Supreme Swordfiend

Leon’s freshest kill prompted a bout of self-reflection.

In only five days, he’d killed both monsters and men, committed acts of great and terrible violence in his pursuit of strength.

Long before today, he’d already accepted the cruelty inherent to pursuing power and knew that valuing the growth of his own abilities over the lives of other living beings made him, at the very least, an amoral monster.

At worst, it made him a madman.

The thousand human lives he’d claimed in the Trial had never burdened his conscience- he’d felt shocked in the moment, but ultimately they’d been no more human than anything else he’d killed, an army of soulless homunculi created purely for him to destroy.

Still, he’d always presented mercy to his fellow Tutorial participants. Even at the height of their foolishness, even at cost to himself, he’d chosen not to claim their lives.

Now he had crossed one of the few remaining lines in the sand.

Committed an act of murder, an act Leon had tried his best to abstain from.

How shockingly easy it had been.

That was the exact reason he’d avoided it.

Within the Tutorial, killing any who opposed him was nearly consequence-free- but once he returned to Earth?

At first, Leon would only kill those who crossed him, whether that be stealing his kills or claiming resources he needed. There would be blowback- so he’d have to escalate. Have to start pre-emptively dealing with anyone who might cause him problems. That would give him a reputation.

Then they’d start banding together- those afraid of him, the friends and relatives of the slain and those who held a burning hatred toward his disregard for human life. Through sheer quantity, the naïve moralising masses would grind him down, blind to their own hypocrisy as they gleefully murdered the murderer.

Getting into bad habits now would lead to consequences in the future. Cold-blooded murder was not a catch-all solution to every interpersonal problem, though the swordsman would never deny that it had its place in his toolkit.

It was important to remind himself of these truths- with no more humans left on the island, aside from himself, he would need to internalise these lessons before returning to his home planet.

Of course, these truths only applied outside of a fight. If another human wanted to throw down, Leon would set aside all qualms.

After all, hot-blooded murder was a whole other ball game.

Casting off the dark haze he’d sunken into, Leon entered his house, his devilish mentor awaiting the swordsman’s return, map spread across the table, smirk affixed to his face.

“Already done, huh?”

Keeping his armour on, Leon approached the table, inspecting the map of the island. Divided neatly into quarters, with a volcano dominating the centre. An increasingly messy scrawl of nearly illegible writings dominated the map’s edges. Running his hand across the stubble on his chin, he replied.

“It wasn’t so tough. What’s next on the agenda?”

The devil rolled up the map and flopped back into the increasingly worn beanbag he favoured, reclined, conjured a cigar from thin air and began puffing on it as he explained.

“Nothin! Woods Tyrant’s dead. Every other dino got killed off when you beat it, so the woods are your playground kid. I’m gonna wait for your Job tutor to turn up, get her input on things, then we’ll get you trained up as a smith- we got a month of downtime to prepare you for the next stage.”

Leon turned on his heels, calling over his shoulder as he made his way to the door.

“I’m off to train then- I’ll be back later.”

“Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out, kid!”

The storm raged still; the heavens discharging bursts of power alongside claps of thunder, the sound alone enough to rattle Leon’s bones.

With the obscured sun only having passed its zenith, nearly an entire day remained for Leon to fill.

In no hurry to practise his swordsmanship, Leon set to wandering through the woods, his feet taking him back to the beach.

Where it all began- as good a spot as any to train.

Though first, he would review his status.

Name- Leon Knox

Race- [Human]

Grade- [H]

Class- [Unique- Sealed Swordfiend]- Level 1/1

Job-None!

Aggregate Level- 26

Stat Block:

HP-1029/1029

MP-1000/1000

Power-130

Speed-130

Constitution-129

Intelligence-101

Wisdom-100

Fame-3

Infamy-0

Skills:

[Sealed Fiend Eyes]-Level 1/1

[Giant Slayer Style]- Level 1/1

[Shifting Tides Style]- Level 1/3

Quests:

Fuel- Consume a slain foe in its entirety- bones, organs and blood.

Progress- 0/1

Reward- Class Skill

Dominance- Defeat a foe stronger than yourself without using your maximum strength.

Progress- 0/1

Reward- Class Skill

Bloodline:

[H] Grade- Swordfiend (Sealed, 0% Unlocked)

Insights:

Water’s Power- Early Shallow

Air’s Pressure- Early Shallow

Lightning’s Supremacy- Early Shallow

The growth satisfied him; the power granted from a single level, taking all his stats either to or beyond one hundred.

That felt meaningful. A boundary crossed both literally and metaphorically.

The reduction in his HP gains reinforced the feeling. A change in the formula, a confirmation of diminishing returns.

He’d speculated on depreciating gains days ago, and yet it was no less painful to see hard evidence.

Examining the rest of the status set Leon to planning.

Quests went straight to the top of the priorities list- without completing the capstone quest, he’d be stuck at his current level. Of the two available, one was easy, the other hard. The latter, contingent on if the dungeon he had in mind, remained accessible.

His bloodline seal- Leon had a sinking feeling he’d need it undone as part of his capstone quest. The higher levelled monsters he’d slain might have bloodlines he could consume to loosen the seal, though he still had no method to extract a bloodline.

Insights- ineffable bonds between himself and the world; understandings they had of each other, revealed in both the quietude of a serene valley and the cacophony of a blood-soaked battlefield.

