Crimson: born as noble lived as phantom

TO SURPASS TYRANT

The man standing directly in front of me is not known as a tyrant for no reason. But I am absolutely not going to give up.

Thud! Slash! Slash!

We have already traded a massive number of lethal blows. The pitch-black hellfire coating my twin blades truly doesn't affect his armor or weapon at all. With every single heavy strike he unleashes, the raw physical impact forces my frame to slide back across the concrete.

Dammit...

In a desperate move to create a perimeter, I blasted all of my black flames at maximum output, creating a towering inferno of hellfire all around us. But the Blood Tyrant simply walks straight through the black flames like a small child casually playing on a playground.

Thud!

Before I could reset my guard, his heavy fist violently punched me straight in the guts.

A thick spray of dark blood burst from my mouth, mixing instantly with the pouring rainwater pooling on the ground. Looking down at the slick cobblestones, I could see my own reflection staring back at me. It looks pathetic. The cold sensation instantly dragged my memory back to that fateful night—the exact feeling of total, suffocating helplessness I felt on the day my parents died.

“You just don't get it, kid,” the Blood Tyrant spoke, looking down at me with cold indifference. “Those flames have absolutely zero effect on me.”

I wiped the crimson fluid from my jaw, my eyes locking onto his massive frame through the slits of my mask. “Thank you.”

I violently vomited a fresh wave of blood onto the stones right after saying this. The Blood Tyrant didn't pursue the opening; he simply stood there, watching my broken posture patiently.

“Thank you for forcefully reminding me of the exact reason I choose to fight, and why I wear this mask,” I whispered, my voice dripping with a dangerous resonance.

“The reason?” Ruken tilted his head.

“Yes. The only reason I fight is because I was weak and pathetic back then. I couldn't save the ones I loved. And that is exactly why I put on this crimson mask—to change the board completely.”

“If that's the case, kid... then you haven't changed a single thing,” the Tyrant sneered.

“You're completely right,” I muttered, slowly forcing my trembling knees to lock as I stood up straight. “I am still pathetic. Just like you... a monster who couldn't even save his first friend, Kiro, from endlessly laughing at his own miserable fate.”

The moment the name Kiro left my lips, the Blood Tyrant’s eyes flared with a terrifying, unbridled rage. He aggressively blurred across the distance, rushing straight at me.

Slash! Thud!

This time, I didn't fall back an inch.

Rebounding off the impact, we both leaped simultaneously onto the high metal roof of an adjacent warehouse. Ruken rushed forward blindly, swinging his titanic broadsword with a speed that cut the falling rain to pieces. I didn't try to counter-attack; my mind was entirely focused on blocking every single crushing trajectory. Under the immense kinetic feedback of our steel, the warehouse roof beneath our boots completely shattered into flying debris.

Vaulting off the collapsing structure, we lunged at each other mid-air. My flame-coated twin swords clashed violently against his giant demonic blade one final time.

BOOM!!!

A massive concussive shockwave split the dark sky, and we both landed safely on opposite sides of the ruined courtyard.

“I told you before, anomaly,” the Blood Tyrant barked, resting his heavy weapon over his shoulder. “Those black flames of yours are of no use against me.”

“Then tell me...” I raised my left blade, pointing the tip straight at his face. “What exactly is that sitting on your cheek?”

Ruken frowned, reaching up with his heavy leather glove to touch his left cheekbone. When he pulled his fingers away, they were stained with a fresh, wet trail of crimson. It was blood. His own blood.

Before he could even utter a word, a sudden ripple of black parasitic energy hissed along his skin, and the shallow cut instantaneously closed up, leaving no scar behind. His internal regeneration speed was completely superior to Kiro’s.

A dark, thrilling grin spread behind my crimson mask. The suppression rules were clear now. If I wanted my hellfire to burn him to ash, I just had to  push past my current limitations and completely surpass his demonic mana output in the next two minutes .

“Interesting...” the Blood Tyrant muttered, a wide, sinister grin splitting his scarred face. “You are officially the most interesting opponent I have faced in an entire decade.”

I stayed completely silent, resetting my grip on my twin black swords.

Moving with sudden, terrifying fluid ease, Ruken didn't strike toward my chest. Instead, he violently slammed the tip of his giant broadsword directly into the hard ground.

CRACK!

The cobblestones shattered, and from the fractured earth, monstrous, deep red trees began to rapidly explode upward. They were grotesque, dripping with fresh, wet blood, and their heavy branches were wrapped in millions of long, razor-sharp thorns.

Is this his unique demonic ability?

Without a microsecond of delay, the thorny, pulsing branches whipped toward my crimson suit, attacking me at full speed from every single direction.

BOOOM!!!

Channelling my internal power, I swung my blades in a wide arc. The pitch-black hellfire successfully caught the wood, instantly reducing the red branches to piles of ash.

But my eyes suddenly narrowed behind my mask. Wait... if his demonic mana is suppressing my fire, how did I just burn those branches so easily?

I looked at Ruken, who was standing perfectly still in the center of the yard, completely inactive. Then, I looked down at the floor. The wooden trunks had burned completely, but the heavy, blood-dipped thorns on the branches had survived the fire. They had detached, clattering safely onto the ground.

