CHAPTER 190
Sohan and Aranseol's figures crossed again and again.

Sohan, levitating blood-forged swords and swinging them. Aranseol, clashing back with a single blade—Danmyung.

Every time the two collided, the air itself shuddered, a clear testament to their strength.

"You've gotten stronger. Aranseol."

Sohan's voice drifted through the swarm of swords.

Sohan's Ability allowed him to freely wield anything without touching it.

The true value of this Ability depended entirely on how well its wielder could control their body.

In other words, Sohan's swordsmanship transferred directly into his Ability.

Innate talent for the sword.

Soun, the Sword Lord's teachings.

And on top of that, his Ability.

To put it plainly, Aranseol was effectively fighting thousands of Sohans at once.

Of course, Sohan's brain had its limits. The more swords he multiplied, the harder it became to execute diverse techniques with each one.

Thousands of Sohans was essentially a bluff.

But the real threat lay elsewhere.

Just as Aranseol pushed through the rain of swords, a single blade arced toward her face from an unexpected angle.

She barely jerked her head back to dodge, then clashed Danmyung against the sword that came at her point-blank.

KAGAGAGAGANG—

A sword carrying an entirely different level of force from the others.

And the technique behind it was on another level entirely.

A blade that would twist and snake toward Aranseol's throat at the slightest opening. One of the swords Sohan was consciously controlling among the thousands.

Sohan could truly control three swords at once.

Those three performed his skills at one hundred percent.

KAANG!

Aranseol finally deflected the sword and kicked off the ground, dodging the pursuing blades.

Thousands of swords appeared to be decoys, but hidden among them were three real blades that could strike at any moment.

In other words, Aranseol couldn't afford a single lapse in concentration—not for even a second.

She could never predict when or where a lethal strike would come.

The mental pressure was greater than one might think.

With each gesture from Sohan, the number of swords kept growing.

He was clearly straining, but he didn't care.

Sohan's swords were like a school of fish—a swarm pooling together to make itself look massive.

Among them, three carried real fangs that could tear out a throat.

The swarm split apart, sweeping around Aranseol from all sides.

She broke free again and again, but Sohan was relentless.

He used the three real swords to cut off her escape routes with surgical precision while the decoys endlessly closed in around her.

Before she knew it, Aranseol was trapped inside the swirling mass of blades.

Swords spinning all around her.

They targeted her blind spots with cruel precision, darting in from every direction.

KAANG! KANG! KAANG!

Concentration cranked to the maximum, Aranseol cut down sword after sword without pause.

Perhaps because she'd already fought the 3rd Sword Lord and his curtain of blades, she could at least hold her own against Sohan's onslaught.

But even Aranseol couldn't block everything.

Blade edges nicked her skin again and again, steadily piling up shallow wounds.

Her clothes were being dyed red in places with her own blood.

Beyond the storm, Sohan was wearing a thick, satisfied smile.

"You know what?"

Sohan flicked his hand again, replenishing the whirlwind of swords. He acted as though he could generate blood-swords infinitely.

"Apparently, for a psychopath, killing isn't all that different from sex."

The vortex of swords encircling Aranseol accelerated even further.

On top of that, Sohan added irregularity.

Swords began colliding with each other, ricocheting inward at random.

A move that killed two birds with one stone—easing the strain on his brain while introducing moves even he couldn't predict.

For Aranseol, it meant she could no longer read his patterns, making him that much harder to fight.

"The act of putting something into another person's body—they say it gives the same rush as sex. That's why they kill over and over."

The ringing of clashing steel screamed through the air.

Through it all, Sohan smiled as if he'd reached some twisted enlightenment.

"So then—in their eyes, would this moment look like that?"

"I have no interest in your garbage musings."

Aranseol's strained voice cut through the cacophony.

"The moment you joined Black Dawn, you were nothing but a terrorist."

She stated it as absolute fact.

Hearing that, Sohan let out another hollow laugh for some reason.

"Fair enough. Pointless question, I guess."

"A woman's role is just to sit at a man's side and look pretty, isn't it?
Killing is about conquering other men—not women. How the hell would that be anything like sex?"

KAAAAAAANG!

In the middle of Sohan's self-indulgent rant, Aranseol brought her sword down with tremendous force.

An explosive gust of sword-pressure erupted from the point of impact.

Every blade flying toward her collided with the gust at once.

The swords careening at her were sent spinning in all directions, flung back into the whirlwind.

KANG! KAANG! KAANG! KANG! KANG!

A spine-chilling sound roared through the vortex.

The swords, caught in the gust and sent back, had nowhere to go—they crashed into each other.

The tremendous noise rang on and on, and the result—

Sohan couldn't believe what he was seeing.

