Chapter 634: The Last Dance
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 634: The Last Dance
"They don't die?" Encrid asked.
"No, they don't. Evil spirits cannot be cut by mere steel. If we could use Vital Energy, it would be an easy fix, but Vital Energy is suppressed in here. Because of that, those things have become as dangerous as grim reapers."
As Bran spoke, several drowners craned their necks forward. Their spines stretched with an abnormal, sickening elasticity. It was a grotesque display, possible only because they were possessed by evil spirits.
Traces of frost clung to their bodies; the spirits themselves seemed to harbor a bone-chilling cold.
"Cutting them with Will won't work either. Don't even bother asking."
Bran was undoubtedly the most perceptive among the Woodgards. He answered before Encrid could even voice the question.
"Zero."
At Bran’s call, Zero leaped forward. He severed the arm of a drowner that had begun to close in. As the limb fell, the evil spirit looming over the drowner’s shoulder lunged with a translucent hand. It wasn't particularly fast; as long as one could see it, dodging was simple enough.
Zero evaded the spectral touch and retreated. He had severed the arm, but the drowner’s limb merely twitched on the ground, planted its fingers, and began to crawl away on its own.
"See? Cut off an arm, and the arm moves. Cut off a leg, and the leg follows. Burning them isn't easy, either."
This was knowledge born of bitter experience. The elves had clearly attempted to conquer this Demon Realm Labyrinth before. Encrid had already deduced as much when they mentioned having been here once.
Despite claiming the monsters were immortal, Bran remained unperturbed. He had a solution.
"We need to slip past them, find the sphere hidden nearby, and destroy it," Bran explained nonchalantly. "That is their Life Vessel. While the rest of us hold them off, one of us must break through."
Encrid nodded, though he found the method incredibly tedious. Until they found that sphere, they would be trapped in a battle of attrition. It was a mechanism designed to bleed their stamina and pile on fatigue.
'If there is a demon here...' Encrid thought. 'It must be an insidious bastard that enjoys cheap tricks.'
"Unless we have a weapon that can cut souls, they are enemies we cannot defeat. If we buy time, Brisa will find it."
Bran meant that one of the elves would have to take a significant risk to bypass the horde. The female elf, Brisa, gripped a dagger instead of a Needle. Her eyes darted between the gaps in the drowners' ranks, likely mapping out the optimal path in her head.
Just then, Pel spoke up.
"There’s no need for that."
He stepped forward, his hand tightening around his hilt. The weapon Pel held was the Idol Slayer—a sword forged specifically to cut evil spirits and souls. Against formless or spiritual enemies, it was a weapon that bordered on a cheat.
"Let's clear a path," Encrid said.
Pel lightly tapped his feet against the ground and advanced.
"Dangerous," Brisa warned. As Pel stepped forward, the entire horde of lingering drowners reacted in unison.
It was indeed dangerous—or it would have been, if the man stepping forward wasn't Pel, and if the sword in his hand were an ordinary blade.
Pel didn't bother to answer. He stepped his left foot to the side and swung.
In that single strike, Encrid saw traces of the "Wall of Slashes" Ragna had once shown him. The sweeping blade didn't stop after severing a drowner’s neck; it continued its lethal arc.
Encrid had felt it while sparring with him: Pel possessed an extraordinary talent. If not for Ragna, he would have been the most prominent genius of their generation. Even with Ragna around, Pel’s talent was impossible to ignore.
His swordsmanship went beyond merely mimicking techniques; he interpreted them, making them his own. Combined with his innate ability to spot an enemy's weakness, he didn't need to think before he swung. His blade naturally found the ideal trajectory.
Calling him a natural-born genius was no exaggeration.
The Shepherd’s sword swept through dozens of drowners, the Idol Slayer moving as if in a choreographed dance.
The frozen drowners were dangerous; even in death, they tried to drag their killers down with them. A severed arm would still crawl to grab an ankle. They didn't die when cut, slashed, or stabbed—they simply split apart to attack from multiple angles.
They were troublesome foes. Fire was useless because the evil spirits repelled the flames, and the damp floor made for a poor environment to start a blaze. Without Vital Energy to purify them, they were a nightmare to deal with.
Two elves reached for the oil flasks at their waists, prepared to set the monsters ablaze if things went south. But their hands froze. There would be no need to throw them.
The oil was a mixture of Woodgard sap, flaxseed oil, and rare herbs—a product of high-grade alchemy. If Krais had seen them about to waste it, he would have surely screamed, "You're using something that expensive just to kill monsters? Give that oil to me instead!"
Pel relished the joy vibrating through the Idol Slayer, a weapon he hadn't wielded in far too long. He severed heads and pierced chests with a precision that far exceeded the level of an Associate Knight.
It was only natural. While his talent was formidable, Pel’s daily sparring partners were Encrid, Ragna, and Rem. Constant combat against those superior to him, coupled with his rivalry with Ropode, had acted as a catalyst for his growth.
Pel did not hesitate, even as a hundred drowners swarmed him. Not a single one fled; they all lunged, knowing even a graze would leave a cursed wound. Yet Pel felt no fear. Like the star of a ball fluttering the hem of her dress, the Shepherd’s sword moved with elegant, lethal grace.
Thud!
The thick liquid flowing from a split skull was the corpse of an evil spirit.
Slash!
The screeching wail of “Kieeeek!” erupting from a severed head was the scream of a dying soul.
To Pel, spiritual entities were the easiest enemies to handle. It was twice as easy as slicing blood-sucking flies out of the air.
