Chapter 409

Dueling is originally a contest pitting skills against skills.

You might throw your muscle into it, but never your magic power. Once you do, it completely throws off the balance.

Of course, all this only applies if you’re not overdoing it. Just concentrate your strength on your physical abilities or only to the extent that your opponent doesn’t end up dead.

The problem is that even the definition of “not overdoing it” varies from person to person.

It’s just like how an elephant can crush another beast underfoot without effort, yet that beast might not withstand it and be squashed flat.

-Kwaaang! Bang! Bang!

And in the Tartar Dueling Arena, two elephants were clashing with all their might.

Every time they collided, it felt like a bomb was going off, with blinding flashes lighting up before my eyes.

The power was akin to that of natural disasters, as if titans were going toe to toe.

“Get out quickly! It’s dangerous here!”

“Move! Move!”

That’s when the duel between the two men escalated into a life-or-death battle.

The audience watched their fight with great interest, but sadly, it wasn’t long before they changed course toward evacuation.

Staying here would only put them at risk of catching collateral damage. The audience was too close, and the shockwaves resonated throughout.

No matter how much Tartarans loved a good fight, danger is still danger. Especially since Hector’s energy felt ominous; evacuating was the top priority.

“Let’s watch just a bit longer! When else will we have a chance to see this?!”

“Right! A warrior boldly taking on His Majesty the King in a fair fight!”

“Look at his hands! Whoa! It’s—Red Lightning! Just spewing out like that!”

Of course, the thrill was so overwhelming it was almost ludicrous, and thus not exactly easy to endure.

Quite a few people were glued to their spots, insisting on watching till the very end like stubborn statues.

In fact, they even mocked the Academy students and locals who were in a hurry to evacuate as cowards.

Naturally.

-Szzzt!

“Aaaah! My eyes!”

“I can’t see anything!”

“Is there anyone there?! Please take me with you!”

Most were being carried out not as ordinary people, but as patients.

Eventually, it was only after Kara gave the command that those who remained finally started to evacuate…

“Anyone got sunglasses? That’d do the trick.”

“I’ve got some here. Let’s keep watching.”

“Just go! That’s Princess Kara’s order! Are you really going to defy royal orders?!”

“Ugh.”

…Anyway, they evacuated. Haven’t they always said that safety is written in blood?

Fortunately, in this case, they managed to escape without shedding any.

Still, not everyone was fleeing. Those competent enough to protect themselves stayed till the very end at the Dueling Arena.

On Tartar’s side, there were a few heads of families like Kara, and from the Academy, Luna and Grace.

They watched the battle of those two monsters with a mix of half curiosity and half seriousness.

“Red Lightning, huh? First time seeing such lightning. Was there ever a mention of it in old texts?”

“Nope. Lightning is mostly blue. It gets deeper in hue and then turns bluish-white as it intensifies.”

“Who exactly is that student? Who is he to be competing on equal footing with our Majesty?”

The heads of families gawked at Sivar showcasing the Red Lightning while simultaneously being in awe.

To the naked eye, Sivar and Hector seemed evenly matched. And they were having a gloriously macho showdown.

Typically, one would block an attack, but they were just taking hits and trading blows instead.

Their skills were such that taking hits like that was not a problem. They weren’t even getting seriously hurt.

-Wham!

Sivar caught Hector’s uppercut exactly and slightly lifted off the ground.

Just before Hector sent him soaring into the air, he grabbed onto Sivar’s ankle and slammed him back down to the ground.

Bam! With a loud noise, Sivar crashed into the ground. Cracks like spider webs spread across the solid soil.

Hector, still holding onto the ankle, spun around and flung Sivar away toward a nearby wall.

-Kraaang!

The moment Sivar smashed against the wall, he buried a fist as if it were a pot lid.

His fist burrowed deep into the wall, but Sivar’s face remained unscathed. Just before the punch connected, he had managed to turn away and barely escape the hit.

If he had dodged, a counter would’ve been immediate. Sivar swung the hammer he clutched in his right hand with all his might.

-Thwack!

Yet Hector quickly executed a jab to Sivar’s face. Anticipating the attack, he cut it off preemptively.

But Sivar only flinched for a moment; it didn’t seem all that damaging.

In the end, the thick hammerhead swung down toward Hector’s waist.

-Smack!

Even Hector’s stout body couldn’t withstand the hammering. His torso bent slightly in pain.

A sight clearly showing he was in agony. Sivar wouldn’t let this rare opportunity slip by.

He disentangled from the wall and without a moment’s hesitation drove the hammer, imbued with Red Lightning, into the ground.

-Boom!

