Chapter 249

The battlefield was melting like a furnace, filled with the sounds of screams and roars of evil.

The midday sun’s rays shimmered like heatwaves over the earth, adding to the intense heat emanating from thousands of soldiers.

And there I was, right in the middle of it all.

Dyeing the ground red with blood within a radius of several meters.

“Run! The Carnivorous Beast’s spikes are coming! Keep your distance…! Ugh!”

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

“Ahhh! My stomach! My stomach!”

Ten crimson tendrils pierced and shattered the enemies all around.

Spikes as strong as iron, as sharp as spears, and as flexible as snakes, infused with life force.

“Is this all you’ve got?! You dare challenge me with such pathetic strength?!”

Responding to my rage, the ten spikes grew even more ferocious and sharp. Their attacks were beyond anything the enemies could block.

If they raised their swords to protect their upper bodies, the spikes bent downward to pierce their stomachs. If they shielded their torsos with spears, the spikes pierced through their heads and yanked them out.

The spikes didn’t stop at piercing just one enemy—they skewered as many as they could reach in one go.

Then, I lifted the impaled enemies high into the air.

So that all the enemies could see clearly.

Like velvet tangled in antlers, each tendril of malice had several enemy soldiers strung up, squirming helplessly.

“Behold the fate that awaits you all!”

I shouted as if showing off, swirling the bloodied spikes with their edges sharpened.

The skewered enemies were torn apart into pieces, their flesh scattering like flower petals.

[Truly magnificent.]

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

Yeah, of course, she’d be satisfied. It was a performance similar to her tactics.

Using cruelty as a weapon to crush the enemy’s will with fear—I too thought it was an effective strategy.

Though I didn’t plan on eating people like Hersela.

Blood and entrails poured down like rain, drenching the surroundings.

Even my allies were terrified by the sight. So, imagine how the enemies felt.

Cavalrymen covered in their comrades’ guts swung their weapons with faces drained of spirit.

Blades lost in fear, their attacks were as weak as a breeze, unable to kill even a single soldier.

With every hoofbeat, a spray of blood erupted.

The knights, their morale shattered, couldn’t even defend themselves, let alone counterattack.

The number of enemies dwindled rapidly.

“You should’ve surrendered quietly! Not that I’d accept it now!”

I had no intention of offering surrender to the knights or cavalry anymore.

Those who wanted to surrender had already stepped aside.

What remained were fools stubbornly loyal to their trashy masters and those too dirty to even consider surrender.

So, even if they died like bugs, they had no right to complain. Right?

—

After plowing through the battlefield like that for dozens of seconds, the enemy I’d been targeting finally came within range.

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

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

He seemed to be a commander among Ernst’s knights, a true master.

“Yeah, there’s no escape! For you!”

I turned my horse toward him and charged.

No enemy dared to block my path. Even if they tried, they wouldn’t last a second.

The knight noticed my approach and adjusted his grip on his longsword, charging toward me.

Even as a master, he couldn’t completely suppress his fear—his eyes trembled slightly—but he showed no intention of running away.

“Carnivorous Beast Ai-shan Gi-or! I, Grig Rymer, knight of His Highness Ernst, will hold you accountable for your slaughter!”

“I don’t know that name!”

I really didn’t.

There are about fifty masters in the Empire—how could I remember all their names?

By the time this war ends, that number will probably drop to thirty anyway.

“Then I’ll carve it into your corpse!”

The longsword came at me with a fierce momentum.

He definitely had the skill to back up his name.

He seemed like he’d rank high among the masters.

If it were the old me, I’d have needed a dozen exchanges on horseback to deal with him.

But not now.

I suppressed my boiling emotions, focused my consciousness, and poured myself into my blade.

I didn’t need to go all out like I did against Valenstein. This wasn’t the final battle, and it shouldn’t be.

The second manifestation of my soul’s slash.

I was certain.

This was the power of those who had surpassed masters and entered a realm beyond.

The first step of the 【Heroic Epic】.

Once again, Durandal accelerated in an unreal way.

“What the…!”

At the moment our horses crossed paths, before Grig’s sword could even reach halfway, my blade had already cleaved through half of his upper body.

The black iron armor split like firewood, muscles and bones severed as the slash dug deeper.

On the other side of Grig’s horse, only half of his body remained, collapsing.

Only the lower half of his body remained, spurting blood like a tipped wine glass.

“This… this can’t be! How could it reach…!”

With a final gasp filled with shock, his upper body disappeared among the cavalry. Probably turned into well-trampled fertilizer.

The intestines that burst from the lower body, which had tumbled off the horse, oozed out, emitting a foul stench. Perhaps due to the discomfort of feeling like excrement had been splattered on its back, the horse shook its body and flung the now-ownerless lower half to the ground.

“Neigh!”

It even stomped on it with its hind legs. Like squeezing a tube of toothpaste with a fist, a jelly-like liquid mixed with blood and guts gushed out, soaking the ground.

…What a nasty-tempered horse.

“Sir Raimar!”

The knights screamed in horror.

Even if he couldn’t hold out as long as the Ghost Sword, they probably never imagined he’d be killed in a single strike. Well, compared to the barely-master-level Paladin, he was still a fairly skilled man among masters.

“Even Sir Raimar was taken down in one hit…!”

“What kind of master-level knight is that? A monster, a monster!”

Perhaps because the few remaining masters were being killed so helplessly and miserably, the knights around me were now fleeing in the opposite direction, cutting down even their own allies who stood in their way. Pathetic.

[Even seeing it again, that slash is utterly bizarre. Like Valenstein’s Ghost Sword or Or-han’s Indestructible God of Fire. Was that attack something similar?]

‘That’s probably it. A technique beyond the realm of mastery. I don’t know what the Ka`har call it, though.’

Perhaps because my consciousness was clearer than when I first used it, I instinctively understood the principle—no, the effect—of this technique. The acceleration was just a visible phenomenon. The essence of a hero’s tale is the power to twist the laws of physics.

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 the reach became faster.

Yes. My soul-infused sword was compressing the very time it took for the attack to land!

Like fast-forwarding just one character in a movie. The moment I swung my sword, I and the world were walking different timelines.

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 that technique?]

Name…?

I hadn’t really thought about that yet.

It was a very Hersela-like question, naming every technique. From “Falling Blade” to “Crushing Mountain,” “Righteous Slash,” and “Up-hwa,” there were all sorts of technique names.

‘Well…? I haven’t really thought about it. Do techniques even need names?’

I answered while slicing the surrounding knights into pieces. The name, well, wouldn’t the people who saw my fight come up with something appropriate?

[Foolish talk. Names are the essence of all things translated into human language. Giving a suitable name alone can make the fundamental image of a technique much clearer.]

Sounds like some philosophical nonsense…

In short, giving a technique a name makes it easier to recall its image.

True, hearing it, it made sense.

Then I guess I should come up with a name…

What should it be?

The essence of this technique is compressing time to strike down enemies before they can react. So…

‘The Sword That Definitely Kills?’

[…Are you insane? That’s what you call a name?!]

Hersela shouted in frustration.

Apparently, my naming sense didn’t quite align with her tastes.

Isn’t it fine? ‘The Sword That Definitely Kills.’

Better than “Time Sword” or “Compression Sword,” right?

‘If you don’t like it, I’ll think about it later. Not the time for this now.’

Perhaps because I had calmed my emotions to take down Grichi, or maybe because I was chatting with this woman, the burning rage had cooled like a winter lake.

I was still angry, but not to the point where my judgment was clouded by passion. I could act calmly and decisively.

Not long after, another master fell to my sword.

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