Chapter 62
Chapter 62
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 62
Chapter Title: The Arrowhead Project
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When Belok regained consciousness, he was in a demon’s paradise. The bio-laboratory of the Black-Red Brigade. There he was, on that very operating table, his limbs bound in chains.
They were there, too. The experimenters, staring blankly at the ‘subject.’
“We will now record the pathological processes occurring in the subject's body according to the degree of decay.”
With those words, the tips of Belok’s toes began to rot, turning black.
“No, no, it’s not me…!”
The decay spread from his toes up through his body. But the simple release of death never came. It was merely the beginning of the next test.
“We will now amputate the limbs and observe how long the subject survives.”
“We will extract the organs and perform a transplant with animal entrails.”
“We will extract a lethal amount of blood and inject raw chicken blood.”
“In cooperation with Lord Walter of the Burning Blood, we will heat the subject's blood to its boiling point while they are still alive and observe the progress.”
“Aaaaaargh, aaaack! It hurts, it hurts so much!”
There was no sign of a seeker of truth, preaching the necessity of sacrifice to turn the wheels of history.
Belok thrashed and screamed, his hell only just beginning.
***
At last, the girl withdrew the tentacle that had been toying with his brain.
“Hee, hee hee hee, sob, hkk!”
The 6th-Circle black mage, Belok, burst into laughter, drool dribbling from his lips. After laughing, he began to bawl like a child. After crying, he began to cling like a child, begging for forgiveness.
“Why do you beg for my forgiveness?”
“P-please, please, please, p-p-p-please…!”
“In the face of the great cause of truth, was not the suffering of victims a worthy sacrifice? Was that not the wheel of history you all so revered and cried out for?”
Watching him, Dale tilted his head.
“Was the wheel of history you so worshiped so fragile that it could be abandoned the moment your roles were reversed? Then what meaning is there in turning such a wheel?”
A wheel that can only be turned through sacrifice and blood is better off shattered.
His expression was devoid of any emotion.
“Reveal everything about the experiments the Black-Red Brigade conducted that day.”
At Dale’s words, Belok flinched and bowed his head low.
“Tell the truth, and I will grant you your life’s end here.”
He wouldn’t have to return to that hell. He could die, right here. At that realization, Belok opened his mouth without a shred of hesitation, recounting the Black-Red Brigade’s actions during the empire’s unification war, without omission or embellishment.
“...”
Every detail was nauseating. However, it wasn’t much different from what Lord Crimson, Marquis Yuriseu, had told him that day. It wasn’t the ‘true purpose’ of the Black-Red Brigade that the empire was so desperate to conceal. The empire was not one to be troubled by mere brutal human experiments.
So Dale asked again.
“I-I don’t know the finer details!”
“Ah, is that so?”
“I-I-I really… I’m telling the truth!”
“Then I suppose you’ll have to continue your tour of hell.”
Just as Dale, disappointed by the pathetic answer, was about to plunge the familiar tentacle down again.
“The Arrowhead Project!”
Belok hurriedly blurted out. For a moment, Dale’s expression froze.
“I-It was an experiment to reach the realm of the 9th Circle!”
“A 9th-Circle experiment?”
The final destination of magic, a point no mage in the continent’s history had ever reached. The pinnacle of magic, and the realm beyond it.
A divine domain attainable by human hands. A Magic God.
“W-We, the mere unit commanders, do not know the full details of the experiment! We were nothing but puppets carrying out the orders of the supreme commanders!”
“Then, as a puppet, spit out everything you know.”
At Dale’s question, Belok answered frantically, the words tumbling out of him.
“W-we were just… to inflict pain within a specific location to stimulate the subjects’ negative emotions, and concentrate them within a special barrier…”
By intentionally creating a living hell, and using the resulting energy of despair, pain, and corrupt thoughts as a foundation—
“—to open a gate to the ‘World of Truth’ using negative emotions as energy, that’s all I know…”
That was the true purpose of the Black-Red Brigade; the biological experiments were merely a secondary objective.
“Therefore, the orders we received were, a-at all times, to secure the negative emotions necessary for the experiment!”
Living sacrifices, needed only for the true objective.
That was all that Belok, a mere unit commander of the Black-Red Brigade, knew.
“...”
Dale hadn’t expected anything more.
During the war, the Hero from Another World was merely an enforcer for the empire. A hunting dog who knew nothing of the Black-Red Brigade’s purpose, nor the empire’s goals or intentions.
But Dale knew the man who understood the whole truth, not as a low-ranking unit commander, but as one of the leaders of the demonic brigade. And for that very reason, he couldn’t hide his agitation.
He simply pictured the man’s face.
The man he had believed to be innocent of the empire’s ambitions. The man he had believed would sever ties with the old darkness of the Black Magic Tower, preach the weight of life, and would never affirm the empire’s brand of justice.
“Father…”
Dale murmured under his breath.
The 2nd Unit Commander of the Black-Red Brigade, Lord Black.
Even when the empire secretly tried to keep the brigade operational after the war, Dale’s father had disbanded it of his own will.
He had stood against the 1st Unit Commander and the brigade’s supreme leader, Lord Crimson, Marquis Yuriseu, to put an end to the black-red bond… swayed, as the Marquis had put it, by such petty morals.
But that could never be a reason for forgiveness.
—Hey, big brother.
It was then.
—Can I play with him a little more?
