Chapter 54
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 54
Chapter Title: Thunder That Shakes the Heavens
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Chapter 54
[This is transport vehicle F882! We must depart immediately! An unidentified enemy is descending!]
As I was about to pull the pin on the inhibitor, Seira grabbed my shoulder.
“Pulling it now won’t do anything!”
“What?”
“Look at the situation calmly!”
The Hollow Bone King’s second command.
Half the army of primitives began descending the mountain slopes, while the other half launched a massive offensive against the front lines of the Iron Fortress Brigade.
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Could I cut them all down in three minutes and advance toward that thing?
No, it would be impossible…
Why were the limitations on the transcendent power I could wield so severe…?
[Chief Engineer, I will buy as much time as possible. I need you to take all the refugees gathered there!]
[This is the 2nd Armored Brigade, under attack by primitives… Gaaahhh!]
A tragedy was about to begin.
In that suffocating instant, the sky blazed with a brilliant golden light.
A lightning bolt, striking like a blade, swept away the sandstorm and scoured the canyon slope.
“Your Excellency Setsunen…!”
The effect was tremendous.
The primitives that had been charging down the slope were turned into charred husks and fell to the ground.
Not only that, but Hairkan and the enemies filling the narrow pass were swept up in the resulting landslide and washed away.
“Amazing, she wiped them all out!”
“No, the platform is over there. This is bad! We have to get down there now!”
“But how…”
Only then, when the dragon of light that had been circling in the air descended before them, did they realize.
It wasn't Setsunen of Thunderous Fragrance.
It was a larger, more majestic, and more familiar being. That familiarity, perhaps, was an intimacy born from a shared soul.
“Blades of Light, I offer my deepest gratitude to the guidance of the light that has allowed us to meet again.”
Cardinal Yotos.
One of the five pillars who served the Light Dragon Haraderiman.
“The situation is dire. Climb onto my back at once. We must strike now, while the Hollow Bone King is separated from the protection of his primitive army.”
I immediately leaped onto his back.
I grabbed the arm of Seira, whose movements were somewhat hampered by her heavy armor, and pulled her up, asking,
“Your Excellency, did you bring the Pale Light Sword? We cannot seal an Old Noble without it.”
“There is always a way, a path unseen. But to walk it, Kaisen, you must take more of my soul.”
“Pardon?”
With a great beat of his wings, Yotos lifted his massive body into the sky.
“My body has already weakened; I can no longer engage in conflict with the Old Nobles. If you can neutralize the Hollow Bone King, I will handle the rest.”
“Your Excellency Yotos.”
“The righteous, noble soul you took that day was the soul of the Light Dragon. The Light Dragon is the father of all golden dragons’ souls. As all souls originate from it, you need only will it to reclaim them.”
What in the world.
What was he saying?
I had already received an unbelievable gift, and he was telling me to take more?
“I don’t want to. No, I can’t! It would be better if we fought together—”
“—While respect is admirable, a Warrior must read the tides of the time. I am not asking you to take all of my soul. Take just enough to strike a balance, where you can stand against the Hollow Bone King, and I can still radiate light from the heavens.”
Six yellow wyverns flew up beside Yotos, forming a dragon squadron.
The lightning they breathed created a curtain of light, temporarily blocking the primitives’ advance.
With that power, the power of a True Dragon even greater than theirs, I shouldn't need to receive more strength.
“Your Excellency, I beseech you—”
Yotos closed his eyes for a moment.
The faces of Raminea, who died in 1692, and Camilla, who died in 1696, superimposed themselves over his.
In life, they both wielded the same holy sword and lit this world’s final flame.
Though not bound by blood, those children shared the same scent, like true kin, and walked the same path.
Yotos had always wondered about the origin of that sameness.
Dragons do not bear young, so he could not know the love of parenthood, but one day, he came to understand it on his own.
Rista Alter Scherpang, a hero of the turbulent era, had shown him that partiality.
Rista was reborn, not as a Warrior, and bore a child, and her distant descendant was Raminea.
Raminea gave birth to Camilla with her heart and to Kaisen with her body.
The two children, taking after their mother, were illuminating this world with the sword on the path of the sword.
Rista, Raminea, and Camilla had all died before Yotos.
He recalled what the humans, who lived but for a moment, would say through their tears: when parents die, you bury them in the earth, but when a child dies, you bury them in your heart…
Perhaps it was from that same sentiment.
