Kuro no Maou 424 – Part 3

Formation: Dragon Killer

“So, what are we aiming for here?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re getting this golem’s humongous eye!”

It was probably a cheap move, but Nero had no intention to go against it. It didn’t seem to be its weak spot though, but it was still better than trying to punch through the metallic armor which completely covers the golem, making it like an iron castle.

Right at that moment, the golem’s head was facing them, possibly to see their newly arrived intruders. The crimson light shining through the lens was inorganic and mechanical. However, they could not help but feel the power hidden in it.

Without hesitation, Kai dashed away from the golem’s shoulder at full speed, still under the effects of his martial arts, aiming for the golem’s single eye. Nero followed him one step behind him –no, it would be more precise to say he was half a step away from Kai.

Even for an ancient golem of this size, the eye was only a mere ten meters away from the shoulder. There was no doubt that the two of them could make that distance in an instant as if carried by the wind. Even without the aid from the harbinger skeletons, the chimera army wouldn’t have been able to block their path at all.

“Take this! ‘Ultima Slash’!”

Kai’s ‘Buster Sword’ shone brightly with an aura that looked as if it was wrapped in blue flames as he raised it over his head. Kai’s martial skill was quite straightforward, but still quite dreadfully fast and strong. Swords are ideal for using martial skills.

The blade, which fell upon its target like a blue meteor, struck right in the middle of the golem’s shining red eye.

“…Whoa! It’s hard!”

Kai’s yelling came right after its attack.

In his head, Nero wouldn’t even have gotten the chance to do anything, because his own attack would have split the golem’s head in half. But what happened instead was that the attack didn’t even cut through the eye’s lens.

The lens over the golem’s single eye seems to have been made of brittle glass at first glance, but it actually was a refined ancient material. In other words, it could not be reproduced in modern times, and yet it boasted great performance, being a light, hard, and beautiful material.

Perhaps the lens had been refined to that degree in order to protect the eyeball, which must have been more fragile than the golem’s body. It was by no means your average weak spot.

“That should be enough for me to break through it, Kai.”

Therefore, Nero had no complaints about Kai’s attack.

A vertical scar-like line was left on the lens on the spot where Kai had hit it with his sword. That’s where Nero pointed his Spirit Sword ‘White King Cherry Blossom’ which he held in his right hand.

Normally, that sword would shine in silver light, but at that moment it was wrapped in a dazzling white light due to the martial skill imbued in it.

“‘Beheading Gleam’.”

Nero’s two most used martial skills are ‘Flash’ and ‘Instant Flash’. The former was best suited for short-range attacks, while the latter was used when he needed to attack from a longer range. Particularly, Nero’s opponents would usually meet their ends the moment he used ‘Instant Flash’ to cut them down from afar with the unmatched accuracy and tremendous force of light.

Nero himself considered his ‘Instant Flash’ to be the best way for him to deal with small fry, which is why that martial skill is his forte.

However, the two martial skills that Nero had thoroughly trained in Avalon day and night since childhood were ‘Lone Flash’ and ‘Beheading Gleam’. To be more precise, those two techniques weren’t taught by any swordmaster, but instead were based on incomplete techniques taught by a shrine maiden that had been working at the Temple of Pandora ‘The Society of Fire’ in Avalon Royal Castle for 300 years. The martial skills, which he then named ‘Lone Flash’ and ‘Beheading Gleam’, were arguably superior to his ‘Flash’ and ‘Instant Flash’.

The ‘Lone Flash’ used to slice off Greed-Gore’s shell was superior to his ‘Instant Flash’, so the ‘Beheading Gleam’ he was using against the golem was definitely a superior sword martial skill than his ‘Flash’.

Nero realized that he had yet to master that skill since it still takes him some time to use it. However, once he finished, he created a tremendously powerful sword of light.

The pure white shine of his sword gleamed, carving through the golem’s lens. His horizontal strike overlaps with the vertical scar Kai had left on it before, making a cross pattern on the lens.

The lens, which was much thicker than it seemed to be, shattered into pieces the moment the cross was cut.

Then, as its remains came crumbling down, Nero drove his sword into the eye.

“‘Crimson Lotus’.”

That was one of Nero’s Blade Skills, the Force Edge ‘Crimson Lotus’. As its name suggests, his blade casts a bright red light, much like Kai’s ‘Buster Sword’.

This Blade Skill is not used for slicing or chopping down an enemy. Instead, it specializes in complete destruction by overheating its target until it bursts into flame.

Using the momentum of his ‘Beheading Gleam’, Nero took his sword in his left hand and used his ‘Crimson Lotus’ to attack the unprotected eye.

The burning blade sank deep into the shining red eye. Its red light started flickering, indicating that at that moment it had ceased functioning as a camera.

“‘Riot of a Hundred Flames’.”

Nero’s last attack was an exclusive Blade Skill. His blade itself turns into a massive explosion of fire, befitting his class name, ‘Lord Knight’.

The golem’s single eye slowly began to lose its color, and the deep crimson radiance of ‘Crimson Lotus’ started to emanate from it, almost as if it had absorbed all of the eye’s red light.

By the time the red light had started turning to white, both Nero and Kai left the golem’s head.

Still under the effects of ‘Sonic Walker’, both of them use their superhuman jumping ability to leap back to the castle walls by stepping on the nothingness of mid-air once again.

The golem had been advancing while being under attack, so there was no need for using the Blackbird as a scaffolding since the golem was closer to the castle walls.

However, even with those incredible abilities, they weren’t able to get back to the corridor on top of the wall and instead landed on the vertical side of the wall itself.

Not surprisingly, the Rank 5 Lord Knights stand on the side of the Galahad castle walls as naturally as ever. For those capable of using such dashing martial skills, there was little difference in effort between walking on the academy’s corridors and walking vertically on the castle walls.

After making sure he had successfully landed on the side of the wall, and that Kai didn’t mess up and fall and was, in fact, standing right next to him, Nero looked up and saw the golem’s face bursting into flames.

‘Riot of a Hundred Flames’, which is derived from ‘Crimson Lotus’, is the simple effect of causing an explosion, which is not different from a regular Fire Magic attack. However, even though there’s a magic skill that produces the same effect, its execution, casting, and activation are different.

Nero was looking for an instantaneous explosion, so he came up with a way to amplify that effect by chaining a hundred ignitions together within his ‘Crimson Lotus’.

The hundred detonations were triggered as soon as he was done activating his skill. A hundred lights could be seen lighting up on the golem’s face just before the wave of explosions began.

Naturally, it was not safe to trigger such powerful explosions right after stabbing the target with ‘Crimson Lotus’. The time before the chain of explosions start can be controlled by changing the skill’s execution speed. One could say this effect is like a ‘Magic Fuse’ used to control the time before the hundred explosions are triggered.

That way, the blade stuck in the golem’s eye by the effect of ‘Crimson Lotus’ changed into a series of explosions at the exact time set by Nero, destroying the eye in the process. No, rather than just the eye, it’s probably safe to assume that the explosions disabled other functions of the golem’s head.

They couldn’t see anything past the black smoke that resulted from the explosions, so they can’t tell just how much damage was done to the head. But at least they can see that it wasn’t enough to stop the ancient golem. The golem’s legs, big as two ancient trees, were still carrying it forward.

“Finish it off, Charlotte.”

Nero was just talking to himself, but her childhood friend had reacted as if she had heard him. At that very moment, there was a flash of red lightning on Galahad Fortress.

“‘Lightning Spada’!”