Chapter 194
Chapter 194
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 194
Chapter Title: The Ringing of the Staff
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By the time twilight had settled over the forest, he was racing out.
Fruit trees wafting a fresh, tangy scent flashed by on either side.
It was around then that something warm settled on his shoulder amid the rustling leaves, bringing a surge of relief.
“Pipi!”
“Pipi, pipi, pipi.”
You’re safe.
Does that mean Valencidis and Cora are okay too?
Pipi rubbed its beak against his cheek, as if answering the question.
“Danger, danger, Valencidis danger.”
* * *
In the annals of the hero’s saga, the Demon Slayer’s prowess was defined by just two words.
Overwhelming power. Frenzied charge.
It wasn’t some special technique or unique ability. Nor was it talent with exotic weaponry, they said.
Simply overwhelming force unleashed in a frenzy.
The iron chains gripped like weapons in both hands were merely to maximize that rampaging power.
And that was it… Or so he’d heard, but that power truly lived up to the word “overwhelming.”
“Target annihilation.”
The iron chains came flying, plowing up the earth with immense weight.
It was a blow that cracked the ground, yet someone met it head-on.
“Captain──!”
The strike rent cracks through the strata, but in the next instant, the chains were repelled by a colossal force, sweeping into the distant forest.
“Whew, impressive.”
At the sight, a woman with bandages wrapped around both hands clapped her fists together and let out a genuine whistle.
Her body was covered in wounds, and so was her dobok.
Her name was Somali, a veteran mercenary who carried the aura and dignity forged from over a decade of training.
“You’re holding out against all three of us like this?”
Five hundred years ago, she’d been infamous as the Fighter Slayer.
The man revealed amid the fierce dust cloud she stared at was Doran Slade.
Even as blood poured from his body, the sight of him steadying his breath and stance was truly magnificent.
“What are you all doing? Why haven’t you taken those kids to the docks?”
Doran Slade smiled at his subordinates as he always did, but unlike usual, his eyes weren’t smiling.
The battle hadn’t started out this disadvantageous.
But the boy soldiers swarming from all sides… Once they realized these emotionless, reasonless children were brainwashed troops, it had come to this.
- I’ll handle them. You all subdue these kids and get them somewhere safe.
All the Special Task Force mages were subduing the boy soldiers and binding them with ropes.
No need to explain, but in special missions, subduing was always harder than killing.
They’d captured about two hundred boy soldiers, with at least three hundred more to go.
“I just can’t understand it. Why waste such immense power like that?”
“Tell me about it.”
Priest Slayer Lucia recited a holy verse to heal Somali’s wounds as she replied.
“The gods created the weak for the strong. To let them know the joy of ruling like the gods. But tied up like that──”
“──Sorry, but that interpretation’s backwards.”
Doran Slade assumed the Seojin-ryu stance once more as he retorted.
“The gods created the strong for the weak.”
The Slade family, like Chaihak Academy, were Ging Type mages who enhanced their bodies to fight.
But unlike Chaihak’s strike-focused techniques, the Slades specialized in jujutsu.
Seojin-ryu circulated mana smoothly through the body, forcibly invoking centrifugal force in every motion to wield the power of the Eight Trigrams.
“Don’t spout nonsense when you know nothing about theology!”
Lucia swung her wooden coffin hammer and charged.
He lightly rotated his ankle, bending his knee. Then inhaled, twisting his wrist.
The sequence absorbed the blow to his right arm and unleashed it reversely from his left hand in a massive flow.
“───!”
The moment Doran pressed his left hand to Lucia’s solar plexus, the flow disrupted the laws of physics.
As Lucia flew back rolling across the ground, Somali leaped sky-high and dove straight down.
The earth shattered, shockwaves erupted.
In that chaotic instant, four limbs clashed and tangled in dozens of exchanges.
A close-quarters battle between masters of body arts.
“You’re really something!”
To ordinary ears, only the crisp crackle of mana sparking like lightning could be heard.
“Wanna become a Mage Slayer? I’ll recommend you myself!”
To ordinary eyes, only two whirlwinds spinning wildly were visible.
The ground was gouged unevenly by the maelstrom, sending leaves and fruits from the dense forest flying like falling foliage.
“Seojin-ryu ultimate technique.”
Doran drew a deep breath in an instant shorter than a blink.
“On-gyeong.”
He concentrated all the blows he’d taken into a single point, forcibly twisting and warping the ki flow to gather it at his fingertips.
In that moment, a script like crystallized ice bloomed dazzlingly from beneath his feet.
“Emit.”
Doran’s thrust into Somali’s solar plexus and her kick to his jaw landed almost simultaneously.
