The Sword Emperor Transmigrates-Chapter 285

It’s tough!

As Leonard’s Evil-Repelling Sword of Heaven pierced through the creature’s forehead, he felt an overwhelming resistance—one that seemed to transcend the very concept of durability.

Even at the level of a True God, it couldn’t be penetrated. This wasn’t just about thick skin or dense flesh. The being before him was a Great Evil, a creature born from the accumulated remains of ancient gods compressed over countless ages like layers of sedimentary rock. Its density was beyond reason.

And yet, it was still just a newborn. Despite being incomplete, its soul and body were not yet fully unified, and even after Hades siphoned some of its power, it was already on par with Great Gods. If it were to fully ascend to godhood, it might even reach the level of a Chief God.

If Crom Dubh were to reach that state, it would be the end. The fighters who stood against this True God–level entity were barely able to muster enough power for a single decisive battle. Even if they could fight multiple times, against a Chief God–level monster, combat itself would be meaningless.

...I will end it now, right here and now!

Before the allied forces were completely exhausted, Leonard had to defeat Crom Dubh’s incomplete form. This was his role in the final battle.

The moment the fight began, he had amplified his Qi of the Four Symbols to Deification and struck with his strongest attack in an attempt to kill the enemy in one blow. Though the attempt had failed, the blood and spiritual energy spilling from Crom Dubh’s forehead was proof that he had harmed the creature.

Crom Dubh was neither an invincible nor unkillable opponent. If one strike wasn’t enough to kill it, then he would simply strike again and again—until its life was carved away.

Blazing Wings Ignition

As Leonard’s will surged, the pair of wings flickering behind his back exploded, propelling him forward at a speed faster than sound. There was no concept of acceleration.

The moment he launched himself, he had already arrived.

Gurgle—

Even with Leonard’s near-instantaneous velocity, the creature reacted. No, react wasn’t the right word. The countless tendrils sprouting from Crom Dubh’s body simply shifted in response, as if they had instinctively predicted his approach.

“What?!”

Leonard, whose perception had long since transcended human limits, saw through Crom Dubh immediately. Its tendrils weren’t just for decoration. On their own, they didn’t possess significant offensive or defensive power.

What mattered was their function—they read distortions in the space-time continuum, allowing Crom Dubh to predict the future at an absurd level close to that of precognition.

Whether Leonard moved at supersonic speed, or even as fast as light, surprise attacks were impossible as long as those tendrils existed. The only reason his first strike had landed was because the creature had yet to fully react after emerging from the dimensional rift.

A darkness surged from the thousands of writhing tendrils, preemptively flooding the space along Leonard’s trajectory.

It was a crude and chaotic energy—nothing more than unrefined malice spewed forth as a curse that stained the fabric of space. In both quantity and quality, it was utterly insufficient to pierce Leonard’s armor made of the Black Tortoise Qi. And yet, Leonard’s expression darkened.

This isn’t just an attack—it’s an attempt to reclaim control of the netherworld from Hades... It’s corruption!

Even knowing this, Leonard couldn’t carelessly step into the abyss. Because of the darkness, the space surrounding Crom Dubh was no longer the netherworld. It was becoming the Demonic Realm.

Like the Void Deities, even in an incomplete state, Crom Dubh could begin to recover its lost divinity if it established its own territory.

A Great Evil with the potential of a Chief God. If even a fraction of its full power were restored, Leonard wouldn’t have the luxury of resistance—he would simply be erased.

But if he stood by and did nothing, he would be allowing Crom Dubh to fully regain its divinity and complete its transformation into an Evil God of the Apocalypse.

—Tch. The power level is on a completely different scale... Ten minutes at most.

At this moment, there was only one being in the netherworld capable of contesting for territorial dominance—Hades.

The Underworld King, donning the appearance of a deathly pale, sickly young boy, pointed his spear, and the ink-black darkness that had spread like a plague split apart.

—Go!

Leonard didn’t respond with words. He swung his sword.

Sky-breaking Demon Quell

The blade, empowered by the White Tiger’s Qi, expanded dozens of times and slashed outward in a massive arc, enlarging the path Hades had carved open.

If the darkness corrupted space itself, then he would simply carve through space.

With brute force, the chaotic darkness was ripped apart, revealing the evil tendril dragon lurking within.

