Chapter 439
Chapter 439
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 439
Chapter Title: The Sword Ghost's Final Flame
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A single human's life—the path he had walked—burst into flames.
The life of the Sword Ghost, Draka, went up in smoke.
The scent rising from the burning trail he had carved was anything but elegant. It was acrid, foul, laced with venom. Clutching that poison close, the ghost swung his blade.
Shwaaaaaack!
With every inch the sword moved, blood sprayed like a fountain. Chunks of mangled beast flesh rained down, and geysers of gore turned into a bloody mist that shrouded the view. In a meadow soaked with blood and meat, the ghost rampaged.
He swung his sword, swung it again, and swung it once more.
Slaughtering every magical beast in sight, the ghost pressed forward. With each step he took, corpses piled up like cordwood. The endless horde of beasts, which had seemed infinite, began to thin at last.
A flinch.
The swarm of beasts, stripped of fear by their king's command and charging mindlessly, suddenly faltered under Draka's momentum. They started backing away. Even beasts could sense terror from the specter before them.
Was that thing truly human?
As the beasts halted, Draka kept swinging relentlessly. Drenched in blood, he hurled himself at limbs time and again. He leaped into gaping maws, tore them apart from within, and burst out, only to repeat the frenzy.
"Come on."
Draka laughed maniacally.
"More, more, more..."
Covered head to toe in gore, his battered body still erupting in laughter as he brandished his sword... It was the very picture of a ghost.
Thud.
And then, the Beast King stirred.
Trampling and crushing the fear-stricken beasts underfoot, the Beast King pointed at the ghost. Hurry forward. A ghost ahead, a terrifying king behind. The beasts now faced death either way.
———!
The beasts howled in rage and charged at Draka. Watching them shredded into meat, the Beast King raised its sword.
Plop, plop.
Blood and flesh rained down between them.
The ghost and the Beast King locked eyes. Draka's bloodshot gaze burned fiercely. The Beast King's eyes gleamed with a sickly green glow.
Kiiiiiiing!
A screech of clashing metal rang out without warning.
Ghost and beast swung at each other simultaneously. Before the echo faded, clang, clang... their blades crashed in a deafening frenzy.
2.
This beast, inheritor of the Beast King's memories, was a distinct entity from the original Beast King, Barta. Though it bore those memories, it lacked Barta's pride as a swordsman. The concept of "swordsman" was faint in its mind.
What the beast possessed was the king's authority and the arrogance of standing atop all magical beasts.
It wasn't the hubris of the weak. One might call it the leisure befitting the apex predator, the strongest in the food chain. The Beast King had the power to back it up.
Kiiiiing!
Its originally crude skeleton, filled with filth, had been perfected by the authority of forgotten gods—now rivaling Barta's own flesh in might.
A body of unyielding toughness. A perfect body.
From such a form, the beast unleashed sword techniques etched in its inherited memories. It didn't grasp their principles, but it had the physique to mimic them flawlessly.
Clang, clang. Kiiiiing!
As the beast swung, a thick unease settled in. The human before it wasn't yielding. This fragile-looking man, who seemed he could be brushed aside with a touch, refused to fall.
Kiiiiiiing!
The prolonged ring of blade on blade.
At a glance, the beast and Draka appeared evenly matched. But this standoff wouldn't last.
Superior physical prowess wedded to an impossibly heavy sword.
Each blow from the beast shook Draka's body, made the flames of his burning life flicker.
Crack.
With every clash, his sword-gripping fingers and planted ankles emitted thunderous cracks. Blood spurted from wounds clawed and bitten by beasts.
Blood flowed. Life ebbed.
Draka watched the flames within him waver endlessly. He felt death drawing near.
'Ah.'
But.
'I see it, I see it, I see it...'
Still, Draka's eyes didn't waver. His dilated pupils were eerie. They didn't see the beast before him. Draka beheld only the path his sword traced.
The sword's path, his life's path, the Sword Road.
Draka immersed himself in the swing of his blade.
He saw only where it must go. His gaze fixed solely on his own road. All else held no value to him.
'No one, no one can interfere.'
An arrogant, selfish man.
He who reached this realm by unwavering faith in his path. The ghost beheld the flames born from his life's final blaze.
A road of fire reeking of venom.
The sword's path, burning to ash. Draka saw it clearly. Magnificent. That would be his final strike. He stomped down.
Boom, the earth resounded.
Draka's sword moved.
Faster than ever, wilder, fiercer. The soaring sword aura raged like inferno flames.
Chaotic Sword.
The ghost's blade stirred.
