The ‘Forest’ hieroglyph flashed behind Dora as she whirled her huge warhammer and soared into the air. Hovering in the sky for a moment, she struck. As the only one without mastery over the Weapon’s Heart level, she made up for it by having the strongest Spirit.
The hieroglyph imbued her blows with the force of nature itself. One of her attacks created a shockwave so powerful that it knocked down the first row of Spirits like bowling pins. Hadjar had to jump to the side or his right leg would’ve fallen into one of the cracks Dora had just created.
Tom’s Sword Spirit flashed with scarlet energy. He was getting ready to use his favorite combo.
“Thunder God’s Sword!” He roared, turning his blade into a streak of scarlet lightning, within which raged the mysteries of the Sword Spirit. “Bloody Charge!”
Compared to his reckless charge, Anise’s attacks looked smooth and graceful, almost like she was dancing. Tom was more like a bloodthirsty beast. He didn’t use the Sword’s mysteries to attack, but to fuel his Technique. Every blow he delivered to the Spirits exuded rage and a deep thirst for battle. Flashes of lightning, generated by the swings of his Imperial level sword, shot out into the sky.
Looking at all of this, Hadjar smiled broadly. During his first battle in the Moon army, where he’d fought side by side with Nero, he’d realized just how good it felt to fight with strong allies against strong enemies. Those moments allowed you to reach a deeper understanding of cultivation and of things much more complex and fundamental. Things close to what Hadjar had been trying to find during his travels.
Azrea yawned. Stretching out across the warm sand, she rested her head on her paws.
“What? Is this too easy for you?”
Azrea snorted. Like any true predator, she didn’t want to deal with the small fry. Moreover, she didn’t want to deny Hadjar the opportunity to grow stronger, so she was content to remain an observer.
“As you wish,” Hadjar chuckled, “more for me.”
The tigress snorted again, then closed her eyes and wrapped her tail around herself.
“Anise!” Dora cried. “Don’t summon your Spirit!”
Taking his eyes off Azrea, Hadjar only then noticed that Anise was the only one who hadn’t summoned her Spirit.
“We can’t win without it!” The girl answered, disappearing and reappearing a few feet away.
By the High Heavens and the Evening Stars, he could watch her movements forever — smooth but sharp, they were filled with both beauty and destruction, like true harbingers of death. Never before had he seen a swordsman with such a style. It was mesmerizing and very different from his own. He hadn’t had a real sword Master to teach him, so he’d ended up teaching himself everything that he now knew. He’d never bothered with mastering any of the fancy moves, only focusing on learning the simplest and most effective ones. His only goal had always been sending his enemies to their forefathers as quickly as possible. Compared to Anise, he looked like a barbarian who’d just picked up the sword for the first time.
Hadjar would’ve just stood there and enjoyed the spectacle had his companions been winning. However, their best and most powerful attacks had managed to destroy only four out of the fifty Spirits. Seeing that they were still outnumbered, they began to retreat.
“Seems to me like it’s time for the Heaven Soldier to join the fight, huh?”
Spinning the Black Blade in his hands, he drew out half of his Core’s power. His crystallized meridians also contributed to the energy exchange. His body, strengthened by the Wolf Broth, easily accepted and processed the enormous amount of power that suddenly rushed through it.
“What the-”
“Another Spirit-”
“You’re-”
“Barbarian!”
Sensing something that felt like a wild, predatory beast awakening behind them, the rest of the squad turned to Hadjar, who’d been engulfed in a column of dense energy. In its darkness, one could glimpse the outline of a dragon’s open maw.
“Black Wind!”
Obsidian energy followed the swing of his sword, robbing the world of color. Everything seemed to turn gray, and everyone felt something heavy and deadly push down on their shoulders. A sixty-foot-long copy of the Black Blade struck the Spirits.
