Awakening the Great Bloodline Chapter 141

Chapter 141 — Crimson Order

Calix senses Kohtan's 'order'.

The air was already warped like shards of shattered glass. The energy of darkness seeped into his skin, and the sensations throughout his body grew dull, as though he had been injected with an anesthetic.

Fortunately, the mana within his body resisted, holding the line by a razor-thin margin.

'It's different from Midra. This is a force closer to chaos than pain.'

Even as he charged toward enemy lines, he felt sothing cold settling in one corner of his heart. Would his companions resist as well as he could? Would the warhorses hold out until they reached their destination?

[All flows... Return to their place.]

Then, all of a sudden, an unknown voice rang out. Not a single pair of lips moved. The words had co from sowhere deep within the mind.

But Calix knew.

It was Kohtan.

[Even your desperate struggle will ultimately flow toward a single end.]

In an instant, the wind reversed and the sky tilted. Had the ground risen, or had his body sunk? The sound of his heartbeat rang unusually loud in his ears.

It was the very mont the assault unit gained speed.

Crack-crack-crack-crack!!

The front hooves of the warhorses buckled, and so of the knights broke away from the formation. Where their mounts should have planted their feet, they had instead folded their knees.

"Faster, faster!"

"At least collapse after you've reached that thing!"

Even so, the riders did not stop.

Royce lowered his body and leveled his sword low. Marik checked the count of reserve Mana Stones with his fingertips. Dwarf Basim's axe deflected light in reverse, and priestess Ella had already begun reciting a prayer.

The Mountain Rabbits raised their morale as they followed behind Calix, and the knights rode with their eyes fixed on Imran Akran's back.

"Enemy ahead!"

Beyond the edge of his vision stood a wall of monsters.

Shadows rose from a plain drenched in crimson. Forms carved from torn flesh and bone. Among them, a familiar presence caught his eye.

"Nergas!"

Calix's eyes wavered for an instant. It was different from when they had faced it before. The body that had seed to exist and yet not exist was now ripped into hundreds of strands, divided into dark red lines.

And that force was spreading outward from below the ground like a network of underground veins.

Whoooosh!!

Calix drew his sword without hesitation. The Neural Accelerator drank in mana and slowed the pace of the world. Imdiately, Geomhwa blazed from the tip of the blade, striking the ground and tearing apart its crust.

Amidst the flying sand and fragnts of stone, threads of dark red tentacles mixed in as they crawled upward.

"Cavalry, scatter! Spread your intervals!"

The thousand riders responded quickly. The mont they understood that Calix had blocked the enemy's ambush, they swung their blades all at once and added their strength to his.

Or rather, they tried to.

Sheeaack!

"……!"

Royce, the mont after scattering his fla mana, realized sothing had gone wrong. His armor felt as though it were pulling him down heavily, and the hand gripping his sword bent in the opposite direction of his will.

Because he was at the front, there were no friendly casualties on his end—but the situation at the rear was different.

Crack-boom-boom-bang!

"What is this!"

"Get your head straight and look ahead!"

Those whose senses had malfunctioned struck their own allies. Each was of upper-rank swordsman caliber or above, so the charging formation collapsed in re monts.

Soone was run through the back by an ally's blade, and another barely dodged but lost their balance and fell from their horse.

"O Kriya, drive back the wicked whispers with your truth!"

Just then, Ella's sacred spell completed and the chaos began to ebb. But even the Divinity could not hold on for long.

Kohtan's voice rang out once more.

[Only this body defies the providence of the gods. All laws shall lose their form and perish.]

A flat, hollow tone of voice. Yet within it was the weight of sothing that shattered the order of the world.

But there was no stopping now.

The distance between them and the monsters had already closed considerably. The great monsters had ford a defensive formation with Nergas at their center. Flesh like scales, chitinous black carapace fitted together like joined bones—they trembled with fine, rapid shivers.

The riders, even as they felt the disorientation of their senses, pressed into the enemy lines without delay. If their speed faltered, they would die regardless.

Fortunately, there were two n standing ahead of them.

Crack! Crumble!!

Dark red tentacles thrust off the ground and lunged like speartips. Imran Akran tore through their trajectory with ease. It was a flawless stroke.

