The Sword of the War God
The Sword of the War God
The moment the Sword of the War God faltered mid-incantation, Anton's body ignited.
He abandoned regeneration entirely, channeling every trace of mana meant for resurrection into a catastrophic self-destruction.
A detonation at full yield.
Kuuuuuuuung.
An unnatural heat erupted from the epicenter. The compressed air flash-expanded, birthing a monumental storm of raw force. The look of alarm on the Sword of the War God's face hadn't even finished forming.
Kwa-gagagagagagagagaaaaaang!
A blast so immense it would have carried to impossible distances.
Not an explosion of breadth, but of density. A strike from the Master of Magic compressed into a single point, intended for one purpose alone: to incinerate the Sword of the War God completely.
A conflagration rose that seemed to sear the soul. A pillar of flame surged skyward, scattering the clouds in its wake.
"Gods—!"
Past Tiyamal's startled cry, soldiers stared at the column of fire as though entranced.
It raged as if it might burn forever, then stopped.
Kururururu...!
Even its dissipation was violent. The superheated air ripped outward in every direction, a brutal gale exploding from the center that hurled the finely pulverized corpses across the ground like chaff in a storm.
Amid the swirling bone and flesh, the Sword of the War God was less dark-red than outright black.
One arm was gone, burned away completely. Its body was a ruin. One eye was a scorched hollow leaking nothing but black ash.
Plain upon that twisted insectoid face were hatred, agony, and towering rage. The expression of a beast that had shed all reason, incensed that a mere human had dared to wound it.
The beast howled.
"――!"
It was a monumental fury. The sheer thunderous volume was enough to drop every soldier nearby, unconscious, in a wave.
As bodies crumpled to the ground—slump after slump—the Sword of the War God hefted its greatsword in its single remaining arm.
"―!"
And charged.
It meant to annihilate as many followers of the Ancient Gods as possible before it fell.
The slaughter resumed. The fallen soldiers were the first to die, fresh crimson painting itself over the already blackened and scorched earth.
Taking in the scene, Frida discarded her shattered axe, seized one from a dead warrior, and screamed.
"Hold it back! Buy us—buy us time!"
Frida shouted. Bahot charged in after her. Anna began an incantation, her expression grim, and Tiyamal drew his bowstring back.
And in the midst of it, Aslan clawed his way back to consciousness.
*
—Kuuung.
A low, heavy reverberation inside his skull. Aslan lifted his head, retching, blood spilling from his lips in thick pulses. He clutched his chest, and a groan of pure agony escaped him.
The pain was so profound it registered even through nerves that were all but dead. Breathing was torment; every rib felt shattered.
Ragged, wheezing breaths. Forcing his body upright on that alone, Aslan checked himself by reflex.
His left arm was gone. The stump above the forearm had been torn viciously—no, burst was the better word. Both legs were compound fractures. If Equalization didn't exist in this world, a prognosis of never walking again would have been generous.
Shards of bone jutted through the fabric of his trousers, slick with blood. Aslan stared, a flicker of confusion crossing his face before he traced the cause.
Kuuuuung.
A thunderous sound from a distance. A blur of memory tied to that sound. He fumbled through the haze and only then truly saw the catastrophe before him.
A Warrior Monk stood there.
Black armor lacquered with so much blood it gleamed a wet, dark crimson. Something about it, inexplicably, evoked War and Knowledge. Only the greatsword Victory in its grip seemed to confirm what it was.
The Sword of the War God.
'We brought it down... I'm sure we did.'
In his fractured memory, Aslan had definitely defeated it. Manufacturing a high priest wasn't a simple matter—the enemy couldn't just spontaneously produce a new one on the spot to launch an ambush.
It wasn't impossible that this was an illusion, but the far greater probability, he judged, was that the Sword of the War God had simply not died.
A human body disintegrated into scattered pieces. Bone and flesh rained down. The wet, heavy slap of meat against his skull made Aslan shudder as he lifted his head.
The transformed Sword of the War God was still fighting.
One of its arms was gone, but its opponents had fared far worse.
Soldiers, unable to endure the death raining down, became part of that rain. The few who could barely stand against it were warriors of command rank.
Their purpose was devastatingly clear. Not a single Master was on this part of the field. They were buying time—protecting the remaining Masters, spending their lives to summon any last scrap of hope onto this battlefield.
Soldiers who moved even as terror shook them. Men who, pissing themselves in fear without realizing it, still clenched their spears, charged, and were turned to pulp.
All the time they had lived, all the meaning they had held. Scattered and erased.
He turned his head. His companions lay strewn across the field.
Ereta, her skull split open, barely holding on. Fay, driven into the earth. Rumel, unconscious. Richard, collapsed. Angie, both arms torn away, somehow forcing herself upright.
And the mages, supporting them, trying to heal them, trying to stabilize them.
He didn't need to guess what had happened. It was obvious he had suffered the same fate. The fate of anyone who had tried to shield him was just as obvious.
Only then did Aslan recognize the fragments at his feet.
A soldier, nothing left but part of a torso. Another whose helmet had shattered against the ground, face now exposed. A human being staring up with eyes gone distant and still—dead at his boots.
He knew this soldier.
Her name was Karl.
It was Karl, who had been so afraid she didn't know if she would ever make it home.
A woman who had become a soldier in male disguise for reasons he could only imagine.
