The office of the Leon province's guildmaster was like any other, it was made of a wooden floor and concrete walls. The walls were adorned with decorations of the heads of multiple powerful beasts including a young dragon. All of these were artifical, of course, but they were decorated with actual parts of the creature that did not easily rot.

Aside from that, there were a few old-fashioned candle lights that lit the room, several shelves to store items, and a lone fir desk surrounded by two chairs.

Behind the desk was an aged-man, who held on tightly to a communication pearl.

“Hello, hello? Can you hear us?

This is our final message

Tonight, a horde of nearly five hundred young dragons have been spotted near the borders of the Leon province, they are headed for the direction of Acies.

We send our brotherly regards to all troops stationed in the territory of ducal house de Leon.

And all those fighting, wherever they are,

The lion’s head of the chimera shall not perish!

Semper Invictus!”

The ceremonial hymn of Invicta was heard from the communication pearl, the deep voices that sung the solemn tune were filled with a sense of heaviness, a deep dread.

After a few seconds, there was a loud, incoherent noise heard from the other side, and the pearl went silent.

“Ngh!” Juan grit his teeth so hard that they slipped off each other and dug into his mouth. He crushed the now useless communication pearl in his hands.

He turned to the lanky, male messenger that was waiting in the corner of the room, Juan had set aside the matter since the call was more important than whatever message he could bring.

“We have lost contact with the headquarters of the peacekeepers near the border. I am afraid they have been overrun.”  He lamented

The messenger at the corner of the room only shrunk back and nodded.

“Now, state your business, in this state of emergency it would be more likely that I would be contacted via a communication pearl rather than a human messenger, so why are you in my presence?” Juan leaned forward and gave the man a sharp glare. It was specially terrifying considering his age and appearance.

Despite that, the messenger immediately straightened his posture and took out a piece of paper.

“My sincerest apologies sir, the capital has been covered in a multi-layered barrier, they are unable to make contact as of the moment. I am here with a message from King Charles.

Guild master de Leon,

The capital has been besieged by various monsters from under the earth; it appears they were driven away from their natural habitat.

This phenomenon is suspected to be the work of the earthquake caused by a potentially hostile entity at the level of at least an adult dragon.

At the time of writing this message, the archmages are being positioned at the four corners of the capital to deploy the multi-layered barrier, we can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Thusly, all human resources dedicated to the capital are unable to provide aid to the Leon province, and the surrounding territory. Work with the army stationed outside the barrier. The defense of the Leon province is up to you, guildmaster.

I have sent a mage capable of using teleport to deliver his message.

Semper Invicta,

King Charles Sanchez"

“Give me that.” Juan ordered.

The messenger complied and presented the piece of paper to Juan, who hastily grabbed it.

He carefully examined the text and confirmed the content; the handwriting was the same as what he recognized King Charles’ penmanship to be, albeit it was hastily written for clear reasons.

The situation seemed sudden and unbelievable, but it was true.

He took a deep breath, and let it out.

“We stand alone.” He muttered.

He moved to a nearby candlestand and held the paper above the wick of fire, it burned the paper to ashes. He then turned to the messenger who was standing in place, with only an expression of fear painted on his face. Upon closer inspection, he did notice that the man was quite refined, but from the lack of proper attire and the disorderly appearance of the man, it was not obvious that he was an expert mage.

Juan lowered his head.

“I apologize for the disrespect, you may leave.”

“It is alright, it is my fault for barging in here dressed so outlandishly.”

The messenger nodded and immediately left the room and rushed out of the building.

Juan waved his hand and called upon his soul weapon, the seemingly blunt training sword that he wielded in battle. He sifted through the rack of communication pearls to consolidate whatever power he had available in the capital.

“If only a miracle would happen.” He lamented,

Little did he know, the miracle was hovering right above the province in the form of his own grandson.

--

A robed figure suddenly appeared over the night sky in a remote area of the Leon province, an area that was once a populated town, but if one considered the destruction the monsters left in their wake, it was basically a desolated region.

