The Reincarnated Assassin Is a Genius Swordsman

Chapter 1514 -D-death aura? Wrath's mouth fell open as he sensed the power Raon had drawn out. -You're going to use the death aura now? He raised his voice, as if he couldn't understand. 'Yeah.' Raon nodded as he felt the seething death aura. 'Because right now, it wouldn't be strange if I died.' Just as Derus Robert had said, his current condition was dire. His upper dantian, responsible for the spirit, was overloaded and felt as though it would tear apart; his Middle Dantian, which maintained the body's firmness, was broken and ragged; and his Lower Dantian was so empty of aura that it felt hollow. 'Though the internal injuries are even more serious.' Derus Robert's death aura, Archangel Michael's ashen aura, and even the dragon's Authority of Destruction—none of them were forces that could be taken lightly, so inside his body the wounds had already gone beyond bursting open and were beginning to fester. Since his limbs hadn't been severed, it didn't look like a severe injury, but his condition was in fact far worse than that. 'Forget fighting again….' Raon bit down on his reddened lips as he spat out the black blood that kept endlessly welling up in his throat. 'Even just standing like this isn't easy.' It wasn't a lie. His internal bleeding and mental exhaustion were so severe that his vision kept narrowing. He was pretending to be fine since Derus Robert might seize the opening and lunge at him, but his condition was worsening as time passed. -Ha! Wrath let out a hollow laugh. -Even with all those Authorities, your recovery still isn't enough…. He frowned, as if at a loss for words. 'Because the death aura, the ashen aura, and the Authority of Destruction are all more than a match for it.' Derus Robert, Archangel Michael, and the Demonic Dragon of Destruction were not mere demon kings. They were beings on par with, or even beyond, the highest Monarchs seated upon the loftiest thrones among demon kings, like Wrath or Pride. Having endured the combined force of those three alone, it was only natural that his condition had reached a point no Authority could heal. 'So….' Raon clenched his molars as he felt the three auras rapidly consuming his body. 'The only way to recover from my current state is the death aura.' Since his condition was drawing closer to death, the best way to overcome it was to make use of the death aura itself. -Since death is drawing near, you'll use the death aura…? Wrath narrowed his eyes. -It's absurd, but... that might actually be the right answer. He nodded, as though there were no other choice. -So what are you going to do. Wrath smacked his lips, curious about the method. 'I'll operate the death aura at its maximum and send it into the wounds.' Raon smacked his lips briefly. 'There's quite a lot of death aura left in me, after all.' Strangely enough, the moment the Crimson Peak had formed, the death aura had grown drastically, as if resisting it. It wasn't at the boundless level of Derus Robert's, but it was more than enough to operate freely. 'But before that….' Raon lowered his chin, glancing sidelong at Derus Robert. 'I need to hide first. The moment I operate the death aura, Derus Robert will move.' Derus Robert understood the death aura better than anyone else, so the instant he began to operate it, the man would surely notice and lunge at him. Now was the time to trust those before him, fall back, and set himself in order. 'Though it makes me a little uneasy….' He could trust the Heavenly Demon and Pride completely and fall back, but Darkan, for some reason, made him uneasy. 'This isn't a problem with Darkan, though….' Raon narrowed his eyes at the dragon blocking Darkan's sword with flames of destruction. 'It's because of that thing.' The Demonic Dragon of Destruction's Martial Prowess had been halved thanks to the Holy Sword Alliance's holy ground Barrier and the constellation of the Vast Heaven Sword left behind by the First Patriarch. Yet even halved, it still felt weaker than he'd expected, and that gave him a sense of foreboding. -Hey, you! Wrath frowned, striking his own shoulder. -Don't think about that stuff right now, just focus on recovering! He gritted his teeth, saying there wasn't much time left. 