Chapter 164
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 164
The rumbling march of the orcs, growing louder by the second, was reaching its climax.
“Time to wrap this up.”
It was Sian who gave the signal to retreat. The moment the words left his lips, he swung his staff, instantly unleashing the spell he had been quietly preparing.
High-tier magic: Lethe, the River of Oblivion.
A spell that erases memories.
Of course, the amount of memory it could erase was extremely limited. But for their current situation, wiping a few hours of short-term memory was more than enough.
His targets were the other seven soldiers assigned to destroy the Teleportation Hub.
After erasing their memories of the past few hours, Sian used a simple brainwashing spell to get them on their horses and send them back to the neighboring territory. With that, the only ones who knew the whole truth were Uin, Rashumer, and Sian himself.
Only then did Sian retrieve the Masterpiece from the paladin’s corpse. He also took the sword and shield.
Then, using transformation magic, he altered his face.
He copied the face of the dead paladin.
“Annoyingly perfect.”
Coming from Rashumer, who wasn't particularly fond of Sian, the comment sounded even gruffer than usual.
The bodies of the other paladins were teleported beneath the ruins of the dismantled barracks, leaving no trace of the battle for the orcs to find.
Once the cleanup was complete, Uin, Rashumer, and Sian exchanged a nod.
“Now, finally…”
Rashumer turned his head, his gaze falling upon the Teleportation Hub. It was the last thing left.
According to the original plan, they were supposed to destroy it. They were to destroy it even if it cost them their lives. Only then could they prevent the orcs from crossing over to Riaze.
And yet.
“We’re going back as we are.”
They would not destroy it.
Stepping onto the Teleportation Hub, the three of them vanished from the Annun Plains in a faint shimmer of mana.
*
“We failed! We failed!”
Urgent news arrived: they had failed to secure the Teleportation Hub. Using the intact hub, the orc army was now teleporting into every corner of Riaze.
As a frontline commander of the Riaze defense force, Garot Azaneljia received the news before anyone else.
She dismissed the soldier, whose face was pale with defeat, and slowly began to walk. Pandemonium was about to break loose. This was her only window.
Slipping quietly out of her soldiers’ sight, Garot used teleportation magic several times, reappearing in Ar’s office.
Someone was already waiting for her. It was a paladin clad in full armor, carrying a sword and shield. The paladin smirked, then let the illusion fall, revealing his true face.
The paladin—or rather, Hero Sian, who had copied the paladin’s face—spoke in a cold tone.
“…Everything went smoothly.”
Sian’s report was succinct.
“Thank you, Sir Sian.”
Garot bowed her head.
A failure, the soldier had called it?
It was no failure.
It was exactly what they had intended. It was the very task Garot had requested of Uin and Rashumer.
She hadn't harbored such a plan from the beginning. Just yesterday, this insane operation wasn't even a consideration. It was only a few hours ago that Garot had hastily given this order.
A few hours ago.
Back when Garot was rummaging through Ar’s office, desperately trying to figure out what he had been planning.
“We have been waiting for you.”
That was when the Imperial Magic Society, ‘Third Eye,’ had come to find her.
“The Deputy said that if he were to die, or become incapacitated and unable to give orders, and if you, Sir Garot, came tracing his footsteps… we were to tell you the truth.”
The scholars of the ‘Third Eye’ abruptly bowed ninety degrees. Caught red-handed in Ar’s office, Garot had been extremely guarded, but she relaxed slightly upon realizing they harbored no hostility.
The magic scholars said to her, “We have something to tell you. Please, follow us. We will guide you to the laboratory.”
Phase. 7
The search for the truth in Ar's office had not been easy.
The first thing Garot did was filter out the magically enchanted documents from the thousands of papers piled everywhere. These were ‘dummy’ documents—traps designed to deter anyone from snooping.
