Chapter 1032
Chapter 1032
Martha shifted into a streak of amber lightning, lunging straight toward the chest of the 9th Apostle.
‘He outmatches me in raw might.’
Holding back was out of the question; she had to unleash everything from the opening second. Channeling every drop of Titan’s Aura coiled within her dantian, she brought down a thunderous, earth-imbued sword slash like a bolt from the heavens.
“Eager to throw your life away, are you?”
The 9th Apostle did not retreat an inch, even as that devastating barrage crashed downward as though meant to snap a warship in half.
“Ah, now it makes sense why your veins carry such a delectable fragrance!”
He thrust his fist forward, cloaked in blazing white sanguine force, meeting her descending blade. The concussive blast rattled the surrounding air!
When the Titan’s Aura enveloping Martha’s greatsword slammed into the 9th Apostle’s blood-tinted knuckle, the entire vessel lurched violently, groaning as if ready to splinter into firewood.
Martha stumbled backward five paces to disperse the shuddering shockwave ripping through her limbs, her brow furrowing tightly.
‘He truly holds the upper hand.’
While she had been forced back five paces, her opponent had only yielded three.
Even when taking into account the natural leverage between a heavy weapon and bare knuckles, that displacement laid bare a distinct gap in their cultivation and physical might.
‘A Grandmaster of the Upper Tier, or perhaps…’
Ultimately, the exact classification was irrelevant. Whether she was a Middle-tier Grandmaster confronting an Upper-tier or even a Peak-tier adversary, her objective remained absolute: she had to cut him down.
“You possess considerably more bite than the rumors suggested.”
A predatory grin spread across the 9th Apostle’s face as he casually tossed the captive woman he had been pinning beneath his left arm toward the rear of the vessel.
“This is thrilling. Imagine the euphoria when I finally drain every drop of your blood!”
He tightened both fists, igniting twin wreaths of pale scarlet fire as he settled into a proper combat stance.
“Your breath is rank enough to kill. Would you shut your filthy mouth?”
Martha let out a scoff, flicking her fingers in a dismissive gesture that signaled him to hold his tongue.
‘This fiend is far more monstrous beneath the surface.’
Though she maintained an arrogant sneer on the outside, a sharp ache stabbed at her chest. The reverberations from their opening collision had penetrated all the way to her inner core.
‘Even so, yielding is not an option.’
Her ultimate target was not this gluttonous swine, but the supreme Transcendent presiding over the White Blood Religion. No matter how deep the chasm in strength, she could never step back.
Darting toward the 9th Apostle’s left flank, Martha whipped her colossal blade in a vicious horizontal arc, slicing parallel to the horizon.
A blinding flash illuminated the deck!
It was the Crushing Ocean Sword, an art passed down to her directly by Denier. Steeped in the profound essence of absolute destruction, the edge hurtled straight for the 9th Apostle’s throat.
“You really are a lunatic!”
Baring his stained yellow fangs in shock at her ferocity, the 9th Apostle drove his fist out to counter her swing. His punch carried an overwhelming desire to pulverize whatever it touched—a devastating martial strike of pure violence.
As the shattering sword path and the pulverizing fist repeatedly smashed into one another, tempestuous waves of energy rippled outward in every direction. Sparks showered across the dark water and night sky like a storm of fireworks. Yet remarkably, the deck beneath their feet—forged from some unnatural mineral denser than tempered steel—remained uncracked and unbroken.
“I am going to chop you into scraps!”
A savage glint burned in Martha’s eyes as she executed a lethal variant of the Crushing Ocean Sword aimed right at the 9th Apostle’s chest.
“Is that kind of foul gutter talk fitting for a representative of the Five Kings?”
Bellowing that such vulgar threats were unworthy of her lineage, the 9th Apostle thrust forward with a fist engulfed in pale crimson fire.
Martha clamped her jaw shut as the brutal weight behind his strike bore down on her once more.
‘This mass is suffocating.’
It felt precisely as though her own crushing techniques were being turned against her.
The 9th Apostle utilized an almost identical methodology, overwhelming his targets through raw power, swiftness, and unyielding weight. Clashing with him was eerily similar to battling her own reflection.
‘Yet why am I the only one absorbing the trauma?’
By its very nature, the collision of their crushing styles should have rattled both of their physical forms and spiritual centers alike, even through a successful guard.
Yet while Martha felt her internal organs twisting with agonizing pain, threatening serious inner trauma, the 9th Apostle showed not the slightest hint of distress.
‘He may surpass me in martial rank, but he is certainly no Transcendent.’
It defied reason that an opponent who had not crossed into Transcendence could emerge entirely unscathed from direct impacts with her crushing sword.
‘There must be a trick at play.’
Spinning swiftly to the right, Martha thrust her blade straight toward the 9th Apostle’s thick belly.
