Chapter 549: Jealousy is My Power (49)
Chapter 549: Jealousy is My Power (49)
A single flower alighted upon the desolate landscape.
She was a figure whose dark blue hair and blue eyes formed a striking contrast. At a glance, she appeared to be nothing more than a small girl, but that appearance was merely a facade.
One only had to look at the 'Vampire' to know the truth.
The Fiend, one of her arms hacked off, glared with eyes that were nothing short of murderous. Her thick, viscous hostility was enough to make my breath hitch in my throat.
This was inside the Vampire's barrier.
It was a place where space itself was constructed by the Vampire's will. Naturally, the caster's wrath could not help but influence the environment.
The temperature in the area plummeted.
The scent of winter brushed against the tip of my nose, and the blood moon looked down upon its new prey like the eye of a beast.
The girl let out a short, mocking laugh.
As if the situation were truly pathetic.
Displeased by that composure, the Vampire ground her teeth and pushed herself up from the ground. Her severed arm had already regenerated more than halfway.
Soon, a voice steeped in hatred leaked from the monster's throat.
"Y-You... how dare this bitch...!"
"Tsk, tsk."
But before the rage could even continue.
The girl clicked her tongue and shook her head. At that attitude—as if the Vampire wasn't even worth listening to—the whites of the monster's eyes turned even redder.
"Your mental discipline is woefully lacking compared to the power you possess. I expected more from a Fiend of legend... but I suppose you only obtained that power through shortcuts."
Every single word was a blatant provocation.
The girl was merely speaking her honest thoughts, but the Vampire's expression crumpled and smoothed over repeatedly in an instant. Eventually, her body began to tremble from a level of rage that transcended all limits.
In truth, it was inevitable.
The Vampire did not know this girl's true identity.
A mere child had suddenly appeared, hacked off her arm, and was now delivering a scathing critique.
It would have been stranger if she weren't angry.
The Vampire's fury soon rippled through the entire space.
A humming, vibrating noise buzzed restlessly in my ears. It continued until the monster, who had been taking deep breaths with her eyes squeezed shut, opened them once more.
A deep blue glow rose into the air like a will-o'-the-wisp.
The Vampire curled the corners of her mouth into a savage smile. The trembling arc of her lips spoke volumes of her wrath.
"...I take it you're quite confident in your skills?"
"Well..."
Uttering those indifferent words, the girl's gaze turned toward me.
I was still sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath. Honestly, I felt a bit aggrieved.
How was it that even after becoming a 'High Expert,' I ended up in this state every single time?
Even if the opponent was a 'Vampire.'
However, the girl seemed rather pleased by my injuries.
"...I possess enough skill to show off a bit in front of my disciple."
To be more precise, she seemed delighted to have caught an opportunity to showcase her prowess before me.
The slight upward curve of her lips was proof enough.
The Vampire, however, only reacted with even greater disbelief.
"Disciple?"
"Yes, my disciple."
The monster's blue eyes began to dart back and forth between me and the Sword Duke.
An unidentified girl and a young knight whose fame had been skyrocketing lately.
It was a pairing that made it difficult to imagine a master-disciple relationship. Even if they were master and disciple, nine out of ten people would assume the latter was the master.
The Vampire seemed to share this sentiment. A faint sneer played on her lips as she whispered mockingly.
"I heard our nephew-in-law was the disciple of the Great Witch?"
It was a comment with an unclear motive.
Perhaps she simply hated seeing the girl so triumphant. Or perhaps she wanted to set the facts straight.
Either way, the Sword Duke's reaction was beyond imagination.
Her composure shattered instantly.
Her small body practically jumped, and her gaze, now filled with wariness, snapped toward the Vampire.
"W-What?! What kind of nonsense is... c-could it be?"
Then, her suspicious eyes turned toward me.
I wanted to offer some kind of excuse, but I was in no condition to even breathe properly. And the Sword Duke seemed to interpret my silence in a rather unique direction.
The girl growled, making no effort to hide her hostility.
"You wench... so you came here to steal someone else's disciple just because you're both from the Southern Kingdoms?! Like a thieving cat!"
"...A-A thieving cat?"
There were limited ways to react to such an absurd accusation.
The Vampire chose 'making a dumbfounded sound.' Despite the incredulous look she received, the Sword Duke proudly thumped her chest a couple of times.
"Hmph, but there's no way a mere spell-slinger could move a knight's heart! It's a pity, but I'm taking the kid with me."
"And who decided that?"
Chomp, chomp.
As the Vampire began to chew on her glove again, a blood-red mist began to spread around her.
It was the prelude to battle.
"That boy is my niece's lover... and the disciple of my enemy! Naturally, he should belong to me, shouldn't he? And then, I'll laugh... while looking at the distorted face of that woman who has always looked down on me!"
"What a truly pathetic desire."
"...Pathetic?"
The girl's calm expression was reflected in the Vampire's bloodshot eyes.
Rip, tear.
The sound of the recklessly chewed glove being torn apart echoed. The Vampire seemed not to even realize it, blinded by a torrent of emotion.