Concentrating all of his physical and mystical power in one spot, he added his sharp and strong will and the Sword’s mysteries to the attack. With that, the ‘Black Wind’ was able to break through the barrier that separated a Heaven level Technique from an Imperial one, turning several Spirits to dust.
“Holy shit!” Everyone else swore at once.
Hadjar, turning into a plume of black fog, cut through the enemy’s lines. There was no elegance in his movements, only pure rage. There was no beauty in his swings, only a desire to kill as quickly and efficiently as possible. He didn’t look like a swordsman, but like an enraged predator hungering for its prey’s essence.
There was nothing human in his mad grin and eyes anymore.
Chapter 654
H adjar slammed into the chest of one of the two Spirits nearest to him. Grabbing the other one by its head, he tore it to pieces, spilling blood and gore everywhere. An Energy Stone — the best food for the Black Blade — hung in the air for a moment. Summoning his sword, Hadjar sliced through the Stone. Since artifactors used them to create items of very high quality, they cost at least a thousand Imperial coins. But Hadjar didn’t care about being frugal right now, only about making his weapon stronger.
The Black Blade instantly absorbed the Spirit’s essence.
Calculate progress, Hadjar ordered.
The neural network, despite the fact that most of its computing power was currently focused on finding a way to remove the Sword Spirit’s mark, still completed this simple task with ease.
[11,904 Spirit Knight level Energy Stones are required to advance the sword to the next level.]
The figure didn’t daunt Hadjar. On the contrary, it only made him grin wider. The more difficult a task was, the sweeter it felt to complete it.
“Hadjar!” Someone cried.
Busy fighting three Spirits at once, he’d missed a fourth. It had crept in from behind and swung its flaming sword at him. The flames traced a sharp arc through the air and hit Hadjar in the back. His cloak managed to slow down the blow and weaken it, but not block it entirely. Even Imperial level armor wouldn’t have been able to do that.
“Damn it all!” Hadjar snarled in pain and swung his sword in retaliation. “Strong Wind!”
A gust of wind, within which dragons writhed madly, struck the Spirits. The creatures, holding their swords in front of them, lined up, resembling a wall of fire. The wind couldn’t destroy them, but it did manage to send them flying.
Taking advantage of the momentary reprieve, Hadjar turned on his heel, his damaged cloak fluttering in the wind. The Spirit that had wounded him was already raising its blade to strike again. Blue flames melted the sand around them.
“RAAARGH!” Hadjar snarled, losing his grip on his humanity.
His teeth and pupils appeared slightly elongated. His left hand shot out and grasped the wrist of the Spirit as he growled even louder. Blue flames licked the black armor that protected his body, but did no damage to it. Without realizing it, he drove the Black Blade deep into the specter’s chest. Its Energy Stone shattered, and the blade instantly devoured it. The specter twitched in agony. It tried to open its non-existent mouth, but all it managed to do was tear the skin on its ‘face’. Hadjar swung his sword and threw the mummified corpse at the feet of the other specters.
Feeling the Sword’s mysteries clearly, Hadjar turned and slashed the air with a shout. A powerful wave erupted as a result of the collision between his and his enemies’ energies and pushed the Spirits away, leaving craters and cracks in its wake.
Hadjar was about to grab his latest foe by the neck, then halted. Instead of black, dead eyes, green ones stared at him with surprise.
“Anise,” he breathed out a
nd took a step back.
“Watch out!” She shouted.
Disappearing and then reappearing behind him, she swung her Imperial level sword at one of the Spirits. A crescent of scarlet energy split its gray skin, exposing an Energy Stone. Hitting the specter, she popped the artifact out of its chest. Before the creature’s body could crumble to dust, the Stone disappeared into Anise’s spatial artifact.
Hadjar, now standing back to back with her, looked around. They were surrounded by a dozen Spirits. Their huge swords burned with a blue flame.
“Fuck me,” Hadjar cursed as he swung his blade, drawing energy from his Core. “Azure Cloud!”
