Chapter 551

The months in the Holy Kingdom were truly a series of extraordinary events, but the journey back was, in contrast, eerily peaceful.

“Greeeeat!”

Of course, as if to prove that the world had become more dangerous, monsters occasionally popped up…

“It’s a Grave Devourer! Battle priests! Deploy the containment formation! Knights, charge!”

“For order and justice!”

Without us needing to lift a finger, the paladins, who had sensed the signs of the monster’s appearance, hunted them down as soon as they emerged.

“Gaaaaah!”

“Return to the darkness from whence you came!”

The Grave Devourer let out a monstrous scream and struggled, but its entire body was crushed under the suppression miracle cast by the battle priests, rendering it unable to move.

Then, the Light of Judgment and the Blade of Order swept through like a golden storm.

Hmm. They fight well.

Yes, this is what the Holy Kingdom should be like.

Even a mid-sized Corpses Raised by Magic, which would normally require two masters to safely subdue, was torn to shreds under the concentrated attacks of the paladins and priests, spewing black smoke.

“…Impressive. Are the Paladins of Astraea always this strong?”

Milia, who had been drawing her bowstring in case the paladins were in danger, awkwardly smiled and put the arrow back into her quiver.

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

“Because the enemy is a monster. The paladins you’ve seen so far were using blessings meant for monsters to fight people, so their true strength didn’t show.”

The paladins Milia had seen were all wielding their swords against humans, so she had underestimated their strength.

However, for any church order, the true power of priests and paladins is only fully displayed in battles against monsters. Not in killing people.

At least in the case of the Astraea Church Order, their attack power varies depending on the weight of the sin, allowing them to perform decently in human combat. The Menes Church Order has miracles that weaken the regeneration of beastmen, making them useful in battles against beastmen…

But even so, it’s much more efficient to use them in battles against monsters.

Anyway, we turned our attention away from the disintegrating Grave Devourer and continued toward the border.

—

It was my idea to decide not to help with the subjugation of monsters we encountered along the way unless the paladins were in danger.

In a way, it could be considered dereliction of duty. It meant standing by while having enough power to face a clear enemy.

Naturally, there were objections within the group.

Lacey and Agnes reacted as if I were talking nonsense, and Leonor and Nigel also thought it was wrong as knights.

However, I didn’t retract my stance. There was a reason it had to be this way.

“If we help, we can easily defeat the monsters. But then, when will they ever become stronger? That can’t be. We can’t defeat all the monsters for them.”

The current state of humanity’s combat power is extremely unbalanced.

Most humans are as weak as they were before the Heavenly Barrier was damaged, while only a few heroes, including myself, have become disproportionately strong.

In short, everything depends on a handful of strong individuals.

The strong solve problems alone and continue to grow even stronger, while the majority of the weak simply praise them. Since the subjugation of enemies is left to the strong, the weak never develop their own strength.

From the perspective of the strong, it might be satisfying to grow stronger quickly, but for humanity, it’s closer to a vicious cycle.

Even a strong individual who can take on thousands alone cannot perfectly replace the work that requires thousands of people.

Take me, for example. I can solve the problems where I am, but I have no way to deal with what happens elsewhere in the meantime.

If this continues, as Rotholandus warned, the world will become harsher, and everything outside my residence could easily collapse.

So, we had to give ordinary people a chance too.

A chance to grow stronger, a chance called trial. That was the conclusion I reached after much thought.

“Everyone who can fight must become stronger than they are now. Right?”

There was no rebuttal.

After that, we only intervened when the local subjugation forces couldn’t defeat a monster without significant losses or when the subjugation forces didn’t arrive in time.

Even then, I didn’t step forward, leaving it to the rest of the group to handle.

And so, more than ten days passed.

—

‘Hmm… Something feels subtly different.’

Near the border, on a forest path.

While Hersh stopped the carriage to prepare a meal, I stood a little apart from the group, looking down at the blue-green blade.

Around me were many cut trees. Traces of an unfinished technique.

Since my energy had mostly recovered during the journey, I had been trying to recall the sensations from my battle with the demon whenever I had the chance.

The Heaven-Splitting Slash was a technique far beyond my capabilities, so I couldn’t replicate it without overexerting myself. But if I could freely execute a spatial slash, it would be a great help in battles against Or-han or dragons.

…It didn’t go so well, though.

‘It’s not easy… How did I succeed back then?’

I planted Durandal into the ground and lit a cigarette, rubbing my right arm.

It was frustrating to feel like I was on the verge of success but not quite there. Like a rifle with a slightly misaligned scope.

[Stealing others’ techniques is your specialty, but do you really think you can easily replicate the skills of an ancient hero?]

…True. Spatial slashing was originally part of Rotholandus’s Heroic Tale, so it couldn’t be easy to learn. It should have been impossible to imitate in the first place.

