Chapter 39: The Arm That Became a Weapon

With a roar of effort, the adventurer parried the blade wide and stepped into a counter-offensive.

The General swung a brutal backhand.

The adventurer barely ducked in time, the rusted iron tearing a massive gouge across his chest plate.

Using the momentum, the adventurer thrust his sword upward, burying the tip deeply into the General’s unarmored shoulder joint.

The beast barely reacted to the pain. It simply ripped itself off the blade and swung a devastating horizontal strike.

The adventurer stepped back, attempting to establish distance. But the General was impossibly fast. It shifted its grip, accelerating the arc of the heavy weapon beyond human reaction time.

Kōya, watching from the mud, saw the trajectory of the attack form before the blade even moved.

"Look out!" Kōya screamed.

He was too late.

The enormous blade came sweeping down in a lethal diagonal arc. The adventurer twisted his torso, desperately trying to contort his body out of the path of destruction.

The rusted steel missed his unarmored flank by a fraction of an inch. But it did not miss his arm.

SLASH!

The sound of severing meat and shattering bone echoed through the clearing. The adventurer’s left arm, severed cleanly above the elbow, fell heavily into the mud.

For a second, there was absolute silence.

The adventurer stumbled backward, clutching the geyser of blood erupting from his stump, staring down at his severed limb lying in the wet grass.

Kōya froze entirely, his blood running cold.

The General laughed, a deep, victorious rumble, and casually raised its massive sword again to finish the execution.

Suddenly, the adventurer began to laugh. It was a high, manic, breathless sound.

Kōya stared at the dying man in disbelief. "What is funny?!"

The adventurer fell to his knees in the mud. Ignoring his bleeding stump, he reached out with his remaining right hand and physically picked up his own severed arm from the grass.

"Nothing," the man wheezed, his face stark white from blood loss.

He looked up at the towering General, his eyes manic and entirely devoid of fear.

"I just realized..."

Volatile, blinding magical energy began gathering rapidly around his remaining hand, bleeding aggressively into the dead tissue of the severed limb he was holding.

"... I still have one trick left."

Kōya’s eyes widened in sheer, terrified comprehension. He recognized the arcane buildup of a suicidal mana overload.

"Wait. Don’t!"

The adventurer pressed his remaining hand tightly against the severed flesh. Brilliant, unstable, lightning-like magical circuits spread aggressively across the dead arm, glowing with a blinding white light.

His face twisted in absolute, unspeakable agony. He was pouring every single drop of his remaining life force, every shred of his aura, directly into the dead flesh, turning it into an arcane bomb.

The General finally noticed the catastrophic buildup of mana. Its eyes widened in genuine panic.

"What are you—"

The adventurer hurled the glowing, overloaded limb directly at the General’s chest.

"Run, kid!"

The severed hand struck the General’s iron plating.

For one agonizing heartbeat, the world went completely, deathly silent. Nothing happened.

Then—

BOOOOOOM!

The entire clearing disappeared beneath an apocalyptic sphere of blinding, white-hot magical fire.

Massive, ancient trees exploded outward like splinters. The surviving smaller demons lurking in the brush were instantly vaporized or thrown across the forest like ragdolls.

The concussive shockwave hit Kōya like a physical wall. He was knocked brutally onto his back, skidding across the mud. Thick, choking smoke filled the air, blotting out the sky.

Kōya covered his face with his arms, coughing. A high-pitched, deafening ring echoed continuously in his ears.

Slowly, the raging winds died down. The thick, acrid smoke began to clear, revealing a massive, blackened crater in the center of the clearing.

Standing in the center of the destruction, amidst the embers, was the Demon General.

It was still alive. Barely.

Its face had been completely devastated by the point-blank explosion. The entire left side of its skull was a charred, ruined mess of exposed bone and melted flesh. Its thick, dark body was covered in horrific, smoking third-degree burns, and the iron plates had melted into its skin.

Yet, impossibly, it was still moving. It was driven by pure, monstrous spite.

Kōya’s eyes widened in horror. "How..."

The General staggered blindly, its massive chest heaving. Its remaining, unburned hand tightened securely around the hilt of its colossal sword.

The adventurer was lying in the mud a few feet away. His armor was completely blackened, his breathing shallow and erratic. He couldn’t move a single muscle. He had exhausted his soul.

The General slowly, painfully raised his massive sword into the air, aiming the tip directly at the fallen man’s chest.

Kōya’s tactical mind snapped back to reality. He understood the trajectory immediately.

"No!"

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring his screaming ribs, and rushed forward in a dead sprint.

The General brought the enormous sword crashing down.

Kōya reached the paralyzed adventurer a fraction of a second before the blade. He didn’t try to block it; he simply grabbed the heavy collar of the man’s armor and shoved him sideways.

"Move!"

The adventurer rolled limply across the muddy ground, narrowly avoiding the strike.

But Kōya had placed himself directly in the kill zone.

He turned back. The massive rusted sword was already descending toward him, moving with the unstoppable momentum of a falling mountain.

He didn’t retreat. He didn’t try to parry. He jumped directly toward the weapon.

The heavy, rusted blade passed mere inches beneath his boots. Kōya twisted his body flawlessly mid-air, contorting his spine to align his trajectory perfectly with the descending weapon.

His dark eyes locked with absolute, lethal precision onto the thick iron crossguard and hilt of the General’s sword.

He drew his leg back and kicked downward.

BANG!

The full, concentrated force of his demonic strength, augmented by his sheer, unadulterated grief, struck the side of the heavy iron hilt perfectly.

