Chapter 342
Chapter 342
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 342
Chapter Title: Kyle Toven (3)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ He sliced through the falling rain.
He cleaved the black mist blanketing every direction.
He tore up the flowing black river from the ground itself.
In the end, after slashing and slashing, Kyle arrived before crashing waves. Beyond those black waves lay what Kyle had to cut down.
"......"
Fear. A momentary hesitation born of terror.
But Kyle soon steeled himself and charged toward the waves. Midway through leaping at the massive surge that could engulf the world, Kyle glanced absently at the ground. The parched earth was littered with sword marks.
Sword marks of varying shapes and depths.
They were not the work of a single swordsman.
Traces of swords perfected by countless lives etched into the ground. Looking back, the marks formed a single path stretching long behind him.
The sword marks bore witness to Kyle's footsteps.
No filth remained on the path Kyle had walked. He had cut through the shadows to reach this place. Kyle turned his gaze forward again. The massive wave reaching to the heavens. The sight that stirred fear.
But now...
'Now, I can cut it.'
Kyle threw himself into the waves.
Chwaaaaaak!
Fierce currents swallowed him whole. The instant he entered, Kyle's vision went dark. It was pitch black. He saw nothing. But Kyle did not panic.
If his eyes could see nothing, there was no need to keep them open.
Kyle closed his eyes.
In that utter darkness where even his senses faded into an abyss, Kyle did not lose his center.
"A sword is ultimately simple."
"Find your center."
"Sense what must be cut."
"Swing with all your strength. That's it."
The sword savant, Kuntel.
Recalling his master's teachings, Kyle found his center. As he did, he asked himself.
'What must I cut?'
Everything. All that he felt.
Kyle pressed forward with his center firm. With every step, his flesh tore and blood flowed. The blade-like currents shredded his body. Yet the tip of the sword in Kyle's grip never wavered.
'Swing with everything you have.'
Crrrack, crunch.
A cacophony erupted from the fingers gripping his sword. Defying the onrushing currents that battered his body, the blade moved.
Ssshing.
Unlike the raging torrent, the sword stroke cutting against it was eerily serene. But serenity did not mean a gentle outcome.
Chwaaaaaak!
The wave split apart.
Amid the rending wave, Kyle regained his senses. Opening his eyes, he stood at its heart. Though darkness dyed everything around him, dry earth lay beneath his feet.
The ground still bore sword marks.
Gripping his sword, Kyle expanded the ground he claimed with each step. He swung and swung, cleaving the surging waves. Cutting through them, he advanced.
Flash.
Pure white particles pierced the waves to reach Kyle.
He knew they were Sara's blessing.
Grateful to her unseen form, Kyle gradually picked up speed. At some point, his movements outpaced the rushing currents.
Acceleration.
Before the currents could fill the space he carved, Kyle swung first. With every swing, the massive wave that seemed to touch the sky rippled.
Chwaaaaaak!
Before the overflowing shadows, a human was pitifully small.
A battered, bleeding human held only a single sword, and the starlight he harbored was but a handful of ashes from a burned-out star.
Meager and wretched.
Yet that light would neither extinguish nor be hidden. It shone even brighter. The human's sword rent the waves of calamity. In the end, Kyle cleaved them all.
Thud.
Kyle took a step forward.
Splatters of filth that had formed the waves poured down to the ground. Standing atop the formless sludge, Kyle looked ahead.
There lay what he had to cut.
The Demon King's essence.
Kyle faced the aggregate of curses.
2.
The Demon King was a being born from gathered curses.
Countless lives had cursed the heavens and hated those blessed by the stars. They wished for all to become like them.
Fall, shatter, and crumble.
They sought to drag down the stars.
They sought to claw and scar the world.
The shadows took the form most suited to that end.
'...Hands.'
A being composed of countless grasping hands.
Before the entity called the Demon King, Kyle swallowed dryly. Large and small hands clutched at something each.
A collapsed wall of the Celese Kingdom, a watchtower, a house no longer fit for living, lightning about to fall from the sky, or if not...