The reversed force warped and distorted Somali’s mana heart concentrated at her own heart, exploding within the next instant.
At the same time, Doran flew backward from the fierce blow, his jawbone shattering. His neck vertebrae seemed cracked too.
“Keuk…….”
Agony dyed his vision bright yellow.
He tumbled across the ground like a ball, crashing hard into a tangerine tree and vomiting blood.
A shadow lunged at him then… But the moment he sensed his end, over a dozen wind blades sliced through, blasting the shadow away.
‘That guy…….’
His hair color had changed, but those distinctive features and mana were unmistakable.
He was a person of interest.
Just as battered as Doran, Valencidis appeared, supported by Cora.
“Regenerating right away, as expected…….”
Earlier, the Demon Slayer’s sudden ambush had saved Cora, but he’d nearly been crushed by debris. Pipi’s help had barely pulled him from the brink of death.
“Truly enviable. Some of us have to chant healing spells one by one.”
Wary of Milea regenerating her severed leg in an instant from the wind blades, Valencidis flung healing runes toward Doran.
It wouldn’t heal the severe wounds instantly, but he could feel his broken jaw mending enough to speak.
The moment the Special Task Force officers recognized Valencidis a beat late and moved to engage──
“I’m in your debt to a stranger.”
Doran dragged his feet over, positioning back-to-back with Valencidis.
“I’d like to grab coffee sometime and have a serious talk.”
Was Doran blind? Or had his memory failed?
No, his mages couldn’t imagine their captain saying such words without meaning.
Focus on the enemies in front of us now? But wasn’t Valencidis likely with them?
‘I know from classified intel that Valencidis made a major contribution in the last incident.’
He’d question him deeply later about Lunen and Tirintid, but now wasn’t the time.
“Tea’s more my taste than coffee.”
“I prefer coffee.”
The gazes of the two black-hearted men met briefly in the air, then they assumed combat stances.
If they could focus solely on defense, even against those monsters, a one-vs-two might be feasible.
The Priest Slayer knelt, clutching the Fighter Slayer who’d collapsed spewing blood from all seven orifices from her burst heart, sobbing bitterly.
“Ahh, how could this be…… How could you allow such tragedy, how…….”
Huh?
He’d only blinked for a moment.
Yet a heavily armored warrior, unseen until now, had placed a hand on Lucia’s head.
“Big brother…….”
“Jeez, why pray? The gods never answer anyone’s prayers.”
A chill froze their spines.
An inexplicable terror clawed at the two mages’ hearts.
“Making our Lucia cry. Guess I’ll have to punish you myself before the dragon hunt.”
With those words, the world plunged into gloomy silence.
Crackle—the sound of electricity, and the Dragon Slayer’s form vanished from sight.
Then the absolute pressure from behind… They couldn’t even turn, their hearts pounding madly.
‘Dead.’
He could sense it from that instant footwork in full armor.
The foe before them was on another level. Different from the other Slayers—and from themselves.
‘This is the end…….’
In his hyper-focused nerves, he felt a massive, deformed spear shatter his ribs and pulverize his guts.
This sudden, eerie emptiness enveloping him… was this death?
As the world in Doran’s eyes turned monochrome and everything seemed to end──
Zing.
With that clear sound, echoes of childhood rippled in his ear.
- Doran, do you know about Lin?
The story his frail sister, who passed at twenty, had told her eight-year-old brother as her last.
- The archmage who wandered with an old bamboo hat and stone staff.
- They say he’d appear wherever people needed him, with the staff’s zing and all.
- So at some point, that sound became like the sound of hope.
Memories flooding at death’s door?
No, he wasn’t dead.
No trace remained of the savage death that had just assailed him.
- A mage who spread hope to a world of despair—pretty cool, right?
But it hadn’t been mere illusion.
If that sound hadn’t rung.
More precisely, if he hadn’t appeared with it, it would have been reality. The killing intent had been that intense.
Roooar!
Then a fiercely rising pillar of fire, and the figure that emerged drew their gazes like magnets. Impossible to look away.
Old bamboo hat and stone staff……
For an instant, elation surged as if the hero from his sister’s childhood tales had materialized in reality.
“Your opponent is me, Dragon Slayer.”
“Me, me, me.”
Snapping from the hallucination, Doran’s eyes widened.
A boy he’d never seen, yet familiar. He instantly recognized the red-haired youth.
Distinct features, the blood-red eyes unique to the Ludwig family.
‘Yes, Lin is dead. Long ago.’
And yet, even so.
He instantly understood the thrill those helped by Lin three hundred years ago must have felt.
His sister’s voice seemed to echo, the one who’d placed a top hat on his head and told him to become a mage like Lin.
“I’ll settle this for you.”