The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 31 – Templar (2)

Arwain raised his shield. He was not so foolish as to lower his guard just because Juan looked like a child. Demons existed even in the body of a young child or in the form of a weak woman. This cautiousness was an iron-clad rule of the Order of the White Crow.

Even amongst such demons, the relaxed appearance of the young boy in front of him seemed particularly different. There was a distinctive aura emanating from him, almost as if he was not born the way normal humans were.

“You are definitely the offspring of a demon,” Arwain commented.

Juan laughed at Arwain’s serious tone and replied, “I was feeling slightly expectant because I heard Templars were the emperor’s sharpest spear, but it seems that you are the same as everyone else. If you guys want to get something done, you should have at least sent someone with a decent brain. I will give you the name ‘Crabshell.’”

Arwain’s face slightly twitched at Juan’s provocation. Apart from members of his own Order, there had never been anyone who looked so relaxed even after seeing his Templar armor. Even provincial nobles were careful with their words when they saw his Templar armor. He had initially thought that the boy did not recognize the armor, but that did not seem to be the case based on what the boy was saying.

“..... Blind or insane?” Arwain asked.

“Choose whichever you prefer to be, Crabshell,” answered Juan.

Instead of replying, Arwain started to slowly walk toward Juan. Each footstep was heavy enough to leave deep imprints in the mud, yet each step was also agile. Arwain was almost like a moving tower due to the heavy armor and shield he was wearing. He was similar to a golem, yet subtly different.

Juan was not able to win against the golem. Rather, he was only able to ‘stop’ the fight because he had gained the authority to command it. If Juan had to destroy the golem, he would have had no choice but to give up. However, Templars possessed a similar defense to golems and also had the questionable ‘Grace’ to protect themselves.

‘How should I remove that shell so I can eat the meat inside?’ Juan wondered, spinning his short sword with his fingers as he watched Arwain getting closer.

“If you don’t want to answer, I will assume that you are both blind and insane,” Arwain said.

At that moment, Juan dashed towards Arwain. The moment the mud started tangling his feet, Juan was already hitting Arwain’s shield.

Clang!?

Juan rose into the air along with the harsh sound of something hitting the shield. He was a little surprised. He had planned on using the momentum while Arwain was unprepared to slide beneath the shield. However, Arwain had blocked him with the shield and even sent him flying into the air.

.

Arwain was also flustered. He had already expected that Juan would be different, but Juan’s movements exceeded his expectations. He would not have been able to block Juan if his shield had not received His Majesty’s Grace.

Arwain swung his hammer in Juan’s direction as Juan fell. A heavy lump of steel that an ordinary person would not even be able to lift with both hands flew toward Juan. Juan twisted his body and narrowly dodged. The hammer got caught in his white cloak, but the two unraveled softly like smoke.

“You there, what magic are you using?!” Arwain shouted.

“What nonsense are you suddenly spouting?” Juan retorted.

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The moment his body landed on the ground, Juan once again rushed toward Arwain. As if foreseeing the attack, Arwain raised his shield. Meanwhile, Juan moved slightly upward instead of rushing in from the front.

‘Blink.’

Talter’s short sword headed straight toward the gap in Arwain’s helmet.

Arwain was flustered by the sudden change in Juan’s trajectory, but he quickly lifted his shield and deflected Juan’s attack. Due to Arwain’s actions, Juan hit the decorations on top of Arwain’s helmet instead of the gap in the helmet.

“Ughh!”

Arwain stumbled from the blow to his head. It was a good opportunity for Juan, but he was also in no condition to move since he had been struck by the shield while using Blink.

Arwain repositioned his helmet and swung his hammer. Juan dodged dangerously while rolling in the mud.

“What in the world...? You despicable heretic bastard!” Arwain yelled.

“Damn, removing this crab shell is quite difficult,” murmured Juan.

“You rude heretic bastard!”

Arwain’s head started heating up with anger. Up until this point, Arwain had never been hit on the head during any of his missions. If anyone left a mark on his armor or shield, he would retaliate by crushing his opponent. However, he did not know how to retaliate against this kind of reckless assault.

“My body, my armor, my weapon were all bestowed and Graced by His Majesty! They are not something someone like you can casually touch!” Arwain shrieked while charging toward Juan.

