00710 14 Vs 1000.
Absolute chaos!
What had been a peaceful forest just that morning instantly transformed into a living hell. The scene was so horrific it defied description. A massacre had begun—a brutal theater of death where one side slaughtered the other without mercy.
“Ugh, aaaaaaah!”
A piercing scream erupted from the outlaw who was assaulting a young woman. The moment Vivian’s clear, commanding voice summoned her legion, hundreds of shadowy figures burst forth from the earth. Before the outlaw could even pull up his pants, the summoned beasts pounced with explosive force.
Sara quickly gathered herself and stared wide-eyed at the legion of beasts flooding the forest.
They stood about two meters tall. Among the flowing mass of creatures, one shadowy figure laughed maniacally, twisting and flipping with acrobatic grace. Its blood-red eyes slit open in a wicked grin, and its mouth stretched wide beneath its earlobes, revealing a terrifying maw.
“Graaah! Graaah!”
Someone screamed at the sight of the charging figure. But the shadowy beast grabbed the outlaw firmly with both hands, hoisted him up, and swallowed him whole.
Crunch, crunch, crunch!
The sickening sound of bones breaking followed. As the man’s desperate struggles faded, his body went limp. His severed head dropped to the ground, and smaller beasts swarmed, tearing at the corpse.
There was nothing to think but how utterly gruesome it was.
But the summoning of the legion was only the beginning. Unable to bear the sight, Sara turned away—only to be met with an even more horrifying scene that made her whole body tremble.
A giant, eyes blazing with crimson fury, rampaged like a demon. The outlaws were being slaughtered indiscriminately by his spear. Each strike shattered skulls, spraying brains and blood far and wide. Some were impaled through the abdomen, their torn bodies flailing grotesquely in the air. The destructive power was terrifying.
And that wasn’t all.
“Kyaaah!”
A woman leapt forward gracefully, eyes flashing as she swung her hand. Her five fingers glinted like blades, piercing the throat of an outlaw who had been choking a boy. Twisting the neck, a sickening snap was heard, and blood gushed from the outlaw’s mouth, dripping down to stain the dew-soaked earth crimson.
The woman smiled coldly, then moved on, stabbing and slashing anyone in her path. She killed with such casual ease it was impossible to tell if she was playing or executing a sentence.
From there, screams erupted all around.
In an instant, the situation flipped. The forest that had echoed with the user’s desperate cries just minutes ago was now filled with the outlaws’ screams. Panic-stricken, some outlaws began to act—grabbing weapons and trying to fight back—but they were few. Most froze in place, overwhelmed by fear, while others retreated instinctively.
Then—
Whoosh, whoosh!
Suddenly, bright red flames blazed upward from somewhere nearby. Feeling the heat, the retreating outlaws spun around reflexively. A streak of fire shot straight across, leaving a glowing trail.
Slash, slash, slash, slash!
With a clean horizontal sweep, four outlaws’ heads were severed almost simultaneously. They didn’t even have time to speak. Though their bodies remained standing briefly, the freshly cut necks smoldered red, releasing thin wisps of white smoke.
Bodies, spouting fountains of blood, collapsed. A man in a dark gray robe stepped over the corpses. Oddly, the sword in his right hand showed only the hilt—its blade invisible, as if it had merged with the air.
Before the nearby outlaws could fully grasp what was happening, the man swung the hilt like lightning, severing four more heads. One of the outlaws wore thick armor covering his neck, but the unseen blade sliced through as easily as tofu.
It was an unbelievable spectacle. Startled, one outlaw scrambled back and hastily raised his staff to cast a spell. But the man slid forward smoothly, slipping the sword hilt into the outlaw’s slightly open mouth like flowing water.
The outlaw collapsed without a sound. Yet the man’s relentless advance and swordplay didn’t stop.
From the moment he first slashed horizontally and stepped over the bodies, his blade never paused. Adjusting his grip, he moved forward, swinging left and right. With each flash of light, outlaws’ necks snapped like fragile twigs, dropping lifelessly.
This was no longer a battle. It was a one-sided massacre.
Of course, Kim Soo-hyun’s ambush had been a success. He had started by striking with a thunderbolt to sow confusion, followed by Gong Chan-ho’s sudden attack and Seon Yoo-woon’s sniper fire to draw attention. Then Vivian’s legion stormed in, deepening the chaos, while the remaining melee fighters closed in from all sides to finish the job.
But if these had been mere bandits rather than outlaws, it wouldn’t have come to this. Even the elite outlaws under Simon who invaded the Northern Continent two years ago wouldn’t have been so thoroughly crushed. Even if they couldn’t match skill for skill, they would have at least formed ranks and resisted based on numbers.
In the end, it was inevitable. The difference between the Northern Continent—who had spent nearly two years steadily honing their skills in preparation to conquer the Steel Mountain Range—and the Western Continent, whose people lived driven only by desire, was stark. That difference was laid bare in this battle.
“Ugh, aaaaaah! Damn it! I’ll kill you!”
One outlaw screamed, charging wildly, unwilling to die quietly. The others nearby, stunned at first, quickly snapped out of it and surged forward after him.
