Hard Carried by My Sword

Chapter 260

A little while later, with thunder that had clearly lost much of its force, Lark came back down to the ground. His entire body had become bluish lightning, barely holding on to a human shape. If he lost focus for even a moment, even the vessel of his soul would collapse and crumble away to nothing.

It was an extremity that an ordinary person couldn’t endure for even a single second. The fact that he had maintained it for over thirty minutes meant Lark truly deserved to be called a superhuman. His willpower might already have brushed up against the realm of transcendents.

However, Britra looked down at the human flickering and crackling before him, just as arrogant as when they had first met.

“Are you finished thrashing about?” he sneered.

He was still perfectly intact, and his opponent was about to vanish. It was the only outcome that was possible from the beginning.

“You were a persistent little gnat. I’ll at least give you that. To survive for thirty minutes against me was thoroughly outside my expectations.”

The battle between the Evil Dragon Britra and the First Cardinal Lark was decided in only thirty minutes. The outcome was not so different from what had been set from the very beginning.

Up, down, front, back, left, right—no, Lark had been able to run wild in all three hundred and sixty degrees, at more than ten times the speed of sound, ignoring even inertia. That was the only reason he had lasted this long.

In terms of pure combat power, Irexana was half a level above him, but if he had fought Britra instead, would he have lasted even three minutes? The real difference lay elsewhere.

“Hoho, but I’m actually quite satisfied with this outcome.” Lark smiled impishly, his voice drained of strength. “This old man did land a proper hit on you, did I not?”

“You...”

Space around Britra twisted. He had merely let a bit of killing intent slip for real, and the planar fabric of the dimension already couldn’t endure it. That was why higher beings could not interfere lightly.

But even as he faced that murderous will head-on, Lark chuckled without the slightest hint of fear. He couldn’t help it.

“You dare show arrogance with strength borrowed from her...!”

A pale line of light burned across Britra’s upper body, running diagonally from shoulder to flank. It was a scar that looked as though it had been carved in with a colossal blade.

A little deeper, and it might have reached his heart. It was a blow that even the natural-law-defying power born from the Demon King’s fragments had not fully blocked. The one who had made that possible, of course, was the goddess of the heavens.

Folding his hands together as if in prayer, Lark needled him.

“Are you still hung up on that nonsense? Why would a servant be ashamed of his mistress’s grace, instead of proud of it?”

The existing Divine Judgment formulas consumed far too much Holy Power, and they were practically useless against rightful beings, so their practical value was low. They worked well enough on monsters summoned directly from exodimensions, but if the opponent was an exolaw wielder who hadn’t modified his own body, the result was little more than a mild burn.

For that reason, Lark had tried to improve the Divine Judgment formulas. The fruit of more than half a century of study was what he had unleashed upon Britra.

“I commend you. In that pathetic mortal body of yours, you somehow managed to disgrace me,” Britra said, but there was no anger.

Perhaps he saw no point in wasting his emotions on someone who was already as good as dead. Britra calmed his fury and spoke.

“While you did borrow her power, you may count this blow as the glory of your lifetime. Now, speak the name of that grace and vanish, instead of clinging on in vain.”

Lark looked up at the distant sky and murmured, “That was the revised version of the final, ultimate sacred spell, Divine Judgment. I named it Heaven’s Punishment.”

Since primitive times, the lightning that speared down from the sky had been passed down as the judgment and wrath of the gods above. If Divine Judgment was a formula specialized in targeting phenomena that strayed from the natural order in the conceptual realm, then Heaven’s Punishment weakened that conceptual focus in exchange for maximizing physical power and versatility.

Against Britra, who wore the mask of a rightful being, Divine Judgment was almost completely nullified. However, Heaven’s Punishment was a different story. With Demon King fragments lodged inside his body, Britra was hit hard once Heaven’s Punishment pierced his outer shell.

