Chapter 210: Pitch-Black Night (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 210: Pitch-Black Night (6)
Rustle.
Someone stepped on a fallen leaf.
Normally, it would have been mere noise—a simple auditory cue that someone had stepped on something. But as his senses expanded, the very nature of the information delivered to his mind transformed.
Rus... tle.
The entire sequence—a foot making contact with the leaf, pressing down, and generating the sound—was broken apart, processed in fractions of a second.
That wasn't all.
Whoosh.
The wind blew.
The mana rising from Roman Dmitry mingled with the wind. As the breeze brushed past his enemies, their shapes naturally materialized in his mind's eye. He knew exactly how many were lurking nearby, their physical builds, and even the current state of their bodies based purely on the rhythm of their breathing.
The Human Stage.
It was the most basic realm.
It laid the foundation of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, sharpened the senses, and carved out the pathways for mana to erupt.
Roman Dmitry had been cultivating the Human Stage all this time. People gasped in admiration, calling his progress meteoric, yet even up to the moment he defeated Butler, he had remained within the boundaries of the Human Stage. But through relentless, repeated training, he had finally shattered the wall. Entering the Earth Stage meant more than just physical evolution; it meant true assimilation with nature itself.
His senses cast outward like a spiderweb.
If the Human Stage was about accepting nature, the Earth Stage was about becoming one with it.
One step.
He moved forward.
The Shadows had no idea what that meant.
In his past life, on the day Baek Joong-hyuk first entered the Earth Stage, he had decapitated a hundred masters of the Righteous Faction after cornering them in a dead end.
* * *
Rumble!
Aura flared from all directions.
Manifesting their Primordial Energy, the Shadows rushed forward simultaneously without needing a single signal.
Swish!
The first one charged.
Roman Dmitry read the opponent's intent through a micro-series of actions: the shifting of weight into his feet, the swelling of his thigh muscles, the sharp intake of breath to summon his Dark Aura. The Shadows moved in a flawless chain reaction. As if communicating telepathically, their coordinated assault exploded in an instant.
They were incredibly fast.
Enveloped in Dark Aura, they lunged at Roman Dmitry with a speed that defied the naked eye.
However—whoosh—the first attack missed.
His hyper-sharpened senses gathered the surrounding information. Complex data, right down to the exact trajectory of the dagger thrust and the microscopic twitching of muscles, relayed the true nature of the attack directly to his brain. This was what it meant to assimilate with nature. The environment, saturated with his mana, had transformed the immediate area into Roman Dmitry's personal domain. Evading the first strike, he simultaneously executed Lightning, severing his opponent's head in a single flash.
Flash.
Splurt!
The head flew into the air.
It was a reality the Shadows simply could not comprehend.
Even pushing their Dark Aura to its absolute limit, they hadn't been able to react to Roman Dmitry's counterattack. Worse yet, their innate ability to turn their bodies into smoke had failed to activate.
'These enemies have a weakness.'
During their previous clash, Roman Dmitry had completely unraveled his opponents' abilities.
There were two fatal flaws.
First, there was a split-second window when the Shadows dispersed into smoke and then reconstructed their physical forms. In that exact moment, they could not phase through physical attacks. When Roman Dmitry had previously slashed one across the chest, the enemy had dispersed into smoke, only to meet his death and spill dark red blood on the immediate follow-up strike. Roman had perfectly targeted the moment of physical reconstruction.
Second, and far more difficult to exploit than the first: the source of their power.
When the opponents entered a state of physical non-existence, they emitted a subtle flow of mana. That flow was the lifeline sustaining the Shadow's existence. Even if they scattered into smoke, they could return to their original state as long as that mana link remained intact. However, Roman Dmitry severed that flow in a single strike.
Severing the link meant instant death for the Shadow.
Reverting to their original states, they could only stare wide-eyed as the blade sliced through them.
The method to defeat the Shadows was far from ordinary.
Exploiting such fleeting, microscopic opportunities was impossible with normal human senses, but for Roman Dmitry, who had stepped into the Earth Stage, it was effortless. He grasped every single twitch of his opponents. He saw right through the timing of their physical reconstruction and the invisible flow of their mana. Before his opponent could even attempt to react, he severed their link to the physical world once again.
