- Whirik! Whirik!
As the bastard swung his arms this way and that, space slowly began to warp.
- Whik!
He was like a maestro.
Conducting space, controlling the rise and fall of its changes.
- Tatatatatat!
‘Fuck.’
For now, I decided to move my body first and think later in this space full of variables.
Whatever the opponent was planning, if I kept moving, I could interfere with him carrying it out.
With that thought, I ran without stopping.
A little more time passed like that,
and when nothing much happened, this time I ran toward him.
Because if I just kept running sideways like this, there would be no end to it.
But,
the distance between him and me refused to close.
In the middle of that,
- Shwoong!
The bastard lifted several pillars, created a circular warp hole in midair, and threw the pillars into it.
Then warp holes appeared around me.
The pillars he had thrown came crashing down toward me.
“Fucking hell!”
At first, I tried to dodge them with movement alone.
Since I’d gone through so much trouble to create Sword Aura, it felt wasteful—and a loss—to use it on obstacles like these instead of on him.
But,
- Kwakwang! Kwang! Kwakwang!
I had no choice but to cut down a few pillars I couldn’t avoid in time with my sword.
“Phew…”
After cutting down the pillars, I quickly moved my eyes to check the state of my aura.
- Kuoooo…
Fortunately, an amount of aura that could still be called Sword Aura remained gathered on my sword.
But,
just because it was fine now didn’t mean there was any guarantee it would stay fine later.
‘I have to keep deflecting to a minimum. Otherwise, there’s no chance of winning.’
I could increase my odds of victory, however slightly, by maintaining my Sword Aura as long as possible.
The Apostle could keep me in check from afar with a few little clicks.
At a glance, the situation was flowing favorably for him.
‘Well, I expected this.’
My aura was being consumed in real time without cutting through anything.
Since it had already been shaved away anyway, I gave up trying to maintain the Sword Aura at its original output.
I continued injecting only enough aura for it to still be called Sword Aura.
And,
- Kurrrr…!
I redistributed the aura I managed to secure thanks to that back into my legs, then charged at him at a speed far greater than before.
‘With this…!’
Feeling the clear difference, I thought I had finally seen through that bastard’s technique.
However,
after a few minutes passed like that, I realized this situation wasn’t a problem that could be solved by simply running faster.
“Hahahahaha! The sight of you running without being able to leave the same spot is as if you’re floundering, trapped within your own fate! Is it not truly laughable? The sight of you struggling this desperately for a meaningless future!”
‘What the fuck is he talking about?’
I thought inwardly as I looked at the bastard mocking me.
Did he really think such cheap provocation would work?
From my point of view, he was the one who was laughable.
It seemed his goal was to mock his opponent like this and shake their mental state,
‘But your intentions are so obvious it doesn’t work, you bastard.’
No matter what he said, I paid it no mind and focused only on how to break out of this situation.
‘If I search through my memories carefully, I feel like it should be there.’
Amid the waves of memories flooding in, I focused on replaying scenes of the old man fighting Tespatiium.
‘Not this… not this either…’
Then,
‘Huh?’
By chance, looking down at my own legs helped me recover the relevant memory.
Ever since I concentrated a little more aura into my legs, flames had briefly flared up each time I stepped.
And each time, I saw the aura push back the demonic energy and prevent the expansion of space.
Aura was a world.
Resisting demonic energy with my world.
‘That’s it.’
I stopped walking and stood in place.
“Are you… giving up? More boring than I expected.”
Seeing me like that, the bastard’s expression gradually cooled, and he lowered the arm he had been holding up.
“I am quite disappointed in you. To think a member of the Hero’s party would break so easily. Your existence would only have value when you charged at me with more hope, only to be broken by my hand.”
Listening to him mutter and drone on by himself in front of me for quite a while, I became even more certain of what I was about to do.
“Hey.”
“You are tru—… Pardon?”
I stopped the bastard, who had been walking slowly left and right with his hands clasped behind his back, rambling on like some professor.
“You’re actually a pushover, aren’t you?”
At my question, the bastard asked me with a calm expression, as if I had presented an incorrect but interesting idea.
“And why do you think that?”
Why else?
Because even though you were standing still, you didn’t attack and just kept running your mouth.
Maybe it was just a whim.
Maybe he had left me alive to mock me before killing me.
It was true that such doubts crossed my mind for a moment.
But the basis for my judgment was—
‘Let’s confirm that from now on.’
I was throwing the dice now.
“I don’t think I have any reason to answer you.”
- Kwadeudeuk!
I gripped the sword maintaining the Sword Aura in a reverse hold and drove it into the ground beneath my feet.
Then,
- Hwarurururu…!
The floor was covered in my flames, and they gradually began to expand their domain.
- Kwakwakwak!
In that state, I tilted my sword slightly forward.
So the power of my Sword Aura could concentrate in one direction and reach all the way to him.
