Chapter 215
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 215
Chapter Title: Barrier of Blue Flames
A premonition naturally followed the moment he witnessed the ominous sight.
‘It’s going to explode.’
Loan opened his synesthesia and read the direction of the mana about to run rampant in the floating soldier's body.
Perhaps due to the large amount of airflow injected, the internal pressure was immense.
If it exploded, there was no telling how far the flesh and blood would splatter. It could even reach the Union barracks far in the distance.
[Sphere of the Void] couldn't cover all the damage.
Reaching this conclusion, Loan squeezed out every bit of magical power he could wield—
Vwoooom?
He recalled the most powerful and largest barrier left in his memory.
‘Headmaster Arthur….’
As Loan delved into the memories of his younger days, his eyes glowed with a brilliant blue light.
The whirring of his Circles rang in his ears like tinnitus.
Loan reverse-engineered and reconstructed the form of Headmaster Arthur's unique magic, the process of its creation, and the incantation the headmaster had chanted, until finally.
KRA-BOOM?
The moment the soldier's body completely exploded, its remains bursting in all directions.
Fwoooosh?
Causing the green slime, the chunks of flesh, and the ominous blood to all vanish in mid-air.
He cast [Barrier of Blue Flames] across the entire square.
The whole world was dyed blue. It was a truly magnificent sight.
All the living stared at the sky, mesmerized by the 5th-Circle magic that had unfolded in an instant.
Marbas, his trump card nullified, immediately turned and fled the square at full speed.
But Loan couldn't chase him.
He had reached a state of exhaustion after using up most of his magical power at once.
However, thinking he couldn't just let the man get away.
Whoosh—
He threw a sheville with all his might, succeeding in slashing the man's side.
“Kuaargh!”
Twisting his waist in pain, Marbas glared back once before leaping onto a three-story building in a single bound and disappearing from sight.
Just as the blue flames billowing in the sky completely vanished, making the setting sun feel even redder.
“Loan, are you all right?”
Sienna, who had quelled the storm on her own, supported Loan as he started to collapse backward.
For a moment, he felt a sense of warmth.
Loan struggled to stay conscious.
“Yes, Senior….”
Not wanting to show weakness, Loan immediately straightened up and quickly assessed Sienna's condition and the surrounding situation.
A scene that could only be called a massacre lay before them.
Sienna was sturdy, with only minor scratches, and the area around the Union barracks seemed to have stabilized some time ago.
“Ah, be careful with that!”
Loan waved his hand toward Berthelot in the distance, as if to stop him.
A naturally flowing Convection gently pushed Berthelot's body back.
It was just as Berthelot was about to examine a corpse emitting green smoke.
Berthelot asked.
“Why... did this happen?”
From his expression, it seemed to be the corpse of someone he knew.
Despite being quite injured himself, he was more concerned about what had happened to his acquaintances than his own pain.
“It's the work of a demon's trickery. We'll have to investigate further to find the exact cause.”
Loan, regretting his failure to capture or eliminate Marbas, glanced once more in the direction the man had disappeared.
Sienna, who had watched the entire process, gently patted Loan's shoulder.
“You've done more than enough. Don't worry about it. Let's clean up.”
Sienna was right.
The enemy numbered 200.
In contrast, there were only seven combat-capable individuals on their side who could be considered actual fighting power.
Yet they had annihilated the enemy without a single death.
Moreover, Sienna, though she had borrowed the power of the storm, had even defeated a mercenary from Le Dong who was on par with a Seeker.
Thanks to the great effect on her mana management, her aura had materialized into a slightly more distinct haze; in many ways, it was a significant achievement.
“You were amazing too, Senior. I didn't know you were this overwhelming.”
Sienna's face flushed red.
It was hard to tell if it was because of Loan's compliment or the glow of the setting sun.
After clearing her throat unnecessarily a few times.
Sienna said.
“I'll go report via carrier pigeon...”
While Sienna was gone for a moment, Loan, who had quickly recovered his magical power, used Convection to sweep the corpses into one place.
He separated the bodies covered in green slime.
On the corpse in the worst condition—meaning, the one where Marbas's spell was best preserved—he placed a membrane of Convection.
‘I need to examine this properly.’
After making the specimen he would carefully examine float and follow him, Loan headed for the Union barracks.
Melvil and his two escorts had no major injuries, but they were completely exhausted.
Having fought to protect the Union barracks, their fatigue must have been doubled.
Loan was genuinely grateful to Melvil.
“Melvil, you've really been through a lot. Thank you.”
“No, Master, don't say that. It's you who suffered because of my family's problem....”
“You just did what a member of the Union should do. In any case, I'm proud of you. Your skills are more than worthy of a lord of the Pobel region.”
It was a rather presumptuous assessment to give to a regional lord, but Melvil took his master's sincere words as a compliment.
“Ah, well, I, when I faced the scale of the enemy, I almost tensed up, I mean, there were more of them popping out from all sides than I expected…. But then I suddenly remembered what you told me, Master, that the true meaning of the Albre swordsmanship lies in the connection of power, so I naturally kept the flow of my power from breaking within the enemy's formation, and of course, my escorts here, Lyca and Charles, have also learned the Albre swordsmanship, so we had good chemistry, and with the image of our sword strikes endlessly circulating and amplifying, we unfolded our vision....”
