Hard Carried by My Sword

Chapter 259

Dungeon Break. That was the name people would later give this disaster.

As if they had coordinated it, demon realms all across the continent ruptured at once, vomiting out more monsters than anyone could hope to count. Even the creatures pouring out of nameless demon realms averaged somewhere between C-rank and B-rank in threat. They were on a completely different level from headcount-fodder like goblins or kobolds.

So then, what about the continent’s Four Great Demon Realms? From those hellscapes where even a single escapee could cause a catastrophe, where A-rank monsters sat at the very bottom of the food chain, just how powerful were the things now breaking loose?

The lucky few who survived got their answer. Their reactions were violent, to say the least.

“M-monsters... The monsters are going to kill us all!”

“I saw an ogre burn up like some gnat! There’s no way any knight order can beat things like that!”

“Goddess above, please, have mercy on us.”

Some thrashed in sheer terror, some fanned the crowd’s panic, while some clung to faith to soothe their fear.

None of them could even imagine a carefree tomorrow. The monsters of the Four Great Demon realms were terror made flesh, wielding power on par with natural disasters.

If humanity had simply left those four realms unattended with no defenses, this incident would have wiped several nations from the map. However, along the border of the Mirror Canyon, the artillery installed along the canyon line was ready to roar like thunder and send a rain of steel screaming outward.

“Fire!”

With the signal, thousands, perhaps over ten thousand gunports belched flame in sequence, shredding even the darkness of the night apart. The iron storm and thunderfire that even an A-rank threat could not endure for ten seconds smashed any monster that set one foot out of Mirror Canyon into pulp.

From barrel to shell, they were custom weapons that burned through magic and special metals like water. Even an S+-rank drake would be nothing but minced meat under this downpour.

The sheer destructive power made the dimensional boundary of Mirror Canyon itself waver for several seconds. It was a simple physical barrage, but with firepower that could bring down a mountain concentrated into a single area, the story changed. It was the same logic as how an Aura Blade, a power outside normal physical law, could be overwhelmed if one massively outstripped it in raw output.

The defensive line the Kingdom of Jugend had built up over hundreds of years was enough to crush even the invaders of Mirror Canyon. The Titan Mountains were the same.

Kasim the Giant King and chieftain of the Titans, shook out his fist and muttered with a bored look, “Tch, there were a few more of them today.”

At his feet lay a serpent easily a hundred meters long, its glasslike, transparent scales clearly anything but ordinary. It was a monster wrapped in an impossible hardness that even Aura Blade struggled to pierce, a substance that did not belong to this world.

By threat level, it was at least SS-rank. The serpent named Tarasque was a legendary monster from the old era that only rarely appeared then as well.

“If things like this are showing up elsewhere, it’s going to get tedious.”

Kasim had already crushed the Tarasque’s head with three punches. As if that wasn’t enough, he had also hacked its headless body into several chunks until it finally stopped rampaging.

He was a Grandmaster. Those on that level were beings that not only stepped past the realm that transcended physical law but imposed their own laws in its place. Kasim had beaten immortality and defense from another dimension to death.

Limply hopping over on one leg came Sarunga, the chief warrior who had lost his other leg.

“My king, is it over?”

Kasim answered without much interest, “Seems that’s it for today. Casualties?”

“Seven dead, twenty-four injured. Half will be back on their feet by tomorrow, but the rest will need three days of rest.”

“Feed them well and let them sleep as soon as we get back. This isn’t going to be over in a day.”

“Understood.”

Despite wounds that would have left any human unconscious, the Titans walked back toward their village on their own feet.

Kasim followed slowly behind and glanced back. His instincts as a transcendent were warning him. This sudden rupture was only the beginning, and worse upheavals were coming.

“Hurry, Brother. We don’t have much time,” he muttered.

It was unreasonable to shove this onto a human who was not even in his thirties yet, but bearing that unfairness was exactly what it meant to be a Hero. From the moment he drew the Holy Sword, there was nowhere left for Leon to retreat. As his senior, all Kasim could give his junior was words of encouragement.

“Hm. It’s morning already.”

The sun rose over the eastern horizon. Kasim walked on toward the rising light, leaving behind the sea of dismembered monsters laid bare by the dawn.

