Erebos Siege (Part 4)
Rumble.
Ice spikes split apart and pierced through the shadows.
The air froze, fragments scattering everywhere.
Isolde swung her hand without a moment to breathe. Elemental magic flowed from her fingertips, sweeping away the shadow monsters in an endless barrage, yet far more poured forth in their place.
“…Hah.”
Isolde bit her lip.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
Several minutes had already passed since the fight began. In that time, Isolde had destroyed nearly dozens of shadow monsters.
Yet the gray-haired man continued pulling fresh monsters from the shadows with an almost leisurely expression.
“Tsk.”
If this dragged into a war of attrition, Isolde’s mana would run dry first.
She needed maximum effect with minimum mana.
Whoosh!
Her magic shifted. The ice fragments shattered into finer shards, covered by faint streaks of lightning.
The fragments buzzed like living swarms, encircling the shadows before surging forward in a lightning-charged assault.
“Haha! Magnificent! That level of mana control and combat instinct! As expected of Erebos’s top student!”
Youngrang clapped with genuine admiration.
“Wow, you’re really something. Most professors couldn’t withstand this kind of numerical assault.”
“…Professor?”
Isolde caught the odd note in his words. He smiled as though proud of it.
“Yeah. I killed one or two before coming here.”
Isolde ground her teeth.
The man admitted to murder with complete nonchalance.
A villain among villains.
“…The Full Moon Festival.”
Isolde recalled the shadow monster that had appeared at the festival hall. She had been inside the Ashen Tower’s research lab that day and never saw it, but she could tell these shadows were no different from the one that had attacked then.
“So it was you. The mastermind behind the Full Moon Festival incident.”
“Hmm… Quick on the uptake. I like that.”
Youngrang produced a small bottle from his hand. Inside floated a tiny mass of tentacles, glowing dark red like a clot of blood.
“This is called a shadow factor. Plant it in a human and you get a human-shaped shade. Plant it in a wolf and you get a wolf-shaped shade.”
Isolde’s expression hardened.
The shadow monsters currently assaulting Erebos, the very ones charging her, were mostly humanoid in form.
If Youngrang was telling the truth…
“That’s right. What you killed were humans. Ah, no need to feel guilty. Once they become shades, there’s no turning back.”
“…You slaughtered that many people?”
“I raided a nearby village. Don’t worry, though. I wiped them out completely so no one would be left behind to grieve.”
Youngrang spoke as casually as if discussing the weather. Isolde’s brow tightened at his flippant tone.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Hmm… Call it revenge, I suppose.”
“Revenge?”
“Yeah. Revenge. The world hates me. The only solution is to erase everything and start over.”
“Is that… your goal?”
Youngrang gave a bitter smile and shrugged.
“Sorry. Unfortunately, you don’t seem like the right person to hear my tragic life story.”
He shook the factor in his hand. Madness and hatred burned in his eyes, mixed with a strange, twisted affection.
“You know, a shade’s performance scales with its host’s abilities. In that sense, Lady Kreuz last time was rather disappointing.”
“Kreuz…”
Isabella Kreuz. The student who had been a victim during the previous Full Moon Festival.
“Good physique, but poor instincts. I went to the trouble of implanting the factor, yet she got taken down by a couple of students. Defective goods.”
Isolde clenched her fists. Youngrang’s red eyes gleamed as he licked his lips and looked her over from head to toe, like an appraiser judging merchandise.
“So, what about you? Personally, I think you could become my greatest masterpiece.”
“…!”
Isolde stepped back instinctively. A chill ran down her spine.
‘This isn’t the time…’
Through the mana link, Leo’s danger signals kept hammering at her mind.
Between that urgency and the overwhelming numerical disadvantage she faced, the situation was dire. Would her mana run out first, or would the endless shadow legion finally be exhausted?
The answer was obvious.
A war of attrition meant defeat.
But could she win a quick decisive battle against him?
‘I don’t know.’
The power he used was neither magic nor black magic. It wasn’t holy magic, nor any form of sorcery.
Therefore, unknown.
And Isolde was vulnerable to anything outside the textbook—unknowns that couldn’t be explained by logic. It was the limitation of a model student, the chronic weakness of a textbook mage.
“Well then, let’s continue.”
Youngrang snapped his fingers.
Dozens of shadow monsters—shades—surged toward Isolde in response.
Just as she raised her hand to cast a defensive spell—
Thud!
Something flew down from above and blocked the shades’ path.
A small figure. The shades hesitated.
“Hmm…? What’s this?”
Youngrang’s eyebrows twitched.
At the end of his gaze stood a doll rising with a creaking mechanical sound.
