The Sword Emperor Transmigrates

Chapter 173

Aiolos saw the divine power embedded in Leonard’s blade.

“What? That blade is made from Pollux’s iron fists?”

Leonard didn’t answer and only raised his sword. There was nothing more foolish than disclosing information to an opponent as cunning as Aiolos.

Besides, he didn’t need to.

“That was dangerous. If you have the power to cut off his hands, not even my winds are safe. I see that you are the key to this battle.”

Aiolos recreated the divine giant soldiers. It consumed a significant amount of his divine power, but he knew that he would be defeated in an instant if he only had two of them.

He was a king, not a warrior. His true duty was to direct his servants on the battlefield, leaving the real fighting to them.

I don’t see any openings. I didn’t think he would also be such a skilled tactician, Leonard thought.

If he saw even the tiniest opening, he would have immediately broken through the four giant soldiers and cut off Aiolos’s head. That was why he had let him give his little speech, though it would be more accurate to describe it as Aiolos talking to himself.

There was a very small path he could take to weave between the soldiers, but Aiolos would use his divine power as soon as Leonard tried to get past them. There was no way for Leonard to avoid this.

“It would not be wise of me to have a head-to-head contest with you.”

Aiolos looked at Leonard with eyes that were nearly transparent like glass marbles. In fact, it was hard to say if they could even be called eyes. His gaze was fixed only on the boy, ignoring the four White Dragon Knights.

“The four winds are the symbol of my power, but I also control the winds that sent the king of Ithaca adrift! Not even the legendary hero himself could withstand them! Witness their power!”

A current of wind that wasn’t part of the seasonal winds shot out and swirled around Leonard, becoming a vortex and creating a wall. He wouldn’t be able to escape the prison even if he had wings.

It all happened in an instant, the tornado trapping him the very same moment it was created. Properly counteracting a move like this required one to see a few seconds into the future.

One Origin Five Elements Sword Art

Five Elements Style

Ultimate Secret Technique: Azure Dragon’s Flash

Leonard swung his sword at the wall a moment later, and a bolt of lightning shot out, cutting through the currents.

“Tch.” He clicked his tongue.

Far from destroying the tornado, all he achieved was severing a few strands of wind, and they immediately restored themselves.

He’d known that Aiolos’s authority was no ordinary power, which was why he’d used an ultimate secret technique. But if even the Azure Dragon’s Flash couldn’t cut through it, he needed to use a technique at the Demigod Tier.

Leonard shouldn’t be surprised. When the legendary hero Odysseus was cursed and his journey took a decade instead of two weeks, Aiolos’s storm winds had played a part. Aiolos could command the gentle winds, so it only made sense that he could command their counterpart as well.

Not even Pollux’s sword could overpower his authority, so this had to be consuming a lot of energy. Is that how dangerous he thinks I am? He’s probably planning to hold me captive here while he wipes out the rest of the group first.

While the knights were fighting the divine giant soldiers, both they and Aiolos realized that, excluding the sword that could overpower a god’s authority, they were a weak matchup against his servants. Their swords were concrete, but the winds were immaterial, so it was fundamentally impossible for the knights’ blades to cut through them. Isaac’s heart sword could likely have a chance, but if Aiolos dodged as he had earlier, it would be pointless.

“I’ll have to break out of here as fast as possible,” Leonard concluded, raising his sword.

The Northern God Style wouldn’t work here, of course, because it focused on defense. He couldn’t properly dissipate Aiolos’s tornado with the Eastern God Style either. His instincts told him that even if he managed to create and widen a gap in the wall, Aiolos would call upon his storm winds to confine him again, and that would be the end of it.

He had to completely obliterate the prison.

If I use the Southern God Style’s firepower over a larger area, I’ll have a chance. The only problem is that I’ll be completely exhausted afterward.

Among his Demigod Tier techniques, those of the Southern God Style were the least efficient. While the Eastern God Style borrowed the power of natural laws and the Northern God Style neutralized or used the enemy’s power against them, the Southern God Style only had its own power to rely on.

The same was true of the Western God Style, but because it leaned more on the power of concepts than the power of brute strength, it consumed more mental energy than it did internal energy. But since Leonard’s mental energy had expanded greatly after fighting Heavenly Demon to the death over a hundred times, it wouldn’t put too much of a strain on him.

“Hoo...”

He closed his eyes halfway and held his sword to his middle dantian. His consciousness dropped as if it were falling off a cliff, and he plunged into a trance.

His techniques couldn’t remain in the Demigod Tier unless he brought forth his full potential, which he could just barely achieve by cheating and relying on his Dragon Heart to channel internal energy and his Dragon Eyes to comprehend the necessary principles.

Somewhere in his Mindscape, a curled-up tiger began to wake up very slowly.

* * *

It only took about ten minutes for Isaac to be reduced to a bloody mess.

“Don’t break formation!” he yelled as he took a big leap back. “If you fight them one-on-one, you’ll die!”

Now that Leonard, their main fighting force, was trapped in the vortex, the White Dragon Knights were helplessly being pushed back by the giant soldiers. It was a miracle that no one had been killed or seriously wounded yet.

Storm winds...! I’ve never heard of this authority! As Isaac dodged the summer soldier’s sword, the heat emanating from its blade singed a few hairs from his eyebrows. He gritted his teeth.

