Translator:imperfectluckEditor:Kurisu
If you only looked at Karo’s physical appearance, his dirty clothes were covered in dust, his blond hair was filthy, and his clothes were quite tattered. He appeared just like any common drunkard found at every bar.
However, as he stood there while yawning and picking at his ear, seeming nothing like a powerful warrior, he still gave everyone a sense that he would be insurmountable. Three minutes had passed already with not a single person daring to step forward.
Everyone present felt an instinctive danger coming from Karo. Although he appeared quite easy to deal with, as long as someone stepped forward, that person would definitely be attacked and sliced in two.
“This is the worst possible opponent. Karo... no, Sword Saint Roland!”
Barton grit his teeth as he identified who this spirit image really was. But right after that, he felt a tremendous desire to do battle welling up within him. Although Roland had indeed taught Barton swordsmanship after they’d met, Barton had also been quite displeased with Roland for a long time already. Perhaps this would be a perfect opportunity for Barton to obtain some revenge... er, defeat his teacher.
This future hero’s eyes were filled with blood as he unhesitatingly let off killing intent. Perhaps this spirit image obstacle was a huge obstacle to everyone else, but to Barton, this was a rare opportunity for him to truly challenge himself.
“...Please hurry up and all attack me together. I want to get this over with and go back to sleep.”
The spirit image kept saying such casual words without even opening his eyes to look at anyone. It was quite evident how condescending he was being.
“I don’t know how much of his actual power the spirit image imitated, but it did a perfect job of imitating his personality that deserves a beating!”
Barton unhesitatingly attacked first. He immediately started off with the Whirlwind of Swords attack again.
He knew that even though this person before him was only a spirit image copy, there would be no room for going easy whatsoever. That was why Barton started off right away with a powerful ultimate attack.
“Isn’t Karo supposed to be a mage? Isn’t this something-room supposed to copy the strongest warrior in Barton’s memory? Why would Karo be here?”
The other mercenaries all naturally recognized Karo as they had all chatted, drunk, and told stories together in the same bar. Although Karo had recently suddenly revealed himself to be an unexpectedly powerful undead mage, nobody understood why Karo was the duplicated spirit image here. Not a single person thought that Barton would lose.
Based on common sense and logic, human potential would have its limits, after all. Karo sounded quite young from his voice, and humans weren’t commonly known to be a long-lived species. It would be quite an accomplishment already to become an expert in one field such as undead magic. It would be incredibly difficult to become an expert in two completely unrelated fields, so there was no way that Karo should be an expert warrior. Meanwhile, Old Barton was well known to have studied martial arts for more than thirty years already.
“Perhaps there was an error with the duplication. Old Barton has always been worried about his daughter being stolen away by Karo, right? From a certain standpoint, the future son-in-law is indeed the biggest enemy of any doting father. Yep, Karo would definitely be the person that Barton wants to defeat the most.”
Some mercenaries were making casual jokes, but some other mercenaries now had worried or shocked expressions. Those who’d managed to recognize Karo as Roland all knew just how worrisome things would become if Roland was an enemy.
Even Timlad had stopped his calculations as he worriedly observed the situation before him. He started asking Katarina a question.
“This spiritual creature creation room can’t make a one hundred percent duplicate, can it? Are there any limits or restrictions?”
“This place was originally intended to be a training field for warriors. The artificially created spirit image will be incapable of controlling the elements or casting any magic. I suppose that counts as its restrictions. There’s also a limit as the facility’s power is limited. At most, it will only be able to imitate up to Legend rank power level. However, the spirit image’s martial arts techniques will be perfectly copied from the real individual rather than just the entering warrior’s memory. It can obtain true records from the spirits, so it will be an almost completely perfect duplicate... Actually, it doesn’t really matter. How could any regular Legend rank possibly be a match for my father who’s a Sword Saint! And, Karo is such a sickly individual.”
