The Force Sword Emperor Kyle Tennant
The Holy Kingdom of Astraea had fallen, becoming the Dark Empire, and the Dragon Lord had informed not only the Habsburg Empire but also the other five kingdoms of the Demon King’s arrival.
The Sardinia Kingdom and the Venice Kingdom, in particular, had been especially shaken. As the nations bordering the Holy Kingdom of Astraea, their reactions were intense.
Ten years ago, when the Demon King Laylana fell, the Sardinia Kingdom and the Venice Kingdom had mobilized numerous troops and called upon many experts from across the continent, playing their part as continental powers. However, unlike the other nations, they had lacked any masters capable of becoming companions to the summoned Hero.
Consequently, in the present, they could no longer assert their voices and were forced to cower, and naturally, their influence and national strength in the continent could only decline.
Among these two nations, the Valua Kingdom, bordering the eastern and northeastern borders of the Sardinia Kingdom, was the birthplace of the Force Sword Emperor Kyle Tennant. Moreover, it was the country in which Kyle Tennant, as a Duke, held power exceeding that of the monarchy.
The Tennant family had originally been a venerable martial clan. However, due to an internal war in the Valua Kingdom two hundred years ago, the family had suffered near extinction and fallen. The descendant Kyle had grown up with the mission to revive the clan burned into his parents and grandparents at a near-hypnotic level.
Particularly, the kings of the Valua Kingdom had always possessed strong royal authority, maintaining a feudal system of enfeoffment while also pursuing a powerful centralization system capable of suppressing the nobility.
Although a perfect centralization system could have sparked a great civil war, the royal family had expanded its territories by increasing the royal lands it held and had also incorporated the many nobles who felt excluded into its own power base to expand its influence.
As a result, when Kyle reached twenty years old, the Valua Kingdom was at a period when royal authority was exceptionally strong.
At first, to revive the clan, Kyle had focused his efforts on honing his martial arts.
Fortunately, the Tennant family had been a venerable martial clan, and although their power had declined, the family’s vision had been passed down through the generations, allowing Kyle to receive and master powerful martial arts.
Fortunately, in the history of the Tennant family, he possessed the greatest talent, making the practice of martial arts surprisingly easy for him.
Thanks to his innate physique, which showcased terrifying strength, he had primarily practiced a domineering sword technique, and naturally, his weapon had also been a greatsword.
Standing at 198 centimeters, a giant, and having reached the realm of Sword Master in his teens, he possessed a strength capable of easily wielding even the unusually heavy greatswords that ordinary people could not handle.
Normally, even greatswords weighed about 2 to 3 kilograms, but here there were many differences from Earth. First, there were metals absent on Earth—Orichalcum, mithril, adamantite—and humans could raise themselves to the realm of Sword Masters through mana and display superhuman strength.
Consequently, on Earth, even a skilled wielder would struggle to properly wield a sword of only 4 kilograms, and at 5 kilograms, no one would be able to use it in combat. Here, even a human weighing over 10 kilograms could wield greatswords that were difficult to use in real combat.
The sword Kyle wielded was precisely such a greatsword weighing over 10 kilograms. Possessing the strength to swing this terrifying greatsword, he had reached the realm of Grand Sword Master in his late thirties thanks to his innate talent and physique.
Having reached the realm of Grand Sword Master, he had initially operated as a free knight, gaining fame, and then, upon reaching his own limit, had headed toward the capital of the Valua Kingdom. He had submitted an application to join the White Lion Knight Order affiliated with the royal family.
When a free knight who had reached the realm of Grand Sword Master applied to join the royal family’s White Lion Knight Order, the King of the Valua Kingdom had been greatly pleased.
Immediately, he had bestowed upon him the title of Marquis. Although the application to join the White Lion Knight Order had not been accepted, he had instead been granted the authority to establish a new knight order, which he had created as the Red Lion Knight Order and headed.
Thus, in the Valua Kingdom, having received the title of Marquis and vast wealth, he had worked to elevate his position within the kingdom by hunting dangerous monsters and suppressing bandits, earning the title Force Sword Emperor. As he desired, he had received a hereditary title allowing succession, and he had adopted the middle name of von Tennant, symbolizing nobility, becoming Kyle von Tennant of the Tennant family.
Thus, for the span of several decades, his life had flowed peacefully. Then, at the age of 55, the incident finally occurred.
The Demon King Laylana had manifested in the Intermediate World.
The Kingdom of Kalmár, located in the northwest of the Valua Kingdom, had fallen alongside the Iberian Kingdom and the Frank Kingdom under the forces of darkness, and the territory of the Valua Kingdom itself had seen nearly one-third of its lands occupied or suffering equally devastating damage from the forces of darkness.
Particularly, the border regions bordering the Kingdom of Kalmár, where loyal border dukes had been dispatched by the royal family, the royal forces had been greatly weakened.
However, the issue of the forces of darkness led by the Demon King was not merely a problem of royal authority and the kingdom but a continental problem.
Kyle had also stepped onto the battlefield as the representative of the Valua Kingdom, but the strength of the forces of darkness had been far beyond what he alone could handle, and he had had to retreat after struggling against even the mid-level demons serving the Demon King Laylana.
Even with the aid of other races such as elves and dwarves, he had had to retreat, making the shock and fear he felt in the Valua Kingdom beyond imagination.
And in just one year after the war began, half of the continent had already fallen into the hands of the Demon King Laylana, and ultimately, all races of the continent had placed their hopes on a single one.
