Roman's Sword Art-Chapter 74

4. The Mountain of Extremes>“Hmm…”

The moment Sian entered the interior, he let out a low groan at the strange energy pressing down on his entire body. He had heard about it, but he had not expected it to be this severe.

The energy emanating from the Mountain of Extremes did not feel as though it posed a mortal danger, but it was certainly a burden even for him, an Alpha. The internal coefficients throughout his body were fluctuating wildly, and he had to devote considerable attention just to enduring it. He could actually feel his combat power being gnawed away bit by bit.

At the same time, he understood how the Lukra had managed to hold out between the Drakun and the Harijan. If it was assumed that they could preserve their full combat power inside here, then by fighting with this place at their backs, they could very well stand against those two.

Even he, right now, had a significant portion of his combat power shaved away. Since he had been told it grew worse the closer one got to the summit, it felt only natural that the Drakun and Harijan could not easily enter this place. Conversely, it also meant that the Lukra could not go outside either.

“Anyway… what do I do now…”

The best option would be to pass through this place in secret, cross over to the Don-Nasian Continent, find Ragaofe, politely ask him to send him back to his original continent, and then resume his training. From the beasts’ perspective, they would think he had fled here, so they would not go searching the Lasian Continent again.

The problem was whether things would really go that way. They had helped Ragaofe in order to demand that he fulfill his duty as an ally. It was doubtful whether they would let him out so readily. ‘Ugh… I don’t know. Let’s just face it first.’ The powerful auras felt from the summit were descending one after another toward where he stood. They had probably sensed the clash among Dragona and the other beasts and were coming down.

Seeing their strength, the idea of resolving this by force vanished instantly. In particular, three among them seemed to be on the same level as Dragona, who was trading blows outside, or only slightly below. If he took into account the penalty of being in this place as well, then if he tried to struggle against them, he would be ground down in an instant. ‘Well… still, they say we’re allies, so what could they do?’ Sian relaxed his mind and waited for them to descend.

Among those who came down, one dressed in garments overflowing with dignity abruptly sent a spiritual wave toward Sian conveying admiration. “……?”

Sian narrowed his eyes and looked at the Lukra, wondering what on earth this fellow was talking about. “Excuse me… what do you mean by the easy path?”

When Sian asked with a look of confusion, the Lukra wore expressions as though they could not understand him. Then, giving Sian a reassuring look, the Lukra placed a hand on Sian’s head. ‘Ah… so they can’t understand spoken words.’ Thinking about it, he had understood them because they spoke through spiritual waves; there was no reason they would understand him if he spoke in the Kingdom language. Sian once again recalled the words he had just said in his mind. At that, the Lukra spoke with a surprised expression. <…

What do you mean, convey?> Then the Lukra spoke with an expression of incomprehension. <…….> <…….> <…….> ‘…….’ Sian felt so dizzy he could hardly tell where things had gone wrong, or who was responsible for this whole situation. ‘Ragaofe… Kukutaran… Dragona… Liona… Krona… Lukra… urgh…….’ Sian, who had been making a gesture as though he might clutch the back of his neck at any moment, suddenly remembered what the duty of the alliance that Ragaofe had meant to convey might be and hurriedly asked. At that, the Lukra spoke with curious expressions. Seeing the Lukra looking at him as though asking what kind of idiotic thing he had done, Sian put on a wounded expression. <…….> The flashes of light flickering outside had already subsided. Perhaps they had simply been heated by the sudden situation and had no intention of fighting to the death, for they seemed to be withdrawing before the damage to both sides grew too great. Or they might have been wary of the Lukra watching them from within the Mountain of Extremes.

Once the commotion stopped, the Lukra lowered their guard a little and led Sian upward, toward a somewhat higher part of the summit.

The summit of the Mountain of Extremes was under a pressure that could not be compared to the lower slopes. That pressure, which seemed intent on wringing out his internal coefficients, was of course not enough to threaten Sian, but it was significantly reducing his combat power itself. It seemed the strength he could exert on this summit would not even reach half of what he could use on the ground.

At the summit was a huge pit sunken in like a crater, and below it, a single golden-glowing crystal slightly larger than a person was embedded.

It was an exceedingly beautiful and enormous crystal, so Sian grew curious and asked the Lukra before him. At that, the Lukra smiled and answered. If there were priests, there was no reason there would not be a sacred object. As Sian nodded at those words, the Lukra continued. Since that felt extremely uncomfortable, Sian refused and told them everything he had heard from Ragaofe. At that, the Lukra nodded and answered.

After hearing the whole story, the Lukra nodded and replied. Having more or less guessed as much from the way he had been speaking, Sian accepted the words without surprise. <…….> At those words, Sian nodded. If they were Alphas of the Lukra, capable of exerting their full combat power inside this Sacred Ground, then they could gain the upper hand against those two as much as they liked.

