Translator: CinderTL
Though Roland's strike had failed to slay the Rust Knight, the sheer power he had unleashed left the surrounding knights unable to hide the horror in their eyes.
They exchanged uncertain glances, their hushed whispers muffled by their visors.
"This... what's with this guy's strength?"
"A mere Veilbreaker... His brute force is practically on par with the monsters in Howling Canyon!"
"His sword... I felt the ground shake from that last blow..."
Seeing his men falter, their momentum stalled by the enemy's single strike, Hagrid felt his pride wounded.
He drove his roaring mana vehicle forward a few paces, his four arms flailing in fury as his shrill voice screeched with rebuke and command.
"What are you all standing around for, you useless filth?! He's just one man! Charge him all at once! Hack him to pieces with your blades!"
The chief's roar dispelled the knights' momentary hesitation.
They renewed their battle cries, like whipped beasts, and once again swung their strange weapons, launching a more frenzied assault on Roland from all sides.
In an instant, the deafening crashes of metal clashing against metal erupted in a continuous roar, like a colossal, invisible drum being struck.
Countless blades, wreathed in eerie green energy, sliced and thrust through the air, forming a lethal storm of steel.
Yet, at the eye of this storm, Roland stood as immovable as a mountain. The Solitary Bastion trait had quietly taken effect, allowing him to remain steadfast amidst the torrential onslaught.
The Radiant Moon Longsword in his hand became a silver wheel of light, precisely parrying, deflecting, and redirecting every strike.
In this brief but ferocious exchange, Roland's keen combat instincts quickly grasped the crucial truth.
Their strength far exceeds that of ordinary men, rivaling those who have just stepped onto the transcendent path. But their combat skills are crude and utterly lacking in finesse. All they rely on are those strange suits of armor and weapons that can conduct and amplify their power.
Clang!
He parried another heavy chop—the core of its hilt humming with power—and felt an impact that rivaled that of a seasoned transcendent professional. A cold glint flashed in Roland's eyes.
With a flick of his wrist, the Radiant Moon Longsword lunged forward like a viper, striking the chest of the knight before him with lightning speed.
The next instant, just as Hagrid had blocked Avril's arrows, a murky, spectral green energy field surged across the knight's chestplate, viscous as a swamp.
Vrumm!
The moment the Radiant Moon Sword's tip pierced the energy field, Roland felt the sword's power and speed be drastically weakened and absorbed, as if it had plunged into an invisible mire.
Ultimately, the razor-sharp tip only left a distinct white scratch and a faint indentation on the heavy chestplate, failing to pierce through.
But...
Faced with this eerie defense, Roland felt no panic. Instead, his brow arched slightly as he confirmed a certain hypothesis.
The force these armors can absorb and disperse isn't without a limit. That last strike caused the energy field's fluctuations to intensify noticeably...
Realizing this, Roland ceased holding back.
The dragon bloodline within his body erupted like a dormant volcano, pouring its boundless power into his arms. The Primal Core trembled faintly, supplying him with nearly infinite energy.
The Radiant Moon Longsword's originally restrained silver glow suddenly flared, faintly revealing a golden light sharp enough to tear through anything.
Meanwhile, outside the battle circle, Hagrid sat atop his mana vehicle, watching the fight with complete leisure.
One arm rested casually on the control lever, while the other reached into a storage compartment on the vehicle's side, retrieving a piece of greasy, unidentifiable jerky to chew on.
Seeing Roland "struggling" against his knights' onslaught, Hagrid let out a muffled, smug snicker from behind his visor.
"Hmph. I thought he'd be a real threat. Turns out he's just a punching bag with a bit of muscle," he mocked, his voice distorted by the helmet as he spoke to a trusted rider beside him.
"See that? Against the Rust Knight Order's iron tide, any Veilbreaker can do nothing but struggle in vain! His pitiful strength can't even scratch our armor. This is nothing but a boring performance."
At this, he even waved an arm, shouting taunts toward the battle circle.
"Hey, Veilbreaker! If you kneel now and surrender your ship, I might be merciful enough to leave you a whole corpse to nourish this wasteland!"
Hagrid seemed completely lost in the smug superiority of a cat playing with its prey, utterly oblivious to the longsword gleaming with a dangerous golden light at the center of the battlefield—and the sudden, icy killing intent in Roland's eyes.
What he had mistaken for a cornered beast's struggle was, in truth, a dragon measuring the thickness of its prey's shell.
And the measuring...
...was complete.
Decision made. Killing intent unleashed.
Facing the Rust Knights who were once again swarming him, Roland held nothing back.
A sharp glint flashed in his eyes as the traits of battle dance Shadow and Phantasmal Footwork converged for the first time in actual combat.
A knight roared, swinging a humming energy greatsword down at Roland's head. But Roland's body merely swayed slightly, slipping past the blade's edge by an almost impossible margin.
Phantasmal Footwork had taken effect.
In the wake of his dodge, two or three blurry, short-lived afterimages instantly materialized, each mimicking a different action—even feigning a block or a parry. This caused the attacker's judgment to falter for a split second.
And at the exact moment he successfully dodged, battle dance Shadow triggered.
At the spot where he had originally stood, a more solid afterimage, composed of turbulent battle intent and distorted light, quietly emerged.
"First one."
Roland's whisper was like a reaper's decree.
With a mere thought, he swapped places with the afterimage of battle intent several meters away, instantly appearing behind another knight who was charging toward Avril.
