Chapter 363: The Tin Knight and the Land of Emeralds (13)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 363: The Tin Knight and the Land of Emeralds (13)
Dorothea frowned at the heavy pain throbbing in her chest.
Gazing at the unique magic circle carved near her heart, she thought.
‘…I can’t use this often. No wonder she died so quickly, maintaining something like this throughout a war.’
Dorothea possessed immense mana.
Even when she had just begun learning necromancy, she already had more mana than her master, the Witch of the East. Through subsequent training and growth, her reserves had only expanded.
At present, she, a single individual, rivaled a magic tower that drew power from the ley lines. In the future, she might even surpass that. The term ‘in a class of her own’ was a perfect fit.
But to put it another way, it also meant her current limit was still only ‘about one magic tower’s worth’ of mana.
It was absurd to use a word like ‘only’ for an amount of mana a normal mage might never accumulate in a lifetime, but for Dorothea, it was a different story.
For starters, the undead dragon she currently commanded, while exceptionally powerful, had atrocious mana consumption.
The power of its breath, which could obliterate terrain and barriers alike in a single blast, was extraordinary, but she could feel her mana draining away in huge chunks with every shot.
Even without using its breath, simply maintaining and moving its colossal body consumed a vast amount of mana, and she still had to sustain her other necromantic spells and the supply to the Tin Knight.
The mana Dorothea had expended so far would have been enough to bankrupt three of the four great towers.
To solve this, Dorothea had resorted to a bit of a shortcut.
She had carved an inscription on her own body that increased her mana capacity and recovery rate.
Dorothea had once observed the Queen of Ashes through a vision shown by Opium. She knew that while the Queen’s absurd level of mana was partly innate, it was also the result of certain measures she had taken.
Anticipating the immense mana consumption in the fight against the heavens, Dorothea had carved the same inscription. Thanks to it, her mana was overflowing, but the price was clear.
A steadily intensifying pain.
An instinctual terror, as if her very life force was leaking from somewhere in her body, like water from a cracked vessel.
And even this was merely a minor price to pay, as it hadn’t been long since she’d activated the inscription.
If Dorothea’s analysis was correct, an inscription that had consumed one’s entire lifespan would ultimately burn the soul itself as fuel.
Of course, Dorothea, who had borne the inscription for less than a day, wouldn’t suffer the same side effects as the Queen, who had maintained it throughout an entire war. But on the other hand, unlike the Queen who had steadily consumed a fixed amount of mana from the rear, Dorothea herself had no idea how much mana she would expend in this battle.
Depending on how the fight unfolded, she could lose decades of her life.
Still, Dorothea did not hesitate.
It wasn’t out of any noble sentiment like protecting the world by sacrificing her body… but rather a stubborn pride, a determination to crush her enemies by any means necessary.
Besides, her master had managed to live for a thousand years by delving into necromancy; she calculated there had to be a way for her to extend her own life, too.
It wasn’t a heroic motive, but it was a reason perfectly befitting the Tin Knight’s party.
Dorothea suddenly turned her head to look back.
‘He’s quite far away, but with more mana than usual and the circuit itself enhanced, he should be able to fight for at least a few hours as if I were right beside him.’
As long as his fuel supply was steady, Dorothea had no doubt that the Tin Knight would never be defeated.
That held true even if his opponent was the previous Tin Knight.
The Tin Knight was the type of person who said what he could do, and what he couldn’t.
If he went to fight his predecessor without asking for help, it meant he was confident he could win on his own.
Deciding it was time to focus on her own task, Dorothea turned her gaze forward again.
Thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum!
Suddenly, a barrage of black magic bullets, far denser than anything before, was fired at Dorothea and the undead dragon.
Dorothea hastily maneuvered the undead dragon to evade the attack, but the storm of projectiles showed no sign of letting up.
They must be using holy power for all of that. Just how vast are their reserves? Dorothea cursed inwardly.
To escape the onslaught that was so thick it obscured the ground, Dorothea ascended higher.
-Vwooooom!
“Ugh?!”
Feeling a chilling vibration from above, she reflexively looked up.
In the next instant, a beam of light shot out from the spherical barrier itself, high above her, and pierced the undead dragon.
Pshuuuuuuk!
She had narrowly avoided a direct hit, but that was all.
The pillar of light instantly obliterated one of the undead dragon’s wings and a quarter of its body. As the dragon plummeted, bullets of holy power rained down on it from all directions.