Within a split second, a horrific transformation occurred. From every single fallen thorn, three brand-new crimson trees violently sprouted out of the stone, multiplying the danger instantly.

Thud! Slash!

The new wave of branches attacked me again, their speed doubling. It was a terrifying, infinite loop. Once this specific spell gets activated, it simply does not stop until the opponent is reduced to shreds. No matter how much I burned them, the core thorns stayed completely intact, rising back with triple the volume of trees from before. If I kept burning them blindly, these thorns would grow an entire endless forest before my three-minute card timer could even hit zero.

I dodged a lethal vertical branch, my mind rapidly tracking the mathematical variables of the spell. There must be a loophole. Think.

I found it. The loop hole was right there in Phase 2. The small saplings didn't possess any protective thorns yet during those initial three seconds of growth. If I could cut or incinerate them during that exact miniature window, that meant I could permanently stop them from multiplying and regrowing.

I immediately put my theory to the test.

BOOM!!!

I unleashed a massive, sweeping shockwave of black hellfire, burning the entire front line of giant trees to ash. The moment the parent branches disintegrated and the detached thorns dropped, turning into small, defenseless sprouts on the ground, I lunged forward. Before the three-second timer could hit, I executed a low-angle dual slice, burning all the saplings at once.

The endless cycle stopped. The dirt remained empty.

The Blood Tyrant looked genuinely happy as he witnessed me figuring out his secret trick. He threw his tattered cloak back, his laughter echoing through the heavy rain.

“Splendid!” Ruken roared, raising his massive broadsword with both hands. “I simply didn't want a rare anomaly like you to die from a boring tree, that’s all. But now that you've cleared my yard... things are finally going to get fun.”

______________________________________________________________________

The two girls were furiously pursuing Kiro across the rooftops, their blades flashing through the downpour, but the veteran commander didn't even bother to draw his own weapon. He effortlessly used his phantom agility to jump from one ledge to another, easily evading their synchronized strikes.

Suddenly, a monstrous, sky-shattering roar tore through the western outskirts.

BOOOOOM!!!

Before Erina or Quina could even register the sound, a tattered, all-crimson figure violently smashed through the reinforced brick wall directly in front of them, embedding deep into the concrete rubble amid flying debris and smoke.

“The Crimson Card...!” the girls gasped in unison, their postures completely freezing in pure shock as they recognized the masked anomaly.

Kiro rapidly pivoted, his scarred face turning toward the massive structural breach. Emerging from the smoke with heavy, ground-cracking footsteps was the Blood Tyrant himself. Ruken stepped into the open courtyard, his starless cloak fluttering in the storm.

But the exact millisecond Ruken's eyes locked onto Kiro’s grey-skinned frame standing in the rain, the Tyrant completely froze. His terrifying momentum vanished, replaced by a deep, agonizing paralysis. He didn't know how to face the best friend he had mutilated and broken twelve years ago.

SLASH!

Seizing the microsecond his opponent's guard dropped, the Crimson Card violently burst out from the concrete rubble. Moving with blinding phantom speed, Erik's black alloy twin blade sliced through the air in a lethal horizontal arc, cleanly severing Ruken's left arm from his torso.

The massive limb crashed heavily onto the wet cobblestones, but within seconds, a writhing mass of black parasitic tendrils began violently bursting from the stump, rapidly regenerating a brand-new arm.

“If you space out like a pathetic amateur next time, Tyrant... it will be your head,” Erik whispered coldly behind his crimson mask, resetting his dual-blade stance.

Ruken looked down at his newly reformed hand, a slow, sinister laugh escaping his lips. “Fufufu... then try your best to take it, kid!”

In a single millisecond, the Blood Tyrant and the Crimson Card collided in a cataclysmic, all-out slaughter. The sheer, terrifying speed of their exchanges turned their bodies into complete ghosts. Erina and Princess Quina stood paralyzed on the ridge, their eyes entirely unable to trace the movement or see the after-shadows through the rain.

Recognizing this as the perfect, tactical window, Kiro blurred through the flank. Moving with a seasoned commander's grace, he delivered two paper-thin, magic-reinforced palm strikes directly to the napes of Erina's and Quina's necks.

Both girls instantly short-circuited, their eyes rolling back as they collapsed unconsciously into his arms. He laid them safely beneath the shelter of a broken awning.

But just as Kiro was about to turn his torso back toward the life-or-death duel, an absolute, suffocating torrent of monstrous mana exploded from the shadows behind his back. The air pressure dropped to freezing.

It was Kenon.

The Grand Commander stood tall, his blood-red hair matted against his skull, his eyes glowing with an unstable, terrifying crimson light.

“Kenon...” Kiro whispered, his voice trembling as he sensed the grotesque energy radiating from his childhood brother. “Why... why the hell did you do it?”

Kenon let out a manic, fractured smile, his hands violently shaking as a massive, pulsing monstrous limb began to grotesquely warp and tear through his right sleeve.

“Because if I don't have you by my side, Kiro... I am destined to become just like you,” Kenon shrieked into the storm, his sanity completely snapping. “Why did I do it? Why did I track down the vaults and consume Ruken’s fallen arm raw?! To reach the absolute pinnacle of a Stone!”

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!