“Hmph!”
Snorting in contempt, the 9th Apostle raised an arm to knock the piercing steel aside.
The instant his fist shot forward, Martha altered her sword’s trajectory with a sharp twist of her wrists, rerouting the point toward his shoulder instead.
Caught off guard by an assault that deviated from their frontal slugfest, the 9th Apostle failed to deflect it cleanly. The heavy impact violently shoved him backward as his shoulder took the brunt of the strike.
“Have you already abandoned direct confrontations because you know you cannot win?”
The 9th Apostle scoffed, eyeing her with blatant disdain.
“…”
Martha paid no mind to his sneering words, keeping her gaze locked on the pale glow rising from the wound on his shoulder.
‘That radiance…’
Her eyes dropped toward the intricate patterns of blood magic carved into the wood beneath their boots.
“You…”
Her brow knitted as she watched his lacerated shoulder knit itself back together in the blink of an eye.
“You have been relying on the ship’s blood magic to sustain yourself.”
The truth became clear: the 9th Apostle was channeling the sorcerous array etched into the vessel’s timber to dissipate the concussive force and mend any internal damage before it could take root.
“You possess a sharp mind.”
The 9th Apostle gave a faint, mocking nod.
“Indeed. The glyphs across this deck drink in blood and sanguine vigor. And whatever absorbs energy can just as easily discharge it.”
With a casual gesture of his hand, the ship’s surface flared with an eerie pale luminescence, releasing a thick surge of blood essence.
“Every bit of trauma and pain inflicted by your heavy strikes was washed away using the stored vitality within this vessel.”
He curled his fingers in amusement, clearly entertained that she had pieced it together.
“Had I absorbed your crushing techniques with nothing but raw flesh and bone, I would have been reduced to paste long ago.”
He arched an eyebrow, silently asking whether she still had the stomach to oppose him.
“Hmm…”
Releasing a terse breath, Martha stepped backward.
‘I must abandon this deck.’
Her adversary already possessed superior martial prowess, and with such a regenerative enchantment anchoring him, her odds of victory had plunged to near zero.
Regrouping on the harbor docks below appeared to be the only rational course.
“Fleeing will do you no good.”
The 9th Apostle shook his head mildly, as though peeling back her thoughts with ease.
“This blood enchantment is intrinsically linked to the surrounding boundary.”
His lips curled into an arrogant smirk, revealing that the sorcerous perimeter stretched across the entire misty bay.
‘He is telling the truth.’
Martha bit down hard on the inside of her cheek as she observed his smug countenance.
‘The harbor itself is trembling beneath pulses of sanguine force.’
Watching the ripples of blood energy emanating from the ship and washing over the surrounding shoreline, she knew his boast was not an empty bluff.
‘Furthermore…’
Shifting the battleground to the docks would spell catastrophe for anyone nearby.
The sheer shockwaves produced by the collision of their devastating styles were catastrophic. If their clash spilled into the town, the disciples of the Natchal Division and helpless townsfolk alike would be caught in the meat grinder.
“I had no intention of running.”
Martha growled, leveling the tip of her greatsword directly at his heart.
“I will simply have to cleave this entire vessel apart along with you!”
Lifting her head proudly, she dared him to make another move.
“Putting on a brave face to the very end? How amusing. Though I admit, crushing prey that cowers is dreadfully dull.”
The 9th Apostle chuckled darkly, slamming his knuckles together.
“From this point on, I shall show no restraint.”
The pale scarlet flames dancing across his fists surged to twice their previous volume.
He launched himself forward like an artillery shell, twisting his shoulder violently as he drove his right fist downward with apocalyptic force.
“You think that bloated gut makes you invincible against my blade?”
Martha swept her greatsword upward, unleashing the purest form of the Crushing Ocean Sword against the charging brute.
The resulting shockwave thundered across the waters!
The instant steel met knuckle, a blinding agony shot through Martha’s arms and legs. She deliberately yielded ground, letting her boots skid across the deck to disperse the kinetic shock fracturing her frame.
‘He was not boasting when he claimed he would hold nothing back.’
The force behind his fist felt twice as suffocating as before. A sickening sensation churned in her chest, confirming that her internal organs had finally taken significant damage.
“We are just getting started!”
Circling swiftly to her right, the 9th Apostle unleashed a relentless flurry of heavy blows, refusing to grant her a moment of respite. Despite his enormous girth, his footwork remained eerily buoyant.
Swallowing the metallic tang pooling in her mouth, Martha executed form after form of the Crushing Ocean Sword, desperately parrying each thunderous strike.
‘The internal damage has finally caught up to me.’
Even the formidable resilience of the Titan’s Aura had its limits after absorbing blow after blow capable of fracturing stone. That she had held out this long before coughing blood was a testament to her tenacity. A hollow boom resonated through the air!
