Chapter 125
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 125
Chapter Title: First Warrior (3)
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“You’ll teach me the Pulverizing Apex? Are you serious?”
“This is one thing I’d never joke about.”
It was right when the Orc Kingdom’s forces had finished reorganizing and were about to launch a full counterattack.
To be precise, just before Bellona awakened in her new form and made her appearance. Berglen was taken aback by what Screum, whom he had summoned, had said.
Even though he was a human-born slave soldier, Berglen was receiving fine treatment thanks to his outstanding skills and steadily accumulating achievements. Yet here was an offer he’d never imagined.
Screum was offering to pass down his own realm—the Pulverizing Apex.
“...Why?”
Berglen had no choice but to ask outright. No matter how much he racked his brains, he couldn’t find a single clue.
For one, he was human. A non-orc treated as a thorough slave in the Orc Kingdom.
Moreover, countless orc warriors lined up under Screum, dying to learn from him.
“I, too, only opened my eyes after receiving the teachings from the Divine One. In the end, the path we walk converges to a single point, and race matters little on that journey.”
Screum was one who had accepted that the enlightenment the Deity Urmark wished to impart transcended race—a singular realm.
Thus, he stated his position simply: he would teach because Berglen had talent.
Berglen’s eyes wavered at those words.
Until now, he had believed humans like himself were fundamentally different from orcs. Different body structures, different ways of life.
He had been trapped in the fixed notion that even wielding the same sword would inevitably differ.
So, Screum’s words—that all who picked up weapons and trained were the same warriors—struck him like a thunderbolt.
“...Teach me. Curiosity’s killing me, setting everything else aside.”
Screum was an orc of a different race, the supreme commander of the forces that had toppled his homeland.
Yet his prowess was undeniably extraordinary, and his warrior’s spirit was that of a true exemplar, worthy of emulation.
After a brief but intense inner turmoil, Berglen formally requested to be taken as Screum’s disciple.
Monstrous ants swarmed before their eyes anyway.
As Screum intended, he figured rolling around the front lines meant prioritizing the extermination of those ants above all else for now.
“Very well. I’ll start with the basics. Absorb even half of it and forge your own realm.”
Screum grinned, and his instruction began from that moment.
It coincided with rumors spreading of a peculiar monster unlike other ants—one that wielded a sword.
“Th-that’s him! The Sword Devil!”
An Orc Kingdom supply unit, tasked with delivering goods to frontline troops, plunged into emergency mode.
Across the vast plain, a horde of ants was charging at tremendous speed.
Composed mainly of fast, lightweight variants like Gale Ants, Decapitation Ants, and Spider Ants, someone perched crookedly atop the lead Gale Ant.
At a glance, she resembled a female knight clad in black armor—a figure now dubbed the Sword Devil in these parts: Bellona.
The shocked supply unit hurriedly prepared for battle.
With ample escort forces, they had no reason to flee immediately or give up hope.
‘She sure knows how to make full use of herself.’
Jin-hyuk watched Bellona with admiration.
Having evolved based on her desire as queen to fight on the front lines, Bellona devised tactics exploiting that very trait, throwing enemies into panic.
The basic structure mirrored how Asmora had used Seira.
A small elite force with overwhelming combat power and firepower pierces the enemy’s broad defensive line to destroy key facilities, personnel, or assassinate leaders.
In truth, Asmora’s method with Seira had mimicked the very tactic Screum used to slay Bellona. Now, Bellona was exacting revenge on Screum’s Orc Kingdom troops in kind.
Bellona recognizes the defensive barrier deployed by the enemies.
The orc shamans and human mages in the supply unit hastily erected a barrier.
It was the standard response to protect supplies and enable safe counterattacks from within.
Once fully formed, it would demand tremendous firepower. A few Turtle Ants bombarding relentlessly, followed by Heavy Plate Ants ramming it, might shatter it.
“Gasp?!”
“I-it’s coming!”
But before the barrier fully coalesced—before the translucent shield fully merged—it always had weak points.
Bellona’s senses, honed to detect energy flows, spotted them instantly.
Ignoring her mount’s crash from the impact, she leaped into the air, drew her sword, and slashed down at the barrier in one fluid motion.
A vortex of deep blue power swirled around the thrusting blade’s tip, becoming a single shooting star.
“Argh!”
“Everyone, evade!”
With a ferocious shockwave, Bellona shattered the barrier and invaded within.
The slave soldiers and even orc warriors shrank back in terror at her intense gaze, sword in hand, standing motionless as she surveyed them.
