Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 185. The Domineering Thundercloud Sword Art.
At the westernmost reaches of the battlefield, the momentarily bright and intense lightning all over the green-haired youth’s body calmed down once his Lightning Steps finished. The lightning, however, didn’t dissipate completely and continued to linger all over the youth’s body in form of dozens of surging sparks. The youth himself sprung his body directly into motion, effectively eliminating one of the most glaring weaknesses of his, and of most, movement arts. With a satisfied and yet blood-chilling smile on his face, he slashed with one of his twin swords from a low position and cut towards the thigh of the martial master of the fourth rank he had chosen to target.
The man, having seen too many of his allies fall to count, despaired as he didn’t know what to do. If he moved his sword to guard his leg, the secondary attack would aim at his neck or head and would kill him. Yet, if he chose not to move to protect his leg, he would have it disabled or cut off altogether if he were to be somewhat less fortunate. This would undoubtedly lead to him dying the next moment too, and this awareness, that no matter what he did, no matter how he chose to guard, no matter if he chose to counterattack or if he tried to escape, that no matter what he did he would end up dying, brought to him such a pressure that his mind was about to crumble from it alone!
He had come over with hundreds of their allies in order to hunt the Lightning Devil, but during the last two minutes, he had been feeling like the one to be hunted instead! Had it been merely a quick clash with this Djinn-spawn, he perhaps wouldn’t have gone as far as to despair. However, he had seen all of the tactics employed by his fellow brothers fail one after another. No matter what they did, they were unable to pin down this lightning-fast and ridiculously agile monster! Instead, he and many others had felt that the more they were fighting, the stronger this Lightning Devil became!
Early on, this little monster had been on the defensive with almost a hundred of their ruby-golden-robed brothers joining together to kill him. And yet, as time went on, more and more of them started dying to the Devil’s attacks! The common experts they had brought with them were expected to be too weak and so their deaths, even in huge numbers, hadn’t shaken their elite ranks. However, the overwhelming sense of helplessness they were beginning to learn as this battle went on couldn’t be described with words. They couldn’t understand how and why, but every time this Devil targeted one of them, it would be like the verdict of the Death God. No matter what this person did, as long as it wasn’t a martial master of the fifth rank, he would be forced into a situation where no choice existed that could save him! This overbearing fighting style was terrifying in itself, but its true terror laid in the fact that it wasn’t the pure prowess of the Devil which brought so many of them to their deaths, but the other aspects of his fighting style, all of which were ridiculous enough on their own.
It wasn’t that this Lightning Devil was too powerful for their martial masters of the fifth rank to lose to him in a contest of strength nor was his movement technique too fast for the strongest of them to react in time. His Qi wasn’t powerful enough to kill their experts effortlessly and his swords weren’t sharp enough to instantly snap their weapons, either. However, the Devil’s talent for combat was something they wouldn’t ever have a hope of imitating. His sword arts, if they could be called that, were overbearing to the extreme but not in the usual way, not simply because they were on an incredibly high level. That alone was true, of course, but the fact that those sword arts were akin to balancing the wielder’s life on the edge of a sword was the most terrifying thing about them!
Early on, they had still been attacking him bravely, but the more of their companions they had seen die under those twin swords, the more apprehensive they had become. Then, when it came to be their turn to face the Lightning Devil, the accumulated mental pressure would add up to the realization that no matter how they reacted to the Devil’s attack, they would die the same. This, in turn, caused many of them to despair, just like that most recent martial master of the fourth rank who Yin had chosen as the next target.
As for hoping that their own counterattacks would somehow end up landing and killing the Lightning Devil, even the strongest of them grew too apprehensive to try once five of their martial masters of the fifth rank fell to this monster. Had it been just this extreme sword art which placed its wielded in great risk every time he attacked, they would have been able to handle it. However, this Devil could move his body in ways that made it seem that he was detached from the physical world. Rather than facing a human, they had a feeling they were fighting against a streak of wild lightning that could change directions, curve and jump around however it pleased.
“Don’t let him escape!”
Thus, once Yin cut off the leg of his most recent target with his first attack, then stepped in and pretended to attack his neck, only to cut his stomach apart, the yell of the martial master of the fifth rank from just a few meters away was filled with more apprehensiveness than anything else. The man himself was furious to have lost another one of his good friends to the Lightning Devil, but a large, bloody wound already stretched across his stomach. This time, he didn’t dare to attack as the first time he tried to kill this monster while one of his companions was being cut down, he had almost gotten killed in retaliation. Had he not released so much of his fire-element Qi at once that he suffered internal damage in order to force this monster to flee, he had a feeling… no, he knew that the second exchange between the two of them would have ended his life.
