Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 136

—She didn’t just knock that massive thing away with a rebound strike—she even layered a delayed internal strike technique on top of it?

Even El-Cid clicked his figurative tongue in awe. To fling a Sand Worm weighing dozens of tons with a frame like Elahan’s, raw strength wasn’t enough.

She had fixed her stance with Heavy Body Technique, one of the applications of Aura, then gathered all her destructive force into a single point and detonated it in an instant. Without that, the recoil alone would have injured her—or crushed her flat.

A delayed internal strike? Leon asked.

—It’s the same category as the Void Shatter you mastered. The only difference is that this one manipulates impact instead of Aura.

So it’s a penetration skill focused on raw striking force.

—Exactly.

With that, Leon pulled his consciousness outward again. His Sand Worm had already closed in, practically within arm’s reach.

Perhaps triggered by the stench of its kin’s blood, the eyeless creature let out a horrid shriek and lunged. The pressure felt like an avalanche crashing down.

The immense mass of a worm-type monster was both weapon and shield. Its limbless, writhing body might look grotesque, but when it struck, it was like a living battering ram capable of breaking walls. Far too much power for any one man to endure.

Not that I need to take it head-on.

Leon didn’t take a single step back. He simply raised his sword to meet the charge.

He couldn’t swat it away like Elahan had. If smashing and breaking were a hammer’s role, then slashing and cleaving were the work of a sword. No matter how massive the target, if he split it before it touched him, that was enough.

With a hum, the Holy Sword blazed with golden light, and Elahan’s eyes went wide as she saw it.

“Ah...!” she mused in awe.

A warmth, a holy radiance. It was light that any clergy would revere without question.

The gore of the Sand Worm washed away from Leon’s armor, blade, skin, and hair. It was the purifying light, one of El-Cid’s inherent powers. In seconds, he was spotless. His sword gleamed entirely gold, searing the air with heat.

I can see it.

The dust cloud blinded Leon’s eyes, but the vibrations in the sand told him exactly where the beast was moving.

Three seconds. Two. One.

Now!

Leon snapped his eyes open and brought the sword down in a fierce arc.

“Heavenly Core First Form: Dubhe.”

Light surged forth, cleaving the world before him in two. The dense dust split apart, and the slash roared into the Sand Worm’s face.

It was the same blade of light that had ripped through drake scales. The worm’s hide was thick and rubbery, but it was still just a Sand Worm. It had no chance against Dubhe.

Its massive weight turned into a weapon against itself. Mortally wounded, the creature couldn’t stop its own charge and hurled itself headlong into the colossal golden blade. The light carved straight through, from its head down to its tail. It was a literal one-stroke bifurcation.

“Kye...eeegh...”

The worm split in two, slumping past Leon as dark green ichor spilled into the sand. A beast that ranked among the most troublesome of A-rank monsters was slain in a single blow.

The light wave didn’t stop there. It tore through the worm and even split a dune behind it in half before fading.

Leon exhaled, reflecting, Even using Grand Chariot at full scale, my breathing doesn’t falter. The Stigmata’s recovery aside, has my vessel itself expanded?

All martial disciplines, Aura included, shared common principles. Just as muscles must be trained, so must the meridians that channeled Aura. Just as martial forms required countless repetitions, Aura techniques had to be ingrained until they were second nature.

And the most fundamental of all was filling and then emptying. Like muscles breaking and recovering stronger, Aura was best cultivated by replenishing and draining it empty again.

El-Cid agreed, —The Grand Chariot’s immense drain and the Stigma of the Guardian’s recovery—together they create a synergy. In one sense, it’s the truest orthodox path. In another, it’s the most unorthodox of them all.

What are you saying?

—Your growth follows a rational principle, but the method itself is irrational.

Orthodoxy was called orthodox because everyone knew it, but almost no one could actually apply it as-is. Leon shouldn’t have been an exception, except that he was.

—Others might know it, but they can’t do what you do. Abuse a finishing skill like the Grand Chariot, and the meridians will tear apart from Aura being siphoned too fast. Deplete Aura too often, and the channels crack like parched earth, rupturing the pathways like a broken vessel.

Leon’s body, however, remained intact. The Holy Sword’s power healed his internal injuries instantly, while the Stigma of the Guardian prevented his meridians from ever rupturing. Training and recovery in one cycle—no wonder his growth was explosive.

So, this is cheating...?

—Call it individual difference. There was someone who recovered even faster without a Holy Sword or Stigmata.

Who?

—Me.

That’s cheating!

While Leon bickered with El-Cid, Elahan had approached and burst out, eyes shining, “As expected of you, my Hero!”

“Huh?”

“I had heard the stories, but to see with my own eyes that you can wield the swordsmanship of the great Rodrigo Caldias el Vivar! To witness the Grand Chariot itself—what an honor!”

She clasped his free hand with both of hers, eyes brimming with tears of awe. Even El-Cid faltered at such fervent reverence. He liked to boast when given the chance, but it was embarrassing to do so in front of someone who truly revered him.

—My disciple, you deal with this fan in my stead.

What?! Hey!

Ignoring Leon’s internal outburst, El-Cid sank back into the sword’s depths, leaving Leon alone before the starry-eyed saintess.

