Chapter 400: Even a Hero Wouldn't Want to Be Born in Turbulent Times
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 400: Even a Hero Wouldn't Want to Be Born in Turbulent Times
The Thunder God was a fixture of Claudia. On days heavy with clouds, it would creep in from the distant sea, peer over the land, and then, with a great roar, unleash a torrent of lightning upon the earth. Thanks to the Lightning Towers and the Thunderarch, it was never truly dangerous, but it was a loud, menacing old nuisance all the same.
But that was all by design. The Thunder God, faithfully playing its given role as an "alarm," never aimed its power at anyone. It would announce the coming storm, then allow itself to be outsmarted by human ingenuity. Much like the powerful but foolish giants of old tales.
[... . -]
However, that description no longer applied to the Thunder God of this moment.
The Thunder God raised its spear.
The world trembled.
The fine hairs on my arms stood on end.
Tiny sparks of static electricity danced across the soil and rocks. The Thunder God's fury was seeking a sacrifice. All of creation held its breath and bowed its head, praying for the solemn punishment to pass it by.
Never before had a god unleashed its fury upon humanity. If one had, the world would not have retained its shape for long.
The Thunder God proved it.
[..-. .. .-. .]
The spear, over ten meters long, glowed white-hot. Earth and stone shuddered and rose into the air. Then, in an instant, the world seemed to stretch, and the spear became a single streak of light.
There was no world-tearing roar, no startling flash. Even the power that had been scattered across the world was now condensed into one point. To throw the spear—that was its sole purpose.
There was no throwing motion. One moment there was a flash of light, and the next, the spear was gone from the Thunder God's hand. The steel spear, now moving at the speed of lightning, was impossible to follow with the naked eye.
"...Woof?"
Azzy, who had been barking loudly, blinked. Lunken, who had been slaughtering humans just a moment ago, had vanished from before her eyes. In his place, his severed arms and legs fell to the ground with a thud. The humans he had been holding fell with them.
It was impossible to know how far Lunken had been sent, but he was certainly closer to the Duchy of Mist than to Claudia now. No matter how immortal an Elder he was, it would take him a considerable amount of time to restore his body and return.
Peru, who had vanquished the Elder, panted heavily, her arm still outstretched. As vampires and humans alike stared at her, speechless, she took in the devastation she had wrought.
A branching, tree-like pattern was seared into the ground where the spear had grazed it—the mark of the lightning spear tearing through the earth. Thin tendrils of lightning sprouted like reeds from the cracked and shattered fissures. The land, now saturated with lightning, awaited only Peru's command.
In the midst of the breathless silence, Peru's expressionless face hid her panic.
...Huh?
This wasn't what Peru had intended. She had only meant to repair the Thunder God with the Golden Lord's power and give them a scare. She had wanted the same old Thunder God as before—loud and menacing, but ultimately harmless.
But the moment she tried to fix it, an unknown power had intervened, causing an unforeseen problem. The Lightning Thief had entrusted its long-hidden power to Peru's will. Without even realizing it, Peru had gained dominion over all the lightning on this land and created a true Thunder God.
...This isn't right.
If you fire a blank and a live round comes out, the person most shocked is the one who pulled the trigger. That was exactly how Peru felt. When the Thunder God she'd repaired for intimidation purposes sent an Elder flying, Peru was startled by the uncontrollable power.
However, because Peru's facial expressions were so minimal, even her shocked face looked nearly blank. Her lips were pressed into a firm line as she stared after the Elder, giving her the air of an absolute being, unfazed by anything, as if she had expected it all along.
There was no time to correct the misunderstanding. Seizing the moment while everyone was focused on her, Peru quickly got to the point.
"...This is your last warning. Stop!"
It probably wasn't just my imagination that her words sounded like, If you don't stop, I'll do the same to all of you. And she wasn't entirely wrong.
