Chapter 142
Chapter 142
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 142
Chapter Title: Captives in the Dark
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Using the dark monkeys was a plan Arsen had come up with on the spot after arriving here. He hadn't even known they lived in this place until he showed up.
Arsen's original plan had been far more ruthless and brutal than this.
First, using excavation artifacts and a few others, he would set up pit traps to collapse the ground ahead of time. Then, the moment the enemy charged in, he would stomp the ground with all his might to trigger the holes.
At the bottom of those pits, he would plant dozens of blades and spare weapons he carried around.
Even that alone would be enough to inflict fatal wounds or kill most of them—Arsen and the battle puppets in their sturdy armor might come out unscathed, but the mages who were no different from ordinary people would not.
Even if a few survived through some clever means, the ordeal wouldn't end there.
Eloise would pour flame spells down from above.
Anyone surviving that far would be one or two lucky souls at best, and they could be subdued without much trouble.
With this simple plan—not even worth calling a strategy—he could crush the enemy with minimal losses on his side.
The plan's only flaw was that capturing them alive would be next to impossible.
But luckily, he'd gotten his hands on the dark monkeys, allowing him to switch to a slightly less harsh approach.
For Arsen, capturing them alive was far preferable, even if it was a bit more hassle.
No matter that they were the enemy, to Maroon's detachment and the other mages, these people were comrades they'd shared decades with.
As an outsider, Arsen slaughtering them unilaterally in a trap rather than open combat would breed massive resentment.
Unless he planned to cut ties with the Starwing faction completely, their accumulated knowledge and power were too valuable to discard.
“Argh!”
“What the hell is this!?”
As pitch-black darkness filled the cavern interior, the Starwing mages controlling the battle puppets screamed.
The plaza had been lit up like midday thanks to mana lights, but in an instant, it turned as black as a moonless night.
Some fell into panic, screaming, but others stayed calm and sought countermeasures.
Their leader, Elder Uman, was one of the latter.
“Everyone, light up! With magic!”
As expected of a gathering of mages, they immediately turned to spells to solve the problem.
Lights flickered to life here and there, but unfortunately, they only illuminated a few meters around each caster.
Even combined, they were barely enough to make out faces and get one's bearings—no way to spot the enemy.
They were dozens of meters away from the foes, after all.
Unlike the flustered enemy, Arsen's subordinates showed no agitation whatsoever.
They had already experienced this darkness once before, and they had anticipated it happening.
In the dark, they groped around to set a few more traps, thoroughly tightening the encirclement to ensure no one escaped.
“Damn it! What trick is this bastard pulling...”
Grumbling under his breath, Elder Uman judged the situation too unfavorable and decided they should retreat for now.
He instinctively sensed this darkness wasn't to their advantage.
A grating metallic screech echoed through the darkness.
“Teleportation gate! Back through the teleportation gate!”
At the elder's command, the mages turned and ran toward the exit in the dark.
Reaching the teleportation gate was easy. The ones that had charged out moments ago were their battle puppets; the mages themselves had only advanced a dozen meters or so from the gate.
But what greeted them was a mundane mirror, devoid of swirling energy.
It felt cold and slick to the touch—clearly just a massive mirror to anyone.
In other words, the teleportation gate that should have led them north to safety had already been shut down.
One mage cried out in despair.
“Elder! The teleportation gate's gone out!”
“What?”
Eloise was the one who had extinguished it.
Lacking aptitude for spatial magic, she couldn't manipulate it directly, but overwhelming mana let her twist the connection itself apart.
Much like how someone unskilled with machines could still smash them with brute force to render them inoperable.
At that moment, Elder Uman's senses caught something odd amid his panic.
From the ground beneath their feet, something that had been out of alignment began to click into place.
Sensing it instinctively, Uman shouted urgently.
“Everyone! Cast defensive spells!”
At his order, all the mages cast defensive spells—the quickest to deploy, though weak, protecting their bodies from various attacks.
Having endured all sorts of hardships as mages since childhood, their response was swift and precise.
And almost simultaneously with the spells activating, a powerful shock slammed into them.
Few realized the massive boom and the earth exploding, as they were all flung in every direction like bowling pins.
Eloise's explosion spell, per her master's instructions, reduced lethality and instead blasted away everything in the blast radius.
“Guh!”
“Argh!”
Clustered together as they were, not a single mage escaped the attack.
Regaining their senses, they realized they were isolated by the explosion and immediately called back their knights—the battle puppets.
Even in the darkness, they could sense their masters, so the puppets returned to their respective owners.
Safe under their puppets' protection, the mages soon faced a dilemma.
Once scattered in this darkness, regrouping would be incredibly difficult. Shouting to call each other risked drawing enemies instead of allies.
Arsen gave them no time to deliberate solutions.
