Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 157

In the desert, where boundless sands piled high and no windbreak existed, sandstorms were nothing unusual. Unlike the stony deserts, the fine and light grains of a true sand desert meant storms came more often and lasted far longer. Records even spoke of one vast sandstorm that raged for fifty days straight, earning its own name: the Khamsin.

Once it began, a sandstorm swept across the land, climbing up to the undersides of clouds and blotting out the sun. It wasn’t darkness like night, but in the desert at midday it still cast a heavy shadow.

And in that shadow, Evil stirred.

“Gaaahhh!”

“L-Lord Rahmu! Aaaagh!”

With their death cries, two men vanished. It was no figure of speech—they vanished in the literal sense. Where a wave of pitch-black swept past, nothing remained. Not even a drop of blood.

The black was beetles, glistening black like obsidian. Anything their mandibles bit, armor or flesh alike, rotted away, reducing the living to a handful of dirt.

“Ermud! Rahim!”

Calling the names of his fallen men, Rahmu swung his sword with all his might. The reddish Aura along its blade forced the beetles back for a moment.

The crimson blaze of his scimitar could wound even those beetles with its Scorching Aura. Yet Rahmu’s face remained pale.

“Anyone who’s still alive, answer my call! Is no one there!?”

Barely thirty minutes since he’d entered the storm, and his was the only voice within it. It had been a good fortune to find the creature suspected of all the disappearances. The mistake was pursuing it into the storm. The Bedouin’s finest warriors, famed for their skill, had been slain without managing a single true strike.

“If I don’t get out of this storm...!”

There was only death. Rahmu felt it as vividly. Never before had death’s shadow pressed so vividly against his back, not when an arrow pierced dangerously close to his heart, a scimitar at his throat, or poison dragging him toward death.

Leaving his men’s corpses behind, Rahmu ran with all he had. Fear and tension locked his legs stiff, burying them again and again in the dunes, but he never stopped. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

A hundred meters. Two hundred.

Even after running until distance lost meaning, no end of the sandstorm appeared. Above, the warped sun and, below, his writhing shadow seemed to mock him.

Was it his imagination? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

This storm was not natural. Finally stopping, Rahmu crushed down his fear with pride and turned back.

“Show yourself!”

It couldn’t be. When he had first sighted “it,” the air around them had been calm. Only after chasing it had his vision blurred. and, before he knew it, he was in the heart of the tempest.

“Don’t you dare skulk! If you have honor and pride, show your face to Rahmu here and now!”

It was a desperate shout. He knew there would be no answer, yet he had to shout. For his fallen men, at the very least, he had to spit in the monster’s face before dying. His Aura swelled higher with that resolve.

Just one strike. Even if it cost his life, he would at least scar the vile creature that had fed his men to mere insects.

“Khrrh...hh...khhhrrh...”

As though mocking his resolve, a ghastly sound echoed, and “it” revealed itself. The sandstorm blurred its outline that looked like a man, but flickering black, like shadow itself.

Upon its head rested a jeweled nemes. Draped about it was a shawl of ancient-kingdom style. A false beard of gold hung at its chin, an adornment only the chosen Pharaoh of the gods could wear. Around its neck and waist, bands of orichalcum. In its hands, the royal scepter Nekhaka and the staff Heka.

“A lowly creature... daring to call me...”

With coal-black skin and green light flaring from the deep-set sockets within, it was undoubtedly the form of the Black Pharaoh, Nephren-Ka.

Rahmu, knowing by instinct this was something that should not exist, cried out like a man possessed.

“W-what are you? So vile, so blasphemous...! That such a monster walks proudly beneath the sun!”

Roused by his words, Nephren-Ka blinked and raised his gaze skyward. Even veiled by storm, that radiant orb still shone.

“The... sun...? That cursed light...that denies me...!”

Hatred blazed in Nephren-Ka’s glowing eyes as he glared at the sun, then turned them on Rahmu. The murderous intent was palpable. Faced with it, Rahmu swung reflexively.

“Haaaah!”

His scimitar, burning with Aura, split the air and seared the sky as it came down to cleave Nephren-Ka’s crown. However—

“Pathetic...worm...”

Nephren-Ka neither moved nor chanted. He merely... looked.

