Volume 2, Chapter 33: Earl Mansion’s Raid⑧
「LAMBERT DE LA CROIX?! HOW DARE YOU MASQUERADE AS THAT LAMBERT IN FRONT OF ME, A GUIREF-SAMA ADMIRER! YOUR SIN DESERVES THE MOST PAINFUL DEATH!」
Manzi yelled at the top of his lungs, gripping Guiref’s Grimoire even tighter than before.
「NO, A SIMPLE DEATH IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU! I’M GONNA TURN YOU INTO A MEAT DOLL WITH GUIREF-SAMA’S SORCERY, AND KEEP YOU ALIVE SO THAT YOU’LL LIVE IN PAIN AND AGONY! DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY JUST BECAUSE YOU CUT DOWN MERE ENHANCED UNDEAD!」
Lambert closed in toward Manzi.
Manzi’s right hand pointed toward Lambert while keeping the book in his left hand.
「O FLAME, BURN!」
He invoked sorcery by using Guiref’s Grimoire as an intermediary.
A big flame around two hein (meters) in height materialized from the tip of Manzi’s finger, burning the floor and ceiling in its wake.
Manzi’s spell moved as if it had its own will, preventing Lambert from getting away from it.
「HYOHOHOHO! YOU’LL SUFFER INSIDE OF THAT ARMOR!」
「What…magic of such scale?!」
The 『Dancing Sword』 adventurers couldn’t hide their surprise.
Manzi’s spell was far bigger than when the same spell was cast by a normal sorcerer.
A normal sorcerer needed quite a long time to invoke that spell, but be its firepower, range, or time for invocation, Manzi’s spell excelled in all areas.
And most of all, the aggregate amount of mana to create such a phenomenon was too overwhelming.
Amongst the list of spells, creating something from nothing consumed an overwhelming amount of mana.
For that reason, many offensive spells belonged to the wind or earth elements.
The most a normal sorcerer could do with the fire element was creating a fireball as big as the palm of their hand.
If any normal sorcerer created a flame of that scale, their mana would be sucked dry in a second and kill them.
Manzi was using the spell with Guiref’s Grimoire as an intermediary.
Guiref’s Grimoire was nearly a perfect intermediary for spellwork. It allowed the user to raise the efficiency of their mana for their spell due to various complex magic formulae written in it.
The ability of that book aside, the skill to produce that scale of flame was enough to tell everyone just how vast Manzi’s supply of mana was.
「Mere adventurers like you aren’t even worthy of making me go all out… That spell alone rivals the five strongest royal sorcerers.」
Fando, who was giving orders to his comrades to fight the enhanced undead, was drenched in a cold sweat upon glancing at the battle between Lambert and Manzi.
「Why did a sorcerer as skilled as that join an anti-government organization?! How can we get close to him?!」
There were three mistakes in Fando’s remark.
First, to put it plainly, Manzi’s forte was in necromancy. He had no means to prevent Lambert from approaching with his undead anymore. That was why he had no choice but to use sorcery to prevent Lambert from approaching.
Second, it was not that he strayed from the path of proper sorcery, Manzi had already failed as a human being since his infancy, and this only worsened along with the growth of his power and age.
And lastly, this level of flame was mere child play in front of Lambert.
Even when it looked like he just barely dodged the incoming spell, in fact, Lambert still had some leeway.
He closed in toward Manzi with the shortest possible path as if to dare his opponent.
「Is that all you got?」
Manzi was clearly enraged upon hearing Lambert’s provocation. It only made the deep wrinkles on his old, fat, and ugly face even more prominent.
Even Manzi. whose ability rivaled that of royal sorcery by Fando’s evaluation, was nothing more than a greenhorn in front of Lambert who experienced the fight against Guiref two hundred years ago.
Finally, Guiref’s Grimoire entered the reach of Lambert’s greatsword.
Lambert and Manzi’s eyes locked.
「I’m gonna destroy that accursed book.」
「Fool, the one who is going to die is you!」
Suddenly, a headless twin swordsman wearing jet-black armor appeared in front of Lambert, raising their right sword overhead.
It was one of Guiref’s 13 contracted spirits of Hades, Dullahan.
The incoming blade from above was blocked by Lambert’s greatsword.
「Guiref’s 13 spirits, Dullahan of the Sixth, huh. It’s been two hundred years.」
Lambert’s sword intersected with Dullahan’s sword.
Dullahan’s twin swords attacked Lambert with a skill that was far beyond human comprehension.
