Damn Reincarnation

e Hero chosen by the Holy Sword, but he was still only twenty-one years old.

Dizziness overcame Edmund, his head swirling with a disorienting sensation.
In his endeavors within Helmuth, he had received no assistance save for Amelia Merwin, from whom he had borrowed the formidable Death Knight.
The Death Knight was supposed to have played a pivotal role within his forces, yet its swift annihilation left him reeling.

‘I don’t even expect you to take him with you.
A fatal wound, at least….’

Edmund immediately used a search spell.
He hoped that Eugene was fatally wounded and unable to battle.
However, the reality was too cruel.

Far from being fatally wounded, there wasn’t even a scratch on Eugene.
He didn’t even look tired, either.
Eugene’s cold, calculating golden eyes darted, and he made eye contact with Edmund, who was observing him through the spell.

Edmund unwittingly tightened his grasp on Vladmir.

‘Hector!’

Although Hector was incomparably insignificant compared to the Death Knight, it was better than nothing.
However, even Hector did not respond right away.
He wasn’t in a situation where he could come to Edmund’s aide right away.

Edmund became enraged after identifying the opponent Hector was engaged with.

“Cyan Lionheart? I even went to the trouble of building you a new body, and you’re stuck with a brat like that?”

Search tinyurl.com/2p9emv8w for the original.

He mobilized all of his divided consciousness to get an accurate understanding of the current situation and to come up with a solution.
Soon, he came to a decision.
He had to let go of his lingering feelings and greed.
It was already impossible to reach the ideal, perfect ritual he had planned to complete in an all-out war, but he didn’t have the time.

He had dispersed too much power in the ritual, and it was all because he had been pursuing perfection.
According to his original plan, he would have had more than enough time, but the enemy was much stronger than his expectations.

If things continued his way, everything would fail, and he could not afford that.
Edmund tightened his grasp on Vladmir while focusing on and manipulating his Dark Power.

He interfered with the ritual and made changes.
He had been pursuing quality over quantity with the blood and soul sacrifices for the ritual, but he could no longer care about the quality of the offerings.
As such, he would quickly increase the number of sacrifices.
Edmund’s lips moved quickly.

The frenzied warriors underwent yet another transformation in their relentless rampage.
Stripped of all vestiges of humanity, their wild state intensified to an alarming degree.
They became single-minded, driven by a singular purpose — to procure an ever-growing supply of living sacrifices, then to offer themselves as sacrifices at the end.

The change wasn’t only prevalent in the warriors fighting in the Footprint of the God of the Land.
Edmund’s black magic refluxed through the Earth Vein back to the capital of the Kochilla Tribe, which was located far from here.

There weren’t any warriors remaining in the capital.
Most of them were elders, women, and children who could not fight.

Black magic permeated their minds, and the lunatics started cutting out each other’s hearts after losing their reason.
In no time, carnage unfolded in the heart of the Kochilla Tribe.

So the ritual accelerated.
Blood and souls from the slaughtered in the capital would be transported to the Footprint of the God of the Land through the Earth Veins.

Edmund did not need much more time.
He would become less than the ideal version of the Demon King he pursued, but there was no helping it.

‘At the end of the day, I will still transcend humanity.’

It’s what Edmund desperately wished for — to become a transcendental being beyond humans.
Even if he could not become the strongest and greatest Demon King, a Demon King was still a transcendental existence.
Even though he was forced to compromise, he would still be achieving his wish.

‘Ten minutes at most before the conditions are fulfilled.
I can definitely hold on for that long.’

Now that he had changed the contents of the ritual, he no longer needed to suppress Melkith.
Rather, he hoped that she would run rampant and speed up the process of his ritual.
Lovellian’s summons were still hindering the process of the ritual, but it was as if he were trying to cover the entire sky with his palms.
How did he plan on stopping the overwhelming amounts of blood and souls coming from the Kochilla Tribe’s capital?

‘I won.’

He had already made a compromise, so he had to win.
Edmund raised Vladmir with a convinced smile.
Having simplified the ritual, he now had a greater reserve of power to tap into.
Moreover, Edmund had given up on suppressing Melkith, so the full might of his magic was at his disposal.

