Chapter 239: The Tin Knight and the Witch of Heaven's Change (9)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 239: The Tin Knight and the Witch of Heaven's Change (9)
“How in the world did things come to this?”
A deep sigh escaped Teur Rognir’s lips.
The man serving as the de facto supreme commander for the Tower of Control was competent in many fields.
Not just in magic or politics, but in military command as well.
The Tower of Control had long trained its mages and soldiers for large-scale military operations, and this was their home ground.
Even if the mages of the Protection side were their equals in individual skill, they had never trained for a large-scale battle and were now forced to fight on enemy turf.
Considering their tactical movements and the defender’s advantage, victory should have been all but guaranteed, even if they sustained some losses.
That was why he couldn't help but lament the current situation.
“If only they hadn’t acted on their own and had followed my orders…!”
At a glance, it sounded as if he were blaming Valdeus for his reckless behavior, but his words were actually aimed at the witch Mombi.
His original plan had not been to put Mombi on the front lines, but to hide her within his army’s ranks, to be used like a blade in the shadows.
The chaos of a melee was the most suitable environment for Mombi to make full use of her magic.
A witch who could change her appearance at will and kill with a simple touch—how many people could fight calmly with such a being in their midst?
In Teur’s eyes, Mombi was a being who could lead the enemy lines into chaos and self-destruction simply by revealing her presence fleetingly while remaining hidden.
If only she weren’t fighting now with her position so clearly exposed on the outskirts of the battlefield!
“Fighting like that is the same as fighting with more than half of her strengths tied behind her back!”
Mombi’s gamble to infiltrate the enemy ranks and swiftly take them down was now yielding the worst possible outcome.
She had likely done it thinking she could pull back whenever she wanted, but her opponents had two magic dolls who were not only strong enough to forcibly hold her in place, but were also immune to her instant-death attacks.
Teur had no choice but to exclude Mombi from his calculations and try to seize victory on his own, but even that was not going as planned.
Groooan…
Guaaaargh…
Corpses were walking the battlefield.
The Tower of Control could turn dozens, even hundreds, of undead into a handful of ash, but it was a different story when their numbers surpassed the tens of thousands—and grew as the war intensified.
Precious firepower that should have been poured onto the enemy mages was being wasted on worthless corpses. In contrast, the enemy used the undead as shields, freely unleashing their own firepower or even casting support magic on the undead.
If it had just been the undead army, no matter how numerous, they would have been nothing more than kindling.
Conversely, if it had just been the Protection forces, the Tower of Control could have defeated them on their own.
But when the two combined, the tide of battle was shifting so heavily to one side that even Teur, with all his efforts, could not turn it back.
Teur was suddenly reminded of something his father had once said.
“The Queen of the Dead can raise an army of a nation by herself.”
“If it were her, she wouldn’t have bothered with such petty tricks and would have just invaded the tower head-on.”
Though he had understood it with his head, he had never been able to accept it with his heart. Now, for the first time, Teur felt those words to his very bones.
A necromancer who surpassed a certain level was, in and of themselves, an absurdity on the battlefield.
Teur gritted his teeth and shouted to his subordinates.
“Is the Magic Cannon not recharged yet!?”
“It’s about ninety percent complete, sir!”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect! Prepare to fire, now!”
The Magic Cannon. A large-scale attack spell that used the ley lines for fuel and the tower itself as the barrel.
The first shot had been used to shoot down the giant undead that had flown in from the sky, but its primary purpose was to repel enemies on the ground.
“B-But there are intruders inside the tower! If their rampage causes the spell to go haywire—”
“It’s just as dangerous if our forces continue to be whittled down like this! Hurry!”
At Teur’s resolute command, his subordinates quickly shouted something into their crystal orbs.
A moment later, a great surge of mana began to well up near the tower’s peak.
The Protection forces seemed to notice and tried to respond, but a perfect evasion or defense was utterly impossible.
“Fire!!”
The gathered mana reached its peak, and just as it was about to be unleashed as a beam of light…
Fizzle.
As if a light bulb had suddenly burned out, the gathered mana dissipated into nothing.
“What…?”
Teur’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief.
He did not know.
He did not know that just moments before, Tower Head Lotbart had been subjugated by Adelaide.
He did not know that with the death of the man who had become one with the crystal pillar at the tower’s core, the ley line mana they had been using at will had lost its control and scattered.
And the loss of the tower’s power brought an immediate change to another battlefield as well.
Claaaaang!
[The ‘Tin Knight’ protests, asking what kind of boss runs away the second their invincibility wears off!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ declares that you will never escape this place!]
“Tch, you damned doll! Enough already, get off me!”
The Tin Knight’s combat stance changed in an instant.
Until now, he had minimized his mana consumption to avoid leaving an opening during a switch, since he couldn’t inflict damage anyway. Now, he began to focus on offense, even if it meant pouring out more mana.
One might think that a supporter-tank switching to a DPS role would weaken his ability to suppress the enemy, but that was not the case.
Swish-swish-swish-swish!
“Kuh!”
With a flurry of fierce strikes from the White Knight, Mombi’s tentacles, which had been aiming for the Tin Knight’s back, were intercepted one by one.
Though he lacked the Tin Knight’s transcendent skill, the White Knight was also a state-of-the-art magic doll.
His artificial brain was exceptionally brilliant, and its superior processing power had long since completed its analysis of Mombi’s movements.
With every flash of sword and spear, the magic characters protecting Mombi’s body were rapidly chipped away.
