Chapter 45. The Expedition Nears Its End (10)
The method Auston had used to defeat Gordon in Shane’s previous life was simpler than one might expect.
If an opponent possessed a technique that was difficult to counter, then prevent them from using that technique in the first place.
The reason such an obvious solution had been so difficult to implement was that information regarding Blood Magic was extremely limited.
But with only that limited information, Auston repeatedly analyzed the battles between Gordon and the various Expeditionary Forces.
Eventually, he succeeded in practically dissecting Gordon’s Blood Magic and understanding how it worked.
Unlike the true authority of Vampires, the weakness of Blood Magic, its degraded imitation, lay in the fact that it was ultimately fake.
It could never truly make something its own.
Then all one had to do was separate the imitation from its main body.
The moment Auston reached that conclusion, he put it into practice.
Without a single failed attempt—
He succeeded in defeating Gordon.
“……!”
The space expanded under the influence of Shane’s Mana scattered throughout the surroundings.
At the same time, the expanded space became a vacuum in which nothing could exist.
Even Mana was expelled from it.
Ownerless Mana returned to nature through the Will of the World.
Then what, in this situation, qualified as ownerless Mana?
Aside from the Mana naturally contained in the air—
It referred to the Mana of people who had already died, which one particular old man had forcibly corrupted into Blood Mana and held onto in defiance of the Will of the World.
The instant the space expanded, every mask Gordon carried was thrown away from him.
Even then, Gordon immediately prepared himself for an attack from Shane.
But Shane did not attack.
For a moment, Gordon’s thoughts stalled at that unexpected action.
Then—
A light erupted behind him.
Light(Light).
A simple First-Circle spell with no physical force whatsoever.
Because of that light, Gordon’s shadow stretched long in Shane’s direction until it connected with the shadow cast across the wall.
And the person hiding within that shadow was far too skilled to miss such a brief opportunity.
By the time Gordon belatedly detected the Negative-Dimensional Mana—
A dagger had already emerged from the shadow and swept past him.
“Grrk……!”
The blade smoothly sliced across Gordon’s throat.
Blood erupted like a fountain.
It had all happened in less than a second.
That brief instant was enough to decide the battle.
“Phew…… It seems my skills haven’t rusted yet.”
James adjusted the glasses on his face as he turned around and looked at Gordon, who was clutching his half-severed neck as it dangled loosely from his shoulders.
Ever the thorough assassin, James kicked Gordon’s head once more.
The barely attached head flew through the air like a ball and smashed into the wall, where it was crushed.
Only then did James relax and turn toward Shane.
“……Shane?”
James found it difficult to believe that a mere Academy cadet had orchestrated an outcome like this.
He called Shane’s name, intending to ask what had happened.
There was no answer.
Shane lay collapsed on the ground without moving.
Just as James hurriedly tried to approach him—
“Do not touch Master, human.”
Darkness emerged from behind the fallen Shane and blocked James’s path.
“……A Dark Spirit? And you called him Master?”
James backed away in momentary confusion.
A Dark Spirit, a type of spirit widely believed to be impossible to contract with, had not only formed a contract with a human—
It was calling that human ‘Master.’
Did that not mean they had established something far beyond an ordinary contract, a true master-servant relationship?
“Krrrr…… Is it the same as back then?”
The Dark Spirit showed no interest in James’s reaction.
Instead, it looked down at the collapsed Shane and mourned someone.
By now, that person would probably find himself wishing for death instead.
Despite fundamentally lacking emotions comparable to those of a human, the Dark Spirit could not help feeling that way.
After all—
By now, its opponent was likely suffering a fate even more horrific than what the spirit itself had once endured.
It had no memories of that time.
It merely understood that such an event had occurred.
Yet the terror once felt by the Rotten Tree Spirit rather than its current self remained engraved in its instincts.
That alone was enough to make the Dark Spirit react this way.
—
“Ugh?!”
Adam redirected the charging Chimera’s attack and countered, barely swallowing a groan.
This passage beneath the trees was wider than the others, but it still felt painfully cramped beneath the sheer number of Chimeras pouring toward them.
Yet what tormented Adam and his knights even more—
Was the unbearable heat coming from behind them.
‘What in the world are you doing back there?!’
There was no need to wonder who was responsible for the heat.
It was Raviata.
The moment the tentacles emerged from the Dragon Heart, Raviata had begun producing that tremendous heat.
If Adam tried looking in her direction now, all he could see were flames blazing brightly enough to blind him.
He was worried about Delilah inside that inferno.
Contrary to his concerns, however, Delilah remained perfectly unharmed under Raviata’s protection.
She had not been burned in the slightest.
She had not even broken a sweat.
But protecting Delilah within the range of her power was already close to Raviata’s limit.
She had little room to spare.
‘Damn it. This really isn’t easy.’
Fighting an army of tens of thousands across an open plain would have been easier.
Within a confined space like this, Raviata’s Mana was simply too destructive for her to protect everyone else from its heat.
Barely controlling that power while simultaneously fighting the tentacles before her was a difficult task even for Raviata.
Especially now—
After she had deliberately touched her own ‘Reverse Scale’(逆鱗).
Controlling her Mana had become even more difficult.
The tentacles possessed the ability to seize control over another person’s Mana.
Unless one possessed exceptional Attribute Dominion, there were few effective ways to resist them.
And for certain reasons, Raviata had sent her own Attribute Dominion elsewhere.
