[Main Quest Triggered: Eradication of the Evil Creed]
[Classification: Calamity]
In the names of Mercy and Benevolence, those who wield unjust, discordant, and wicked violence are threatening the world.
The 'mercy' they shout is not mercy; the 'love' they whisper cannot be love.
In the end, it seems only your blade can sever this deep, suffocating darkness.
Goal: Eradicate the masses consumed by the Evil path.
Progress: 7.8%
Reward: History +100, ???
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'A Main Quest, then.'
Bong-su's cold, analytical eyes swept over the blood-red plains. In this context, the "Evil Creed" mentioned by the system was, without a shadow of a doubt, the Dark Net Rakshasa Path.
He had been slightly puzzled; throughout his previous skirmishes with the cult's monks, only minor sub-quests had popped up. He had wondered why such a notorious organization hadn't triggered a significant narrative event.
It seemed the system had simply been waiting for the right moment to present him with a truly substantial "gift."
Perhaps this was the world's way of returning the favor for the many "gifts" he had recently distributed to his enemies.'A Main Quest.'
The evil cult it mentioned must mean the Dark Rakshasa Way, nine times out of ten, no, ten times out of ten.
I had found it strange that, despite clashing with the Dark Rakshasa Way before and getting numerous miscellaneous quests, a major quest had not appeared.
But it had returned to me now as this enormous gift.
Perhaps it was a reward for the successive gifts I had so willingly bestowed upon them.
My thoughts on the quest ended there.
Whoosh.
The Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword in my left hand, having grown twice as strong, was swung diagonally toward the center of the approaching reddish-yellow flame wind.
With that simple horizontal strike, the fiery wind that had been coiling and boiling around the area was sucked back along the blade.
The roaring sea of fire was instantly devoured by the jet-black blade and vanished, and the condensed red and yellow energies being released from the tip of Mandala Rakshasa's finger were repeatedly cut and severed, scattering in all directions.
A deeper layer of darkness settled over the blade.
Right there.
The Evil-Slaying Sword in my right hand thrust straight toward the giant's front.
But the tip of the blade was not aimed at the point where the chains connected.
It was aimed at the spot between the brows of the Vajra Rakshasa, who had transformed into a blood-red giant.
Clang!
The moment the tip of the Evil-Slaying Sword touched the giant's brow, the full force of the sword was repelled.
The skin, cloaked in blood-red Aura, had instantly deflected the sword's tip.
It was neither cut nor split.
The tip struck the crystallization of Aura there, sending a vibration all the way up to my wrist.
As expected, his Indestructible Vajra Body had been made much tougher by that Blood Rakshasa.
But Dong Bongsu's eyes did not waver.
The calculation was simply made faster in that instant.
'Interesting.'
There was a specific place where this one's Aura condensed.
The two Vajras he wielded.
They were the mediums through which his true power was most densely focused.
Dong Bongsu's gaze shifted from the giant's brow to the black Vajras in its hands.
In the instant his gaze moved, his feet kicked off the ground.
Whoosh.
His body slid to the blood-red giant's side, and from that position, both his hands moved simultaneously.
The jet-black sword in his left hand swung diagonally from top-left to bottom-right toward the handle of the Vajra in the giant's right hand.
With that single move, the blood-red Aura thickly enveloping the handle was entirely sucked in along the blade.
The Aura on the handle vanished without a trace, and the handle held in the giant's right hand became nothing more than a heavy black staff, sinking powerlessly to the ground.
At the same time, the Evil-Slaying Sword in his right hand struck precisely into the center of the Vajra in the giant's left hand, at the very point where its Aura was most deeply condensed.
Clang!
As the tip of the Evil-Slaying Sword precisely pierced that point, the blood-red Aura condensed there instantly unraveled and scattered.
With that, the Vajra in the giant's left hand cracked and broke into two pieces right then and there.
Both of the Vajra Rakshasa's hands had been neutralized at once.
"Kugh!"
The giant's massive frame staggered once.
Having lost the two mediums his Core Meridian had been using, more than half of the blood-red Aura he was drawing from his shoulders lost its destination and reversed its course toward his Dantian.
Woooooo.
The giant's skin trembled violently.
The flesh, which had turned into Aura, was instantly thrown into Qi Deviation by the reverse flow of his Core Meridian.
"Senior... Brother!"
