The Reincarnated Assassin is a Genius Swordsman 1405

 Chapter 1405

 

"Huh...?"

Archangel Raphael’s lips trembled as he watched his own body collapse after his head had been severed.

"W-What! What did you do to me!"

He screamed in shock, as though the possibility of losing his healing power had never even crossed his mind.

"Haaah...."

Rector bent at the waist as he exhaled a breath thick with the scent of blood.

"Looks like it worked."

He gave a short nod, as though everything had gone exactly as expected.

"Y-You human!"

Raphael forced his eyes to move and glared at Rector, who was using his sword like a cane.

"What did you do to me!"

Even with his neck severed, he ground his teeth as though he still did not understand what had been done to him.

“What else can a swordsman do?”

Rector calmly shook his head.

“I merely swung my sword.”

He shrugged, saying that he had used no special trick and had simply performed swordsmanship.

“D-Don’t spout nonsense!”

Raphael clenched his molars hard and raised his bloodshot eyes.

“There is no way the swordsmanship of an ordinary human could overcome the healing ability of me, Archangel Raphael!”

He spat blood from his mouth as he shouted that the sword that had struck him could never have been ordinary.

"Of course it wasn't ordinary."

Rector gave a short sigh and nodded.

“The sword I used against you wasn’t a killing sword...”

He looked at the blade of his sword, which did not have a single drop of blood on it, and gave a faint smile.

“It was a Life-Preserving Sword.”

Rector smiled, having used a sword meant to save lives rather than take them.

"What...?"

Raphael's tongue, hanging out of his mouth, trembled as though he could not understand Rector's words.

“Even before I became the Blood Swordmaster of the Holy Sword Alliance, I cut down countless people during my days as the Versatile Swordmaster.”

Rector lightly bit his lip as though recalling a past he had never wanted.

“The extreme of the Killing Sword. Even as I walked the path of the Versatile Sword, my blade could never rid itself of the scent of killing.”

He lowered his brows, saying that although he had never wished to pursue the Killing Sword, he had naturally come to comprehend the very extreme of murderous intent.

“After becoming the master of the Holy Sword Alliance, I tried to erase the smell of blood embedded in my sword and pursued the Heart Sword, but that path never opened to me. Only after overcoming the Killing Sword did another path finally open before me...”

Rector raised his sword, which shimmered with a warm blue light, and smiled.

“The Life-Preserving Sword that saves lives.”

He calmly nodded, saying that the path of the Life-Preserving Sword had opened to him at the end of the twisted paths of the Versatile Sword and the Killing Sword.

"What kind of bullshit are you spouting now!"

Raphael ground his teeth as though telling him to stop talking nonsense.

“Isn’t the Life-Preserving Sword a sword that saves lives?! How did you cut me with a sword imbued with positive energy?!”

He spewed black blood from his mouth as he demanded a proper explanation.

“You’re right. By its nature, the Life-Preserving Sword saves lives, so it possesses Yang energy.”

Rector slightly tilted his head, seemingly surprised that Raphael knew about the Life-Preserving Sword.

“Then why...?”

“And your healing ability, which restores wounds, also possesses Yang energy.”

As though telling him to think carefully, he tapped his temple with a finger beneath his falling white hair.

“N-No way...”

Raphael’s deathly pale lips trembled as though he had finally understood what Rector meant.

“What happens when a healing ability possessing Yang energy meets a Life-Preserving Sword that also possesses Yang energy?”

Rector beckoned with his finger, telling him to guess.

“Yin energy is born...?”

Raphael’s voice shook violently as realization finally dawned on him.

“Exactly. I severed your neck with the Yin energy born from the overlap of the Life-Preserving Sword and your healing ability.”

Rector nodded, saying that he had imbued his sword with the Yin energy created when Yang overlapped with Yang and used it to cut Raphael.

“Your healing ability was converted from Yang into Yin, so there was no way your wound would recover.”

The corner of his mouth curled upward as though that had been his aim from the very beginning.

“Before this, your regenerative power was too strong. Even when I used the Life-Preserving Sword, I couldn’t bring the two Yang energies into balance.”

Rector frowned, saying that he had been unable to use the Life-Preserving Sword because he could not create perfect Yin energy.

“But thanks to you diverting your healing energy into might, it finally came into balance with my Life-Preserving Sword.”

He smiled as though Raphael had willingly walked down the path to his own death.

“No. I suppose you didn’t do it on your own.”

Rector slowly raised his gaze toward the sky.

"That child created this opportunity for me."

He gave a warm smile as he looked at Raon cutting through the enormous flames.

"Grrrrrgh!"

Raphael ground his teeth so hard that they audibly creaked.

“I-I...! Do you think I, Archangel Raphael, will meet my end here?!”

Raphael let out a scream so shrill it hurt the ears and drew out his divine power. His headless body planted its hands against the ground and began to rise.

“I am Raphael, the Archangel of Protection and Healing! A wound like this won’t kill me!”

Raphael moved his headless body forward as though determined to reattach his head by force. His wings spread once more, radiating a vivid light of healing.

Wooooong!

Raphael seemed to have strengthened his healing power with the horn of destruction, and his head was trying to reattach itself to his body on its own.

“To think you can still move after losing your head...”

Rector drew in a short breath and raised his sword, aiming it at Raphael’s headless body.

“Now I can’t tell which of us is the insect.”

He seemed deeply exhausted as well, the fingers gripping his sword trembling faintly.

“Do not insult me, you inferior creature!”

