Chapter 55: Ice Cavalry
Yumesaki, watching the scene unfold through his Clairvoyance Magic, couldn't help but clap his hands in appreciation.
The move was genuinely impressive, instantly cornering Reinhard into a seemingly hopeless bottleneck. But in Yumesaki's eyes, expecting a trick like this to actually defeat Reinhard was, without a doubt, far too naive.
While many believed that Reinhard's overwhelming power stemmed entirely from the absurd number of Divine Protections layering his body, Yumesaki knew better. Even without a single blessing, Reinhard was by no means weak. The Divine Protections were merely the world's way of showing its love for him.
Even stripped of those blessings, Reinhard remained the Sword Saint. He was, by his very nature, a walking violation of the rules.
A massive roar echoed through the cavern.
The solid ice binding Reinhard's leg was violently blown apart by sheer physical force. At this point, Reinhard finally turned serious. Holding the Dragon Sword, he delivered a casual, singular slash.
The blade cut through the air with a sharp, deafening whistle, colliding heavily with the colossal ice lance encasing Esdeath's left arm. The raw, staggering power behind the blow instantly pulverized the massive structure into fine powder. It exploded into a cloud of sparkling frost that sprayed out in every direction.
The sight left Esdeath stunned. The frozen lance she had formed was no flimsy construct; it was incredibly durable, possessing a hardness that easily rivaled steel. Yet, it had been reduced to dust by a single swing of a sword.
*What on earth is that man's blade even made of?*
Before Esdeath could process the shock, Reinhard delivered a second strike, the blade sweeping toward her neck from the flank. The body of the sword vibrated against the air, producing a low hum, its speed so extreme that the edge left a ghostly afterimage under the dim light.
Within her manic excitement, Esdeath's pupils shrank. She didn't dodge—not because she didn't want to, but because she physically couldn't. The speed of the blade was simply too fast for her reflexes to track.
But Esdeath was not the type to sit still and accept death.
"Ice-Make: Shield!"
In the blink of an eye, she condensed a frozen barrier right at the side of her neck. It was only a palm's width thick, but she had compressed its density to the absolute limit, giving it a structural integrity far beyond steel.
A dull, heavy thud echoed through the chamber as the sword struck the barrier, shattering the ice shield into splinters in a fraction of a second. However, the impact managed to deflect the blade by a fraction of an inch, allowing it to graze past her shoulder instead, tearing a clean rip through her fabric.
Esdeath seized the brief window to leap backward, opening up the distance between them once more.
Her left shoulder was bleeding, her breathing was incredibly heavy, and her chest heaved violently. Her long blue hair, soaked in a mixture of sweat and melted frost, clung messily to her face and neck. Yet, she was still laughing—wilder and more manic than before.
"Strong... you're too strong... now *this* is the kind of prey I've been wanting to hunt!"
"This is the battle I've been looking for!"
"Come on, let's keep trying to kill each other!"
Esdeath slammed her left hand down onto the icy surface beneath her boots. That seemingly casual strike unleashed the entirety of the remaining Magic Power stored within her core.
In that exact instant, using her as the epicenter, a wave of absolute frost swept across the entire 30th floor of the Dungeon, instantly transforming the massive cavern into a pristine, blindingly white field of ice. The temperature within the vast chamber plummeted yet again, to the point where actual snowflakes began to condense out of thin air, drifting down in a soft rustle.
Reinhard sharply sensed the extreme danger attached to this technique, his expression shifting to one of absolute focus.
"Let me show you... my true 'army'!" Esdeath flexed her fingers, then sharply pulled her hand upward.
The frozen ground beneath their feet instantly fractured along clean, perfectly geometric lines. The lattice of cracks resembled the grid of a massive chessboard, dividing the entire icy plain into countless flawless squares.
Immediately after, those stone-hard blocks of ice began to rise into the air. The frozen masses collided, ground against one another, and fused together with a deafening rumble, sounding like a massive, industrial forging process carried out on a monumental scale.
Then, they stood up.
One, ten, a hundred, a thousand... what rose from the frozen plain was an entire army—completely silent, and radiating an overwhelming aura of death.
They were humanoid cavalry units, standing nearly three meters tall, forged entirely from deep blue solid ice that had been compressed to maximum density. Every line of their frozen forms exuded a brutal aesthetic designed solely for slaughter. Their torsos were protected by thick plate armor, sharp ice spikes jutted from their joints, and their heads were encased in pointed, full-face helms. The only defining feature on their faces was a pair of dim blue lights burning within their hollow eye sockets.
In their right hands, they gripped massive ice lances stretching over two meters long, the tips featuring three distinct blades that gleamed with a freezing, toxic light. Hundreds of these lances were raised in perfect unison, forming a dense forest of sharp points that radiated a pressure terrifying enough to freeze the blood of any living creature.
Outside the Dungeon, Yumesaki, who was watching everything via his Clairvoyance Magic from the surface, couldn't help but click his tongue. He hadn't expected Esdeath to be pushed into deploying this specific move so early in the fight.
The Ice Cavalry.
This was one of the anti-army abilities Esdeath had personally developed, famously utilized during the final battle at the Empire's Capital City. The Ice Cavalry consisted of centaur-like soldiers she manufactured from ice. Each unit possessed combat capabilities far exceeding an ordinary soldier, could automatically reassemble itself if shattered, and was fully capable of autonomous operation.
Back during the Capital battle, after accumulating vast amounts of power, she had manifested tens of thousands of these cavalry units to effectively compensate for the Empire's severe lack of military manpower. Furthermore, it was worth noting that this technique served as the prerequisite for her anti-country skill, Mahapadma, and the massive ice storms associated with it.
