The man with sanpaku eyes looked fierce, a natural murderous air hanging about his brows. No matter how you looked at him, he seemed like bad news.
But what puzzled Luo Ge was this.
As far as he remembered, Ghislaine was hardly a coward. No matter how fierce this man looked, surely he couldn't frighten her this badly?
Unless... he was an enemy Ghislaine had known before.
"Don't move!"
Ghislaine growled under her breath, "Whatever you do, don't move without my order."
Since they had met, this was the first time she had warned Luo Ge in such a stern voice.
The man drew closer.
He said nothing, simply walking at an unhurried pace, yet he exuded an invisible, overwhelming pressure.
It was as though the wind and snow all around had to make way for every step he took.
The silver-haired, golden-eyed man wore no expression, as though he hadn't seen the two people ahead at all.
He approached, step by step.
The instant he passed Ghislaine-
Luo Ge could see her feline tail swishing incessantly, a sign of her extreme fear of this man.
Nothing happened.
Until the man finally reached him.
Just when Luo Ge thought he would walk past him too, the man unexpectedly stopped right in front of him.
"Need something?"
Luo Ge was a little surprised.
The silver-haired man looked down at him, his golden eyes fixing on him like a hawk's. "Are you Rog Greyrat?"
"Huh? You know me?"
"Next... answer one question."
"Are you an apostle of 'Human God Hitogami'?"
That single question left Luo Ge completely dumbfounded. Hitogami? What the hell was that?
"Um... excuse me."
Luo Ge looked up at the man in confusion. "What's Hitogami?"
Looking into Luo Ge's bewildered eyes, the man fell silent briefly, then suddenly seemed to understand something.
"I see... now I understand. You haven't had time to become Hitogami's most capable apostle yet, have you?
"Very well..."
"Let it all end here!"
In an instant.
Luo Ge felt sweat drench his back, a prickling sensation running down his spine.
It was as though an invisible blade were already pressed against his chest.
As the man spoke, he thrust a hand toward him. Luo Ge could feel that, no matter how he tried to block that power, death was inevitable.
He... he wanted to kill him!
At that critical moment, Ghislaine acted. She lunged forward and blocked the man's attack with her sword.
Still shaken, Luo Ge felt a lingering fear.
Without Ghislaine, the man's palm would have pierced his chest in an instant.
But could Ghislaine match the man before them?
"Black Wolf Sword King Ghislaine?"
The man stopped and looked at Ghislaine in puzzlement.
"Ugh! Aaaaaaaah!!!"
Ghislaine launched a ferocious attack on the man, seizing the initiative without the slightest hesitation.
Every move carried the full force of a Sword King. Sword light poured down like torrential rain, enveloping him in chilling killing intent.
Yet the man merely extended one hand and effortlessly caught every attack Ghislaine made.
Throughout the entire exchange... he seemed completely at ease.
Catching a blade barehanded?
Watching the fight from the side, Luo Ge felt his scalp prickle. Fuck... what the hell was this random roadside mob?
Run?
Was there still... time?
Luo Ge began planning an escape route, but when he realized sheer cliffs surrounded them... he quickly abandoned that unrealistic idea.
Because whichever way he ran, it seemed he would die.
What should he do?
What should he do?
What could he possibly do...
Luo Ge's mind raced, but every possibility seemed to lead to a dead end.
Damn it!
Damn it!
What the hell was going on?
Why had someone he had never met decided to kill him immediately after asking whether he was a Human God Apostle?
He didn't even know who Hitogami was!
Bang!
After only a few exchanges, Ghislaine fell. A casual punch from the Dragon God struck her lower abdomen and sent her flying backward.
With a clang, her sword fell into the snow as well.
Ghislaine still tried to struggle to her feet, but she had no strength left. She could only muster her last shred of strength and call hoarsely to Luo Ge, "Run... hurry, run..."
Luo Ge wanted to run too, but with Transparent World, he had already noticed that the area around him was completely sealed off.
Everywhere here lay within the silver-haired man's attack range.
If he made a rash move and exposed his back, he would only die faster.
"There's no helping it. Ghislaine... leave the rest to me!"
Hearing that, Ghislaine could hold on no longer and passed out.
Luo Ge narrowed his eyes slightly, sweeping his gaze over the terrifying man.
He didn't choose to sit and await death. He intended to fight to the bitter end.
He took a deep breath.
Luo Ge tightened his grip on his iron sword and took his stance.
