Chapter 143
Chapter 143
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 143
Chapter Title: The Only Punishment
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As the darkness lifted and the interior of the cavern became visible, Uman let out a groan.
Nearly all of the Star Pupil wizards had been subdued.
Eight had been kidnapped by the knights, and five more had been recklessly charging at the encirclement of soldiers only to be taken down.
Only Uman and two others had managed to link up, thanks to the revealed visibility allowing them to spot each other just in time.
"Damn it, that filthy knight bastard...!"
Uman ground his teeth and spat out his rage, but he couldn't unleash it in the current situation.
They had three knights and three wizards left on their side, while the enemy had only one knight injured and was maintaining full combat strength.
The balance of power had completely tipped.
"Surrender. The fight is over. You know there's no chance of victory."
At Arsen's suggestion, Uman glared at him with eyes practically shooting sparks and bellowed.
"Surrender? Don't make me laugh! I—I haven't lost yet!"
"That's what you want to believe, I suppose."
Contrary to his desperate flailing, the situation was clear.
With the overwhelming difference in strength and no path of retreat, escaping alive or winning the fight was impossible.
All that was left to him was to fight despairingly until death or surrender—those two options alone.
Arsen briefly averted his gaze from the grinding Uman and surveyed the surroundings.
They had captured a total of thirteen wizards so far, five of whom had been subdued by the detachment.
While Arsen, Ahn, Rino, and Bazkal kept ambushing and whittling down the enemy numbers, the detachment members had held the encirclement alongside Arsen's soldiers, easily taking down the wizards who approached thinking they were allies.
He had even prepared countermeasures in case of betrayal, so it was fortunate they hadn't been needed.
Seeing Arsen's unit and the detachment standing together, Uman realized the truth and cried out in anguish.
"You traitors! You know the hardships our seniors endured, yet you abandon the very organization they built for you to receive easy training? You scum, don't you have any conscience?"
The detachment members' faces darkened somewhat at the rebuke.
After all, Uman had been their superior for many years and one of the top commanders.
None of them had forgotten how, in their childhood, he had shown them his scars and taught them to beware of knights, for they were terrifying beings. It was one of the most frightening memories of their lives.
Then, a thin, high-pitched voice shot back.
"Sh-shut up!"
Surprisingly, it was Marun who spoke.
Marun had his eyes squeezed shut as if he had committed some grave sin, but he soon snapped them open and glared at Uman.
Uman seemed more bewildered than angry, as if he hadn't expected Marun to step up like this.
"Marun, you idiot...!"
"We've been properly cooperating with Sir Arsen all this time! We've shared the relics we obtained, but you kept hiding important information from us and even betrayed us...!"
It seemed the past concealment of information about the battle puppets had lingered in his mind as a personal debt.
For Arsen, who had similarly hidden a few key pieces of information, it stung his conscience a bit.
Even as someone felt pangs of conscience, the detachment members who had been wavering at the strained plea steadied their resolve.
After all, they had already beaten down their seniors who tried to break through the encirclement and flee. There was no turning back now.
Arsen took one more step forward and asked.
"This is my final warning. Will you surrender?"
"Go suck your mother's milk, you filthy cur!"
At Uman's curse, Arsen nodded and issued orders.
First, to Marun.
"The detachment has done more than enough. You don't need to step in."
It was also a reward for his courageous outburst.
Confirming Marun's awkward nod and smile, Arsen allocated their forces.
He paired Bazkal and Rino against one puppet, and had Ahn face another alone.
Each pair was assigned five soldiers to assist in the fight.
And Arsen himself stood before the knight puppet that Uman was controlling.
'It looks strong.'
Not only was the mana pressing down oppressively, but every movement was impeccably precise. Even if intelligence dropped, the accumulated skill in the body remained, it seemed.
The knight with its massive shield and longsword rode a Jin shaped like a horse, looking just like a real medieval knight.
'Let's see what you've got.'
Arsen charged straight at the opponent.
"Hup!"
Boom. They clashed several times.
Surprisingly, the enemy deftly used its shield to deflect Arsen's attacks.
It staggered, unable to fully withstand the force, but a normal knight would have lost their shield and been done in after one or two hits, so this was considerable skill.
'At this level, it'd be top-tier even in most estates.'
Objectively assessing the skill, it surpassed not only Bazkal but even Ahn by a wide margin.
It was around the level of Ramun Knight, the finest knight of Belluan whom he once aspired to surpass, or perhaps slightly below.
In any average estate, it would rank in the top three.
But even such a formidable knight was no match for Arsen now.
Feeling a faint joy at his own growth anew, Arsen pondered how to deal with the opponent.
'Kill it? Nah, that'd be a waste.'
He could probably win easily using the Black Lion's hidden breath ability, but it felt too valuable to waste that way.
If the knight had been a good person originally, it'd be regrettable, and if it was a villain hunting wizards as Lattis said, it could be very useful under his command.
Deciding to subdue it first and judge later, Arsen began a fierce assault, darting left and right on his Jin to crush the enemy's defenses.
The force was so immense that the cavern rang with the thunderous clashes of axe and shield.
Hearing that sound, Uman felt his legs go weak.
'Damn brat, he's disgustingly strong!'
He had heard tales of the knight's strength, but hearing about it and seeing it firsthand were worlds apart.
