LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 17 - Dogma (3)
Chapter 17 – Dogma (3)
Leonhart furrowed his brow as he spoke.
“Is that the Rundarpa swordsmanship?”
The dual-wielder winked and then charged straight at Bastille.
It was an incredibly fast sword technique. In just a second, he had slashed Bastille’s body at least three or four times.
Slashing him here and there until his flesh seemed to be hanging in tatters, the dual-wielder let out a mocking laugh.
“What is this? It’s like cutting a piece of wood.”
His sword started to aim at more dangerous areas. After stabbing Bastille once in the lower abdomen, he slashed the opposite side of his waist again.
The blood spurting from Bastille’s body splattered everywhere, soaking the dual-wielder’s body.
The dual-wielder licked the blood that had splashed onto his face and then used a skill. The sword in his right hand began to glow blue, and in an instant, it deeply pierced Bastille’s left lung.
“Why is everyone so scared of something like this…?”
The dual-wielder tried to pull the sword out. However, it wouldn’t budge, as if something was blocking it. In that moment of confusion, Bastille’s hand grabbed his right arm.
“Ahhhh!”
The dual-wielder screamed. His right arm withered in an instant, as if it had turned into a mummy, emitting a putrid stench as if it had rotted.
“Ughhh!”
He screamed in agony. It was a cry so painful that even being torn apart by a thousand blades wouldn’t compare.
At that moment, an enormous gust of wind swept over the two of them. When Bastille turned his eyes, he saw Judah holding a sword.
Judah’s sword was stained with blood. What he had cut was none other than the dual-wielder’s right shoulder.
Having lost his arm, the dual-wielder fell backward, passing out. One of the returning comrades who had come with him hurriedly began chanting healing magic.
Judah sheathed his sword.
He looked at Bastille with eyes full of caution. Though Bastille’s body was sliced up like ground meat, his expression hardly changed.
Judah felt fear creep over him once again. At the same time, he couldn’t help but let out a dry laugh at the dual-wielder who had attacked Bastille.
Trying to attack the master of Einshaten, despite being from Revenheim. How out of touch with the world could he have been? Wasn’t he supposed to be royalty?
Judah spoke.
“Given the situation, it seems we’ll have to forcibly detain the two of you. I plan to use some rough measures. The tactical unit will be arriving here shortly, so unless you want to suffer like last time, wouldn’t it be wise to surrender now?”
It looked like they were planning to call in an army armed with rifles. Even if they used rubber bullets, the impact would still be severe. During a concentrated barrage, even Bastille had lost consciousness before.
Leonhart looked at Bastille, and Bastille looked back at Leonhart. They exchanged a variety of thoughts through their eyes, but no clear answer emerged.
Bastille, contemplating how to break through this situation, gripped the hilt of the sword embedded in his chest.
The dual-wielder’s severed right arm had already completely decayed and vanished from this world, leaving only the sword piercing Bastille’s lung.
As soon as Bastille grasped the sword, he felt something strange.
It was a chilling sensation. A power surged through it, something one could never feel from an ordinary sword.
He glanced at Judah. His expression wasn’t good.
When he pulled the sword out and held it in his hand, it emitted a blue light. The sword’s glow was fierce. At a glance, it was clear the sword didn’t recognize Bastille as its master.
That could only mean…
“A holy sword.”
Judah sighed.
“Caladbolg. A sword from Norse mythology.”
Bastille immediately tossed the sword to Leonhart. A broad grin spread across Leonhart’s face.
“How should I repay this? Since you said it was a matter of the heart, I’ll be sure to keep my gratitude deep inside.”
“You’re quite the irritating character, aren’t you? Golden Lion of the Northern Wall.”
“You’re too kind, Master Judah of the Greatsword.”
At that moment, a commotion could be heard down the hallway. It seemed the strike force Judah had mentioned had arrived.
That was when Bastille moved.
“Clear the path.”
“Leave it to me.”
Leonhart gripped the sword and aimed it in Judah’s direction. However, Bastille headed in the exact opposite direction.
“Where are you going…?”
Before Leonhart could finish his sentence, Bastille placed his palm on the floor.
The tile of the ground crumbled in an instant, and the ground itself began to sink. In a blink, a hole several meters deep opened up.
Leonhart made a startled sound and looked around. Then, he noticed Judah’s frustrated expression.
“Judging by your miserable face, I must have guessed right. Well then, excuse me.”
Just before Leonhart jumped into the hole, he dashed over to a girl trembling in a corner and scooped her up.
“Whoa!”
“Don’t worry. I’m here to save you.”
With a wink, Leonhart held her close and leaped into the underground tunnel Bastille had created.
The pit below the hole Bastille made was so deep the bottom couldn’t be seen. But the real issue wasn’t the depth.
At the end of the pit Bastille created was a cavern of considerable size. It didn’t seem to be a natural cave, and aside from Bastille’s group, there were countless other life forms present in the cave.
“Monsters…”
Bastille’s expression hardened as he spoke.
“At this depth, I figured there must be a dungeon nearby. With so many experimental life forms swarming underground, there was no way the ‘Evils of Eclipse’ wouldn’t have opened a rift here.”
Leonhart, with a slightly tense expression, responded.
“So, between the Evils of Eclipse and the KSA trackers, you’d choose the monsters, right?”
Bastille nodded and began to run.
If they followed a path that led even slightly higher, they would eventually reach a place with more people.
Perhaps an underground shopping mall, or a subway station.
After slaying dozens of monsters and passing through several rooms, Bastille had recovered a fair amount of the blood he had lost during the previous fight.
