[Translator - Pot ]

[Proofreader - Kawaii ]

Chapter 296: Ashen Celestial Dance

I deliberately made a show of being wary of the poison, signaling my intent to take down Theogir first.

I even hid my true martial prowess, carefully deceiving the two of them, ready to be attacked the moment I showed an opening.

Five clashes, then ten, passed in an instant.

'Now!'

The moment my bracelet sword pierced Theogir's heart, he used his last ounce of strength to grab my arm.

"Krrgh."

His grip was desperate, the light of life rapidly fading from him.

Shaking him off would have been easy, but I held my arm still.

"Hahaha! Well done, Theogir!"

Grimnar roared with laughter and, as if pouring all his power into this single chance, struck my back with tremendous force.

WHAAAM!

A horrific, potent poison seeped into my body.

'Wow, this is nasty.'

It was a poison more lethal than any I had ever experienced.

I hurriedly contained it with the Dark Mana and the Dark Soul Mana, and then-

CRACK!

Using a technique from the Flowing Cloud Thunder Fist, I struck Grimnar's dantian.

"Keogh!"

We both stumbled back two steps, creating distance between us.

"Kuh, you intend to struggle until the very end?"

As if the blow had shattered his poison core, grotesque black veins surfaced all over Grimnar's body.

"Damn it, just die quietly!"

Grimnar gathered the poison spreading through his body into his palm and unleashed it at me.

'Good, one more time.'

As I absorbed that poison palm with the Dark Mana, I felt Grimnar's power surging dangerously within my seven organs.

'I'm overflowing with power.'

Like a dam during the rainy season, the capacity of my Dark Mana was filling up in an instant.

"What...?"

Finally sensing something was wrong, Grimnar's eyes shot open.

"What have you done?"

I countered with a question of my own.

"Grimnar, do you know the legend of Eldarkion Eisenach?"

"What?"

Just as Grimnar was about to ask what nonsense I was spouting, he seemed to realize something and let out a sharp cry.

"Don't tell me!"

"That's right. I'm using the Dark Mana to absorb your poison."

"Ah, fuck. Then the reason you, who were said to have a terminal condition, can move like this is...!"

"I learned how to properly control it from my granduncle."

"Balthazar, that old fox bastard!"

Feeling his masterstroke, his last thread of hope, snap, Grimnar roared in fury.

"Does that mean you took my poison palm on purpose?"

"You're slow on the uptake. I'm going to absorb all of your poison and make it my own power."

I grinned.

"But it's a little weak. Don't you have any more?"

"Ha, hahaha."

It seemed my taunt had well and truly struck a nerve with Grimnar.

"Is that so? Fine, very well!"

Screeeech!

An enraged Grimnar whistled, and a bird with feathers of an ominous color flew in from somewhere.

'Ah, is that bird...?'

The bird, which I presumed to be the poison bird Nocturban, landed on Grimnar's shoulder.

SQUELCH!

Grimnar twisted the bird's neck and drew its blood.

"!"

As the blood poured out like a waterfall, Grimnar compressed it with his mana and then placed his palm directly into it.

"Kuuuuh."

Grimnar, letting out a pained groan, said, "Even I cannot absorb this creature's poison directly. It must be carefully and slowly extracted and absorbed."

The corner of his mouth twisted.

"Let's see you handle this."

Grimnar fired the potent poison extracted from Nocturban's blood, infusing it into a poison palm.

"Bring it."

Shielding myself with a protective aura of the Dark Mana, I took the full force of the poison palm.

"...!"

I fell to my knees involuntarily.

My vision swam, and my head spun.

I felt chills and a raging fever simultaneously.

'This is-'

It was a poison so deadly that even I felt a shiver of dread.

'I'm going to die.'

My body instinctively sensed death.

"Kuhaha, serves you right for being so arrogant!"

Seeing my state, Grimnar burst into manic laughter.

