The Swords I Raised Are Too Strong - Chapter 45

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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 45. Awakening (2)
“A―men.”
The Grand Canyon.
Now called a Church.
Jesus gazed upon the cross with reverent composure, his prayer flowing like a whispered incantation.
Even the one true living God sometimes finds himself yearning for someone to lean upon.
Zzzziiing――.
He contemplated while praying.
And in doing so, he fortified his divine authority further still.
Jesus’s power—suppressing Gates, healing injuries and afflictions, invigorating the vitality of the living.
He sought to add new functions to the authority that protected great America.
“I, Jesus Christ, command this.”
If there exist upon this land those who worship evil,
I shall inscribe upon their foreheads a celestial mark, that all mankind may recognize them.
“I, Jesus Christ, command this.”
Should the hunters—knights of holy war dwelling upon American soil—harbor the power of ‘Corruption’,
I shall strip that power from them.
Cast them into the abyss to suffer through eternity.
“Shin Si-woo, what exactly have you shown me?”
The world Jesus had known transformed entirely.
Each person remained within their own nation, cultivating hunter strength, conquering Gates, and obtaining mysteries to purify the earth—such was the world Jesus had understood.
Yet now, beings called Demon Worshippers had revealed themselves.
Even F-rank hunters, upon corruption, were forced to manifest their power in reality――.
But even that was merely the smallest harbinger.
‘The vessel of the Demon King, the Black Gate, and―.’
Matters concerning other nations.
‘National self-interest’ born from the Gate crisis.
It sounded callous in words, but America truly lacked the capacity.
Despite my existence.
‘Canada.’
The calamity of necromancy that began in Canada.
It started with the sudden emergence of undead lands.
The dead appeared abruptly, and the earth was defiled.
Yet no Gate manifested.
They eroded Canada, expanding the territory of darkness, until one day they reached a critical threshold.
And――.
‘The Gate simply overlaid itself upon reality.’
A portion of Canada transformed into the Necropolis.
The land of the dead, the sanctuary of the undead.
A breeding ground of death where the deceased claim the living, a horrific world where the living suffer through eons.
Jesus erased them.
With their disappearance, I restored the fractured nation and returned the people’s worn spirits to wholeness.
‘Now, New York.’
Had it been before meeting Shin Si-woo, I would not have grasped the cause of these phenomena so clearly.
Monsters without Gates are the harbingers of the Black Gate.
Even without me, someone might discover this truth given years of observation, but….
‘Half of humanity would have vanished.’
I was certain of it.
If time were given for this to be statistically confirmed and proven, Earth would already be beyond salvation.
In that context, I focused on the anomalies occurring in New York.
“I never imagined the Demon Worshippers would establish a foothold in America….”
Yet I cannot act recklessly.
Pitiful lambs unwillingly burdened with [evil] by others.
Even I have not yet defined how to handle such beings.
My lips trembled.
“I, Jesus Christ….”
I would shelter them.
Yet the words would not leave my mouth.
Because I questioned whether sheltering them was truly just.
“….”
My words ceased.
A golden cross materialized above my dark pupils.
My eyes began to trace the future, the past, or perhaps the remnants of other worlds.
Awakening and corruption.
Gates and reality.
Something tainting Earth.
I am divine.
Yet still, I fell silent.
‘Humanity is….’
In a moment that was but an instant, yet eternal, I contemplated countless possibilities.
I maintained the transcendent state of time perception that Shin Si-woo experiences when drawing his blade.
And still, I reached no conclusion.
‘…Where must I turn?’
The greatest concern was awakening itself.
* * *
What is the world?
An arrogant yet grandiose question.
Anyone can answer easily, yet arriving at a truly proper answer is difficult.
However, all of my blades can provide a clear answer to this question.
Without the slightest hesitation.
“The world is but my banquet hall—.”
Iris Ruzbella devoured the world.
“A life where one must abandon everything for blind salvation.”
Yulia Lanestia cast aside herself and saved the world.
“A journey that discards the trivial and advances toward the sword’s edge.”
