Chapter 45
Chapter 45
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 45
Chapter Title: Transcendence of the Blade
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A terrifying, raw madness never felt before was now vividly visible in the charging form of Bricala, which lunged forward relentlessly on two thick legs and brandished its four muscular arms in a way that would make any ordinary human shrink back in paralyzing fear.
The monstrous creature was maintaining a semi-forced state of combat awakening by violently burning its own flesh with crackling currents of electricity, moving exactly like a desperate warhorse being lashed mercilessly with a whip.
Yet, right in the path of this charging beast, the man who had willingly twisted himself away from the standard human path moved first without displaying a single shard of hesitation.
“Glory to Helmuntuuuuh!” Jonathan roared at the top of his lungs, the sheer devotion to his house radiating from his very posture.
The sticky, thick crimson aura emanating from his heavy greatsword had warped into something completely unholy, merely bearing the superficial name of Red Aura while pulsing with unstable power.
Kwaaang!
The exact moment the two terrifying monsters clashed in the center of the wall, a violent shockwave of compressed auras and erratic electrical currents splashed out in all directions.
Unfortunately, the balance of raw physical power crumbled completely right from the very outset of the collision.
The instant their weapons collided, Jonathan's massive greatsword was forcefully repelled backward by the beast's momentum, and the savage creature ruthlessly trampled right over his body, crushing him into the stone floor as it passed through.
"Guhk!" Jonathan groaned as his consciousness instantly shattered.
“You were acting all tough and arrogant just a second ago, so what the hell was that, Jonathan?!” Sharen screamed, her reaction being a vital beat too slow because her companion's guard had been completely breached in a mere instant.
Before her horizontal slash could even complete its swing, Bricala easily flicked her heavy greatsword aside with a single swing of its fist.
With her eyes wide in sheer panic, she desperately emitted a dense cloud of Red Aura from her entire body in a final bid of resistance, but the raw force behind the strike was too overwhelming.
"Kyaa!" she shrieked as she too failed to block Bricala's relentless charge, her body being flung backward through the air until she slammed heavily into the stone wall.
It was a terrifyingly close call, for if her trajectory had been misdirected by even a slight fraction, she would have plummeted straight down the sheer drop of the fortress wall.
"...!"
But despite clearing out the knights, Bricala's primary target had clearly been Isaac from the very beginning of the encounter.
The intelligent beast accurately recognized that Isaac was the only presence on this battlefield who had nearly succeeded in claiming its life during their previous clash.
‘There is absolutely no chance for survival if we attempt to fight this monster head-on in my current state,’ Isaac calculated grimly, knowing full well that they could not afford to flee somewhere else either.
With Sharen now thrown far into the distance, the ambient magic of the frost zone was taking effect, and Isaac's body was beginning to freeze over in the biting cold once more.
Thud!
He stomped his right foot forward forcefully onto the frosted stone, anchoring his weight securely.
Completely discarding the damaged Pearlsword, he reached down and placed his steady hand atop the hilt of the last remaining nodachi resting at his waist.
‘Fear,’ Isaac had answered back then without a single shred of difficulty.
Upon hearing his response, the grandmaster had displayed a rare smile and grumbled playfully, ‘You are far too outstanding and perceptive, which makes you not cute at all as a disciple.’
There was absolutely no hesitation remaining in Isaac's movements right now.
The exact moment his cold-stiffened, trembling hand rested securely on the hilt, a sensation of profound freedom washed over his mind as if by magic.
He knew that this specific beast knew how to think, meaning it possessed a high level of wisdom that allowed it to reason, learn from its past mistakes, and grow stronger.
And precisely because it possessed that analytical intelligence...
Thud!
Bricala suddenly halted its advance right before reaching Isaac, spreading its four massive arms wide as it assumed a posture of wary caution.
‘It fears my blade precisely because it knows what it is capable of, and it is acting overly cautious because it learned from our last battle,’ Isaac realized.
In this silent standoff, Isaac was silently questioning the beast's limits with his posture alone.
With the lethal speed of his Iai technique, could the creature truly track the path of the blade with its eyes this time around?
Could it possibly manage to block a sword strike that moved like a flash of pure light again, as if by mere luck?
Bricala's previously unwavering, furious gaze locked intently onto Isaac's sheathed nodachi, focusing its entire mind on the exact millisecond that hidden steel might be drawn.
It was a massive bluff on Isaac's part, a dangerous lie staked entirely on life itself, much like a high-stakes card game.
In reality, the nodachi at his waist was severely compromised, and the instant it was drawn from its scabbard, the residual lightning would ruin the blade completely, rendering the sword entirely unusable after a single swing.
But the crucial point was that the beast had no way of knowing if the weapon currently resting at his waist was the exact same damaged blade from before.
