LIGHTNOVELSTORY Chapter 1 - Molting (1)
Prologue
A colossal battleground encompassing the entire world had unfolded.
The reward at stake was absolute power, capable of ruling over the entire world.
Thus, all kinds of people gathered around the battleground.
Those who set up the stage.
Those who jumped directly into the fray.
Those who observed.
Those who sought to profit from the chaos.
And then there was me…
“This is utterly insane.”
…the one who intended to overturn the entire battleground.
Chapter 1. Molting (1)
It was dull.
This was the sentiment of a man known as a ‘monster in human skin’ as he looked at the world.
It had been 25 years since he first held a sword.
The path he walked was stained entirely with blood.
Fights, battles, wars.
His life was a continuous struggle, and only victory validated his existence.
At fifteen, he claimed a first life with his first victory.
When he slew a hundred men and seized victory, the world first learned his name.
With his thousandth victory, his name gained renown.
When he broke ten thousand swords, people praised him.
When he single-handedly felled a nation, the world feared him.
And then…
When there were no more swords to break and no more foes to face.
The world that lay at his feet revered him as the Master of the Sword.
Though he faced many crises, he had never been defeated.
He was the strongest living being, one who had never known defeat.
A being acclaimed to have seen the pinnacle of swordsmanship achievable by a human.
Sword Master, Luke Ryder.
And what found the absolute victor was profound loneliness.
For a man whose entire life had been a battle, a life steeped in silence was nothing but agony.
Now, at the mere age of forty.
He still thirsted for conflict, eager to advance further.
He wanted to become even stronger.
But…
‘There are no more swords to break.’
Nowhere in the world existed an opponent who could match him.
He lamented this fact.
At that moment, a thought flashed through the absolute being’s mind.
“A sword to match me…”
In this generation, there was no worthy opponent.
Because he had defeated them all.
In that case…
‘Why don’t I forge one myself?’
A sharp sword that could fiercely match him.
A worthy adversary from the next generation who would aim for his heart.
Could he not raise them with his own hands?
“Good… Very good!”
Just thinking about it was enough to make him excited.
His eyes gleamed with madness as he looked at the world.
And not long after, news spread rapidly across the globe.
[Those with talent, come to me!]
This was the promise of the absolute being.
[I will become the fertile soil in which your talents will bloom, and by this…]
It was also the proclamation of a bloody festival.
[Plant your sword in my heart! Whoever severs my neck shall inherit all that I have!]
The world was abuzz with the absolute being’s declaration.
The entirety of the Sword Master.
Some called it the final enlightenment he had attained.
Some called it the absolute power to rule the world.
Or the successor who would gain everything the Sword Master had.
Whatever it was, inheriting ‘the entirety of the Sword Master’ meant becoming the ruler of the continent.
Thus, those confident in their abilities were greedily excited, and those with talent joined the festival staged by the Sword Master.
Forty-two years passed since the Sword Master’s proclamation.
The festival, known as the ‘Usurpation of the Sword Throne,’ continued to this day.
To gain the bloodstained throne of the absolute being.
Day by day, more blood was shed upon the throne.
* * *
Swoosh-.
Red blood splattered everywhere.
“Ugh!”
The man who spewed blood sprawled on the ground, scanning his surroundings with lifeless eyes.
‘Could this place be… hell?’
The sight before him forced him to think so.
Burning buildings.
Blood and corpses strewn everywhere his eyes could reach.
‘A hell of dead bodies and a sea of blood.’
There was no other way to describe the current situation.
‘How did it come to this?’
The order given to his group this time was not particularly difficult.
It was simply to erase a small mountain village that had fallen out of the lord’s favor from the world.
An easy task, as casual as a nighttime stroll.
Indeed, as they burned down buildings and cut down the people who ran out in panic, it felt more boring than tense.
It took less than ten minutes to turn a small village of about twenty households into ashes.
All the houses were on fire, and most of the residents had perished under their blades.
But no one anticipated that the last house, the smallest and shabbiest one at the edge of the village, would be a variable.
