Chapter 406: Banquet at the Sword Emperor Castle (11)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 406: Banquet at the Sword Emperor Castle (11)
Even with his head crushed, the Artisan didn’t fall. He even swung a lightning-wreathed fist at Jin.
Jin repositioned Sigmund and slammed its hilt down onto the Artisan’s fist.
The blow drove the fist downward, leaving the Artisan’s chest wide open. Jin lunged, burying his blade in the gap.
Stab! The blade pierced its chest, but once again, the Artisan did not fall. Instead, the creature grabbed the blade with both hands, trying to pin Jin in place.
The other two Artisans were rushing in. Splitting the first Artisan’s body in half, Jin quickly scanned the attack trajectories of the other two and parried their incoming strikes.
Their movements weren't bad.
The moment Jin evaded, the Artisans twisted the trajectory of their fists—a maneuver that even most skilled warriors would find difficult to imitate.
They were mages just a moment ago, and now they have movements on par with high-level warriors. And their regenerative power borders on immortality.
On top of that, they possessed an irritating amount of lightning energy.
A mix of anger and annoyance welled up inside him.
The Artisan with the crushed head and bisected torso was already regenerating its flesh at a terrifying pace.
Veradin’s guards gagged at the grotesque sight.
The same was true for the gray-robed man who had died first. Though his breathing had certainly stopped, he had already stood back up, the jewel in his chest glowing with a blue light.
Once again, there were four of them. The mages who had become Artisans, however, seemed no longer capable of using magic.
"You wanted this fake power so badly you were willing to throw away your entire lives as mages?"
At Jin’s cold question, the Artisans burst into laughter.
"How can a mere mortal call an immortal body fake…?"
"What are you laughing at? Have you lost your minds?"
Slash!
Sigmund drew a clean line, and the head of the Artisan who had just stood up rolled across the floor. Jin incinerated the fallen head with a Flame Orb and struck the torso with the Pluto Sword Ultimate Technique: Waterfall.
A torrent of lightning energy poured from the blade, engulfing the Artisan. When the lightning cascade finally subsided, only a massive crater remained where the Artisan had stood.
A few small, charred lumps were scattered near the pit.
It was hard to believe that those charred lumps had once been the flesh and bone of a living being.
However, Jin instinctively felt that this wasn't the end. The Artisans, for their part, didn't lose their smirks.
"It seems you don't know the definition of the word 'immortal,' 12th Flagbearer of Runcandel."
In an instant, the blackened bits of flesh regained their original color.
Bones and organs, scattered to the winds, began to reform from thin air where the Artisan had once stood.
The Artisans seemed quite proud of this fact, assuming Jin’s expressionless face was a mask for his shock.
Jin, however, just found it disgusting. He felt a skin-crawling revulsion, the kind one feels when a cockroach scuttles out from behind a headboard.
He crushed it reflexively, like a bug, dropping another bolt of lightning onto the regenerating torso. Since the other Artisans didn't bother to defend it, the creature’s body was once again scattered in all directions, completely defenseless.
And then, the regeneration began once more.
By that point, the Artisans' expressions moved past pride, becoming intoxicated with a sense of absolute victory.
Normally, anyone would be seized by an inexplicable dread at this stage. Their instincts would scream at them to flee, convinced they had encountered an enemy that could not be killed.
The Artisans naturally expected Jin to react that way. No matter how strong he was, he was only nineteen and had likely never fought an immortal before.
"Sigh."
Jin shrugged and let out a long breath.
"What a show. Immortal? This is just advanced regeneration, you mongrels. You're not human, and you're not anything else, either."
Jin had seen advanced regeneration before. He had only to think of the ancient beast he had recently fought, Ozdok, who possessed the exact same ability.
"To think that people once called Great Mages are deluded by such hollow power… it's too pathetic to even be worth mocking."
Crack, crackle!
Suddenly, ice crystals began to form in Jin’s palm. The crystals pulsed, growing and shrinking with fierce momentum and emitting an ominous sound.
"You cannot kill us anyway."
"Is that so?"
The Artisans still didn't seem to grasp the situation.
This was how it was done, right?
The Ice-type magic Jin was manifesting was something his teacher, Valeria Hister, often used.
Ice-type Sealing.
Jin recalled the sight of Valeria sealing the corpse of a Viment Demon in the Wantaramo Forest.
It seemed like a useful magic, so I asked her about it a few times… but I'm not sure if I can pull it off on the first try.
In the few days he'd spent with Yona and Valeria after leaving the Wantaramo Forest, Jin had taken every opportunity to ask Valeria for magical advice.
He remembered a few clues she had given him about Ice-type Sealing magic.
— Anyone can use an Ice-type magic seal. However, to seal something properly and maintain it as you wish, you must know how to completely separate mana from your body. You use that separated mana to form a kind of lock.