'Right.' Raon nodded heavily, then stepped back and raised the Crimson Peak to unfurl the Dance of the Golden Flame. Originally, the Dance of the Golden Flame was a swordsmanship technique with the power to erase wicked auras. He used that trait to conceal the death aura rising from within him. 'Shall we begin.' Raon steadied his heavy breathing and closed his eyes. Hidden behind the flames of the Dance of the Golden Flame, he drew out every last grain of the death aura sunk at the bottom of his soul. Gooooooo! The instant death at full power awakened, pitch-black death blazed over Raon's red eyes as he lifted his eyelids. * * * Kuuuuuuung! Derus Robert's Sword of Beloved Death fell, laden with death. The blade, sprouting seven edges like tree branches, bent along a bizarre trajectory as it dropped toward the Heavenly Demon's neck. It was a chilling motion—even if he dodged the neck, his heart and limbs would be torn apart. Kuuuuuuung! The Heavenly Demon stamped down as if he would smash through anything, driving his fist into Derus Robert's twisting sword strike. The Fighting Spirit dwelling in his fist surged as though about to explode, erasing everything that existed before it. "Hmm!" Derus Robert let out a sound of admiration as he watched the blade of death shatter against the Heavenly Demon's fist. "Even after losing your Right Arm, you've grown stronger and come back—impressive." He curled the corner of his mouth, saying he hadn't expected the Heavenly Demon to come back even stronger. "Shut that mouth of yours." The Heavenly Demon kicked off the ground and leapt like a flying tiger, charging at Derus Robert. "For I've come today to kill you!" He drove his fist forward again, as if refusing to be toyed with by Derus Robert's words. "You've grown wiser." Derus Robert raised the Sword of Beloved Death and slowly turned his eyes. "I'll simply crush you, then kill the one hiding." He glanced toward Raon, hidden behind the Dance of the Golden Flame, and thrust his sword at the Heavenly Demon. Kwaaaaaaang! The Heavenly Demon's Heavenly Strike collided with Derus Robert's sword strike, and the sky shattered black, breaking apart. Behind the cracks that sprouted like falling shards of a mirror, immense ash-grey and darkness surged upward. Kugugugugugugu! Pride, the Monarch of Pride, and Archangel Michael clashed head-on with their auras, and the terrifying shockwave of power became a massive waterspout that blew away the mountain of the Holy Sword Alliance's holy ground. "You talked as if you'd rot away holed up in the heavenly realm forever…." Pride curled the corner of his mouth as he thrust out a fist infused with the Authority of Pride. "Yet here you are, showing your face." He sneered at Archangel Michael, mocking her for not keeping her word. "You reek of filth—hold your tongue." Archangel Michael shook her head as she cut through Pride's fist strike with her ashen aura. "Wherever I am and whatever I do is none of a Demon's concern." She frowned, as if she didn't even want to hold a conversation with the Heavenly Demon at all, and thrust forward her sword blazing with ashen light. "So this is Kalpic Time Distortion." Pride scoffed as he watched Michael's slash approach at the speed of light while slowing down time within the space itself. "The power to command time itself isn't bad, but its wielder is far too weak!" He burst into mad laughter and drove forward a fist flickering as though Pride itself were about to explode. Kwaaaaaaang! Pride's fist strike ignored Michael's Kalpic Time Distortion, pushed straight through, and mercilessly crushed her sword strike. "Weak." Pride flicked his fist lightly, having shattered the Kalpic Time Distortion, and tilted his chin arrogantly. "Haaa…." Archangel Michael's eyes darkened to a deep ashen grey, like her aura. She tilted her upper body forward, sword drawn back behind her shoulder. It was a beast-like stance—one that radiated the will to leap in a single instant and sever her enemy's throat. "Close combat, is it." Pride let out a short laugh, as if he'd already realized what Michael was about to do. "Fine. I'll take you on." True to his name as the Monarch of Pride, he crooked a finger, telling her he'd accept her challenge. Fwooooosh! Michael cloaked her whole body in the power of Kalpic Time Distortion and kicked off into the empty air. The instant she took a step with her Footwork, her sword was already driving into the