***

While the whole continent groaned under Dungeon Break, at the Holy Church’s headquarters, the Grand Church located in the Crown of the Stars, a sacred and secret rite was underway in the underground chamber.

The one presiding over the rite was Lark, the First Cardinal. Hair and beard alike were pure white, with not a single strand spared. Even after reaching such a lofty realm, his skin could no longer fully hide its wrinkles.

He had served within the Holy Church for a full century; some even whispered he had lived close to two hundred years. Kneeling devoutly before the altar with his hands pressed together, Lark recited the prayer in a grave voice.

“Do not covet. Know that all things which have a master, which are shut, which are locked, are all tests. Reckless words invite calamity, as if one’s own tongue stabbed clean through your heart. Remember that careless fingers reaching out may open the lock of one’s own destruction.”

The soft radiance of Holy Power began to grow brighter as Lark engaged in the sealing ritual. Lark unleashed his Holy Power toward the door at the exact center of the underground chamber, and it wound around it in several layers like iron chains.

“Whew, that should suffice,” he muttered.

No one else was there. Even so, Lark lifted his gaze toward the ceiling as if someone were listening and spoke.

Then, as if he had heard an answer, he let out a hearty laugh. “Hoho, you tell me to flee while I can? I could never. This sealing will need at least thirty more minutes to complete. At my age, scraping out a few more years of life would be nothing but ugly.”

With that, Lark began to undress. The mozzetta he had just been wearing was purely for maximum efficiency in using Holy Law; it was not suited for battle.

He needed a fabric that would not hinder the range of motion of his limbs, and that would hold resistance to evil powers. From the wardrobe, Lark took out a set of battle vestments and smiled wryly at how unfamiliar they felt.

There had been a time when he ran about the front lines in these very robes. Looking back on those days now, he realized a full century had slipped by.

“Luckily, I don’t have any lingering attachments to this life.”

No sooner had he changed than he started walking again. From the underground chamber to the surface, he climbed the stairs one step at a time and returned to the main hall of the headquarters, then stepped out across the threshold of the grand front doors.

He needed to get as far away as possible. Only by putting distance between himself and this place would his plan work.

“I can feel it. Honestly, it’s chilling.” Lark chuckled as he watched his fingertips tremble.

His mind was calm, but his body, long past its prime, sensed the power that was approaching and trembled on its own. He could not win. There was no way to survive this fight. That was the truth.

“Black Dragon, huh. No... Dark Dragon would be more accurate.”

Seeing the darkness overflowing beyond the eastern horizon, Lark narrowed his wrinkled eyes and stared at what lay within. It was a dragon that had cast off its innate attribute, accepted Corruption, and become a monster steeped in pure negation.

“You see me, human?”

The instant Lark’s gaze touched it, Britra sprayed its will, thick with a cloying disgust. The mental wave ripped across several kilometers in a heartbeat and scraped at his frontal lobe.

Lark reflexively stepped back three paces and let out a short, bitter laugh. He had retreated from a threat that wasn’t even a direct attack. Sure, he had indeed grown old and weak over the long years, but still, what a disgrace.

Britra spoke again, will dripping with scorn, as if to mock him.

“You are not so foolish that you cannot tell the difference in our levels. Step aside quietly and make way, and I will let you keep your life.”

“What if I refuse?” Lark retorted.

“Then you will spend eternity regretting it, unable to live and unable to die.”

He neither shouted nor released killing intent. Even so, that flat, emotionless warning carried a murderous pressure and threat that far outstripped any Aura Master’s.

A dragon was already a transcendent race to begin with, and this one had even accepted the Demon King’s power and fallen into corruption. Lark, who had never reached Grandmaster, did not have even a hair’s breadth of a chance.

The killing intent slicing through his body was so absurd that it barely felt real. So, Lark simply laughed.

He could almost enjoy it the way one might stand and watch a typhoon raging before their eyes, or a volcano erupting, or a meteor falling. His eyes burned as he stared straight at Britra, an existence on a significantly higher level. The gap was so vast that even looking directly at it should not have been allowed. Lark knew that all too well, yet he still poured strength into his eyes.

His irises shone with a faint blue light. Looking at the creature with eyes that now felt a bit more at ease, Lark wore his usual gentle smile.

Then, he took a step forward and said, “Hoho, it seems this old man has been badly underestimated.”

