Vacuum Slash

By the average lifespan of ordinary humans beneath the Erdtree, which exceeded eighty-five years, Bozales, thirty-five that year, was in the absolute prime of his physical strength. At the same time, more than ten years of fighting and killing on the arena stage had given him ample experience and skill, and all of it had transformed into strength that surpassed his peers.

Ever since the end of the summer league, where experts had gathered in droves, his record had soared after he lost competitors on his level. In less than three months, more than fifty fighters had fallen beneath his Octagonal War Hammer, including several long-established Purple Steel Rank fighters.

As his money and fame rose at breakneck speed, Bozales's standing in the eyes of the audience climbed higher and higher as well. Everyone regarded him as the next Mithril Rank soon to rise. And that was indeed the truth. He only needed to win one final match—a gladiatorial bout that could hardly even be called a "duel"—and he would truly step into the ranks of top-tier fighters, becoming a keen blade that the great nobles would look upon with favor.

Looking at the young knight a hundred paces away, whose build still seemed somewhat slender, Bozales let out an almost imperceptible sigh from behind his refined-steel visor.

He had seen far too many opponents like this when he was young. They were green, weak, and unable to withstand a single blow, yet the temptations of honor, fame, and profit had blinded them, so they always fought with an attitude that held nothing back. Although the arena explicitly forbade killing human opponents, among the fighters left crippled by serious injuries or dead despite treatment, the majority were precisely these young people who had just stepped into the world.

In his eyes, the gap in strength between him and the other party was like heaven and abyss, so he decided to hold back appropriately, lest a moment of carelessness completely ruin the child's career as a fighter. He only needed to stop once the point was made, let him realize he could not win, and have him concede on his own... At least, before the starting bell rang, that was what Bozales thought.

"My apologies—" he heard the young man say with such shameless arrogance.

Then the other party vanished from his field of vision. Only when the wind pressure that suddenly swept through the arena shook him into staggering backward did he instinctively raise his head, and in one horrified glance, he saw a blur of light and shadow rushing toward him at terrifying speed!

Before the match began, the two of them had originally been separated by a hundred paces. The purpose of such an arrangement was to give fighters who used bows, crossbows, and hidden weapons enough room to display their abilities. Yet at this very moment, it was precisely this hundred-pace distance that gave Bozales the barest chance to react.

The muscle memory he had developed through years of killing and hand-to-hand combat made him, without thinking, mobilize the strength of his entire body and swing his war hammer diagonally upward, trying to block the opponent's heavy descending slash. Unexpectedly, the instant long sword and war hammer collided, an unimaginable, surging force pressed down like wind and thunder falling from the heavens!

Amid a blast that shook the entire arena, a corner of the Octagonal War Hammer shattered on the spot. Bozales's bones and muscles sent up a wave of overburdened, jolting pain, his knees went weak uncontrollably, and his whole body dropped to the ground on one knee!

"This is... Storm Swordsmanship?"

With no time in his haste to think through the other party's move, Bozales endured the pain and rolled sideways on the spot. As he pulled away, his wrist secretly twisted, and the hammerhead at the front of his war hammer dragged a thin chain as it shot out, aimed straight at Lucia's face!

The Octagonal War Hammer on which he had built his fame was in fact a specially made flail. After more than ten years of gladiatorial combat, this had long since ceased to be some unknown killing move. Even so, Bozales could still rely on switching flexibly between the two weapon forms to force his enemies into exhaustion, until they finally revealed an opening.

Unfortunately, this time, he had miscalculated again.

For Lucia, whose reaction speed had been developed through long-term sparring with Miquella, Bozales's flail was truly too slow. He had not even brought the Dragon King's Body to half its level before he lightly dodged several steps to the side. At the same time, the arm holding his sword abruptly exerted force, and the blade tore through the air with a sharp cry. A faint, transparent slash wrapped in the whimpering sound of wind howled out from the end of the sword edge!

Storm Swordsmanship. Vacuum Slash!

This was an ancient sword art inherited from the Ancient Storm Dynasty, and also a high-level secret technique among the Storm Combat Arts. Even in the present age, when the inheritance of Storm Combat Arts had not yet withered, only powerful knights who had immersed themselves in this path for many years could release such sword techniques through the explosive force of a body tempered a thousand times over.

But Lucia's circumstances were different. With the formidable physical talent of an ancient dragon demigod and the vital-blood power provided by the Dragon King's Body as his foundation, coupled with the meticulous drills he had performed again and again in the Memory Battlefield, although he had only just glimpsed the threshold of swordsmanship, he could already make preliminary use of similar high-level techniques, and their power even surpassed that of ordinary Storm Knights.