A single strike.
Another Shadow died.
At the sight of their falling comrade, the killing intent of the remaining Shadows flared even more intensely.
Boom!
Crash! Crash!
Tremendous impacts erupted from all directions.
It was a tactic of Mutual Destruction.
The Shadows were throwing their lives away.
As the head of the first charging Shadow flew off, the Shadow right behind him slashed straight through his comrade's falling body just to strike at Roman Dmitry. There wasn't a shred of hesitation or camaraderie. Even the Shadow whose body was being sliced apart thrust his sword forward until his final breath, radiating pure, intense malice toward Roman.
Rumble!
The Dark Aura triggered a massive explosion.
The more comrades died, the more powerful their collective Aura became, manifesting a destructive force that even Roman Dmitry could not afford to ignore.
The Shadows were strong.
Gustavo, Nicholas, Butler—even if he had to face all the continental rankers he had defeated so far at the exact same time, it wouldn't be as threatening as the suicidal, coordinated assault of these Shadows. With every breath he took, explosions erupted around him. If he blocked a strike from the front, another tore in from the side. Even when he parried that and severed the attacker's head, Dark Aura rained down from above like a thunderbolt.
Boom!
Rumble!
A thick cloud of dust surged into the air.
Within the faintly visible silhouette, Roman Dmitry, battered by the storm of Dark Aura, was brutally butchering his enemies.
Splat.
Blood splattered.
As dark red droplets drenched the surroundings, Roman Dmitry's eyes stained a deep crimson.
'Blood Stream.'
The blood reacted.
The scattered droplets transformed into razor-sharp thorns, shooting out to pierce the vital points of the Shadows rushing at him.
Thud! Thud!
Stagger.
A Shadow trembled, his momentum broken.
Roman Dmitry reached out, grabbed the assassin by the head, and slammed him into the ground. The head immediately dispersed into smoke to escape the impact, but that was as far as it got. Before the body could reconstruct, Roman stomped down hard. Blood splattered so violently that it painted Roman's face in a savage mask. Using Blood Stream, he manipulated those very droplets, turning them into merciless projectiles that shredded through the remaining enemies.
The martial arts of a demon.
That was how the world had once described the martial arts of the Demonic Cult, a faction that pursued nothing but absolute strength.
Until now, Roman Dmitry had not actively utilized the Demonic Cult's techniques.
While the primary reason was simply that he hadn't needed to, it was also a conscious choice to avoid the sheer visual horror it would inflict on onlookers.
But the Demonic Cult did not care about the gazes of others.
Even if they were drenched in gore and looked like evil spirits crawling out of hell, as long as they possessed absolute power, nothing else mattered.
Now, facing the Kronos Empire, Roman Dmitry saw no reason to hold back his arsenal.
Standing against enemies shrouded in darkness, whipping up a crimson vortex of floating blood, Roman Dmitry looked like the true devil.
Crack.
He crushed an enemy's head underfoot.
That was already the tenth.
The number of attackers had dwindled significantly.
They were certainly strong, but the best effort Kronos could muster was still not enough to solve the problem named Roman Dmitry.
It was an overwhelming display of might.
Perhaps sensing that total annihilation was imminent, the Shadow who appeared to be the leader had vanished at some point during the slaughter.
* * *
The Shadow sprinted frantically through the forest.
This operation was supposed to be perfect.
Roman Dmitry had displayed the exact belligerent nature Kronos had anticipated, crossing the border to attack Écorché's stronghold. That alone had virtually guaranteed their success. When the Shadows saw that Roman Dmitry had arrived without a single subordinate, they were absolutely certain this assassination could not fail.
Yet, they had been unilaterally butchered.
Even after experiencing it firsthand, the sight of Roman Dmitry tearing through the Shadows felt like a nightmare.
'Based on the testimonies of his past battles, we calculated that Roman Dmitry might be up to twice as strong as he previously let on. We prepared an excessive response just in case, but what on earth was that devilish display?! Our abilities didn't work at all, and we were overwhelmingly crushed in a pure, head-on clash of power.'
