Sword Blaze

Compared to frontline positions, the rear echelons have little experience with injuries. No, almost none at all. For the rear to sustain wounds generally signifies the team’s annihilation.

Yet they knew the most dreadful suffering well.

Searing agony.

Witness a few battlefields, and one cannot help but know. Valorous knights grit through deep gashes and myriad lacerations.

But those ablaze cannot endure so. No matter how stubborn or valiant the knight, they screech hideously.

The most chilling death wails on the battlefield belong to those rolling in flames. That swan song twists the listener’s bones.

And Doyun was no exception.

---

The sable sun descended yet did not detonate. Only a piercing tinnitus briefly split his head before vanishing – his eardrums had disintegrated before the blast.

However, tremors wracked his neck and skull. Only after his eardrums regenerated did that horrendous wailing resound.

The screams of other soldiers? His own screams? Was he the one screaming?

‘Unclear.’

Unbearably scorching.

Auditory – the ringing tinnitus, his bursting and regenerating eardrums. Olfactory – the stench of charred human flesh. Tactile – sheer searing torment.

His senses of taste and sight had long failed. Every facet of perception shrieked. His Seventh Sense only conveyed his imminent demise.

While others perished instantly at the Hellfire’s impact, Doyun’s resilience and anti-demon fortitude instead condemned him to a hellish experience. Perhaps instant death would have been merciful.

The relentless cycle of his flesh charring, crackling as it sloughed off, then regrowing only to burn again. His tremendous anti-demon resistance and regeneration. And his mental fortitude.

‘Agonizing.’

Hwaaaah- His intermittently regenerating eardrums conveyed intermittent anguished wails – his own.

Not that he lacked sensory perception. Even Doyun’s pain-dulled state could not withstand the war spell’s excruciating torture.

Yet his ability to remain conscious, to somehow move within that inferno – that stemmed from the 18 rebirths’ tempered mentality. His willpower.

From that charred silhouette amidst the flames, golden irises flashed.

‘Scorching.’

With every revisited demise, every brush with death’s door, Enoch had grown stronger.

His life did not solely comprise those past 18 turns.

This 19th life as Han Doyun – his present existence was not merely a process of regaining his peak prowess. Even now, he awakened and grew ever mightier.

His heightened Seventh Sense perceived the blaze. The System’s blessings enabled this accelerated growth responding to it.

The sensation of combustion – that feeling vividly etched into Doyun’s consciousness alongside sheer torment.

And it resonated with his blazing will to utterly exterminate the demonic, undimmed even at this very moment.

He was pioneering new frontiers.

Fwoosh-

From within that sable hellfire, golden flames ignited along his sword’s edge.

+++

“L-, Look over there!”

A golden glimmer flashed amidst the ebony inferno.

Initially faint and small, one could have mistaken it as an illusion. But it gradually grew more distinct until even the Alliance could clearly perceive its brilliance.

Fwoosh-

A tiny golden flame devoured the hellfire, rapidly expanding.

Shlick-

“…!”

“N-, No way!”

The mountain of fire cleaved vertically as a sweeping golden blaze incinerated the hellfire.

At the heart stood a single silhouette wreathed in sable flames – and a sword enveloped in brilliant golden fire gripped in its hand.

“A-, Apostle Han Doyun! He’s alive!”

“Impossible!”

“He must have a fire-resistant item!”

The Alliance reacted with shock yet elation that he still lived.

And simultaneously, they shuddered at the flames he radiated.

“That’s…”

The same dazzling light Doyun had previously manifested, as if the sword’s essence itself had descended. Identical to that radiance.

Someone murmured, entranced.

“Sword Blaze…”

A resplendent blaze that seemed capable of incinerating all demonic essence in this world.

Half-delirious, Doyun remained unaware that he had achieved something so extraordinary, that all eyes were upon him – his every sense ravaged by torturous flames.

He simply moved as before – to exterminate the demonic until his last breath.

Blisters bursting under his feet showered hellfire behind as his charred form charged the Dark Lord rear lines.

Witnessing this, the Dark Lord officers cried out in dismay.

“Impossible…!”

“St-, Stop him! Don’t let him through!”

That figure advancing with flashing eyes despite being engulfed in hellfire – he was like a demon reborn from hell itself.

A dread abomination causing even demons to shudder.

“Innom!”

A close-quarters tank-type officer charged him.

Having suffered a direct war spell strike, still burning in those hellfire – his vitality must be at its limit. A mere shove would slay him.

As the bravely advancing officer swung his massive greatsword at the charging Doyun –

Fwoooosh-

He was consumed by the flames Doyun unleashed. That was the end of him.

The officers gaped in horror.

“…!”

The tank-type officer vanished without a trace in an instant.

Not merely burned, but utterly vaporized – an overwhelming display of destructive power.

‘What in the world was that…!’

That dreadful radiance like before. No, even more horrific flames.

Doyun sheathed his sword against his waist, powerfully drawing it back.

‘Manifest’ expands phenomena through one’s will. That is the essence of the Manifest Sword.

And Heclaeus expanded phenomena through the will of ‘striking mightily’. That was Heclaeus’s Manifest Sword.

Then by imbuing the sword with different wills…

Just as the Demon Lord had manifested ‘killing’, could one not also advance towards other phenomena?

Amidst mind-numbing agony, the sole concept Doyun’s fading consciousness grasped was:

‘Incinerate.’

Răzvolnic Style Swordsmanship – Supreme Technique.

Fwoosh-

As he drew his sword back, flames erupted and elongated forth. Towards the dismayed Dark Lord forces, Doyun swept those flames in a vast arc.

The Manifest Sword. Sword Blaze.

Fwoooooaaaaash-!

The golden Sword Blaze engulfed the Dark Lord army.

In that moment, the Alliance bore witness.

Golden sacred flames washed over the distant plains like a tidal wave, utterly erasing the sable silhouettes without a trace.

In a single strike, nearly half the Dark Lord forces had vanished completely.

A large-scale open battlefield engagement unprecedented in decades – one that would etch its name into history. The Apopis Plains Decisive Battle.

[Skill ‘Răzvolnic Style Swordsmanship’ has been created.]

A resounding victory for the Alliance forces led by Apostle Han Doyun.