Or was it simply that he had sensed his own limits?
It was surely both.
Yotos did not want Kaisen to die.
He wanted this child to live, to grow stronger, to end this ceaseless game, and to find happiness in life.
He wanted him to forever possess what his mother and his master had grasped but ultimately lost for eternity.
When a father gives a gift to his child, he does not begrudge the gift… It must be something like that.
*Uncle Yotos, look. This is my son. Isn't he cute?*
A horizon of a world that never came to be.
In it, he dreamed that Raminea and Camilla, alive, brought the infant Kaisen before him.
In that world, there was no Abyss, no evil, and no Warriors.
*Your radiance shines through this child’s face.*
In that dream, Yotos bestowed a blessing of profound joy. The baby Kaisen smiled brightly, and Raminea and Camilla smiled along with him.
A horizon of a timeline that never was.
He wondered if this was the kind of dream mortal beings always had in the moments they lost something precious.
Perhaps it was because of that dream that he was able to reach this decision.
“—You must. It is the only way. Raminea sowed the seed of a miracle by giving birth to you, and Camilla reaped the fruit of that miracle by teaching you. So it must be you. You must do it.”
The situation was urgent, so the words should have ended there, but they did not. They simply came to be, within an unseen smile.
“Do you understand? Your very existence is this world's miracle.”
Simultaneous Fronts,
Subjugating the Hollow Bone King Hairkan (3)
[I can’t wait any longer, we’re departing!]
The story I heard on Yotos’s back and the state of the battle were both utterly chaotic, but I had to calm down.
I had to hurry, yet I had to be composed.
If I couldn't win the fight before me, every battle across the mountain range would end in defeat.
[Hold on, Chief Engineer! Multiple tracked vehicles carrying refugees are heading your way! You have to help them escape too!]
As Yotos dove toward the foothills, I saw Hairkan rising, shaking off the debris from the landslide.
Ha…
His body, which had taken a direct lightning strike, was already fully restored.
“Blades of Light, I will clear away the primitive army from above. Signal me when you are ready.”
“Understood, Your Excellency!”
“I’ll block the first attack! You aim for a direct hit then!”
Slowly, I drew a breath.
And in the next moment, I kicked off Yotos’s back and leaped toward the distant target.
I saw Hairkan twist his body to the side, preparing to swing his soul sword.
*Krrrrr…* The tormented souls woven into the blade wail as a sword wind of transcendent power rushes toward me.
Dodging it or blocking it is impossible, even with Aradamanthel.
But.
“Here comes the first one!”
Seira’s shield began to glow.
The immense mass and heat of the Abyss were deflected and dispersed in all directions by the semi-circular barrier her shield projected.
Solang, the sister sword of the Tassalpo line, was famed for its unique properties.
[Your Excellency Page, please authorize the train’s departure! The primitive army has breached the station!]
Solang was a shield and sword in one.
After absorbing an enemy's power with the shield, it would amplify that absorbed power and transfer it to the holy sword's blade.
It sounded like an invincible power, but the slightest miscalculation in absorbing the enemy’s force would cause the wielder to be consumed by it and die.
For that reason, Solang was called the sword that drew closest to death in order to repel it.
[This is Julius Page. I want you to follow the judgment of the on-site commander, Chief Engineer.]
The power absorbed by the shield shimmered brilliantly upon Solang’s blade and was reflected back at its owner, Hairkan.
[It’ll be too late if we wait for the Hollow Bone King’s subjugation! There are already over two thousand refugees on this train! We can’t wait any longer!]
As if to sever all the urgent tremors that tangled and snarled on the battlefield with a single stroke.
*Ting—!*
The inhibitor pin, plucked from my fingertips, left a clear resonance that stole all sound from my ears.
*An image.*
The Dragon Orb, once a mere fragment, was now, in this moment, nearly whole.
The atmospheric pressure and sheer presence radiating from my own body made the bones and muscles of my limbs tremble as if they would break.
I confirmed that an unknown pressure had put a slight brake on Hairkan’s movements.
*The image of that moment, back then.*
Hairkan plunged his soul blade deep into the ground.
With a world-shaking shimmer, countless primitive soldiers clawed their way out of the earth.
That shimmer blocked the lightning strikes and aided the advance of the undead horde.
*The image of the power I used to subjugate Mauna Loa.*
Then, a tempest of radiance gathered upon my palm.
It was a fragment of the Dragon Orb.
