Soul of Blades - Chapter 43: The Death of Men (Patreon)

“Your tricks will no longer save you, human.”

The Queen eyed the defiant human male with disdain. He had survived her opening salvo, somehow.

Using the old ways, she breathed deep, gathering the world's mana into her blade and sensing its contours as she altered it fundamentally, turning its structure into that of aura as she prepared for another swing.

She was using a source of free and untainted mana, granted to her by the space that the human had freed with his system-ending skill. It clung to them, and inside of them, she suspected. She had no idea whether her access to the old magics was finite, but she would use it until she could avenge her dying hive.

She fought the human that would befriend one of her children, the human that dared to disarm her progeny. And she judged him.

She had seen better. Her blade slashed down, targeting his shoulder. He sidestepped—metal cleaved air, just missing flesh.

She had seen faster. She spun, her second attack a swift thrust aimed low to cut his legs from under him. He jumped back, the tip brushing the fabric of his garments.

The queen struck him with gold once, and with bronze twice. She struck with impatience and the human flinched not at all.

He struck back, and his retaliation was mired in pride—a counterattack that seamlessly flowed from the previous defence. She swung with both blades—

He countered, a rock against the tide, turning her force against her. He ducked, swift as a storm and his return was lightning striking back. His riposte was a thunderbolt, swift and inevitable, his blade striking with the force of existence itself.

It was-

Exquisite.

The Hidden Queen was no longer mocking, then, as Alex stumbled from her golden blow. He stumbled not from lack of skill, but lack of magic. The human had stripped himself of his system-granted skills- and it was apparent that that was the only magic he knew.

Why would he do something so foolish? A look of concern crossed over the Monarch's face. The man had nothing but brute strength and martial form and still fought against her aura blade as none had before.

What if such a person was granted aura of thier own? A powerful aura and not the limited kind she currently wielded?

What if one of her children had wielded such skill? How great could such a person have become? Greater than even her? Greater than her sisters?

She touched the place above her chest, in the center, where her mana heart would be—as if the new body she possessed were in pain—

‘If only he had been one of us,’ she thought.

If only such mastery could be preserved without loss. Forget the final evolution, what of the first? If the first evolution was perfected, what heights could they have achieved? Would they have been able to enforce peace through force alone?

Through perfection?

Her blade shone brighter than any present in her chamber, and this time she didn't swing.

She stabbed.

Alex parried the blow perfectly.

There was craft to his blows- a perfection. The kind of forethought and efficiency in form and purpose that spoke to lifetimes of evolution. He was not wielding an art but a path, a martial way. The drifter girl didn’t impress her in the same way. But she was young. She could learn, maybe.

“Where were you trained?” She asked between a swing, he stepped into her swing causing its aftereffect to sweep behind him and decimate the empty space. “There is artistry in your form. strange techniques that exceed my own.”

Blades clashed and they separated. A pause, as one eyed the other.

His skill was… immense. She craved it for her own kind. She craved a way to capture his martial path- beyond his death. To kill him and pass his prowess completely to her young. To do so now would only create a fragmented revenant, limited in skill but complete in potential- and potential was a thing often unrealized. A loss. “But you have no magics, save for that one powerful trick. Like a novice. Did you have nothing before the system?” She asked, sword lowering.

“I had… something,” Alex said, sword raised.

All she did was frown.

—Then she closed her eyes.

“There is no final evolution,” she muttered to herself and no one. “There is only the first evolution- our chance to truly capture essence.”

“Had I realized this truth earlier? I might have let you leave here alive and killed you later.”

She raised her blade, energy coursing along its edge, and thrust forward,

“It’s too late now.”

***

Alex didn’t believe her.

He didn't understand her words and didn't care to. He pressed through the pounding in his skull to channel the Dao into his blade.

He struck and reality shifted in a thin line before its path- a painter's stroke of destruction that would bisect the Queen- and anything it came in contact with.

She leapt to the side and up, a horizontal white streak that Alex’s eyes easily followed, then she swung her blade and the air exploded, changing her trajectory with a wave of her sword, aiming to land in front of him.

Alex charged. He couldn't afford to waste time, his skill would run out soon and despite his inner and outer sense skills still working somewhat even with the systems removal, he couldn’t tell when.

The queen bared her teeth as she fell from above. She unleashed a hail of falling strikes like stars.

“Hive-killer!” She said, the glee of battle filling her veins. “Swarm-Ender!” She yelled, the grief of loss tainting her movements. “Show me more that I have never seen before! Make your death worthy of the end of my hive!”

So Alex did. Her blow was heavy and brought him low, but his blue blade stole portions of her aura and was shrouded in his Dao. He moved with the cold certainty of winter, parrying her blade aside, his senses tuned to the subtle shifts of her muscles and mana. He ducked, a shadow slipping past daylight, and retaliated with the precision of a marksman.

