Chapter 38

Chapter 38 – The Prelude to All-out War, The Battle of the Red Mountains (6)His vision cleared as the path to the Daemon’s core, obscured by volcanic ash, finally revealed itself.

The holy sword, targeting the enemy of the world, roared with a fiery red energy.

Cross Sword Style – 4th Form, Shoot.

Within the sheath, power surged, coalescing into a single ray of killing intent.

The blade, the hilt, the entire sword quivered under the immense force.

With a mighty leap, Kaisen closed the distance between himself and his foe.

「!」The Daemon, its wings outstretched, reacted with impossible speed.

Kaisen, spinning like a top, sliced deep into its arm. With the momentum of his rotation, he cleaved through the limb entirely.

「一!」

A deafening crack echoed as if the earth itself had been split.

Lava erupted from the wound in the creature’s arm.

Already, Kaisen was gone before the lava far exceeding the combustion point of a human’s body poured over where he’d just been.

Shoot – Cross Sword Style – 6th Form, Glancing Blow

Faster… One slash was too shallow. If he wanted to kill it, he had to be faster.

Shoot – Cross Sword Style – Quick-Draw Sword Technique, Chopping Firewood

Just like Kamila used to do, his individual strikes blurred into a relentless dance of steel.

Shoot – Cross Sword Style – Cross Decapitation

Each slash left a crimson trail in its wake and overlapped with previous trails before they could fade.

Again and again, his sword dance overlapped with itself, and to an onlooker’s eyes, it looked as though crimson flowers were in full bloom around the Daemon.

“That… isn’t that…?”

Though everyone was shocked by the sight, Loveris bore a different type of shock.

She had seen that dance and those illusionary flowers before. At the end of the ‘Black Summer’, a ‘hero’ had cut down an Incarnate-Level Mauna Roa with the same technique.

“Lady Raminea’s sword dance?” she mumbled to herself.

The Cross Sword Style was designed for fluidity—a continuous flow of movement rather than isolated strikes.

She’d heard that using it to its full potential was impossible for Kaisen because he chose ‘Shoot’ as his foundation, so how was it possible?

Shlink! Shlink shlink shliiiiiinnnnkkkk—!

There was a rather simple answer…

Kaisen used his body and the power of the dragon spirit to their very limits and managed to continuously use Quick Draw and Shoot one after the other so quickly that the moves blended into a facsimile of his mother’s sword dance.

Shoot – Sudden Attack

Shoot – Thunderous Dragon Strike

Shoot – Lightning Resistance.

The fake holy sword could not harm the Daemon’s soul, but it certainly hindered it.

“The Daemon’s movement is blocked!”

“Kaisen Alter Aradamantel’s attacks are keeping it in place!”

“Great Encirclement of No Return has been increased to 88% area of influence!”

The dark fairy’s excited words filled Mirngadia with a thrill. ‘Kaisen, the descendant of the Dragon Sage, who holds the spirit of the Light Dragon…’

Mirngadia could not help but think of the end of the ‘Black War’ after witnessing Kaisen’s illuminating sword dance.

Raminea Alter Aradamantel…

She was a bright child from birth. Like her ancestors, she smiled from a young age and shed tears even at the slightest sadness of an animal dying.

Her face resembled a combination of the brightness of the Dragon Sage and Miria, who was like a mother to the Three Heroic Dragons.

Her smile bloomed like a flower.

She had entered the path of a Warrior, wanting only to help the Three Heroic Dragons.

“I want to help my elders with all my heart and strength.”

Mirngadia was surprised and impressed by the beauty of creation’s ability to generate a resemblance to faces, expressions, scents, and hearts of people long past.

“Uncle Mir, I would like to end my journey here. You were hurt a lot, right? Just take a break.”

The child had fought the Mauna Roa in his stead at the end of the ‘Black Summer’ and died on paper.

‘Yes, on paper…’

Had the heart and soul of that child, who’d given birth to a daughter and a son, lived happily, and then died to protect her child, really reached heaven?

“Mir, I went to see Raminea today. Both her daughter and son look so much like their mother. It would be nice if you could see them for yourself…”

She’d resembled the Dragon Sage.

Had that child, who would rather go into danger herself than force others to, met the Dragon Sage somewhere in the afterlife?

When he eventually met them again, would he be able to stand straight in front of her without a trace of shame?

Kamila would have been able to stand proud in front of Raminea since she had died to protect others, just like her teacher.

‘I’m sorry…’

If only he had more wisdom; if only he felt strong enough to look upon the Dragon Sage and not be ashamed. If things had been different, he would not have dragged Raminea’s child down the same path that caused her so much pain.

Mirngadia’s sleeping body, recalling old memories, shed a tear.

‘Yes, and your son truly takes after you…’

At a certain moment, Kaisen’s endless display of techniques intersected countless times, creating diagonal lines of overlapping light.

The Mauna Roa’s tail instantly broke through and aimed at Kaisen’s heart, but a dull, black light appeared and caught the tail in midair.

“Ha, for someone so big…” Teval grabbed the tail with both hands, showing his extraordinary strength. “You’re weak! In fact, you’re weaker than my dead wife!”

He held still, but the ground beneath him cracked, and he sunk into the earth.

“Teval…!”

The Daemon pulled his tail back and tried to bring it down on Teval, but cracks appeared in the air over the appendage.

