Chapter 439: Integrated Ranking (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 439: Integrated Ranking (6)
His duel with Chris.
This was already their third.
Kevin remembered their past encounters vividly.
During their first duel, Kevin had been nothing more than a beginner with a shallow understanding of the sword.
'Back then, I thought it was an impossible match. Lord Chris was a renowned genius swordsman in Dmitry, while I was a nobody wandering the slums. And after my miserable defeat, the very first thought that consumed my mind was how pathetic and wretched I was.'
Defeat.
It was a natural outcome.
Yet, even knowing it had been an impossible matchup, Kevin could not accept the reality of his loss.
Roman Dmitry had stood behind him.
Even though Roman had told him exactly how Chris would move and with what intentions he would attack, Kevin had failed to capitalize on that advantage and lost. He was deeply ashamed of that fact. The thought of his own miserable skills—unable to bridge the gap even when handed the answers—and the realization that he had dared to dream of becoming Roman Dmitry's sword with such pathetic ability filled him with a shame so intense he couldn't sleep.
From that day on, he threw himself into training like a man possessed.
He vowed, and vowed again, that he would never become a hindrance to Roman's future, and that he would never suffer such humiliation again.
His inferiority complex became the source of his growth.
Because he looked up to Chris, he improved rapidly, and at some point, a burning desire to surpass him took root. Thus, their second duel came about naturally. When Roman Dmitry gifted Chris a better sword than his own, Kevin's boiling inferiority complex made it impossible to accept reality.
And he lost once more.
This time, he was furious.
People called him the Evil Ghost of Dmitry.
He had grown immensely, and he believed himself to be strong now, yet his failure to defeat Chris plunged him into utter despair. It was a reality he now had to accept: the fact that Chris stood above him, and the undeniable truth that Roman Dmitry's true sword was Chris, not him.
He turned it over in his mind again and again.
But in the end, he still couldn't accept it.
No matter how long it took, he wanted to defeat Chris and prove his own worth. It was probably from then on that he began to delve into more fundamental theories. He sought to understand where the difference between himself and Chris originated, and whether there was a way to bridge a gap that seemed to stem purely from the passage of time.
It was madness.
He admitted it.
Roman Dmitry had become his life.
To a boy who had lacked so much, Roman Dmitry—who had filled all those empty spaces—could not help but become his entire world.
And so, time flowed, leading to this very day.
Step.
He stepped onto the stage.
Across the vast arena, he saw Chris waiting for him.
'This time, I will win.'
Their third duel.
He would absolutely not lose a third time.
* * *
Tension hung thick in the air.
The duel between Chris and Kevin drew everyone's undivided attention, to the point where even the spectators held their breath.
No matter who won, new history would be written.
Amidst the mounting tension, Chris spoke.
"Kevin. While preparing for this tournament, I knew that I would eventually end up standing here with you."
His tone was calm.
The crowd leaned in, listening closely to his quiet voice.
"Our relationship began a long time ago. When Dmitry was first rising to prominence, not many people paid attention to you. But the way you looked at me, your attitude... it made me think that you might target my position one day."
It was a truth he had wanted to deny.
Chris had tried to ignore his rivalry with Kevin, but seeing Kevin defeat Ares made him realize his true feelings. The rivalry had nothing to do with Kevin's growth. From the moment Kevin expressed his fierce desire to win in their very first duel, Kevin's existence had never been a simple matter to Chris.
He was a being who would, one day, try to surpass him.
He hadn't expected that time to come so quickly, but Kevin had clawed his way up through sheer, relentless effort to stand before him now.
'There is no trace of your past self left.'
The Kevin of back then.
The Kevin who was nothing but a slum boy.
The Kevin who couldn't even swing a sword properly.
The crazy bastard who, even while learning absurdly basic swordsmanship, spat venom and fought with pure malice against him until the very end.
He acknowledged it.
Kevin was a rival.
And rivalry was the foundation of growth.
He would utterly crush his rival and ascend to a level no one could ever reach.
"I have no intention of yielding my position to anyone, including you, Kevin. This stage was prepared for you and everyone else who dares to covet my place. Defeat me to prove yourself, or else..."
Shring.
He drew his sword.
The spectators swallowed hard.
Completely overwhelmed by the atmosphere, they couldn't tear their eyes away.
"Illuminate the value of my existence with your third defeat."
No further words were necessary.
There was no need for talk.
Flutter.
The referee's signal fell.
