“Maintain formation! If we break ranks, it’s all over!”
With the Supreme Commander’s shout, the extermination battle began.
The demon beasts were more wicked and enormous than anything seen on the front lines.
Their skin was as tough as metal, and with a single roar, the soldiers covered their ears.
Soldiers and thousands of demon beasts clashed.
Monsters that barely resembled beasts tangled with humans, and blood and flesh splattered everywhere.
The spearmen maintained their formation and charged in, while the Knights Order actively utilized their control to slay the demon beasts.
Swords and spears, energy and magic collided.
Blood and screams mingled on the ice.
“Right flank! One more demon beast! Reinforcements are on the way!”
Ersche, the vice commander of the Duke of Belfern’s Knights Order, took the lead and tore apart the demon beast.
The most powerful next-generation aura user’s energy shone brilliantly as it sliced through the charging demon beast like tofu.
While maintaining formation as best as possible, he actively killed the demon beasts that were breaching between the spearmen.
“It’s a beast-type demon beast! Kal, Milia, Rie, stick to the left! Maintain formation as much as possible!”
Ersche, who was commanding the Knights Order, suddenly spewed a fountain of blood from his neck.
In an instant, something shot through the battlefield like a cannonball.
Dozens of spearmen maintaining formation were torn apart at once, their intestines splattered everywhere.
Among the blood-soaked soldiers, a figure emerged.
Crimson eyes that stood out even in the snow.
A grotesquely elongated black figure.
A shape that seemed to hint it was once human.
In the powerful claw of the greater demon beast, resembling blades embedded in its forearms, Ersche’s head was held aloft.
“Shit, Ersche!!”
“Vice Commander…!!”
Ersche’s headless corpse collapsed.
A comrade who witnessed his death let out a shriek and rushed forward, but without even a single exchange, his head quickly joined the others on the ground.
This marked the beginning of an indiscriminate massacre.
It only took a moment for the formation to begin to collapse.
“Don’t break! We can still hold on! Fall back――?!”
The shout of the field commander was ripped through by the snowstorm.
A long spear protruded from the chest of an officer screaming at the top of his lungs.
Blood gushed forth like a fountain.
Fear turned to madness, and the screams became death throes in the frozen expanse.
As other demon beasts followed behind, slaughtering the soldiers on the front lines, the formation began to crumble.
At that moment, a red slash flew through the air and cleaved the side of a greater demon beast.
A cold handsome man, with half of his face covered in tattoos, walked through the disarray of the formation.
Franz Eldin stared at the severed head of Ersche.
“Ersche. I owe you a debt from the Southern region.”
He threw the head of the demon beast he had been holding onto the ground.
“I will repay the grudge.”
Franz, gliding forward, clashed with the demon beast.
His red hair fluttered, tattoos shining, and sparks flew in the air.
The blades on his arms and his great sword crossed dozens of times.
Even the recoil from colliding metal was used as part of his swordsmanship as he pressed the greater demon beast back.
With a great sword engulfed in flames, he struck down the demon beast’s arm through the blizzard.
“Don’t run away! Killing them is the only way for us to survive-!”
Irene’s frost spear swept away the demon beasts,
Following her, the holders of the Platinum Iron Blood Medal beheaded more demon beasts.
The hidden powerhouses of the Empire began to block the way of the greater demon beasts.
I dashed through the battlefield, buried in the echoing death cries.
I gave orders to the strike team beside me.
“Reven, Helz, and three others, support the Duke of Belfern’s Knights Order.”
“Tov, Pianel, Svern, Rie, follow me.”
To win this extermination battle, it couldn’t just be a matter of buying time.
The most important condition for our gamble to succeed was to kill the visible demon beasts and quickly exterminate the greater demon beasts.
Only then could we start the extermination of Erebeon while maintaining as many troops as possible.
With four squad members, I charged towards the greater demon beasts slaughtering the soldiers on the front lines.
I raised both energy and wave while swinging my sword.
The wave of energy burst forth like lightning, piercing through the blizzard.
***
How long had it been since the battle started?