Katerina was quite confident in her father’s abilities. She knew that Karo had a weak physical body to the extent of having less physical strength than even herself. He would always complain so much if he had to do any physical labor.
All martial arts techniques would require a strong physical body as the foundation. In the end, martial arts were also another method of strengthening one’s own physical body as they were all about techniques on how to use one’s body. Everyone would have different natural talents, and would not be born equal. For instance, it would be impossible for any goblin to ever hope to match a giant in physical strength—no matter how powerful the goblin was or how much it cultivated. In that case, Karo, who was so sickly and weak, wouldn’t possibly be a threat to her father Barton.
Pre-combat calculations always seemed so perfect. And, this spirit image training field was limited to copying only up to Legend rank and only being able to use physical martial arts techniques. And, the spirit image’s energy level was also limited. All of this should have been good news. But, the more Katerina explained, the more downcast Timlad’s expression became. After analyzing the information he’d just received from her, he no longer held any hope for being able to break through this training field in a swift manner.
“...It would seem that the only method left to us is to completely use up the spirit image’s energy.”
“That won’t be necessary, will it? Karo is so weak—”
Before Katerina even finished her sentence, Barton, whom she had placed her hopes on, was sent flying backwards.
*Boom!*
Barton was sent smashing into the floor, creating a large hole. The bald old man’s head was injured, and his purlicue was bleeding as well. It was evident that Barton was injured significantly. Meanwhile, his opponent Karo simply stood there while still holding that wooden stick, with his eyes closed as if he had fallen asleep.
“How did he do it?”
What everyone saw was that Barton had the overwhelming advantage and proactiveness. The spirit image Roland only constantly retreated. Right before the Whirlwind of Swords was about to tear the spirit image to pieces, Barton was sent flying backwards the next instant instead.
Timlad replayed what’d just happened with his recording device, yet he was still unable to determine what had happened. In the end, Timlad had to slow down the replay to one-tenth the original speed before he could see clearly what had just occurred.
“After Roland saw through every movement while Barton was whirling at high speed, he lured Barton into digging a hole with his own sword, and then he lured Barton into stepping in his own hole. Roland was able to cause Barton to lose to himself simply by constantly changing positions. There’s such an overwhelming difference between their combat techniques and experience... But since Roland saw through Barton’s movements, why not just swing his sword and stop Barton that way? Why use such a troublesome method? It would seem that not only has this spirit image fully copied all of Roland’s combat experience, it’s also copied his twisted personality.”
While insulting Roland’s strange personality in his mind, Timlad still had quite a serious expression. Everyone’s final goal, the core control area, was right before them, but they were now blocked by a duplicate of Roland himself. Naturally, Timlad would be highly displeased.
“I think we’ve met the worst possible opponent here.”
“Father is clearly a Sword Saint. Isn’t it said that Sword Saints have the ability to challenge those above their power level?”
Katerina was no expert on martial arts. However, she had heard plenty of hearsay on this topic as a bartender girl who always served mercenaries. She had listened to plenty of legends and stories about Sword Saints defeating enemies far more powerful than they were.
“Sword Saint? Ha. The person standing right there is probably the strongest Sword Saint Eich has ever seen in the past three hundred years.”
Timlad had a helpless expression as he said this. He wasn’t exaggerating Roland’s abilities at all. And after Hell was constructed, much information about Roland was no longer considered top secret within the Gentlemen Alliance. Even Timlad had been astonished at what he’d learned regarding Roland’s extraordinary past.
“Have you heard of the Red Lotus Sword Saint, Adam? Yep, I’m talking about the person who’s regarded as the strongest living Sword Saint of our time. Many even consider Adam to be a candidate for being the strongest human alive right now...”
As Timlad said this, he noticed that everyone was attentively listening to him. Timlad paused for a moment, worrying that saying the next part out loud would negatively affect everyone’s morale, but he also worried that if he didn’t tell everyone, more idiots would foolishly go up to challenge the spirit image Roland. Finally, Timlad decided to tell everyone the truth.