The battle puppet he controlled, the Shield Bearer, had subjugated countless knights before, yet even to Uman's mage eyes, it was visibly struggling against Arsen.
Given that fearsome momentum, it was obvious his puppet wouldn't last much longer.
Naturally, Uman couldn't just watch. That puppet was his only hope in this situation.
Calmly focusing his mind, Uman gathered an enormous amount of mana into the staff in his one remaining hand.
Moments later, his specialty freezing spell was complete.
'Take this, you punk!'
The freezing spell was one of the most efficient spells mages could use against knights, alongside illusions.
Of course, even the weakest knight was hard to kill outright with a spell, but plastering their body with ice chunks severely hampered movement, often immobilizing them.
Distinguishing between the two entangled knights to target precisely was difficult, so Uman ordered his puppet to fall back slightly.
But the moment the freezing spell flew toward Arsen, Uman realized he had lost control of it.
The spell shot forward, then halted abruptly, spun a few times, and slammed into his own retreating battle puppet instead.
Thanks to his powerful mana, the directly hit puppet was completely frozen solid—at least unable to move for several dozen seconds.
He immediately identified the culprit.
Mages could sense mana unless in some special interfering environment, so he could see where the mana that had suddenly intervened and seized control had come from.
A beautiful girl with long black hair, and the crimson staff she had raised toward them—that was the source.
"Urgh..."
Before he could even curse, a knight charged at him with a mighty shout.
"Here I go!"
It was Bazkal.
He and Rino had quickly dispatched one puppet together, freeing him to join this fight.
Facing the oncoming knight, Uman suppressed his hatred and fear while casting a spell.
But no matter how much mana one possessed, a hastily cast spell without proper gathering couldn't stop a knight. Bursts of cold erupted several times, but Bazkal powered through them bodily.
"Damn it all!"
With that final curse, Bazkal's fist flew, and Uman's consciousness faded.
* * *
"Urgh..."
When Uman regained consciousness again, everything was already over.
The wizards' hands were bound behind their backs, ropes even tying their fingers to prevent bending them.
It was to stop them from using heating spells to loosen the bonds.
For Uman, it was a familiar method.
In his youth, he had been imprisoned in some estate and bound the same way.
From his seated position, he couldn't see it, but the whirring vortex sound suggested the portal had been activated again.
And a voice called to him.
"Elder Uman."
Looking up at the familiar voice, he saw Lattis standing there.
Seeing him, Uman muttered hollowly.
"And Elder Berg?"
"He surrendered. When three knights burst through the portal, he raised his hands immediately."
"Well, he wouldn't risk his life on something that looked hopeless."
Though he had included Berg as a comrade due to similar circumstances, Uman didn't much like the elder's opportunistic nature.
He had hoped Berg might try a hostage situation with Lattis's group, but he surrendered as soon as he sensed things going south.
"Why did you do it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You told that punk knight all about my plans. And the ones we supposedly subdued—you let them take you, didn't you?"
Lattis shook his head at the question.
"Thanks to letting ourselves be captured, there were no casualties. If we'd resisted, someone definitely would have died. Maybe a lot of someones... And as for why we sided with Sir Arsen, you've fought him yourself, so you should understand."
"True, that punk was disgustingly strong. I've seen plenty of knights in my time, but never one like that."
He hadn't imagined his trump card, the battle puppet called Shield Bearer, would fail to even hold its ground and be brutally overwhelmed.
Even if everything had gone according to plan, victory would have been uncertain against such tremendous skill.
"It's not just strength. Sir Arsen already knew we were using battle puppets and controlling knights. Even if I hadn't told him, he probably would have sensed something suspicious or prepared for a fight."
At Lattis's words, Uman sighed in disbelief.
Who would feel good hearing it was a hopeless fight from the start?
After a moment, shaking his head, Uman asked.
"So, what will you do with me now? Kill me?"
"I'm curious about that myself."
Arsen interjected bluntly as he approached.
He had given the two elders a chance to talk privately, but he had been eavesdropping nearby.
Knowing that, Lattis showed no surprise and bowed politely.
"We apologize profoundly for the trouble caused by our inadequacies, Sir Arsen."
Arsen accepted the apology while quietly observing Lattis.
A scholarly-looking middle-aged man in his early to mid-forties.
As imagined from his voice, his lean build and slightly long face gave an intellectual impression.
While studying him, Arsen played the role of the courteous young man and replied politely.
"Not at all. In the end, I could confirm Elder Lattis's sincerity. I think it was meaningful."
Arsen had actually suspected, with plans within plans, that Lattis might be colluding with Uman to pretend alliance and betray him later.
That's why he had checked if anyone in the detachment sympathized with Uman's ideals, to verify if Lattis's words were true.
Even after meticulous suspicion and investigation leading to a favorable conclusion, he hadn't fully dropped his guard until Uman was completely subdued in this battle.
As he said earlier, the true significance of this fight was that the two factions could now unite without mutual distrust.
"So, had you already decided how to handle Elder Uman?"
Assuming he had considered even that and appraising him highly, Lattis bowed courteously once more.
At the same time, he declared firmly.
"Since it's unprecedented, I'll need to coordinate with the other elders... but there's probably only one possible punishment."
The implication of his headshake was clear.
Beside him, the old wizard who had just heard his death sentence let out a hollow laugh.
The weary laughter echoed through the cavern.