Now that she had proven she could do it, Peru's words were not a bluff, but an act of mercy. She was suppressing a power that could overturn the world and twist its laws, giving them a chance to survive.
Even if she couldn't properly control that power yet. After all, killing humans didn't require much finesse.
But there was one person here who possessed not only a mighty power but also the skill to wield it with precision. The man fighting the Saintess of Steel had felt the new power and moved without a moment's hesitation.
"Blood Veil."
Valdamir clenched his fist. The overwhelmingly strong power burst even his own grip, and the pressure sent droplets of blood scattering in every direction. In an instant, a thick blood-mist spread, consuming the space. The blood that erupted from his body swallowed the surrounding pools of blood, growing in size.
A life that had become immortal by being closest to death. The Progenitor was a seed of the Divine that had become a racial deity before it could fully bloom. She had established new rules that applied only to her kindred, the vampires.
But setting the rules didn't guarantee one was the best at the game. Tyr had created it, but it was Valdamir who had mastered its principles and honed them into a technique.
In a flash, the Cloud Waterfall was stained crimson. Not a single ray of sunlight penetrated the dark red clouds, and the ominous stench of blood filled the air. A space by vampires, for vampires. Submerged within it, Valdamir moved, shrouded in the blood mist. In the darkness, only the red glint of his eyes left afterimages, and his form blurred.
It wasn't that he was too fast to see. It was because his physical body had dissolved into the bloody mist.
Crimson Phantom Step.
It was named after a footwork technique, but it resembled swimming. And to be more precise, it was closer to teleportation.
For vampires, the boundary between inside and outside is blurred. They place no meaning on flowing blood or a broken body. They bind and remake themselves with the Bloodcraft derived from the Progenitor's original blood. In other words, their essence lies in that blood.
So, what if one were to scatter their own blood like a mist? The entire mist becomes the vampire's body, their domain of influence. Within his infinitely expanded self, Valdamir simply shifted his center of gravity.
That was all it took for Valdamir to appear right in front of Peru. He snatched the greatsword that flew to his hand and muttered.
"You wield a power you cannot handle."
A technique of deconstructing and then reconstructing oneself to move. It was impossible to catch, impossible to stop. Peru, reacting too late, had no time to even feel fear. Staring down at her eyes, which held only bewilderment, Valdamir swung the greatsword down without expression, not even testing her ability to respond, giving her no chance to do so.
But I, who can read minds, always know the enemy's move. Usually, I'm forced to watch helplessly, but fortunately, this time I had a way to stop it.
The greatsword grazed past Peru's ear. A sound like the world being split in two followed the wind, and the red sword-qi left a great scar upon the earth. The greatsword was buried halfway into the ground.
The red greatsword, which treated even the solid earth as something to be cut. But there was no trace of Peru's blood on it. Lord Sanguine's blade had missed her by a paper-thin margin.
Valdamir looked at his right arm—the Elder's arm he had just deconstructed and reformed. From within it, a thin thread-like substance extended. Finer and more delicate than a spider's web, the line flickered with a bright yellow light.
The thing pulling on the most powerful Elder's right arm was a pitiful thread that looked as if it couldn't lift a single leaf. Valdamir spotted the card at the end of the thread. The Seven of Spades. The card that revered the Thunder God was wrapped tightly in lightning, like a spool of thread.
Seven of Spades, the Lightning Spool. Like a reel used to fly a kite, it was a condensation of lightning, wound with thousands, tens of thousands... no, billions and trillions of fine lightning threads.
Valdamir spoke, showing a faint curiosity.
"So you were the one wielding that power."
Phew. That was a close one. I let out a silent sigh of relief and played dumb.
"No. It's not my power. I'm just borrowing it."
Literally. It wasn't me who made Valdamir's attack miss. It was Valdamir's own power.
When Valdamir reconstructed his entire body, I had scattered threads of lightning in that location. The microscopic threads of lightning had seeped between the coalescing blood, and I interfered just as Valdamir was about to swing his greatsword.
