Chapter 39

The Swordsmanship Genius Possessed by a God — Chapter 39

Allen could hardly believe his ears.

His swordsmanship was familiar?

At that moment, Allen unleashed a sword technique.

Celestial Star Style, First Form.

Behold.

Clang!

The demonic human's legs staggered as he blocked the technique. But only for a moment. Still unsteady on his feet, he unleashed sword energy.

A flash erupted overhead, and sword energy rained down like lightning. Allen executed the Hundred Lotus Steps and quickly retreated.

—The Celestial Star Style. You bastard, you're a direct descendant of Vishken.

‘You know the Celestial Star Style?’

—Are you seriously asking me that?

The Demon Sword's voice echoed inside his head.

—Don't tell me you don't even know who I am.

‘Who you are...’

It was then.

The demonic human's sword, which had been flying toward him, stopped.

And it wasn't just the demonic human's sword that had stopped.

‘Huh?’

Allen's sword, the squad members fighting alongside him, and the unidentified enemies.

Everything had stopped, as though time itself had frozen.

Only one thing continued to move.

Allen's consciousness, floating in the air.

‘What is this?’

Hadn't he been fighting the demonic human just a moment ago?

But now,

An entirely different scene unfolded before Allen's eyes.

As his consciousness floated,

A battlefield engulfed in flames appeared before him.

Whooooosh.

The ground was scorched and crushed beneath raging crimson flames, while the sky was hidden behind dark-red smoke.

Allen had seen a landscape like this once before.

‘The Demonic Realm?’

Apart from the dark-red sky caused by the flames, the scenery was familiar.

The Demonic Realm.

The land of monsters where Allen had once stayed long ago.

This was undoubtedly that place.

Thud.

And in the middle of it,

A being appeared, making the ground tremble heavily beneath its steps.

The impact was tremendous, but the being itself was small.

It was a demon with reddened skin and barely any clothing.

Allen could sense no aura from it.

Yet he could tell it was no ordinary demon.

‘At least on the level of the Ten Great Demons.’

The high-ranking demon that had appeared on the burning earth seemed stronger than most of the demons Allen had encountered.

And directly in front of that demon, a young swordsman appeared.

‘...?’

The first thing Allen saw was the swordsman's back.

Broad shoulders. A straight back. Even the way he held his sword.

The moment Allen saw that figure from behind, his heart sank.

‘Father?’

For an instant, the man reminded Allen of his father in his younger days.

They resembled each other.

Very closely.

But upon looking more carefully, they weren't exactly alike.

‘No. He's someone else.’

The man was not his father.

Nevertheless, the resemblance was so striking that they could easily have been father and son.

Suddenly, Allen recalled the numerous statues erected along the Path of the Sword.

The oldest statue, standing at the very end.

‘...The first family head?’

The man was Hecate Vishken, the first family head of Vishken.

A genius swordsman who had founded Vishken fifteen hundred years ago.

He had appeared alone in the Demonic Realm.

Hecate approached the demon.

He had been injured somewhere, and his entire body was covered in wounds.

Even so, Hecate walked with an unwavering stride. As though nothing were wrong, he strode forward and stood before the demon.

Hecate and the demon stood a certain distance apart.

“...”

“...”

The two exchanged words.

Allen couldn't hear what they were saying.

The demon's expression was blank, and Hecate had his back turned, concealing his face.

How long did they converse?

Swish.

Hecate slowly raised his sword.

Allen could see the tip trembling slightly. Clearly, his body was not in good condition.

Crack!

The ground split beneath his feet, and Hecate shot toward the demon.

Allen carefully observed Hecate's sword.

As befitted Vishken's first family head, he wielded the Celestial Star Style. After all, Hecate was the one who had created that swordsmanship.

But why?

As Allen followed the trajectory of Hecate's sword with his eyes, a thought occurred to him.

‘It's different.’

From the initial movement of raising the sword to the execution of the technique,

Hecate's swordsmanship was both similar to and different from the Celestial Star Style Allen knew.

It wasn't merely faster and stronger.

Whooooosh!

First Form, Behold.

It was a technique Allen had performed thousands, even tens of thousands of times, from his previous life until now.

Yet it was different.

At first, he couldn't distinguish what was different about the same technique.

To his eyes, it certainly appeared to be the same form, but his instincts screamed otherwise.

Hecate's Behold grazed the demon's arm.

Then Hecate unleashed his next technique.

Second Form, Rainstorm.

Whooooosh!

Allen's mouth fell open.

A rainstorm poured down from the sky. But it was different from the Rainstorm Allen knew.

The sword energy scattered and poured down like rain, just as he knew it should. However, each individual strand of sword energy pursued the demon's movements as though it were alive.

The Rainstorm Allen performed poured down in only one direction.

The next technique was the same.

Hecate's Surge drove the demon backward. Like waves enveloping a sandcastle, Hecate's Surge dispersed the demon's demonic energy.

Where Allen's Surge pushed forward like a wall, this man's Surge was like a tidal wave.

‘What's different?’

Allen did not believe he had learned the Celestial Star Style incorrectly.

Even when he had been unable to use mana, Allen had devoted his entire life to embodying the Celestial Star Style in his swordsmanship.

The same was true of its incantations.

He had memorized them over and over without the slightest error. He could execute the swordsmanship with his eyes closed and recite the incantations even when awakened from sleep.

So why?

It was then that a voice reached him.

—The root of the sword is one, but its branches are infinite.

A voice belonging neither to the Demon Sword nor to Question Mark.

