Episode 84
Thud!
“Death” lightly tapped the ground with a skeletal staff. The avatar of the black mage’s grimoire, “The Scales of the Heart.”
He looked like a Victorian English gentleman.
In terms of being an avatar of an idea, he wasn’t much different from the knights’ avatars. But the weight of his presence was incomparable to that of any ordinary knight. Just like the being behind Dale.
It was at that moment.
Flap!
Several crows took flight from behind “Death,” rushing toward Dale like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
A swarm of crows darkened the sky, all diving toward Dale.
In response, Dale drew his “Shadow Cloak.” The cloak, mimicking a black surcoat, fluttered as it turned the area into a lake of darkness.
To block the oncoming crows, the tendrils of the “Shadow Lurker” shot out, generating the maximum magical power from three circles and two black sources.
“Death.”
Even the continent’s greatest black mage, the Black Duke, would be nothing more than a child before that presence.
And then—
”……!”
The tendrils of the Shadow Lurker, meant to stop the crows, sliced through empty air, like a sword swung at a mirage.
But it was no mirage.
The swarm of crows plunged straight into Dale’s body.
Thud!
─ I told you.
“Death” spoke.
─ No one can stop death.
”……!”
Dale lowered his head weakly. The crows pierced through his stomach and emerged from his back, scattering dark feathers.
’……!’
Yet, strangely, he felt no pain. He simply saw his own body sprawled on the ground.
Countless crows surrounded it, pecking at his flesh.
Dale watched this scene from above, as if experiencing an out-of-body experience.
Thud!
Once more, “Death” struck the ground with his skeletal staff. The surroundings began to change.
A white and dark winter night. Dale’s world. But it was not an empty void.
Thud!
A searing pain struck from behind. The cold touch of metal. The blade of the holy sword Durandal.
Turning his head, he saw a face he could never forget.
Count Brandenburg, the Holy Knight. Leading the empire’s grand army.
─ Oh.
The old gentleman in a suit chuckled with interest beside the groaning Dale.
─ What an intriguing sight.
─ What do you think, old man?
Shub giggled with delight.
─ It’s a rare sight, even in the eons where countless stars are born and die.
─ It’s the perfect place to grant the child’s request.
“Death” nodded with a smile.
─ A child who survived my ‘visit.’
Thud!
And once more, he struck the ground with his skeletal staff.
─ Try desperately to ‘survive.’
Desperately survive. But the blade of the holy sword Durandal had already pierced through Dale’s back and emerged from his chest.
‘How am I supposed to survive this…?’
Dale muttered in disbelief. His consciousness blurred. Death approached him once more. It should have.
But as his consciousness sank into darkness.
Thud!
Once again, it was the blade of the holy sword Durandal that awakened Dale.
’……!’
As if replaying the events from just seconds ago. The blade pierced through his back and emerged.
His consciousness blurred.
Two deaths. ──But when the next time came, it was different.
Quickly activating the Shadow Cloak’s ability, “Spectral Form,” he dodged the holy sword’s strike from behind.
He swiftly gained distance and turned his head.
An unforgettable scene lay before him.
Count Brandenburg, the Holy Knight. The imperial army, including the knights of Saint Magdalena, looked at him without a hint of emotion.
”……!”
The three circles entwining his heart began to accelerate madly. Toward the Holy Knight who bore malice against him.
Dale expanded the domain of the Shadow Cloak.
A lake of darkness. From within, the silent “Shadow Lurkers” unleashed their thorny tendrils.
Slash!
The tendrils whipped through the air, slaughtering the imperial soldiers. A hell of thorny tendrils rising from the lake of darkness, tearing flesh apart.
In the midst of the one-sided slaughter, the man was different. The Holy Knight’s body was enveloped in the power of aura.
‘He’s here……!’
The “King of Pigs.”
A grotesque mass of desire with the face of a beast. But different from what he had seen on the island of Britannia.
Two large tusks like those of a boar protruded, exuding the ferocity of a berserker.
──A god of battle stood there.
Just as high-ranking mages are, so are knights.
The form of an idea is not singular.
For instance, in the case of Count Brandenburg, the Holy Knight… it wasn’t the desire to spread his seed to women.
When he focused his consciousness on the ruthless struggle to eliminate competing “males,” his true form emerged.
A god of battle.
One of the continent’s greatest warriors that Dale had to defeat.
That warrior kicked off the ground.
A single slash.
Dale’s severed head rolled across the winter ground.
Once more, the blade of the holy sword Durandal pierced from behind.
Dodging the strike from behind with Spectral Form, slaughtering the imperial army with the Shadow Lurker──.
He blocked the Holy Knight’s charging strike.
Immediately, a second sword was swung, and Dale’s severed head rolled on the ground.
He died, died, and died again.
But he couldn’t die.