‘The fact that it is actively thinking is what trips it up, because its own knowledge is building the foundation of its fear,’ Isaac observed.
Having intimately felt the terrifying possibility of death once upon its own skin, and with its anger currently warring against the deep chill of dread rising in its chest, Bricala found itself unable to easily close the remaining distance to attack Isaac.
Of course, that hesitation could only last for a brief moment.
"Kraaaang!"
Bricala slammed its massive fist heavily onto the floor, causing a violent surge of lightning to snake along the stone wall directly toward Isaac's position.
Faced with a literal wave of crashing electricity, Isaac tried to block the path by hurling the nearby Pearlsword into the current, but the discarded weapon had only a minimal dampening effect.
In the end, the blinding lightning completely engulfed Isaac's body.
"Grhuhhh!" Isaac screamed as a sensation like his entire physical being was about to explode ripped through his nerves.
While his body had been freezing solid just moments ago, his skin was now burning fiercely, steam rising from his uniform alongside the pungent stench of scorched flesh.
"Kraaaah!"
Judging that Isaac was fully downed and neutralized at last, the beast thudded forward with heavy steps.
Smack!
Using the full force of its momentum, Bricala deliver a back-handed strike that hit Isaac squarely in the chest.
"Isa-aaack!" Sharen's desperate scream echoed across the wall.
Thanks to her loud shouting, Jonathan managed to stir slightly from his unconsciousness, but it was already far too late to change the outcome.
Isaac's broken body floated up into the air, shoved violently beyond the edge of the wall, before beginning a steep, vertical plunge down toward the ground below.
The intense shock caused his frozen limbs to feel as if they were shattering into pieces, and even the freezing wind rushing past his ears felt like pure agony.
‘So, this is how I finally die,’ he thought quietly to himself.
"Th—at gu—y! He is fal—ling—!"
"Bloc—k the impact with i—t al—l!"
"I—saac si—r!"
A series of fragmented, distant voices barely held Isaac's fading mind together like persistent tinnitus.
Within his hazy, fog-shrouded vision, the towering outline of the fortress wall loomed, and then, before he could even process the distance, Isaac had somehow reached the solid ground.
Surprisingly, there was absolutely no crushing impact, despite his mind fully expecting instant death from the fall.
"So what on earth were you planning to do up there alone?!" a voice yelled, making the reason behind his survival clear soon enough.
A dense shroud of warm, vibrant green mana was enveloping his entire body, causing the pounding, agonizing pain throughout his limbs to fade away into his skin.
His fingers twitched slightly, and his blurred vision rapidly cleared to reveal Vivian, the dedicated field medic mage.
"If I hadn't managed to catch your body with my magic in the nick of time, you wouldn't even be in a state to receive treatment right now—it would have been instant death!" she yelled, her words interrupted by a violent coughing fit caused by the sheer strain of casting high-tier healing magic.
"You explicitly told us to retreat yourself—cough cough! What were you planning by fighting that monster up there alone—khek! Gack!" she turned aside to spit out a mouthful of phlegm.
The heavy healing magic had strained her body greatly, and her haggard, pale face clearly showed that she had completely depleted the vast majority of her mana pool to save him.
"Ah."
Isaac slowly rose to his feet, finding that while he wasn't fully recovered, he was at least ready to fight again.
"Sir Isaac, are you truly alright?!" the surrounding Mallidan Wall soldiers asked anxiously, immediately closing in around him.
"Give me a damage report," Isaac commanded as he brushed off the lingering ice crystals from his scorched uniform.
"There is no further damage to our forces besides the initial ambush, which is entirely thanks to your quick judgment in ordering the immediate retreat," a soldier replied right away, as if trying to reassure him that his tactical call wasn't wrong.
But Isaac ignored their comfort, forcefully shoving past the blocking soldiers and staggering back toward the base of the wall.
"It is not over yet," he muttered.
Sharen and Jonathan were still trapped above, battling Bricala with their lives on the line.
As he advanced with heavy, resolute steps, the other soldiers urgently blocked his path once more.
"You cannot go back up there, sir!"
"Going back now is nothing short of suicide!"
"Please, let us climb up and fight in your stead while you rest here, Sir Isaac!"
"Defending this Mallidan Wall was our sole duty from the very start!"
Faced with the soldiers who were insisting on taking his place, Isaac turned and glared at them with bloodshot, terrifying eyes.
"You want to climb up there? Only to freeze to death together without making a difference?" he asked coldly.
"..."
"You are the wall's final guardians, and that is exactly why you must stay right here," he stated firmly.
"If we happen to die up top, then you will be the ones to block its advance next," he added, knowing that the longer they engaged the beast on the wall, the more damage would accumulate on Bricala.
Even if they couldn't kill it outright, fighting for as long as possible up top would wear the monster down to a manageable level.
