The God-Possessed Swordsmanship Genius - Chapter 17

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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 17 — The Swordsman Blessed by a God

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Squelch!

Blood spurted up from the split skull, spraying into the air.
With a single stroke, Allen cut through three Dorbi and spun his body around.
Thwack. A vampire bat that had dropped from the ceiling was skewered on his blade. He swung the sword with all his might, and the head of an earth-mermaid that had been going for his legs from the ground was severed.

Shwaaak!

Allen did not stop.
He sprinted through the monsters in the darkness, cutting them down again and again.
As he dodged a charging Bristle and stepped back with a retreating footwork,

Thwack!

a Dorbi that had been lunging at him from the other side slammed into the Bristle and was flung away.
The Bristle, having struck an unexpected target, whipped its head around.
That was the moment.

Shfft.
Kkwaeeek!

Allen’s sword, flying faster than light, pierced straight through the Bristle’s forehead.

“Brings back memories.”

Long ago.
After running away from his family, Allen had once gone to the Demon Realm in search of a transcendent being, hoping to find a way to grow stronger.
The Demon Realm was home to monsters far more numerous than these. The level of the creatures that appeared there was beyond comparison.
The memory of fighting for three days and nights in the darkness, unable to eat or sleep properly, was still vivid even now.

“Is there really no way for me to get stronger without mana?”

Of course, all of that training had come from the master he had met in the Demon Realm.
The transcendent of the Demon Realm, Sairon.
Allen had been honing himself under him for many long years.

“When you’ve got no teeth, you make do with your gums. Without mana, train your body and sharpen your senses.”
“I’ve kept up with the body training. But… how exactly does one sharpen the senses?”
“You already know.”

Upon hearing Allen’s concern, he spoke as though the question were far too obvious.

“You face a life-or-death crisis. In real combat.”

Boom.

In the pitch-black darkness, a heavy footstep echoed.
A Stone Shell Golem.
A mid-grade monster with skin as hard as rock and a massive body reaching three meters in height.
Its fist came crashing down right above Allen’s head.

Crash!

The floor shattered, and debris scattered in every direction. The Stone Shell Golem’s fist only smashed the useless ground.
In that brief moment, Allen had already climbed onto the stone golem’s arm.

Woong.

The Sword Qi gathered on Allen’s blade rippled in a blue glow.
Trailing light that pierced the darkness, Allen’s body shot toward the golem’s head.

First Form, Bora.

Shhk!

The Sword Qi cut through skin as hard as rock. The flesh hidden beneath it was sliced open, and blood gushed out.
Standing atop the golem’s severed head, Allen murmured.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a crisis, though?”

If Sairon had seen this, he probably would have said something like this.
What crisis was there in just dancing with a blade among a bunch of small fry?

Pat.

Leaping down from the stone golem, he plunged back into the crowd of monsters.
Chwaak!
Blood geysered from the split bodies of the monsters.

“Hff, hah.”

Allen, who had never stopped moving, found his breathing growing ragged little by little.
Right after the fight with the half-breed demon, he was now fighting over a hundred monsters without a moment’s rest.
Allen, catching his breath for a moment, scanned the darkness with his eyes.
The number of remaining monsters was roughly twenty.

‘That should be enough.’

Chik.

For the first time since the battle had begun, Allen’s legs came to a halt.
As he stood in place catching his breath, monsters charged at him from every direction.
The fastest of them, a Dorbi, thrust its fangs right in front of Allen’s face.
A distance of less than a hand’s width.
At the very moment the Dorbi was about to tear Allen’s head off whole.

Hwiiiii.

Allen’s sword stirred up a gust of wind.
The final form, pouring every last drop of remaining Mana into it.

Seongsin-ryu, Second Form.
Sonagi.

Phuwaaak!

The Dorbi that had bared its fangs right before his face burst apart into pieces.
The monsters that had charged in alongside it were all sliced through at once and sent flying.
Chwaaaaak!
Monster blood surged up toward the dungeon’s ceiling, and fragments of monster corpses scattered in every direction.
Just as the form’s name suggested, monster blood came pouring down like a downpour.
The only place the blood did not fall was a small space centered on Allen.
It was the moment when every remaining monster was swept away all at once.

“Huff… haah.”

The moment he finished the final form, Allen let out a ragged breath.
Allen, utterly spent, sank down onto the floor.
A hollow sense of exhaustion crept in now that his mana had run dry. His breath came short from moving and swinging his sword without pause.
Still, he didn’t feel bad at all.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
He found himself laughing.
It was the first real fight he’d had since regressing.
Still sitting on the floor, grinning from ear to ear, Allen shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Awesome!”

…ill you, …ill you, …ou, ou, ou…

Allen’s voice echoed back at him again and again through the cave.
Then, as though celebrating his victory, the torch that had gone out flared back to life.
Whoosh, the cave was bathed in light once more. At the same time, the corpses of the monsters lying on the ground and the pools of their blood scattered, crumbling into black ash.
Amid the drifting ash, Allen smiled with satisfaction.

‘Only the second stage, huh.’

The swordsmanship Allen had mastered was Seongsin-ryu.
Only the direct descendants of the Bishuken could learn it, the same swordsmanship his father wielded.
If you lined up all the swordsmanship techniques scattered across the continent like stars, the one standing at the very front would be Seongsin-ryu.