Martha gritted her teeth against the overwhelming pressure, using her blade to divert a fist that aimed to smash her skull into fragments.
‘Where is Raon?’
He should have arrived by now… Raon had been stationed not far from this harbor. With the distress signal sent, his arrival ought to be imminent.
Sensing that her focus had drifted for a fraction of a heartbeat, the 9th Apostle flicked his wrist, driving a hidden blow straight into her midsection.
“Kuhuk!”
Clutching her ruptured abdomen, Martha let out a ragged wheeze, the stench of copper coating her breath.
“Your concentration is wavering!”
With a vicious grin, the 9th Apostle threw an upward hook ablaze with sanguine fire.
Though she managed to shift her weapon into a hasty block, the Titan’s Aura coating the steel shattered into pieces. Martha was thrown through the air, crashing violently against the outer railing of the ship. A sickening crunch echoed through her ribs, leaving her breathless in blinding pain.
“Ugh…”
Forcing her trembling legs beneath her, Martha fought her way back upright, though the hand gripping her sword shook uncontrollably from the widespread agony coursing through her limbs.
“What happened to that fierce pride of yours? Why are you crumpled like broken refuse?”
The 9th Apostle tilted his head mockingly, as if wondering if the show was already over.
“From the desperate look in your eyes, were you praying for Raon Zieghart to save you?”
A cruel smirk played on his lips as he saw straight through her distraction.
“Save your breath, bastard.”
Martha bit her lower lip, blood seeping through her clenched teeth.
“How tragic for you. This spectacle will be finished long before he ever steps foot on this dock.”
The 9th Apostle shook his head with finality, implying he possessed an escape route entirely detached from the waterways.
“Perish.”
He channeled an immense wave of bloody fire around his fist, unleashing a strike meant to extinguish her life once and for all.
“Haah…”
Releasing a shuddering breath, Martha watched the fiery fist tear through the air toward her.
‘Hoping for Raon’s salvation?’
When did I become so pathetic?
‘Since when did I accept defeat before the end?’
She had initiated this battle with the sole conviction of putting this Apostle in the ground with her own hands.
Yet the moment she recognized his superior prowess and realized the deck’s sorcery neutralized her strikes, she had grown timid. Entering a duel with the subconscious belief that victory was impossible guaranteed one’s downfall.
“You useless coward!”
Martha brought her hand across her own face with a sharp slap, then swung her greatsword downward to meet the incoming fist.
A deafening metallic clang exploded between them!
Her blade, which had been steadily beaten back throughout the entire engagement, suddenly blazed with a deep, radiant amber light, halting the 9th Apostle’s bloody aura in its tracks.
“If I cannot slaughter a fiend like you, my vengeance is nothing but a hollow joke!”
Bellowing at the top of her lungs, Martha leaned all her weight into the two-handed grip, forcing the 9th Apostle’s knuckle backward.
‘Burn everything.’
Let rage and soul be consumed together!
If she could not overcome an Apostle who had not even stepped into Transcendence, reclaiming her mother from the master of the White Blood Religion would remain an impossible fantasy.
She pressed forward with unyielding ferocity, having resolved to leave her corpse on this deck if victory slipped from her grasp.
“What is this…”
The 9th Apostle’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief as he felt his own fist being pushed back by a woman spitting mouthfuls of blood.
“You are far more deranged than I anticipated!”
For the very first time, he retreated a step, rattled by the terrifying resolve burning in her unblinking stare.
“I cannot allow you another breath.”
Shifting tactics, the 9th Apostle dispersed the sanguine energy from his fists across the entirety of his frame.
“I will pulverize every last trace of you and those Zieghart dogs!”
Enveloped head to toe in crackling bloody flames, he stamped down so hard the deck beneath him buckled, hurtling toward her like a living projectile. It was as though a colossal boulder had been fired from a catapult. The atmosphere groaned under the pressure!
Martha let out a whisper of breath as the monstrous shape closed the distance in a heartbeat.
‘Raon told me to yield to my inner fire.’
Following her enlightenment, Raon had advised her not to rely solely on technique and aura, but to let raw emotion and intent guide her blade. She had struggled to grasp the full meaning of his guidance back then, but the truth was now crystal clear.
‘I must feed my soul and will to the flame.’
The solemn vow she had carried since the first day she lifted cold steel. Transforming her pledge to annihilate the White Blood Religion and liberate her mother into raw martial willpower, she ignited the fury slumbering within her soul. The air thrummed with a heavy, resonant rumble!
Squaring her stance, Martha brought down her weapon, loaded with unshakeable conviction, against the hurtling 9th Apostle.
Crushing Ocean Sword technique: Crushing Heaven Unblemished.
