Episode 99
“You crazy bastards!”
Gritting his teeth, Zeke watched as the outlaws kept coming at them like an endless swarm of cockroaches.
He spurred his horse and rejoined Karus and the others.
Zeke cast a wide-range buff and activated his healing factor.
A low hum resonated.
In an instant, both the group and their horses felt their strength returning.
The urgency of the situation left the others oblivious to Zeke’s efforts, and they pressed on.
Ahead, a massive sandstorm began to brew in the wasteland.
Simon shouted, “Boss! Beyond this point is Ishtar’s territory!”
“Keep going!”
Zeke and his companions plunged into the sandstorm.
The pursuing outlaws hesitated, recognizing the boundary of Ishtar’s domain, and gradually halted their chase.
But the hounds were relentless, undeterred by the storm.
Watching them, Zeke clenched his jaw. “Persistent bastards…”
Zeke had a long-standing grudge against the hounds from his past life.
He called out to Simon, “I’ll handle them! You all keep moving!”
Turning his horse, Zeke charged into the sandstorm toward the hounds.
The fierce winds made it nearly impossible to see, but with his dragon’s eye skill, Zeke could spot the hounds through the storm.
“About twenty purple knights, and a blue one too. How does the Empire churn out so many knights?”
While the Draker family surpassed the Empire in blue and black knights, the Empire had an overwhelming number of purple knights.
In his past life, Zeke had even encountered hound squads composed entirely of blue knights with a few red ones mixed in.
With a powerful gust, Zeke unleashed a wind field at the charging hounds.
The storm, now mixed with his whirlwind, swept through the hounds.
“Damn it! That bastard’s using magic!” shouted the hound leader.
To those unfamiliar with elemental swords, it looked like magic.
Zeke cut down the hounds that had been thrown from their horses by the whirlwind.
“Argh!”
Blinded by the sandstorm, the hounds couldn’t evade Zeke’s blade.
Suddenly, a flash of a sword appeared behind Zeke.
A blue knight swung an aura blade.
Zeke dodged with ghostly agility.
He then focused his strength and rammed into the knight’s horse.
Crash!
The horse toppled sideways, and the knight quickly got back on his feet, charging at Zeke again.
“Haaah!”
Zeke parried the hound’s aura blade with his own, infused with his power.
“Ugh!”
The blue knight, feeling the shock in his wrist, retreated instead of attacking again.
He shouted to the other hounds, “Capture him! I’ll pursue the prince.”
He turned and mounted another hound’s horse, galloping toward Karus.
With no time to waste, Zeke adopted the dragon-slaying stance.
A crescent-shaped aura shot from his sword.
The blue knight, galloping away, was struck by the crescent aura and fell from his horse.
Though he wore armor underneath, he wasn’t dead.
“Damn it! A Draker!”
The hound recognized Zeke’s dragon-slaying technique immediately.
Zeke gritted his teeth.
If even one escaped, his identity could be compromised.
He focused and raised Bahamut.
A surge of aura erupted from his sword.
Zeke moved like a tempest.
Dragon-slaying technique: Gale Form
Wind Blade
Zeke’s body became a whirlwind, his sword slashing like a razor-sharp wind.
He weaved through the hounds, his blade slicing throats, piercing hearts, and severing limbs.
“Argh!”
The hounds couldn’t withstand Zeke’s attack, which had become one with the sandstorm.
When the whirlwind passed, all the hounds lay defeated.
Zeke approached the still-breathing blue knight, sword in hand.
The knight glared at Zeke. “Damn Drakers. The Empire’s wrath will burn you to—”
Before he could finish, Zeke’s sword silenced him.
Zeke pondered how to deal with the bodies, marked by his dragon-slaying technique, and decided to gather them in one place.
He placed his hand over the corpses.
“Power of Decay.”
Using the power he gained from devouring an ancient dragon, he watched as the bodies began to decompose rapidly.
In moments, the bodies, armor, and weapons disintegrated, scattering with the sandstorm.
Zeke was taken aback by the swift disappearance.
“So this is the power of decay… It could be a formidable weapon if used wisely.”
After dealing with the hounds, Zeke mounted a surviving horse and raced toward Karus and the others.
As he neared them, cutting through the fierce sandstorm, something felt off.
“What the…?”
Simon and Boris lay on the ground, bleeding, while Karus aimed a crossbow at someone.
Zeke leaped from his horse, unleashing a gale.
He swung his sword at the approaching enemy.
Clang!
The enemy deflected Zeke’s aura-infused sword with a dagger.
Standing in front of Karus, Zeke faced the attackers.
Two figures stood before him, slender and clad in clothes made of coarse fabric, their faces hidden by chadors.
There was only one place with such distinctive attire.
“Ishtar’s mystics.”
Zeke tossed a potion to Simon and asked, “What happened?”
