The Sword Emperor Transmigrates

“It’s coming—!”

With a shout, someone pointed beyond the horizon as a towering Undead creature leaped into view. It stood dozens of meters tall.

The Undead was a cyclops that had turned into a ghoul. The one-eyed giant, its single eye radiating green light, landed amidst the front lines with a single leap, impacting the ground like a strike from a massive catapult. The earth erupted with a tidal wave of soil, flipping the terrain upside down.

Boooom—!!

The force of its descent shattered even the ghoul cyclops’s lower legs, but injuries meant nothing to Undead creatures. Its shattered bones, which had fragmented into thousands of pieces, began to reassemble. The flesh regenerated atop the frame, and its legs completely restored their functionality. Its body, saturated with the deathly energy of Nastrond, was far removed from anything resembling normal physical matter.

Its jet-black muscle fibers writhed once.

“A body that size has its inconveniences. You can see every move it’s going to make,” Izmel, the captain of the Red Dragon’s 1st Unit, remarked with a smirk as he looked down at the ghoul cyclops.

Even when alive, a mature cyclops was classified as a Rank S threat. Though its single eye no longer emitted destructive energy beams, its undead nature gave it immortality, and its colossal mass remained a dire threat. Its strikes, no more than a child’s tantrum, could level mountains.

As such, it had to be felled before it made a move.

A crimson sword energy slashed through the cyclops’s arm. Out spilled black, necrotic blood, which had congealed over a millennium from Nastrond’s venomous energy.

Izmel deployed his augmented energy shield to incinerate the blood spray, then raised his sword again. Severing one arm wouldn’t stop the cyclops—it was an Undead, after all. To buy time, he needed to incapacitate the cyclops.

A fiery glow danced. The Undead’s weakness lay in its disregard for pain and injury. The cyclops charged heedlessly without protecting its vital points, and its neck was grazed by a streak of sword energy. Even with Izmel’s deliberate restraint, the slash’s power was enough to sever its head along with both arms.

The cyclops’s massive head, larger and heavier than most boulders, tumbled to the ground, its headless body collapsing shortly after. It crushed dozens of zombies beneath it. Though the decapitated cyclops would regenerate within minutes, it was immobilized for now.

Having incapacitated the ghoul cyclops in two strikes, Izmel landed nearby and issued commands to his squad.

“Keep watch on the cyclops’s head. Destroying it will only cause it to regrow from the neck. Keep the head separated; that will suffice.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Yes, sir!”

The Order of the Red Dragon had amassed centuries of battle records, and it had taught them how to deal with undying foes. If they couldn’t be killed, they could be rendered inert—trapped in a state neither alive nor dead. This tactic wasn’t necessary for ordinary zombies and ghouls, but creatures like the ghoul cyclops posed a severe threat to the front line if left unchecked.

“…We’ve been doing this for three days already,” Izmel muttered, exhaling heavily.

The passage of time felt unbearably slow. Even a veteran like him, accustomed to countless battles, found himself sighing, so there was no need to ask how the others felt. He’d fought without rest for days, and the fatigue clung to him and weighed down his blade. Compared to his peak state, his combat ability had dropped by nearly thirty percent.

The Undead Legion of Nastrond consisted mostly of minor threats, but their endless onslaught wore down even the Transcendence Tier warriors.

Izmel glanced back and muttered, “If this is what it’s like with just a slight delay between rotations, we wouldn’t have lasted had we gone deeper.”

Since Cruella began crafting the magic formation to locate Nastrond’s core, the expeditionary force’s burden had increased manifold.

It couldn’t be helped. Directly manipulating the world laws through the medium of a Dragon Heart was a feat so complex that even a Class 9 mage struggled with it. The principle was improvised, and as such, the formation required extreme precision.

But…

Nastrond was expanding in real time. Even as the expeditionary force remained stationary, their distance from Nastrond’s edge continued to increase, causing them to be further inside as time passed.

The zombies and skeletons that apprentice knights could easily cut down had diminished, replaced by ghouls and wights[1] since the day before. In a few days, higher-ranking Undead like dullahans and banshees would arrive by the thousands.

There was a reason the Order of the Red Dragon hurried to seal Rifts. Once corrupted into a Corroded Realm, the difficulty and danger of subjugation rose tenfold. Among such realms, Nastrond was infamous as one of the five deadliest, its endless Undead hordes requiring at least two commanders to handle effectively.

If Wade’s prediction is right, today or tomorrow will be the turning point. I can’t afford to falter now.

After substituting several seconds of contemplation for actual rest, Izmel returned to the front line and raised his blade. The Undead Legion, now surpassing one hundred thousand in number, had completely surrounded them.

