Chapter 59

Chapter 59. Even a Rebellious Phase Has Its Limits (3)

Raum had failed to notice Michael secretly transferring aura into Durandal.

"Ghk! When did you do that?!"

"When? Did you really think I was just going to sit there and absorb your demonic energy? Do you know how nervous I was while secretly mixing my aura into it?"

If Raum had noticed what Michael was doing, he would have stopped him immediately, and the plan would have failed.

"Still, it was easy because you were so focused on pouring in demonic energy. Aren't you being a little too careless for a swindler?"

Raum's eyes shook as though an earthquake had struck them. He had been so focused on pouring energy into Durandal that he had failed to notice the small amounts of aura Michael had secretly added. However, there was something Raum found even harder to believe.

"Don't tell me Durandal actually accepted your aura? That's impossible!"

Durandal hadn't avoided Michael's aura. It had willingly accepted it. Raum believed Durandal had fallen because it had betrayed its owner, Michael. But now that the truth had been revealed, he realized that wasn't the case. If anything, Durandal had been using him.

"What's so impossible about it? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to calm down a kid going through a rebellious phase?"

"Shut up! You think I'll just let you take it back whenever you want?!"

Raum's face twisted as he squeezed every bit of demonic energy from his body and poured it into Durandal.

Drip.

Blood also began flowing from Raum's lips. He had bitten them to suppress his anger at being betrayed by Durandal. Since he couldn't release the sword right now, it was the only way he could vent his frustration. Raum felt as though he would completely lose his mind if he couldn't even do that much.

Grab!

"Fine. Let's take this all the way."

Michael grabbed Durandal's blade. Since it was a double-edged sword, the blade cut his palm and drew blood, but he didn't care. In fact, the bleeding made it even more effective for him to transfer aura directly into Durandal. From this point onward, it was a contest to see who could pour more energy into the sword.

Crackle! Crackle!

As their powers mixed, pure white, representing aura, and pitch-black, representing demonic energy, repeatedly rose and fell across Durandal's blade, alternating with each other.

Whenever the aura purified the demonic energy, new demonic energy corrupted the aura. As the two opposing forces continued devouring each other, Michael was the first to make his move.

"Stop wandering around already, Durandal, you little bastard!"

Michael gathered every bit of aura he could use without pushing himself into overload.

"I won't allow it! Durandal is just like us! Those who were abandoned by God and cast into the abyss have nowhere to go except Hell!"

Refusing to back down, Raum gathered even the demonic energy he had scattered throughout the air and poured it into Durandal.

SCREEEEECH!

The two opposing powers tangled violently, and the speed at which Durandal changed color grew faster and faster. Eventually, after reaching its limit, Durandal produced a sharp metallic scraping sound, almost as though it were screaming. And then,

BOOOOM!

An explosion erupted from the center of Durandal. Within the explosion, where demonic energy and aura were mixed together, Michael saw brilliantly shining aura approaching him. Hidden inside that aura were Durandal's memories.

A full 250 years had passed. After Michael fell asleep, the knight commander, who later died in battle, lost Durandal. With nobody searching for it, Durandal passed through the world from one place to another until a clergyman eventually embedded it into the cliffs of Rocamadour.

That was when the waiting began. Durandal waited every single day for Michael to awaken and come looking for it. At some point, someone recognized Durandal and spread the rumor of a Holy Sword embedded in a cliff. Famous priests and swordsmen visited after hearing the rumor and tried to pull it free, but Durandal stubbornly remained where it was.

After 250 years passed like that, Durandal finally sensed Michael's presence coming from the east. It believed that Michael would soon come to pull it out.

One day passed after it sensed Michael. Then two days. Then an entire week. And while Durandal continued waiting, demons appeared.

"Durandal... It really was here? But you're going to corrupt this thing?"

"That's right."

"Well, you don't have the same talent for deception that I do. I'll trust you, Foras."

