SWNOVELXO Chapter 36 - Beast of Illusion (1)
Chapter 36. Beast of Illusion (1)
With a swoosh, a new sequence began.
This time, the stage was a desolate desert.
The scorching heat and dryness suffocated me, as though anything living would shrivel up instantly.
“Is there no one here?”
I hadn’t yet confirmed whose fear this was. Glancing around, there was no sign of any illusionary beast.
“Whose fear is this?”
“Ugh, I’m so thirsty.”
“Could it be that the point isn’t an illusionary beast… but rather to survive here somehow?”
Blane bent down and scooped up a handful of sand. She scattered it into the air, but there was no breeze.
The sand fell back to the ground, adding to the desolate atmosphere.
“Something’s coming.”
Saying this, Rubin gazed into the distance.
Though slower to react, Kun also sensed that something was approaching, encircling us.
Along the horizon, rippling with mirages, tiny specks began to densely fill the line.
No matter which direction I looked, I could see them.
They were gradually surrounding us from all sides.
“We’re completely surrounded.”
“Looks like there’s at least a thousand.”
Blane and Hamil each commented, and Kun added, wearing a smug expression.
“Whatever they are, we’ll just have to kill them.”
As the unknown force that had encircled us entered a certain range, it suddenly charged forward, as if it had been waiting for this moment.
In an instant, dust billowed in every direction.
And then—
Before the dust behind me had even settled, the enemies that had been in the distance were now close enough to reveal themselves.
“Huh? Could it be…”
The first to react upon seeing the identity of the illusionary beasts was Hamil.
“Haha!”
Hamil burst into laughter, bending over.
Beside him, Kun stood, his body trembling.
“Kun! Do you know what this is called?”
“…Shut up.”
“This is exactly what you’d call a dark past! A dark… past.”
“Damn it, I told you to shut up!”
It was indeed a memory Kun would rather forget.
A thousand illusionary beasts filled with hostility.
They had the bodies of eight-year-old children, but the problem lay in their heads.
Where their heads should have been, there were pristine white ostrich eggs.
Moreover, each one wore a mask that bore an unsettlingly familiar face.
“It seems to be my face.”
Rubin spoke calmly. His nonchalant tone only added to Kun’s humiliation.
“Since their bodies are small, it doesn’t seem to be me as I am now. It’s probably how I looked at eight years old?”
“Hah…”
In utter humiliation, Kun averted his gaze to avoid Rubin’s eyes.
Kun’s inner fear.
It was the memory of his first encounter with Rubin when he was eight.
The day he first visited the Ronan estate.
While the heads of the families were conversing, Kun and Rubin had roamed through the estate.
It was behind the servants’ quarters, in a narrow pit where the guards’ watch was thinnest, that Kun had shown his true colors to Rubin.
But he quickly realized he’d chosen the wrong opponent.
Rubin not only subdued him completely, but also pinned him in the pit, stifling him with the Dark Ripple.
For the first time, Kun felt a genuine fear that he might actually die.
“Kun, are you okay?”
Hamil asked, mischief in his voice.
Blane, wisely choosing to stay silent, kept his lips tightly shut, though a faint smile still crept through.
“All the bodies are identical, and the atmosphere they give off is uniform. I guess we could call them copies.”
Rubin could have crushed Kun’s pride completely, but he refrained.
“Those scarecrows. They’re only eight years old. I’m dozens of times stronger now than I was then!”
Rubin nodded at Kun’s words.
Kun was right.
There was a difference in time between now and when he was eight.
Given the growth he’d achieved since then, even a thousand of them wouldn’t be frightening.
“Kun.”
“What!”
“How about we take these things out first, and then settle things between us?”
The thousand masked Rubins, who had been surrounding them in a circle, took a step forward.
The pressure increased in an instant.
“Are you sure you won’t get taken down by those egg-headed kids?”
Kun drew his dagger, asking.
“The same goes for you, doesn’t it? We’ll see who kills more of them when it’s over.”
“How cocky. Fine then, I’ll crack open every one of those Ronan egg-heads!”
Kun yelled, veins bulging in his neck.
“I’ll smash every one of those heads!”
Kun was the first to move.
He charged forward, driving his dagger into the head of the nearest masked Rubin.
With a popping sound, the ostrich egg mask shattered, spraying yellow liquid everywhere.