Juan slightly dodged to the side to avoid the quick head-crushing blow. The force of the weapon alone was enough to make Juan’s slender body stumble, and the entire village trembled from the heavy impact.

Hearing the commotion, several villagers and soldiers came and surrounded the two from a distance. However, nobody dared to approach them carelessly. Everyone could tell that even a small graze from Arwain’s hammer was enough to make mincemeat out of them.

‘Just one hit would be enough to crush me.’

Even if he blocked with Talter’s short sword, he would still be crushed into the ground along with the short sword. Arwain’s attacks were heavy and destructive, while his weak points were covered perfectly by his shield.

Juan acknowledged that facing Arwain was more difficult than he thought. It seemed like a good idea to stop narrowly dodging each blow.

Time flew by quickly with Juan not getting any time to recover. Meanwhile, Arwain did not tire even when wielding such a heavy shield and hammer, and he constantly attacked Juan. In fact, his movements were actually getting faster.

“You rat-like bastard!” shouted Arwain.

Juan saw Arwain glaring at him when he smashed his hammer into the ground right in front of his nose. Upon looking closely, he could see that Arwain’s body was subtly glowing. Juan caught the familiar scent of mana from Arwain.

‘That must?be the Grace.’

Arwain’s skills themselves were nothing special. His skills were better than those of the Order of the Blue Rose, but they were below that of Sina. However, the Grace emanating from his armor strengthened his body, making him fast and strong. Even with Talter’s short sword, it seemed like it would be difficult to penetrate him without strengthening the short sword. If Sina were to fight with a Templar one-on-one, it would end with Sina’s defeat. That was how strong a Templar’s equipment was.

Juan could not think of other ways to defeat Arwain head-on in his current state. He had thought that Arwain would be dull as his body was big and heavy, but that was not the case. Juan had also thought that by constantly evading him, he would tire Arwain out, but that too ended up not being the case.

Arwain possessed perfect attack, defense and stamina, but his skills were nothing special. Not that they were important anyway, with such an overpowering advantage. Juan thus began to realize the reason why the Church emphasized 'faith’ over ‘skill’.

‘But it's disappointing.’

For someone strengthened with his own mana, the result was unsatisfactory. With such inefficiency, it would be better to empower a golem rather than the Templars. The golems he had made in the later years of his life, when war was rampant on the northern border, were much more efficient and powerful. There shouldn’t have been any need to strengthen and modify a human’s body like this.

“You bastard!” Arwain hollered.

Arwain’s anger erupted at Juan’s mumbling. He could feel that Juan was looking down on him. It was true that while Juan was using all his focus to evade, Arwain had yet to land an effective blow on Juan. He started to feel slightly uneasy.

‘He seems to be using the Baltic Sword,’ thought Arwain.

The Baltic Sword was something all the knights of the empire learned, but the application and form varied for everyone.

If compared against those knights, Juan’s skill was at the level of the top Imperial Guards. It should have been impossible for a wanderer who came from beyond the borders to use the Baltic Sword, and at such a high level to boot. If his colleagues were to hear about this, they would laugh at him for casting aside his clan’s glory and forcefully entering the Templar Order only to be defeated by a kid.

Becoming a Templar who was granted His Majesty’s Grace required more than just talent and effort. It was a position only geniuses could hold. However, Arwain possessed the lowest skill level amongst the Templars of the Order of the White Crow. Faced with such a vast difference in skill and talent, Arwain had developed an inferiority complex. The reason why he had become obsessed with interrogating heretics was not simply because he had become bored with the life of a Templar; it was also because he wanted to escape from the inferiority he felt from being compared with the other Templars. He had escaped in order to experience the feeling of killing the weak in the name of carrying out justice on the emperor’s behalf.

The arrogance he felt in being the emperor’s Templar slowly started to crack. The thoughts of inferiority that he had ignored for so long started to slip through the cracks and fill his head. Arwain felt as if he could hear the sounds of everyone mocking him.

“I am the emperor’s fist!” Arwain roared loudly.

Juan noticed that something was strange about Arwain’s state. The light surrounding Arwain’s body had noticeably thickened. The appearance of his armor shone as if it was burning. For a moment, the light surrounding Arwain shone brightly like the sun.

“Taste the emperor’s pure rage and Spear of Wrath!” shouted Arwain.

