novelraw Chapter 145 : Chapter 145
Chapter 145 : Chapter 145
145
The people blocking the carriage numbered nearly twenty.
At the very front stood a massive man over two meters tall—the green-haired brute whose nose I had once crushed.
In the few days since I last saw him, his eyes had completely gone mad.
His pupils, nearly swallowed by the whites, glistened as though some curse had been cast upon them.
“That is Geis. He offered up his eyes.”
“The others are similar. That one is using shamanism, that one necromancy. Looks like an assassination unit. They came here fully intending to kill us.”
Geis was a curse that maximized one’s innate power at the cost of restricting parts of the body or senses.
Indeed, the pressure emanating from the green-haired man’s body was grotesque.
External mana flowed into him, twisted unnaturally, and formed bizarre patterns.
It was the same for the shamanism and the necromancy.
I stepped down from the carriage and faced them.
Raipen stood at the very back.
“Teacher. It has been a while.”
He looked no different than before.
His dark brown raincoat was dirtier than when I had seen him at Akarind Academy, almost gray now, with frayed edges that bore the marks of battle.
As always, he chewed on an unlit cigarette, so worn it looked ready to snap.
There was only one thing that had changed.
“I never thanked you back then. I learned something good thanks to you.”
His presence.
I could tell just from the way he stood.
He had reached the realm of a Sword Runner.
Moreover, not a single person here lacked awakened Aura.
Most striking of all was the absence of any ranged weapons among the mercenaries.
There were no mages either.
Which meant they knew about the Giant-Block fantasy and anti-magic fantasy I possessed.
This was an assassination unit built solely for me.
The sheer number of them was likely meant to exploit my inability to sustain long battles.
“Did you come to escort me past the imperial army?”
“If you want to call it an escort, it is an escort to the end of your life. So you can finally leave this tiresome existence.”
Raipen exhaled slowly.
It looked as though smoke were pouring from the cigarette in his mouth.
“This is unexpected. I thought Avril would still need me.”
“Our boss is like that. He assigns value to people endlessly. This time is no different. You created Aura, and the world learned Aura. You have fulfilled your purpose.”
“Does that bastard Avril actually intend to save the world?”
Rozalin snapped incredulously.
Raipen shrugged.
“Do we really need to?”
“…What?”
“I did hear about the future from the Guild Master. But even in that future, the Guild Master only provided support. If that is the case, why should anything change in the present?”
I see.
Aura had spread far and wide—there would be plenty of people to protect the world now.
Avril had not bet on saving the world.
He had bet on living well after the world was saved.
And so he was eliminating me, the greatest variable in the process.
I had learned enough of the truth.
As I looked at them, Rozalin cocked one leg and asked casually,
“Just asking, but if we surrender, do you let us live?”
“If that were an option, I would not have brought twenty men.”
“Really? That is a shame.”
Rozalin drew her sword from her waist.
A blue gemstone, the same color as her hair, gleamed brilliantly on its hilt.
“With that kind of resolve, I might have spared you.”
“Spare? Us? Keh? You? Now? Huh?”
Apparently irritated by her composure, the green-haired brute stepped forward, sticking out his tongue.
The tip of it, pierced and split into two forks, wriggled grotesquely.
Whether that was the result of countless battles or the influence of Geis, I could not tell.
“Ahh? Really? You? That is possible? Huh? Really? With just that? Eh?”
Not only the green-haired man, but the other mercenaries also stepped forward.
“Just that? No.”
And we stepped forward as well.
Excluding Serris, who remained in the carriage, there were four of us—Hati, Pan, Rozalin, and myself.
And added to that—
Step. Step.
Twenty more people emerged behind Rozalin and Hati.
A total of twenty-four.
“Huh?”
Rozalin and Hati had always split off from me whenever we came to the Empire, moving tirelessly.
Under the pretense of securing artifacts, dungeons, and people.
Of course, Avril, another regressor with similar information, existed within the Empire.
Which only made them move faster and more diligently.
‘Avril is a merchant. Rozalin belongs to the military. And Hati is a mercenary. All three walk different paths.’
And so they had gathered twenty people.
They were veterans who had undergone Rozalin’s special training during the Academic Exchange Conference and remained in growth dungeons ever since.
Every one of them was at least a Sword Walker.
They were more than a match for our opponents.
“We are busy, so we will not escort you. Just die properly on your own. Understood?”
With that, Rozalin charged, sword raised.
The green-haired brute screamed and rushed forward as well.
