Chapter 280 Volume IV - Chapter 127: The Sword That Pierced The Sky
As soon as Colonel Vulnar finished readying the sword... a shadow appeared behind him.
Time stopped in an instant, my heartbeat quickened, and it was the only thing I could hear.
The shadow was a soldier wearing the flag of the North Holar. He was a high-ranking soldier, a lieutenant colonel. Blood was oozing from his eyes, his nose, his ears, even from the gaps in his skin... from everywhere. His eyes were so red that I couldn't make out the pupils.
With difficulty, this shadow put the pistol he was holding against the Colonel's back. When all sound had disappeared, when the world had stopped spinning... the sound of a shot echoed across the field.
The lieutenant colonel behind the colonel collapsed to the ground, the pistol in his hand falling down the hill he was standing on and landing in front of me. The colonel's eyes widened, and blood oozed from his mouth as he vomited blood.
He tried to stand, but he couldn't. This time his legs really gave way, he lost his balance and fell to the ground. The sword in his hand began to fall with him.
Everything happened in an instant. I didn't even think about what would happen, what would happen to me.
Losing this war meant that I would be crushed under the burden of tons of people dying because of me.
Losing this war meant that I could never go back to my friends and Clara.
Losing this war meant that my chances in this world were completely over.
Losing this battle meant that I could not stop Lunerra from taking the first step toward its apocalyptic future.
Losing this war... meant losing everything for me.
So... I gave myself completely to my instincts, I didn't even think. The millisecond the Colonel was knocked off his feet, the moment the Durandal's hilt separated from his fingers... my entire body was flooded with mana like never before.
Spiritual Ascension activated within seconds. My crown appeared on my head.
Phoenix's Ascension followed close behind. My hair waved, my eyes sharpened, and a blue glow enveloped my body as I saw a golden light under my eyes.
My feet left the ground and I found myself on top of the hill in an instant, in front of Colonel Vulnar, who had not even fallen to the ground yet.
Our eyes met, and within seconds we understood each other, even if we hadn't said anything. The colonel's face showed gratitude and respect. As for me, I only looked at the Durandal's hilt, which was only a few millimeters out of place.
I reached out my hand and gripped Durandal tightly.
Intense mana, which a normal person could only withstand with armor specially designed for it, entered my body, coursing through it savagely.
"You fool! What do you think you're doing?!"
For the first time, literally the first time, I heard my wiera side speaking in such a tone. He was angry, worried, and... desperate.
For the first time he was not manipulating me, he was actually spewing anger at me.
"You idiot! Quickly put down that stupid sword!"
I didn't let go, on the contrary, I gripped it even tighter.
Sith supported me with the mana he gained access to through the Spiritual Ascension. Phoenix's Ascension contributed to my resistance to mana.
However... none of it was enough. Not even half a second later, my whole body trembled more violently than ever before. I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, the mana was so thick in my body that even my inhales and exhales bore its traces.
My body literally began to disintegrate alive. I felt the mana literally tearing my body apart from the inside, especially my hand holding the sword.
My wiera side cursed me in my mind, but he didn't stop there.
For no reason, suddenly the left side of my vision turned purple. Caora forced the pieces of me that the mana had torn apart to hold together, like stitches. It replaced the pieces I had already lost as if it were a patchwork.
For a moment I felt like stumbling, and when the mana started to tear my feet apart, I almost lost my balance and fell down like Colonel Vulnar.
Countless thoughts flashed through my mind.
No... no, I can't.
I gritted my teeth even more, biting my tongue just like the colonel.
Hold on... hold on... hold on...
All you have to do is swing the sword at the shadow in the sky, that's all you have to do.
My vision suddenly blurred, and all the sounds blurred together.
But I could still make out the shadow in the sky and the glow was still intensifying. It didn't matter that my vision was blurred, the only thing that mattered was that it didn't go black.
I thought of what I could do if I got out of this battle. If I threw the sword aside as I swung it, I would only be in contact with it for a second, I had faith that the dwarves could heal me.
Actually... I didn't need to believe in anything.
If I hadn't done this, I wouldn't have had a future anyway. I would have been captured again by the South, tortured again, enslaved again. It was as good as death. So... I decided not to care what was going to happen.
I just focused. I just focused on the state of my body and whether I was going to swing the sword or not.
As I watched all my muscles tear, as I watched my skin tear, and as I watched the veins on my hand holding the sword expand, burst, and blacken as if they were turning to ash in a flame... I felt something else.
The mana touched something else than my body. It was so intense that it searched for something else to travel through and... it found it. It found my soul.
In the first few seconds it felt like my body was falling apart, but when mana touched my soul... it felt like hot lava was flowing through my veins instead of blood.
I stumbled again, this time reflexively trying to direct the mana in my body to my leg.
Durandal's wild mana traveled down along the right side of my body and reached my leg. Even though my intention was to support myself, the result was worse as I felt a sensation in my leg similar to the one I felt in my right hand.
Caora glowed more violently than ever. It splashed on my hand and leg, focusing on the right side of my body.
The blue color of Durandal flickered for a moment as if something had seeped into it. And then the huge sword reaching for the sky suddenly blended with a bright purple. The battlefield was suddenly covered in the purple glow of the huge purple sword reaching for the sky.
I gave everything I had, I focused all my desires on being able to swing the sword just once... and then... something else happened.
Just as the left side of my vision turned purple, something flickered on the right side. A bright, pure blue filled my right vision as if to counter the purple on my left.
Not only that, it splashed over Durandal like caora. Two colors that seemed to be in conflict with each other and at the same time in harmony, purple and blue... suddenly rose into the sky along the sword.
A sensation entered my body this time as if something was healing me, as if something was replacing the parts of my body that had been torn away.
My body was filled with a power I had never felt before.
No... I had felt it. I had felt something like that long before when I escaped from Caleuche for the first time and the Northerners, suspicious of me, opened fire on the vehicle I was in... I remembered that it was this blue thing that responded to my desire to live at that time.
So I took a deep breath, and the flow of time suddenly accelerated. A single second was enough for me when my whole body was overflowing with power.
I gripped Durandal even tighter, ignored the numbness in my hand, and swung it at Caleuche.
The sword, soaring into the sky, turned sideways in an instant. I drew a diagonal line against the ghost ship, but I didn't stop. I gritted my teeth even more, twisted the sword in my hand, and drew another diagonal line at an angle.
The sword did not reach the shadow in the sky.
But it didn't need to. The specialty of this sword was that it could cut through anything. It was a feature that responded to its wielder's desire.
Cracks appeared in the air as if the atmosphere had been shattered. A strange tremor, reminiscent of an earthquake, shook the entire ground.
The black in the sky flushed for a moment, and two orange lines appeared on it, forming a cross. Then the slaughter machine at the level of the clouds exploded with a great noise and shock wave.
The last thing I saw as I fell to the ground was the reflection in my eyes of the purple and blue sky above the clouds.
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