Chapter 83: Hughway’s True Sword Art

The air in the burning central area of the ironwood grove grew heavily silent as Ser Damian turned and leaped into the treelines, making his swift return toward Heaven’s Net Castle.

Left alone amidst the glowing embers and melting stone, Ser Hughway slowly turned his gaze back to the solitary Sword Sage assassin.

His Lord Viscount had given the absolute order to execute the intruder.

Under normal military circumstances, capturing an elite Ranker alive for interrogation in the Viscounty dungeons would have been the preferred course of action.

Yet, Ser Hughway understood his master’s decision with absolute clarity.

When the other four ghost-masked operatives fell, a common mercenary would have attempted to slip into the shadows or flee the moment a 4th-Tier Dragon descended from the sky.

But this assassin had remained standing, unmoving even in the terrifying presence of Dark Sister.

He had refused to flee because he could never return.

Having failed a high-priority mission against a Darkstar Successor, the assassin had already made peace with his end.

He was a dead man walking—a broken tool ready to embrace the grave.

There was no strategic reason for Craig to waste time or energy attempting to extract words from a fanatic who had already abandoned life.

Ser Hughway exhaled a long, heavy sigh, the hot vapor swirling past his silver beard.

He raised his broad longsword, resting the tip lightly toward the earth.

“Do you have any last words?” Hughway asked, his voice low and steady.

The Sword Sage assassin let out a raspy, hollow laugh that rattled in his throat.

Half of his face had been horribly charred and blistered by the scorching dragonfire, while the remaining half was still obscured by the cracked, bone-white ghost mask.

The assassin tightened his pale knuckles around his curved katana and spat a mouthful of dark, clotted blood onto the scorched earth.

“Last words?” the assassin sneered, his single exposed eye burning with venomous malice. “I have no last words for a glorified babysitter! Die!”

Ser Hughway’s lips curled into a calm, unbothered smile.

“So be it.”

BOOM!

Both Rankers exploded into motion simultaneously, their boots shattering the charred stone beneath them as they collided in the center of the clearing.

CLANG! BANG! CLANG!

Steel struck steel in a blinding sequence of sparks.

Even as a Peak-stage Sword Sage who commanded the broad concepts of the blade, the assassin was severely battered from the dragonfire, whereas Ser Hughway stood at the pinnacle of physical martial refinement as an Initial-stage Sword Master.

They traded violent horizontal slashes, ducked beneath high arcs, and exchanged heavy physical blows.

Hughway parried a diagonal katana thrust with his crossguard, stepped straight into the assassin’s guard, and drove a mana-reinforced left hook directly into the assassin’s scorched ribs!

CRACK!

The assassin coughed up blood as the physical impact threw him backward, but he instantly flipped mid-air, using his spatial awareness to land on a burning trunk and vault straight back at Hughway’s throat.

“Get down, rat!” Hughway roared.

Wrapping his heavy longsword in a dense, swirling coat of silver mana, Hughway delivered a single, devastating horizontal swing.

BOOM!!

The sheer kinetic force of the strike tore through the central area, creating a fifty-foot trench in the earth and blasting the surrounding fire into non-existence.

The assassin managed to twist his body mid-air, barely evading the direct path of the arc, and spawned instantly before Hughway’s chest in a desperate bid to plunge his katana through the knight’s neck.

However, the existence of a Sword Master was no joke.

Whatever baseline combat limits a lower class possessed, a Sword Master had retained them and enhanced them beyond human measure.

At the Initial-stage of the Sword Master class, Hughway had mastered the seamless fusion of his true sword art and inherent talent.

The moment the assassin appeared in front of him, Hughway’s movements became a terrifying display of absolute dominance.

Hughway didn’t dodge.

He shifted his footing by an inch, brought his gauntleted left hand up to slap the flat of the incoming katana aside, and delivered a brutal, vertical knee straight into the assassin’s jaw!

THWACK!

Before the assassin could recover mid-air, Hughway whirled his longsword in a lightning-fast wheeling motion, delivering three consecutive, deep cuts across the assassin’s shoulders, chest, and thigh!

Blood sprayed across the ash as the Sword Sage was brutally battered, thrown across the dirt like a broken ragdoll.

Yet, the assassin refused to relent.