A small explosion accompanied by lightning. As the eruption occurred, Hector flew far away.

Sivar hurled Mjolnir toward the direction Hector was heading.

With both legs firmly planted, Hector had no chance to evade easily.

-Kwaaaang!

Hector, flung from wall to wall. Sivar steadied himself and made his way toward the wall.

Though Hector had taken numerous hits, it seemed his body hadn’t sustained significant damage. Truly a terrifying durability and regeneration.

“What a brutish fighting style.”

“Indeed. But there’s a reason behind that tactic.”

“However, there’s no way His Majesty will lose. He’s faced countless opponents like that.”

Already lost once, Uncle. Kara couldn’t help but smirk internally at the overly confident heads of families.

If they knew Hector, full of vigor, had lost to Sivar, how would they react? They probably wouldn’t believe it.

The very symbol of Tartar, akin to a deity in myth. The idea of losing had to be beyond their comprehension.

In reality, Hector was being pummelled, but the heads of families still felt at ease.

‘It’s not being at ease; he’s just taking hits.’

It’s not that he’s relaxed and going easy. He’s literally letting himself take each individualized blow.

From a competitive standpoint, Sivar was certainly much weaker than Hector. In fact, Kara would beat him easily.

Sivar was doing his utmost to avoid getting hit, but Hector’s expertise was so overwhelming that all his attempts failed.

Meanwhile, Sivar’s attacks? He was just standing there taking them. Normally, he’d have evaded a light jab with ease.

‘What on earth is he thinking?’

Unlike the heads of families, Kara couldn’t even manage a smile. After all, Hector was her father.

Why was Hector choosing to let Sivar’s attacks land instead of countering?

And why was Sivar pressing relentlessly, as if he wanted to kill Hector? It was difficult to understand.

‘…He wouldn’t actually kill him, would he?’

Her anxiety began to grow. Kara trembled slightly, watching the two fight, ready to intervene if something went wrong.

-Bang!

A fist wrapped in Red Lightning collided with a fist entwined in Blue Lightning.

The resulting shockwave spread like ripples, ruffling Kara’s red hair.

She quickly fixed her tousled hair and quietly observed the duel.

-Rumble

Before long, the sky began to fill with dark clouds.

*****

Hector took a beating from Sivar’s blunt toy and made a decision.

If it was a choice between dying as a king or a warrior, he’d rather choose a certain path.

Either die proudly as a warrior, or die gracefully as a king. He had to choose between the two.

That’s why he intended to stake his life in this fight. Let’s die proudly as a warrior in a life-risking battle.

To draw out Sivar’s full powers, he provoked him constantly or got up close enough to make it seem like he wanted to die.

He was just waiting for that vicious entity to finish him off.

‘Not easy.’

But it wasn’t straightforward. While he took several hits intentionally, Hector was no ordinary man.

He was a warrior known as the Destroyer King. He was the strongest entity, bar none, except for supreme monstrous beings.

Among those with blue magic, he could easily be deemed the overwhelming powerhouse. So reflexively, a counterattack would emerge.

Even that counterattack, given how he was holding back, appeared slow compared to his usual speed, yet Sivar kept absorbing blows. Hector nodded, as expected.

‘He’s improved since last time but still has many technical shortcomings.’

His lack of experience produced stark side effects. His innate strength shone brilliantly.

Even that overwhelming strength had grown significantly since last time. He was like a bigger, badder beast.

-Crack!

Mjolnir landed another brutal blow on Hector’s side— the same spot he was hit before.

There’s an old saying in the East: No tree stands unbroken after ten whacks.

No matter how strong Hector’s body was, if he took a hit in the same place repeatedly, it would eventually break.

‘Now he’s even employing strategy…!’

Sivar’s strategy was straightforward. Targeting one spot relentlessly to immobilize his opponent.

In a way, it was a blunt strategy, but also effective. It could even reverse psychology into play.

The moment Hector grasped this psychology, one person came to mind. The inspector who could read human psychology exceptionally well.

‘That old man taught me something pretty useful.’

-Thwack!

In a moment of distraction, he took another hit. Damage steadily accrued to Hector’s body.

As time passed, his thoughts grew more tangled. He still hadn’t found an answer.

When your thoughts race, your reactions tend to lag behind, and that was reflected in his body’s responses.

-Smack!

Hector’s head whipped to the side. His mind went momentarily blank.

Yet, in that daze, his clarity sharpened.

‘Why am I afraid of death?’

Instinctively, he thrust his fist imbued with lightning forward.

The fist struck directly into Sivar’s abdomen. It was a blow packed with all his might.

-Crunch!

