Ending Maker - Chapter 193
EPISODE 193 – LORD PROTECTOR (1)
The war against the Argon Empire was over.
But neither side thought that true peace had come.
It was a mere temporary truce.
“The war is not over.”
The empire did not want to give up on the Cilates Plains, the continent’s largest breadbasket.
And so did the Sälen Kingdom, which was already enjoying the benefits of the Cilates Plains.
“A fight that will only end if one side falls.”
But neither side wanted it to escalate into an all-out war.
Because neither side had an absolute advantage.
Therefore, the Sälen Kingdom and the Argon Empire had fought as many as eight times in the past hundred years.
There had been hundreds of battles, including small local battles.
“I don’t hate it.”
If it weren’t for the war, his life would have ended at best as a back alley thug.
Perhaps he wouldn’t even be able to do that because he’d die from starvation.
When war broke out, there would always be a shortage of troops.
He was moving around the back alleys and became a soldier when he was told that he would be given bread.
It was good at first.
After all, he had bread to eat at every meal, and he had a bed which he could lie down and comfortably sleep on.
The life of eating and sleeping without being deprived of food or being attacked while sleeping was like heaven to him at that time.
But the situation changed when he stood on the real battlefield.
He couldn’t remember the day of the first battle no matter how much he thought of it.
All he remembered was the fact that he was the only one who survived in the barracks where 20 people lived together, and the fact that the tall guy who was always talking loudly in the bed next to him had been shot to death by an arrow on his forehead as soon as the battle started.
The war continued, and the skinny boy struggled to not die as he began to learn the know-how of surviving.
And in the end, he didn’t just survive as he even learned how to kill others.
“I don’t want to die.”
He lived his life in pain, yet he was obsessed with living.
He fought to live and killed to live.
He couldn’t even remember when and where he did his first kill, but he did remember what he called his first murder – the murder he consciously committed.
When the spear pierced the other person’s chest.
When the soldier in front of him, whom he even didn’t know their name, died.
He didn’t experience much joy in surviving.
He didn’t experience any sort of pleasure in killing and ending a life with his own hands.
He was just afraid.
Of death.
Of dying.
Time passed, and he learned more and more ways on how to fight. His know-how became skills, and his skills made him work hard.
It was natural for a person to want to do better if he did well on something.
Moreover, his efforts to not die on the battlefield made him become stronger.
The war ended, and the beggar from the back alleys who didn’t even receive a name from his parents eventually became a knight.
“And 20 years later.”
After a moment of peace and two wars.
The knight became a count, and the count became a duke.
Lord Protector.
The hero who saved the country in its crisis.
He just fought and fought as he rose in rank and even received such a grand name.
“Lord Protector, there’s a child I want to introduce to you.”
The second king.
He had no significant relationship with the first king he saw at the post-war knighthood ceremony.
But he had quite an exchange with the second king.
Because he saved that person’s life, and that person made him a count.
When the last war ended, that person made him a duke, someone like him who was once a commoner and didn’t even know who his parents were.
“He’s my son. He was born on the eve of the war, so I didn’t have the chance to introduce him. Still, you must have heard of him, right?”
The second king smiled with his good-looking face, and the other counted the numbers in his head.
The third war of his life lasted for as long as seven years, so if the child had been born on the eve of the war, the child would be around eight years old.
“Henry, come here.”
When the king beckoned, the little boy hiding behind the queen ran and stood next to the second king.
The child who would become the third king in his life if nothing bad happens.
The boy was very excited for some reason, and he looked up at the Lord Protector with a blush on his face, greeting the Lord Protector in a clumsy yet serious manner before the Lord Protector could greet him first.
“I’m Henry D. Sälen. Lord Protector.”
The child’s eyes were sparkling as if he was looking at a hero from a storybook and not at a vassal.
The Lord Protector knelt in front of the child with the same name as the first king he met, and after some time, he put his name out of his mouth.
“The Duke of Antarius, Gray Antarius, humbly greets you.”
The last name was given by the first king, and the title was given by the second king.
At his greeting, the future third king brightly smiled like the sun in his excitement.
***
“<Dig!>”
“<Gravity Pull!>”
Cordelia and Prince Dion shouted almost simultaneously.
Because both of them knew well that ordinary attack magic did not work on someone from the Ten Great Swordmasters.
