The SSR Weapon
"What a waste of the name Blue Sky. Who could ever have imagined the Namgung Clan, burrowed in a dirt hole like worms, trembling in fear?"
"Hahaha! Is that not just like the righteous sects, so obsessed with their hollow reputation?"
"They spewed every hypocrisy imaginable, and now that death draws near, it seems they're afraid."
"Thanks to him, we've wasted precious time."
Their words became daggers, stabbing into his vitals.
The Namgung Clan.
He knew it as well as anyone. He knew perfectly well that what he had done was something no warrior of the Great Namgung Clan could ever have imagined doing.
True, it had let him slip past their eyes and preserve his life, but still...
Was it his own shame that silenced him?
Even as they bellowed loud enough to make certain he heard every word, he could only bite his lip and offer no rebuttal.
Jin... you must survive. The clan can be rebuilt. So you must survive, no matter what.
Those were the words his father had given him on the day the Demon Cult's schemes set the clan estate ablaze.
"Since he doesn't even bother to argue back, I suppose he knows it himself."
"Hah! If only everyone could witness him like this."
"He should have the sense to come crawling out by now."
"..."
Was it truly right to endure such humiliation, if only to live on?
He could not yet say. His shoulders simply felt heavy. Even if he survived like this and raised the clan from its ashes, what good would it do? His dignity and honor had been hurled into the mud — how could he ever claw them back?
Was he truly enduring this disgrace only because of his father's dying wish? Or had some part of him, deep down, simply wanted to live on, however wretchedly?
Endless reflection left him with nothing but self-reproach and deep scars.
But he soon realized that even such agonizing was a luxury. He had no choices left.
Drawing out the formation device that a friend from the Jegal Clan had once crafted for him as a jest, he rose to his feet.
Yes. No matter how he looked at it, he could not simply lie here and be cut down like a hog. If he had to die, then at least he should die swinging a sword — that would be less shameful in the eyes of the ancestors who had gone before him.
Namgung Jin gripped the sword at his waist tightly and slowly extricated himself from the underground burrow. Even as he squeezed his body out of a tunnel barely wide enough for a single person to pass through, he could not keep the humiliation from burning in his chest.
Then, in the burrow he had just vacated, he spotted the formation device he'd left behind — and beside it, a flat black dagger about a foot in length (roughly thirty-three centimeters).
...
At a glance, it resembled a jagged black thorn. The elongated triangular blade was etched with densely packed, wave-like ripples running crosswise, like the scales of a fish.
From the sound of things, people around him had reacted with congratulations and envy when it appeared, but nothing about its appearance conveyed any of that weight.
And it was a dagger. Not a bad weapon, per se — but he was a warrior of the Namgung Clan. An unfamiliar weapon was nothing more than a burden.
And yet, for some reason, he could not simply dismiss it. The Administrator was no ordinary man. Every single one of his actions had sent shockwaves rippling through the entire community, like a typhoon tearing through still water.
Something he had prepared could hardly be mundane.
Namgung Jin took hold of the dagger carefully.
It was cold — chillingly so.
And yet it is light as a feather.
Ting- ting-
He flicked it twice with his finger, and a clear ring of steel echoed out.
Perhaps it was only natural that a strange anticipation stirred in his chest.
But he hesitated. This might be the last chance he would ever have to swing a sword in his lifetime.
Perhaps — no, certainly — this would be the final moment for the sword arts of the Great Namgung Clan to walk the heavens. If so, should he not gladly announce the Namgung banner with his beloved blade, the one his late clan head had entrusted to him and that had been at his side for seven years?
Caked in dirt and dust, he emerged from the burrow to find a warrior of some fifty years gazing down at him.
"Even a dog wouldn't grovel like that. There's no bigger wretch alive. Kukuk."
"Hahaha! To think the heir of the Namgung Clan would end up in such a state!"
"Arrogant hypocrites, every one of them."
"Drag him out!"
"Yes, Vice-leader."
A young man around Namgung Jin's age came striding toward him, black war robes billowing with a sharp hiss of wind.
The young man appeared to be in the same First-Class realm, and from head to toe his body seethed with a vicious black energy.
The leisurely expression on the man's face made his stomach twist. It was as if the fellow were saying, I will crush you beneath my heel and win the approval of everyone watching.
At the very least, Namgung Jin had never drawn his sword for show. Orthodox or demonic aside, he did not consider that becoming of a warrior's heart.
What galled him was that the man's internal energy was by no means beneath his own — and that —
Thud-
"Hrrk."
— his body was in no condition to fight.
His beloved sword flew through empty air and clattered to the ground. His wrist went numb. He had reacted to the ambush and drawn his blade on pure reflex, but his strength had simply failed him.
To lose one's grip on a weapon mid-battle was the worst sin a warrior could commit. That alone told him how far from normal his body had become.
"Hahaha. Did you all see that? A hothouse flower if ever there was one. Look at the greenhorn — not a lick of real combat experience, stubbornly clinging to textbook techniques. Isn't he the very specimen of a righteous sect lapdog?"
The young man bellowed as if to rally applause from the onlookers, and Namgung Jin bit his lip.
The fellow's intent was plain — he wanted to advertise himself as a seasoned veteran of real battles.
And the worst part was that he wasn't wrong.
"Haha. You're nothing but a clown with a sword. A waste of the name 'warrior.' Come, then — put on your little show for us! Hahaha!"
The man's Shattering Heart Claw carved through the air as it came rushing in again. His fierce clawed gauntlet, tipped with razor blade-nails, loomed across Namgung Jin's vision as it bore down on him.