Rubin, watching, also drew his dagger. Compared to the formidable foes he’d faced before, these were nothing.
“As expected, they’re not dangerous on their own. There may be a lot of them, but we should all make it out.”
Blane and Hamil had already drawn their weapons.
The two took the southern direction, maintaining formation to support each other, as they rushed toward the masked Rubins.
‘Then this area is mine.’
Rubin strode forward, casually activating his Dark Ripple at the second ring.
His body felt lighter, and the enemies’ movements became sharper and clearer.
Pop!
Pop-pop-pop!
Rubin drove his dagger straight into the head of a masked Rubin before him. Then he leaped into the air, driving his knees down onto the heads of two others beside him.
‘This would have been impossible before the regression.’
Now he was easily destroying masks in his own image, but before the regression, he would have felt resistance.
Pop!
Thud!
Crunch!
In every direction, the yellow liquid from the shattered ostrich eggs spurted out like a refreshing spray.
The various bursting sounds resounded like a lively symphony.
‘This is certainly a solid training exercise for everyone.’
Though Kun was likely burning with humiliation, facing a thousand enemies was more than enough to push everyone to a new level.
Rubin thought of his past, where he’d swept through the imperial army like a murderous ghost in the war with the Emperor, as he shattered the heads of the masked Rubins.
‘For Kun to remember me at eight years old as this weak…’
Trauma is a truly frightening thing.
Even now, despite his significant growth, Kun feared the Rubin of that time.
‘It was good I taught him a lesson back then.’
Thanks to that, passing this trial was now easy.
While wielding the Assassin Blade Family’s techniques, Rubin subtly incorporated the Brion Sword Technique.
Having mastered up to the Eleventh Form of the Brion Technique, his movements were like a mage casting a spell of mass destruction, cutting down dozens of masked Rubins at once.
While not on Rubin’s level, the other participants each showed remarkable skill.
Hamil and Kun were confirming their physical limits, covered in the yellow liquid from the shattered egg-heads.
With a firm resolve, Blane also matched Hamil’s pace with confidence.
‘What is this feeling?’
While piercing through the heads of masked Rubins, Rubin suddenly sensed something strange.
As he performed the Brion Technique,
A unique energy circulated from the sword he held.
It was a pure, distinct aura of the sword, unrelated to Rubin’s Dark Ripple.
At the same time, a heavy sensation filled his heart area, as though a massive stone were pressing down on it.
It was incredibly heavy. Yet it was also intensely hot, fierce, and pulsating with life.
Could this be…
‘Is this what they call Aura?’
This new feeling was so mysterious that Rubin couldn’t stop himself from striking down his enemies.
It felt as if it would vanish if he hesitated even for a moment.
Rubin called out to Haneke, who was quietly observing his movements from within.
‘Haneke, are you watching?’
—Yes. Your guess was correct. Faster than expected. To think you’d awaken Aura even before mastering the Twelfth Form.
Though rare, such cases did exist.
The correlation between sword techniques and Aura was merely a human construct. Standards could always be broken.
Haneke seemed satisfied. His face practically expressed that there was nothing more gratifying than witnessing his student’s rapid growth.
Rubin briefly checked the flow within his own body.
Within the previously empty third ring, a new power had appeared.
It was Aura.
‘It certainly feels different…’
The newly acquired ring of Aura.
Centered around his heart, it interwove with the two rings of Dark Ripple, spinning rapidly.
The Aura ring felt significantly heavier than the Dark Ripple.
Perhaps this was due to the Aura’s characteristic “concentration of force.”
—Now’s not the time to savor it. For now, move as much as you can in this battlefield-like situation. We’ll save the explanations about Aura for later.
Though he spoke of a battlefield, Haneke seemed interested in observing Rubin’s killer-like movements a bit longer.
‘I must remember this feeling of Aura manifestation.’
In an instant, dozens of masked Rubins surrounded him. But that was precisely the positioning he’d intended to provoke.
Gripping his Aura-infused sword tightly, Rubin drew a circle, kneeling on one knee.
Papapapapap!
The thighs of the masked Rubins surrounding him burst open, spilling yellow blood.
They staggered, losing balance, and collapsed.
The fallen masked Rubins soon piled into a heap. Standing atop them, Rubin surveyed the other participants.
‘Everyone’s still handling themselves well.’
Hamil and Blane moved in sync, coordinating attacks that used each other’s bodies as extensions.
