Chapter 264: 263

Chapter 263

If the Night is Long, the Dreams are Deep (2)

Sigrun’s body rattled as she raised her hand. A dark blue stain had been spreading across its back like spilled honey. And soon, the stains spread over her entire hand. They didn’t just bloom there; the same thing could be seen happening all over Sigrun’s exposed flesh. The Mistletoe Clan elf lifted her sword. Even in the midst of battle, not a speck of dirt had stuck to the blade, and Sigrun could clearly see her appearance mirrored in the gleaming metal.

Her entire skin had turned blue, and her eye black. It could no longer be said that she was a graceful faerie whose beauty people envied and desired. She was now merely something ugly and disgusting. Yet, the truly terrible thing wasn’t her nasty looks.

Sigrun grabbed at the air. There was nothing, yet Sigrun’s eye had seen her thousand-year-old legacy collapse like a sandcastle; she clearly saw the fragments of her karma and spirit scatter away like grains of sand.

She collapsed as she felt a radical sense of loss and deprivation for the first time in her life, with these emotions filling her empty body. Shuddering under that terrible feeling, she soon found out the truth of the matter. She knew that from this day on, she would no longer be able to dance with her sword. It was more than a gut feeling; she was certain that she was of no use to her clan anymore.

Sigrun started laughing. It came out as a groan at first, then it rattled her entire body, becoming a mad, rasping, breathless laughter. Sigrun laughed like that for a while, then stopped, and spoke.

“That day, and today too. The covenant always surprises me.”

Her words were neither false admiration nor ridicule — she was truly surprised. Sigrun didn’t know how the young prince of Leonberg, who had even forgotten his family’s traditions and was too weak to access Dragon Slayer’s true power, could have unleashed such an ancient power. She couldn’t even imagine how it was all possible.

Sigrun narrowed her darkened brows and then looked at the human in front of her.

“Thanks to that charge, I’ve lost the greatest of my strength. I am damaged, and can no longer perform my sword dance. My body’s abilities have been considerably lowered, at least by thirty percent. Maybe, as time goes on, the things I lose will become more and more. There will be much suffering.”

Her voice was dry, like grains of sand shifting on a dune.

“But the same counts for Your Highness. To disallow me my powers like this, your Highness must have paid a price. And the only currency Your Highness has is your life. So, in exchange for your existence, you have been handed power. Your gains… how long do you think they will last? Now, even in this moment, the time left to your Highness must be continually decreasing.”

Crown Prince Adrian Leonberger did not answer. He just silently stared at Sigrun through the slits in his helm.

Sigrun wished that she was able to get rid of his helmet right away. The act of drawing out power at the expense of one’s life entailed the painful shattering of one’s soul, and not being able to see the prince’s face contorted by pain was annoyingly unfortunate. Instead, Sigrun suppressed her desire to rip the helmet off and continued speaking.

“Maybe you don’t have that long left, since you have already once drawn upon the sword’s power by using your life as collateral. However, this fight will end; you will probably not make it,” she said, staring straight at the prince. “You can’t avoid your death.”

He still stood silent. Perhaps it was because he was enduring the overwhelming pain of his dispersing soul, or maybe it was because he didn’t want to shorten his life by opening his mouth. Either way, Sigrun didn’t care; she didn’t want to. There was only one thing that was important to her.

“I’m glad that you did this on my behalf.”

It was the fact that the man in front of her was betting his life and soul in order to destroy her own.

“I can’t help but repay you in kind.”

There wasn’t any doubt that he would barely be able to drag his body away from here while his soul was being consumed. However, Sigrun had no intention of letting him die such a vain and merciful death.

“Before the sliver of life remaining to your Highness is completely extinguished-”

A purple energy began flowing over the elf’s blade.

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“It’s my turn to rip out your eyes with my own hands.”

And then, the battle began.

***

At once, the ground split as the sky was torn open. It was a fight occurring in a realm that humans could not even imagine.

Airwaves and tremors battered into the fort, making the stronghold shake as if it would collapse at any moment. There was not much that ordinary humans could do in the face of such a terrible contest. Some lay flat, covering their heads, while others trembled, denying the reality of what they saw.

However, there were still some soldiers who did not belong to either group.

“Stand!”

“Wake up!”

These men shouted harshly, forcibly rousing the soldiers who all felt completely terrified.

“You weak southern cubs!”

“You want to die in this fortress!”

They were the Winter Castle rangers, and they ran through the entire fort with their hardened bodies, pulling soldiers out of the stronghold and to safety.

“The fort will soon collapse!”

Knights also constantly shouted with mana as they set about evacuating the soldiers hunching on the ground or hiding in the fort.

“Take the injured first!” At the center of it all was the Winter Commander, Duke Vincent Balahard. “This is our final chance to get the remaining supplies and warriors out!”

Vincent stood on the buckling wall, which seemed ready to collapse at any moment as he orchestrated the soldiers’ evacuation.

“Commander! You have to get away!”

“There are a lot of troops that haven’t evacuated yet! These are the troops that his Highness has taken this risk to protect! We can’t let them die in vain!”

“But-”

“Don’t let me say it twice! Go and save those soldiers first!”

Vincent was pushing his knights like never before.

“Hurry!”

“Yes commander!”

After watching them disappear into the fortress, Vincent turned his head and looked over the plains.

‘Bang! Bang!’

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Countless flashes of gold and purple light bloomed and then faded. And when the light faded, shattered rays of it unerringly slammed into the fort.

‘Krurrrgh!’

Vincent gazed at the trembling walls and at the battle on the plain, and his eyes were gloomier than ever before.

“It’s like that day, damn it.”