* * *

“…Did it work?” Cruella looked at the glowing magic circle in her hands, disbelief evident on her face.

The formation repelled the influence of the Corroded Realm Nastrond, pushing back the surrounding mana and restoring the world’s laws. This wasn’t purification; it was restoration. It was the birth of a formation that could counteract the conceptual invasion of external laws.

Even a Class 9 Grand Magus like Cruella seemed small compared to the external laws. The formation’s existence mattered little if the enemy overwhelmed them with sheer power.

“Now it’s your turn.” Despite her excitement, Cruella maintained her composure as she turned to Leonard.

Leonard, bearing a Dragon Heart, served as the key. His presence could summon a force greater than any Class 9 mage or Demigod Tier being—a power necessary to complete the formation.

“To combat a power at the level of a world, you need to borrow a power of equal magnitude. Nastrond is merely a fragment spilled over from another world. Even with the ‘Throne’ empty, opposing a world’s law is impossible.”

Wade’s expression twisted as he overheard her explanation. “Cruella!”

“I know, I know! I’m not explaining any further,” she retorted sharply.

It seemed that anything related to the “Throne” was classified, known only to the upper echelons of the Three Noble Houses.

As their argument continued, Leonard’s mind replayed something Cruella had mentioned earlier, before they crossed the boundary into Nastrond.

She said something along the lines of our world’s laws weakening when the Divine Throne became vacant at the end of the ancient era…

That was all he knew. The scraps of information weren’t enough for Leonard to piece together the whole picture.

So the God-Slaying War, where the gods perished, is directly tied to the weakening of our world laws. It’s not just the loss of our world’s guardians, but the laws themselves weakening?

When he fought the Void Deity Aiolos, Leonard had sensed something similar. The authority of the gods didn’t just wield the world’s laws—they seemed to merge with them.

However, now wasn’t the time to delve into such matters.

“Lord Cruella, can we begin right away?”

“Huh?” The woman, who had snapped at Wade earlier, now responded with mild surprise. “Hmm, we can, but aren’t you exhausted from helping adjust the magic formation?”

“I’m fine. I wouldn’t be reckless enough to face a Demigod Tier monster without being fully prepared.”

“What about you, Wade?”

“No problem. The sooner we start, even by a minute, the better.”

Wade’s gaze was fixed on the battlefield where the Red Dragon Knights were fighting valiantly. Although no one had suffered fatal injuries yet, the situation could deteriorate at any moment. The time Cruella’s death knight legion spent away from the battlefield was proving critical. Though prioritizing the creation of the magic formation was unavoidable, once the front line broke, it would be nearly impossible to recover.

“Protect the others until I return after dealing with the apostles.”

Cruella pouted at Wade’s words, speaking with irritation, “Are you ordering me around?”

“No, I’m asking for your help.”

“Getting candid with age, huh? Well, fine. Leonard!”

At her call, Leonard stepped onto the magic circle as if he had been waiting. He closed his eyes. The Dragon Heart pulsating within him emitted a faint growl, as if expressing distaste for the very air of the Corroded Realm. If his heart, a reconstructed dragon trait, carried such intensity, one could hardly imagine the ferocity of true dragons.

Whiiiing—

The magic circle beneath Leonard began to glow and gradually lifted into the air, distorting the space around it. Its purpose was to neutralize Nastrond’s influence and restore the area to its former state.

Under normal circumstances, such a feat would have been impossible. The magic circle would have been crushed under the oppressive power of the Corroded Realm, shattering to nothingness. However, that was only the case without the presence of someone infused with the heart of a dragon.

Now’s the moment!

Leonard’s eyes snapped open as the power flowing from the magic circle wrapped itself around his heart.

One Origin Five Elements Cultivation Method

This cultivation method was a martial art born from the principle of attempting to explain the world’s circulation principle, and it was similar to a magical formula that validated the laws of the universe. The compatibility between the martial art and the laws of the universe amplified the magic circle’s power to its utmost limits.

The formation, originally about ten meters in diameter, expanded tenfold, then twentyfold, reaching as far as the battlefield where the Red Dragon Knights and the Undead Legion clashed.

“Huh? W-what?” Even Cruella, standing with her broom in hand, was left speechless. But she quickly remembered her role and shouted the incantation, “World Restoration!”

A spell of global restoration. Responding to the incantation, the magic circle expanded once again, spanning over a thousand kilometers. Both the Red Dragon Knights and Nastrond’s Undead sensed the anomaly and froze, glancing at the ground beneath them.

