Hard Carried by My Sword

Chapter 197

The shockwave erupted, peeling back the surface of the lake by several meters. Tiles were torn off the surrounding road, and the shards howled into a storm. Windows shattered kilometers away, and innocent trees snapped at the trunk as if they were struck by something immense, while clouds unravelled like strands of yarn in the sky above.

And this was after most of the power had already cancelled itself out. Had either technique landed unopposed on the town, the shape of Ladoga’s lakeside may have been altered forever.

“Hup!”

Leon gripped his sword at the very center of the blast. The final strike that had been unleashed by Dayton el Blanc, the Spearmaster who once led Clyde’s vanguard, had lived up to his reputation. Its force was utterly terrifying.

Both of Leon’s palms had long since burst open inside his gauntlets, leaving them wet and sticky. Even his left forefinger had bent at a grotesque ninety degrees.

That was close.

With an audible crack, he reset the finger back into place. The pain was considerable, but he didn’t blink an eye. His gaze stayed fixed on the lightning still ripping through the wall of starlight he had produced.

Old and worn as he was, Dayton had still matched Leon’s “Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar” blow for blow. The dying veteran had nearly taken Leon’s life. That fighting spirit alone deserved respect as a warrior.

In the stretched time that even the lightning slowed to a crawl, the end finally came. The first to reach its limit was the spear.

Dayton’s Aura Blade had transformed it into a bolt of lightning, but at its heart, it was still a weapon forged of mithril. Having barely endured the resistance of hypersonic flight, when it clashed against Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar, the dwarf-forged spear finally met its breaking point.

It neither shattered nor melted. Instead, its surface disintegrated into fine dust, crumbling away as though acknowledging the end of its master’s life.

El-Cid’s wistful murmur drifted as the light began to fade.

—'Old soldiers never die. They just fade away,’ was that how the saying went?

The stars had triumphed. With the spear, which was the Thunder Spear’s core, reduced to dust, the attack lost its focus and scattered. Nothing looked more pitiful than lightning without density.

With a whoosh, the collapsing weapon burned away to ash as the remaining force of “Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar” slammed into Dayton.

The shockwave lifted the old man, hurling him across the air. His body bounced and skidded, finally landing in Lake Ladoga.

I’ve lost... Is this it?

He accepted the defeat that would mark the end of his life, blinking eyes that could scarcely see anymore. The night sky stretched above him. Clear, cloudless, filled with stars.

I regret not saving my boy... but to end it all like this isn’t so bad. For a sinner like me, it was too fine a fight.

He had devised the secret technique, Thunder Spear, to bolster his fading strength with age, and this was the first time he had used it to its fullest. He had fought with everything and lost with satisfaction.

Even after casting aside honor and taking the Evil Order’s hand, the young man who was to become the symbol of the next age had respected him. For a man born a noble, there was no lingering regret.

Forgive me, son, Dayton thought, closing his eyes as he fell into the water. I should have stayed at your side until the end...

With that final thought, his body stilled. His soul was on the verge of departing the material world.

Then came a roar. A colossal serpent erupted from the center of Ladoga, swallowing Dayton’s falling body in one bite.

From head to tail, it spanned fifty meters. Its dark, murky scales devoured light, reflecting nothing. One might think the Winter Serpent would be pale like the color of snow, but in the dimension of eternal permafrost, color was meaningless.

Leon and Karen could only stare blankly at the sudden turn of events.

“Huh...?”

“Eh...?”

They knew what it was, of course. It was the very monster that was summoned in secret by the Evil Order to sow chaos in the Empire. Leon had been baiting it for days, using its hunger for heat to lure it from the lake, though he had never expected it to surface at this precise moment.

Uh... Even I didn’t plan for this timing.

—Even I didn’t see this one coming. Looks like another variable has entered the board.

El-Cid was right. The Winter Serpent, pushed to its limit, had leaped from the lake the very moment Rupert’s life was snuffed out on the far side of the domain. The leash it had been tethered to, even if it had been a pure formality at this point, had finally snapped.

Drawn by the lingering “delicacy” shimmering above the surface, and by another fresh source of power, it could no longer resist.

For the Winter Serpent, food was energy itself. Fire or lightning—anything it swallowed became nourishment. And Dayton, Aura Master even in his dying throes, was a feast unlike any it had ever consumed.

Dayton’s flavor still lingering in its mouth, the Winter Serpent flicked out its long tongue and turned toward its two remaining prey. One was a male radiating the scent of the delicacy, and the other was a female carrying some unknown but enticing taste. Either one would do, as they both looked delicious.

“Things just got pretty messy, huh?” Karen said.

“Yeah, it really did,” Leon agreed.

Staring into the giant serpent’s gluttonous eyes, Leon and Karen knew exactly what was coming. There was no need for words between them and the monster.

With only a few words exchanged, both dropped back into battle stance. Golden and teal Auras flared to life across their blades.

Unable to resist the promise of two exquisite meals, the Winter Serpent lunged. Its body stretched fifty meters long, yet it moved with surprising speed and lightness. Its bulk belied a weight far less than one might think, but that didn’t make its charge any less terrifying.

“Karen, into the shadows!”

Leon shouted the order as he unfurled Icarus Wing. Twin flames burst from his back, propelling him skyward just as the serpent’s gaping jaws tore across the ground.

The consequences of a fifty-meter serpent lunging at full force was catastrophic. The lake surged up like a tidal wave, flooding the surrounding district, while the serpent’s passing carved a channel as if the waters themselves had been scooped out.

