Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 333: Demon of the Sword, Caliste (1)

The Tower Master’s head flew. Had he been an ordinary man, his body would have fallen like a puppet with its strings cut, never to move again. But he was a lich. The jaw of the severed skull clicked once, then began to move with quick, precise intent.

“Explosion!” the Tower Master shouted.

“Celestial Bell, ring!” Helia chanted with him.

Helia had the bell in her hand before the last echo of the lich’s spell faded. Power that could have shaken a nation broke loose inside the cramped cave. Light and mana collided, and the chamber vanished in a burst that turned rock to shrapnel and shrapnel to dust. Debris geysered outward and fell as a hard rain. They both drew breath, expecting smoke and silence.

“Hmm,” the Tower Master said.

“Oh,” Helia whispered.

They had felt no demonic energy when the man entered. If he had taken the blast without a guard, then he should have been torn apart. Just then, something pushed through the ruin.

The man stepped out of the drifting rubble with his coat unruffled and not a single strand of hair disturbed. He did not run. He simply arrived within reach and lifted his sword toward Helia’s heart. Helia snapped a hand up, voice steady.

“Hephaite’s Shield!”

Metal sang into shape. The God of the Forge’s work manifested as a broad, dull gleam, the same shield they had forged with their own hands in the age when gods and demons filled the sky with war. It had borne the fury of hundreds of named demons and had not taken a mark.

The sword went down with a small, neat sound. The shield parted like cheese beneath a wire and fell in two clean halves. Helia’s eyes widened as both pieces struck the floor. The man stepped and thrust. The point came for her heart, too fast and too close to meet with her own blade.

“Teleport!” the Tower Master shouted.

Space folded. The Tower Master seized Helia and threw her through a gap far to the side. She landed on a knee, one hand against the ground, breath ragged. Cold sweat slicked her cheek. She had nearly died. If the lich had not shifted her, the sword would have found the center of her chest.

“What a pity,” the man said. His tone was conversational, almost courteous. “I had hoped to finish it quickly, but your answer was faster than I expected.”

The Tower Master had already retrieved his skull and set it back upon his neck. Bone clicked into place. Dark light stitched vertebrae to jaw.

“You...,” he said.

The man looked as dry as a reed left too long in the sun. He was a demon. More than that, he belonged to a rank that could kill them both before a second thought.

“You killed Mesereka,” the Tower Master said.

The man only smiled. It was enough to serve as an answer. Helia’s breath shook.

“You killed a god,” she said. The words landed heavily, carrying the weight of what they implied. Such a feat spoke of rank beyond comprehension. Not even a ranked demon, or a court of them, could promise such power. One capable of striking down a god had to stand among the very highest—one of the Four Pillars of Hell.

And yet neither Helia nor the Tower Master could reconcile that with what they sensed, because there was almost nothing to sense. No sea of demonic energy swelled within the man. No pressure brimmed in the cave. There was demonic power, but it was thin, the sort of residue that clings to a nameless fiend fresh born in a pit. If not for what had already happened, they would not have noticed him at all.

“The Saintess of the Sun God and the Tower Master,” the man said, as if counting guests at a table. “I did not expect both. Excellent. I thought your meddling would be a nuisance, but it is proceeding as planned.”

At that moment, they understood. The demons had dug a pit, and they had walked straight into it, only realizing the ground was gone when the soil gave way beneath their feet.

“Pleased to meet you,” the man said, smiling. “I am Caliste, the Demon of the Sword.”

“One of the Four Pillars of Hell,” Helia murmured. The worst of all possibilities had chosen to be real.

“I have no time for a long conversation,” Caliste went on. “Our poor children will die holding off the barbarian. I must achieve my purpose first.”

A roar sounded from far beyond the cave. The ground answered with a long growl. Ketal had found his battle.

Caliste’s intent was clear—to kill the Saintess and the Tower Master. He moved with a small, unhurried step, like a man taking a walk in the dawn air. In the instant that followed, he was already within the Tower Master’s reach.