And the instant his gaze fixed upon Rahmu, the beetles—until then instinctively avoiding Aura—sprang to life. Without a moment’s hesitation, they surged together like a wave of pitch-black, interposing themselves before the blade.

One swing of an Aura Sword could hew down dozens, yet when gathered in the hundreds and thousands, the swarm could not be stopped.

And that wasn’t the worst of it. Rahmu’s eyes went wide as he suddenly felt the strength drain from him. The scimitar that had burned so bright began to dim, until it snapped in two mid-blade.

“What?!”

No. It had not snapped. When he looked closely, he saw the beetles gnawing at the blade, chewing it away until tiny fragments crumbled down like dust.

“They... they ate my Aura!?”

Staggering back, Rahmu cried out in horror. It should have been impossible. Aura was refined life-force, power compressed to the highest density. Even the hardest metals could not contain it fully, hence the need for special alloys like mithril or orichalcum. Yet living insects, beetles of all things, had chewed through it as though it were grass.

“My...servants...feast on life...”

A Pharaoh was once the incarnation of the sun, a symbol of life and light. But Nephren-Ka, who had fallen through a pact with the exogod, was its opposite. Death and darkness were his dominion.

“Only the cursed sun dares...to profane...my dominion...your flame...is nothing...”

“Hrghhh...!”

“Are you afraid...?”

Rahmu nodded without even realizing it. Nephren-Ka chuckled, stretching forth his staff—like a cruel hand tormenting a man dangling from a cliff. It dripped with malice.

“Then I shall grant you mercy...!”

From his staff poured darkness that engulfed Rahmu. It invaded his eyes, nose, mouth, ears—every opening in his face filled with unholy power. It was worse, stronger, than any exolaw. Nephren-Ka drew his strength directly from the exogod, a power beyond even the bishops of the Evil Order.

Soon, Rahmu’s struggling ceased. His skin shriveled and cracked like dried fish, clinging tight to bone until only a husk remained.

Then, tendrils stretched from Nephren-Ka’s body, wrapping that husk like bandages. They coiled and coiled until nothing was left exposed but hollow eye sockets and a mouth.

“Rise...my servant...”

At his words, Rahmu’s eyes opened. Green fire glowed within them.

Remade through exolaw into an undead mummy, Rahmu bent his knees in reverence. In a voice hollow and muddied, nothing like the man he had been, he spoke.

“Command me, O Great Pharaoh.”

Nephren-Ka nodded, satisfied.

He ordered, “Lead me...to those...who once were your kin...”

“I obey the will of Pharaoh.”

Gone was the proud warrior who had once defied him. Without hesitation, Rahmu moved to fulfill the command, to deliver the Bedouin to Nephren-Ka as living sacrifices and to resurrect a kingdom of death in this desert.

“We are nearly... there...”

Muttering darkly, Nephren-Ka followed behind Rahmu. His slurred speech, the time wasted on a mere pursuit party—these were because the summoning was incomplete.

A demi-deity like this could never be fully drawn so lightly. To perfect his body and mind, he needed sacrifices to devour. The path was long, but unlike in the ancient age, few remained who could truly threaten him.

“O sun...behold, I have returned...!”

With a monstrous laugh, the Black Pharaoh Nephren-Ka declared his ambition—to rule this land once more.

***

The day after the duels, Leon’s party immediately took three seats in the chieftains’ council and joined the discussion. They had worried the beastkin might dislike outsiders interfering, but after the previous day’s displays, the beastkin regarded Leon’s group as great warriors—rare among humans.

Because of that, the mood in the hall was surprisingly amicable, and the three of them were allowed to speak without issue.

“Hm.”

However, for some reason—

“Hmmm.”

Leon glanced sideways at Urakan, who sat beside him. The wounds he’d sustained in yesterday’s duel were severe; even with Elahan’s treatment, the pungent scent of salves still clung to him.

It was the price of taking Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar head-on. However sturdy a Tigris body might be, the Grand Chariot was a legendary martial art. To throw himself against such a chained secret technique and survive at all was remarkable.

“Hmmm.”

Urakan kept making strange noises through his nose until Leon finally turned and muttered in irritation.

“Why do you keep doing that? It’s distracting.”

