Ch.34Descent – 4

Splash. As Serena stepped into the lake of blood, gentle ripples spread across the surface.

The waves emanating from her ankles expanded outward, drawing large circles on the surface. Serena was now walking on a lake of blood. It was a simple application of the technique for walking on water by surrounding her body with mana.

Serena took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The air tasted of blood.

She flicked her World Eater diagonally once. A few drops of blood from the blade disappeared into the lake with small circular ripples.

Her mind had wavered slightly out of concern for her lord.

Except for her sabatons, which were submerged up to the ankles when the blood first rose, not a single drop of blood stained Serena’s armor or face.

This was because she had burst all the magical beasts with minimal movement while walking on blood, allowing no attacks to reach her. None of the creatures could approach within a certain distance of Serena.

She spotted a small, writhing distortion in space in the distance. The moment she detected it, Serena unleashed a slash.

The blood that was about to coalesce collapsed weakly, cut through by her slash just before a column of blood could rise.

Several more spatial distortions bubbled up afterward, but there were no exceptions to Serena’s slashes.

“Is that all?”

“……”

There was no answer. After infusing her sword with mana to erase even the bloodstains, Serena turned her gaze to the figure of a woman sprawled in the distance.

The woman, half-submerged in blood, raised herself up.

Her once beautiful orange hair was now a mess, caked with bright red blood and sticking out in all directions. Blood dripped steadily from the ends of her hair.

There was nothing where her wrists and ankles had once held something crimson. Not in the sense that the ornaments were gone, but literally “nothing.”

Even her hands and feet were missing. The cross-sections revealed exposed bone and muscle.

Cartina, sprawled carelessly in the blood, reflected on what Serena had just done. The blood creatures that had filled the area had all been swept away with a single slash.

It was a strike so swift that it couldn’t even be perceived by the eye, let alone comprehended by the mind.

Despite being creatures of blood that could naturally heal from ordinary wounds and continue rampaging even with all limbs severed, Serena had not only cut down all the creatures in that brief moment but had sliced them so thoroughly that they couldn’t recover in time.

She coveted it.

That ability and talent, that faith and loyalty—everything about the woman named Serena was desperately coveting. She wanted to possess it by any means necessary.

Although she had descended in response to a plea to exterminate all life in this world, that “extermination” could be interpreted in various ways, enough to justify herself.

For instance, if she removed emotions and thoughts and reconstructed the body entirely with blood to make them her servants, wouldn’t that be essentially the same as death?

The blonde woman was that attractive to Cartina.

At first, she had only felt discomfort toward Serena, who remained unbroken despite seeing her and even provoked her, but now her thoughts had changed.

An intense desire to somehow obtain that immense talent boiled up within her.

After staring at where her severed wrists and ankles had been, Cartina blinked a couple of times, and blood gathered along her thighs and forearms, forming the shapes of hands and feet.

Cartina moved her grotesque limbs—which looked as if all skin and muscle had been removed, leaving only blood—then raised her head to meet Serena’s eyes.

“I am impressed by you.”

Several bizarrely bent arms emerged from the pool, grabbing Cartina’s body and helping her stand.

Once Cartina was fully upright, the arms disappeared back into the pool. Throughout this, Cartina’s eyes remained fixed on Serena.

“Would you consider serving me instead of that weak man you call your lord?”

Instead of an answer, hundreds of slashes flew toward her. Cartina took them head-on and collapsed back into the blood as chunks of meat.

Watching this, even the faint, cold smile that had lingered on Serena’s face completely disappeared.

Serena’s body slowly sank downward. But she wasn’t sinking into the blood. The blood was being pushed aside by the dense and massive mana flowing from her.

As her feet touched not the blood but the ground beneath it, Serena began to walk. The sound of metal pressing against stone echoed.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Now the blood was not just being pushed aside but evaporating near Serena’s body. The ground beneath her sabatons screamed in protest, unable to withstand the overflowing mana.

Serena paid no heed and intensified her aura further.

“Originally, I planned to return exactly what you did to my lord before killing you.”

Crack! Finally, the ground around where Serena stepped split like a spider web. The area where blood was evaporating continued to expand.

Anger blazed in Serena’s eyes. World Eater, injected with excessive mana, trembled repeatedly in her grip.

Cartina, who had reformed a human body from blood, looked at Serena approaching with a face twisted in fury.

It was pressure incomparable to what she had felt moments before. It was astonishing. To think that even that wasn’t the woman’s full power.

It was far greater than the might she had displayed when cutting down hundreds of magical beasts.

If what she had shown then was the limit of human capability, what she displayed now seemed to transcend the human species itself.

“I’ll kill you right now.”

Serena raised World Eater above her head. The blade was wrapped in mana so intense that an ordinary person would be crushed to death by the pressure just by standing nearby.

The mana was so immense that, paradoxically, the surroundings fell into silence. The stillness was so complete that they could hear each other’s breathing, making Cartina feel as if time had stopped.

Serena brought World Eater down.

The massive amount of mana contained in World Eater burst forth in an instant.

As if tearing apart space itself, everything before Serena vanished without leaving even a handful of ashes.

There were no fragments flying or debris created. Things simply dissolved like salt in water.

First, the ground collapsed, unable to withstand the pressure. The bedrock forming the foundation of the earth and the soil covering it evaporated in the mana, which continued to dig endlessly downward.

The precariously standing buildings were no different from mere threads before a typhoon.

No, they were even worse off. “Evaporating” was a more fitting description than “breaking.”

Wood and metal touched by the massive mana instantly disappeared without a trace.

The air was no exception. The swirling mana returned even the gases floating in the void to nothingness. The path swept by the slash had transformed into a perfect vacuum where everything had evaporated.

Serena returned World Eater to its sheath.

The force of the slash that had swept beyond the horizon gradually diminished, finally disappearing after extending to a distance almost invisible to the eye.

Before Serena appeared a massive gash of immeasurable length and depth. The slopes were smooth as glass.

The bottom was so deep that despite being in sunlight, it appeared only as blackness.

A pebble precariously perched on the edge rolled in due to the wind, but no sound of it hitting bottom was heard.

The size was equally impressive. The fan-shaped gash extended beyond the horizon.

Even with Serena’s transcendent vision, she could barely guess where it might end.

Nothing existed above it. Literally nothing.

Belatedly, afterwinds rushed toward the center. With all the air evaporated, a massive wind began to blow to fill the void.

Buildings behind Serena that had barely avoided collapse broke like taffy and were blown away by the powerful afterwinds.

The wind howled for a long time. By the time it finally subsided, nothing remained around Serena.

Only a few remnants of buildings that had narrowly avoided being swept away by the storm stood desolately.

It was impossible to imagine that a relatively prosperous city had once existed here.

All buildings were destroyed, the surroundings scorched, and the eerily deep, fan-shaped canyon exuded an atmosphere as if demons might crawl up from hell at any moment.

Only then did Serena display a satisfied smile. Having achieved her goal, it was time to go find her lord.

Of course, to others, her expression would have appeared as impassive as always.