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Chapter 342

“Co-commander-in-chief!” Trukang hurriedly climbed up to the top of the watchtower.

“…Don’t panic,” Duke Eima instructed.

“Bu-but he took out two knight orders in moments—!”

“I’ll deal with him now.” Eima narrowed his eyes.

Trukang’s eyes widened. “You… are going to fight him yourself, Commander?”

“Wouldn’t a fight between a retired Star and a current Star be quite interesting?” Eima said with a little smile.

“I-It’s too dangerous!” Trukang stuttered.

“Dangerous?” Eima chuckled. “I’m the Ice Emperor. How would I be able to take over a continent if I can’t deal with one old man like him?”

After Eima finished speaking, he glanced down the watchtower he stood on, realizing that he could clearly see Tremblin without effort.

“…Hmm…” Eima quietly groaned.

Maybe Tremblin felt Eima’s eyes because he was looking back at Eima. Neither of them needed to speak out aloud—Tremblin was clearly signaling Eima with his eyes

‘Don’t waste your men’s lives anymore. Come out, come. Let’s see who is the stronger one.’

“Geschhard kon Tremblin, the Sword Emperor of the Avalon Empire…” Eima tightly clenched his fists. How long had it been since he met an opponent that stirred up the desire to fight? It was probably the first since the Grand Duke Lucifer.

“So I at least have to pay my respects.” Eima slowly moved his hand to grip his weapon, but he wasn’t grabbing the ordinary sword that he usually used. There was another sword that he was carrying, strapped horizontally to his waist. Although the size was similar to most longswords, the sword was almost perfectly transparent. Its name was…

“The Ice Sword, Iris, one of the Seven Fine Swords…!” Trukang, who had been watching Eima closely, quietly muttered in disbelief.

“I’ll get going,” Eima bluntly informed his aide.

“Co-commander!” Trukang tried to stop Eima, but he wasn’t fast enough. Eima had jumped down from the watchtower as soon as he’d finished speaking, and his next actions were equally unpredictable. As he fell, Eima lightly swung his sword and a set of ice wings sprouted from his back. He flew toward the old man using the momentum of his fall.

Eima and the old man’s initial collision created an earsplitting explosion. The onlookers’ eyes widened. Since they all had eyes and ears, word quickly spread and everyone knew that the old man was the Sword Emperor.

Two legends clashed…

It was so suffocatingly silent that everyone could hear when someone nervously swallowed. The Sword Emperor was fighting against none other than their commander, but soldiers without their leader were anchorless ships and headless bodies. If they lost their commander and the enemy’s main unit ambushed them during that moment, they were going to be defeated for sure due to their significantly decreased morale. However, if Eima beat the Sword Emperor in a one-on-one fight…

“The morale of the enemy soldiers would be crushed; in that case, it wouldn’t be impossible to get to the heartland of the Avalon Empire in one go…”

“Lo-look!”

At that moment, someone pointed somewhere and yelled. There, the ice fragments were still flying around, but the hazy smoke was slowly subsiding… revealing a surprising sight: the Ice and Sword Emperors’ blades were crossed against each other and neither man was taking a single step backward. If the audience had stopped watching there, the first collision would have seemed like a draw…

But then a bizarre cracking sound hit their ears, attracting everyone’s attention. The sound was coming from the Sword Emperor’s saber.

“His ha-handle is…!”

“Our commander is winning!”

The Sword Emperor’s favorite saber was freezing up; the vengeful ice ghost inside Duke Eima’s sword was trying to devour the enemy. The Sword Emperor frowned and pushed away the sword with his saber, but the sword resisted even harder and tried to swallow him more fiercely with its coldness.

“Wowwww!!!”

The two hundred thousand soldiers of the Swallow Empire that had been watching the fight cheered.

Maybe Tremblin thought he couldn’t keep fighting like that, because he drew up his aura, creating a resonance that was so powerful that it made the ground and his saber shake violently. The blade, newly covered with a thick layer of aura, kept twitching as if it wanted to rip apart the enemy right away. Tremblin brandished the hungry saber and leaped forward.

He swung his saber horizontally just like he had done to chop off the knights’ heads in seconds, but he this time slashed his saber three times at his enemy. However, even the Sword Emperor couldn’t achieve his goal—he ended up retreating backward with his arm behind his back.

“Hmm…” Tremblin quietly groaned.

