Chapter 184: War of Attrition

Inside the ruins of an ancient cathedral, two men stood opposed to one another at the threshold of the Emperor Rank.

One looked glorious, a great knight clad in brilliant golden armor, wielding a radiant sword that shone with the light of grace.

The other…

Was a monster with blistered red skin.

An ancient old man whose red hair had begun to surrender to streaks of white, his upper body completely bare after his clothes had been torn to shreds. Even his hunter's hat had been blown away and lost somewhere amid the destruction.

His sword was rusted.

An ancient weapon that looked as though time itself had long since passed it by.

If any ordinary human were to witness this bloody confrontation, they would undoubtedly believe that a magnificent golden hunter was battling one of the filthy monsters born from the Curse.

Never realizing that the truth was the complete opposite.

Asterion's bloodshot eyes flared.

With a violent war cry, the old man took a single step and blew apart the ground beneath him.

The Red Demon erased the distance between them.

His grip tightened around his rusted sword as he swung vertically for his opponent's head, but the Golden Dawn Knight intercepted the blow with a swift strike of his divine blade.

Even then, Asterion's momentum forced him backward.

The knight's feet sank into the earth as sparks erupted from the point where their swords ground against one another.

Asterion stayed on him.

He attacked ferociously from the right and left.

From above and below.

From every possible direction.

Despite looking completely insane in that crimson form, his swordsmanship hadn't deteriorated in the slightest.

And that battered, rusted sword was anything but ordinary.

It was heavy.

An ordinary sword would have shattered against the Golden Dawn Knight's divine blade.

Even the black katana had struggled against it.

But the rusted sword didn't.

In fact, it was the only weapon in Asterion's entire arsenal capable of enduring the amount of aura the Red Demon unleashed whenever he entered his strongest form.

The Golden Dawn Knight erupted with aura in response to the thunderous barrage of strikes.

Fighting through instinct alone, he stood his ground against the demon's rampage.

Their battle became more violent than ever.

Their swords left intertwining trails of crimson and gold around them, while cutting arcs flew in every direction in far greater numbers than before.

Asterion's rusted blade scraped across the golden armor and left a mark.

The divine sword struck Asterion's crimson skin…

And bounced away as though the old man were wearing invisible armor.

That fact alone changed everything.

The old hunter's ability to withstand his opponent's attacks completely reversed the flow of the battle and finally gave him the upper hand.

This time, it was the Golden Dawn Knight who retreated.

One step after another.

Forced backward by Asterion's momentum and terrifying control over his aura.

The scratches covering the knight's armor gradually grew deeper despite the enormous amount of aura reinforcing it.

At this rate…

It was only a matter of time before the Golden Dawn Knight's actual body was exposed.

The knight's body instinctively sensed the danger.

Retreating wasn't an option when the old man before him could erase any distance with a single step.

But continuing this brutal exchange would only result in his armor collapsing before the hunter's body did.

The Golden Dawn Knight suddenly planted one foot forward.

His golden aura expanded.

Then it wrapped around Asterion.

Golden chains erupted from nowhere, surrounding the Red Demon before crawling across his crimson skin like enormous serpents attempting to crush him.

Countless spears anchored the chains around him, driving deep into the ground.

Asterion immediately tried to break free, but it wasn't easy.

The Golden Dawn Knight had poured a tremendous amount of aura into the chains, making them extraordinarily difficult to destroy.

And yet…

The Red Demon tore his way through them through sheer brutality.

He ripped them apart with the free hand that wasn't holding his sword.

Then with his teeth.

Fangs sank into golden metal, biting through it as though Asterion were some savage beast trying to devour its prey.

A formation capable of completely restraining a King was torn apart within seconds by a demonic old man.

But those few seconds were all the Golden Dawn Knight had needed.

He had never intended to restrain Asterion for long.

The instant the last chain broke, Asterion found himself facing a horrifying eruption of aura.

And immediately understood.

His opponent had only wanted time.

Time to prepare one enormous killing blow.

SLAAAAASH!!!!!

