Ch.860Five Minutes Have Passed.

The intense vibration of Durandal, which had been strong enough to be quite distracting, immediately subsided as if it had never happened the moment I charged toward Rotholandus.

That was fortunate.

It had been whining so much that I couldn’t tell if I was holding a sword hilt or a vibrator, to the point where it was interfering with my ability to fight properly.

Against insignificant opponents, it might not matter. But facing a formidable enemy like the half-naked woman before me, such a distraction could create a fatal opening.

“Kyaaaah!”

“Graaaah!”

She was a powerful opponent. Powerful enough to make my declaration of finishing this in 5 minutes somewhat embarrassing.

In truth, that declaration had been merely rhetorical, meant to affirm my determination to win, not because I was actually confident I could end it within 5 minutes.

*Crash!*

…So perhaps it’s time to retract that statement?

As I was sent flying like a kicked ball and crashed into the remnants of the fortress wall, I felt my face burning with embarrassment for having made such a boast.

‘How is she this strong….’

I sighed lightly as I pushed away the pile of rocks that had covered my entire body like a blanket.

Shengangshi, was it? The half-naked woman possessed by Rotholandus’s soul was an astonishingly powerful being. Impressive enough to draw admiration.

Not just the skills accumulated from sweeping battlefields as one of the Great’s Twelve Knights, but her basic capabilities themselves were already in the superhuman realm.

Her strength was below mine, but her movements and reaction speed surpassed me, and her defense was absurdly powerful, perhaps thanks to the blessing of the Fire Seal.

Though she was said to be possessed by Rotholandus’s soul, I’d heard the physical foundation was definitely that idiot Amin’s body… how on earth had they modified such a worthless body to exert this kind of power?

It was beyond fascinating—it was astonishing.

[Isn’t it obvious? If the enemy were weak enough for you to overwhelm, I would have handled it myself without needing to call you.]

‘Yes, I suppose that’s true.’

Indeed, this Shengangshi must be the trump card that Arch Sorcerer Meiharin had painstakingly created to kill me, so it’s only natural that she would be as strong as me… perhaps even stronger.

If she had turned out to be weaker than me, there would have been no point in preparing such a thing as a trump card in the first place.

‘Well, at least… it’s not completely hopeless.’

Right. It wasn’t that bad.

‘That’s good enough.’

I straightened my body that had been leaning against the pile of debris, and with a violent stomp that shattered the ground, I launched myself toward Shengangshi once more.

With Durandal, its golden seal glowing brightly, firmly gripped in both hands.

“Kyaaaaa-!”

Like a truck sending a high school student to another world, the half-naked woman who resembled me was suddenly within striking distance in the blink of an eye.

*Swoosh!*

The dark sword in her hand, dripping black fluid, was swung like lightning cutting through the air.

As the droplets of fluid scattered in an arc touched the ground, they made a hissing sound as the soil and rocks melted, releasing a stream of black smoke.

Poison.

And not just the kind that could kill an elephant with a single drop, as the expression goes, but a deadly poison potent enough to kill even a whale.

Probably an ability of that sword.

“Whoa…!”

I hurriedly changed direction to avoid the poisonous droplets.

Since it was a poison that could melt stone, it would surely dissolve any body part it touched, even without being ingested. The blessing of the Fire Seal or Mana Resistance wouldn’t protect against poison, so I had no choice but to be wary of this attack.

“That’s dangerous!”

Should I consider it fortunate that she wasn’t actively utilizing this?

Was it because she lacked rationality and couldn’t understand the usefulness of her own weapon? Or perhaps, despite having gone mad enough to fight with her breasts bouncing, she still retained a knight’s mindset that disdained “dishonorable means” like poison?

“Grrraaah…!”

Since the sword itself was flowing with deadly poison, droplets full of toxic energy were scattered whenever Shengangshi swung it…

“Ha! Your babbling is getting clearer! Earlier you were no different from a beast, but now you’re at least at the level of an infant!”

Fortunately, they didn’t directly target me or become a stream that would engulf me rather than just droplets.

“Kenaz!”

…A few drops of deadly poison were nothing—I could just burn and evaporate them before they reached me.

*Whoosh!*

A fierce stream of fire erupted from the seal on my right hand.

Fire of pure mana, not Karma fire.

Without the power of Murder Karma mixed in, its firepower was ordinary, and it wasn’t easy to freely control its shape, but…

“I’ll cremate you, just like the father of that body!”

