Book 20 Chapter 15

Episode 184

The Nemesis of Mission and the Advanced, New Heaven Carditpol Knights (16)

The trajectories of light colliding and merging as two holy swords brilliantly clash… it was already a level of art that left an ordinary person speechless.

Is this the beauty of the sword?

Is this the song of the sword?

As time continuously slowed and accelerated, the clash of swords even formed a regular rhythm, and it was impossible for even renowned sword masters, such as the previous Sword Saint Leland Apeltas, to fully follow the movements of the two swords.

'Rista…!'

And amidst that clash, the one whose armor was shattered in places, and whose flesh beneath was pouring out fresh blood… was Rista Alter Shurpen.

The wounds were not shallow.

They were stab wounds that would have been fatal if they had been a little deeper, and if Shurpen hadn't parried them just before, they would have already taken the swordsman's life.

"You can't win with just stamina or mana, and when you fall behind in skill, defeat becomes more certain."

Said Sarandis Alter Naisemone.

When both sides, friend and foe, need a moment to catch their breath, swordsmen sometimes engage in a struggle of strength, pressing sword against sword.

Not a single tremor was in Sarandis's breath as he spoke amidst the clash of blades and the struggle for power.

'I know.'

Rista bit her lower lip, parrying Naisemone with Shurpen.

'That I have physical limits.'

How could Sarandis perform such movements?

'He's performing at least three to four feints within a single exchange of blows.'

The ability to anticipate both Kies's and Rista's attacks, and to execute the optimal defense and counterattack, was truly at its peak.

'Can he predict all movements? Yes, I admit I'm outmatched in basic skills. But!'

It was then. When the 11th Archmage completely blocked the crystallization of the 4th Archmage!

And fervent cheers erupted!

And Friede also had the leisure to fully concentrate on assisting Rista!

- Leave it to me. Sval is here too. Don't you know we're invincible together?

Friede, the Fire Dragon Priestess, couldn't help but smile brightly even as she turned away from Archmage Lin.

'I… and Pipi…'

It was frustrating that they couldn't say such things due to the limitations of being support roles, but they still had the skill to definitely lend a hand.

"Alright, Pipi! Let's create an opportunity for Rista!"

"Make it, make it, Pipi makes it all."

The reason Friede was revered by witches even in distant future generations was her toughness, which could even enchant many women.

Throwing her pipe into the air before starting a high-level spell incantation was considered her symbolic act.

If Lin's spellcasting movements were beautiful, Friede's spellcasting movements were cool.

"O voice of the burnt offering to creation, O radiance of the never-extinguishing brazier!"

The spell Friede began to chant at this time was Lebendwuerg.

It was a 5-star spell, located at the pinnacle of all magic.

It was a notorious technique that would take even novice Archwitches half a day to recite at high speed.

"Respond to the prayer of Friede, who offers upon the altar of ordinance, and command the fervent, endless flames to descend!"

If the speed of magic is determined by how quickly mathematical equations are calculated in the mind.

By a similar principle, the speed of sorcery is determined by how quickly one can recall the teachings of the Dragon Sutra in their mind.

The incantation spoken aloud is to recite only the core runes to maximize its power, and this is called incantation abbreviation.

For a wizard, it's like the Yorhen type.

"Let's go, Pipi!"

Friede, who snatched the pipe rotating in a circle, deeply inhaled its smoke, thereby amplifying the power of the spell she was about to use to an extreme degree.

And then continuously launched over a hundred fireballs!

Lebendwuerg, meaning the never-extinguishing altar flames in the "Book of Sacrifices," ensures that once a flame attaches to an opponent, it never goes out, just as its teachings describe.

"!"

As the Hagnis imitated the spell, the fireballs amounted to nearly six hundred.

It was a clear threat!

Now that Julak was engaged in combat with Lin and couldn't provide support, this was a force that could certainly restrict Sarandis's movements.

'Friede's flames, as chaotic, hot, and noisy as her personality.'

Kies concentrated the verdant radiance brilliantly onto his White Spear Bow, focusing on 'restraint' rather than 'penetration', and forged 30 arrows.

'I've been waiting for the blind spots in the five senses that inevitably arise amidst the heat, smoke, and shadows of those flames.'

