The Sword of the War God
The Sword of the War God
One day, the sky split open.
Not in some metaphorical sense—a physical rupture.
The Emperor could still recall every vivid detail, even if he had long forgotten his own name.
Fragments plummeting from the shattered firmament. Shards of abyssal darkness so dense they seemed to carry an overwhelming mass of their own.
How they fell upon the Imperial Capital and slaughtered countless souls.
It was, in the truest sense, an aberration.
An aberration vast enough to defy the authority of the creation gods themselves—the mightiest of all authorities.
Geladrion had three creation gods.
The God of Eternity and Night, who shaped the world's earth and sky.
The God of Nature and Creation, who wove life and molded the wilds.
The God of Fire and Smithing, who forged the sun and flame to divide day from night.
Among them, the one who wielded the most supreme creative power was the one who had shaped the world itself: the God of Eternity and Night.
And the greatest trace of that authority, left behind by the God of Eternity and Night, was the sky itself.
Now that sky was breaking. The world was crumbling. To the Emperor—a peerless sovereign who had mastered every field of theology, history, warfare, and magic—the meaning was unmistakable. This was a genuine aberration.
But that aberration was nothing compared to the catastrophe that followed.
The fractured sky blackened, and from the spiderweb of cracks spreading like shattered glass, something began to emerge.
It resembled foam.
Bubbles that a single breath might scatter.
Yet by the time he grasped the sheer magnitude and density of it, the Emperor found himself on his knees, unaware he had even knelt.
The mass of foam was descending from the broken sky.
It crawled forward with intent, radiating a seething, gnawing hunger in all directions.
It stepped down upon clouds too insubstantial to grasp, walked across the empty void itself, and slowly descended to the earth.
Tentacles woven of black froth slithered across the impossibly distant horizon.
Where their reaching grasp touched, human souls and minds simply vanished.
The speed at which life was extinguished was staggering. It disappeared as helplessly as candle flames stuck into a tidal flat before an onrushing tide.
As humanity's accumulated knowledge and souls were devoured and wiped away to sate that hunger, the Emperor saw a being approach the scene.
A figure clad in dark crimson dragon scales, gripping a greatsword shaped from living flame.
A god that stood over two meters tall, his visage radiating absolute majesty—scarlet hair and golden eyes.
Guardian of the Empire, king of all gods, the mightiest deity.
The God of War and Knowledge.
His arrival, which in any other age would have drawn only cheers and desperate hope, was instead... wretched.
Was it because the god confronting the black foam—a monstrosity vast enough to swallow the entire Imperial Capital and more—stood at a mere human's height?
Or was it because of the crushing presence the foam exuded, something anyone could feel just by looking?
The Emperor could only guess.
But when the abominable, foam-like entity rested a single one of its tentacles upon the earth, the Emperor knew the outcome.
The God of War and Knowledge would die.
And the age of humanity would end.
His judgment proved true.
The Sword of the War God clashed violently with that tentacle. The unbreakable greatsword of shaped flame struck again and again, a dozen exchanges in less than the span of a single second. And then the God of War and Knowledge crumpled to the ground, his head severed.
The god's body shuddered and quivered, torn into dozens of ragged strips, and the severed head dissolved into the black foam and disappeared.
It was a sight that defied all reason.
The God of War and Knowledge—who had split mountains, slain dragons, earned the veneration of countless deities, and cut down the great evils of bygone ages—was defeated.
The Emperor could not even process how it had happened, but two truths became clear.
To survive, he would have to abandon nearly everything and adapt to a new era.
And so, that was exactly what he did.
The foam that consumed the God of War and Knowledge devoured many more afterward.
Lives were snuffed out without even a soul-rending scream; they offered no resistance at all. The heroes who raised their swords to oppose it became fodder, or servants.
At the end of it, before the sun had even set beyond the horizon, the black foam spoke.
Within its words, it named itself the War God.
And it proclaimed that all mu—martial spirit—be gathered and offered.
None dared defy that decree.
The Emperor was no exception.
After so many were devoured and erased, barely fifty remained. The Emperor knelt and begged the War God—the being calling itself the Master of Combat—for mercy.
He pleaded for the lives of those fifty people.