Hundreds—no, thousands—of gleaming eyes snapped open, each filled with nothing but pure malice, all locking onto Leonard. A creature that didn’t even need eyes had created them for one purpose: to unleash its curse.

A visible, physical manifestation of an overwhelming reality-warping malediction surged toward him.

“GET—THE HELL—OUT!”

Electricity crackled across Leonard’s cape, amplifying his roar.

Unlike in this world, dragons were sacred beings in the Central Plains. Legends spoke of how a single dragon’s cry could banish spirits and purge evil from the hearts of men.

The swarm of curses hurtling toward him shattered and dispersed like a flock of bats scattered by a storm. Leonard’s roar—coupled with his ascent to a True God, which allowed his roar to become very similar to that of a real dragon—was something the Great Evils despised.

■■■■■■...!

With its divinity being challenged by Hades and its rage further provoked, Crom Dubh grew more ferocious. Jagged wings—or perhaps twisted horns—began to sprout from its writhing form, making its already grotesque appearance even more horrifying.

And it wasn’t just its outward appearance. Compared to when it had first arrived in the netherworld, its presence had already increased by twenty percent.

Despite Hades’s interference, it was still regaining its true form.

“——Here I come.”

With every passing second, Leonard’s odds worsened, but he had no time for hesitation. A multicolored blade aura ignited in his grasp. He charged forward.

* * *

While Leonard and Crom Dubh clashed, another battle was reaching its climax. The fight between Talos and Hydra was already moving toward its conclusion.

Hydra, which had lost one of its heads after relying too much on its own venom, only had three remaining heads. On the other side, the bronze giant Talos, once thought of as invincible, had lost nearly 80% of its armor plating.

Within its cockpit, Drake could feel a dull throbbing pain from deep within him. It was a sign that Hydra’s poison had begun seeping through.

I can’t last much longer... I need to finish Hydra before Talos is completely disabled!

Talos, the legendary bronze giant that once protected Crete, had two known weaknesses: a nail sealing the fuel inlet at its heel and a lack of a dedicated cooling system.

In legend, the nail was the very weakness that the Argonauts had exploited, but the Talos crafted by the Jehoia family lacked this feature and was crafted to be a one-time-use weapon, so such a vulnerability did not exist.

But the other vulnerability remained.

Without a dedicated cooling system, the armor of this newly crafted Talos will heat up and soften.

Like a living furnace, Talos could incinerate anything—even Hydra’s flesh. But at the same time, its bronze plating was melting.

Its body was still made of bronze, and it was not possible to change the properties of metal, which would melt when heated enough. No matter how much divine blessing or advanced metallurgy had improved it, its operational time was finite.

To defeat Hydra, the only option was to push Talos’s heat output to the maximum. However, this came at the cost of its defense and durability—a cruel contradiction. Without its heat, Talos was nothing more than an oversized contraption, smaller and lighter than Hydra, lacking any significant offensive capability.

Hydra was a monster so formidable that even the weapons of the mythological era had to be sacrificed to defeat it. It was a creature that only Heracles had managed to slay.

If not for the blessing of Poseidon, the man known as Drake, leader of Wild Hunt, might have barely reached the level of a Transcendence Tier warrior. Even now, as he trembled uncontrollably, he gripped the controls with all his might.

“...A chance to drive a legendary war machine from the mythological era and take down the same monster that a great hero barely managed to defeat? Sounds like the best deal ever!” ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

The moment he joined the battle, he had already accepted death. Becoming Talos’s pilot had at least ensured that none of his Wild Hunt crew were conscripted. As both a captain and a leader, he had already done everything he needed to—and most of what he wanted to.

Years of drifting across the land, never settling, had finally come to an end. Three years in the empire had washed away all lingering attachments.

Now, no longer the leader of Wild Hunt and no longer the captain of the Golden Hind, Drake had nothing left to hold back. It was time to burn his life to the very end.

“Let’s go, Talos! Let’s reclaim the honor you lost in the past—let’s finish what was left undone!”

The bronze giant held no real will of its own—at least, not one that could be called a soul. It had no memory of the past era. And yet, its bronze eyes flared a deep crimson as its turbines roared to life, as if fueled by Drake’s own burning determination.

Now even more ferocious despite having lost several heads, Hydra let out a monstrous howl and prepared to meet its opponent head-on.

Talos began its charge.

Boom—! Boom—! BOOM—! BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM—!