No name adorned the technique. Draka had found no name for his life. As he readied this final strike—the end of his life—the beast instinctively stepped back.
A step yielded by overwhelming momentum.
Furious at its own retreat, the beast gripped its sword tighter. It recalled the blade of a swordsman etched more vividly than any memory.
...Ganikalt van Galatric.
The Beast King mimicked that swordsman's final strike. Thus, the beast's Sword Road was perfection incarnate. A path of breathtaking beauty. It had to be.
It mimicked the road walked by the mightiest swordsman, the noblest first Hero. A path that could only be beautiful.
Clashing against it was Draka's road. The ghost's path seemed paltry by comparison. Yet, when roads met, the beast's sword was the one repelled.
...If Barta himself had witnessed this, he would have scoffed. Then spat contempt: What value does an empty blade hold?
Kak, kagagagagak!
The nameless, chaotic sword overwhelmed the beast's. Shoving it aside, Draka's blade advanced another inch. Tracing a low arc, it raked the beast's leg.
Slash.
The beast's right leg severed, the cut ragged as if torn free. It staggered, balance lost, yet swung again. Draka didn't dodge.
Slish. His right arm fell.
Gripping with one hand, Draka burrowed a step closer. He swung. Shredding the beast's sword arm.
Splat.
With spurting blood, the beast's right arm and greatsword hit the ground. The instant it lost its grip, its left arm moved.
Krunch!
Claws seized Draka's head. Long talons dug into his eye socket, half his vision turning red.
Shwa.
As the beast crushed down to burst his skull, Draka's sword severed its left arm. Lightly, he stepped into the now-limbless beast's embrace.
Chaotic Sword, Linked Sword.
To finish his unbroken Sword Road, to place its final mark—perhaps his life's—he swung.
Kagagagagak!
Even the end was unadorned.
Deafening, chaotic, brutal. True to the beginning, to the last. The ghost's sword cleaved the beast's head in two, then bisected its body.
Slish.
The human's blade felled the calamity.
Human tenacity rent the disaster asunder.
3.
Thud, the Beast King knelt. It toppled, but Draka still stood planted on the earth. His gaze stretched beyond.
The path opened by the Beast King's fall.
Beyond lay the apostate.
His lifelong foe, who stole everything, stood there. But Draka realized he could go no further.
His allotted time was spent.
Knowing this, he had swung his sword.
Why that choice? Why throw his life away on this stage, knowing he couldn't reach his nemesis? His answer remained ever the same.
...Because it was the most efficient path.
Draka turned back.
There lay a blade to reach the calamity. A blade forged in ash-gray. Draka spared no means for his ends. As always, he had judged.
Sending that blade to the apostate would be her most lethal variable.
Regrettable that he couldn't avenge himself... But a man aware his time was short learns to choose. Draka chose, and paid the price.
"......"
Rak looked at Draka.
Draka looked at Rak.
"You, why..."
"This path isn't cleared for you."
Draka cut him off.
"Just as the ash-gray used me, I'm using you. Sending you intact seems more helpful than me going there."
Merely the judgment's result.
Murmuring so, Draka lightly swung his arm. He tossed the sword he'd clung to until the end. It spun through the air and thunked into the ground at Rak's feet.
"Take it."
It was Draka's life, his very soul.
For a swordsman, the blade is part of the spirit.
"It'll help somewhere."
Muttering, Draka pointed down the path with his now-empty hand. The path bought with his life.
"Go, holy one."
Silent, Rak drew the bloodied sword from the earth. Strapping it to his waist, he offered a brief salute. Not to the man Draka, but to the swordsman who had reached the pinnacle.
As Rak passed Draka with his salute, Natida paused briefly at the ghost's side.
"......"
Natida gazed wordlessly at Draka.
A man who burned his life on his sword. Before her stood an empty husk. A man facing only death. To him, Natida posed a question.
"Any last words?"
"Kill her for certain."
The ghost answered.
"That's why I threw away my life."
To the last, the man chose to be a ghost.
Not the frail human who lost his will, his daughter, everything... but a specter craving only vengeance.
"For certain..."
Murmuring, Natida passed by. Watching the two advance, Draka slowly dropped his arm.
...His stage was over.
The curtain fell, the finale, the ruin he'd awaited so long.
The flames raging within Draka extinguished silently. Only darkness remained. In that quiet void, his eyes closed.
In his final moment rose his daughter's face.
That was the vista the man—who yearned to be a ghost—couldn't release until the end. Recalling his daughter's face, the man closed his eyes. They would never open again.
That was.
The end of the man who wished to become a ghost.