“Hmmmmm.”

“Urakan!”

When Leon snapped, Urakan bared his teeth and said, “Overnight, you’ve become someone else entirely. I’ve heard humans grow quickly, but this is ridiculous.”

Was it his beastkin’s instincts, or a warrior’s insight? Either way, his eye was sharp.

Leon answered sheepishly, “Well, I was lucky.”

“Bullshit,” Urakan snorted. “Anyone who succeeds at something and then calls it luck is an idiot. Things happen because they can, and you win because you’re capable of winning. Don’t act humble. It pisses me off.”

“Looks to me like you gained something too, Urakan.”

“After a fight like yesterday? If I didn’t, that would be stranger.”

A single real battle could teach more than a hundred practices. And Urakan had found no beastkin on the plains who could match him in martial arts. Only the day he’d fought Varg remained a meaningful memory.

Then Leon had appeared. A warrior who claimed to be Holy King Rodrick’s direct disciple, in some ways even more refined in martial training than Varg.

“Next time, let’s fight longer, fiercer,” said Urakan, clenching his fists as he remembered yesterday’s thrill. “If you promise me another round after this business is done, then I’ll support your side completely. What do you say?”

“I did hear that all Tigris were mad about fighting...” Leon muttered.

“Good. I’ll take that as a yes.”

With nothing more than a promise of a spar, Leon secured the support of the strongest warrior of the war faction. He sighed at the man’s bluntness, but still nodded.

And truthfully, today he could win more easily than yesterday. Since awakening his mind-body, Leon really was a different person, just as Urakan had said. With the instantaneous speed of Icarus Wing, could he not even match Varg’s Sirius?

He was still mulling over that thought when Basil, the chieftain of the Capris, spoke.

“Then to slay the one who tried to set us against the nomads, we’ll have to march into the heart of the desert.”

Basil summarized the situation perfectly. Whoever it was, their goal was war—driving the nomads out of the sands to clash with the beastkin. It was a grand strategy, playing the long game. To stop it, they had to destroy the monster attacking supplies and villagers inside the desert.

Alice of the Lepus and Totuga of the Ursus exchanged words.

“We can’t move in force. The Bedouin admitted they don’t know the full situation. If we send a great army, they may think we’re launching a preemptive strike.”

“There’s sense in that.”

Only yesterday, they had stood in different factions—Neutral and War—but after the duels, they debated without a trace of lingering grudge. Savage though it seemed, that too was the strength of beastkin.

The council’s discussion continued.

“If it’s a small force, then the level must be high. Send rabble and they’ll collapse before the desert even tests them.”

“Agreed. At least chieftains, or their heirs.”

“But if we send all the chieftains, what of the order of the plains—”

“What order? When war may break out!”

“So you would leave our home defenseless!?”

Some grew heated, others remained calm. Each argued their stance, right or wrong, from their own perspective.

Leon, however, grew impatient. Every day they delayed, the situation worsened. El-Cid had told him that the enemy was a monster regaining its strength with time and with sacrifices. It had to be struck down as quickly as possible.

Then, with a bang, Urakan planted both feet on the round table and roared.

“Enough! Cowards, bleating this or that! How long are we going to sit here yapping?!”

“Chieftain Urakan! Even you must show decorum in council—”

“Shut it!” he shouted and kicked the table, standing with both arms high. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going! Even if I die, the Tigris will still thrive. Isn’t that so, you bastards?!”

When he turned to the gallery, the bored-looking Tigris tribesmen erupted in cheers.

“Take us too, Chieftain!”

“Don’t hog all the fun for yourself!”

“Unfair!”

“Oooooh!”

The atmosphere of the council flipped in an instant. Those who had been cautious now looked like cowards compared to the Tigris’ bold rally. Even the prudent chieftains could not hold their ground.

There was no need for a vote. Watching, Varg raised his hand.

“It is decided. Gather the warriors for the Great Desert. We march to slay the wretch who thought to use us as live sacrifices!”

And so, in only two days, the council was settled. With Varg’s declaration, the gathered beastkin raised both hands and shouted, until the Fenrir village itself shook with the roar—not hatred, not vengeance, but righteous fury!

In that moment, the beastkin turned their blades toward Evil.