The Reincarnated Assassin is a Genius Swordsman 1281

 Chapter 1281

 

“What?”

Raon frowned at the Bear Alteration Demon.

"What kind of utter nonsense is that?"

He could understand the claim that the Black Form Snake might be dangerous. The man was a Transcender who constantly acted completely outside of Raon's predictions.

But the claim that the world would end if the Black Form Snake died?

That felt completely absurd. Not exaggerated, simply impossible.

Throwing around words like 'the end of the world' so casually...

Wrath let out a scoffing laugh.

Looks like the one who swallowed the authority of pride wasn’t you, but that bear!

He shook his head, openly mocking the Bear Alteration Demon’s words.

“Haah….”

Burren sighed and rubbed his forehead as if exhausted from everything they had been through.

“Have you been hanging around us so long that you forgot you used to be part of Eden?”

Martha snorted and walked up to the Bear Alteration Demon.

“Quit spewing bullshit and get lost.”

She shoved him back as if telling him to leave.

"The end of the world..."

Runaan stared at the Bear Alteration Demon with cold, unblinking eyes, clearly unconvinced.

“U-Um….”

Dorian swallowed nervously and raised a hand.

“Still, shouldn’t we at least hear him out? I-I mean, if he’s talking about the world e-ending, who knows what could happen!”

The mere mention of the world ending seemed to have triggered his anxiety, causing his legs to tremble violently.

“…Fine.”

Raon slowly nodded.

“The sun hasn’t risen yet. Go ahead and explain.”

He looked down at the Bear Alteration Demon, who was still kneeling with his arms bound.

“How would the Black Form Snake cause the world to end?”

Even Wrath, a Demon King, or Pride, or even the Heavenly Demon and Derus Robert, the beings considered the strongest on the continent, wouldn’t casually speak about ending the world.

And the more I thought about it while listening to the others, the less I understood how the Black Form Snake’s death could possibly be tied to the world’s destruction.

“B-Black Form Snake… no, Unfaceable Snake, Red Demon Snake, Blue Lizard Snake, Green Wolf Snake, and Black Form Snake… they’re all….”

The Bear Alteration Demon’s jaw trembled as he listed the snake-helmeted Eden swordsmen they had encountered one by one.

“They’re my sons!”

He raised his head and declared himself their father. His eyes shook like rainwater rippling across a puddle, making it hard to doubt he was telling the truth.

“Five sons?”

Evelyn’s eyes widened in shock.

“What, did you have one every year or something?”

She tilted her head, sounding far more curious about the birth order of the sons than the possible destruction of the world.

“N-No. They were all born at once as quintuplets. Then after that, we had one youngest child….”

Though visibly flustered, the Bear Alteration Demon still answered her question.

“W-Wait, not quadruplets, quintuplets? And then you had another one after that? That’s insane!”

Evelyn gasped dramatically.

"Raon! We can totally do that too, right?"

She grabbed Raon excitedly, as if cheering them on for the future.

“Haah….”

Runaan redirected the chill in the air toward Evelyn, her eyes turning icy.

“She’s seriously out of her mind….”

Even Martha squeezed her eyes shut as though Evelyn was beyond handling.

“Ah….”

Even the Bear Alteration Demon, who had been on the verge of tears moments ago, could only stare at Evelyn with his mouth hanging open.

“Just ignore her….”

Raon pressed a hand to his forehead and shook his head.

“Continue. You’re saying every snake-helmeted swordsman we’ve met so far was your son?”

He recalled the Unfaceable Snake, the first one he had encountered back when Evelyn was still Merlin and had kidnapped him.

“Y-Yes. Those children are all my sons, and every one of them was born with the talent for incarnation, which is why Eden kidnapped them when they were still young….”

The Bear Alteration Demon bit his lip so hard it nearly bled, as though the memories of that time were resurfacing.

“They discovered I also had talent for sorcery, so I was taken along with them.”

His voice grew heavy with emotion as he spoke.

“Watching my children suffer while being unable to do anything….”

