Chapter 176
Chapter 176
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 176
Chapter Title: Is the Mage Losing?
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[Title: Is the Mage Losing?]
(Meme of a mage with only the lower body left)
(Meme of a blue wyvern chomping away)
Inkiyaak!
- Elkiyaak
- Drkiyaak
- (Knight Kon clutching his head in shock)
A shocking post went up on the gallery.
The problem was that the source of the shock was Judak.
The blue wyvern that Judak had brought had eaten an elderly mage in half.
Is the mage losing?
Fuck, yeah, he's losing.
“H-Haiz master!”
“Th-that crazy wyvern bastard!”
The mage's apprentice screamed, and the people were filled with horror.
Kellerton was the kingdom of knights.
Wyverns were upper-class monsters, but one couldn't pull off something like this in the heart of a human kingdom and survive.
“Kyaaak!”
In an instant, knights drew their weapons and surrounded the wyvern.
It couldn't even escape into the sky.
The moment it tried to flap its wings, it was obvious it'd be turned into Swiss cheese by the knights' attacks.
“Kill that vicious thing right now!”
“We have to kill it!”
The resentment of Kellerton's residents toward the wyvern skyrocketed in an instant.
It was even more so because the mage who'd only taken one bite was a fairly well-known one.
But...
Everyone was just talking big—no one was actually stepping up.
Even the knights were hesitating, dithering with the wyvern right in front of them.
Frustrated citizens pointed at the wyvern and yelled at the knights.
“What are you doing? Kill that thing right now!”
Are they scared of a wyvern, of all things?
If so, they weren't knights anymore.
They deserved to be called great wyvern chasers, like mentioned before.
“Aigoo, my taxes are melting away!”
“Go chase great wyverns and slay the beast that ate a person, you cowards!”
“Are you scared of a puny thing like that?!”
One of the prodded knights finally nodded slowly, looking displeased.
“Yeah.”
“What?!”
“Scared of a mere wyvern...!”
“No.”
The knight's expression visible through the narrow helmet slit looked uneasy.
But it wasn't because of the wyvern.
“...Isn't that wyvern personally raised by Lord Judak?”
It was Judak's wyvern, after all.
Sure, a person had died.
Nothing was more important than human life in this world.
But was that really true even in this medieval doomsday world?
The knight turned to the speechless man and said.
“I owe my life to Lord Judak once.”
“What...”
“Maintaining city security is my job, but I can't do this one.”
He shoved his steel sword into the man's arms and backed away.
“If you really wanna kill it, you handle it.”
Human rights only fly in peaceful times.
In the knight's weighing of scales, Lord Judak's pet outweighed a skilled mage.
Nearby soldiers slowly lowered their swords aimed at the wyvern.
“I-I can't do it.”
“I'd take a pay cut over risking a permanent gallery ban...”
Kellerton, kingdom of knights.
But before that, it was a kingdom under Judak's influence.
To some, Judak was a benefactor; to others, an object of fear due to gallery bans.
As weapons were lowered one by one, the crowd fell silent.
Even the man who'd been handed the sword in a daze dropped it on the ground.
“H-Hey, but...”
Someone muttered softly.
Still, letting it end like this felt off.
This wasn't how usual Judak would wrap things up.
Everyone waited for the gallery's reaction floating in the air.
Why hasn't Judak said anything yet?
- Judak*) Ah
A chat appeared then.
Judak approached the apprentice slumped in front of the bisected mage corpse.
- Judak*) Sir, are you this mage's apprentice?
“Y-Yes, yes... that's right.”
Mage Heinri.
That was the name of the elderly mage in the tall hat.
He wasn't stuffy or authoritarian like most mages—he was kind to those around him.
As he nodded vigorously, Judak asked an inexplicable question.
- Judak*) This guy's name is Heinri, right?
“Y-Yes. Master Heinri. Ask around—everyone will confirm it.”
Heinri, Heinri...
Judak pondered briefly, then enlarged the gallery window in front of the crowd.
[Fixed nick 'Slowpoke Mage' real name 'Heinri' is currently active in the gallery!]
- Judak*) He's alive, though?
“...Huh?”
Mage Heinri was alive.
The gallery doesn't record the dead.
The moment they die, all activity vanishes except for Isekai Destruction Wiki edits.
The apprentice's eyes went blank at the fact.
“Th-Then...”
So what was that thing with only the lower body left?
*
Twitter (alias): Blue wyvern ate a person.
Oh, this is gonna stir up some controversy.
“Anyway, what the hell is this?”
I felt baffled first.
That wyvern had a docile personality.
Not that I was defending it out of short-term affection.
“It even let that knight go last time.”
It'd ended with just slapping down the wrist of a knight trying to use it as a personal ride.
But to eat a total stranger—and one defending it?
Too weird.
So I watched the situation and searched the gallery: the guy was alive.
Active under the fixed nick Slowpoke Mage, no less.