Somehow, I managed to adapt it into a form others could mimic and embed it into Durandal, but the difficulty of mastering it was too high.

Was it because I had only experienced it twice?

[Still, thanks to that, you’ve created some useful techniques. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do, why not first improve your proficiency with the new techniques?]

Hersela offered words that could be either comfort or advice.

As she said, while exploring the principles of spatial slashing, I had created two new techniques. Though they were just failed attempts at spatial slashing.

‘You mean Thunderous Rend and Vacuum Slash? They’re useful, but…’

Thunderous Rend (撝霹)

A rending thunder.

It was a Life Force Technique created by focusing on the “rending” aspect of the spatial slash’s power. Since it was based on the Life Force Technique, I couldn’t use it with Durandal.

I raised my left hand and summoned the power of the Life Force Technique, feeling it wrap around my forearm like a thorny vine.

-Crack…!

A crimson energy sparked and crackled, forming a sharp thunderbolt.

Unlike the previous method, which felt like swirling air currents or sharp threads woven together, this was sharper and more destructive. And it was.

I thrust my left arm, wrapped in the Life Force Technique’s lightning, into a nearby tree trunk.

-Crunch!

The Life Force Technique flowed through my fingertips and into the tree trunk.

The lightning of killing intent, with thorns pointing in all directions, burrowed into the tree like an eel, shredding it from the inside. It was like several circular saws spinning simultaneously.

Even after I pulled my hand out, the Life Force Technique remained, the lightning’s charge rampaging across the ground, tearing the tree to pieces all the way to its tips.

If used on a person, even a graze would turn their entire body into shredded flesh.

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

Net of Blades.

A technique that compresses the Life Force Technique’s energy into a net-like form, releasing it all at once upon contact with the enemy to slice them apart. It was Hersela’s basic technique and the foundation of her other skills.

The Arrow of Precision focused the Net of Blades into an arrowhead, and the Falling Flame Spear used the same principle but with a spear.

All three could wipe out dozens of lightly armored enemies in one go, but they were inefficient against heavily armored foes.

And the newly created “Thunderous Rend” shared the same weakness, as it also used the Life Force Technique to disintegrate enemies.

Of course, they only shared the weakness; their uses and activation methods were quite different.

While the Net of Blades was a single-use technique that swept a wide area, “Thunderous Rend” was a sustained technique that persistently disintegrated a single target.

[It’s up to you how you use it. Just break the enemy’s armor with your hand and unleash it inside.]

…Not wrong.

If I used the Ice Blade to pierce the enemy’s body and then unleashed Thunderous Rend inside, even if they wore steel armor, it would be meaningless.

Armor only protects the surface; it’s useless against attacks that strike from within. The armor would remain intact, but the inside would turn to mush.

Still, it remained a somewhat ambiguous technique.

Most humans would die just from being pierced by the Ice Blade, so there was no need to use Thunderous Rend. And against beings like Or-han or dragons, whose bodies were tougher than armor, piercing them was impossible.

…But against large monsters that are hard to kill in one hit and don’t have dragon-scale-level defenses, it might be useful.

—

Vacuum Slash was, as the name suggests, a technique that slashed through the air. A degraded version of the spatial slash, you might say. From the outside, it might look like just swinging a sword in the air, but it was actually different.

When you swing a sword normally, strictly speaking, the air isn’t cut; it flows around the blade to either side.

You might create some wind, but you can’t say you’ve cut it. Cutting something with a sword means destroying it.

However, Vacuum Slash, thanks to having a bit of the spatial slash’s sensation, literally “cut” the air itself.

The essence of Vacuum Slash was to annihilate the air along the blade’s trajectory, creating a vacuum in the shape of a blade.

…By itself, that wouldn’t be very meaningful.

If it only annihilates air and nothing else, what use is a technique that destroys a tiny amount of air? You could use it dozens of times in a confined space to cause suffocation, but…

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 the sword’s reach but those beyond were all cut down to their stumps.

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

In other words, a vacuum blade.

When I unleashed Vacuum Slash with enough force to cut through black iron, a transparent vacuum arc shot out along the trajectory.

-Swish!

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

The power was a bit disappointing compared to the effort, but with this, I had gained a long-range attack I could use anytime.

An invisible blade.

[…Your Heroic Tale and this technique… Both seem more suited to an assassin than a knight.]

‘True.’

An attack that suddenly becomes several times faster, an invisible vacuum blade.

Both were perfect for the “if you don’t know, you die” approach. Optimized for ambushes.

[They say sword techniques reflect the nature of the wielder… Hmm… Indeed.]

…Are you mocking me for having a sneaky, petty personality?

‘Well said. Then what about a human with a Heroic Tale that involves blowing people up?’

[Well, probably someone with the boldness of a warrior and the elegance of a noble.]

Hersela chuckled as she answered.

A self-praise that made me laugh involuntarily. I had no retort.