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Chapter 73

Since almost all the people watching the duel were explorers, there were a few who had a discerning eye and could analyze the match.

“Is it possible to have such mastery over the sword at such a young age? I thought I had completely devoted myself to the sword, but I see now that I still have a long, long way to go.”

“I can’t tell what’s going on when I see Conrad swinging his sword, but I can’t even attempt to follow what Leonard is doing. And he makes it look so easy that I feel like even I could do it, but if I actually tried to copy him, it would only be a poor imitation.”

“I’ve heard people say that one’s mana cultivation Tier wasn’t everything, but I never thought I’d see someone shrink the gap with just their swordplay!”

Needless to say, the swordsmen who were dedicated to their training couldn’t take their eyes off Leonard. It didn’t matter that he was much younger or in a much lower Tier. In front of them was a fellow swordsman modeling what they should pursue.

“Hey! You said Conrad was guaranteed to win! You fucking scammers! You rigged it, didn’t you?!”

“Cancel it! Cancel my bet! Give me back my money! Hand it over!”

“Please please please...! O God, have mercy! I even bet my business license and my house deed!”

The people who had made bets simply based on Conrad’s reputation and the contestants’ Tiers were in hell.

There were those stomping their feet and declaring the duel a scam.

There were those demanding their money back, saying it would end in a draw.

There were those turning to a god in an era of nonbelievers.

There were those who couldn’t accept that a supposedly safe bet had gone downhill. They tried to assault Bermuda employees but were subdued by explorers and were helplessly dragged away.

But there was nowhere with a fouler mood than the secret area where some of the councilors were watching the fight.

“Councilor Pablo,” Gordon Haywood said coldly. “Your ability to gather information must also be rotten. First a child no one has ever heard of entered the ring instead of Marianne, and now look at what a miserable state the boy has put Conrad in after you praised him so much!”

“It’s not over yet,” Pablo responded. “Conrad hasn’t even used the drug I gave him. That youngster’s swordplay is indeed extraordinary, but skill becomes useless when there’s such a large difference in pure strength.”

***

In truth, the match had already been decided.

When a person lost an eye, the only way to immediately adapt was to attain the ability of Visualization to sense their surroundings without the use of sight.

“Gah!”

Conrad dodged another attack from Leonard and rolled onto the ground, clinging to his life. If he had tried to face the boy head-on instead of running away like this, he would already be dead. He was sure of it.

How did this happen? How? How does an expedition team on the verge of collapse have a monster like this?!

The magic sword that seemed like a highest-grade artifact was already powerful, but the beast’s true power lay in swordplay.

Conrad had thought that he could defeat anyone.

In close-quarters sword fights, he always found a way to win, and when danger arose, he either escaped or blocked it. That was the path he had always taken.

But now, his genius instincts were silent.

Nothing works against this bastard! If it goes on like this, I’ll die.

If Conrad hadn’t insisted on having a battle to the death and prohibited surrender, he would have immediately thrown up his hands and accepted defeat.

He had dug his own grave.

Conrad didn’t even notice how hard he was biting his lower lip. As he tasted blood, he had to turn his attention to the “drug” pulsing ominously inside him. The reason he hadn’t used it even after being cornered was that he felt a sense of danger on par with Leonard’s sword.

“Damn it all.” Conrad couldn’t choose between the two, but he couldn’t surrender to them either. He stared forward with his one remaining eye.

A god of death was approaching him step by step, almost leisurely.

Leonard met his gaze and thought, Looks like his innate talent is all he has. In a matter of minutes, he’s already created the same amount of distance as when we started, but it’s a waste of time to play around with him.

Either way, the end result wouldn’t change.

Conrad was going to die.

He would pay with his life for all the karma he had accumulated through his evil deeds.

Clang!

Leonard suddenly dashed forward, making a forward slash. Conrad narrowly managed to block his blade with his own before being pushed half a step back.

As the two swords pushed against each other, Conrad and Leonard fell into a deadlock. It could very easily become a battle of strength, but Conrad had already been thrown to the ground once, and he had no intention of trying again. Therefore, he released his two-handed grip, pulled his left hand back, and swung his fist.

Conrad was also a genius in hand-to-hand combat. Even though he had made a fist from a poor stance, it still cut through the air and made a sharp whistling.