Ping… With a clear tremor like ripples spreading across a lake, the 30 arrows scattered in all directions: up, down, left, and right.

Simultaneous impact, 30 arrows.

Their speeds, trajectories, and angles were completely different, yet these arrows struck the 'same' target at the 'same' time with pinpoint accuracy.

'For me, this is enough.'

Rista was already sprinting. Sprinting through the flames and verdant light with an unreal acceleration that fragmented even time.

'I don't need infinite stamina.'

This was absolute trust.

Not in her own abilities, but in the abilities of her comrades.

'I don't need infinite mana.'

She might actually get caught in the aftermath of those flames or arrows, but she trusted that her comrades would not allow it.

'With these friends…'

Shurpen gripped his left hand in a reverse hold.

His outstretched palm set a portion of the realm of providence as a blank slate.

It was designated as a realm of records, soon to be inscribed with something.

'If I only have this one moment, created by these comrades…!'

What awaited Sarandis where he parried, evaded, and advanced past Lebendwuerg's fireballs, was the Sun Conure, Pipi.

Of course, it was a bluff.

In the instant Pipi's fiery wings disrupted Sarandis's vision, arrows that relentlessly pursued and struck at the same moment came raining down from all 360 degrees.

'…That alone is enough!'

And beyond those arrows, from an angle that completely avoided the barrage, Shurpen's swordplay roared.

- To create a space that controls providence, you can do it.

Realm of Records Setting.

Providence Engraving.

- Command creation itself in this space. O hero of future generations.

Sarandis, at that moment, watched the string of characters being etched onto the space he occupied, and felt the fine hairs on his entire body stand on end.

'Temporary space setting… inscribing characters?'

His instincts warned of danger.

No, admit it. This was fear.

He didn't know its true nature, and because of that, an instinctive fear heightened all his senses to their extreme.

"Naisemone────!"

Amidst the aurora Naisemone exhaled, the timeline centered around Sarandis's feet collapsed.

The collapse of the time domain.

Time is originally the realm of providence, meaning the creator's sovereignty, something mortals dare not tamper with.

"────Stop time!"

Naisemone's and Shurpen's powers, strictly speaking, do not manipulate providence. They merely accelerate their internal time to an extreme degree, making external time feel as if it has slowed.

But now, at this very moment!

The moment Sarandis fully unleashed the power of the Abyss, which he had suppressed both unconsciously and consciously.

Thud, thud-thud-thud… Crack!

With a sound like the world's second hand shattering, the very realm of time itself collapsed.

It was a kind of microcosm.

He became the creator and master of a microcosm called 'stopped time,' where only he could walk through time normally.

'What in the world…?'

Rista saw an utterly unbelievable sight.

Thanks to Shurpen, she could perceive this 'world of stopped time,' but she couldn't move even a fingertip.

And not only that.

Weren't Kies's arrows, which were about to strike Sarandis, all suspended in mid-air?

"Ugh, cough… gasp…!"

It is said that the Abyss's power began by transgressing providence.

So it is not strange that its power generally makes a mockery of time.

And the price of using such absolute power of the Abyss made Sarandis, who hadn't shed a drop of sweat even during the fierce battle with Rista, vomit violently and break out in a cold sweat.

'My hair, turning white, my memories… disappearing.'

Sarandis parried all the verdant arrows, then knelt on one knee, having moved out of the influence of the realm of records Rista had set.

'Time, beginning to move again, freed from its shackles…'

The pain of hitting a limit… the extreme stress of a bursting heart, tearing muscles, and shattering bones.

Suppressing all that pain…

Sarandis, taking up a stance for a slash again, gasped wildly… yet his eyes were more radiant than ever before.

'I still cannot fall.'

A limit where anyone would want to retreat. A peak where anyone would want to give up.

'Even if I want to fall like this, even if I want to give up everything like this… there's only one reason I can't.'

Because I am the warrior who carries on my back, like a cross, the convictions of all those who died before me.

'It's unseemly to fall down whining.'

What memory, taken by the Abyss as the price of power, resonated clearly in Sarandis's mind just now?

A thousand years ago…

It must have been a moment during the demon great conquest campaign.

- By the way, Sarandis, your family's progenitor is Oren Duren, isn't it?