'Themselves.'
The hands clawed at one another.
Bound as one being, they still hated and tore at each other amid their bonds. Their ceaseless screams rang in Kyle's ears.
【■■. ■■■■■■. ■■■■■■■■■■.】
The voice of the false god was a shriek.
Kyle grimaced at the mind-shaking voice. Then he realized his vision had turned red. Looking down slightly...
Splat.
Blood poured out.
From his eyes, nose, ears, mouth... from every orifice. Merely facing the Demon King's essence was breaking Kyle's body.
It had reached its limit long ago.
To arrive here, Kyle had pushed his body beyond endurance. Sara's blessing had made it possible. But now even that was impossible. His entire body screamed.
'...Not yet.'
As Kyle tried to steady his breath.
His eyes bulged wide for an instant.
He leaped aside in haste, but it was far too late. Though distance remained, a massive hand closed the gap in a flash and seized his leg.
Crack, crunch.
Kyle's leg shattered.
The hand flung him to the ground while gripping him.
Craaaack!
The earth split, and a mouthful of blood spewed from Kyle's mouth. But the hand did not release him. It yanked him from the crater. Countless hands surged toward the captured Kyle.
"...Cough. Ack."
Held upside down, Kyle opened his eyes.
Bloodshot veins marred his glaring single eye.
He swung his sword, severing the hand on his leg. He crashed gracelessly to the ground without proper landing form.
The reaching hands balled into fists.
Before the massive fist swinging to crush him, Kyle let out a hollow laugh. Fists large enough to grasp a watchtower. Dozens lunged at him at once.
How was he supposed to fight this?
How was he supposed to cut this?
He couldn't even grasp it. Still, he had to move, so Kyle kicked off the ground with his broken leg and ran. He dodged, slashed, parried. But he couldn't deflect them all.
Kwa-gagagak!
A hand plowing the ground struck Kyle. He raised his sword in defense, but the arm holding it snapped with a crunch. His body launched into the air, tumbling across the ground for what felt like ages.
"...Huff."
Thrusting his sword into the earth, Kyle staggered to his feet. Blood poured from his mouth. His body wailed. The Demon King, which had seemed close, was distant again.
Far.
So very far.
But whether he felt that way or not, distance irrelevant, the shadow extended arms. Through hazy vision, Kyle saw hundreds of demonic hands blotting the sky.
'...So that's it.'
This is.
'This is the sight you saw.'
The calamity you faced that day.
Kyle instinctively stepped back. But the moment he took one step, he halted. The ground beneath his foot had split.
"......"
The sword-marked earth.
The footsteps he had taken to reach here.
They seemed to ask him. Are you running again? Will you flee pathetically once more?
"...Ha."
Kyle let out an involuntary laugh.
Instead of stepping back, he thrust his foot forward, murmuring inwardly. No, he couldn't do that.
Kaga-gagak!
Toward the hands plowing the earth, Kyle swung his sword. As he did, he thought of that day years ago, Raniel's figure here.
'That guy.'
That damn guy.
Didn't retreat a single step before that monster. While everyone trembled in fear, he had staked half his life to hold back the Demon King. He had pinned this colossal calamity here.
Yes, that guy didn't retreat.
Like Raniel, Kyle planted his feet. Hiding his fear, he swung his sword. Midway through swinging, a thought struck him.
Will you settle for this?
It was a question from his younger self.
The Kyle of childhood, who always admired and envied Raniel, now questioned the present Kyle. Will you settle for becoming like Raniel?
Once more, Kyle answered himself.
No, he couldn't do that.
That day, Raniel had held the Demon King in place. But now, he had to cut it down. Standing still achieved nothing.
Thud.
With his broken leg, Kyle stepped forward.
He passed the phantom Raniel at his side and advanced. Swinging his sword as he went.
'I...'
Kyle.
The boy who dreamed of being a hero.
Had always admired Raniel.