Deeping his insights through effort was beyond him. Happenstance and an uncaring machine god’s whimsical favour granted these boons- their improvement depended on the same.

At least so far as he knew- Zerasos claimed he would need to muddle through these on his own, lest he sever his own path prematurely.

Then the last item- to kill the strongest being on the island. Leon turned his eyes on the calm tides, their ebb and flow utterly unaffected by the raging storm overhead.

His fated foe dwelt there, beneath the waves, waiting for a fool to enter its domain.

Leon’s blood thrummed in excitement as he imagined dragging the overgrown fish ashore, his blade buried in its skull.

That day’s coming remained distant. A gap of sixty-four levels separated the swordsman and his quarry, a gap he would close before he was done with this Tutorial.

Rising to his feet, dismissing his status screen, Leon closed his eyes and began practising movements.

No longer content with merely building muscle memory, the swordsman trained himself on the unstable ground against images of foes slain.

How best to open a throat with his blade when the enemy refused to lower their guard?

How best to feint against a thrown javelin, to strike a believable balance between an opening and a trap?

As the sun tracked towards the horizon, as the storm petered out, the clouds dispersing into the aether, a crimson blade took its place upon its wielder’s back once more.

Leon hadn’t counted the swings. He was moving beyond the need for that ritual, his training a process of discovery rather than pure refinement.

Drills completed, Leon turned himself to an uglier task, drawing an intact velociraptor corpse from his storage ring. Another dinosaur had crushed underfoot this velociraptor. It had likely happened during one of the gecko trains he’d used to round up the beasts early on.

He hoped it would count for his quest.

Without a source of fire, and lacking the knowledge to build one, Leon steeled himself for a raw experience, ripping a chunk out of the creature’s head with his teeth.

There was no challenge from the corpse. His jaws easily parted scale and flesh, even bone parted with little resistance before his mighty incisors.

Difficulty came in keeping the flesh down.

He forced himself to chew until the meat became tasteless mush, pushing his fingers down his throat, not trusting that a mere swallow would keep the filth down.

Eyeballs, brain, spine, heart, lungs, liver, intestines. He would never forget the crunch the eyes made, the way the spinal fluid had flowed from the broken bone across his tongue and down his throat.

The teeth and claws proved a problem until he realised their points did little to his enhanced body, unable to pierce the soft skin of his mouth. Leon ground the dinosaur’s fangs and talons to powder alongside a thick cut of the creature’s arm.

No water to ease the burden. Only blood, every droplet drank, not a one allowed to touch the sands. The quest had been specific, and Leon would uphold both the letter and spirit of the task.

Leon could not pinpoint the exact moment he began intoning a mantra, yet he knew it was all that would see him through.

“For the sake of my dream, I do this.”

Soon he spoke aloud. Between chewing sessions, the mantra resounded across the empty beach. The turkey-sized lizard slowly ground down by his molars. Leon wondered if by the end of the ordeal whether his appetite would remain forever spoiled.

The last scrap of tail vanished. Leon left revolted, wishing he could throw it all up. He held back the urge, tongue roaming across his fresh stubble. The last of the dead being’s lifeblood mopped up.

That did the trick, he thanked whatever deities deigned to listen as the pop-up appeared.

“Quest Complete- Fuel

Reward- Unique Skill- [Fiendish Bloodrite]”

“[Fiendish Bloodrite]- User can extract bloodlines from applicable cores through use of their bloodline. Extracted bloodlines are unable to be consumed by any other being”

A strange stipulation and another edgy skill name. If he was interpreting the description correctly, then the core he’d acquired held the bloodline he thought he’d lost.

All further thoughts were put on hold, as Leon violently disgorged the meal he’d worked so hard to consume, chunks of half-digested lizard spraying across the beach.

Wiping his mouth and withdrawing a pitcher of water, the swordsman drank deeply. He felt no shame- had his body not protested, he’d have forced the awful meat back up with two fingers down his throat.

Despite fowl tracing their ancestry to dinosaurs, the velociraptor had tasted most foul.

The matter of the core could wait. Odds were good it had some role to play in smithing. Even if it didn’t, he would only be delaying the extraction of the Woods Tyrant’s bloodline by hours.

A price he could stomach, despite how rough his currently felt.

Pulling himself together, Leon shifted focus.

One quest left to complete- one location he knew still had a good fight for him.

A stain on his pride, one he'd wipe out today.

The sun still hung just above the horizon’s edge. If he was quick, he’d be done before nightfall.

Sprinting through the woods, Leon truly experienced his increased speed.

A two-hour walk before was now a mere half hour’s run, the swordsman arriving at a rotten hill, a blue portal still spinning in place.

There would be no Trial this time, only a slaughter to prompt the response he needed.

He stepped through the portal, finding himself upon the bridge, an army arrayed against him once again.

Leon did not hear the canned lines the automatons were programmed to spit out, his focus entirely on completing his task.

Drawing Wavecutter and ramming all his mana into Ebb and Flow, the swordsman laughed, a man unfit for battle losing his head as he began his attack run, the mad warrior’s charge taking him into the enemy host, their lives his to claim as the dungeon desperately began deploying counters to the overwhelming power Leon displayed.

He looked forward to facing the enemy commander.

This time, the First Spear of The Blazing Sun and the Sealed Swordfiend would have a great fight.