Every breath brought the smell of blood deep into my lungs.
My body was already at its limit.
Wounds I didn’t even know when I got them bled, but the blood had frozen and begun to decay.
I swung my sword until I completely lost my sense of time.
I pulled out the pitch-black sword from the corpse of a greater demon beast.
I had thought I had undergone quite a bit of training, but fighting more than six greater demon beasts in one day was clearly beyond any standard.
Before long, only two people remained beside me.
Tov and Svearn, who had fought to protect my side, were already buried in the snow in the distance.
Rie slowly raised her body, breathing heavily.
Her body was not unscathed either.
Half of her left hand was gone, and with her remaining hand wrapped in cloth, she was forcing herself to swing her sword.
But that too was starting to show signs of nearing the end.
Franz severed the neck of the last greater demon beast.
The head of a former Sword Saint, with a broken imperial flag stuck in his shoulder, fell to the ground.
Finally, all the greater demon beasts were dealt with.
Erebeon, who had remained silent since the battle began, began to react.
As if it had been forgotten, the massive existence slowly knelt.
A giant in armor nearing three meters tall twisted its joints as it stood up.
The black iron armor creaked, and its great sword cast a shadow on the snow behind it.
The nearly 4-meter giant hoisted a great sword that was even larger than its own body onto its shoulder.
Its red eyes slowly lifted to survey the survivors.
Franz Eldin raised his great sword horizontally against it.
His left arm was broken, his thigh pierced, and he looked pale as if he had lost a lot of blood.
Franz squeezed every last ounce of aura out of himself.
His complexion became even paler, and at the same time, tremendous heat erupted around his body.
“…I’ll finish it here.”
Irene and others followed behind him.
Naturally, the remaining forces began to gather one by one.
There were no shouts, cheers, or emotions.
Even the anger to spur on their immobile bodies dwindled, and the only driving force left was a sense of duty.
They were determined to end it right here.
The moment the blizzard abruptly stopped, Erebeon moved.
Its heavy footsteps echoed across the frozen ground, and its sword slowly fell from its shoulder.
Just that motion scattered the surrounding snowflakes and distorted the air pressure.
The Sword Saint Franz was the first to charge forward.
He dashed forward, cutting through the snow.
A red afterglow etched itself into the snow as swords clashed.
Clang!
The sound of metal breaking.
A moment later, a shockwave surged, sweeping across the snowfield.
The remaining survivors frantically fired their weapons at Erebeon from close range.
Erebeon’s pitch-dark magic erupted explosively, engulfing everything around it.
The torrent of magic raced like a cold blade.
At speeds that disregarded direction and position, it carved through flesh and obliterated bones.
Erebeon’s great sword flailed wildly, deflecting the onslaught of attacks and crushing the weapons aimed at it.
The falchion wielded by the district chief, Edelgard Selnia, was split in two above her head.
Along with the shattered halberd, the upper body of the mercenary coalition leader, Kalbrad, evaporated.
Franz’s sword broke in two as Erebeon’s great sword sunk deeply into his collarbone.
With a noise that resembled crushing human flesh through armor, Franz was flung backward.
Crashing into a sheer cliff, he was pinned beneath a pile of rocks.
Even though three of the strongest forces fell in an instant, they did not relent.
Irene stomped down hard, sending forth her frost spear.
Around the descending footsteps, ice began to form, and an aura blade shaped like a drill materialized at the spear’s tip.
This was a lance charging from a knight forged to the limit with the aura.
Behind Erebeon, Pianel and Rie unleashed waves of energy.
Blue waves flared up like lightning between the crimson energy enveloping their bodies.
Materializing the waves, they infused the weapons with potent energy.
In the split second before the ultimate attack capable of killing even a high-level demon beast descended onto Erebeon’s armor,
Erebeon began to use proper swordsmanship for the first time.
Twisting the great sword, it minimized the shock of the lance charging.
One leg stepped back, and while rotating, it changed position, reversing the flow of attack.
Facing the great sword behind it, Erebeon applied a sudden spin with its wrist and fingertips.