There was nothing special about Eima’s sword technique. The problem was the bone-aching coldness that Eima’s sword exuded. Whenever Eima swung his sword, the severe coldness followed Tremblin around like a tail…

‘Have I gotten old? I didn’t know I had to be this serious while going up against a man this young…’ Tremblin smiled bitterly and was about to lower the arm tucked behind his back.

“Why are you distracted during our fight?” Eima said, interrupting Tremblin’s thoughts.

Tremblin realized his mistake.

“Ice Dragon,” Eima murmured.

Their surroundings changed: the countless ice fragments that were scattered in the air started to transform into something giant.

Soon, an ice dragon was created in the air. It loudly roared, opened its colossal jaws wide, and swooped down on the enemy before it.

“Oh, no…” Tremblin groaned, biting his lower lip.

“Wowwww!!!” The excitement of the thousands-strong army reached a peak as they watched the fight between an ice dragon and a human; even a few hours before Joshua arrived at Einburg, the fight was becoming unexpectedly intense.

* * *

A pool of blue light was created in the sky. Then a group of people fell out of the pool.

Theta was the first one to land on the ground. He touched down lightly, then took a look around.

“Let’s see…“

“Sir, I’m here.” A man raised his hand.

“Oh!” Theta smiled gratefully once he found the person he had been looking for.

“You’ve succeeded without a hitch,” the man said with a smile.

“It’s thanks to my best colleagues, who set the coordinates really well.” Theta grinned.

“Iceline worked really hard. She had to pull an all-nighter because we had to calculate so many variables since we didn’t have a warp gate to use as a medium,” the stone-like man replied.

Theta tilted his head thoughtfully.

“So where is the ice lady?” he asked.

“Probably over there—”

The man couldn’t finish answering.

“Urggh…”

“Argggh! Why is it so freaking nauseating?!”

“Get out of my way, Sir Cain! You’re suffocating me!”

“Ah, oh!”

A group of people were lying on the ground, totally entangled with each other. There were over one hundred people, but Theta and Joshua were the only ones who weren’t rolling inelegantly around on the ground with them.

“Have you teleported a long distance before?” Theta asked.

“Yes, but not that often,” Joshua answered.

“Oh, is that so?” Theta’s jaw slackened in surprise for a moment.

Compared to warp gates, a teleportation spell was unstable in many ways, but even a short-distance teleportation spell was considered a Class 5 magic spell—which was pretty high. Therefore, it took at least a Class 7 mage to try casting a long-distance magic spell that was advanced enough to teleport several people at once, but there were not a lot of them on the continent.

‘The more I get to know him, the more interesting he is…’ Theta thought.

The stone-like man slowly approached them.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Hero King,” he remarked.

“Ah, you’ve also heard about him, right?” Theta said to Joshua. “He’s Marcus, holding the seat of earth in the Seven Mages. He’s also my dear colleague.”

However, Joshua was silent—his eyes were fixed somewhere else.

“Umm…” Marcus awkwardly smiled at Joshua’s reaction.

“Hey, he’s being polite.” Theta nudged Joshua. “The least you could do is say he—”

“…About ten kilometers away,” Joshua mumbled.

“Huh?” Theta tilted his head in confusion.

“There are two extraordinary energies and one of them is…” Joshua narrowed his eyes.

What was Joshua talking about? Was he sensing energies that were ten kilometers away?

‘…Wait, if it’s ten kilometers away from here…’ Theta thought disbelievingly.

Joshua started walking away.

“Master,” Cain frantically shouted after him, “are you really going to go to the battlefield like this?! How are you going to do it on your own?! It’s still two hundred thousand soldiers—!”

“I’m not alone,” Joshua interrupted.

“…Pardon?” Cain blankly asked.

“I have you all and…” Joshua trailed off as a veritable explosion of black energy spread out from him.

“De-demonic power?” Cain blankly murmured.

“…countless soldiers here.” Joshua smiled subtly.

The black demon power permeated into the deep underground behind Joshua. Nothing existed within. And that was when things started to change.

Several kinds of shadows were birthed out of the abyss: there was a headless human and some shadows resembled a mage and a knight. The shadow also created an overwhelmingly gigantic bird.

Marcus trembled as a wave of emotions came rushing in. He could sense the energy of earth better than anyone, so he was taken aback at what was happening right now. The earth was trembling and screaming in fear, as was the sky.

“Wh-what in the world…?” Marcus muttered.

“Now is the time to use what I’d taken from Berber before,” Joshua said.

After he finished speaking, he sprang forward as fast as he could, headed to the place where he had detected the two powerful energies coming from.