"We break through in one point!"

Before the words had even finished, Calix's mana exploded outward. The refined flas tore away precisely what their master intended, nothing more.

Thanks to his Mind's Eye rapidly compensating for the confusion of his senses, he was not swept away by Kohtan's energy.

Crack-boom!!

Dozens of tentacles erupted from the ground in succession, and imdiately after, the great fangs of a massive monster ca lunging for his shoulder.

'Speed is sufficient. I must hold my center.'

[Reality Acceleration 3.8x Maintained]

The Neural Accelerator's output surged in an instant. A sword strike laced with darkness, divinity, and chaos carved a path—and a chain of explosions erupted along it.

Guuuuu.

The monster's head burst apart while still alive, and its body, so four ters in height, was swept back by the shockwave—and slowly toppled.

Thud!

Calix drew a deep breath.

Enemies were charging in from all sides, leaving no room for distraction. Head and shoulders, arms and sword, and even his warhorse Lunos—he moved as one.

He bent back to dodge the monster's claws, while simultaneously cutting away the tentacles erupting from the ground. He hurled a mass of mana at a hulking one, and his warhorse's hooves stepped diagonally to evade the next attack.

"Hah……."

Gregor, who had been following close behind, let out a soft sound of admiration and montarily faltered. He knew full well this was the middle of a battlefield, but the sight of it made him react as though watching a dance.

The Mountain Rabbits and the knights could not perform at their best due to the disorientation of their senses—

But with just those two n—Imran Akran and Calix Ashapel—they were carving through the enemy lines. They were now only a few hundred ters away from Kohtan.

Yet before they could reach him, a mana surge erupted first.

Flicker.

The divine light at Calix's blade tip went out. His heart still pounded fiercely, and soon only darkness and chaos swirled together.

The mont he sensed his mana beginning to slip beyond his control, he imdiately poured it straight ahead. It was the technique that had once startled Nergas on a previous battlefield.

But this ti, sothing was different.

The torrent of power converging on a single point was the sa—but at a certain mont, it curved in reverse. The darkness that should have compressed expanded outward instead.

Naturally, a searing pain followed as though his fingertips were burning. The light before his eyes flickered.

"This is……."

Just before a massive explosion could occur—

A single streak of white light sliced through space and drove in.

Crack!!

The blade Imran Akran thrust out suppressed the force of darkness and tore it apart on the spot. There was no explosion. Instead, the balance of power was restored, and only the monsters within a set range were annihilated.

"Do not try to hold it."

Imran's voice resonated low and deep.

"You must know how to let the flow live, and yet control it."

Calix gritted his teeth. The master's advice drove into his mind. The core still pulsed with an unstable turbulence.

But sothing had changed just as much.

'I can see it.'

Following after Imran, he took in the sight of his body moving. It appeared to tremble finely, but the body itself had not divided into multiple forms.

The gap in output and the difference in mana utilization had both narrowed. He had lost his way for a mont, but the certainty that he would ultimately find the right path again—that fact beca a pillar of support more solid than anything else.

And so Calix gripped his sword once more.

By now, death had been exchanged in the rear of the formation. The sounds of sothing colliding, the thick scent of blood mixed with the sll of burning flesh.

Even so, Calix looked only at the target ahead.

Shhheaack!

Pitch-black tentacles ripped through the ground and flew in all directions. In between them, Imran leaped in first. As his blade cut through the air, the energy of darkness was bound by his order and severed.

"There is no longer anywhere to flee!"

The mont Imran cried out, Nergas opened what lay above its sagging body. No—it could not be called a mouth. From within that opening, a spherical orb revealed itself.

The monster's core.

It radiated an entrancing violet light.

Crackle crackle crackle.

In that instant, the sound of sothing scorching ca from Calix's pauldron. The spot where the monster's venom had splattered. Liquid tal welled up from the surface of the damaged armor.

But it did not revert to its original form. The molten tal hardened into sothing sharp and jagged, taking on a shape entirely unlike what it had been before.

The problem was when the sa happened to a human body.

"Ugh!"

Vice-captain Marik let out a stifled groan. A vicious pain surged from the spots where he had sustained minor wounds.

It reversed ti and led things toward a wrong result.

