The sky filled with stormclouds.

I immediately fired a guided thunderbolt.

Crackle!

A compressed orb of electricity formed in my left hand and shot toward Erica.

The orb collided with Erica’s Wind King Armor.

Zzzzzz!

It thinned into a narrow current and shot upward into the sky.

As though a white line had been drawn across the heavens.

Along that line, a golden bolt descended.

Flash!

My vision flooded white and returned.

“Kh…!”

Erica’s Wind King Armor was still intact.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

But the nosebleed that had stopped began to flow again.

Erica’s mana was not infinite.

She spent plenty of mana clearing the sky earlier too. Her limit has to be close.

It wasn’t that I knew it.

I simply had to believe it, or I couldn’t fight.

I used Thunder Step, I swung my blade, I fired more guided thunder.

Rumble!

I dashed around Erica from front to back, right to left, striking her head, neck, and flank repeatedly with her own sword.

At the same time, I kept firing guided thunderbolts to keep the load on her constant.

“If you get caught even once, I’ll crush you!”

Even now Erica stood proudly, as though she had taken no damage at all, and shouted with dignity.

The kind of spirit that would intimidate even me—someone who had trained endlessly, graduated top of the academy, and met the Thunder Star.

BOOM!

That monstrous Hand of Destruction smashed the ground where I had just been standing, like crushing a mosquito.

If I got caught even once, I would leave no bones behind.

Without Biological Radar, neural acceleration, and high-speed cognition, I would have already been pulp.

I thought briefly of throwing soldiers at her to wear her down, then shook my head.

Any ordinary Knight would be blown away instantly by Erica’s wind.

Unless they were at least Feyjin’s caliber, they would never even touch the Wind King Armor before being shredded to pieces.

I couldn’t waste our key forces.

So I had to do it.

That was reality.

I didn’t resent it.

But the limit was there.

Mana.

I had fought countless enemies already.

I had conserved mana carefully, but I had maintained body reinforcement for tens of minutes, and cut down more Navigators and Rykenta Knights than I could count.

And in a situation where one mistake meant instant death, my nervous system was pushing far beyond normal limits.

If I relaxed neural acceleration even a little, I’d be cut to shreds by wind blades or crushed by the Hand of Destruction.

So I had to hold it.

Hsssss.

My nerves burned like heated wire shoved through my muscles.

“For the love of God, just break already!”

I put everything into a downward strike against Erica’s sword.

CLANG!

This time, something caught.

It felt like striking an axe into a thick block of ice.

My hand throbbed from the recoil, but shock outweighed pain.

That worked?

I saw Erica’s face.

That proud, aristocratic, peacock-like face was full of shock.

“How rude.”

She swept her fan.

A wave of wind slammed into me.

At that distance, I couldn’t dodge.

It wasn’t a blade, so I wasn’t torn apart—but instead I was lifted and thrown far back.

CRASH!

I flew over a hundred meters.

“Kh—!”

Even with body reinforcement pushed to the limit, with Thunder Step to break the fall, and rolling to disperse impact, my vision blacked out and returned.

The world flashed black, then yellow.

A crushing drowsiness washed over me.

A concussion. I recognized the feeling.

“Ghhhhh—!”

I forced neural acceleration.

I could not let consciousness go.

The nerves no longer felt like heated wire—they felt like molten metal poured through them.

White sparks snapped across my scalp.

“Sir Kyrie?”

“Kyrie—sir?”

“It’s the Scalesword! Kill him!”

“Fire! Fire!”

And so I realized exactly how dangerous my situation was.

I had fallen into the middle of a swirling melee between Rykenta Repeating Ballista crews and Astreos Retainers.

Erica crossed the battlefield toward me.

“I’ll enjoy seeing you crawl with your limbs severed.”

Each time she swung the Hand of Destruction, our Retainers and Censer-Bearers flew away screaming.

“Hii—!”

“AAAH!”

“Back! Move!”

The thing did not differentiate between friend and foe; unfortunate Rykenta soldiers were swept up as well.

A storm.

A disaster no one could avoid.

The Princess of the Windborn carved a straight path toward me.

“I’ll make you crawl with no freedom left at all!”

Her green eyes shone with murderous cold.

I considered two things:

A painless way to die,
and a way not to suffer after dying.

Only resistance remains.

The answer came.

I let go of the thought of surviving.

Fight until the Thunder Star was satisfied, die brilliantly.

Maybe then my eternity in the abyss would be shortened to a few thousand years.

I rose with that belief.

Whether it was realistic or not no longer mattered.

This is insane.

I grabbed a random sword from the ground—anything.

Erica raised her fan before her face and lifted the Hand of Destruction high as she approached lightly.

I prepared for the final charge.

Crackle!

Then something—a red lightning orb—shot in from the right.

It struck the Wind King Armor, sending a thin red current skyward, calling lightning from the clouds.

FLASH!

A guided thunderbolt.

“Kh!”

Erica staggered hard, stopping in place.

Who—?

The answer came immediately.

“Kyrie!”

Nereus.

“Hold out just a little longer!”

He shouted from the right flank.

How?

I scanned the battlefield with Biological Radar.

…Huh.

The troops under Nereus had nearly finished off the Mutated Beasts.