“You couldn’t hit a fly with that punch.”

Leonard simply caught his fist and looked at him as if he were pathetic. Using hand-to-hand combat even during a sword fight was a very common sight in matches back in murim. A swordsman was simply someone who wielded a sword, not someone who only wielded a sword.

Leonard twisted Conrad’s fist, making the entire left arm rotate.

“Argh!”

A searing pain shot up from the wrist to the elbow, making it feel as if his muscles would snap. Conrad panicked and immediately tried to free his hand, but Leonard would never allow him to retreat. The boy took a step forward and pummeled him four times.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Leonard was using the Five Elements Consecutive Fists: Four Splitting Needles. Each strike felt like a stab of a needle. He broke Conrad’s ribs, and the force of his strikes ripped his insides apart. As soon as Leonard finished, blood spurted from his opponent’s nose and lips.

“Gah! Cough! Cough!”

It was a deadly blow.

The boy raised his sword to put him out of his misery, but Conrad suddenly took a big leap back.

What?

Leonard sensed that Conrad had suddenly become several times more dangerous. Before he could figure out the cause, Conrad began to laugh like a madman with bloodstained lips.

“Ha. Ha. Hahaha! Hahahahaha!”

Even his one remaining eye was covered in dark blood, but he fixed his eyes on Leonard nonetheless.

“It broke! Your punch! It broke it!” he yelled.

“What are you going on about?”

“Kehehehe! What am I talking about, you ask? Of course, it’s—”

There was a crack as something shattered inside Conrad’s body. It wasn’t a sound that could be caused by normal physical movements. Leonard felt an ominous sense of foreboding and lifted his sword.

His instinct told him that he had to kill Conrad right away, but another part of him clashed with this thought and told him that things would become even more dangerous if he killed him.

“Ahhhhh—!!”

Conrad’s wretched body healed at top speed, and he began to emanate a dark red mist. It was almost like a cloud of poison,[1] exuding dark, insidious energy.

His broken ribs knit together, his dying organs restored their functions, and even his eye, which had been gouged out with a sword, formed anew.

It was an unbelievable sight.

Is this some technique that releases latent energy? No, I don’t sense Innate True Qi. Perhaps he was hiding some kind of drug inside him.

It appeared that Leonard’s punches had activated the drug when he used Four Splitting Needles.

His eyes grew cold as he watched Conrad transform in front of him. He knew of a drug that had a similar effect.

His regenerative ability resembles that of the Blood Cult’s Deadly Asura Squad. They create pills by extracting lifeblood from healthy individuals and use them when they’re on the brink of death. It temporarily makes them invincible.

If they used a pill even once, they couldn’t revert back to their original selves. Leonard had already planned to kill Conrad, but his opponent was now a monster whom he absolutely couldn’t spare.

The sword energy on his blade grew sharper.

“Heh. Ha.” Conrad finished absorbing all the power from the drug and turned to Leonard with dark red eyes.

The only thing they held was wickedness. Not bloodlust, not resentment, but pure unfettered evil. There was a baseless desire to kill without reason. Leonard didn’t know what his opponent had ingested, but it was no normal drug.

Here he comes, Leonard thought a single second before the attack.

Clang!

Conrad flew in like a shot arrow, the great force throwing the boy back.

“Ugh!”

The blow was enough to make Leonard’s entire body throb, even though his constitution was superior to Conrad’s and closer to the Transcendence Tier. A normal External Force Tier fighter could have died from one hit. But seeing as he didn’t regurgitate blood, it seemed Leonard hadn’t sustained any internal injuries.

Leonard twisted in midair to change direction and landed on his feet before Conrad could rush him again.

Shing!

The energy emanating from Conrad’s sword jerked and twisted into the shape of a blade. The sharp sound made Leonard’s ears ring. As Conrad finished forming an Aura Blade, the dark red energy corrupted the air around it. Though it was pathetically unrefined, he was using an enormous amount of mana to maintain the augmented sword energy in that shape. Refined or not, augmented energy was augmented energy, and it would be hard to face with normal sword energy.

How troublesome.