There were nearly thirty of them. It wasn’t a tactical move—just the instinctive brawl behavior from territorial fights back home in the Western Continent. Beneath it all was a desperate will to survive.
The problem was, they charged straight at Kim Soo-hyun.
Watching the outlaws rush in like moths to a flame, Kim Soo-hyun exhaled slowly. He lowered the sword hilt in his right hand and used his other hand to remove an earring. White light began to flow from his left hand, forming a beautiful blade—the Glory of Victoria.
The outlaws closed in, gripping their weapons tightly. Kim Soo-hyun raised his left hand slowly. The moment the tip of his sword met the outlaws head-on, the Glory of Victoria emitted a dazzling pale light.
Shhhhhhrrrrrring!
In the blink of an eye, dozens of beams of light burst forth from the sword, crashing over the outlaws like a tidal wave.
And then—
Fwoosh!
“Aaaah!”
“Crack!”
Caught off guard, the outlaws screamed in terror. The flashing beams tore through them, severing limbs with a sickening rasp, splitting throats wide open, and spraying blood everywhere. In the end, thirty outlaws collapsed all at once like scattered straw in the wind. The hidden power of the Glory of Victoria—the ‘Sword Light’—had been unleashed.
“Oh my… goodness…”
Sara, who had witnessed the massacre, squinted and covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes had been fixed on Kim Soo-hyun from the start, but even seeing it with her own eyes was hard to believe.
No wonder. In the blink of an eye, thirty outlaws were sprawled on the ground. The only thing she could barely make out was the light from the sword piercing through the crowd.
“Hmm…”
But Kim Soo-hyun himself scanned the area indifferently, then slowly lowered his left arm. Calmly, he began walking somewhere else. Even in the middle of battle, his steps were composed and unhurried—almost bored.
A thought suddenly crossed Sara’s mind as she watched him in stunned silence.
“Is this… a user from the Northern Continent…?”
Sara had heard about it before. Two years ago, Simon, who had unified half of the Western Continent, confidently led his forces to invade the Northern Continent—and was utterly crushed. It was a disaster of legendary proportions.
After that war, the Western Continent harbored a certain fear of the North. Back then, the West was a lawless land, so chaotic that no one was believed capable of ruling it. Simon was the first outlaw who nearly brought it under control, but the North decisively won the war, slaughtering Simon’s army in the process.
I’d always wondered—just how powerful had the North become to shatter Simon’s undefeated legend?
But seeing it with my own eyes left me speechless. A battle unfolded before me unlike anything imaginable in the West.
A woman radiating a cold, biting chill like a northern wind moved with blinding speed, her entire body glowing with a fierce energy as she tore through the outlaws mercilessly. Her spear danced with uncanny precision, and one by one, the bodies of the fallen began to pile up. The shadows of fleeing outlaws writhed and twisted, then suddenly surged upward, snapping necks like twigs.
The massacre continued relentlessly. It became impossible to tell who was outlaw and who was not.
“Heh heh heh…”
Just as I was thinking this, a sinister laugh echoed right beside me. I barely turned my head before swallowing hard. A hulking figure, exuding a dark, ominous aura, loomed over me—holding a spear raised high toward the sky.
“Ah…”
Locking eyes with those beast-like, blood-red orbs, my entire body stiffened. I wanted to shake my head, to deny it all, but the only thought in my mind was that I was going to die.
There was no time to prepare. The spear came down in a straight, urgent strike—an attack no mage could block or dodge. A sharp sting blossomed at the crown of my head as I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then—
Vwoom!
Thud!
The sound of something colliding echoed sharply all around.
Slowly opening my eyes, I stared in disbelief.
What had just happened?
Before me stood a sword, sheathed in a crimson veil, held horizontally. The spear, which had been descending to pierce me, was stopped dead in its tracks by the red curtain flowing along the blade.
Not just me—Gong Chanho, who had thrown the spear, and Kim Soohyun, who had blocked it, both looked stunned.
Gong Chanho withdrew the spear and took a step back.
“What… just happened?”
He growled, and Kim Soohyun sheathed his sword as well. Calmly, he pulled back his hood to reveal his face.
“She’s not one of them.”
“Not one of them?”
“Right. She only kills outlaws. Outlaws, and no one else. Don’t kill innocent users by mistake.”
“How do you know she’s not an outlaw?”
Gong Chanho asked suspiciously. Kim Soohyun chuckled softly and dropped his robe to the ground.
I instinctively pulled my legs together. The fallen robe finally covered my lower body, and only then did I realize—I’d been completely exposed from the waist down ever since Joffrey had torn my clothes earlier. Even the underwear forced into my mouth was still there.
Eyes wide, I spat out the underwear and gagged, overwhelmed by the shock of the scene.
Seeing me retch repeatedly, Gong Chanho licked his lips. He glanced once more at the sword wrapped in the flowing red veil that had stopped his strike, then without hesitation, turned and walked away.
The screams in the forest gradually began to fade.
---------------------------= Author’s Note =---------------------------
I wasn’t sure what to write for the afterword…
(__)
So I decided to just bow deeply and say thank you.
Thank you all so much for your endless support.