Chapter 272
The courtyard no longer resembled a formal architecture at all.
Lucious had been fighting the four True Transcendents for several moments now, and the constant attacks had finally forced the Devil Monarch to step down into the World of Transcendence to properly engage them.
A barrage of translucent red system windows suddenly exploded across Rudra’s vision.
[Super Sensitivity is identifying a lethal strike approaching from the left!]
[Super Sensitivity has detected a Spatial distortion above!]
The Transcendent stat was finally waking up. The stat could at last comprehend the threat level in the courtyard because Lucious was matching the Transcendents' frequency. But the prompts were still quite a mess as it seemed that his [Super Sensitivity] was still not great enough to accurately capture the transcendents’ movement. Rudra could barely watch as Ken threw one-armed martial arts strikes and Abellio painted massive, roaring waves of ultramarine water to try and restrict Lucious's footing.
Rudra’s eyes tracked the text, but his body was stuck in mud.With the 50% stat penalty he simply couldn’t manage to follow their movement, and his gut feeling was that even if he hadn’t had the 50% penalty, he probably wouldn’t have been able to track this level of combat. He was simply out of his depth.
"Abellio, cover the left!" Jessica shouted over the deafening wind. Thousands of geometric magic formulas multiplied above her hat, raining down in a concentrated bombardment.
"I'm trying!" the painter yelled back, sweeping his large brush to conjure a thick wall of stone to absorb a shockwave. "He keeps slipping the brushstrokes!"
Piaro knelt in the dirt near the crushed fountain, bleeding steadily from his severed right shoulder.
The farmer’s eyes darted across the chaotic battlefield. He gripped the wooden handle of his plow. He mentally calculated the trajectory required for [Fated to Perish]. It was an unavoidable strike, but he needed a single microsecond of a physical opening to lock onto a point. Lucious was weaving through Biban's giant sword, Ken's punches, and Jessica's magic without leaving a single gap in his posture.
Piaro couldn't find the opening. He let out a slow, frustrated breath. He shifted his focus to Biban.
He watched the senior Sword Saint swing the massive blade. Biban wasn't just cutting the air. He was imposing his will upon the space itself, treating the distance between him and Lucious as something that could be physically severed.
Watching the older transcendent, the final pieces of Piaro's incomplete understanding clicked into place. He didn't need to reinvent his techniques. He just needed to draw out the entirety of the Sword Saint's power that had always been resting inside him.
[Your Knight, Piaro, has acquired the Sword Saint’s ultimate technique, 'Space Sword'.]
[Your Knight, Piaro, has acquired the Sword Saint’s ultimate technique, 'Heart Sword'.]
"Biban, move!" Ken barked, sliding backward as Lucious effortlessly parried a heavy sword strike. A residual wave of distorted energy spun off the Devil Monarch's hand, tearing through the cobblestones straight toward the unconscious bodies of the Red Knights.
Piaro stood up.
He swung the hand plow. He didn't aim at Lucious. He aimed at the space itself.
[Space Sword] activated.
[The power of a Sword Saint has been revealed.]
[The peak swordsmanship is fighting against the world.]
The heavy red sky caused by Lucious literally split in half. A jagged, black tear ripped through the dimension, swallowing the stray shockwave and continuing straight toward Lucious's chest.
"Oh?" Lucious murmured.
The Devil Monarch raised his left hand. He didn't bother dodging. He pinched the empty air right at the edge of the spatial tear and simply pulled his fingers downward. The fabric of the dimension stitched back together like a closing zipper.
Piaro didn't hesitate. He knew the [Spatial Sword] wouldn't work the second he swung it. It was just the setup.
He forcibly drained his remaining sword energy and sacrificed a portion of his health. He didn't swing the plow again. He just looked at Lucious.
“[Heart Sword]”.
There was no spatial distortion this time. There was no physical trajectory to block. It simply attacked the target.
[The sword of will is aiming at the target.]
[The target has received 500,000,000 damage.]
A sudden, sharp red gash appeared on Lucious's pale cheek.
"Ha!" Biban let out a loud, booming laugh, resting his giant sword on his shoulder for a fraction of a second. "What am I looking at? Why is the Sword Saint looking like a farmer and using farming tool to use the Sword Saint’s techniques!"
Lucious reached up. He touched his cheek, looking at the smear of dark blood on his pristine white glove.
The polite smile dropped from his face. He looked at Piaro with genuine surprise.
"A willpower strike," Lucious noted, his tone lacking any mockery. "If you hadn't just learned that technique a few seconds ago... if you had truly perfected it, you might actually be worthy of standing before me."
Rudra watched from the edge of the courtyard.
A cold knot tightened in his chest. Piaro had just executed the Sword Saint’s Ultimate Technique according to the system prompts yet the Devil Monarch was evaluating it like a mildly interesting trick. Even the ultimate strike of a Dual Legend wasn't enough.
Rudra looked at the laggy red warnings still cluttering his vision. If he stepped in now, he was dead.
Navigating his Deep Sage interface, he immediately pulled up [Knowledge Creation] skill.
He needed a skill that would allow him to keep pace with the monsters in front of him. He based it on Mumud’s Lightning Magic Tree and focused the magic directly into his own nervous system. He wanted to create a skill that allowed him to keep with them, ignoring any penalties it would have to go past his natural limits.