“So this is as far as I go. I’ve walked this earth for just under two hundred years from birth until today, and it seems I’ve reached the final curtain,” Lark muttered as his fingertips and toes began to crumble.

His body, now nothing more than a mass of lightning, dissolved into the air without leaving a single grain of ash behind. Lark glanced down once at what was left of him—already gone up to the elbows and knees—and felt someone’s gaze upon him, looking down from the heavens. It was a sensation that could never be perceived unless one had surpassed their limits and stood face-to-face with death.

“Hohoho.”

There was no question whose gaze that gentle, tender look belonged to, tinged with the faintest sadness. For a believer, could there be any joy greater than the love of their god?

Even as his soul crumbled, Lark smiled and muttered, “What a luxurious end this is...”

Before he could even finish the sentence, he crackled once like static and vanished. The only trace that the First Cardinal Lark had ever existed was the patch of blackened earth where he had been standing moments before.

And with a loud thump, Britra stomped that spot with all his might as if even the tiniest remnant offended his eyes. The Evil Dragon finished venting his anger, then ran his hand over the wound in his chest.

Sparks crackled and jumped. No matter that Lark had staked his life on it, the damage was strange. Even if his insides were more vulnerable thanks to the Demon King’s fragments, how could a mere mortal, not even a transcendent, inflict an injury this hard to heal?

“No... It wasn’t really him.”

Realizing something, Britra looked up overhead. The rage that had twisted his features was gone without a trace. In its place was an expression that was not only calm but verging on rapture.

In a voice far too gentle for him, he murmured, “You are just the same as ever, goddess. You struck me with your servant’s hand? To think this wound came from you... even the pain and humiliation that reached my very soul taste sweet.”

Britra let out a chilling laugh. The goddess had personally intervened to wound him, but in the grand scheme of things, that interference was unwise. Unlike him, who was free of causality, the goddess would have to pay a price for using her power from the heavens. She would no longer be able to bolster her believers as she had just done.

“Hehehe. Don’t be impatient. Wait for me. Once I’ve devoured this world down to the last scrap, I will come to greet you myself.”

With his immediate objective gone, there was nothing left for him to do in this desolate northern edge. Lark’s desperate resistance had prevented him from opening the Monster Zone beneath the Grand Church, but Britra actually turned away as if things had worked out better this way.

The goddess no longer had room to interfere. That left only the pitifully weak Hero.

“When this wound is gone, I must kill him.”

He would prepare thoroughly for whatever might come. Leon might not be an out-of-spec monster like Rodrick, but he was still a Hero. There was a nonzero chance that this wound could lead to his defeat.

Leaving the blizzard behind, Britra slowly took to the sky. As the hundred-meter dragon rose, a vortex roared to life, sweeping over the battlefield and erasing his traces. With a single beat of his wings, he punched through the troposphere, leaving even the clouds beneath him. The battle that only one being had watched came to an end with Lark’s martyrdom.

Was it a coincidence? From the sky where Britra had vanished, a single shaft of light fell and shone upon Lark’s final trace, now buried under snow and dirt. It was a light of mourning, almost devout in its solemnity.

***

Albion and Leon’s party left Ground Zero soon after hearing the news of the Dungeon-Break from Jugend. While Albion’s hibernation came often, she still had some time until the next time, so she was able to operate normally for the time being.

Concealing her presence with magic, she said quietly, “If Britra truly got his hands on Corruption, then someone who’s already been hit once is in all sorts of danger. I’m much weaker now than I was then. If I’m tainted again, I may never come back.”

Even Rodrick, in his prime, hadn’t been able to free her safely; he’d had to carve away the corrupted wings, the horn, and even part of her heart to succeed. If she were polluted again, not even a resurrected Rodrick would have a way to save her.

Leon asked carefully, “Does Britra know you’re alive, Albion?”

