Chapter 10
It was a relationship filled with bitter ties for Kraush.
The reason he knew so much about this person was precisely because of that.
He was once a friend of Kraush.
“Friend, my foot.”
Kraush had known for a long time that he was only considered a friend because of his usefulness.
From the perspective of others, Anicks was a rival house to Balheim.
Embracing Kraush, the direct descendant of Balheim, would have been useful for standing at the center of the Kingdom’s faction.
However, Kraush also knew of a far more disgusting reason beyond those superficial motivations.
The incident occurred after their graduation from the academy.
After joining the Sky Generations, Kraush worked alongside Anicks to prevent the world’s erosion, and then things went awry.
Anicks’s party fell into a trap of world erosion.
All the members perished in the trap, and Kraush barely survived, clinging to the edge of a cliff.
And, true to the Sky Generations, only Anicks managed to escape the trap.
“Anicks! Help me up!”
The intense gravitational force pulling from below felt like it would tear his arm off.
So, he called for Anicks’s help.
But what came back from Anicks was not assistance, but rather something entirely different.
“…Kraush, if it becomes known that this trap happened due to my mistake, I will lose my place in the Sky Generations.”
At those words, Kraush’s eyes widened.
Anicks had recently been ostracized from the Sky Generations due to a mistake he made.
If this incident were to get out, it would undoubtedly lead to him being expelled from the Sky Generations.
This was now a group that had become the center of power.
Being cast out of this circle was something one would dread.
“What kind of nonsense is that?! Isn’t your life more important right now?!”
But life was indeed the more pressing matter.
However, Anicks’s expression remained unchanged.
It was the look of someone who had already made a decision long ago.
“If I survive, my mistake will be buried.”
Anicks stood up.
Then he began to walk away, leaving Kraush behind, trapped in the trap.
“Anicks, Anicks, wait!”
Kraush shouted desperately.
At this rate, he would die.
“You idiot! Do you think things will just resolve themselves that easily?!”
The Sky Generations were no fools.
Before even being part of the Sky Generations, they were a group embroiled in power struggles amongst themselves.
They would surely use this incident as a pretext to expel Anicks.
He was one of the key figures within Starlon too.
Anicks likely wasn’t oblivious to that fact.
But Anicks let out a self-derisive laugh.
“It’s alright. You’re here, Kraush.”
Kraush’s eyes slowly began to widen.
He realized what Anicks was planning.
Anicks intended to take the blame for this incident.
The foolish underachiever from Balheim had dragged him into this trap.
Kraush was already facing hostility from many within the Sky Generations.
Regardless of the truth, they would uproar over Kraush’s blunders.
In the meantime, the truth would become muddled.
“Thank you, Kraush, for being my friend until the very end.”
Anicks’s final words were like a direct hit to Kraush’s boiling rage.
“Friend, friend?! What a load of crap! When did you ever think of me as a friend?”
Kraush had known for a long time how meaningless Anicks’s claim of friendship was.
Yet, he still wanted to believe, even if just a little.
That this jerk would see him as a comrade fighting against the world’s erosion.
However, for Anicks, Kraush wasn’t even a comrade, let alone a friend.
Kraush’s disgust ultimately triggered Anicks’s ire.
“You clung to me as an excuse, but you were just there because of Charlotte!”
Anicks’s previously calm face shattered for the first time.
“Do you think I wouldn’t know that this mistake happened because you lost your mind over Charlotte’s wedding?”
Anicks had deep feelings of love and hate for Charlotte.
Today, his blunder stemmed entirely from being distracted by the news of Charlotte’s wedding.
At first, Kraush had told Anicks not to come.
Seeing his demeanor, it was apparent he would likely cause trouble.
Then, pushing through and creating this mess, he now meant to take the blame.
It was an absurd and disgusting devaluation.
“…This is why I hate you.”
Anicks’s face held a jumbled mix of emotions as he looked at Kraush.
“You have no ability, yet you think you can see through people, so you keep digging at that point.”
That was the real reason Anicks had kept Kraush close as a friend.
Because being near Kraush, he could occasionally catch glimpses of Charlotte.
Yet, that would end today.
She was now forever gone.
“Oh, but at least something good came out of today.”
Saying that, Anicks wore a twisted smile filled with love and hatred.
“Charlotte wouldn’t want to hold both her brother’s funeral and wedding at the same time, after all.”
“You bastard!”
