Chapter 173
Chapter 173
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 173
Chapter Title: War is (1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I revved up the motorcycle.
It ran over the corpses strewn across the ground. A humid wind battered my ears.
I could feel Kyle turning toward me.
He was going to try to crash into the motorcycle, but it seemed impossible. He’d probably block the bike’s path with a sword strike.
I tensed my body, preparing to leap off at the right moment.
The bike trampled over buildings and debris.
It raced between collapsed structures.
At some point, I spotted my kin.
“Hilde.”
Kyle grinned viciously and put strength into his legs.
“I thought you’d tucked tail and run.”
Clang!
Our swords collided.
I focused solely on the fight. I ignored Hecate, Sequoia, and Sion. Yoon was right behind me. He’d handle support on his own.
Even if he didn’t, there was nothing I could do.
When facing Kyle, I always had to go all in.
I felt his sword.
“What are you trying to do?”
I muttered while locked in a contest of strength.
“What do you want now?”
“You think you’ve won.”
His voice dripped with mockery and contempt.
I stared into his gleaming golden eyes from point-blank range.
“Cowards who knelt to these things.”
Boom!
The blades glanced off.
A circular shockwave spread out. The ground where we’d stood cratered from the impact. I heard the shock ripping through buildings, shattering their glass, and smashing vehicles on the road.
But I couldn’t look back.
Second clash.
His sword couldn’t be deflected.
Clang!
“Kyle. I’m begging you just once.”
Our two swords met again.
I felt the intensity and direction of the force transmitted through my blade and muttered.
I knew full well that even saying this would be a grave insult to him.
Even knowing that, I uttered the words coiled inside me.
I pleaded.
“Surrender and come into the Core.”
Boom!
The impact struck my body.
I flew backward from the intensified force. The shock clogged my throat. Then it hit my back. I must have slammed into something. I’d reflexively deflected the blade, avoiding being impaled.
My internal injuries were severe.
I let out a groan and narrowed my eyes.
I saw Kyle’s rippling black hair.
I understood why I’d been pushed back so suddenly. He was absorbing. When absorption began, faint ripples formed around his body.
It had been a long time since I’d seen Kyle use it.
He’d converted the absorbed nutrients into force and shoved me away.
A refusal laced with fury.
I pushed off the ground with my sword and staggered to my feet.
As I raised my head, Kyle was right in front of me.
Thud!
I was hurled back, slamming into something again.
I’d blocked sword with sword, but my strength fell short.
Unless I absorbed too, I’d get skewered.
“After taking a third of it, you’re still greedy?”
Ignoring the heavy pain, I focused every nerve on my sword when Kyle growled.
I didn’t grasp his words right away.
A third of what...?
“You forced that many of our kin to kneel, and you’re still not satisfied?”
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Bullets flew.
Kyle twisted his body, deflecting them with sword strikes. He’d reacted before the gunfire even rang out.
Boom! A deafening roar and a point-blank shockwave.
A wise choice. Even Kyle wouldn’t have emerged unscathed from a submachine gun burst.
And the timing was perfect.
Because his words had made me lose focus for a split second.
Without support, Kyle’s sword would’ve pierced my heart.
“Get it together.”
A cold voice came from beyond the hazy smoke.
“You planning to let him slip away like last time?”
Kyle’s attention shifted to Yoon.
He seemed intent on eliminating the human who’d unleashed the volley. He planned to cut him down swiftly while I was distracted.
He’d taken his eyes off me for a moment, just like I had.
I raised my sword in the gap as his head turned.
Boom!
My blade plunged vertically into the earth.
The sword strike rippled along the ground. The attack branched in multiple directions, bursting the piled corpses. Things that would’ve empowered Kyle shattered and scattered into the air.
Kyle leaped back, dodging the oncoming strikes.
From beyond the smoke, Yoon muttered a curse.
“You don’t distinguish friend from foe?”
“My apologies.”
I apologized shamelessly.
“Didn’t realize you were in the trajectory.”
“Yeah, right.”
Busted?
“See you in three hours.”
Clang!
A sword approached, shoving aside the surrounding air.
Clang, clang, clang! Our blades clashed repeatedly.
During the exchanges, I couldn’t survey my surroundings or speak. Blocking Kyle’s sword and pressing my attacks took everything I had.
Boom!
The terrain around us crumbled into dust.
My vision wavered.
Damn internal injuries.
Even in perfect condition, Kyle was a tough opponent.
On top of that, stupidly, a phrase he’d spat lingered in the corner of my mind throughout our clashes.
“A third.”
“That many kin.”
But where were they?
I hadn’t sensed them inside the Core. All the kin presences I detected were outside. Right in front of me. Behind Kyle, facing me down.
Hecate, Sequoia, and Sion were being handled by the seniors.
Ah.
Boom!
I nearly got stabbed after losing focus for a split second.
I twisted away, deflecting his blade, and retreated. The barely deflected shockwave demolished the remaining building debris.
