Ch.551Two New Technologies

# The Months in the Holy State

The months in the Holy State were truly a series of extraordinary events, but the return journey was peaceful to the point of feeling strangely different by comparison.

“Graaaaargh!”

Of course, monsters occasionally appeared, proving that the world had become more dangerous…

“It’s a Grave Eater! Priest battalion! Deploy the containment formation! Paladin division, charge!”

“For order and justice!”

Without us needing to help, paladins who had sensed signs of monster manifestations arrived and eliminated them as soon as they appeared.

“Graaaah!”

“Return to the darkness from which you were born!”

The Grave Eater howled and struggled desperately, but its body was completely immobilized by the suppression miracle manifested by the battle priests, preventing it from moving properly.

Following this, blades of judgment light and order swept through like a golden storm.

Hmm. They fight well.

Yes, this is how the Holy State should be.

The medium-sized undead species, which would normally require two or three masters to safely eliminate, was torn to shreds while spewing black smoke, unable to offer proper resistance against the concentrated attack of the paladins and priests.

“…That’s impressive. Were Astraea’s paladins always this strong?”

Millia, who had been drawing her bowstring in case the paladins were in danger, smiled awkwardly as she put her arrow back in her quiver.

See, I told you we didn’t need to help.

“It’s because the enemy is a monster. The paladins we’ve seen until now were using blessings meant for hunting monsters to hunt people instead, so they weren’t showing their true abilities.”

Since all the paladins Millia had seen were wielding their swords against people, she seemed to have underestimated their abilities.

However, regardless of which church they belonged to, priests and paladins could only fully demonstrate their power in battle against monsters. Not for killing people.

In the case of the Church of Astraea, their attack power varied according to the weight of sin, so they could perform reasonably well in combat against humans, and the Church of Menes had miracles that weakened the regenerative abilities of werebeasts, making them suitable for deployment against werebeasts…

Even considering that, they were far more efficient when used against monsters.

Anyway, we turned our attention away from the Grave Eater that had begun to disintegrate and continued toward the border.

—-

It was my opinion that we should not help with monster subjugation when we encountered them on our way, unless the paladins were in crisis.

In a way, this could be considered dereliction of duty. It meant that despite having sufficient power, we would merely stand by against clear enemies.

Naturally, there were opposing opinions within our group.

Lacy and Agnes reacted as if I was talking nonsense, and Leonore and Nigel also considered it improper conduct for knights.

However, I did not retract my assertion. There was a reason why this had to be done.

“If we help, we could easily defeat the monsters. But then, they would never grow stronger. That shouldn’t happen. We can’t defeat all monsters for them anyway.”

The current state of humanity’s combat power was grotesquely imbalanced.

Most humans remained as weak as they were before the Heaven’s Wall was damaged, while only a few heroes, including myself, had become exceptionally strong.

In other words, it was a structure where everything depended on an extremely small number of powerful individuals.

The strong continued to grow even stronger by solving problems alone, while the majority of the weak merely praised such strong individuals. Because they entrusted the subjugation of enemies to the strong, they failed to develop their own strength.

From the perspective of the strong, this might be satisfactory as they could grow stronger quickly, but for humanity as a whole, it was close to a vicious cycle.

Even a strong individual who could face thousands alone couldn’t perfectly substitute for tasks that required thousands of people.

Just look at me. I can solve problems in places where I stay, but I have no way to handle what happens elsewhere during that time.

At this rate, as Rotholandus warned, if the world begins to grow harsher, everywhere except the vicinity of my residence could be ruined, and it wouldn’t be strange at all.

Therefore, ordinary people, not just me and my companions, needed to be given opportunities.

Opportunities to become stronger—opportunities in the form of trials. That was the conclusion I reached after much deliberation.

“All people who can fight need to become stronger than they are now. Don’t you agree?”

There were no words of rebuttal.

After that, we only intervened when the monsters couldn’t be defeated by local subjugation teams without massive casualties, or when subjugation teams couldn’t arrive in time.

Even in such cases, I didn’t step forward, letting the rest of my companions handle the situation.

And so, more than ten days passed.

—-

‘Hmm… something feels subtly different.’

On a forest path near the border region.

While Hush, who had stopped the carriage, was preparing a meal, I was looking down at my blue-silver blade some distance away from my companions.

Cut trees were scattered all around. Traces of incomplete techniques.

Since my energy had almost fully recovered during the journey, I had been trying to recall the sensation from my battle with the devil whenever I had time, attempting to revive that feeling.

Sky Slash was a technique far beyond my capabilities, so I couldn’t reproduce it without pushing myself unreasonably, but if I could freely implement the space-cutting slash, it would be a great help in battles against Orhan or dragons.

…But it wasn’t going well.

‘This isn’t easy… how did I manage to succeed back then?’

I stuck Durandal into the ground, lit a cigarette, and massaged my right arm.

It was frustratingly close yet unattainable. Like a rifle with a slightly misaligned sight.

[Though stealing others’ techniques is your specialty, did you really think you could easily imitate an ancient hero’s ultimate technique?]

…That’s true. Space Cutting was originally part of Rotholandus’s heroic tale, so how could it be easy to master? It was probably a technique that couldn’t be imitated in the first place.

Somehow he had modified it into a form that others could imitate and embedded it in Durandal, but the difficulty of acquisition was still too high.

Is it because I’ve only experienced it twice?