Realizing that Anicks had completely gone off the deep end, Kraush shouted, but Anicks was already turning away, stepping away from him.
“Still, I’m glad you were useful until the end, Kraush.”
And with that, Anicks left.
All Kraush could do was hurl insults at his back.
Just when Kraush found himself on the brink of death.
Someone came to his rescue.
The owner of platinum hair that would rise with the sun.
Arthur Gramate.
It marked the beginning of a new, twisted relationship.
“You jerk.”
After that, Anicks was expelled from the Sky Generations due to Arthur’s testimony.
And soon after, the sight of him marrying Princess Cladia, who had no right to the throne, grasping for any last straw, was truly revolting.
“He looks and sounds just like Charlotte.”
At that moment, Anicks’s voice echoed in the present.
This fool still had only Charlotte on his mind.
“Hey.”
So, Kraush glared at Anicks, clenching his fists tightly.
“Don’t go using someone else’s sister’s name casually.”
Anicks’s eyes widened.
It was a reaction he hadn’t expected from Kraush.
“And you said I looked like your sister.”
At the same time, an aura began to ripple from Kraush’s fist.
As Anicks quietly observed the aura at the level of an Expert novice.
“I won’t let anyone who touches me, who looks like my sister, go unpunished.”
Kraush jumped up, kicking off the ground.
In an instant, he closed the distance to Anicks and punched him, just like he did with Balak.
Smash!
His punch was blocked by a branch that sprouted behind Anicks.
The sudden intrusion of wood was surprising, but it was familiar to Kraush.
Thump!
Grabbing the branch with both hands, Kraush spun downward like he was on a bar.
And then, he swung his legs toward Anicks immediately.
But once again, a branch shot up between the railings, coiling around Kraush’s leg and sending him flying.
Suddenly airborne.
The trees attacked Kraush with their branches flailing about.
As branches reached for him from all directions.
Kraush skillfully maneuvered through the air, landing on the ground.
“Kraush, you’re like a squirrel.”
Bianca, who had been quietly watching from behind, said with a look of wonder.
What a carefree kid.
“Phew.”
In contrast, Kraush wiped the sweat from his brow.
The Graizar branches were still annoying.
“Is this all you’ve got? You should use a weapon instead, really.”
Amidst the branches that swirled around him like armor, Anicks smiled faintly.
The Graizar’s affinity.
Wood Manipulation
It was a unique ability that allowed him to manipulate not only wood but plants at will, infusing them with aura to enhance their strength.
Of course, that power weakened in places where plants couldn’t grow.
But skills contracted with deities rendered that weakness meaningless.
Recovery.
In simple terms, regenerative power.
Wherever they were, plants would sprout and become his hands and feet through Anicks’s skills.
That was the real reason he could belong to the Sky Generations.
“You told me to use a weapon.”
With a chill-inducing smile at him, Kraush revealed what he had been hiding behind him.
Upon seeing it, Anicks’s eyes twitched for the first time.
What was in Kraush’s hand was a branch.
And it was none other than one taken from Anicks’s tree.
Using his black hood, Kraush had stolen the branch.
“Your tree isn’t half bad.”
Kraush adopted a sword stance with the long branch that was the length of a longsword.
Anicks let out a hollow laugh.
“Not sure what you think you can do with that.”
Though Anicks said that, he seemed quite displeased, a twisted smile plastered on his face.
“Well, then, why not try it with my branch?”
At that moment, branches began to tumble from behind Anicks.
The branches infused with aura were shaped like stalagmites and were strong enough to pierce the marble floor.
Through the rain of wooden spikes, Kraush dashed about.
Though the wooden spikes seemed to be falling without guidance, they were each controlled by Anicks.
Having been attached to Anicks during the Sky Generations.
Even now, Anicks carried those usual habits.
In a way, Kraush might be a nemesis for Anicks.
No one knew Anicks better than Kraush.
“Hmm?”
As Kraush dodged the wooden spikes and slowly approached, Anicks displayed a baffled expression.
Kraush moved as if he knew exactly where Anicks’s attacks would come from.
However, even then, Kraush exuded no overwhelming pressure.
The energy he explained only felt like it came from an ordinary person.
‘Feels like he’s squeezing out his limits.’
Even now, Kraush was panting, barely dodging the wooden spikes.
It was evidence that while he understood with his mind, his body wasn’t cooperating.
‘Did he awaken some insight?’