For Reinhardt Euclid, the world was a path of cultivation.
Thus, the world as defined by my Swords was somewhat simple and willful.
Yet because my Swords upheld their convictions, it became defined as such.
‘I still do not know.’
Shameful as it is to admit, I, Shin Si-woo, the master of such transcendent beings, have yet to arrive at a clear answer about this world.
⦗A world ruled by iron and hammer.⦘
Even as Muratan in my hand defines the world so vividly.
Clang———!!!
I brought down the flat of my blade like a hammer against the colossal tree before me.
As the hammer moved, the world resonated, and the place called The Void began to twist grotesquely.
A tree so immense that human eyes could not contain it.
Yet thanks to becoming one with a transcendent blade, I could perceive the remnants of the World Tree with absolute clarity.
[The ■■ of the Fallen World Tree.]
The fate of the World Tree I had witnessed countless times within the endlessly repeating world of [Sword Cultivation].
A symbol of nature corrupted, withered, and defiled.
The mother of terrible monsters that brought indiscriminate death.
And….
‘A human-made calamity.’
The Fallen World Tree was a disaster artificially created by mankind.
The World Tree was nature itself.
Thus it had always been arrogant and aloof, regarding itself as ephemeral while protecting nature, rejecting all humans.
Such a being could never fall of its own accord.
Someone had defiled and corrupted it, causing its fall.
Clang————!!!
With each swing of my blade, the tree of unfathomable size trembled ceaselessly.
From within it, things that had once been human flesh began to be ejected outward one by one.
This is not swordsmanship.
Muratan’s blade possesses no techniques or skills of any kind.
‘Obsession.’
The desire to filter out impurities and seek purer iron.
Proving to the world that Muratan himself is a blacksmith who wields the blade.
And Muratan is already a proven existence in itself.
Rumble——.
With a thunderous sound, the outer shell of the black tree began to crumble.
All traces of what had been human on the bark scattered, and the inner flesh of the World Tree was laid bare.
Flesh corrupted and stained crimson.
Red and blue threads flowed ceaselessly through the interior, supplying something to the World Tree.
And the truth of it far exceeded my expectations.
‘Converging into one?’
I realized that all the blue threads carrying the force of life originated from a single man.
That man who had been muttering to himself from the beginning and even now.
He appeared to be an extremely old elder, yet his face seemed strangely familiar.
“…If you’ve come from outside…to rescue us….”
He continued muttering alone.
Separated from the World Tree.
Cradling countless blue veins connected to his body.
I listened intently.
“…A massive…rectangular…structure….”
Slowly, but clearly.
He was reciting what he wished to say.
“…Please…find it….”
Find the colossal structure and rescue the people contained within it.
But here’s the thing.
Aside from me and that man, everyone here is dead.
As I tilted my head in confusion.
Muratan spoke.
⦗Hoo—! A contractor of the evil god who has devoured 170,000 lives, no less.⦘
He was saying that 170,000 people were alive inside that man’s body.
⦗Truly a bizarre human.⦘
And it doesn’t end there.
There’s more.
* * *
Crash———!!!
Crash———!!!
Crash———!!!
Dismantling the World Tree took three seconds.
I fractured my transcendent perception and swung the hammer dozens of times.
Crushing the tree itself would take just one second—a blow or two at most—but separating the people clinging to it required far more effort.
If these were truly dead citizens, I should have at least collected their remains.
‘This isn’t the true World Tree.’
After separating all the human forms from the massive pillar, what remained was a single sapling, blackened and withered.
[Fragment of the Fallen World Tree].
Merely a fragment.
It was only slightly taller than I was.
Of the human forms that had fallen from the World Tree, all but one were corpses.
Someone already dead.
But….
⦗So what are you thinking, Sword Master?⦘
At Muratan’s question, I gazed upon the man before me.
Jeolla Man, a public relations official for the Jeolla Province Public Relations Department.
His name was Kim Jun—the sole person who had revealed this bizarre phenomenon to the outside world.
His form was difficult to discern, yet his muttering allowed me to recognize his identity.
