Imps driven mad with frenzy shot into the sky with a roar.
“Kieeeeeeeek!!!”
“Urgh!!!”
Kazan’s soldiers all shuddered at once.
The screams of the lesser demons wreathed in blue flame were as horrifying as a banshee’s wail.
Even knowing they were not aiming this way, but that way, an instinctive revulsion and chill ran down their spines.
The barbarians were the complete opposite.
“Ha! You think you can come at us with mere trash like that?”
“Hmph! Idiots.”
“Kyaoooo!!!”
Kudan and the other wyvern riders snorted.
If they were wyverns of the same weight class, perhaps it would be different, but these were monsters no better than goblins.
Their eyes had rolled back? They looked insane? So what?
There was not the slightest reason to fear them.
Dodging them would itself be a disgrace.
They decided to personally teach reality to the puppies who knew no fear of dragons.
“Ram right through them!!!”
-Boom! -Boom! Boom!
“Khek!?”
An imp collided with a wyvern in the sky and exploded.
Blue flames burst one after another in midair.
Through the flames and black smoke, the wyverns roared.
“Kyaaaa!!!”
Of the twelve wyverns, not a single one had been shot down.
The imps’ self-destruction was nothing but a useless sacrifice.
The soldiers’ faces filled with despair, and the wyvern riders’ faces with exhilaration.
“Damn it! Entire army, defensive stance!”
“Good. Resist! A hunt only tastes right when the prey struggles!!!”
In Kudan’s field of vision appeared his target, Rainer, and the soldiers who had formed up to protect him.
As the thrilling battle approached before his eyes, his whole body trembled with excitement.
“Sweep them all away! Capture the noble brat alive if possible! If he resists, you may cut off an arm or a leg!”
“Uwaaaaaaaa!!!”
The wyvern riders prepared to throw their javelins.
The wyverns flapped their wings and adjusted their speed so their masters could aim steadily at their targets.
‘Damn it!’
Rude gritted his teeth.
Once those javelins fell, someone would die, and part of the formation would collapse. Those monsters would not miss that opening and would dig right in.
A worst-case future, in which the army was trampled by the wyverns in less than ten seconds, drew itself in his mind.
“Defend!”
“Square formation! Square formation!”
Not only Rude, but everyone knew.
This was an attack they could not stop.
They were merely holding firm because there was no choice here except to stop it.
Trembling with fear and despair, everyone steeled their resolve.
At that very moment.
“Kieeeh?!”
“Uwaak!?”
“What, what is it? What’s wrong?!”
“Huh?”
Fear and despair vanished, and doubt and hope arrived.
*
Chaos arrived.
Not atop the walls.
In the sky.
“Kyaaaa!”
“What are you doing! Get your posture straight! The formation is breaking!”
“Chief! The thing is!”
“The wyverns won’t listen!”
“What?!”
-Stagger
“Ugh?!”
“What, what is that?”
“Why are they acting like that?”
Just as the Bima Tribe were masters of horses, the Steel Scale Tribe were masters of wyverns.
Rude had fought the Steel Scale Tribe dozens of times before.
Among them, he had never once seen a Steel Scale tribesman fail to control a wyvern.
That was why the reality reflected in his eyes now felt unreal.
Wyverns wavering in the air, unable to keep their posture, and wyvern riders shouting at the top of their lungs in panic as they pulled on the reins.
He wondered if he was dreaming.
“Damn it! What the hell is going on!!!”
Kudan was flustered.
If it had been one or two, perhaps, but for every wyvern to go out of control—this was a first.
“Kieek!”
“Damn it, calm down! Why are you thrashing around like—huh?!”
As Kudan cursed and tried to soothe his beloved dragon, something entered his sight.
The wings flapping without pause. More precisely, the membranes that made up those wings.
He saw holes pierced through them.
Kudan’s eyes flew wide.
“What is this?!”
There were not just one or two holes.
The bigger problem was that those holes were growing larger right before his eyes.
It was as if burning paper were being consumed by flame, the holes widening!
The larger the holes grew, the harder it became to control the wyvern.
“When the hell did this… don’t tell me!?”
Kudan whipped his head around.
He saw the mage near the bloodline of the Grand Duke of the North, their target.
The mage whose eyes met his raised a fist with the thumb up, smiling.
The instant he saw that thumb slowly turn downward, sparks flew from Kudan’s eyes.
“You goddamn bastaaaaard!!!!!”
Only then did Kudan realize.
From the very beginning, the imps’ self-destruction had not been aimed at shooting down the wyverns.
What he had been aiming for was the wyverns’ wing membranes!
An attack like deadly poison—small enough to be invisible for the moment, but one that would become fatal with time—had been his goal!
“No! I can’t maintain altitude…!”
“Damn it!!!”
“Kieeeeeek!!!”
Kudan tried to give the order to retreat, but he was one step too late.
In the end, the wyverns whose wings had been reduced to rags began not a dive, but a fall.
The riders pulled on the reins and struggled, but it was useless.
