The Belfort Naval Battle (3)
Everything was silent.
From all directions came the roar of cannon fire and the agonizing screams of soldiers consumed by flames.
Yet to Lexion right now, all that noise felt like a distant murmur drifting in from another world.
A sensation as if time itself had frozen across the entire battlefield.
Only a storm of emotions swirled through Lexion’s mind.
The humiliation of a crushing defeat.
The sneering contempt of the imperial nobles who had looked down on him as a joke.
And the woman he wanted to trample over all of it and claim completely for himself.
-Drip.
All those emotions, tangled with the razor edge between life and death, shattered the wall that had sealed him.
The horrific pain from his severed fingers and the searing burn across his flesh no longer reached him.
Only an ecstatic sense of omnipotence surged from his core, as though he could seize the world itself in his grasp.
Having finished condensing his power, Lexion slowly opened his eyes.
“……”
His golden eyes held no trace of emotion.
All those feelings had burned away as the price for forcibly stepping into the transcendent realm.
In the empty space they left behind, only boundless mana remained.
Even the memory of his own rage from moments ago felt distant, like a scene from someone else’s story.
His obsession with Ayla, the nobles’ mockery, and even the glory of his position as naval admiral meant nothing to him now.
The only thing left was the primal instinct to clear away the irritating things before his eyes.
First.
“...How insolent.”
He thrust his sword toward the countless eyes watching him from above.
“Sword Master.”
As expected, Lexion had risen to Sword Master.
This was the second time I had witnessed the sight since watching Roxanna reach transcendence last year.
It had been the same back then.
-Hummm.
Numerous magic eyes began to bloom in the sky above the eastern coast.
‘Great Mage Asterion.’
He must have sent his eyes to confirm the situation after sensing the birth of a transcendent.
In the original novel, he would always deploy those eyes to observe whenever a major event shook the continent.
‘Voyeur mage.’
Lexion, having just ascended, apparently found the gaze unpleasant and swung his sword.
-Kwaaaang!
The slash he aimed at empty air instantly shattered dozens of the magic eyes floating overhead.
‘...But he’s not attacking?’
Even though twenty percent of his magic eyes had been destroyed by Lexion, Asterion showed no sign of taking action.
Surely he could erase the current Lexion with nothing more than a gesture.
Instead, seventy percent of the remaining eyes stayed fixed on Lexion while thirty percent watched me.
‘Why is he looking at me? Is he greeting me after so long?’
The gaze that seemed to scan my soul was unpleasant, but that wasn’t what mattered right now.
I immediately issued orders to the knights through the mana communication network.
The power of a transcendent was beyond standard.
If that bastard swung his sword toward the sea with true intent even once, every one of our ships would be sliced apart.
Fortunately, because Asterion was drawing Lexion’s aggression, the man showed no interest in our forces.
The moment my command went out, the kingdom’s vessels that had been blocking the escape route at the strait’s perimeter hurriedly unfurled their sails and began maneuvering clear.
The loading crews and mages stationed across the island held their breath and pressed themselves flat against the ground below their positions.
Ordinary soldiers and a handful of cannons could never hope to face a transcendent Lexion anyway.
-Kwaaaaaang!
Lexion, still fixated on Asterion’s eyes, continued swinging his blade without pause.
Each time his cutlass carved through the air, navy-blue sword waves split the sky and the magic eyes that filled it crumbled and fell.
‘...He really is persistent.’
Yet Asterion, for whatever reason, simply continued observing both me and Lexion without taking any action.
Seemingly provoked by the indifference, Lexion began swinging his sword with even greater fury.
But no matter how many magic eyes he destroyed, new ones kept forming to replace them.
“How dare you look down on me.”
Lexion’s mana-infused voice thundered across the eastern coast.
As if his words were an order to the sea itself, most of the strait’s mana began converging into the cutlass gripped in his left hand.
-Ruuuuumble!
A transcendent had begun preparing an attack carrying his own will.
It looked as though Lexion intended to cleave the irritating gazes in the sky—and the sky along with them—clean in half.
In the original story Lexion had used a sea-based vortex technique, but because the manner of his ascension had changed, the technique itself had shifted as well.
Navy-blue aura surged upward like a pillar, evaporating the surrounding seawater.
Most of the knights and mages lying on the island gasped in pain under the oppressive aura radiating from the transcendent.
But.
‘This works perfectly for us.’
Since he was busy waging his own private war against the sky, this was the best possible opportunity.
Of course, the ideal outcome would have been Asterion eliminating Lexion himself.
For some reason, however, he remained completely inactive.
“M-My lord…! That energy…! We must take cover!”
Seria, standing beside me, cried out with a face drained of all color, unable to endure the mana Lexion was emitting.
Even though she was a high-ranking Sword Expert, it was inevitable she would feel terror before the aura of a transcendent on an entirely different level.
Or perhaps the fact that she was a high-ranking expert only made the pressure hit harder.
“It’s all right. Calm down. I have a plan.”
“B-But that mana… it could swallow the entire island!”
“It’s nothing but raw power without control. Look at all the openings while he gathers that much energy toward the sky.”
Reaching transcendence did not make one an immortal.
Besides, Lexion’s ascension was unstable.
The proof was that he could only output this much power.
‘...Roughly half, maybe less, of what Roxanna released when she ascended.’
This much was entirely manageable.
I took out a black magic stone in front of the SI-07 beam cannon I had completed by modifying the SI-06.
The stone contained Elisha’s condensed mana.
In other words, it was saturated with witch mana.
Without hesitation I squeezed the stone in my hand.
-Crack.
The stone shattered, releasing the witch mana that had been sealed inside.
If an ordinary mage absorbed witch mana directly, their mana circuits would burn out, driving them mad or causing them to explode where they stood.
But I possessed a unique constitution capable of operating both circles and aura.
I could divide the burden.
The witch energy flowing from the broken stone seeped deep into my body through my breath.
-Hummm.
The instant the witch mana touched me, the aura coiled in my dantian began to writhe violently.
It was an instinctive rejection, trying to expel the foreign power.
I quickly raised my aura and guided the witch mana toward my heart as if embracing it.
The witch mana that reached my heart immediately collided with my four circles.
“Ugh…!”
“M-My lord…! That’s…”
Seria’s flustered voice reached me.
But nothing registered in my ears.
A pain like my blood vessels were about to burst slammed through my entire body.
The witch mana was forcibly widening my circles, attempting a compulsory fusion.
‘I have to accept it.’
If I hadn’t endured with aura, I would have already collapsed, vomiting blood.
-Crack.
The sound of the solid wall of my fourth circle fracturing echoed inside me.
And through that gap, a fifth circle began to take form.
‘Forced fifth circle.’
A temporary awakening using witch mana as a catalyst.
It was similar to the method Count Kaelen had used.
The portion of Asterion’s gaze directed at me increased by another twenty percent.
He must have sensed the witch mana.
But it didn’t matter.
The Great Mage Asterion had already overlooked the seed of the Great Witch once before.
He had likely judged that it would ultimately help preserve his own kingdom.
Even after reaching the fifth circle, the gap between my realm and Lexion’s was still like heaven and earth.
However, unlike the mana inside the Seed of Greed that Count Kaelen had used, witch mana did not place much importance on differences in realm.
‘During the Karvan recapture I went to great lengths to hide the witch mana.’
There was no longer any need to exert such effort.
With royal authority now firmly strengthened after the kingdom’s purge, I could simply silence or make excuses to the people.
And there would be no imperial soldiers left alive to return from this place today.
The only news to reach the empire would be word of their defeat and the fall of a new star.