Chapter 207 : Chapter 207
Chapter 207
I was assigned quarters.
A barracks with about twenty people, not one of them with all their limbs intact.
Most were missing at least an eye, an arm, or a hand; one was even missing a leg.
Their faces were thick with the resignation of people who did not know when they would die.
That they remained in this barracks at all seemed miraculous.
"Hey."
After a little while, the barracks door opened and someone walked in.
Hati.
Aside from an expression drenched in exhaustion and disillusionment, he looked much the same as I knew him.
Muscular, short, bald, scorpion tattoo and all.
"Take this."
He tossed me a small black stone.
A Fantasy.
The eyes of the people around me stirred at the black glint arcing through the air.
Greed and killing intent crept into their gazes.
"Big Sister said so. You are an Aura user? Sooner die than have someone steal an Aura user's Fantasy."
But as Hati's words continued, the room went quiet.
He had deliberately stressed "Aura user."
A small thread of fear wove into the people's emotions.
The covetous glances were still there, but not more than I could handle.
"Thank you."
"Step outside with me."
I stood.
At my waist was the sword I had picked up earlier.
Ill-maintained, with gaps in its edge and rust — that kind of sword.
Hati glanced at it, then trudged outside.
I followed him out of the barracks.
He led me to a clearing ringed by seated soldiers.
"I want to see what you can do."
I could tell at a glance.
The soldiers gathered here were the elite.
Not one could use Aura, but they were brimming with energies that substituted for it.
Geis, Necromancing, and Fantasies.
People who, in a world without Aura, had sold many things to fight demons.
"Who am I fighting?"
"Here."
A hunched old man rose from one side.
A face I knew well.
"The Spear God."
"Oho, you know me? Well, if you can use Aura, you must have heard of this master's renown along the way. But I do not know a young whelp like you......"
His spear was slightly different from the one I knew.
Jagged thorns bristled in every direction — it looked less like a spear and more like a spiked club.
Its length exceeded three meters, and I worried whether even the Spear God could swing something that massive.
"Well, seeing is believing."
Saying so, the Spear God smirked and leveled his spear at me.
Then, from his wrist to his forearm, the green tattoos began to emit a fluorescent glow.
His body swelled — muscles expanding to roughly 1.3 or 1.4 times their normal size, and his hunched back seemed to straighten slightly.
"Here I come!"
Not "come at me" but "here I come." How very like him.
I set my intent.
HUMMM—.
When the blade of my mind was set, the world looked a little brighter.
This world was saturated far too densely with Demonic Energy and all manner of negative forces.
The Aura seemed to drink in the mana and cut through every bit of it.
"HRYAH!"
I dodged the Spear God's thrust, which came so fast it left afterimages.
Along the spear's trajectory, the thorns jutting out at random angles spun, creating a hellish wall of blades.
I cut through every one of them.
"Gwahahaha!"
The Spear God laughed, pleased with my response.
"Real Aura!"
Around me, murmurs of admiration arose.
Eyes from every direction swept over my body.
I accepted those gazes and focused on the postures of the people around me.
'......Far more data.'
Looking at the Spear God, Hati, and Rozalin's skill alone, the people of this era were far inferior to those at my side in the present.
But the average soldier's skill was.
'Akarind's students use clean, textbook swordsmanship. But the people here wield practical sword techniques honed on the battlefield. And...... they are strong.'
The swordsmanship of this era seemed about half a step better.
Surprising.
I had thought I was training my students to be strong, but in the end, over ten years of real combat experience could not be surpassed.
"You dare look away?!"
The Spear God bellowed and swung his spear.
The spear vibrated like a snake, tracing bizarre trajectories from sky to ground and back.
But every one of those trajectories.
Was weaker than the Spear God's spear I had fought until now.
I thrust my sword and pierced the center of the Spear God's spear.
With a snap, the spear broke in half.
"Let us stop here."
"What?! You destroy my weapon and then run?!"
"That was not a proper weapon."
"What?"
"The balance was off. You were using something longer and cruder than your usual weapon."
At my words, the Spear God narrowed his eyes.
"Even though you bulked up your muscles, the timing of your force release was subtly off. Your planted foot was forced wider than normal, throwing off balance."
"What?"
"And the timing of your offense-defense transition......"
"Wait!"
Ah, the habit came out again.
I quietly shut my mouth.
The Spear God would probably ask how I knew all that and praise my perceptiveness.
I had not meant to start a lesson even here.
The Spear God looked exasperated.
"Do you think you are some god of the sword? What do you know to flap your mouth like that!"
"......Pardon?"
"What is wrong with my spearmanship? Boy! My spearmanship is perfect! It has kept me alive for ten years!"
The Spear God flew into a fury that startled even me.