The faint, formless slash flashed through the air and vanished. In an instant, the flail whipping toward him from midair broke into several pieces. The remnant force of the slash continued forward, leaving two deep sword marks on Bozales's breastplate and sending his entire body flying backward to crash heavily onto the ground!

The arena, which had originally been roaring with cheers, fell into dead silence. Thousands of spectators, including Old Hart, all stared at the scene before them with their mouths agape. It was so quiet in every direction that it seemed one could hear a needle point hit the ground.

Bozales violently coughed up a mouthful of blood and tried hard to climb back up. However, after that series of blows, his body had already been overdrawn to its limit. After struggling a few times, he could only give up.

He lowered his head and looked at the sword marks on his chest. The young man opposite him had clearly held back. After that slash pierced through the steel armor, it had only barely cut his skin, and the shock injuries inside his body did not count as serious either. Once he coughed out that mouthful of clotted blood, there was no real harm.

"I lost..." he murmured, his eyes vacant, feeling that everything before him was so disillusioning, like a nightmare only a dead-drunk sot could have dreamt up.

Only after standing there stunned for a full seven or eight seconds did the host at the side of the arena abruptly come back to his senses and ring the bell signaling the end of the match.

Although the audience was a little gloomy because they had lost their bets, the brilliance of the fight temporarily suppressed that displeasure. To them, witnessing the rise of a young powerhouse was far more exhilarating.

And so they began to shout the unfamiliar name "Lucifer," throwing the prepared petals and golden leaves in the arena toward the fighting platform. The magical devices around the arena once again erupted with dazzling fireworks, celebrating the birth of the victor.

"Raise his fighter rating by one rank, then find out his background immediately!" Old Hart shouted at the subordinates around him amid the clamorous voices. "Have the guards bring him to my office later. I want to personally ask whether he's willing to represent Serant in the year-end Combat Festival!"

"Supervisor, he's already gone..." someone replied with an awkward expression.

"What?"

When Old Hart heard that, he hurriedly stood and looked toward the arena. Then, in disbelief, he discovered that the young man who had just pulled off an upset victory against Bozales had not stayed on the stage to accept the audience's cheers and praise. Instead, he had cleanly jumped down from the fighting platform and run toward the exit, soon slipping into the crowd and vanishing without a trace.

The old supervisor of Serant rarely cursed out loud. By the time he reacted and arranged for people to search for Lansseax, who had come with Lucia, the only news he received was that she had already collected the gambling winnings and left long ago.

Meanwhile, outside the arena, Lucia widened his eyes and caught the large pouch Lansseax tossed over. Even with his current strength, under circumstances where he was mentally unprepared, he still felt his hands suddenly sink.

"This much?"

"The odds were one to twenty. I only bet three thousand Runes, so you wouldn't scam their entire arena out from under them and make that damned old man Duoris come crying and threatening to die in front of me," Lansseax said, spreading her hands. "Plus the one-thousand prize money for your win this match. I claimed that for you too. Settled in gold Runes, it comes out to this much."

Lucia hefted the pouch in his hands with a sense of great accomplishment and sighed. "What a pity this kind of method can't be used often. If I could fight a hundred or eighty matches every day, sooner or later I'd be able to buy the entire royal capital."

"You only know how to dream!" Lansseax snapped, knocking him on the forehead. "The management of this arena will probably try every possible way to investigate where you came from afterward. If you still plan to come here in the future to find people to spar with, I'll help you arrange a false identity under this name when we get back."

"Then thank you, Sister Lans—"

"Words don't count. Show some sincerity. Tell me how we're splitting the loot."

"Well... fifty-fifty?"

"Who gets the fifty?"

"Huh?"

The two joked and laughed as they set off on the return journey. Since this place was too far from the Golden Sanctuary, and after a full day of running around neither of them felt like walking, they simply rented a carriage at a carriage house. They prepared to return first to the Ancient Dragon Temple, then arrange for the temple's carriage to send Lucia back to Valeria Hall.

After boarding the carriage and traveling for a short while, Lucia suddenly smelled a stench mixed with blood drifting in from outside. He frowned slightly, opened the carriage window, and looked out. Nearby was a relatively secluded stretch of streets and alleys, and in the direction the stench came from, there was an extremely wide ground well.

At that moment, five or six cargo carriages were driving toward the mouth of the well. The drivers swung their long whips, lashing the mules and horses pulling the carts. The tops of the carriages behind them were all covered with pieces of filthy cloth so dirty their original colors could not be made out, and inside, they were packed full with who knew what.

"Those are corpse carts," Lansseax said calmly from beside him.