— How do you separate mana?
— That's hard to explain. I've given you the basic concept, so practice on your own.
Valeria's explanation had been misleading, to say the least.
Among ice magics, sealing was a spell of the highest difficulty. To begin with, only a tiny fraction of mages specializing in Ice-type magic could even handle seals.
Furthermore, maintaining a seal at will was an entirely different realm. A typical mage's seal would only last until their mana was depleted.
Valeria was, as far as Jin knew, the most talented mage in the world. And Jin was the only disciple she had ever acknowledged.
Separate mana from the body.
He recalled his fight against Quajito Truka during his cadet mission. When his sword, released with spirit energy, had gone out of control, he had been forced to separate the spirit energy from his body. It must be a similar sensation.
He felt it. The ice crystals that had been fluctuating wildly in his palm began to stabilize.
"You won't die. Instead, you'll become research subjects while sealed."
As Jin reached out, a brilliant white energy poured from the ice crystals and coiled around the regenerating Artisan.
Crack!
The Artisan, frozen in an instant, appeared to have its regeneration halted.
The gruesome part was that the heart of the Artisan, now encased in ice, was still beating.
Using the mana separated from his body, Jin poured in more to ensure the seal would be maintained.
He felt the mana drain stop—a clear sign of success.
It worked on the first try. Nothing had ever come this easily, not even back in my past life when my master beat the lessons into me.
He sealed the other body parts that hadn't regenerated yet in the same way. As the ice crystals sealing various parts of the Artisan's body clattered onto the floor, the smirks vanished from the faces of the remaining Artisans.
"It seems you're the ones who don't know the definition of 'immortal,' isn't it?"
"You…!"
"If you think immortality is merely the body regenerating infinitely, it's only because your world is so small. You said humans like me negate everything you've built your whole lives?"
Jin let out a short laugh.
"You've only negated yourselves, because you no longer have the will to achieve anything. And is achievement the only standard by which a life's value is measured?"
"…Your mana won't be infinite. You won't be able to maintain those seals forever."
"Still delusional. I can maintain them, but I won't need to. You'll be handed over to research mages, sealed in pieces. From then on, your juniors will be the ones maintaining the seals on you."
In an instant, the 'immortality' the Artisans had gained felt like a distant, terrifying curse.
Just as Jin said, if they were stuffed into mages' laboratories, the fact that they couldn't die, even if they wanted to, was the most terrible curse of all.
The Artisan who found this fact particularly terrifying was the first to turn and run.
He was trying to escape.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A blast of sword energy shot out and severed both his legs. The regeneration was swift, but it could not regenerate a heart crushed by fear.
His newly regenerated legs refused to move. In his terror, he reflexively discharged a blast of lightning that spread haphazardly, threatening not only Jin but his own comrades.
"Tsk."
While the other Artisans dodged their comrade's wild lightning, Jin skillfully wove between them and swung Sigmund.
It didn't take long to butcher them into pieces small enough to seal.
They were more troublesome back when they were still mages.
Watching the lightning bolts strike down chaotically without distinguishing friend from foe, Jin felt a sense of bitterness.
It was a bitter thought, that so many of the world's powerful were throwing themselves away for the hollow promises of Kinzelo and Zipple.
Crackle, snap, pop…!
Soon, all the Artisans were sprawled on the ground, trapped within Jin’s Ice-type seals.
"Hey."
Jin turned and called out to Veradin’s guards.
"You guys head back to the Sword Emperor Castle separately. I'll take Veradin and go on ahead. Shuri, pick all these up."
[Myaaaa.]
Shuri gathered the seals in her mouth. Jin climbed onto her back and reached a hand out to Veradin.
Veradin stared blankly at that hand for a moment.
"I can't believe you were beaten by things like this. Not after seeing how you fought me in the Ventica conflict zone."
It didn't make sense.
Neither the fact that Veradin hadn't asked for help from the start, nor the fact that he had been pushed to the brink of death by such creatures. With the power Veradin had shown in Ventica, he should have been able to handle these Artisans with ease.
The more he thought about it, the more suspicious Jin became—not of Veradin himself, but of the Zipple family controlling him.
"The me back then wasn't me, Jin."
"It could be the same now. The offer I made you before still stands."
— There's something I want to propose to you.
— What is it?
— Discard the name Zipple.
He was repeating the offer he'd made at Veradin's villa, back when he was still a reserve flagbearer.
The memory surfaced for both of them at the same time.
Veradin did not answer but took Jin’s hand and climbed onto Shuri.
After that, the two didn't exchange another word until they reached the Sword Emperor Castle. This was partly because Veradin had passed out from blood loss, but even if he had remained conscious, the silence likely would have held.