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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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Chapter 61: The Night Becomes a Cradle (3)
During the three days he spent learning Spell Cleave from Yuren, one thought consumed Callios.
What is Sword Aura?
How does one wield it?
This wasn’t the result of some deep contemplation, but a question born of pure longing.
Truthfully, hadn’t it been that way from the moment Yuren first hit him?
Every time that damned Sword Aura appeared, he couldn’t even put up a fight.
It was a matter of pride.
Callios hated losing to others and loathed being seen as inferior.
Admitting Yuren’s skill was one thing, but accepting that the gap between them was unbridgeable for life?
That was another.
So Callios desperately yearned to master Sword Aura.
He believed that, if he learned it, he could surpass Yuren.
Knowing that Spell Cleave was a byproduct of Sword Aura only made him pursue it more fiercely.
Even as he groaned in pain, he never once asked to stop—this was the reason.
In conclusion, though:
He failed to obtain Sword Aura.
But—
Slaaash!
He succeeded in learning Spell Cleave.
The imposter’s eyes widened as if about to tear.
Callios calmed his breathing.
He had blocked the attack, but couldn’t afford to let his guard down.
‘As expected, this won’t be easy.’
That he could use Spell Cleave without knowing Sword Aura was thanks to his perfect mimicry of Yuren’s form—
The strength with which he gripped the sword, the angle of his arm’s movement, the direction in which his breath, strength, and mana flowed at that moment.
In other words, it was only a half-baked Spell Cleave.
Thus, the success rate wasn’t even close to 100%.
The moment the imposter realized this, the tide of the battle would shift.
Feeling the psychological pressure, Callios lunged forward.
Boom!
A barrier blocked his sword.
The artifacts enveloping the imposter’s body began to glow, launching spells.
‘Should I block them all? Dodge them?’
Wrong.
Creeeak!
Callios used Spell Cleave on the barrier.
A stationary barrier was easier to cut.
Crack!
He broke through and swerved, slashing horizontally.
The imposter clenched his teeth and backed off.
The spells were still shifting course, homing in on Callios.
“Not a chance.”
He could dodge them, but he didn’t.
Battle, after all, is a game of strategy.
Victory goes to the one who lays out their hand and discerns superiority.
In Yuren’s words:
—Think about it. What if the imposter becomes convinced that Spell Cleave can erase magic? What if you plant the illusion that it has a 100% success rate? The imposter will inevitably become more cautious. And caution, in another word, is hesitation. That creates openings to exploit.
The imposter needed to believe—mistakenly—that Callios could nullify all magic.
Callios accepted this fact: it would open up opportunities.
So, Callios held his breath.
He awakened his senses.
His five senses sharpened, detecting every anomaly in his surroundings.
He imagined all possible ways to dispel them, options rising and vanishing in his mind.
His accelerated thinking completed the task in a blink.
And so—he struck.
KWA-KWAAANG!!!
Moving at a speed that blurred his form, Callios swept away the magic.
Not all of it, of course.
He had employed a clever trick.
He sliced through explosive magic to create a smokescreen.
Inside the mist, he struck what needed striking, blocked others with barriers, or diverted them to collide with other spells.
What would it look like to someone viewing only the start—Callios slicing through magic—and the end—Callios standing unscathed?
Hssss―
What the imposter saw was the initial spell being cleaved and Callios emerging unharmed.
Feigning composure, Callios smiled.
The imposter felt a creeping sense of danger from that smile.
He couldn’t give him time to think.
With that judgment, Callios charged again.
It wasn’t a mere charge.
He burst his mana outward to hinder movement.
He fired sword energy to interfere with the artifact’s activation.
The imposter understood all of this.
And he responded with his best move.
He was, after all, the ruler of Egrosia for a decade.
Time had honed him through experience.
“…You persistent bastard.”
His eyes turned cold.
And then—
“Let’s see you block this.”
The imposter’s ring lit up.
The ground rippled, then shifted, as a spear jutted upward.
From right beneath Callios’s feet.
“Kh!”
CLAAANG!
Callios raised a mana shield and blocked the attack.
In other words, his momentum was halted for a moment.
‘An opening…!’
Callios realized it.
And let out a dry chuckle.
‘So that’s your play, huh.’
Ah, it was because of Beatrice.
Magic wasn’t limited to elemental or projectile spells—there were debuffs, physical spells, and the like, too.
But he had overlooked that.
Who else could’ve been the reason?
Three straight days of blocking nothing but elemental magic had narrowed his focus.
Still—it wasn’t over.
Not yet.
“What’s this supposed to do?”
Tap!
Using the risen ground as a foothold, Callios kicked off.
He shot forward at a speed difficult to track.
The tip of his sword targeted the imposter.
A rushing thrust, met by a barrier.
The imposter’s face twisted in frustration as he added more magic.
A debuff.
It activated at that moment.
Callios made a mistake.
‘I’ll take the hit and strike through.’
Lack of battle experience.
Other than the orc champion, he hadn’t really fought any strong foes.
Too insensitive to the consequences of taking damage, Callios let the debuff hit him.
Not even knowing what it did—just clinging to a shallow calculation that this would end the fight.
It was a magic that slowed him down.
The imposter dodged.
Not only that—the incident rewrote a key assumption in his mind.
Callios couldn’t nullify all magic.
His spell-cleaving had limits.
The carefully planted misconception shattered, and the imposter’s offensive grew fiercer.
Callios, belatedly, had to acknowledge his mistake.
* * *
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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The root of the crisis was the difference in perception.
Callios was strong.
He had always lived as the strong and would continue to do so.
Faced with crisis, he chose to confront it head-on.
He preferred to break through his enemy’s plans rather than respond to them.
But the imposter was different.