So they dug the ground and pulled him down with gravity. They focused on preventing his movement.
Boooom!
The Lord Protector was slammed into the ground.
But Cordelia and Dion did not let their guard down. Even though their opponent had declined from age now, he was still the hero who saved the Sälen Kingdom in its crisis in the past, and was the Lord Protector, one of the Ten Great Swordmasters.
“Uuuuugh!”
Prince Dion sweated as he strengthened his gravity magic, but he couldn’t beat the Lord Protector.
He also couldn’t stop the sword attack the Lord Protector did while being pulled down by gravity.
Shing-!
The Lord Protector cut the air.
No, he cut the magic with his aura blade. The magic formation was broken, nullifying the magic.
It was generally not possible.
A magic formation wouldn’t just break from the slash of an aura blade in the air.
But it was the sword of someone from the Ten Great Swordmasters.
It was possible for them to read the flow of mana and accurately cut its core.
“Ugh!”
Prince Dion suffered from the backlash of the forced destruction of his magic, stepping back as he groaned while Jude and Princess Daphne held their breaths. Right after the magic was broken, they focused all their attention on the Lord Protector who leapt up from the pit.
‘We need to buy time.’
That’s the victory condition for this fight.
We must not overdo it.
We should focus on buying time.
We should actively utilize Daphne and Dion.
We should fight together instead of protecting the two.
‘They don’t need protection.’
Henry II, his queens, and Princess Darianne had fled.
Even if Princess Daphne and Prince Dion died, the blood of the founder king would still continue.
‘Let’s go.’
He didn’t have the time to think anymore. Even if it was hard, they had to stop the Lord Protector from and moving as they hold him back.
‘Black Dragon’s Roar! Link!’
T/N: The word ‘link’ here refers to the link in mathematical knot theory, which is a collection of knots that do not intersect but can be linked or knotted with each other. An example of that is the Hopf link we saw in a past chapter. But seriously, Jude’s naming sense for his attacks is just weird…
Jude shot out the black dragon’s energy in succession towards the Lord Protector. Princess Daphne closely watched the Lord Protector destroy the black dragons with his sword covered with a dark blue aura. When he defeated the fourth black dragon, she kicked the ground.
Princess Daphne’s combat power.
Her sword was sharp and fast. But it wasn’t enough to reach the Lord Protector. He rotated his body like a top and the sword he swung deflected her sword, but Jude narrowed the distance with his Hyper-Fast Thunderbolt. As he charged at a tremendous speed, he threw his fist filled with the energy of the black dragon towards the Lord Protector.
Booooom!
The energy of the black dragon missed.
The Lord Protector stretched out his sword aura and made the black dragon’s energy hit the wall. He lowered his body as if lying on the ground before he soared like a snake and aimed for Princess Darianne.
“The Holy King’s Light!”
At that moment, Prince Dion cried out and a white light from the sky covered Princess Daphne.
“Haa!”
Princess Daphne let out a spirited shout as she swung her sword, locking swords with the Lord Protector.
Though her precision and skill proficiency was incomparable to his, it became possible for her to be on par with the Lord Protector in that momentary increase in power.
“Euaaa!”
When Princess Daphne let out a spirited shout again and crossed swords with the Lord Protector, he let his sword go with the flow instead of resisting. He stepped back and looked at Princess Daphne.
“Is it the blood of the Holy King?”
The special ability of the first king.
It gave the first king, Lion D. Salen, a powerful strength for a moment.
It seemed that it was Prince Dion who inherited that special ability rather than Princess Daphne.
Instead of answering, Princess Daphne fixed her sword stance while Jude instantly measured Princess Daphne’s power.
If he added Dion’s support, her overall combat power was stronger than Lucas but weaker than Jude himself.
At this rate, it was possible for them to fight together.
‘I must match with Princess Daphne.’
Princess Daphne was not Cordelia. It was impossible for him and the princess to team up as naturally as he and Cordelia did.
But if neither side helped each other, it would be hard to land a proper attack.
“Crown Princess!”
“Support me!”
At the moment Jude shouted, Princess Daphne cried and rushed towards the Lord Protector, and Jude also kicked the ground.
And Cordelia thought as she watched all this.
‘It’s impossible.’
We can’t win this way.
The moment she saw it, she knew.