[Still, thanks to that, you’ve created some useful techniques. Rather than focusing on something impossible, why not first increase your proficiency with the new techniques?]

Hersella offered what might have been comfort or advice.

As she said, while exploring the principles of Space Cutting, I had created two new techniques. They were merely failed attempts at Space Cutting, but still.

‘You mean Tearing Lightning and Air Cutting? They are useful, but…’

Tearing Lightning (Hwipyeok)

Lightning that tears.

It was a technique of murder karma that focused on the “tearing” aspect of Space Cutting’s power to tear through the world. Since it was based on murder karma, I couldn’t cast it with Durandal.

I raised my left hand in front of my eyes and drew upon the power of murder karma. With the sensation of wrapping lightning in the form of thorny vines around my forearm.

– Crack…!

Dark red energy sparked up, crackling as it became sharp lightning.

Unlike the previous method of operation, which was closer to wrapping whirlwinds of air currents or sharp threads like layered fabric, this felt sharper and more destructive. And it actually was.

I thrust my left arm, wrapped in the lightning of murder karma, toward a nearby tree trunk.

– Crack-crack-crack!

The power of murder karma flowing through my fingertips burrowed into the tree trunk. The lightning of murderous intent, which thrust thorns in all directions, burrowed into the interior of the great tree like an eel, slashing it apart. It was like dozens of chainsaws being wielded simultaneously.

Even after I withdrew my hand, the energy of murder karma remained, rampaging like electric charges on the ground, burrowing into and tearing apart the tree to its furthest reaches.

If used on a person, even a mere graze would have torn their entire body to shreds, turning them into minced flesh.

‘…Honestly, the power itself isn’t much different from Blade Net.’

Blade Net.

A technique that compresses murder karma, refined to be as sharp as thread, into a net-like form, then releases it all at once when it touches the enemy, cutting them to pieces. It was Hersella’s basic technique and the foundation for other techniques.

Arrow of Destruction was just Blade Net concentrated on arrowheads, and Falling Flower Spear was the same principle but using spears instead of arrows.

All three could easily wipe out dozens of poorly armored opponents at once, but they were inefficient against heavily armored enemies as they were blocked by steel armor.

And the newly created “Tearing Lightning” shared the same drawback as it was a technique that dismantled enemies with the energy of murder karma.

Of course, they only shared the same drawback; there were significant differences in their uses and manifestation methods.

Blade Net was a one-time technique that swept a wide area in an instant, while “Tearing Lightning” was sustained continuously and persistently dismantled a single enemy.

[That depends on how you use it. You could break through the enemy’s armor with your hand and unleash it inside.]

…That wasn’t wrong.

If I penetrated an enemy’s body with Frosting and unleashed Tearing Lightning inside, it wouldn’t matter if they wore steel armor or even dragon scale armor.

Armor only protects the outer surface; it’s powerless against techniques that attack from within. The armor would remain intact while the inside turned to meat paste.

Of course, even considering that, it was still an ambiguous technique.

Most humans would die just from being penetrated by Frosting, so there was no need to deploy Tearing Lightning, and for those like Orhan or dragons with bodies superior to armor, penetration itself was impossible.

…Still, it might be useful against huge monsters that are difficult to defeat in one blow but don’t have dragon-scale level defenses.

—-

Air Cutting was literally a technique of swinging a sword to cut air. It was like a degraded version of Space Cutting. From the outside, it might look like just swinging a sword in empty space, but it was actually quite different.

When swinging a sword normally, strictly speaking, the air isn’t cut but flows around the blade.

Wind might be generated, but it can’t be said to be cut. To cut something with a sword means to destroy that target.

However, Air Cutting, perhaps due to having a bit of the sensation of Space Cutting mixed in, literally cut the “air” itself.

Annihilating the atmosphere that touches the trajectory of the blade to create a vacuum in the shape of a blade. That was the essence of Air Cutting.

…In fact, this technique wouldn’t be very meaningful on its own.

What use is a technique that can only eliminate extremely small amounts of air and nothing else? You might be able to aim for suffocation if used dozens of times in an enclosed space, but that’s about it.

However, the true value of this technique lay not in its power but in its range.

Look at the trees around me. Like a drunken war elephant had swept through, not just the trees within sword range but those beyond were all cut down, revealing their stumps.

Yes. The vacuum created by swinging the sword could, depending on the speed and power of the swing, affect areas far beyond the length of the blade!

It was like a vacuum sword aura.

When I deployed Air Cutting with enough power to cut even black iron, a transparent vacuum arc like a heat haze shot out following the trajectory.

– Slash!

A tree about ten meters away was cleanly cut, and a long crack appeared on the surface of the rock behind it.

The power was somewhat disappointing compared to the effort put in, but with this, I had gained a ranged attack method I could use anytime.

An invisible sword aura.

[…Both your heroic tale and this technique seem more suited for an assassin than a knight.]

‘That’s true.’

An attack that becomes several times faster without any warning, an invisible vacuum blade.

Both were techniques optimized for surprise attacks, perfect for “kill before they know what hit them.”

[They say a sword technique reflects the nature of its wielder… hmm… indeed it does.]

…Are you mocking me, saying my personality is as sinister and petty as an assassin’s?

‘You talk well. Then what about someone with a heroic tale that involves blowing people up?’

[Well, surely such a person would be someone who combines a warrior’s magnanimity with a noble’s splendor.]

Hersella answered with a smirk.

Her self-praise made me laugh involuntarily. I had nothing to say to that.