Some would trigger offensive magic the moment their contents were read. Others would send a signal to a specific person the instant they were touched. Since it was best to leave them undisturbed, Garot had naturally set these dummy documents aside before beginning her search.
After an hour of quick scanning, she came up empty.
“…It’s not here.”
She couldn’t find the document she wanted.
Of course, there were plenty of highly classified papers. However, most contained information Garot already knew, things she had caught wind of while assisting Ar, or matters closer to the affairs of the Imperial Family than the Empire itself. There were also numerous reports from secret investigations into Swallow, but none of them were what she was looking for.
What she wanted was the breakthrough plan Ar had devised for the current crisis.
Ar thought differently than others. He always prioritized the future over the present, every action calculated based on its predicted outcome.
There was no way such a man had planned nothing for the future. The same applied to this war.
Rather than trying to snatch victory through momentary wit or simple command, he would have established a foolproof countermeasure to stop the enemy. That was the key. The ultimate trump card to overcome the crisis they now faced.
Is there really nothing?
The thought suddenly occurred to her. Ar had a habit of leaving no traces of important matters. Perhaps he hadn't left any written record at all.
“Everyone is hiding something.”
“There’s no way the Captain didn’t leave anything behind.”
Recalling Uin's words, she shook her head, rejecting her own doubts.
Ar had been desperate. Ever since he realized he was dying, he had begun to cling desperately to something.
The more one tries to hide something, the more likely it is to be recorded.
And especially since he was suffering from fits of madness, he was bound to have a record organizing his plans.
“Lady Garot Azaneljia.”
While she was resting for a moment on the sofa, a close aide of Riaze’s West Gate Defense Captain came directly to the office, urging her to attend a meeting to organize the defense force. For Garot, the clock was ticking.
Do I have to rush and scan everything one more time?
Forcing her exhausted body up, Garot looked around the office once more.
She had searched everywhere except for the dummies. But there was nothing. Looking over things she had already seen required no small amount of patience. Just as Garot let out a sigh—
Everywhere except the dummies… Wait.
A question flashed through her mind.
She hadn't looked at the dummies yet.
Who in their right mind would defuse every single avoidable bomb just to examine its structure? She had dismissed it as a matter of course, thinking it a waste of time.
“…”
Suddenly, it struck her that it might not be a waste of time after all.
Painstakingly, she began to dispel the magic placed on the dummies one by one. Once the magic was gone, a dummy was nothing more than an ordinary paper document. Garot unraveled the magic on the first few pages and read their contents.
At a glance, they seemed to be nothing but scattered, disorganized pieces of information without any central focus. Had she seen this information in the past, she surely would have dismissed it as trivial.
“…No. This is a lie. It can’t be.”
She wanted to deny what she was seeing.
Because now, she knew all too well what this chaotic mess of data meant.
There was information on predicted battlegrounds in the event of war. There was information on the Pope's movements and his faction. There was even data on the paladins the Pope had been raising in the shadows, their strength, and the movements of the Holy Kingdom's leadership.
All of it.
Every single bit was data related to this war.
Ar had known in advance that the war would happen. He knew, yet he did not try to stop it. He had feigned ignorance. He could have made massive preparations, and with his capabilities, he might have even been able to prevent it altogether.
The strength drained from her legs, and she collapsed to the floor.
Her mind went blank.
Of course, Garot knew that Ar was not someone who only did clean work. Ar had often said, “We are not the good guys.”
She knew he occasionally committed acts against humanity, and even though she knew it was wrong, she had turned a blind eye. The Knecht incident had been repulsive even to her, but according to Ar, it was an unfortunate accident where the damage had multiplied dozens of times beyond expectations. She had forced herself to accept it. The rest, too, were matters within acceptable bounds that she could somehow overlook, considering they were deemed necessary evils.
But no matter who Ar was, and no matter what the Edelbreas Black Wolf Knights were, war went far beyond the scope of “inevitable sacrifice.”