He had never heard it before, yet it did not feel unfamiliar. Allen realized whose voice it was.

It belonged to Hecate, the first family head who was fighting before him.

—Wind pushes, while water envelops. If you have learned to cut by pushing, know that there is also a way to sever by enveloping.

It was an incantation.

The underlying structure of the incantation was the same as the Celestial Star Style incantations Allen knew. But the details built upon that foundation were different.

—Drive the power from the heart to the tip of the sword, but do not push it all the way. Let it flow. It is not the body that wields the sword, but the guidance of mana in the upper center that flows downward...

Allen listened intently.

He couldn't afford to miss a single word. This was a moment that would never come again.

His focused consciousness absorbed the incantation. At the same time, his eyes remained fixed on the battle between Hecate and the demon.

With each passage of the incantation, Hecate executed another technique. It was as though he were demonstrating the forms corresponding to each passage.

—At the end of Behold lies Rainstorm, and at the end of Rainstorm lies Surge. Only when they flow together without interruption does the next stage become possible.

Allen's body trembled.

This was exactly the incantation he needed right now.

A chill ran through his body. He shuddered with excitement.

At that moment, Allen felt that he had reached the Fifth Star of the Celestial Star Style.

But there was no time to savor his joy.

Allen repeated the incantation over and over. He couldn't afford to forget a single word.

The incantation was still continuing.

__________________

The demonic human swinging his sword at Allen sensed something strange.

At some point, Allen's eyes had become completely vacant.

It hadn't lasted very long.

Nevertheless, it was hardly the expression of someone fighting for his life.

‘Is he thinking about something else?’

His face looked as though his mind were somewhere far away.

He reflexively blocked and dodged the sword strikes, but that was all.

Allen made no attempt to counterattack. It was as though all his attention was focused solely on protecting himself.

When the demonic human considered why, only one explanation came to mind.

‘He's worried about the main force.’

The main force that had gone searching for the fake Demon Sword.

His concern for them had distracted him.

‘An opportunity.’

The demonic human's eyes gleamed.

At first, he had wondered whether Allen was trying to lure him into lowering his guard, but if that were the case, Allen had already had several opportunities to counterattack.

Which meant this was an opportunity for him instead.

Grip.

The demonic human removed the hand he had been pressing against his wound.

He gripped his sword with both hands.

The next moment, sword energy surged from his blade.

[Rending Claw Sword]

Whooooosh!

Pitch-black sword energy flew toward Allen's head like a set of claws.

Just as the sword energy was about to sever Allen's neck,

‘Got him!’

Whoosh!

Allen's head tilted backward, and his body moved at tremendous speed.

Allen slid backward.

For an instant, the demonic human lost sight of Allen's movements.

His movements had changed drastically from just moments earlier. It was as though he had become a different person.

‘He's suddenly gotten faster.’

Having forced himself to unleash sword energy, the demonic human frowned.

Becoming a demonic human had granted him greater resistance to pain, but even so, the agony was severe.

Merely suppressing the internal organs that kept threatening to spill from his torn wound required considerable stamina and concentration.

“Wow, I nearly died.”

It was then that Allen spoke.

As though he could finally breathe again, Allen straightened his back and looked up at the sky.

He looked like someone who had only just regained consciousness.

‘What is with that bastard?’

The demonic human felt a strange sense of unease.

The longer they fought, the more his impression of Allen changed.

When they first met, Allen had seemed like a novice whose neck he could snap and whose eyes he could gouge out whenever he pleased.

But after exchanging a few sword strikes, he had discovered a level of experience impossible to expect from such a young swordsman, along with the courage to stake his life on the outcome of a fight.

And now?

Before he knew it, he was the one injured and feeling afraid.

He felt as though death were approaching.

As though he were standing before an opponent he could not defeat.

‘He's grown stronger already.’

Was it because he had obtained the Demon Sword?

Allen was stronger now than when they had first encountered each other.

What was even more astonishing was that Allen hadn't lost his soul to the Demon Sword.

“What exactly are you?”

Unable to contain himself, the demonic human asked.

“It's rare for a person to change so completely in an instant. And how can you remain perfectly fine while holding the Demon Sword?”

At first, he had regarded Allen as merely a talented swordsman from Vishken.

But his perception of Allen had now changed completely.

Not only was the swordsmanship he used of the highest order, but his experience and ability to adapt to unexpected situations surpassed even the demonic human's own.

Above all, the fact that his mind had not been devoured by the Demon Sword meant that Allen clearly possessed something special that others lacked.

It was then.

“So you were from Dark Castle.”

The demonic human was startled by the words that came from Allen's mouth.

“Rending Claw Sword. A technique used by Dark Castle's swordsmen for surprise attacks. Normally, it's used to ensure the opponent's neck is severed, but you failed this time.”

The demonic human's eyes began to tremble.

Since Allen had even named the technique, it was clearly more than a simple guess.

Allen was certain of the demonic human's identity.

“Has Dark Castle joined forces with the demons? Or have their agents infiltrated Dark Castle as well?”

Instead of answering Allen's probing question, the demonic human pointed his sword at him.

At first, he had tried to learn more about Allen's identity by talking to him, but the situation had reversed.

From this point onward, the more he spoke, the more he would disadvantage himself.

“Then again, I suppose I shouldn't expect your kind to talk.”

Step.

When the demonic human fell silent, Allen grinned and approached.

“Don't you agree?”

The next moment,

Flash.

Allen's figure vanished from the demonic human's sight like a mirage.

Celestial Star Style, First Form.

—Behold.

Slice.