Chapter 37 — To the Utmost Limit
Chapter 37 — To the Utmost Limit
Translation: GodTL
The instant Minos's blood-red sword pierced the ground, foul energy spilled out around it. The blue sky dimmed. The earth blackened. Beyond the boundary, the void seemed to inhale—and the world transformed into a battlefield drowned in old blood, broken weapons, and bodies that should have turned to dust centuries ago.
Min-jun recognized the armor first. Then the swords. The saddles. These were the soldiers from Minos's memories.
Dark red smoke kept pouring from the sword. One soldier became ten. Ten became hundreds. Then the smoke climbed into the sky and twisted into wyverns until their wings blotted out patches of blue overhead.
Min-jun's stomach tightened. An army stood before him and another circled above. Minos watched his expression and said almost kindly, 「Don't worry. You cannot die here.」
"What on earth... do you want from me?" Was this punishment for those who had invaded his tomb and disturbed his rest? But if that were his purpose, the others should have been brought here along with Min-jun.
The emperor, Minos, shook his head. 「Didn't I tell you? I want to see someone use full-fledged Dragon Words in a human body.」 This wasn't punishment. With no other motive, he simply wanted to see someone else use the full-fledged Dragon Words he himself never could. Though his way of going about it was terribly wrong.
Minos offered no further explanation. The army did. Soldiers surged forward with killing intent so real that Min-jun's body reacted before his mind did.
He slipped past the first blades and answered with a sweeping cut. More than a dozen soldiers fell. Before their bodies struck the ground, however, they dissolved into crimson smoke, reformed, and raised their swords again.
They were endless. Just like the Sword Remnants—except now the sky itself was full of enemies too.
Wyvern breath crashed down. Min-jun twisted away from one blast, then another. The third swallowed him.
Pain erased thought. His flesh burned. Bones seemed to split. For an instant, he felt his body come apart—and then watched it restore itself without leaving a wound. Minos had told the truth. He could not die. Unfortunately, he could still feel everything.
"What am I supposed to do?!" His shout broke into a ragged gasp. Killing the army was meaningless; they simply returned. If Minos truly intended to keep him here until he mastered Dragon Words, then this battlefield could become an eternity made entirely of pain.
So he stopped trying to win the battle. There was only one victory condition: break the world itself.
Min-jun emptied his Subspace. Artifacts unfolded around him one after another. "Fine. You have an army. I have these." He didn't need them to win. He needed them to buy seconds.
Then he removed Rokan's suppressor. The moment it came free, restrained power surged back through him so sharply that his vision shook. Rokan had warned him never to do this unless death was otherwise certain. Minos had created a place where death wasn't even an escape.
Min-jun raised the Dragon Bone Sword. He poured everything—fear, anger, desperation, the need to return to Sia—into one command. "Shatter." Nothing happened.
A wyvern smashed through his defenses and crushed him into the ground. His body restored itself. The pain did not. Through clenched teeth he forced the word out again. "Shatter!" Still nothing.
The soldiers flooded the opening. Blades entered his body. Hooves trampled him. His bones mended as fast as they broke, forcing him to experience injuries that should have ended consciousness several times over.
He dragged himself upright anyway.
Again. Failure. Pain. Recovery. Again. Each time his voice grew rougher. Each time his knees took longer to straighten. Yet every time his fingers threatened to open, he tightened them around the sword hilt and forced the command out once more. "Shatter!"
At some point he stopped striking at the soldiers and began hammering his Dragon Bone Sword against Minos's sword. If the blood-red blade anchored this world, then he would break the anchor. The collision sent brutal vibrations up both arms and through his skull, but he kept striking.
Then Minos's blade answered with a faint aurora glow.
Energy rushed from the sword into Min-jun. The pain remained, but beneath it something immense opened. His senses sharpened. Strength flooded limbs already exhausted beyond reason. For the first time, Dragon power stopped feeling like an abstract concept. It felt like standing above the world and believing, with terrifying certainty, that the world should obey.
That certainty frightened him almost as much as it thrilled him.
Maybe this is it. Min-jun could barely see straight, yet he raised the sword again. "Shatter into pieces without a trace!"
His throat was raw. His voice cracked. He had lost count of how many times he had spoken the command. But somewhere beneath the pain, instinct screamed that the distance between failure and success had finally narrowed to almost nothing.
He gathered every remaining trace of Dragon power and brought his sword down on Minos's blade. "SHATTER INTO PIECES WITHOUT A TRACE!" The two swords collided. Aurora light exploded across the battlefield. The world convulsed—and a crack appeared in the sky.