With that cry, the tip of Mandala Rakshasa's finger immediately extended toward her Senior Brother's massive body.
A single strand of blue light, one of the five colors, unspooled from her fingertip, attempting to wrap around her Senior Brother's Dantian and control the reverse flow of his energy.
But the condensed blue light scattered and vanished before it could reach her Senior Brother's Dantian.
More than half of her own energy reserves had already been depleted.
No matter how much support she received from the Blood Rakshasa... there were limits.
In a flash, the Senior Brother and Junior Sister simultaneously realized that they could no longer dare to face Dong Bongsu head-on.
At this rate, they would be nothing but a handful of sand.
The gap was so overwhelming... they might not even be able to leave that handful behind.
And that was not all.
Moreover.
The ridge line above them was not empty.
Shadows that had circled around from the opposite side of the mountain slope now filled the ridge.
On the spot where only Dong Bongsu's group had been standing moments before, Myo Jinheo of the Formation Tower and External Affairs Elder Baek Hando now stood, leading a dozen or so members of the Formation Tower, followed by the family members of the Hero's Sect, all lined up in a row.
Their swords and formations were taking an assault posture toward the slope.
And that wasn't all.
There were others who had circled around in the opposite direction.
Three figures had gone deep into the main force's flank, hugging the opposite side of the ridge, and were now rushing into the side of the two-thousand-strong main force.
There were only three of them, but their power was not that of just three.
Sshhhk!
The Falling Flower Flying Leaf Needle pierced straight through the main force's flank.
Each time the line cut through space, blood-red kasayas were torn left and right, collapsing to the ground and splattering blood.
Beside her, Dongmun Mutoe's Blood Script Formation and Yan Bilyeong's offensive supported her perfectly, as if they had been fighting together for a long time.
The martial arts of a peerless sword master of the highest level from Vast Heaven and the attacks of two Trigram Masters from the Formation Tower were not something even high-ranking Rakshasa Monks could hope to block.
It was a complete rout.
On top of that.
From the northern slope, far beyond the ridge.
Dozens of small, dot-like shadows were approaching at high speed.
It was the forty-some members of the Vast Heaven Infinite Sword Sect's expeditionary force who had rushed over upon seeing the Vast Heaven Sword Light.
Though their numbers were few, each and every one was an elite personally dispatched by the Vast Heaven main sect.
The sharp aura of their swords alone was enough to make the air of the eastern plains of the River Capital grow heavier.
Dong Bongsu was in front.
The Hero's Sect and the Formation Tower were above.
Yeop Bihwa, Dongmun Mutoe, and Yan Bilyeong were on the flank of the main force.
Vast Heaven was to the north.
At least the Left Guardian's main force was behind them, so they weren't completely surrounded, but...
They could not retreat without a different order.
"...Junior Sister."
At the short call that fell from the Vajra Rakshasa's lips, the tip of Mandala Rakshasa's finger hardened with a deeper condensed force, as if in reply.
The simultaneous activation of their nirvanic extinction moves... permitted only once in a lifetime.
Mandala Rakshasa's Mandala Cloth billowed enormously behind her, and the five colors began to gather at the tip of her finger all at once.
Green, red, blue, yellow, and white.
The five colors merged into one in an instant, and from that spot, a rainbow-like light covered the entire Mandala Cloth, which then billowed up gigantically over the slope.
Mandala Nirvanic Extinction Finger.
At the same time, the Vajra Rakshasa's massive body used Void Grasp Manipulation to scrape together the chains that had already been torn to shreds and began to wrap them messily around his own body.
From his shoulders to his chest, from his chest to his waist, from his waist to his hands.
The chains bound his massive body, tying knot after knot.
The blood-red Aura that had lost its way and was flowing backward into his main meridians began to condense into each and every one of those knots.
Vajra Chain-Crushing Annihilation.
A final phrase fell from both their lips at the same time.
"May this reach... the Honored One."
Kwwaaaaaaaaaaaaang!
The Mandala Nirvanic Extinction Finger was the first to run rampant.
The five colors at the fingertip instantly wove into a five-colored rainbow, and those five colors covered the entire slope in a single breath.
Red burned the flesh, blue froze the flesh, green melted the flesh, yellow entangled the flesh, and white erased the flesh.
The five aspects of slaughter were woven into a single stream, coiling like a tornado as it shot toward Dong Bongsu.