Get it together.
I steadied my mind and thought.
Winning seemed impossible, so I had to inflict as much damage as possible.
As I resolved myself and adjusted my stance, Sequoia shouted from within the smoke.
“Kyle!”
She was fending off Sophia and Ami amid a encirclement of creatures.
“It’s time to retreat!”
Huh?
“We succeeded! You have to go!”
Succeeded at what?
I’m still alive.
The Core hasn’t fallen yet?
I widened my eyes and rapidly expanded my senses. The awareness I’d focused solely on Kyle spread to multiple points.
Dulled by pain, but still functional.
With it, I perceived the creatures concentrated around the collapsed barrier. A full melee was unfolding there. I couldn’t detect the humans directly, but their stances against the Black Badgers told me they were clashing.
But most creatures hadn’t crossed into the Core.
Flying types kept entering, only to be shot down one after another. Even the farthest one eventually plummeted after hitting anti-air fire.
Succeeded at what, exactly?
Puzzled, I tried to extend my senses further, but something rose from within.
I spat up a gush of blood.
“Shit.”
“We could push through if we press.”
Irritated in the common tongue, I wiped the blood with the back of my hand as Kyle muttered.
He was using the common tongue too.
More precisely, English, which was nearly identical.
“There’s too much interference….”
Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-bang!
Boom! A sound like my eardrums might burst rattled my ears.
Yoon had rejoined.
I thought he was handling Sion.
The master handler was suddenly up close, detonating something.
I’d heard from the lab scientists: Yoon had no bonded weapon. He wielded terrain and objects more adeptly than anyone, picking whatever fit the situation.
In balanced combat, he fell short of Ye-hyeon. In raw power to Walker, speed to Ami, stamina to Richard Green, ferocity to Jason Tvein.
But in lethality, Choi Yoon stood at the top.
Sion was….
“No.”
The moment my sharp senses caught a kin collapsing on the ground, dying, Kyle muttered.
My senses screamed.
Boom!
We kicked off the ground simultaneously.
Kyle probably arrived first. If not for the mine Yoon had placed in his path.
Click—a sinister sound, then an explosion. It was massive enough to throw me, mid-leap toward Sion, off balance and tumbling across the dirt.
Kyle rose, blood pouring from his mangled leg.
Absorption would restore it soon enough.
But that delay cost him.
Now I stood beside Sion.
Gripping my sword, I looked down at the bleeding, fallen kin.
Sion wasn’t a child of the World Tree. Not even a formal knight. I vaguely recalled he’d been a mercenary.
We’d had so little connection I couldn’t even be sure.
Yet I couldn’t stop my sword hand from trembling.
It hadn’t shaken like this even on my first kill.
I met the eyes of the kin gazing up at me.
“Say you surrender.”
I pleaded in a quavering voice.
“Please, I beg you.”
Sion stared up at me silently.
Then he smirked.
“Fuck off.”
Ah.
Ah….
“Hildebert!”
“Kyle! We have to retreat! There’s no more nutrients nearby to transfer!”
“Cowardly bastard, cowardly bastard!”
“No hope anyway. Just finish it quick.”
Kyle shouting my name in the common tongue, Sequoia rushing to grab him, Hecate raging but blocked by Ricardo and Karl.
Sion’s faint mutter.
I gazed down at the man and whispered darkly.
“Eternal blessings upon you.”
Volume only for Sion’s ears.
“Eternal rest.”
Then, pointing my blade at his heart,
“May all blood reach the place of peace.”
I raised my sword,
“Rest in peace.”
And plunged it down.
Squelch.
I felt life end.
One kin vanished. The presence cut off abruptly. I stood motionless, sensing the death through my sword hilt.
Someone spat pain and resentment, but it barely registered.
Someone screamed, but that too faded unheard.
I sensed an incoming attack, but had no time or will to dodge.
Kisis.
I’m sorry.
I….
Boom!
My body tumbled.
Agony racked me. Vision shook wildly.
When the shaking stopped, red flooded my sight. I thought I heard Ami scream. Someone called my name, but I couldn’t tell who.
Tinnitus and dizziness prevented grasping the situation.
So I lay there stupidly, staring at the sky.
Until someone approached and bent to grab me.
A cold voice fell.
“I let you kill him with your own hands.”
The master handler propped me up.
“Kept him alive on purpose. But seeing this, maybe I shouldn’t next time.”
“No.”
Panting raggedly, I lowered my gaze.
In my stained vision, I saw Yoon’s uniform soaked in blood.
“Thank you.”
Utterly sincere gratitude.
“For handing me the end.”
I don’t want to see kin perish by human hands.
I raised my head to meet cold black eyes.
Eyes whose thoughts I couldn’t fathom, fixed on me.
Brushing over the cruelty in them, I smiled faintly.
“Please do it this way from now on.”
The piercing scent of blood.
Yoon didn’t reply.