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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: One Sword
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And it was one of Krash's deepest grudges.
That was why Krash knew so much about him.
He had once been Krash's friend.
'Friend, my ass.'
Krash had known it for a long time.
He knew the reason Anix had stuck around as his "friend" was simply because he had some use value.
To others, the Valheim family could be called the rival house to Anix's Graiza family.
Embracing Krash, a direct descendant of such a house, would demonstrate leadership useful for positioning himself at the center of the kingdom's faction.
But Krash knew an even more repulsive reason than that superficial one.
The incident happened after they graduated from the academy.
Krash, who had joined the Generation of the Sky alongside him, moved with Anix to stop the World Erosion—and that's when it all went wrong.
Anix's squad had fallen into a World Erosion trap.
All the squad members died in the trap, and Krash barely survived by clinging to the edge of a cliff.
And Anix, true to his Generation of the Sky status, was the only one who escaped the trap.
"Anix! Pull me up!"
Krash's arms felt like they were about to be torn off by the intense gravity pulling from below.
So he called out to Anix for help.
But what came back from Anix wasn't help—it was something entirely different.
"...Krash, if it gets out that this trap happened because of my mistake, I'll lose my place in the Generation of the Sky."
Hearing that, Krash's eyes widened in shock.
Anix had already been pushed to the margins of the Generation of the Sky due to a recent blunder.
If this mistake got out on top of that...
He would definitely be kicked out, just as he said.
The Generation of the Sky had become the center of power.
Being ousted from it was something to avoid at all costs.
"What the hell are you talking about?! Is that what matters right now?!"
But wasn't life more important than any of that?
Yet Anix's expression didn't change.
He wore the look of someone who had already made his decision long ago.
"If I escape alone, my mistake gets buried."
Anix stood up from his spot.
Then he started walking away, leaving Krash trapped in the pit.
"Anix, Anix, wait!"
Krash shouted desperately.
If this kept up, he would die.
"You idiot! You think this is gonna blow over that easily!?"
The Generation of the Sky weren't fools.
Before anything else, they were a group rife with internal power struggles.
They would definitely use this incident as an excuse to boot Anix out somehow.
He was one of the central figures in Staron, after all.
Anix surely knew that too.
But he let out a self-mocking laugh.
"It's fine. You've got my back, right? Krash."
Krash's eyes slowly widened.
He had figured out what Anix was thinking.
Anix planned to pin this mistake on Krash.
Claim that the half-wit Valheim had grabbed his ankle and dragged them into the trap.
Krash already had plenty of enemies in the Generation of the Sky.
They would jump at the chance to expose his "mistake," truth be damned.
In the meantime, the real story would fade away.
"Thanks, Krash. For being my friend until the very end."
Anix's final words struck at Krash's deepest sore spot.
"Friend? Friend!? You full of shit! When the hell did you ever think of me as a friend?!"
Krash had long known how meaningless Anix's talk of "friendship" was.
Even so, deep down, he had wanted to believe it.
That at least, this guy saw him as a comrade fighting against the World Erosion.
But to Anix, Krash wasn't even a comrade, let alone a friend.
In his utter disgust, Krash struck at Anix's own sore spot.
"From the start, you only hung around me because of Charlotte, didn't you?!"
For the first time, the composure cracked on Anix's face.
"You think I don't know about today's screw-up? You lost your head because Charlotte's getting married, and that's how we ended up like this!"
Anix harbored deep love and hate for Charlotte.
Today's mistake was all because he had lost his focus over news of her wedding.
Krash had even told Anix not to come at first.
He could tell from the guy's state that something would go wrong nine times out of ten.
Yet the bastard had dragged them out to fight World Erosion anyway, causing this mess.
And now he wanted to shift the blame onto him.
It was utterly revolting.
"...That's why I hate you."
A jumble of messy emotions crossed Anix's face as he looked at Krash.
"You're talentless, yet you have those eyes that see right through people—and you poke at it sometimes."
The real reason Anix had kept Krash around as a "friend."
It was so he could see Charlotte, who often came looking for Krash.
But that was over today.
She had left forever now.
"Well, at least something good came out of today."
With those words, Anix plastered a repulsive smile twisted by love and hate across his face.
