Chapter 267: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (7)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 267: The Tin Knight and The Banquet of Madness (7)
The stairs leading down to the basement were incredibly deep and long.
Even those who had been bustling about, insisting they had to hurry, and those who had grumbled, questioning if anyone truly believed the absurd tale of the Lion Duke’s resurrection, gradually fell silent.
Each member of the Council of Elders was a titan who made others tremble, a pillar of the Empire's power. Yet, the atmosphere of the basement was so solemn that even they were compelled to close their mouths.
Despite the temperature and humidity being controlled by magic, an unidentifiable chill and pressure seemed to bear down on any visitor.
It was as if the place itself was warning them not to set foot here with half-baked resolve or for trivial matters.
But the Council of Elders did not stop.
In their minds, there was no matter more urgent, no business more important than this.
When they opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, a stone chamber beyond was revealed.
The chamber was massive, yet it felt neither ornate nor grand.
It seemed to have been built to a certain size simply to secure space for a magic circle, with any other decoration deemed unnecessary.
Devoid of a single piece of gold or treasure, its purely utilitarian appearance felt almost desolate for the tomb of a hero who had supported the Empire.
While the other elders, visiting for the first time, swallowed hard amidst their confusion, bewilderment, or an unknown chill…
The head of the Council of Elders alone quietly approached the stone sarcophagus and placed his palm on a crystal orb embedded in its center.
The crystal, reacting to the blood of the family line, turned gold. The magic circle blazed to life, sucking in the mana from the surrounding ley lines.
An extraordinary amount of mana surged into the sarcophagus, and the circuits etched across its surface like blood vessels pulsed without rest.
Ruuuumble.
A sound like stone grinding against stone echoed, and the lid of the sarcophagus, moving on its own, was thrown to the floor.
And then, from within the coffin, ‘he’ rose.
“Oh, ooh…!”
“It worked, it worked! It’s done!”
“Our ancestor, our great hero!”
The elders of the Council poured out praises, their eyes filled with emotion. Some were even on the verge of tears.
The Lion Duke’s presence was that overwhelming.
Golden hair like a blazing fire.
Violet eyes that seemed to hold lightning.
His frame was enormous yet sleek, with no unnecessary bulk, and even the scars etched across his body seemed to add to his dignity.
For those who had inherited the name Lennart and lived their lives admiring the heroic tales of the Lion Duke, this meeting with their ancestor brought a sense of fulfillment that was almost religious.
The head of the Council knelt before the silent Lion Duke and spoke.
“Great Lion Duke. A crisis has befallen the Lennart family. The Imperial Family has forgotten your great deeds and betrayed us, and now they seek to destroy us. Please, save your descendants…!”
《…….》
The Lion Duke did not answer.
He paid no attention to the head of the Council at his feet or to the others, instead sharpening his senses to their utmost, as if searching for something.
His senses, having reached the realm of transcendence, did not stop at merely scanning the stone chamber but pierced through the entire surrounding area.
Searching, searching, and searching again.
Searching thoroughly so that not even the slightest mistake could be made.
And at the end of it all, the Lion Duke realized.
—That which he had been waiting for was not here.
《…Ah, ahh, AAAaaaa■■■■■!!!!!!!!!!!!!》
A cry of anguish tore from his lips.
Tears of blood streamed from his eyes, and his face, handsome enough to be called beautiful, twisted in agony.
This was not the great hero who would be remembered throughout history.
He was merely a man who had lost his final chance due to the greed and arrogance of fools.
“……”
A cold sweat ran down the head of the Council’s back.
Only then did he realize he had made a critical mistake.
“An-Ancestor, please calm yourse—Gack!”
One of the elders, slow to grasp the situation, tried to say something to the Lion Duke, but his words were cut short.
The Lion Duke’s right hand had seized his face.
Crunch, craaack.
Slowly, very slowly, the Lion Duke’s hand tightened its grip.
The old man struggled desperately to break free, but the Lion Duke’s arm didn’t even twitch.