He swore he would become its faithful servant.
The black foam, now the War God, accepted his plea.
In its own twisted fashion.
And that was where memory ended.
Yet the Sword of the War God could not help but notice the changes wrought upon his own being.
Those fifty subjects had become the very flesh and body comprising him.
Their lives were preserved, but no soul or will remained within them.
The War God likely cared nothing for the self-awareness of living things.
To it, the difference between existing as a mindless, blended mass and existing with individual wholeness was probably meaningless. The Emperor could grasp that much.
In truth, grasping it was the only way he could keep moving forward.
He lived a little over four thousand years as the Sword of the War God.
The tally of lives he took in that time was not small.
Nor was the number of civilizations he crushed insignificant.
He truly lived as the Sword of the War God.
Forgetting his name. Forgetting who he even was.
And at the end of that long forgetting, he was destined to die.
Struck by that magnificent blow, he had been forced to his knees.
That was how it was supposed to end.
But the panorama of his life that flashed before him at the brink of death pulled him back.
He saw visions of the time before his end.
He saw the brightly shining divinity of the Ancient Gods.
He felt the divinity of those impotent gods, who had died helplessly without a single act of resistance, abandoning their children to agony.
He felt it split his flesh.
Before he could even think of it as punishment, a feeling of raw indignation surged forth.
He had done his utmost just to survive.
He had sacrificed everything to save his people.
And this was his reward?
The Emperor raged, and he loathed the scene that followed.
The image of a girl, and the massive ballista in her hands. The sight of an arrow fired from that ballista piercing straight through his body.
That ballista had been built in the days when the Empire stood strong, designed to fight dragons whose hides, after feeding on metal, grew impossibly hard.
It was called the Dragon Slayer Cannon, and true to its name, it was used to kill dragons.
It was proof of the Empire's most glorious era.
As if to prove that glory itself, the girl had bright golden eyes and scarlet hair.
The coloration unique to the Emperor's own bloodline.
Of course, the Emperor's bloodline must have been extinguished.
Those colors could only be a coincidence.
The last Emperor of the Empire was dead, and only the Sword of the War God remained.
But even so.
When the Sword of the War God saw that new Emperor wielding the power of the Ancient Gods, he felt a searing hatred and fury toward them.
To him, it was as if the very gods who had accomplished nothing, who had abandoned their children, were now trying to kill those same children.
Whatever the truth might be.
That was what the Emperor believed.
And so, breaking free of his life's last visions, the Emperor acted.
He discarded his body. He discarded the fifty subjects as well. They were nothing but cocoons now, devoid of self-awareness.
He discarded his divinity. Not all of it—but by burning even a tiny fraction, he could use it as sufficient fuel. He could forge a new body.
He discarded size. Sheer bulk would only make him a target, a helpless feast for bombardment.
He discarded his pride.
He had cast that aside long ago.
He discarded his humanity.
That was threadbare and worn; falling away was easy.
He discarded his life.
In the end, it was unnecessary.
There was only one thing he craved now: the ruin of the Ancient Gods.
He would not survive even half a day, but that was enough.
Half a day was enough time to exterminate the lackeys of the Ancient Gods.
Using his remaining divinity, he forged a new body. At last, the Emperor became the true Sword of the War God.
Gripping a sword with the swordsmanship carved into his mind, he dredged up a memory.
Something the God of War and Knowledge had told him long ago.
That every technique that god had used to accomplish his great feats required divinity.
The Sword of the War God laughed as that ancient memory finally resurfaced.
The moment he burned the divinity the War God had bestowed upon him, his swung blade stained itself black.
As if baring its measureless malice to the world.
Knight Slayer.
The voice reverberated through the minds of both Aslan and the Sword of the War God.
Aslan instinctively called upon Purity in defense, but against the Knight Slayer, any defense was meaningless.
Aslan realized it in the same instant—saw his critical mistake. But the greatsword charged faster than he could react.
The blade pierced through Purity and bored into Aslan's left hand.
A wet crack tore through the air.
The left hand burst apart. The power was so overwhelming that Aslan's body simply could not withstand it.
In the span of a heartbeat, he lost the hand. His body was launched—sent flying.
