You Are Wilhelm
Auryll watched the arena in quiet composure.
But in her mind, the previous fight was still turning over and over.
I poured everything out without a single regret.
She had lost — yet it had been a fight with nothing left unspent, and so there was no regret. If anything, she had been taught.
Randolph had deliberately taken her sword all the way to the end. Auryll, by contrast, had never managed to draw out his true strength.
······ There's so much to learn from Lord Randolph.
She hated to admit it, but she did. The swordsmanship she had learned in the Primeval Forest had been rigid, sealed shut. Randolph was not sealed. Every time she crossed blades with him, she felt her own skill surge forward. Like a master to a disciple, he was a presence that granted her enlightenment.
Because Lord Randolph is no ordinary human.
At first she had taken him for a human through and through. But Randolph was also a High Druid — perhaps a being who wore human skin while holding a High Druid's qualifications. Chieftain Aruwen had said so, and that made it certain. As proof, laurel leaves grew rapidly whenever he was near. Even in spirit, Auryll felt herself growing tougher, little by little. Encountering emotions she had never felt in the forest, desires she had never touched — like a child becoming an adult, she was moving forward.
Having settled her thoughts, Auryll looked back to the arena. From opposite sides, Randolph and the Champion were beginning to appear.
······!
The moment she saw the Champion, Auryll trembled.
She knew at a glance. An aura so vast it pressed against the skin itself — a blue force coiled around the Champion like a dragon.
······ Strong. Stronger than Karas, perhaps.
And it was not merely a question of strength.
He's clearly human······.
Human. The Champion was unmistakably human. But through an elf's senses, he stood on a completely different plane from ordinary people.
Humans······ are mixed together?
Several scents were tangled into one. Not the scent of a single human, but of many. A person did not naturally carry multiple human scents. That they were mixed meant they were truly mixed — body, organs, countless parts replaced with pieces of other humans, stitched and blended into that form. And they were not ordinary human bodies either.
The strong who dominated their eras. And······.
The bodies of those who had reached the absolute peak of their fields. Those who had driven themselves until there was nowhere higher left to climb — gathered and completed into the Champion.
Moreover—
There's an incredibly ancient scent mixed in as well.
A musty smell that felt easily thousands of years old coexisted with the rest. How was that even possible? A body from thousands of years ago would predate the continent's ascent into the sky. Human corpses rotted within days. She had never heard of anyone capable of finding remains that had not decayed across millennia, joining them so naturally, and bringing them back. Not even a powerful lich who raised the dead, nor the Death King of Kramdel, could produce undead of that caliber. And besides — that thing was not undead at all.
That's not all. Even now, he's continuously swapping in the bodies of stronger ones······!
Auryll clenched her fist tight. The Champion was still enhancing himself without pause. The intermingled scents numbered well over a hundred. A hundred bodies existing in that single form at once made no sense — not unless he was constantly exchanging them.
Ah······.
The realization made her flinch. If Randolph lost, one of his body parts could become the Champion's. Judging by the auras pouring off him, he was seizing not only flesh but the techniques and qualifications of those he absorbed. The High Druid's qualification itself could be stolen.
A monster among monsters — one who had mastered over a hundred techniques and made the full power of those who reached the peak entirely his own.
Then Auryll grasped one further fact. A body part that, despite all the swapping into stronger flesh, had not been changed for thousands of years. When she confirmed it, her pupils began to shake wildly.
How······ do you even beat something like that?
Thump! Thump!
His heart was pounding. When had it last raced like this? Certainly not within the past year. But back then he had only been watching.
Wilhelm's successor!
Now the one who had inherited Wilhelm's techniques stood before him. It was not the man himself — yet simply facing his heir was enough. He could shed some of that lingering attachment. No. Not only attachment.
··· I can become stronger.
That one had, without a doubt, completely mastered Wilhelm's techniques. He was clearly demonstrating the swordsmanship the Champion himself had never managed to achieve. Through Emperor Penguin's body, then, he would be able to recreate more perfectly the Wilhelm techniques that lived in his own memories — to that absolute realm of the blade that memory alone could never reach. To the qualification of that existence he had lacked a year ago. He would finally ascend.
— Seize it. Cut it off by force and stitch it on. Make it all yours!
A voice rang through his skull.
"Mm······."
The Champion shook his head once.
What was I just thinking?
His head ached as if it would split. The devil's whispers came periodically. He did not know since when, but lately their frequency had been climbing.
"The match between Emperor Penguin and the Champion begins!"
"Wooooaaaaah!"
"Waaaaaaaah!!!"
As the match opened, the crowd roared. That did not matter. All the Champion had to do was bring down the opponent in front of him.
Azure Dragon Kick.
Guoooo!
Kwa-ji-ji-jik!
An azure dragon bellowed as it crashed down upon Emperor Penguin. Now — just how far could Wilhelm's successor block him? One hundred and eight Unique techniques that had reached the realm of mastery. He only hoped the man would stop at least half of them.
Familiar.
That vast aura and presence, like an azure dragon itself. And when the Champion drove his foot into the ground, I was certain.
Azure Dragon Kick.
An azure dragon surged up from the earth and crashed down on me in a single stroke. Azure Dragon Kick. And I knew the one who used this technique.
······ Azure Dragon Legend. A skill from my alt character.
It felt like a blow to the skull. Azure Dragon Legend — a character I had painstakingly raised as the hidden class Descendant of the Azure Dragon. Azure Dragon Kick had been Azure Dragon Legend's most powerful Transcendence skill. But the Champion was absolutely not Azure Dragon Legend. Azure Dragon Legend sat in a place completely unrelated to the Tower of the War God. I had parked that character on Azure Dragon Mountain precisely because it seemed impossible to escape the shadow of being a mere "Descendant."
