A sudden roar rang out in the large, lavishly decorated room. The one who had slammed his fist down on the desk was a middle-aged man dressed in resplendent attire. His narrow, slitted eyes left a striking impression, and at that moment, he was furious enough to have his rage rise to the very crown of his head.
“What? The crown prince has gone missing? How could such a thing happen?”
Before him stood three or four knights, flustered and at a complete loss. One knight mustered his courage and raised his head.
“If all had gone according to schedule, Crown Prince Alcaris should have spatially transferred to the detached palace south of the capital. However, according to the magical communication, the crown prince’s party never arrived there. Far more time has passed than when they should have arrived.”
“What in the world is going on? At such a critical time…”
Duke Perschstein, who could be called the most important man of power in the Crossen Empire, trembled at the lips, unable to contain his anger. The news that the most important person to him at this moment had disappeared was not something he could possibly take calmly.
“Emperor Valensius will soon pass from this world. If Alcaris is not brought back before he dies, my plan will come to nothing. This is truly disastrous.”
All at once, a murderous gleam surged in his eyes. It was anger directed at those charged with guarding the crown prince.
“Ludwig. Peirun. Those bastards, I’ll…”
A thought suddenly struck him that he had been rash. If things had gone according to plan, he should already have placed his own trusted men in their positions, but thinking surely nothing would happen, he had left them be—and that had been the root of the trouble. They were loyal retainers of the old emperor to the very marrow of their bones.
“Damn it… No matter what, they must be found. Those two old fossils may be killed the moment they are discovered, but the crown prince must be brought back without so much as a hair on his head harmed.”
“Y-yes, understood.”
The knights hurried out in a flurry. Watching them leave, Perschstein’s eyes gleamed. To him, it was something like a mission to fulfill the long-cherished wish his ancestors had failed to realize.
“More than half of the Crossen Empire’s military power is already in my hands. But I must be cautious. No matter what happens, I will not follow in the footsteps of my forebears.”
Ordinarily, in Arcadia, even if a regime changed through a coup d’état, surrounding nations almost never intervened. It was the so-called supremacy of the strong. According to the principle advocated by Emperor Crossen, any noble with the ability could overturn a nation and open a new era. Whether that could be prevented or not depended, in principle, on the ability of the ruler. In Arcadia, it was only natural for an incompetent ruler to be pushed from the throne.
This was the very philosophy that governed Arcadia.
According to that logic, Perschstein should already have become the absolute ruler of the Crossen Empire. Yet the reason he could not act so easily was because the current emperors of the empire were descendants of Emperor Crossen himself. The grace he had bestowed upon Arcadia was by no means light. As such, even if Perschstein possessed power, he could not rashly depose that man’s descendants. In the worst case, the other kingdoms might form an allied army and punish him. After all, they were men who had been able to become kings thanks to Emperor Crossen…
“At present, I possess enough military strength to destroy two kingdoms or so. But if the neighboring kingdoms combine their forces into one, even I would have a difficult time handling them. Therefore, my foremost priority is to take secure control of the Crossen Empire. Only by gathering the empire’s military power into one can I achieve the great undertaking of unification.”
But to do that, Alcaris’s existence was absolutely necessary. Only by placing him, a man incapable of sound judgment, on the emperor’s throne could Perschstein manipulate the affairs of the empire as he pleased.
There was a proper reason for that.
“In the current situation, it is impossible for me to ascend as emperor. That is because the Crossen Knights still remain loyal to the emperor. Those bastards are fanatics who would accept death with a smile if it were for the emperor’s sake. If I cannot obtain their power, my dream cannot be realized.”
As Perschstein muttered in a low voice, someone suddenly rushed into his office. Judging by the robe he wore, he seemed to be a mage, and he looked extremely urgent.
“What is it?”
“T-this is terrible.”
The mage, panting for breath, was Kuslan, one of Perschstein’s trusted men. He must have run here in great haste, for he was gasping so hard he could not even continue speaking. At the sight, Perschstein frowned.
“I asked you what happened.”
