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Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 23: Leader
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Lucian deflected the scimitar flying at him in a vicious arc with his Silvermoon Grass longsword, then drove in a counterthrust.
Clang!
But the creature's thick iron armor knocked aside the tip of his blade. The strike had been too shallow.
He immediately twisted the blade toward the beast's unarmored throat.
However, the lesser commander-class Beastfolk bent its head at a grotesque angle and avoided the blade.
Its reflexes were on an entirely different level from ordinary creatures.
In that brief opening when Lucian's sword cut through empty air,
the creature's scimitar came down diagonally with murderous force.
Lucian caught the attack on the flat of his blade.
Bang!
The Silvermoon Grass longsword withstood the scimitar's brutal impact.
Without forcing mana into it to its limit, the blow would have broken his wrist in one strike.
The exchange continued.
Three moves, four, five.
The commander-class beast was strong, but it was no match for Lucian.
Its killing power did not even reach that of a low Warden.
It was only taking time to finish it because of its absurd musculature and layered armor.
The sixth exchange.
The moment it swung its scimitar wide and left its upper body open,
Lucian's sword slipped into that blind spot like a snake.
The soft flesh beneath its armpit, where the armor did not reach.
Thud!
The silver blade plunged deep into the beast's entrails.
“Krrrgh...!”
The commander-class creature vomited blood and fell like a giant tree.
A tidal wave of experience poured into his veins.
It was far denser than that of ordinary creatures, a current of energy close to aura in vitality.
It seemed to have been a high-potential creature, on the verge of breaking through the limits of a Seeker and reaching the Warden realm.
Five creatures slaughtered.
But the situation was growing worse.
The entire forest had already been alerted.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Beastfolk must have been pouring out of their base in a frenzy.
Lucian shook the blood from his blade and kicked off the ground again.
He poured mana explosively into both legs and sprinted at full speed.
He tore through the forest toward the east, where he was supposed to meet the main force.
Chilling howls of pursuit rose behind him, but the distance was steadily widening.
It was not that Lucian's speed completely surpassed the beasts. He was constantly changing direction through the tangled terrain of giant trees and bushes.
The Beastfolk running in packs could not match Lucian's agility when changing direction.
Five minutes. Ten minutes.
The sounds of the beasts behind him faded.
He had secured a safe distance.
Just as he tried to steady his wildly racing heart and catch his breath,
Thump. Thump.
A sound came from ahead.
Not the light sound of fallen leaves being crushed, but horribly heavy footsteps that seemed to press down on the entire earth.
Footsteps approaching from directly ahead on Lucian's eastern escape route.
Lucian stopped as though his feet had sunk into the mud.
A huge despair emerged through the giant trees in the darkness.
It was a wolfman.
But it belonged to an entirely different biological category from ordinary creatures or the commander-class beast he had just cut down.
Its upright body stood nearly three meters tall.
Its entire body was like a rag, covered in scars from every kind of weapon. Its left eye had been gouged out completely and was covered by a black eyepatch.
In one hand, it held a massive battle axe as large as a human upper body.
More than anything, what made the hairs on Lucian's body stand on end was the murderous ripple shimmering like a heat haze over the axe blade.
Aura.
A beast capable of controlling energy. A Warden-class magical beast.
The cold fingers of death slid down Lucian's spine.
The Boss.
It was the owner of the overwhelming killing intent that had poured from the barracks below the cliff when he scouted the base.
The mutated monster comparable to a high Warden, which Kairon's lieutenants were supposed to face.
When humans and magical beasts were at the same level, magical beasts held the advantage because of their overwhelming physical bodies.
Why was a monster that even regular knight order lieutenants would need to be wary of here?
The answer was obvious.
Having heard the alarm, it had left the main base to personally tear apart the intruder who had torn out the nest's eyes.
While the pursuit force followed behind, it had read the forest terrain, claimed a detour, and cut off Lucian's path.
Dozens of pursuers behind him.
A high Warden monster ahead.
He was surrounded on all sides.
“If you encounter a chieftain-class creature, avoid it by any means necessary.”
Kairon's order came back to him.
Avoid it.
But where?
Even if he threw himself into the forest to either side, there was no guarantee he could escape a high Warden's superhuman senses and mobility.