Edmund’s Dark Power rose from the ground as a giant black hand.
The Hand of Death, which destroyed everything it touched, lurched forward.
If there was any chance of the ritual failing, it was because of one person.

Edmund was wary of the power that Eugene Lionheart had used in killing the Death Knight earlier.
Edmund was still quite certain that the Cube’s defenses were impenetrable, but he couldn’t simply ignore Eugene’s enormous power either.

In truth, Edmund harbored a desire to offer Eugene as a sacrifice.
Despite having already relinquished numerous concessions in his ritual, the notion of sacrificing such a potent and extraordinary soul ignited within him the possibility of elevating his ritual to a realm of higher dimensions, a chance for its evolution.

Fwoosh!

Eugene suddenly appeared out of thin air from embers.

‘Magic….
I don’t know that kind of magic.
Is that his Signature? Is he taking his feathers as coordinates and… I see.’

Despite studying magic for a mere span of less than five years, the young child had achieved the remarkable level of an Archwizard.
His mastery of the arcane arts exceeded expectations, with his Signature displaying exceptional qualities and demonstrating a great level of sophistication.

“His existence itself is unreasonable,” Edmund muttered.
He had never felt jealousy toward humans, but this was the sole exception.
He felt jealous of that unreasonably talented youngster.

It only fueled his desire to take Eugene Lionheart as a sacrifice.
It wasn’t based on his theories as a wizard, but Edmund was convinced.
If he could take Eugene Lionheart as a sacrifice, he had a hunch that he could obtain the status of a Great Demon King despite the concessions he made.

“Come,” Edmund said while maintaining the Hand of Death.

Rumbleeee!

The hand approached Eugene while growing in size, and by the time it was near Eugene, it was as big as the side of a cliff.
But despite the advance of the threatening attack, Eugene seemed unfazed.
He reacted with a simple move.

The Holy Sword was already in his hand, and he was maintaining Prominence in place of Ignition.
His mana was burning around him as flames.
The lion’s mane fluttered, and the flames coating the Holy Sword became riddled with black spots.

Boooom!

A horizontal slash easily split the Hand of Death into two.

However, it was only the loss of a single spell.
It meant nothing to Edmund.

With a disdainful snort, Edmund summoned his Dark Power once again.
The domain surrounding him, centered around the Cube, was firmly under his control.
He possessed the ability to unleash hundreds of spells in one breath, each infused with lethal potency capable of effortlessly extinguishing a human life.

As if to prove this, his magic materialized.
Eugene grabbed Akasha from inside his cloak.
The spells Edmund unleashed weren’t randomly created.
All the spells were connected, and no exit existed to escape the barrage.

[Sir Eugene!] Mer arrived at the same conclusion.
Even though she specialized in magical support, she could not find any gaps in Edmund’s magic.

She had no choice but to admit it.
As a wizard, Edmund was superior in every way to Eugene.
Eugene could never hope to win in a battle of magic.

However, this fact wasn’t despairing for Eugene.
He had other weapons at his disposal besides magic.
The moment Edmund’s spells descended, Eugene let go of Akasha and grabbed onto a pommel.

‘That’s….’

From within his cloak, Eugene produced an object, and a dull gray radiance diffused through the encompassing darkness.
Despite the onslaught of spells relentlessly assailing Eugene, Edmund ’s incantations dissolved into nothingness as the ethereal gray light interwove in front of him.
The moonlight voraciously devoured the magic, eroding its very essence.

‘What is it?’

Edmund unknowingly moved the Cube backward.

Eugene wielded the moonlight and painted a crescent moon.
Dark Power could not block the moonlight.
How could it when the moonlight simply devoured anything and everything it touched?

“Don’t tell me….” Edmund’s face turned pale.

He had read about a similar sword in the special archives of Babel.
But that couldn’t be.
The sword had not been seen for three hundred years, so how could it be here?

“The Moonlight Sword…?” Edmund spat out in disbelief.

Eugene stared at Edmund for a moment before bursting out in laughter.
“So you know about this?”

Edmund’s expression crumpled after hearing Eugene’s answer.