“Twisted and off somehow, but that was definitely the Heart-Thread Pierce—wrapping mana around the blade and concentrating power at its tip!”
Then, an orc warrior adorned with ornate decorations and a symbolic tattoo across his broad, muscular back growled, stepping forward with axe raised.
“The rumors were true. A monster mimicking our sacred techniques, including the Heart-Thread Pierce!”
A great warrior blessed by the Deity Urmark and captain of the supply escort, he pointed his axe at Bellona in fury.
Though she’d only recently taken up the sword, Bellona had battled foes relentlessly, absorbing data like a sponge and growing rapidly.
Now, no ordinary elite warrior— even several at once—could match her in pure swordsmanship.
Judging it time to face a great warrior, Bellona calmly raised her sword and pointed it at him.
“Y-you monster bitch...!”
Enraged, he surged with mana across his body and charged, swinging his axe.
A great warrior was hero-level strong. Capable of smashing variants several times his weight and size single-handedly.
“Such arrogance. How dare you mimic the essence we forged over ages of experience and teachings!”
When Bellona’s body was pushed back blocking his axe, he bared his teeth in a grin.
In mere seconds, shockwaves rang out repeatedly, shattering stones and gouging the earth in their wake.
As Bellona’s exoskeleton began cracking at the precarious clash’s end, no one doubted the great warrior’s victory.
“As expected of a great warrior... Huh?”
“Captain!”
But in that instant, as he raised his axe to cleave Bellona from crown to crotch, a barrage of slashes flew at blinding speed.
‘Impossible.’
Time seemed to slow for him as his eyes widened in disbelief.
Bellona wielded but one sword, deflected by his axe.
Her chest lay utterly exposed, defenseless.
He boldly gripped his axe two-handed, aiming to smash her defeated head.
Yet from Bellona’s armpit, a pair of arms erupted, swinging integrated blades like mantis forelimbs.
No veteran warrior could have imagined such an attack.
The swords mercilessly carved his undefended torso delivering the finishing blow.
Arm and leg severed armor and all, tumbling away; before his bulging eyes could close, his head flew through the air.
“Heh.”
As his neck spurted blood, in his spinning vision before death claimed him, he distinctly heard it.
A fresh feminine laugh echoing from within the monster’s helm.
“---!”
Simultaneously, the roaming swarm ants charged from behind like waves devouring a sandcastle, overwhelming the supply unit.
With the barrier shattered and their trusted great warrior fallen, the panicked unit was torn apart by charging jaws and impaled by venom stings.
A Bladejaw Ant parried an orc warrior’s descending sword with its razor mandibles.
Then a Decapitation Ant followed, hooking and severing the startled orc’s neck with its talons.
The clashes looked like prior melees on the surface, but the outcomes differed vastly.
Thanks to Queen Bellona’s ability to analyze and study vast data pouring into the hive mind in real-time, the entire roaming swarm had grown accustomed to orc tactics and techniques, boosting their countermeasures.
Asmora proposes modifications and improvements.
The first to broach the topic was Asmora.
As Bellona swept the front lines, earning the moniker Sword Devil and steadily honing her skills.
Asmora proposed she create something new from it.
Just as she, the Evolution Sovereign, birthed new variants en masse, Bellona—now walking the path of the sword—surely had something only she could forge.
‘Perfect replication? Impossible.’
Bellona judged she couldn’t fully mimic Screum’s realm she’d witnessed—not in this body, this state.
She was growing fast, but far from his heights.
Catching up via orthodox means would take too long.
Thus, like Asmora blending human genes with those of devoured creatures, Bellona intuited she must carve a new path.
Screum’s pinnacle as an orc warrior wasn’t even the final destination.
Just as Asmora lusted after endless knowledge and predation, Bellona would target beyond Screum once surpassed.
Perfect imitation was impossible.
Becoming identical meant sharing the same limits.
True evolution existed to transcend those limits.
“Finally figured it out? Pathetic.”
“Duel? Welcome.”
In the hive mind, the confronting queens ended their healthy debate with sneers and taunts at each other.
“...”
Seira, caught between Asmora’s smirk and scoff and Bellona’s finger-pointing, could only purse her lips and watch warily.
“The swarm grows stronger even in moments like this.”
Yet Seira was certain: separate from the queens’ bickering, the ant swarm sharing everything via hive mind was diversifying and powering up under queens forging their individualities.
‘Who’d win between her and Ji Ye-eun?’
Jin-hyuk, having just witnessed Ji Ye-eun’s hunters defeat another deity’s subordinates, chuckled curiously.