Chapter 228 : Chapter 228
Chapter 228
"Is that fool really planning to fight alone? He didn't strike me as a dimwitted young man."
At Merea's question, Sihan snorted.
"He's not dimwitted—he's smart, and that's exactly why he'd do something like this. His brain is first-rate, but his personality is a pain in the ass."
"His personality?"
"His number one priority is always the students."
Cassian had never intended to bring students to Aislard.
No matter how much talent the students displayed, they were still just students.
Basic Class students were thirteen or fourteen, and even the Graduation Class hadn't reached twenty.
Taking students like that to deal with Avril?
"A guy like that would never move with students in tow."
Sihan chuckled.
It wasn't only Avril waiting there.
The Underground Magic Tower.
And Red Moon, which was likely connected to Avril.
Monsters and demons too.
With no telling what lurked in such treacherous terrain, Cassian had planned to go with only the most select personnel.
That was the Firestorm Mercenary Guild, the Auditors, and the Crownhardt soldiers.
But the intelligence had shifted.
"How much did you tell him?"
At Sihan's gaze, Merea answered with a little hum.
"Exactly as it was! A hundred people will be selected. And they're coming to get you. I told him the general area you'd be in."
Arms folded, she surveyed the Akarind Academy grounds with keen interest.
Or rather, she studied Cassian at the center of it all with eyes full of curiosity.
"So the enemy will be prepared and waiting."
Cassian had a quietly perfectionist streak.
When it came to students, he never compromised.
Even if a hundred students charged in and only five died—no, even one—and the target was eliminated, he'd consider it a failure.
"So he flipped the strategy."
Avril would undoubtedly prepare for Cassian.
Then change the nature of the fight.
Instead of going to the enemy, use himself as bait and draw the enemy in.
"This place is going to become a battlefield. That okay with you?"
"While we're at it, I'll haul in the Iron Eater metal from the Belmein capital and upgrade the defenses. And......"
Sihan looked at Merea and bared his teeth in a grin.
"You can watch from here and see just how much I've improved over the last sixty years."
***
I walked at a measured pace, new sword in hand.
'I can't fight at the Academy.'
Every student would be leaving the Akarind territory, true.
But students weren't the only ones living in Akarind.
Akarind Academy and Academy City were spaces where countless people lived together.
Students' families, longtime residents of the Akarind territory, prospective students, graduates......
I couldn't burden them the way I'd burden students.
'The air's taut.'
Thanks to my heightened senses, the scent of war seeped into my body from every direction.
The air, drawn tight like a bowstring, carried a cold edge.
"Let's go."
I mounted a Griffon and slowly crossed Akarind Academy's domain.
"I need to go where there are no students."
Fittingly, the only place currently devoid of students was the forest where the Giant-Block had first appeared.
Early in the demon crisis, a formidable monster had emerged and devastated the forest's ecosystem.
Every lesser creature had been killed, and the surrounding landscape had turned barren.
Thanks to that, the terrain was rich in cover and ideal for combat.
A ready-made stage.
'This will do.'
I landed in the heart of the forest and sent the Griffon back.
Traces of the battle against the Giant-Block still lingered here and there.
'I was so young then.'
A mere year ago.
And yet the difference between then and now was staggering.
A single year had been a period of pressing every drop out of time and swallowing it whole.
Each day was dense, and that density had grown me—and my world—immensely.
I stared at one of my own old footprints.
My mind stilled.
'Good.'
Unlike the times I'd always been advancing toward the enemy.
Now I was the one waiting for them.
'The word is out.'
Over the past week.
I'd placed conspicuously large orders to supply two thousand students' needs.
Abrahal, who'd caught on to my true intentions midway through, threw himself into procuring everything.
When the students departed, so did the teachers, mercenaries, and essentially all other combat assets—ostensibly to oversee their evaluations.
Of course, not every asset had truly left.
Sihan, Berlis, the Spear God, Duke Crownhardt.
Those four held Akarind's last line of defense.
A 6th-circle, a 5th-circle, and two Sword Experts.
A defensive line stronger than any other location could boast.
'And me.'
I'd made a point of wandering every corner of Akarind Academy.
I'd exposed my every move and let slip that I planned to retreat here soon to organize my thoughts in solitude.
'It isn't a lie.'
The foundational textbook I'd been writing in my spare time had cleared my head.
The sword, perhaps thanks to my earlier threats, also seemed to obey me a bit better now.
So.
"You've arrived."
I was ready to face the enemies converging from every direction.
— Ngh. Uh. Uh. Uh.
The terrain around the forest had transformed entirely into marshland.
From the squelching, melting earth, bodies dripping downward rose to their feet.
Mud golems, abominations, ghouls, skeletons.
There was no way this small space contained this many corpses.
'Illusions? Or an ambush?'
Either way.
I'd cut them down.
'You can cut freely.'
I swung the sword and gave it permission.
In the same instant, every trace of mana in the area evaporated.
— SHAAAAAA!
Aura exploded outward in a ring, as if a single slash could fell the entire forest.