“Flowering Power!” the Tower Master chanted.

His voice cut through the air. Scores of spells manifested at once. Lightning, blades, and a storm of pure mana converged on Caliste, every one of them powerful enough to end a named demon on its own.

Caliste’s sword moved, its motion strange not for its speed but for its effortless grace. The blade never met resistance—it merely touched the edge of lightning and turned it aside, like a rod diverting a stream. It met the mana storm at a slant that guided the energy away. Space warped, lost its shape, and then settled again with nothing left where Caliste had stood—except that he still stood there.

“What is this madness?” the Tower Master began.

The sword whispered through the air, and the lich’s body, its bones and will bound together by layers of spells, came apart into dozens of clean, exact pieces.

“Flame of Calioros!” Helia cried.

The God of Flame answered. Fire that had devoured demons in the Divine-Demonic War rose in a clean column, the kind that left not even ash when it closed.

Then Caliste’s sword traced a small curve, and the fire changed course. Its tongue ran along his blade before veering away. It was not dispelled; it obeyed, moving as he willed without ever touching him. Even during all of that, Helia felt no demonic energy. This was not sorcery. It was only the path of a sword.

Caliste crossed the gap.

“Sun—” Helia began.

“I would rather you not draw a relic,” he said.

The sword’s tip brushed her palm, and something broke with a dry, delicate sound. The channel through which the relics answered her call fractured, and the power she had been about to summon slipped away and never came. He had read her in the moment before the thought completed. Steel traced a clean line along her forearm, and pain flared bright and sharp. The blade shifted, gathering its aim toward her heart.

“Thunderbolt!” the Tower Master cried.

Caliste’s blade flicked toward the sky. Lightning struck, crawling down the sword’s length before vanishing, as though the steel itself had swallowed it.

“Even after losing your limbs, you still move,” he said. “Liches really are troublesome.”

“I do not die so easily. Frozen Tempest!”

Cold howled into being. The storm wrapped the demon and tried to make a statue from his living body. It was a Ninth-Class spell, the kind of working only Heroes could command. The storm thinned as a shape cut through it, and Caliste stepped forward without a scratch.

The Tower Master’s confusion tightened into something close to fear. The demon did not so much as stir a breath of demonic energy. His sword looked like any blade a soldier might buy from a city smith. His movements were not quick. If anything, they verged on slow.

And still, he let everything pass.

“Celestial Bell, ring,” Helia said, voice tight.

The golden sound rolled. The wave that purges corruption washed across Caliste. He extended the sword and drew its point along the bell’s unseen path. The wave tilted and went past. The relic’s force, which had scoured caves and plains, brushed his sleeve and did nothing.

“The Demon of the Sword,” the Tower Master said. The title fit the story. A demon who had not even earned a name rising to the station of a Lord with only a sword and the skill to carry it.

Caliste closed in. The Tower Master dropped back and called a spell he had prepared the instant he first saw the demon’s face. He had split his own mind into several strands long ago, and so he could lay different incantations upon the world at the same breath.

“Tenth-Class magic,” he said. “Denial of All Creation!”

Mana condensed into countless blades. They did not fall; they overflowed, flooding the air until it became a wall of edges—a river drowning its own bed. Each blade moved with calculations too precise for the eye to follow. Whether one tried to dodge or block, it made no difference. The blades would converge and tighten until no space remained to draw breath.

“A fine work,” Caliste said, and sounded sincere.

He stepped forward and moved the sword. The tip touched the first edge and turned it. The next bent of its own accord. A corridor appeared in a wall that should not have allowed a door. The Tenth-Class magic failed to slow Caliste’s walk. He crossed the threshold and stood before the Tower Master.

A hand closed around the Tower Master’s head and twisted. The lich readied a curse, words gathering behind his teeth.

“Falling—”

“That is enough,” Caliste said. He drew a dagger and drove it through the lich’s lower jaw. Bone chattered and then could not move. The skull rattled in mute protest.

