#274
Rematch (3)
The corridor before the VIP quarters of the Roselia Grand Temple.
Grind—
There, the low sound of teeth grinding echoed.
At that, the empire’s delegation, who had been waiting in deathly silence, all swallowed dryly at once.
Dozens of people stood frozen in the middle of the corridor, unable to go forward or back, watching only one person’s expression.
‘What is it? Did someone make a mistake?’
‘I can’t breathe…’
There had been no problem when they arrived at the holy land through the Grand Temple’s gate, nor afterward, when the party finished exchanging greetings with the church’s senior figures and reached this place.
The sudden change occurred immediately after.
“…Your Highness? Are you all right?”
It began when Princess Riley, the representative leading them, abruptly stopped in place.
For a while, she seemed to be frowning with a grave expression, but now her entire body was radiating displeasure and a murderous aura.
“……”
An imperial knight, unable to endure it any longer, cautiously spoke to Riley, but she paid no mind to the reactions around her and simply glared quietly into empty air with an icy face.
Silently chewing over the rage boiling within her.
‘So this is how you want to play it?’
If things had gone as they intended, she might only have found out after the situation had already ended one way or another.
But thanks to 「Chains of the Covenant」, she had been able to hear the circumstances in real time, and she was already certain who was behind the attack on Hesperon.
‘Duke Hermanheart.’
The maternal family and backer of the former crown prince, and the current empress’s family home as well as the emperor’s in-laws.
Unless it was the Hermanheart ducal house, her greatest political enemy, there was no one left in the empire with the nerve to pull such an outrageous stunt.
‘And here I was, about to show them mercy.’
Of course, that mercy was only by her own subjective standards.
Even the compromise she had thought was a considerable concession on her part was, to them, a submission they could never accept.
At this rate, not only their honor and title, but even their lands and wealth were about to be torn apart from every side, so naturally, the Hermanheart ducal house, which had styled itself as the empire’s foremost noble family, could not possibly sit still.
This scheme was likely also part of their maneuvering to gain even the slightest advantage in the negotiations.
‘They must have thought I looked quite easy.’
But their circumstances were none of her concern.
She had already been in a foul mood because of the grand cause of minimizing chaos within the empire, and now, had they not conveniently given her an excuse?
“Count Pilteim.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
As Riley’s cold voice flowed through the quiet corridor, the archmage who had been silently following behind her bowed respectfully.
Though she was surely still nothing more than a girl in age, the dignity she faintly exuded made the surrounding air grow heavy.
“Right now, there is a message I need sent to Marquis Lawrence.”
There were two extreme-level superhumans in the delegation at present, but they had joined for escort duty and for the prestige of the empire, so she could not deploy them for private purposes.
However, with the tides already having turned in her favor, there were many, many people who had entered her command.
‘If they choose resistance instead of submission.’
Finding someone who would move immediately at a single “request” from her was not a difficult matter.
Even if that someone was a mighty being called a superhuman.
‘I’ll have to break those stiff necks by force if I must.’
In the suffocating air, Riley’s eyes gleamed coldly.
***
Irritating.
That was what Stav felt after once again letting Hesperon slip away right before his eyes.
“You certainly run well, you rat-like bastard!”
Crack—
He gnashed his teeth as he swung his sword, wreathed in black energy, and struck away a cluster of black threads that flew at him without warning.
The attack was not enough to be a major threat to him, but the way it suddenly formed and flew out of empty air was incredibly bothersome.
Woooo—
Every time his heart pounded fiercely, black mana whirled through his entire body.
It was an unfamiliar sensation, different from before, when he had always operated his power through his aura hall.
But it was also a sensation he now had to grow accustomed to.
For to him, who had lost not only his aura but everything he had built up until now, this was the only lifeline left.
If he wanted revenge on the bastards who had reduced him to this state.
‘What the hell is that thing? It hasn’t even been long since then!’
But that undertaking had run into an unexpected obstacle from the very first step.
Unlike before, Stav, now able to handle black mana, could sense the cause more clearly.
‘His magic and physical ability are both high-level, but those don’t matter. The problem is those bizarre magic tools and his right arm. I can accept the magic tools I saw last time, but…’
When the people who had first spirited him out of that hell proposed revenge, he had gladly taken their hand and accepted black mana.
And after becoming a dark knight and regaining a certain degree of power, he had confidently set out on this mission.
How hard could it be to kidnap a mere lover, not even the princess herself, who was under thorough protection?
Of course, everything had gone awry because of that bastard, leading to this tangled situation, but that was something that could be handled by preparing more thoroughly this time.
From what he had experienced directly, the bastard’s own realm was nothing but small fry, wasn’t it?
Yes, surely.
That was what he had thought…
“Grr! What the hell is that? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it!”
