Chapter 479: A Far Away Tale, the Magician of the Military State
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 479: A Far Away Tale, the Magician of the Military State
A comet fallen to earth. The most formidable genius the Military State had ever produced.
Despite the grandiloquent titles attached to his name, Erzsebet was unimpressed.
The reason was simple. She had never heard the name Lankart before.
“I have not heard that name. Is he some local dignitary? Regrettably, I do not deign to commit the worthless to memory.”
A historical genius born in the Military State, a nation with a history of barely thirty years, was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the countless humans Erzsebet had encountered. Authority is born from history. A regional representative was beneath her notice. For Erzsebet, who made occasional appearances in history books herself, there was no reason to remember some upstart magician.
Being ignored to his face, Lankart looked more baffled than angry.
“The worthless? Are you referring to me?”
“Of course. You magicians may believe you are special… but in the end, you are just another dime-a-dozen sorcerer. How pathetic, to be so full of yourself.”
It was arrogant, but an Elder had the right to be. Erzsebet openly mocked the self-important magician, but Lankart simply tilted his head and asked a question.
“And yet, you’re just a ‘right-hander’ who bowed to the Progenitor and went with the flow, aren’t you?”
A right-hander?
Erzsebet tilted her head, having never heard the term used that way before. As he said, she was right-handed. The hand holding her fan was, after all, her right. But she knew the magician wasn't referring to her dominant hand. Erzsebet asked.
“What do you mean by ‘right-hander’?”
“The mainstream. The current. The status quo. Or power. It doesn’t matter what you call it. In the end, you’re the type who ‘follows.’ It makes no difference whether you were born a right-hander or made into one.”
It was utter nonsense. Then again, magicians were eccentrics who delved to the extremes of their own mental worlds. Erzsebet had no way of understanding such a freak, nor did she need to. Deciding she had to kill him, she extended her right hand. The hand holding the blood-red fan touched the domain of her Unique Magic.
In that moment, Erzsebet vaguely recalled the past.
She had once been a noble in a certain country. Nobles were expected to master proper etiquette and comportment. Parents would hire tutors to strictly drill their children in the ways of courtesy.
‘Erzsebet. You are truly perfect.’
‘There is nothing left to teach you.’
‘If only my children were half as good as you…’
Erzsebet had been the model student among model students. Everyone praised and envied her. Among them were the left-handers.
‘Child! How many times must I tell you not to use the wrong hand!’
‘It seems I’ll have to tie that hand behind your back!’
They were the failures who were clumsy with their right hands, the ones they were supposed to use, and thus couldn't keep up in class. Beings twisted from the very start.
One could not live by the left hand just because it was more skillful. Using the left hand at the dinner table would cause one to bump into the right-handers, and it would create difficulties in reading and writing.
Above all, being different from others was, in itself, a major disqualification. Rather than letting them live that way, it was better to fix them before sending them out into the world.
And so, one by one, the left-handers vanished, and manufactured right-handers took their place. From her position far ahead of them, Erzsebet pitied and despised those who, after so much time and effort, had only just reached the starting line.
Erzsebet was a natural-born right-hander. She had always been a right-hander. Rather than defy the current, she rode at its forefront, reaped the benefits, and was proud of it.
“In a world you cannot comprehend, the world turns to the right.”
As she reminisced, the magician’s voice reached her ears.
“The universe observed by the bungling sage. The seedling that grew the Tree of Corruption. Or even just the masses of right-handed humans. They all decide that right is superior and force everything to turn that way. Why is that? Is it because it’s better? No, of course not. Left and right are identical, differing only in direction.”
“You livestock…”
Within Lankart’s Unique Magic, blood and wind were swirling. Erzsebet fired her blood energy, intending to devour the vortex whole. The energy erupted from her fan, surging against his Unique Magic as it tried to consume Lankart.
“But if they are truly equal, why have all the lefts disappeared, leaving only the rights? The reason is simple.”
Whether the Elder was aiming for his life or his blood energy was trying to swallow him, Lankart continued his explanation, unconcerned.
“It’s because there are more right-handers.”