That was why entering this rampaging state had been the only way for her to resist the tentacles.
‘Where the hell is that idiot, and what is he doing right now?!’
Raviata gritted her teeth as she thought of the member of her party to whom she had granted a portion of her Attribute Dominion immediately after entering the Mezaia Great Forest.
Then—
“Huh?”
The tentacles that had been struggling desperately to devour Raviata’s Mana began gradually losing strength.
As though responding to that unexpected change—
“AAAAAAAAARGH!!”
A scream suddenly rang out from empty space.
Everyone’s attention turned.
A tiny flame appeared in midair where nothing had existed moments earlier.
The flame rapidly expanded—
Then gradually assumed the shape of a person.
“Behold! I have arriiiiived!!”
Flames burned as though scorching through the dimension itself.
A man burst out from within them, looked toward Raviata, and grinned.
“Sorry, Commander. I’m a little late. Hahaha!”
“You rotten bastard…….”
It was a member of Raviata’s party who had entered the Mezaia Great Forest ahead of everyone else.
Ignis.
“Where the hell have you been?!”
“Heh. Things are urgent right now. I’ll explain later. Honestly, I don’t fully understand what’s happening here either.”
Ignis turned toward the weakening tentacles and ground his teeth.
“But one thing is obvious. We need to deal with those damned tentacles first.”
Ignis drew a flame from within his own chest and held it out toward Raviata.
“Take it back, Commander.”
“You damned bastard.”
The moment the flame returned to Raviata—
Ignis disappeared once again.
Ignis, the Fire Spirit.
The spirit Raviata had sent ahead to investigate the Mezaia Great Forest had finally returned.
And with him—
The Attribute Dominion Raviata had entrusted to him returned to its proper place.
Raviata felt her rampaging Mana return beneath her control.
“Phew. Good. Let’s finish off this damned thing first!”
The Mana that had previously been raging wildly began moving with perfect order.
All of its firepower concentrated upon the tentacles.
The tentacles had already begun weakening.
Unable to withstand Raviata’s renewed assault, they finally began disappearing.
At the same time, good news reached Delilah, who had been deep in concentration.
“Huh? They suddenly became docile!”
“That so……?! Knights over there! Everyone get down!”
“……!”
At Raviata’s warning, Adam and his knights immediately threw themselves aside.
Raviata redirected the Mana she had been concentrating upon the Dragon Heart and unleashed it toward the approaching Chimera army.
An overwhelming torrent of fire swept over Adam and his knights’ heads and swallowed every Chimera inside the passage.
Astonishingly—
Adam and his knights, who had previously suffered inadvertently from Raviata’s heat, realized that the flames were now protecting them instead.
More than that—
The warmth gently wrapping around their bodies seemed to breathe vitality back into their exhausted limbs.
“Let’s finish this already, you exhausting bastards!”
Several Chimeras had managed to survive the inferno by using their companions as shields.
They charged again without fear of the flames.
But their momentum had fallen drastically compared with before.
At long last—
The expedition through the Great Forest was beginning to reach its end.
—
Gordon was startled and angered by what had happened because of a single moment of carelessness.
Even so, he calmly assessed the situation.
‘For now, I have no choice but to retreat like this. Tsk. What a shame.’
Originally, Gordon could have requested far more extensive assistance from Nameless.
He had chosen not to.
Part of the problem was that he had underestimated the expedition because they were ultimately only humans.
But another reason was his confidence that his masterpiece, the Dark Elves, was nearly complete.
Yet the Dark Elves had vanished without explanation.
The expedition had somehow reached the Dragon Heart he had hidden so thoroughly.
And Gordon himself had now suffered defeat at the hands of that young brat.
‘It was a mistake, but this is not a complete defeat.’
The amount of data he had obtained from this incident was hardly insignificant.
The only truly regrettable part was that he had failed to completely secure the Dragon Heart.
But he could simply try again later.
His current body might have died—
But Gordon was originally a Black Mage and Blood Mage exceptionally skilled at manipulating souls.
He could simply discard this dead shell.
His soul would return to his original body on its own.
‘Just how much knowledge does that brat possess?’
The one thing Gordon could not dismiss was Shane.
Ever since Shane arrived here, every measure Gordon had prepared began falling apart under his direction.
The existence of the Dragon Heart, which Nameless had hidden so thoroughly, had become known to outsiders.
The weather phenomena of the Mezaia Great Forest, which had functioned as a natural fortress, had been deciphered.
The existence of the underground tunnels, something no one other than Elves should have known about, had been discovered.
Even the Teleportation method usable only by Elves had been exploited.
Everything.
Every single one of those events—
Had begun with that brat’s ideas.
At this point, Gordon even suspected that Shane might have been responsible for the disappearance of the Dark Elves.
‘Whatever the truth is, I can have them investigate him later.’
For now, returning to his original body and organizing the data he had gathered took priority.
But……
Something was wrong.
Ever since the body he had been using died, nothing had changed.
His vision remained completely dark.
This was one of Gordon’s secret techniques.
It had allowed him to survive even during his past battle against the allied forces.
By now, more than enough time should have passed for his soul to cross through space and return to his original body.
Yet everything remained dark.
‘What is happening?’
Something was wrong.
The moment Gordon sensed that discrepancy—
His vision brightened.
Above him stretched a sky stained an ominous blood-red.
And beneath it—
Corpses covered the land all the way beyond the horizon.
At the center of that world—
A man sat upon a throne.
A Holy Sword was driven through his body.