It was a question from Reynolds, more famous by his nickname 'Delinquent Priest'.

- Wow, that's amazing. Isn't he one of the Enuel Assault Squad members?

Then Julak, who usually read magic books at every moment of his day, uncharacteristically looked up and showed interest.

- Sarandis, did you become a warrior because you wanted to be like your ancestor? Everyone was whispering about it.

Sarandis was the daughter of the Grand Duke Duren family.

The progenitor of the Duren family was Oren Duren, recorded in history as one of the few 'survivors of the Enuel Assault Squad' and a great warrior.

If she had followed in the footsteps of such a progenitor and applied for a warrior training project that was unproven, the story would roughly fit.

- No.

But Sarandis firmly shook her head.

- No?

- As you say, Oren Duren is both the progenitor of our family and my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather lived a very long time. Even longer than my grandfather.

His usual taciturn tone remained, but his comrades could feel a certain excitement stirring somewhere beneath it.

- I was the second daughter and outside the line of succession, so no one scolded me for receiving martial arts training or listening to stories from my great-grandfather. I liked that even more.

- Your grandmother and grandfather must have been jealous? That's usually the grandmother's and grandfather's privilege.

- I don't know about that. When my great-grandfather thought I was asleep, he would shed tears, looking towards the northernmost edge, in the direction of his comrades who had become beast-men.

The regret of a lifetime.

Oren Duren was unable to become a beast-man and could not assist Enuel until the very end.

To Oren, that was an unerasable sorrow and regret.

- I didn't like seeing my great-grandfather sad. The best way to make him happy was to ask about Lord Enuel's heroic tales. Even if I wasn't curious. He would tell the stories with incomparable passion compared to when he talked about himself.

The members of the warrior party, who had been listening to their leader's words without much thought, suddenly realized they were engrossed in the story.

Was it because the story was interesting?

That might not be all.

It was the first time Sarandis had talked about her past, and it was fascinating that she was telling the story with 'incomparable passion' compared to before.

- Sara, Lord Enuel was about seven feet tall! Do you think that's an abnormal physique? But that's not what you should pay attention to! It was his presence!

- His presence?

- Yes! If you were by his side, if you followed behind him, you would absolutely, certainly win no matter what happened… He was a person who commanded such hope like a presence. Just seeing his back as he ran ahead would send shivers deep into my soul.

In those young days when she didn't know what a sword was, what the weight of a sword was, or how long and arduous the mission of a swordsman was… she vaguely came to admire it.

'To become such a presence for someone.'

She didn't wish for a warrior who would shine the light of hope upon all lands.

Only, just.

Perhaps she merely wanted to replace the warrior that her great-grandfather waited for and waited for, but who never came.

- Perhaps I just wanted to make my great-grandfather a little bit happier.

What if I could, even a little, alleviate that guilt, that regret, with my life?

"What?! What just happened?!"

Friede cried out blankly.

Unable to perceive the 'stopped world,' she felt as if the moment itself had been erased, like a fragment of time had vanished.

The very moment 'Kies's arrows struck Sarandis' disappeared. The process of evading or blocking it simply did not occur.

[┌(?ㅁ?)┘]

Kies also didn't understand the situation. Rista looked back at her comrades and shouted.

"He stopped time!"

"What? How is that possible?!"

She knew it was difficult to land a decisive blow.

The opponent was the first Faequir.

And the strongest Faequir.

But by complementing each other's weaknesses, she believed they could seize a momentary opening, just like now, and win as they usually did.

"But he stops time? How on earth do you beat something like that?"

"Still, our coordination had an effect! Look at Senior Sarandis! His breathing is completely messed up! It means he can't freely stop time! If we push a little harder, we can win! Let's go!"

"But if we get attacked in stopped time, it's over!"

"No, it's only for a second at most! You guys aim for the interval beyond one second! Then there'll be no danger!"

Sarandis composed his breathing, aiming at the three warrior party members with the tip of Naisemone's sword.

"Only the power imbued with unwavering conviction… shall be justice and the greater good."

As the Abyss surged over the blade and Naisemone cried out in pain, the timeline around Sarandis collapsed again.

Time Stop!

This power was the absolute power of the Abyss!