He saw it all before him: the day when Winter Castle fell, the day when his father finally failed to return from battle. He recalled the dark green waves of abominations, the burning castle, and the desperately fleeing soldiers, his vision overlapping with the crumbling fort. All that was different was that it was not waves of greenskins that struck at the walls, but the golden and violet flashes.

Vincent was just as helpless as he had been on that day, and all he could do was watch on. The image of the prince thrusting his sword into his heart entered his mind, and he shuddered. He could still hear the sound of the blade piercing flesh. Vincent figured it must be a ritual to draw out the power of the royal sword, the Dragon Slayer. It was clear that legends of the Leonberger royal family weren’t mere empty tales. Such golden armor Vincent had never seen in his life; it was indeed straight from a legend.

However, Vincent could not feel the thrill of witnessing a legend come alive before his very eyes, nor did he feel any joy at the fact that the person who reclaimed the legend was his dear cousin, the prince.

Vincent was anxious. Strangely, he could not calm his heart down. He shook his head, trying to shake off such sinister forebodings. He constantly spoke to himself.

“It’s going to be different than back then. He’s a knight several times greater than my father. So, Ian will surely come back.”

Vincent repeated the same words countless times, yet he remained nervous. How much time had passed, he wondered?

“Commander! The troop evacuation is over!”

The knights who had gone off to save the troops returned.

“Are you sure none remains?!”

“We’ve got them all… No! Even if there are some left, we can’t get to them anymore! If we tarry, all our rescue teams will die!”

At that very moment, one side of the keep collapsed with a great rumble.

“Commander!” the knight screamed as he grabbed Vincent, who knew he could no longer be stubborn. Vincent was confident that he was among those that the Crown Prince was trying to protect, and Prince Adrian would not wish for him to die in the fortress and share his fate.

“Damn!” Vincent swore as he ran down the steps of the curtain wall.

‘Rrummble!’

And in the instant after Vincent passed through the gate, the wall sank to the earth with a roar, scattering a lot of dust and mortar into the air. In the meantime, Vincent kept bellowing out orders.

“Withdraw your troops as far back as you can! If you can, get to where you can’t see the flashes!”

Vincent coughed a few times between giving commands to his officers.

“Commander! Where are you going!”

“Please fall back!” Vincent shouted in reply, and set off at a run, going around the collapsed wall and toward the plain. He almost stumbled over scattered stones several times, finally coming to a stop close to the area where the battle was in full swing. Vincent had come to where the champions and a few others were already gathered.

“Good job.”

Count York Willowden, champion of the kingdom and grandmaster of the Templar Order, praised Vincent briskly when he saw him. Instead of responding, Vincent looked over the plain, with flashes of light striking across it.

“It looks like a scene from a myth,” York said, looking to Vincent for confirmation, but the duke once more remained silent.

“The royal sword is such a great thing,” Count Stuttgart observed.

“No matter how wonderful it is, it needs a man who can endure to wield it, and that is another power of his Highness.”

York Willowden and the Palace Knight Commander were constantly admiring the Crown Prince’s battle. However, the prince’s knights, Vincent included, soon spoke up and disagreed with their words. Whether or not the old knights thought that too big a fuss was being made, they shut their mouths and grew silent, keeping their thoughts to themselves. It wasn’t strange that Prince Adrian’s knights were frowning in anxious silence, for their master was famous for entering the most terrifying battles.

However, no matter how worried they were, they could only look on with grim intensity. They did not once look away from the contest, and their pale lips were tightly shut, their fists clenched to the point of bleeding, with their entire faces looking terrible.

by far, the worst, for she had tried to plunge headlong onto the battlefield several times.

Had Arwen Kirgayen not stepped up and rebuked her for being disturbed in the mind, Adelia would have been scorched into a handful of ashes under the intense flashes. However, now, Adelia was held in Arwen’s arms, staring at the plains upon which the Crown Prince did battle. Her eyes were empty as if her soul had escaped her body, and rays of light and tears alternately flowed from them.

Adelia was regretful and terrified, so much so that she somehow maintained a grip on reality. Though there were certain degrees of difference, the others were all similar to her.

Bernardo Eli, who frequently fiddled with his sword, looked very unstable. If he was left in his present condition, there existed valid concerns that his mana heart could be damaged. The same counted for Arwen Kirgayen.

Outwardly, she seemed to maintain her composure the best among the prince’s knights, but in reality, this was not the case at all. One could see it by looking at her sword.

Arwen’s sword aura flared up from time to time, and she was gripping the hilt tightly. She repeatedly forced the aura to fade back down, but was constantly staring at the far side of the plain, trying to see whether she could feel the prince’s presence.

Carls Ulrich, famous for being serious, possessed a sharp enough discipline for him to resist the urge to charge onto the grim battlefield right away.

York Willowden, who had lost his composure and avoided meeting the gazes of the young knights and champions, turned around, opened his mouth, and decided he would give them at least a few words of comfort.

‘Qaw ahhh!’

A tremendous energy burst somewhere behind his back. York stiffened where he stood. He was now very afraid of turning his body, believing that he would face something terrible were he to look back. Still, he turned around, and he saw it: something giant upon the plain that was slowly raising its head. It was something so supreme that York could never have imagined something like it existing in the world; it was something wild that he feared to even look at.

‘Krumble!’

Eventually, the thing which had raised its head also raised its body, and this was when York Willowden screamed.

“A dragon!”

Shortly after shouting so loudly, he promptly realized the truth. He had soon come to understand that the thing he had thought to be a dragon was actually an illusion of swordsmanship. York was utterly enchanted as he witnessed such an expression of energy, something he had never heard of. And just then-

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‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’

At this, the dragon form suddenly spread its wings and soared into the sky, soared toward the eye of an ominous storm of purple flashes.

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