Chapter 230
2.
Countless heavenly spears embroidered across the sky poured down like rain.
Emitting a soft platinum glow, beautiful lights in the void descended toward a man on the ground.
But as the man waved his hand,
Darkness rose from the earth and surged toward the spears as well.
Dark spears sprang up just as numerous as the heavenly spears, blocking each one.
The platinum energy and pitch-black energy shattered and scattered, scattering light and darkness around.
A brilliant yet ominous spectacle.
At that moment, with the radiant platinum energy dispersed in all directions,
The heavenly energy suddenly became spike-like and flew toward the man.
His ominous dark aura exploded, engulfing the platinum energy.
Pava-bavavavavavavvng——!!!
The surrounding area was instantly swallowed by an explosion;
all energy vanished immediately.
The man, Seonghyun, frowned watching this.
At a glance, it seemed even.
But the disadvantage was on Seonghyun.
Even now, the amount of mana he’d consumed was abnormal.
First, summoning dozens of dark spears demanded significant mana.
But to compensate for all the diffused energy,
He unleashed an explosion that consumed even more mana.
As expected from elemental disadvantage,
Such drawbacks arose.
Meanwhile, Helena operating the heavenly energy smiled brightly and exclaimed,
“Incredible! Now let’s move to the next step.”
Speaking with an excited expression as if training, she snapped her fingers.
Heavenly energy appeared again in the sky.
Earlier, countless spears had appeared.
Now the heavenly energy formed blades and shot at Seonghyun.
A single blade.
But at that moment, Seonghyun realized the heavenly energy in that blade was extraordinary.
It was truly unbelievably powerful.
Comparing,
‘It’s stronger than the energy that summoned the spears earlier.’
Even combining all the heavenly energy that made the spears wouldn’t compare to that blade.
Knowing this, Seonghyun instantly thought hard.
As he’d thought before,
If he responded the same way as with the heavenly spears, he’d be overpowered in attributes.
The wisest countermeasure now was defense.
Judging so, Seonghyun summoned darkness, forming a protective barrier surrounding him.
Helena smiled mysteriously as she looked at Seonghyun.
But unlike Helena’s smile,
The heavenly blade, shining sharp as a razor, flew rapidly and sliced through Seonghyun’s dark barrier.
Sssrrriiiip!!!
The dark barrier was cut as lightly as slicing through radish.
But Seonghyun’s figure was nowhere to be seen inside.
Helena laughed watching that.
The blade seemed startled, unable to move from where it was.
Where on earth had Seonghyun gone?
The blade seemed to scan the surroundings, searching.
At that moment, darkness spread widely over the ground, and something surged up.
Swooook! Ssuook! Ssuook!
Darkness erupted suddenly.
The darkness that rose from the dark field soon began to take form.
Every single one of those forms was Seonghyun.
Dark shadows appearing as Seonghyun’s clones.
It was impossible to tell which was real.
Each shadow formed from darkness contained dark energy, resembling pure shadows themselves.
The blade could not distinguish them.
Yet even as the blade remained still,
The clones moved.
Seonghyun’s clones wielded their dark energy, gathering and firing it one by one.
As the dark energy was shot out in cylindrical shapes,
The blade could not just watch.
Ssas-sas-sasss—!!!
The blade sliced through the energy all at once and cut down all the surrounding darkness.
But the moment it cut the clones,
The darkness composing the clones began to spread, engulfing the surroundings,
Wrapping the blade like cloth.
Layer by layer.
The thickening darkness soon became too numerous to ignore.
The blade could not withstand it and disappeared into the darkness, completely erasing the heavenly energy.
“Huuu… Got it.”
Watching this scene, the clones vanished and Seonghyun finally appeared.
Seonghyun sighed with relief and savored the moment.
Seeing this, Helena asked appreciatively,
“What qualities of darkness did you use?”
“I shaped the clones using the nature of shadows, and I swallowed the blade by using the void of darkness to make it disappear.”
He used various properties of darkness.
More precisely, its qualities.
He utilized the characteristics that darkness possessed to maximize their effects.
He could have freely created various forms with Lord of Darkness,
But by using the traits of darkness, he could utilize other skill types as well.
The innate stealth of darkness that briefly concealed him.
The shadow’s property that created clones.
And finally, the all-consuming nature of darkness to overcome the disadvantageous elemental matchup and erase the heavenly blade.