“…A doll?”
Displeasure spread across his previously bewildered face.
“You thought you could stop me with a toy like that?”
“It’s not a toy.”
Isolde spoke, genuinely relieved by the doll’s appearance.
“Earlier, you said I had the talent of an archmage.”
Youngrang tilted his head. She continued without pause.
“You’re mistaken. I’m not the one with an archmage’s talent.”
“What?”
“Someone else in Erebos possesses that talent.”
The moment Youngrang frowned, five dolls burst from the forest thickets all at once.
Crack! Crackle!
They looked crude at first glance, but their power was immense.
The dolls moved like living warriors, destroying the shades’ cores.
It wasn’t a simple charge.
Each one moved in perfect organic coordination—a flawless army.
“There’s an exceptionally skilled dollmaker here.”
*
With Erebos’s tallest building, the clock tower, now collapsed, the next tallest was the spiral tower that symbolized the magic department.
Though the White Tower had fallen, the rooftop of the Ashen Tower still offered a panoramic view of the entire academy.
At the very edge of that rooftop stood Ottilie von Eichendorff.
Strong winds whipped her twin tails about, yet her expression was more serious than ever.
Swoosh.
At the tips of her ten fingers stretched invisible threads of mana.
Those threads extended down the tower and spread across all of Erebos.
“Good. That’s it, everyone.”
Ottilie murmured in a gentle voice. Her eyes were closed, yet every detail within Erebos’s grounds flowed into her mind.
The faint vibrations traveling along the threads, the flow of mana, the direction of the wind—
All of it coalesced into a single map inside her head.
‘Because the teacher asked.’
Leo had requested she place dolls throughout Erebos.
Right after she had done so, the clock tower exploded.
‘As expected, the teacher knows everything.’
He had even realized there was a traitor inside the magic department.
She wasn’t curious how he knew.
What mattered now was the role he had entrusted to her.
Ottilie took a deep breath.
Then, as if plucking a string, she flicked her index finger.
Tap.
The slight tremor traveled outward, growing into a massive wave.
The dolls that received the signal moved in perfect unison.
There was no risk of the threads tangling.
It was just like the puppet shows she had played with in the castle as a child.
The stage had simply grown larger.
“…As expected, I like dolls more than people.”
Because before she was a mage, Ottilie had been a dollmaker.
*
Helena and the maids of Ophelia Hall.
And the Yaksha.
Their battle was… exactly as Helena had said, closer to a hunt.
Crack!
She deflected the Yaksha’s brutal punches with silver threads and drove daggers into his blind spots.
Every strike targeted vital points. Yet the Yaksha was no easy opponent. His steel-like skin repelled the blades, and his overwhelming strength forced the maids back.
“Umhahaha! I thought a bunch of girls rushing me wouldn’t be worth much! But this is actually quite enjoyable!”
“…Crazy bastard.”
The Yaksha swung his aura-wrapped fists with hearty laughter, looking every bit like a massive wild beast.
In contrast, the maids surrounding him moved like primitive hunters bringing down a mammoth.
“Meat!”
“Yeah. Feels like hunting a beast.”
Void agreed, scanning the battlefield.
Even if Ophelia’s maids were skilled, the Yaksha possessed a body sturdy enough to shrug off ordinary hidden weapons.
Before they could subdue him, the maids’ ammunition would run out. That would be the end. They needed to find a way while the maids still held his attention.
But before I could even search for a solution, something changed.
Thud!
Three or four dolls leaped from the forest and joined the fight.
They withstood the Yaksha’s punches without breaking, surrounding him and restricting his movements.
“Those are…”
Familiar dolls.
Of course they were—Ottilie used them often.
Now that I had awakened to mana, I could see the threads of mana connected to them.
I turned my head toward the tall tower rising in the center of the academy.
“…”
Ottilie von Eichendorff.
Standing atop the tower, she had turned all of Erebos into her stage.
The sight was familiar. So familiar it sent a chill down my spine.
I had seen this exact scene countless times on a 24-inch monitor.
Act 4. The opening cutscene of the Erebos Siege.
Just like now, a shadow executive had stood atop the tower, commanding an army of chimeras.
A merciless slaughter weapon named Johyeon.
True to the name, she had manipulated the threads connected to the chimeras and invaded Erebos.
And now, in the place where Johyeon should have stood, Ottilie was there instead.
“Ha… haha.”
Only then did I understand why only the white-faced one had appeared during the twin tower incident in Act 2.
The reason.
It was almost laughable that I had realized it so late.
“…Johyeon was Ottilie.”
The villain from the original story had become a reliable ally standing before my eyes.