As soon as he regained consciousness, the blade of the holy sword Durandal awaited him.
For an ordinary person, it wouldn’t be strange for their mind to collapse in such a living hell.
But what filled Dale’s heart as he endlessly experienced death was an incomparable fighting spirit.
This was never “real.”
It was merely a mirage overlaid with the image of the Holy Knight from Dale’s memory.
To be able to experience such a vivid mock battle against an enemy he loathed so much.
Was this how Dale’s father had trained all this time?
‘Fine, let’s see this through to the end.’
What were the odds of Dale defeating that god of battle now? 0.1%? Even that was too much. 0.01%, perhaps even less. But it was never zero. That fact was enough.
Dale kicked off the ground.
The blade of the Shadow Cloak, revolving around Dale, was now parrying the Holy Knight’s three swords.
How many times had he died, died, and died again?
He couldn’t even remember. And using those deaths as a foundation, he succeeded in deflecting the three swords.
Against one of the empire’s strongest, known as the Seven Swords of the Continent.
‘But it’s still not enough.’
He spun the three circles that threatened to burst, combining all sorts of magical formulas, repeatedly testing them against that god of battle.
Walls of ice, ice projectiles, shadow bullets.
And none of them could break through that presence.
─ Oh, your spirit hasn’t broken yet.
“Death” chuckled with interest.
─ I told you, old man.
Shub laughed with a hint of pride.
─ My brother is a very special person.
As if she couldn’t contain her affection.
Watching Dale, who stood up on his two feet again, desperately thinking of the ‘next move,’ even if it seemed like a reckless and meaningless struggle.
No matter how much he racked his brain, the odds of a mere 3-circle mage defeating a Holy Knight were nonexistent.
Even if given a hundred, a thousand… even more chances, it wouldn’t change.
But Dale never thought that way. Because he held a slim but certain chance of victory in his hands.
‘The opponent’s movements don’t change from the moment before death.’
In other words, it was no different from a machine moving according to programming. Among the hundreds, thousands of possibilities, Dale was calmly reviewing the ‘flow of battle.’
Blocking the three swords was manageable.
Deflect the first strike with the Shadow Cloak, dodge the second to the left while firing a shadow bullet, immediately raise and explode a wall of ice, and counterattack from Dale’s side.
But that was as far as it went.
Before he knew it, the “King of Pigs” was butchering Dale’s body.
‘Again, from the beginning.’
Moreover, with each repeated battle, Dale could tell.
─ What a stubborn child.
That his swordsmanship was clearly improving.
That the ‘memories of the hero’ sleeping deep within his consciousness were gradually awakening.
At first, it was difficult to even grasp his movements. But not anymore. Finally, he could faintly perceive his movements.
It was an act possible only because Dale had the existence of his past life, and he was desperately projecting his former self.
A hero from another world.
Once, the likes of the Swordmaster, Count Brandenburg, couldn’t even dream of being his rival.
Now, he was retracing the steps of that warrior’s sword and magic, as if feeling his way through braille.
His heart pounded as if it would burst, and the pain was so intense it felt like he might cough up blood at any moment. But he didn’t care.
None of it mattered. Not even his original goal of reaching the fourth circle.
All that mattered was defeating that man.
The “King of Pigs.”
He had become an embodiment of obsession, driven solely to bring down the figure before him, dying and rising again and again.
With each death, he wondered how many times Dale’s father, the Black Duke, had experienced this.
To become the continent’s greatest dark sorcerer, to grasp the power of the eighth circle.
─ Such iron will.
“Death” chuckled, seemingly satisfied.
─ Yet you still can’t overcome your own world.
─ …….
─ A moment is all it takes for the heart to break.
As “Death” coldly pointed this out, Shub puffed her cheeks in annoyance.
Watching Dale, who was on the brink of the fourth circle, consumed by obsession.
As if she couldn’t bear the insult to Dale.
Once again, Dale dodged the Swordmaster’s initial strike. But no matter how many times he tried, he couldn’t quite fend off the Swordmaster’s “Four Blades.”
─ Before the baptism of time, everything loses meaning and fades.
─ …….
Watching Dale’s will steadily crumble amidst endless deaths, Death spoke.
Once more, Dale pushed off the ground.
He blocked the first blade with a shadowy cloak, twisted his body to evade the second, and conjured an ice wall, scattering its shards to deflect the third.
The fourth blade swung down.
Clang!
The Swordmaster’s fourth blade clashed against steel and was deflected.
“──Come to think of it.”
Having blocked the Swordmaster’s “Four Blades,” Dale spoke, as if he finally understood.
Feeling the “fourth circle” revolving around his heart.
“This is my world.”
In Dale’s hand was a sword.
Once the beloved blade of the “Hero from Another World,” the sword of a relentless hunter who had slaughtered countless of the continent’s strongest.