Episode 42
With the appearance of another human being, there was no longer any reason to insist on being male.
“Syang, it’s over there.”
Meeeeeeeee!
Syang ran with excitement. He had left his armor in Hebron, so he ran as fast as he could with his light body.
The guy who appeared this time looked down at us from high above.
The horseman rode up the steep slope without hesitation. The man on horseback took out an arrow from his back and raised his large longbow.
Shaeeeeek, Kang!
The arrow the man shot bounced off the stray’s fur.
The man seemed a little surprised, but not flustered.
He put another arrow on his bow.
‘Come!’
The man loaded the arrow with an aura. I also added an aura to my longsword, and this time I grabbed Syang’s hair and twisted it slightly.
As the stray turned and ran, the arrow flew towards me.
Kaaaaah!
Even though it was quite a distance, the aura on the arrow did not diminish. He was a man who had mastered archery properly.
In such a vast environment, it would have been necessary to learn archery using aura in order to survive.
The man wrapped in black cloth held a sword instead of a bow.
Suddenly, the sheep picked up speed. The creature kicked the ground and ran, running at a furious pace, just like the mutant sheep that had once scared me.
It was natural for the man’s sword to aim for Syang.
Meeeeeee!
Suyang believed in me. He kept running without slowing down.
I responded to that belief.
He struck down the man’s sword with a long sword imbued with an aura.
Kaaaaang!
Syang seemed to be used to fighting me and matched my pace. The guy hit the horse’s head with his horn.
Phew!
The horns that could shatter rocks crushed the horse’s skull.
The horse fell backwards, unable to bear the shock.
The man rolled on the floor, but wasn’t crushed by the horse like the previous guy.
Instead, the man lost sight of me. When he regained his balance, I swung my longsword and aimed for his waist.
The man’s sword moved. He tried to block my sword with his Sardian sword technique. His sword was simple but heavy.
I resisted that honest swordsmanship with my Braio swordsmanship.
Seo-eok!
The right arm of the man holding the sword was cut off. He followed the trajectory drawn by his arm and the sword with blank eyes.
The arm holding the sword fell off with a thud and was covered in sand.
“I won’t say much. Since you have revealed yourselves, you must show the appropriate determination.”
From the moment they tried to assassinate me, an all-out war began between them and me.
They didn’t seem to notice that fact, though.
The man looked back and forth between me and his arm. He briefly thought about the swordsmanship I had just shown him, then ground his teeth with a cracking sound.
“Breio… … ! You guys will definitely… … !”
I wondered what this meant.
‘Was there something going on between the Sardia and Breio families?’
Being a member of the Breyo bloodline did not give him access to all the secrets. He was confident that he had looked through most of the documents, but there were many secrets that only the lord could read.
There were quite a few confidential documents that could only be viewed after reaching adulthood.
I chewed over the three words the man had uttered. It seemed a little insufficient, so I uttered something that might provoke the man.
It was a vivid word that I encountered even in my dreams.
“For brilliant talent.”
“Eww!”
The man pulled a dagger from his waist.
He rushed at me, blood gushing from his uncut forearm.
The man raised his voice and brandished a dagger at me.
“Breio! It’s Breio’s dog! Breio’s dog has appeared! How dare someone like Breio… …!”
There seemed to be a colleague of the man in this area. The man’s severed arm was shining. The cursed mark that had spread across his body was briefly visible.
I easily dodged the man’s dagger. With his mask removed, the man looked to be in his early twenties at best.
“Wasn’t it Sardia who got hit by that Braio?”
“You cunning bastard! Not only did you accuse us of treason, but you came all the way here!”
The man was open-mouthed. It was fortunate for me.
It was said that the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend. But when they met briefly, they were powerless. It was remarkable that they had survived for over a century, but during that time, they had never once rebelled against House Braio. It would never be the same again.
“Sardia was a people worse than earthworms.”
This was my assessment of the survivors of the Sardia Dukes. If they were earthworms, they would have squirmed once or twice, but they were stuck here. The best they did was send one of the brightest guys to be Delgain’s staff.
No, even that was probably something that Spiel couldn’t stand and left the wasteland.
“Eeeeek!”
The armless man tried to kill me with all his might. I was disappointed in his ability to fire an arrow loaded with aura, but his arm was already cut off.
“Inferno.”
Whoosh whoosh!
The man was set on fire. He came towards me, writhing in pain, and then fell down dead.
I picked up the weapons that had fallen to the ground. There was a longbow, a longsword, and a dagger. The large bow looked like it had been made hastily, while the longsword and dagger looked old.
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The dagger in particular was unusual.
‘Is this the weapon of the Duke of Sardia?’
I examined the sword and scabbard.
At first glance, I thought it was just a geometric pattern engraved on the surface of the scabbard, but it was actually written in cursive. The overall interpretation was impossible because of the worn-out parts, but I could immediately tell what the language was.
‘This is Antarian.’
Beyond the wasteland lay the ruins of the kingdom of Antaria.
It was a land that was both abandoned and cursed.
Antaria was a small country. It was unable to keep up with Zeno in terms of population, national power, and wealth. However, it was a kingdom that stubbornly resisted Zeno and endured, but was eventually destroyed by civil war and epidemics.