His face had gone somewhat red — this was not idle talk.
"You think because you can handle that paltry Aura, you can run your mouth about another man's spear?! This spear art of mine! Do you have any idea how many of these wretches it has kept alive?!"
"No, sir, that is not what I meant......"
"You demon!"
A broken half-spear shot at the dead center of my forehead.
It brimmed with an unknown energy.
'Cut.'
I immediately set my Sword Intent and cut the half-spear.
Then backed two steps and took my stance.
The Spear God, eyes nearly rolling white, charged at me with the ferocity of a man bent on mutual destruction.
Stopping him half-heartedly would be impossible.
"Hup!"
I lowered my stance and drew in the surrounding mana in a single breath.
Cassian-Style Swordsmanship, First Form.
Proper Cut.
A trajectory powerful enough to split the world in half carved through the air.
Thud.
And the Spear God collapsed to the ground.
The people around us, who had been watching from a distance, all stood.
The atmosphere was ominous — it felt like weapons could be drawn at any second.
"He is not dead. He is breathing. Look."
Fortunately, Rozalin appeared and defused the situation.
At her words, people stared at the Spear God.
As she said, he was still alive.
What I had cut was not the Spear God himself but the hostility and fighting spirit seated within him.
"Wh-what, what have you done, huh!"
Belatedly, the Spear God groped around and started shouting.
He managed to get up after a few struggles, but his hands would not stop trembling — he could not grip his spear.
Rozalin watched him, one hand in her uniform pocket.
"Is this your Aura?"
"Yes."
"Shit...... I really might have to offer up my body. If this is what it is."
A cigarette was in Rozalin's mouth.
This time it was lit. She took one deep drag and burned through most of it.
"But about what you just said. Those comments. I think you actually knew what you were talking about."
Rozalin's eyes fixed on me.
"......There was someone like that, once."
"Once?"
"About ten years ago? I do not know exactly. I stopped counting time a long while back."
Rozalin dropped the cigarette and ground it out with her military boot.
The harsh smell swirled once and dispersed.
There were things here that smelled far worse.
She seemed lost in thought as she walked.
I followed, not wanting to stay behind.
"What kind of person?"
"Just...... the most ordinary story. When I was young, my eyes lingered on him a moment longer, I wanted to say one more word. That sort of thing."
Rozalin's eyes wandered through empty air.
"I have forgotten the name by now. The very existence."
That was a lie.
The moment she had regressed and seen me, she had shouted asking if I was really her teacher and rushed toward me.
"There was just...... a time like that."
Rozalin did not say she had regressed to save the world.
'Teacher! I ran for ten years to protect you! Do not worry anymore! Mwahahaha!'
She had said she had come running to save me.
And at that time, to my eyes.
Every word she had spoken was the truth.
Unlike now.
"Could it be that person was......"
THUMP — the world rang.
As though the heart of the living planet had beaten hard.
It was the most powerful demonic pulse I had ever felt.
"Tch, dammit...... It is here."
Rozalin smiled as though she had known, pulling up the corner of her mouth.
Not a smile of joy — the smile of someone who had set everything down, standing at the very end of life.
"Let us go. The end of the world ought to be witnessed."
"You speak as though you know what appeared."
"I do. The Necromancers warned us years ago. The demons too. That their lord would come soon."
The lord of demons?
The first thing that came to mind was the General.
A demon that transmitted strategy to other demons through images and governed them.
"The General?"
"What are you on about? Pan killed that thing two years ago. You must have been holed up in a mountain training your Aura."
Rozalin shook her head.
Killed two years ago.
Well, "General" was a title for a commander, not a lord.
A lord would mean an entity above even that.
Rozalin quickened her pace, and I hurried to follow.
Along the way, people began to join us, one and two at a time.
Men and women, young and old. People who had been lying in barracks, training somewhere, sleeping, eating, despairing, contemplating death, gritting their teeth to survive, or dismissing everything with vulgar jokes.
All of them gathered into a single mass on the hilltop.
Beyond the hill.
A great dragon was taking flight.
"Entity name, hmm. Baphomet, perhaps?"
A demon with the enormous horns of a ram.
Its face was a ram's; its elongated neck was as long as a giraffe's; its wolf-like body bore forty-four wings jutting in every direction.
From its legs, which stretched to the ground, hundreds of eyes and teeth writhed.
From its torso, tentacles served as arms, and in those arms was a single enormous scythe.
Death made manifest.
That was Baphomet.
'That is the one.'
Just looking told me everything.
Humanity had perished at this very moment.
And at the same time.
"Still, we ought to struggle a bit."
Pan charged first, ahead of everyone.
From his sword, an Aura that seemed to hold both sun and moon blazed with radiant light.