The worst-case scenario was turning his back to flee, only to be split apart by the axe.
He had to fight.
The Boss's single remaining blood-red golden eye bore down on Lucian.
Pure, boiling rage toward the intruder who had burst the heads of its subordinates.
The Boss raised its massive battle axe and kicked off the ground.
Boom!
The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.
The charge of that three-meter giant was a walking disaster in itself.
Blood-red aura surged viciously along the axe blade.
The aura of a high Warden.
It differed in density and mass from the faint mana Lucian forced into his sword.
An overwhelming heat wave that crushed even the air.
There was nowhere to run.
Lucian tightened his grip on the Silvermoon Grass longsword and exploded the mana in his dantian into the blade.
Hummm!
Lucian's silver mana and the Boss's blood-red aura.
A mid Warden and a high Warden.
It was time to learn firsthand what a catastrophic gap a single level could create on the battlefield.
* * *
The Boss's axe fell vertically like lightning.
A strike that seemed capable of splitting the earth in half.
Lucian twisted away from its path.
Boom!
The axe buried itself in the muddy ground, releasing an explosive shockwave.
Dirt and stone fragments scattered in every direction like buckshot.
Its destructive power easily surpassed a Troll's downward strike.
If it hit him directly, Wyvern leather or not, he would be crushed into bloody pulp.
Lucian dodged the fragments and slipped into the beast's blind spot, slashing sideways.
Clang!
The blade struck its thick forearm but bounced away without cutting flesh.
Beyond the absurd thickness of its hide, the blood-red aura flowing across the beast's body rejected the blade like a shield.
Aura-enhanced full-body reinforcement.
A shallow slash was not enough to leave even a scratch.
He had to pierce a vital point with overwhelming penetrating power.
The Boss pulled the axe from the mud and swept it sideways in one motion.
Lucian instinctively leaped backward, but the axe's reach was overwhelmingly long.
The tip of the axe brushed across Lucian's chest.
Crack!
The surface of his Wyvern Light Armor was ripped open, and the aura-infused impact from the metal struck his ribs mercilessly.
“Urgh...!”
His breath caught, and pain tore through his lungs.
There was no doubt that one of his ribs had cracked.
It had only grazed him, yet it carried that much destructive power.
This was the density of a high Warden's aura.
The mana on Lucian's sword could not break through that monster's physical reinforcement.
Fire Blade.
Perhaps intense heat could pierce its aura shield and damage it.
Lucian forced mana into his sword to its limit and layered heat over it.
The silver blade glowed red-hot, burning the air.
The Boss prepared its third strike.
It gripped the axe with both hands and brought it down diagonally like a beast.
Instead of dodging, Lucian charged madly inside the axe's path.
A suicidal move aimed at the only blind spot, inside the range of a massive weapon.
But the Boss was different from the stupid magical beasts he had faced before.
It read Lucian's charge, threw away the axe without hesitation, and drove a huge fist wrapped in blood-red aura straight at him.
A fist after abandoning the axe.
An unexpected, irregular fighting technique.
Lucian hurriedly twisted his upper body with all his strength, but he could not avoid it completely.
The aura-filled beast's fist grazed Lucian's left shoulder.
Crunch!
The Wyvern hide held, but the shockwave brutally crushed his shoulder bone.
Still, Lucian swallowed the pain and drove the Fire Blade-infused longsword into the creature's flank with all his strength.
Thud! Sizzle!
The Silvermoon Grass longsword broke through the blood-red aura and sank deep into the beast's flesh.
Heat tore through the wound and seared its entrails.
A sickening smell of burning flesh filled the air.
“Krrraaaagh!”
The Boss released a dreadful roar that seemed capable of collapsing mountains.
A scream of overwhelming pain unlike any beast Lucian had faced before.
The enraged Boss vomited blood and slammed down its remaining left fist like lightning.
This time, there was no angle to escape through.
Lucian pulled out his sword and forcibly raised his numb left arm as a shield.
Bang!
The aura-laden fist struck his left arm directly.
The bone did not break, but the impact felt as if his entire network of nerves had been torn apart.