Guoooooo!
I watched the azure dragon bearing down. A far more complete form than the Heavenly Dragon Kick Azure Dragon Legend had used — a more perfect shape of the azure dragon itself.
······ Huh.
What was this? Someone using a skill from an alt I had raised, in a more finished form — and that someone was the Champion. Impossible. And yet it was the reality unfolding before my eyes.
Ji — Earth — of Creation of Heaven and Earth.
Ji of Creation of Heaven and Earth. A swordsmanship that resonated with every attack and dismantled it. That azure dragon was originally a skill from my own alt. I simply extended my blade and tore the dragon's core to shreds.
"Ahh — of course!"
The Champion cried out at the same moment. I frowned inwardly. Anyone could see it had been an ordinary thrust. Had he recognized it? Had he grasped Wilhelm's swordsmanship — the principles of Creation of Heaven and Earth?
The Champion ate Wilhelm's star.
He had eaten the Sun's star as well. Perhaps some fragment of Wilhelm's memory had carried over.
"Death Dragon's Sword!"
Black haze rose from his left arm. The arm itself had become a blade with the nature of a dragon of death. A skill Azure Dragon Legend could never have used. That, too, was a Transcendence skill and a Unique skill. How many Unique skills — skills no other character could possess, skills even one character could barely hold a single one of — was he throwing around?
······ Interesting.
He was definitely not normal. Still, after clashing head-on, I roughly understood.
A mixed existence. That might be how it was possible.
That he was mixed. That the Champion's entire body was no longer his own. A strange case of countless fragments joined into one. Slightly different from a chimera. A synthesized chimera only used the functions of the replaced flesh; the Champion before me seemed able to use the techniques along with those functions.
Clang! Shraang!
Kwaaaaang!
We clashed, dismantled, and kept the exchange going. Skills and attacks that constantly shifted form were brutally difficult to handle.
"God-Sword Unity!"
The bastard was deliberately calling out technique names, savoring it. He seemed genuinely curious how far I could block.
··· But at the name he uttered, I grimaced inwardly.
God-Sword Unity?
······ MentaikoConan?
MentaikoConan. A master of the sword I had raised with ten thousand SP. But he had died. Reset — everything gone. Yet God-Sword Unity was MentaikoConan's Transcendence swordsmanship: a skill only a true master of the blade — one who expressed the realm of becoming one with the sword as a skill — could use. A skill from a character already dead, and the Champion was using it.
He definitely died in the Hell Worm Pit Dungeon.
Hell Worm Pit Dungeon. A dungeon I had found by chance, that only I knew about. How had he found the corpse that was there?
Chaeeng!
He gave me no room to keep thinking. Speed even faster. The tip of the blade far more precise. God-Sword Unity was an unavoidable attack — it could not be deflected. It also raised the special critical-hit rate to one hundred percent for thirty seconds. Even blocked, the damage stacked. A Unique skill only MentaikoConan could use. Best not to clash for the duration. That was how broken Unique skills were.
Just how many Unique skills does he have?
At this point, I was curious. How many Unique skills this bastard possessed — and what secret lay in the flesh he wore.
Of course!
Of course his eyes had not been wrong.
Aaaah. The Champion let out a moan of pure bliss. Emperor Penguin had already blocked more than ten techniques.
If he's Wilhelm's successor, he should manage at least this much!
As expected — no, beyond expectation. Moreover, the principles of the swordsmanship Emperor Penguin was displaying were unmistakably Wilhelm's. The one and only sword art that he himself, master of over a hundred Unique techniques, had never managed to perform.
This can't be everything!
Cheon — Heaven — of Creation of Heaven and Earth. Ji — Earth — of Creation of Heaven and Earth. With only those two, the man was facing him: reading his movements, dismantling his attacks. Composure? Or was this all he had? But it could not be everything. Just as the Champion had not yet brought out his full hand, Emperor Penguin had not shown all of his cards either.
At least up to thirty······!
Even Karas had barely blocked seventy techniques. His rank had been lowered by Sancha, true — but in the past five years he had never demonstrated more than that.
More. Block more. Show me your limits! Successor of Wilhelm!
Having instantly displayed twenty techniques, the Champion nodded hard. If even this could not be stopped, the disappointment would have been crushing. Before long, after thirty techniques, he marveled quietly.
He still has the capacity to block me!
Breathing steady. Movements stable. Room to spare. As expected, Wilhelm's swordsmanship was beyond imagination. If he could only make that art his own··· he might even be able to kill the Demon King.
······ Not bad.
The duel entered its middle phase. He had already shown sixty Unique skills. But the Champion's techniques grew stronger the more they stacked. Blocking everything so far was miraculous — and that miracle would soon hit a wall.
Huh.
This guy — what was he?
At last, after seventy techniques, the Champion's expression hardened. He had surpassed Karas's record. This was an absurd level of skill to call merely "Wilhelm's successor."
He still has room to spare?
More astonishing still was Emperor Penguin's condition. He was still facing him with only two techniques. Did that make any sense? Showing this much composure against him. But that composure ended now. From here on was the real beginning.
"You······."
······ It should have been the beginning.
The Champion frowned. As time passed, everything was being read and stopped; nothing flowed as he wanted. Even after a full hundred techniques. Emperor Penguin was still using only the two principles of Heaven and Earth.
Only then did he understand.
"You······ are not his successor. You are······."
There was no way a man like this was a successor. No way he was an heir. The Champion's body trembled finely. The more they clashed, the more certain he became.
This man. This Emperor Penguin—
—was the Knight King Wilhelm he had so desperately waited for. Himself!