“I can’t be sure, but I doubt it. Dragons are extremely oblivious to anything outside their territory or interests. And he didn’t know me personally, so he’s likely forgotten.” But then she added, “If he catches me even once, his memory of me will come back, and he’ll try to use me. We have to be extremely careful that no rumor of me reaches Britra’s eyes or ears.”

“I see. And if he really can freely corrupt others as the Demon King did three hundred years ago...”

“No, we don’t have to worry about that,” Albion cut him off. “If it were the Demon King himself, maybe. But Britra only scavenged one of his fragments, so his limit is obvious. His Corruption is more like a consumable. Considering how much he used on self-enhancement, the amount he can spare is limited.”

If Britra’s Corruption had been as inexhaustible as the Demon King’s, he wouldn’t have spent three centuries quietly manipulating a cult—he would have devoured half the continent by now. Creating those Nine Hell Bishops was probably the most he could afford to do.

“Hero Leon,” Irexana said, looking around at the four of them. “I will return to the Jugend royal court. You should go with Albion.”

“That... sounds like you’re telling me there is somewhere you want me to go,” Leon said.

“Yes. There is something I must ask of you.” He continued, “Do you know the southernmost of the Four Great Monster Zones called the Nether Valley?”

“I’ve heard the name, at least.”

“Despite the name, Nether Valley resembles a forest more than a canyon. It is also where the Second Cardinal, William the Drifter, currently resides.”

“The Second Cardinal?!” Leon asked, surprised by the weight of the name.

Leon had heard of the eccentric who was both a Cardinal of the Holy Church and a registered adventurer once before. He listened with widened eyes.

Irexana explained, “With his ability, he could easily contain a breach of that scale. However, perhaps because of that region’s unique nature, not even oracular messages can pass in or out.”

“You’re asking me to check on his safety.”

“That is the first reason,” Irexana said with a nod. “The second is for your faster growth.”

“I understand your intention, Your Eminence. But at my level, even more practical combat experience won’t let me jump ranks in the short term. To defeat Britra, I’d have to enter the realm of Grandmasters.”

“That is something the Holy Sword can solve.”

“Pardon...? The Holy Sword?”

At that moment, El-Cid spoke.

—Ah, he’s thought this through nicely. Leon, accept it.

Why?

El-Cid explained to the still-confused Leon.

—Have you forgotten one of the Holy Sword’s functions? It absorbs power whenever you slay monsters or beings from other dimensions. Thanks to that, your mana has been growing dozens of times faster than someone who’s trained for decades.

But gaining more mana won’t raise me up to higher realms anymore.

—Well, duh. Mana isn’t the point. What the Holy Sword absorbs is karma. Mana is just the by-product. Just as I was dragged to the heavens, you need karma if you want your rank to rise quickly. The most efficient method is to conduct raids in hellish places like the Four Great Demon Realms.

Only then did Leon understand Irexana’s true intent—for him to break through the wall of the Grandmaster. There was no shortcut from mortal to transcendent. It might take decades, or it might happen overnight. It was a future impossible to predict, requiring countless trials with no guarantee of progress. However, with Britra’s assault looming at any time, they couldn’t simply wait for “someday.”

“Understood. I’ll depart for Nether Valley immediately.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

“Yes. It may be a shortcut unbefitting a warrior, but this isn’t the time to be stubborn.”

Under ordinary circumstances, it was something one could do but should not. If one forcefully amassed karma and crossed the wall only to reach a level they couldn’t withstand, the backlash would be catastrophic.

Yet Leon didn’t hesitate. A future he couldn’t promise, pride as a warrior—none of it outweighed his duty as a Hero. And El-Cid’s presence cemented his resolve.

Sounds like I’ll need some special training. Can we do that? Leon asked El-Cid.

El-Cid snorted with laughter. —You better not cry halfway through and beg to quit, disciple.

The greatest hero in human history adjusted his teaching schedule according to one goal: To make Leon grow faster than the rate at which karma accumulated.