Nergas had shown but a fragnt of Kohtan's power.

And in exchange for that—

"Nergas!"

It faced Calix.

'Don't hold it—let the flow live.'

Imran's words remained vivid in his mind. He did not suppress his dark mana. He guided it gently, letting it flow toward where it needed to go.

When that force surged and reared up violently, he drew on Chaos. That too, he did not press down but pushed it outward naturally. Soon, two colors settled onto his blade.

Forces of different kinds—yet there was no boundary between them.

It was nothing more than the sa Geomhwa he always wielded, swung in a single stroke.

Whoooosh!

The monsters' carapaces were torn apart, and the layers of stacked tentacles were cut clean through.

"Now!"

Imran bisected the monster horde and opened a path. It was not rely his sword—white energy locked down the entire space.

With that, Warhorse Lunos borrowed the power of the Mana Stone and leaped with full force. Calix drove the mana condensed on his blade straight forward.

Thud.

Chaos and darkness—just two forces combined—pierced through Nergas's heart. The mont the blade tip touched the core, a sound like tearing air swept the surroundings.

A violet torrent poured forth, and a thunderous roar rang through his skull.

And just like that, a stillness fell over the battlefield. The mont the fist-sized core collapsed, the monster's body crumbled instantly.

"……Is it really over just like that?"

Basim's hollow murmur was precisely Calix's own question. He looked down at his clenched fist. The sensation was too hollow to feel like the taste of victory.

'The horde of monsters was by no ans a small number, yet they were far too unguarded.'

But already, the enemy had dissolved into a pool of blood without leaving even a scrap of flesh behind.

"Like this, we go straight to Kohtan—"

It was at that very mont.

[Offer the sacrifice.]

All of a sudden, a thwang—like a taut rope being severed—rang out. Every hair on Calix's forearms stood on end. At the massive wave of power that washed over the battlefield, even the riders montarily halted.

[For you were mine from the very beginning.]

In response to the absolute command, Nergas's dissolved body shot up into the air. Not only that—every monster that had been moving just monts ago was pulled in entirely.

[Co back now.]

The crimson lines defied even gravity. The fragnted core turned to dust, and soon all of it flowed like a river and reached Legion Commander Kohtan.

The hazy silhouette grew clearer and clearer.

The blood that had coated the exterior converged toward the center, which had been empty—and imdiately after, pressed tightly against Kohtan's body for the first ti.

The form of a knight clad in dark red armor.

'……That is the true body.'

Calix saw through the enemy's true nature in an instant. He understood that the battles up until now had been aningless, that the true fight had arrived right before them.

[All of it…….]

A cold and arrogant voice spread through the air.

Without question, this was a being that could not coexist with humans. Setting aside the matter of race, even rank and station held no aning.

Soon, the mbers of the assault unit sensed the anomaly and gathered as one.

[……Is mine.]

And in that mont, Kohtan unleashed a trendous force.

Crack-crack-crack-crack!!

The ground surged in an instant. Soil and rock shot up like spikes, and the fissures tore the earth into dozens upon hundreds of pieces. What had once been a plain was transforming into a sheer cliff with nowhere to stand.

"Abandon the horses! Switch to ground combat!"

In an instant, Imran's shout rang out. Dozens of warhorses were already being dragged into the fissures and struggling. Their hooves could no longer find a place to stand, and the earth heaved and sank like a churning sea.

Calix too flung his body away with haste.

Snort!

Truly with remarkable intelligence, Lunos found his own way out the mont his rider dismounted. The surroundings were thick with dust and dirt, but the mont Calix landed, he found his footing.

"……Calix."

Steadying his breath, he and Imran Akran exchanged a glance. Gregor stepped forward with his shield held out front, and Royce and Marik joined them, covered in dust. Dwarf Basim was a little late—he had been looking after Ella, who was coughing repeatedly.

Soon, Adrian shrugged and muttered briefly.

"It's finally beginning."

Calix gave a short nod and gripped his sword tight. His heart was pounding fiercely, but his eyes did not waver for even a single instant.

But Kohtan did not mock the behavior of these mortals. Already, the entire world was screaming on their behalf.

The earth split, and the sky was overturned.

At its center, only the red knight stood, proud and untouchable.