Their difference in power was too big.
Wild beasts were able to instinctively sense the strength of their opponents the moment they encountered them.
So did Cordelia.
The Lord Protector was strong.
It was worse than the strange feeling she felt the moment she met First Sword, but it was clear to her that the Lord Protector was a strong person she and Jude could not win against.
What should we do then?
How do we overcome this current crisis?
Jude and Daphne’s teamwork began. Prince Dion couldn’t do anything else because he was having a hard time in just supporting Princess Daphne.
‘Should I join?’
Should I work with them?
No. My senses and intuition are telling me no.
I have to do something else.
I have to find another way.
Cordelia’s gaze turned to the divine sword.
Divine Sword Claíomh Solais.
But she couldn’t just take it away. Because she had already discussed it with Jude.
‘You can’t use the divine sword.’
First of all, it was dangerous.
It was the sword used by Solari, an archangel and the one who was called the sun god.
Cordelia used Ancestral Regression and became an angel, but she was still an ordinary angel, so if she tried to rashly use it, she wouldn’t be able to handle its power, and there was a possibility of her soul and body being damaged.
‘The core of the barrier will break too.’
The divine sword was both the core and the power source of the barrier.
Just as how a remote control would no longer work if it didn’t have batteries, the barrier would disappear as soon as the divine sword was removed.
‘He can’t remove it too.’
The reason why the Lord Protector decided to kill all the royal family members was because it was impossible for him to pull out the divine sword.
‘Perhaps if it’s you… You’re an angel, so it may be possible. But then, it’s like we’re fulfilling the wish of the demon followers ourselves.’
That was what Jude had said.
In the game, the demon followers placed demonic humans and demons on the royal capital when the barrier disappeared, and they summoned a Hell Gate in the end.
Boooom!
Along with the roar, Princess Daphne was greatly thrown back while Jude managed to escape the Lord Protector’s sword with the Hyper-Fast Thunderbolt.
The dark blue aura blade that was originally intended to cut Jude left deep marks on the floor and walls instead.
“Cordelia!”
Jude shouted. He tried to send an attack towards the Lord Protector, but the latter naturally avoided it.
And Cordelia understood.
Apart from Jude’s cry to join them, she realized why she felt that the fight was futile the way it was now.
‘The difference in experience.’
She could say that Jude had a slight edge when it came to their physical abilities.
But if she added the Lord Protector’s skills and experience, a gap that Jude could not overcome was created.
‘Great swordmaster.’
He was that strong even though he had declined because of his age.
Among the Ten Great Swordmasters, the Sword of Light was one of the strongest – so how powerful was First Sword?
‘He was nice to us back then.’
He didn’t want to kill us.
He didn’t fight us with his full power then.
‘Father-in-law.’
She remembered Count Bayer who was fighting against First Sword at that moment.
But Cordelia stopped all her thoughts.
She sharpened her senses when she saw Princess Daphne charging towards the Lord Protector again.
Cordelia herself began to think.
She focused.
Thus, she awakened her wild beast’s senses.
What they needed the most now.
The way to become victorious.
Her eyes turned to the divine sword again.
And there was a flash of light again.
“Uooooh!”
Jude roared and let out the energy of the black dragon, and the Lord Protector cut down the energy with his sword attack.
Princess Daphne attacked from behind, but he easily blocked it.
If it continued like this, they wouldn’t last long.
Both Jude and Princess Daphne were struggling and wasting their stamina and energy.
So before they were completely exhausted, she had to do something before they collapse.
Boooom!
The attack of the Lord Protector did not stop at destroying the floor as it also split the entire floor into two. The aftermath of the devastating attack alone was enough to send Jude and Daphne flying.
And Cordelia flew with her wings. She pierced through the center of the barrier and stood in front of the divine sword.
“Jude!”
At her loud cry, Jude turned his gaze and made eye contact with Cordelia.
Cordelia’s thoughts.
And what they should do from now on.
She couldn’t tell him all.
But telling him some were enough.
‘Trust me.’
Jude stopped his calculations. He once again rushed towards the Lord Protector.
Princess Daphne roared and joined him, and Prince Dion’s eyes turned bloodshot as he awakened the special ability of the Holy King.
And Cordelia looked at the divine sword.
She widely spread out her angel wings and grabbed the divine sword.