His entire body trembled violently, as though he still hadn’t escaped the rage and agony of those days.

“It was no different from hell.”

*   *   *

I couldn’t see anything.

I couldn’t feel anything.

But there was one thing I could hear.

“D-Dad!”

“AAAAAH!”

“Help us!”

“Dad!”

My children calling for me.

My children screaming for their father to save them.

The children more precious to me than my own life were coughing up blood and begging for help, yet there was nothing I could do.

I kept forcing strength into my numb body, over and over, relying on faint sensations alone. Eventually, my fingertips began to move.

Driven by the desperate determination to save my sons, I kept moving my hand, and the moment feeling returned to my arm, something was forced over my head.

An Eden mask.

One that plunged my already sightless world into even deeper darkness.

“DADDD!”

Hearing my sons cry out for me until their voices tore apart, I fell into a grotesque world.

A giant monster stood before me.

No, something even larger than a mountain.

It was a Bearwolf, a monster with the face of a bear and the body of a werewolf. And not an ordinary one, either, but a Bearwolf Sorcerer capable of wielding ancient sorcery.

I ran without even looking back.

The Bearwolf Sorcerer toyed with me as though I were nothing more than a plaything it could crush whenever it pleased. It hurled rocks, drove blades into me, and rained sorcery down upon me, all while mocking me.

But no matter how many stones struck me, no matter how many blades pierced me, no matter how much sorcery rained down on me, I never surrendered.

Pain worse than death came endlessly, over and over again, but every time I thought of my sons crying out for help, I endured it somehow.

But the Bearwolf Sorcerer was relentless.

And powerful.

It attacked not only my body, but my mind as well, tormenting me with incomprehensible illusions until, eventually, my sanity finally began to crumble.

In the end, just as I collapsed to my knees and the Bearwolf Sorcerer moved in to devour me, a swordsman wearing a pitch-black goat helmet stepped into the mental world.

“I had a feeling. Good thing I came.”

Evil Goat Demon, Syria Sullion.

The swordsman known as the continent’s greatest degenerate smiled faintly and cut down the Bearwolf Sorcerer that had been about to consume me in a single strike.

“Eat.”

Syria Sullion tilted his chin toward the Bearwolf Sorcerer’s soul as it scattered apart in death.

“If you want to save your sons, then you’ll have to consume that filthy soul.”

The corners of his lips curled coldly as he said it was the only way to save them.

“GRAAAAH!”

I shoveled every last fragment of the Bearwolf Sorcerer’s soul into my mouth as it oozed across the ground like filth.

It felt as though my stomach would burst apart and my head would split open, but if it meant saving my sons, I could endure far worse than that.

As agony like thousands of worms burrowing through my brain tore through me, unfamiliar sorcery spells and techniques flooded into my mind.

They seemed to be the Bearwolf Sorcerer’s spells.

“As expected. You’ll be useful. Come out.”

Syria Sullion left the mental world, saying we would speak outside, and the moment he vanished, I too escaped that horrifying world.

“Haah….”

The moment I opened my eyes with an unconscious sigh, I found myself staring up at a clear blue sky completely at odds with the chaos in my heart.

“Congratulations. You finally woke up after twenty years.”

Syria Sullion grinned and raised two fingers.

“T-Twenty years?”

I repeated the words blankly. I couldn’t understand them at first. The time I had experienced felt far shorter than that.

“In reality, even more time has passed.”

Syria Sullion nodded calmly.

“T-Then my children….”

“They’re dead.”

He shrugged as casually as if discussing the weather.

“Four of your quintuplet sons died.”

Then he raised two fingers again.

“They died at the hands of a man named Raon Zieghart.”

“M-My children are dead….”

I had endured that hopeless battle against the Bearwolf Sorcerer for the sake of saving my sons.

The moment I heard that the children who had been the very pillars of my soul were gone, strength drained from my entire body.

I just wanted to die.

No.

I didn’t want to believe it.

“N-No, that can’t be….”

