Sword Saint Kiel (1)
Sword Saint Kiel (1)
- Who are you?
It was probably one of the Seven Great Demon Realms. I couldn't remember exactly which one.
- Olivia.
After freezing the charging magic beast in an instant, she extended her hand to me, covered in blood as I was.
- Pleased to meet you, Duke Kiel.
The hand Olivia used to command the cold was warm.
It was a memory I wished I could forget now.
******
"Come down this instant!"
A crimson blade-aura rippled along Kiel's sword.
'Shit! Second Strike!'
The secret sword technique of House Rothschild, the Spatial Sword.
It was named because it was said to sever space itself once mastered, but since the founding head, not a single head of the house had ever reached that realm.
[Main NPC 'Sword Saint Kiel' uses 'Spatial Sword'.]
Except for one man: Kiel Rothschild.
Crrrrack!
The sky split with a hideous sound. At that surreal sight, Olivia gritted her teeth.
Olivia's mind raced.
She was trying to deduce why Kiel was here.
The answer came faster than expected.
At this point in time, Kiel's location in the north was correct. But if he had regressed, common sense dictated he should return to his house first to assess the situation. Didn't it?
That crazy bastard.
If his wanderlust was that bad, it was a damn mental illness!
Olivia released Glacia's leash and spoke.
"Glacia. Go to the lair first and wait."
[...May I?]
The corner of Glacia's mouth twitched upward.
"In exchange, remember one thing. If you get caught trying to run, one death won't be the end of it for you."
[...Yes.]
"Good. When I give the signal, you strike upward and get out."
Now!
The moment Glacia shot into the sky, Olivia leaped down and brought both hands together.
[Memorize]
Hundreds of spells flickered through her mind.
A spell suitable for the moment...
[Skill 'Lightning Strike' activated.]
['Elementalist' trait activates.]
[An electric current flows through the body.]
This was it.
Wooooosh!
Thick thunderclouds filled the sky.
Spears of lightning poured down toward Kiel.
Crack-crack-craaash!
Even under the sudden attack, Kiel did not panic; instead, he drove inward. Whenever a bolt fell too close to dodge, he angled his sword and deflected it.
With his level this high, he was definitely troublesome to deal with.
[Skill 'Levitation' activated.]
Levitation magic.
A spell a mage must master when facing a swordsman.
Of course, this alone wasn't enough. The body of a swordsman who had reached the pinnacle could do everything—literally everything—except fly.
He could launch his body like a bullet, cross a mountain with a single leap, or send a blade-aura flying tens of meters into the sky.
[Skill 'Blink' activated.]
So a mage had to move even faster. She had to unleash an uncountable volume of magic, faster than a swordsman's kinetic vision, faster than he could perceive.
[Skill 'Charge Storm' activated.]
The charges that hadn't been absorbed accelerated violently, tearing through the air like arrows. It had the drawback that even the caster couldn't predict their direction, but that problem was solved by pouring out thousands of them at once.
Crackle-crackle-crack!
The invisible currents tore through Kiel's clothing. His warrior's instinct allowed him to avoid any decisive blows somehow, but it was clear the damage was accumulating.
[Kiel Rothschild]
Level: 83
Favorability: -100
Even amid the Charge Storm, Kiel did not take his eyes off Olivia. They were the eyes of an avenger, determined to kill her no matter the cost.
Without lowering her guard, Olivia descended to the ground.
She planned to freeze him on the spot and then join Glacia.
That was the moment.
['Regressor's Privilege' trait activates.]
['Sword Saint Kiel' temporarily regains all abilities from his past life.]
Goddamn it, the Lactea game operators were far bigger lunatics than I had ever imagined.
['Sword Saint Kiel' uses 'Severance'.]
Olivia shot upward urgently.
"Insane!"
Shhhhh.
A pain like skin sliced by paper bloomed, and my vision blurred. The mana that had endlessly welled up from my heart stopped circulating at some point.
I had let my guard down.
[Severance].
The fifth form of the Spatial Sword, a technique that cut beyond space into the origin itself. It wasn't a technique that directly dealt damage, but it was such a monstrously broken technique that taking damage was actually preferable.
[Natural mana cannot be used for a set duration.]
[Mana cannot be recovered for a set duration.]
