Chapter 102
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 102
As the Blade Maid ducked and lunged, Gwyn raised his bow like a sword and slashed down at her. She barely blocked the strike before swinging her own blade in a fierce counterattack.
Crack!
The sharp edge bit deep into the bow’s riser. Having swung his weapon up in a desperate block, Gwyn groaned.
“Guh… ugh.”
He gritted his teeth against her impossible strength. This is absurd, he thought.
Whether it was Uin or this Blade Maid, they both looked fragile enough to snap, yet their physical power was beyond ridiculous. Gwyn had never lost a contest of raw strength before, but holding her off for even a single second was pushing him to his absolute limit.
Creeeak…
As the bow’s riser began to splinter under the pressure, Gwyn sensed the danger and quickly retreated. While backing away, he snatched a slip of paper from his belt.
The Blade Maid, refusing to miss the opportunity, slashed forward.
Her blade sliced through both the paper and Gwyn. With a sharp tearing sound, blood sprayed from his body.
But she knew something was wrong. The sensation of the cut confirmed it. The Blade Maid’s gaze fell to the torn paper.
It was a magic scroll.
“!!!”
In the brief moment it took for the paper to flutter to the ground, the Blade Maid, who had been aiming to slit his throat, snapped her head up to look at his face.
He was grinning, the corners of his mouth curled upward.
It was the smile of a man with a plan.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, her expression contorting in fury, the Blade Maid instantly leaped backward. Gwyn bolted in the opposite direction at the same time.
KABOOM!!
A massive explosion erupted where the scroll had fallen.
Thick smoke billowed out. Gwyn, having barely escaped the blast wave, nocked another arrow. Even in that split second, three blades came flying toward him.
Perhaps she had thrown them blindly into the smoke, as only one headed directly for him. Gwyn fired his arrow, the impact warping the blade’s trajectory.
It whizzed past his face, close enough to open a red line across his cheek. Blood trickled down as the blade clattered loudly, embedding itself in the ground.
The longer this drags on, the more dangerous it gets.
Just as Gwyn, having narrowly escaped the crisis, pulled out another arrow to plan his counterattack, his eyes fell on the blade stuck in the earth, and he froze.
Damn it.
It was a misjudgment. The moment she threw three blades, he should have known something was wrong. He should have reacted immediately.
The monster known as the Blade Maid hadn't thrown them to attack him.
It was to close the distance…
By the time he realized it, she had already burst through the smoke, pulling herself along her wires at incredible speed.
The monster leaped into the air.
Her shadow loomed over Gwyn.
His eyes met her black, murderous gaze. Before he could even react, a massive blade plunged toward him.
* * *
“…This old man cannot fathom your intentions, Commander. A bow is a weapon for striking from a distance. An archer should always have a knight to intercept close-range threats.”
The Magic Tower was just ahead. Sir Sturman, who had finally voiced his concerns, received Ar’s usual, serious reply.
“Did you only see him holding a bow, Sir Sturman?”
“I have seen him borrow the power of spirits to shoot arrows during training, but that is all. As far as I know, he only used spirits to imbue his arrows with power.”
Spirit summoners, like mages, had their capabilities largely determined by innate talent. From that perspective, Gwyn was truly blessed. To possess high aptitude as both an archer and a spirit summoner was a gift from birth.
However, in Sturman's opinion, that was far from enough. No matter how much talent he had, it wasn’t everything.
How many magic swordsmen had challenged the Primordial Core?
How many had returned alive?
Hadn’t they all perished?
“His talent isn’t so shallow,” Ar replied simply.
*
Screeech!
Right before Gwyn’s eyes, the sharp blade ground against his own, sending sparks flying.
But that was as far as it went.
It stopped just shy of splitting his face in two.
“……”
It could not advance an inch further.
It felt like his clenched teeth would shatter, but Gwyn was holding the line.
What he held was not a bow, but a sword.
In a split-second decision, he had dropped his bow and drawn his sword to block the killing blow.
Screeech… Groan!
The Blade Maid was right in front of him, so close that only their clashing blades separated them. But Gwyn didn't dare look the monster in the eye. The black eyes he’d met earlier held an abyss, and just looking into them felt like it would drain the strength from his body.
Having brought her full weight down from the air, the Blade Maid continued to press her advantage on the ground. With every push, the blades screamed. It was the sound of steel eating steel; both weapons were being worn down simultaneously.
He was at a disadvantage.
Not only was he being overpowered, but unlike the monster before him, Gwyn only had one sword. If his blade broke, all that awaited him was a brutal death.
Holding out with just a bow and sword has reached its limit.
The time he’d held out felt like an eternity, but in reality, barely twenty seconds had passed. He was lucky to be alive. A single misstep would have cost him his head.
I’m going to die.
The thought flashed through Gwyn’s mind. His blade was cracking. He didn’t need to see the future to know what would happen in the next few seconds.
It was time to play his final cards.
Screeech!
The screaming blade seemed to urge him on. Squeezing out his remaining strength, Gwyn shouted into the empty air.
“O spiritibus——!!”
As if in response, a roar echoed from the heavens and the earth.
Though the language was indecipherable, the Blade Maid clearly sensed the danger and instantly leaped back several meters.
