Chapter 378

Chapter 378

Farzan falls silent.
Even to the uninitiated, Schlieffen’s attack just now was brilliant.
Five swords of a size I’ve never seen before.
I’ve never seen or heard of a technique where they’re flying in different directions.
“You—.”
But Ronan broke it down in one fell swoop.
It was Schlieffen who first broke the silence.
He stared at his scattered sword qi in disbelief.
“Times have changed. It’s a fine skill, but it’s not enough to make you a swordsman. If it were me and not a Zaifa inspiration, I would have finished you off before you’d even made five moves.”
Ronan said.
There was no sign of exhaustion after taking on such a big technology.
He didn’t look like he’d just come from a fight with Jaifa.
“—who looked after me at graduation.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I thought we were evenly matched—what a farce.”
Schlieffen muttered.
It was nothing like the Ronan he’d been dealing with.
I had my doubts, actually.
Ronan is not playing to his strengths.
The man who broke all curses and slashed the king of a race of giants could not be this good.
I didn’t realize it was true.
“Look at you freezing. Aren’t you paying attention?”
Ronan’s eyes widened suddenly.
Ronan’s sword glowed in the sunset.
Feeling the pull, Schlieffen tried to evade.
Ronan lunged forward as if expecting it.
“Holy—!”
Schlieffen gulped.
The brighter light swallowed him whole.
The spacing has become useless.
He raised his sword to block, but Ronan’s blow was too late.
Boom!
Blood gushed up Schlieffen’s left thigh.
“Ugh!”
It was a cut deeper than a shoulder blade.
Ronan didn’t stop attacking.
Every time sword clashed with sword, sparks flew like a flash of lightning.
At first glance, it looked like they were blocking everything, but the balance was definitely tipping.
Missed shots carved wounds across Schlieffen’s body.
“We’re going to lose.
You’ve already lost a lot of blood.
He’d managed to stave off fatal wounds, but it was only a matter of time.
We couldn’t get out of this deficit by conventional means.
“Give me your flesh and take your bones.
Schlieffen steeled himself.
Once we changed our strategy, opportunity presented itself.
Just like before, a blow to the shoulder.
Schlieffen gave up trying to block the attack and twisted his body.
Blood splashed from where the blade licked.
“What the hell. Why aren’t you stopping this?”
Ronan was about to say something when he saw the ridiculous hit.
Schlieffen stomped the ground and stepped back.
A blue wind whipped over the sword.
He landed and plunged his sword into the floor.
Ronan’s eyes widened.
“Oh, shit.”
That was a mistake.
It’s too late to avoid it.
As Ronan took a defensive stance, the ground beneath his feet exploded.
Kaaaah!
A gust of wind knocked him into the air.
“Ugh.”
Ronan gritted his teeth.
It was like being hit by a giant’s fist.
Schlieffen didn’t miss the opportunity.
The sword embedded in the ground spewed blue light.
The dozen or so whirlwinds that had been churning Farzan’s waters surged toward Ronan in unison.
Tentacles of the storm, flying from all directions, left, right, and center, slammed into Ronan.
“Crack!”
“Lo, Ronan?!”
Iril was stunned.
With a lone scream, the figure of his brother vanished.
The vortexes that had swallowed Ronan were tangling with each other, morphing into a giant sphere.
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a win-lose situation.
“——Not yet.”
But Schlieffen knew.
His opponent was not a great man to fall to such a low level.
I had to make sure I had a good finish.
He silently drew his sword from the ground.
“Hoooooooo—.”
I lost a lot of blood and my head felt dizzy.
Suddenly, I remembered climbing the mountains near Nimbuson with my family.
Beneath a seemingly endless array of stars, he had an epiphany that took him to the next level.
“The stars were beautiful.”
Even Schlieffen himself couldn’t quite explain what that realization was.
Because they didn’t make it entirely their own.
I’m not quite at the point where I can put it into words yet.
However, we were able to show it in action.
“Coming. Ronan.”
Schlieffen gripped the hilt of his sword.
An extremely concentrated storm enveloped the sword, and for a moment, the entire audience felt an indescribable chill.
“Uh, Mom!”
“Come here. Aria.”
Aria sobbed and hugged Iril.
Albrije and Elsia grabbed popcorn.
Nabiroze reflexively looked back at Alogin and Sunje, who were on the brink of natural death.
The colors of the storm were getting darker.
Paaaaah-!
The windswept blade glowed with light.
There was an intense flash of light and everyone in Parzan closed their eyes.
Then the light faded.
The reopened eyes of the audience spit out a gasp of disbelief.
“This, this?!”
“——Am I dreaming?”
The landscape has changed.
