Chapter 236: The Tin Knight and the Witch of Heaven's Change (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 236: The Tin Knight and the Witch of Heaven's Change (6)
“You killed Jeras and his men, threw the country into chaos with those bone flutes, saw through Mombi's disguise, destroyed our old capital, and now you've even conquered the magic tower to stand before my very eyes.”
Lotbart Rognir continued to speak in an exceedingly calm manner.
“Truly magnificent achievements. A display of unparalleled might. To think you've come this far with just a handful of people. Regardless of my personal feelings, I must acknowledge that much.”
No trace of anxiety could be felt from him.
Despite everything he had built crumbling around him, he remained rational, even before Adelaide, the very cause of it all.
As if to say that this, perhaps, was the true qualification of a king.
“Adelaide von Lennart. I know of you. I had you investigated. A girl who lost her family and fell from grace due to the plan we orchestrated. Your rage toward me is, I suppose, quite justified.”
Like a wise and benevolent king, he affirmed Adelaide's actions.
He judged her thirst for revenge to be just.
“However… just because your path is righteous does not mean the blood spilled along the way can be affirmed. Countless lives have ended because of what you have done. Among them were many who had no connection to your father's death, who were simply living as members of the magic tower. And was that all? You destroyed a city, killing the innocent residents who lived there, and your actions started a war, causing tremendous damage.”
But this was cunning deception.
It was a rhetorical trick to condemn her sins and pick at them without denying her goal itself.
“How far do you intend to go? How much further will you press on? Your father and the soldiers of your domain were annihilated, so will you, in turn, annihilate my bloodline? Will you slaughter even the innocent children, like my granddaughter whom you just passed by?”
Lotbart’s words went unanswered.
Adelaide merely listened to him in silence.
She neither erupted in anger, telling him to stop spouting nonsense, nor did she crumble with guilt upon facing a truth she had been avoiding.
On the contrary, it was for this very reason that Lotbart raised his guard.
And then, Adelaide finally opened her mouth.
“If it were the Knight, he probably would have started fighting immediately without listening to a word you said.”
A sudden remark, difficult to place in context.
“But I didn't want to do that. I felt I wouldn't be able to accept it that way. So, I will now explain what will happen when you fall to me.”
Though formally addressed to Lotbart, the content was closer to a monologue.
“I have no intention of annihilating your entire bloodline. I will accept anyone who surrenders. They will be tasked with publicly announcing the truth of Friedel’s tragedy and atoning for that sin.”
Her hand holding the sword hung limply, and her body showed no signs of tension.
“Your name will be passed down for generations as the root cause of it all—the one who, with shortsighted greed, coveted a throne only to lose the wealth and glory already in his grasp, robbing his descendants of any chance at glory they might have had. Even if your descendants were to rise again one day, they would never praise you. If anything, they would spit on your name as the one who caused the downfall of their once-great family.”
With a lightness as if she were making small talk on a morning stroll, she decreed Lotbart's future.
“‘If only that old fool hadn't done something so useless.’ ‘If he had just stayed put, we could have lived in luxury as the heads of the magic tower.’ ‘Why do we have to suffer like this because of that bastard?’ ‘Everyone despises us; is there any point in telling people we're his descendants? How about we just change our family name?’”
Her violet eyes, tinged with a languid light, stared at Lotbart.
“You will be remembered in history not as a king, but as a traitor. The name Rognir will be remembered not as a symbol of glory, but of shame. Your descendants will not acknowledge your achievements or your efforts; they will simply use you as a scapegoat, calling you an incompetent, pathetic, and vile old man. Do you think my words lack realism?”
Lotbart did not reply.
But his eyes sank, growing somber.
The rational old man, precisely because he was rational, acknowledged that the girl's words were not mere bluffs, but a reality that could very well come to pass.
And also, the fact that he could never accept such a future.
“It seems you now understand this is no time to be worrying about others.”
As if she had gleaned the answer from his silence, Adelaide smiled.
It was a smile tinged with a strange, poignant sorrow.
“Now that you know your place, try and struggle. —Because I came here to shatter that struggle head-on.”
And in an instant, that sorrowful air transformed into the ferocity of a wild beast.
“…Have I awakened a sleeping lion?”
Lotbart lamented as such, then raised his right hand and plunged it into his own left breast.
With a wet squelch, fresh blood gushed out.
Not a single drop of the blood that flowed onto the throne fell to the floor; it was all absorbed by the crystal pillar behind him.
The crimson-stained crystal pillar seemed to melt fluidly for a moment, then, as if alive, it devoured Lotbart's body.
Crystal melted into his now-empty heart, and soon, his very flesh merged with the pillar as if they were being mixed together.
Lotbart casually tossed the red piece of flesh that was once his heart onto the floor.
《Fine. I admit my miscalculation. But that is all. You may bring about my death, but you will not leave a single scratch on the glory of Rognir—!!》
Lotbart's voice boomed, filling the entire floor.
Now one with the crystal pillar—the core of the magic tower and a nexus of the ley lines—Lotbart's mana had swelled by more than a hundredfold.
With his every step, his every gesture, a chilling crimson cold swirled ominously.
Facing him, Adelaide had already raised her mana.
Golden flames and violet lightning intertwined, imbuing her small frame with an unimaginable, colossal strength.
