Bang!

The mutant demonic beast’s first head burst apart.

Blood and flesh scattered like wet flames.

One eyeball shot upward in a long arc through the air, bounced several times across the ground, then melted grotesquely.

“Ugh!”

“Whoa?!”

Nereus and Frey, who had been charging ahead, flinched their shoulders for an instant.

Normally, I might have felt smug inside, but right now, my bewilderment was greater.

Magnetic Railshot with lightning reinforcement.

I had not expected it to be this strong.

For a twenty-five-meter-class demonic beast, its head alone was the size of a carriage.

The strength of the bones supporting that massive body and the force of its muscles were truly beyond imagination.

The spears and swords of ordinary soldiers could not even scratch its hide, and only an attendant standing at the lowest edge of superhuman ability could barely draw a drop of blood.

It was an existence that even a superhuman without authority, even a knight, would have to risk his life to face.

And that monster’s solid head had just burst apart in a single shot.

‘So this is the power of sword aura reinforcement.’

When the overall reinforcement of sword aura reinforcement overlapped with the explosive enhancement of electric arts, its power rose to a dizzying level.

It was beyond what I had imagined.

Tung! Tung! Tung!

I kept firing Magnetic Railshots with lightning reinforcement.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Wherever the bullets struck, that massive body was deeply gouged and split open.

“Kaaaaaak!”

The monster let out a roar.

It was not a thunderous intimidation.

It was merely the scream of a beast frightened by pain.

“Hah.”

“Heh.”

Nereus and Frey stopped their charging horses and looked back at me.

Blue Hydrangea and the marksman school cadets also took their fingers off their triggers and turned their heads.

Their origins, classes, authorities, and genders were all different, but the emotion in their eyes was the same.

Even I could recognize it.

Surprise. Astonishment. Envy.

The mutant demonic beast’s body was already in tatters.

Blood gushed like fountains from all over it, and pieces of tail and limbs stretched across the ground.

Was this the end?

I began to hope that we might finish it with long-range fire alone, without swinging a sword even once.

Tssssss!

“Did we get it?”

Frey’s words became the seed of disaster.

Hissssss!

The creature’s soggy muscles began to melt while spewing steam.

Damn it.

A stench violated the air.

The smell of cooking flesh and filthy, viscous steam numbed the tip of my nose.

“No. It’s changing!”

Nereus growled.

The mutant demonic beast’s scales rearranged themselves, becoming a dark blue exoskeleton that wrapped its body smoothly.

The dangling flesh vanished as if evaporating, four mantis-like scythe legs stretched from its back like insect legs, and eight tentacles writhed ominously.

Its overall body size had shrunk, but it had become far more agile.

Suddenly, my memory of the skeletal lord “Lord of Flies” undergoing several transformations overlapped with the sight.

It seemed those things could use mental waves in various ways even without “bursting” them outward.

The creature rose, planting its long limbs against the ground.

[“Kaaaaaaak!”]

A charge.

In an instant, it vanished from sight.

Only the sound of the ground splitting and the wind being torn remained.

Its speed was too fast for the eye to follow.

If not for Bio-radar, I might truly have been caught off guard.

“Be careful!”

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

The marksman school cadets pulled their triggers all at once.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The demonic beast leapt so irregularly and swiftly that even that net of fire missed it.

Most bullets only skimmed empty air, and the few that struck by luck bounced off the exoskeleton, scattering sparks.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

With every step it took, clouds of dust rose from the ground.

Its speed rivaled the leg strength of a Navigator wrapped in Wind King Armor.

Five hundred meters.

Fortunately, thanks to Bio-radar, I still had not lost it.

Four hundred meters.

Every few blinks, it came one hundred meters closer.

Three hundred meters.

So what were those two doing in this situation?

I looked toward Nereus and Frey.

They did not retreat.

Saaaah!

A red haze rose over Nereus’s shoulders.

Crackle! Crack!

Frey also wrapped lightning reinforcement around his cavalry lance and aimed it forward.

Even though a monster over ten meters long was charging toward them at a speed that was almost impossible to see.

I knew they would.

[“Grrrrrr!”]

Two hundred meters.

I lowered my waist in the same way and aimed my cavalry lance.

I raised lightning reinforcement.

Bzzzzzt!

Mana like faint sunlight mixed with sharply crackling electricity, creating a dazzling flash.

“I, no matter who the enemy is, do you think I will lose?”

Nereus bared his teeth.

Red lightning reinforcement also raced along his cavalry lance.

One hundred meters.

We instead spurred our horses forward.