Another step.

“By a lizard wretch who has even forgotten his own duty, no less.”

And one more.

“Looking down on me like that.”

It happened in the blink of an eye. The moment his third step touched the ground, Lark turned into a streak of blue lightning and tore across several kilometers. The hem of his mozzetta burst into flame under the friction, and the air he had punched through so cleanly spat out a delayed shockwave a beat later.

Before he knew it, his body was wrapped in pale blue-white lightning. In just half a second, Lark’s fist slammed into the very center of Britra’s human-disguised face.

The ground turned inside out. The massive shockwave exploded outward, tearing up the earth in a fifty-meter radius and scooping it out into a crater. Britra and Lark were at the center of the oval that had formed around them.

Stray bolts of lightning that had not fully discharged flicked out into the air, burning away dust with a menacing crackle. Just brushing against one of them would be enough to sear marrow from bone.

And yet, Britra had not taken even a single step back. Not even an inch. He simply looked at Lark.

“A foolish choice.”

The gaze of a transcendent looking down on a mortal was full of contempt and pity. Meeting that gaze, Lark clenched his teeth without meaning to.

He’s the same as the Demon King from three hundred years ago...! A power that overturns the natural order and nullifies anything born of it. As expected, the Holy Sword is the only way through.

“You understand now?” Britra asked as if he knew exactly what Lark was thinking.

He read my thoughts?!

Lark reflexively snapped a kick into its abdomen and used the recoil to open up some distance. He was not as fast as he’d been in his initial rush, but it was still speed that made the sound barrier look trivial. This was Lark’s secret technique, the Lightning Fist, with which he had once made his name known across the continent.

“Did you truly think a maggot living off the goddess’s mercy could possibly defeat me?”

“Of course not. This old man is not quite that greedy.” Lark raised both fists as he answered, “With a power that overturns the order of the world, physical attacks are completely nullified. Even if I use sacred spells, all I can do is blunt your momentum, and Aura Blade would barely land a tenth of its intended damage. Am I wrong?”

“So you do at least understand your place. In that case—"

“In that case?” Cutting Britra off, Lark grinned. Unlike the smile he had worn thus far, this one was tinted with mischief and fighting spirit. “If one punch won’t do it, I’ll just hit you ten times,”

Then, the mass of Aura stockpiled within Lark’s body, energy condensed over the span of a century, exploded and surged through his veins. His capillaries and nervous system went up in flame, and an awful pain rampaged through him from the inside, yet Lark simply managed his own insides with a calm expression and stepped into a higher realm.

From bone and muscle down to his very skin, his body was dyed in lightning. He had come to terms with certain death a long time ago, so there was not even the slightest tremor in him.

Seeing the change, Britra spoke with certainty. “You turned every nerve and meridian in your body into current and made yourself into lightning in the shape of a man? You have abandoned the very foundation of life. You will not escape death now. Once you have spent the last of your strength, you will vanish without even a speck of dust left behind.”

“In this life, I have received too much. Too much kindness, too many bonds,” Lark shouted with a face that looked almost refreshed. “So, I will give back as much as I can until this breath runs out!”

With less than an hour of life left, the First Cardinal Lark reclaimed power beyond even his prime. Since ancient times, lightning had been counted among the very highest of natural phenomena, and like flame it could step into the realm of plasma. With that terrifying power rampaging through him, Lark felt almost as if he had grown young again.

“Come, then. Dance with me a while, fallen dragon.”

“I retract what I said before...”

Britra spoke without a hint of concern for the display. Wings had risen from its back at some point, horns now jutted from its head, and the storm of magic swirling around it proved its fury.

Even the lightning raging around Lark’s body seemed to hold its breath. A calamity on par with a massive serial volcanic eruption was coming.

“...You really don’t know your place, human!”

Casting off its disguise and returning to its true form, the Evil Dragon loomed over Lark with gleaming yellow eyes.

It looked like despair given shape.

Its scales, steeped in the power of Corruption, its magic now several times stronger than before, and its innate authority of Attunement had all been twisted into something far more destructive.

There was no winning this. Confronting that unreasonable reality, Lark shot straight up at the corrupted dragon without a flicker of hesitation, like a bolt of lightning falling from the sky.

“Uooooooooh!”