The severance here was severance from the world.
The moment a mage used magic, her mana dissolved into the natural world. Even an Archmage only improved the efficiency; the fundamental fact of dissolution never changed.
The only way to recover spent magical power was to absorb the mana of the natural world. But once the connection to the natural world was cut, her magical power was bound to run out eventually.
"Now it's finally a little fairer."
Kiel straightened up within the Charge Storm. She had canceled the spell to reduce mana consumption, after all.
Shiiing-!
Kiel pulled the greatsword embedded in the ground out with one hand. He had looked far more intact than expected, and evidently the greatsword had functioned as a lightning rod.
['Sword Saint Kiel' uses 'Cross Slash'.]
Crrrrack!
In the next instant, space warped into the shape of a cross.
The glacier, the clouds, the atmosphere—everything was torn apart along the path of Kiel's sword.
[Skill 'Blink' activated.]
At this moment, Kiel's proficiency was at least at the Level 90 range.
Such a dramatic level increase was normally impossible. Even if you collected every hidden piece and applied every possible buff, the standard was gaining about a four-level advantage.
'This is a complete balance break! Does this make any damn sense? You wretched developers?'
Olivia ground her teeth.
Crr-crrrrack!
[Skill 'Blink' activated.]
I couldn't afford to look away for a single moment. The moment I relocated to the other side, blade-auras flew at me viciously, as if determined not to give me an opening to counterattack.
I could feel my magical power, which I had thought was limitless, dwindling.
Kiel must have sensed it too, because a sneer settled on his face.
Kiel's aura reserves were overwhelming compared to other swordsmen.
The fact that a man like him had already burned through half his aura meant Olivia had used a significant amount of mana herself.
A warrior could keep fighting even after his aura ran out, because his body itself was so potent.
But a mage could not.
That was the reason a mage's odds of victory dropped the longer a battle dragged on.
[Skill 'Blizzard' activated.]
Chunks of ice the size of houses poured down like a storm. Their sheer scale was on a different level from when she had faced Glacia.
Now there was no reason to hold back.
Kiel did not retreat. He raised his greatsword high and brought it down with all his strength.
['Sword Saint Kiel' uses 'Heaven Splitter'!]
The crimson blade-aura and the blue glacier hurled themselves at each other to destroy one another. The two forces were evenly matched. It was impossible to predict which would gain the upper hand.
But Olivia had no intention of leaving it at that.
['Archmage' trait activates.]
[Skill cooldowns are reset.]
['Truth Seer' trait activates.]
[Skill cooldowns are reset.]
A sensation of exhaustion washed out from my heart. It was a feeling I had never once experienced since falling into this world.
He wouldn't be able to block this one.
[Skill 'Blizzard' activated.]
[Skill 'Blizzard' activated.]
The moment the storm was stacked three times, a notification window rose before my eyes.
[Fusion Skill 'Erna's Blade' activates.]
Swish!
For the first time, Kiel failed to react in time. His eyes flew wide open. His left arm froze solid in an instant.
"This is...!"
Yeah, that was the normal reaction.
No matter how strong someone's willpower was, no human could remain calm in front of the magic that had killed them.
'Erna's Blade' had weak damage, but it possessed an overwhelming number of hits. The winds laced with cold became invisible blades that froze anything they touched in an instant.
I remembered Kiel's end.
He had held out with Melina to the last, buying time for Imperial Princess Aria to escape, and died frozen solid, his entire body iced over.
['Regressor's Privilege' trait duration ends.]
['Sword Saint Kiel's' level returns to normal.]
[Status Effect 'Severance' ends.]
The mana that had been reduced to half surged back all at once, churning at my heart.
Kiel ground his teeth. But that was all.
With his whole body frozen, there was nothing else he could do.
"Kill me."
"..."
Olivia did not answer and simply gazed down at Kiel. If it were up to her, she wanted to kill him, but if she did, all this brutal suffering would have been for nothing.
'Does this bastard even know how much I struggled to subdue him without killing him?'
No way he would. He was a bastard who only cared about himself.
Having decided to render Kiel unconscious, Olivia slowly extended her hand.
That was the moment.
[Regressor 'Kiel Rothschild' has been subdued without being killed.]
[A Clue related to the main quest has been acquired!]
What the hell was this now.