They were not standing on the top of a mountain, but on a vast plaza.
Paving stones of pure white marble crunched underfoot.
Huge pillars rose up everywhere, like something out of a temple.
A storm with thunderstorms was slowly rotating around the square.
“Hey, where am I, am I hallucinating?”
“It’s too–live for that.”
“Huh huh, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Even Alibrije was impressed.
It felt different from the illusion magic.
I looked up and saw a clear, cloudless sky.
It was like being in the eye of a typhoon with only the top of the square clear.
Schlieffen stood in the center of the square.
He closed his eyes and gathered his strength.
The sphere formed by the tangled vortex remained in the air.
The car was getting louder and louder.
Chaaaaaah!
The wind sphere exploded and scattered, revealing Ronan.
“Shit, you almost died!”
Ronan sticks out his tongue as he lands.
Outside the sphere, his body was covered in countless stab wounds.
I didn’t have any deep cuts, but I did lose a lot of blood.
“Ouch, that stings. When did I learn to do this—”
After many swings of the sword, I managed to escape.
His brow furrowed.
The landscape around me had been completely transformed.
Ronan raised an eyebrow at the roaring storm.
“What, we’ve gotten this far already?”
I was genuinely surprised.
This was a different direction of evolution than the metamorphosis.
A second awakening, if you will.
The Aurors, who had been confined to the mind, had overflowed and taken over the entirety of space and time.
To reach this point with a subject who hadn’t lived as long as Nabiroze or Jaifa, and who hadn’t lived twice as long as he had, was truly worthy of his nickname, the Empire’s Rising Star.
“The power of love or something. That’s amazing.”
Ronan marveled.
Schlieffen didn’t answer.
He was getting ready to finish up.
The storm swirling around the square was a giant vortex, sucking in Schlieffen’s sword.
As soon as the preparations were complete, this space of Schlieffen’s imagination would be struck with a blow that would be more destructive than anything else in the world.
“Then I’ll have to show it to you.”
The slack is over.
Ronan gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands.
The playfulness in his eyes was gone.
A white blur of light began to creep up the blade.
“Are you—!”
Nabiroze jumped to his feet.
I recognized it right away.
That was the same kind of space that Schlieffen created.
A warm, enveloping glow gently spreads out around him, coating Schlieffen’s mental image.
Schlieffen frowned.
“That’s.”
“Isn’t it great? You’re the second person to see this. You’re the first to have it spread so wide.”
Ronan laughed.
I actually developed it quite a while ago, but peace came to the world and I didn’t have to use it for a long time.
The sword was now completely white.
“Name it, sunrise.”
It was the name of a new technology.
Note that the original Auror was named Sunset.
He reached this realization while watching the sunrise with his family.
Sunset is the struggle of the sun.
It doesn’t want to die, so it attracts the light of the world.
In that sense, this auror was the opposite.
Sunrise is the improvement of the sun.
The dawning sun pushes out the light of the world and takes center stage.
It was a microcosm of the sunrise that drove the crazed Jaifa underground.
“—But are you sure this is okay?”
“Ah, Alogin, Swordsman, stop the game!”
“I don’t want to die!”
The theater was turning into a shambles.
The faces of the wizards behind the shields have long since paled.
People had an instinctive sense of what was going to happen when Ronan and Schlieffen clashed.
Farzan, holy places, and their own bodies.
It was literally going to destroy everything.
The only ones who remained calm were Nabiroze, Alogin, and Balon 44.
Sun Tzu squeezed his son’s nervous hand and said.
“Let’s trust the two of them.”
“What?”
“It’s going to be okay, at least for us. Remaining calm in any situation is a virtue of kings.”
Sun Tzu’s eyes never wavered in their approval.
The Emperor, about to say something, nodded.
He chose to believe the man who had once led the Empire in its heyday.Just then, Ronan and Schlieffen, who had rushed forward, swung their swords simultaneously.
“——!!!”
Silence descended.
Surprisingly, there were no big explosions or colorful flashes.
The moment of conflict was calm and peaceful.
The surrounding background is now a blank, empty space.
They saw the stormy square and the rising morning sun clashing in a single sword fight.
Antagonistic worlds.
Or a simple crossing of swords.
Like paint smearing, the landscape of Parzan was coming back to life.
Ronan and Schlieffen, who had disappeared for a moment, were revealed.
Kwahhh-!!!
The shockwave exploded with a sound like a star exploding.
“Off!”
“Me, catch me from flying away!”
“God!”
As predicted, the shields were not broken.
And yet, every single one of the surprised audience members fell on their asses.
To avoid falling down the mountain, they were forced to hold on to the person next to them.
When the shock subsided, the wasteland-turned-crater was revealed.