The fact that two Great Demons had come looking for it before Michael made Durandal feel betrayed. As if taking advantage of the opportunity, the two demons attempted to corrupt it. No matter how powerful those Great Demons were, Durandal would never have fallen if it had released its holy power and rejected them.

"Haha! Hahahaha! Michael is going to be quite shocked when he sees this!"

However, Durandal willingly accepted the corruption. It wanted Michael to realize how precious it was, so it accepted Raum's touch. If Michael ever wanted to use Durandal again, he would have to personally remove the corruption and restore its noble purity.

And now, the explosion announcing that Durandal's owner had been decided slowly began to fade.

Roll, roll!

This crazy thing. Is it really a Holy Sword, or is it the Demon of Jealousy?

The shockwave sent Michael flying backward. As he rolled across the floor and witnessed Durandal's memories, he was left completely dumbfounded. It had waited for 250 years, yet it had willingly accepted corruption simply because demons had come looking for it before Michael.

Still...

CRASH!

Michael slammed into a wall, then immediately stood up and brushed the dust from his body.

"Huff! Huff!"

Directly in front of Michael stood Raum, who had stubbornly held on to Durandal until the very end. Seeing how exhausted Raum looked, Michael grinned.

"In the end, you still know who your real owner is."

Unlike the smiling Michael, Raum couldn't smile at all. A faint aura had begun shining from Durandal's blade. Just as Durandal had wanted, Michael had removed its pitch-black corruption and restored its pure-white nobility.

Hissssss!

With its demonic energy gone and aura surrounding it, Durandal began displaying the power of a true Holy Sword. The sacred light released from Durandal naturally inflicted terrible pain on Raum, a demon who was holding a power completely opposed to his own.

"GHHHHH!!!"

Durandal released a fierce stream of aura into Raum, who continued gripping its hilt without letting go. As the aura engulfed him, burns began spreading across his body.

"Never! Never! I won't just let you take it back!"

The burns began on Raum's palm, then spread along his wrist, arm, shoulder, and neck. Even so, he gritted his teeth and endured the pain, demonstrating his determination never to release Durandal. However,

Clang!

No matter how much he endured the pain, his determination was meaningless if his body itself couldn't withstand it. In the end, Durandal slipped from Raum's hand, and his entire body trembled.

"AAAAAARGH!!"

Both of Raum's arms hung limply because of the burns, and he screamed in agony. As Raum desperately reached out to grab Durandal again,

Grab.

Michael picked it up first and gently stroked it from the blade down to the hilt.

"You threw such a huge tantrum. Are you satisfied now, you little troublemaker?!"

Wooooong! Wooooong!

As though celebrating its reunion with its master, Durandal answered by shining with a faint aura.

"Aww, good boy."

Durandal released aura to heal Michael, and the expression of defeat on Raum's face deepened.

"Why?! Why!! Why did God throw me into the depths of Hell while giving Michael everything?!"

Filled with despair, Raum raised his head toward the sky and screamed, blaming God for his fate. Hearing his complaint, Michael raised one eyebrow.

"What kind of bullshit is that? Why are you blaming someone else because you wasted your own time?"

Just as he had done during the incident that first caused Raum to develop resentment toward him, Michael began lecturing Raum once again.

"It'd be different if you'd continued training your sword like Marchosias. But you got addicted to demonic energy and only became better at deceiving people. What exactly are you so upset about?"

Marchosias, the Demon of Strength, was one of the 72 Demons and a fallen angel, just like Raum. He had spent his entire life training in the way of the sword and was probably still pursuing it even now. Raum, on the other hand, had tried to become stronger through the easier path of demonic energy and the Authority of Distortion. That was why Michael compared him to Marchosias while lecturing him.

"Even giving you this kind of advice feels like a waste. Just..."

"Enough! Enough!! Stop humiliating me with those pathetic lectures of yours!"

Raum covered his ears with his palms to block out Michael's harsh lecture. However, simply covering his ears wasn't enough to escape Michael's nagging.