The existence of the Hero from another world recorded on the ancient stone tablets.
They had summoned the Hero from another world as a “convenient vessel” to save them, and the summoned youth Kim Jae-hyun had been forcibly pulled into this world, suddenly bearing the fate of leading the war that would decide the continent’s destiny.
One would not have been surprised if a normal person had gone mad from the stress, but fortunately, the one who had trained him was Irene, allowing him to grow strong without going mad.
And in the year when one year had passed since his summoning and two years since the Demon King Laylana’s manifestation, he had appeared on the battlefield as the Hero alongside his lover, the Flash Magic Swordswoman Irene, and that was when he had first met Kyle.
Kyle had hated Jae-hyun. Or, to be precise, he had liked the beauty of Irene, who possessed the continent’s greatest beauty, and had felt intense desire toward her.
However, he had been proud of his talent and realm in swordsmanship. He had grown jealous and repressed when he had witnessed the overwhelming talent of those two who had easily surpassed the realm he had only reached in his fifties by his teens.
Consequently, he and the Valua Kingdom had betrayed the Hero who had defeated the Demon King and saved the continent.
After the betrayal that day, Kyle had maintained close connections with Ferdinand, the then-crown prince of the Habsburg Empire and current emperor, collaborating with Ferdinand’s schemes. Thanks to the Habsburg Empire’s active support and the effects of public opinion manipulation, he had stood proudly among the heroes who had saved the continent from the Demon King in the Valua Kingdom.
He had received the title of Duke, surpassing even the Marquis, and his power had exceeded the royal authority possessed by the King of the Valua Kingdom, who had seen his strength weakened by the Demon King Laylana’s manifestation.
And countless warriors had gathered around him, forming a force. The betrayers from the Valua Kingdom who had betrayed the Hero that day had gathered around Kyle, hiding that day’s ugly secret, becoming his hands and feet while feasting on the spoils of power.
“The Holy Kingdom of Astraea has fallen.”
Kyle, now 68 years old, was on the verge of turning 70. Yet the fact that he still appeared as a young man in his thirties, despite his age, proved that his martial prowess had surpassed even the limits of a Grand Sword Master.
Having already fought countless demons on the stage of real combat experience against the forces of darkness, ten years later he had succeeded in surpassing the limits of the Grand Sword Master realm.
Even back then, he had possessed strength beyond the limits of a Grand Sword Master, so for him it had been natural that he had reached this realm.
Of course, Jae-hyun and Irene had already reached this realm in their teens, so even now, comparing himself to them brought an unjust and infuriating feeling. However, his inferiority complex had at least been suppressed thanks to the fact that Jae-hyun had died and Irene had become a sex doll.
But the news delivered by the dragons had shocked him.
“Damn it! He’s still alive? And he became a Demon King on top of that! Damn!”
Kyle, a muscular man with brown hair and gray eyes, whose body had been trained with the physique of a thirty-something man, roared loudly and slammed his fist onto the desk. The desk, worth an amount that could feed a four-person commoner family for three years, had been smashed into pieces by his fist, but he felt no pity for the desk.
After all, with his wealth and power, he could simply prepare another one in no time.
“Huu… huu…”
Kyle took deep breaths, suppressing his anger. Now was the time to prepare countermeasures rather than to rage.
Even the Emperor of the Habsburg Empire, Ferdinand, the Archmage Griffith, the Gale Sword Emperor William of the Gallia Kingdom to the north of the Valua Kingdom, and the Archmage of Flame Jason of the Minoa Kingdom, located to the north of the Gallia Kingdom, would feel this situation as dangerous.
The Holy Kingdom of Astraea had become the Demon King’s territory, with Saintess Lucretia captured and over forty million forces of darkness under her command, making this crisis greater than even when the Demon King Laylana had ruled.
In the previous war against the Demon King Laylana, the entire continent had suffered massive population loss, just like the Valua Kingdom. However, in exchange, the elite warriors who had experienced the war had become more refined, and even though only ten years had passed since the war ended, many reverse heroes were still alive.
Kyle had worked hard to seize power, but the fact that he had been able to sit in this position was fundamentally because his family, though fallen, had still been a venerable clan.
In contrast, Jae-hyun, who had come from another world, was a lowly being with no lineage to boast of. Although he was not as deeply classist as Ferdinand, Kyle had treated Jae-hyun’s bloodline as beneath the commoners of this world and had proudly viewed his own family’s lineage as superior.
The true difference was that Ferdinand looked down on commoners as trash, while Kyle treated Jae-hyun’s bloodline as inferior to the commoners of this world.
“Your Grace the Duke. Shouldn’t we contact the others first?”
Joshua von Hockney, the Count who had once served as his aide during the war against the forces of darkness and had also betrayed Jae-hyun alongside him, asked cautiously while watching Kyle’s expression.
“Yeah, we should.”
Kyle, having suppressed the anger of his inferiority toward Jae-hyun, agreed once again as he prepared to confront the forces of darkness.
‘We have grown stronger too. Kim Jae-hyun! Even if you have grown stronger than before, you will not be able to belittle us now.’
Kyle knew that his and the other betrayers’ strength had increased, but he did not know that Jae-hyun’s strength had risen to an incomparably higher level than before. Or rather, he refused to accept it.
He did not want to accept the reality that Jae-hyun had grown to the point where he could no longer follow him.
Thus, the Valua Kingdom had begun contacting the other nations immediately to prepare to face Jae-hyun.