Behind the incoming claw, Namgung Jin caught sight of a twisted smirk, and in that instant he understood the man's true aim. The attacks were deliberately missing his vital points — he meant to humiliate even his death.
You think everything will go the way you want it to?!
Namgung Jin drew the dagger from his breast and hurled himself straight at the man, unleashing a thrust that abandoned all thought of survival — a mutual-destruction strike.
I may die without honor, but I will not let my death be mocked!
Yet perhaps the dagger was simply too short. Or perhaps it was that his body was in no condition to fight. Before the blade could reach him, the man twisted his upper body aside and slipped out of range with room to spare.
Damn it! If only it were just a little longer!
"The Mutual Destruction technique of the Vast Heaven Boundless Sword Art, is it?"
"Doesn't look like it's ever actually been used before."
"Heheh. Righteous sect fools, truly. Why is it that even their mutual-destruction strikes follow such canned, scripted forms? Tsk tsk. Wouldn't you say so, Blood Soul Sword Bi Gwang?"
"..."
The Demon Cult's pursuit squad assigned to the Namgung Clan had been an elite force: a Supreme-realm leader, more than ten Peak-realm vice-leaders, and over three hundred warriors.
And among those vice-leaders, the strongest — Blood Soul Sword Bi Gwang — had quietly taken command in place of the lazy squad leader. As a direct descendant of the Blood Demon Sect's patriarch, his standing was nothing ordinary either.
That was how desperately the Demon Cult wanted what lay sealed in the Namgung Clan's secret treasury — and how closely they had watched over this operation.
The Heavenly Demon Sword. A legendary blade from myth — they had to reclaim it.
"Vice-leader Bi Gwang? Why so quiet?"
"Haha. Come to think of it, I heard that young man there was close with Vice-leader Bi Gwang."
"Certainly seemed skilled, even among the First-Class."
Yet for some reason, Vice-leader Bi Gwang — who normally turned talkative the moment praise of him came up — stood there glaring, saying nothing.
"Vice-leader Bi Gwang?"
It was in that very moment.
"Vice-leader Bi Gw—"
The voice of the vice-leader who had noticed something wrong with Bi Gwang was cut short.
It happened just as Namgung Jin and the Demon Cult warrior clashed once more.
Sllk- fwish-
On the wind, one vice-leader's head slid free and tumbled away, and a line of blood erupted from the region of Blood Soul Sword Bi Gwang's heart as he crumpled to the ground.
"Wha...?"
"What?!"
"V-Vice-leader Bi Gwang?"
An eerie silence settled over the Demon Cultists. And then...
"What the—?!"
"Gaaagh!"
Suddenly, four or five warriors began collapsing, blood pouring from their chests — with no warning whatsoever. There wasn't even a trace of internal energy to be found.
"!!"
"Wh-who's there?!"
"What's happening?!"
To Namgung Jin, locked in the heat of battle, it was an incomprehensible event. But to the Demon Cultists watching, it was nothing short of catastrophe.
"We know not who you may be, honored one, but show yourself already."
"You seem to be a hero of the righteous sects — show us your face and let us speak. Though our banners differ, we are not so rude as to be discourteous to a senior master."
The Demon Cult's vice-leaders were wound tight with tension. Surely this must be some hidden master beyond their reach.
An ambush that not even a Supreme-realm warrior could sense! And from the righteous sects, no less!
No answer ever came.
Meanwhile, Namgung Jin, still swinging his dagger, felt something strange.
What is this? Am I imagining things?
For a moment, he had felt the uncanny sensation that the blade was growing longer. But the dagger was light as a feather, and he dismissed it as a trick of the mind.
That man's movement arts are no joke!
The fellow twisted his upper body every which way, evading his attacks with an effortless, drifting footwork.
Then, just as the man turned his head toward the commotion around them—
Now!
Namgung Jin swept the dagger in a wide horizontal arc, aiming to cleave the man in two.
"Die!"
"Sloppy. Against an attack like that..."
The man leaned far back, evading what should have been the killing blow. It was different from before, when he had only twisted his upper body to slip past an attack. His movement arts were one thing — but his footwork was extraordinary too.
Damn it all! Is this the end?
He had no strength left to move.
Huh?
The moment his surroundings finally registered, Namgung Jin could only stare in horror.
"Wh-what...?!"
Everything around him had been shredded to ribbons, as if cleaved apart by a colossal blade — sparing neither the ground nor the very bedrock.
Sllrrk-
And the opponent who had just dodged was beginning to come apart at the waist, upper body sliding free of lower.
"Gkkk."
"?!"
What?
Namgung Jin could not make sense of anything that was happening.
"What a needlessly convoluted pathway. Filthy beyond words, like a tangled spider's web."
It was nothing like the Great Sephiroth.
"Still, it does seem to be connected to that place..."
Criella had at last tracked down the traces of the dimensional pathway and succeeded in finding the culprit. Call it a stroke of fortune.
"I'll finish this quickly and return."
The dimensions outside Sephiroth were like the deep sea — the longer he lingered, the more they eroded his divinity. Corruption was one thing, but beyond the reach of the Great Sephiroth, of Mother's touch, his divine power was draining away by the moment. Wait too long, and he might never find his way home.
"Hm...?"
That was when a woman with starlight hair entered Criella's gaze.
"Woman! Do you know where this is?"
There was something inexplicably chilling about her.
But what did it matter?
He was Criella, the great Lord God who governed an entire world!