He knew he was a fake.
He knew he lacked talent.
And so, he spent his life compensating for that shortcoming.
In other words, his greatest weapon was caution.
Why else had he kept his most hated enemy alive until now?
Saving her was one reason, yes—but also, he needed time to build a force that could sustain battle.
That much analysis showed just how cautious he was.
That mindset hadn’t changed, even when his plan fell apart and combat broke out.
The imposter knew he couldn’t beat Callios in a straight fight.
So he mobilized every artifact he had and attacked only with thorough calculations.
His analysis never stopped.
Pushed into a corner, survival instinct sped up his thinking, allowing him to break down every one of Callios’s moves.
He pieced together the clues.
After cleaving the first spell, Callios hadn’t shown much sign of cleaving magic head-on again.
After breaking the barrier, he had evaded other spells, dealt with clusters under the cover of smoke.
Had he really cut through all of them?
That question, coupled with the discovery that physical magic could threaten Callios, led to a test.
If Callios couldn’t fully negate magic, then more strategies became viable.
The guess was correct.
Callios was hit squarely by the deceleration debuff.
Another opportunity presented itself, and the fake unleashed a wider variety of spells in diverse forms.
What is the greatest advantage of an artifact?
That it doesn't consume any cost.
If there are dozens of artifacts, then dozens of spells are activated simultaneously.
In this case, each artifact was a rare treasure.
The most precious spells in all of Igrosia — ancient relics, pinnacle achievements of the new era — were unleashed upon Callios.
Callios struggled to fend them off.
He sliced through debuffs that were curses of a different level than before.
But to do so, he had to block elemental attacks using mana.
That left openings, and physical spells sought to seize his legs and strike his head.
Once you gain the upper hand, you don’t let go.
Once you have momentum, you ride it to the end.
If your prey is wounded, you don’t give it a moment to recover — that was the combat style of Igrosia.
The fake then used an artifact that had been saved until now.
It was… an artifact that demanded a price.
“An eye, as the offering.”
Fzzzzing—!
The fake’s left eye lost its light.
Blood-tears streamed down.
But the price of one eye came with certainty.
A drop of blood floated and coalesced.
It became a weapon and flew toward Callios.
This was an artifact containing the secret technique of the vampire race — a temporary power granted in exchange for the body.
Shhhraaak—!
Each drop turned into a sharp dagger, beginning to tear Callios’ body to shreds.
In that moment, the fake felt a burning thirst.
It wasn’t merely because of using vampire power.
“Revenge…”
Revenge on that wicked human who tore her apart.
Retribution upon the one who stole away her only light.
The thirst soon became pain — yet it couldn’t be stopped.
To the fake, she was the very meaning of life.
She was the sunlight that shone into a life spent licking filth in the depths of the sewers.
Since her departure, there had been one recurring dream.
That the boy she saved had grown up and brought light to Igrosia.
That was the dream.
But that dream had collapsed.
Even the chance to bring her back was crumbling due to that man's tyranny.
He must pay the price.
They could not coexist under the same sky.
The searing hatred condensed into blood, and began to crush him with magic.
“Die. Miserably. Full of regret.”
That moment was supposed to be the end.
“Guhk…!”
Callios coughed up blood.
* * *
Callios looked even more wretched than when he had fought the Orc Champion.
Not physically — but emotionally, he was far more wounded.
He had accepted his defeat against the Orc Champion because he knew the opponent was beyond his reach.
But now, look — this was an opponent he had confidently claimed he could defeat.
He had been trained in the strategies to do so.
And yet, due to a single misjudgment, he was on the brink of collapse.
That crushed his pride, which was at the core of his identity.
“Lose? Here? Me?”
The more that thought swelled within him, the hotter his mind burned.
Being overwhelmed by magic didn’t even matter — all his thoughts were consumed by the possibility of that outcome.
He couldn’t breathe.
His body trembled.
His face twisted.
More than the wounds on his body, it was the trembling of his heart that hurt.
And then, the threshold was crossed.
“...Don’t make me laugh.”
Something snapped in Callios’ mind.
“You bastard I’ll rip to shreds.”
BOOOOM—!
Suddenly, Callios’ mana changed in nature.
His bloodshot eyes locked onto the fake.
Flinch—!
The fake’s body trembled.
It was an instinctive reaction.
The sense of danger surged violently.
And even amidst that, the change accelerated.
Rrrrrumble—!
The spells began to tremble.
The moment he, blood-soaked, revealed his emotions, the disturbance grew stronger.
Finally—
CRACK—!
The spells shattered one by one.
Callios slowly rose, gripping his sword so tightly the veins on his hands bulged.
“You got cocky. Didn’t know your limits. Forgot your place. You maggot.”
He was a wounded lion.
One bitten by a small creature he had ignored.
There was no better way to describe it.
After all, his pride and belief in his own greatness had been shaken.
His rage toward the fake — who had caused this — was immense, and there was only one way to resolve it: overwhelming victory.
Thus,
“…I’ll kill you. So thoroughly your last struggle won’t even have meaning.”
That thing had to die in utter misery.
This was all within Yuren’s calculations.
Why had Yuren chosen not to accompany him here, and acted separately?
The answer needed to be reconsidered.
It bears repeating, as many times as necessary:
Callios von Ortaire —
At this moment, was a man whose only flaw was inexperience, and he possessed the most brilliant talent on the continent.
A brush with death was merely fuel for his rapid growth.
Tzzzzz—!
The mana in the space was suppressed.
All remaining magical control around Callios transferred to him.
The reason?
In unexpected disadvantage, his rage — driven by survival and the need to reclaim his pride — had forcibly broken through his limits.
In an abnormal form, his nature — Dominion — awakened from its dormant state at the Expert level.
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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