The three serpentine heads spewed torrents of lethal venom, missing by mere inches as Talos slipped beneath Hydra’s massive body. The bronze giant struck the ground to propel itself into the air.

Using its full weight, Talos wrapped all four limbs around one of the remaining heads and ripped it apart with sheer brute force.

Two heads left. But Hydra wasn’t just going to sit back and take it.

Talos was faster and more agile, but at the end of the day, it was still a thirty-meter-tall bronze giant. There was a limit to what it could evade.

One of Hydra’s remaining heads—the infamous immortal head—lunged forward, its golden scales glimmering. It sank its fangs into Talos’s ankle and hurled Talos through the air.

“Urk—AAAGH?!”

Inside the cockpit, Drake felt his organs violently churn. His lower body, already exposed to Hydra’s venom, was torn apart at the knees. His blood spewed everywhere.

A weaker man would have died from shock on the spot. Even a stronger one would have been left writhing in agony, barely clinging to life.

But Drake?

He bit down hard on his tongue, forcing himself to stay conscious as he seized the controls and dodged Hydra’s follow-up attack. In that brief moment, venomous breath rained down where Talos had been, melting the ground into a massive crater dozens of meters deep.

“Ugh...cough...d-damn it...! Even the internal armor’s failing...?!”

Relentless waves of venom had eaten away at Talos’s defenses, and now the physical blows were finishing the job. Even Talos’s legendary durability had long since reached its limit.

Poison had infiltrated the war machine’s very circuits, reducing its movement efficiency, while Drake himself was on the verge of death, his body nearing total collapse.

Shiiiiiiiing!!!

Talos, already corroded beyond recognition, suddenly split open at the chest and revealed its blazing power core. The intense heat it had accumulated from prolonged combat was unleashed in a concentrated beam of energy.

A devastating blast erupted, fueled by every last drop of ichor, the divine liquid once known as the Blood of the Gods. The strike carried enough destructive force and power to erase an entire mountain and threaten even Hydra’s existence.

Hydra acted on instinct and recoiled, its immortal head pulling back in retreat while the last remaining ordinary head sacrificed itself as a shield.

BOOOOOOOM—!

The final expendable head detonated under the sheer intensity of Talos’s energy beam, leaving only one head remaining—the immortal head. It was the very head that Heracles himself had failed to cut off and chosen to bury beneath a mountain.

As Drake and Talos were not able to exterminate Hydra with their final desperate attack, their chance of victory was as good as gone.

—■■■■■...!

As if sensing it instinctively, Hydra let out a sinister chuckle despite its battered and mangled form. It was clear that it intended to toy with its opponent in its final moments.

A hissing sound filled the air as steam billowed from Talos’s overheated body, the last remnants of its heat dissipating. If it had been a living being, one might have thought it was losing its very soul. The massive bronze giant, now cooled to the core by the energy blast, was no longer a threat to Hydra.

Neither its punches nor its kicks—nor even the desperate grip that had torn away eight of Hydra’s heads—could do anything to the monster’s undying flesh.

Victory belonged to Hydra.

“...Not... yet...” Drake’s voice, ragged and barely audible, cut through the thick tension.

His lower body had melted away, leaving only his upper half remaining in the cockpit. He struck the control levers with trembling hands, as if urging Talos forward—urging the colossus to keep fighting just a little longer.

The fire in his lifeless eyes burned brighter.

“Not yet...! I’m... not done... yet...!”

With a grinding screech, Talos’s knee joints shifted. Half-melted and with a metal frame warped and twisted beyond recognition, Talos somehow pushed itself back up.

Rather than being shocked by this desperate display, Hydra only sneered and continued to approach. It still hadn’t realized its mistake. It hadn’t understood why Drake had been pushing it in this direction or why he had been attacking and evading, always guiding the battle toward a single point.

“This is it... my final move...! I, Drake, will not let my adventure end in defeat!!!”

Talos, hunched forward as if bracing itself, suddenly charged. If it fell now, it would be over.

If Hydra so much as shifted aside, the desperate attack would amount to nothing. And yet, the beast did not evade. It stood there, waiting. It wanted to crush even this final act of defiance beneath its monstrous might.

In doing so, Hydra sealed its fate. The act of mocking the adventurer’s indomitable spirit and the bronze giant’s unyielding strength became the very thing that sealed the fate of the Monstrous God Hydra.

Kaaaaboooooom!!!