He paused for a moment to catch his breath and glanced back. Leonhart, still holding the girl, was in view.
“Are you going to bring her?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“Is it a problem?”
“No. Compared to when you weren’t holding Caladbolg, having the girl with you is actually more helpful right now.”
Leonhart gave a wide smile.
“Searing criticism, thrilling.”
In that brief moment of calm, the girl struggled to break free from Leonhart’s grasp. But Leonhart couldn’t let her go. Even in this very room, several of the Eclipse’s bugs were lurking in the shadows, hunting for a host.
When she couldn’t escape no matter how hard she tried, the girl bit Leonhart’s forearm. Blood gushed out, dripping to the floor.
However, Leonhart still wore a smile as he spoke.
“It’s alright. I’m trying to protect you.”
The girl seemed bewildered by Leonhart’s reaction. Instead of feeling justified for hurting him, she looked flustered.
She hesitated for a moment and then released her grip on his arm. Afterward, she licked the wound. The area around the wound turned golden, and it quickly healed.
Bastille watched the girl with an intrigued expression. Leonhart asked him,
“Even you find that strange, don’t you?”
“A half-breed of a vampire and a dryad….”
“A dryad? Like a forest spirit?”
“The ability to heal wounds with bodily fluids is a power only forest spirits possess.”
The revelation of her identity was surprising, but there wasn’t time to continue the conversation.
The tunnel collapsed, and Eclipse’s monsters poured in. Bastille’s Lion’s Grasp and Leonhart’s holy sword, Caladbolg, slashed and swallowed the monsters left and right.
Despite the cave being full of monsters, there wasn’t a single one capable of standing in the way of these two superhumans.
—
Meanwhile, chaos erupted in the KSA’s underground laboratory, where they had just lost sight of the group.
Monsters were flooding in through the hole Bastille had opened.
The woman in the white coat standing beside Judah spoke.
“Are we going to pursue them?”
Judah shook his head.
“No. Down there, it would be impossible without a monster like Bastille.”
“That’s true.”
Judah glanced at the tactical unit firing around the hole and spoke again.
“This deep underground, with all this noise… we’ve known for a long time that the Eclipse’s monsters have been preying on the experimental subjects around the lab, haven’t we?”
“Isn’t it better to just seal it off?”
When Judah nodded slowly, one of the keykeepers shouted to the squad.
“Chemical unit, forward! Seal the hole with high-density resin foam!”
The soldiers at the rear hauled out spray devices equipped with large extinguishers and fired them at the ground. Foam spewed out, quickly sealing the hole and swelling up like a mound.
Once it began to harden, the foam boasted a strength comparable to that of a concrete wall. Some monsters that hadn’t escaped in time were fossilized inside it.
The high-density resin foam had been intended to subdue Bastille, but it also temporarily prevented the influx of monsters.
Another returner, Luchita, the Archer of Rending Fire, spoke to Judah.
“The damage is severe. They took the key. You think we’ll be alright? It’s a living sample that survived….”
Judah shook his head.
“No, it definitely failed to fuse. I’ll have to check the CCTV again, but I think it was Bastille who revived it.”
“Spirit binding?”
“Most likely.”
“Why would he do such a thing…?”
“He needs information.”
Luchita laughed at Judah’s words.
“If that’s the case, then he’s grasping at straws. This entire floor is just a decoy.”
Judah smiled.
“Anyone would think so. The most important things are always hidden in the deepest place. And in an environment like this, they’d believe their flimsy prophecy had come true.”
“Exactly.”
Judah continued.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I prefer that saying.”
Judah raised his head and looked upward.
Twenty floors above.
The keys had been scattered across all those floors. And, in fact, there were dozens of similar experimental bases all over the world.
“It won’t take long before we get a key that successfully fuses.”
Luchita glanced at the ground.
“Caladbolg was a waste.”
Judah nodded.
“If we’ve lost anything from this commotion, it’s Caladbolg. But it’s fine. We gained far more valuable information.”
Judah’s gaze rested on the dual-wielder’s eternally lost right arm.
“Information?”
“The true nature of the master of the Mage Tower Einshaten.”
At Judah’s meaningful smile, Luchita shrugged her shoulders.
The fear she had felt from Bastille was still etched deep in her bones. But if she had to choose between becoming an enemy of Judah or Bastille, she thought she would choose Bastille.
She could endure the terror in front of her, but there was no way to deal with the schemer lurking behind.
—
The two returners and the girl first stopped by Leonhart’s apartment.
Aside from anything else, their clothes were a total mess.
Leonhart quickly took a shower, then, wearing only a pair of training pants, headed to the fridge.
“Beer, beer—!”
As he popped open a can and took a gulp, Leonhart’s eyes caught an unusual sight.
A girl he didn’t know was squatting outside the balcony window, looking at him with a downcast expression. With a pitiful look, she stared at Leonhart, pleadingly.
Just then, Bastille emerged from the other bathroom after washing up, and Leonhart asked him,
“Why is she out there? She doesn’t seem to be trying to escape.”
Bastille glanced in the direction Leonhart was pointing and couldn’t help but give a wry smile at the scene.
“The transparent wall must have become like shackles for an elephant.”
“Elephant shackles? Oh, you mean how they’re tied up to a post with chains when they’re young, and then, even after the post is gone, they still can’t leave?”
Bastille nodded.
“Maybe… she might have been born down there. It’s natural for her to think of the space beyond the glass as where she’s supposed to be.”
“Are you saying she spent her whole life behind a glass wall?”