"Charlotte wouldn't want to hold her brother's funeral and her wedding on the same day."
"You crazy bastard!"
Realizing Anix had completely broken, Krash screamed, but Anix had already turned and walked away.
"At least you were useful in the end. Krash."
And Anix left.
All Krash could do toward his retreating back was hurl curses.
Right before Krash died, abandoned like that...
Someone came to save him.
The owner of platinum blonde hair that rose with the sun.
Arthur Gramalte.
That marked the start of a new grudge.
'Fucking idiot.'
After that, Anix was expelled from the Generation of the Sky based on Arthur's testimony.
Not long after, marrying Princess Claudia—who had no claim to the throne—like grasping at straws was truly repulsive.
"She talks like Charlotte and even looks a bit like her."
At that moment, Anix's voice leaked from his mouth in the present.
This idiot still had only Charlotte on his mind even now.
"Hey."
So Krash glared at Anix and cracked his knuckles.
"Don't call my sister by her name like that."
Anix's eyes widened round.
An unexpected reaction had come from Krash.
"And you said she looks like me."
At the same time, aura began rippling from Krash's fist.
As Anix watched the Expert Beginner-level aura without reacting...
"Anyone who messes with me gets no mercy, just like with my sister."
Krash kicked off the floor and leaped forward.
The moment he closed the distance to Anix in an instant and thrust his fist like he had against Ballak...
Kwak!
His thrust fist was blocked by a tree branch sprouting from behind Anix.
It might have been startling, this sudden intrusion of wood, but it was familiar to Krash.
Thud!
Grabbing the branch with both hands, Krash spun downward like it was an iron rod.
Then he immediately whipped his leg toward Anix.
But again, wood surged between the railings and wrapped around Krash's leg, hurling him away.
In an instant, he was airborne.
Trees extended branches to attack him.
Amid the branches spreading everywhere to catch him...
Krash twisted through the air like an acrobat and landed on the floor.
"Lord Krash, you look like a flying squirrel."
Bianca, who had been watching quietly from behind, said with an amazed expression.
So carefree.
"Hoo."
In contrast, Krash lightly wiped away a bead of sweat.
The Graiza family technique still grated on him.
"Is that all you've got? Why not use a weapon at least?"
Anix smirked faintly through the branches wrapped around him like armor.
⚔ GRAIZA FAMILY TECHNIQUE ⚔ Wood Heaven Sword Style
Not just trees—the Graiza family technique freely manipulated plants by infusing them with aura to strengthen them.
Of course, its power weakened in places where plants couldn't grow.
But a skill contracted with a god rendered that weakness meaningless.
⚡ SKILL ACTIVATED ⚡ Recovery
Regeneration: Plants bloom anywhere to serve as limbs.
In simple terms, regeneration.
Plants bloomed anywhere through Anix's skill, becoming his hands and feet.
That was the real reason he had made it into the Generation of the Sky.
"You told me to use a weapon."
Krash flashed a chilling smile at him and pulled out what he had hidden behind his back.
For the first time, Anix's eyes twitched.
In Krash's hand was a tree branch.
And it was none other than one torn from Anix's own tree.
Krash had stolen it using Black Hood.
Black Hood Stealth theft successful.
"Your wood's pretty decent."
Krash assumed a sword stance with the long branch, about the length of a longsword.
Anix let out a hollow laugh.
"I have no idea what you think you can do with that."
Anix said that, but he looked quite displeased, wearing a twisted smile.
"Then try blocking my branch."
At that moment, branches poured out from behind Anix.
Infused with aura, they took the form of spikes hard enough to pierce marble floors.
Krash weaved through the storm of wooden spikes.
They seemed to rain down aimlessly, but Anix controlled every single one.
Krash had stuck with Anix exhaustingly back in their Generation of the Sky days.
Even now, Anix's innate habits remained the same.
In a way, Krash was like Anix's natural counter.
No one knew Anix as well as he did.
"Huh?"
As Krash dodged every spike and slowly closed in on him, Anix reacted with bewilderment.
Krash moved as if he knew exactly where every attack was coming from.
But even so, Krash didn't exude overwhelming presence.
The energy from him felt merely ordinary.
'He's squeezing out his limits.'
Even now, Krash breathed heavily, as if dodging the spikes was a struggle.