Mana began to surge explosively around Gwyn. It was a foreign power, not his own. It was too vast, and its flow was too natural.
It took a few more seconds for the explosive mana to coalesce. Finally, behind Gwyn, the owners of that power revealed themselves.
Spirits.
High spirits, to be precise—and not just one, but two.
“……”
The Blade Maid, now at a distance, narrowed her eyes.
A spirit summoner was several times more troublesome than a mage. The spirit used the magic, not the summoner, bypassing a mage’s greatest weakness: casting time. And since they didn’t use their own mana, they didn’t tire easily.
Besides, wasn’t the limit for summoners entering the Primordial Core usually a single high spirit? Contracting with two high spirits of different attributes at the same time was unheard of.
“ludica eum!”
Refusing to give her a moment to think, Gwyn commanded the two spirits.
The translucent wind spirit was first, stretching its hand toward the sky. The settled debris on the blood-soaked ground began to float. The wind grew fiercer, sweeping up everything in its path—twigs, leaves, dust, stone fragments, and even the mangled corpses of homunculi and humans spilling red fluids.
Soon, the wind became a raging torrent, a chaotic vortex dominating the space.
Next, the earth spirit, clad in a carapace of rock, slammed its fists into the ground with a monstrous roar. The ground for dozens of meters around the Blade Maid began to churn like ocean waves. The earth cracked and shook, spewing stone thorns and pillars from its depths. Leaping into the air, the Blade Maid kicked off the flying fragments to dodge the relentless assault.
The gale, swallowing everything in its path, was not white but a murky gray. It was impossible to breathe in the storm that completely obscured all vision.
But the Blade Maid—that monster of impossible movement—escaped the kill zone with relative ease. More accurately, she had anticipated it, escaping before the zone was fully formed.
Yet Gwyn was calmer than ever. His mind was cold and rational.
Do not forget the purpose.
He wasn’t trying to win. He just had to buy time until the Hub was established.
Gwyn steeled his resolve, recalling Commander Ar’s words. He wouldn’t forgive an unplanned death. But surviving without completing the mission would be a far greater disgrace. If his death could buy more time, he was prepared to die.
She won’t be able to approach easily.
The space itself was now a high-grade spell. Even if she threw her blades, the torrent would sweep them away. Of course, maintaining two high spirits consumed an immense amount of mana. At this rate, he could barely hold out for three minutes before they vanished.
Three minutes was enough.
The problem was surviving those three minutes.
If what she’s shown so far is everything, there’s no way she could have killed thousands of subjugation troops.
As Gwyn remained on high alert, the Blade Maid’s expression suddenly went blank, all traces of wariness gone.
…?
Confused, Gwyn watched her, not letting his guard down for a second.
The Blade Maid casually glanced at the wide blade in her hand, then tossed it to the ground. Ignoring the clatter, she lifted the hem of her skirt. One hand reached for the blades tucked into her garter.
Five in total.
She pulled out all of them and threw them toward Gwyn with an almost half-hearted motion.
Whoosh!
As expected, the blades were swallowed by the torrent, never reaching him.
It was the natural result.
Watching this, the Blade Maid finally parted her lips.
She smiled.
A faint smile spread across her pale pink lips, spreading across her face like a plague until it became a wide, chilling grin. It was an ecstasy born of pure thrill.
She was saying something, but the roar of the wind was too loud to hear. She was too far away to even read her lips.
After she finished speaking, the Blade Maid pulled a single blade from her front pocket.
This one was different. It was circular. And Gwyn knew what it was.
It was a weapon that had drawn public attention a few months ago, an item with some connection to the Edelbreas Black Wolf Knights.
One of the 36 Masterpieces: ‘Guillotine’s Tooth.’
So it belongs to that monster, Gwyn muttered to himself. The puzzle pieces were falling into place—the entity Swallow had been searching for in Riaze, and the reason why.
And then.
In that brief moment of thought.
The Blade Maid crouched down and plunged straight into the torrent. She threw herself into the storm as if being torn to shreds meant nothing to her.
Though it was unexpected, Gwyn calmly issued more commands to his spirits. Stone thorns erupted from the ground, splitting in all directions like blooming flowers, while blades of wind, sharper than before, howled within the gale.
With this, the time he could hold out was shrinking.
Three minutes? No, two… maybe one…
WHOOSH!
“Huh?”
The question escaped his lips only after ‘something’ had already flown far past him. By the time Gwyn voiced his confusion, his eardrums had ruptured and his skin had been torn by the sheer wind pressure. An instant later, a building dozens of meters behind him collapsed with a deafening crash.
Only after the sound of the crumbling building registered in his one good ear did his mind begin to work properly.
What was that?
The moment the thought formed, he cursed himself for his foolishness. He already knew.
The blade that had just flown past was ‘Guillotine’s Tooth.’
And Gwyn also knew why it had grazed him.
It would soon be retrieved by its wire.
Relying purely on instinct, Gwyn threw himself to the ground. His body felt like it was moving through molasses, an eternity passing in a single second. A split-second later, a massive blade grazed over his head.
Snip.
His green hair was cut short. Flustered, Gwyn tried to follow the blade with his eyes, but it was far too fast.
He could, however, see its shape. It was hundreds of times larger than the small, circular blade he’d seen before it went up for auction.