Whoosh-.
The last house caught fire, and the old woman who ran out first was struck down by a sword.
They thought the mission was over.
But from that very last house…
‘A monster.’
…a monster emerged.
A monster engulfed in deep darkness.
Grrr-.
The sudden appearance of the monster rampaged through the flames.
[Stop it!]
[What is that?!]
[Run away!]
Neither their will to fight.
Nor the skills honed over a lifetime.
None of it was of any use against the monster.
In the blink of an eye, all twenty of his comrades were torn apart.
“Haha…”
A laugh, more akin to a sigh, escaped the man as he recalled that horrific moment.
‘Surviving… seems impossible…’
The arm gripping the sword had been torn off, and he had lost sensation in his lower body, possibly from a spinal injury.
Due to the significant blood loss, his vision was already becoming blurry.
‘I didn’t expect to die like this…….’
He had considered that he could die anytime, but he never thought that a small mountain village would become his grave.
As the man lamented this, he heard footsteps approaching.
Thud- thud-.
In his blurred vision, he saw small feet moving.
At the sight, his heart pounded, and his vision cleared.
Soon, a single figure came into focus.
Jet-black hair and golden eyes.
And a small tear mole beneath the left eye.
A boy, no older than seven, stood there holding a broken kitchen knife.
Despite his fair skin and delicate features, the man felt a faint fear as he looked at the boy.
“You……”
A small, fragile-looking child.
But the man knew.
The monster that had torn apart and killed twenty of his comrades.
And the monster that had torn off his arm was that boy.
“Cough!”
As his heart raced, causing a sudden rush of blood, the man coughed up blood.
The boy, who had been watching him indifferently, opened his mouth.
“Why did you do it?”
“……”
“Why did you do it?!”
As the boy’s thin, unbroken voice echoed, a black shape shimmered behind him like a mirage.
And then.
Slash-.
The man’s remaining arm flew off.
Blood spurted out.
Feeling that the end had truly come, the fear disappeared from the man’s face.
He looked at the boy and laughed.
“Heh, hehe. Why… did I do it?”
The boy was asking.
Why did he burn the village?
Why did he kill the innocent villagers?
There was only one thing the man could say in response.
“Because… you’re weak. You’re weak… so you were trampled.”
“……”
“And… because I was weak… I’m dying… by your hand.”
His voice was faint, as if he could die any moment.
But the firm conviction in his voice left a mark on the boy’s heart.
“…Because we’re weak?”
“The weak are trampled and eliminated, while the strong… crush and evolve.”
“……”
“That is… the age of the Sword Master.”
The world had been conquered by the Sword Master, but it had only become more chaotic because of him.
A harsh world dominated by the principle that the strong monopolize more thoroughly than in the past.
People called it the age of the Sword Master.
“In that sense… you have every right to enjoy the age of the Sword Master.”
If that monster, who had massacred twenty knights with just a kitchen knife, could indeed become a key player in this harsh era.
‘Have fun. Hehe.’
With that thought, the life faded from the man’s eyes.
“……”
The boy stared at the dead man for a moment, then turned his back.
Thud, thud-.
He walked a few steps before stopping.
Near the boy’s feet.
There lay the body of an old woman, bleeding and dead.
The boy stared blankly at her corpse.
Then a voice, as if squeezed out, flowed from his mouth.
“For something… for something that was just going to die like this……”
Whether it was sorrow or joy.
Pain or relief, it was an ambiguous emotion.
A voice mixed with various emotions that didn’t seem to belong to a child.
Growl-.
And in response, the black shape behind the boy rippled greatly and then disappeared.
Three days later.
A middle-aged man carrying a large wooden box entered the mountain village.
“What, what is this?!”
A peddler who had been selling necessities and buying leather in the mountain village for the past few years.
He was horrified by the terrible scene before him.
‘It’s completely burnt down!’
Just three weeks ago, the place that had been a village was now nothing but blackened remains.
‘What happened here?’
The peddler cautiously entered the village, looking around.
Then he stopped abruptly, having noticed something.
