Chapter 66
Chapter 66
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 66
Chapter Title: Grimudo Climax (2)
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When the first intelligent beings were born and looked around them,
when they picked up stones and branches to fight off wild beasts and monsters, what did they decide to rely on?
Was it mana, which existed even in that era but no one knew of?
No. The intelligent beings of the primordial age found the answer within themselves.
What allowed humans to pride themselves as superior to beasts. The foundation that blossomed into intelligence.
It was the secret arts they devised by focusing on mental fortitude: mental arts. In Grimudo's era, no one knew how to wield mana, so instead they cultivated their own mental strength and used it to confront enemies.
That era came to an end by Grimudo's own hand, and hundreds of cycles swept over the earth afterward. Now, no one knows mental arts anymore.
Later intelligent beings reached for mana, which could easily and quickly amplify their power, and everyone studied only that.
The era when all geniuses delved into mental strength can never be recreated, and the mental secret manuals can never be restored.
Thus, Grimudo's mental attacks are truly one of a kind. It's not a technique he created alone; it's the legacy of the civilization refined over eons by the geniuses of his time.
The problem is that the traces of civilization within Grimudo aren't limited to that one thing.
Squeal!
Seeing the Demon Killer flying toward him, Grimudo neither dodged nor blocked.
The whip burrowed into the Demon King's torso like a living thing, and the resentment writhed. This Demon Killer of the Western family is the aggregation of grief and rage from those slain by demons, the screams of the unjustly dead.
A weapon akin to a reaper in some ways, forged to vanquish evil with evil.
Even struck head-on by such a thing, Grimudo remained silent, while Lucia Western let out a roar instead. She swung the whip down with all her might and shouted.
"With demons! We never compromise!"
"Is that so?"
"Especially not with you, Grimudo!"
She had heard that Kyle might be in Larphentia and passed it on to Lrehenheim. But she couldn't tell him that.
It wasn't about loyalty among comrades; if Grimudo appeared in an imperial provincial city, things would blow up massively. And Lucia truly didn't want to compromise with this bastard.
This scum who had reduced the Western family to a fate worse than death, who had left her father, mother, and siblings in horrific ruin—
She wanted to kill him somehow, erase him. Even if she couldn't, she didn't want to do him any favors.
—Grimudo. Ancient Demon King whose name alone we have heard.
We, the descendants of Western, shall surely judge you.
—We are the sole weapon capable of felling the strongest Demon King. The outcry of the trampled.
—Descendant. Do not retreat. Seize us. We shall aid you.
The magic weapon, Demon Killer, is a cursed blade that grows by devouring the grudges of those killed by demons.
The successive heads of the Western family serve as the focal points for those grudges. This cursed blade grows stronger by absorbing the souls of past heads, and thus it grows ever more powerful with time.
But that ends today.
"Then I have no further business with you either."
Grimudo stared at the whip straining to pierce him, then gripped its tip with two fingers. The whip abruptly halted and began shrieking furiously.
At first came screams like those of agony, then sobs. Then it cut off sharply.
The part touched by his fingers bent limply and snapped, and the entire whip shattered into fragments and vanished. Stunned by this astonishing sight, Lucia froze and couldn't press the attack.
"Do you think the power of resentment is impressive? It can be, of course. But when crushed by even stronger mental fortitude, no matter how potent the grudge, what can it do but shatter?"
It was a counter only Grimudo, who had trained mental arts to the limit, could perform.
He had strangled the grudges and ancestral spirits packed into the whip with his pure mental strength. He had crushed them, utterly overwhelmed them. The Western family's heirloom fell just like that.
"Ah... Ah, aah... No way..."
Though she hadn't been hit by a mental attack herself, Lucia staggered and collapsed.
And she couldn't rise again. Tears flooded her vision.
"No way..."
Now the Western family had nothing left. Even the whip, the symbol of the house, was gone.
Only she remained, alone. This was no different from the family having been wiped out.
