Chapter 24
The realm of a 7-star Superhuman was difficult to reach without heaven-sent talent.
Lorenzo Bastoni, who had stabilized his 5-star level at the age of thirty, had realized the harshness of reality.
Would there have been a different outco if he hadn't accepted it back then? No one knew.
And now.
Lorenzo's heart pounded at the sight unfolding before his eyes.
‘This is unbelievable…….’
Was he even twenty?
The man with a youthful face was slicing through the ogre's thick muscles with far too much ease.
Gulp.
Watching the monsters that had claid his comrades' lives being slaughtered.
Lorenzo, forgetting his pain, could only swallow his dry saliva.
***
Fwoooosh.
The sword, clad in Red Fla, slashed the Grand Ogre's body.
Even as flas erupted from the wound, regeneration was occurring, albeit slowly.
Grand. A title given to those like mutants among monsters.
Generally, those with the 'Grand' title were rated 1-star higher than their sa-species counterparts.
Killian shook off the Red Fla and stared at the monster revealing its killing intent.
‘It’s a creature worthy of the na Grand.’
Its size was double that of a typical ogre, and its swollen muscles and fighting spirit would make even a 5-star knight freeze.
The first Grand monster I had encountered since climbing the mountain range.
If I couldn't obtain its Magic Stone this ti, I might have to wander for quite so ti again.
I checked the dismbered corpses of the knights scattered around.
‘It also has the intelligence to toy with a survivor. It'll be a headache if I let it escape.’
Sizzzzzle.
Smoke rose from the ogre's body where the flas touched it.
[Grrrr!!]
The ogre roared and slamd the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
In a mont, a massive body burst out from between the dust and flas that obscured the view and charged at Killian.
No, the mont it thought it had charged.
Slice.
Killian's sword, having stepped aside, cut through the ogre's muscle.
[Kraaa!!]
Normally, it would have flinched in surprise, but it charged again without stopping.
“This mountain range isn't normal either.”
First Flash.
Crack!
The sword, engulfed in Red Fla, pushed back the ogre's chest.
Second Flash.
With two consecutive strikes, the ogre's sternum was exposed.
But that wasn't enough.
Ascension, Netherworld, First Group, Frenzy.
The Cheonghwageom was swung without rest.
Scorched flesh and blood splattered in all directions.
[Grrrrrr!!]
Even for a 6-star monster, its regenerative ability should have slowed down with wounds like these.
However.
‘It’s getting more ferocious? There's sothing else going on.’
Killian used the ogre’s leg as a stepping stone to leap back, then checked on the man who was staring at
with a dazed expression.
He was a knight wearing armor engraved with the Bastoni Family's crest and an epaulet indicating his command. His body was severely mangled from the ogre's play.
A critical injury that wouldn't allow him to survive more than three days without prompt treatnt.
‘Using the Head Apothecary's recovery potion could reduce the pain…….’
Killian glared at the ogre, which was three heads taller than him.
Its face, singed by the Red Fla, was grotesquely distorted.
This was a world of survival of the fittest. There was no need to discuss justice now.
I readjusted my grip on the Cheonghwageom and released my 6-star Mana at full power.
Tzzzzzzzzzzz.
The color of the Red Fla scattered throughout the area turned blue.
[……!!]
The ogre's two eyes focused on the sword scattering the Blue Fla.
“Your senses aren't bad, but.”
One step.
Killian began to walk forward.
Another step.
He walked toward the ogre and raised his sword.
Then.
Thud. Thump.
For the first ti, the ogre took a step back.
Killian advanced the sa distance the creature had retreated.
Five paces.
He stopped his steps with that short distance remaining.
“It’s already too late.”
Tap.
The indifferently raised Cheonghwageom touched the ogre's leg.
“Annihilate.”
The Blue Fla in the area concentrated on the ogre's body.
Sizzzzzzzzle.
The Grand Ogre's constantly regenerating body began to burn away.
[Gaaaah…… Gaaaaaaah!!!]
