Chapter 140: Forging Twilight

The wind rushed past him as Valerian’s figure fell down from the sky. His body was still enveloped by the starry mist of his divine mana, and he held the unfinished Twilight in his hand.

The snake’s head turned to him, its eyes burning with hate and anger. He met the snake’s reptilian eyes with his own slitted ones, not willing to back down even a fraction.

While falling from the sky, he channeled his mana into Twilight; the smoke began to intensify with the increased fuel. When he neared the snake, Valerian gripped the handle with both his hands and covered the blade with a layer of space mana.

The purple hue covered it instantly; his body stopped mid-air and his grip tightened.

The serpent seemed to have sensed that something was off and moved to the side, slipping through the trees like they weren’t even there.

Valerian followed the snake’s movements with his eyes, and in one clean motion, he brought down the blade. Following the line created by the downward slash, a thin line appeared in the space in front of him.

For a moment, it seemed like nothing happened; then reality caught up with the attack. Down in the white forest, a long line reaching for hundreds of meters appeared where his blade passed.

The trees split apart; some only lost a few branches, but others were split right down the middle. A deep but thin scar reached into the ground. The attack didn’t uproot hundreds of trees or create a large crater. It simply cut right through the space, only slicing through the objects right in its path, leaving everything else alone.

’Tsk, it didn’t work.’

The cause for his annoyance was the huge white serpent that slithered through the trees completely unharmed. With its high speed and mobility, it managed to move to the side before the attack could reach it and completely avoided the space slash.

Letting out a deep breath, an action that stuck with him even after losing his lungs, Valerian teleported down in front of the serpent. Its eyes widened slightly when he appeared right before it; in an act of agility that was unbefitting for a beast of its scale, the snake whipped its tail around.

The heavy lower part of its body moved towards Valerian, who had enough time to simply teleport away again, but he chose not to do it and face it head-on.

When the tail neared him, he brought the shadowy form of Twilight up and fueled a large amount of his divine mana into it. When the tail hit, he could feel his body being ripped apart from within and the blade digging into his palm.

But he ignored it and supplied even more mana into the sword, bringing his current body to its absolute limits. While defending against the heavy strike, Valerian could feel a connection with Twilight through his divine mana, and his eyes widened when he saw the shadowy form of it slowly becoming more tangible.

’It’s working!’

While the excitement rushed through him, his foot lost its grip on the forest floor, and his body was sent flying away by the force of the tail strike.

While his body ripped through the trees, his mind was completely occupied by the revelation that he had just received, as he completely ignored the dozens of trees he took down.

’It actually worked; Twilight became slightly more tangible! Maybe it’s because the snake is so loaded with spatial mana, and my connection to space somehow interacts with it... I don’t know if that’s it, but it doesn’t matter.’

Deciding that he took down enough trees, Valerian teleported back to the snake completely unharmed. His body was way too durable to be actually hurt by just a few trees, and even if he were hurt, it was nothing his body couldn’t fix.

Now standing back before the snake, he raised the sword and pumped his divine mana into it before slicing down at its white scales. Like before, he wasn’t able to cut through it, but now that the sword was closer to being done, he could actually see a thin line appear where the sword struck; it was barely visible, but it was there.

Not letting up, he began to strike the sword again and again into the body of the serpent, trying to replicate what happened the last time. But unfortunately, his attacks didn’t seem to have the same effect, and he couldn’t feel any change happening with the sword.

The serpent felt the attacks and tried to slam its heavy body into him again. Valerian raised Twilight, but this time made sure to anchor himself so he doesn’t lose his footing again.

He felt the force of the beast again, and he fueled more of his mana into Twilight. Different from when he was just attacking it, now he could clearly feel the changes that were happening with the blade.

It slowly lost more and more of its shadowy and mist-like form and became more like an actual sword.

’Only a bit more!’

But then the snake pulled back its tail when it noticed that it wouldn’t be able to just slam him away, something that caused a wave of annoyance to rush through Valerian.

’This piece of shit, I was so close.’

Looking down, he now held a real handle in his hand; it wasn’t a somewhat handle-shaped shadow anymore, but the real handle of a sword.

It was long enough to be held with both hands and wrapped in a black fabric that he wasn’t able to make out the material of. The shadow began again right after the crossguard, which had a weird shape.

Where normally a round crossguard took its place, was now a small rotating black hole-looking object. But the black hole didn’t seem to have an effect on the surrounding gravity and only served an aesthetic purpose.

Valerian’s eyes snapped up to the head of the snake, and their purple eyes met. Valerian went low and rushed towards the snake, raising Twilight.

"Khssssssss!!"

The serpent opened its jaws, and the long fangs in its mouth began to glow purple. At the same time, Valerian channeled an enormous amount of mana into Twilight and clashed straight with its fangs.

They were locked in a stalemate, as neither backed down and only fueled more mana into their attack. The purple glow around the fangs increased even more while Valerian pushed his body to its limits once again to push past his current output limit.

Slowly, the darkness that hid the rest of the blade began to recede, and a finished blade took its place. When the shadow only covered the tip of the blade, Valerian pushed even more of his divine mana into the blade to finally finish it.

With that last push, his divine mana raced to the tip and chased away the rest of the darkness. When the last of the darkness was gone, a large explosion of Valerian’s divine mana tore through the surroundings.

The large discharge of divine mana caused the surrounding space to retract into the black hole at the crossguard. Valerian stood dumbfounded when he saw how the space was getting sucked into the blade.

Even the serpent, a monster that was born and lived its life in a dimension overflowing with space mana, wasn’t able to resist the pull and was sucked into it. Valerian could feel a strange feeling enter into his body through the blade, but he had to admit that this feeling didn’t feel bad at all and was actually very pleasant, like holding an old companion.

When the sucking force of the blade finally stopped, Valerian began to fall to the ground, but before he could hit the ground, his body decelerated, and he gently landed on what should have been a forest.

’I didn’t expect... that.’

He turned around, but the lush forest that consisted of white trees with purple leaves was completely gone. Everywhere he turned was only a wasteland. It looked like someone took a ginormous spoon and took a big chunk out of the world, with him standing in the very middle.

The snake that previously caused him so much trouble was completely gone, not leaving anything behind.

Looking down, for the first time he saw the form of the now-finished Twilight, and he couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear like a child on its birthday.

’It’s so cool.’

His grip tightened around the now-finished sword. The handle looked the same way he had previously seen with the black fabric wrapped around it. The crossguard also stayed in place like the black hole that just sucked in everything around him.

The blade itself was onyx black, the same color as his horns, and like his horns, there was a subtle purple glow inside it shining into the outside world.

If someone were to ignore the black hole, it looked like a perfectly slightly glowing katana, something he actually preferred. He didn’t want to run around with a sword that glowed in the dark like a Christmas tree.

He could also feel the connection that was previously severed by Ravena connecting him once again with the sword.

With a thought, the sword disappeared from his hand before reappearing again when he called for it.

’Haaa, that’s one goal done.’

Turning back to the large wasteland around him, he let out a sigh before picking a direction and walking there, ready to face whatever monster might find him with the now-finished Twilight.

A/N I did it! Finally, another upload!

You must have been quite annoyed that there hasn’t been another Chapter in so long.

And the main reason why that was, was because I wasn’t sure what I should do with Twilight; the weapon caused me a lot of headache, and so I just chose to finish it now and be done with it.

What do you think of the design?

If you want to see an image, go join the discord!