Velus Ma'kel
Velus Ma'kel
"...Appalling."
The old man's deep voice resonated through the audience chamber. Where that voice fell, human death lay in bloom — and the gruesome state of those who had abandoned their humanity.
Bodies split apart, crushed, pierced clean through.
Death blossomed riotously among the remnants.
As the old man moved, the silence of the dead was shattered by the living. His armored boots clattered loudly with every step.
"...Truly, truly appalling."
His words carried two meanings.
One was that this massacre was appalling. The other was that it was appalling that those lying dead here had discarded their humanity. Even amid the carnage, the old man approached the Emperor — the liege whose neck had been snapped.
"...Your Majesty as well."
Weariness etched deep lines into the old man's face, a fatigue that resembled what Aslan had shown not long ago. Ileina noticed it, silently clasping her hands together.
"If you could not place your trust in me... you need only have spoken the word..." The old knight in armor, Reynald — the one they called the Dark Spear — straightened the Emperor's corpse. "How could you go so far as to forsake your own humanity...?"
He fitted the broken neck back into place, closed the eyes that stared wide open, and wiped away the blood that had spilled.
"Never did I dream I would fail in my duty... a second time."
Grievously murmuring, Reynald lifted the Emperor's body. Behind him, Ileina could only press her lips into a bitter line.
"And they... truly escaped?"
As Reynald closed his eyes and asked, Ileina's expressionless face recalled Aslan's intentions.
If the transfer of power revealed that Ileina was involved or implicated in the Emperor's assassination, it would inevitably cause friction with the succession and coronation.
So Aslan had told Ileina to summon the captain of the imperial guard — and then vanished. To make it easier to pin the blame, Aslan had even instructed her on what to say before she left the audience chamber.
The girl offered up those words as testimony.
"Yes. The moment they murdered His Majesty — murdered my brother — an unknown force enveloped them, and they vanished. Taken by that force."
***
"...Is that right? We didn't have anything like that."
Amid the bustling crowds, three figures walked with their forms concealed under heavy cloaks and hoods. They should have drawn stares, yet strangely they did not. They cut diagonally through the throng.
The one who spoke was a girl, her scarlet hair hidden beneath her cloak.
The black-haired man with the unsettling teal eyes, Aslan, glanced sideways at her words.
Harod pulled his sackcloth-like cloak tighter and looked at the girl. With both of their gazes suddenly fixed on her, she pouted discontentedly. "What?"
Harod can explain.
Watching Angie's reaction, Aslan offloaded the explanation. He just flicked his eyes toward the two-meter-tall dragon-kin, who turned his yellow, slit-pupiled gaze upon Aslan in return.
"Hm, quite true. The magic you used is hardly obscure, is it? Plenty of sorcerers in Belus Alpen practice it, so it wouldn't exactly count as an unknown power...?"
Tracing backward from there, the first point should have been that they hadn't escaped via some unknown power at all. But Harod seemed not to think of that, and merely stared blankly at Aslan.
Aslan found their reactions somewhat ludicrous, but he explained anyway.
"It's to plant a misconception about the last remnant of the Ancient Gods."
"A misconception...?"
"A misconception that the remnant is already serving a god, that it's already a priest of something."
That was the reason for calling it an unknown power. This was Geladrion, where gods still lingered, and the Ancient Gods had once reigned.
In an age where every known form of power had already been catalogued, the only things that could be labeled unknown or unidentifiable were the powers of gods themselves.
Neither Harod nor Angie seemed to properly grasp it. They just looked at Aslan with blank expressions.
Even Harod, who's practically a noble... doesn't know?
Angie came from poverty and had a patchy education, so her ignorance was understandable. But Harod's cluelessness was genuinely surprising, and Aslan's expression turned complicated.
As he walked on with that look on his face, Angie shrugged at him.
"Even if that's true, did we really need to go that far? If a priest or whatever shows up, why not just beat them all?"
She grinned proudly. Aslan glanced at her. It didn't seem like mere bravado meant to bolster morale.
She'd been doing well against priests, and every fight so far had gone smoothly under Aslan's planning. It had likely made her overconfident. He shook his head.
"That might work if only one priest shows up. But if there are two or more, we'd be in trouble. You'd struggle."
Angie looked mildly displeased at having her point refuted, but she listened quietly as Aslan continued.
"If a high priest appears, there's no answer. Right now, we don't even have the strength to handle two priests at once. We need to avoid their eyes and grow stronger."
"And this is the scheme for that," he added. Angie stared at him with a sullen expression.
"...You told that pretty one that if you don't fight, you'll never know. That if you don't fight, you've already lost."
As she grumbled, Aslan let out a low chuckle.
Angie clearly hadn't shed all her youthful impetuousness.
He answered simply as he cut through the crowd. "That's true. If you don't fight, you lose for certain. And if you don't fight, you'll never know. But... once you start fighting, you can't take it back. So you prepare thoroughly before you commit."
"Why, what's so different about them?"
"Hm... how should I put it."
Aslan stroked his chin as he walked at the head of the group, then spoke from his experience in the game.