At that exact moment, the two figures facing each other lunged forward like starving beasts.
* * *
The duel between Chris and Kevin.
There was a certain picture the crowd had anticipated.
They had expected a clash worthy of their reputations, but what actually unfolded on the arena stage was a collision far beyond anyone's imagination.
Flash!
Rumble!
Chris struck first.
Faced with a lightning-fast attack that tore through space in an instant, Kevin didn't even try to evade. Instead, he plunged straight into the storm whipped up by Chris's Aura. Cuts opened up across his body. Blood splattered in all directions, but he perfectly blocked the strikes aimed at his vitals, never slowing his charge.
The domain of control.
He was going all out from the very beginning.
The moment Kevin entered striking range, he swung his sword like lightning, exchanging several blows in the blink of an eye.
Clang!
Cl-cl-cl-clang!
Whenever an attack was blocked, a strike aimed at a vital point inevitably followed.
As Kevin deflected the blows and attempted to counter, Chris unleashed a barrage of attacks with a speed and destructive power that utterly suppressed Kevin's presence. Strikes rained down from above, left, right, and below, turning the world into a chaotic blur. Even when Kevin tried to counterattack, Chris left absolutely no openings.
Rumble!
It was an overwhelming presence.
Up until this point, Kevin had displayed one-sided dominance in his matches, but Chris's swordsmanship was suppressing even him. It was the difference in their Aura. In a situation where Kevin could not surpass Chris in pure skill, the destructive power of their Aura created a clear gap. Above all, Chris's complete lack of fear in close-quarters, high-speed combat instantly shut down Kevin's unpredictability.
Boom!
Crash!
Aura exploded.
Chris pressed hard against Kevin, who had closed the distance.
With every violent clash, Kevin's body shuddered as he was pushed back.
'He's strong.'
Chris.
The Flash of Dmitry.
The man in his memories had grown once again.
Even more than the Chris of their first duel, and even more than the Chris of their second, Chris was evolving faster than Kevin could grow, weighing down heavily on him. Kevin had to admit it. If Chris were the type of person to stagnate, Kevin would have brought him to his knees long before this third duel could even take place.
Flash!
Slash-slash-slash-slash!
Space was torn apart.
Attacks too fast for the naked eye to track poured in from all directions. Kevin wasn't seeing and reacting; he was merely responding to whatever his heightened senses managed to catch. Just now was the same. Chris's attack grazed right past his nose. Kevin had been certain he had struck first, but in the next instant, Chris was casually parrying the blow and launching a counterattack of his own.
Swish.
He whipped his head back.
Blood sprayed from his face.
Even though he had protected himself with Aura, a shallow cut opened up. Through it all, Kevin kept his unwavering gaze locked onto his opponent.
He had to be bolder.
He needed to be more reckless.
Only then could he bridge the gap.
Chris was undeniably stronger than him, but even on this stage of life and death, Kevin did not believe himself to be weak.
'Heavenly Demon Sword Technique - First Half First Form.'
Boom!
Rumble!
He struck with ferocious intensity.
Meeting attack with attack, Kevin pressed against Chris as if refusing to yield even a single inch. His eyes gleamed with madness. How long had he anticipated this moment? When he first lost, he hadn't been worthy of being compared to Chris, but now, just like the breathless crowd watching them, he had a real chance of winning.
He would win.
He would absolutely emerge victorious.
Boom!
Crash!
The counterattack was fierce.
Chris's Aura erupted explosively, but at a distance so close their very existences seemed to entangle, neither Chris nor Kevin retreated a single step. It was a matter of pride. The outcome and the process—he wanted to claim both. He didn't just want a technical victory; he wanted to utterly dominate his opponent from start to finish.
It was a deadlock.
The more blood he spilled, the more violently they clashed, the clearer his mind became.
With a face painted in madness, Kevin clashed with his opponent, remembering why he had made Chris his target in the first place.
Dozens of attacks.
Dozens of defenses.
Not a single strike was allowed through.
He knew that only by tearing down this man, who countered every single blow, could he truly become the strongest sword that Roman Dmitry would be proud of. That was why he had targeted Chris. An inferiority complex only arose because the opponent was outstanding, and in Kevin's world, Chris shone more brilliantly than anyone else.
Flash.
His forearm was slashed.
Even as he was gradually dyed in blood, Kevin was certain.
In this duel, he would definitely win.
* * *
After his second defeat, Kevin had fallen into deep thought.
