Uproar in the Imperial Capital
Aslan was doing pretty well. Managing to gather the students somehow showed he had the bearing of a proper prince.
I found myself looking forward, if only a little, to how things would turn out from here.
At the very least, I believed he'd be different from that hero bastard.
"Olivia? What on earth is going on?"
Aslan asked urgently the moment he spotted me.
These days, the second I showed my face he started pelting me with questions like a dog.
It was simple enough, really.
"It's simple. Anti-imperialists have colluded with nobles who hold a grudge against the Empire and invaded the capital."
He had to have some sense if he was gathering students. He was doing what a prince ought to do.
At this rate, even if he talked a little too much, he might just become crown prince again.
The fact that he'd already rounded up a considerable number of students in such a short time was impressive enough.
"Then those black stalks are all…?"
Aslan pointed toward the black stalks pushing into Athelina.
Black stalks pouring into Athelina. Almost certainly the Mains'. Some kind of ritual formula for summoning Mains, I had to assume.
More precisely, they were hiding in the shadows and eroding Athelina itself.
I gave a slight nod.
Fleeing from here would be difficult. Now that I was present it wouldn't be a problem, but gathering somewhere and holing up was the better play.
In that case, the auditorium would do.
"We need to gather the students in the auditorium first."
"That place is wide open on every side. There are even too many doors, so it's terrible for defense. And you want us to dig in there?"
Yuria shot back at once.
"Yuria's right. Are you trying to get us all killed?"
Right. So you two could actually use your heads.
Fair points. The place was wide open and far from ideal.
If everyone piled in there, the Mains would wipe them out in an instant.
But if we wanted to house every student in Athelina, the auditorium was still the best option.
Besides, I was here this time, so it wouldn't be a problem—and there was nowhere else to go.
"Then is there somewhere better than the auditorium? You're not seriously suggesting we go feed ourselves to the enemy, are you?"
If we bolted outside as things stood, we'd be finished on the spot.
"But the auditorium is still dangerous!"
Without me, sure.
"There are a lot of doors, but nowhere else is large enough to hold the students. I'll raise a barrier, so it'll be safe in the meantime. The important thing is the students who are still out there."
We could have sealed off the main building instead, but there wasn't enough time to set barriers over the whole place. Some of them might already have gotten inside.
Better to hold the auditorium—smaller scale, and it could take every student.
"That makes sense. All right. We'll send everyone to the auditorium."
"Celia's teddy-bear unit will hold this area. Get moving!"
Aslan was listening reasonably well, at least.
Thick, heavy shadows began to spread across the campus.
Athelina's defenses amounted to a few dozen golems provided by the Magic Tower, the professors and mages assigned as guards, and a handful of knights.
Protecting the students came first.
"Why are the defenses so thin?"
"Of course they are. Who would ever think the enemy would come all the way to Athelina?"
For the enemy to reach Athelina at all, they would have had to punch straight through the heart of the capital. If things had gotten that bad, the Imperial Palace itself wouldn't be safe either.
Who would have predicted it?
Either way, the surrounding nations would look at the Empire differently after this.
They let the capital be invaded, people would say.
"Honestly, if it hadn't been for my teddy bears we'd have been in real trouble."
"Still, we're lucky it's only this bad."
Moving the students to the auditorium wasn't difficult.
The problem was that the number of shadow Mains grew so large on the way that they caught up almost at once.
Or rather, the real miracle was that no one had been hit while we were still gathering people.
"Damn it, they've caught us. What now?"
What else? We fight. Aslan still needed me to hold his hand.
Even so, I couldn't let him fall here. Protect him first, then worry about the rest.
Shove every student into the auditorium.
"Celia, you guard the auditorium. Until I finish setting the barrier—"
"Yes. Your Highness and your party, inside quickly!"
Celia and the prince's group disappeared into the auditorium.
I threw up the barrier in a hurry and turned my gaze on the shadows.
"Wait. What's going on? Why is the Saint here?"