The legendary large-scale ice storm was actually created by releasing the massive amounts of energy stored within the Ice Cavalry over several days all at once, generating a blizzard wide enough to blanket nearly the entire Empire. The technique was primarily intended for mass destruction, proving devastatingly effective against standard armies and civilians.
Against truly powerful individuals, however, it was practically useless. Esdeath had originally designed the storm as a filtering mechanism to weed out anyone incapable of surviving an unsurvivable environment. Against an absolute master like Reinhard, it would be even less effective. Therefore, even if Esdeath had completely lost her mind, there was no way she would waste that massive blizzard technique on him. Besides, even if she wanted to try, Reinhard wouldn't give her the time.
"Kill."
Esdeath pointed a single finger forward, her voice as light as a whisper. Yet that exact whisper completely ignited the battlefield.
Hundreds of Ice Cavalry surged forward at the exact same moment. There were no battle cries, no thundering roars—only the uniform, perfectly synchronized thud of frozen hooves that sounded like thunder rolling across the earth. That silent, absolute obedience was far more chilling than any roar could ever be.
They converged from all four directions, lances lowered in a unified charge, forming a wall of steel with zero blind spots, intent on grinding the single red-haired figure into dust. The air tore open under the rush of hundreds of lance tips, their whistling combining into a symphony of death.
Standing at the absolute center of the encirclement, Reinhard faced the oncoming tide of frozen steel. In his brilliant blue eyes, there was no fear, no shock—only the absolute stillness of a perfectly calm lake.
Then, he drew his sword.
The sound of the blade clearing the scabbard cut cleanly through the thundering charge of the cavalry, echoing sharply throughout the underground chamber. The moment the steel was fully bared, an invisible, crushing aura diffused outward with a heavy boom, using him as the absolute center.
The first Ice Cavalry unit reached him, its massive lance carrying the full kinetic energy of its charge and physical weight as it thrust toward his chest like a battering ram. The force behind the attack was easily enough to pin a full-grown elephant to a stone wall.
Reinhard didn't bother to block.
He flipped his wrist, and the Dragon Sword Reid transformed into a streak of light completely invisible to the naked eye, tracing a flawless arc through the air. The blade swept out horizontally.
And then, Yumesaki saw a light.
It was a ring-shaped flash of sword energy that looked capable of cutting the entire Dungeon in half, expanding outward from Reinhard's position. There was no thunderous explosion—only a remarkably crisp sound, like glass shattering or ice cubes falling into a crystal chalice.
Then, everything fell into a dead, frozen silence.
The Ice Cavalry unit leading the charge, along with dozens of its comrades trailing directly behind it, froze instantly mid-motion. A faint, thin line appeared across their bodies, starting from the tip of their ice lances, cutting through their torsos, and extending all the way to their flanks.
A second later, dozens of these heavily armored cavalry units snapped clean in half at the waist. Their upper torsos separated from their lower bodies, crashing heavily onto the frozen ground with a loud rumble before shattering into a cloud of sparkling frost.
A single slash had completely broken the formation.
Watching the scene, Yumesaki couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. The strike was incredibly beautiful—exquisite to the absolute extreme. From the look of things, Reinhard was finally beginning to show a glimpse of his true depth.
The Ice Cavalry, however, knew nothing of fear.
Though the front rank had been obliterated in a single blow, the units behind them simply trampled over the scattered shards of their comrades to continue the charge, their momentum completely unchecked. More ice lances thrust out from all four directions, the density of the assault far exceeding what the naked eye could track, resembling a torrential downpour or a localized hurricane.
Reinhard didn't dodge, nor did he back away. He casually took his first step forward.
He walked directly into the forest of death formed by the ice lances. His figure looked remarkably small amidst the massive, countless forms of the Ice Cavalry, but that small frame suddenly moved with a lethal agility. His movements were fast to the absolute extreme, leaving behind a series of faint afterimages, making it look as though multiple Reinhards were fighting simultaneously.
As an ice lance came crashing down from above, he didn't even look up; he simply tilted his upper body slightly. The lance grazed past the tip of his nose and slammed into the ground, while the sword in his hand thrust outward in a reverse grip along the path of the weapon, piercing precisely into the cavalry unit's eye socket and snuffs out the dim blue light burning within.
As he pulled the blade free, he used the momentum to pivot, stepping one foot onto an incoming lance from another unit. He stomped the heavy weapon deep into the ground, using it as a springboard to vault into the air. In midair, he delivered three rapid slashes, sending three arcs of sword energy down like lightning strikes, cleaving three cavalry units waiting below clean in half from head to toe.
Landing, rolling, springing back to his feet, and executing a wide horizontal sweep.
The four movements were completed in a single breath. The legs of five surrounding cavalry units were cleanly severed at the same time, causing their massive forms to crash heavily to the ground.
More units immediately flooded the vacancy, their assault growing even more aggressive. They no longer relied on simple, straight thrusts, instead executing a highly coordinated tactical formation. Three units marched abreast, completely sealing off any room to dodge to the left, right, or above. Five units formed a group, shifting front to back to maintain an uninterrupted, wave-like assault. Other units stayed back, hurling their ice lances from a distance; the weapons fractured into dozens of smaller ice spikes in midair, raining down in a wide-area barrage.
This level of tactical precision was clearly being manual-controlled by Esdeath. Otherwise, the autonomous Ice Cavalry could never pull off such a sophisticated combined assault.
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