Chapter 135: Practical Combat 4
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 135: Practical Combat 4
"I'm going to go catch a Necromancer."
I spoke in a breezy, nonchalant voice, as if I were mentioning something as mundane as, 'I had spaghetti for lunch today. It was quite delicious.'
[.............]
Not a single sound came through the communication device.
"Your Majesty?"
[.............]
"Huh, did it cut out?"
[.............]
"Your Majesty the Emperor?"
[.........]
"The great ruler of the glorious Croa Empire and its one and only sun, Your Majesty?"
That’s strange. The light on the communication device is still on. Did it break?
Thinking about how I’d explain it to Yerika if it were broken, I searched for the word the Emperor would most likely react to and spoke.
"Father-in-l—"
[Sigh..........]
The Emperor finally let out a long, heavy sigh, breaking the silence. Then, he spoke, enunciating every single word.
[So.]
[Tomorrow.]
[You're going to catch a Necromancer?]
The Emperor let out a hollow laugh every now and then, as if he still couldn't believe what he was hearing. In response to his words, which clearly questioned his own ears, there was only one thing I could do.
"Yep. You heard perfectly."
I confirmed it for him.
[Haa... Fine. I'll call the Knights and, just in case, Duke Freya as well—]
"No! No! There's no need for that."
I cut the Emperor off, even though I knew it was rude.
Whoops, can't have that.
I spent the next ten minutes or so rambling. Normally, I would have put some thought into it before contacting the Emperor, but I was exhausted from planting "surprises" in the forest.
After ten minutes, the Emperor summarized my words briefly.
[In the end, you're telling me not to worry because you'll handle it yourself.]
".....Is that how it sounds?"
[Then why did you tell me at all?]
"................."
If I was going to handle it myself anyway, I could have just caught him and reported it afterward, like last time. The Emperor was asking why I had bothered to tell him in advance.
I wasn't actually going to tell you, but...
From the Emperor's perspective, it would be much safer to send the Knights or Duke Freya to catch a Necromancer rather than an Academy student. But if that happened, Sepia wouldn't be able to get her proper revenge.
Still, the reason I went out of my way to tell the Emperor I was going to catch the Necromancer was...
"By any chance, will you give me money again if I bring you the Necromancer's head?"
I hadn't forgotten the sweet taste of the reward I received after killing Mordor.
[................]
The left hand doesn't need to know the good deed the right hand is doing. But the Emperor absolutely must know the good deeds I do.
* * *
A small village sat a short distance from the capital. Within that village lay a forest where people rarely ventured.
Flying through the sky with the help of a spirit, Sepia closed her eyes, feeling the chilly morning wind against her skin. As she did, the events of yesterday and today flashed through her mind.
When the Pushover told her that the spirits knew where Betzdo was, she didn't believe him at first. Once she did, she was angry at the spirits for not saying a word to her, but she made up with them after talking late into the night.
She had wanted to come immediately upon learning the location last night, but the Pushover said he had things to prepare and suggested they go tomorrow. She had waited ten years; she could endure one more day.
And finally, today had arrived.
She met the Pushover early in the morning, at an hour she would normally still be asleep. He guided her skillfully, as if he had already visited this place before. After telling her where to hide, Loki left to lure Betzdo out.
Sepia had initially opposed the idea of Loki acting as bait personally, but she couldn't argue once she heard how he planned to do it. There was no more certain way to lure Betzdo than that.
Sepia recalled the words Loki left before he departed.
"I won't interfere in the fight from the moment you start battling Betzdo."
"Let's finish that guy off quickly and go grab tea again. I'll even treat you to lunch!"
As Sepia flew through the sky, worrying if something had happened to Loki, a sharp, irritable voice drifted up from below.
"Why is that old man barking orders for me to come and go? So damn annoying."
It was a voice she had never forgotten. The voice of the man who had killed her parents and toyed with her life.
Sepia opened her eyes and looked down at the target of her long-awaited revenge. It was the man who had destroyed her peaceful daily life. More than ten years had passed since that day, but Betzdo looked exactly the same.
Her clenched fists trembled.
Betzdo looked around with a curse, seemingly unaware of her presence in the air. Sepia, who had even borrowed an artifact from the Rivayden family vault that allowed for brief invisibility, prepared her most powerful attack.
On Sepia's right hand, which had been bare until a week ago, was a lightning-shaped mark. The same mark was on the forehead of Chirpy, who was flying beside her.
Chirpy, who usually maintained a small size to stay on Sepia's or Loki's head, now revealed its true form, boasting a physique larger than the wyvern Sepia had ridden before.
"Let's go."
Sepia said, stroking Chirpy's head once.
A member of a powerful race that had nearly gone extinct. A race that wasn't called a magic beast because it possessed intelligence, but was thought to be wiped out by a certain organization that feared its immense power—or so everyone thought.
A Divine Beast that had inherited special blood even among its kind, despite being newly born.
Chirpy, who had learned from a Dragon—the race known as the greatest and most powerful of all—followed its contracted master's command. It conjured a bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky and sent it crashing toward the ground.
The lightning—which the Dragon who taught it said would kill anyone in the Academy instantly except for a select few because Chirpy couldn't control its power yet—struck the unsuspecting Betzdo.