The great sword imbued with magic crashed head-on with the waves from Pianel and Rie.
After maintaining a tense standoff, Pianel’s wave faltered first, unable to withstand the weight of the great sword.
Upper arm, ribs, sternum, thigh, kneecap, pelvis—
The body pierced by the great sword crumbled like clay under pressure, bursting apart.
Pianel was killed instantly without even having a chance to scream.
As Rie thrust her sword, her left arm was pierced by the great sword, tearing through her arm, while Irene was kicked aside.
Irene struggled to rise but soon fell again.
The previous strike had shattered all the bones in her body.
“Th-this…”
Before she could finish her words, I charged toward Erebeon.
The pitch-black sword in my hand pulsed with a flow of vitality.
While others held off the enemy, I was feeding the blood of the demon beasts to the armored soldiers of Radiata.
Now that Franz and Irene were also out, it was my only best option.
“I’m going.”
The moment my toes scraped the snowfield, I reached Erebeon’s vicinity.
I adjusted my center of gravity from front to back, twisting my lower body while keeping my upper body horizontal, unleashing a series of thrusts.
One was a rotation, one a stab, and one an uppercut.
The sequential strikes with different axes of rotation amplified the shock of each blow through chain reactions.
At that, Erebeon began to draw up its magic.
The elegant yet irregular curve of the great sword traced a semicircle as it deflected the three consecutive strikes.
Rotation of the ankle and hip joint.
Subtle twisting between the shoulder blades and ribs.
The great sword, which had been moving so smoothly, abruptly shot upward as if rebounding.
That sudden strike ripped through the armor around its body, penetrating the flesh.
That overwhelming amount of magic became a one-hit kill the moment it made contact.
I shifted my weight to my left foot, moving not through consciousness but instinct.
My raw instincts, honed through crossing countless lines of fire, forced my posture and body into alignment.
I tilted my upper body slightly to the right, and the sword blade was turned.
I created two waves and circulated them through the sword blade.
I let loose a strike that could only be endured through sheer force by reducing it to a one-hit kill.
At that moment, both of my arms twisted in opposite directions as I couldn’t completely hold back the blow.
Pushing my muscles to the brink of tearing, I gripped tightly until my ligaments felt like they would fray.
The moment the two swords clashed was 0.3 seconds.
Erebeon did not lock its wrists or elbows.
As soon as the strike met, I redirected the opponent’s recoil into another counterattack.
From that instant onwards, it wasn’t a black wall but a mirror.
The opponent’s trajectory was reflected back from the mirror, and I pressed down following that rebound.
I set my opponent.
I myself became a mirror, reflecting the trajectory back and pressing down with that rebound.
I pushed back.
While my energy was inferior to the magic, the human body was far more fragile compared to a demon beast’s.
Even if the armored soldiers consumed their vitality to enhance regeneration and energy, the result would be the same.
That’s why I concentrated on the wave.
Something that belonged to nothing, that truly approached the power of humanity, I put all my being into it.
With each desperate moment for survival, waves became even clearer.
Red and blue waves flickered like lightning through the surging magic and emanating energy.
I spat out light so intense it was blinding, again and again.
The moment the wave no longer entered my sight, even the vibrations pulsating within me began to fade.
Suddenly, realization struck.
A resonance is proof that one is still conscious of the external world.
True resonance is achieved only in the silence where not even a hint of vibration remains.
I completely melded with the external flow.
In that instant, I began to exist as the wave itself.
Reaching beyond, I could see distinct waves of different colors that should never intertwine clearly enough to grasp.
Normally, I would be struggling to keep up with this flow, but now it was different.
I could directly interfere with that flow.
The extreme colors that wouldn’t normally touch converged at a single point.
Dozens of colors spun together in a spiral, twisting and unraveling in a chaotic mix.
I thrust my sword.
There were no complex principles, techniques, or know-how.
It was simply the monotonous action of a child stabbing a stick.
The black sword wrapped in waves shattered Erebeon’s great sword and penetrated through the armor beyond.
Erebeon, now missing its upper body, fell helplessly backward.
The sky opened up.
