Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 201

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 201.
Choose the Dawn (13)
I drew my sword. Having come this far, I had no desire to see blood spilled. Yet if they attacked, I would have to cut them down as I had the puppets.
Grrrrr….
Yelp! Snap! Snap!
The sound resembled a dog’s bark, but something was different. These were unmistakably the ashen wolves that prowled the Winter Forest.
A handful of them I could dispatch with my skill, but a pack was another matter entirely.
Yet the enemy that bounded up from the hillside exceeded my expectations.
Snarl! Howl!
It resembled a wolf, certainly. But its body was more than twice the size of the largest wolf I had ever seen. It was a beast closer in stature to a horse than a wolf.
Its fur was a silvery-white tinged with ash. Others with dark blue-grey coats emerged behind it. Their legs and shoulders were so powerfully built that a mere brush against a man’s neck would shatter bone.
Did such wolves exist in this world?
I quickly reasoned it through. If this was indeed the place that Gitisi, the great sorcerer of Ganapoli, had glimpsed—or the world to which those unable to accept Winterer’s power had been cast—then every evil here would be manifold more wicked, manifold more cruel, and manifold more immense.
The beasts that swiftly surrounded the boy, who was barely a mouthful, snorted and sniffed as though they already savored victory. Was this the fate that awaited him—to be torn to shreds?
I suppressed my fear and wondered if I could hold them back by borrowing Winterer’s power.
There was no answer. But regardless, I could not die having come this far!
Thus, the moment the first wolf lunged, I cast aside my original blade and drew Winterer with its white edge.
My blade’s point pierced the space between the wolf’s eyes before its foreleg could reach me. I felt anew how Winterer’s edge cuts through any bone as easily as flesh, and I withdrew the blade and lowered my body.
The next wolf that rushed from behind, I turned and cut down.
The massive wolves were agile and powerful. Even as I wielded Winterer with terrifying speed, they evaded fatal blows, retreated, and regrouped to attack again.
When a wolf’s foreleg raked across my upper arm, I barely dodged, yet flesh was torn away and blood sprayed across the snow.
As with all wolves, the scent of blood made them more ferocious. Though I had cut down a dozen, the remaining dozens showed no sign of retreat.
It was the moment I felt a reddish light flickering beyond the endless tide of wolves. Glancing westward at the horizon, I noticed something the clouds had obscured moments before, and I froze.
This could not be a dream. I had clearly seen the moon rise moments ago, yet on the horizon hung a dying sun, pale and feeble, bleeding brass-colored light.
What manner of ominous sky was this, with both sun and moon risen simultaneously?
Winterer’s speed accelerated further. I clenched my teeth to maintain my senses.
The sword technique was undoubtedly mine. Yet the storm-like velocity and amplified sharpness belonged to Winterer. And the belligerence that, upon tasting wolf blood, drove me into their ranks as though possessed—that too was Winterer’s.
Soon everything would become one. I found myself hoping that everything would move faster still, so that even this slaughter would end quickly.
At last, piercing the final wolf’s throat amid the heap of corpses, my spirit was so exhausted that I nearly dropped the sword from my hand.
Silence fell.
Having arrived in this strange world only moments before, I had stained the snow with blood. It took a brief moment to reclaim myself, to remember who I was.
“Hah… hah….”
Breathing heavily with a vacant expression, I looked around to see more than forty massive wolf corpses piled like a hill. My body trembled uncontrollably.
I gazed down at Winterer. Its white, noble edge bore not a single drop of blood.
It was a weapon of unbearable strength. Yet holding it brought me neither joy nor relief.
As I surveyed the wolves’ corpses, a painful confusion seized me—were their fates not the same as my own?
But the silence did not last. As I sheathed Winterer and retrieved Nauplion’s blood-stained sword from among the wolf corpses, a new sound began—footsteps echoing from all directions.
I shook my head in thought. Cold sweat beaded on my brow and temples. If new enemies approached, what would I do now? Could I endure? Did no weak humans like myself survive in this place?
From the magnitude of that tremendous sound, it was….
A giant emerged from the mist—tall as a fir tree, with a body resembling a human yet massive and dark as an ancient oak. Deep vertical wrinkles scored its thick limbs.
There was no neck, only a low protuberance where a head should have been, and in its center sat a single enormous eye. No nose or mouth was visible.
The giant stood towering over the wolves’ corpses. As its flickering eye swept across the surroundings, I felt my spine turn to ice and every thought in my mind dissolve into blankness. Flight was impossible—I could barely move.
The giant dropped to the ground with a thunderous crash. Beneath its head, a mouth gaped open like a catfish’s maw. It began devouring the wolf carcasses with ravenous hunger.
“….”
Fortunately, the giant did not seem to have charged at me. I had to escape this place.
The wolf corpses scattered everywhere made it difficult to flee with minimal movement. I thought I was moving as stealthily as possible, but the giant—which had been tearing and crushing wolf bones and hide—suddenly widened its terrible eye.
There was no time to hesitate. The giant’s massive fist came crashing down directly before me.
Crash!
Seeing the wolf corpse splatter with blood and entrails nearly drove my mind to delirium. I barely dodged two more punches.
