I knew instantly.

I already knew, actually.

But when I experienced it myself… I truly understood.

Why the Lautes are so feared.

Why their manipulation of mana is so terrifying.

And…

Why Rian Laute has been labeled as untouchable.

As humans, mana in the atmosphere is not something we can use directly, but it is important for both replenishing our reserves and for our growth.

And it is always there.

Even if its purity, its density is different in each place… it’s always there.

But… as soon as Rian Laute used his ascension skill, or whatever it is… I felt that this whole connection was severed.

My reserves suddenly stopped replenishing. I felt like I was in an infinite nothingness. It was like, even though I could breathe, the atmosphere was gone… The sudden loss of mana was such a sudden blow that all my senses were confused.

However, I was able to recover quickly thanks to the fact that I had activated Ascension of the Crimson Giant.

As an ascension skill, it drained my reserves almost rapidly… but there was enough to last a while.

As I gazed at the majestic, almost divine appearance of Rian Laute, both excitement and nervousness rose in me.

He was making the mana in the atmosphere reject me. Or… the mana was so drawn to him that it spontaneously denied the existence of everything else in the environment.

Either way… it made it clear just how frightening he was.

He raised his hand, slowly… carelessly. And aimed it at me.

All the mana in the atmosphere moved with him… as if obeying his orders. The amount of mana, the intensity, the purity of the attack gathered in his hand and directed at me… was so high that it caused the light to refract where it passed.

It was like an indescribable natural forgiveness, a hurricane of pure mana instead of wind… but all and more in a single attack. Stay updated via NovelBin.Côm

Not only did it refract light, but it even dragged the atmosphere itself with it. It played with pressure points, creating vacuums of its own.

And then… it reached me.

I felt as if a gigantic planet had been dropped on me. My legs, my arms, my torso… every single cell I had… Each of them was crushed under the mana, which felt like a solid just by its density alone.

My bones crunched, my muscles tore.

The ground beneath me collapsed, unable to support the mass, and my feet sank into the cracking ground.

It was a tremendous pain and force.

It was the most powerful attack I’ve ever taken in my life.

No, probably… it was the most powerful attack I will ever receive in my entire life.

It was so hard to resist that only its sheer power pushed me to give up, reminding me of what a blessing it was to let it all go.

But, then… it was over.

All that force, all that weight… slowly disappeared.

The refracted light was slowly restored.

And the first thing I saw… was a huge pool of blood all around me, which was all mine, in the dust cloud.

“A- ah…”

I was still standing, somehow.

I was alive.

But I was knee-deep in the ground, all my bones were broken. Blood was pouring out of every part of my body, as if every vein I had had burst, every muscle had been severed.

And then I started to heal, fast.

First my bones, which had been shattered to pieces, straightened, then the tears in my muscles reconnected with each other. My veins rebuilt and my body regenerated all the blood it had lost.

And as the dust cloud slowly lifted… the mansion slowly emerged.

Or rather, what was left of it.

What… wasn’t?

I was in the center of a huge crater.

Everything around us was gone.

There was no trace of the mansion, no sign of its walls… no sign of any living thing.

And in the middle of all this ’nothingness’ stood Rian Laute… with his hovering figure.

His ascension skill was still active. His long hair fluttered to his left side and his golden eyes gazed at me.

“Hah…”

My lips curled upward.

First, I took my right leg off the floor, then my left.

And… I could only simply laugh.

“Ahahahah…”

He still… had energy.

Even after that attack.

He was still able to keep that skill active, he could even make a second attack…

It was funny.

Very, very funny.

“Monster, huh…”

No.

He’s not a monster.

To call the man in front of my eyes a monster… is an insult to him.

They should come up with a new term, for men like him…

No, only for Rian Laute.

I took a deep breath, gripped my sword tightly.

No words were exchanged between us, nor did we wait any longer.

Rian Laute spread both hands to his sides.

He was going to make a different attack this time… perhaps one even more powerful than the one before, who knows.

But, this time, I wasn’t going to stand still either.

I simply gripped my sword with both hands, reversed it in my hands, and closed my eyes.