Erzsebet’s body was slammed into the wall of the windmill. The deflected current of blood energy arced through the air, shattering one of the windmill’s walls and bringing it crashing down.
Having lost its support, the windmill collapsed with a great crack. Gears ground against each other as the massive mechanism fell toward Lankart’s head.
Even then, Lankart remained composed.
“Right-handers and left-handers clash and annihilate each other. Over a long period of time, as they are eliminated one pair at a time, only the right-handers remain. Why? Because there are more of them. It’s a practical application of survival of the fittest. Even nature, which seems so grand, only passes down the rules that have survived.”
Thud, thud, thud. Even the falling debris veered away from Lankart’s body. The vortex surrounding him protected him from all attacks, whether from above or below. Lankart leisurely clenched his right fist and looked down at Erzsebet.
“My Unique Magic, the World of the Right-Handed, follows that rule, destroying and annihilating everything on the left. This vortex is merely the result. Within the World of the Right-Handed, I am a god. A sycophant like you, who merely rides the current, cannot even dare to touch the hem of my clothes.”
Lankart and his Unique Magic were openly mocking her, calling her a coward who followed the majority and clung to the strong. The truth of it was so painfully sharp that Erzsebet’s pride was wounded. She unleashed her blood energy again and shouted.
“Don’t get so high and mighty over one Unique Magic! Let’s see if you can keep talking when you’re drowning in blood from head to toe!”
Erzsebet snapped her fan shut, grabbed it with both hands, and twisted. Blood gushed from the fan as she wrung it like a towel. If her power couldn't reach him, she would simply fill the entire space with her blood energy.
Lankart clicked his tongue as he watched the blood rise.
“Tsk. I was kind enough to explain it to you since you’re an Elder… but you’re obsolete and make no effort to understand. This is why the ignorant masses are hopeless. Even an Elder, if ignorant, is still just one of the masses. No, you’re worse. An undying, obsolete fool.”
There were two ways to deal with a magician who had constructed their own absolute philosophy: a surprise attack, or overwhelming power.
Historically, magicians were often killed anticlimactically by surprise attacks, but Elders were among the few beings who could kill a magician with overwhelming power. With her overflowing blood energy, Erzsebet was an Elder who could kill a magician more easily than anyone except Valdamir or Muri.
The only problem was that her opponent was no ordinary magician.
“You fail. You fool.”
Lankart, who had been standing still until now, took a single, light yet heavy step toward Erzsebet.
Lankart’s Unique Magic was centered on him. He was the core of the vortex, the eye of the storm. And now, the eye of the storm, which should have moved with a weight befitting its majesty, turned toward Erzsebet.
How kind of the magician to approach her first. Erzsebet reached for the advancing Lankart. She, too, was a vampire trained in Blood Aura Techniques. A frail magician would be crushed the moment she touched him.
If she could touch him, that is.
Snap. Erzsebet’s arm bent in a sickening arc. In the eye of the storm, Lankart’s vortex was insurmountably powerful.
“There’s no value in conversing with obsolete losers. Go and fetch your Progenitor. Since I’ve come all this way, I might as well see the face of this newborn Divine.”
“You bastard…!”
All force directed at Lankart missed him. Conversely, if Lankart moved toward something, he could make it miss. The same was true even if that something was an Elder.
Lankart didn't strike Erzsebet directly. He merely made a motion as if to throw her with an invisible arm.
It was a bluff, but his Unique Magic made the illusion a reality. The vortex coiling around his arm swept across the land.
“Giant’s Right Arm.”
Struck by the vortex, Erzsebet and her cloud of blood energy shot into the air as if sucked into a vacuum. It was less like flying and more like being launched. Because the vortex’s epicenter had come to her, Erzsebet had no time to react before she was sent flying violently away.
In an instant, the vanished Erzsebet looked like a distant red cloud. From within the ruined windmill, Lankart watched her disappear into the distance.
“It’ll take her a while to get back. Now, then. Shall we have a little chat, just the two of us?”
Having repelled an Elder single-handedly, Lankart turned away without any particular emotion.
“Where is Huey?”