Blocking with Purity might have been one thing, but a sword strike taken directly on his flesh flung Aslan's body away as easily as a tuft of dandelion fluff.
"Aslan!"
A body in flight. He soared well over fifty meters.
As the arcing spray of blood fell toward the earth, the Sword of the War God absorbed the recoil of his swing with his hips and swept the blade around wide.
A sudden vacuum of air created a shockwave that screamed in the blade's wake.
His target was Ereta, who had loosed a near-scream at the sight of the flying Aslan.
The eyes of the Myth Killer fell upon the woman charging at him, her jaw clenched tight.
From observing this battlefield, he had concluded: this woman's regeneration could withstand even wounds that should cause instant death.
Its source was some form of divinity.
He could not kill her in a single blow. So instead, he would inflict a wound so grievous that her regeneration would slow to a crawl.
His muscles twitched, and a crimson arc stretched out.
By nature, the Sword of the War God was not a Warrior Monk who relied heavily on divinity.
Like most Warrior Monks, what little divinity he used was only to maintain a body that defied the laws of physics.
But now, that had changed.
The Sword of the War God had shed his colossal form and poured all of his remaining divinity into this new body.
What was born from that was a monstrous strength rivaling his former titanic bulk.
The instant his arm and sword blurred out of sight, the only thing left hanging in the air was a long crimson scar.
A roaring, grinding screech tore through the air!
Ereta swung her axe to meet that elongated scar, but the arc of it simply and effortlessly shifted direction.
"What—?!"
A dry crack, then a wet pop. Ereta's body lost its head. The woman's form was flung backward, tumbling limply as her head rolled. Her eyes, frozen wide with shock and consternation, were an afterthought.
Even with a generous estimate, regeneration would take several minutes. That was more than sufficient. The Sword of the War God pivoted, turning both his body and blade simultaneously.
"You bastard!"
A girl with the same colors as the Emperor sprinted at him, her face twisted in fury. Her raised fist and the intent telegraphed in her stance were painfully obvious. The Sword of the War God analyzed it with cold, deadened eyes.
This girl's regeneration stopped the moment she died. Its source was the divinity of the Ancient Gods—a divinity the Sword of the War God knew well.
So he would cleave her in a single blow. He twisted his body and swung upward. The sword trail howled as if splitting the fabric of space itself, and a storm erupted in the void it left behind.
A cataclysmic boom shook the battlefield!
But she was unexpectedly durable. He failed to sever bone and muscle cleanly at once.
The arm she threw up to block shattered, scattering into chunks of meat, but she did not die.
She was sent hurtling, though. That was enough.
The Sword of the War God glanced at the small girl flying in another direction and then quickly flicked his blade, Victory, to block.
A sharp, ringing clang!
An opening so brief it barely existed. Precise ambush timed perfectly to exploit it. But it did not work on the Sword of the War God.
He raised Victory and caught two sword blades against it, then lifted his leg and kicked out.
A heavy, concussive boom!
Accompanied by the sound of air splitting, the Elf's body tore. She spat a mouthful of blood and flew backward, slammed into the ground and half-buried.
A cascade of dust erupted upward as the girl's legs went limp and her body sank into the dirt.
She was not dead yet, but she could be killed at any moment.
Drawing back the blade he had used to block the Elf girl's swords, the Sword of the War God swung Victory once more.
"Ngh—?!"
The one who took the blow was a human. His mana tattoos were the crude kind—far inferior to the work from the era of the Ancient Empire.
So he would twist and shatter them. As soon as the Sword of the War God twisted his grip on the pommel and drove forward, Richard understood.
This attack. The force contained in this deceptively simple thrust was far beyond the punches of the two Warrior Monks he had recently learned to defeat through compliance.
He could not deflect this.
It was leagues beyond his own martial arts.
Before that understanding could fully register, Richard's body was launched skyward.
An earth-shaking boom!
There was a choked groan of shock and pain as the human was slammed into the dirt. Blood welled from his lips. The War God stepped forward to finish him, but before he could, a hail of crossbow bolts flew toward him.
Twang after twang, bolt after speeding bolt!
It was a volley fired with perfectly concealed presence, but the Sword of the War God saw every single projectile.