Simon applied the potion to his wounds, using the rest on the more severely injured Boris, and replied, “They ambushed us out of nowhere.”
Zeke, still holding his sword at the ready, addressed the Ishtar group.
“Why did you attack us?”
One of them stepped forward. “You ignored Ishtar’s decree and entered our territory.”
When Ishtar issued a decree, no one was allowed to enter their domain.
Zeke glared at them. “And you attack without hearing us out?”
“We prioritize the decree above all. Those who ignore the sacred sandstorm’s warning cannot have good intentions. Only the earth god’s judgment awaits.”
Knowing Ishtar’s reputation for being inflexible, Zeke realized further discussion was futile.
He took a deep breath and spoke slowly.
In ancient Eastern tongue, he declared, “Under the name of the earth god, I challenge you to a duel to determine the guilt of violating the decree.”
The Ishtar warrior was taken aback. “How do you… know the sacred laws of the earth?”
Ishtar was known for strictly adhering to their ancient laws, with the most revered being the sacred judgment through a warrior’s duel.
The earth god they worshipped was also the god of warriors.
Thus, when a crime or dispute arose, a duel would determine the earth god’s judgment.
Ishtar was the most isolated place on the continent, so few outsiders knew of this law.
But Zeke, thanks to his past life in a special organization, was aware of Ishtar’s laws.
The sudden invocation of the warrior’s law left the Ishtar warriors flustered.
Then, someone who had been observing from the back stepped forward.
The other warrior was surprised. “M-Miss, are you going to duel?”
Nodding, the warrior stood before Zeke.
The Ishtar warrior drew two uniquely shaped daggers, their blades wavy like ripples.
Zeke recognized them as Ishtar’s signature weapons.
“Using those daggers… she must be a high-ranking warrior.”
Ishtar, one of the three transcendent families, was known for their mystics, distinct from the central continent’s knights.
They used mystic arts to enhance their bodies, combining weapon skills, stealth, and poison techniques.
As Zeke recalled Ishtar’s ways, the warrior took her stance with the daggers.
Zeke, too, readied Bahamut, adopting the dragon-slaying stance.
Facing an Ishtar mystic required constant vigilance.
The Ishtar warrior charged at Zeke.
Clang!
With animalistic agility, she swung her daggers.
Zeke, pushed back by the force, realized, “Such strength… it’s like she’s using power.”
He focused his power into his sword, clashing with the warrior’s daggers.
Clang! Clang!
The sound of metal clashing echoed as their weapons collided.
Like a dancer in a seamless flow, the warrior wielded her dagger with precision, executing a series of sharp, relentless attacks. In response, Zeke swung his sword with all his might.
“She’s strong.”
The swordsmanship of the Central Continent had evolved to optimize the use of aura. However, the Ishtar family’s techniques were honed for one purpose: efficient killing.
As a result, the warriors of the Ishtar family were renowned as consummate experts in the art of assassination, far surpassing ordinary killers.
Clang!
The unending chain of attacks left Zeke struggling to find an opening to use his dragon-slaying technique. He stepped back, adjusting his stance.
“Haah.”
Taking a deep breath, Zeke assumed the posture of the Elemental Sword and summoned the Field of Water.
Whoosh!
Among the skills he had learned from Kaishir, mastering the Field of Water had been the most challenging. Zeke’s sword moved with the fluid grace of a flowing stream.
Clang!
The sudden shift in his sword’s rhythm caught the Ishtar warrior off guard. She had been on the defensive, unable to find the right moment to use her aura, when Zeke’s style abruptly changed.
Swish!
Though slower than his previous strikes, Zeke’s new approach left no openings. The Ishtar warrior realized her dance of death was being disrupted by Zeke’s fluid movements.
In the end, she had to retreat, unable to maintain her relentless assault against Zeke’s precise thrusts.
Whoosh!
A gust of sand blew between Zeke and the Ishtar warrior. They stood still, eyes locked, yet an intense battle raged between them.
Another Ishtar warrior watching the duel was taken aback.
“My God. To think there’s a warrior who can fight the young lady on equal footing.”
She was hailed as the greatest genius in the history of the Ishtar family. Even the most skilled warriors of the family faltered before her sword dance. No one in the family could match her in martial arts, so seeing an outsider hold his ground against her was astonishing.
Then it happened.
Swoosh!
Both fighters lunged at each other simultaneously. Zeke’s sword swept through the sandstorm like a massive wave.
Whoosh!
The Ishtar warrior, charging towards the wave-like strike, spun with her dagger, riding the wave’s momentum.
Swish!
She gracefully spun once more in mid-air, launching a deadly aerial attack at Zeke with her dagger.
Boom!
A powerful kick, imbued with immense force, descended upon Zeke. A massive explosion erupted where he stood, sending sand flying in all directions.