"That is the very poison that killed your maternal grandfather! How amusingly droll that a grandson and grandfather go to hell together in such a friendly manner!"

Just then, the three who had broken through all of Grimnar's forces, Ulbhild and Rudgarda, stood protectively by my side.

"Allen, are you okay?"

"Can you withstand it?"

"My lord, we will protect you."

Resisting the vicious poison, I managed to speak.

"...Grimnar's dangerous poisons are now depleted. You will be able to fight him with sufficient caution."

My position and Grimnar's had reversed. Now, I was the one who needed to buy time.

'The moment I overcome this...'

I will become stronger.

I knew it was a crazy gamble. But-

'To defeat a greater enemy, the Dark King, I must take a risk of this magnitude.'

...I closed my eyes and sank into my own subconscious.

***

Grimnar's poison and Nocturban's poison raged through me, threatening to melt and tear apart all my blood vessels and organs.

I first enveloped them with the Dark Mana and the Dark Soul Mana, then protected my body with the power of the Brilliant Spirit Mana and the Seven Stars of the Black Sea Technique.

It was a complex task, using two different powers to simultaneously protect myself and block the enemy's attack.

'Focus.'

If I lost focus or made the slightest mistake, it would be the end.

Like a man walking on a tightrope between cliffs in a gale, I began to carefully dissolve the poison with this difficult work.

'Using two opposing forces to dissolve a single power.'

This was an exceedingly difficult, yet harmonious, task.

If until now I had used the powers of light and darkness separately, and in the next step, made them collide to utilize their force-

'...Now I must advance to the third stage of combining the two powers.'

A form where light and darkness intertwine and harmonize.

In other words, integration.

'This is the third stage. Combining the opposing powers of the Ink Soul Sacred Shadow Technique to transcend to something greater.'

Following Venion's voice, I recited the latter verses of the Ink Soul Sacred Shadow Technique, conducting the great battle taking place within my body.

My ego merged with the realm of selflessness as I felt immense agony, a terrible emptiness, the haziness of walking through fog, the stomach-lurching feeling of falling from a great height, and the thrust of rising from a low place.

And so, finally, what was separated like oil and water, the image that was divided into black and white, blue and red...

'It merges.'

Hwaaaaaah!

There was light and darkness.

A distant mana, like two warm and cool paints mixing to become gray, began to envelop my entire body.

'Ah, this is...'

I knew it intuitively.

'The final stage of the Ink Soul Sacred Shadow Technique.'

The epiphany gained in the process of absorbing Grimnar's immense poison ignited, using the swallowed power as fuel.

'Open your eyes.'

I shot up from the deepest sea of my subconscious in an instant.

***

Grimnar was desperately fending off the attacks of one warrior who had reached the 7th tier and two who had surpassed the latter half of the 6th tier.

"How absurd. Do you think that brat can overcome my poison if you just buy him time?"

Grimnar gathered the residual poison leaking from his shattered poison core and caught Knut's hand.

Tssssss!

Even with what little poison remained, it was enough to pierce Knut's protective aura, infiltrate his body, and cause considerable pain and hallucinations.

'If it weren't for my greatfather's poison immunity elixir, I would have already been poisoned,' Knut thought, enduring the dizzying pain.

"You're playing with words, Grimnar."

"What did you say?"

"If you were so confident, you could run and hide, and Allenvert would die on his own. Why are you so anxious to confirm the kill?"

"!"

Knut sneered.

"You're afraid. Afraid that the poisonous fang you've spent a lifetime honing might not be able to do a thing to Allen."

"Shut up!"

Grimnar, exploding with rage, aimed for Knut's throat.

Clang!

Rudgarda, who parried the sword, said.

"Father, my father. Please accept that the daughter you abandoned will be the one to kill you."

"Why the sudden formality, you bitch?"

Grimnar jeered at Rudgarda, his eyes bloodshot.

"It would have been better if a wench like you had been 'culled' at birth."