The Tin Knight and the White Knight had also taken their share of damage while trying to stop Mombi, but their movements, far from slowing, grew ever sharper.
It was a strength possessed only by warriors of steel, not of flesh and blood.
Watching the cornered Mombi, Dorothea scoffed from the rear.
“Even a Great Witch ends up in this sorry state when she’s using someone else’s workshop on a temporary basis instead of her own.”
If this had been a workshop Mombi had built with her own hands from the start, it would have been impossible to sever the connection between it and her so easily.
No, even if they had managed to sever it temporarily, Mombi would have immediately reclaimed her domain.
In fact, when Dorothea’s party had subjugated the Witch of the West, they hadn’t used a tactic that targeted the workshop itself. No, they couldn’t use it.
That was why the Witch of the West, Elphaba, had been able to fire off a barrage of grand magic that had terrified even Dorothea.
But Mombi was different.
She had been sealed for a long time and had only just set foot in the world again a short while ago. As such, she hadn’t had the leisure to create a proper workshop.
She must have thought her hastily made workshop would be enough to defeat Dorothea’s party, but that was a grave miscalculation.
Gale added her own cold remark.
“…Just because you clumsily obtained our teacher’s power, you relied on it too much. That is the cause of your defeat, Mombi. The Mombi you once were would never have taken hostages to call us out for a direct confrontation. You would have thoroughly hidden your form and identity, wearing us down with ambushes and deception. You didn’t become as strong as our teacher; you just became a muddled version of yourself.”
Mombi’s tactic was that of an assassin, deceiving the enemy and striking at their weaknesses.
Orin’s tactic was that of a rear-guard tank, protecting herself and her allies with thorough defense.
For an assassin to gain an invincible defense and then reveal herself under the sun—that was the height of arrogance, she pointedly remarked.
Mombi seethed at the two girls chattering as if the battle were already won, but she didn't even have the leeway to express her anger.
Her character barrier had been completely stripped away, and the damage that had been absorbed by her shield was now striking her health directly in real-time.
With every clash against the two knights, her flesh was torn, blood flowed, and bones broke.
Mombi was actually quite skilled at healing injuries.
All she had to do was ‘transform’ back into her uninjured body.
But that, too, was an action that consumed mana.
When she had an external battery like the ley lines attached, she could use mana freely without any issue, but now that the external supply was cut, she had to bear all mana consumption on her own.
The body of Orin that Mombi had stolen held an amount of mana that, befitting a Great Witch, was incomparable to that of any ordinary mage, but it was still no match for the ley lines.
As the battle continued, her mana drained away rapidly, and Mombi felt a sense of absurdity.
No, it was one thing for her, who had been using someone else’s mana until now, to finally be using her own. But the ones before her had been fighting with their own mana from start to finish. Why did they still have so much to spare?
‘This isn’t going to work.’
At this point, Mombi admitted that she no longer had any chance of winning.
And that she had no choice but to use the trump card she had desperately wanted to avoid.
Mombi unleashed a large, reckless attack, forcibly pushing the two knights away.
The moment the two knights tried to close the distance again, her body swelled up like a grotesque balloon.
BOOOOOOM!
And then, it exploded.
The countless pieces of her flesh scattered in all directions like a swarm of mice, beginning their escape.
The Tin Knight and the White Knight quickly swept away the fragments, but the number of escaping fragments was greater than those being destroyed.
As she fled in such an undignified manner, Mombi’s vengeful spirit burned.
She had been defeated this time, but the next would be different.
‘I’ll kill you all slowly, surely, bleeding you dry.’
Under the extreme stress of being unable to trust anyone they met, where allowing a single physical touch meant instant death, how long could they possibly last?
Once she killed the witches, finishing off the knights, who would be out of mana and unable to move, would be a simple matter.
And so, she looked for her next opportunity.
“Your willingness to use endlessly petty and cowardly methods despite your great power is one of your strengths, I’ll give you that. But… did you really think I’d let you get away?”
Dorothea’s cold words pronounced her end.
Crack. Dorothea’s staff slammed down on something.
It was a piece of Mombi’s flesh, gathered by the Tin Knight and White Knight who had been blocking her escape.
The Black Witch’s lips wove a curse.
『I offer this one’s warm blood. You who harbor rage, come here and drink.』
『I offer this one’s tempting flesh. You who have lingering desires, come here and eat.』
『I offer this one’s bloated soul. You who scream in sorrow, come here and take your revenge.』
『The name of the offering is the witch Mombi. The evil witch who ended your lives.』
For a moment, the world blurred.
The spirit who had screamed, clutching its own dead body; the spirit who had repeated a meaningless battle, not even knowing it was dead; the spirit who had collapsed to the ground, weeping uncontrollably—all at once, they received Dorothea’s mana and revealed their faint, whitish forms.
Some of the spirits, despite Dorothea’s invitation, shook their heads and quietly disappeared.
However, more than seventy percent of the spirits, revealing emotions of anger, grief, and despair, rushed toward the piece of flesh Dorothea had struck—and toward the other fleeing fragments.
The blood that touched the spirits turned black. The flesh that touched the spirits rotted away. The soul that touched the spirits let out a scream.
If Mombi had been in her original state, she could have repelled such a curse, but having split herself into countless pieces, the witch had no power to resist it.
The time for feasting and revenge was as brief as a fleeting moment.
All the flesh fragments crumbled like sand, and the spirits, having witnessed this, departed from the mortal plane one by one.
For a witch who had once spread infamy throughout the world, it was a rather shabby death.