Chapter 718
Episode 180: Each Their Own Battle (8)
Outside Ricarton, the battlefield between Jin and Diffus.
The wilderness was breaking apart.
Like a massive storm, the thunder energy unleashed from the Sigmund sword tore through the sky and earth.
A considerable amount of time had passed since the two had teleported away from Ricarton Castle.
Despite the fierce battle that had twisted the entire terrain of the wasteland, neither of them had suffered any significant injuries.
They simply couldn’t land a decisive blow on each other.
The one expending more energy was Jin.
While Diffus easily struck and retreated through flight, Jin had to spread his thunder energy across the entire battlefield just to keep up the pressure.
Still, even if Jin was “wasting” energy, it wasn’t a shortage.
Diffus, on the other hand, was impressed as he pushed back the increasingly intense thunder energy.
[To have such power without being granted divine authority like me… I see now why you defied your mother. You must have felt no need for it.]
Diffus dodged a lightning strike and spoke.
[But not everyone can do what you do.]
Jin said nothing, his gaze fixed on the lightning bolt that vanished just before striking the ground.
‘This isn’t the first time. Since earlier, four of my attacks have been disappearing as they’re dodged or deflected.’
At first, Jin hadn’t noticed. The fight was so intense that he didn’t have time to check the afterimages of missed strikes.
But now, the balance of their duel was shifting. The tension was pulling slightly in Jin’s favor.
There was only one reason for this.
Even though Diffus had received part of Rosa’s divine power, he couldn’t surpass Jin’s strength.
Even if he were whole, it would be the same. On top of that, he had suffered irreversible damage from Eternalization and had overexerted himself with teleportation, so the gap was widening faster.
‘Where do those vanished attacks go? Are they somehow returning to the Four Horsemen, or…?’
[Looks like you’re worried about those left behind in Ricarton Castle. You just started pushing me back, yet you keep getting distracted.]
With a thunderous crash, Diffus slammed down Volgar. Jin countered with Sigmund, firing a lightning strike—but again, the missed lightning vanished.
“Focus on yourself. Handling those missed attacks isn’t for fighting me.”
Suddenly, Jin recalled all the thunder energy filling the battlefield.
Diffus descended slowly, shrugging.
[Sharp eyes. I didn’t expect you to notice so soon.]
“If I were worried about my comrades, I’d be trying to get back to Ricarton Castle by any means. Not sticking around here to fight you so stubbornly.”
Jin switched swords.
“I don’t really know why you bother cleaning up missed attacks. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The scouting phase is over. From now on, you won’t have the luxury to do that…”
A pure white aura wrapped around Bradamante.
That calm, radiant aura was the complete opposite of the wild thunder energy that had been ravaging the wasteland.
[You’re going to use a lesser power instead of your thunder and spirit energy? Are you sure about that?]
Jin switched swords to minimize missed attacks.
Thunder energy was inherently too wild, so many attacks inevitably slipped through.
He chose aura over spirit energy to conserve strength.
‘He’s certain he can’t beat me. He’s already fighting with defeat in mind.’
Jin had been sensing that from Diffus all along.
Since the operation began, every move Diffus made was a ploy to buy time.
Separating Jin from his comrades, casting illusion magic on the Ziphl side, deploying the most troops on the Kinzello side.
Even now, Diffus was dragging out the fight by cleaning up missed attacks.
Jin concluded all this was to buy time for Rosa’s intervention.
Another clue was Orgal and Siris.
Even though a long time had passed since Jin separated from the group, there was still no news from the allied teleporters.
‘Except for the Tyrant, no one in the Sword Garden faction can handle Orgal and Kinzello. Yet the teleporters haven’t reached me because Orgal is tied up somewhere.’
If Orgal were with the allies in Ricarton Castle, they would have already sorted things out and started searching for Jin.
Especially with Orgal’s abilities, he should have found Jin multiple times by now.
And the only one capable of restraining Orgal was the Tyrant Rosa.
Orgal was currently held back to prevent Rosa’s intervention.
That was why Jin had to conserve spirit energy—to support Orgal after dealing with Diffus.
“Are you sure? Everything you’ve done so far suggests otherwise… But that’s not something Diffus would say. He was a man who fought only with his sword. Later, he expressed willingness to join the Demon Sword Return for the family, but he always revered the sword above all. Because we are sword bearers.”
So, I’ll show you the essence of a sword bearer.
Right after Jin’s words, Diffus suddenly felt his vision turn blindingly white.
What blocked his sight was Bradamante’s blade.
Accustomed to the speed of thunder energy, his reaction was delayed.
Surpassing lightning speed, Jin unleashed Runcandel’s ultimate technique.