All of the soldiers were pulled out of the ground and scattered on the ground.
Ronan and Schlieffen stood in the center of the room, facing each other.
It was as if he had become a statue, unmoving as he held his sword to his side.The wind sounded loud in the silent world.
After a long moment of silence, Schlieffen was the first to speak.
“—— Ronan.”
“Ugh.”
“Has my sword touched you?”
“You asked a stupid question and lost.”
Ronan smirked.
The two lowered their swords and stood in a relaxed position.
Ronan gestured to the scars that covered his body.
“What does this look like, tomato ketchup?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Didn’t you look out for me? Did you, did you take this fight seriously?”
His black eyes were blazing.
The tone of his voice was serious and almost guttural.
At that moment, a crack appeared above the sword in Schlieffen’s hand.
Boom!
Shattered swords spilled onto the floor.
“Failed to load—!”
Alogin’s eyes widened.
Fail load.
The Sword of Frost, the symbol of Gracia, has met its end.
Poof.
The hilt slipped from Schlieffen’s hand and fell on top of him.
Ronan, wiping his face roughly, spoke up.
“Of course, asshole.”
No answer came back.
Schlieffen’s gaze lingered on nothingness.
Ronan stood and put an arm around his unconscious friend’s shoulders.
“You’re the best knifeman I’ve ever seen, twice over.”
And together they fell.
I realized that my legs were tired.
Zaifa was too strong an opponent to fight back-to-back.
“I’m sorry about the knife. But you’ll have to make your own.”
Schlieffen will probably regain his position as a swordsman in the near future.
Ronan was lying on his back, shoulder to shoulder with Schlieffen.
The fall sky was cloudless.
My eyelids were getting heavy from the fatigue that was creeping in.
“I mean, get back to work, what are you doing fighting with that body!”
“What, are we done already?”
A familiar voice came from somewhere.
I glanced up and saw Asel hovering in midair, and Zaifa looking like she’d just landed.
His dark, muscular body bore the scars of his fight with Ronan.
Ronan locked eyes with him.
“You’re up already?”
“Ronan. By the looks of it, you’ve won, but you’re a little late.”
Jaifa snorted.
“I’m a little disappointed. If it were me, I’d have gotten rid of that greenhorn a long time ago and ascended to the position of swordsman.”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you lost.”
“Jaifa, he’s a—!”
Watching, Nabiroze grabbed the hilt of his sword.
A thick line of blood stood out on her forehead.
The greatsword slipped out of its sheath, shedding a chilling glow.
“How dare you, loser, set foot in this place!”
“Ji, calm down, Swordsman!”
Nabirozze pounced.
The emperor tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail.
Asel gasped, telekinesis flaring.
Their bodies stopped in midair.
“Doo, doo, doo, both of you, calm down! Hee hee, what’s going on!”
“Mage Asel, get off me!”
“Kahahaha, come on, untie it for a second, Archmage. I’ll give you a fun tour.”
Zaifa bared her teeth and smiled.
As my body has rejuvenated, my brain hasn’t been the same.
The two swordsmen struggled against Asel’s telekinesis.
“Oh, Dad!”
“Father!”
Once again, a familiar voice rang out.
Ronan, looking away, spat out his embarrassment.
Adeshan, Lance, and Erin were running toward him.
Right behind him, Sita flapped her four wings.
“What the hell–how did you all get here?”
“How could you not notice after something this big? Are you hurt?”
Adeshan dropped to one knee and supported Ronan.
His tone was calm, but his breathing was ragged.
Her hair, always neat and tidy, was tangled in the wind.
His ashen eyes were moist with water.
Ronan pursed his lips and nodded.
“Uh-huh. I’m sorry.”
“Thank God—.”
Adeshan laughed.
It was still beautiful, even with all that dirt.
Lance and Erin furiously pawed at the immobilized limb.
From the looks of it, he’d never be able to fight Nabiroze’s sister.
At least for today.
I know you’re going to protest, but I can’t move.
“Oh, my God, honey! Ronan!”
“Apaaaahhhhhhhh!”
Iriel and Aria came running, panting.
The audience was having a heated discussion about what was going to happen next.
Ronan took in his surroundings, then looked up at the sky again.
The colorful clouds were beautiful.
It was the exact opposite of the ground, where there was no shit.
He opened his mouth slowly.
“—I love you. Y’all.”
“What, what?”
“I heard you. You’re embarrassing me.”
Lance was stunned.
I couldn’t believe those words came out of my father’s mouth.
Ronan decided to repeat himself.
Normally I wouldn’t have done it again, but today I just felt like it.
An early rising star twinkled in the darkening sky.
“I love you. Assholes.”