Riiiiiip, claaaaang—!

Space-Time Void.

A dimensional tear formed, cutting the tail off and sucking it away.

“Don’t stop!”

Kaisen’s mouth twitched. His sword and body trembled as if they would break apart from the infinite series of transcendental forms.

Even when blood gushed from his mouth, he didn’t stop. Loveris’s encouragement seemed to fill him with renewed vigor.

Beyond the pain he felt in the moment, his destiny had to be pioneered through his sword.

Kaisen tightened his grip and focused so much that he only realized he’d swung properly after the rebound of his attack shook his bones.

Shoot – Torpedo Step.

Kaisen’s barrage of techniques inevitably led to momentary openings in his defense, and the Daemon took advantage of one such opening to launch an attack from an unnatural angle.

Shoot – Lightning Shroud Sword Dance.

Shoot – Void of Annihilation.

Teval’s dragon spear, Mern’s arrows, and Alidona’s magic saved Kaisen from the counterattack.

「Pu Hasas!」Mauna Roa struck the ground with its foot, causing lava to boil up from the ley lines far beneath.

The lava naturally fell under the authority of the King of Lizards and flowed down the slope of the Red Mountains.

The hair on Kaisen’s arms stood on end. ‘This bastard, no way…’

Like poison spreading through the bloodstream, the lava spread over the three peaks and dyed them red.

The three rays of light meant to vanquish the Daemon were on the verge of becoming completely one in the sky above.

“What we must do is turn fleeting deaths into noble sacrifices.”

He had to stop the Daemon. If it managed to break through the killing technique, all of the deaths to that point would be for nothing.

“Wait, you’re too impatient!” Loveris shouted behind him after he moved into action.

Lacking a proper foothold due to the surging lava, Kaisen’s leap was greatly restricted in its trajectory.

The Daemon, rather than reading his movements, created a situation in which Kaisen could only move as it wanted.

The Mauna Roa’s pitch-black and huge hand swooped in. There was no way to avoid it in time, and before he could even swing his sword, the claw wrapped around him.

This…’ His sight flashed, and every bone in his body except for his skull felt like they were crumbling into powder…

‘Like this…?’

Overwhelmed by the weight and heat far exceeding his tolerance, his consciousness began to fade.

‘Will it end like this…?’

Kaisen’s five senses were amplified to the limit, and they all transmitted every bit of pain vividly into his mind during his futile struggle against death.

‘Here…?’

The clarity of his impending end scared him.

「That is enough.」

The sound of a clear clap reverberated through that clear awareness of death, followed by light and a radiance warmer than the sun.

The warmth carefully pulled him out from the cold grasp of death and hugged him.

「You’ve worked hard.」

It was the same light he felt when escaping from Aristapo… the power of lightning that could reweave time and space.

Kaisen’s vision still flickered, but he saw sun-blonde hair and cross-shaped eyes. He tried to speak, but his lungs were filled with blood.

Still, there was an enemy that needed to be cut down…

Setsunen looked into Kaisen’s heart and shook her head. She was also completely exhausted after saving the remnants of the 2nd Army, but a trace of a quiet smile appeared on her lips.

「Rest. It all came true thanks to you.」

A storm of concentrated blue light swirled in the sky before it suddenly fell to the ground like a lightning strike.

The brilliance of the technique blinded the eyes as one of Great Mage Lynn’s seals of immortality activated.

The Encirclement of No Return was a high-level technique that completely froze the body when its caster received a fatal injury until complete recovery.

[Great Encirclement of No Return… Hit…!]

The spell was originally designed to protect the life of the mage and was reconstructed into a seal through the hands of Lynn’s disciple, Priestess Tureina.

[Freezing the Daemon’s form. Progress: 35%!]

The spell could put even an Incarnation into a limited state of suspension.

ΓΚΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑAAasssssEEEEEEEEEEEE!」 The Mauna Roa broke away from the mountain range with its wings and rushed toward Setsunen, who was carrying Kaisen.

In that fleeting moment, as if it wanted to take just one more life, it struck.

“Kaisen!”

“Your Excellency!”

“Mern, Alidona! Help!”

Everyone reacted a beat too late.

Setsunen whispered as she stretched out her hand toward the Mauna Roa as it approached.

「Are the lives you took still not enough?」 The moment her hand touched the Daemon’s forehead, lightning tore through the sky and drove the monster down the cliffside.

It fell, letting out a tearing roar of absolute murder and hatred.

The Encirclement of No Return reached its peak, covering the Daemon’s massive body in freezing power at a cellular level and instantly turning it into an ice sculpture.

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The three peaks, which were formed 270 years prior, had been used by the old priestess, Tureina, as foundations for the Encirclement of No Return to put the Forgotten Kings to sleep.

Mirngadia kept that power in reserve, no,,, it was augmented several times with his own intelligence.

If the Daemons continued to come back, it would be best to put them to rest until the war ended…

[82%!]

In order to make it a reality, countless corpses had to lay a path on the mountains, which was why Mirngadia did not refer to it as a victory until the end.

[97%!]

Setsunen conveyed it all to Kaisen through Lightning Resonance.

Why would she personally explain it all to him, who was just a Fake Warrior?

Just as he was fading into unconsciousness, Kaisen heard the dark fairies shouting in relief.

[100%… completely frozen! The sealing of the Incarnate-Level Daemon has succeeded!]

____