"Knowing that you are standing directly behind us is the sole reason why we can afford to stake our lives up there without fear," Isaac said.
The speechless soldiers found themselves unable to stop Isaac's steady advance, but just as he reached the stairs, an utterly unexpected man blocked his way.
"What exactly happened to your other swords, Isaac?" Antonio asked quietly.
"Antonio..."
Without waiting for an answer, Antonio snatched Isaac's nodachi, drawing the steel slightly to inspect its condition.
Crackle!
The blade was fully ruined, charred completely black from when Isaac had taken the direct hit from the beast's lightning, rendering it completely unusable.
"The sword is dead," Antonio muttered, but Isaac merely extended his hand in silence, demanding the silver nodachi that Antonio currently held in his grip.
"I wasn't originally supposed to give this weapon to you under these circumstances," Antonio said with a wry smile, but knowing that now wasn't the time for arguments, he handed over the magnificent silver nodachi.
"Just make sure you return it directly to the young lady yourself when you come back from the battle," he added, passing the responsibility along.
Isaac's eyes widened slightly as his fingers wrapped around the handle, finding that the nodachi in his grip was astonishingly light and infused with a mystically clear aura that he recognized at a single glance to be the signature trait of Frost Silver Light forging.
Giving a small, resolute nod, Isaac strode inward toward the stairs, his body suddenly heating up from within.
"Kheek! Cough! Gack!" Vivian was retching violently now, having expended her remaining reserves to cast a final, powerful warming spell on Isaac's body to shield him from the cold.
As he headed up toward the wall, the surrounding soldiers slowly parted to clear a path, silently raising their hands in a formal military salute out of profound reverence for the swordsman marching back to battle.
As he climbed the long stone stairs ascending the wall amid the chilling cold, the familiar sensation of his brain freezing under the environmental magic began to return.
Yet, Isaac's ears rang clearly with the remembered voice of his dear grandmaster.
The old hybrid grandmaster had tilted her cup back then, her eyes laced with deep lament as she retorted with a question of her own.
‘...’
‘Is it when a warrior is actively staking their life in a desperate battle, swinging their sword with all their might while focusing every shred of sanity just to survive?’ Isaac had proposed.
Well, everyone in the martial world probably imagines it exactly that way—shedding one's human shell and reaching a breakthrough of enlightenment during a dire, life-or-death crisis.
But back on the wall, with nothing but a cliff behind him, Isaac remembered her true answer.
‘...’
Taking heavy, deliberate steps up the frosted stairs, Isaac pushed forward.
Passing through steps heavily rimed with thick frost and jagged icicles, Isaac finally reached the flat top of the wall once more.
‘Get what exactly?’ Isaac thought as the freezing gale swept across his body, forcing a white, frosty breath from his lips.
Through the drifting white vapor of the blizzard, he could see that Jonathan and Sharen already lay fallen and bleeding on the stone floor.
The beast's returning sight was clearly irritating it, and it snorted aggressively at Isaac's reappearance, unleashing its blazing fury in a deafening roar.
In response to the roar, multiple streaks of lightning speared through the scattering snow clumps like physical lances, the sheer quantity of mana condensed into the bolts proving that the monster still possessed a massive reservoir of energy.
‘What an absolute monster,’ Isaac thought as he smoothly assumed his signature combat stance.
He placed his right leg boldly forward, keeping his left leg anchored behind him like an immovable pillar to stabilize his center of gravity, before resting his hand naturally on the hilt of his nodachi.
‘...’
Thud!
The distinct memory of the grandmaster slamming the tip of her sheath onto the floor perfectly overlapped with the heavy thud of Bricala's advancing footfall.
Isaac's mind snapped into absolute alertness, his eyes locking firmly onto Bricala as the beast kept a cautious distance, probing for a weakness.
‘...’
Hexzzzt!
Bricala's erratic lightning suddenly sprayed everywhere, intending to suppress Isaac's sword just as it had during their first encounter by firing massive waves of current the exact millisecond he moved, but...
The silver blade slipped free from its scabbard as smoothly as flowing water.
Right here in the frozen north, where the moon shone brightest, he had swung the sword.
Where the stars watched the dawn, he had gripped the handle.
Sweat-soaked, he had watched the moon fade as the sunrise rose.
Before the rooster's crow, he had shouted his kiai.
And he had repeated it daily, without fail.
“The moment it is drawn—.”
The execution reached a realm far beyond the mere end of a technique, achieving the state known as the Great Iai.
A brilliant, flawless silver line was etched cleanly forth into the darkness of the blizzard.
It extended effortlessly, reaching out further and further until it touched some unknowable, higher place in the fabric of space.
The clean severing of the monstrous beast's neck was no longer a grand struggle, but merely one natural process in his continuous advance along the path of the blade.
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