A falling thing has no wings.
The massive bodies of the wingless monsters lost their balance and spun round and round as they dropped toward the ground.
The cheers that had split the sky turned into screams.
“Uwaaaaaaa!!!”
-Bang!
The wyverns plunged not into the walls, but into the streets of Kazan.
The fall of wyverns, seen for the first time in their lives.
In the eyes of the people standing there blankly, one man’s back was reflected.
The sorcerer’s eyes, glaring at the wyverns and barbarians that had crashed into the city, were as cold as a hunter looking at prey caught in a trap.
‘As expected, Lunatic Flame has gotten stronger too. The effect is killer.’
Danil looked down at the blue embers blooming at his fingertips.
The flames slowly died away.
Just like the imps that had exploded to death at his command moments ago.
‘What am I supposed to say at a time like this? Words become seeds? Or speak of the tiger and it appears?’
Danil gave a faint smirk.
“Doesn’t matter. I made the first move.”
The cold eyes of the hunter fixed on the prey.
“You should have dodged.”
As expected, the enemies had no experience whatsoever in warfare against magic.
Otherwise, there was no way they would have done something as stupid as charging at demons imbued with Lunatic Flame like they had just now.
“I’m not the kind of guy who gets slapped in Jongno and glares at the Han River, you see.”
Danil declared in an icy voice.
“Hold still, you bastards.”
*
Lunatic Flame.
This was no simple black magic.
It was a revolutionary spell that changed the history of black mages,
and the product of revenge.
The image of black mages spread among the public was that of villains like gang bosses who commanded demons.
But when black mages first appeared in the world, it was the exact opposite.
Black mages were the weaker party, no different from slaves.
And the stronger party that commanded them was none other than demons.
A demon’s contract was always one-sided.
Demons used contracts as bait to exploit black mages, mock them, despise them, and betray them.
When breaking contracts, it was also common for them to make black mages their prey.
In that age of humiliation, there was a certain black mage.
His name was not recorded. But the magic he created after grinding his teeth in bitter resolve was recorded as the spell that changed the history of black mages.
Lunatic Flame.
A spell that, in exchange for unilaterally breaking the contract from the black mage’s side, ignited flames that caused the contracted demon’s mana to run wild.
The power of the demon that ran wild increased explosively, but the duration was at most thirteen seconds. Once that time ended, only one thing awaited the demons: death.
It was an insane spell that forced the worst kind of suicide, making demons go berserk in hellish agony until they self-destructed.
After this mad magic was invented, demons and black mages were no longer in a master-servant relationship.
An equal relationship, a balance of terror, had been completed.
In this way, Lunatic Flame was a great spell that changed the history of black mages.
In truth, however, this spell was considered taboo among black mages and was almost never used.
Why was that?
The reason was simple.
Because using it even once permanently broke the contract with the target demon.
A contract with a powerful demon had to depend on luck.
But once such a contract was formed, that demon’s power soon became the black mage’s power and a stepping stone toward reaching a higher realm.
Lunatic Flame, on the other hand, was a self-destructive spell that blew all of that away in one shot.
No black mage with common sense would ever use a spell that destroyed his own foundation for growth.
Yes. If he were a black mage with common sense, that is.
“Why wouldn’t I use it? I can just use it.”
Danil, a black mage unlike any mage, was the exception.
“Yeah. Permanently break it. I can just contract with another low-rank demon.”
The demons he contracted with were imps. Low-rank demons he could summon and contract with whenever he felt like it.
They were so weak that any black mage could contract with them, but for that very reason, no one did.
That was why he had no qualms about expending them as “bullets.” He could replenish them as much as he wanted.
To Danil, Lunatic Flame was not something used at the very end.
It was simply something to be conserved as much as possible, then used when the moment was right.
Just like now.
-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Idiots.”
As the imps under Lunatic Flame collided with the wyverns and burst apart, Danil smiled.
Lunatic Flame, which granted explosive power in exchange for life, raised the grade of the low-rank demon imp to the level of a mid-rank demon for thirteen seconds.
In other words, for thirteen seconds, the imps could use the unique demonic ability only mid-rank demons and above could handle: dark demonic energy.
Dark demonic energy, characterized by eating away at life force, corroded the opponent’s flesh and caused extreme pain.
That was why the wyverns’ hides and wing membranes, which ordinary blades could barely scratch, had been reduced to tatters.
-Ruuuuumble!!!
“Kieeeee!!”
The ground shook, and smoke billowed upward.
The monsters that had fallen onto nearby roofs and collapsed buildings let out pained screams.
Danil, who had been looking down at the downtown area thrown into chaos, leaped from atop the wall.
As he flew toward the scene with flight magic, his expression was nothing short of savage.
“Once you bring down the horse, the standard move is to capture the general next.”
The mage, known to the people of Kazan as one whose abilities were those of a mage but whose spirit was that of a knight, decided to draw out his final trump card.
“Dark Flame Rain. I’ll end it with this.”