The operation was a catastrophic failure.
The tactical advantage of using Écorché to drain his stamina, the element of a surprise attack, their superior numbers—it all meant absolutely nothing.
In the end, they were simply broken in a direct confrontation.
Faced with Roman Dmitry's insurmountable might, the Shadow had made a swift decision to flee.
'To think we couldn't bring him down even after mobilizing Demonic Humans. Roman Dmitry is infinitely more dangerous than the world realizes. I must report this to the Empire. If what I witnessed today wasn't even his full power, he will undoubtedly become a massive obstacle to the Kronos Empire's grand design.'
The Shadows had carried out countless black-ops missions for the Empire, facing enemies hailed as the strongest on the continent.
Only once before had they suffered such a one-sided defeat.
That had been against an unranked individual who wielded holy power; seeing her exert such a purifying force against their darkness, they had no choice but to retreat. But this... Roman Dmitry was completely different. He didn't wield holy power. He was not their natural counter, and the terrain and situation had been entirely in their favor. It was purely a clash of raw, unadulterated power, yet they had been torn to shreds by a monster they couldn't even dare to rival.
It was terrifying.
Without a doubt, even the absolute top rankers of Kronos would not have been able to overcome their coordinated suicide assault so easily.
'The more we learn about Roman Dmitry, the more of a mystery he becomes. We need His Majesty the Emperor to issue the command. The Empire must devote its entire military might to assassinating him.'
He pushed his legs to their absolute limit.
His plan was to put as much distance between them as possible before contacting the Empire.
It was then.
Stumble.
His body suddenly pitched forward.
The moment the Shadow realized something was wrong, his vision tilted sharply, and he crashed hard into the dirt.
His legs, which had been perfectly fine just a fraction of a second ago, had been cleanly severed at the knees.
Before the Shadow could even scream or crawl away, a heavy boot planted itself firmly onto his chest.
Stomp.
'...Did he already finish off the rest of them?'
It was Roman Dmitry.
He had caught up.
With this, the plan was dead.
He had intended to report the truth of this massacre to the Empire, but he had been caught.
However, Roman Dmitry calmly pulled a magic communicator from his robes and tossed it onto the Shadow's chest.
"Contact the Empire. And report exactly what happened here."
* * *
Roman Dmitry.
His intentions were completely incomprehensible.
There was a high probability this was some sort of trap, but the Shadow had to contact the Empire, even if it meant playing right into his hands.
He activated the communicator.
A moment later, a voice crackled through.
[Have you dealt with Roman Dmitry?]
It was the voice of Baron Charlton.
Staring up at the monster standing over him, the Shadow spoke through gritted teeth.
"...The operation has failed."
[Failed? What on earth do you mean by that?!]
"Baron Charlton. Please convey my exact words to His Majesty the Emperor. Our assessment of Roman Dmitry was completely, fatally wrong. Even though we mobilized eighteen Demonic Humans, we couldn't inflict a single wound on him. Even our innate ability to phase through physical attacks was rendered useless. Roman Dmitry has been hiding his true strength. No... perhaps he simply never had a reason to reveal it until now."
Even as he spilled all the highly classified combat data he had just witnessed, Roman Dmitry made no move to stop him.
Seeing Roman merely looking down at him with cold, quiet eyes, the Shadow hurried his report.
"For the past two years, Roman Dmitry's rate of growth has defied all logic. We thought we understood his starting point, but he possesses secrets far beyond our ability to handle. He must be eliminated. Before Roman Dmitry does something entirely unpredictable, the Kronos Empire must step in directly and snuff out his life."
His voice grew frantic, desperate.
He glared up, as if daring Roman Dmitry to finish him off.
With this, his final duty was complete.
If a report of this magnitude reached the capital alongside the news of a failed mission, the Emperor of Kronos was not a man who would sit idly by.
Heavy silence fell over the other end of the communicator.
Perhaps too stunned by the catastrophic report, Baron Charlton didn't speak for a long moment. Then, a coldly subdued voice came through the receiver.
[Roman Dmitry. You are listening, aren't you.]