The giant seemed unable to perceive objects unless they moved. I barely concealed myself among the wolves, but as if mountains rose beyond mountains, three more identical giants appeared from the opposite direction.
I was trapped with no escape. No matter how poor the giants’ vision, there was no way to deceive the eyes of four of them.
The scent of blood from the wolf corpses had spread far, and soon creatures took to the sky as well—massive birds resembling ravens but with hooked beaks like talons. These birds were as large as the wolves from moments before, rivaling eagles.
I was surrounded. Left, right, all sides, and the sky above. If I remained here, I would become nothing more than food mixed among the wolf corpses.
Sure enough, a large raven dove at my head. With no other choice, I slashed through the air with my sword.
Whoosh!
The raven flew away unharmed. But soon three more attacked simultaneously.
It was a living hell. Blood pooling on all sides, a putrid stench, chunks of meat with steaming entrails exposed, giants devouring corpses and raptors thirsting for blood.
Standing alone in the midst of it all, I had to move without a moment to breathe. With every ounce of remaining strength, I thrust, slashed, twisted, and struck.
Fighting unfamiliar monsters was far more difficult than fighting humans, whose movements I had learned to predict through repeated encounters. And what I held in my hand was not Winterer, but Nauplion’s sword.
My cheeks still burned with the heat from the previous battle. I feared that if I drew Winterer again, I might lose myself entirely.
Epibiono came to mind. Be careful, the danger might be greater than expected? Was this merely danger? This situation was something only a genius mage like you could navigate!
As the worst situation drew closer, my hands grew faster and my blade more vicious.
Though I could not display the near-miraculous movements I showed when wielding Winterer, the killing intent already dwelling in my body surged and flowed through the blade. I knew this truth: the deeper I went, the more the oath would shatter.
But I also knew this was the only final method before death.
Screech!
In the air exhaling violet breath, raven feathers scattered like black snowflakes. They descended slowly, and finally the giants drew near.
Nauplion’s blade had already cut down countless enemies, and its edge had dulled. It seemed unlikely such a sword could pierce the giants’ thick hide.
There was only one choice left.
I brought the blade down and struck the foot of the nearest giant. Then I released the sword and rolled between its legs to escape. And I seized my final choice—Winterer.
The white blade reflected the sunlight on the horizon, burning crimson. There was a time when Yefnen had held Winterer beneath the sunset in just this way. With the resolve to succeed as I had then, I launched my first attack.
The sun was obscured.
“Ah….”
I watched the giant swinging its massive arm before me turn to ash in an instant. Or was it ash?
A light far more intense than the dimmed sun poured down from high in the sky. The giant spewed flames once, transformed into black charcoal fragments, and crumbled to the ground.
As I stepped back several paces, the same calamity descended upon the other creatures. A fireball containing a black nucleus scattered the flock of ravens at once, and shortly after, something like a long white afterimage swept horizontally across the air.
The next moment I saw hundreds of raven corpses, drenched in blood, fallen to the ground. The stench of burning assailed my nostrils unpleasantly.
A new presence had appeared. It seemed like a bird at first glance, but it moved too fast to observe clearly. More precisely, it was impossible to even perceive its movement.
This presence appeared and vanished across the sky where violet and orange light swirled, manifesting in another place and wielding its terrible weapon moment by moment.
Kuooooo!
The remaining giants cried out in resistance. But as a similar afterimage flashed past, they quickly lost their necks and arms, crumbling. Whether it was moving so fast that only afterimages were visible, or whether the afterimage itself was the weapon, remained unclear.
Yet one thing was certain: it severed the bones and flesh of those colossal giants as easily as it had the armored beetle, in a single, decisive stroke.
I couldn’t believe it. Not the overwhelming power it possessed, nor that it appeared as though summoned for my sake, annihilating my enemies, nor the safety that would follow once this battle ended. I couldn’t believe any of it.
The ravens’ piercing shrieks gradually diminished from a deafening cacophony to something quieter than chirping. Then silence descended. The only sound that remained was the distant dripping of blood.
Convinced that escape was futile, I looked upward. I had to see my opponent clearly. I couldn’t surrender my life to an enemy I didn’t even understand.
A presence hung suspended in the void.
“….”
My throat went dry. Wings…. They evoked the monster of Emera Lake, yet were fundamentally different. Though massive, they resembled those of a bird.
Four wings stretched from the spine, spanning the sky in a magnificent cross formation. As they rose once, I wondered—were they descending? Was it approaching….
In the span of a single blink, the figure stood before me.
Only upon its arrival did I perceive what the sky’s hue had concealed: the feathers were an unsettling deep crimson. Yet mysteriously, its form resembled a human. Its cold face shone as though radiating its own luminescence.
From neck to ankle, it was wrapped in what appeared to be white cloth like bandages, though much of its body remained exposed, making it seem unlike garments. Yet “cloth” was an imprecise description. In truth, it was a substance that moved ceaselessly like mist or smoke. I wondered if it might be part of its very body.
Its face could not be described as beautiful, nor as fierce, nor by any such conventional terms.
Though its contours were fundamentally similar to humans from the world I had known, it bore no trace of humanity whatsoever.
It spoke in a voice reminiscent of the metallic resonance of wind instruments.
“Winter’s Blade, the Master of Winterer has finally arrived.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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