“W-we have discovered where they went.”
“What?”
Perschstein sprang to his feet. No matter where it was, he was firmly resolved to dispatch every knight he could muster and retrieve Alcaris. But at Kuslan’s following words, all strength drained from Perschstein’s body.
“T-the lair of the red dragon Verkis? The one in Truvenia…”
“Y-yes. It is the very place where Royal Guard Knight Heywood and the trainee knights went monster hunting not long ago.”
“Damn it.”
Perschstein bit down hard on his lip. Only now did he understand Ludwig and Peirun’s scheme. That place was unquestionably a deathtrap.
“So they mean to dispose of the prince by borrowing the dragon’s hand. It cannot be helped. Dispatch the knights at once. No matter what happens, we must retrieve Alcaris.”
“B-but there was a report that a 9th Circle lich exists there…”
“If you fail to retrieve Alcaris, you will die by my hand. Choose one or the other. Will you die to the lich? Or will you die to me?”
In the end, Kuslan had no choice but to nod. If he died to the lich, it would end with him alone, but if he incurred Perschstein’s displeasure, his entire family would not be safe.
“And arrest every member of Ludwig and Peirun’s households without exception. We must make an example of those who dared attempt treason.”
“Y-yes, understood.”
Trembling all over, Kuslan turned away as if he understood. Perschstein watched him leave with a sharp gaze.
“Theodore. Was all of this your doing? How dare you…”
As if he could not possibly contain his rage, Perschstein’s body trembled violently.
“Let me see. What was the formula for applying Qimen Dunjia to magic?”
In his quarters, Damon was deep in thought. He was currently attempting to apply every sorcerous art he knew to magic.
Among the sects of the Central Plains, the group most versed in sorcery had been Baegyo, and because Damon had once been its cult leader, he had mastered all manner of sorcery and occult arts. Until now, he had been unable to perform sorcery because he lacked internal energy, but that was no longer the case. After becoming a 9th Circle master, Damon had steadily unearthed sorcerous arts, and the long-forgotten theories of those arts had all been transformed into magic.
“To deal with dragons, magic alone is insufficient. Therefore, it seems most desirable to face them with sorcery, a type of art unfamiliar to them.”
In order to seize Naidelhark’s sealing sphere from the green dragon Zikrate and escape from Verkis’s grasp, he had chosen sorcery as the solution. But that was by no means an easy task. Damon’s skull, with only bone remaining, shook from side to side.
“No matter how I think about it, extracting my Life Force Vessel is impossible. Damn it…”
Through the documents Verkis had personally prepared, Damon had learned one fact.
Not only his, but the Life Force Vessels of all liches were currently being stored inside Verkis’s body. If that was true, then escaping from Verkis’s grasp was truly a distant prospect.
Of course, if Verkis awoke from his sleep, even if all the liches guarding the lair attacked him together, they would be no match for him. No, if he put even a little strength into his belly, the liches would be unable to avoid the fate of being annihilated. And even that was only something one could consider under the assumption that the liches, led by Gedenhyde, broke free from the brainwashing magic and cooperated with Damon. Naturally, that was something utterly unimaginable, with no possibility whatsoever.
“But there is a way.”
Damon’s eyes suddenly gleamed. Through sorcery, he had already devised several alternatives. Of course, the problem was that these methods had extremely slim chances of success and carried tremendous risks.
“I will make it succeed, no matter what.”
As he quietly steeled his resolve, a faint light suddenly arose from the crystal ball placed before him. Realizing that it was a magical communication, Damon hurriedly sat before the crystal ball. When he infused it with mana, an image appeared inside it. It was the form of a lich identical to himself. The lich shouted as if in urgent haste.
“To all Guardians. A powerful enemy has now appeared in the southeastern part of the lair. Three Guardians have already fallen to them. Requesting swift support.”
Irritation flashed through Damon’s eyes. He was greatly annoyed that his thoughts had been interrupted over such a trivial matter. Of course, the safety of the lair was not something he cared about in the slightest.