The girl’s tentacles twitched restlessly beneath her skirt, as if she couldn’t bear it any longer. Dale turned his head again, toward the man now begging for death.
“Ah, ah, ahhh…! No, no, no, please don’t, don’t play with me, please, please…!”
“Play with him as much as you like, until you’re bored.”
Dale replied, as if it truly didn’t matter. His voice was devoid of any emotion.
*Plunge!*
Shub’s tentacle shot out, wrapping around the six circles within the black mage Belok’s heart.
“Keuk, khek!”
Just as the young vampire had devoured the blood of the Black Elder to become a black-red mage, absorbing an enemy’s power was by no means exclusive to vampires.
Like a vampire craving human blood, the dark magic within Belok’s body was absorbed through Shub’s tentacle.
The essence of magic that a 6th-Circle black mage had built over a lifetime.
The black magic swirling at Dale’s feet began to grow darker than anything he had ever wielded before.
***
At that same time, in the upper levels of the Black Magic Tower.
Edgar, the 7th-Circle black mage, was there.
His neck was severed, his limbs torn apart, his abdomen split open, his entrails spilling out. It hadn’t been a fight so much as a one-sided slaughter.
But he was not dead. Because the angel of death had not permitted him to die.
Amidst the scattered flesh and bone stood a man with wings of jet-black. He was shrouded in six dark wings, like those of a raven.
“...How.”
“Did you truly think I returned from that world having gained nothing?”
That world.
The World of Truth that the black mages of the Black Magic Tower so desperately craved. The divine realm beyond the veil of death.
“Ha, haha.”
At Lord Black’s words, Edgar let out a soft laugh. It was not a laugh born of pain or resignation. It didn’t even matter that he would lose this battle and die.
He was simply amused by his own foolishness.
“Yes, of course. That’s just like you.”
Edgar smiled, looking at the angel of death wrapped in six black wings.
“And now, it will be my turn.”
Facing the angel of death, Edgar smiled calmly, turning his back on the veil of death that was about to claim him.
“I, too… will finally reach the same world you have.”
Even if it meant crossing a river from which he could never return.
“The truth has always lain in death.”
“...”
“I will be waiting for you in hell, Allen.”
“Farewell, my friend.”
Allen of Sachsen replied, unfurling his six ominous black wings.
“—Nevermore.”
The angel of death spoke, and raven feathers scattered. Silence descended. And the dismembered body of Edgar, strewn about the room, finally fell silent.
And that silence would never be broken.
Silence settled like feathers. A silence as deep and dark as a raven’s plume.
***
In the pre-dawn darkness, Charlotte Orharhart’s black sword swung.
She did not hesitate to be the sword that protected House Sachsen.
Not all death knights were created equal. Even if they were death knights who could wield an ‘Aura Blade’ through the black magic of a 6th-Circle necromancer, the martial prowess projected in their swords was crude and fleeting.
They were no match for the swords of the death knights Dale once commanded.
‘They’re nothing compared to Dale’s.’
These beings were not knights. They were mere rabble, relying solely on their immortal bodies, devoid of a knight’s pride or honor.
“For House Sachsen.”
“For Dale!”
And so Charlotte swung her sword without hesitation, unreservedly crying out her ‘lord’s name’ as the sword that guarded House Sachsen, ready to fulfill her knightly oath even at the cost of her life.
“Do not break the defensive formation!”
“We fight for the Captain!”
Likewise, the mercenary company loyal to Dale, a hundred heavy infantrymen, desperately maintained their line.
It was at that moment.
The black swords of the death knights, which should have clashed with theirs, froze in place. Silence fell.
*Thud!*
In the silence, the death knights knelt in unison, plunging their swords into the ground before them.
“Wh-what is this…?”
One of the Night Raven Knights muttered in confusion, but it did not take long to understand the meaning.
“You have fought well.”
“D-Dale!”
The heir of black was there.
He had reclaimed the death knights controlled by the elders of the Black Magic Tower as his own, reviving the knightly pride and honor they had forgotten.
“Charlotte, and you, the swords of Sachsen.”
Dale spoke, addressing the armored Charlotte and her knights.
“In life and even in death, we will not forget the honor and pride of the swords loyal to Sachsen.”
The bloody battles that had raged throughout the ducal castle against the elders’ assault came to an end. As if to prove it, the ‘Black Prince’ of Sachsen strode through the ranks of the death knights.
“Therefore, to those who would defile their honor, we promise we will show not a shred of forgiveness or mercy.”
With a coldness devoid of any emotion.
***
The Ducal Castle of Sachsen.
The darkness of early morning gave way as the first light of dawn raised its head.
In the pale gloom, the ‘Black Prince’ of House Sachsen sat upon the throne in the castle’s great hall.
With his mother and young sister by his side, and the swords loyal to House Sachsen at his command, he sat with the corpses of the foolish who dared to oppose the Ducal House of Sachsen behind him.
The strongest knight of the north, Lord Helmut Blackbear, the Mad Sword.
Eris, the Agent of Black, and the elven mage Sephia. Charlotte and the Night Raven Knights of House Sachsen.
And between them, the Grave Guard, the ducal house’s own elite royal guard, who had not even been given the chance to draw their swords in the silence.
Watching him sitting upon the throne, taking control of the situation within the castle and issuing commands with perfect discipline, who could say he was merely an eleven-year-old boy?
The image of the ‘Black Prince’ there was, without a doubt, the Duke of Sachsen himself.