There was no grand explosion or dazzling light. For a Class 9 supreme spell, the display seemed almost understated, even modest.

However, someone’s unintentional remark captured everyone’s attention: “The ground is… being purified? But it was soaked with poison and deathly energy.”

It was an impossible phenomenon in Nastrond, a place where such purity should never exist.

“Purified… no, it’s being restored to its original state.”

“But wasn’t the Corroded Realm supposed to be impervious to even supreme magic?!”

“That’s what I heard, too. I’m not sure what this is.”

Even the seasoned Red Dragon Knights, veterans of countless battles, exchanged baffled looks, but no one could provide an answer.

The effects of World Restoration were immediate. The corrupted land began to heal from the poisoning of the dead’s hatred and anguish. The venomous rain falling from above transformed into harmless droplets, leaving the knights, who had braced themselves for agony, bewildered.

For a brief moment, the Corroded Realm’s influence was completely erased—a miracle no one thought possible.

“Impressive,” Wade muttered, a rare flicker of awe in his eyes.

As a Demigod Tier knight, he could perceive the flow of the world’s laws. He had anticipated the effects of Cruella’s and Leonard’s efforts.

The Undead Legion of Nastrond wasn’t created by some necromancer; it was a manifestation of the laws of the Outer God Mocking Slayer.

…Growl?

One of the ghouls stared at its hand as it disintegrated, momentarily frozen. It then leaped into the magic circle with an expression of bliss and immediately crumbled to dust, vanishing completely.

“Grrk?! Gyaaaaah!”

“■■■■!! ■■■!?”

“Graaaaaaah!!”

Shrieks filled the air. Even the most mindless Undead, driven purely by instinct, recognized what was happening. Centuries of resentment and hatred had eroded, leaving them with no desires but eternal rest. Their hatred and jealousy for the living, which had persisted for a millennium, disappeared.

Far in the distance, wraiths and banshees flying over at full speed disintegrated as if melting on a summer day. Zombies and ghouls collapsed into ash, never to rise again.

Over a hundred thousand Undead surged into the range of the magic circle, seeking release, and found it. Freed from the endless torment, they embraced annihilation.

“At this rate, Nastrond’s power will be significantly diminished. The Corroded Realm might collapse without needing to confront the apostles.”

“Considering Nastrond’s peculiarities, this is beyond expectations.”

The once-infinite undead army dwindled to less than half in mere moments. Given the chance for freedom from eternal suffering, none hesitated. Even annihilation was a blessing for them.

If Nastrond were a prison, the Undead were its inmates. Naturally, those enraged by the prison break would appear.

———————————!!!!

—————————!!!

A silent roar rippled through the air. A wave of spiritual energy swept over the battlefield, binding the remaining Undead in place. Unable to move, they howled in despair, knowing they would likely never find such an opportunity for release again. Nevertheless, the Undead did not take a step forward, turning stiff like statues.

“It’s here.” Wade unsheathed his blade and gazed toward the horizon, unfazed by the oppressive roar that had paralyzed even the Transcendence Tier knights. Before making a move, he glanced at Leonard and asked, “Can you keep up?”

Leonard already knew how to answer. Except for the likes of Wade and Cruella, humans were insignificant to the Outer God’s apostles, the Demigod Tier beasts. Being the medium for World Restoration, Leonard was already a target. Staying with the main force was far more dangerous than accompanying Wade, the strongest among them.

Moreover, witnessing Wade’s battle firsthand was an opportunity Leonard couldn’t pass up.

“I’ll follow.”

“Good.”

Without hesitation, the two leaped into the air. Wade effortlessly traversed the skies, while Leonard followed closely with Sword Flight. Within seconds, they disappeared beyond the horizon.

Back on the ground, Cruella slumped into a seated position, the effort of maintaining her composure finally taking its toll. With most of her mana depleted from invoking World Restoration, the emptiness overwhelmed her.

She groaned, “Ugh, I know it’s not fair to complain, but couldn’t they spare a thought for me, too?”

When Leonard disappeared into the horizon, World Restoration came to an end. The Undead were furious at losing their chance for liberation, and they intensified their assault.

Cruella summoned a fresh wave of death knights with what little mana she had left, letting out a long sigh as she glanced in the direction the two had gone.

Her gaze lingered not on Wade but on Leonard.

“A boy bearing the properties of law similar to what the Gold Dragons possessed, huh…”

The four-hundred-year-old witch smiled faintly.

“Will he become the second advent of Ancestor Cardenas—or ascend to become the owner of the Divine Throne? Either way, he’s a variable worth watching.”

1. Wights are undead and wraith-like beings often featured in modern fantasy works. ☜