The sound of the strike thundered through the cathedral like the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

Every window throughout the cathedral shattered under the pressure.

Every living creature inside felt that terrifying force.

The Red Demon attempted to block with his rusted sword.

He managed to place the blade between himself and his opponent, but after a violent collision that ignited the air between them, the Golden Dawn Knight's sword forced its way past Asterion's weapon.

The golden arc buried itself across the old hunter's chest.

His crimson skin split apart.

Blood erupted once again.

A deep horizontal wound stretched across Asterion's chest.

But what poured from it hardly resembled blood.

It looked more like molten lava.

The liquid burned against the ground the instant it touched it.

But inside the wound…

The Golden Dawn Knight saw something impossible.

Something that stunned Aldrich.

"That…"

Aldrich stared through the knight's crimson eyes.

"Aura Armor… inside his body?"

It finally became clear why Asterion's skin had become as hard as iron.

The old man had placed his Aura Armor between his flesh and skin, compressing it to an extreme degree inside his own body.

It sounded simple.

But any creature possessing even half a brain would immediately understand that such a thing should have been impossible.

"Aura Armor can be used to protect the body, and at advanced ranks, it can reinforce physical strength…"

Aldrich trembled behind the Golden Dawn Knight's eyes.

"But placing his entire Aura Armor beneath his skin…"

Disbelief entered his voice.

"That's impossible. Even the strongest monsters born from the Curse of Darkness are incapable of something like this…"

Asterion answered with the same savage grin that had never once left his face.

"You'll make a grave mistake if you try applying human logic to me…"

His bloodshot eyes burned.

"Because I was never a normal human to begin with!!"

Ignoring the molten blood pouring from his wound, Asterion resumed the battle and swung his rusted sword like a madman.

The Golden Dawn Knight charged toward him without the slightest fear of that madness.

He might have been fighting through instinct alone…

But he was a true monster in his own right.

The only way to wound Asterion in his new form was to strike him with attacks containing the greatest possible output of aura.

And so the Golden Dawn Knight began draining his enormous reserves without restraint.

Even if doing so meant risking that he would be the first to run dry.

The old hunter wasn't in any better condition.

The Red Demon form was destroying his body.

And Asterion himself was draining everything he had down to the last breath in order to destroy the golden armor protecting his opponent.

The third phase of the battle between the strongest hunters became a war of attrition.

That phase lasted only a few minutes.

Yet within those minutes, they exchanged a horrifying number of blows, every swing of their swords carrying an insane amount of destructive power.

One cathedral wall after another collapsed.

The echoes of their battle began reaching the others fighting within the cathedral, placing them in danger as well.

But Asterion didn't have the luxury of worrying about them.

His bloodshot eyes were focused on only one thing.

Breaking that damned armor.

No matter the cost.

Would the armor shatter first?

Or would the Red Demon's body tear itself apart before that happened?

It was a race against time.

Again and again, the two blasted each other across the battlefield, only to charge back into the fight the instant their backs struck the walls.

Fire ignited around them from the friction of colliding metal.

Soon, the entire battlefield began to burn.

For a time, it seemed as though they would remain trapped in that endless cycle forever.

Trading blow after blow.

Tearing the cathedral and everything within it apart.

Then, after several more minutes…

The turning point finally came.

Hundreds of exchanges had passed.

The Golden Dawn Knight had lost his brilliance.

His overwhelming aura had dimmed and grown considerably weaker, while cracks had spread across every part of his armor beneath the relentless punishment of Asterion's heavy sword.

He looked as though he might collapse at any moment.

But on the other side…

Asterion's world lost its colors.

Hot blood sprayed directly across his vision.

And beside his left side…

A terrifying golden sword flashed.

SLASH!!!

The sound of air, flesh, and bone being severed reached his ears.

Asterion immediately understood that the worst had already happened.

His eyes slowly drifted to the left, where he saw a severed arm falling before him as though the world itself had slowed down. It continued its descent until it struck the ground, landing in a spreading pool of blood pouring from the severed limb.