Pulverized corpses were strewn across the ruined buildings; those that could be recognized were merely bags of flesh with its insides composed of liquid. Occasionally, there would be corpses of monsters, and very rarely, an odd formation of rocks.

An eerie silence permeated the night, and not even faint cries for help could be heard from the surroundings.

“For a war against beasts, this sure is peaceful.” Louis voiced out, half-surprised.

He recalled the frequent beast tides that plagued his land, the wars against the beasts were so deadly that the normally big difference between mortals and cultivators could not be seen at all.

Low-leveled cultivators would drop dead like mortals; even decent experts could fall in a single strike from the claw of a beast. While humans could temper their body, without qi they would still pale in comparison to the ferocity and strength of large creatures.

Spiritual structures made with jade would crumble and erode as structures of marble and stone do, the very landscape itself would be changed by fire and ice. The fauna razed by lightning, and the earth shaped to the whims of its masters.

Even the sky was not safe, for it would change and be torn apart by the clashing domains of top experts.

Such events were on a particularly good tide, at worst, the landscape would be painted in blood and the cultivators would have to retreat, condemning those left to become vengeful souls. It created a land of eternal suffering and at the same time a hotspot for opportunistic cultivators.

The verdant and empty fields left by the dragon horde was nothing like that, it was beautiful, vibrant and almost poetic.

Had Louis actually cared about such things, he may have considered letting the dragon horde run wild and overrun the province.

However, that was not what he was here for.

With immense speed far beyond that of sound, he arrived at his intended destination with a single step.

He eyed the hundreds strong horde of young dragons, instead of flying high in the sky like they usually did, they stomped on the ground, and marched towards the capital.

Strangely enough, the amount of Viventum crystals that accompanied them was about the same, even slightly below at that, Loius assumed that the elder dragon called upon these locally and not from his horde due to their low speed.

He let out a chuckle.

“That which lurks in the unknown is terrifyingly powerful compared to those that stand before the light of day.”

Using his soul weapon, he created a long stick of bread. As if it was a sword, he took it using both hands and held it firmly in front of him.

A slight smile crept up on his face.

“However, it had always been like that, had it not?”

He pulled the sword closer to him.

‘Anything under heaven can be a sword. As long as one’s intent is true, and as long as one is able to manifest one’s will, even the most mundane can be powerful and profound!” He recited the cant in his mind, and the stick of bread suddenly stood erect as if it could pierce the very heavens.

"It is foolish to think that crawling on the ground would keep you safe from me!" 

He floated downwards and did a single slashing motion with the stick of bread, from the motion, the air ripped apart, no, it willingly parted for the product of flour and power, an immense force found its way across the land, landing on the rear guard of dragons before they could notice.

Louis was not done.

In almost an instant later, he continued to slash with his makeshift blade, slowly closing in the distance between him and the dragon horde. Each blow threw chunks of earth below them hundreds of miles into the air.

With each motion of his blade, he aimed the next a little higher as to not hit the piling corpses of the dragons, the dragons greatly varied in size and height, so he had started out with finishing off the dragons with the smaller builds, before moving on to the more sizeable dragons.

Eventually, he had closed in on the dragon horde.

‘So sword intent works the same in this world as well, huh. Good, it would be troublesome if it did not’ Louis looked at the stick of bread in his hand.

All he needed was to maintain his qi inside it so that it would not break, and his sword intent would do the rest. While he was not the most adept in the art of the sword, it was enough to deal with such a trifling horde.

Within a millisecond, over a hundred dragons have already perished.

However, the reaction time of young dragons were not to be underestimated, as the others had already noticed the death of their comrades and roared, the ones at the front had already started to charge their breath in haste.

‘Too slow!’ Louis thought.

He got up close and started to do some weaker, yet swift strikes on the body of the monsters, some needed two blows, which he cut time by connecting the first blow with a weak piercing strike. As he leaped, he made sure to make his impact as violent and harsh as possible to throw rocks into the air.