It threw a punch with a monstrous scream, but even that couldn't reach Killian.
Fwoooosh!!!
The intensified flas burned its uvula, tongue, and eye sockets, and blocked its nose and ears.
Five seconds.
That was the ti it took for the ogre, unable to even scream, to die, leaving only its torso behind.
Fwoosh.
Killian swung his sword to retract the Blue Fla.
“A persistent bastard.”
I picked up an iron sword lying on the ground and plunged it into the creature's charred corpse.
Sizzle.
The sword lted just by touching the heated flesh.
Ignoring it, I pulled out its heart and stuffed it into my backpack.
Belatedly, I looked around.
‘It really ran wild.’
The corpses of ogres and knights scattered everywhere made it difficult to find traces of any more prey.
It was because Carpe, using Blue Fla, was not perfect.
‘I'll have to be satisfied with just this one ogre.’
The promise with Loen was for one preserved Magic Stone each from an ogre and a troll.
But I had already collected six Troll Magic Stones and one Grand Ogre heart, which was more than enough.
“Are you alright?”
I belatedly approached Lorenzo, who had a dazed look on his face.
“Who, in the world, are you…….”
“I am a knight of Eurasia.”
‘Eurasia……!!’
Lorenzo's body trembled at the unexpected na.
Strength enough to hunt a Grand Ogre single-handedly.
The first people who ca to mind were the family head, Simon Eurasia, and the Commander of the Knights, Escardo Schtenberg.
But Lorenzo soon realized that the man before him looked much younger than himself.
‘Could he be one of the young masters, called the geniuses of the family?’
First Young Master Demian Eurasia and Second Young Master Paian Eurasia. Two geniuses who were renowned even in the Frontier.
Of the two, Demian Eurasia, who was said to have achieved faster progress, ca to mind.
‘Co to think of it……’
The man before him also had silver hair, a symbol of the Eurasia bloodline.
The pain from his broken body, the guilt of losing all his knights, and the relief of having survived.
Suppressing these complex emotions, Lorenzo Bastoni laboriously opened his mouth.
“Hoo…… hoo……. Thank you, Young Master Demian. I was able to survive thanks to the subjugation force arriving earlier than expected. I will never forget this grace…….”
“Killian.”
“Yes……?”
Killian took out a recovery potion from his backpack and poured it into Lorenzo's mouth.
Lorenzo's complexion noticeably eased, as if the pain-relieving effects appeared imdiately.
“My na is Killian. Young Master Demian and the Eurasia subjugation force have not arrived yet.”
“If you're Killian…….”
Lorenzo's mind beca complicated.
Killian Eurasia. He had certainly heard the na before. But there was an unbridgeable gap between what he had heard and the man he saw before him.
“We should move quickly.”
Killian, who had downed two recovery potions in a short mont, hoisted Lorenzo onto his back.
“Monsters that have caught the scent are flocking here. We will descend the mountain at full speed from now on.”
“W-wait, hold on…….”
As if Lorenzo’s thoughts didn't matter.
Swoooosh.
Killian, cloaked in Mana, began to move his feet.
“Heup……!!”
Lorenzo let out a groan.
The surrounding scenery was changing rapidly. It was a speed that made it hard to believe he was carrying a person.
‘This is by no ans the level of a 5-star knight.’
To think that his first encounter with soone who had reached 6-star at the age of what could be, at most, his mid-twenties, would be to have his life saved.
“…….”
All that was permitted for Lorenzo Bastoni, the 5-star knight and young lord of the Bastoni Family, was to gasp for breath and bury his head.
***
On the night of the second day of the subjugation.
“Umm…….”
Loen Favre groaned from a worsening bout of dizziness.
It had only been two days since the Fourth Young Master had left.
In that short ti, her condition had deteriorated even further.
She was holding on with painkillers and recovery potions, but at this rate, rumors about her situation would spread in less than a week.
‘Not yet…… I can't.’
The family head, who had achieved 8-star, had not yet stabilized his power.