Only after his cheekbones were crushed, both his eyeballs had burst from the pressure, and every feature that could be called a face had been reduced to a handful of remains did the Lion Duke carelessly toss the body aside.
Splat. Brains and blood soaked the ground.
The head of the Council trembled at the horrifyingly merciless act.
The Lion Duke hadn't crushed the old man's head slowly because he lacked strength.
He could have obliterated it in an instant if he’d wanted to. He had deliberately slowed the process to inflict the maximum amount of pain.
The emotion behind the act was clear.
A desperate rage and hatred that would not even permit them the mercy of a quick death.
One man prostrated himself, begging him to quell his wrath.
His waist was stomped on, separating his upper and lower body. He writhed like an insect before dying miserably.
Another screamed and tried to flee.
His two legs and two arms, everything needed for movement, were torn off like a dragonfly’s wings. He convulsed on the spot and died.
Another, his eyes wild with terror, charged in a desperate, all-or-nothing attack.
A rough hand seized his neck, and in the next moment, by some unknown artifice, his head was ripped out along with his spine, tumbling to the floor.
Apologies begging for forgiveness, pleas for salvation, condemnations filled with resentment, even simple cries to be spared—none of it worked.
The Lion Duke slaughtered them all without distinction.
There was no honor here, no dignity, and certainly no pride.
Such was the fury of one whose final lingering attachment in life, a wish he sought to fulfill even if it meant being reduced to a mere specter, had been denied.
“Ah…”
I was wrong.
With that single thought, the head of the Council, the last one alive, had his head smashed like a watermelon.
Having massacred everyone in the basement, the Lion Duke slowly began to ascend the stairs.
With each step he took, a deep darkness enveloped his body, forming new armor and a new sword.
After the Lion Duke had departed.
A black shadow rose from the basement floor.
Someone with a humanoid shape, but whose features were obscured by the thick darkness, looked at the corpses strewn across the floor and spoke.
《Foolish, so foolish. Yet, I am impressed. To plunge a soul that had not succumbed to corruption despite centuries in the underground's darkness into the abyss in a single moment. The folly of a fool is at times superior to the schemes of the wise.》
The shadow’s gaze turned upward.
Its eyes, veiled in darkness, located the knight and the witch on the surface.
An emotion leaked from the shadow’s form.
It was clear enmity, but at the same time, a kind of familiarity.
It was not the contempt reserved for the hateful and despicable heavens, but the respect for a powerful and honorable rival.
《Please, show me your skill. Prove that you have not grown rusty. It would be most unrewarding for me if the report I deliver to our great king is that our enemy has fallen into such a pathetic state.》
The shadow.
The prime minister of the underground vanished as if scattering, leaving only those words behind.
The basement, where only death remained, was left abandoned.
No one paid any more attention to the corpses that had once dreamed their own, presumably grand, dreams.
*
After a fierce battle, you had finished analyzing Werner’s super armor. You were debating whether to ‘steadily chip away at his health to finish him’ or ‘invest more mana than his natural recovery to end it in one blow,’ when you suddenly sensed something strange.
The basement.
Something terrifying was rising from beneath your feet.
You slowed your assault on Werner.
The body of the ‘Tin Knight’ was sounding an alarm, warning you that getting distracted by something else right now would be dangerous.
Werner, too, looked puzzled at first, but a moment later, he sensed the same thing you did, and his expression hardened.
It was then that screams and sounds of destruction began to echo from all over the mansion.
Realizing you had no immediate intention of attacking, Werner turned and started running toward the area he had just been protecting. You followed close behind.
And then you saw him.
A mysterious warrior, clad in jet-black armor and clutching a greatsword.
The path he walked was filled with nothing but blood and corpses. Not a single one had died cleanly; all of them had their bodies thoroughly mangled.
Only their blood-soaked golden hair and the violet eyeballs rolling around like marbles proved they were of the Lion Duke’s bloodline.
Squelch, squelch.
The warrior, walking through a river of blood, fixed his gaze on Werner, who was ahead of you.
In the next instant, the warrior’s body closed the distance to Werner’s face.