If I could just make direct contact with the inside of a body, I could make even the Progenitor's heart beat for a moment with my meager mana. I was speaking from experience.
And as they say, practice makes perfect. Now that I had the Divine of Lightning in my hands, I could even control a body, as long as the lightning threads were touching it.
Well, this was a trick that was only possible with direct internal contact. What idiot other than a vampire would let you touch their nerves directly? And even then, it would be useless if they noticed and resisted like Valdamir.
Valdamir clenched his right hand hard. With just that, the lightning threads I had implanted snapped all at once. His right arm free again, Valdamir slung the greatsword back over his shoulder and turned to me.
"Do you wish to die?"
A chilling killing intent washed over my entire body. As the strongest of the Elders unleashed his aura, even the hot blood coursing through my veins seemed to turn pale and hold its breath.
But even facing Valdamir, I didn't lose my smile.
"You can't kill me."
Because, you see, I have Tyr's favor.
I didn't have to wait long. Tyr spoke to Valdamir, her voice a low warning.
"Valdamir. Restrain yourself."
Her quiet yet firm voice carried the clear command not to act rashly. Valdamir didn't miss it and immediately bowed his head.
"As you wish, Progenitor."
The hostility vanished as if washed away, as if his every action until now had been an act.
And it was similar to an act. His actions, his words, even the aura he projected—it was all thoroughly calculated.
It wouldn't take Valdamir even a second to kill me from here. If he just moved the blood he'd spread everywhere to crush my body, I would die splattering red juice like a pomegranate in a press. The same went for Peru. She didn't yet have a proper grasp of the Thunder God and lacked the strength to block an Elder's attack. Even if she had somehow dodged the first blow, she wouldn't have lasted if Valdamir had attacked in earnest.
In short, Peru and I were alive only because Valdamir hadn't been aiming to kill us.
Valdamir didn't move with a fixed purpose. He had shown me killing intent to confirm Tyr's intentions, and he had attacked Peru purely because he felt threatened. After assessing the situation a little more with his own power, he had easily given up. He had been serious about wanting to kill the Saintess, but as soon as he judged it impossible, he had immediately changed his target.
They say people grow more stubborn with age, but it seems that if you pass a certain limit, you come full circle. Valdamir's judgment was astonishingly swift and flexible.
Just my type. As long as I could read his mood and play along, there was nothing to lose.
"Let's calm down a bit now, Tyr? There's no need for us to fight amongst ourselves, is there?"
Tyr still looked displeased.
She didn't hate Peru, but if Peru were to lend her strength to the Sanctum, Tyr would kill her without a shred of hesitation. Yet I had not only handed over the power of a Divine to such a person but had also protected her. By her own principles, she should have been able to kill me as well, but Tyr was intentionally erasing that possibility from her mind. She didn't want to be trapped in such a dilemma.
"Hmph. Are you taking their side? The side of the Sanctum's minions, who tried to cast out not only me but you as well from this world?"
Tyr's complaint was laced with a deep resentment for having been forced into this conflict.
I'd given her enough slack; now it was time to pull back a little. A person's heart is like flying a kite—pull too hard and it nosedives, let it go too slack and it flies away completely.
"I don't know if I'm on their side, but I've certainly never sided with the Sanctum. In fact, you could say I want to get in the Sanctum's way."
"Then why did you stop him?"
"Because the Sanctum wants them dead, too."
Even though I hadn't pointed, Valdamir slowly turned his gaze toward the Saintess of Steel. Feruel, who had been gleefully pounding on Valdamir's body just moments before, had dropped her hands at the most crucial moment and was simply watching. She hadn't summoned her angel, nor had she used her holy power.
You already knew from fighting her, didn't you, Lord Sanguine? This one's no saint either. In any case, in place of the Lord Sanguine, who was too loyal to voice his opinion, I advised Tyr.
"Because the Saintess of Steel plans to have everyone here martyred in the clouds!"