He realized that simply swinging his sword more and training like a madman wouldn't be enough to surpass Chris.
'I need a change.'
Chris was a genius who worked hard.
He wasn't the type to rest on his laurels; he put in just as much effort as Kevin did. No matter how much Kevin improved, the gap between them could not be bridged through effort alone. The result of their second duel had laid bare that reality. Realizing that he could never win by continuing to live exactly as he had before, Kevin's thoughts spun in endless, agonizing loops.
Power.
Speed.
Swordsmanship.
He was lagging behind in every single category.
Within conventional boundaries, he possessed no advantage that could surpass Chris. However, there was one thing in which he held the upper hand.
Unpredictability.
Breaking out of the mold.
Kevin focused on that single fact.
The Heavenly Demon Sword Technique was an incredibly grand and powerful weapon, but he knew he couldn't defeat Chris in a contest of pure destructive power. He was not Roman Dmitry. If he could unleash the same level of destructive power as Roman in a single strike, he would have chosen an orthodox approach. But just because he possessed the same weapon didn't mean he could fight like Roman Dmitry.
He changed his way of thinking.
He needed a weapon of his own.
It was a monumental shift.
As a former slum boy, Kevin had trained exactly according to the methods Roman Dmitry taught him. Even when he learned the Heavenly Demon Sword Technique, he had remained within a set mold. Despite his naturally unpredictable temperament, he was a creation forged strictly through the teachings of another. Now, Kevin cast off the mold that had confined him. The moment he pondered and decided what he truly needed, he fused everything he had learned up to that point into a single entity, carving out a brand-new domain.
In that manner, he forged a weapon uniquely his own.
What had been incomplete during his fight against Ares had transformed into a flawless masterpiece as he prepared for this tournament.
As a result, Edwin Hector, a strong candidate for the championship, had been forced to his knees before him.
* * *
Flash!
Rumble!
This was his chance.
The moment Chris unleashed a flurry of consecutive attacks, Kevin deflected them, his eyes flashing with sharp intent.
A single strike.
He had to decide the match with this next blow.
If he failed to land a meaningful blow on Chris, this fierce, close-quarters battle would inevitably end in his defeat.
'Reverse the flow of Mana.'
Rumble!
His insides boiled.
Instead of exploding the Mana in his Dantian outward, he recalled all of it back into his Dantian, compressing it tightly. It was an unorthodox method. Reversing the flow meant defying the laws of nature, and Kevin's body screamed in agony at the sudden, violent internal shift. The pain was immense. For an ordinary person, the shock and pain would have torn their insides apart, but the regenerative power of the Ghost Soul Demonic Art endured the reverse flow.
And then—
'Explode it all at once according to the mnemonic of the Heavenly Demon Sword Technique.'
In reality, it was a mere fraction of a second.
One second.
No, even less than that.
In the brief window of deflecting Chris's attack and initiating his next move, a transformation occurred within Kevin.
Rumble!
The Mana in his Dantian tangled together.
The Mana trying to surge forward and the reversed Mana clashed and intertwined, creating a powerful explosion at the exact moment Kevin desired.
'Heavenly Demon Sword Technique - First Half Third Form.'
With this attack, he had brought down Edwin Hector.
This time, he poured in everything he had.
As the reversed Mana began to erupt, Mana exploded across his entire body, and Kevin instantaneously cut through space.
Boom!
Slash-slash-slash-slash!
A powerful explosion!
The methods of the Central Plains Murim and Alexander's style harmonized.
While manipulating Mana through his Dantian, Alexander's emission method added explosive force to his entire body. It instantly rendered the distance between him and Chris meaningless. He closed the gap in a flash, and an Aura blazed forth as if to reduce the world to ashes.
A single strike.
It was a speed no one could react to.
When he perfected this technique, he had been certain that no one in the world, save for Roman Dmitry, could ever stop it.
Flash.
He cleaved through space.
It was over.
In a realm of time that the crowd could not even perceive, Kevin's powerful strike sliced cleanly through Chris's body.
At that moment...
"..."
Kevin's eyes widened.
A look of utter disbelief washed over his face.
Even the heightened senses of his fully mastered Ghost Soul Demonic Art failed to comprehend what had just happened to him.
Spurt!
Blood sprayed like a fountain.
In that split second, Chris's attack had pierced through space.
It was the ultimate Fast Sword Technique—one that absolutely no one, save for Roman Dmitry, could have ever perceived.