Heavenly Demon's throat. It was the power of Kalpic Time Distortion, dominating even the time of her own body. Kuuuuuuung! Pride, as though grasping at a glance Michael's movement of splitting an instant into fragments, drove his fist forward along the direction of her charge and struck back. "Hmph." Michael, too, seemed to have anticipated Pride's counterattack, and with a fluid turn of her body she drove her ashen sword in again. Kyagyagyagyagyang! Archangel Michael and Pride, the Monarch of Pride, ill-suited to their grand epithets, dispensed with their vast auras and instead began a close-quarters exchange of techniques at point-blank range. From the sky, where the sharp clash of the two transcendents rang out, came Darkan's scream. "Damn it all!" Darkan, the Dark Night Sword God, spat out a curse through gritted teeth. "Now that I think about it, this pisses me off! Why do I have to be the one stuck with a dragon's head!" He shrieked, insisting that he too had been fighting a Martial Artist. "There's no thrill in fighting something like this!" True to a man mad for the sword, Darkan clicked his tongue, saying the battle with the dragon held no fun. Kugugugugu! The Demonic Dragon of Destruction, its pride seemingly wounded by Darkan's words, shaped its flames of destruction into a massive sword and struck down at Darkan. "Ha?" Darkan let out a hollow laugh at the sight of the dragon's descending sword. "That's not a sword!" He ground his teeth as though his irritation had exploded, and thrust out a sword strike blazing red as if wreathed in flame. Kraaaaaaack! Darkan's sword strike split apart the flaming sword the dragon had formed, and even tore the scales from its neck. "Impressive!" Darkan let out a cry of admiration at the sight of the wound that had opened on the dragon's neck. "So this is the true worth of the Vast Heaven Sword!" The Vast Heaven Sword itself was already a technique of Transcendence, but before the Demonic Dragon of Destruction it became even more—capable of unleashing power that surpassed even the Absolute realm. All those nights without sleep, all that Cultivation, had been worth it, and a smile rose unbidden to his lips. "Now that I see it, you really are a worthy opponent after all!" Darkan burst out laughing, declaring that he alone was capable of taking down the Demonic Dragon of Destruction. "Once this war is over, I'd like to cross blades with him—the genius who created this sword!" He burned with the desire to fight Zieghart's First Patriarch as he charged at the Demonic Dragon of Destruction. * * * "Kkeuk." Raon bit his lip until it bled, against the pain blooming through his entire body. "Damn it!" As though he could no longer endure it, he bent at the waist and dropped to one knee. -Ngh! Wrath let out a low groan as he read Raon's condition. -Far from healing, the wound…. 'Yeah.' Raon nodded heavily. 'If anything, it's flared up worse.' He'd tried to send death aura into wounds capable of summoning death itself, hoping to recover, but all that came back was excruciating pain and wounds torn even wider. Had his body been intact, it might have been different, but broken as it was, even operating the death aura itself was next to impossible. -Th-this isn't going to work? Wrath shook his chin fiercely, saying it absolutely wouldn't work. -Even now, some other way…. 'No, it's fine.' Raon spat out the blood that kept rising up and struggled to pull himself upright. 'Because I've found a new way.' He nodded, saying he'd come up with a new method. -A new method? What is it? Wrath patted his own back, as if urging him to hurry up and try it if it were true. 'Thanks to that bastard, I learned something.' Raon watched Derus Robert fighting the Heavenly Demon as he gripped the Heavenly Drive in a reverse grip and raised it. -W-wait! Wrath's chin trembled at the sight. -You don't mean to! 'The death aura….' Without the slightest hesitation, Raon drove the Heavenly Drive down into his own chest. Pfuhhhhk! He felt, with vivid, exacting clarity, the sensation of the blade piercing through his own flesh and muscle. -You crazy bastard! Wrath screamed, as if asking whether he'd truly lost his mind. 'This is the answer. The death aura….' Raon curled the corner of his mouth as countless streams of blood poured from his mouth. '—is completed by its Master's death.'