Ch.249The Sword That Kills Without Fail?

Screams of rage and terror mixed together in the battlefield that melted like a furnace.

The heat exhaled by thousands added to the earth where the midday sun boiled like a mirage.

I stood in the middle of it all.

Staining a radius of several meters with flesh and blood.

“Dodge! The Flesh-Eater’s spikes are coming! Keep your dist—Gahk!”

“How are we supposed to dodge this?! This isn’t swordsmanship or anything!”

“Aaaaargh! My stomach! My stomach!”

Ten crimson tentacles impaled and crushed enemies in all directions.

The spikes of murderous Karma, strong as iron, sharp as spears, and writhing like snakes.

“Is this all?! With such pathetic forces, what did you hope to accomplish by challenging me?!”

The ten awls, grown more ferocious and sharper in response to my rage, were attacks they couldn’t possibly block with their skills.

When they raised their swords to protect their upper bodies, the spikes bent downward to pierce their abdomens. When they covered their torsos with spear shafts, the spikes impaled and pulled out their heads.

They didn’t stop after penetrating one enemy, but continued through as many as they could reach.

I lifted the impaled ones high toward the sky.

So all enemies could see clearly.

Like velvet tangled in deer antlers, each strand of murderous intent had three or four enemy soldiers skewered in a row, struggling.

“Behold the end that awaits you all!”

Shouting as if showing off, I sharpened the bloody spikes and swept them around.

The skewered enemies scattered in pieces, and chunks of flesh fluttered like flower petals.

[ Truly magnificent. ]

Hersella, who had been silent for a while, exclaimed with satisfaction.

Yes, she would be satisfied. It was a performance similar to her fighting style.

I also thought it was effective to wield cruelty like a weapon to break the enemy’s fighting spirit with fear.

Though I had no intention of eating people like Hersella did.

Blood and entrails rained down, soaking everything around.

It was a sight terrifying enough to frighten even our own troops. So what about the enemies?

Cavalry with their comrades’ entrails splattered on them swung their weapons with vacant expressions.

Blades that had lost their edge due to fear. Like harmless breezes, attacks too weak to kill even a single soldier.

Blood sprayed up with each stomp of hooves on the ground.

The demoralized knights couldn’t even defend properly, let alone counterattack.

The number of enemies decreased rapidly.

“You should have surrendered quietly! Though I wouldn’t accept it now anyway!”

I had no intention of offering surrender to these knights and cavalry anymore.

Those who wanted to surrender had already stepped aside.

All that remained were fools stubbornly loyal to their garbage master, and those too guilty to choose surrender.

So they shouldn’t feel wronged dying like insects. Right?

—-

After tearing through the battlefield like this for dozens of seconds,

Finally, the enemy I’d been targeting came within range.

“Don’t retreat! There’s no escape! Fight!”

A middle-aged knight cutting down our knights like weeds with a single longsword.

He appeared to be a Master commanding Ernst’s knights.

“Right, there’s no escape! For you!”

I turned my horse toward him and spurred it on.

No enemy dared block me. Even if they tried, they wouldn’t have lasted a second.

Noticing my approach, he readjusted his longsword and charged at me.

Though he was a Master, he couldn’t completely suppress his fear as his pupils trembled slightly, but he showed no intention of fleeing.

“Flesh-Eating Aishan-Gioro! I, Grihit Raimar, knight of Lord Ernst, will judge you for your crimes of slaughter!”

“Never heard that name!”

It truly was a name I didn’t know.

There were said to be about fifty Masters in the Empire, how could I remember each one?

Anyway, after this war, that number would be reduced to about thirty.

“If you don’t know it, I’ll carve it into your corpse!”

The longsword approached with intense momentum.

Indeed, he seemed skilled enough to confidently announce his name.

Among Masters, he probably ranked in the upper tier.

If it were the previous me, I might have needed to exchange more than ten blows on horseback.

But not now.

I suppressed my boiling emotions and focused my consciousness on the blade, imbuing myself into it.

I didn’t need to go all out like when facing Valenstein. This wouldn’t be the end of the battle, and I shouldn’t.

The second manifestation of my soul’s slash.

I could be certain.

This was truly the power of those who had transcended the realm of Masters.