Among the blackened remains and the dark red stains scattered around.
The peddler immediately recognized what they were.
‘Bloodstains?!’
A chill ran down his spine.
‘I need to get out of here!’
Bloodstains meant something had happened here.
The trouble in the village might not be over yet.
The peddler was about to turn and flee when.
“Mister.”
“Eek!”
He was startled by the voice behind him and quickly turned around.
His pale face brightened when he saw who had called him.
“You, you are… Yuri, right?”
A child with distinctive black hair and golden eyes.
He remembered the boy who always followed him with curious eyes whenever he visited the village.
The peddler cautiously approached Yuri.
“What happened here?! Why is the village like this?”
As he asked, the peddler looked over Yuri’s appearance.
His clothes were covered in black soot and dark red scabs, and his fingertips were smeared with blood and dirt.
And.
‘What’s with this kid’s eyes?!’
When he met Yuri’s empty gaze, the peddler shivered.
As the peddler involuntarily took a step back, Yuri, who had been standing silently, opened his mouth again.
“…Mister.”
“Huh? What is it?”
“Do you know what this is?”
Yuri held out a small token to the peddler.
It was something he had found on the person who had attacked the village.
The peddler squinted at the item Yuri held out.
“Huh? That’s?”
It was an iron badge marked with a serpent-like twisted sword emblem.
The peddler, who had been doing business in the vicinity, quickly recognized the emblem.
“It looks like the emblem of the Pauli family.”
“Pauli… family?”
“You know, the family that was just appointed as the lords of this nearby territory? Those greedy bastards raised the tolls by 50% without any real ability! What are they trying to squeeze out of this backwater village? They’re practically telling us peddlers to starve to death!”
“……”
“I heard that to become a lord, he gathered a few mercenaries and hastily formed a knight order… and to make up for the money spent on that, they’ve been stripping the territory bare.”
The peddler, filled with resentment, rambled on.
Realizing his ranting, he cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Ahem! Anyway, that emblem seems to be from the Pauli family… where did you get it?”
“…Thank you.”
In response to the peddler’s question, Yuri took back the badge and bowed his head slightly.
Then he walked away silently.
“Hey, kid!”
The peddler tried to grab Yuri, but his body wouldn’t move.
An unknown dread had paralyzed him.
Meanwhile, Yuri’s eyes turned red as he walked away.
‘Because we’re weak, we were trampled?’
That’s the age of the Sword Master?
If such a ridiculous reason had caused this…
‘You should experience being trampled too.’
Yuri’s shadow quivered slightly in response to his strong resolve.
It was only after Yuri had disappeared into the distance that the peddler exhaled the breath he had been holding.
“Phew! What, what was that?!”
Panting, he tilted his head in confusion.
‘Come to think of it, that thing at his waist, wasn’t it… a knife?’
His memory was hazy, but he vaguely recalled a broken kitchen knife at Yuri’s waist.
A knife covered in dirt, no less.
‘Was it really a kitchen knife?’
As he tried to recall, he noticed something behind where Yuri had been standing and froze.
The peddler’s eyes landed on the spot.
There, dozens of freshly made earthen graves were mounded.
“Sigh…”
The peddler realized.
Yuri’s dirt-covered, blood-stained hands.
The broken, muddy kitchen knife.
He understood what they meant.
‘Did he make those graves all by himself?’
The peddler’s gaze lingered on the mounds for a long time.
And two weeks later.
News swept through the area near Yuri’s mountain village.
[The Pauli family was devoured by a monster!]
The family, who had a reputation in the countryside, was annihilated overnight.
The Pauli family mansion had burned down, and there were no survivors among those who had been in the mansion at the time.
Some people, awakened by the desperate screams from the mansion that night, spoke in unison.
A gigantic black monster had swallowed the Pauli mansion whole.
For a while, people gossiped about the monster that had destroyed the Pauli family whenever they gathered.
However, no one knew about the broken kitchen knife left abandoned in a corner of the burnt Pauli mansion.
And then…
Eight years passed.