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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 11: Troll
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Southern mountains. Four hours south of Kaldia.
A boundary region where dense primeval forest gave way to the ridges of steep rocky mountains.
The Troll nest marked by the red-bordered request lay near an abandoned mine that gaped open at the entrance to the mountains.
The people from nearby villages had fled in terror long ago.
Only silence pooled around the place like the stench of blood.
Lucian hid behind a massive boulder two hundred paces from the abandoned mine's entrance and watched the beast's lair.
The mine entrance was wide enough for two carriages to enter side by side.
Grotesque handprints gouged into the rock walls were clear around the entrance, while footprints three times larger than a human's crushed the muddy ground.
Above all, there was the smell.
A sickening stench of rotting animal entrails and putrid blood seeped thickly from within the abandoned mine.
The remains of a meal the Troll had torn apart.
Lucian had no intention of entering the mine.
Fighting a large magical beast with overwhelming mass head-on in a dark, narrow cave would be foolish.
He had to draw it out into the wide open.
Before the mine was a broad clearing. Wreckage from a shattered cart lay on one side, with boulders scattered across the other.
A slope stretched behind it, making it easy to secure an escape route.
It was an excellent slaughterhouse.
Lucian dragged the half-eaten, rotting corpse of a mountain goat from near the mine and threw it into the center of the clearing.
Then he melted back into the shadows behind the boulder.
Waiting.
Boring, but the foundation of hunting.
A hunter without patience was bound to be eaten by their prey instead.
Around the time the sun passed its peak and began staining the sky blood-red.
Thud.
A heavy scraping sound came from inside the abandoned mine. The ground trembled faintly.
Lucian's black eyes sharpened like razor blades.
A gigantic monstrosity stepped out, tearing through the pitch-black darkness of the mine.
Three meters tall.
It was roughly the same size as the wolfman chieftain, but its form was nauseatingly grotesque.
Its arms were long like an ape's, hanging below its knees in contrast to its short, thick legs.
Its entire body was covered in gray-green hide that looked mossy, its surface studded with hideous tumors swollen like warts.
Its face looked like filth shaped to mock humanity.
Two red, bean-sized eyes gleamed from deep-set sockets, and crooked yellow fangs dripped with saliva like a waterfall from its mouth, which was split all the way to its ears.
It carried no weapon.
Those overwhelming masses of muscle that served as arms were living battering rams.
The Troll spotted the mountain goat corpse in the clearing.
Snorting, it approached, crouched, lifted the entire goat with one hand, and began tearing into it ravenously.
Crack! Crunch!
The sound of skull and bones breaking, flesh tearing apart, echoed horribly through the clearing.
It was completely absorbed in its prey, utterly defenseless.
‘Now.’
Lucian stepped out from the boulder's shadow and kicked off the mud.
A silent ambush.
His soundless steps were an instinct perfected through dozens of hunts.
As he closed the distance, he wrung mana from his dantian and forced it into his silver longsword.
Hardness enhancement. Then heat.
Hummm.
Heat shimmered above the blade as its cool silver surface began to glow faintly hot.
Three seconds.
He had to tear through its hide and sear its entrails within that three-second limit.
Ten paces. Seven.
At that moment, the Troll chewing on the goat sensed his presence and whipped its head around.
Too late.
Squelch!
Lucian's silver longsword brutally plunged into the Troll's thick back.
The heated blade pierced its gray-green hide and drove deep into the muscles between its bones.
Ordinary steel without mana would have bounced off its insane durability.
The instant the sword sank in, compressed heat exploded inside the wound.
Sizzle!
The nauseating smell of muscle fibers and fat scorching black burst forth.
“Grrruaaaagh!”
The Troll let out a scream that tore at his eardrums and swung its enormous arm behind it.
Lucian pulled out his sword and rolled across the ground, avoiding its devastating counterattack.
As he opened the distance, Lucian's eyes gleamed coldly.
It worked.
Sticky blood poured from where the blade had been pulled free.
Normally, the wound should have sealed shut and begun growing new flesh in an instant.