"W-we don't know either."
Oh? Judging by that reaction, I hadn't been the target.
The Saint hadn't been on the list?
Or maybe they had been coordinating with Plant. Or they simply assumed I was too much of an idiot to even use teleportation.
"Screw it! Kill them all!"
"Saint or whatever, just kill them!"
Saint or whatever, just kill them? These bastards had completely lost their minds.
One thing was certain: they knew absolutely nothing about me.
If they had, they never would have come at me like this.
Probably anti-imperialists or Mains who were dead certain they could beat me.
Either way, it was more than enough to sour my mood.
"There's a limit to how much you can look down on people. Filthy vermin. Is it because you're commoners that you act so dirty?"
"!?"
Judging by the reaction, I was right? It was too dark to see properly.
"What are you flinching for? Or are you nobles? Did you get cut off, get crushed by the Ashtars, and then whip up a bunch of commoners because you were so bitter and resentful?"
"How dare you mock our cause!"
They'd been going on about their "cause" for a while now. I was genuinely curious what that cause was supposed to be.
Starting a rebellion in this country while spouting about a cause was nothing but pure idiocy. Nothing more, nothing less.
Bang. Bang-bang-bang!
Magic bullets shredded the black shadows.
What were they so shocked about? They were a ragtag bunch to begin with.
"What—?"
"You people seem to think I'm some kind of joke. Perfect. Just come at me all at once. It's been a while since I had a proper massacre."
A few hundred of them would at least be fun to slaughter.
"You crazy bitch!"
Celia's teddy bears cleaned up the small fry, and the ones who looked like Main officers charged me.
And, as expected—
the Mains who had raided Athelina burst apart under my magic bullets.
Just weaklings. Nothing more, nothing less.
"What kind of monster is she? Fine—then we'll take her in close combat!"
Oh? So they dared aim for melee range?
Crack!
I crushed the skull of a trash Main who tried to slip in from the side with a single punch.
"You think close combat is going to let you beat me?"
"What the hell is that thing? Is she really the Saint? How is our target—!"
Our target, my ass. They weren't even a proper force to begin with.
Just the whining of a pack of losers.
"Me? I'm not the Saint."
"Then—"
"I'm the Taesa."
"Quit playing word games!"
The ones playing word games were the idiots who had charged in with this level of power.
I was honestly speechless.
These people who couldn't even provide decent entertainment kept starting trouble anyway.
"Wow. Looks like that grand cause of yours is collapsing right in front of me."
"You think we'll die here? In that case—"
The shadow-like figures were preparing something as a group.
Fsssshhhh—
Oh. So they had black magic ready as well.
Black bars were rising from every direction.
The bars shot up all around me and formed a prison that locked me in.
Hmm. All right. They had prepared quite thoroughly.
It was a prison built from a considerably solid barrier.
"Wow. I didn't expect you to have magic like this ready."
A filthy, murky lump of magic.
"Even a bitch like you won't be able to break through a barrier of this level. This black magic is something no human can ever escape."
The shadows laughed arrogantly.
What made them so confident? No human could escape it?
"No human can ever escape it, you say?"
"Equivalent exchange."
Oh. Equivalent exchange. So it was black magic after all.
Exactly what it sounded like—an exchange. A type of black magic that sacrificed souls to grant a wish equal to the value of those souls.
Naturally it cost lives, so calling it a "wish" was generous; it was closer to a curse.
"You used heretical magic? Really?"
"That's right. No human can break free of this prison!"
"'Human?'"
They had said "just a human" a moment ago as well, hadn't they?
"Yes. This prison can imprison one person by sacrificing a hundred souls."
"Oh-ho? Why go to such an inefficient length?"
Where in the world had they learned such an inefficient spell?
"That person prepared it for occasions like this."
"That person," was it. Dark magic like this was black magic, and if "that person" had prepared it, then the ones behind this were the black-magic cult, the New World Group.
Anti-imperialists and the New World Group were all in the same bed. If nobles were mixed in as well, then more people inside the Empire than expected might already have been influenced under the surface.
