Free Web NovelChapter 323: Chapter 311: Light and Dark
"Oh, brilliant star fallen to the mortal realm! Shield of Guardian, arriving in the hour of despair! Your might is enough to make a Giant Dragon bow its head, your radiance..."
Witnessing the miraculous scene, the Minstrel Galvis nearly forgot the danger around him. He couldn’t resist plucking his strings and launching into an exaggerated aria of praise, as if this were not a bloody battlefield, but a stage for the singing of epics.
Roland, however, paid the flowery prose no mind.
He quickly transferred the heavily injured and unconscious Reggie from his arms to Teresa’s, his instructions delivered with extreme speed yet perfect clarity.
"Take care of him. Fall back. Get away from this area."
During this brief handover, the inky black tentacles—which had just been repelled and even partially annihilated by a spiritual storm—began to surge madly from the creature’s body once more.
They twisted and writhed, launching a new, more ferocious assault, like a relentless tide.
Roland’s gaze sharpened. Just as he was about to face the assault, a cold, faintly trembling hand caught his arm.
He turned back to meet Teresa’s eyes. Usually so aloof, they now clearly reflected a worry he had never seen before.
Roland froze for a moment, then a faint, reassuring smile touched his lips. He gently patted the back of her hand.
"Don’t worry. I never take uncalculated risks."
The words had barely left his lips when several menacing tentacles tore through the air, striking at him once more.
Without even looking back, Roland swung his sword in a backhand motion. The sharp gust from his blade severed the tentacles, causing them to dissipate once more.
Yet, just as he’d expected, the Dark Energy immediately began to reconverge.
This time, however, Roland’s expression remained completely unchanged, as if he had anticipated this all along.
Instead of retreating, he took a step forward, initiating a Charge into the ever-regenerating tide of Darkness.
He rushed forward, his form a blur across the shattered battlefield as he deftly dodged a heavy, sweeping tentacle.
Meanwhile, a low, ancient incantation began to flow steadily from his lips. Each syllable was perfectly clear, forming a peculiar concerto with his swift, fluid movements.
"By the guidance of the Wind Spirit..."
He sidestepped a lunge, the Mithril Longsword in his hand following the motion with a diagonal slash.
The blade began to hum. The air around it stirred, and pale cyan currents gathered as if drawn by an unseen hand.
His pace never faltered. He even used the force of a push-off to accelerate his advance. More tentacles closed in around him, yet he dodged them by a hair’s breadth every time as he recited the second line of the chant.
"Shake the roaring mountains to silence..."
The currents of air swirling around the blade intensified, emitting a sharp shriek, as if they truly held the power to move mountains.
The faint golden glow on the blade flared, suddenly growing bright and concentrated, like a fire fed fresh kindling.
Roland abruptly changed direction, the arc of his glowing sword momentarily forcing back the Darkness surging from his side. The rhythm of the incantation didn’t pause for an instant; on the contrary, it grew more resonant.
"In the hour when the stars and moon grow dim..."
The Wind Element poured in frantically. The golden light had become as dense as molten gold, flowing and surging across the blade.
An ineffable aura of sharpness and Destruction emanated from him, so powerful it even pushed aside the dust and smoke in his path.
With a final step, he shattered the ground beneath him. His body shot forward like an Arrow toward the massive shadow’s true form, and the last line of the chant rang out like a thrown war spear, sharp and powerful.
"Rend the ancient pact!"
The final syllable of the incantation coincided perfectly with his arrival at the forefront of his charge.
The entire Mithril Longsword was suddenly engulfed by a roaring cyclone and a blazing, unstable golden light.
The light flickered violently, like an ancient Storm Spirit, barely roused and still bound by countless shackles, yearning for a freedom it could not fully grasp.
This, however, was the absolute limit of what Roland could channel with his current Power.
A full release was far beyond his current ability; the incantation itself was much longer.
Even so, the power he had managed to coax forth was already far beyond the ordinary. The glowing light and shrieking vortex at the blade’s edge radiated a terrifying might.
The shadowy figure seemed to sense the power gathering on the Mithril Longsword—a power that inspired both instinctual hatred and Fear.
It had no face and could show no expression.
But its abrupt halt, its frantic retreat, and the way the Dark Energy around its body began to boil uncontrollably—all of it was a clear testament to its inner terror.
To counter this unprecedented threat, it let out a soundless shriek as its massive upper body swelled once more.
The horrifying silhouette, already several men tall, swelled to an even greater size, casting a Shadow that nearly swallowed all the light around Roland.
It was now the size of a small, mobile fortress, exuding a suffocating and almost tangible pressure from the Abyss.
Before this behemoth, the charging, sword-wielding Roland looked minuscule, as if he would be utterly crushed by its pure Darkness and sheer mass at any moment.
