Hard Carried by My Sword

Chapter 258

Rodlin’s sudden transfer of ownership caused brief confusion, but the group quickly calmed down and returned to their seats around the round table. The only difference was the small girl standing quietly behind Leon, but after everything they’d witnessed between Albion and El-Cid, everyone simply accepted it.

In its own strange way, things had wrapped up neatly. Albion’s anger had subsided, Leon and his companions had formally passed the “trial,” and he had earned the right to stand in a dragon’s presence as someone acknowledged. They couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.

“Your Eminence,” Leon called Irexana quietly.

“Yes, Hero?” Irexana sat with the same calm expression as always, though his glance drifted now and then toward Rodlin.

Leon leaned in and said, “I... never told you, did I? About Rodrick’s soul being inside the sword...?”

“No, you didn’t.” Irexana smiled and shook his head. “But it wasn’t hard to guess. Didn’t I tell you before? That the martial lineage of the Holy King Rodrick has long vanished?”

“Ah, right.”

“And yet you mastered one of his signature arts, the Grand Chariot, without losing your way even once, and even raised its realm. The only reasonable assumption was that you had a mentor... or a guide.”

Leon finally nodded in understanding. The path of martial arts was deep. Unless one were a once-in-a-millennium prodigy like Rodrick, they reached mastery only by climbing step by step, through countless mistakes.

One wrong step could set someone back ten. A path that looked like a shortcut could turn out to be a cliff. That was why warriors coveted secret manuals and the guidance of masters.

—Hmph. It’s because I’m good at teaching, obviously.

Ignoring El-Cid’s obnoxious voice, Leon admitted Irexana was right. Even advanced Expert-level techniques demanded near-impossible precision. Mastery required not only controlling one’s muscles and joints but the internal flow of Aura itself. Observing such things with the naked eye was almost impossible.

Even reading a founder’s secret manual often meant inheriting only a fraction of its true essence. For something as profound as the Grand Chariot, even more so.

“Hero. You know the saying ‘Seeing once is better than hearing a thousand times,’ yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then there are two lines that follow. Do you know them?”

“No... I can’t say that I do.”

“The world only remembers the first line,” Irexana said with a knowing smile. “But the rest goes: ‘Seeing a thousand times is not as good as thinking once, and thinking a thousand times is not as good as doing once.’”

The first line alone might sound like a warning against hearsay. But the complete proverb was a lesson about information itself: direct experience was faster, sharper, and more accurate than anything indirect. It applied perfectly to martial arts.

“Even if you obtained the manual to Grand Chariot,” Irexana continued, “whether you properly mastered it would be a separate matter. You likely wouldn’t even be very efficient. Yet in only a few years, not only did you learn it, you can even use the chained secret techniques with its forms.”

Then, he concluded firmly, “So I deduced you must have learned through a method far more efficient than hearing, watching, thinking, or acting.”

Irexana’s gaze dropped naturally to Leon’s sword hilt. “And whenever we spoke, even for a few seconds—or less—I could feel your consciousness drift toward the sword. At first, I thought it was just my imagination, but if you were truly speaking with the sword, then everything made sense.”

His reasoning was sound, though the greater marvel was that he could sense such faint shifts at all. Then, Leon turned to Elahan.

“And you?” he asked.

“The Goddess told me!” she said proudly.

“Seriously...?”

“Yes! She warned me not to take after his rude way of speaking. She said His Majesty’s speech is... um... unbecoming.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a legit message from the Goddess herself.”

As Leon muttered in agreement, El-Cid vibrated furiously in his sheath.

“Hey! Tell that ditz goddess to show her face right now! Talking behind my back?! She’d have been Demon King food three hundred years ago if not for me, that ungrateful...!”

“Woah! It really is the Holy King!” Elahan bowed excitedly. “Hello! I’m Elahan, the eighth Saintess!”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood for pleasantries?! And no need for greetings, anyway. I’ve been watching for a while. Just keep looking after my disciple like you’ve been doing.”

“Already planned to,” Elahan answered with a proud smile.

“And you,” El-Cid then turned his attention to Karen, who froze like a startled rabbit. “You reached that level with just one manual? I knew the Shadow attribute would complement it well, but I didn’t expect you to go that far.”

“Um... You mean the Twilight Waltz of the Duskgoom? Y-Your Highness...?” Karen asked.

“Yeah. I wrote it while trying to organize the principles of shifting between truth and illusion. Didn’t use it often. The Sun attribute and that art mix like oil and water.”

Unlike shadows, which flickered between presence and absence, the sun was a fixed symbol of life, high above the world—no overlap with illusion.

Rodrick, who had approached the peak of martial arts, could force the technique to work, but he had far more efficient options. Still, Karen wore the art like a glove. It stirred the ambitions of the creator of the art.

“I don’t plan on taking more disciples... but maybe I can poke around for fun,” El-Cid murmured, and Karen’s ears perked up instantly.

“Y-you mean...?”

“Try learning from me. If you want. If not, forget it.”

“I-I would be honored for the rest of my life!”

Afraid he might retract the offer, she immediately bowed deeply. Many would give their lives for a single lesson from the Holy King.

At that moment, the other voice spoke. It was Albion, having listened quietly the whole time.

“Are you all done with your pointless chatter? You didn’t come here to gossip, did you? My time is precious. Let’s move on to the main point.”

“Man, just hearing the way she speaks makes me want to...” El-Cid said.

“I wasn’t speaking to you.”

Leon quickly clamped his hand around the sword hilt to shut El-Cid up. “Understood. Albion, the reason we came to find you and entered Ground Zero was to...”