Helena nodded as if finally satisfied.
“This is acceptable!”
“Huuu…”
It had truly been a grueling struggle.
He’d started training on Thursday.
And now it was Monday.
Four full days and five nights.
Though he understood the nature of darkness intellectually,
Utilizing it was not easy.
Of course, manipulating the outer form of darkness was easy.
Even now, Seonghyun could effortlessly create a small dark figure in the palm of his hand, moving it through various poses.
But it was quite difficult to utilize the inherent properties contained within the darkness.
He had also tried initially to use the shadow darkness movement only with Lord of Darkness.
That, too, had given him considerable trouble at first.
Anyway,
“Huuu…”
“Hmm, you’re going to be really good at this now!”
“It’s still difficult, though, just the same.”
Still, having gained this knack,
He thought he would pick up on Lord of Terror or Lord of Blood much more quickly when facing similar situations.
Having gone through so much hard work,
He felt more fulfilled than expected.
But he didn’t show much of it, simply looking at Helena and saying,
“Thank you for your help.”
Honestly.
Without Helena’s tough, Spartan style, it might have been harder to get the hang of it.
Helena blushed a little and said,
“Oh, it’s nothing, haha.”
Seeing Helena laugh awkwardly,
Seonghyun chuckled and nodded.
Now that the training was done,
Was it time to do what he had been putting off?
“How about going to that place from Hindel’s memories?”
Seonghyun said with a smile.
One of the luxurious royal chambers,
A room so extravagant that even high-ranking nobles couldn’t have one so lavishly furnished.
Not a single piece of furniture was damaged;
it was flawless luxury.
The room was also equipped with bells to call maids anytime and various comfortable furniture.
It was a room anyone would dream of.
Yet the young man inside was lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, clearly displeased, or rather very unhappy.
Even the ceiling had a lavish chandelier and a painting that was surely a masterpiece, though who painted it was unknown.
Amidst all this, the young man sighed and muttered,
“Haaa… Being confined…”
He abruptly rose from the sofa.
Looking around the luxurious room, he muttered again,
“This is not a room fit for a hero.”
The young man, or rather the hero Luke, shook his head at the luxurious and lavish room.
Though it was comfortable,
Maybe that was why?
‘It’s uncomfortable.’
He thought he would have been much more at ease in the humble lodgings of knights.
Though harder and physically less comfortable,
His mind would have been much more at ease.
It wasn’t that Luke was immature; it was just his nature.
He wasn’t planning to train here or anything like that,
But at least, that’s how he felt.
When he asked when he could leave, all he got was the same parrot-like answer—
There would be a hero’s council soon, so wait until then.
He was told that after the hero’s council, the Sword Saint himself would come to find him.
That made Luke even more reluctant.
‘“Beware of the Rieszkan Kingdom,”’ he recalled the words Seonghyun had told him.
He asked one of the visitors who came to see him to investigate that,
But
‘Will Flingky do well…?’
The problem was that it was Flingky he had asked.
Flingky was a mischievous fellow, not exactly trustworthy.
Still, Luke believed in Flingky.
Though eccentric,
Flingky always got the job done.
So he tried not to worry too much.
Above all,
‘Since it was said by this generation’s Overlord... his eyes changed when he said it.’
So surely they would investigate properly.
With that small hope, Luke lay confined, looking up at the ceiling and muttering,
“Not sure if there’s any evidence.”
A world without Helena or Hindel.
The Rieszkan Kingdom stood firm after their deaths.
In some ways, they were the only survivors.
They had enough time to manipulate the past.
Of course,
‘The Over Palace was involved.’
So perfect distortion wasn’t possible.
Still, would there be anything left for them to hold onto—any shame?
He thought they would have eliminated such stains.
But then another strange thing remained.
‘If that’s so, why did the Over Palace leave the Rieszkan Kingdom, which was said to have executed the previous Overlord, alone?’
That part was incomprehensible.
More puzzling than anything.
Would they end up finding nothing at all?
Though uneasy, he resolved to try one more time.
Closing his eyes, he made up his mind.
As Luke worried and pondered,
At about the same time,
Someone took out a scroll.
An ancient mission document from long ago.
The scroll looked very old.
It recorded a mission once undertaken by a knight order.
It didn’t detail what the mission was about.
But the person took out another notebook-like book near the scroll and began reading aloud,
“I found it.”