- Hwareuk!
Fortunately, my intent was carried out exactly.
“Ghk!”
The flames quickly clung to him and began suppressing his twisting of space-time.
The sight of the Apostle floundering as he tried to brush away the flames.
‘Now!’
Sensing that I had created an opportunity, I immediately ran toward him.
- Tatatat!
And,
- Hwareureuk!
I wrapped sword energy around my blade and cut off his left arm without hesitation.
‘It worked!’
Fortunately, my gamble was a success.
The problem was that I had underestimated myself too much because he was at the Master-class realm.
On top of that, the fact that my opponent handled the concept of space-time had made me far too passive.
And the evidence had actually been clearer than I’d thought.
The Tespatiium in my memories was different from this bastard.
Unlike him, Tespatiium at least held something called a sword.
In other words,
though he couldn’t swing his sword because the old man was his opponent, it meant he had the physical conditions necessary to wield one.
But the bastard in front of me was completely barehanded.
Being barehanded meant he didn’t really use weapons, and that was a factor that increased the possibility he hadn’t trained his body.
And demonkin weren’t born demons, but humans.
Then where had that power come from?
Could a human body and mind truly handle the concept of space-time?
Could he have a perfect understanding of it?
The answer was—
impossible.
Therefore, he was not strong in the true sense.
His power and realm were not things he had seized for himself.
He had received power from a demon archduke and been forcibly made an Apostle, merely rising to the Master realm through another’s strength.
For a bastard like that, perhaps it was only natural that he couldn’t defeat me, someone who had slowly climbed up from the bottom.
As long as his ability was broken through like now, killing him wasn’t that difficult.
- Tududuk.
Standing behind the bastard, who had lost his left arm and fallen to his knees, I lightly swung my sword once to shake off the blood clinging to it.
“Guys who lack skill are always the ones who talk the most. Most of the strong people I’ve met so far didn’t talk much.”
“Is… that so…”
Hm?
Why is he suddenly acting like this?
“Are you not going to burst out laughing anymore? Or did getting your left arm cut off clear your head a little?”
“No.”
- Whik!
Maybe he was trying to launch a surprise attack, because he stretched his right arm toward me.
But,
- Seogeok.
- Tuk.
Before he could do whatever he was trying to do, I cut off his right arm.
“This is why you shouldn’t have conversations with things tainted by the demonic.”
And without drawing my sword back, I immediately—
- Seuk.
cut through his neck as it was.
“…”
I quietly looked at the bastard’s severed head.
‘In the end… this fight wasn’t really that difficult a trial either.’
I could consider this situation fortunate in its own way,
but if things were like this, I couldn’t grow.
Experience was absorbed only by overcoming adversity and trials.
‘What a shame. Well, can’t be helped.’
I’ve said this before, but I’m not someone with a death wish.
So I’d rather just live and hope hardships came naturally, not go around looking for them and picking fights everywhere.
‘Tsk…’
As I stood still in front of the Apostle’s corpse and thought, a sudden sense of emptiness hit me.
It was a little awkward.
Like I said above, it was less of a big deal than I’d expected.
No, the reason I was a little tense at first was just because the atmosphere was kind of fucked up.
It wasn’t that I was scared or made a hasty judgment. Seriously.
The inside had a gloomy atmosphere, didn’t it? There were pillars standing on both sides, and corpses piled on the altar…
‘Huh?’
Eh?
“What the hell, I’m sure there was something here… Hm??”
What the hell.
“Where did this bastard go too?”
Suddenly, the deceased piled atop the altar and the Apostle’s corpse collapsed behind me—both of them disappeared at the same time.
“Uh…”
Fuck?
The atmosphere suddenly got scary as hell.
“C-Captain William?”
For no reason, I called out to William.
I felt like I’d be a little relieved if even that person appeared beside me.
But no matter how much I called, the old man did not show himself before me.
“Willia—!”
I was about to call him once more.
At that moment.
“Hmm…”
“Fucking hell, aaagh!”
William had suddenly appeared in front of the altar and was examining something.
Fuck, I seriously thought my heart was going to drop.
On top of everything else, his clothes and everything were all white, so seeing him in a place like this made him look almost like a ghost.
‘But is this okay…?’
Since I had cursed in front of an elder much older than me, I was sure William would scold me a little.
But,
he only continued looking around the altar and checking something.
“I cannot tell…”
After looking around for quite a while, William ultimately concluded that he didn’t know.
“We should return to the Holy Kingdom quickly, just in case. I have a bad feeling.”
He hadn’t discovered anything certain, but he still maintained a serious expression.
As if he could not be sure, yet had more than enough reason to suspect.
“……”
Normally, I might have wondered what that old man was doing and looked at him a little pathetically,
but though I didn’t know the details of the situation,
I, too, could feel from his expression and movements that something serious was unfolding.
It seemed an ominous wind was about to blow toward the future ahead.