The ceaselessly spinning vortex of swords was gradually grinding to a halt.

The colliding blades had sapped each other's rotational force, ultimately devouring each other's momentum entirely.

There was absolutely no way this was a coincidence.

CRACK—

Inside the stilled vortex.

Aranseol had swollen her muscles to their absolute limit, gripping Danmyung hard enough to crush it.

The instant Sohan felt a chill run down his spine, she swung.

KWAAAAAAAAANG!

An explosion of sound, and Sohan's swords lost all control—they blasted apart in every direction.

Swords embedded into walls everywhere, shattering on impact, dissolving back into blood.

Among them, one had grazed Sohan's face.

A vivid trail of blood slowly trickled down his bronze skin.

Aranseol—who had analyzed, dismantled, and annihilated the unpredictable variables even Sohan couldn't calculate—

She snorted softly and flicked her hair.

"There's one thing I never knew about you. But I see it now."

Red sparks crackled from Danmyung.

"Sohan. You have an inferiority complex."

Inferiority complex.

For the first time, a crack appeared on Sohan's composed face.

"A woman did something to you in the past."

Sohan stared at Aranseol in silence.

Everything Sohan had ever done.

Pretending to love every woman while using them as sexual tools.

The deep-seated misogyny and gilded superiority complex he'd revealed today.

Aranseol had caught a faint glimpse of where it all began.

"I don't know what happened to you, and I don't care."

After all, there was only one person in this world she cared about.

"And I don't care what desire you're trying to fulfill through Black Dawn, either. My job today is to cut you down."

Hearing Aranseol's declaration, Sohan raised a hand and cupped his own cheek.

He slowly wiped the blood running down his face, then fixed her with a quiet stare.

That was when—

KUGUUGUGUGUGUNG!

An ominous tremor shook the entire space.

Aranseol sensed danger and threw herself sideways—

SLICE!

The entire building where Aranseol and Sohan stood was severed clean through and split in two.

What had cut it was a blood-sword of overwhelming size.

An impossibly massive blade, formed outside Sky Castle.

Aranseol had chased Sohan all the way to the outer edge of Sky Castle.

As a result, the ground beneath her was carved away by the colossal sword, and she began plummeting along with the severed black roots.

Sohan, meanwhile, was already perched atop a floating sword, looking down at her.

"Who's cutting who again?"

He stared down at Aranseol as if confirming her position.

"The inferior one."

A thick emotion of revulsion hung in his eyes.

A deep, gaping chasm of hatred—one that denied and degraded the very existence of women.

"Learn what a woman's role really is."

Three colossal swords loomed in the sky.

Those overwhelming blades plunged toward the falling Aranseol.

Massive greatswords descending upon her.

The sight was like the sky itself collapsing—and Aranseol, still in freefall, stomped down on a surface below.

There was no way she could block those greatswords head-on.

The difference in mass was simply too great.

But if she redirected them instead of blocking—

That was a different story.

The 2nd Sword Lord.

What he had spent his entire life mastering was the aesthetics of flow.

Everything has a flow, he said—even the stars that fill the vast cosmos.

Aranseol had seen and experienced firsthand the philosophy he'd spent a lifetime refining.

Even stars, beyond the scale of human comprehension, have a flow.

So how could one not perceive the flow of a mere sword, no matter how large?

An unprecedented stillness settled into Aranseol's blade.

A greatsword bearing down on her.

Aranseol's sword extended to meet it.

Her blade did not oppose the greatsword's direction.

A single, carefully placed step let her barely dodge the greatsword's edge, and then her sword extended in the same direction as the descending blade.

Like flowing water.

She guided the greatsword's momentum to her own will.

Flowing Sword Assimilation

All flow merely determines direction.

KAAAAAANG!

The greatsword that had been descending on Aranseol instead collided with another greatsword. The flow Aranseol had twisted made them obstruct each other.

It happened in an instant.

Before Sohan could react, Aranseol stepped onto the flat of the greatsword and launched herself skyward.

A crimson bolt of lightning rode the blade upward.

Just before Sohan's eyes could track her—

He noticed the cold touch against his neck.

A sliver of flesh was cut from his barely-turned neck, and blood sprayed.

Right in front of Sohan.

Aranseol, returned from the crimson lightning, stood before him.

She had already passed him in an instant, and now stood on a black root in midair.

Sohan clutched his bleeding neck as he fell. But his fury was directed not at his wound—but at Aranseol, standing above him.

"Damn it—who the hell are you looking down on!?"

"Don't worry."

Aranseol stood unflinching atop the black root, not so much as blinking at his curses.

"I'll be coming back down soon enough."

She still hadn't finished cutting that damn neck of his.