“Go!”

Seeing myself commit this stupid act made me think that I too was a Blue Knight after all.

Thududududu!

Hooves trampled the ground as we charged.

In the next instant, the monster’s scales rushed right before my eyes.

Their glossy texture was clearly visible.

The stench carried in its breath stabbed my nose.

Boom!

Nereus, Frey, and I thrust our cavalry lances into its foreleg at the same time.

Crack!

The lance shafts reinforced by lightning reinforcement snapped apart entirely and flew away.

Shattered fragments scattered sharply.

“Neigh!”

At the shock of impact, the warhorses screamed and were thrown back, and our bodies flew into the air as well.

The tremendous impact knocked the breath out of me.

We had certainly taken payment for it.

[“Kaaak!”]

The mutant demonic beast’s foreleg bent as if it had exploded.

Its exoskeleton shattered, and blood burst like a fountain through the cracks.

The huge body rolled once across the grassland.

Crash!

“Ugh!”

“Kuh!”

“Argh!”

Nereus, Frey, and I also rolled dozens of meters across the grass.

I scraped the ground with my hands and looked at the mutant demonic beast.

We had landed one blow.

Even so, its remaining three legs, the scythe legs on its back, and its long tentacles were still intact.

“Damn thing is hard!”

Frey shouted through clenched teeth.

“It’s as fast as old Orcail. I can’t catch it with Lightning Strike. There isn’t even time to cast.”

Nereus glared at the sky, clicked his tongue, and drew his Wall-Breaking Longsword to replace his broken lance.

He was right.

That demonic beast was extremely tough and extremely fast.

Considering its mental waves as well, it was a monster that could never be hunted by mere soldiers.

“You both know how to handle lightning reinforcement, right? I saw you practicing earlier.”

I asked briefly.

“Hehe, you caught me.”

Frey forced a laugh.

“Who would use that kind of heretical technique… yes, it is fairly useful.”

Nereus began to deny it, but eventually nodded.

“We can’t kill it in one strike. Let’s do it like when we hunted that ogre at the academy. We use neural acceleration to the maximum and cut it to death.”

I spoke aloud a plan I absolutely did not want to execute.

“D-do we really have to?”

Frey’s eyes widened.

“That was a four-meter-class ogre. It only had two arms, and no poisonous sting. This one is different. It’s over ten meters, with mantis-like legs and even tentacles.”

Nereus also seemed inwardly uneasy.

“You scared?”

I provoked him.

“…You bastard!”

Nereus’s neck veins bulged as if he had heard an unforgivable insult.

I was scared.

But in this world, there were fights that had to be fought even while scared.

Fights to protect one’s own reality were like that.

And it seemed there was someone else here who understood that.

“Evade!”

Blue Hydrangea shouted from far away.

The mutant demonic beast had just crouched its hind legs to leap toward us.

Clack!

“O White Flower Star! I ask in the name you granted me: grant strength to the beautiful, that they may protect their beauty!”

Blue Hydrangea aimed her musket toward us.

[“Guided technique!”]

Wung!

[“Explosive technique!”]

Wung!

“Techniques” deployed in overlapping layers.

It was the authority of the White Flower Star, said to be closest to the “magic” of the Dragon Emperor of the Ancient Empire.

[“Splitting technique!”]

Wung!

[“Penetration technique!”]

Wung!

[“Hydrangea Scattershot!”]

Behind her back, dazzling cross-shaped radiance bloomed.

Booooom!

A blue hydrangea flower burst open in front of the muzzle.

The flower clusters soon spread even wider and shot forward.

Bababababang!

Bullets resembling hydrangea flowers split into dozens of streams in midair.

The split bullets split again, then split again, pouring down across the vast earth like a rain of flowers.

“Whoa!”

Rumble!

Nereus, Frey, and I instinctively threw ourselves backward.

Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwang!

A radius of one hundred meters centered on the mutant demonic beast was devastated.

Clods of earth, fragments of stone, and pieces of grass scattered like rain.

“Cough, cough! She really slammed it in properly.”

Frey coughed.

Wung!

I deployed Bio-radar through the rising dust.

Hopeful expectation that we had caught it and an ominous certainty that we had not existed at the same time.

[“—rrrrrrrrraak!”]

Along with the monster’s scream, its intact form appeared on Bio-radar.

The exoskeletal carapace covering its body was cracked here and there, but most of it remained intact.

However, all eight tentacles that had writhed on its back had been severed.

The creature’s eyes trembled with bewilderment.

The emotion was closer to shock than pain.