“I thought we could tire him out, but,” the fire-element martial master secretly sighed with relief when he saw that the green-haired monster chose to retreat northwards. He wasn’t wounded so badly that he couldn’t continue fighting, but he decided to pretend otherwise and used his wounds as an excuse to stay behind. The remaining two hundred men, including four of their ruby-golden-robed martial masters of the fifth rank, chased after the Lightning Devil, but he didn’t believe they would be able to take the monster’s head. Once the area around him quieted down, he shook his head and revealed a very tired look on his face. Somewhat unwillingly, he looked around himself and at the close-by hundreds of meters towards the south, his face turning pale in consequence.
It had been a mere two minutes, but this battle cost them too much for no gain. To be fair, once this Lightning Devil escaped, it could be said that they served as his sharpening stones and had only made him stronger. So, instead of no gain, this entire engagement was to their disadvantage. However, he never would have thought that with ten plus elite martial masters of the fifth rank, with over fifty elite martial masters of the fourth rank and with hundreds of other experts, they would end up unable to kill one boy who couldn’t even be called a young man just yet.
“Five martial masters of the fifth rank, all dead,” the man sighed bitterly. The entire area around him was loitered with corpses, those regular martial masters alone had suffered over a hundred casualties, but the truly painful loss was their own ruby-golden-robed brothers. “Over thirty martial masters of the fourth rank and who knows how many of our martial masters of the third rank. All by one child who wasn’t even in the Realm of Heroes. Not killing him today… it will probably lead to a major disaster down the line. We have to inform Master Abdain and Yimar Maar about it,” the man mused while watching the numerous scattered corpses. This entire area of the forest was now filled with a thick smell of blood, too, what only added to the man’s feelings of anxiety.
“Whatever happens, we have to kill this Devil today,” he murmured and looked at his stomach. The wound had more or less closed, but it would reopen if he strained his body too much. Having made up his mind, he decided to personally move to the middle and to the eastern battlefields to deliver the news. He wasn’t sure why their enemies were moving so slowly and were engaging them on purpose with inferior numbers instead of fleeing to safety, but they had to make use of this opportunity. If those young seeds in this group of enemies were allowed to grow, then in a few decades, they would undoubtedly face a disaster of unpreceded proportions.
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“They are quite stubborn,” Yin thought while running northwards at full speed. He didn’t bother to look behind in order to preserve his speed, but he was well aware that over two hundreds of those men were still pursuing him stubbornly. As far as his newly created Thundercloud Sword Arts alongside his growing insights into the Profound Mystery of Lightning Dance could carry him, he couldn’t afford to fall too far behind the frontlines. After all, all the crazy killing he had done was at the price of the reservoir of his Qi and his stamina, not to mention mental strength that was required to constantly fight on the edge of death or in a better-case scenario, of heavy wounds.
“Though,” he mused, all the while using this opportunity to calm himself down a little. “I do feel better than I thought I would, at least physically. I wonder if that gift we received in the mountains wasn’t a part of it? It feels like my stamina is recovering quite a bit quicker than usual, even if I take the fact that I’m half a step into the Realm of Heroes into consideration,” he noted quietly. He had been too focused on the battle to be able to tell what the exact state of his body had been, and neither did his magical beast instincts going wild help with making cool-headed and rational decisions. Because of that, he was a little late to notice this improvement in his constitution.
“I’m feeling good enough,” he thought in the end. “I have a little under a third of my Qi left, too. Once I make it closer to the frontlines, I will turn around and fight them again. I’ve made quite some progress, but since I only fleshed out my Thundercloud sword art a few minutes ago, I still need to accumulate more experience. I have to make it to the point that both my mind and body are familiar with all the movements, else I can’t even call myself a master swordsman. Compared to Laien’s Water Flow Spear Art, my Thundercloud Sword Art is still too immature,” he assessed objectively, though he kept smiling the entire time. Although he had fallen behind Laien in Weapon Arts, he had finally come up with a Sword Art that would supplement the strongest aspects of his abilities. This thought was extremely satisfying to him and as his train of thoughts wandered further, he failed to suppress a chuckle. Was it bad of him that he wanted real bad to spar with Laien as soon as possible even though he technically ought to first be worried about the dangers in their immediate future?