Because the Aura had vacuumed up the ambient mana in the blink of an eye, the marshland solidified back into normal ground.
Corpses that had been rising from the earth were now trapped within it, cracking and splitting apart, their severed pieces crawling along the surface.
FWABABABABAK!
But a rapid series of follow-up strikes tore those remnants to shreds.
I bent low and swung the sword wide again.
Cassian's Basic Swordsmanship.
Horizontal slash.
SHAAAAK!
A phantom-like Aura swept through the forest once more, shaking everything.
Trees already cut from the first strike swayed from the repeated impacts and toppled.
The rumbling sound rippled outward from me like dominoes.
Interspersed were wet thuds—chunks of flesh hitting the ground.
A rough count put the bodies at around a hundred.
"......What the hell."
People who'd barely managed to pull themselves together between the fallen trees poked their heads out.
Not one of them was standing unscathed.
"Underground Magic Tower? Or Red Moon?"
Some wore robes like mages.
Others looked like knights, assassins, or mercenaries.
A mix of everything, by the looks of it.
Every single one of them was clearly visible, thanks to the trees having been cleanly sheared away in roughly a one-kilometer radius.
"K-kill him! He must die here!"
"He's a demon! That man is a demon—no, something worse! A threat to the Empire, to the world!"
Near-screaming wails rose from every direction.
Enemy of the world, was it.
If someone else had said that, it might have stung.
But not from you people.
Mana surged from every direction.
In the span of mere seconds, the sky darkened, the landscape rippled, and a ghastly keening blanketed everything.
White specters flew about, a banshee's wail echoed, and curses that felt ready to devour my heart came hurtling in.
"Hm."
I walked slowly, swinging the sword as I went.
The surroundings became clean.
"Th-the curse was cut!"
"The magic—the magic—!"
"There's no mana!"
Again.
Warriors who'd used the Underground Tower's magic as a shield came charging at my vitals.
Volleys of flaming arrows and poison arrows thick enough to blot out the sky, clouds of toxic mist fired directly at me, iron nets thrown to restrict my movement, and spears exploiting their long reach.
I cut through all of it.
"It's not worki— GAKH!"
Everything, silently cut down.
'This is broken.'
At the center of it all was the new sword—the fusion of Doppelgänger and World Eater.
Since the fight began, I'd swung it roughly a hundred times.
Not only had the blade not dulled in the slightest, there wasn't a single snag when I wanted to swing—not even the smallest resistance.
When I cut air, the sword moved with the air. No matter how distant the enemy, I could sever them in a single stroke.
Because of that, I could go anywhere.
I walked, slowly crossing the forest.
"That's far enough!"
Several mages shouted, and the fallen trees around me were engulfed in searing flame.
A space barely five steps wide.
Looking up, storm clouds were gathering overhead.
A rumbling vibration suggested lightning was about to strike.
"No matter how exceptional you are, do you think you can defy the laws of heaven?!"
I cut down the shouting mages first.
With strangled cries, three or four mages who'd been cavorting in midair plummeted simultaneously to the ground.
They'd been high enough that survival was unlikely.
But the spells already cast wouldn't cancel just because the casters had fallen.
The clouds looked ready to unleash a bolt at any moment, flickering with light.
If I tried to cut all the way to the clouds...... no, my blade couldn't reach the sky.
But.
I took my stance and prepared to draw-cut.
And timed it to the moment the mana reached a boil.
I cut.
CHWAAAAK—!
The lightning, split in two, scattered in every direction.
I couldn't cut the clouds or the sky, but I could cut the mana of a bolt hurtling toward me.
"Haha."
I laughed.
With this one sword in my hand, it felt like I could do anything.
I cut through the surrounding flames and walked on.
While the great wall of fire blocked my path, the area had filled again with spells, curses, corpses, and people.
But they were the ones who were cornered.
Every gaze that met mine was steeped in fear.
THUMP!
Then—a sensation so intense it made the back of my neck prickle swept through the area and vanished.
The corpses strewn across the ground were sucked toward a single point.
It felt like encountering Ocean Hall on dry land.
Could this be—
"A demon?"
The Underground Magic Tower truly was the entity behind the demon summonings.
Ha. Ha.
I raised every sense in my body to its peak.
And then, very faintly.
Through the suffocating blanket of Demonic Energy, I was able to isolate one particularly dank, clinging presence.
The exact same feeling I'd had when hunting Sacer.
"Found you."
There stood a figure in a grotesque mask, body shrouded in a white hood.
Hands clasped at chest height, forming an eerie mudra, chanting an incantation that sounded like a song.
The corpses drawn to that single point assembled themselves into a monstrous creature of their own accord.
A hundred hands and feet, two hundred eyes, thousands of teeth dangling and oozing from every surface of the body.
Every one of those eyes stared at me.
The Demonic Energy writhing across the creature's body was more potent than the combined mana output of every combatant on this battlefield.
A genuine demon.
But.
'Weak.'
I swung my sword.
The creature and its summoner split cleanly in half and collapsed to the ground with a wet splat.
The Fantasy of this nameless, unknown demon clattered hollowly as it fell.