[“----?!”]

The fact that it had failed to dodge, the fact that it had failed to perceive, and the fear that it would fail to dodge even if the same attack came again were all contained there.

“Kyrie.”

At that moment, Nereus called me.

I met his eyes.

Nereus’s blue-green eyes burned with fighting spirit.

Bzzzzzt!

He reinforced his body not with electricity, but with lightning reinforcement.

The Dawn Council were traitors and apostates, but their authority itself was useful.

Muscles and nerves reinforced with sword aura reinforcement could contain more electricity.

“Shall we bet on who takes it down?”

Nereus calmly showed me that state and proposed.

Bzzzzzt!

So I openly raised lightning reinforcement as well.

“What’s the point of betting?”

“So you’re saying you’ll lose anyway?”

“I’m the one who’ll win again!”

I had admitted it long ago.

At times, I envied that fighting spirit.

So I decided not to turn away from it anymore.

Amid the exhilaration heating my whole body, I kicked off the ground.

Rumble!

Sometimes, the simplest method could become the wisest method.

“Haaaaaaah!”

I reinforced my body with sword aura reinforcement, reinforced it again with electric-arts bodily enhancement and neural acceleration, and in that state, even unfolded Thunderstep.

Whoosh!

The friction against the air at such tremendous speed made my face burn hot.

My accelerated consciousness let me sense even a single piece of grass rising as it fluttered in the wind.

My reinforced nerves grew hot like wire thrust into fire.

But unlike before, they did not feel as though they would melt.

【Bodily Enhancement: 4.2】

【Neural Acceleration: 5.5】

The coefficients appeared at the edge of my vision.

Sword aura reinforcement was protecting my body.

【Bodily Enhancement: 4.4】

【Neural Acceleration: 5.7】

It allowed me to contain more electricity.

Slash! Slash! Slash!

In a time of no arising and no ceasing, I swung my sword freely in all directions.

I leapt onto the mutant demonic beast’s back and cut the joints of its mantis forelegs, then swept beneath its legs and aimed for the wrist joints.

Kaaang! Kaaang! Kaiang!

Every time the scales and the Wall-Breaking Longsword collided, dazzling sparks and hot blood splashed in every direction.

[“Kaaaaaaak!”]

The mutant demonic beast’s howl echoed across the grassland.

A mental wave was mixed within it, and my legs nearly buckled for an instant, but I endured.

This too seemed to be an effect of sword aura reinforcement.

“The best escort kills all enemies! The peerlessly handsome Blue Knight Frey goes forth!”

Near the head, Frey swung his greatsword like a pinwheel and hammered the demonic beast’s brow.

“I shall be the trumpet and drum of your end!”

Near the legs, Nereus drove his Wall-Breaking Longsword into the joints like he was felling trees, loaded fully with scarlet lightning reinforcement.

Kang! Kang! Kang!

The sound of scales splitting rang in my ears like drumbeats.

I also swung the crystalline holy sword with the mindset of a cook shaving ice to make shaved ice.

[“-----!”]

The mutant demonic beast did not meekly allow itself to be struck.

Whoosh!

Its giant tail swept across the ground, and mantis-like scythe legs came crashing down from above my head.

It had enough force to cut even a knight in engraved plate armor cleanly in half.

Thud!

After rolling across the ground to dodge the stomping leg, I immediately counterattacked, but another foreleg descended again.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Each blow was like an Air Cannon that could only be dodged.

Then—

Whoosh!

Its tail burrowed toward my side.

Even though I had seen it with Bio-radar, it was an angle I could not dodge.

Damn it.

Boom!

My whole body shook, and the sky flipped.

Along with the sensation of my breath being knocked out, strength left my limbs.

“Kiri-Kiri!”

Frey’s scream reached me.

Because of the exhilaration of battle, I felt almost no pain.

But it felt as though all the air in my lungs had emptied, and I could not breathe.

A sudden drowsiness washed over me.

I knew I must not fall asleep now.

And a realist was one who acted according to what he knew.

I clenched my teeth and raised lightning reinforcement even further.

“Ha, hahaha!”

Even though my body was reinforced with sword aura reinforcement, my whole body burned hot as if on fire.

I recalled the superhuman journey I had walked until now.

From attendant to retainer, from retainer to knight. And now, beyond even the limits of a knight.

Crackle, crack!

I sprayed electric sparks into the air from both eyes and kicked off the ground again.

“Hahahahaha!”

How long had I swung my sword?

Thud!

The mutant demonic beast laid its body down upon the earth.

Chapter 199

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