What she was experiencing felt like a dream. Grimudo ignored her completely and walked toward Yurinel. Yurinel Rakphonsia gripped her holy sword with trembling hands.
The Lich Albatross and his minions had fled long ago, and Harma El lay moaning, still unconscious from the mental attack.
Only she was left. How long had it been since Grimudo appeared, and already things were like this?
'No one made any mistakes.'
Had they fallen into a trap? Absolutely not.
From the moment Harma El thought to lure Grimudo in, this outcome had been fated. The reason it came to this was skill—first, skill; second, skill; third, skill.
'No one miscalculated.'
Difference in skill. The most certain and merciless factor.
This absolute gap was why she ended up like this. In the end, their power amounted to less than embers before Grimudo—already burned-out ashes.
'We're just... too weak. Way too weak.'
No one in the world could stand against him.
Surrounded on all sides with no escape in this nightmare, Yurinel realized her true duty. She was the hero. It was her responsibility to cut down abominations like him.
The holy sword whispered to her. Do not retreat.
Honestly, there was nowhere to retreat anyway. With this level of disparity, fleeing was pointless.
Win or lose, she had no choice but to fight to the end. Grimudo looked genuinely surprised.
"Curious."
One step. Then two.
The ancient Demon King approached her at the same unhurried pace. Thud, thud—like he was out for a stroll. Then again, to him, was this even combat?
It must have been no more than stepping on ants. Yurinel swallowed hard.
"I thought you'd turn tail and show me your back. Now that your ancient god's priest is gone, you have nothing to rely on, do you?"
Yurinel didn't charge at him as he approached. She had to conserve even that much strength.
Since Grimudo was coming to her, there was no need to waste stamina rushing forward. She had to pour every ounce of strength into each moment's attack if she hoped to inflict even a wound.
'I don't even hope to win.'
Just one indelible scar.
If she could leave even the smallest proof that Yurinel had wounded the ancient Demon King.
If she could manage that, her death wouldn't be in vain.
It was desperate, yes. Yurinel was a worldly person, after all.
But she wasn't so卑鄙 as to kneel here and beg for her life. She had at least the bare minimum pride as a hero.
She aimed her holy sword, but the Demon King approached without a care.
The holy sword was an exorcism blade. It held absolute dominance against demons.
But that was because its creators, the Three Pillar Gods, overwhelmingly surpassed demons in strength.
What about Grimudo? Would the holy sword even be reliable against that monster?
At best, mutual counters.
Perhaps not even that.
"People in the world fear me and revere me. Some even worship me. They see me as the savior who will overturn this rotten world. Even I still haven't forgotten that I was once just one human."
Charging in knowing defeat is courage.
He was used to those who fled in terror. But those who clung to courage until the end, thrashing in a death throe they knew it to be—it was always fresh to him.
"I thought you'd show shameless disgrace, begging for your life. But instead, you've resolved to fight me as a single warrior. Very well, I shall respect your spirit."
Mana writhed and gathered in Grimudo's hand. The deep darkness coalesced into the form of a sword. The Demon King lightly gripped it and replied.
"Come. I won't use mental attacks."
Defeating Yurinel would be simple.
A mere glance into his eyes, and her mind would empty before the overwhelming mental shock, shattering to pieces.
His mental strength, honed over hundreds of thousands of years of mental arts as a supreme scholar, could puppet her like a marionette with just a whistle.
He vowed not to use that mental attack. And not only that?
He declared he wouldn't use magic either.
"Nor magic. Let us clash purely with martial skill."
He wouldn't use the mental arts he'd trained since his boyhood days. Nor the magic he'd honed ever since learning it from dragons.
But Yurinel felt no reassurance. It was the same. Nothing changed.
She still knew well she had no chance of victory.
This was more hopeless than a child fighting an adult.
Even if the child used everything it had, flailing with tiny fists, the adult could subdue it effortlessly with one arm.
But that didn't mean she could refuse to fight.
Moments later, the holy sword's light cleaved through the darkness.
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