“Four died while wearing snake helmets. But two are still alive.”

As if he had been waiting for my reaction, Syria Sullion raised two fingers once more.

“Though the fifth, the one currently wearing a mask, will die soon. And the youngest… will become a monster capable of bringing this world to ruin.”

He bared his white teeth as he spoke of how my fifth son would soon die, and how my youngest son would become a monster capable of bringing the world to ruin.

“You have to save them before that happens. Help me, and I’ll help you.”

Syria Sullion curled his lips into a smile and promised to save my remaining two sons if I aided him with my sorcery.

“T-Two are alive….”

I bit down on my lip as I thought of my fifth son and my youngest.

When I believed all of them had died, I refused to accept it.

But now that I was told two still lived, I desperately wanted to believe it.

And after devouring the Bearwolf Sorcerer’s soul, I had inherited knowledge about Eden itself, making Syria Sullion’s words all the more believable.

“I-I’ll help you. But….”

My trembling hand clenched into a fist as I swore I would obey whatever he asked.

“Where are my fifth son and my youngest now? What kind of masks are they wearing?!”

Nothing mattered more to me than my children’s whereabouts and condition. I grabbed Syria Sullion by the sleeve and pulled him closer.

“Your fifth son is running around wearing a black snake helmet, and your youngest is imprisoned somewhere within Eden’s headquarters.”

Syria Sullion answered without hesitation, as if he had already investigated my children before rescuing me.

“Snake helmets? My children who died were wearing snake helmets….”

Unable to understand what he meant, I tilted my head.

“You’re wondering why they all wore the same helmets, aren’t you? That’s because your sons were all made to wear them for the sake of a single monster.”

Syria Sullion twisted his lips, seemingly amused by the stiffening expression on my face, and slowly spoke the monster’s name.

“And the name of that monster is….”

He leaned in slightly and whispered it like a curse.

“Hydra. The Serpent of Despair.”

*   *   *

“Hydra….”

The moment Raon heard the name, chills crawled across his entire body.

‘I had a feeling something was off every time they appeared wearing different helmets and grew stronger, but….’

But to think it was actually Hydra.

Hydra was a mythical monster said to have plunged the world into despair long before the era of the Dragon of Destruction. A nine-headed serpent, each head possessing a different attribute. And whenever one head was severed, the remaining heads would grow vastly stronger.

Because of that trait, Hydra was considered an almost impossible monster to defeat.

Legends claimed that once only a single head remained, Hydra’s power became great enough to destroy the world itself. If someone had completely inherited Hydra’s power, then the next person to appear wearing the snake mask after the Black Form Snake might possess strength rivaling the Heavenly Demon or Glenn Zieghart.

Hydra!

Wrath let out a low exclamation.

If it really is Hydra, then this should be interesting! That creature was true strength incarnate!

For once, he spoke of a being from the continent with genuine respect, the corners of his lips curling upward.

‘Even you know about it?’

Raon swallowed dryly and glanced at Wrath.

The King of Essence never saw it personally. However….

Wrath narrowed his eyes into thin slits.

The King of Essence once heard that the energy of despair spread so far across this continent that it nearly gave birth to a new Demon King. Ever since then, he had wanted to see it for himself.

He smacked his lips, intrigued by the existence of Hydra.

‘If what he’s saying is true….’

Even if Hydra’s might was only just below Glenn Zieghart or the Heavenly Demon, it would still be too much for me to handle right now.

I had only barely stabilized my current realm, taking on a creature bound to sit at the absolute pinnacle of that realm was completely out of my depth.

‘As expected, I can’t afford to be satisfied with my current realm.’

His encounters with Pride and the Heavenly Demon had brought him tremendous enlightenment, both martial and mental.

Even so, for the sake of Zieghart’s future, he couldn’t allow himself to stop here.

‘As quickly as possible….’

Raon rested his hand on Heavenly Drive and lowered his gaze toward the crimson thorn bracelet Pride had created for him.

‘I need to awaken <Pride>.’

 

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