The Quie Family was known for their genetic Flame Mastery and their specially refined Quie Style Slender Swordsmanship.

I was an anomaly in my family, all my life.

I didn’t wield a slender sword, I didn’t have flame mastery… nor did I inherit the family’s political intelligence.

But none of that mattered.

Because despite all that, I still became the leader of the family.

In spite of everything, I became someone who could take on the family’s main task, the protection of the royal family.

I rose to this position on my own, without having to do the most important things that distinguish the Quie Family from other families.

Because I created my own style.

I discovered a way to use my body and my abnormality in the most optimal way.

Mana was a really fascinating energy.

Because it could mimic anything in the universe as long as it was given the necessary meanings.

And not only could it mimic, it could do more. Just the way it moves, the flow it has, its intensity during this flow, the combination of singular or multiple, senseless ’meanings’ it can assume in the process…

That was the essence of weapon styles.

Not the modern styles, which today are used in combination with the help of the system, masteries, and certain skills…

The essence of the oldest, ancient styles from before the system even existed.

Guiding mana through the weapon with rhythmic movements and techniques, giving it ’meanings’ and using it completely without ’characterizing’ it completely.

It is a way of using mana in its own right without characterizing it.

A way to use mana independently of the system.

A way of ’empowerment’ that humans, like other races, have invented themselves.

And my style, which was created using this method.

It was a simple style with nothing special.

A style that doesn’t look glamorous, that doesn’t mesmerize…

A style that has only one purpose.

Pure physical strength.

A style that allows mana to simply mimic the ’force’ itself.

But when combined with the abnormal state of my body, the results are tremendous.

And on top of that, the addition of Ascension of the Crimson Giant.

This skill… not only increases physical strength, power, endurance, and regeneration.

The Crimson Giants are, first and foremost, a race that existed in the past.

And the most familiar traits of this race… is that their bodies can absorb the mana itself and become many times stronger, that they can convert mana into ’force’, which is what my style actually does, only with their bodies.

So what happens when all this is combined?

I jumped, causing the cracks already under my feet to widen by many meters and the ground to shake…

All the air around me dissipated around me, literally creating a vacuum due to sheer force, leaving nothing around.

The movements my sword followed were simple. A few straight turns and pseudo swings to maintain momentum. But every one of these ’pseudo’ swings reached the clouds, tearing slits in the ground hundreds of meters away.

But these were unimportant.

There was only one target in front of my eyes.

The last time I swung my sword, when I made my attack… Rian Laute was right in front of me.

Just by standing where he was, the mana he emitted around him, the aura alone was enough to take my breath away…

Despite all the strength I now wielded, his individual strength was so much greater than mine that his presence was enough to crush me.

At the same time, the attack he was preparing to carry out…

It was many times more powerful than the one before.

Powerful enough, perhaps, to wipe an entire average-sized island off the face of the planet, if that was its purpose.

All the mana in the atmosphere was gathering on us.

From everywhere, it was being pulled here.

And it was getting ready to collapse on us, like a press machine.

But I didn’t stop.

I didn’t have to stop.

Because it was only his presence that gave me this feeling of ’weakness’.

His current state, not his body.

And his body… was sick.

It was dying, even without me.

It was fragile.

And the blood that appeared on his nose, trickling down, was a sign of that.

I exhaled all the breath in my lungs at once.

The fingers holding my sword shattered under the force, the bones in my arms broke over and over again.

Cracks appeared on the sword, its red metal trembling as if it was about to explode like a bomb.

Yet it would hold.

I knew it would.

There was a reason I had chosen it as my main weapon for so many years, after all.

And so… I swung the sword.

At the same moment… the huge wall that had gathered above us, so white it looked like heaven descending to the planet, fell to the ground.

But Rian Laute did not only carry out this attack.

As the blood dripping from his nose fell to the earth, he narrowed his golden eyes, focused on my sword… and destroyed the mana around it.

All the mana inside it, as well.

He scattered everything.

But it didn’t matter.

Because what the sword had was not mana.

It was pure strength.

And…

~cra-

Everything turned white with a momentary crackling sound.

~BOOM!

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