Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 123

Berger said that he had encountered spider-shaped Crag Mutants multiple times. It was an abnormality unseen in the shafts of Units 11 and 8, but curiously frequent in Unit 14’s route.

So, what was the reason? Something that existed only in M13-5, but not in M13-1 or M13-2, must have been involved, likely an unidentified spider-type monster, an exodimensional being that not only subdued four A-rank mercenaries, but also created puppets wearing their skins.

This isn’t something to be talked out, Leon thought.

The impostors masquerading as Unit 14 were perfect. Even Karen or Geoff, both a cut above him when it came to their eyes, had failed to notice.

They had copied not just appearances, but voices and mannerisms exactly. That meant no one here could identify their true nature through skill alone.

And if I try talking, I’ll just give them time to prepare. Whether they only copied appearances, or copied abilities too... The first case is okay, but the second is dangerous.

Spies and schemes had always been active on battlefields for a reason. There was nothing more threatening than someone you thought was an ally stabbing you in the back.

He considered pretending to be fooled by their act, but the risk of a pre-emptive strike was too high. So, he moved quietly toward Berger. Hearing something a hundred times couldn’t match seeing it once, and he planned to expose their true identity himself.

Holding his breath, lowering his body, Leon stopped within striking range. Berger was speaking noisily, just as usual. Looking at him, no one would think he was fake.

El-Cid asked, —Are you hesitating?

No.

Leon firmly denied it, tightening his grip. The solid feel of the hilt, the coolness seeping into his palm, calmed his boiling blood.

The more perfect their imitation, the greater his fury grew. A monster wasn’t capable of creating something from nothing. That body and those memories likely came from the “real” ones.

Leon drew the Holy Sword. The moment its blade revealed its edge, the air froze. The noisy atmosphere was cut off in half a beat, weapons came up, and everyone drew apart.

Eleven A-ranks, separated into three groups, opened their eyes in shock, and rightfully so. Leon’s blade, moving before anyone else, severed Berger’s right arm in a single stroke.

Strictly speaking, he had aimed for the neck. Berger, in that instant, raised his right arm to save his life, sacrificing the limb instead. A seasoned, viciously quick reaction, worthy of an A-rank mercenary.

“Graaaah! What the hell, you bastard?!”

To anyone watching, Leon was the attacker, and Berger—missing an arm—was the victim. However, the mood in Units 8 and 11 was different. Unlike Unit 14, which looked ready to pounce, the two Units were only startled by the sudden violence, not accusing Leon or showing hostility.

Forewarned by Irexana, Geoff assumed Leon had his reasons, and Karen did the same. Only Hazel and Garlond, close enough to hear, didn’t understand.

“W-why? Why did he attack Unit 14?” Hazel, in panic, asked Garlond.

“I-I have no clue,” Garlond said, just as clueless.

Meanwhile, Berger snarled at Leon with a savage face.

“You dare attack an ally in the middle of a mission? Forget the Guild’s judgment—I’ll kill you here and now!”

“Ally? You?” Leon retorted.

“Ha! Are you high on something, rookie? You saying I’m not an ally? Huh?!”

Looking into his furious face, Leon replied in a cold, steady voice.

“Your human act is impressive... for a monster.”

“What the hell are you babbling about?!”

“Look at your arm and say that. Does that look human to you?”

“Huh?! Of course—”

Eleven pairs of eyes turned naturally to Berger’s right arm—to the cut surface filled not with blood but packed with white spider silk. It wasn’t human.

“W-what is that body?!”

“Spider silk?!”

“A monster that can mimic a human...!”

As Units 8 and 11’s expressions hardened and their hostility showed, the mercenaries of Unit 14 let every trace of emotion fall from their faces. Then they began to laugh with those blank expressions.

“Kek, kekek, kekekekeke!”

It was a sickening sight. The mad laughter carried the glee of a monster mocking the dignity of life.

Their alien laughter would have left some terrified and some without their fighting spirit. Against this crowd, however, it was a mistake. Geoff, ranked fifth among the Holy Iron Inquisitors, burned with rage.

“How dare you! A wretched monster daring to mimic humans! To trample dignity! To defile bonds and call for blood!”

In answer to his cry, two other Holy Iron Inquisitors stood beside him, gathering holy power. This was the righteous fury. The Holy Church was one of the continent’s strongest powers, but its true strength was shown in one moment: when it destroyed heretics who mocked life and belittled the value of good.