“Maybe it is, but who cares,” he told himself and chuckled again. He had a feeling that his conclusion was quite Laien-like, but he didn’t mind it at all. “Laien… seems to be doing fine?” he checked as the last thing, just to be sure. With what now felt like six or seven kilometers between them, he was surprised to be feeling anything through their Spiritual Bond. He hadn’t heard anything about Spiritual Bond becoming so strong at this level of cultivation, but by the looks of it, the two of them were an exception to the rule. After all, he had sensed a surge of strong emotions from Laien a few moments ago, just as he had been getting fired up before the last, large-scale battle. Thus, once he knew it was possible, he couldn’t resist checking just in case. Thankfully, Laien appeared to be experiencing something that he would describe as ‘calm excitement’, so it was unlikely that he was in any kind of a life-threatening situation. He couldn’t sense disappointment or anxiety from Laien either, so he could tell that Laien must have reaped his own share of benefits from their gamble.
Reassured, he was about to turn around and engage those two hundred men who were trying to keep up with him, the front of whom had been reduced to only the strongest fifty of them due to the difference in speed. However, at that very moment, two short blows of a horn resounded throughout the forest, followed by the third, longer blow.
“So soon?” Yin’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. They had agreed to start retreating at the first sound of the horn, be reminded by the second call three minutes later and left to fend for themselves if they were to not return by the third blow after six minutes. However, seeing as their enemies had no usable horses left and considering that they had already pulled virtually all experts out of their country for this war, it was weird for Casimir to blow the horn so soon. Could it be that some enemy reinforcements came out of nowhere? Or did something else happen?
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“Might as well go,” he decided after a second of thought. He would have been extremely frustrated had those three blows of a horn sounded while he was in the crucial part of polishing his Sword Art and coincidentally, advancing his lightning-element insights, but luckily it didn’t. In the grand scope of things, it was very fortunate that he had gone all-out early on and quickly obtained the crucial insights he had been after and even quite a bit more than that. He wouldn’t be losing much apart from the short-term rate of improvement by withdrawing from the battle at this moment, so it didn’t pain his heart to retreat. Moreover, if there appeared more opportunities to face multiple enemies in a life-or-death battle during the rest of this chase, then he would have effectively sacrificed nothing by going back early. Thus, he hesitated no longer and retreated at full speed.
“I could call my horse,” Yin mused once he saw that the bunch that had been chasing after him opted to allow him to disappear from their sight. By the looks of it, while they had the determination to try and kill him when he was still willing to go into their terrain and put himself in danger, they weren’t about to chase him towards the areas where they could stumble upon additional enemies. “But I still have time. I might as well see if our allies don’t need help disengaging their fights,” he thought and as soon as he did, he shifted directions and started moving westwards. He was pretty sure that he had ended up close to the western edge of the battlefield either way, so picking up the possible stragglers from all the way to the west and moving eastwards with them shouldn’t be much of a problem.
“Young master.”
“Little master.”
On his way, he soon encountered two small teams, one numbering seven and one eight people, which consisted purely of Julien’s elite subordinates. They didn’t appear to be have been under all that much of a pressure, likely because he had been rampaging in the area behind them. The leaders of the two teams greeted him in quite a formal manner, and what in itself lifted his spirits a little, they appeared to be glad to see him here. Soon, one of the team leaders spoke a few more words to him.
“Young master, if you are going west to help with the retreat, then mind joining us? We were just about to go and pick up Lieutenant Zalar’s team.”
“Zalar?” Yin tried to recall. He remembered the five main commanders of the five thirty-six-man units under Julien introducing themselves to Laien and him at one point, but since they never really had a chance to interact with them, they hadn’t left much of an impression in his mind. He was pretty sure that Zalar was a wind-element martial master of the fifth rank, and that would make sense since someone faster would be better suited to operate on the edges of the battlefield.
“Lead the way,” he said with a smile and after lightly tapping at the ground, he accelerated significantly as a few dozen of lightning sparks appeared all over his body. In this way, he quickly caught up to the two teams and ended up running alongside their two leaders who were clearing the way from the forefront. The blond-haired man and the silver-haired woman, however, gave him a startled look in a manner similar to all of their subordinates. This just now definitely wasn’t a movement technique and yet Yin had accelerated so suddenly! They couldn’t tell what the limits of this new technique or ability Yin must have comprehended were just form this brief display, but just this alone caused the awe in their eyes to deepen by a level and made them respect Yin even more.