Even though Leon had held back much of his strength fighting Dayton, the aftershock reached straight into the heart of the domain, rendering his earlier efforts meaningless. The thunderous noise and impact—without any barrier to dampen it—were enough to wake the entire population in terror.

At least we achieved the goal of drawing it out of the water.

Leon stayed calm as he observed the devastation below. Regret was useless. The only option was to plan around the situation as it was now.

The snake is already fixated on me. Getting a taste of Dayton may have dulled its hunger for a moment, but it’s never faced a true challenger. The moment I turn my back, it’ll chase without hesitation.

Sure enough, the serpent lifted its head to glare at him soaring above its head.

“Kyaaaaaah!”

Its roar dropped the temperature in an instant. The very heat in the atmosphere was drawn into its body, chilling the entire region as it devoured energy itself.

Then, it lunged at Leon. Its massive body straightened like a spear, shooting up toward him. However, Leon wasn’t one to be caught on such a predictable, straight-line charge.

With a swift sidestep and the backfire of the Icarus Wing, he slipped free, leaving only a trail of flame behind. The serpent greedily swallowed the fire and twisted its head back toward him, ready to charge again.

Its persistence made Leon grin with the thought, This is it.

This was the moment of realization for Leon. He had found the way to draw the Winter Serpent further out and deeper inland. It was out of the lake now, but still too close—close enough to slip back into safety at any moment.

“Karen!” he shouted down. “We’re drawing it north! Get the civilians on that path evacuated! And if you find Elahan, have her prepare a barrier at the lure point!”

Leon bore no grudge against the Viscount, but the northern district was sparsely populated compared to the others. More lives could be saved that way. It was a hero’s choice, and Karen agreed without hesitation.

She vanished into motion at once. After all, she’d already done something like this once back in Alger. Leon watched her retreat with several shadow clones, then leveled his blade at the serpent.

“This way, you oversized worm!”

He couldn’t afford to throw anything too threatening. It had to be just enough to keep its attention fixed squarely on him.

“Sun Sword, Crimson Lotus, Second Form: Flare.”

This time, he didn’t swing the blade. Instead, he spread his palm wide. Channeling through the Holy Sword would imbue the attack with the Goddess’ holiness, acting like poison to extradimensional monsters. That wasn’t what he wanted, and the same went for the Stigma of the Purifier. Those flames would purge rather than lure.

Instead, he gathered raw heat inside himself. A sphere of compressed fire swelled into existence against his palm. Then, he hurled it at the Winter Serpent.

“Eat this!”

A ball of violent light and heat burst apart, sweeping the beast in its radiance. For any normal lifeform—even an S-rank monster—such an explosion would have meant severe injury, if not death.

However, to the serpent, devourer of heat, the blazing tide was nothing more than a banquet.

“Kyah?”

The serpent’s jaws gaped wide as it sucked in the offering. Its scales shuddered as the energy coursed through its body, and in an instant, it grew another three meters. Ecstatic, the beast writhed in delight.

“You want more? Then come and get it!”

Leon spread his wings, swelling them with flame to taunt the monster. And so began the chase—one man and one serpent tearing across Ladoga’s lands.

For the county, the spectacle was a disaster. The creature was fifty meters long. A single twitch could flatten dozens of buildings; a single undulation could crack the ground and collapse roads beneath its weight.

“Aaaah! M-monster!”

“Run! Get out of my way!”

“M-my shop! I put my blood, sweat, and tears into my shop!”

Leon’s senses, heightened to, no, past the limit, captured every nuance of the chaos. He clenched his teeth and beat his wings harder. If he slowed out of sympathy, the death toll would skyrocket beyond imagining.

I have to move faster, and I have to shoot more accurately.

He lured it along with carefully measured Flares, each one thrown where it would do the least collateral damage. No more than ten minutes had passed, but by the end of it, Leon was drenched in cold sweat. Even the smallest mistake here would mean hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives lost. The pressure was suffocating.

“We got it!”

At last, he succeeded. Breaking into the northern quarter—an open field devoid of homes—Leon landed and turned. At the same time, Winter Serpent lunged with a screech.

“KYAAAAH!”

Its eyes burned red as if it were furious from being taunted. The prey it had been mocked by would be chewed and crushed in agony. Its primal bloodlust rattled the night.

“O merciful Goddess! Bestow your grace upon this desolate land and lay down a sanctuary from which evil cannot escape!”

Elahan’s voice rang out. The spell she had been preparing burst to life.

A radiance bright enough to be seen past the horizon flared into being. Warm, resplendent light swirled into a vortex, enclosing Leon, the serpent, and the field around them in a one-kilometer barrier.

Elahan had summoned a sanctuary, a sealing formation designed to trap anything not of this world, cutting off escape in or out.

“Looks like I managed to be right on time,” she said, smiling.

Leon smirked and agreed, “You always do.”

“And me? I worked hard too, you know!” Karen chimed in.

“Of course you did. Though the hard part starts now,” Leon replied.

The Winter Serpent, prowling and hissing, stopped thinking altogether. The nauseating light meant nothing. What mattered was the prey standing right before it.

The earth trembled as the serpent’s roar ripped away the warmth of the air, chilling the atmosphere into an unnatural fog. The beast’s very existence warped nature around it. And in its path, the Hero raised his sword.

The frozen air melted into a warm breeze. The sunlight that poured through the Holy Sword El-Cid—Heaven’s gift, the divine weapon even Holy King Rodrick could not so much as scratch, radiated a sanctity so pure, even the Winter Serpent recoiled.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Leon said flatly, mocking it. “From here on, it’s nothing but junk food.”

He leveled his sword at the beast and added, “I’ll feed you until that damned belly of yours bursts.”