“O Goddess, watch over this land! Show that the flame that burns the unholy darkness and the light of judgment still lives!”

Geoff recited the prayer and raised his sword, and sacred flames—Holy Fire—erupted from the three Holy Iron Inquisitors.

Unlike Leon, they used no stigmatic power. This was the authority refined from deeds and faith alone. The three, wrapped in sacred flame, charged at the monsters. It was a fearsome momentum.

“Join Unit 11 and take down the enemy!”

Leon quickly set Unit 8’s course and looked ahead. The monster disguised as Berger, even missing an arm, possessed power that was considered top-tier among A-ranks. Letting his guard down for a moment could mean losing his head.

“Hoo...”

A short breath blew away distractions. What was the spider that had made these fakes? What had happened to the real Unit 14?

Were the other Units in different tunnels safe? Could these things have more than just their mimicry up their sleeves?

Dozens of thoughts rose and vanished like bubbles. Turbulence was unnecessary. He calmed his mind without a single ripple, focusing until sword and body became one.

But...

One question remained. The power he’d felt from the cursed sword and from the spider silk were clearly different in nature.

If they’d come from the same being, that wouldn’t be possible. Which meant the Great Vein’s corruption and the spider monster were entirely separate matters.

With a clang, Leon knocked away a spear thrust at his heart, and at the same time, stopped thinking further.

He had to update his priorities. He could worry after he cut down this monster.

Cut them down.

Leon and the monster wearing Berger’s face clashed.

***

Meanwhile, in A5, Irexana shook the blood off his hands. A few punches had been enough to crush the Rock Eater’s skull. He hadn’t even felt the need to draw a weapon.

Its adamantium-coated hide was extremely tough, but not tough enough to withstand fists capable of shattering solid adamantium. As Jugend’s greatest blacksmith, Irexana the Grand Meister was naturally accustomed to working with adamantium and orichalcum, and he preferred his hands over a hammer when shaping them.

“All those years of using my fists instead of a hammer have paid off,” Irexana muttered and started walking again.

Even though he had chosen the hardest route, his pace was the fastest in the entire expedition. It looked like a leisurely walk, but he moved so quickly he left afterimages, cutting down A-rank and S-rank monsters alike with a few punches before advancing again.

Considering that he never needed to pause for breath, if any squad had been ahead of him, that would have been the strange thing. Then, a faint light seeped from within Irexana’s sleeve, pointing toward one of the branching tunnels.

“As expected...”

Wearing the look of someone who had anticipated this, he followed the light’s guidance without hesitation.

Irexana’s Stigma of the Guide was a holy light that sought out the corrupt and the wicked, and the very reason the Evil Order had almost no influence in Jugend. No matter what they tried, their location would always be exposed, leaving them hunted down before they could scheme.

“A monster escaping from the Mirror Canyon, the production and distribution of cursed swords born of the Great Vein’s corruption... I thought Chaos was acting rather systematically for its usual character,” Irexana muttered to no one in particular as he walked down the pitch black shaft. “There’s no rule saying the three sects of the Evil Order must act separately. Their goals may differ slightly, but in the end, they’re all the same filth in the same gutter. Mix them together and you’d hardly notice a difference.”

His tone was unfailingly polite, befitting a cardinal, but his words attacking Evil were as sharp as a finely honed blade. The air around him rippled in response to his growing hostility. He was, after all, an Aura Master—one who could bend the laws of physics to their will.

The darkness seemed to shrink back as if in fright. At some point, a cloak of light began to flow over him, and Irexana greeted a distant silhouette.

“Wouldn’t you agree, Bishop of Despair?”

Anyone overhearing those words would have reacted with horror.

In the Evil Order, a bishop was also called one of the Nine-Hell, one of only nine leaders. They were the equivalent of a cardinal in the Holy Church, each with a bounty worth a fortune. And now, that shape writhing in the dark... was supposedly one of those great villains?

“It’s you, the mongrel cardinal of Jugend,” said a voice, raspy like metal being scraped. “You’ve found me again with that stigma, have you? No different from a wild animal sniffing blood, you dog of the Goddess.”

“Yes, I am a dog.”

Irexana smiled, unfazed by the provocation. His face and voice, however, carried such cold killing intent that even a trace of it sent shivers down the spine.

“A hunting dog that leaps the fence to kill the vermin nesting in the front yard—unlike some, who know only how to bark.”

“...”

“Those who turn from the light, who repay grace with malice... For you, life is an undeserved luxury. May you regret ever being born into this world and return to the abyss of nothingness.”