“The first light you used—it was the purifying light, wasn’t it? If it’s not too presumptuous, may I bask in it once? It felt like the Goddess’ grace itself, so bright and warm...”

Few were harder to handle than a clergy intoxicated with faith. Leon broke into a cold sweat as he tried to respond, but that was when a presence drew near. Karen, who had just reduced a Sand Worm to rags, approached with a grave expression and addressed them both.

“Something’s wrong.”

As an A-rank rogue with deep knowledge of monsters, Karen immediately sensed the discrepancy.

Elahan, startled back to her senses by those words, asked, “What do you mean?”

“Sand Worms don’t live in packs. When giant monsters gather in one place, their food runs out too quickly,” Karen explained.

If Sand Worms were pack creatures, their danger rating wouldn’t be A-rank—it would rise to A+. The difference between one and many was that great.

Karen then pointed to the ground with her finger and continued, “And it’s strange that some just passed us by. From the vibrations underfoot, at least four more were there, but even with the smell of their kin’s blood, they didn’t react. That means they weren’t here for us in the first place.”

“Then...!”

Leon’s eyes widened as he turned toward the direction the Sand Worms had come from. A reasonable suspicion clashed with an impossible possibility.

Karen confirmed his thought with a nod.

“Yeah. Something scared them off.”

The reason A-rank monsters had fled without looking back lay beyond that horizon. All three faces hardened.

“Are there monsters that strong in the desert?” Leon asked Karen.

“There’s the Antlion, rated S-rank. But it rarely clashes with Sand Worms. It sets its nest up in one place and stays, so the worms avoid it on their own.”

“If not monsters... then people?”

“Sand Worms aren’t worth much. They also wouldn’t run just because of humans unless it was a Master or a massive extermination force.”

“So, either way, it doesn’t make sense...”

Leon pondered. Their mission was, after all, to mediate the dispute in the Western Great Desert. Sand Worms acting strangely didn’t necessarily mean that another disaster was going to strike.

Karen and Elahan waited silently for his decision. Choosing the path forward was the Hero’s role.

After a chain of thought, Leon chose.

“We’ll follow the direction the Sand Worms came from.”

Unlike the recurring conflicts of the Great Desert, the worms’ panicked retreat was extraordinary. Ignoring it now might mean losing an important clue.

Leaving behind the three worm corpses, the party set off once more across the sands. On the horizon, a wavering mirage seemed to beckon them.

***

The desert and death were always closely related. After all, it was a land where not even weeds could sprout.

A single failed hunt meant even an eagle would fall and bleach to bone. The desert was merciless and cruel to life.

Countless had died fighting over the few oases, while men and monsters preyed upon each other in the endless cycle of survival. The Western Great Desert had always been that way, since time immemorial.

But now—

“Grrk... guh... gghhh...”

A man in a turban writhed on the sand. Outwardly, he bore no wounds, but his twisted face and bloodshot eyes screamed of agony.

No. Upon closer inspection, something writhed beneath his cracked, drought-parched skin.

“Gyaaaaaaah!”

At last, his death cry tore out, and his limp body collapsed. From his nostrils, his ears, his mouth—from every opening in his flesh, jet-black, ominous beetles crawled out.

Dozens, perhaps over a hundred. As they spilled free, his body shriveled into an empty husk of skin. It was a grotesque, horrifying sight.

The beetles converged like a black tide. The man was not the only victim.

All around lay corpses like his—shriveled to leather. Dozens of humans. Even the camels they had ridden were long since reduced to husks, consumed by beetles.

The swarm of black beetles piled together as if to build a tower, then compressed into a single form.

In a language that hinted at no linguistic era, “it” spoke.

“Not enough. Offer life. Sacrifice breath. Sacrifice flesh.”

Its entire body, black from head to toe, began to walk. An existence that denied death: Undead.

It lived on by devouring the lives of the living. Though it had forgotten even its name, its instinct drove it to hunt.

The monster that had consumed an entire caravan now moved again, following the scent of prey, unaware of the eyes watching from atop a dune.

Among those eyes, a figure in a sand-colored robe spoke.

“Brothers. The manifestation of the Dark Pharaoh has succeeded. He embodies the phenomenon of death itself, beyond the cursed Goddess’s gaze. With him, we shall drain the desert of life and drive the beasts of the steppe and the nomads who lost their homes into slaughter.”

The robed figures around him all spoke as one.

“I agree.”

“I agree.”

“I agree.”

The embodiment of pure malice by the name Evil Order revealed itself in the Western Great Desert. From beneath their hoods gleamed eyes twisted by black madness. They were not Chaos, nor Despair.

One of them pointed to the horizon as he said, “The goddess’ butcher draws near. I recommend dispersal.”

The others nodded immediately at the news of the approaching enemy number one of the Evil Order. For three hundred years, the Holy Iron Breaker had drenched itself in their blood.

Exolaw wielders were always a few steps ahead of other fighters of the same rank, but it was the opposite with a clergy. And to face the strongest saintess in history, those gathered here were far too few.

“I agree.”

“We scatter, each to a different path.”

“Brothers, may success be with you.”

They exchanged brief farewells. Then, as one, they held their breath and declared their malice toward the world.

Life shall end. Only destruction shall be eternal.

The Evil Order’s greatest sect—Destruction—had arrived in the Western Great Desert.