The old king of the tower and the young lion clashed, and a tremendous shockwave reverberated through the tower.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
*
The magic towers’ monopoly on mages was severe.
A 2nd rank mage could expect to be treated like a knight in other domains, and a 3rd rank mage was a rare sight even in a Count's family.
But in the magic towers, 2nd rank mages were a dime a dozen, 3rd rank mages were considered merely skilled professors, and even 4th rank mages numbered in the dozens at each tower. It was enough to spawn rumors that 99 percent of the continent's skilled mages were concentrated in the magic towers.
No, to be honest, based on the time before the Witch of the South began mass-producing Wizards in the Empire, it wasn't a rumor but a simple fact.
With these two treasure troves of talent clashing head-on, high-level magic that ordinary people would never see in their lifetime flew in every direction.
Massive fireballs and ice storms were considered mundane. Magic swords thrown carelessly flew through the sky on their own to pierce the enemy; a mage removed their eyepatch and glared, petrifying foes en masse; enemies bewitched by hallucinations and illusions stabbed their own throats in a state of confusion. All sorts of phenomena were occurring.
One of the characteristics of mages—their outstanding killing power but relatively weak defense—also contributed to maximizing the damage on both sides.
High-level magic that could spell certain death even for knights skilled in reinforcing and protecting their bodies rained down like stray arrows, and the battle lines on both sides melted away at a terrifying speed.
Regular soldiers were nothing more than meat shields. The soldiers of the Tower of Protection, armed with all sorts of magic tools, held out a little longer, but the Tower of Control’s firepower was correspondingly higher, so the overall casualties were similar.
Inevitably, expensive Golems, magic dolls, homunculi, and spirits had to serve as tanks, but in the eyes of the mages, this was an act akin to using banknotes instead of newspaper to plug a drafty hole in the wall.
“What are you all doing?! Hurry up and raise the undead! There are corpses lying all over the place!!”
“Why do you think we even accepted you Necromancers?! If you're not useful at a time like this, when are you ever going to be?!”
Thus, the mages of Control relentlessly hounded their Necromancers.
Unlike the Tower of Protection, whose members were almost all Enchanters and Enchantresses, the Tower of Control was a hodgepodge of all sorts of schools.
Among them was a small number of Necromancers, who could only grimace at the rebukes of their colleagues and superiors.
‘Ah, for fuck's sake, I just resurrected ten of them! Can't you see they were incinerated the moment I sent them out?!’
‘You think it's easy to cast spells just because there are corpses everywhere? You crazy bastards. By that logic, why can't you burn all the enemies when there are so many of them right here? Do you think magic just happens and undead just pop into existence with a snap of your fingers?’
It was undeniable that a battlefield teeming with corpses and the energy of death was the ultimate environment for a Necromancer.
There was no need to procure materials from elsewhere, the mana emitted by the vengeful spirits greatly reduced the Necromancer's mana consumption, and it even had the effect of strengthening the undead.
But there was a limit to everything.
In a situation crawling with area-of-effect dealers who could wipe out dozens of soldiers with a single spell, the undead served as little more than moving kindling. What could they do when they melted away before they could even get close enough to swing a sword?
No matter how good a Necromancer's mana efficiency was with corpses aplenty, in a situation like this, it was no better than pouring water into a bottomless pit.
And if they tried to fight with methods other than summoning undead, like curses or poison, the problem was that all their enemies were mages.
Unlike ordinary people, they had a large amount of mana in their bodies and could easily shrug off minor curses. As for high-level curses that would work on them, those required a proper altar and a ritual that took days to perform, making them impractical for use in the heat of battle.
As they were chewing over the sorrows of being the weakest school of magic…
[The 'Tin Knight' advises that a chaotic battlefield is the perfect stage for the transformation witch to run wild, and recommends tidying up a bit!]
“Got it. I just need to clear the area, right?”
A wave of black mana washed over the battlefield.
“Gasp!”
“Th-This is…!”
The first to realize its nature were their fellow practitioners, the Necromancers.
As they reacted as if they had seen something unbelievable, the other mages were about to ask what was going on, but it was unnecessary.
Not even a few seconds after the mana spread, the corpses lying underfoot began to rise up as one.
All across the entire battlefield, tens of thousands of corpses rose in unison.
A wave of astonishment erupted from both the Control and Protection formations simultaneously.
“Ah, I misjudged my strength. The range was a bit too wide.”
When the black-haired witch gave a casual wave of her hand, the corpses on the Protection side all dashed across the ground, moved smoothly to the side of the battlefield, and neatly laid themselves down where they wouldn't be in the way.
In contrast, the corpses on the Control side rolled their eyes back and began to mercilessly claw and bite at those who were once their comrades.
The mages of Control, flustered, tried to wipe out the undead with magic, but the creatures didn't stop moving even when only their limbs remained.
With the firepower of both sides being roughly equal, one side's tanks began to be reinforced unilaterally, and the tense front line suddenly began to be pushed back heavily to one side.
Dorothea used the surplus undead to guide the overall flow of the troops where she wanted.
As she did, a large empty space formed between Mombi and the White Knight, who had been rampaging in the center of the battlefield.
Mombi, seeming to grasp the situation, tried to break through the center of the Protection formation, but the Tin Knight appeared and blocked her path.
Mombi's blade-like fingernails clashed with the Tin Knight's sword.