Chapter 40
Chapter 40
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 40
Chapter Title: The Second Ruin (2)
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“Was he… always that strong?”
Seamus swallowed hard as he watched Kratos parry the Imperial Knight's sword.
He couldn’t find an easy opening to jump in. He had tried to aim for the knight's back a few times, but on each occasion, he was nearly struck himself.
At least a high-level Expert.
How was it that whenever he was with Kratos, they always ended up fighting such ridiculously strong opponents?
It was enough to make him wonder if Kratos secreted some kind of pheromone that attracted powerful foes.
He was just a mere Sword User. The gap was just too wide.
“An opening!”
The throwing dagger Seamus hurled bounced off the armor on the man's arm.
He never expected it to pierce through. It was just a feint to create an opening for Kratos.
“How annoying—!”
Just dealing with Kratos demanded all his focus, but with someone poking at him from behind, the knight swung his sword in irritation.
The man couldn't even wield aura properly. So why couldn't he tear him to shreds as he'd planned? It was utterly baffling.
The black aura shot out, clawing at the wall. Startled, Seamus threw himself far from the crumbling wall as chunks of stone fell.
“Damn it! Damn it all!”
He cursed his own helplessness. In such a crucial battle, he was being completely useless.
What was the point of saying they shouldn't abandon their comrades if this was all he could do? Perhaps if the entire squad were here, but right now, he was nothing more than a burden.
“Don't get hit by that aura, no matter what.”
“You don’t have to state the obvious.”
“I'm not kidding. Don't even let it graze you. That aura is a mass of demonic energy. Getting hit by it will be a huge problem.”
“What? Demonic energy? Ugh… What the hell is with these guys?”
Kratos clenched his jaw, shaking off the tingling numbness in his fingertips.
“Black aura… Right. That has to be it.”
The answer had to be that black aura. That sinister, viscous energy emanating from that foul black aura.
Black aura, demons, demonic energy. Strength. Yes, the best way to get strong easily, without much effort.
The Empire wasn't just accepting it; they were clearly using it actively. Soldiers, knights, anyone with deep ties to the Empire.
The corruption ran too deep to be considered the deviance of a single group.
Come to think of it, most of the Imperials he had faced so far had been like this. They all displayed skills far beyond their true abilities.
“It makes no sense. The Empire has this many high-level Sword Experts? Not unless some insane mana cultivation technique that could mass-produce Experts suddenly appeared in the last ten years. If that were the case, would Sword Masters also be popping up like weeds?”
Low or mid-level Sword Experts were a dime a dozen.
Even from his memories of ten years ago, those who earned the title of knight were at the peak of Sword Users or low-level Sword Experts.
But from the mid-level onward, the numbers dropped exponentially. High-level knights numbered only about 300 among all the knights in the vast Empire.
Even within an Empire that had unified an entire continent. That was how rare they were. High-level Sword Experts.
The knight before him was probably a low-level Sword Expert at his core. But by actively embracing demonic energy, he'd become a high-level one.
Demonic energy was a booster of sorts, one with guaranteed results. Of course, the consequences were irreversible.
Since he was so steeped in demonic energy, Kratos could handle him with relative ease. Especially with the added 6.7% from his Annihilate Evil skill.
But where had this man obtained such power? Power like that never came for free. It had to have a price.
So what was the price? The kind of price demons and black mages loved most.
Suddenly, the memory of Livria surfaced, and rage boiled within him. Bile rose in his throat.
“I wonder how many people were sacrificed for your pathetic skills.”
Wasn't the underground of Livria just like that? What did they plan to do with the blood drained from all those people? Was it simply to satisfy their sadistic tendencies?
He highly doubted it. Human blood and souls were what black mages craved most.
“Ten? A hundred?”
“Ugh—! What's with this sudden—!”
As the hammer blows rained down, each strike multiplying in force, the knight could no longer retreat. His stance crumbled until he was forced to one knee, desperately trying to block the hammer.
“A thousand? Ten thousand?! How many lives are contained within your demonic energy?”
Cracks spiderwebbed across the sword that had been steadfastly blocking the hammer. The kneeling knight’s feet began to dig into the floor.
“And the others in the Empire? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?!”
An untamed spiritual power surged, binding the knight’s sword.
The sword and hammer became one, as if drawn by a powerful magnet, refusing to budge.
He released one hand from the hammer pressing down on the knight and twisted the man's wrist.
“Gah—!!”
“Seamus!”
The knight was completely immobilized.
Knowing what was to come, he struggled to break free.
But the gray energy binding him and the fiercely glowing eyes before him left him paralyzed, like a mouse before a tiger.
“Slowly… and make his death agonizing.”
“N-No—!”
Hearing Kratos’s cry, Seamus slowly, very slowly, plunged his dagger into the back of the knight’s neck.
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“We're going in.”
Kratos kicked the knight’s corpse into a corner, wiped the warm blood from his face, and walked toward the door.
“We’ve already killed the knight. The rest should be small fry.”
Seamus said nothing, instead flicking the dark red blood from his sword.
Though his pupils were glowing brightly, the space inside the door was shrouded in a darkness so thick it seemed to forbid even a sliver of light, granting him no visibility.
It was as if a distinct line had been drawn at the threshold of the door.
“Grab my clothes and stay right behind me. Don't let go, no matter what.”
“Right.”
Was this a defensive mechanism triggered by forcing the door open? The first ruin hadn't been like this.
The key to opening the ruin was blood. The blood of the Venatio species, to be precise. So how had the Empire managed to open this door?
He stepped inside, circulating his spiritual power to get his bearings. It only revealed his immediate surroundings, but that was enough.
At least he could tell if something was there or not. He hadn't taken ten steps when it happened.