She crouched and rocketed above his swing.

Her leap left a physical arc in the air, a trail of solid light and mana that burned. A bridge of deadly light. At first, it seemed a stationary after-image, until she swung and it shot forward, mirroring the path and structure of her technique perfectly. “Your magics are unrefined and young. But masters elevate magic.” Her landing cracked the stone. “You haven’t tried.”

Alex ducked and pivoted on his heel, his elbow tucked in a tight and powerful swing. she swung up to meet it with both blades and Alex realized something.

I shouldn't have let my skills guide my blade.

It’s my blade-

My blade guides my skills.

The two locked blades and Alex stared at the Queen. Her eyes wet and her teeth bared— in a smile, she smiled as she wept. He froze in surprise, distracted. She had almost killed him, then. Could have, maybe.

But she hadn't. She had paused imperceptibly to allow him to recover. She had noticed a weakness in his habits and begun targeting his legs, slowly erasing his habit of crouching he'd gained from overreliance on Phoenix leap, it left his head exposed. Why did he need to crouch when the skill launched him with magic?

Then she targeted his left side, forcing him to return to his fundamentals and abandon his reliance on his skills. She had been polishing his form during the battle, erasing his weakness to prolong the fight for as long as it could last. She’s mourning, he realised. She’s not thinking straight.

She was mourning what she had lost and not wanting the battle to end. For to face the end of the battle was to face what she had lost.

It was foolish, and Alex had never met someone like her, but he felt regret in every stroke of his exchange.

He reminded himself of the dead humans at her hands as he fought, of how much of a monster she was. He thought of people he had witnessed her consume as they entered the chamber. To play the role of monster given to you by your enemies was a choice. It's a choice, he told himself with a swing of his blade.

Its-

-A

-Choice.

But was it really?

Alex steeled his heart and struck, he could waver later, now was the time to fight.

He landed, and his sword rang. Rang and rang as he had never heard a blade ring before, like the chimes of an insect’s shell, so loudly that he feared it might shatter. The queen saluted his blades. He raised his sword-

And his Skill burnt out. The countdown ended. 5 minutes had passed.

The system returned.

The emptiness Alex felt ceased, the world burst, awash with colour and vibrancy once more, his senses increasing twofold.

The light in the Queen's blade vanished completely and she was once again shackled by the system. And empowered by it. Her aura was forcibly stripped from her and in its place, her stats surged.

The Queen stilled as the light of her blade faded to nothing, never to truly return.

Her form was rigid and frozen- not from surprise, but from grief, for she knew it was time to kill the strange human swordmaster and face her dying hive.

Alex stood frozen, too. Like a leaf on water he stood, delicately balanced and seemingly still, yet ready to drift with the current of her wrath's capricious blows.

He had grown painfully aware of the Queen's blistering speed and stood poised with his sword aimed directly at her neck, his wrist angled to pierce and swing. He understood that he couldn’t hope to match her speed- any attempt at tracking her movements would be futile. Instead, he positioned himself where he calculated the least effort was needed to respond, a minimalist stance where the tilt of his wrist and the direction of his blade were all that he could rely on. It was a posture born of necessity and not intent on matching speed but on creating a nexus point, a singular opportunity for defence turned into an offensive pivot.

And the Queen took a step, slow and deliberate. Alex tensed with senses strained and his sword pointed toward her. She disappeared.

She moved so fast she was a glittering blur- a streak of porcelain white aimed at Alex’s neck.

Alex exhaled sharply and held his sword tight, but his mind was elsewhere.

He knew he could die within the second and yet his focus remained elsewhere, on something that lay just beyond the battle. He extended his senses beyond the veil of existence, piercing at a sensation that seemed to lay just beyond the known.

And when he connected to it, for a moment the world ceased to exist.

Amid life and death, between his beginning and end, Alex found himself at a crossroad of existence, where every moment held the weight of infinity. As he faced the Queen's impending deathstroke, his understanding transcended the mere physicality of their confrontation. In this pivotal moment, he connected with the underlying currents of the world around him, recognizing the transient nature of all that exists.

And It was beyond him. It was too much all at once and threatened to consume him lest he look away. Alex recoiled from the impact of universal truths before it claimed him as its own.

But not before he took a piece; a grain of sand he could barely grasp.

The grain was as heavy as the entirety of existence. In possessing it, Alex saw the inevitability of destruction and the impermanence of their struggle. He held within him the fluidity that bound the essence of life. It told him that Destruction was necessary.