Scrambling to his feet, blood dripping profusely from his charred skin and torn robes, the assassin realized he was being completely overpowered in raw martial output.

A dark, hysterical madness glinted in his eye.

He drew a deep, ragged breath, reaching deep into the core of his soul.

A True Sword Art was a sacred, singular technique created only when a practitioner truly accepted their inner nature and drew inspiration directly from their soul’s origin.

This man was born to be a killer.

He had lived in the dark, accepted his fate as a weapon of the shadows, and forged a technique tailored entirely to his existence.

An assassin-type True Sword Art.

Headless Ghost!

“Headless Ghost, Fourth Form!” the assassin hissed.

“One with Nothing!”

BZTT!

In an instant, the assassin’s physical form didn’t just fade—his entire presence, mana signature, and intent vanished completely from the physical plane.

To standard Sword Experts, he had ceased to exist entirely.

His presence was erased so thoroughly that only specialized Spirit Mages could track his ethereal trail.

Against standard combatants, this technique was absolute, terrifying, and fatal.

Suddenly, heavy, silent attacks began raining down on Hughway from every conceivable angle!

SWISH! CLANG! SWISH! CLANG!

The assassin’s strikes had become impossibly heavy, swift, and nimble.

The invisible katana struck at Hughway’s neck, his back, and his heart in fractions of a second, aiming to bypass his martial awareness entirely.

Yet… what is a terrifying technique when it cannot damage its target?

BZTT!

A brilliant, translucent layer of silver-runic plate armor erupted around Hughway’s body as his A-Grade Talent: Valgaryian Armor flared to its absolute limit.

SPARK! SPARK! SPARK!

Every single lethal strike delivered by the invisible assassin bounced harmlessly off the ethereal armor, producing only violent sprays of silver sparks!

The near-indestructible barrier completely absorbed the kinetic force of the Headless Ghost, rendering the assassin’s ultimate technique useless.

Ser Hughway stood firmly in the center of the storm, his eyes closed as he felt the slight atmospheric displacement against his armor.

“Found you,” Hughway murmured softly.

Tightening his grip on his longsword with both hands, Hughway raised his blade high above his head.

He drew upon his own soul’s origin, channeling his refined sword art into a single, decisive execution strike.

His True Sword Art.

Sky Sundering Art!

“Sky Sundering Art, First Form” Ser Hughway’s eyes flickered,

“Mountain Cleaver!”

Hughway brought his blade down with catastrophic, world-splitting force!

BANG!!

An explosive collision of silver energy and spatial pressure blasted through the clearing.

A colossal cloud of dust, ash, and dense smoke erupted, completely shrouding the grove in pitch-black shadow.

Seconds passed.

The heated wind slowly blew the thick smoke away, revealing the devastating aftermath.

The earth had been cleaved open in a massive, thirty-foot crater.

In the center of the ruin, the Sword Sage assassin was on his knees.

The bone-white ghost mask had been completely shattered and blown away, revealing a harsh, scarred face.

Half of his upper torso and left arm had been cleanly cleaved away by Hughway’s strike, exposing bone and pulsing crimson tissue.

Drawn clearly across his exposed left cheek was a stark, pitch-black tattoo depicting a kraken with forty writhing tentacles.

Tears of failure and pain dripped down his hollow, dying eyes as he stared at the bloody dirt beneath him.

Realizing that his end had arrived and that his soul was fading, the assassin summoned his final drop of strength.

He reached into his belt with his remaining hand, pulling out a thin, black-poisoned dagger.

“FOR THE GLORY OF HYDRA!!” the assassin screamed at the top of his lungs, driving the dagger straight toward his own heart to erase his secrets!

SWOOSH!

CSHHH!

Before the poisoned tip could even touch his chest, a silver line of cold steel flashed across the air.

The assassin’s head flew off his shoulders, spinning through the smoke before landing heavily in the dirt, his eyes wide and lifeless.

Ser Hughway slowly lowered his blood-stained longsword, flicking the crimson droplets off the tip with a crisp wrist movement before sheathing the blade with a heavy click.

Standing over the headless corpse of the Hydra operative, the old knight leaned down, picked up the severed head by its hair, and whispered cold into the quiet night air:

“You are not permitted to kill yourself. Your head belongs to the Viscount.”