"I can beat a priest even without preparation, as long as you and Harod help."
But he paused and leaned against a wall to avoid the incoming crowd. Under the gazes of his two companions, he finished the thought.
"High priests are monsters. No one beats them without preparation."
Regular priests were already at the level of monsters, but high priests were something beyond even that.
Possessing stronger physical abilities and far mightier divine authorities, high priests were essentially demigods. As such, even Aslan wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with them. Even with all manner of preparations and plans, he couldn't guarantee a hundred percent chance of victory.
Of course, things might be different now that he had leveled up. But he wasn't keen on gambling with his life.
At the mention of high priests, Harod nodded in agreement and leaned against the wall as well.
"Angela Tail, no matter how strong you've grown... you would do well to be cautious before a high priest. They are monsters, just as Lord Aslan says. Please, heed his words..."
"Oh, like one of those will actually show up! You're just a scaredy-cat!"
Angie shot back at Harod's fussing and stepped ahead first. Harod watched her go with a resigned expression.
"It seems she's gotten a bit too full of herself."
Becoming a remnant of the Ancient Gods had thrust power surpassing human limits easily into her hands. That must have swollen her confidence, Aslan supposed as he spoke.
"...Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure. Don't you remember? That's simply how the girl has always been. Even when facing foes stronger and more numerous, she was never scared. She'd just scream and charge right in."
Harod shook his head as he replied.
Aslan thought back to the first time he'd met the girl. She had indeed always been that way.
"Unlike myself," the dragon-kin added. Aslan glanced at Harod. Now that he thought about it, Harod had been subdued and brought to heel by Aslan without much difficulty.
"It's just in her nature."
The dragon-kin's voice was tinged with regret. Aslan let out a sigh at that tone and pushed himself off the wall.
"Enough with the moping. Before Angie gets lost..."
The moment Harod grimaced at the word 'moping,' a sharp, cold sensation shot down Aslan's spine.
It was more than the usual prickling warning. It was a chill that felt like an awl gouging into his brain. Unquestionably, his Luck was at work. Guided by that sense, Aslan's eyes snapped to the side.
A woman entered his vision.
Standing some distance away under the drawbridge, she wore a linen cloak over her body just like Aslan, Angie, and Harod. Even the thick cloak couldn't conceal her innocent pink eyes, her white hair, or the massive axe strapped to her back.
Aslan knew who she was. And the woman, too, knew Aslan. As their eyes met, Aslan drew upon his mana and shouted.
"Angie, get down!"
The mana surged through his heart and flowed down his arms, erupting from his palms to form a shape resembling a shield.
Far away, the cloaked woman pulled her axe down and gripped it. The massive weapon, its haft taller than she was, moved as she leaned back. The sinister sensation shot through his core. Aslan clenched his teeth, the hair on the back of his neck prickling as if standing on end.
He knew what attack was coming. It was a throw.
Kwaaaa!
Just flying through the air, the axe made the air scream and thunder like lightning. It hurtled toward Aslan, ripping apart every human standing in its path. Through the scattering shreds of flesh, the axe came on.
Crrrrrack-boom!
The flying axe struck the barrier Aslan had thrown up. The sound it made upon impact was not that of a hurled weapon meeting a hastily conjured mana shield. It was like a cannonball. The roar of a cannonball striking its mark.
"Nghhhh...!"
The barrier distorted. Cracks spidered across its surface. Behind Aslan, Harod sucked in a sharp breath at the visible stress lines and fractures tearing through the empty air.
Blood began to trickle from Aslan's eyes and mouth. He kept both hands extended, struggling to hold the barrier together—
Sssskritch. Craaaaack!
The moment the barrier shattered, he pulled his arms back. His hand found the sword's hilt as he drew it in a quarter of a breath. He drew and swung upward in the same instant.
KWAAAAANG!
A deafening roar erupted. The hurled axe was deflected, gouging a trench through the dirt before slamming into a building and demolishing it.
Agony shot through Aslan's arms as if the bones themselves had shattered. He barely adjusted his grip on the hilt. Even with his wild magic active, he'd almost lost his sword. That meant one thing.
With a grim expression, he planted his sword in the ground and gasped for breath. Seeing the state he was in, the girl who had been walking ahead spun around and ran back. Amid the corpses caught in the axe's path, the crowd screamed as they fled.
"W-what happened!?"
Angie reached out her hand. Aslan seized it, forcing his buckling knees to straighten as he struggled upright.
Harod took in the scene and what had occurred, and let out a heavy sigh, drawing his weapon and raising his shield.
"Great Flame above..."
Aslan wiped the bloody tears veiling his vision with the back of his hand. His voice, thick with exhaustion, muttered.
"Angie, it seems the worst-case scenario has come to pass."
The girl's expression was one of confusion, but Aslan paid it no mind and pulled his sword free from the ground.
"I don't know why she chose now to show herself, but... that high priest I was talking about has appeared."
Angie couldn't find a reply. The woman, walking calmly across the drawbridge, simply smiled — as if she'd heard every word.