My Invincible Defense: Traversing the Endless Worlds

“Chivalric Eightfold... Whack?” Jimmy scratched his head. He had a feeling something was off about this sword technique, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

What Jimmy didn’t know was that Finn was indeed a master swordsman.

After diving deep into the sword arts of Endless Worlds, Finn had refined and reworked the Chivalric Eightfold Whack. He took the strongest points from countless schools, threw out the weak ones, and fused them all into a single ultimate technique.

After transmigrating, Finn had decided he needed to learn a real sword style. So he returned to Earth and started by studying three major categories: Chinese, Japanese, and European swordsmanship.

In Japan, he mastered every school there was—Hokushin Ittō-ryū, Niten Ichi-ryū, Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, Katori Shintō-ryū, Kyōshin Meichi-ryū, and the rest. He went undefeated across the country, leaving swordmasters, sword saints, and sword demons alike howling in defeat, and earned a full-transmission Menkyo Kaiden license.

The All-Japan Kendo Federation had already declared they would no longer award tenth-dan ranks, but Finn’s sheer dominance forced them to make a special exception and grant him one anyway.

Later, Finn traveled to Europe and mastered the German Meyer system, the Talhoffer, the Liechtenauer, the Vadi techniques, and everything else to perfection.

He brought German two-handed greatswords, Italian longswords, and rapiers to their absolute peak, establishing himself as Europe’s top HEMA practitioner.

Note: HEMA stands for Historical European Martial Arts—a general term for reconstructing old European martial arts from original manuals, then studying, practicing, sparring with them, and even holding regional and international competitions.

After that, Finn entered the HMB Battle of the Nations medieval combat world championship. Armed with nothing but a two-handed greatsword, he carved through more than a dozen teams of European heavy knights and walked away with the overall title.

He even marched up to the Knights Hospitaller’s headquarters, challenged them on their own turf, and smashed their signboard.

Then he came to China, Finn drilled every practical sword style until he knew them inside out: combat Taiji sword, Wudang sword, Qingping sword, Zhending Damo sword, Miao dao techniques, and everything else on the list.

Then he went straight to their doors for decisive duels. He kicked down the mountain gates of Wudang and Huashan and smashed the signboards of dozens of top-tier national martial arts schools.

On top of that, he entered the elderly morning sword-dance fitness competition and took home the championship trophy.

These ordinary mortal sword arts could no longer satisfy Finn. Once he was sure his foundations were rock-solid, he moved on to the real xianxia sword techniques—one strike to split the nine heavens, sword qi raging across a hundred thousand li.

Flashy, showy styles held no interest for him.

Finn’s sword didn’t move mountains, sever rivers, overturn seas, pluck stars, or topple cities. It only killed people. Nothing more, nothing less. A pure instrument of murder.

Later, while traveling through Endless Worlds, he studied every sword art, sword technique, and sword dao he came across. He borrowed the best from every school, kept what worked, threw out the rest, grasped the true principles of the blade, and returned to its simplest form.

……

Inside the Copperfield Department Store, Finn pointed at Eddie Peters lying on the floor and told Jimmy, “Go loot the body. Whatever you find on him is yours.”

Jimmy rubbed his hands together, then forced himself to get to work. He searched Eddie Peters thoroughly, even yanking open the guy’s underwear for a quick check. Unfortunately, even though the man was a priest of the Radiant Path, he didn’t have much worth taking—just several dozen dollars in coins and a gold watch.

The watch was solid gold, not some cheap plated fake. Finn couldn’t have cared less about it, but Jimmy slipped it into his pocket with care. He’d sell it once he made it back to his own world.

They kept heading upstairs. When they reached the twenty-first floor, Olivia tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. Her gaze sliced straight through the concrete and rebar, scanning the floors above one by one.

After a long moment, she lowered her somewhat stiff neck and said to Finn, “It’s confirmed. This is the Demon Gang’s headquarters. I can just make out their leader, Simpson, on the top floor. He’s got dozens of gunmen guarding him.”

“Good. We kill our way straight up,” Finn said, striding toward the stairs.

They reached a section of staircase where the stone steps had been smashed wide open, leaving only a single metal handrail. Finn grabbed the rail and started climbing. Olivia followed close behind, with Jimmy right on her heels.

