Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 166

The light pierced through layers of darkness, obliterating the mummies beyond. Immortality meant nothing before the swordlight of the Holy Sword.

Like bundles of straw with their strings cut, the mummies collapsed, and the beam of Alkaid reached Nephren-Ka’s face in an instant with power that could have pierced even plates of orichalcum.

Against an otherworldly being, the Holy Sword was the ultimate weapon. And now, imbued with the Aura of the sun, its force was terrifying.

If the giant Leon had fought in Blaine and the vampire mage he had faced in Rubena had taken this strike head-on, they would have fallen in a single blow. However—

“Hmm?”

The blazing swordlight was casually stopped by the staff that Nephren-Ka raised, its round head deflecting the beam. The light struggled, pushing forward until its last vestige, but at length it fizzled out.

“What...?”

Leon’s eyes widened in shock at the unexpected defense. Nephren-Ka sneered with his withered lips.

“Is this all? Is this the true strength of someone who bears the cursed sun’s power and wields the Holy Sword?” Then, he swung his staff wide and roared, “Pathetic!”

At once, rippling darkness surged forth. This time, it wasn’t some beetles. Centered on Nephren-Ka, a wave of blackness drew a circle that devoured light. A primeval sorcery of unknown origin. Only one person—or rather, sword—present recognized it.

—That’s Death Circle! Touch that ring, and all life functions cease! You must evade or block it somehow!

It was a kind of instant-death curse. Master-level warriors or those with Holy Power might survive, but anyone weaker—regardless of ability or state—would not escape death.

Ordinarily, pharaohs who symbolized the sun and life could never wield such a spell, but cursed with inversion and bound to the underworld, Nephren-Ka made himself an exception to the norm.

And then, a clear, resplendent voice rang out, scattering the darkness and flooding the field with light.

“Aaaaah!”

At the center of the sacred chant stood Elahan, leading six Holy Iron Inquisitors arranged in a hexagram, raising their voices high.

She was the strongest Saintess in the Church’s history. With her as the lead and their support, the hymn’s power was more than enough to counter the Death Circle.

“Wretches, slaves to a false divinity, dare to...!”

Enraged at his trump card being neutralized, Nephren-Ka shook his staff, and once more an army spilled from the darkness. Crocodile-headed giants charged at the front.

The ground trembled, but no less massive, warriors of the Taurus and Ursus tribes stormed out to meet them.

“Kill them! Smash those reptiles’ skulls!”

“Undead who’ve lost even a warrior’s pride! We’ll send every last one back to dirt!”

“I, the chieftain of Taurus, Bulls, shall charge!”

Swinging his twin axes in a furious blur, Bulls met one giant head-on, caving in its crocodile skull with a crushing blow. The three-meter-tall mass of muscle reeled from the impact, but it did not die. No, being undead, it could not die.

The crocodile giant countered with its greatsword, but Bulls laughed heartily and met it with his axe.

“Not bad for a dead hunk of meat! If breaking your head won’t kill you, I’ll grind you down until nothing’s left but scraps!”

That reckless fighting spirit turned into strength. The true terror of the undead was their immortality and the revulsion their forms inspired. However, the beastkin warriors ignored such dread, charging in to smash them apart.

Thanks to them, the other warriors overcame their fear and followed, while the spellcasters shielded in the rear unleashed their magic.

Fireballs soared, lightning crashed down. The true battle had begun.

Perhaps the air of war made his blood boil, but Varg shed his royal mantle for the first time in ages and became simply a warrior again.

“This is great!” shouted the Beast King, Varg.

He, too, had once been intoxicated by battle like Urakan. He had grown complacent without rivals, but he would never shrink in a fight where his full power was needed.

“Sirius, Swiftwind Step: Chasing Wind, Catching Shadow.”

Ten Vargs appeared, charging as one. What he had shown in his spar with Leon had been mere illusion, but these bodies were all real, each bearing his strength.

It was a decisive art that multiplied his offensive power tenfold.

“Sirius, Swiftwind Kick, Secret Ultimate Technique: Tenfold Lightning Advance.”

Ten kicks fired in unison, rending the air, exploding with thunderous roars and flashing with lightning. It was one of the rare wide-area techniques of Sirius.