Then, Ulbhild froze the ground beneath Grimnar's feet and said.

"What a pathetic father you must be to face vengeance from your own daughter. Compared to my father, your skill as a king and your capacity as a father are both substandard."

"Silence."

Just as Grimnar was about to prepare another ultimate technique-

"Chirp, chirp, you're noisy, you fucking old man."

Allenvert spat out a curse and got to his feet.

"What...?"

Grimnar was aghast.

"He recovered?"

Allenvert's gaze was strange.

A power that seemed to converge from a mixture of black and white into gray, abiding in the space between the brightness of day and the coolness of night.

'It's like the breaking dawn.'

As if mesmerized, Grimnar asked.

"You overcame it? That poison?"

"Yes. As you can see."

"Fuck."

Grimnar despaired.

Moreover, it wasn't a situation where he had barely overcome the poison and was severely injured as a result.

'He's become stronger. Frighteningly so.'

Before him stood a being who had reached a realm that even he had not.

The latter half of the 7th tier? Or the very peak of it? He couldn't tell.

'To become so strong in an instant.'

Allenvert had completely stolen his enemy's power and used it as nourishment to strike down another foe.

"Grimnar, the shabby king of the mountain. The time has finally come to pay for your deeds," Allenvert declared.

"I won't let you."

Grimnar activated the final measure he had prepared.

"...Let's all die together."

He tore a scroll he pulled from his robe, and a strange thing happened.

BOOM! RUMBLE-!

An enormous explosion sounded, and the mountain cried out.

"Don't tell me this is?"

"I destroyed a weak point in the foundation. A massive landslide will begin shortly."

Grimnar said, laughing with an exhausted face.

"Let everyone be buried and crushed to death. If it's a throne I cannot sit on..."

He stopped mid-sentence, frowning.

"Why are you fucking smiling?"

The four of them were looking at him, trying to hold back their laughter.

"Ah, I feel really bad about this."

Allenvert said, scratching his head.

"Black Wings."

"!!!!"

As he spread his black wings, Grimnar's eyes widened.

"No, you crazy-"

"We can just fly up and avoid a pathetic landslide. With lightness techniques, carrying three people into the sky isn't that hard, you see."

"..."

Looking at the crestfallen Grimnar, Allenvert said.

"But don't worry. I have no intention of ending this fight that way."

"What did you say?"

Allenvert took a step forward and said to the other three.

"Step back behind me."

RUUUUMBLE!

With a thunderous roar, a massive landslide, like a tidal wave, rushed to engulf everything.

"Lord Leszek told me to reach the pinnacle of the sword."

Allenvert said, his sword now cloaked in the true Ink Soul Sacred Shadow Technique, where light and darkness harmonized.

"But sometimes, a shortcut is necessary."

His body was enveloped in an explosive aura.

"Ashen Celestial Dance."

There was a great light.

A colossal strike, like a darkness that swallowed all, and a light that illuminated all, 'struck back' at the landslide.

KWAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAK!

Engulfed by the immense slash, or perhaps an immense wave of mana, or perhaps an immense power itself, Grimnar's body vanished without a trace.

And then-

"Ah..."

It completely annihilated the center of the collapsing mountain debris.

"How absurd."

This was on a different level from parting a wave.

The power of a single human had just obliterated a part of a massive mountain, a vast amount of rock, earth, and trees.

"This is..."

Ulbhild muttered.

"This is the final ultimate technique of the Ink Soul Sacred Shadow Technique, the Ashen Celestial Dance."

Its power seemed capable of killing even a transcendent being who had reached the 8th tier.

"Hoo."

Feeling slightly dizzy, Allenvert looked at the scene he had created.

"...Brother, and Sixth Commander."

"Speak."

"I am listening, my lord."

Allenvert just smiled calmly.

"Vengeance is served."

[Translator - Pot ]

[Proofreader - Kawaii ]