Aslan had probably been the original target this time.
And the New World Group must have assumed these idiots were only worth about that much.
"This black magic reeks of the New World Group. So Aslan was the original target?"
"If we fail anyway, better to kill you here and remove a future problem!"
They couldn't admit their own blunder, so they were trying to shift everything onto me.
"A future problem? Looking at the way you keep saying 'human,' it seems the best your foolish, stupid level can manage is to bind beings that fall under the category of 'human' and nothing more."
A hundred souls to lock away one human.
Honestly, it wasn't a bad deal. If there was someone you absolutely had to kill even at the cost of your own lives, the terms weren't terrible.
If you could guarantee the death of a being that hundreds of thousands or millions of soldiers couldn't catch, just by spending a hundred lives, it would be a bargain.
An enemy monarch, a brilliant enemy chancellor, a rival—equivalent-exchange magic wasn't bad at all.
The problem was that these idiots had stupidly keyed it to the word "human."
"Kwahahahaha! Die, Saint!"
"You're laboring under a misunderstanding."
A chorus of fools.
"What? How are you still able to move freely?"
Had I been supposed to be completely immobilized?
These really were stupid bastards.
"Which Saint did you people investigate, exactly?"
Let's hear how good their intelligence actually was.
"The Taesa and the young lady of House Ashtar."
"Which is why your intelligence is lacking."
No—even the New World Group probably didn't know this. The only eyewitness, Gerato, was dead. Even if the New World Group had been connected to Gerato, they wouldn't know about the fragment of the Demon King.
Even if they did know, they would never have imagined that I was the one carrying it.
What kind of insane noble young lady would be harboring the Demon King's power, after all?
"Huh?"
"I'm not human, for starters."
At the very least, I wasn't an ordinary human. That much was true.
Thanks to the mana fusion, my body itself was a mass of mana.
"What nonsense is that? You're still trapped in there."
"Right. You can move, but you can't take a single step out!"
So it was a double layer. It had been so weak I hadn't even noticed.
The fact that I could move around inside already gave them the answer, didn't it?
Even mocking them any further was getting tiring.
"Unlike you half-wits who can't even control yourselves, I can choose my race whenever it's convenient for me."
I drew up the demonic energy I had hidden inside my mana.
More precisely, the Demon King's power. The Authority Gerato had so kindly gifted me.
That bastard was probably regretting it even in death. To think the one he had tried to turn into a subordinate using the Demon King's fragment would end up wielding that power freely.
"What the hell kind of bullshit is that?"
"Celia will handle that side anyway, and no one will be able to see this."
Better to finish this quickly.
"W-what… you… that form…"
That form, or rather, it was simplest to just call it demonization.
I was a higher being than any Main, after all.
"Didn't I already tell you? I'm different from trash like you."
"This form would look better with this sword, don't you think?"
The Authority of Despair. The Sword of Despair.
A blade that corroded and shattered everything it touched.
The shadows stared in shock at the sword in my hand.
"That form… it's just like Pector's…"
Oh, so they at least knew of Pector.
"Well, Pector did give it to me, so you're not wrong. But coldly speaking, I'm closer to the Demon King than to Pector, don't you think?"
I could use Pector's Authority, that was all.
The reason was the fragment of the Demon King I carried.
By now it had completely assimilated with me, so it was fair to call it my own power. Which ultimately meant I was a being close to the Demon King.
That was why Bernoa couldn't casually mess with me. I didn't know about Seto or Clanis, but at the very least my existence was closer to the Demon King's than anyone else's.
So I stepped out of the barrier with complete confidence.
"I-impossible… the D-Demon King…"
Idiots.
Now they were mistaking me for the Demon King.
"Isn't this the future you people want? A world ruled by demonkin. And the king of those demonkin is the Demon King. In the end, isn't this exactly what you were hoping for?"
Fsssshhhh—
I swung the Authority, and everything crumbled away with ease.