“To hide my presence, I left my sword,” Caliste said. “I cannot kill you without it, but I can silence you.”

A mage had to speak to cast. The shape of the spell could live in the hands and the mind, but to make the world accept it, a mouth had to give it a name. With the jaw locked, only the smallest magics could crawl out.

“This is a spellbinding dagger,” Caliste added. “It will not hold forever, but it will hold long enough.”

“Armor of the Sun. Spear of the Sun, to my hand!” Helia chanted.

Armor unfolded in plates of radiance. A spear settled into her grip with an old, familiar weight. Holy power poured over the cave and rolled out into Hell, and the world itself began to shed its tarnish.

Caliste’s face tilted.

“A human should not be able to wield relics of that grade so easily,” Caliste said, tilting his head. “And you have summoned the relics of several gods besides. You are not merely the Sun God’s Saintess.”

He paused, then nodded as if in recognition. “You carry god-blood. You were sent to guard the world. They do that from time to time.”

“Be silent.”

“It does not matter,” Caliste said.

He moved without haste. Helia steadied herself and struck. The Spear of the Sun was no mere ornament; a clean hit from it would leave even a Demon Lord wounded.

However, it did not touch him. He let his upper body fall back just enough for the spear to pass before his nose. His feet pressed forward the whole time. The tip stopped a breath from the bridge of his nose.

“A spear thrusts once,” he said, almost gently. “Then it must be gathered again.”

Helia snatched the spear back. Caliste followed the motion and closed the last step. He shifted his grip, pressed the spear at the wrist to jam it, and drew his sword in a short, quick line.

The Armor of the Sun was no simple relic. With his own sword left behind, Caliste could not break it by force—but he had no intention of trying. Steel scraped against the plate, the sound like sand dragged across glass. Tiny scars bloomed where the blade had skimmed, and holy power leaked from the wounds.

“All armor has a grain,” he said.

He thrust along the lines he had cut. The blade found one of the hair-thin seams and traveled it. The point slid through armor and opened Helia from abdomen to back.

“Kh—” she said, and fell.

Caliste drew the sword free and turned his wrist. The next cut would take her head.

“No,” the lich croaked in a sound that was more a groan of bone than a word.

He shattered the binding dagger at last and reached for a spell, but the sword had already begun its path. He could not reach it in time. Helia squeezed her eyes shut. Suddenly, Caliste’s face twisted, the first sign of emotion since he had spoken his name. He drew the sword back and turned, both hands bringing the blade into a guarded stance.

Sound slammed into the cave, and a great axe met the sword, sparks leaping like a flock.

Ketal laughed, the sound raw with joy, and poured strength into his arms. The sword shook. A thin, cracking sound climbed its length as if it did not like the weight that pressed it.

Caliste felt the limit and shed force. He let the blade spring. The axe plunged past the guard and buried itself in the cave floor, stone bursting under the blow. Caliste’s hand flicked, and he caught the rebounding sword in a new grip. The tip rose for Ketal’s spine.

Ketal caught Caliste’s wrist and twisted hard. Caliste’s hand did not resist with force; it moved like water, flowing with the motion. The sword traced a strange arc, one that would have sliced Ketal’s hand to the bone had he not released his grip and stepped in within the same breath. His shoulder drove into Caliste’s chest.

The blow forced the demon back, though there was almost no true impact. Caliste had let his body move with the strike, preserving his stance and absorbing the force with effortless control. Everything between them had happened within a single second. Helia and the Tower Master had barely assembled the order of events.

“You returned sooner than I expected,” Caliste said. “Our children did not hold you long.”

“You answer with pure movement. It is marvelous. And strong,” Ketal said, eyes bright. He bared his teeth and lifted the axe. “With power like yours, you must be one of the Four Pillars. Pleased to meet you. I am Ketal.”

“I am Caliste,” the demon said. “The Demon of the Sword.”

“Very well, Caliste,” Ketal said. “Let us begin.”

There was nothing to ask and nothing to explain. Ketal closed the space in a single breath and brought the axe down.