Proof that his body couldn't keep up even if his mind knew.
'Did he awaken Insight or something?'
Anix thought of the legendary Insight, but he soon scoffed.
'Not Charlotte, maybe.'
A guy who awakened something like that wouldn't be called the Valheim half-wit.
"Anix."
Through the spikes, Krash smirked from the now-close distance.
"Still thinking about Charlotte?"
Twitch—
Anix's eyebrow twitched.
Those words prodded the deepest sore spot buried in Anix's heart.
"...I've let you off plenty of times already."
With that, Anix raised his hand.
"Looks like you need to fix that mouth of yours."
A different energy from aura flowed into his hand.
The tree behind him suddenly sprouted tens of thousands of leaves.
A massive root burst through the marble floor.
A tree worthy of being called a World Tree loomed overwhelmingly.
Something humanoid shaped arms on top of it.
⚔ WOOD HEAVEN SWORD STYLE ⚔ Fifth FormWood Heaven Giant
The giant created by the Graiza family's Wood Heaven Sword Style.
The shadow it cast filled the entire terrace of Green Pine Pavilion.
"You'd better watch yourself next time."
Beneath the giant that would make an ordinary person collapse in fear...
Anix declared Krash's end and swung his hand down.
Soon, that colossal fist smashed toward Krash—a blow that could demolish Green Pine Pavilion.
"Lord Anix!"
Elfin, Anix's subordinate, burst through the terrace door with a shout, too late.
If Krash took that fist head-on, there would be no coming back.
But it was already too late.
The massive fist was right in front of Krash's nose.
Staring at that fist, Krash raised the branch above his head.
In the secret library of Green Pine Pavilion, there is one thinnest secret manual.
The reason it was so thin was simple.
The author had only created one secret art in his lifetime before writing it down.
The Valheim half-wit, utterly talentless in everything.
Lacking talent, he devoted himself solely to the basics of the sword, repeating downward strikes his entire life.
A pure downward strike, devoid of any flourish.
He swung the sword downward hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of times—surpassing a hundred million.
When his life reached past eighty.
The sword he held shattered.
His sword could no longer withstand his downward strikes.
But by then, he no longer needed a sword.
The sword becomes me, and I become the sword.
He achieved one thing alone.
Man-Sword Unity in downward strikes—the pinnacle of swordsmanship.
From that day, no one in the world could block his downward strike.
The secret manual he wrote at the end of his life contained only that one simple technique: the downward strike. It was incredibly short.
Yet the art within that brief manual reached a realm no ordinary martial art could touch.
Krash's eyes closed calmly as he raised the branch.
He forgot all surrounding sounds and presences.
Krash focused solely on the single branch in his hand.
This technique required extreme concentration.
A state near object-self unity.
Most couldn't learn it even with the manual.
But Krash was different.
In the past, due to a curse, Krash had been forcibly thrust into states akin to object-self unity countless times.
Ironically, that allowed Krash to peer into his own depths better than anyone.
His empty inner self—nothing was there.
Of course.
He had accomplished nothing himself.
But precisely because of that.
Krash could house his ancestor's secret art within himself.
The sword becomes me, and I become the sword.
A profoundly simple truth.
Kugugugugugung!
A massive roar echoed as the Wood Heaven Giant crumbled.
"Wh-what? What's going on?"
"Something happen outside?"
The enormous noise caused a commotion inside the terrace.
But the dust cloud from the Wood Heaven Giant's collapse billowed up, preventing the noble youths from seeing the situation.
Within the dust, Anix stared straight ahead with bulging eyes.
The family technique infused with Recovery: Wood Heaven Giant.
And it had been shattered by a single downward strike.
The problem was, even if he gave it his all, he wasn't sure he could block that downward strike.
"Hey."
At that moment, Krash's voice rang out through the dust.
Anix instinctively recoiled at the voice.
"...Urk."
But he felt ashamed that he had backed away from just Krash's voice.
Yet contrary to his mind, his body was tense.
Cold sweat beaded on his back.
His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
Until the dust cleared.
Anix couldn't move a muscle in the tension.
Slowly, Krash's figure emerged from the dust.
He tossed the shattered wooden sword to the floor and opened his mouth.
"Don't fuck around anymore."
Just like him.