As was creation. Both parts were the essence of flux. There was a third state, too. A third state of flux unknown to him, a thing beyond his grasp that caused his head to burst with pain.

His strategy no longer stemmed from a place of resistance but from a deep alignment with the principle that all things must evolve or fade and that both states were aligned and natural. Clarity engulfed him and he sought to part from the Dao completely. To take his prize and wield it to enact the will of the Dao; to destroy and be destroyed- to change.

In embracing this state of flux, Alex did not merely move to respond to the Queen's attack; he moved with the understanding that his physical actions were mere ripples of the deeper shifts occurring within the canvas of existence. he moved with the fluidity of a stream carving its path through stone, not by force but by yielding to the natural contours of the world. He embraced his end and shifted imperceptibly into the path of his destruction.

And hers.

The queen drew her blades back in an exaggerated motion, behind her back—and the three blades collided. Alex was braced for the impact. But all he felt was a ringing in his sword that travelled the length of his arm and shook his teeth—then his blade wavered.

His blade became a thing of two states. It flowed between existence and obliteration. For a heartbeat, his blade ceased to exist entirely.

It slipped through his foe's blade as light would.

[Dao: ‘True Immortality’ - Progress 0.03 > 0.06%]

As the Queen's blade sought to end the duel, Alex moved with clarity born of desperation. In the heartbeat he saw her blade angled to carve through him-

And he stepped into her path.

He twisted, his sword returning to existence to trace a fatal arc through her guard. In that brief eternity, his blade and her swing met in a tragic embrace, cleaving her torso even as his own arm was severed. Together, they fell, a singular sound of finality marking the end of their clash.

His arm and her body fell to the ground in the same instant, two wet thuds that sounded like one.

She fell to the ground in pieces.

Alex fell to his knees, summoning a healing potion between his lips while reaching for his severed arm. It had been a perfect cut, so seamless that blood barely dripped, whereas his cut had ravaged the queen as it tore through her. I still have a long way to go, he realised. He pressed his lost arm to the stub and downed the potion, praying it would do something to heal his life-changing injury. The wound tingled and burned but he wasn’t sure, he could only wait and hope. Imperceptibly silent steps sounded behind him and he tensed- then sensed the soft footsteps owner. It was the girl. She had freed herself and walked over to join him, her stomach a mosaic of broken skin, cracked carapace and both bleeding and coagulated ichor.

She made it, he thought with relief, rising from the ground with some effort. They locked eyes but neither could bring themselves to smile. Both tore away from the other's gaze and stared at the dying monarch at their feet. Alex watched the Queen's fallen form for what she might do next as feeling returned to his lost arm. He felt a hint of remorse, for the Queen looked so regretful as she lay there- her will was completely broken.

Alex tightened his grip on his sword at the thought of ending her reign.

She was in a pitiful state, just an arm and a torso, he could even see the edge of her core. But she was still conscious, somehow. And she spoke

“Is he the one?” The Queen raised a weak finger to point at Alex while questioning the girl. The girl nodded and the Queen laughed, a sad and dejected sound. “If you had taken all of his power, you could have saved us.” She hacked again.

“I didn’t want it.” That was all the girl said in response.

Alex simply raised his sword. He would think on that later, but not now.

The queen eyed his blade without fear. “You’ve beaten us all and destroyed my swarm. And yet you still want to kill me, Because the system tells you it must be done.” She hacked more ichor and gave him a derisive and spiteful look. “Go on, then. Do it. It's in your nature. Show her what you are.”

A soft warmth brushed against his skin.

The girl had touched his arm in an attempt to dissuade him. Not with strength or even urgency, but gently. “Alex, she's beaten. It's done, let's go.”

Alex didn’t move.

He reminded himself of the countless people she had killed and eaten, and of all the lives she had taken in the century before he arrived in this world. Regardless of whether it was how some twisted God had designed her, she had still created paths of destruction. She may not have been completely guilty, but she wasn't innocent either.

John's still form in the distance was a clear testament to that.

She’s very much a monster. She has to die. It’s her Karma, He told himself. His entry into her hive and her broken form was merely the culmination of decades of slaughter. The result of her own actions. Alex told himself it was evening the scales, carrying out the will of karma- following the path of his Dao. But deep down, far deep within him, a small part of him felt as though he was ending her not just for her crimes, but for power.

He set his feet, grasped his blade’s hilt with both hands- one above the other- and swung.

As his blade descended, the Queen eyed them both and muttered her final words.

“What a waste.”

[You have defeated, Level 56 Arachne Queen]

[Level 38 > Level 41]

[Strength +12, Dexterity+12, intelligence+18, unassigned stats +12]

[Quest: ‘Sapient Saviour’ Completed - Calculating contribution…]

[Calculating rewards…]