The impact was precise. The General’s exhausted, burned arm was violently jerked sideways by the impact. The massive sword abruptly changed its downward trajectory.

Instead of striking the earth where Kōya had been...

The enormous, rusted blade drove directly, point-first, into the General’s own exposed abdomen.

THUNK!

The heavy steel sheared through the creature’s thick muscles and lodged itself deep into its guts.

The General froze entirely, a horrific, gurgling sound escaping its ruined throat.

Kōya didn’t hesitate. He used the momentum of his kick to land perfectly balanced on the beast’s heavily muscled forearm.

The creature’s ruined, half-melted face turned slowly toward him in absolute shock. It tried to jerk its arm back to pull the blade free from its own organs.

Kōya didn’t give it the chance.

He jumped straight up. At the apex of his leap, he brought both of his heavy boots slamming down against the flat of the General’s extended arm.

Viscous, violent black flames erupted aggressively around his entire body, channeling every ounce of his remaining aura into gravity and mass.

"Go down!" Kōya roared.

He pushed. With everything he had left in his soul.

The General’s ruined, burned arm was forced brutally downward by the overwhelming pressure.

The massive sword tore violently deeper into the creature’s own body. The jagged, rusted blade ripped upward through the abdomen, shattering the ribcage and carving a catastrophic path directly through the beast’s chest cavity and upper torso.

The General’s body was literally split open from the inside out beneath the leverage of its own weapon.

A massive, wet, deafening roar of absolute agony echoed through the quiet forest, shaking the remaining leaves from the trees.

Then, total silence.

The Demon General collapsed backward into the mud, a ruined, bisected mountain of flesh.

Kōya backflipped off the falling corpse, landing heavily on his knees beside the crater. He stayed there, his chest heaving, his dark eyes locked onto the beast.

He stared at the horrific wound. The creature didn’t twitch. It didn’t draw a breath.

It was dead.

Kōya breathed out a long, ragged exhale, the black flames finally dying away from his skin.

"I... actually did it."

Then, reality crashed back over him. He remembered the adventurer.

He spun around in the mud.

"Are you alive?!"

Suddenly, the brush at the edge of the clearing rustled violently. Several heavily armed adventurers emerged from the trees, having followed the sound of the explosion.

One of them immediately spotted the fallen man and rushed forward, sliding into the mud.

"He’s alive! He has a pulse!"

Another adventurer dropped heavily beside him, tearing off a satchel. "Get the high-tier healing potions! Now!"

"His arm is completely gone!" the first man panicked, his hands slick with blood.

"I know it’s gone! Cauterize the stump and just keep him breathing!"

Soft, golden healing magic began to rapidly spread across the wounded adventurer’s charred body, stabilizing his fading heart rate and sealing the catastrophic bleeding.

Then, a sudden cry came from the edge of the clearing.

"My husband."

A woman adventurer came running through the trees, nearly stumbling in the mud as she pushed past the other adventurers.

The moment she saw the wounded man, she rushed to his side and dropped to her knees.

She carefully wrapped both arms around him, tears streaming down her face.

"You’re alive..."

The adventurer opened his remaining eye and gave her a weak smile.

"You’re safe?"

She nodded frantically.

"Yes. They got us back toward the bridge. I heard the explosion and..." Her voice broke. "I thought I’d lost you."

She pressed her forehead against his shoulder for a moment before looking toward Kōya.

Her tear-filled eyes met his.

She slowly stood.

"Thank you."

Kōya blinked.

The woman bowed deeply.

"Thank you for not leaving my husband behind. You kept him alive. Our whole family is indebted to you."

Kōya stared at her for several seconds.

Then he looked toward the wounded adventurer.

"You shouldn’t bow to me."

The woman slowly raised her head.

"Your husband was the one who saved me." Kōya’s eyes fell briefly to the man’s missing arm.

"He gave up his arm to keep me alive. I only made sure he survived afterward."

The woman looked back at her husband. For a moment, she said nothing. Then she bowed her head again.

"Even so... thank you."

Kōya gave her a small nod. He didn’t know what else to say. The adventurer managed a faint smile.

"See, kid? Now you have another reason not to die."

Kōya almost smiled.

"Then I suppose I have another debt to repay."

The wounded man weakly opened his one unswollen eye, tracking the boy’s movement.

"You..."

Kōya knelt slowly in the mud beside him, his expression completely unreadable.

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Why did you save me? You sacrificed your arm for a stranger."

The adventurer looked at Kōya’s youthful, blood-stained face. For several long seconds, the man said nothing, his chest rising and falling shallowly.

Then, incredibly, he smiled. It was a weak, pained expression, but entirely genuine.

"Because..." He glanced weakly toward the other hardened adventurers desperately trying to save his life. "Because you kids... you are the future."

Kōya frowned deeply, rejecting the sentiment. "We do not even know each other."

"I know."

"You lost your arm because of me."

The adventurer looked down at the cauterized, heavily bandaged stump where his arm used to be.

His expression softened, devoid of regret.

"Because of you?" He slowly shook his head against the mud. "No."

He looked back up, his single eye locking onto Kōya with absolute, unyielding conviction.

"Because I deliberately chose to."

Kōya said nothing. He didn’t possess the emotional vocabulary to argue with that kind of selfless logic.

The adventurer continued, his voice a raspy whisper.

"We are adventurers, kid. We took an oath. We are supposed to protect people."

He glanced tiredly toward the burning sky visible through the canopy.

"Especially the ones who are going to have to inherit this broken world after we’re all gone."