When Sian showed that he understood, the priest continued with a grave expression. At that, the Lukra pointed far away, toward the sky outside the Sacred Ground. Seeing the Lukra priest point at the sky, Sian spoke with a puzzled expression. <…

A barrier? Do you mean the barrier made with Kikyullus?> At that, the priest shook his head and said. And the Lukra priest pointed with his hand to the countless clouds wandering aimlessly across the sky. <…….> When Sian looked as though he did not understand, the Lukra priest began to explain further. And he continued the story.☆ ☆ ☆Thousands of years ago, when the conflict between the Lukra and the Drakun was at its fiercest.

Aksarai was suffering from quite a headache.

The reason was the Lukra, who would flee into their Sacred Ground whenever things went badly. Even though the Drakun could fly, it did not provide any great help to their combat power, so for Aksarai, it was a major concern. After all, once one reached the level of an Alpha, one could attack even targets dozens of kilometers away. And if, by mistake, they entered that place, even an advantageous situation was often overturned in an instant.

As Aksarai watched the Lukra hide inside whenever they pleased and pour out attacks, he suddenly thought there was no reason they could not do what those fellows were doing. The sky could not become a home ground. Therefore, they had to create a home ground that could grant an advantage as powerful as those fellows’ Sacred Ground.

But there was no room to build something entirely new from scratch. The Lukra would never stand by and watch such a thing be made. Aksarai was powerful, but Gran-La was no less powerful. He would certainly come out, wreak havoc, smash it apart, and then flee back into the Sacred Ground.

In the midst of that, while flying, Aksarai looked at the clouds beneath his feet and thought of a good idea.

To be precise, he saw the clouds mixed with the dense smoke emitted by Unkara, the monstrous beasts that buried themselves underground beneath a colossal cloud mountain far away beyond the peninsula in the northeastern part of the continent.

Those species lived beneath the island, devoured the lava under the earth, and possessed a peculiar ability to spew smoke that was similar to clouds while also reacting to supernatural power with extremely high density. That smoke did not easily disperse, but merged with the clouds and drifted through the skies above the continent. In fact, the skies where the Drakun lived were densely enveloped in such clouds, and that smoke served to help the Drakun manifest their supernatural abilities more easily.

Since the place where the Unkara lived happened to be extremely far from the Lukra’s Sacred Ground, Aksarai had no need to worry about interference. There, he mobilized the full extent of his power and used the clouds mixed with Unkara smoke to create an unprecedented barrier.

A barrier created by Aksarai, who possessed authority nearly equal to that of a god, using that authority solely to suppress their enemy race, the Lukra.

That was the cloud barrier currently enveloping the entire continent except for the sky above the Sacred Ground: .

In truth, the Unkara species were not on the Drakun’s side. Rather, they were closer to neutral, and they hated anyone intruding into their territory to an extreme degree, attacking fiercely if anyone invaded the underground of their mountain. On top of that, their tempers were so vile that if they seemed likely to lose, they would self-destruct without hesitation.

Aksarai, who needed them alive, came up with a good idea. After all, what he needed was not those creatures themselves, but the smoke they produced.

Aksarai poured his authority around the cloud island where they lived and arranged it so that his authority would seep into the smoke rising from beneath it. Unable to leave his post for long, Aksarai hurried back and calmly waited for the barrier to spread.

At first, the Lukra did not notice the existence of this barrier. It had been created in a region so far away, and its rate of expansion was slow. If it had covered the continent in an instant, the Lukra would have taken some measure against it.

But Akunkal—the cloud barrier created from the smoke emitted by the Unkara and combined with Aksarai’s authority—slowly, layer by layer, began to cover the skies of the continent.

Within Akunkal, the abilities of the Drakun increased dramatically, and the Lukra were bound.

Beneath Akunkal, the movements of the Lukra could be read no matter where they went.

Akunkal bound all beings except the Drakun below, preventing them from rising.

There were several other functions as well, and several drawbacks, but the barrier Aksarai had constructed with truly terrifying efficiency mercilessly narrowed the Lukra’s range of movement. The authority of Aksarai, who had created such an absurd barrier, was enough to leave one speechless, but by then it was already too late.

By the time the Lukra noticed, every part of the continent except Sinji had already been covered by Akunkal. At least it was a tremendous blessing that the accursed barrier could not invade Sinji itself.

From then on, the Lukra, who had been pushing the Drakun outward, gradually began to be pushed back into Sinji, and the current standoff began to take shape.

Even after Aksarai, Broxian, and Granla destroyed one another, this strange standoff did not end. Even though Aksarai had died, Akunkal, the barrier he had set up, did not disappear.

But now, that strange standoff was about to end. Because Akunkal was pushing back the authority of Sinji and pressing inward.

☆ ☆ ☆

As he spoke, the priest pointed at the sky. Looking up, Sian saw that the clouds outside and the clouds inside were completely different in feeling, divided by the boundary of the Extreme Mountain.

There were clouds above the Extreme Mountain as well, but they felt far clearer and more transparent. Those were probably clouds without the barrier—the clouds that had covered the entire continent thousands of years ago.

By contrast, the clouds outside the Extreme Mountain were the sort he had often seen back when he was on the Rasian Continent. At the time, those were the clouds he had always grown up seeing, so he had never thought them strange, but seeing them divided by such a clear boundary made the difference unmistakable.