***

When Leon finished telling the story of the Archbishop of the Evil Order, Albion’s expression twisted as if she’d just heard something foul. It was only natural.

Dragons were the symbol of harmony and guardianship. If what Leon had just said were true, then one of her kind had fallen so low as to create something like the Evil Order.

She had rarely interacted with mortals, but the Order’s depravity was infamous even among dragons. Every tale was grotesque enough to stain the ears.

And now she was hearing that their founder was a dragon who actively sought the world’s end? Had the words not come from Rodrick and his successor, she would have dismissed them outright and struck Leon where he sat.

“How vile. To think the existence of another of my kin would only serve to dirty my ears. I was better off alone, fretting over a promise with no end in sight,” Albion said as she stared blankly into the air. “I can guess, more or less, who it is. When our kin departed for the Upper Heavens, there was one who never showed up. I thought he had left earlier... or simply departed after.”

“Did you know him personally?” Leon asked.

“Hardly. Britra is an ancient dragon born more than a thousand years before me. In dragon society, age is status. That gap is astronomical.”

Britra. Leon mouthed the name.

The Archbishop of the Evil Order. The root of all calamities. The monster who appointed those Nine Hell Bishops and turned the continent into a bloodbath. And now, for the first time in three hundred years, his true nature had finally come to light.

Albion released a slow, weary breath and said, “If you came here hoping I would fight him for you, I cannot grant that wish.”

“Pardon...?”

“As I said, my body is no longer whole. Escaping the Corruption was a blessing, but the wounds I took then—my wings, my horn, the damage to my heart—none of it has healed.”

The reason she fell into hibernation so frequently, far more often than the three, four times that other dragon do, was that very damage. Her Dragon Heart’s output had fallen to less than half, and the loss of her wings crippled her high-speed flight.

With one horn gone, which was the organ that concentrated mana, her recovery and spellcasting speed suffered terribly. Compared to her state before Corruption, her combat power had fallen to less than thirty percent.

“Worse still, he’s likely far stronger now than he was three hundred years ago, when he was still a pure dragon.”

“Why would that be?”

“It happened when Rodrick slew the Demon King.”

Few outsiders knew the truth: the Demon King was not some creature born from another dimension nor a construct of forbidden laws.

He was a being born within this world without violating its natural order, a child of fate itself. Which meant he was free from causality, unbound by the world’s constraints, wielding powers surpassing even the transcendent races. He was the accumulation of centuries—perhaps millennia—of filth, distortion, and impurity given form.

“Only the Holy Sword, which returns all things to their rightful order, could kill him. That’s why the Goddess bestowed it upon Rodrick, strong as he already was,” Albion said, clicking her tongue. “But it was one-sided. The Demon King was torn apart like a mere goblin. It couldn’t even beg for his life. Rodrick pummeled him like a training dummy until he died.”

“Ah... I see.”

“That wasn’t the problem. The problem was his corpse.”

The Demon King’s remains carried the pure essence of the authority called Corruption, which was able to taint anything and twist it into an enemy of the world. Any wound directly cut or crushed by Rodrick left no fragment behind, but pieces blasted off by indirect shock scattered across the battlefield.

The dragons were summoned to dispose of them, and for decades, they dug up the land to recover every trace. And Britra also took part in that task.

“No way...!” Elahan covered her mouth, horrified by where this was going.

Her dread was justified. Albion did not hesitate to confirm her concern.

“Most likely, he was tainted by Corruption while gathering the Demon King’s remains. That would explain how a dragon could ignore causality itself, command the Evil Order, and even oppose the Goddess.”

“He kept his mind after being Corrupted?”

“Either he was already deeply steeped in madness... or his goals aligned perfectly with Corruption. It’s one of the two.” She shrugged and added, “Either way, he’s insane.”

Leon’s party fell silent, shaken to their core. Albion—stronger alone than all of them combined—claimed that defeating him was impossible. And Britra now carried the Demon King’s authority on top of his own power. A chill ran down Leon’s spine.

“Albion,” Irexana said quietly, “can you predict what this Britra will do next?”

“Hmm.” Albion closed her eyes, then opened them sharply. “If the news you brought is true, then every ‘monster zone’ that appeared across the continent was his work. He likely used the authority of Attunement to distort unstable dimensions. Imprisoning the Titans in that mountain range, creating Mirror Canyon to hinder Jugend’s progress... all of it.”

She paused before continuing, “Thus, he will spread these ‘zones’ again. Unlike the Demon King, he has no army, and the Evil Order lacks the strength to conquer the world. He’ll aim for chaos instead.”

At that moment, a metallic vibration rang from somewhere nearby. Leon’s group flinched, unsure of its meaning, but Irexana and Albion both stiffened.

Irexana approached the source. “I’ll answer it.”

He then picked up the metal stick with a click and then spoke into it as if speaking to himself. After a brief, hushed conversation, he returned with a grave expression.

“That was a royal emergency notice from Jugend. Thirty minutes ago, the boundary of the Mirror Canyon collapsed. Monsters are spilling out into the surrounding regions.”

“Your Eminence! That means...”

“Yes. Just as Albion predicted... Britra the Evil Dragon has begun to move.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Albion. The silence in Ground Zero grew heavier, pressing the air tight.

Leon clenched the Holy Sword until his knuckles turned white. The strongest enemy he had ever encountered—stronger than every foe until now combined—had finally shown his hand.

Britra the Evil Dragon. That was the destroyer of worlds, and the enemy that he would soon have to face.