He continued to murmur to himself, his pupils devoid of focus.
“Ah, there are still… survivors….”
That was what tormented me.
‘What in the world happened here?’
This abnormality could not be explained by merely a corrupted World Tree.
His skin, darkening to an ashen hue, clearly proved he was a ‘Demon’s Contractor’.
Yes, a Contractor.
A being of an entirely different dimension from the rabble who merely worship.
‘A transaction conducted between equals.’
To have acquired the qualification to make a contract meant the Demon treated him as an equivalent position.
Then, why?
⦗It’s mixed.⦘
That answer came from Muratan.
Though I too possessed the craftsman’s eye in my transcendent state, I had never grown accustomed to wielding such ‘sight’.
Muratan’s eyes allowed him to perceive the world in countless overlapping layers, penetrating to profound depths.
Brilliantly iridescent, yet deep and dark.
Such a vision where all of it coexisted was difficult to fathom even with a transcendent body.
⦗Earth’s peculiar power and the marks of a Demon’s contract are intertwined.⦘
Demon Worshippers venerate the Demon and offer something in return.
An Awakened becoming a Demon Worshipper is also achieved by offering ‘tribute’.
However, a [Contractor] can even be a non-Awakened.
‘There have been cases where a king of a nation contracts using his own people as the price.’
In [Sword Cultivation], there was even a case where a king with meager martial prowess sacrificed his own citizens as the price of the contract and obtained tremendous power.
This meant that Kim Jun before my eyes had similarly made some transaction, offering the 170,000 citizens within his body as the price.
⦗You always demanded decisiveness from me, yet you think quite deeply, Sword Master.⦘
Another second had elapsed.
Muratan’s manifestation time was [5/100]—five seconds.
By orthodox standards, the proper course was to eliminate this Demon’s Contractor called ‘Kim Jun’.
Yet the weight of 170,000 remained with me.
I could do it.
“Separation.”
A word I would never have demanded of my Swords.
I spoke it within my own world.
Only now does the weight of this moment truly press down upon me.
⦗Kuhaha! Sword Master—. Time has passed.⦘
And Muratan simply watched over me in silence for the remaining duration.
Had he wielded his power, he could have stripped the [Mark of Contract] from Kim Jun in less than a second.
Yet he merely observed.
‘Perhaps….’
It was never his intention to mock me.
The [Sword Cultivation] world was a barren realm where only the resolute could survive.
Those who failed would see their swords perish.
Back then, my swords had not yet transcended.
“Swords, my strength was simply insufficient.”
They understood this well.
But….
I now possessed swords that had transcended.
They would never need to make such agonizing choices born of weakness.
And Muratan, that infuriatingly disobedient blade, even now endures the [Sword Master’s Dominion] and madly resists my commands.
“I have a way forward.”
He cannot truly fail to understand my will.
His dream, his world.
They were realized through me, after all.
Within that vast cognition, Muratan began to fade.
In the instant approaching five seconds.
Kuguguguung—————.
Muratan’s will struck the earth.
Crack—.
The black sapling was crushed instantly, leaving not even a trace as it vanished.
Only then could I truly see the man before me.
“Survive… please….”
Kim Jun, seen through my pure gaze untainted by anything else.
His faint voice was poignant, and within it lay a sincere plea.
Please, save us.
‘So contractors are not necessarily evil.’
Those who revere evil always exceed our expectations.
They bind children to evil gods as proxies, or they forcibly create Demon Worshippers by holding their families’ lives as collateral.
‘This will be the same.’
I am certain of it.
For in the moment of transcendence, I glimpsed a faint spark within Kim Jun’s heart.
That spark was terribly faint, yet it remained remarkably steadfast.
And so I drew closer to him.
⦗Sword Master, we shall bear witness to your choice here.⦘
The Swords whispered.
I nodded calmly.
I have a way to resolve this crisis.
[Saengsagwi]
A Demon born from the power of necessary life and necessary death.
And the Aga Sword with its characteristic ability to cleave through time and space.
‘If I combine these two….’
I could extract the survivors dwelling within his body to the outside.

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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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