The Holy Sword's Light to Purify the Beasts... Uh, It's Not Turning On? (3)
The crystal champagne flutes clinked with a clear, elegant ring.
“To the night when the sun of the great empire is extinguished.”
Clotilde, submerged up to her shoulders in the golden hot spring water of the open-air bath, and I, lounging back on a sunbed, both turned our eyes at the same moment toward the magical communication device hovering above the table. Its screen projected a scene straight out of hell.
The sky had turned the ominous crimson of a Blood Moon, and beneath the ash-gray walls of the Lumiere Empire’s capital, an endless black tide of monsters surged forward like a tsunami.
The journalist’s voice, thick with screams, came from off-screen. Yet the atmosphere at the very top of the wall the camera focused on was strangely solemn and sacred.
At its center stood Kael, the Holy Knight Commander, his silver armor drenched in blood. Beside him, Fiora the Saintess knelt in prayer, hands clasped and eyes glistening with tears.
Kael drew a heavy blade from behind his back. The scabbard was caked in dirt, clearly bearing the marks of having been tied to a lamppost in the imperial garden only moments earlier. As he solemnly raised the drawn sword, the light that poured from the blade was…
“……”
Clotilde, watching the screen, couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter.
It wasn’t the majestic, brilliant golden light one would expect. Instead, it was a murky, ominous fluorescent green—the kind you’d see on a cheap tavern sign in a back alley—flickering with a pathetic buzzing noise.
But the key figures of the Lumiere Empire, whose brains had been thoroughly pickled in love and faith, seemed completely oblivious to how bizarre it looked.
The Saintess swayed as if overcome with emotion, while the knights guarding her clashed their swords together and let out frenzied cheers.
Kael widened his eyes and poured the immense aura of a Sword Master from his heart straight into the Holy Sword’s hilt.
His thunderous cry shook the battlefield. It was the climactic moment as Kael swung the fluorescent-green-glowing Holy Sword high and brought it down toward the horde of monsters below the wall.
Flash——!
The light flared. Or rather, it tried to.
Crackle. Tick.
“……?”
A tiny, pathetic sound came from the other side of the screen. It was like the hiss of a single drop of water hitting a burnt-out coal, or the snap of a cheap lightbulb filament breaking.
The fluorescent green light that had been flickering weakly from the end of the Holy Sword’s hilt simply died, as if it had all been a lie.
The frenzied cheering that had filled the top of the wall stopped dead, as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over it. Only the wind whistled across the battlements.
Kael stared blankly up at the sword he held high with both hands—a sword that was now nothing more than a heavy, pitch-black lump of metal.
There was no light. No wave of mana. Nothing.
In his panic, Kael shook the Holy Sword up and down. It was a desperate, pathetic struggle that looked exactly like a modern person smacking a dead remote control.
Kael frantically smacked the hilt and tried to force more sword aura into it. But the patience of a five-gold Slime Dung Magic Stone had reached its limit. Unable to withstand a Sword Master’s power, the pommel let out a dull bang! and belched out thick black smoke.
Fiora the Saintess, who had taken the smoke straight to the face, coughed with her features now completely blackened. The monsters below the wall seemed to freeze in momentary confusion at the sight, but then the giant orc chieftain at the front snorted as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He raised his rusty axe and brought it down.
Kwaaaaaang—!!!
The once-solemn rampart turned into a horrific scene of carnage in just ten seconds. A dumbfounded knight commander clutching a lifeless hunk of scrap metal, a saintess screaming with her face covered in soot, and the terrible roars of monsters pouring over the walls on ladders.
The moment the journalist holding the camera was swatted by a gargoyle, the magical communication device’s projected screen fizzled out completely into darkness.
“……”
“……”
For a while, only the gentle sound of waves filled the resort.
Then, a moment later—
“Puhahahahahaha——!!!”
Clotilde slammed her hands against the surface of the bath, laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
“Ah, hahaha! Did you see that, Ilario?! Did you see him shaking it?! The Holy Knight Commander of the great empire! Waving around a dead streetlamp like an idiot! Hahahaha! Come on! Shine! Come on! I’m dying, this is too good!!”
She was even shedding tears from laughing so hard. I couldn’t help but shake with laughter myself.
“I never imagined Sir Kael would treat a national treasure like a broken remote control. ‘Warm-up’? The magic engineers would clutch their necks and faint if they heard that.”
“Ah, that was the biggest laugh I’ve had all year. My stomach hurts.”
Clotilde finally managed to stop laughing and tapped the ornate mana-stone panel sitting at the edge of the outdoor pool. Beneath it, the real core of the Holy Sword—the Heart of the Sun we had stolen ten months ago—hummed steadily, supplying endless hot water and energy throughout the entire resort.
“By the way, Ilario. Just like you said, its lifespan really ran out at the perfect moment. How could the timing be that spot-on?”
“Didn’t they say a five-gold magic stone only lasts a year? It was used as a lamppost in the imperial garden every single night, so it was about time it ran out of juice. And then Sir Kael crammed Sword Master-level aura into it. There was no way that cheap stone could handle the overload. It just blew up.”
I rose leisurely from my seat and walked over to the top-tier magical charcoal grill that had been set up beside the sunbed.
“We invested five gold and wiped out the empire’s entire capital defense line. Where else are you going to find value like that? Shall we grill some beef to celebrate the monster breakthrough? Medium rare?”
“Sounds perfect. And pile on the truffle sauce.”
Clotilde hummed a cheerful little tune as she stretched her smooth legs out of the open-air bath. A servant rushed over and draped a fluffy, top-quality silk towel over her shoulders.
Sizzle—
The finest black beef tenderloin from the Varcia Empire began to cook on the grill, releasing an aromatic smoke. The sound of meat searing somehow overlapped with the chaotic screams we had just heard from the screen, and I let out another soft chuckle.
The great Holy Empire of Lumiere. The heart of that once-arrogant nation that had ruled the continent was probably being trampled mercilessly beneath the feet of monsters right about now.
Of course, the mad Tyrant Crown Prince and the world’s strongest mage tower master were still holding the line, so the fall of a single capital wouldn’t mean the country would collapse tomorrow. But that was actually good news for us.
The national treasury and secret assets we had devoured through “perfectly legal paperwork” over the past year weren’t limited to just one Holy Sword battery. The mage tower’s core, the imperial family’s slush fund, the empire’s food warehouses, and even the key components of the imperial family’s emergency escape airship—we had scraped every last pillar of the empire clean while those lunatics spent the year panting after the saintess’s skirts. We had moved it all here to our vault in the Varcia Empire.
“What’s next, Ilario?”
Clotilde asked, eyes sparkling as she speared a perfectly cooked piece of steak with her fork and popped it into her mouth.
“Now that the capital’s been breached, the crown prince or the tower master will have to step in, right? To sweep away that monster horde, they’ll probably need to use some kind of wide-area grand magic.”
“Ah. You mean Tower Master Elias?”
I sliced into my own steak and grinned.
“It’s time to open the forbidden tomes that have been sealed in the mage tower’s archive for centuries. You can look forward to it. The moment the tower master risks his life to open those books, some truly dizzying and explosive spells are going to come flying out.”
“Dizzying and explosive spells?”
“Yes. For example… something like 『Ah, Your Highness the Tyrant Crown Prince! Not there!』”