A black cloud formed over the specters. From its darkness emerged a dragon-sword and descended upon its prey with incredible speed. It was about to strike when a dozen of the Spirits simultaneously raised their swords toward the sky. The multiple streams of blue fire merged into one, and the dragon was swallowed by a huge mouth.
“Bloody Hunt!” Anise shouted, activating a Technique that, to this day, remained a mystery to Hadjar. He’d never seen anything like it before.
Swinging her blade, Anise created a scarlet ring of energy around her that then expanded and struck the specters. Unfortunately, just like the ‘Azure Cloud’, it had no effect. The flaming mouth that had swallowed the sword-dragon collapsed to the ground and stretched out into a wall. The ring of energy crashed into it and disappeared in the fire, which the Spirits passed through as if it weren’t even there.
“How many are left?” Tom and Dora landed nearby.
Tom held his injured left arm close to his side. Purple drops dripped down it and fell to the ground. Judging by the flickering of his Spirit, it was more than his arm that had been injured. Dora favored her right leg. There was no blood, but one look through the World River revealed an energy wound. If not for his enhanced meridians, Hadjar would’ve suffered a similar fate. The blue flames seemed capable of inflicting wounds on one’s energy body. Einen, who’d also landed next to them, was the only one among the three of them who wasn’t seriously injured. Except for the fact that his ape and Spear-staff Spirit were gone.
“Thirty,” Hadjar grunted.
He and Anise launched attack after attack at the group of enemies in front of them. They used pure slashes since those didn’t require any energy at all, relying only on the cultivator’s skill and not how much power one could take from the World River.
“I’ll use my Spirit,” Anise whispered.
“Don’t you dare!” Tom, Dora, and Einen shouted in unison.
“Do you remember how that went last time?” Dora hissed and struck the ground with her warhammer. The impact was relatively weak, but it was still enough to create a tremor that stopped the ring of monsters around them from closing in.
“You almost died,” Tom reminded his sister. “And if the Head of the clan finds out about your Spirit… We’ll all die.”
“Maybe. But if I don’t use it, we’ll all die here anyway.”
“By the Evening Stars!” Hadjar cried out in frustration. “What is going on here?”
“How do you think we got away from the Nameless assassin, my friend?” Einen whispered to him.
“When I summon it, you’ll have a couple of seconds,” Anise warned them as blood-red energy swirled around her. “If I don’t manage to kill them all, leave me behind and run away.”
“What the hell-”
Hadjar’s cry was drowned out by the roar of energy bursting forth into the physical world.
Anise had summoned her Spirit.
Chapter 655
T he wave of power that swept over them was so overwhelming that they almost ended up falling to their knees. The ground shook and caved in, forming a hole several yards deep. The nearby buildings instantly crumbled to dust. Thousands of sword slashes shot out in all directions, some of which even managed to hit their targets. If not for the barrier that had appeared around them, Hadjar was certain that he wouldn’t have survived the onslaught even if he’d depleted his Core to defend himself.
Oozing power and reeking of blood, the slashes struck the shimmering barrier formed by the protective hieroglyphs, making them ripple like water.
“By the High Heavens,” Hadjar breathed out.
“Sister...” Tom whispered.
In his hand, he held a die that looked like a miniature replica of the shields floating around them. The Imperial level artifact radiated power equal to a peak-stage Lord’s Technique.
Anise Dinos, moving faster than the speed of sound, had transformed into an angel of death, a shield-maiden of Derger, the God of War. She was now a terrifying demoness who brought death and ruin with every swing of her sword. Each of her attacks would first divide into ten smaller ones, and then merge back into a single whole, releasing a barrage of terrible sword slashes in the process.