“Protect Sir Kyrie!”

“Crush the Rykenta dogs!”

Several Blue Knights of the Heavy Cavalry even came charging down the hill.

Seeing the formation of Mutated Beasts and Nereus’s knights, I understood.

At the horn call earlier, the beasts had begun descending toward me.

Nereus must have considered letting them through to trap me and then charging Erica… or fighting the beasts to the last.

He broke them.

I didn’t know what made him choose to appear loyal to me.

Maybe Erica just looked too strong—he figured letting me burn her stamina first was wiser.

But he didn’t betray me.

That was enough to be grateful.

“Left side is her weak side! Keep your mind and charge!”

Not only that.

Joy’s voice came from beside me.

“My lieutenant?”

“Nari! Nari! Wake up!”

She slapped my cheeks with her gauntleted hand.

“I’m awake.”

She had known—and still slapped.

“I brought holy water. Drink!”

She shoved a small holy-water vial between my lips.

A cool, sharp liquid slid down my throat.

Strength returned to my limbs.

Some of the wounds began to knit.

The blazing nerves cooled slightly.

“Can you hear me now?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve achieved the strategic objective. The Repeating Ballista crews are wrecked, and we’ve taken heads off half the Rykenta Retainers and Censer-Bearers.”

I scanned again.

True.

Strategic objective: nearly complete.

“Yes.”

“But that maniac Navigator-chief is coming to kill you. So as your lieutenant, I advise retreat. We’ll handle the rest somehow.”

Joy pulled me upright.

“We?”

I looked ahead.

BOOM!

Frey was smashing his Lightning Greatsword against the Hand of Destruction.

“Kyrie! MOVE!”

Each time his blade struck, the wind forming the hand dispersed, reformed, dispersed.

If the hand caught him, he would die—but Frey was fast, and Erica was too occupied to track him well.

“At the last!”

Knight Augusta charged with a lightning-imbued one-handed sword and war hammer.

“Like thunder forever!”

“Like a star newly risen!”

“As the greatest star explodes brightest!”

Behind her charged the Heavy Cavalry Blue Knight, then the Procus–Epicus brothers, then Knight Feyjin, and others whose names I couldn’t remember.

All shouting their house mottos and scriptures of the Eternal Church, swinging weapons under Wide-Area Imbuement.

They were at least Retainer-level.

They could react to Erica’s movements.

And Erica was unarmed.

She could not unleash mass wind blades without her blade.

BOOM!

Of course, that was like saying facing a mature hydra was fine because it had no wings.

Erica showed exactly what a direct-line house scion was.

BOOM!

Two blasts of compressed air tore apart a Knight and a Blue Knight in full plate.

A heavy cavalry Blue Knight was crushed like a beetle beneath a boot.

Wooooosh!

“How dare trash stand before me!”

Erica swept her fan wide.

Wind swirled around her into a vortex—not drawing inward, but blasting outward.

“I bear the blood of myth! Kneel. Bow your heads.”

Soldiers and Retainers could not even approach.

Censer-Bearers and Knights slowed as they tried to penetrate the vortex, only to be destroyed by blasts and wind shot.

Procus and Epicus were no exception.

Epicus charged on horseback.

BOOM!

His lance pierced Erica’s side at the same instant she fired a wind blast.

Epicus’s lance—and his arm—were torn away without trace.

Surprisingly, he did not scream.

He only struggled to keep balance and raised a war hammer with his remaining hand.

Then Erica gestured and a typhoon of wind rolled both horse and rider hundreds of meters away.

Astreos’s soldiers, retainers, censer-bearers, knights, blue knights—fell like thunder bursting and fading.

Whether the Thunder Star would remember this forever, I did not know.

But I would.

Joy helped me to my feet.

I could run again.

“Nari, nari—?”

“Joy.”

“For God’s sake—please! I am begging you! No more reckless—!”

“Would you have me ashamed of myself?”

“If you fall, we are nothing.”

“I only ever do my best. Just like you.”

Joy’s face twitched.

I laid a hand on her shoulder and stepped forward.

Rumble.

Erica was ahead.

A blast shot toward me.

Knight Feyjin cut it apart midair, the recoil flinging her back.

The Hand of Destruction tried to crush me.

Frey threw himself into its path.

He was tossed again and again like a man being rammed by a bull, but he kept swinging, tearing the wind apart.

Erica summoned a whirlwind from the sky—

FLASH!

Nereus fired a guided bolt.

Guided thunder wasn’t suitable at long range.

The price of his focus was taking a psychic blast from some orc war-shaman directly.

I reached Erica.

I squeezed out mana and called lightning.

FLASH!

At last, Erica’s Wind King Armor shattered.

I drew a dagger from my belt.

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Collarbone. Under the arm. Thigh.

Deep, deliberate strikes into major blood vessels.

Then I smashed my forehead into her brow with everything I had.

I opened my eyes.

Did I call a lightning strike and black out immediately?

Overheated nerves—loss of consciousness.

It happened often during thundercraft training.

“You’re awake?”

I lay on a field cot in a barracks tent.

Nereus sat at my bedside.

“So I died and came to hell.”

“Heaven. A warrior’s heaven—you get to fight forever.”

“What’s the situation?”

Chapter 73

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