They had poured time and capital into preparing a spatial sealing formation aimed solely at this moment, one that even an archmage would have considerable trouble escaping from.
All that remained should have been to cut off the resisting bastard’s limbs, kidnap him, and leisurely disappear.
Shaaak—
Splat!
Another masked man scattered into a handful of blood.
They were by no means weak enough to die so easily, but the materialized curse Hesperon wielded possessed terrifying lethality beyond that.
Under certain conditions, it was a sure kill.
Thankfully, its reuse interval was quite long, and among the masked men, those capable of magic had begun setting up magical defenses against it, putting the brakes on his attacks.
Otherwise, everyone except Stav might have been annihilated, and they might have pointlessly let the bastard escape.
‘But that ends now!’
However, immediately after Hesperon’s attack ended, Stav seized the opportunity, and black light flashed in his eyes.
At the same time, the black mana released from his body spread in all directions, beginning to burn the surrounding air.
Kwaaang—!
Then he kicked off the ground with terrifying speed and charged at Hesperon.
Stav, of course, and the masked men as well were veterans who had survived all manner of hardships.
Naturally, they had already roughly grasped the mechanism behind the abilities Hesperon used.
To perform that peculiar three-dimensional maneuvering, he needed the curses scattered around him; every time he launched that sure-kill attack from a moment ago, it consumed a large amount of them; and by releasing energy like this and burning them away, the spread of curses in the air could be suppressed to a certain extent.
‘We have to capture him here for certain! Even if that means killing him!’
Therefore, now that he had no choice but to land on the ground again.
This was also the perfect chance to deal with him, as he was growing terrifyingly in real time.
‘If we let him go here, there’s no telling how much stronger he’ll get! I can’t allow that!’
For that, he needed to go all out.
Though he had been forced to accept black mana, Stav also knew well the dangers of black mana.
Naturally, even after gaining power, he had remained wary of it and suppressed it all along.
‘For a short while, it should be fine.’
He would soon make him regret having acted so arrogantly.
Thump—
His blackened, corrupted heart pulsed, and black mana whirled through his entire body.
That destructive energy seeped into every cell of his body, shattering the limits of his flesh and beginning to run wild.
Thump—
A sensation different from handling aura.
Unlike aura, which sturdily supported the body so it could contain greater power, black mana, with its destructive nature, did not take its owner’s safety into account at all.
It pursued only stronger power, more destructive power.
Thump—
That rampaging power finally surged all the way to the top of his head.
With the enlightenment he had reached at the extreme, he could prevent himself from being completely devoured, but he could not stop part of his thoughts from being tainted by its influence.
Violence and bloodlust, the desire to show off and obsession ran rampant in his mind.
But Stav did not care.
In an instant, he tore through the air and crossed space—
“Puhah—!”
“Hup?!”
In the blink of an eye, he arrived right before Hesperon’s nose.
Kwa-gwaang—!
First strike, he shredded the black threads enveloping the surroundings.
Second strike, he smashed apart the barrier blocking the space between them.
Third strike, the sword collided with the outstretched right hand, and the great explosive sound that resulted shook the area.
“Guh, I knew it. An extreme-level bastard was going down way too easily!”
Hesperon, flung backward by the impact, wiped at his right arm with effort as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
At that, dozens of black threads bound Stav’s legs and offset his charge, but only for a moment.
Unable to withstand the black mana wrapped around him for long, they were instantly disintegrated and vanished.
‘Still, if I’ve bought this much time!’
Using 「Hand-to-Hand Combat」, Hesperon quickly recovered his broken balance and calmly responded to the follow-up attack.
Amid that storm-like offensive, he used every means at his disposal—magic, magic tools, physical techniques, curses—and clung on desperately.
Five, six, seven…
But when Stav’s sword strike finally reached the ninth.
‘Ah, this is seriously dangerous.’
He felt that he had reached his limit.
He had held on for quite a while, but he knew he would not be able to endure the tenth.
By dragging things out, all of his irregular methods had already been exposed.
From the front, the extreme-level dark knight was charging in recklessly to give him no opening.
Assassin-type masked men were blocking his escape routes and tightening the net from every direction, while mage-type masked men were even preparing something in the rear.
‘This is over.’
In the end, he had no choice but to prepare to cancel the summons.
‘Tsk, still, I gained quite a bit from experiencing actual combat, so it’s not bad.’
When he thought about it, disappearing for about a day and a half was not all that long.
Of course, he would need to tell Riley in advance, but…
Just as he was about to leave her a word and vanish with that thought.
‘Huh?’
At a sudden sensation he felt, he immediately threw himself backward.
“Kh, what is this?”
And Stav, who had been charging at Hesperon with savage force, sensed it as well.
A chilling intuition that stimulated instincts made even stronger than before.