She simply stomped her foot once.
That was enough.
The blood spilled by me, the Vampire, and the Great Witch scattered into droplets. It was as if only the blood had been freed from the influence of gravity.
The sight of the crimson droplets gradually rising was beautiful enough to be trance-inducing.
Though the result it would bring was not beautiful in the slightest.
Cr-crack.
The glove the Vampire had been gnawing on tore away, and threads burst out. The purpose of such violent gestures was revealed immediately.
The writhing droplets of blood formed blades.
Swords, spears, axes, and even arrows.
There was not a single shape that wasn't born for slaughter. At a glance, there were hundreds of them.
The sheer number of blood armaments created an overwhelming sense of pressure.
"People like you wouldn't know... the pain of a human without talent, the gap that cannot be closed no matter how much one struggles! Do you have any idea how heart-wrenching it is to spend your entire life looking at someone's back? Do you dare to even guess?"
"I don't particularly care to guess."
Speaking in a voice devoid of any inflection, the girl made her declaration.
"I have always been the best, so why should I care about the feelings of those who lag behind?"
"Then I'll show you."
Grinding her teeth, the Vampire slowly raised her left hand.
Even then, the Sword Duke did not take any stance. She simply let out a yawn, staring at the Vampire with bored eyes.
Immediately after, the taut balance shattered with a sharp crack.
"The miserable feeling of being floored and forced to look up at the sky...!"
Hundreds of blood armaments aimed at the girl all at once.
The dance of blades, moving as if they were a single body, allowed for not a single opening.
They could not be evaded.
Even if blocked, it was an overwhelming quantity that could strike again and again.
The sound of air being pierced was the signal.
Countless blood-red trajectories filled the field of vision in an instant.
Space refracted and joined together, and the randomly distorted paths made calculations impossible. Phenomenon after phenomenon occurred: a spear that had been in front was suddenly pushed to the back, and a blade that had been lagging behind suddenly lunged forward.
The highlight was the sight after the blood armaments closed in on the girl.
The distance vanished in an instant.
Weapons that had been some distance away were suddenly right against her skin. The blood spears passing through the distorted space repeatedly elongated and contracted.
Amidst that rain of blood, the girl silently looked up at the sky.
Then, a small sigh escaped her.
"The sky, huh..."
A low murmur, a single step forward.
And then, a Single Strike.
It was a 'sword.' Every instinct I possessed rang an alarm, testifying that it had been a sword.
But how?
It hadn't even been caught by my senses. Sight, hearing, touch—even intuition failed to detect the presence of the sword. Only the advance of the blades filling the air came to a simultaneous halt.
Even reality itself failed to immediately grasp what had happened.
By the time the girl lowered her stance and brought her hand to her waist.
CRASH!
The entire world let out a scream.
The shattered blood armaments scattered like flower petals. Amidst the welcome she had created for herself, the girl wore a faint smile.
"I, too, once had a time when I looked up at the sky."
But the Vampire's offensive was not over.
"Shut up...!"
At the end of a voice trembling with rage, her hand dropped like a guillotine.
Then, the fragmented blood armaments writhed and regained their forms. No, rather, each individual fragment transformed into a weapon, and their numbers increased even further.
Despite this, the girl's expression remained serene.
"...Not anymore, though."
There was no answer to her monologue.
Instead, only a storm of blood-red weapons rushing in greeted her. Like heavy rain drumming against a window, it was impossible to deflect every single blood blade that caused an endless sonic boom.
Thud, thud, thud!
Dull sounds, like fingers digging into mud, echoed in succession. Before long, the girl's body was surrounded by blood armaments that had plunged down without leaving a single gap.
Even then, the Vampire did not seem at ease.
"Foolish girl, where do you think you've crawled into? My barrier is perfect! Though it's still incomplete, it has already absorbed a vast amount of power... once the Great Forest is transferred...!"
But the Vampire's words could not be finished.
A tremor occurred in the tomb of blood armaments that should have pierced the girl's body.
Before the Vampire's face could even crumple.
A sword light flashed.
It was a slash that truly deserved the expression 'flash.' Immediately after a thin line of light swept through the field of vision, the world showed no change for a moment.
Except for one thing.
A single silver thread had appeared, piercing through the very center of the Vampire's body. No, it wasn't just the Vampire's body.
From the ground to the sky.
The blade that had struck space itself had left a subtle yet unmistakable scar. Only then did time begin to flow again.
RIIIP!
Space revealed its cross-section.
The air, the blood blades, the Vampire's body, and even the ground and the sky.
There were no exceptions.
A straight-line slash was dividing the world in two.
"Sky Slash."
As the girl said this, she sheathed the blade that had been slightly peeking out from its scabbard.
Click.
The sound of it locking into place.
Soon, the torn atmosphere let out a bone-chilling death rattle.
The girl's hair and clothes fluttered wildly in the sudden gale. But without taking a single step back, she glanced back at me and asked.
"...How was it, kid? Do you feel like learning the sword now?"
With the halved world at her back.
The split landscape was tilting.