“...The Red Lotus Sword Saint Adam’s teacher is that person you see right there. He was the one who personally taught the current strongest Sword Saint of this generation. Since that spirit image has copied his terrible personality and all his swordsmanship skills, do you think that anyone here could possibly beat him in swordsmanship?”
After hearing this, not only were the mercenaries shocked, even Barton himself was stunned to hear this. He never knew that Roland had previously taught such an incredibly famous disciple. Nor did Barton know anything about the “glorious” past that the “raggedy drunkard” in his bar had experienced before.
“It’s said that Roland became a Sword Saint only one year after starting to learn about swordsmanship. His talent in swordsmanship is so high that he only needs to see someone’s ultimate sword technique twice to completely learn and imitate it. He knows more than twenty types of ultimate sword techniques and the great majority of common swordsmanship styles. In fact, he’s even managed to raise three Sword Saints among his disciples. Are you certain that you can deal with such an existence?”
Alright then, after Timlad said all this, that immediately cooled everyone’s fervor.
“All of you, why don’t you come attack me together?”
The spirit image Roland said the same words, but received a different reaction. Since he had now shown off his astonishing true abilities, this time, nobody dared to say anything back to this drunkard in a tattered white cape who looked down at everyone from a condescending forty-five degree angle.
“...The spirit image even copied Roland’s personality. It’s basically... no, it’s a perfect imitation! Ha! There’s hope for us! You over there, you’re Winston, right? Yep, I’m talking to you. Bring out your pride as a Legend ranked mercenary and go challenge him. Yep, challenge him by yourself. We don’t need you to actually win. Just use all the ultimate attacks in your arsenal. All you need to do is use up some of his energy.”
As Timlad made his arrangements, the scanner on his eye finished the analysis of the spirit image Roland.
“His combat strength... Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are all complete garbage that’s less than 5 points. He really knows how to act. He’s almost scared us into not daring to challenge him.”
Indeed, since this spirit image was a complete duplicate of the real current Roland, that naturally meant the spirit image also duplicated Roland’s current physical weakness. Although the Roland spirit image was able to use overwhelming experience and tactics to defeat Barton, Roland’s incredibly physically weak body wouldn’t be able to handle too much physical exertion. Rather than defeating Roland in a direct battle, it would be far more effective to use the advantage of numbers to use up all of his energy.
And, spiritual and elemental creatures’ stamina was the same as their energy. The moment that their energy was used up, they would naturally disappear.
However, Winston who had such expectations placed on him didn’t even last for 30 seconds before he was sent flying backwards by a blade of sword energy that flew right above his head and only sliced off part of his helmet.
“Casually tossing out sword energy? Sword energy will use up some of his physical energy. Don’t attack together, as that will give him the opportunity of using you all against each other and creating a chaotic situation. We’ll take turns going one at a time. Since this is only a training facility, it will definitely also be forbidden from killing people! It probably also has the restrictions of not being allowed to attack first and not being allowed to leave this area.”
Alright then, Timlad had managed to accurately guess all of the spirit image’s weaknesses. This time, it was time for the spirit image duplicate Roland to smile wryly.
But, before the next warrior could carry out Timlad’s shameless plan, the injured Old Barton rushed forward first. He had no intention of giving up on this rare opportunity.
“All of you, back off! This is my personal fight!”
“He has commendable bravery, and I can also praise him for taking advantage of a rare opportunity to challenge and improve himself. However... he completely fails as a commander-in-chief who acts on his own whims.”
Although Timlad was insulting Barton in his mind, he kept cheering Barton on out loud. Although Barton’s behavior just now made Timlad subtract some points from his assessment of Barton’s commanding abilities, Timlad was more than happy to see someone else volunteer to act as cannon fodder to tire out and use up some of the spirit image Roland’s physical energy.

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