Chapter 236: Heroes Never Kill from Behind, but Unfortunately, I Am Not a Hero
No longer were they merely the collectible character tags from a game expansion pack—those figures who bore the names of the Seven Deadly Sins, each with their own joys, sorrows, and vivid charms.
Nor was it only about Cosette anymore—that little maid who always followed quietly behind him, whose eyes and heart had seemed to hold only him and the trivial chores of daily life.
Those labels that belonged to a player, that easy detachment of watching events from the far shore, had become as thin and fragile as paper before the all-consuming storm of flames now raging before his eyes.
What was a Witch?
A walking natural disaster.
An aberration outside the rules.
A dangerous deviation in the form of life itself.
A being born carrying enough terrifying power to burn cities, boil seas, and overturn mountains—and that very power was often the curse that devoured her mind and existence in turn.
Shiloya was not one of the legendary Seven Deadly Sin Witches. At most, she was an ordinary Witch whose Mana talent had mutated to a dangerously extreme degree.
But at this moment, with flames raging as though they meant to burn even space itself to ash, the word ordinary seemed pale and laughable.
Destruction never became any less terrifying because of a modifier placed before it.
Shiloya’s crimson eyes locked onto Ryan. Slowly, she raised her right hand and curled her fingers.
A blazing white torrent of fire, as thick as a water barrel and formed from nothing but highly compressed flame, shot toward Ryan with a shriek like a giant serpent bursting from its lair.
Where the torrent passed, the air became completely ionized, leaving behind scorched traces that lingered without fading.
Ryan’s crimson-gold eyes narrowed. Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss let out a low hum as azure light flowed along the blade. He stepped forward and lifted the sword at an angle, the edge meeting that blazing white torrent with perfect precision.
There was no explosion.
No deafening impact.
The instant the blade touched the torrent, that violent white flame—hot enough to melt gold and iron alike—began to vanish from the point of contact in complete silence, like snow before its natural enemy.
As though that destructive force had never existed at all.
Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss remained azure, cold, and untouched by even a single spark.
Ryan had blocked the fatal strike.
But the pressure brought by the power of a Witch lay in more than direct attacks alone.
At the very moment Ryan was blocking the torrent of flame, Shiloya swept out her left hand. Several explosive fireballs the size of washbasins, each with flickers of black lightning pulsing faintly within, curved through the air like living things, bypassed Ryan entirely, and crashed toward Vera, Ilyss, and the mutually supporting Rex and Lillian behind him.
“Watch out!” Vera shouted sharply. Her hands moved at once, and a thin, rapidly spinning wall of green wind rose before them. Ilyss also forced more Mana out of herself, weaving violet lightning into a net.
Boom boom boom—!
The fireballs slammed one after another into their defenses and exploded violently. Wild flames and chaotic magical turbulence smashed through everything in their path.
Vera’s wind wall was torn apart instantly. She let out a muffled groan and was hurled backward by the shockwave, blood spilling from the corner of her mouth.
Ilyss’s lightning net flickered erratically. She barely managed to stop one fireball, only to be struck by the aftershock of another. Her already pale face turned even whiter, and she staggered backward.
Rex’s earth-element barrier shattered after blocking two of the fireballs. He and Lillian were both hurled to the ground by the final blast wave. Rex wrapped his body around her to shield her completely, but molten fragments from the explosion struck his back, tearing flesh open and drawing a suppressed cry of pain from him.
The aftermath alone had reduced them to a miserable state, leaving every one of them wounded.
After Shiloya’s awakening, her Mana now held an overwhelming advantage in both quantity and quality.
Ryan could block her frontal attacks, but he could not completely erase the pressure of her Mana that flooded the entire battlefield, nor the indiscriminate destruction spread across such a wide range.
His companions were like small boats in the middle of a storm, liable to capsize at any moment.
“Hahaha! See that, you worthless trash?!” Marcus threw back his head and laughed wildly. His one remaining eye shone with savage delight. “The power of a Witch! This is what real power looks like! Ryan Velt, you can’t protect them! Every one of you is going to die here today!”
Olaf licked his dry, cracked lips and grinned viciously. “Take your time burning them to death, Shiloya!”
A cruel and delighted expression spread across Shiloya’s face. She was plainly enjoying this feeling of holding other people’s lives and deaths in her hands.
She raised her hand again, and more flames began to gather around her.
This time, they vaguely took the shapes of savage beasts—a phoenix, a wolf, gigantic fists—each radiating an even more terrifying aura. It was obvious she was preparing an even deadlier area attack.
Ryan’s expression remained cold, though light flowed deep in the crimson-gold depths of his pupils.
He had to finish this Witch as quickly as possible. Otherwise, his companions would not be able to hold out much longer.
But she had clearly learned. She no longer intended to clash with him head-on, instead using her overwhelming Mana advantage to suppress him with wide-range attacks.
Against that kind of tactic, the anti-magic property of Frostbite Dragon’s Kiss was far more limited.
And then, at the most critical moment—
Just as Marcus and the others believed victory was already theirs, with joy breaking openly across their faces—
A streak of crimson light suddenly tore through the burning air with no warning at all.
It came from the ruined stone doorway at the rear flank of the battlefield, like a scarlet viper that had lain in wait for the perfect moment, or a meteor slashing across the night sky, cutting into the battle at a speed beyond the limits of sight itself.
At the moment the sword light rose, it was light and swift, bringing with it a sharp current of air so fierce it seemed capable of cutting through the soul itself—that was the scream of highly condensed wind element.
Halfway through its arc, the crimson streak suddenly ignited into full blaze.
The extreme friction between blade and air drew in the fire element that had already grown violent and overabundant throughout the atmosphere because of Shiloya. In that instant, wind and fire were perfectly fused, compressed, and driven together.
This was the essence of battlefield swordsmanship, inherited and tempered over centuries—using wind as the guide and fire as the blade, wind feeding the flames, and flames borrowing the might of the wind.
In an instant, the crimson sword light seemed to gain life.
It swelled upon the wind into a vast green-and-red crescent of flame that swept across nearly ten paces of space, magnificent and lethal all at once.
Its edges were made of high-speed wind pressure that cut through everything in its path, while at its core burned explosive azure flame capable of incinerating all things. Wind and fire were intertwined, taking on a strange azure color that was both clear and violent, and wherever it passed, it gave off a low thunder-like roar.
This was not a sword move for sparring or formal combat.
It was a destructive slash born for battlefield slaughter and for sweeping away enemy ranks.
Its range was enormous, its power immense. It was one of the greatest foundations upon which the Sword Duke’s family had stood at the summit of the Empire’s military might.
With a force like dry branches before a storm, the crescent of azure flame instantly swallowed Marcus, Olaf, and even Kallen farther away, all of whom had relaxed and let triumph show on their faces as they watched Ryan and the others fall into desperation.
“Wh—?!”
Marcus’s savage grin did not even have time to turn into shock before his single eye was filled entirely with azure flame.
Olaf saw only a flood of blue rushing toward him.
Kallen managed nothing more than a short, startled cry.
Ssshhh—!!!
There was no clash of metal. No screaming. No wailing.
Only the horrifying sound of flesh vaporized in an instant by overwhelming heat, and bodies torn apart by hurricane-force wind.
The azure flame swept past.
The massive bodies of Marcus and Olaf melted away like snowmen beneath a blazing summer sun. What remained of their charred torsos swayed once, smoking, before collapsing to the ground.
Kallen was caught by the wind pressure at the edge of the crescent and sliced diagonally into two halves. The cut was blackened by heat, and he died on the spot.
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