Prologue: Total Eclipse
"Khan!"
The white-haired man called Khan channeled his technique, reproducing a crashing wave through his spear and sweeping the attack aside.
— Shaaaah!!
Thankfully, it seemed his technique had carried them through the crisis.
"Hmph. The lowly creature endures better than I expected."
"Buy me some time, Shichurin!"
"I'll help too!"
At my words, a white-haired woman and a red-haired woman wordlessly threw themselves at the black-haired man with horns growing from his head.
"We won't last long out here. Hurry and get ready!"
Even in the middle of all that, she had to leave me with one last remark.
"Crescent!"
The moment I called the name, a small dragon, pure white as fresh snow, was summoned before me.
"Yes, Successor!"
"Transfer your authority to me."
"Of course!"
Receiving the authority of moonlight, I readied my attack. I glanced to my side, and my golden-haired lover gave a small nod — everything was prepared.
The Demon-Slaying Sword activates the Moonlight Sword Art!
Moonlight Sword, 5th Form: Moon Trace
White Flame Sword, 4th Form: Dawn Sword
Through the effect of your Trait, the skills of the Moonlight Sword and White Flame Sword are harmoniously fused!
Skill activated — Total Solar Eclipse!
The sky was blotted out, and where the sun had been, only a blinding white moon now hung suspended.
"Haah... this is exactly why I never gave you time..."
The black flame of hopelessness rises to swallow the light itself.
The pristine white moonlight and the searing black flames blazed against each other, each devouring at the other as if to speak for its own side of the world. The fire of the sun coiled itself around the moonlight, and together they plunged toward the black flame.
At last his sword and mine collided, and with a thunderous detonation the clash began to pour out a heat so fierce it seemed it would melt everything around it.
Long, long ago, on this continent called the Hung Continent, demons ran rampant. Feasting upon humanity's despair and its own base desires, they massacred, violated, and ravaged humankind without mercy.
So the people prayed ceaselessly to the gods, hoping only to survive.
Please, let us live.
Moved by their plight, the Four Divine Beasts sent their authorities down into the world below, bestowing them upon mortals — and the people came to call these chosen ones the Successors of the Divine Beasts.
The Successors of the Four Divine Beasts developed the authorities they carried, and in time they themselves became gods — beings who could no longer interfere with this world.
And even so, the world remained steeped in chaos and suffering.
So a new Successor appeared upon the earth.
Thus the authorities of the Four Divine Beasts turned, generation after generation, pouring their strength into one purpose: the annihilation of the Four Perils, the primordial culprits who had given birth to the demons in the first place.
And I, the seventh Successor of the Azure Dragon, could not escape that duty either.
I wasn't even from the Hung Continent to begin with, yet I was chosen as a Successor and have been through hell ever since.
Worse, I'm someone who got sucked into a game.
Why would someone from another world be chosen as the Azure Dragon's Successor, you ask?
Well, the explanation is a bit long... but there was a reason I couldn't do anything about.
That's a story for another time.
Instead, I have a question for all of you who are about to witness the story of my life.
Suppose you lost someone precious and lost your way. And then suppose that, having barely clawed your way back up from that wound, the new precious people in your life were exposed to a threat you could never hope to withstand. What choice would you make?
My choice was to protect them.
No matter how overwhelming the threat, you have to clash head-on with it at least once — don't you think?
And so this is the story of my brilliant, blazing life — the tale of a man who was once a broken wreck, and how he went on protecting the people he held dear.