If anything, he would have felt relieved if the entire lair were turned upside down by a powerful enemy, but that, too, was a difficult assumption to imagine. This place had at least more than fifty 6th Circle liches, and there was also Gedenhyde, who had reached the 9th Circle.
“I don’t know who they are, but I doubt the intruders will last even the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. Just who could they be?”
As Damon tilted his head, another voice burst from the crystal ball.
“Among them is one powerful Sword Master and one high-ranking mage. The others are not much of a problem, but those two cannot be underestimated. Since the Sword Master is of the highest class, we are experiencing considerable difficulty in defense, so hurry.”
With those words, the image in the crystal ball vanished. It seemed the lich had gone to support his comrades in battle. Damon was about to turn away as if it had nothing to do with him. He knew well that even if he did not go, Gedenhyde and the other liches would finish off the intruders. But then a strange light suddenly arose in his eyes.
That was because one fact had abruptly occurred to him.
“Wait. If I were to obtain the body of that Sword Master…”
Having come up with a good idea, Damon launched himself forward without delay. On his face flickered a look as though he had found some solution.
As Damon flew forward with all his might, the theories of sorcery passed ceaselessly through his mind.
What Damon needed most right now was a body. Not the rotten body of a lich, firmly held in Verkis’s grasp, but a vivid, living, breathing human body. At that moment, the mnemonic formula for the Evil Art of Soul Exchange surfaced in Damon’s mind.
The Evil Art of Soul Exchange. This could be called one of the highest-grade spells among Baegyo’s sorcerous arts. It was a high-level art that extracted another person’s soul while preserving one’s own memories intact, then entered and took that soul’s place—in a word, becoming an entirely different person. Of course, as a high-level evil art, the conditions for performing it were inevitably unbelievably strict. Unless various conditions that could not be explained in numbers—such as the brain’s wavelengths and the homogeneity of the soul—were satisfied, the great art had a high chance of failing.
Through the Baegyo scriptures he had read in the past, Damon knew well that the chance of this art succeeding was only around ten percent.
“If it fails, both of us will become idiots, won’t we?”
The Evil Art of Soul Exchange was a method that was that difficult to succeed with. Nevertheless, the fact that Damon intended to choose this method seemed to show just how desperate his situation was. In truth, there was no other way to escape Verkis, who held his lifeline in his hands. Since there was no way to steal the Life Force Vessel, there seemed to be no method other than exchanging bodies.
In fact, even within Baegyo, which had a long history, it was difficult to find precedent for this art being performed. First of all, the chance of failure was remarkably high, and there was almost no merit worth taking that risk for.
Originally, martial arts placed the unity of mind and body as the foremost condition. Therefore, hoping to seize ability by changing bodies was, quite literally, absurd. Even if one kidnapped a supreme master and took over his body, it had to be assumed that almost none of his internal energy could be obtained.
For that reason, this method had until now been used only in limited cases by Baegyo elders who were on the verge of death or facing death from old age, in order to extend their lifespans.
But its effects were truly meager. Even if one overcame the ten percent chance and obtained a new young body, the caster would only possess a body no different from an ordinary person’s, without the slightest internal energy dwelling within it. Until he learned martial arts again through long training, the caster would become a completely useless existence. If, by any chance, there was someone within the cult who bore him a grudge, he might not even live past that very day.
Because of that, this Evil Art of Soul Exchange had long been buried in Baegyo’s scripture repository. Damon, too, had memorized the formula, but he had seriously doubted whether it would ever actually be of use…
“But my case is different. Even if I obtain a body utterly useless in every way, it has no bearing on my ability to deploy magic. All I desire is for the great art to succeed.”
Damon was now a grand mage who had experienced the very limits of magic. Since the study of magic itself was a discipline that placed an extreme emphasis on the mental aspect, even if his body changed, there seemed to be no particular obstacle to casting magic.
Of course, there was the issue of needing to practice again until magic became familiar to the body, but that could be accomplished in a short time. In other words, magic could be considered an entirely different case from martial arts.