The Radiant Moon Longsword, surging with peak dragon force and brilliant golden light, sliced through the enemy's hastily raised eerie green energy field like a hot knife through butter.
With a sharp shink, it cleaved both man and armor in two! Blood and shattered metal components sprayed across the ground.
This spectral displacement and ruthless kill caused the surrounding knights' assault to falter.
"Nice work, Roland!"
Avril seized the opportunity. Instead of closing in on the melee, she gracefully maneuvered along the battlefield's edge, her longbow drawing and releasing in a continuous rhythm.
Her arrows weren't fired in direct lines but were instead aimed with cunning precision at the knights' armor joints and the eye sockets of their mutated mounts, effectively stalling the enemy's advance and creating more space for Roland to dodge and strike.
"Ooh! A poem for victory and destruction!"
Galvis had somehow leaped atop the mast, plucking the strings of the lute in his arms as high-pitched, mana-infused notes flowed forth.
This was no gentle buffing melody, but a sonic wave imbued with disruptive power.
The invisible ripples of sound swept across the battlefield, making the afterimages Roland left behind even more elusive and difficult to discern. At the same time, the Rust Knights felt a growing sense of agitation and confusion, their attack rhythms subtly falling into disarray.
Occasionally, he would pluck a sharp note that materialized into a tangible blast of energy, striking the helmet of a knight attempting to ambush him. Though not enough to cause serious injury, it was sufficient to leave the attacker dizzy and disoriented, interrupting their assault.
With his teammates' seamless coordination, Roland unleashed the full potential of his two new traits.
Like a phantom dancing on a blade's edge, every masterful dodge left behind a Phantasmal afterimage that distorted the enemy's vision. Each successful evasion also instantly generated a battle dance afterimage, which he could use for spatial leaps.
At times, he would leave a decoy in place while his true body materialized in the enemy's blind spot. At others, he would weave through the battlefield using his afterimages, leaving the knights who besieged him exhausted and their attacks repeatedly missing their mark.
Every flash of golden swordlight was followed by the fall of a Rust Knight.
The heavy armor, once a fortress, offered no protection against such absolute strength and surgical precision. It was either crushed by brute force or shattered where the energy field flickered and failed.
At the center of the battlefield, a flower of death bloomed—a macabre blossom of metal shards, torn flesh, and flickering afterimages.
Hagrid, perched on his mana vehicle, had stopped chewing his jerky. His four arms froze mid-air, his eyes wide with disbelief beneath his visor.
"No... impossible!" his voice shrieked, stripped of all arrogance by sheer terror. "What... what kind of monster is he?! Those shadows... what the hell are those shadows?!"
He watched in horror as his elite knights were reaped like straw by the ghostly human swordsman. The man's combat style—ignoring armor as if it weren't there, moving like a wraith—shattered everything Hagrid knew about war.
One moment, he had been savoring the smug superiority of a cat playing with a mouse. The next, he realized he was the one being toyed with.
A wave of sheer terror seized his heart.
Instinctively, he tried to maneuver his mana vehicle, desperate to flee this suddenly horrific battlefield.
But the very instant he spurred his mount, its engine roaring as he attempted to retreat...
...a frigid gaze locked onto him.
Roland, having swapped positions with an afterimage of battle intent, materialized just ahead and to his side.
The golden glow of the Radiant Moon Longsword had not yet fully faded, its tip dripping with viscous blood.
Roland didn't even spare a glance for the remaining knights scattered around. His gray eyes, cold as the harshest ice, pierced through space to fixate directly on Hagrid.
The next moment, Roland moved.
There was no roar, no warning. He simply lowered his center of gravity and shot forward like a bolt of lightning skimming the ground, his charge fueled by an unstoppable, resolute killing intent.
Hagrid's pupils constricted to pinpricks.
Yet, in the next heartbeat, as Roland bore down on him with peerless momentum, the terror that had nearly overflowed from Hagrid's eyes vanished without a trace, like smoke scattered by the wind.
In its place was a frenzied battle lust, a volatile mix of madness, fury, and a twisted, ecstatic thrill.
"Roar!"
A sound, utterly inhuman, exploded from beneath his sealed helmet, laced with the jarring screech of metal on metal.
Instead of retreating, he slammed the throttle of his mana vehicle to its absolute limit. The core's deep violet glow flared, becoming blinding and unstable, emitting a piercing hum like a dying beast. With a desperate resolve, he charged straight at Roland.
His four heavily armored arms now revealed their true, terrifying purpose.
Two arms gripped the vehicle's controls with crushing force to steady his course, while the other two lunged forward like predatory pythons.
One wielded a chainsword—similar in design to those used by his knights, but larger, its core pulsing with a more violent light. The other arm gripped a strange, short-barreled hand cannon, its muzzle flashing with a dangerous red glow.
"Die, Veilbreaker!"
The roar still trembled in the air as the strange hand cannon in his four-armed grip erupted in a destructive blast.
There were no arrows, no bullets.
A beam of dark red energy, as thick as a child's arm and intensely condensed, tore through the brief space between the two like a venomous fang thrust from the abyssal depths of hell.
In its wake, even the stagnant magical elements in the air were forcibly pushed aside and annihilated, leaving only a fleeting vacuum trail that hissed with a sound that made one's scalp tingle.
It left Roland almost no room to dodge with his exquisite footwork. The shadow of death seemed to expand rapidly along with that dark red light.
Boom!
The light exploded, instantly swallowing Roland's figure.
(End of the Chapter)
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