But the charred edges of the wound regenerated terribly slowly.
Fire Blade destroyed the Troll's regenerative cells, or delayed them drastically.
His hypothesis had been proven.
The method was right. The problem was its brutal conditions.
He could maintain heat on the blade for only three seconds.
In that brief instant, he had to stab and withdraw. Then there would be at least a ten-second opening while he replenished his mana.
For those ten seconds, he had to endure that monster's furious assault with a bare sword stripped of flame.
Stab, recharge, evade, stab again.
It was a long battle where he had to repeat that hellish cycle and force in more damage than its recovery could overcome.
A contest of stamina and mana efficiency.
The Troll turned, its red eyes blazing with rage.
Mad speed that did not suit its enormous body. Its arm swept horizontally through the air like a log.
Lucian lowered his upper body to the muddy ground and avoided its path.
The pressure of a typhoon-like wind swept over his head.
Boom!
The Troll's arm struck the cart wreckage beside the clearing. The cart exploded into fragments as if hit by a bomb, and debris rained down.
Even a graze would shatter bone.
Lucian circled around its flank.
A vital point.
To end the Troll's life for good, he had to pierce its heart or throat vertically and burn away the core of its regeneration.
The heart. The center of its chest.
A dead zone he could only reach by breaking through those overwhelming limbs from the front.
The Troll raised both arms high into the sky and slammed them down at the ground.
Booom!
The ground split, and a shock wave sent fragments flying.
Lucian felt his body lift from the ground and rolled roughly to the side.
He kicked off the mud and rose with a counterattack.
Slash!
His mana-hardened longsword split the Troll's forearm hide, spraying blood.
But a wound without heat was meaningless.
Sure enough, the sliced flesh closed like a zipper immediately afterward, reducing the wound by half in three seconds.
This was why he needed fire.
A cut without heat was only a waste of stamina.
Lucian kept evading as he drew mana from his dantian.
Heat gathered in his palm and flowed into the blade.
Two seconds. Three.
The longsword heated up again, exhaling a cool heat.
Now.
The Troll threw a left hook.
Instead of retreating, Lucian leaped like a beast into the blind spot along the inside of its extended forearm.
Inside the range of that massive weapon was his only space for survival.
The Troll's broad chest opened before him.
Lucian gripped the heated longsword with both hands and drove it down vertically.
Squelch!
The blade's point, layered with mana heat and hardness, pierced the thick hide like butter.
But.
Clang!
The tip bounced off a rib and stopped before reaching its heart.
He lacked the strength.
“Graaagh!”
Driven mad with pain, the Troll violently shoved Lucian away.
Lucian pulled free his sword and was flung backward, rolling across the mud as he swallowed the pain.
A wound on its chest. Blood poured from it, and the smell of burning filled the air as its regeneration stopped.
Fire Blade's effect was certain.
But unless he pierced its heart, this monster would not fall.
His breath came hard.
Leaping, evading, and releasing mana. The protracted battle was tightening around Lucian's throat.
Before his stamina and mana ran dry, he needed one perfect swift strike.
The Troll spread both arms and charged like a massive bear.
It meant to grab and tear him apart. If caught, his limbs would be ripped off.
Lucian twisted aside and deeply cut its calf.
The shallow wound made by a blade without heat regenerated at once, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of its charge for half a second.
As the Troll limped and turned, Lucian began forcing all his remaining mana into his blade with extreme focus.
Five seconds. Seven seconds. Ten seconds. Charging complete.
The Troll charged again.
The instant its right arm slammed down, Lucian evaded left and slid forward along the outside of its forearm.
The moment its fist buried itself in the ground.
Lucian used the beast's thick arm as a stepping stone and sprang upward.
Two leaps.
Lucian's body rose above the Troll's shoulder height.
From the air, he looked down at the crown of its head.
The deadliest point.
A vital spot leading from the neck into the spine, unhindered by thick hide or ribs.
Lucian drove the longsword, carrying all his weight and mana, vertically into the back of its neck.
Squelch!