Speaking the death sentence as though delivering a blessing, he made the figure in the darkness take a step back. An Aura Master’s killing intent was power in itself, enough to stop the heart of someone weak in body or mind.

Of course, a bishop of the Evil Order was not so easily cowed.

“Regret being born, you say...”

Finding something amusing in Irexana’s words, the figure laughed.

“Ke... kehe, kehaha! Kehahahaha!”

It was clear madness. The Bishop of Despair’s blood-red eyes began to blaze, not from amusement, but from rage too great to contain—fury spilling out in the form of laughter.

“Regret! Yes, regret, you say, Cardinal!”

Malice poured from him like a great curtain, making the darkness itself writhe like the folds of his robe. Exolaw was a power without discernible origin or principle.

He glared at Irexana from head to toe and shouted harshly.

“Ah, what a blessed body! A blessed life! You were born into a happy family and achieved everything with your great talent! Jugend’s Grand Meister! A cardinal of the Holy Church! A body inheriting the best traits of two races! Utterly unfair!

“Even if you praise me like that, I’m afraid I still can’t spare your life.”

Enraged by the joke, the bishop roared like he was spitting blood.

“Don’t give me that shit! Think, Cardinal! How much misfortune was born for the sake of your happiness alone?! The scales of fate are balanced. For every happy person, there is one unhappy person! But when someone like you enjoys such excessive blessings, dozens, hundreds more are cursed with misfortune!

Astonishingly, there was conviction in his voice. Twisted and deranged from the roots, sure, but built upon an unshakable pillar—a mind immune to temptation or torture.

The voice of a fanatic could be dangerously persuasive. To the ignorant, it could sound reasonable. Once one nodded a few times, they might actually start to believe it.

“You call us ‘evil’? No! You are the evil! You stain the world with misfortune, birthing us—the so-called Evil!”

In response to that certainty, Irexana shrugged and said, “I don’t agree.”

His smile remained, casual and unhurried as he continued, “To say that you were born in a garbage household, kept company with vermin, and committed unforgivable crimes—all because of happy people—that’s nonsense so absurd it’s almost funny.”

With each word, the smile faded from his half-human, half-dwarf face until it was cold and hard. Though he looked young, he had lived over a century, and his reply carried the weight of all he had seen.

“I can agree, to some extent, that happiness is finite. Wishing for everyone’s happiness is unlikely to come true. We might get close, but we will never reach it.”

Then he added, “But happiness is not like gold coins—you cannot take it from others to make it your own, nor can you hand it to the have-nots. In the world your ‘Despair’ seeks, everyone will be nothing but slaves to an equality of evil.”

If happiness were finite, suffering was infinite. Creating a world where everyone was happy was impossible, but one where everyone was miserable was quite possible.

That was what Despair sought—a hell so full of pain that nothing was left to steal. They called that paradise.

Irexana’s speech grew stripped of formality, his contempt plain.

“Trash lower than fleas. You who only seek to offload your own pain onto others deserve not even a crumb of pity.”

From the bracelets on his wrists, light flared, and in an instant, two battleaxes filled his hands. Jugend Steel number 200 and 201—the Goddess’s Irises: one golden-yellow axe of orichalcum, the other silver-gray axe of adamantium.

Each weighed over thirty kilograms, yet Irexana held them with ease. Then, he unleashed all the power he had been holding inside.

Master-level Aura, the high elemental powers of earth and fire, and the Holy Power of a cardinal—three forces combined, amplifying one another until they boiled over. The air buckled under the pressure, whirlwinds forming, dust spiraling into the sky.

Even the Bishop of Despair swallowed reflexively before the being who was closer to the level of a dragon than man, someone whose mere existence distorted the natural order.

Crossing the two axes, Irexana spoke.

“I, the Third Cardinal of the Holy Church, Irexana the Ravager, am your end.”

The storm of power that could smother even madness left the bishop momentarily speechless. Bishop Cordia clenched his teeth hard enough to crack them, pain sparking through his jaw, but it barely registered. The madness crushed under Irexana’s presence surged back from deep within.

From the darkness shrouding Cordia, nine heads sprouted, gaping like the hydra of myth.

“Don’t make me laugh...! It is you who will meet your end, mutt!”

They were far from the main operation zone and just slightly ahead of the scheduled meeting time.

The strongest of the two sides, the expedition team and the Evil Order, were about to begin their battle.