Soon, he forcibly stopped himself, hastily threw himself backward, and spewed black mana from his entire body.
Immediately after.
Kwaaaang—!
A fierce pillar of flame surged up from the place he had been advancing through.
It was not a simple flame, but a superheated hellfire mixed with dense mana that would instantly burn to death anyone caught within it.
“Damn it! What the hell, all of a sudden!”
Moreover, that unexpected attack was not aimed only at him.
Fwoooosh—
The great magic struck Stav and every masked man in that space at the same time, and apart from a very small number who were able to evade thanks to unusually good senses and luck, all of them were reduced to ash in an instant without even being able to scream.
“My, my, what brazen fellows you are. To dare do something like this in Jeron.”
As everyone raised their guard at that sudden turn of events, a voice imbued with immense mana echoed in every direction.
At the same time came an enormous sense of presence.
At that, Stav gritted his teeth and raised his head to look up at the sky.
“Marquis Lawrence…! How are you here?!”
There, floating leisurely in midair, was the master of the Imperial Palace Magic Tower, the archmage Marquis Lawrence, who should by now have been obediently holed up in the imperial palace.
He had torn his way through the spatial sealing barrier they had prepared with such painstaking effort for this operation.
‘They said that no matter how much of an archmage he was, at this distance he’d never be able to notice us!’
Recalling the briefing he had received in advance from the operation’s designer, Stav ground his teeth quietly.
Nothing ever went properly when this side got involved.
“Ha! Is it really Sir Stav? But that state of yours…”
At that moment, Marquis Lawrence, an old man in an antique robe holding an archaic staff, who had been looking down with narrowed eyes, furrowed his brow with a grave expression.
And upon seeing Stav’s ruined state—his eyes and arms, along with the rest of his body—he seemed to roughly grasp the situation and slowly nodded.
“…I see. So that is how it ended up. But black mana, is it?”
Yet the pity that had briefly shown lasted only a moment.
Soon, with a displeased air, he tilted his head slightly and slowly extended the staff in his hand forward.
“I had no choice but to come forward, since I could not refuse the request… But my, even without that, this has become something I cannot simply overlook.”
Black mana, an unclean power, and the black mages and dark knights who used it.
All of them were things forbidden in current society, and now, with everyone on edge because of the war against the Immortal King, they were social evils that had to be cut down the moment they were seen.
And yet such people had entered the imperial capital and were carrying out some sort of covert operation?
On top of that, one of them was an imperial noble who had even served as captain of the Imperial Guard?
‘I nearly disgraced myself again.’
At this point, it was not that he had done the princess a favor by accepting her request; rather, he ought to be thanking her.
It meant there was a hole in the defenses of the Imperial Palace Magic Tower, which was responsible for part of the capital’s security.
It also meant there were still agents inside the Magic Tower who were under outside influence.
Just like during the previous attack on the princess.
“Come to think of it, I owed your side a debt. Do you have any idea how much hardship I suffered because of you bastards?”
At Marquis Lawrence’s irritated words, the air trembled and mana began to seethe.
Magic circles manifested in an instant, intertwining with one another as each brought forth its own mystery.
Wooooong—
Of course, as an archmage, he had suffered no direct disadvantage, but it was undeniable that he had been put in a difficult position when the momentum of the rapidly growing Imperial Palace Magic Tower was broken and its standing diminished.
In the process, he had also had to pay attention to all sorts of matters in order to restore relations with Princess Riley, who would become the next emperor.
“…Wow, that was close.”
And in that hair-trigger situation, where tension was soaring.
Hesperon quietly drew his body back, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and muttered calmly.
Stav, who was far from being in a normal state, and Marquis Lawrence, who had originally been evaluated as superior to him.
And… even the Magic Tower’s battle mages, who were joining one by one and beginning to encircle the area.
At this point, the situation was as good as over.
-Heron, are you all right? I did urge him to go as quickly as possible, but you’re not hurt anywhere, are you?
Just then, Riley’s cautious voice reached him again.
Perhaps worried she might disturb his focus at an important moment, her voice was so quiet it was barely audible.
-Ah! I’m fine.
Then, as if timed to match, system messages appeared before his eyes.
《The entity has fulfilled the conditions and gained enlightenment. The 「Right Arm of Longing」, having swallowed han (恨) and been satisfied, grows.》
《The entity has gained enlightenment through repeated real combat. The skills 「Introduction to Magic Studies」 and 「Combat Arts」 merge and evolve into 「Magic Combat Arts」.》
-Mm, really.
Now he had strayed far away from being a true orthodox mage, but he had never been an orthodox mage in the first place, so it probably did not matter.
…No, not only that—thinking about it carefully, Hesperon’s greatest stat was, after all…
Koooom—!
“Guhah! Law…rence…!”
Thud—
His connections, it seemed.