The clear sound of bones fracturing rang out. It seemed Sivar took some damage too, staggering back with a grimace.

Hector wasted no time, pressing the advantage and delivering successive strikes to rattle him further.

-Crack! Crack! Crack!

Each hit caused Sivar’s head to turn, with blue lightning exploding with each blow.

Ideally, his eardrums should have ruptured and electrocuted him. But who was Sivar?

He was a monster with an astonishingly high regeneration capability, capable of overcoming anything thrown at him.

-Thud!

Sivar clasped Hector’s hand with his left. Hector faced him directly.

His skin had been scorched by lightning, and irritation was evident on his face.

Under normal circumstances, he should have kicked or pushed away to retaliate, but as mentioned, Hector’s mind was now cluttered.

-Kaaang!!!

The Mjolnir wrapped in Red Lightning crashed into Hector’s chin.

The chin is one of the human body’s vital points, connected directly to the brain through nerves.

Even Hector couldn’t evade a strike to a vital area. For a moment, he felt his consciousness cut off with a jolt!

Fortunately, he regained awareness quickly but could clearly see the sky above him, now veiled in dark clouds.

‘…Why am I afraid?’

Something fell from the sky. His vision was blurry, but it began approaching closer.

Before long, he realized that it was Sivar, soaring high above, about to come crashing down.

-Kooowaaang!

“Cough…!”

Sivar, falling from the sky, aimed his foot squarely down on Hector’s abdomen.

That mighty strike made Hector’s eyes widen. Even so, the confusion didn’t cease.

‘A warrior shouldn’t fear death. Does that mean I’m a king and not a warrior?’

-Thud! Thud!

Hector’s head swung back and forth with each hit from Sivar’s lightning-imbued fists. His ears rang in a haze.

His consciousness began to drift, and his thoughts grew increasingly nebulous.

Faintly, he could hear someone calling his name. But Hector shrugged it off.

‘A king must always fear death? No. Death is…’

One cannot arrive at an answer with such binary thinking. Hector couldn’t let go of his thoughts till the very end.

What is it that’s making me afraid of death? He once faced death without fear in the past.

‘…No.’

No. In the fading consciousness, Hector recollected memories of his first encounter with death.

The memories of the times when he was still a bumbling warrior.

How was he back then? He fought tooth and nail to escape death’s clutches.

That struggle led him to rise as the Destroyer King and the Emperor of Tartar.

‘Death is… terrifying.’

Should a warrior not fear death? Even a warrior is ultimately human, bound by flesh and blood.

Even a king is nothing different. As long as flesh and blood exist, fear of death is inevitable.

‘Human beings, people…’

Given life, they inevitably sprint toward death.

It’s not the status of being a king that makes one fear death; nor is it being a warrior that makes overcoming the fear of death necessary.

It’s simply because one is human, a living being, that such emotions surface. The intricacies of fear and overcoming it are irrelevant.

The only thing that truly matters is this.

‘I cannot die like this.’

He needed to flee from the promised death.

Even if it was shameful, he could not let the inevitable death close in.

Fearing death? That’s nothing strange; it’s only natural.

And thus Hector made a firm resolve.

‘It’s not strange to fear death.’

It’s not strange; it’s merely instinct. Even the Destroyer King was just one life among many.

As time passed, he was more a figure likely to appear in history books. Only then did Hector realize.

‘That’s why people wish to leave a name behind.’

It’s a kind of desperation. Since there’s no escaping, one has to find ways to cement their existence.

That’s why he vowed, as one human, to hold onto this desire.

A warrior or a king, he would flee from death and leave a monumental mark on the world.

‘First of all…’

Hector’s consciousness, teetering on the brink of darkness, gradually began to return. He could see clearly now.

The wild-eyed savage. The wild being poised to deliver the finishing blow to take his life.

Hector couldn’t help but smile inwardly and shouted loudly.

“Gulrak!”

“?!”

“Your follower appeals!”

Sivar flinched at the sudden outcry.

In that split second, Hector made his plea to the ominously overcast sky.

“Let this blasphemer face divine retribution!!”

While outwardly making such declarations, his inner thoughts were far more personal.

‘I appeal as a father.’

Though he appeared to be the cool and collected barbarian warrior on the outside.

‘May that scoundrel who took my daughter face divine wrath!!!’

In the end, he was just a single father.

Was it fate or some alignment that his intentions reached the heavens? Or perhaps Gulrak had been waiting for a chance all along?

-Kwaaaang!!!

A dazzling pillar of white and blue light descended, filling the entire arena.

It was truly the ‘Divine Judgment’ of the gods.

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