Recalling the legendary insight, Anicks scoffed.
‘Maybe for Charlotte, but not you.’
There was no way someone called the underachiever of Balheim could possess such perception.
“Anicks.”
Then, amidst the wooden spikes, Kraush smirked with a wide grin from a short distance away.
“Still thinking about Charlotte, huh?”
Twist—
Anicks’s eyebrows twitched.
That statement touched a deep-seated anger within him.
“…You’ve been allowed to get away with this much.”
Anicks lifted his hand.
“Looks like you need to work on your mouth a bit.”
Then, energy unlike aura flowed through his hand.
Suddenly, the wood behind him began to burst forth, sprouting thousands of leaves.
Unveiling a massive root that pierced through the marble floor.
On top of a tree so overwhelming it could be called the World Tree.
What appeared to be a humanoid figure formed arms.
Wood Manipulation
Five Styles
Wooden Colossus
It was a giant created through the secret technique of the Graizar clan.
The shadow cast by the giant filled the terrace of Arayonguan.
“Next time, be careful.”
Under the giant, which any ordinary person would have instinctively collapsed under, Anicks warned Kraush with finality, lowering his hand.
Soon, the colossal fist of unmatched size came crashing down towards Kraush.
“Anicks!”
At that moment, Anicks’s subordinate, Elfin, rushed through the terrace door, shouting.
If Kraush took that fist head-on, it would be irreversible.
But it was already too late.
The giant’s fist, massive enough to crush Arayonguan, was mere moments away from Kraush’s face.
As Kraush looked up at the impending fist, he raised the branch above his head.
In the secret library of Green Pinegwan, there lay the thinnest manual on swordsmanship.
The reason for its thinness was simple.
The author of the manual had never been able to create anything beyond that one technique in their lifetime.
A hopeless underachiever from Balheim who possessed zero talent.
Because he lacked talent, he focused solely on the fundamentals of swordplay, repeating the act of striking downward his entire life.
A pure downward cut devoid of all embellishments.
He continued to strike until the number of his downward cuts reached not hundreds or thousands, but over billions.
When his life had surpassed eighty years.
The sword he had been holding shattered.
The sword he had grasped couldn’t withstand his relentless strikes any longer.
But at that moment, he no longer needed a sword.
The sword became me, and I became the sword.
He had reached the peak of the unification of body and sword.
From that day forth, there was no one capable of taking the hit he delivered.
And yet, the last manual he penned in life was a mere simple technique of the downward cut.
But the techniques written within that short manual were realms that could never be grasped through mere practice.
Kraush’s eyes, as he lifted the branch, became quiet.
He forgot all sounds and presence around him.
Kraush focused solely on the single branch in his hand.
This technique required a high level of concentration.
That concentration took them to a level approaching the unity of all things.
Most manuals had just that, but very few could master the technique.
But Kraush was different.
Due to his curse from the past, he had been forced into a situation resembling the unity of all things countless times.
Ironically, it was precisely that which allowed Kraush to see himself better than anyone else.
An empty self, devoid of anything.
And it was natural.
He had achieved nothing on his own.
But because of that.
Kraush could accept the skills of his ancestors within himself.
The sword becomes me, and I become the sword.
A very simple truth.
BOOOOOOOOM!
The Wooden Colossus crumbled, releasing a colossal sound.
“What, what is happening?!”
“What’s going on outside?”
A commotion erupted inside the terrace due to the deafening noise.
However, the dust raised by the Wooden Colossus filled the air so thickly that the young nobles couldn’t see what was happening.
Within that haze, Anicks stared ahead with wide eyes.
The clan’s technique, the Wooden Colossus, made from the power of Recovery.
That giant had just shattered with a single downward cut.
Now, whether he could stop Kraush’s downward strike with everything he had was a question.
“Hey.”
At that moment, Kraush’s voice rang through the cloud of dust.
Unintentionally startled, Anicks took a step back at the sound of Kraush’s voice.
“…Ugh.”
Yet he felt a twinge of shame for jumping back merely at Kraush’s voice.
Nonetheless, he was tense, his body frozen.
Cold sweat collected on his back.
His throat swallowed hard.
Until the dust cleared.
Anicks couldn’t move an inch, frozen in trepidation.
As the dust began to settle, Kraush’s form slowly emerged.
He tossed away the shattered wooden sword onto the ground and opened his mouth.
“Don’t mess with me again.”
That was truly a classic line.
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