A soldier who had tried so hard to kill her fear, to carry herself with composure.
Aslan could see it clearly now. That distant, slack expression—it was the same face she wore when she pretended to be calm, even as the terror seeped in.
The woman who had struggled to remain polite while fighting to hide her dread.
His face twisted. He felt like vomiting.
Because of the gruesome scene?
No.
It was the fact that someone he knew was dead. The sheer, absolute brutality of it.
Aslan covered his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.
When he thought about it, this was inevitable. Geladrion had always been this kind of land. Unfair. Irrational. A place where not a single good intention could ever take root. A venue where any depravity was permitted.
A land where even beings of the strongest will and the most desperate circumstances could never escape the predestined despair and exploitation. A place where the slightest virtue was erased before a single Grim.
This was nothing new. And yet Aslan felt the realization hit him as if for the first time.
"...Fuck."
The rare obscenity escaped him on a wave of fury.
He was disgusted with himself for having told Karl some reassuring nonsense about fighting together, only to let her die. Humiliated that he had failed to do what was required of him and lost consciousness.
And revolted by the filth and injustice he had been powerless to stop.
That was the source of his rage.
The ones being trampled and torn apart right now were not lesser or baser than Aslan. They were all people, just like him. Equal humans who thought, lived, loved, and burned with life. Every one of them must have cherished their own existence.
They were not the kind who craved sacrifice. Yet they were throwing their lives away because they wanted more people to survive. That their noble sacrifice would receive no reward twisted in his gut and ignited a searing anger.
The dead, scattered faces. The screams torn from throats to blot out terror. The concussive roar of even those screams being split apart. Aslan took it all in and staggered to his feet.
A jolt of pain shot up his spine like an electric current. Blood surged from his mouth and pattered wetly onto the ground. The agony was so immense he couldn't suppress it. His body was in tatters. His lifespan was a guttering candle.
He could feel death approaching. He could feel the hollow void where his left hand had been.
Reckless Equalization would only hasten the end. If he was going to die, it had to be protecting people.
To fight even a little longer, to bring down the Sword of the War God—what was required was selection and focus.
Aslan pulled out the Dragon-king's arm and fixed the thought in his mind.
A limb covered in black scales. An arm like a mobile fortress, nearly impossible to cut without Purity.
It was a hypothesis, but Aslan believed he could use it.
There was no guarantee, of course, that Predator flesh ran on mana. But considering that a core made from souls functioned as both life support and power source, and simultaneously a weak point—considering those souls were a form of mana—it stood to reason that Predator flesh could be moved by mana.
The Wings of Stymphalos had activated their innate function when infused with mana. Other Predator equipment had done the same. The Dragon-king's arm would be no different.
Aslan forced mana into the Dragon-king's arm.
The limb writhed. Muscles within it convulsed. A low, dense turbine hum resonated from the metal-like structure.
He brought the arm close to the severed wound of his left stump.
A cold sweat traced down his spine.
Once he attached this arm, there would be no going back. It would be treated as part of his body. No Restoration School magic would ever heal it, and Equalization would not restore it. This arm would become his arm. Forever.
His soul would be damaged. The process of attaching it might kill him. Even if it didn't, the agony of forcibly bridging the mana flow would be so intense he would feel it even through a body whose pain receptors were all but dead.
He had no certainty he could endure the torment of tearing and forcibly binding his own soul.
But those were only Aslan's concerns. Unlike his mind, which was calculating the risks, his body moved on its own.
For reasons like that, Aslan could not hesitate.
The moment he pressed the Dragon-king's arm against his severed stump, he collapsed as if his body were crumbling to dust.
A scream tore from his throat, unbidden. Genuine pain—the kind he hadn't felt in a long time. Pain that bypassed the body entirely. Pain of the soul.
It felt as if his internal organs were being turned inside out, outside in. Nausea and agony fused into one. It was like having the entirety of his soul plowed under and overturned.
A groan of pure suffering seeped from his lips, cold sweat streaming down his body in rivulets.
Even so, Aslan kept his right hand clamped on the Dragon-king's arm and continued to pour mana into it. He moved the mana, forcing open a pathway through the limb.
If he succeeded, this left hand would never feel anything again. Eternal loss. Depending on the circumstances, it might even produce a pain that crushed his soul. That sensation would follow him forever, until the moment Aslan died. It might even severely impact his remaining lifespan.
It certainly would.
But he had no regrets.
If he didn't do this, if he didn't fight... he would regret it even in death.
Through the agonized groans, Aslan formed the thought.
'I am Aslan.'
It was an answer meant only for his own ears.
'And this is something only I can do.'
As if brainwashing himself, Lee Hyun-woo recited the words. He clenched the now fully fused left hand tight, and light erupted from his mana tattoos.
"Equalize. Restore."
Excluding the left arm, the surging mana restored Aslan's body. Legs that shouldn't have been able to support standing, let alone walking, with their compound fractures, mended. Internal organs that had ceased function re-engaged, spreading the phantom pain of their damage across his entire system.
His heart hammered wildly. Afterimages bled across his vision. Blood surged from his mouth. But Aslan could rise.
He stood, staggering. He looked upon the death scattered in every direction. And he clenched his left fist in a raw, blinding fury.
Ka-ralak. The metallic rasp of grinding steel.
Wooooooong...!
A low, deep turbine hum resonated across the battlefield, as if giving voice to Aslan's rage.