Suddenly, a faint tingling numbness prickled across Finn’s palm.

“Shit—that’s an electric shock!”

Finn’s stomach dropped. He spun around just in time to see a high-voltage current tearing through Jimmy and Olivia, burning them into charred corpses.

The nauseating, acrid stench of roasted meat spread through the stairwell. Olivia and Jimmy, who had been full of life only moments earlier, were now burned pitch-black from head to toe. Their hands slipped lifelessly from the metal handrail and they collapsed to the floor.

Jimmy’s charred corpse broke into three pieces. Olivia remained a single, intact humanoid lump of charcoal.

“They died way too fast?” Finn muttered, stunned. I just turned my head, and my teammates are already stone-cold dead?

Clap. Clap. Clap. A slow, mocking round of applause came from the top of the stairs, applauding the brutal instant kill.

Finn looked up. A man with a goatee and red-and-green hair was leaning casually against the wall—the same man who had pumped high-voltage current through the metal handrail and fried Jimmy and Olivia.

The man gazed down at the two charred bodies, shook his head, and sighed. “That weak? What a disappointment. That Radiant Path priest couldn’t even handle a couple of small fries like these, yet he still had the balls to call himself a Tier 4 Vanguard.”

Finn’s face darkened instantly. “You bastard. Now you’ve made me waste two Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pills.”

“Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill?” The goateed man cupped a hand to his ear in mock curiosity. He narrowed his eyes, perfectly at ease. “You outsider, did you really think your thick skin would let you walk away? The hand you had on that metal railing should be burned clean through by now, right?”

Finn lifted his hand and showed it to him. His palm was completely unscathed.

The goateed man’s expression tightened. His eyelid twitched, and he snapped his fingers with a sharp crack. A violent bolt of electricity erupted and streaked straight at Finn.

“The electric light dancing between your fingers…” That random line popped into Finn’s head right before a massive shock slammed into his chest.

The surge was strong enough to turn an elephant into a roast pig, yet it only made Finn’s hair stand on end.

Finn shook off the stray thought, gripped the metal handrail, and launched forward like a tiger. He shot straight through the electric blast and pounced at the goateed man.

“Impossible! Why isn’t he dead?!” the goateed man panicked.

He staggered back a step. Electricity crackled between all ten fingers as he wove a dense grid of lightning in front of himself—thick enough to stop bullets.

But Finn wasn’t a bullet. He plunged straight into the net. Endless currents surged and writhed across his body, wrapping him in a silver-white cage of sparks.

The goateed man had never seen such a reckless charge. His legs trembled. He hurled another bolt at Finn.

Finn didn’t have a scratch. He leaped upward, brought his gleaming Skybearer Sword down in a savage overhead slash, and cut the goateed man—and the entire electric net—clean in two.

Wild arcs of electricity flickered chaotically through the air before vanishing.

Finn dropped back down the stairs and walked over to the charred corpses of Olivia and Jimmy. A strange wave of helplessness washed over him.

Luckily, he knew an alchemist who ran an industrial-scale pill refinery with full assembly-line production. He had plenty of Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pills to spare.

And for Finn, the Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill was basically just candy. Come to think of it, the last time he had used any kind of healing item was more than four hundred years ago.

Still, he might as well bring his teammates back. Finn took out two Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pills—the kind that could revive the dead and regrow flesh on bones—and placed one beside Olivia’s mouth and the other beside Jimmy’s. Then he triggered the medicine’s power.

Moments later, Olivia Hill and Jimmy re-formed their bodies and came back to life. Jimmy realized Finn had saved him again and kept nodding in thanks, eyes brimming with gratitude. He looked ready to drop to his knees.

Olivia was still in a daze, not quite sure what had happened.

“You two should leave the building,” Finn said calmly. “Don’t slow me down.”

Olivia hesitated, gave Finn a worried look, and thought back to what had just happened. She finally nodded. “Okay. You be careful!”

She raised her submachine gun and led Jimmy downstairs.

Olivia’s X-ray vision let her see enemies before they could see her. Her own combat strength was already at Tier 3 Vanguard. Finn was sure that even without him, the two of them could get out of the building safely.

“Wait,” Finn called out to Jimmy. He handed over three bottles of healing potions and reminded him, “A boy has to protect himself when he’s away from home.”