Chapter 94
Chapter 94
Saint, You’re So Vulgar! – Chapter 94
Asher couldn't leave Versia right away, despite her words.
It was because she looked so exhausted and precarious.
The Curse of Gal-ae was not the kind of curse one could take lightly.
And Asher knew that better than anyone.
A wave of guilt welled up inside him.
For forcing her into that choice at a moment like this. For making her bear this curse.
Yet Versia's method was the most effective one.
If he stepped in personally, he could shift the entire battlefield. Now that Versia could pray in safety, no ordinary foe could break them.
Asher's lips twitched. Finally, he managed a faint smile as he spoke.
"Could you hold on just a little longer?"
"I will."
"I'll end it as quickly as possible and come back."
"I like it when it lasts longer."
"...Don't tease me like that."
Versia giggled at his troubled response.
"I'm not teasing."
Heat rose in his body, unbefitting the situation.
Versia, gazing at him with flushed cheeks and sticky eyes, exuded a truly intoxicating aura.
He averted his gaze. Gripping his sword tightly, he added one more thing.
"...Thank you."
This was Versia's consideration.
What mattered to her was killing the witch, not what happened to Baern's Big Ten or Gester.
Even so, she'd turned away and put her own neck on the line, risking it all. It was a gamble.
Because she knew it mattered to Asher.
To push his back so he wouldn't break.
Versia pressed her forehead against the tent fabric.
And murmured softly.
"If you're thankful, come back and hold me."
"I won't."
"You're so mean. For real."
Asher said no more.
Leaving the struggling woman behind, he strode toward the battlefield.
In that instant, his expression changed completely.
Familiar body, familiar sensations, even the familiar total amount of divine power.
Sss
Armed with just a straight sword and no armor to protect himself, but it was no issue.
'Feels liberating.'
He'd never felt freer.
Tszz
Divine power rose like smoke over Asher's body.
Not mere emission of energy, but the manifestation of a secret art.
The perfect killing machine.
The irreplaceable secret art that had earned him that moniker.
Divine power enveloped his body. His silver hair returned to jet black. His muscles throughout screamed, eager to unleash themselves.
Asher took a step forward,
Boom!
And the next moment, he was at the center of the battlefield.
* * *
The battlefield was drowning in despair.
Not just the enemycorpses of fallen allies, comrades who'd been laughing and chatting that very morning, now mindless and swinging swords, had crushed the mercenaries' morale beyond repair.
Screams filled the air. The stench of blood and iron hung thick.
"Hey, Kuolin! We need to retreat!!!"
"Hold the line! Clear a path for the prince to escape!!!"
Even the Big Ten's captains foresaw defeat.
They were sacrificing themselves to let Gester flee.
Gester felt despair.
Memories of that day in his youth, when everything had crumbled, flooded back.
Was revenge impossible?
Did good triumph and evil get punished only in fairy tales?
Devastation weighed on his shoulders.
Blood trickled from his bitten lip.
"B-Brother...!"
Even Jern was choking back sobs, trying to drag Gester from the field.
Fear dwelled in his eyes.
Terror was contagious.
On a battlefield where death brought no rest, mercenaries began losing the will to swing their swords.
Desperate backward steps for survival began.
Ramos, captain of one Big Ten unit, muttered amid the scene like a sigh.
"...Would it have been different if Terbion were here?"
His voice was soft, but everyone still swinging swords heard it.
All sighed in agreement, feeling guilt at the same time.
They'd been caught in the politics, sure, but they'd killed him without him ever drawing his blade.
Every time they recalled that name, they became the sinners who'd executed a hero of the masses.
Fear and despair intertwined.
The lines were on the verge of collapse, and now all that remained was being swept awaynot just to die, but to an undeath worse than death.
"Aaaah!!!"
Screams pierced the air.
That was when it happened.
Thud, thud.
In the chaos of the battlefield, one set of footsteps that didn't belong slipped in.
Leisurely footsteps, all alone in the madness.
Anyone even slightly perceptive would notice the anomaly right away.
The mercenaries looked up.
Their eyes widened hugely.
Slash!
In the heart of the enemy lines, one man swung his sword, and blood erupted like a whirlwind.
* * *
The ones who first noticed the change were the surviving Sandstorm mercenaries.
And the Ashanta warriorshereticsmixed among them.
Black hair, blue eyes, and divine power coiling like smoke around his body.
They knew all too well what that signified. They flinched for a moment.
That hesitation was their death sentence.
Slashslashslash!
His straight sword gleamed sharply, shredding every enemy in his radius.
He diced the corpses too, ensuring they couldn't rise again.
No one could follow his movements with their eyes.
All they saw was that the man who'd wrought such carnage wore an expressionless face.
An icy, almost mechanical expression.
Like he was butchering livestock.
The battlefield froze for a moment. As the man at the center of the blood sprayAsherprepared his second strike, every undead and heretic focused solely on him.
"Ah...!"
And so, calamity descended upon them.
Slash
One swing warped space itself. Everything along the horizontally slashed path was bisected.
A move beyond comprehension.
How could a mere sword swing cleave an unreachable range in one go?
It was impossible under normal rules.
That's why they called it a "secret art."
Of course, it wasn't your average secret art.
Asher's deviated slightly from the concept.
Typical secret arts awakened and refined the unique mysteries dwelling in an individual into techniques.
For 1st Class Knights, like Satern's White Scale, Melburn's Spiritization and Diego's spatial control, or the baptism bestowed on Halia.
They honed unique powers others lacked into arts called "secret arts."
But not Asher.
Slashslash!
Asher had no special power.
No dragon blood, no spirit blessings, no superhuman range detection or baptism.
He had only one thing.
"Evade him! Widen the distance!"
"Kaaaah!"
Talent.
Unreasonable talent that transcended human limits.
The kind that made even the mightiest champions of history lick their lips.
The kind that put a sword in a five-year-old's hand.
That talent had elevated his swordsmanship to secret art levels.
The reason every 1st Class Knight named him the pinnacle.
Boom!
Not bound by fixed power but born of research, Asher's swordsmanship had no path limitations. No martial weaknesses.
Asher with a sword was a man who performed killing with perfect efficiencya true killing machine.
It first emerged to the world when he was just fifteen, on his debut dispatch.
Asher stood alone.
Facing dozens of Corrupted Entities and hundreds of heretic warriors.
Even a 1st Class Knight would blanch at such numbers, but the mere boy of fifteen dove into their midst without hesitation.
And butchered them all without a single scratch.
After that, Asher became a 1st Class Knight candidate.
The only reason it took time for his official rank was his youth.
He'd piled up merits overflowing, but his knight training wasn't complete.
Thus, he earned his 1st Class rank at eighteen.
That day was when he received his Sword Name.
Sword Names were typically decided by ten cardinal-level priests and the Holy Knight Captain in council.
But exceptionally, for Asher, different criteria were applied.
-There is already a name by which Sir Asher Terbion is called.
-Indeed, assigning a separate Sword Name now would be odd.
Asher had left inexpressible feats across countless dispatches.
Despite his youth, the humans he'd slaughtered numbered in the four digits, making his merits the heretics' terror.
That terror became his Sword Name.
"Blood River... The Blood River has come...!"
Because wherever he tread, he forged rivers of blood. Blood River.
Knight of the Blood River, Asher Terbion.
"Aaaah!!!"
"Kaaaah!!!"
Quite a gruesome Sword Name, compared to his smiling face.