Booooom!
In the same instant, the Vajra Rakshasa also detonated all the True Qi that had already begun to flow in reverse due to Qi Deviation from the inside, that is, from his Dantian.
The earth on the slope was gouged out dozens of zhang deep in all directions, and the giant's flesh, the chains, and even the Vajras were ground to pieces, compressed into tens of thousands of bundles of blood-red Aura that rained down upon Dong Bongsu all at once.
Two Mutual Destruction techniques of the Dark Rakshasa Way, said to have no equal under the heavens.
That vast, explosive slaughter was poured out toward a single person.
Right then.
Dong Bongsu's left hand was brought up before his chest, holding the jet-black blade horizontally.
In the same breath, his right hand placed the blade of the Evil-Slaying Sword over the length of the Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword, forming a cross shape.
The blade of the Evil-Slaying Sword was placed like an arrow on the straight, jet-black line that was spread open like a bow.
A black Aura spread wide over the blade, stretching long like a bowstring.
His right hand pulled that bowstring back to its limit.
The black Aura on the blade swelled and bent, stretching out long.
Whoooooooooooooosh!
Then.
Looking straight at the center of the two Mutual Destruction techniques pouring down on him with such ferocity, he focused all of his available Super True Qi Field onto the pommel at the back of the Evil-Slaying Sword's hilt and shot it forward.
Gooooooooooooooooo!
With that, the straight blade of the Evil-Slaying Sword exploded forth like an arrow released from a bowstring.
A single line of black crystallization was carried on its tip, and the white light radiating from the Evil-Slaying Sword transparently enveloped the outside of this one line of darkness as it advanced.
A single line devours all creation.
The five-colored Qi of the Mandala Nirvanic Extinction Finger was sucked into the arrow's straight path.
Red, blue, green, yellow, and white, the five colors had their evil qi cleansed, one by one, by the white light of the Evil-Slaying Sword, vanishing as if offered up into the black line at the sword's tip.
On that same straight path, the blood-red explosion of the Vajra Chain-Crushing Annihilation was also drawn into the Evil-Slaying Sword's trajectory as if caught in a storm.
The Vajra Rakshasa's flesh, chains, and staff were all purified of their evil qi by the white light, disappearing into the darkness without leaving a single speck behind.
Rumble...
The entire slope was emptied in an instant.
The Evil-Slaying Sword pierced straight through that empty space.
And soon, it struck its target with the same momentum.
Clang!
First, Mandala Rakshasa's brow.
"...This is absurd..."
The last words she uttered were also sucked into the event horizon crafted from Qi, never to be finished.
Then, the blood-red Dantian that was the last thing remaining in the spot where the Vajra Rakshasa had exploded and disappeared.
Clang!
It was slain.
Thud.
Belatedly, Mandala Rakshasa's body collapsed on the spot.
In the final posture of one who had unleashed a Mutual Destruction technique, the five colors at her fingertip flickered for a moment and vanished.
The core of the Vajra Rakshasa's blood-red Dantian pulsed one last time, about to explode violently, but the tip of the Evil-Slaying Sword completely purified the final remnant of the Vajra Rakshasa that had been left floating alone in the air.
Whoosh.
Having precisely eliminated its target, the Evil-Slaying Sword slid along the flow of the Super True Qi Field and returned to Dong Bongsu's right hand.
Only then did Dong Bongsu's hands slowly lower.
In his left hand, the jet-black Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword; in his right, the straight and short Evil-Slaying Sword.
Neither blade was stained with a single drop of blood.
"..."
"..."
The middle of the slope returned to its original, perfect silence.
Indeed, the best hunt of all is hunting humans.
And among those, the absolute best is hunting a master.
And.
The best prey still remained.
"....."
Dong Bongsu's impassive eyes slid down the slope and fixed on the center of the enemy's main force.
Unlike before, he could now savor the view at a leisurely pace.
The Left Guardian of the Dark Rakshasa Way, the Blood Rakshasa.
'This is certainly... a calamity, Sect Leader.'
The very calamity that Myo Jinheo had described.
[Main] Eradication of the Evil Creed
[Calamity]
The very calamity that Lumina had also certified.
Hehehehe.
What delicious seasoning this was.
The appetizer was over.
Now, the time had come to gluttonously devour the main course.