The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 247

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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 247. The Song of Vister (2)
Vister soldiers surged forward with bestial roars.
Those charging toward Dracula and the Vampire Legion were nothing short of madmen.
They hurled themselves forward drenched in blood.
They threw themselves into battle despite limping.
How could those fighting bare-handed without weapons be anything but mad?
“Meaningless thrashing!!”
Dracula gnashed his teeth.
For some reason, rage made his jaw tremble.
This was a battle where defeat was plainly inevitable.
Yet those Vister soldiers were charging forward with even greater fervor.
Unbroken even before the power of immortality.
Dracula ground his teeth in fury.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaa!!”
He roared and drew forth a whip of blood, lashing it about.
Dozens of blood spears erupted in rapid succession.
“Block it! Blo—aaack!”
“Gaahhh…!!”
The Whitewolf Territory soldiers fell one after another.
The Vampire Legion seized the opportunity and surged forward.
They tore through the fractured formation and ripped at the throats of the Vister soldiers.
Dracula gazed down upon the scene.
It was over.
The battle lines had long since collapsed.
The chain of command had crumbled.
There was no more of that mysterious red liquid that healed wounds like the power of immortality.
They no longer possessed the strength to continue fighting.
Those still resisting were merely those who had not yet fallen.
Remnants thrashing about, refusing to accept defeat.
Some might call that ‘fighting spirit,’ but to Dracula it was merely suffering that wasted time.
Surely that was true.
Surely it must be so….
“Hold on to the very end!!!”
They did not fall.
They had already surpassed the limits of their flesh.
Yet still they did not fall.
‘Are those creatures… truly human?’
Doubt crept into Dracula’s mind unbidden.
An arm had been severed.
They had sustained fatal wounds with ribs laid bare.
Nothing to possess. Nothing left to lose.
Yet why do they continue to rise?
How could mere mortals possibly display a tenacity that surpassed even the power of immortality itself?
Dracula’s fingers trembled.
His breathing grew ragged.
“Why…!”
Mere humans.
Nothing but soldiers.
“Why, exactly!!”
For the first time, a deep displeasure flickered across Dracula’s eyes.
“Why won’t you fall!!! Why won’t you just fall!!!”
Dracula’s cry echoed across the battlefield.
Within it lay no longer mere anger.
Confusion in the face of an incomprehensible phenomenon.
…And fear.
The displeasure he felt toward the Vister soldiers who refused to fall even before his immortal power was slowly transforming into ‘terror’ within his heart.
“Die! All of you! Tear yourselves to shreds and vanish!!”
A whip of blood painting the sky crimson.
A downpour of blood spears cascading down.
The earth split open and formations shattered into fragments.
Within a horrific landscape where screams never ceased.
~♪ ~♬ ~♩.
A song drifted through the air.
…A marching song, perhaps?
It was too quiet for a marching song.
There were no thunderous drums, no commanding shouts, no blaring horns.
The spirit of a military anthem was absent.
It was a meager, somehow deflated melody.
The pitch was uneven, wavering and discordant.
Yet still, that song carried across the battlefield and rang out.
The Vister soldiers joined in, one by one.
Those without arms.
Those who limped on broken legs.
Those whose faces were crushed and mangled.
Yet the Vister soldiers endured and stood.
As their voices layered upon one another in succession, the song at last began to find its rhythm.
-Beneath the Lawless City. We stood.
In the darkness of the Back Alley.
Within a cage from which there was no escape.
We believed the blood upon our hands was the price of survival.
Neither hatred nor resentment.
I believed it all was the price of survival.
-Beneath the snow-covered Snowy Mountain. I stood there.
The bitter cold wind.
The echoes of sins long past whispered through it.
Within this new life that began with hypocrisy.
When happiness built on lies became truth itself.
-Only then could I understand.
That mere survival was not everything.
The world is barren to the greedy.
Yet boundlessly abundant to those with true need.
-Now I comprehend it.
Our time draws to a close.
Yet with our final breath, we shall sing.
The blood we shed becomes the rivers of this land.
The bones we leave become the soil of this earth.
Beneath a sky stained crimson.
-We stand here now.
Neither perfect nor magnificent in form.
-We stand here.
Broken as we are, we shall stand until the very end.
* * *
How long had they fought?
How much time had passed?
The Battlefield reeked of blood.
The Vister soldiers who had held their ground began falling one by one.
Sarpedon gripped the axe handle with blood-soaked hands.
“Hold the line…! Maintain formation—*cough*!”
Blood spilled from his lips in a torrent.
It seemed.
Sarpedon’s time was coming as well.
Time to return to where he truly belonged.
‘…Just a little longer, just a bit more…!’
Sarpedon clung to his fading breath.
Dracula cut through the Battlefield, drawing near.
His crimson cloak billowed in the wind, and countless blood spears still hovered behind him, countless and terrible.
…It was overwhelming.
Yet Sarpedon did not release his axe.
“Aaaaaaaah!”
With his final strength, Sarpedon swung his axe toward Dracula.
“Impossible!”
Dracula hurled blood spears forward.
Dozens of blood spears tore through the air in an instant, pouring down like a tempest.
Kwaabooom─!!
An explosion of blood and dust intermingled.
Sarpedon was sent flying, rolling across the ground before coming to a stop.
“Ugh…hck…!”