Dozens of mummies were shattered, and several crocodile giants staggered as gaping holes opened through their torsos. They would regenerate within seconds, but Varg did not waste those precious few seconds.

“Hup!”

Until now, every technique he had shown was merely an adaptation of Sirius, not a true ultimate move. The reason was simple. Even as an Aura Master, Sirius was too profound to fully master. According to the records, only the first Beast King, Hackapel, had perfected it.

Varg, however, had techniques he had made his own. With a woosh, navy whirlwinds coiled around his legs.

A colossal power circulated at hyper speed, accelerating with every passing second, until within moments it amassed overwhelming destructive force.

“Sirius, Swiftwind Kick, Ultimate Secret Technique: Sevenfold Tempest Strike.”

Varg kicked the ground hard and soared.

The instant his right leg swept out, the unleashed vortex ripped apart everything along its path, accompanied by spine-shaking shrieks.

Three more kicks followed in succession. The whirlwinds locked onto Nephren-Ka, tearing through beetle swarms, smashing giants and mummies as they drove forward. The four storms accelerated one another, grinding the undead caught between them into mincemeat and scattering the remains.

With that, a path opened. The countless legions split for a brief moment, and into that gap Varg hurled the last of his kicks.

“How dare a half-witted beast bear its filthy claws before me!” Nephren-Ka shouted.

Even that attack of Varg fell hopelessly short. The three whirlwinds were bisected by the darkness unleashed from his staff, and in less than ten seconds, he had summoned more than he had lost.

A transcendent. One whose very existence dwelt in a higher dimension above mortals. The raid force still had not grasped the true meaning of what that entailed.

Raising his staff to the heavens, Nephren-Ka fixed Varg with a baleful gaze.

“By decree of the Pharaoh of the Nether Necromancy, die.”

The moment the pupil of the blood-red eye glaring from the night sky flared, Elahan burst forth from the hexagram, stepping before Varg. Her foresight told her she was the only one who could block this.

The Death Gaze, a primitive curse more dangerous than even eighth-tier magic, was an instant death sentence to anyone without Holy Power or Holy Weapon.

“O Goddess, shield me from this evil!”

She thrust her Holy Iron Breaker forward, armor wards flaring as she poured every ounce of sacred force into her defense. Fortunately, the Death Gaze targeted only one. With no risk of it spilling to others, Elahan could commit herself fully to resistance.

The golden wall of her Holy Barrier cracked under the immense pressure, but it held. As soon as the Death Gaze broke, Elahan hurled her Holy Iron Breaker, smashing into the glaring eye that loomed in the sky.

“Be gone!”

It was not a true eyeball, but a magical entity, and the direct blow shattered it, erasing it from the night sky. It was the kind of interference Nephren-Ka could not ignore.

What spilled from his lips next was a profane incantation to a blasphemous being—one of the three most dangerous exolaw manifestations.

“O mighty and resplendent Chaos, O tongue drenched in blood, O faceless King of hovering terror, who writhes in shadow, whose malice dwells in darkness.”

Every word profaned the world. The Holy Iron Inquisitors raged and pressed forward, but newly summoned undead clawed at their legs.

“Let all wail and thrash; let even bare bones tremble at you. Whisper ruin upon the world as a two-headed bat.”

“You think I’ll let you finish, heretic?!”

Elahan caught her returning Holy Iron Breaker and hurled it again to break his chant with Divine Judgment, the supreme Holy Law.

Against exolaw, it was peerless in might and efficiency, but its flaw was accuracy. Unless she struck true with her hammer, she could only burn out broad swathes—useless.

The massive hammer spun at blistering speed, about to smash into his face, when Nephren-Ka’s twisted mouth smirked as if he had expected it.

“T-teleport? Where?!” Elahan stammered as the body she struck dissolved into beetle swarms.

Realization dawned on her as she frantically searched the battlefield. It took three seconds to find him, and by then, it was far too late to stop his incantation.

And so, she had to let the next person take over.

“Finally, my turn, huh? I’ve been dying to jump in!” Karen joined in.

Leaping from the shadows, she brought her hands together and split into six, all ambushing Nephren-Ka at once.