Since then, raiders seeking the treasures of Antaria have made their way to the abandoned lands, but those who managed to return were left with their bodies rotted and decayed.
It was leprosy.
So the land to the south beyond the wasteland was abandoned. Occasionally, adventurers visited the land, but no one ever returned.
For that reason, there are hardly any traces of Antaria left.
Even in the Duke of Breio, books from Antaria were rare.
‘I guess I’ll have to take some time later to look at it more calmly.’
Suddenly, a group of horses approached me. There were four riders and five running while performing the Sardia maneuver.
“I understand your circumstances. I will kill you today, and I will follow you. Hebron swears that he will not only take the vacant ducal throne since Sardia, but also turn his sword against the Breio dukedom that you hate.”
I don’t know if they heard me, but it didn’t matter. It was a promise to myself, not a pact with them.
I took off my cumbersome clothes.
Now, even without these clothes, they came to me on their own. In addition to the nine, several other guys came running one after another, heading in the same direction.
‘Everyone worked hard.’
I saw the epitome of Sardia’s maneuvers. The men quickly crossed the wasteland, and their skills were quite impressive.
‘I can’t use my swordsmanship, which was made for mountainous terrain, in this wasteland, and it doesn’t show my skills.’
It was amazing that he had developed that level of skill in such a wasteland. I could guess that his life had not been easy.
-There’s no point in working hard. If you don’t become the best, you’ll end up being forgotten.
Even if I tried to cut ties and live, there was Braio inside me.
Their thoughts dominated me.
However, we could not only believe in the values of Hebron.
-It’s okay if you’re wrong. No, there’s nothing wrong from the beginning. So trust your instincts. Trust yourself, just as I trust you. Son, go your own way.
These were the words of my father, who helped me overcome the limits of my training. They were also the words that proved Hebron was right.
But only those who sat in the highest seats could say such words.
If the descendants of Sardia had lasted for more than a century, they should have continued to live as they were. The thought of assassinating a noble recognized by the Zenon royal family was unthinkable.
“Syang, run!”
Meeeeeeeee!
Syang kicked the ground while crying.
At that moment, a bolt of lightning struck the ground where we were standing.
Jeez, jeez, jeez!
The lightning that struck the ground also flowed into Syang and me. It was fortunate that it missed, but if it had hit me directly, I would have been grilled.
‘wizard!’
There was a magician among them. He wasn’t among the ones running towards them with their magic wands on, but he seemed to be one of the four on horseback.
“Inferno, run wild!”
The rule of thumb is to respond to magic with magic.
The wizard kept muttering as he prepared his next spell. Normally, he could not perform high-level magic while on a running horse.
Kwaaaaang!
A gigantic inferno suddenly shot up and fired a barrage of fireballs. As the large fireballs were fired wildly toward the enemy lines, the horses that had been running without knowing what was happening were frightened.
Horses were originally timid animals. In order to use them as war horses, they had to be trained to listen only to the rider’s words without being afraid. However, their horses were not properly trained in that way.
As the horses ran wild, the wizard was unable to use his magic.
He fell from his horse, and the man with the sword dismounted and tried to take the wizard away.
Kwaaang! Kwaaang! Kwaaang!
The bullet struck the wizard and the man who tried to protect him.
As the charred man collapsed, the wizard was revealed. He struggled to put out the fire on his staff, even though his body was scorched by the fire.
Kwaaaaang!
The fireball hit the wizard in the face. He fell down without even being able to use defensive magic.
Whoosh whoosh!
Inferno burned my enemies, fueled by my aura.
In a wasteland where water was hard to come by, the fire spirit was a disaster.
puck!
If the only wizard who could stand against the spirits had a sword stuck in his chest, their disaster would have clung to reality and drawn a picture of hell.
“There’s no need to let them live. Kill them all.”
Meeeeeeeee!
Every time Syang leaped, his gaze created afterimages. Every time a pair of red lights scattered in the air, human bones broke and blood spurted out.
The cowardly Syang was now able to fight living beings as well. He went berserk like he did when he fought me in the past.
Kwaaaaang! Kwaaaaang! Kwaaaaang!
Inferno also worked. The fire attribute aura he received from me was so pure that it was incomparable to before. My energy raised Inferno’s temperature.
Now there were three men left. They fought desperately, as if they were knights, despite being burned all over their bodies.
“stop.”
As I gestured and spoke, Inferno and Syang stopped attacking.
I looked around at the three men and said.
“Your swordsmanship is poor. It seems that you have modified Sardia’s swordsmanship in order to overcome the solution that Breyo created, and that was your mistake. Instead, you should have mastered the swordsmanship that has been passed down through generations.”
As I nodded, three men rushed at me. They performed Sardia swordsmanship. It was a swordsmanship that was close to the original, but modified to only imitate the shell. The Ora training method did not match that swordsmanship. Nor did their talent support it.
It was natural.
Even for the Duke of Braio, it was impossible to surpass the realm with pure talent and passion alone. Only an unparalleled genius could do that, and if you weren’t a genius, you had to have a genius teacher and genius support.