Of course, if Leonard used his own augmented sword energy, it wouldn’t take long for him to end it, but he didn’t want to reveal his greatest secret in front of such a large audience. He wanted to fend him off using Five Elements Sword Qi if possible and wait for Conrad to grow exhausted. Then, he could aim for the tiniest opening and kill him.

With that plan in mind, Leonard watched as tens of magic arrays began to form around his opponent.

There doesn’t seem to be any spells above Class 4.

It appeared that Conrad was going to attack with an unsophisticated barrage of spells that focused more on quantity than quality.

Leonard strengthened his energy and dashed forward.

Booooom—!

Led by Fireball, dozens of offensive spells Class 3 and under flew toward him nonstop, filling the ring with clouds of smoke.

Balls of fire, arrows of lightning, spears of ice, chunks of earth. Offensive spells of every element flew toward a single target. Even if he used the Water Current Step, Leonard couldn’t dodge the entirety of the dense wave of attacks, and it seemed as if he would be swallowed up at any moment.

Five Elements Style

Thirty-Six Black Turtle Defensive Forms: Ice Shell Barrier

Leonard didn’t slow down his momentum and drew a circle with the tip of his sword, creating a round jet-black shield resembling a turtle shell to protect him. Spells that were Class 3 and below couldn’t even scratch it. His shield was the ultimate defense against attacks that prioritized quantity over quality.

“Haaaaa!”

The shield couldn’t block Conrad’s unrefined augmented sword energy. A beat after Leonard fell back, he heard the Ice Shell Barrier shatter. It was impossible to block Conrad’s sword unless he used an augmented energy shield or an augmented barrier.

Leonard had to alternate between attacking and precisely dodging every strike to slow down his opponent’s regenerative abilities as much as possible.

Leonard dug his feet into the ground, entering an elegant stance.

Five Elements Six Divinities Art

Heavenly Dragon King Art: Flash Lightning Stride

Azure Dragon Qi rushed through his body, and the movement art made him accelerate to peak speed. His physical abilities as well as his mana swelled by several times. For a moment, he moved so fast that not even Conrad could see him. Leonard closed the distance with one leap and thrust his sword forward.

Five Elements Style

Azure Dragon Eighteenth Form: Thunderclap Return

In the blink of an eye, he stabbed Conrad dozens of times, peppering him with holes and cutting through blood vessels. But even the deepest wounds healed within a few seconds. As the bleeding stopped, Conrad swung at Leonard’s afterimage. Even though he hit the empty ground, the Aura Blade created a fissure several meters long.

His destructive power had already reached the Transcendence Tier. Even when he missed, his sword left destruction in its wake.

Attacks such as stabs and cuts that only left small wounds were ineffective against Conrad’s regeneration. As soon as Leonard realized this, he assumed the White Tiger Form.

He would use the Flash Lightning Stride once more to reach his opponent before slashing through his torso.

Five Elements Style

White Tiger Fifth Form: Heavenly Steel Wave

Leonard felt the sword in his hands rip through flesh. The wound was even harder to heal than an injury to the chest. Fortunately, Conrad was unable to activate an augmented energy shield, perhaps because his techniques were still unrefined. If that weren’t the case, Leonard wouldn’t have been able to hit him without the use of augmented sword energy.

However, as Leonard retreated with the Flash Lightning Strike, he felt a single line of blood drip from his forehead. Conrad’s meters-long augmented sword energy had grazed him.

“I see. So your talent is showing itself now that you’ve lost your reason,” Leonard observed.

Only after losing his thoughts, desires, and even his self did Conrad show the true depths of his power. He’d managed to follow Leonard’s Flash Lightning Stride with instinct alone. Though Conrad had only grazed his opponent, if he had two or three more chances, he could land a fatal attack.

For some reason, Leonard felt glad.

It was ridiculous that someone who was no more than an idiot had become more like a martial artist after going mad from a drug.

“I should take this seriously,” the boy said.

If he didn’t want the audience to see his true power, he simply had to block their vision.

The Five Elements True Dragon Ring began Circling within him, and his mana mastery covered the arena and halted Conrad’s spells.

Leonard let out a very low whisper. “Dust Cloud.”

As he cast the Class 4 ground spell, a giant sandstorm swallowed the arena.

1. This word can also mean malice. ☜