That was the consequence of keeping barely half a day's worth of life and converting everything else into divinity.
He moved with blistering speed, swinging his blade.
A rapid series of harsh clangs rang out!
In the same breath, the bolts were deflected outward, as if it had all been choreographed.
Before the blue-tinged bolts could even finish glowing red-hot from the impact, the Sword of the War God lowered his stance and lunged.
A sharp crack split the ground as his form blurred. Anton, the one who had fired the volley, grimaced.
Ambushes were useless now. Whatever that thing had become, it was beyond such tactics.
Ignoring vengeance for the moment, Anton reached back and pressed a hand against Rumel's stomach—she had been poised to launch a counterattack.
"INCENDENT!"
A chant with two emphasized syllables. As the repulsion flung Rumel's body backward, a crimson glow washed across Anton's skin.
The instant later saw the Myth Killer's blurred form reappear right before his eyes. And just before Anton's body was split in two—
A thunderous roar erupted!
Condensed wind surged in all directions as a colossal blaze of demonic fire swallowed both Anton and the Sword of the War God, an erupting pillar searing upward.
An overwhelming detonation. A violently lashing storm.
As the soldiers who had been cheering moments ago turned their gazes to the center of the self-destruction, Rumel—who had been thrown clear by the repulsion—lost consciousness amidst the blast.
After all, there had been no time to carefully put her outside the blast radius.
And the opponent was the kind where even sacrificing Rumel to the self-destruction might not guarantee damage.
Just as Anton had calculated, the Sword of the War God stood perfectly intact at the epicenter.
A humanoid Warrior Monk whose carapace, smeared with soot, still radiated that stark dark-crimson light.
Victory, held loose in one hand, gleamed eerily. The outcome was devastating.
It had only been a moment's lapse.
A brief instant of carelessness born from the assumption of victory.
A sliver of time so short it might not even have existed.
A gap too small for any ordinary high priest to exploit, but the current Sword of the War God could seize it.
The life left to him was a half-day. He had poured every drop of divinity and every shred of strength into this moment. The first Master of Combat could easily clutch a fraction of an instant like that.
As soldiers across the battlefield witnessed masters suddenly blasted away and scrambled to find healers or call for mages, Frida, who was commanding in the field, stared at the epicenter in sheer horror.
That figure holding Victory loosely at his side, clad completely in an insectoid carapace that glinted like dragon-scale armor, was one that resembled the God of War and Knowledge.
It was the form of the king of gods, etched into the ruins of Kehil, Throne of Gods. The scene was so vivid even through the hazy memories of her childhood that Frida clenched her teeth, cycling through every curse she knew and expelling them just as fast.
The urge to vomit rose on its own. Her head spun. Her stomach churned.
She could not believe this was happening—not in a battle they had already won—but Frida had no choice.
She drew the axe and dagger she had only just sheathed moments before, and activated her mana tattoos.
As the blue radiance of the tattoos washed across her face and surged through her entire body, the beast beneath her snarled. Its body swelled massively, its two monstrous feet planting themselves firmly on the ground.
She was using every single mana tattoo etched densely across her body, with nothing held back.
On a normal battlefield, she would be in a state to leap fortress walls and slaughter every archer lining the battlements. But Frida could not relax.
What stood before her was an avatar of destruction that had surpassed even miracles.
Frida cried out.
"There!"
The soldiers' attention snapped toward her in an instant, and she dropped into a fighting stance.
"The Sword of the War God still lives!"
The soldiers' gazes turned bewildered. They shifted to the dark-crimson form, then to Frida, then to the fallen colossal body of the centipede monster.
"Do not lay down your weapons! Protect the masters!"
A rational order. But before the soldiers could even process that assessment, Frida was forced into a far more brutal resolution.
"Lay down your lives! Buy us time!"
There was surprisingly little hesitation.
Because even this might not be enough.
At the woman's shout, the soldiers moved in perfect unison. The Warrior Monk who resembled the king of gods lowered his stance.
"Goddammit...!"
His form charged in, seeming to vanish as it closed the distance.
Staring straight at the Myth Killer hurtling toward her, Frida gritted her teeth hard and braced to meet him.