“Knights, proceed as planned!”
To avoid them recklessly endangering lives in capturing the mages, he issued a vague order.
At the command, four knights charged toward the scattered mages.
This unnatural darkness blocked the knights' vision too, so they couldn't prowl freely with glowing eyes as usual. In it, even they saw only dimly, limited to about ten meters ahead.
But those few meters made a world of difference.
“Gah!”
Bazkal struck a flailing mage in the darkness with measured force and snatched him up.
No mere mage could block a knight riding Jin, charging like lightning.
The mage's battle puppet just stood there dumbly.
Had the mage spotted Bazkal and given orders, it would have obeyed faithfully—but its master passed out before any command came.
Its last order was “stand by at current position,” unaffected by its controller's fate.
Arsen subdued a mage the same way.
The one Bazkal hit sensed something coming an instant before, but Arsen's victim didn't even register it.
Thanks to the Black Lion's superior agility and Arsen's predator-like approach, slipping past the mage's notice.
“Gurk...”
Gripping the throat of the unconscious mage he'd punched in the face, Arsen glanced at the knight standing beside him.
Close enough to touch, yet the knight just stood blankly, staring.
‘As expected, dumb as they say.’
He'd heard modern controllers could handle complex, varied commands.
Patrol specific areas and kill or capture only certain lifeforms, protect individuals and block all attacks on them, etc.
But the controllers from the so-called Ahital era—the “ancient ruins era”—weren't that advanced.
Arsen knew this from Bakran, which enabled this strategy.
“What happened! Hesain!”
Uman cried out desperately, but the sacrificed mage was too far for him to see.
Sending his own battle puppet to help was too risky, leaving him unable to assist.
“Grr...”
Uman ground his teeth. Why? How could they counterattack so naturally?
In the darkness, Uman fought to calm his wave-like panic and analyzed why this was happening.
The explosion from moments ago came to mind first.
Guessing its source was easy.
Uman received info from Maroon too, so he knew Arsen had an exceptional mage.
He knew Eloise's mana was outstanding, with few in the Starwing faction to match—even he, one of those rare few, couldn't fend off this one-sided assault in the dark.
Magic was always far easier to attack with than defend against.
Especially sudden, pre-prepared ambushes.
‘That blast wasn't from range. It was buried in the ground. They predicted we'd cluster there!’
The fluid counterattack, plus seemingly pre-set traps.
It wasn't hard to realize the enemy had anticipated their ambush and dug their own countermeasures.
“No way, that bastard Latis...”
Only then did Uman realize Latis hadn't fallen helplessly—he'd foreseen the coup and prepared responses.
Rage and sorrow hit him at once.
‘Why hand his life to knights and strike down his kin? Couldn't he just leave it be? If he'd stayed quiet, everything would have worked out!’
Sadly, no time to grieve. Intermittent screams from nearby told of his subordinates' fates.
Biting his lip and scanning around, he spotted something white lunging suddenly.
A knight in artifact armor, riding Jin.
‘Enemy!’
It was Lino targeting Uman.
With the Belluan-style Jin from Arsen, his speed was blinding—enough for a speeding ticket on Earth's highways.
Unfortunately, Uman was the Starwing faction's strongest mage, and his light was bright. Enough to match the knight's visibility.
Thus, the instant Lino started charging, Uman spotted him and issued a defensive order.
‘Block!’
No need to speak aloud. The mere mental command had his battle puppet already clashing with the oncoming Lino.
Their weapons collided, ringing out the first metallic clash of the battle.
“Urk!”
The knights' duel went against Lino.
Unbeknownst to him, his foe was a renowned knight from northern Robiem territory.
Though he'd failed to suppress the mages and become their puppet, he'd disabled two of their battle puppets in the process—a true expert.
A novice like Lino couldn't match him.
“Huff...”
After just a few exchanges, the enemy pushed Lino to his limit.
Hiding behind a massive shield like a city wall, a slender longsword thrust out suddenly, stabbing his side. The technique was fluid as water, hinting at decades of mastery.
‘Can't win!’
Gritting his teeth through the sharp pain, Lino manipulated Jin to leap backward with all his power.
He retreated meters in a blink, spun, and dashed out of Uman's sight.
Seeing the blood trail on the ground, Uman gnashed his teeth.
“Damn it.”
Chasing the retreating figure outside his vision would leave Uman defenseless.
If not for this damned darkness. As he lamented, a distant command rang out.
“Block the water tank again!”
No way they'd literally mean that now—it must be some kind of code phrase.
Thinking so, Uman narrowed his eyes, staying vigilant to issue orders the moment anyone lunged.
Minutes passed in tension. The surroundings fell silent, save for occasional pained groans of unknown origin.
Finally, when Uman resolved to charge forward with his puppet...
The darkness began to lift.