As her vision swam chaotically, Dorothea’s mind raced.
That downward strike was a technique they had never shown before.
If they had such a weapon, they could have intercepted her party much earlier, right as they took flight.
The reason they had waited until after she had dropped off everyone else, until she was all alone, was obvious.
‘…So they think I’m an easy target?’
Grind.
Dorothea ground her teeth for a moment, then commanded the undead dragon.
“Fire!!”
A normal living creature, caught in a surprise attack and plummeting to its death, would never choose to attack when its own survival depended on righting itself immediately.
But the dragon was already dead.
Its body was moved not by a complete soul, but by a collection of residual thoughts.
It cleanly ignored the fundamental premise of self-preservation and obeyed its master’s command.
《──────!!!》
In an instant, nearly half of Dorothea’s mana drained from her body.
A massive torrent of power gathered in the mouth of the undead dragon as it fell headfirst toward the ground.
Without a hint of hesitation, the dragon fired.
A flash of light. A deafening roar. A subsequent shockwave.
The heavenly soldiers waiting to intercept the falling dragon were struck head-on by the torrent of destruction and instantly vaporized.
Dorothea gripped her staff tightly.
CRUUUUNCH!
A light of mana flowed from the staff, protecting its master from the impact of the fall.
Forcibly ignoring the dizziness that still lingered in her head, Dorothea surveyed her surroundings.
The area directly hit by the breath was now a complete ruin.
Only one thing remained intact: the emerald palace, a relay point maintaining the Kingdom of Heaven’s barrier.
Seeing the palace still standing perfectly after taking a dragon’s breath, Dorothea narrowed her eyes.
It wasn’t purely due to the building’s durability.
She could see countless vine-like tendrils covering the building’s surface, radiating holy power.
Dorothea realized that the master inside the palace had protected it.
Should I just keep firing the breath until the barrier breaks and see who wins?
Dorothea felt a momentary impulse to do just that, but she quickly shook her head.
While the inscription gave her access to more mana than ever, the heavens were also flaunting their majesty by expending an enormous amount of holy power.
Attempting a war of attrition without knowing the enemy’s true strength was foolish.
Dorothea checked the undead dragon’s condition.
Struck by the pillar of light, fallen from a great height, and then caught in its own breath attack—the undead dragon’s state could not be called good, even with the most generous of words.
Dorothea focused her mind and used a new necromantic spell.
The intact parts of the undead dragon split apart and compressed, reforming into five skeleton soldiers.
Dorothea strode through the ruins and walked into the emerald palace.
Countless soldiers were waiting inside.
They charged at Dorothea to eliminate the intruder, but the strength of the dragon-soldiers was incomparable to that of ordinary skeletons.
Even if parts of their bodies were damaged, Dorothea’s mana, pouring in from the rear, repaired the wounds completely.
But Dorothea’s face was laced with considerable dissatisfaction.
A necromancer was, by nature, a being who walked alongside death.
A key trait of a necromancer was the ability to extract new mana from the corpses and souls of their enemies, thus regaining a certain amount of mana by defeating them.
However, the emerald soldiers were made of holy power and left no proper corpses. More importantly, the nature of their souls was bizarre.
They were souls, yet not souls. And yet, they possessed the skills and memories of souls.
It was as if they were ceramic dolls, crafted by grinding souls into clay and then firing them anew.
An image surfaced in Dorothea’s mind: the sight of those who paid for their sins in the City of Scales, having parts of their bodies, or their very existence, levied from them.
The City of Scales was just one of the realms ruled by the Kingdom of Heaven; there were other territories on the continent under its direct control.
If, in such places, the Kingdom of Heaven had continued this ‘levying’ for the unfathomably long eons of its existence…
Just how many of their bodies, souls, and minds had been stockpiled?
Where did the Kingdom of Heaven’s bottomless holy power, its seemingly infinite resources, truly come from?
Was it just her imagination that this beautiful, shining emerald city somehow looked like a pile of corpses?
“…Well, that’s just fine. Birds of a feather, and all that.”
A necromancer isn’t exactly human-like either, Dorothea thought, letting out a faint, self-deprecating laugh.
Even if it wasn’t a school of magic she had chosen willingly, she had made good use of it until now. Dorothea wasn’t the type to feign innocence and pretend it never happened.
She advanced for some time, marching like a queen in her own right.
At last, Dorothea reached the deepest part of the palace, where a great throne stood.
The girl who was there met Dorothea’s gaze.