“The one who shitposted on the gallery before?”
The troll who'd tried manipulating opinion alternating between throwaway and fixed nicks.
My instincts kicked in.
“Something's... something's up.”
The moment I sensed something fishy.
- Pssst...
Purple smoke began rising from the mage's lower-body corpse.
It started dissolving slowly, like the body was turning to dust.
“No, the body...”
“It's not the mage?”
Normal people don't die like this.
It was smoke like you'd see bubbling from a witch's potion cauldron.
Someone kidnapped the real mage and impersonated him with fake smoke magic.
Luckily, finding the real body didn't take long.
“Mmph, mmph!”
“We found Mage Heinri!”
In the basement under Heinri's mansion, bound naked.
They'd found an elderly man bound stark naked!
“Who would do such a horrific thing?!”
“Urgh, ugh...”
In other words, someone had deliberately kept Heinri alive to avoid suspicion of vanishing from the gallery.
And used him for gallery opinion manipulation and some spying.
“Who did this?”
[Title: Lawtards, Get On It]
(Meme of Heinri naked and bound in the basement)
Is this our country?
Fuck, it's a major power, but they're filming some degenerate kidnapping hostage drama?
The mages need to step up and find the perp.
[Upvotes 2932] [Downvotes 102]
- Holy shit; giving me chills
- A thing like that happened inside the city?
- If not for Judak, he'd have been stuck like that forever fr;
Crimes involving magic were usually handled by mages tracking the perp.
They could pinpoint spells with mana,
And with few mages, it was easy to catch them.
- We can't find 'em either, sorry
ㄴ OP) ?
ㄴ You're the mages
ㄴ Yeah mages, but that's a mana form we've never seen
ㄴ Fr something's off;
ㄴ Feels like it's not even from this world mana, super alien ㅇㅇ;
The magic form wasn't common to begin with.
Only one way left.
Morone: It's witchcraft.
Get help from a practicing witch.
Estella: It's a bit different, though. Similar to ours but deeper...
Morone: Maybe the Rift Expedition got hit with witchcraft on the way back?
The witches' take was that.
Something must've happened to the expedition on return.
Judak*: Can you check?
Judak*: I'll gather the expedition members from back then.
Gathering the gallery users from the expedition confirmed it.
-Kieeek!
Something burst out from one of the knights who'd gone on the expedition.
“Got it.”
Morone didn't miss it.
She snatched the shadowy thing barehanded: it was like black ink.
The knight was shocked seeing the shadow-witchcraft emerge from his body.
“N-No idea I had something like this...”
The world was ignorant of witchcraft.
No countermeasures, given the history of witch hunts.
That's how a not-so-special spell could rampage inside the city.
“Should I recruit more witches?”
I had two official witches now.
But they were so reclusive, spotting them was the hard part, let alone recruiting.
“Is this the Seven Deadly Sins' doing too?”
The Seven Deadly Sins naturally came to mind beyond the rift.
Nothing else had the intelligence for doppelgangers acting real.
[Rift analysis in progress... 86%]
Good news: analysis progress was up.
Next time in, I might see and counter it myself.
-Kieeek!
Watching the shadow vanish like smoke from Morone's hand, I sank into thought.
*
“Kyuing!”
Adrian Cathedral inner plaza.
A blue wyvern folded its wings and landed in the plaza.
Twitter (alias), whose residence had changed to Adrian, had just arrived.
“Ooh, that creature...”
“Never thought I'd see one with my own eyes.”
The cathedral knights stared at the wyvern with sparkling eyes.
Wyverns were rare, but not so special knights couldn't see them.
The interest stemmed from it being personally raised by Judak.
“They say it weeded out evil in Kellerton.”
“Divine beasts are different, huh.”
The knights gazed warmly at the wyvern.
Soon, amid the knights, a figure emerged with his holy sword.
“That the wyvern?”
“Ooh, Hero. Yes.”
Gallery hero, Darian.
With Darian's arrival, Adrian Cathedral had been completely purged.
The cathedral now worshipped another god.
The Nameless God.
...But everyone knew that meant Judak.
Some for money, some riding the wave—but one thing was clear.
‘Corruption's gone.’
Some from faith in Judak, some for honor, money, or whatever reason.
The cathedral was coalescing into a massive power.
“Kyuing?”
“You've been chosen by Judak too, huh.”
Darian extended a hand to the wyvern unusually gently.
Surprisingly, the wyvern didn't dodge—instead, it rubbed its cheek against him with a rumble.
Darian stroked the wyvern like a divine beast, then turned.
“The key is nearly complete.”
Purging corruption.
A righteous cathedral united by faith.
Hero and divine beast.
Finally, intel on the rift core to destroy their archenemy, the rifts.
All of it pointed to one goal.
“The gods wills it.”
Deus vult.
The Crusades.
Darian gazed with sunken eyes at the long lines of knightly forces.