The heated silver longsword plunged deeply through the Troll's neck and scraped against its spine.
“Grrraaaaaaagh!”
The Troll thrashed as if in convulsions and screamed.
Hanging in the air, Lucian twisted the hilt like a demon.
Sizzle!
Flesh and blood vessels inside the wound burned black, breaking the cycle of regeneration.
Its movements visibly slowed.
But the monster did not die.
With its neck half-severed, its left arm swung toward Lucian's legs.
Whoosh.
Its huge claws brushed his trouser leg.
If it caught him, it would smash him into the ground.
Lucian pulled out his sword, flipped backward through the air, and landed on the muddy ground.
The Troll staggered.
Blood poured from its neck like a waterfall, while grotesque regenerative cells struggled to cling together against the heat at the blackened wound.
The three-second Fire Blade had reached its limit. The heat was fading.
At this rate, it would reattach its neck and live again.
He needed greater, more destructive heat.
But with his current veins and dantian, three seconds was the limit.
At that desperate moment.
The Mana seed that had sprouted beneath his dantian throbbed violently.
His physical fatigue had reached its limit after being driven to the extreme throughout the battle, but his neural network had been renewed as he read the beast's killing intent.
The process of breaking through that limit was melting down the Experience Points of countless magical beasts he had absorbed, forcibly expanding Lucian's vessel.
His veins swelled as though they would tear apart.
It was the violent sensation of the path mana had traveled through a narrow hose expanding by an entire dimension.
The heat gathered at his fingertips became insanely hot.
The three-second limit shattered.
Four seconds. Five.
Grinding his teeth, Lucian poured every last drop of mana into his silver longsword.
Hummm.
This time, it was visibly clear.
A blazing red haze rose from the blade's surface, erupting with enough heat to melt flesh on contact.
For the first time, fear rather than rage filled the red eyes of the Troll clutching its half-severed neck.
Lucian kicked off the mud and leaped at full speed.
He hammered the remnants of mana from his dantian into his leg muscles.
Body Enhancement. Acceleration entrusted to instinct without rational control.
Lucian's body shot toward the monster's face like a fired shell.
Panicked, the Troll wildly swung its massive arms.
Lucian slid low enough to brush the ground, letting its arm pass over him. Carrying that momentum, he thrust his sword upward.
His target was the soft cartilage beneath its ribs, and the heart beyond it.
From below to above.
Squelch!
The silver longsword, bearing incredible heat, pierced the diaphragm and buried itself deep in the beast's chest.
Through the hand gripping the hilt, Lucian felt the huge, savage heart beat vividly.
Lucian poured the limit-breaking heat of five seconds into its heart.
Screeeech!
A horrible sound echoed from within the Troll's body as its heart burned into charcoal.
There was no roar or scream.
The giant beast's jaw dropped, and life vanished from the crimson glow in its eyes.
The three-meter giant toppled down toward Lucian like a rotten tree trunk.
Lucian pulled free his sword and rolled aside to evade it.
Boom!
The Troll crashed into the mud, shaking the ground.
It would never rise again.
The core of its regeneration had turned completely to ash.
Covered in blood, Lucian sprawled flat on the ground and breathed roughly.
His lungs burned, and his muscles ached as if they had been torn to pieces.
His mana channels were so severely overloaded that he could no longer even feel his fingertips.
But maddening exhilaration surged through him.
A huge, murky, intangible force pouring from the corpse of a higher magical beast flooded wildly into his body.
A dense, sticky storm of experience on an entirely different level from devouring dozens of Goblins.
The seed in his dantian split fully open, and mana roots stretched horribly through his veins and into his bones.
The physical expansion of his mana channels, the compressed evolution of his muscle fibers, the explosive increase in the resolution of his vision and senses.
Above all, the paths of swordsmanship and the balance of mana control etched into him through the desperate battle synchronized with his body.
Lucian staggered to his feet and severed the Troll's hideous head with his silver longsword.
Proof.
Dragging the enormous head, as large as the upper body of a grown man, down the mountains with one hand, Lucian walked beneath a dark crimson sunset.
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