The clash began.
***
The first collision was between Rozalin and the green-haired man.
“Die!”
He surged forward, his filthy hair whipping back.
Hands the size of a human head reached for Rozalin’s skull.
Green Aura surged around the knuckles he wore, mixed with a sinister presence—likely the influence of Geis.
A flame that would burn straight through bone if it touched.
“Reflect.”
If it touched.
Rozalin’s blue blade gently slid the Aura aside.
Despite Aura colliding with Aura, there was nothing more than a faint sound of friction.
It was control so delicate it defied belief.
“Huh?”
That was the green-haired man’s final word.
In an instant, his arm flew off.
In the next, his neck was severed.
He stumbled forward three more steps before losing balance and collapsing.
Rozalin was already charging toward her next opponent, not a single drop of blood staining her body.
From then on, flashes of light illuminated the dark street whenever swords collided.
Aura crashing against Aura produced deafening booms.
BOOOOM!
Those who lost the contest of strength fell one after another.
Most of them were on Avril’s side.
“…Unbelievable.”
Raipen let out a hollow sigh.
The mercenaries on Cassian’s side all looked young—barely twenty at most.
Their combat experience could not possibly compare.
And yet, despite wielding Geis and other unprecedented powers, they were being overwhelmed.
There was only one reason.
Those two.
“Yahhh!”
Rozalin tore through the battlefield, her sword a storm and a tidal wave.
Each time she surged forward, another body fell.
Where she passed, nothing living remained.
Her movements never faltered, flowing in a single unbroken line from beginning to end.
That was possible because her swordsmanship moved with absolute certainty that the enemy would be cut.
Even when two opponents charged her at once, it was useless.
She cut everything she intended to cut, and before finishing one strike, she already knew what she would cut next.
“That, I can understand.”
She was a regressor, after all.
She must have learned something monstrous in the future.
That explanation was enough—until I saw him.
That boy was only fifteen.
And yet his sword was disturbingly alien.
“Hah!”
From his footwork to the motion of his blade, everything was subtly misaligned, making it impossible to find a center.
The intent behind his steps, his swings, his gaze, his jaw, his shoulders—
None of it could be read.
Now that they understood sword intent and had awakened Aura, Pan’s sword frightened them more than Rozalin’s.
Because they could not comprehend it.
“Damn it.”
Raipen stepped back and snapped his fingers.
Mercenaries who had been hidden in nearby buildings revealed themselves.
There were thirty of them.
Combined with those already present, nearly forty.
Even so, victory was not assured.
Which meant there was only one target.
“Focus on Cassian!”
Their objective was never to win this fight.
It was to eliminate Cassian.
A man whose constitution made prolonged combat impossible.
Sacrificing five would be enough to bring him down.
At the signal, dozens of mercenaries charged straight at Cassian.
Cassian watched them and slowly drew his sword.
It was the first time he had drawn it, yet the feel in his hand was warmly familiar.
Like shaking hands with an old friend after a long separation.
‘Strange.’
Where did they even find a sword like this?
The thought made him smile despite the situation.
Without exerting any force, the blade naturally cut through the air.
The movement was slow, almost leisurely.
Yet Raipen felt a profound sense of unease.
‘The sword is different.’
It was not the blade he had seen at Akarind Academy.
The blackened blade looked as though it held the night sky itself, and even from a distance, its sharpness was unmistakable.
And another thing.
‘There is no Aura.’
Cassian was the man who led the Sword Aura trend of the era.
No one wielded more powerful Aura than him.
Yet his blade showed none.
And the last thing—
‘My voice.’
No sound came out.
My vision tilted.
Thoughts raced, but my body would not move.
No—there was no sensation below my neck.
‘Ah.’
I realized it instinctively.
I was dying.
It was a complete failure.
Just as they had targeted Cassian, Cassian could target me.
I was the core of this mercenary unit.
With my death, the rest would scatter.
But how?
I had been far behind, and Cassian was the farthest among the opposing side.
Before I could grasp the answer, darkness swallowed my vision.
‘That will do.’
Cassian gasped for breath.
Success.
The hardest part of fighting the Spear God and the General had been closing the distance.
That was not limited to those battles alone.
A sword could only cut as far as its blade reached.
Aura existed to cut everything.
What the sword could not cut, Aura could.
Even beyond the blade’s range.
If it did not reach, then make it reach.
A technique unique to Aura that shattered the limits of the sword.
Aura Wave.
The magic of swordsmen, manifested through the blade.