In panic, a bunch of young dragons started to lunge in the direction of their overwhelming enemy, most collided into each other, but the momentum was kept, which gathered up into a hill-sized rock hurling towards him.

‘Foolish!’

He searched for the weak point of the ball, the keystone that would case the entire thing to crumble. It was an easy job, as he had already found multiple by the time it was a few meters from his face.

He withdrew his sword for a moment, and pointed a poked a finger at the ball, at the same time he extended his finger, the ball collided into it.

At first, it was only the young dragon in front of him that shattered, but as the collision progressed, the rubble from the explosion of the first dragon dug into the surrounding ones, and shattered them as well. The force spread out through the dragon boulder, causing a chain reaction that eventually shattered every dragon that was a part of the ball.

Louis moved a few meters to the right as to not get hit by a stray pebble.

He once again drew his breadsword and slashed downwards, hitting some of the dragons that had stayed on the ground. Although this time it did not kill all of them.

Using the momentum from his fall and his own strength; Louis dug into the earth and displaced more stone into the air, as well as ending the life of the surrounding dragons.

A hundred more dragons had fallen,

Louis let out a couple more weak slashes, it did little more than harm the young dragons surrounding him and push them back a little. Killing them was not his goal, however, it was simply to lengthen the distance between them.

He held the stick of bread near his chest, and pointed the “edge”, to his face. Softly, he muttered two words under his breath.

“Sword will.”

The qi surrounding the sword of bread faded away, and Louis’ grand plan for the battle was revealed. All of the earth he had thrown into the air during the battle had not hit the ground yet, instead, they merged into one, single, falling projectile.

The clump of rock was equal to the size of most mountains.

Louis swiftly broke through space thereafter, appearing far above the battlefield, he looked down on the young dragons that helplessly struggled to break the gargantuan weapon falling towards them.

“Sword Art: Will of the Collapsing Mountain!” Louis bellowed as he pointed his mighty stick of bread towards the firmament.

The rocky mound of death fell upon the desecrated plains and buried the young dragons alongside it. The slice of earth that was thrown in the sky coalesced and collapsed, and Louis’ utilized its will to bury all those beneath it.

Of course, the area that the monsters occupied went far beyond the impact radius of the mountain, so it did not crush them all immediately.

What followed was an explosion of sheer kinetic energy that would put the power of even adult dragons to shame.

A mushroom cloud rose high into the air, the scorching heat from the blast had already killed the monsters that gawked at the natural disaster before them.

What followed was an intense shockwave that would be felt throughout half of the continent with no interference.

Louis had accounted for this, and had erected a barrier that would shield the de Leon territory from the impact. As for the other human settlements, they can only blame their luck for getting in his way.

"A second and a half, not bad."

With a tired look on his face, he somberly gazed on the aftermath of the battle, the altitude of the area had been greatly reduced, it formed a very steep crater. At the center of the landmass was a towering mountain that stood in its lonesome.

Someday, life would bloom here once more, but for now it was a reminder to humans of their mortality and eventual death. That even the most powerful of beasts could crumble and fall like a pebble displaced from the roadside.

It would even start a series of myths told in taverns and sung by bards, a tale of the Lion God that protected his land. He whose golden eyes that watched over every citizen in the Leon province, protecting those that were good and purging those that were evil with his blade.

Louis sighed, the bread stick that he held in his hand had now been reduced to dust; the last vestiges of power that remained in it were directed towards the sword will.

He had spent a small amount of qi to accomplish the feat, it was insignificant, but Louis still felt the loss, he felt less incomplete.

He had only lived here for 14 years and he had already done it once, how much more would he do it in the next hundred, the next thousand?

However, he did not regret it.

He stared at his slightly calloused hand.

“Father, this is the least I can do to be filial.”

Anon_Y_Mousse

One day, I aspire to write my fight scenes as well as smut authors write their sex scenes. Make sure to leave a favorite if you liked that chapter, and your thoughts in the comments!