"When someone teaches you something, you should gratefully accept it and say thank you. Instead, you get angry? Looks like you need some retraining."

Michael rested the Durandal he had been stroking on his shoulder and gave Raum a wicked smile.

The moment Raum heard the word retraining, he remembered the horrifying past that had caused him to abandon his sword.

"Did you get into the order through connections or something? How can someone from the Heavenly Knight Order be this bad at swordsmanship? Your stance is fine, but you keep making mistakes when it really matters."

Back then, just like now, Raum had lost to Michael. After his defeat, Michael had mocked his pride as a former knight and even criticized his swordsmanship.

"If you repent, I might be willing to teach you the basics of swordsmanship. Maybe? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe?"

Michael's mocking words repeated inside Raum's mind like an echo.

"Damn it! Damn it!!"

Raum shook his head, desperately trying to erase the memories repeating inside his mind, then forced his ruined body upright.

"Marbas told me to stay quiet until he arrived... But I can't take this anymore."

For a moment, Michael doubted his own ears. At this point, any demon whose name came up was likely to be a vassal of the White Horseman.

Marbas?! Of all the bastards who could become a vassal, it had to be him...

Marbas, known as the Demon of Pestilence, was one of the opponents Michael disliked fighting. Among Great Demons, Marbas ranked near the top, and the plagues he wielded could turn an entire country into an infected wasteland.

If Marbas sets foot on this land... Can I stop him?

If Marbas arrived in Korea, the final destination, and the White Horseman descended as well, there would be nothing the current Michael could do.

I'll do everything I can to stop them, but I have to hope Lady Helena awakens as quickly as possible.

Helena's Authority would be more than enough to stop the plague, so Michael desperately needed her help.

Seeing Michael fall into deep thought with a serious expression, Raum whistled.

Whiiiiistle!

"You're going to keep ignoring me right until the end, aren't you? Fine. Forget about staying quiet. Starting today, I'll erase this pub. No, I'll erase this entire city."

Flap! Flap!

"Caw! Caw!"

Hearing Raum's whistle, the two crows that had been sitting on his throne began circling above his head.

Crackle!

Raum's skin suddenly crumbled like grains of sand. Another layer of skin appeared, but it also turned to powder. The next layer suffered the same fate, and all the crumbled skin was sucked back into Raum's body.

"How long has it been since I last revealed my true form...?"

CRAAAACKLE!!

The layers of skin that had accumulated within him rapidly scattered, and Raum's voice became a chaotic mixture of different voices.

"Your true form? Weren't you an angel?"

As far as Michael remembered, Raum was a fallen angel, so his true form should have been nothing more than an angel with black wings. However, as though correcting Michael's careless assumption, Raum absorbed every last bit of the demonic energy that had been maintaining the room.

"I'm very different from how I used to be. A lot has changed over the years."

The room that had been completely ruined by their battle disappeared, revealing an unfinished room connected to the hallway through demolished walls.

Crack!

When the final layer of skin crumbled away, Raum's naked body and expressionless face appeared. Before Michael could properly see Raum's face, the two crows cleverly concealed him as they descended.

"Caw! Caw!"

The two crows circled near Raum's face before suddenly being sucked into a vortex that appeared on his back.

Pop! Pop! FLAP!

As the crows disappeared into him, black feathers erupted from Raum's body. His hands became sharp like a crow's claws, and a long pair of wings unfolded from his back.

CRACK! SPLURT!

A crow's head covered the place where a human head should have been. From inside its wide-open beak emerged a face with thick eyelashes and bored, indifferent eyes.

"Yeah. That's the look I wanted to see. You should've looked at me like that from the beginning. The White Horseman? Marbas? They can both go fuck themselves."

Raum floated in the air without even flapping his wings. Enjoying Michael's startled expression, Raum raised one finger.

"In the end, you'll kneel before infinite distortion."