Even though mana in his body had automatically rushed in to disperse the blow, his entire left arm hung limp like an uncontrollable lump of iron.
His left arm was paralyzed.
His throwing daggers, flame projection, and bow were all unusable.
Half of a Magic Swordsman's combat methods had been cut off. It was a desperate situation.
The Boss picked up the huge axe lying on the ground with one hand.
Blood poured from its flank like a waterfall, but its blood-red gaze was that of a berserker beyond pain.
The superhuman mental strength of a high-grade magical beast.
A desperate disadvantage.
Yet there was not a trace of fear in Lucian's eyes. Nor was there excitement.
Only cold, chilling killing intent, like a frozen lake.
He had been at a disadvantage ever since the first day he fell into this damned world.
He fled, ambushed, and cut down enemies while being torn apart himself.
That was how he had survived, devoured, and evolved.
This time, too, he would drain this monster's life and evolve.
The Boss's muscles expanded slightly.
The angle at which it raised the axe. The direction its weight shifted onto the tips of its feet.
Combat instinct, honed into his body through dozens of life-and-death battles, was reading the beast's next movement half a beat ahead.
The Boss's axe swept sideways in a mad arc.
Lucian lowered his upper body until it nearly touched the ground and avoided it.
The axe sliced through the giant tree behind him, sixty centimeters thick, as though cutting tofu.
Using the force of his dodge, Lucian kicked off the ground and sprang upward, driving his silver longsword vertically toward its armpit.
Its absolute weak point, where its armor did not reach and its aura was thinnest.
Thud! Sizzle!
The blade pierced the beast's flesh, penetrating bone and its network of nerves.
The intense heat of Fire Blade exploded inside its body.
“Kraaaagh!”
With a scream of pain, the Boss's right arm suddenly lost strength and fell limp.
The battle axe rolled across the mud.
The nerves in its right arm had been completely burned away.
Lucian withdrew his sword and widened the distance between them.
The Boss's fighting power had been cut in half.
Lucian had also lost the use of his left arm, so their apparent conditions had become equal.
No, they were not equal.
Inside Lucian's body, even at this very moment, the Law of Devouring was working furiously.
The extreme pressure of trading life and death with the Boss, using the Experience Points from the five pursuers he had cut down earlier as a catalyst, was forcibly evolving Lucian's combat senses in real time.
His sword paths grew sharper, his speed at reading the enemy's movements increased by another beat, and his mana efficiency pushed past its limits.
The Boss exploded all of its aura into its remaining left fist and unleashed a frenzy of blows.
A berserker's desperate attack with no direction or pattern.
Lucian calmly read the beast's movements and stepped back.
One step, two steps, three steps.
A huge dead tree touched his back.
A dead end with nowhere else to retreat.
The Boss's final fist shot toward Lucian's face like a cannonball.
At that moment, Lucian threw himself onto the muddy ground and rolled into its blind spot.
Boom!
The beast's fist struck the dead tree directly, splitting the massive trunk in two with a shriek.
But Lucian had been waiting for that destructive recoil.
He sprang up like a spring as he rolled and claimed the space behind the off-balance Boss.
The Boss tried to turn its head in alarm, but it was too late.
Lucian poured every last bit of mana from his dantian and all the heat of Fire Blade into his silver longsword, then thrust it horizontally toward the creature's spine.
Hummm! Thud!
The pinnacle of mana conductivity.
The silver blade pierced the wall of blood-red aura as if it were tofu and drove through the center of the beast's spine.
Holding the hilt, he twisted it cruelly.
Crack.
The chilling sensation of thick vertebrae being crushed traveled through his fingertips.
The Boss's enormous body lost its life force and collapsed onto the mud.
The three-meter monster fell amid a cloud of dust, its lower body paralyzed.
Its single remaining blood-red eye turned back toward Lucian.
An empty gaze, with neither killing intent nor rage left within it.
Resignation toward the predator that had slaughtered it.
Without changing expression, Lucian pulled out his sword and mercilessly drove it into the back of the creature's neck, piercing its medulla.
The beast's gaze went dark.
The battle was over.
At the same time, an overwhelming, dense tidal wave of experience drawn from the high Warden monster began pouring into Lucian like a waterfall, tearing through his blood vessels.
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