If she fell as well, rumors of the family head's unstable condition would spread like wildfire.
‘If the family head falls, Eurasia falls. Even so…… the rate of deterioration is getting faster.’
After downing a bottle of painkillers, she let out a ragged breath.
This was no ordinary Slump.
It was a reflux of the Mana Heart, exposed to uncontrolled 8-star Mana.
The Mana that couldn't circulate was eating away at her body mont by mont.
She had belatedly found a way to improve her condition through the Fourth Young Master, but the Magic Stones of a Grand Ogre and a Troll were not items easily obtainable in the Frontier.
They were items that even within the family, only the Red Knight Order or the Annihilation Squad could get their hands on.
‘If only the Annihilation Squad had the ti…… no, I'm having weak thoughts again.’
They were already undertaking a crucial task for the family with only a few mbers.
As an elder, she couldn't make a personal request of them.
“Haa…….”
She took a gasping breath.
‘The only one I can trust…… is the Fourth Young Master.’
The original deal was for him to provide the Magic Stones he obtained while carrying out the subjugation.
Just in case, she had also made requests to a few others besides the Fourth Young Master.
The problem was ti.
Even if she bought ti with all sorts of recovery potions, she wouldn't last two weeks in this state.
But what had gotten into him?
On the day of the subjugation, the Fourth Young Master had changed the plan.
‘It was a reckless plan.’
To break through the middle stratum of the Kurt Mountain Range alone?
Normally, she would have firmly dissuaded him, but now she had neither the energy nor the justification to stop him.
Her condition was worsening by the mont. The one with the highest chance of saving her life was the Fourth Young Master.
“Uuugh…….”
Loen was struggling to open the cap of a Vitality Recovery Potion due to the suffocating pain in her chest.
Fwoooosh.
From the warp stone set up in a corner of the room, a bright light and Mana surged.
A warp stone that hadn't been used for years, except for two days ago.
Naturally, no one but her should have known the coordinates…….
“Fourth Young Master……!!”
Loen shouted upon seeing the man the warp stone had disgorged.
The clothes he wore and the cloak he had on were torn and cut, and his unkempt hair was damp as if he had been caught in the rain.
Whatever had happened in two days, he looked completely different from when he had left.
“Thankfully, you were not yet asleep.”
Killian, skipping the greetings, set down the backpack he was carrying.
“The weather in the mountain range was not as good as I expected.”
‘A failure…….’
He had returned a day earlier than promised.
It was not enough ti to obtain the Magic Stone of a high-level monster alone.
‘This is the worst.’
Loen shook her head with a groan.
“Even if you failed, there was no need to co here like this. You should have just continued with the subjugation……”
“I sohow managed to get the opportunity to use the Bastoni Family’s warp stone. If not for that, I would have arrived tomorrow night.”
‘Bastoni?’
What was this all about now?
Killian opened his backpack.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Each ti a monster's heart was taken out of the backpack, Loen's eyes widened.
“Six Troll Magic Stones, and one Grand Ogre Magic Stone.”
“……!!”
“It's a little singed by the Blue Fla…… but, well, it shouldn't be a big problem.”
Thump.
When the Magic Stone of the Grand Ogre, which was as big as a troll's belly, was revealed, she covered her mouth.
“My goodness…… Fourth Young Master, you, what on earth…….”
While Loen was speechless, looking at the seven Magic Stones lined up before her.
Killian naturally took the Vitality Recovery Potion from her hand and downed it.
“As expected, the Head Apothecary's recovery potions are the best.”
Killian leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.
As the potion took effect, vitality returned to his body, which had been exhausted from the forced march.
Killian t eyes with Loen, who was looking back and forth between the Magic Stones and him.
“I believe it's ti to fully participate in the subjugation now.”
“R-right.”
“Before that, if you have any special gifts for , I will gratefully accept them.”
“……?”
“Spiritual dicine is fine, and secret dicine is fine too.”
“…….”
Killian, who was looking around the lab.
Showed his characteristic harmless smile.
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