Admittedly, many of their companions had fallen in this war, even two of their strongest five unit-leaders had been killed in the prolonged clash against Abdain. Julien wasn’t one to keep his men in darkness though, so they all knew the overall situation which brought them into this war. They knew about their country’s intention to ally with Makarash and they knew that Elder Samuel came to favor not just Arslan, but those two youths, Yin and Laien, too. They had realized that Arslan was an amazingly composed and decisive kid early on from their interactions with him, so they accepted him as their ally. However, had Laien and Yin turned out to be averagely-talented cowards despite all the rumors they had heard about them ever since their visit in the Fortress-City of Lugna, they would have likely come to perhaps not resent them, but certainly bear a very negative attitude towards them.
Yet, both Yin and Laien, having been rumored to be dead, not only came back with reinforcements from the Holy Union but had also fought at the forefront of every subsequent battle. This courage alone would have already earned them much respect in the eyes of battle-hardened soldiers like their bunch, but the peerless combat ability they displayed and the boundless talent they seemed to possess pushed this respect much further. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they, as Julien’s personal subordinates, would be perfectly willing to follow orders from either of those two youths in the absence of their superiors on this or any other field of battle.
“They are fighting,” Yin noted silently but didn’t bother speaking up. Given the speed they were moving at, those guys would hear the sounds of battle before he could finish his sentence. After all, his senses were much more acute than those of the very majority of people, but they weren’t that much sharper compared to those martial masters of the fifth and fourth ranks.
“They are keeping quiet?” he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows once he noticed. This bunch must have heard the noise by now, but the two unit-leaders didn’t speak up to deliver any orders. Additionally, their subordinates appeared to be calm and collected too, as if they were used to operating in silence, without exchanging many words with their commanders. “They are a level higher compared to those White Sword and Black Sword Units. The same thing with Casimir and Anna’s Royal Guards, but these Royal Guards are still young, they will grow more powerful in the future, especially after experiencing a bloody battle like this one,” he estimated, all the while thinking that it would be nice if he could one day command a disciplined unit of experts, one like those people Julien had brought under his wings and trained into such an exquisite state.
A few seconds later, their group of sixteen spotted the nine-man-strong team led by Zalar. However, the rest of the scene unfolding before their eyes caused even Yin to frown a little. Zalar and his eight subordinates were thoroughly encircled by the excess of three hundred martial masters. At first glance, they could tell that the common experts were further away while the ruby-golden-robed elites were in the middle, the strongest two dozen of them harassing Zalar’s group with constant attacks. Surprisingly they hadn’t resorted to using martial techniques in such a perfect situation, but given the field of corpses and the utterly devastated area of the forest, it was likely that the battle which led to this situation had been a fierce and thus, a draining one as far as one’s Qi went.
The moment Yin figured all of this out, the fifteen elites of Julien’s seemed to have come to the same realization. All of them fought off the split-second hesitation they had felt before and without saying a word, all of them jumped straight into the enemy ranks. Perhaps due to exhaustion or perhaps because it was only the common experts on the outside of the encirclement, but their arrival was noticed late and by the time the first warning cries spread, those average martial masters were already dying in droves. Against the relatively fresh reinforcements which consisted purely of martial masters of fifth and fourth ranks, those common experts were akin to straws of dried-up grass, falling whenever and wherever their new enemies moved.
In this moment of chaos, Yin chose to employ his Lightning Steps in order to quickly bypass the lines of weaker enemies. Just like Julien’s elites, he could easily slaughter as many of those weaklings with unstable cultivation bases and impure Qi as he wanted. But, this cannon fodder wasn’t worth his time. They had been a bit useful to him early on when he had been tempering the early stages of his Thundercloud Sword Art, but now, they were too weak to make killing them worth the time and effort spent. To top it off, both him and those elites of Julien’s had to retreat as soon as possible, so wasting their time on slowly killing their way through this large group of enemies was suboptimal.
Those ruby-golden-robed martial masters of the third rank weren’t worth the hassle either, so he bypassed them with the second consecutive use of Lightning Steps. On the other hand, killing any of those ten martial masters of the fifth rank would both require too much Qi and even then, he wouldn’t be guaranteed to succeed. Taking all of that into consideration, Yin chose to target the martial masters of the fourth rank and immediately put his plan into action.
