Chapter 98
Chapter 98
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 98
Chapter Title: Sword that Cleaves the Heavens (1)
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Chapter 20
1
During the Dragon Emperor War, Azel had seen countless Dragon Demon Armaments—both those wielded by his allies and those by his enemies.
Each possessed unique forms, abilities, and names, and all boasted terrifying might. As such, Azel made a point of committing every Dragon Demon Armament he encountered to memory.
“Book of Dark Souls, is it? So the Dragon Demon Armament of that Flop Prince Saibain is still being passed down among your lot?”
One of the Dragon Demon King’s sons, Saibain.
The Dragon Demon Armament known as the Book of Dark Souls, which Niberis had summoned, was the very one he had wielded. A wondrous tool that dominated darkness and bore inscriptions of all manner of high-order spells, enabling carpet-bombing devastation.
Those words ignited Niberis’s fury.
“You bastard! How dare a green human whelp insult my father!”
“Hm? You’re the Flop Prince’s daughter? Did that fool actually live long enough to spawn heirs? Well, flop though he was, the bastard did have nine lives.”
During the Dragon Emperor War, humans had mockingly dubbed Saibain the Flop Prince. Not because he was weak—befitting a son of the Dragon Demon King, he commanded immense Dragon Demon power and masterful spellcraft.
The issue was his lack of decisive victories. Even when he had served as bait to lure Azel’s third master, Riglen, into a trap, he invariably faltered in critical moments, retreating in disgrace.
This pattern repeated itself countless times until the war’s end. He had suffered a grievous wound in the battle immediately prior to the finale, skipping the last clash altogether—yet he survived, retreating to the Dark Snowfields.
Niberis erupted.
“A human who hasn’t even lived a century dares prattle on as if he knew my father? I’ll leave you in limbo—neither dead nor alive!”
“You think I don’t know that? Is the old man still kicking, by any chance? I’d love to cross paths with him. Came within a hair’s breadth of taking his head twice, but his lackeys kept throwing their worthless lives in the way, and I never quite sealed the deal.”
“How much drivel do you plan to spew?!”
All manner of spells exploded from the encroaching darkness on all sides. Niberis’s own prowess had grown since a year prior, and with the Book of Dark Souls added to the mix, the unleashed power was incomparable to before.
Kwaaaaaaah!
Darkness surged like a tidal wave, thunderous booms erupting from its depths. In dominating dark mana force, the Book of Dark Souls rivaled a dragon wielding its innate element. Moreover, every inscribed spell was a masterpiece, allowing its user to unleash the might of a one-man army with a mere invocation.
That power burst forth in full. The onrushing darkness engulfed Azel as curses and spells of destruction rained down. No Spirit Order practitioner, no matter how adept, could emerge unscathed from such firepower.
“…It’s certainly a pain, the Book of Dark Souls. Outstanding performance, I’ll grant you that. Sheer overwhelming output alone can smother any foe into irrelevance.”
Yet Azel’s voice pierced the roar. Niberis swallowed despite herself.
At the same instant, blue lightning rent the darkness asunder.
Fiercely concentrated in a way no natural bolt could be, it resembled a single blade. At the root of the lightning cleaving the vast darkness in twain stood Azel, red locks whipping in the wind.
To the stunned Niberis came words beyond imagining.
“Dragon Demon Sword, come forth!”
The heavens themselves wailed at Azel’s invocation.
Ruuuuumble! Craaaack!
Lightning shattered a cloudless patch of night sky, tearing the gloom apart. It plunged into the sword gripped in Azel’s hand, linking earth and sky as one. Amid the erupting blaze of light rang a cry not of flesh, but of pure will.
—Sword that Cleaves the Heavens!
True to its name, the heaven-rending bolt coalesced into a single blade. The azure sword of condensed lightning took the exact form of the Dragon Demon Sword Azel had wielded to fell the Earth Dragon in Valan Forest long ago.
Yet it was an ethereal phantom. An unbelievable nexus of power, destined nonetheless to dissipate without anchoring into the physical realm.
Azel defied that fate. His Dragon Sword, its blade of pristine white dragon bone, overlapped the Dragon Demon Sword’s illusion. Its form shifted to match.
Niberis paled in horror at the sight.
“Impossible! That can’t be the sword…!”
Her shock stemmed not merely from Azel wielding a Dragon Demon Armament. Astonishing as that was, it wouldn’t have frozen her thoughts outright.
The true culprit was its name—the true name of the Dragon Demon Armament Azel had invoked through will alone. To any Dragon Demon Worshipper, it was a nightmare etched indelibly into their dreams.
A Dragon Demon Armament’s name is not bestowed by its wielder. Every such weapon bears its true name from the instant of its birth.
Woooooong…!
Before the shock-stricken Niberis, the Book of Dark Souls stirred. Untouched by her, it shuddered violently, pages rustling of their own accord. In that moment, she sensed the book expressing some raw emotion.