EPOS

The first step of 【Tale of Heros】.

Once again, Durandal accelerated in an unrealistic manner.

“What…!”

In the moment the two warhorses crossed paths.

Before Grihit’s sword could travel even halfway, my blade had already cut through half his torso.

A slash that split his black iron armor like firewood, cutting through muscle and bone.

On the warhorse that continued in the opposite direction, only the lower half of his body remained, spewing blood like an overflowing cup.

“Impossible…! It couldn’t have reached…!”

With these astonished final words, his upper body disappeared among the cavalry.

Probably turned into well-ground fertilizer.

Intestines burst from the collapsed lower body on the horse, spreading a foul stench.

Perhaps due to the discomfort of having excrement poured on its back, his horse shook its body and threw its masterless lower half to the ground.

“Neeeiiigh!”

It even trampled it with its hind legs.

Like squeezing toothpaste with a fist, a jelly-like mixture of blood and entrails spurted out, soaking the ground.

…That’s a horse with a nastier personality than I expected.

“Lord Raimar!”

The knights screamed in shock.

They apparently couldn’t imagine he would die in a single strike, even if he couldn’t last as long as the Ghost Blade.

Well, unlike Paraschvalier who barely qualified as a Master, he was quite skilled among Masters.

“Even Lord Raimar in a single strike…!”

“How is that a Master-level knight?! Monster, he’s a monster!”

Perhaps because one of the few remaining Masters had died so powerlessly and miserably.

The knights around me were now fleeing in the opposite direction. Cutting down even allies who blocked their way. What a spectacle.

[ …Even seeing it again, it’s an incomparably strange slash. Like Valenstein’s Ghost Blade or Orhan’s Unyielding Flesh. Is that attack also something similar? ]

‘That’s right. A technique beyond the realm of Masters. I don’t know what the Ka’har call it, but…’

Perhaps because my consciousness was clearer than when I first used it, I could instinctively understand the principle—no, the effect of this technique.

The acceleration was merely a phenomenon visible to the eye. The essence of the Tale of Heros was authority that overturned physical laws.

It wasn’t that the sword’s speed increased.

There was no aftermath of acceleration, no resistance of inertia. Even the power of the slash remained the same. Only, the enemy was cut faster.

A slash where the speed remained the same, but only the arrival was faster.

Yes. My sword imbued with my soul was compressing the time it took for the attack to land!

Like fast-forwarding just one character while playing a movie.

The moment I swung my sword, the world and I were walking in different times.

A strike that compressed the flow of time.

That was the essence of the power I had realized.

[ I don’t know how someone of your level reached that realm. But it’s certainly impressive… So, what is the name of this technique? ]

Name…?

I hadn’t thought about that yet.

It was a question typical of Hersella, who named all sorts of techniques.

Netherfall, Falling Cliff, Mountain Cleaver, Red Flash, Karma Blaze. She had all kinds of technique names.

‘Well…? I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not like a technique name is necessary, right?’

I answered while cutting the surrounding knights into pieces.

As for a technique name, I figured people who saw my fighting would come up with something appropriate.

[ Foolish talk. A name is the essence of all things converted into human language. By giving an appropriate name, you can more clearly engrave the fundamental image of the technique. ]

It sounded somewhat scholarly…

In short, she was saying that naming a technique makes it easier to recall its image.

Certainly, now that I heard it, it made sense.

So I should come up with a name…

What should I call it?

The essence of this technique is a slash that compresses time and cuts down enemies before they can react. So…

‘The Definitely Killing Sword?’

[ …Have you lost your mind? You call that a name…! ]

Hersella burst out.

Apparently, my naming sense didn’t match her taste.

I think it’s fine. ‘The Definitely Killing Sword.’

Seems better than Time Sword or Compression Sword.

‘If you don’t like it, we can think about it later. Now’s not the time anyway.’

Was it because I had calmed my emotions to defeat Grihit, or because I was chatting with this woman?

The rage that had been burning like fire had cooled like a winter lake.

I was still angry, but not so much that my reason was clouded by passion, allowing me to act with cold judgment.

Soon after, another Master was cut down by my sword.

This time it was even easier. So simple it was almost bewildering.