Creating a wave of fire by swinging my arm while shooting it in a straight line wasn’t particularly difficult.

The rune’s flames, burning fiercely with the mana in the air as fuel, spread out in a fan shape.

*Hiss!*

*Hisss!*

Erasing all the poison droplets flying toward me.

“Grrrr… ahhrrr…!”

Though it hadn’t reached the level of Karma fire, it still had more than enough heat to burn a person to death.

Facing this, Shengangshi let out a strange groan and half-turned her body, pulling back the long sword she held with both hands horizontally behind her shoulder.

It was a familiar sight. The sword form that Nigel had shown me when teaching me swordsmanship. It was exactly the same stance.

Imperial Swordsmanship.

The basic sword stance.

“Aaaah—!”

As Shengangshi, with Imelia’s face, let out a sharp battle cry, a black curtain unfolded right in front of her.

It was a magical sight, but this wasn’t magic but a pure sword technique.

Sword Curtain.

An ultimate technique that creates a barrier made of sword light trajectories by activating the body to its limit in an instant and layering ultra-high-speed slashes upon slashes.

When you think about it, the principle itself was extremely simple. It was just cutting the air very quickly and very many times.

However, this was clearly the ultimate defensive technique a swordsman could deploy.

If the ability to cut space were added to this, it would become an ultimate technique that could be called invincible without anyone objecting.

*Fwoosh!*

The next moment, the stream of fire that collided with the black curtain disappeared helplessly like an erased scribble, leaving only small sparks scattered about.

…Yes. I thought as much.

Even I had used the Sword Curtain combined with Durandal’s space-cutting ability to block a close-range explosion, so how could Rotholandus, the originator of that power, not do the same?

I had hoped she might not understand the danger of fire as much as she didn’t grasp the usefulness of poison, and would just get hit and burn to death, but it seemed that even in her deranged state, her combat sense remained intact.

Therefore—

*Whoosh!*

I burst through the flames that were just barely outside the Sword Curtain’s range and ambushed Shengangshi as she was regaining her posture.

【Defying Fate】

Color disappears, sound disappears. The Tale of Heroes of time compression that had led countless powerful beings to futile deaths.

A single fatal strike that deserved applause just for being countered shot out like a sniper’s bullet toward the face that resembled mine.

However.

In the colorless world slowed down to near stillness.

“———!”

Shengangshi proved herself worthy of applause by moving her body, albeit slowly, to deflect Durandal’s blade with her cheek and launch a counterattack.

…She dodged it?

I widened my eyes and slightly bit my lip.

Though her movement seemed as slow as that of a common soldier, considering that I hadn’t yet withdrawn Defying Fate, it was clearly an incredible speed in reality.

Or perhaps… the space-cutting ability itself had some effect in offsetting the time compression of Defying Fate.

There was no time to ponder the reason.

The pitch-black sword thrusting diagonally upward toward my exposed flank contained such powerful Karma that the flow of power was clearly visible.

A momentum that seemed capable of not just tearing space apart but erasing it completely.

I might be able to split her head horizontally if I continued my attack, but I would also be fatally skewered through my side to my heart.

‘Ha, so much for a single fatal strike. Nobody ever falls for it…’

In the end, I had no choice but to give up on the second slash and create distance to avoid the counterattack.

Taking mutual damage would be about 500 million times more disadvantageous for me.

Even if my opponent were this world’s final boss, it would ultimately be my loss—and this wasn’t even the final boss, just a half-corpse created by Meiharin, so how could I end up in mutual destruction with such a thing?

I would lose my one and only life and become a corpse, but Rotholandus before me was, strictly speaking, already a moving corpse, so dying together would just mean returning to where she originally belonged.

The living should live, right?

So I retreated and created distance. Exactly 4 seconds after deploying Defying Fate.

And 1 second later, as the world regained its color,

*Boom!*

A tremendous air-rending sound pierced through the void.

Rotholandus’s strike. It was the sound of something bursting from the tip of her sword cleanly cutting away the roof of a building far away.

“Ha….”

I let out a hollow laugh.

Skewered? If I’d been hit, they wouldn’t even have found my corpse.

The battlefield had darkened as clouds covered the sun. A single ray of sunlight came down like a pillar, illuminating the exposed-chested Rotholandus like a spotlight.

Evidence that her sword had penetrated and scattered the clouds.