Then he charged straight at him, intending to strike first.
Silent Blade!
But the man before him was simply too strong. Whatever technique Luo Ge used-Silent Blade, Flow...
He easily blocked them all with one hand.
He hadn't even drawn his blade.
Clack, clack, clack!
Luo Ge swung his sword again and again. The silver-haired man continued blocking with one hand, looking utterly relaxed and at ease.
"Are you human?"
A bitter look flickered across Luo Ge's lips.
"Still putting up a desperate struggle? You're every bit as tenacious as I remember."
"Rog Greyrat, as Hitogami's strongest apostle, I will definitely kill you this time."
The man finished speaking coldly.
With effortless ease, he caught Luo Ge's iron sword in one hand. There was a crack.
He crushed the iron sword in an instant, and it fell to the ground in two pieces.
"You bastard!"
"That was the only bond between my old man and me in this world." Instantly enraged, Luo Ge shouted about their bond, his blood beginning to boil.
He began unleashing his inner cosmos!
But it didn't do a damn thing... the gap in their strength was still too great.
Slash!!
The man severed Luo Ge's arm with one swing.
Then, as though lifting a chick, he hoisted Luo Ge with one hand and plunged straight into his heart and lungs.
As his chest was pierced-
The excruciating pain made Luo Ge grunt.
Warm blood gushed from the wound on his arm.
Drip, drip. Blood fell onto the snow, spreading into a shocking crimson stain.
Luo Ge didn't fall.
Gritting his teeth, he still tried to punch the man with his remaining hand, aiming for the weakest part of his body: his throat.
Had he hurt him?
No.
To be precise, he hadn't even broken the skin. Luo Ge's attack was like scraping at him.
Then the world spun.
Unable to fight back at all, he was punched away, his body turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees as he spiraled into the air.
He finally landed in a miserable heap in the snow over ten meters away and rolled.
His entire body was covered in wounds.
With only one arm remaining, he could only continue fighting with his left hand.
He kept struggling to rise and fight, but after several attempts, every one of them ended in failure.
Only... a brief moment had passed.
Blood stained the snow red.
Luo Ge lay in a pool of blood.
Using the last of his strength, he raised his head and looked up at the man standing over him a short distance away. "Cough, cough!"
"Pfft!"
Coughing up blood, Luo Ge asked haltingly in confusion, "Why... just... why?"
"Rog Greyrat, I don't want to kill you, but in the future, you will help that bastard Hitogami defeat me. That makes you my enemy."
The man's reply was as calm as though he were stating some trivial matter.
"Oh! Right!"
"After you die, pass a message to Hitogami for me. Tell him that I, Dragon God Orsted, will one day... kill him without fail."
"Hitogami?"
"Dragon God?"
"Looks like I accidentally got dragged into... some complicated personal grudge?"
But none of that seemed to matter anymore.
He was going to die anyway.
Wasn't he?
Luo Ge slowly closed his eyes, his body slumping into the snow as the blood beneath him gradually congealed.
In the gorge of the Red Dragon Mountains, amid the wind and snow, he finally closed his eyes peacefully and died, filled with unwillingness.
The man before him who called himself the Dragon God, Orsted, stood silently for a moment. Rather than leave, he approached step by step.
"Hey!"
"Don't you know magic?"
"And voiceless magic at that-why aren't you using healing magic to treat yourself?"
"Nani?!"
Luo Ge's heart sank as his eyes remained shut, and he instantly came back from the dead.
He thought this was fucking bullshit.
This was completely different from the script he had imagined. After killing someone, wasn't a powerhouse of this level...
Supposed to turn away with a stylish sweep of his sleeves and leave without looking back?
That was the sort of swagger a powerhouse should have.
Instead, this guy was checking very carefully whether he was actually dead. More absurdly, he seemed to know about his Voiceless Magic.
Luo Ge hadn't used magic earlier...
Precisely because he had wanted to wait until the man left.
Then he would secretly cast healing magic on himself and hold out until Ghislaine woke up and took him away.
That was the only way to survive Luo Ge had managed to devise.
Playing dead and bluffing his way through...
Yet the man before him had snuffed out even that one chance of survival.
"Not speaking? Hmm... hoping to survive by playing dead?"
Orsted spoke coldly.
With things spelled out so clearly, Luo Ge knew he couldn't bluff his way through with that trick.
The next second, Luo Ge simply stopped pretending and laid his cards on the table.