He easily avoided all the flames and arrows supporting the succeeding warriors by walking through 'stopped time,' and when the world's second hand began to move again, Naisemone clashed with Shurpen.

- Sara, you must not become a person who wields a sword against someone solely for personal desires and reasons.

Again, what the Abyss took as a price was humanity…

In short, memories of a person.

In an inescapable sorrow, as Sarandis parried Shurpen, that memory vaguely overlapped beyond his vision and faded away…

- Murderous intent born of desire and greed becomes nothing more or less than a power that merely harms others.

Sometime, in the distant past of memory, a winter in his childhood when the clear, crisp scent of pine from the north pricked his nose.

- Then what should there be?

- Your soul's conviction.

Oren Duren.

The memory of a winter day spent with his great-grandfather, the family's progenitor, who loved him more than his parents.

- Conviction?

- What your heart truly strives for. A value you wish to achieve even at the cost of your life.

- Is it important?

- Very important. Power without conviction is mere violence, and conviction without power is synonymous with incompetence. My beloved Sarandis. To truly become great, you must be a person who possesses both.

Before that memory was swallowed by the maw of the Abyss, he extracted only the most important core from that memory and muttered it aloud.

"Is power without conviction merely violence…?"

Soon, the past, the memory, vanished.

A piece of Sarandis's humanity, which made Sarandis Sarandis, disappeared.

At that moment, Sarandis!

He was pushing Naisemone's blade into Shurpen's trajectory, which had charged right in front of him.

Sparks flew wildly as steel scraped against steel.

"Alter Shurpen, what is your conviction?"

"…?"

"My conviction is to completely end this war, this endless game, in my generation."

Sarandis learned as he came of age. No matter how much he waited and longed, the warrior would not return.

'Eldia Kata (05) died in that last battle.'

Yet, his great-grandfather looked towards the distant north, where the Spider Lord's Fortress of a Thousand Hands stood, until the day he died.

"The <Ones Who Came>, the Eldia warriors, failed for one reason!"

Therefore, as Sarandis grew into adulthood, he harbored this conviction in his soul.

"Because they tried to embrace even the useless weak!"

Someone.

Someone other than the warrior.

Must become the warrior and end this war.

"The weak are not just useless! They drag down the entire world! Their weak-willed nature, their fear, their hesitation, spread throughout civilization, making humanity weaker day by day!"

To completely, utterly end it.

To bring peace to those who lived and died in endless waiting.

"Therefore, what this world needs is only truly strong individuals!"

To his great-grandfather who died looking north until the very end, to his great-grandfather's friends who lived lives of vigilance in the distant northern lands even by taking on beast bodies, and to those like him who followed that path.

"Those weak in body or mind must be culled at the stage of reproduction. And the same goes for trash who are inherently lazy, weak-willed, or have a tendency to repay good with evil."

And Sarandis also knew.

To end this endless game, he alone must not be the warrior.

It must be a world where everyone, everyone who can think and fight, wields their own holy sword and becomes a warrior.

"Only when truly valuable and excellent individuals make up the majority of humanity! Only when all of humanity is composed of soldiers who will fight for their own lives! Can victory in the Great Abyss War be achieved! That is the eugenics for that purpose!"

The blades of holy swords clashed and bounced off, and the timeline repeatedly collapsed and regenerated before the dragon's flames and the verdant surge.

"Why should the strong fight for the weak…?"

Even if Rista tried to isolate or destroy the space itself with the engraving she had etched into the realm of records.

Even if Friede's flames and the chains of the psalms tried to bind his movements.

Even if Kies's arrows aimed for blind spots, with an inescapable trajectory, to end this battle.

"You know better than anyone…!"

Sarandis repeatedly escaped all of it within 'stopped time.'

"Both you and I, simply because we are strong… simply because we were born with such talent…!"

Each time, again, memories were indiscriminately sucked away…

As evidence…

Sarandis's white hair, contrasted with before the battle, was turning abyssal dark blue…

"…that we have been loved by all people in the world since birth!"

When he used Naisemone like a staff to support his body, pouring sweat like rain.

The succeeding Faequir.

No, the Sarandis of the past.

Looked at her, now in this state, with sad eyes and said.

"But then, having grown up like this, why does one need a reason to return that love…?"