Her greatsword erupted in an awe-inspiring, profound radiance as the vengeful will fueling her heart enveloped the steel. An earth-shattering clatter rang out!
The zenith of a sword art that united crushing weight, momentum, and brutal power slammed into the 9th Apostle’s reinforced, fortified physique.
Sssss!
As the surging sanguine flame and Martha’s radiant blade collided head-on, an unimaginable shockwave ripped outward, violently shaking not only the ship but the distant shoreline as well.
A catastrophic boom tore through the harbor!
“Right over there!”
Lawaine pointed toward the harbor basin blanketed in thick, pale mist. To an ordinary observer, such fog would seem natural amid the squall churning the open waters.
‘I see through it now.’
Raon clicked his tongue, his gaze piercing the shrouded bay.
‘That vapor is artificial.’
While the white blanket mimicked natural fog on the surface, it leaked an unnaturally warped frequency of mana. Because the distortion was extraordinarily faint, common folk would simply assume a thick mist had rolled in with the tide.
-It stinks of wretched blood.
Wrath grimaced, glaring at the unnatural haze.
-Those parasitic mosquitoes are behind this.
He clicked his tongue in disgust, immediately identifying the mark of the White Blood Religion. At the same moment, the Blade of Requiem began to thrum with intense agitation, reacting sharply to the stench of slaughter Wrath had detected.
‘No doubt about it.’
Raon gave a subtle nod, his fingers tightening around the pulsing hilt of the Blade of Requiem.
‘Only those blood-worshipping fiends would stage an atrocity like this.’
Countless cutthroats took human lives, but only the White Blood Religion systematically abducted the majority of their victims alive. The complete absence of corpses in the surrounding reports had raised his suspicions, and this lingering scent confirmed it—the blood demons were responsible.
“Everyone, draw your steel and brace for combat. We breach immediately… Wait.”
Raon’s brow twitched just as he was issuing orders to Dorian and the swordsmen of the Light Wind Palace.
‘That beast is here as well.’
Floating upon the swells beside the harbor was the ethereal visage of a blue wolf.
‘Its aura has completely transformed.’
The serene, ocean-born essence it once exuded had vanished, replaced by a foul, rancid presence saturated with malice. It no longer resembled a sacred spirit; it was merely a rabid monster.
‘Was it truly a hound corrupted by the White Blood Religion all along?’
Observing its cloudy, vacant stare, it was evident the creature had lost its sanity. Even so, there was no luxury of time to deal with the wolf right now. His immediate priority was rescuing the captives trapped within the port.
“The… the vessel cannot advance!”
Lawaine called out with a scowl, noting that the ship was being repelled by an invisible ward sealing off the docks.
“Hold for a second. We must dismantle this ward before…”
Before he could summon the vessel’s navigator-mage, a monumental tempest of mana ruptured from deep within the foggy perimeter. A deafening roar echoed over the waves! Feeling the distinctive, resonant pressure of Titan’s Aura, it was obvious Martha was locked in a brutal life-or-death struggle against one of the cult’s high-ranking demons.
“There is no time to waste on careful methods. I will carve a path.”
Raon stepped directly onto the empty air, positioning himself before the fog-wrapped ward. Drawing upon the searing heat of the Ten Thousand Flames Cultivation, he saturated Heavenly Drive with blazing energy and unleashed a peerless Crimson Slash. A radiant beam of scarlet-gold fire lanced between the sea and the sky, cleaving the dense barrier down the center. With a thunderous crash, the entire perimeter shattered!
The mystical ward maintained by the White Blood Religion fractured into thousands of glittering fragments, gradually unveiling the harbor hidden behind the veil.
The first spectacle that met his eyes was the water directly adjacent to the docks. A massive sailing vessel had been torn in half, slowly taking on water and sinking into the deep, while upon the ruined planks lay a middle-aged brute, his flesh violently shredded from his shoulder down to his hip.
Before him stood Martha, her blade pressed against the throat of the gasping, blood-drenched man, her own legs swaying as though she might collapse at any moment.
‘Martha brought down that monster alone?’
Even on the verge of death, the aura radiating from the fallen figure—clearly one of the Apostles—was suffocating enough to overshadow Martha’s own. It seemed almost miraculous that she had managed to fell such an adversary.
“I managed it thanks to your advice.”
Martha offered a strained, bloodied grin as she turned toward Raon, as if reading the disbelief in his eyes.
“And this is merely the opening chapter.”
Though drained and battered from the grueling clash, she tightened her crimson-stained fist, her eyes burning with an unquenchable warrior’s resolve.
“Of my retribution!”
Comments for chapter "Chapter 1032"
MANGA DISCUSSION
Madara Info
Madara stands as a beacon for those desiring to craft a captivating online comic and manga reading platform on WordPress
For custom work request, please send email to wpstylish(at)gmail(dot)com