Along with Arwain’s roar, the light from his armor started to flock like lightning to his hammer. The condensed light was similar in nature to what Sina had shown when demonstrating her Grace.

Juan sensed that it was dangerous. He quickly used Blink?to retreat, but the light from Arwain’s hammer was slightly faster.

Everything in Juan’s vision suddenly turned bright. A blazing spear appeared from the end of Arwin’s hammer and penetrated Juan’s body. Juan was unable to do anything.

The Spear of Wrath passed through Juan’s body and continued like lightning to the stone walls protecting the village. Rocks started to scatter as the stone wall collapsed. There was now a huge hole in the wall. Screams erupted from all directions. A greedy fire started along the path where the Spear of Wrath passed by and lit up the village in an instant.

Arwain wore a cruel smile as he approached Juan. “Foolish bastard. Did you really think that you could win against one of the emperor’s Templars with your measly talent?”

Juan showed no sign of movement. It seemed clear that he had died on the spot.

Arwain didn’t think too much of it, even though there was no blood to be seen. The Spear of Wrath burnt anything it touched. The wound was scorched too, so it was natural that blood wouldn’t flow from it.

“I am His Majesty’s spear and sword, protected by and moving with the power of the Grace!”

Arwain felt unpleasant, given that he had to use the Grace bestowed upon him by the emperor on a young boy, but since he had punished the heretic with death, it didn’t matter much to him. All that was left was to clean up the area.

“I will grind your profane corpse, burn it and then feed your ashes to the pigs,” declared Arwain.

“Dumbass....”

Suddenly, Arwain heard Juan’s voice.. He doubted his own ears—he had never seen anyone survive after getting hit by the Grace. The Grace possessed enough power to be used in a siege. Even Templars would not survive a full-frontal blow from the Spear of Wrath unless they had been bestowed a Grace with even greater power.

“...... you really say things in a cringe-worthy way.” Juan slowly stood up.

Arwain was unable to speak and only watched with wide-open eyes. Juan casually stood and stared at Arwain, just like he had done when he had initially met Arwain at the town square. There were traces of his clothes being burnt, but there were no injuries on his body.

“Did the Church teach you that sort of speech before teaching you how to fight? Sina also seemed to speak like that,” said Juan.

“You… you heretic bastard! What unspeakable things did you do to withstand His Majesty’s—!?” Arwain roared.

“This emperor or whatever doesn’t seem to be all that impressive,” Juan groaned as he approached Arwain.

Arwain stepped back without even realizing it, and was astonished at his own actions.

‘I stepped back from a heretic? Me?’?

Juan noticed Arwain’s reaction and looked at him coldly. “Did you just step back?”

“Argh, Aargh!” Arwain shouted while gathering the power of his Grace once more. Once light surrounded his body, the light started to gather at the tip of his hammer. Arwain’s voice was filled with despair and urgency as he swung his hammer.

“D-Die! You heretic bastard!”

The Spear of Wrath once again pierced through Juan’s body. Arwain believed that the Spear of Wrath would skewer Juan just as it had previously destroyed castle towers and demonic beasts, and reduced countless heretics to ash.

However, a small seed of doubt started to sprout at the back of Arwain’s mind.

Crash!?

The Spear of Wrath passed through Juan’s body and destroyed the wall behind him. And yet, Juan continued to stand in that position like a ghost.

“Are you going to try again?” asked Juan.

When Arwain saw Juan standing completely unharmed, he lost all his will to fight. He completely gave up the thought of pushing Juan into a corner.

He started to think that Juan’s previous actions of evading his attacks were all to play with him, while the form of a young boy was to deceive and mock him. Juan was an opponent unaffected by the emperor’s Grace. Arwain felt the basis for his arrogance and ego slowly crumbling.

The emperor was the center of the world and the measure of justice, and he was the agent of such an emperor. On nights after committing a massacre, Arwain had dreamt of becoming the emperor. However, an opponent who did not submit to such an emperor’s Grace had now appeared.

“Aaahhh!” Arwain threw away his shield and hammer, turned his back toward Juan and ran away.

Juan was anticipating how Arwain would react and stared blankly at Arwain’s departure. He really wanted to question Anya, who had said that Templars would rather die than lose their equipment.

However, rage filled Juan’s head first. “This bastard!”