To Kyle, the hero was always Raniel. When Kyle despaired before his burned hometown, Raniel lifted him and headed to the capital. Saying they'd die if they stayed.
From then on, that's how it was.
Always walking ahead, Raniel showed Kyle the path. He was the guide, the perfect hero Kyle imagined.
Not some fairy-tale fiction.
To Kyle, Raniel was a living hero. Kyle had dreamed of becoming like him, of someday standing one step ahead.
In the end, Kyle recalled that dream.
A faint smile touched Kyle's lips.
He closed and opened his eyes. His hazy vision cleared. The path he had walked was filled with severed hands.
Kyle stopped.
Before he knew it, he stood far ahead of Raniel. Before the Demon King. He had achieved his dream. Murmuring as much, Kyle assumed his stance.
The stance to recreate the hero's ultimate strike.
3.
Thud.
He slammed his broken leg down.
The final step. The ground cracked with a crunch the instant his foot hit. Rocks and dirt burst upward from the fissure.
They did not fall.
Or rather, they seemed not to.
In time slowed to its limit, as if frozen, Kyle recalled it. The hero's strike he had seen countless times in dreams. The final blow of the first hero, Ganikalt van Galatrick.
It was an impossibly beautiful sword stroke.
The pinnacle of the sword.
A realm that seemed unattainable in a lifetime.
With his one eye, he saw reality; with the eye lost that day, Kyle saw within himself. In an endless wasteland stood a man.
He mimicked the man's stance.
But not perfectly.
That was Ganikalt's sword.
His own was different. Not a single sword, but one forged by piecing together countless others. Upon it, Kyle overlaid his unique swordsmanship.
What his bulging eyes saw was the sword path.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of strands converged. As Kyle's stance perfected, the paths dwindled. When the burst rocks had moved a handspan, all paths became one.
A single path.
But it did not reach the Demon King.
He could not cut what he sought.
Not enough. Kyle burned every last mote of starlight left in him.
"The stars only open the way."
"In the end, you swing the sword."
"In the last moment, believe not in the stars."
Only in himself.
After the stars burned away, only the man Kyle Toven remained. He reflected on his life. He looked back on his path.
It was not beautiful.
Not righteous.
A path marred by countless mistakes and flights, far from a hero's.
Wretched, but his path.
Facing it, Kyle laughed.
For he realized how to complete this path that could not reach the Demon King.
'...Ah.'
So this is the realm you reached.
Kyle readjusted his grip. The gathered sword paths scattered, then reformed. The emerging path was utterly different from before.
...A swordsman draws the sword path.
Then the path he had walked.
The path ahead.
His life itself, the path he would walk lifelong, could be called a sword path.
Meager. Hesitant. Regretful. Envious.
Falling. Crooked. Giving up.
Yet in the end, forward.
Not a noble hero's path, but his own. The one behind and ahead. Kyle exchanged it all for sword paths.
Past, present, future.
Burning them to draw one path.
A pristine white path appeared in Kyle's eyes.
It reached the Demon King.
There was a path for the sword, no reason not to swing. Kyle swung along it.
Tick, tictictock.
Air split along the sword's trajectory. Rocks and dirt in the air crumbled on touch. Cleaving all it met, the sword drew a perfect line.
Whoosh.
Kyle swung.
Frozen time flowed again.
A gale swirled around him. The instant he swung, his arm twisted, blood bursting.
The sword tip drew no light trail.
It pulled a massive current.
The Demon King charging with terrifying momentum halted abruptly. It could advance no further. In the born silence, tick, tictictock echoed.
Something splitting.
Frozen in his swing stance, Kyle smiled. The moment his faint smile resounded.
Shlick.
A serene cleaving sound rang out.
A thin line bisected the world. All touched by it was severed. Concepts, common sense, providence, laws—all crumbled.
Chwaaaaaaaaak!
The sword defying providence.
The sword's zenith crafted by one swordsman to cleave the false god: Heaven-Reversing Sword.
After centuries, it was perfectly recreated by one human.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