A fragment left at the edge of my soul, as a mortal body could not fully wield an immortal power.
*Chaaaaaeeeng—!*
I now call forth that power, here, upon this hand, weave it into one, and then shatter it.
Shards of light scattered in all directions.
The fragments rained down upon the area, embedding themselves firmly in the ground before beginning to pulse.
*Ting…*
*…Ting…*
*…………Ting………*
*…Ting………*
As the fragments struck, the sound was exceptionally clear. As if plucking the strings of a soul.
As they landed with that clear sound, the 156 fragments took the form of blades, becoming blades of light.
It was an array of blades, surrounding the ground where the Hollow Bone King Hairkan stood in a semicircle.
“—?”
The blades were sheathed.
Within the sheathes sealed by the blades, power was churning.
These blades were all manifestations of power, a materialization of explosive force given the form of Aradamanthel.
—Dragon Sword Style.
If my mother performed the dance of the Sipmunjado to defeat Mauna Loa, then what I now display is the sword dance of the dragon.
The dragon's dance.
I had only thought of it. Conceived it only in theory. A power I could not achieve due to a lack of draconic spirit was now, in this moment, complete.
—Thunder That Shakes the Heavens.
First Slash.
The moment I held my breath and placed my hand on Aradamanthel’s hilt.
Superluminal speed.
A terrifying velocity that blurred my body into an outline of light.
Upon the trajectory of the slash, the sword left behind a crimson afterglow, and my body a golden nimbus. Only trails of red and gold remained in the path of his movement.
Long after the light had passed, the bodies of the primitives standing in its way were sliced into pieces and scattered.
[The primitive army has infiltrated the station!]
My body, advancing with the slash, stopped before the first fragment.
The moment that blade fragment was absorbed by Aradamanthel, my body once again vanished into an afterimage of light for the Second Slash.
[Hold on! The True Dragon and the FakeWarriors have engaged the Hollow Bone King! And two infantry brigades will be arriving shortly!]
Executing the sheathing and drawing of a sword in the middle of a sword dance inevitably exposes openings.
But here and now.
Amidst these blade fragments, all such time is unnecessary.
No sheathing motion is needed. No drawing motion is needed. No warm-up motion is needed.
[The enemy is just below the platform stairs!]
All I have to do is cut.
With transcendent power.
With transcendent speed.
Pouring all the grief and rage of the helpless and powerless who have died onto this blade.
[Stay calm! The infantry brigade has just arrived! They’re clearing out the reptilians from outside!]
It was an infinite flash of light.
A storm of swords aimed at a transcendent life.
The fury of a divine dragon, descended in the frail body of a human.
“Beautiful…”
Forgetting the urgency of the battle, Seira muttered blankly.
Even the eyes of a Warrior could not follow it.
The dance of the blade, drawing one unending line, shattered the Hollow Bone King Hairkan's armor, severed his skeleton, and slaughtered his primitive army again and again.
[Stairway defenses breached, the enemy is on the platform!]
There was just one question.
Why wasn't Hairkan actively fighting back with his power?
*Don’t tell me.*
It was Hairkan’s experience.
Experience saved for the single fatal moment, when the final fragment-infused lightning blade tore through the world’s darkness.
The moment he closed the distance in an instant, aiming for Hairkan’s soul.
“Kaisen!”
A clash with the soul blade. Aradamanthel flew upward, and I was in a stance with both hands holding the sword above my head.
For a moment, my posture broke.
To change a horizontal strike to a vertical one required not just a change in stance, but also delicate adjustments to the mana chain.
[FakeWarrior, hurry!]
But a being of the Abyss needed no such thing.
Before I could recover my stance, the soul blade screamed chillingly as it plunged down vertically.
An Old Noble’s body and reflexes could follow even the speed of light. Switching to a defensive action was impossible.
[This is Julius Page. We must seal the west gate. A large number of enemies have been confirmed here as well.]
Even if I miraculously succeeded in defending, I would be swept up in the storm of souls raging from that blade, my body would collapse, and I would become a primitive.
Therefore.
Therefore, now.
Therefore, right now.
I released my grip on Aradamanthel. Instead.
*Isla.*
Instead of switching to a defensive stance, I desperately reached my freed hand behind my back and grasped another sword.
*Lend me your strength.*
The holy sword of a fallen friend.
The great hammer-type Supreme Holy Sword, Gaumris.