Both of them, having unlocked the Dark Ripple, continued their swift movements with “Shadow Rhythm.”
In contrast, Kun was breaking through the masked Rubins in his usual headstrong way. He was so relentless that even the faceless masked Rubins seemed to flinch under his merciless ferocity.
Kun’s Dark Ripple movements were beyond “Shadow Rhythm”; they were “Shadow Roar.”
The fluidity decreased, but the destructive power increased.
Rubin called out to Kun.
“Kun! I’m almost finished here!”
Rubin had nearly cleared out his assigned area.
Easily dispatching any that climbed over the heap, he swiftly reduced the remaining numbers.
He must have taken down about 400 of them by now.
Papapapapap!
As he drove his dagger into the last one’s head, a spray of yellow liquid marked the end of the battle in his sector.
Rubin wiped his dagger on the body of a masked Rubin and approached Kun.
“Die! Die! You bastard! You too, die! And you too!”
Kun, showing no signs of fatigue, was smashing through his assigned opponents.
He had taken down about 300, and Hamil and Blane were cooperating to finish a similar number.
“You damn ostrich-egg bastards!”
With a final beast knelt down, Kun drove his dagger directly into its crown.
The force of his angered blow seemed to shake the ground itself.
“Hah…”
Kun, breathing heavily, looked across at Rubin.
Not a mask, but the real Rubin.
“I’ve waited two years for this! You Ronan scum!”
“Kun, your insults toward the main family are getting rather blatant.”
“Do you think you’re the head of the family?”
“Someday I will be. But even if you were to die and come back to life, you’d never be the head of the main family.”
“Hmph. Even as head, you’d be a pathetic mutt.”
Rubin adjusted his grip on his dagger.
He had no intention of taking this duel lightly.
That would be disrespectful to Kun, who had waited two years for this.
‘And I still remember the scorn you showed me before the regression.’
Rubin deliberately recalled those memories, readying himself to take this fight seriously.
Since it was within the world of illusions, there would be no actual harm.
Losing to Kun would mean disqualification, but he had no intention of losing.
This would serve as excellent training for them both.
‘For Kun’s sake as well.’
And for all those in the Assassin Blade Family who would stand against the Emperor.
‘You may not like it, but I have two Dark Ripples.’
Rubin gradually unlocked the first ring, carried over from his previous life. His heart began to throb slowly, releasing the Dark Ripple.
Even with the growth of the past two years, he still couldn’t fully control the Dark Ripple from his previous life.
With the depth of thirty years, this five-star Dark Ripple had a fundamentally different quality.
His vision expanded rapidly.
The sensations in his body completely changed.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
He could feel his heartbeat quickening, and his senses were sharper than ever before.
“Die! You bastard!”
Kun charged, all his Dark Ripple focused into an all-out rush.
It was clear even at a glance that his strength could crush even a sturdy wall.
But to Rubin, he looked slow.
‘Completely mastering the first Dark Ripple is still impossible. I’m only using half of it. I need to end this quickly.’
A tightness swelled in his chest. With renewed resolve, Rubin sprinted toward Kun.
At that moment, Hamil and Blane, who were dealing with the illusionary beasts on the other side, sensed an immense amount of Dark Ripple.
It was a significant level, like that which they’d only felt from the heads of the families.
“This can’t be!”
But that sensation was brief.
A fleeting confrontation.
A momentary clash.
That was all there was.
Rubin, having evaded all of Kun’s consecutive attacks, launched a counterattack.
A fierce wind.
A storm.
The swift, condensed trajectory of his sword swept over Kun.
“…!”
Kun, confronted with an attack he’d never seen, managed to block only one strike.
Afterward, Rubin’s blade slashed through him, his flesh pierced, cut, and torn.
After passing by Kun, Rubin took a deep breath, looking down at his own blade. His hand trembled at the faint aura clinging to his sword.
“This is the Eleventh Form of the Brion Sword Technique, Kun.”
The fact that he had mastered the Brion Sword Technique was a secret shared only between Rubin and Haneke, but it didn’t matter.
Kun was already lifeless.
Kun’s body, still suffering from the pain, fell to the ground, lifeless.
Whish.
In front of Blane and Hamil, many illusionary beasts remained, but since Kun, the origin of the fear, had been defeated, this sequence automatically ended.
The remaining three returned to the black pond.
It was now Rubin’s turn.