“Shadow Arts, Third Form: Sixfold Phantasm.”

Even he had not expected her to erupt at such close range. He stumbled back, chant interrupted, though not fully broken. If given even a breath, he would complete it.

“Did you think a rat like you could hide from me?”

But before Karen’s strike could land, Nephren Ka found her true body a beat faster. The gaze of a transcendent, much like the Stigma of the Observer granted to Leon, could pierce straight through illusion and guile. Even Karen, mistress of stealth and ambush, could not fool him.

“Even the gallows are wasted on you. Crawl in the dirt like the vermin you are and die.”

When Nephren Ka slammed his staff into the ground, the earth surged up in a hundred-meter radius, swallowing space itself.

A tide of beetles, except they were now monsters that devoured life. A hundred thousand of them swarmed to engulf her.

And yet Karen survived.

“I’m a vermin, huh? Then how does it feel, Your Rotten Majesty, to be twice outdone by vermin?”

“You...?!”

It was a substitution, one of the advanced shadow techniques Karen had mastered after learning the Twilight Waltz. She had switched her body with a decoy he ignored, and in that instant slipped behind him. From her inner pocket, she hurled something she had kept hidden.

This was her plan from the very start. A holy relic, a statue of the Goddess given to her by Elahan, struck Nephren Ka and shattered. Radiant light burst out like a net, snaring him and rooting his feet for a few brief seconds.

“Divine Judgment, EXECUTE!”

The heavens split once more as the Judgment descended. It was a power meant for one purpose only: to destroy the alien, and the glory of the goddess fell directly upon Nephren-Ka.

“Kraaaaaah!”

And that was not all. While he writhed beneath the pillar of light, unable to move, the warrior with the Holy Sword was already preparing his second assault.

One Alkaid had not been enough, even at full force. Then, he would unleash everything he could.

First Form, Second Form, Seventh Form. A vertical slash, a horizontal sweep, and a thrust to drive the golden tide forward with all his might.

The three chained together into the Grand Chariot’s Chained Secret Technique, Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar.

From the sky, light speared downward. From the earth, starlight erupted upward.

The two waves met and exploded, painting heaven and ground alike in brilliant radiance.

The undead caught in the blast lost even their immortality, collapsing into dust. Souls bound by the transcendental necromancy were freed in the aftermath.

Divine Judgment, the Holy Sword El-Cid’s radiance, and the Grand Chariot’s might struck Nephren-Ka squarely.

“You...vermin...dare...!”

And still, he did not fall. The damage was real. The bandages that had never blemished now burned away, foul smoke rising from his body to poison the air. The ground beneath his feet rotted and sank like a swamp.

Was it arrogance that kept him from kneeling, or pride? Green light flared behind the wrappings as, for the first time, Nephren-Ka raised his royal scepter, Nekaka.

“To behold...my kingdom...with your eyes... what glory you’ve stolen!”

Then the earth rumbled. Like an earthquake, the ground quaked. Warriors stumbled, beastkin crouched low, bracing by instinct for safety.

However, this was no quake. It was the sign of something rising from deep below.

“What is that pointy thing...?” Leon muttered as a towering structure forced its way up from the earth.

El-Cid answered, —A pyramid. The Pharaoh’s tomb, the royal sarcophagus. He means to kill you all without a shred of mercy.

“Is it dangerous?”

El-Cid’s voice held no mirth as he explained.

—Of course. The kings of old were no warriors. They were priests. That pyramid is both a coffin and gateway to the underworld, a cycle of death that promises eternal unlife to the dead.

Nephren-Ka was not called the Black Pharaoh for nothing. Necromancer, exolaw wielder—his true power awakened the moment he summoned his pyramid.

As the raid force steadied itself, the ancient tomb’s peak rose, and atop it Nephren-Ka bellowed, “I swear it...! When I have made you all my slaves, I will pluck out your profane, arrogant eyes and wear them as my necklace!”

With that oath, the pyramid’s gates opened and air from another dimension spilled forth. The corrupted tomb of an ancient king spewed forth twisted monstrosities, each one a beast of A-rank or higher.

A force strong enough to wipe a nation from the map was poured upon the raid force.