Simultaneously, its method of attack changed abruptly.
It stopped forming the comparatively slender tentacles.
Instead, all its churning Dark Energy converged at an unprecedented rate before its "torso," rapidly solidifying into an enormous, crudely-shaped, yet impossibly dense fist.
The fist was larger than Roland’s entire body. It carried the ferocious power to pulverize anything in its path as it came crashing down on him like a black meteor.
The pressure from the descending fist cracked the ground inch by inch. The very air seemed to have been punched out of existence, as if the creature was determined to use the purest, most savage force to utterly annihilate the wielder and his sliver of golden light.
Facing the colossal fist smashing down like a black meteor, the molten gold in Roland’s eyes blazed to its peak, transforming into the gilded, inhuman slits of a predator.
He showed no sign of retreat. Instead, he bent his knees slightly, and the ground beneath his feet erupted.
He shot upward like a golden arrow loosed at the heavens.
In an instant, he soared to a height level with the top of the shadowy figure’s swollen torso.
The gale whipped the black hair from his forehead, revealing the cold, burning fire in his eyes.
Gripping the Mithril Longsword—now the core of a storm of light—Roland raised it high above his head.
It was as if an invisible force had stripped away everything around him.
The deafening roar, the shattering and flying stones, even the devastating pressure of the fist—all of it faded rapidly from Roland’s Perception.
His entire world, his very being, focused into his hands—into the thrumming Mithril Longsword that yearned for release.
His [Concentration] Trait activated with unprecedented intensity, forcibly gathering and refining his Spiritual Power, drawing it in like countless rivers flowing to the sea.
In his mind, the text from the Scroll he had recently learned lit up one by one, like burning Runes.
Every syllable, every diagram illustrating the flow of power, was analyzed, reconstructed, and seared into his instincts at an astonishing speed.
Meanwhile, his Spiritual Power surged as never before, washing through his limbs in an almost violent torrent before converging on his heart, where it mingled with a deeper, more incandescent power.
This was a Power born of will and conviction.
The immense strain made the veins on his forehead bulge and his temples throb. He could even feel capillaries bursting under the pressure as a warm trickle of blood slid down his cheek.
But the hand that gripped his sword was as steady as a rock.
The next moment, a vast, boundless torrent of Positive Energy, like liquid sunlight, poured from the Mithril Longsword. It flowed through his body before being channeled back into the blade.
[Supreme Slash]!
The light of the blade was no longer pure gold. It had transformed into an incandescent, holy radiance so brilliant it was impossible to look at directly.
The very space around the blade’s edge began to warp, as if unable to withstand such an extremity of light and holiness.
And at that exact moment, the enormous fist of Darkness came crashing down!
BOOM!
Light and Darkness.
Two diametrically opposed forces collided in the most savage and direct manner imaginable.
A deafening explosion threatened to rupture the eardrums of everyone present.
A terrifying Energy Shockwave radiated outward in a ring, ripping up several feet of topsoil. Dust and fragments of Holy Light and Darkness scattered in every direction.
For a brief moment, there was a stalemate at the heart of the collision.
The giant fist of Darkness sought to crush the tiny point of light with sheer force, but the incandescent sword remained as immovable as a spike driven into the core of that Darkness.
The stalemate, however, lasted only an instant.
The moment the shadowy figure’s fist—a concentration of immense Abyssal Energy—made contact with the boundless Positive Energy of the [Supreme Slash], it began to sizzle like snow cast into a furnace.
Faced with such ultimate light and sanctity, the highly condensed Dark Energy composing the fist began to rapidly dissolve and evaporate, as if it had met its natural predator.
The Darkness tried to fight back, but it was futile.
The sacred, incandescent light of the sword spread up the massive fist with unstoppable momentum, purifying everything it touched.
Roland’s arms surged with power. With a cry that could pierce the clouds and shatter stone, he brought down the Mithril Longsword, which now bloomed with infinite radiance.
There was no second cataclysmic collision, only a heart-stopping, high-pitched shriek, like the sound of fabric being violently torn.
Like a hot knife through butter, the incandescent blade sliced through the massive, fortress-like dark body, cleaving it in two without any resistance.
The sundered halves showed no sign of writhing or regenerating. There was only a residue of ash, utterly purified by Holy Energy, that scattered to the wind.
The shadowy figure’s massive upper body froze completely. Then, as if all support had vanished, it crumbled into two collapsing clouds of rapidly dissipating black dust.
Roland’s figure descended slowly through the drifting dark ash, landing lightly on the ground.
The incandescent brilliance of the Mithril Longsword in his hand gradually subsided, though a faint golden halo continued to shimmer around it.
A brief, deathly silence fell over the once-chaotic battlefield.