“Seamus? Seamus!”
He couldn't feel Seamus, who had been following, holding onto his clothes. He fumbled for the hem of his clothing behind him, but there was nothing.
He couldn't be dead. If he were, I would have felt something.
He tried to expand the range of his spiritual power to search for him, but it was as if he'd hit a massive wall; the energy simply swirled in place, unable to extend forward.
“Hah… I need to focus.”
Suddenly, in the pitch-black space, a faint, very faint light appeared, like a lighthouse on the sea.
When he reached the light, the same altar he had encountered in the desert appeared. As he touched it with his fingertip, the altar drank his blood, and once again, his consciousness expanded endlessly.
At the edge of that expansion, instead of hearing a voice, a faint figure appeared before him.
The figure, holding a weapon, began to move slowly. No words were spoken.
It simply moved, as if telling him to watch closely. He focused all his attention on the movements of the figure before him.
What was he supposed to glean from these movements? And how could he escape this place and achieve his goal?
“Ah. Right. Like being the god of thunder, not the god of hammers.”
Watching the movements, a famous movie line came to mind.
What the figure before him was demonstrating was not a weapon skill that used spiritual power.
It was the application of spiritual power itself. Spiritual power, on its own, had infinite applications. As if the spiritual power and 'I' were one and the same.
The weapon was merely a tool, a medium to make handling spiritual power a little easier.
“Ah… spiritual power. Yes, it's the spiritual power. The weapon is just a means to an end.”
Until now, he had thought that, in a broad sense, spiritual power was operated in much the same way as aura.
That was why he'd assumed that imbuing his weapon with the energy he learned in the first ruin, or spreading it wide, was the extent of its techniques. But he was wrong.
That method of application was only the most basic of spiritual power techniques.
Moreover, the spiritual power the figure demonstrated was not like a raging sea of crashing waves, but a calm one.
Perfectly controlled power.
An old advertising slogan he'd seen online suddenly came to mind.
Power is nothing without control.
Was he truly in control of his spiritual power? Or had he just been letting it run rampant in response to his surroundings?
The versatility of spiritual power demonstrated by the figure was truly remarkable. It was performing feats he would have thought impossible.
A strange sensation began to take over his body. His eyes took in the movements, understood them, and accepted them.
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“Hm. Why is it repeating?”
The figure’s demonstration had completed a full cycle, but the same sequence was now repeating. He had thought he just needed to learn it.
“Am I supposed to imitate it, not just learn it? Hmm…”
The key was the application of spiritual power. The figure showed a variety of movements, but the underlying methods of operating spiritual power were broadly twofold.
The first was body reinforcement, similar to imbuing a weapon with spiritual power.
The second was projecting the spiritual power itself.
Though there were only two, the range of applications derived from them was immense.
Moreover, those applications seemed like they could help him perfect the combat style he had been vaguely imagining.
He drew up the spiritual power within his body. In the end, what mattered was the method of application and circulation within the body.
Circulating spiritual power from the heart, through the head, chest, and abdomen, to the legs or hands.
The final destination determined the intermediate process and the resulting outcome.
If so, the method was very simple. He just had to remember it. He just had to recall what he remembered.
Not mastering it through repetitive imitation, but performing it from memory. Wasn't that the advantage of having an exceptional memory?
Ah, this is perfect. Absolutely perfect.
***
“Hold them back! Hold the line! We can't let them into the inner fortress!”
“The priests… What about the priests?”
Someone muttered, their face pale, but those who had witnessed the priests’ final moments couldn't bring themselves to answer, turning their heads away.
The priests, who had been trying to hold back the monsters with their holy power until the last moment, had been swallowed by the tidal wave of creatures.
“Don't stop firing! Keep shooting! Snap out of it, you bastards!”
“Bring more rocks! Mages, fall back and replenish your mana!”
Hectic orders flew back and forth as soldiers desperately fought to knock back the monsters scaling the walls.
The area outside the inner fortress was already teeming with monsters. Fear and despair were etched on everyone’s faces.
“We’re going to die… We’re all going to die. Hehe. There’s no escape.”
The 12th and 10th squads were also resisting desperately in the hopeless situation. The soldiers had already lost their morale, succumbing to the despair of imminent death.
“Damned bastards. To fall apart over something like this! White Mercenary Corps, to the gate! Defensive formation!”
Hearing the splintering crack of the wood-reinforced gate as it failed to withstand the monsters’ onslaught, Derek Heinman led his mercenaries to take position before it.
There were too many wounded. They were buying time somehow, but what if that gate was breached?
The outcome was painfully obvious.
*Was this the wrong choice?*
He didn't know. Who could have predicted this would happen while Kratos and Seamus were away on a mission?
*There might be… casualties.*
Something was wrong. Something was amiss. Since when did the White Mercenary Corps rely on others to complete their missions?
This was clearly his mistake. He didn't know why he'd grown so complacent.
Sending Kratos and Seamus on a mission after just one day was a result of that lax judgment.
But regret, however deep, came too late. Now was the time to find a solution, not to dwell on past mistakes.
*CRASH—!*
With a shudder that threatened to split the gate apart, a hole was punched through, and a troll’s club breached the inner fortress.
For now, it was only a small hole, just large enough for the tip of the club to poke through. But considering the endless horde of monsters outside, it was only a matter of time before that small hole led to a complete breach.
As the troll twisted its club, widening the gap in the gate.
“Uwoooah—!!”
Cheers erupted from the soldiers on the wall.
The troll’s club pulled back from the gap it had created.
For reasons he couldn't explain, a wave of relief washed over Derek Heinman, and his legs nearly gave out from under him.
For through that small gap, past the snarling teeth of the monsters, he caught a glimpse of the imposing figure of Kratos.