Azel, clutching the Dragon Demon Sword, grinned.
“Go ahead—take what I say next as wind or not, your call. This blade has twice rent the Book of Dark Souls in battles against the Flop Prince. Care to see what happens on the third go?”
2
Far in the northern Dark Snowfields lay the Dragon Demon Palace. Ainsera, the Dragon Demon King’s first secret, slumbering within the great magic of darkness, awoke in alarm.
The Great Darkness she perpetually maintained was a spell inherited from Dragon Demon King Atein. Transcendent in scope, it allowed her—without ever straying a step from the Dark Snowfields—to receive the collective will of all Dragon Demon Worshippers, survey the continent’s every corner, and safeguard and conceal great legacies such as the Void Paths.
At its heart, Ainsera was akin to a god hearkening to the prayers of myriad faithful. More precisely, she served as the god’s proxy, relaying human supplications.
This magic’s utility extended beyond mere communion. From the moment Ainsera first embraced it, it wielded prophetic might in unearthing preset information.
The sightings, hearings, and very thoughts of darkness-linked Dragon Demon Worshippers wove into a singular tapestry. From this, it extracted data matching her predefined criteria.
Thus had the Dragon Demon Worshippers expunged humanity’s desired knowledge: the secrets of Spirit Order and Dragon Spirit Arts, Dragon Demon Armaments, the Dragon Slaying Ritual… all of it.
Ainsera murmured like one in pain.
“Sword that Cleaves the Heavens… why has that cursed Dragon Demon Sword resurfaced?”
She who bore the Great Darkness paid dearly for it. In exchange for might akin to pilfering a fragment of divine authority, she existed as a half-dead husk.
Ainsera’s personal self had drowned in an ocean of foreign wills, her ego faint and fleeting. Only the fixations and tenets of her mortal life drove her onward.
Emotions, too, had withered to near nothingness. All events passed through her indifferently.
Yet now resurfaced a terror inscribed over two centuries past, ineradicable.
“Sword that Cleaves the Heavens?”
“The great sinner’s Dragon Demon Sword has appeared?”
“Impossible.”
Shocked voices winged in from across the continent. Vast distances be damned, they shared a singular sentiment as if gathered in one hall.
Fear.
Ainsera knew the instant any Dragon Demon Armament came into being. And should one under the Great Darkness encounter such a relic, that knowledge reached her too.
Thus did she identify the Dragon Demon Armament Niberis had faced.
Sword that Cleaves the Heavens.
It was the very Dragon Demon Sword the hero Azel Karzark had wielded throughout the Dragon Emperor War—the blade that severed Dragon Demon King Atein’s final breath.
3
Azel possessed several Dragon Demon Armaments, including one bestowed by his third master, Riglen. Yet the sole one he had forged himself was the Sword that Cleaves the Heavens.
The blade now in his grasp was no new creation. It was a restoration of that selfsame sword from ages past.
While Azel slumbered, Kallos had preserved it via wondrous magic. Yet during the Earth Dragon encounter and Dragon Slaying Ritual in Valan Forest, it had exhausted its power to sustain itself and vanished.
After his second Dragon Slaying Ritual, however, Azel discovered its fragments lingering in his Spirit Veins. The reason they had eluded him before was simple: insufficient Dragon Demon power.
Lacking Dragon Demon power, a Dragon Demon Armament cannot manifest—nor even persist. Thus the shards in Azel’s Spirit Veins amounted to nothing, fated to dissolve into oblivion.
The second Dragon Slaying Ritual altered that doom. Upon realizing as much, Azel—while lingering in Duke Tarantos’s domain—undertook a third such rite, emerging victorious with vastly augmented Dragon Demon power.
In turn, the Spirit Vein fragments coalesced, reviving as a Dragon Demon Sword.
The catch: the revival was incomplete. Among Dragon Demon Armaments, the Sword that Cleaves the Heavens ranked supreme. Even after three Dragon Slaying Rituals, Azel could not manifest it in full.
Further rituals would enable it. Yet such rites could not be rushed or spammed. Had they been feasible, Azel would have scoured the realm, slaying dragons with reckless abandon.
Those who claimed Dragon Demon Armaments during the Dragon Emperor War refrained from such excess for two reasons.
First: Undertaking a ritual without fully assimilating a prior dragon’s power invited the dragon reclaiming it by force.
Second: The stronger the challenger’s Dragon Demon power, the fiercer the dragon’s response. Multiple rituals and forged armaments notwithstanding, each clash retained its peril.
Kallos theorized thus:
‘Likely because Dragon Demon power originates from dragons. It dominates phenomena through will alone—mirroring how dragons freely command their innate elemental forces.’
A Dragon Slaying Ritual was a desperate clash of lives, a discourse of souls. For victor to claim the vanquished’s wisdom or might already transcended mundane magic, did it not?