Once the horde was decimated, a staircase leading downward appeared. A faded sphere rolled among the corpses. Bran had said they needed to slip past them to find it, but it turned out one of the drowners had been carrying the sphere inside its own body. If they had followed Bran’s original strategy, they would have wasted a massive amount of time and energy.
"Let's spar later," Zero proposed, his eyes fixed on Pel. He was a rare elf, possessed of a fierce competitive spirit.
"Both that Frok over there and you... truly formidable experts have come," Bran said, a sliver of emotion peeking through his calm voice. It was a quiet, flickering hope.
"We cannot leave Lady Sinar as the Demon's Bride," the male elf added.
Encrid didn't reply. He simply took a step forward.
Unlike the upper levels, these stairs were neatly paved. One could feel an artificial touch—whether from humans, monsters, or demons.
"Do you know how many floors there are?"
"Even if it is a labyrinth, it shouldn't be large enough to be a Great Labyrinth," Bran replied. "The demon is likely hiding on the next floor."
As they descended, a straight, neat wall greeted them. It was a perfectly square corridor, ending in a darkness so deep that even the elves' heat-sensing vision could see nothing.
'Magic.'
Encrid could smell it. His intuition was screaming.
"Now is our only time to rest," Bran suggested.
It wasn't a great place to sleep or eat, but it was better than the damp floors above. In exchange for the dry ground, however, the air grew thicker and more ominous. The pressure suppressing their bodies became a heavy weight. Two of the elves turned pale, though Zero and Bran seemed fine.
Pel and Luagarne were unaffected.
"Still seems better than being kept awake for a week in the mountains for training," Pel remarked.
Encrid had undergone that same training—a hellish course designed by Audin and Rem to test self-control under extreme fatigue. Ragna had refused to participate, simply asking, "Why would I do something like that?"
It was a legendary course in the Border Guard’s training regimen. Pel had passed it with pride. Frok’s stamina was simply inhuman. And Encrid was the type of person who actually enjoyed that kind of suffering.
Even so, they rested. When the body fails, the mind follows. No matter how strong the elves' mental fortitude was, fatigue would eventually create openings.
After a brief rest, they moved out. The passage stretched in a straight line, making it impossible to get lost. As they advanced, the darkness receded slightly, and monsters lunged from the shadows.
"Trolls," Pel noted.
Before he could finish the word, Encrid ripped out a troll's cervical vertebrae and severed the neck of another swinging a club. It happened in an instant. The passage was wide, providing ample room to swing.
The luminescent stones barely illuminated the path ahead, while the pitch-black darkness to their left and right seemed to writhe. Black, soot-like shapes occasionally darted out from the gloom.
Zero perceived them instantly. "Evil spirit."
The moment he spoke, Pel’s sword sliced through the air.
They encountered cockatrices and basilisks that tried to cast petrification with a glance, but the monsters seemed strangely feeble. They fought for what felt like an entire day.
"It's as if they're churning out monsters from a factory," Pel muttered. Boredom was starting to set in—until it was abruptly shattered.
The next guardian stood alone.
The figure blocking the path was motionless, like a suit of armor hung on a rack. It wore black plate, its cheeks hollowed out and crawling with maggots. Its eyes were vacant and dull. It was a corpse, devoid of any vitality.
The figure had a slender physique, contrasting sharply with the massive, thick sword in its hand. The tip of the blade rested against the floor. The metal was a dull, dark brown; instead of reflecting the light, it seemed to absorb it. Light could not penetrate a certain radius around the weapon, casting jagged, unnatural shadows upon the floor.
"Argilla?" Zero gasped.
The opponent was a miserable existence—an elven knight bound to the Demon Realm even after death. Encrid didn't wait for an explanation.
Creak.
The corpse’s neck tilted to the side. There was no malice, yet its momentum was overwhelming.
Encrid stepped forward, crossing his feet. Chring! He drew his Truesilver sword, the blade scattering light in stark contrast to the opponent’s dark steel. He knew instinctively that this was an opponent he couldn't entrust to anyone else.
A black, soot-like haze shimmered behind the corpse, and then it lunged.
Screeech!
The dark blade scraped against the ground, surging upward in a vicious rising slash.
Bran recognized the sword and the knight. He shouted in a panic.
"Avoid it!"
What he meant was: Do not clash blades.
*
Coming this far, Bran had watched Encrid and felt a spark of hope. The man was skilled; his reputation as a demon slayer was no boast. However, Bran also knew they couldn't afford to hold back their final trump card.
'Just because we cannot project Vital Energy doesn't mean we cannot use it.'
The elves had brought a means to fight. They had refined purified Vital Energy into gems shaped like fruits.
Its name was Kiaos. In the continental tongue, it meant "The Last Dance."
Consuming it meant certain death, but it allowed a warrior to unleash an explosion of Vital Energy for one final, glorious stand. That was the elves' ultimate weapon.
In Bran’s judgment, the time for Kiaos had come. The enemy was Argilla, a legendary elven knight, and her weapon was a cursed magic sword.
If one clashed seven times with that blade, the weight of the opponent's own sword would double. It was a technique of a genius, forged from Vital Energy and Will. Bran didn't know how the Demon Realm had enslaved Argilla, but he knew one thing for certain.
"If you clash, you lose!"
Clang!
Before the warning could even leave his lips, the swords collided. Bran screamed again.
"Don't cross blades!"
Encrid was already locked in a high-speed exchange, blocking Argilla’s relentless slashes. Bran’s eyes could barely track the movement, but he knew the truth: if they stayed still, they would all be annihilated.