‘So it wasn’t that people simply couldn’t fly into the sky by nature….’

At this point, Sian was beginning to get a sense of just how incredible the likes of Aksarai and Granla had been in the past. To think that they could split a continent in half while fighting, and when it seemed they were being pushed back, cover the entire sky with their own authority.

‘I’m sick of it… truly sick of it….’

He felt he could understand, to some extent, why the Lukra feared Aksarai’s resurrection. And by this point, Sian was also beginning to guess what these people wanted to ask of him.

At that, the Lukra priest nodded.

Sian asked back with a look of incomprehension.

The Lukra priest shook his head and said,

At those words, Sian remembered what Ragaofe had told him in the past.

‘So that’s what he meant when he said he went out with blood in his body… and got caught.’

He had not known that fact and had wandered all over the continent in the past, yet they had never come to capture and kill him. It seemed his blood was not Lukra blood. It merely possessed that characteristic.

In any case, after putting the story together, Sian reached a simple conclusion.

They had clearly said that a certain qualification was needed to summon him. That meant one had to be strong to some extent in order to carry out this mission. When Sian asked with a curious expression, the priest suddenly looked off into the distance.

Sian clutched his head, his mind aching.

At that, the Lukra priest laughed as though amused.

‘…Damn it.’

Sian realized there was no way to avoid this.

Sian quietly organized his thoughts.

He knew the location. As he had listened, it had felt familiar. It was probably that strange mountain where Duke Lorval and he had exchanged blows. Back then, he had found it curious that the dense smoke made it difficult to sense anything, and it seemed that smoke had been emitted by the race called the Unkara.

The area they had destroyed had been quite large, but compared to the size of that enormous island—or mountain—it had been no more than a drop in the bucket.

‘Hah… If I’d blown the whole thing away back then, would I not have to do this now…?’

As he thought that, Sian shook his head. If he had done something like that, he would have been caught and killed by the Alpha of the Drakun species flying toward him.

After worrying it over and arranging his thoughts, there were roughly two important matters at hand.

First, finding out how strong they were.

Second, preparing a way to finish them off and escape safely.

If he recklessly destroyed the barrier and then got caught by the enraged Drakun, that very day would become the day of his memorial rites. The Lukra said they would draw their attention, but it was best to secure an escape route no matter what.

After thinking a bit more, Sian reached a conclusion.

They said there was no time, but he could not charge in when he knew he would shatter upon impact. He had to move only when he judged there was enough chance of victory. To do that, he first needed to know how strong the enemy was.

He also decided on a method of escape after scouting. If he was going to flee, it had to be spatial movement. And Sian knew very well an expert in that field.

‘I’ll have to find Mr. Conrad or Mr. Ragaofe… But where do I find them…?’

However, after thinking a little more, he arrived at a simple conclusion. If they had sent someone to meet him, that meant they had crossed over through spatial movement. Back then, Mr. Ragaofe had said that intercontinental spatial movement was difficult unless one used a core.

Then first, he could visit, one by one, the places where Kiculus’s cores had been restored.

‘As for training… I’ll have to keep doing it as I go….’

The stronger he was, the better. Rather than go in half-prepared and get beaten to death, it would be best to prepare as much as possible and finish it all at once.

Having steeled himself, Sian moved to tell the Lukra that he would be leaving.

☆ ☆ ☆

“Achoo!”

“…What’s wrong?”

Conrad asked in puzzlement as he watched Ragaofe suddenly sneeze. Ragaofe might be frail, but he was still a superhuman. There was no way he would catch a cold.

Seeing Conrad look at him with curiosity, Ragaofe waved his hand as though to say it was nothing.

“It is nothing. But I do not know why… I have a very bad feeling.”

“Huh… What could it be?”

In the middle of repairing cores here and there, Conrad looked at Ragaofe with an expression of incomprehension, then began focusing on the core and the magic circle again.

Just then, something in Ragaofe’s arms suddenly began to flash. It was the communication artifact Ragaofe carried.

When he took it out and answered, it was Libias. Communication should not have worked from the other continent, so the fact that he had initiated contact like this meant Libias had returned to this continent.

“Mr. Libias, have you returned?”

Ragaofe nodded and conversed with him, then suddenly noticed something strange.

“But… did you come alone? What about Mr. Sian?”

At that, Libias looked off into the distance and feigned innocence.

“…….”

“…And?”

As long as the egg and the message had been delivered, he could come here. Up to that point, there was no real problem, so Ragaofe urged him to continue.

At that, Ragaofe’s expression grew serious. Libias had witnessed Duke Conrad’s power several times. There was only one person he would describe in such terms.

“It was Mr. Sian.”

“…North?”

“…Hmm…….”

Ragaofe deduced the situation in an instant. It seemed Sian had gotten entangled in something again and had to flee. There were only three beings there who could make Sian run away. Most likely, he had gotten involved with one of those three and fled to the land of the Lukra, which Mr. Sian believed to be safe.

“How truly unlucky. I even prepared an easy path for him……. In any case, I do not know whether he made it there alive. This is a problem…….”

With a grave expression, Ragaofe shook his head.