If it was him from earlier, he would have had trouble making the best use of the opportunity his Lightning Steps provided him, but now he was fully capable of bringing out the very best out of his abilities. The moment his Lightning Steps finished, he fell straight into motion and slashed out two times, beheading the first man and shattering the Qi Origin of the second one. Then, he adjusted his stance and twisted his body just enough to avoid an incoming slash of the third martial master of the fourth rank. At the same time as the blade was cutting through the air in front of his face and then alongside his chest, adjusted his hold on the sword in his right hand and slashed from below. Needless to be said, this one attack was enough to directly eliminate the third of the men.
Subsequently, using the fact that this group of enemies was still unfamiliar with his battle style, Yin pushed himself to the limits and dashed forward alongside the inner line of encirclement. His body surging with dozens of sparks and small streaks of lightning, he maneuvered to dodge whichever attacks necessary all the while pushing his offensive forward ruthlessly. Without exception, every martial master of the fourth rank who took a swing at him would die the very next instant. The only difference was that while most of them would end up missing, a few of would still manage to force him to use one of his swords to block or Lightning Steps to readjust his position. Dealing with a large group of elites, even if those elites were startled by the unexpected turn of events and most of them appeared to have less than one-fifth or even one-tenth of their Qi left, wasn’t a walk in the park.
Though, from the opposite point of view, Yin’s goal of killing each and every one of them without blocking their slashes and without using his movement technique could also be described as quite ludicrous. Be it as it may, however, just his present performance of disposing of thirteen martial masters of the fourth rank within the span of five seconds was enough to fill both his enemies and allies with thorough disbelief. This might have happened only because their outer forces were occupied by the fifteen new elites of Julien’s while their ten martial masters of the fifth rank were still trying to prevent Zalar and his eight subordinates from breaking out of the encirclement, but regardless of that, it was a great feat that required a truly exquisite skill honed for the pure purpose of slaughtering one’s enemies as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
“Come!” A few seconds later, Zalar shouted at Yin once the ten martial masters of the fifth rank gave up and dissolved their formation, moving to save their companions from the ongoing slaughter. Apparently, they realized that if they only focused on keeping Zalar and the rest where they were, then even if they managed to kill them in the end once more of their own reinforcements arrived, the cost would be far too great. Many of them would likely have to pay for this with their own lives, too, so they were unwilling to go that far without explicit orders to fight to the last man from their Master, from Abdain. Julien’s subordinates or not, the lives of nine men weren’t worth almost all of them dying in exchange, not when it wasn’t required of them by their leader.
Having found himself under a far greater pressure than he could safely handle, Yin didn’t think twice and used Lightning Steps to flee. Thankfully, his assumption about those ruby-golden-robed men lacking Qi to use martial techniques was correct as no ranged attacks were thrown after him and Zalar’s team as they fled out of the half-broken encirclement. Moreover, both Zalar and the people under him were on the fast end of martial masters of the fourth and fifth ranks, so even though all of them were exhausted and wounded to a varying degree, they managed to leave their enemies behind, though a part of it was definitely those enemies not trying too hard to catch them.
“Good,” Zalar spoke up once he confirmed that no immediate pursuers were on their tail. He was a man of few words by nature, but on this occasion, he forced himself to say a few words as he turned his gaze towards the green-haired youth that was keeping up with his speed and running by his side. “Thank you for coming with the others to save us. I owe you a favor,” he stated outright and right afterwards, stopped paying attention to Yin. In his opinion, Yin wasn’t a part of their army and hadn’t been obligated to go out of his way to help with their retreat. Thus, no matter what this boy said, he would consider himself as in his favor and once appropriate, he would definitely repay him.
Sensing that the man wasn’t about to have a chat with him, Yin smiled to himself and nodded. He didn’t know if the man noticed his nod out of the corner of his eye, but it didn’t matter. He was glad to have been of use to those who were risking their lives for his and Laien’s sake. If it was up to him, he would never accept this man’s favor, but it really didn’t look like he had room to argue here.
Thus, he laughed quietly and stopped thinking about anything, trying to give his mind some time to recover. Compared to the physical exhaustion, he felt that if he needed to fight for too long using his Thundercloud Sword Art, it would be his focus that would break first. The style was very much to his liking and he wouldn’t exchange it for any other, true, but it was quite nerve-wracking to employ.