A sword strike whistled through the air.
An ordinary person—no, even a reasonably skilled knight—would have been cut down without being able to react. But Werner was no ordinary man.
His heavy club blocked the blade, and his fist slammed into his opponent’s chest with a dull thud.
But that was all.
Even after taking a blow that could shatter boulders, the warrior’s body didn’t budge an inch.
Not only that, but golden and violet mana erupted simultaneously from the warrior’s entire body.
Werner’s eyes widened.
As if seeing something unbelievable, he uttered the name.
“Lion Duke…?”
《───■■■■■!!》
The man called the Lion Duke roared.
Sensing danger, you instinctively tightened your grip on your shield.
The next moment.
The Lion Duke’s sword, imbued with terrifying mana, swung down at almost the exact same time you unleashed the power of all the gems embedded in your shield.
KABOOOOOOOM!
It was less a slash and more an explosion.
The massive chunks of the building caught in the attack either evaporated on the spot or were sent flying in all directions by the aftershock.
Your own body couldn’t withstand the shockwave and was violently pushed back.
Thud, thud. You righted yourself with a tumble and were about to charge forward again, but you saw one of the fragments launched into the air falling toward an odd spot and quickly changed direction.
CRASH!
Your shield bash struck a piece of debris ten times your size that was about to fall on Dorothea and Sophia’s heads, shattering it to pieces.
The remaining smaller fragments scattered, but they couldn’t penetrate the barrier that Dorothea’s staff had automatically deployed.
“What… what is this? What’s going on?”
As you landed beside her, Dorothea asked, her face filled with bewilderment.
You thought she had every right to be.
The ducal mansion. A building that, compared to your memories, was comparable to a large stadium, had been reduced to ruins by about half in a single instant.
The fact that it ended at ‘half’ was only because you had unleashed all the mana from the gems in your shield to forcibly alter the sword’s trajectory.
In the area where the slash had landed cleanly, nothing remained from a person’s waist-height up. Truly, every living creature inside the mansion would have been annihilated.
“Sir Knight!”
And from within the part of the building that remained, your pupil came running out to join the group.
Of course, she was far from unscathed.
Her body was covered in wounds, and the one on her left shoulder was so perilous that had it been any deeper, it would have reached her heart.
Dorothea, who had been stunned by the sudden destruction, turned serious upon seeing Adelaide’s state and took out pills and ointment, while Sophia silently poured holy power into her.
You stood guard, silently protecting the group from the battle’s aftermath until the treatment was finished.
Dorothea, her eyes still on Adelaide, opened her mouth to ask you a question.
“Situation report. Just the key points.”
[The Tin Knight reports that while he was fighting the old man, a strange being burst out from the basement!]
[The Tin Knight testifies that the old man called the strange being the ‘Lion Duke’!]
[The Tin Knight asks if necromancy includes resurrecting figures from the past!]
“It’s not entirely impossible, but that’s not what this is.”
Dorothea denied it firmly.
It was as if she could grasp the situation to some extent just by sensing the mana and the soul, even without seeing the enemy with her own eyes.
“A soul isn’t supposed to be able to linger in this world for long after death. It looks like they took some measures, but it’s still a far cry from a complete soul. It probably clung to some intense purpose as its sole anchor, shedding everything else to endure. It’s less a soul and more a lingering obsession. And it looks like it’s been coated with some strange power, too.”
“…Miss Dorothea. What happens to the soul if that ‘purpose’ becomes unattainable?” Sophia asked.
Seeing the wine-colored mana shimmering in her eyes, it seemed she had glimpsed something through the Chalice of Tuberose.
Dorothea answered.
“One of two things. It either vanishes in despair. Or—”
As she spoke, the dust cloud swirled away, revealing the figure of the Lion Duke beyond it.
Beneath the blackened armor, two eyes like violet lightning stared at Adelaide.
Golden hair and violet eyes. He recognized the proof of the Lion Duke’s bloodline.
“—it goes berserk, cursing everything it deems responsible for obstructing it.”