“Ugh…”
Nausea surged from sheer disgust. Her stomach was empty, and she only retched, spitting bitter acid onto the carpet.
The sense of betrayal that washed over her was as deep as the absolute trust she had once placed in him. Above all, the fear of the unknown was overwhelming. The doubt bloomed endlessly: perhaps he had been doing things like this all along.
If Uin ever finds out about this…
The more she thought, the more her strength fled. Garot collapsed onto the floor in an unsightly heap as the piled documents fluttered and scattered around her.
She remained like that for a long time. When she tried to organize her thoughts, they felt severed, as if cut by a knife, making it impossible to reach a conclusion.
It was only when the pressure of time forced Garot to push herself up from the floor.
That was when she suddenly sensed a presence in the hallway.
It was literally sudden. A presence that hadn't been there a moment ago simply materialized. Feeling a faint fluctuation of mana, Garot swallowed hard. Someone had used teleportation magic to arrive in the hallway.
To guard against surprise attacks and assassinations, teleportation magic was blocked in the office and the adjacent corridors. Garot was the only one who could bypass the coordinate distortion. Yet, this uninvited guest had just stepped into this space using teleportation.
They were either an incredibly skilled assassin or someone Ar trusted so absolutely that he had shared the bypass method with them.
“Sir Garot Azaneljia.”
The newcomers were the magic scholars of the Imperial Magic Society, ‘Third Eye.’
“Seeing the state of things, explaining will be easy.”
Even without asking, she could tell from their voices what business brought them here.
“Please, follow us.”
In the underground laboratory of the Magic Society where she followed them, Garot was confronted with the raw truth.
“This is the truth you were seeking, Sir Garot.”
She saw creatures squirming inside test tubes.
“This is…”
“They are homunculi.”
She listened to the magic scholar's explanation. She heard about the development stages of the homunculi, their power, the fact that Ar was overseeing the ‘Third Eye's’ research, and that the project was being conducted under the direct orders of the Emperor.
“I thought the rumor about a new research project starting after the failure of the Heavenly Wings was just a joke circulating among the Sky Horsemen…”
“The rumors they spread have no basis. Currently, the only ones who know this truth, aside from us and His Imperial Majesty, are the Deputy and now you, Sir Garot.”
“…”
“There have been countless sacrifices to get this far,” the magic scholar said, his voice devoid of any emotion. Knowing what Garot feared, he laid bare the truths she dreaded most.
She listened to the timeline of the research. She heard everything: where and what they had researched, how many people had been used as test subjects, where and for what purpose they had released how many specimens, what sacrifices had been made, and what results had been achieved.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Weren’t you trying to find out?”
“…”
“The Deputy’s primary plan was to shoulder everything himself. This current situation is his contingency plan—his second-best option.”
“…”
“If the Deputy became unable to command, and if you, Sir Garot, attempted to follow his trail, we were to tell you everything.”
Why?
“And he instructed us to ask if you would be willing to accept the delegation of his authority.”
Nausea threatened to rise again.
“As an aside, the Deputy was preparing for mass production just before the war. I believe this is the answer you were looking for, Sir Garot.”
Throughout the conversation, the magic scholars' voices and expressions remained completely flat. It was often said that those obsessed with magic looked as if they were possessed, and indeed, they did.
The magic scholar asked, “What will you do?”
*
This had all happened just a day ago.
Garot stood atop the ramparts of the South Gate, which was now under her command.
Looking out from the wall, she saw an immense number of orcs pouring through the Teleportation Hub connected to the Annun Plains.
In the town of Riaze, already emptied by evacuation orders, thousands of orcs had flooded in, their battle cries echoing through the streets.
“Half a day will be enough for Nilkumbal’s entire army to cross over. So, it all begins in half a day.”
Only two walls remained between here and the Imperial Palace, the heart of the Empire. Though the soldiers stationed along them were preparing for a final, bloody battle, their chances of successfully defending against that massive orc army were, realistically, nonexistent.