My entire body felt shattered.
I remained pressed against the ground, gasping for breath.
My hand felt strangely empty.
My axe was gone.
I must have lost it while rolling across the ground.
Looking around, I spotted an axe that the Vampire Legion had used in their former lives.
Or rather, I couldn’t call it their former lives.
Vampires were creatures that never truly died.
In any case, an axe they’d used when they were human lay on the ground.
I gritted my teeth and reached out my arm.
The cold touch of metal.
Its performance was abysmal.
My axe was forged from Adrian’s fingernails and possessed the same performance as an Aura Blade.
But this axe was not.
Just a poorly-made axe crafted from ordinary steel.
“Still….”
It was an axe that could channel aura.
Adrian’s axe rejects aura.
But this one did not.
I gripped the axe tightly with my blood-soaked hand.
Shhaaaaaaa─!
Aura manifested with crystalline clarity.
Its light was a murky gray-black.
A dull, dark, filthy hue.
Unlike the brilliant aura that noble knights wielded.
It was the color of Sarpedon, trampled and soiled in the gutters.
“Do you truly believe you can defeat me with such power!”
Dracula opened his hand.
I swung my axe.
The murky gray-black aura tore through the blood curtain, rending deep into Dracula’s chest.
“Krraaaaaah!!”
Dracula’s scream erupted.
When aura is channeled, the weight of a wound transforms entirely.
A wound that lays bare the flesh becomes fatal when wrapped in aura.
That is the nature of aura’s power.
But for Dracula, the concept of a fatal wound did not exist.
“You bastard—!!”
Dracula gnashed his teeth and summoned a whip of blood.
His torn chest had already regenerated.
“Die!!”
The whip of blood and the ashen-black aura collided.
Sarpedon had only recently awakened to aura.
He was not yet accustomed to wielding it.
Yet Sarpedon’s axe demonstrated sufficient power against Dracula.
Crash! Bang! Boom!
Sarpedon’s axe neutralized Dracula’s attacks and defenses, and Dracula was clearly being pushed back.
Was it because of the enlightenment gained at the brink of death?
Was it because Sarpedon overwhelmed Dracula?
Neither was the reason.
Dracula was cowering in fear.
‘What good does it do if you’re afraid, you wretched creature.’
To possess such tremendous power and yet be intimidated by a mere criminal—it was pathetic.
“You should be ashamed.”
Sarpedon smiled and swung his axe.
Dracula retreated.
One more time.
Sarpedon squeezed every ounce of strength and swung his axe.
Thud!
Sarpedon’s axe bit deep into Dracula’s chest once more.
“Screeeeeeeeeech—!!!”
A scream erupted.
“How dare you…!!!”
Dracula’s lips convulsed.
Rage, confusion, fear.
Eyes swirling with tangled emotions fixed upon Sarpedon.
“How dare you defy me—!!”
Blood surged around him.
The bloodstream swelled and churned as if ready to burst.
Sarpedon swung his axe without hesitation.
In truth.
I had known from the beginning.
That I could never defeat Dracula.
Yet the reason I cannot release this axe is….
‘I’m not sure.’
Perhaps it was because I received a debt of gratitude I could never fully repay.
Or perhaps because I committed sins too great for this world.
Every swing of the axe sent blood spraying forth.
My arms grew heavy and sluggish.
My legs buckled as though sinking into the earth itself.
No matter how much strength I poured into my two hands gripping the axe handle.
My legs refused to obey my will and keep me standing.
“Not yet…! Just a little more…! Cough!”
…Only then did I realize the end was approaching.
Sarpedon’s knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground.
Sarpedon gasped for breath and lifted his head.
Dracula’s blood-red eyes gazed down upon Sarpedon.
There was no more fear.
Only a renewed sense of superiority was etched there.
Sarpedon let out a hollow laugh.
I had endured so much—my entire body torn asunder, coughing blood—yet persisted still.
And yet Dracula remained utterly unmarred, without a single wound.
‘…Damn it.’
We were never evenly matched to begin with.
This was truly a battle I could never win.
Sarpedon gazed up at the sky.
The night sky stained crimson with blood.
Yet within it, a single star still glimmered distantly.
How to describe it.
It resembled Adrian.
A beacon that guides another’s path even in a world obscured by blood—a light that refuses to be extinguished.
Though I would not be able to share the end with him.
‘For accepting us despite our worthlessness….’
For not casting us out as criminals.
For calling us human again, not garbage.
For allowing us to live a life and happiness far beyond what we deserved.
And for this.
For letting us dream such a magnificent dream.
‘I was truly… grateful.’
Sarpedon smiled, his face covered in blood.
The final path.
How fortunate to be able to smile.
Sarpedon closed his blood-stained eyes.
And then, with a soft scrape—!
…The sound announcing Sarpedon’s final moment echoed through the air.
A warm, viscous sensation trickled down the nape of my neck.
There was less pain than I had expected.
Only a strange, peculiar sensation remained.
A voice—someone’s cry—reached my ears.
Was it the voices of those Vister dogs?
Or was it a scream?
Perhaps I was hearing things that weren’t there.
“You’ve done well, Sarpedon.”
…An impossibly unbelievable hallucination.
Sarpedon opened his eyes.
A vision stained with blood.
On the ground lay not Sarpedon’s neck, but Dracula’s.

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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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