A shimmering hieroglyph could sometimes be glimpsed floating behind her. Hadjar recognized it. He’d seen it hundreds of times before. The first time he’d encountered it had been inside the World River, a long, long time ago. Hidden behind a layer of dangerous energy, its reflection had promised to grant power to anyone who could understand its essence. The next time he’d seen it had been when he’d sunk into the water. The third time, he’d been washing the blood of his friends off his clothes. But more often than not, he’d seen it inside his soul. Shaped like a beetle, it was a terrible scar comprised of 999 sword slashes. Anise’s Spirit was the embodiment of the Sword itself. Its power had turned the young girl into a weapon of mass destruction.
“How is this even possible?”
They were looking at a legend come to life. No one in the Empire believed in the existence of the fourth kind of Spirit. No one believed in them, but everyone still desperately wanted to see one manifest.
The first Emperor, the founder of Darnassus, had had this kind of Spirit, the kind that came from the World River itself. It was a sign, one that marked the greatest of heroes and the strongest of swordsmen.
The Spirit that Dora possessed was a part of nature, but Anise’s own... She owned the entirety of it: every blade of grass, every grain of sand, every newborn fawn, every piece of iron, every swing of the blade forged from that iron, every ray of sun reflected across its surface… Every Technique. Every essence. Every mystery. All of this was contained within the legendary Sword of the World River. The power it granted her was all-encompassing and as boundless as the wind.
A tsunami of power swept over their enemies, crushing them and the nearby buildings to pieces. It cut through the ground with more ease than the sharpened scissors of a tailor had when cutting through a piece of cloth.
Each wave of her hand was followed by a crescent of bright, scarlet energy that devoured the Spirits standing in its path. The monsters didn’t dare attack her, only trying to defend themselves. Their blue flames tried to wall her off, but she was too fast. So fast, in fact, that even Hadjar couldn’t keep track of her. For the first time, he understood what it was like to be a mortal spectator watching a fight between powerful cultivators. He only saw red flashes and flickering afterimages.
Suddenly, it was all over.
The Sword disappeared, and the girl fell like a wounded bird thrown out of its nest. Her enemies hadn’t even touched her, so the blood she was covered in could be none other than her own. Try as she might, she couldn’t tame and control the Sword’s power. Summoning it really was a double-edged sword.
“Run… away,” she whispered.
Her fingers unclenched, releasing her sword’s hilt. Blood trickled down the corners of her mouth with every word she uttered. Coughing violently, she stained the sand crimson.
“Sister...” Tom’s voice broke.
“We have to run,” Dora said, pale as a ghost. “They’re closing in.”
“Leave?” Hadjar roared furiously. “There are only ten of them left! She managed to get rid of twenty of them in two seconds!”
“Look! Over there!” Dora argued, pointing at t
he ruins that were still standing.
Barely visible through the debris, more blue lights started appearing. One by one, they gradually grew brighter, transforming into pillars of azure flame from which new Spirits emerged. Dragging their longswords and damned souls behind them, they made their way toward Anise. Lying motionless on the sand, all she could do was beg her friends to run away.
A low roar sounded from behind her.
Adjusting his grip on the Black Blade’s hilt, Hadjar took a handful of pills from his spatial ring and popped them into his mouth, flooding his Core and meridians with pulsating energy. It crashed into the walls of his energy body, leaving tiny injuries behind. Alchemy wasn’t a panacea. Power always came with a price.
“That won’t help!” Dora tugged at the hem of his cloak. “We can’t fight them forever.”
“We won’t have to. I refuse to leave one of our own behind.”
Einen resolutely walked over to stand next to his friend.
“How much time do you need?” He asked.
“Half a second,” Hadjar replied. “Buy me half a second, and I’ll carve us a way through.”
“You’re insane!” Tom shouted. “My sister just gave her life for us, and you-”
“All right,” Einen said, interrupting him. “I’m with you, barbarian.”
“I never doubted it, islander.”
The two of them didn’t need any more reassurance. They trusted each other more than they trusted themselves. Theirs was the prime example of a true friendship between cultivators who lived, fought, and died side by side. A cultivator’s life was long, and if they lived it alone, what was the point of living at all?
Dragon Heart: Land of The Enemy. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 8 Page 9