Even now, Raphael looked down on Rector as though clinging to his pride. Tentacles of light resembling octopus arms emerged between his neck and head and began to connect them.

"Once these are connected!"

Raphael focused entirely on restoring his body, as though convinced that once he reattached his head, he would be able to kill Rector.

Ssssss....

Rector bent his knees while holding his breath. As though determined to end it here, he kicked off the ground with tremendous force and charged at Raphael as he tried to reconnect his head.

"Begone!"

Raphael’s eight wings spread wide as he unleashed an immense surge of divine power. Refusing to let Rector approach, he erected a massive wall formed from healing energy.

Baaaaang!

However, as though he had already adapted to Raphael’s power, Rector imbued his sword with the Life-Preserving Sword and cut diagonally through the wall of divine power.

Wooooong!

Raphael came into view beyond the collapsing wall. Living up to his title as the Archangel of Protection and Healing, in the brief moment it had taken Rector to cut through the wall, he had already reattached more than half of his head to his body.

Baaaaang!

Rector did not miss the instant Raphael drew a deep breath to complete his recovery and drove a fierce sword strike toward him.

Slaaaaaash!

Rector’s sword, blazing with blue light, came down, but Raphael’s neck, connected by tentacles of divine power, was not severed and remained intact.

"Hehe...."

Raphael twisted his lips into a grin as he looked at Rector, who had passed by him.

“I knew you would use the Life-Preserving Sword, so I released my healing energy the instant your blade reached me.”

He chuckled, saying that he would not fall for the same trick twice.

"It's over now."

Raphael sneered as he rubbed his neck, which had now completely reattached.

"No matter what you do now... huh?"

He froze just as he raised his hand, intending to kill Rector immediately.

"W-What is this...."

Red lines appeared all across Raphael’s body, and blood began to seep from between them.

“I knew. I expected you to dispel your healing power, so I used the Killing Sword for the final strike.”

Rector lowered his sword, blood dripping from its blade, saying that he had slashed not Raphael’s neck, but his entire body with the Killing Sword.

“I told you, didn’t I? Only after reaching the extreme of the Killing Sword did the path of the Life-Preserving Sword open to me.”

Rector shrugged, saying that cutting Raphael’s body after his healing energy had disappeared was an extremely easy task for him.

"You...."
"I apologize for saying that you lacked experience. You were strong."

Rector nodded, thanking him for moving exactly as he had expected.

"A-A mere human like you... urgh!"

Raphael continued looking down on humans to the very end before collapsing, his body cut into dozens of pieces. No matter how powerful his healing ability was, there was no chance of him reviving now.

"Hoo!"

Rector drove his sword, from which blood was streaming, into the ground and dropped to one knee.

“Archangels really are different...”

His physical wounds were bad enough, but the mental exhaustion from using the Life-Preserving Sword had also reached its limit. He could no longer move even a single finger.

"Huh?"
"L-Lord Raphael is dead...."
“He wasn’t even fighting a Demon King, and he was defeated by a human like that...”

"How could this happen!"

The celestials who had been expecting Raphael's victory trembled at the jaw.

"N-Now! He's exhausted!"
“Let’s avenge Lord Raphael!”

"We can kill him!"

The angels sensed Rector’s exhaustion and raised their spears of divine power, intent on avenging Raphael.

Boooooom!

The angels who had been gathering divine power to kill Rector burst apart into masses of green blood.

"Hey, old man."

A chilling voice rang out over the green blood as Demon King Envy appeared riding a gigantic serpent.

"You...."

Rector barely lifted his eyelids, as though even opening his eyes had become difficult, and looked at Envy.

“I was going to kill you if you put up a sloppy fight...”

Envy looked Rector up and down with murderous intent blazing in her eyes.

“But it wasn’t bad, all things considered.”

She curled her lips upward, saying that the fight had been worth watching.

“No. It was a sloppy fight.”

Rector planted both hands against the ground and looked up at the sky.

“It only became a decent fight thanks to that child.”

He gave a proud smile as he watched Raon's back as the young man faced Uriel head-on.

“Now I understand why they say parents dance when their children are filial. Of course, that dance was...”

Rector chuckled and flicked Raphael’s blood from his sword.

“A sword dance.”

*   *   *

"Thanks."

Raon twisted his lips upward as he glanced back at Raphael, whose body had been cut into dice-shaped pieces by Rector’s sword.

“Thanks to you, it really is five now.”

With Raphael as the last of them, all five Archangels who had descended to the land were now dead. As he said this, Raon folded down the little finger he had kept raised until the end.

"You bastard, don't tell me...."

Archangel Uriel's jaw trembled as he looked at the smiling Raon.

"You were aiming for this situation from the beginning?"
"That's right."

Raon calmly nodded.

“Just as you said, my grandfather seemed to have little chance of winning, so I played on your anxiety.”

He smiled, saying that he had provoked Uriel into pushing Raphael to overextend himself.

“Thanks to you ordering Raphael to release his power and finish the fight quickly, my grandfather got his chance. Thanks.”

Raon gave a faint smile, saying that Raphael had died and Rector had been able to win because Uriel had given that order.

"Krgh...."

Only then did Uriel realize that Raon had been manipulating him with his words, and he bit his lip hard enough to taste blood.

"I'll kill you!"

Determined to kill Raon even if it cost him everything, he brought down Apocalypse, blazing with terrifying crimson flames.

“Come at me all you want.”

Raon arrogantly raised his chin as he watched Uriel’s flames pour down like a waterfall.

"Sixth."