And Lambert parried all those swords that came at the speed of light.
Lambert was completely defensive for almost 30 moves in front of Dullahan’s sword skill.
Guiref’s 13 spirits weren’t the kind of opponents that could be easily defeated, even by someone as powerful as Lambert, one of the Four Demon Generals of Regios kingdom who won the Eight Countries Unification War.
Lambert kicked the floor, opening some distance from his opponent.
「I see, you’ve grown stronger during my sleep, huh.」
「…」
Dullahan readied its twin swords in silence.
Despite its weapons being called twin swords, Dullahan was in fact using two different swords.
The sword in its right hand was a mithril sword, a lightweight yet durable sword that was completely geared for swiftness.
Dullahan’s swift strikes used that sword as its main force.
The sword in its left hand was a jet-black sword that was covered in mist.
It was already obvious with a single glance that the jet-black sword was a demon sword from the spirit world.
That sword was part of Dullahan’s body. It was a cursed demon sword that nullified physical protection and severed life once it entered its opponent’s flesh.
That sword was the main reason for Lambert opening some distance from the Dullahan.
A swift and durable mithril sword in its right hand and a demon sword that nullified any attempt to defend against it…
It’d be a simple matter for Lambert to defeat the Dullahan if the other party was only equipped with one sword.
But even someone as powerful as Lambert had a hard time dealing with the twin swords which had completely different natures from each other.
Manzi used Dullahan to gain control of almost all adventurer guilds in Barreira City.
No matter how strong the guild was, the fight ended quickly when Dullahan swung its sword.
Even someone with a huge amount of mana like Manzi wanted to suppress his mana consumption.
Moreover, Manzi himself realized that he wouldn’t get away unscathed if he fought the major guilds.
In addition, Dullahan’s sword was more reliable to minimize the damage done to those it fell, leaving them perfect specimens to turn into undead.
Another reason was that the spirits of numbers seven and above needed a large-scale and dangerous ritual to be summoned in this world. Yes, it was dangerous even for Manzi himself.
For that reason, Dullahan of the Sixth was the most suitable and useful for any situation.
Dullahan, with its transcendent sword skill that could insta-kill any kind of swordsman, was Manzi’s strongest sword.
But on the other hand, since its power was too overwhelming, it was eternally relegated as the main force to gain total control in the battlefield—or as the last shield like now.
Ever since he got Guiref’s Grimoire, Manzi had rarely encountered life-threatening danger thanks to Dullahan’s overwhelming power.
That was why looking at the opponent that even THAT Dullahan couldn’t overwhelm caused Manzi distress.
「WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! STOP PLAYING AROUND! STOP TRYING TO CATCH HIM ALIVE! KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!」
Dullahan leaped forward upon hearing Manzi’s scream.
Thus, the duel between two swordsmen who both transcended the limit of humanity restarted.
Manzi pointed his arms toward the battle between the two swordsmen while revealing an ugly smile on his face.
「O FLAME, BURN!」
As a spirit, Dullahan wouldn’t die even if the majority of its body parts were destroyed. At most, it would return to the spirit world.
That was why Manzi decided to burn both Dullahan and Lambert.
Soon enough, the two swordsmen were enveloped in the flame released by Manzi.
「HYOHOHOHOHOHO! YEAHYEAHEAYH! I KILLED HIM! HYOHOHOHOHO…」
Manzi laughed like a madman.
Suddenly, a jet-black sword wrapped in miasma was thrown from inside the raging flame.
「HYOH—?!」
At the next moment, Dullahan’s figure was also thrown out from inside the raging flame. It only stopped after crashing against the wall.
The sword in its hand was gone. Maybe because its jet-black armor was heavily damaged, it couldn’t maintain its form in this world anymore, and it started to vanish.
「H-HOW?! HOW CAN IT BE…」
Lambert’s figure could be seen inside the flame pillar, readying his greatsword to finish off Manzi and Guiref’s Grimoire.
「It seems you wanted to assist your spirit. Too bad though, the one who got distracted was none other than your spirit.」
Due to Manzi’s flame, Dullahan’s exquisite twin swords’ strike was dulled for a moment.
And in a battle between transcendent swordsmen like them, that moment was more than enough to decide the victor and the loser.
As a result, the one who came out as the victor was none other than Lambert. Clad in Organ that protected him from half-hearted magic attacks like the one used by Manzi, Lambert also triumphed over his opponent in a mental aspect.
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