KRA-BOOOOOM!!!
"Aaaaaaaagh!!!"
Betzdo's scream echoed alongside the thunder.
Sepia confirmed Betzdo's state—not dead, but certainly not unscathed—and steeled her resolve. Recalling the attack patterns she had practiced to death for a month, she tried to descend to the ground, forcing her trembling hands to steady.
BOOM! BANG! BAM! BOOM! KABOOM! BANG! KABOOM! KABOOM! BANG! KABOOM! BAM! KABOOOOM!!! KABOOM! BAM! BANG! KABOOM! BANG! BANG! BAM! BANG! KABOOM!! BANG! KABOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!
That is, until the sound of insane explosions erupted from the ground, continuing non-stop for about thirty seconds.
Startled, Sepia looked around, but she saw no one. That meant someone had set those bombs in advance...
Sepia and Chirpy looked at each other. Since their contract, the two were able to communicate without speaking.
'Did you do that?'
'No.'
'Then who else would do something like this right now?'
'There's one person, isn't there?'
Hearing Chirpy's words, a certain someone's face came to Sepia's mind. The someone who had guided her skillfully as if he'd been to this village before. And the final words that someone had left before going to lure the target.
"I won't interfere in the fight from the moment you start battling Betzdo."
From the moment the fight starts, huh...
"......Heh!"
A light laugh escaped Sepia's lips as she descended. There was no trace of tension left on her face.
'Let's finish this quickly and get that lunch out of the Pushover.'
* * *
'What the hell is going on?'
Betzdo thought to himself about twenty minutes after the sudden battle began.
Mordor, the 8th rank of Death Heaven—a man higher in rank than him, but someone Betzdo believed he would never lose to in a fight. When that old man, who hadn't even attended meetings lately, suddenly appeared and summoned him here, Betzdo hadn't thought much of it.
He didn't care if the old man was dead or alive; he had only come here to get information about that woman, the 4th rank.
But when he arrived in the forest, the old man wasn't waiting for him. Instead, he was greeted by a terrifying bolt of lightning. And then there were the bombs that kept exploding under his feet.
Normally, he could have easily blocked the bombs, but his reaction had been delayed by the initial lightning strike. As a result, he had taken the full force of the explosions.
Crack! Snap!
"Tsk."
Clicking his tongue at the sight of his skeletons being shattered in an instant, Betzdo summoned new ones. But those skeletons were also quickly destroyed by the girl in front of him.
Betzdo was annoyed by this girl, who hadn't even lived a tenth of his lifespan. She was strong for her age, but compared to him, she was a weakling. A bug. He was certain he could kill her easily, but...
Grit.
"Urgh!"
Betzdo gnashed his teeth at the lingering pain. He didn't know what kind of lightning it was, but his body still wasn't moving properly. He increased the number of skeletons to end it quickly, but...
Crack! Crunch!
Not a single skeleton could even graze the girl's clothes. It wasn't just that she was fast. She dodged as if she knew exactly where and how every attack would come.
She was a bug-like girl weaker than him, someone he should have killed instantly. It was infuriating to watch his attacks fail to land.
"Did that old man Mordor send you?!!!"
"..............."
Since Betzdo didn't know that Mordor no longer existed in this world, he assumed Mordor was behind Sepia. Because of this, Betzdo wanted to conserve as much strength as possible, thinking he would have to fight Mordor after killing the girl.
As a result, Sepia gained a slight upper hand.
Crack! Boom!
Blocking an incoming fireball by summoning a skeleton, Betzdo vowed that he would not let the girl die easily.
"You'll be singing a different tune soon enough!!"
Deciding that this unpleasant fight was going to drag on, Betzdo sent a signal to his subordinates who were waiting in the distance. Once dozens of his subordinates arrived, he would be able to kill the girl in no time.
* * *
A group of dozens of people, whose very presence screamed 'suspicious' even from a distance, received Betzdo's signal and headed toward the forest.
The clothes they wore were all emblazoned with a skull symbol. Following their master's orders, they moved in silence and reached the forest entrance in no time.
There, they found an old man at the edge of the woods.
"Please, buy something..."
The old man, with herbs and vegetables spread out on a mat, looked destitute. He was so thin his bones protruded as if he hadn't eaten in days, and his voice carried no strength.
"Kill him."
The man at the front of the group ordered nonchalantly, as if he were killing a bug that had crawled into his house. They could have just ignored him and entered the forest, but they chose to grant the old man death instead.
And not a single person among them opposed the order.
"Yes."
A hand wreathed in black mana lunged toward the old man's heart without hesitation. The old man, his heart pierced, should have died instantly. And they should have moved into the forest.
Or so it should have been.
"Aaaaaaaagh!!!!"
The scream should have come from the old man, but the one screaming on the ground was the man who had just attacked him.
"You should be careful of children and the elderly."
The voice came from where the old man had been, but it wasn't the old man's voice. They instinctively looked toward the spot. Standing there was no longer a frail old man on the verge of death. Instead, there was a man wearing a red cloak and a mask.
"It's common sense in Wuxia. Didn't you guys learn that?"