Runcandel Sixth Ultimate Technique: Lightning Flash.
The decisive move Jin had used on the mission to assassinate Barton alongside Diffus. He chose that sword to start.
Diffus hurriedly moved, spreading his wings.
But where he flew up, another Runcandel ultimate technique was already falling.
Runcandel Third Ultimate Technique: Meteor Shower.
There was nowhere to hide.
Hundreds of sword energies now covered the sky, slicing through clouds and blurring Diffus’s vision.
The sudden acceleration of the battle was unsettling, but so far, Diffus could still counter.
Sending the missed attacks back to Ricarton Castle was also possible.
But Jin had already made it clear that Diffus wouldn’t have that luxury.
That meant Jin had learned all of Diffus’s patterns and counters during the scouting phase.
Jin was confident he could press the attack relentlessly, leaving no room for Diffus to clean up missed strikes or catch his breath.
As Diffus deflected five streams of meteor showers and tried to send the deflected attacks back to Ricarton, Jin twisted his body along the distorted trajectory of the meteor shower and unleashed a new sword technique.
Overlord Sword First Ultimate Technique: Meteor Breaker.
This time, sword energy surged from the ground, opposite to the meteor shower in the sky.
Unlike the real Overlord Sword wielded by Ron, the sword energy didn’t shine gray, but Jin had adapted the sword he saw in the Sword Emperor’s War into Runcandel style, with help from the half-possessed warrior during training in Lapra Rosa.
As the meteor shower and meteor breaker intertwined around Diffus, one of his wings was torn.
‘Regeneration will take two seconds.’
No matter how fast, it was two seconds—the speed Jin had confirmed by tearing Diffus’s wings several times with the Possessed Warrior technique.
But Jin prepared the next sword even faster.
Runcandel Fifth Secret Technique: Lightspeed Thrust.
Aura surged wildly inside him, and juggling multiple ultimate techniques at once twisted his center of gravity, but Jin displayed monstrous strength, executing the lightspeed thrust slightly faster than two seconds.
The lightspeed thrust pierced through Diffus’s remaining wing.
‘Aura reflux will calm in four seconds.’
The reflux had triggered. As Diffus fell and regained his stance, deflecting the remaining sword energies of the meteor shower, Jin calmed the reflux and closed the distance.
Diffus was too busy defending to clean up Jin’s missed strikes.
When four seconds passed, the distance between them was twenty steps.
Jin’s reflux had completely stopped, and Diffus’s wing regeneration was nearly complete.
‘By now, he must realize that no matter what he does, my sword is faster than his regeneration.’
As expected, instead of trying to create distance, Diffus charged forward, swinging Volgar.
The massive blade, soaked in chaos, was falling toward Jin’s head.
But Jin switched swords and looked ahead—this was the end of the fight.
‘He’s probably just thinking he doesn’t have enough time to activate Eternalization.’
That was true. Even for Jin, in such a frantic battle, he couldn’t fully unleash Eternalization.
So he had to gain small advantages each time, accumulating moments to activate it.
He had to push Diffus back step by step until only a cliff remained behind him.
Runcandel First Ultimate Technique: Sky Shatter.
The family’s greatest ultimate technique, left behind by Jorden.
As Bradamante plunged into the ground, Diffus, charging forward, realized too late what sword technique it was.
“Sharp eyes, must be thanks to Diffus’s memories.”
But it was too late.
The aura that had already seeped underground exploded, creating a massive sword energy that split the earth and sky in two.
Diffus hastily moved sideways, but the sword energy of Sky Shatter rose there as well.
Even the aura fragments left by the meteor shower and meteor breaker in the sky were about to be shattered by Sky Shatter.
[Argh…!]
Fragments of the shattered meteor shower pierced through Dipus’s back, and the fierce energy of the Shattering Sky Sword surged violently upward, tearing through the ground as it ascended.
One of those fragments swallowed Dipus’s left wing and left arm whole, just as they were regenerating.
If it had been the right arm that held Volgar, the battle would have ended right then and there.
But the fight dragged on, even though the outcome had been decided long ago.
Jin was certain of that. Dipus had entered the battle already resigned to defeat.
Knowing he would lose, Dipus still pulled Jin into a one-on-one duel on the battlefield.
To buy time for Rosa to move.
And to drive Jin into despair.
Jin clenched his teeth, contemplating that very intention.
“So, if in the end I’m the one who kills you… do you think I’ll fall into despair? Don’t be mistaken, Horseman of the Blight. Mary and I have already prepared ourselves to send Dipus on his way.”
With that, Jin’s eyes snapped open wide as he finished the Shattering Sky Sword’s strike and swung his blade at Dipus once more.