The authority that Aiolos was using against Leonard, storm winds, was a power that had never been reported. As Isaac was trying to figure out why, it didn’t take long for him to come up with a logical answer.

I see. Aiolos never had a need to use it. The storm winds wouldn’t work against a commander-level knight, and it was rare for someone in a group of weaker knights to stand out to him like Leonard.

Using the storm winds to imprison Leonard was a very effective tactic, but Aiolos couldn’t defeat an opponent simply by trapping them. It also consumed a significant portion of his power—Isaac could sense that the giant soldiers had weakened considerably after Aiolos trapped Leonard.

If they hadn’t, the group would have likely died by now.

Janet managed to find an opening for a counterattack. She spun. “Haaaa!”

Song Blade

Sonata of Steel

Prestissimo

Prestissimo was a lethal attack that used over a hundred strikes to shred its target. It hadn’t worked when she sparred with Leonard, but even then, he hadn’t defeated her by blocking each hit of her swords.

The continuous attack surpassed the law of inertia. In order for one to withstand the entire barrage, they needed to either have some kind of shield that could withstand it or be faster than Janet. The winter soldier met neither requirement.

Boooooom—!

Her swords visibly moved faster than the speed of sound, and the sonic booms ripped through the wind body. If the winter soldier had a physical body, all its joints would have been shredded.

Fwooooo.

It took only three seconds for the soldier to reform.

The attack consumed a third of Janet’s energy, but it only gave her three seconds. She’d known that this would happen, but she still couldn’t help but feel discouraged.

“Ugh!” she screamed in frustration. “How the hell are we supposed to kill these damn things?!”

“We can’t because they aren’t alive. As long as Aiolos is still alive, they’ll keep regenerating,” Hugo responded, coughing and wiping the blood from his lips. He raised his greatsword, which had a chip in the middle. “But we can still drain his energy. We have to hold out until Leonard can break out of that tornado. That’s our top priority.”

“Don’t you feel embarrassed relying on him as someone with more experience?” Janet asked.

“Ha! We’re getting pummeled even though it’s four against one. What does that matter?” Grady scoffed as he joined them. He didn’t look good at all. He had been stabbed, and the wound was so deep that his intestines would have spilled out had the blade gone just a little bit deeper.

Hugo added, “Aiolos isn’t doing so great either. Ever since he created that trap, his presence has weakened a lot. I’m pretty sure that ability drains his energy continuously.”

“Do you think we can wear him out by dragging out the battle?” Janet suggested.

“No way. Even if he’s a Void Deity, do you really think he’s stupid enough to kill himself by overusing his authority? He’ll prioritize staying alive above all else.”

Isaac nodded in agreement. “Grady’s right. It may be different if we had no chance of winning, but as long as Leonard is still here, we have no reason to take such a huge risk.”

It wasn’t that they had no way of reaching Aiolos’s throne. Isaac could strike all four giant soldiers with his heart sword, so Aiolos was randomly dispelling and resummoning his soldiers to throw him off. Therefore, Isaac could reach the throne by aiming for the opening when a soldier dissipated and was resummoned.

It wasn’t very likely that he would succeed, but it wasn’t a bad idea for a last-ditch effort.

The only thing is that I don’t know how powerful Aiolos’s own body is.

Using divine powers that relied on underlings to fight usually meant that the deity wasn’t a very good fighter, but in rare cases, the deity would send out their servants simply because they themselves were too lazy to fight. Ancient texts didn’t place any particular emphasis on Aiolos’s fighting prowess, so he was most likely in the former category. But the problem was that there was no guarantee that he didn’t fall into the latter.

Even though the Arcadian Empire was several centuries old, it was only a small part of the ancient eras, so the records could be inaccurate.

Aiolos seemed calm, but he had used up most of his power. After discovering this, the four White Dragon Knights reorganized themselves.

Suddenly, a ripping sound rang through the air, piercing through the choking tension.

All of them instinctively held their breaths as a presence much stronger than Aiolos’s bore down on them.

“...Claws?” someone whispered.

Indeed, a white-furred paw shot through the vortex of storm winds, its claws tearing open a large hole. Though it was merely an illusion manifested through Visualization, the divine beast White Tiger made all of them go silent as it brought its paw down and split the wall.

One Origin Five Elements Sword Art

Western God Style

Cutter of All Things

Sky and Cloud Piercer

The name of the technique was almost arrogant.

The White Tiger destroyed the rest of the storm winds, which had absorbed over half of Aiolos’s power, and sprang out. The scene was so violent that it warped the air for a split second.

Booooooom⸻!!!

Aiolos couldn’t stop the attack. He knew this yet still tried to dodge.

“What power...!”

But his authority had the advantage of versatility, and he managed to retreat hundreds of meters to the side as the attack came down upon him. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to avoid it if he moved back.

“To think that you are already at the Demigod Tier at such a young age!” Aiolos said in shock as he somehow managed to save himself.

“It was smart of you to dodge, but you shouldn’t have left your soldiers behind.”

“What?!” n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Leonard appeared behind Aiolos, sword outstretched. Aiolos hadn’t even sensed him. With Sky and Cloud Piercer’s immense power as the perfect cover, Leonard had used a concealment art.

Aiolos tried to dodge again.

But his fate was sealed.

“It’s too late,” Leonard said quietly.

Dragon Soaring Through the Sky

He swung upward like a bolt of lightning charging into the sky, his blade cutting through the Void Deity’s chin and emerging from the crown of his head.