Allen’s current realm was the second stage.
It was a level he had reached naturally, by making the mana that had been sleeping inside his body his own.
Of course, it was a remarkable realm, beyond all comparison with the past.
During the years he’d been bound by the Curse of the Vile Demon, he couldn’t use a single technique that relied on mana, and even raising his realm had been out of the question.

‘So Father mastered this?’

Among all the Bishuken family heads throughout history, only a handful had mastered Seongsin-ryu.
And without exception, every swordsman who had mastered Seongsin-ryu, Axion Bishuken included, had ascended to the Continent’s Foremost Swordsman.
To think that in my previous life I learned a technique like this and never once put it to use.
It was like hanging diamonds, not pearls, around a pig’s neck.

But things were different now.
I’m only at the second stage, but I can already unleash new forms.
As my realm rises and I learn more forms, I’ll surely grow stronger and stronger.

“Hngh.”

Having finished savoring the afterglow, Allen rose to his feet once more.
Was it because his mana had run dry?
His craving for the elixir felt sharper than ever.
On top of that, knowing there was another fragment behind that iron door, he couldn’t bring himself to sit still.

‘It’s definitely in there.’

As he approached the door, Allen’s heart pounded even harder.
It was much the same feeling he’d had when he found the fragment at the family estate.
The only difference was that his reaction wasn’t as intense as it had been then.

Allen pushed the iron door with his hand and threw it wide open.
When he first opened it, the inside had been pitch black, but the moment the door swung open, lights flickered on along both sides of the ceiling.
It seemed the chamber had been designed to illuminate itself automatically whenever someone stepped inside.

Whoosh.

“……Ah.”

Allen let out a quiet admiring breath at the sight before him.
It wasn’t a large space.
Behind the iron door stood yet another altar.
Various kinds of artifacts were neatly arranged on either side of it.
Gold coins and gems lay scattered across the floor, and everything glimmered faintly in the torchlight.
Even Allen, who rarely startled at anything, found himself taken aback by the scene.

‘More than I was told.’

It was far more treasure than the rumors had suggested.
He had come for the Star Flower, but the other artifacts were no small matter either.
Above all, what he liked was the thoughtfulness of whoever had built this place.
In a corner of the altar, on the right side, sat a small pouch.
To the eye, it was nothing more than an old leather bag. Yet a faint trace of mana drifted from its opening.

Allen bent his head and picked up the pouch.
It was light, as though nothing were inside.
But when he opened the mouth of the bag, its interior bore no relation to its exterior size. He could reach in up to his arm without touching the bottom.

‘A Spatial Expansion Pouch.’

A magical artifact needed for carrying bulky, heavy objects.
Its value was beyond comparison with other artifacts.
Even the Kuin Family, a magic-wielding house rivaling Bishuken, treated spatial pouches as something precious.

Of course, however rare a spatial pouch might be, it was not the first priority here.
Allen raised his head and surveyed the top of the altar.
Treasure was fine, but what Allen was searching for in this place was something else.
A single small chest atop the altar.

‘The Star Flower.’

Inside that chest lay the Star Flower, the very reason Allen had come here.
Had it been any other day, he would have opened that chest at once and claimed the Star Flower.
An elixir of the Star Flower’s caliber would grant an enormous surge of mana the instant it was consumed.
But in this moment, what first caught Allen’s attention was not the Star Flower.

‘That’s it.’

The chest that held the Star Flower.
Embedded right in its center was a small red orb.
Allen reached out and pried the orb free from the chest.
The moment he held the faintly shimmering orb in his palm, his heart began to pound harder and harder.

‘It’s much smaller.’

The third fragment he had found was far smaller than the ones he already knew.
The orb he had taken from the Demon King was the size of a candy. The fragment in the family vault was a bit smaller than that, about the size of a fingernail.
And this fragment was only about thirty percent the size of the one in the family vault.

‘The fragment in the family vault was the third, and this one is the eleventh. Could it be that the higher the number, the smaller the fragment becomes?’

It might have been mere coincidence, but the possibility was there. In fact, his heart responded even more weakly than it had when he faced the fragment in the family vault.
The fragment caught Allen’s eye.
Treasures lay strewn all around, the Star Flower among them, yet Allen could see only the fragment.
So much so that he began to wonder whether he had come here for the Star Flower at all.

‘Maybe I came back to find this very thing.’

I’d been turning it over and over.
Why on earth had I come back to the past?
What was the question mark, and what purpose had it served in sending me back? And why had the demons hunted these fragments so relentlessly?
No matter how I turned it over, I couldn’t find an answer.
The only way to find that answer was to gather the fragments, just as the demons had.

And once I found them, what then? Was simply collecting them enough?
No.

‘That’s not nearly enough.’

Even now, I wake from sleep and think of it.
What the Demon King was.
Even if I mastered Seongsin-ryu to its full extent, could I surpass him? And if so, why had my father failed to surpass him?
There was no way to surpass him through ordinary means.
And I had already finished agonizing over that question.

Shk.

Allen brought the hand that had picked up the fragment to his mouth.

There was no reason to hesitate.
After all, the reason I was standing here at all was that I had swallowed this strange, unidentified orb.

Gulp.

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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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