Hah! Aaaaaah!!!
He gathered his strength into a punch, unleashing an astonishing surge of mana.
A searing fireball burst from his palm and shot straight at the Dragon God's face!
Yet the man merely uttered two words softly: "Disturb Magic."
In an instant.
The surrounding mana vanished without a trace, and the fireball dwindled to a tiny flame...
No matter how he tried to activate his magic, nothing happened.
What kind of monster was he?
Whether it was swordsmanship or magic, his opponent overwhelmed him effortlessly.
Calm down!
Calm down!
Calm down!
There had to be a way...
But there was no way to beat an enemy like this.
Despair welled up in his heart.
Death did not frighten him. After all, he had already died once.
But he simply could not accept dying like this.
Dying for no apparent reason, without knowing why. He had done nothing at all, yet the man had...
"Still struggling?"
"Apostle of the Human God..."
Through his blurred vision, Luo Ge could only see the Dragon God Orsted walking toward him, step by step.
He was at his limit...
Luo Ge's consciousness flickered like a candle flame. Surrounded by freezing wind and snow, he lay alone on this remote mountain path, collapsed in despair in the icy gorge of the Red Dragon Mountains.
Whoosh!
The sky was gray-white and distant overhead. Snowflakes drifted slowly down, as though covering him with a thin white blanket, a final farewell.
"No..."
"I can't fall here! Aaaaaah!!!"
Mustering every last scrap of strength in his body, Luo Ge lunged toward the Dragon God. But reality was not a novel, and shouting a few times could not turn a losing battle around.
Just as the Dragon God thought Luo Ge was charging at him, and was about to strike and grant this evil Human God Apostle a dignified death.
Who would have thought?
Luo Ge actually did something that shocked even the Dragon God.
He changed direction and sprinted.
Ahead lay the bottomless abyss of the Red Dragon Mountains.
Hadn't he heard that heaven always left a way out?
As long as he wanted to keep going, the road was beneath his feet...
With his mortal body.
Facing the wind and snow all around him, without the slightest hesitation, and with the resolve to die.
He leaped down!
Faced with an enemy he could not possibly defeat, jumping off the cliff seemed to be his only chance to gamble with his life.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
With his head toward the sky, he felt his body plummeting.
He fell faster and faster, farther and farther, and that silver figure rapidly shrank in his vision.
Was it finally going to end?
No!
Something seemed wrong. Why did the figure overhead seem to be growing larger again?
But what happened next made Luo Ge's eyes suddenly widen.
He could never have imagined that the man would actually...
Yes, that was right.
To kill him once and for all, that Dragon God had unexpectedly... jumped down after him.
He was chasing him down to kill him!!!
Fuck!
At the sight, Luo Ge, who had already been on the verge of breathing his last, widened his eyes in shock.
He was chasing him down to kill him.
Luo Ge really... really felt completely numb.
What the fuck had he done to deserve this grudge? Just how much did this guy hate him?
No, it was that Hitogami he hated.
He wouldn't leave him even the slightest chance to live... Cough, cough. Luo Ge could not help coughing up blood.
"This ends here, Rog Greyrat. You cannot escape."
The Dragon God Orsted plummeted through the air, his expression cold.
Luo Ge gave a bitter smile.
He spread his arms, then simply gave up trying.
Since the man wanted to kill him so badly, Luo Ge came to terms with it. If he could not escape, he might as well let him have his life.
Mm...
Let it be.
Let everything be destroyed.
But unexpectedly, just as Orsted was rapidly closing in, a Red Dragon that had strayed from its group charged into Luo Ge as though it had gone mad.
The Dragon God pursued him from ahead, while a Red Dragon attacked from behind...
His luck could not have been worse.
But then, something unexpected happened.
What had been certain death changed when the Red Dragon's ill-timed attack happened to knock Luo Ge slightly off course.
Bam.
Because of its enormous size, the poor Red Dragon took the Dragon God's attack in Luo Ge's place.
Instead, by some strange twist of fate, Luo Ge escaped with his life.
When the Dragon God Orsted thrust one hand into the sheer cliff face and looked for Luo Ge again.
He found that there was no longer any sign of Luo Ge in the abyss below.
He had vanished.
Whoosh!
The wind and snow howled past.
Soon, they buried the bloodstains, footprints, and traces of battle alike.
The Red Dragon Mountains returned to their age-old silence, as though nothing had ever happened. No one knew that a fierce battle had taken place here.