After listening for a while to Melvil's flustered rambling, Loan freed himself and approached Gradin.
Gradin suddenly extended his hand.
They shook hands, Loan gripping the dwarf's thick hand.
His expression was remarkably bright.
Unlike when he was first seen in the hills, his face looked quite refreshed.
“I ended up here by chance, but using my body has cleared things up a bit.”
He could now open his mouth and speak.
His voice was quite deep and resonant.
“My memory is largely fragmented, but if I piece things together with my comrades, we should be able to figure out why we were gathered there. And what the ones who did this to us want. The problem is....”
Gradin trailed off and turned around.
Loan's gaze naturally turned to the dwarves clustered together.
He hadn't noticed from a distance, but a rather strange scene was unfolding.
Loan tilted his head and asked.
“Uh, why are they all like that?”
“Well, I'm not sure myself. After that young lady went in among my comrades, I couldn't pay attention. I just fought frantically with them at my back. I'm actually more skilled with a warhammer than a pickaxe, though of course, their shapes aren't that different....”
“Yes. I'll hear that story a little later. Just a moment.”
Loan asked Gradin to excuse him, glanced at the dark priest still floating in the air, and then approached the dwarves and Bella, who was among them.
They all had their eyes closed.
As if connected by an invisible thread, she and the dwarves were moving as a single cluster.
With their feet fixed to the ground, they swayed very slowly back and forth in the same direction, looking like waterweeds surrendering to the current.
None of them were frowning or expressionless; they all wore faint smiles, making the overall atmosphere feel quite comfortable and peaceful.
Loan called out to Bella, who was standing just beyond the perimeter of the dwarves.
“Miss Bella?”
There was no response.
Rather than something being wrong, he got the impression that she was extremely focused on something.
Loan recalled the method he had used to wake Gradin.
*-Miss Bella. Can you hear my voice? Where are you right now?*
Ordinary words like "Are you okay?" or "Snap out of it" or "Wake up" might have come out, but for some reason, Loan asked 'where' she was.
It was a feeling he had.
That Bella's body was here, but her mind might be somewhere else.
Loan repeated the same words, sending another mental message telling her to come back now.
After a few more times.
Finally, a change appeared on Bella's face.
It wasn't limited to just Bella. The dwarves swaying side to side also slightly parted their lips, all making a similar expression to Bella.
As if they had remembered something they had forgotten.
Then Bella slowly opened her eyes, and the 80 dwarves opened their eyes together.
Their reactions afterward were also identical.
They looked around, distinguishing between the place their minds had been and the real world they now saw with open eyes, and began to recognize their situation.
Then Bella met Loan's gaze.
With a slightly bewildered expression, she walked through the dwarves and approached Loan.
“Miss Bella, are you okay?”
“Ah… yes, I think so.”
Bella seemed surprised by her own voice, briefly touching her throat with her hand and tilting her head.
Loan studied her complexion and asked again.
“What happened just now?”
“A dream… no, I think it was a memory. Inside the memories of many people, all together….”
Bella trailed off and looked behind her.
The dwarves were sharing sighs, shedding tears, and sharing joy with their comrades.
She continued.
“I don't know why. At some point, I started to see their world. A world where they were awake but not awake, similar to what I experienced. There were many sad and scary things in there. So I tried hard to recall only the good memories. The memories I recalled were their memories….”
She had shared and empathized with the memories of the 80 dwarves.
She said she had held each one's hand and walked through another's ‘beautiful’ memories.
Then she heard Loan's voice and came out together with them.
How was such a thing possible?
Bella seemed curious about the reason as well.
She brought up the name Loan had been expecting.
“Amy. Is it because I have the puppeteer's memories? Or because I once possessed a demon's power? To speak into another's mind, touch the most vulnerable part of their memory, and control the mind stolen that way. Ah, then does that mean the demon's power is still inside me....”
Bella stopped talking and shook her head lightly, as if to deny the suspicion she had just raised.
Of course, it could be true, or it could not.
What Bella had just done was closer to waking those who were brainwashed or hypnotized rather than controlling others, but if that was possible, the opposite might be possible too.
There was plenty of room for doubt.
However, her mana itself was very pure, and her magical power was as insignificant as an ordinary person's, so he judged it wasn't something to worry about or confirm right away.
Loan said.
“Let's find out slowly. For now, cleaning up this place is the priority. And we also need to hear the dwarves' stories.”
There was a mountain of things to do.
Loan's gaze moved to the dwarves, to Melvil, to the dark priest floating in the air and the green corpse tightly bound by Convection.
Then it moved to the townspeople who tried to approach the now-quiet square only to shrink back in horror, to the countless corpses Berthelot was handling, and finally to Sienna, standing some distance away.
Their eyes met.
“....”
Her lips parted slightly. It looked like she was about to say something.
Loan unconsciously brought a hand to his chest.
Just then, the carrier pigeon began to vibrate fiercely.