ryethenovel Chapter 181 : Chapter 181
Chapter 181 : Chapter 181
181
There is a term called a "bird's-eye view".
It means a picture drawn from the perspective of a bird.
But in painting, bird's-eye views were often drawn not from a bird's perspective but from the perspective of more absolute beings.
For instance, monsters with immense power like Wyverns, Dragons, Phoenixes, and Griffons.
Or mythological beings like demons and angels.
Or even beings beyond that.
Gods.
'It really is like this.'
Standing at a bird's height, I understood.
It really did feel as though I had become a god.
Down on the ground, mages and Holy Knights were locked in a bloody battle.
Each time the Imperial mages swung their staves, the mana in the area trembled and produced a massive miracle.
A single short incantation made a low hill rise up out of nowhere, while another made the ground cave in and the magma of the depths surge upward.
Ice rain poured down from the sky, and blazing flames rose like wildfire to sweep the ground bare.
"O God!"
"Give us the strength to stand against them!"
"The courage not to despair!"
"Charge——!"
The Holy Knights standing before them were like immortals untouched by any magic.
Even fragments of shattered flesh were gathered back and regenerated.
Unless their heads were completely oxidized and burned away, they would keep charging fiercely, swinging their weapons.
And there was one who led their resurrections.
"I am the daughter of God, and by me the voice of God manifests in the world! Hear me, wicked things! To shelter evil is no different from following it! I shall sweep away the future in which evil comes, and restore the radiant light!"
It was Saintess Ganemia.
The Holy Power she emitted choked and blocked the magic of hundreds of the Empire's mages.
It was a miracle of unreasonable magnitude.
"Insane."
Sihan let out a bewildered chuckle.
"Is Holy Power — or the Saintess — really such a powerful thing?"
"That is a kind of Geis. She has set the condition that her Holy Power will block 'only magic.' So those mages can swing their staves trying to use physical magic, but that only makes them prey for the Holy Knights."
"Ah."
"The mages know that too. Which is why, rather than direct attack spells, they are blowing up surrounding terrain and features to deliver indirect damage. Both sides are fighting at a very high level."
Then he looked at me.
"And you mean to dive into the middle of that?"
To be precise, I would not be diving in.
I was simply going to swing my sword toward that direction once.
"Is it not similar~? If you wish to die, I can make you into a teaching assistant without pain......"
"Witch, shut up!"
Rozalin and Berlith bickered.
I calmed them down and drew my sword.
Perhaps responding to the Holy Power below, the Holy Sword vibrated with a low hum.
And I pulled the Fantasies from my robes one by one and lined them up on the floor of the carriage.
"I am going to use these."
A few days ago, in the capital of the Belmein Kingdom, Sihan had used the Ocean Hall Fantasy to build a geometric structure.
He had alchemically combined the Iron Eater's residue with countless pieces of debris.
That was the very principle I had latched onto.
'A demon's Fantasy does not stop at its own power — it can fuse with mana.'
This was actually not an unfamiliar concept.
Rozalin herself had, the moment she heard that Ocean Hall had appeared, expected me to be able to hurl my mana farther and more powerfully.
"To think I was being naïve like that. Ugh. Not even knowing what would happen to you right after, Teacher......"
So — Ocean Hall, which controlled currents.
Anti-Magic and Giant-Block, which controlled magic and projectiles.
Phantom Steed, which handled a ghost horse without substance.
And the Iron Eater, with its attractive and repulsive forces that absorbed steel.
I could pull a trick using every one of these Fantasies.
"That much I roughly get. So what exactly are you trying to do? Fire some huge, super-dense Aura at all those people?"
"That would damage some of those mages and clerics. Maybe...... one percent?"
"The clerics would just come back."
"But do we need to kill the clerics at all~? Although I might feel pleased if we did~"
"All the mages would probably be wiped out."
"Those are not even Underground Magic Tower people. Just a disguise."
It seemed the three of them were misunderstanding.
"I do not intend to fire Aura."
"Hm?"
"I am going to pull everything in with Aura."
The Iron Eater's attractive and repulsive forces.
The trait of drawing in iron, combined with Ocean Hall controlling the flow.
Using these two, I planned to absorb every energy emerging from the ground and gather it into a single point.
"Huh?"
Then I would use Anti-Magic to remove the magical qualities.
I would use Giant-Block to remove even the attacks of the Holy Knights that had essentially become projectiles.
"I am going to condense it."
"Insane."
Not Aura meant for firing.
But Aura meant for gathering into my sword.
And the medium for that would be the very blade most sensitive to Holy Power.
The Holy Sword.
"Do not tell me......"
"Yes. I am going to forcibly draw a demon out."
When the world's energy grows strong, demons emerge.
Which meant there was a condition under which demons crossed over from their world to ours.
Sacer's condition was Holy Power.
So I was going to compress the Holy Power of the entire Holy Kingdom — from the Saintess down to the Holy Knights — into a single "sword" and deliberately crack the dimension.
"I-is that possible? No, is there even meaning in doing that?"
"There would be."
Sihan realized my intent and nodded.
"Verification."
"Yes."
This experiment would tell us two things.
First.
Whether demons spontaneously manifest the moment they cross over into this world.
Or whether a 7th-circle mage summons them once the conditions are met.
We would be able to clarify this part.
But what was more important was the second.
"If this acts as a kind of trigger and summons a demon......"
"Then everyone here will be able to feel that aura."
The Holy Knights of the Holy Kingdom.
And the Magic Tower's mages, averaging 5th-circle.
The most sensitive to mana in the world, the most outstanding talents, gathered here in the hundreds.
If they could sense the aura of a demon summoning in that place?
"They will trace the source of the demon summoning in reverse for us."
"Insane. Ha, seriously — you are going to put the Empire and the Holy Kingdom on auto-hunt against demons?"
Sihan kept snickering, as though he could not hold back his laughter.
Berlith also looked at me with her lips shaped into an oh, narrowing her eyes.
And Rozalin.
"Ah......"
Her face took on a look of deep emotion.
"Th-then the demon thing is...... really going to be over? We can go catch them? In only two years?"
"Whether we actually succeed in hunting them is another story...... but there is a chance, is there not?"
Rozalin pressed her lips tightly together.
Her eyes rippled slightly, reddening as though she might burst into tears at any moment.
Seeing the bridge of her nose turn a bit sore, it seemed a mix of emotions had welled up.
With that expression, Rozalin finally looked like a girl of seventeen — her actual age.
So I smiled and tapped her head lightly with my hand.
"So watch closely."
"Hm?"
I threw myself out of the carriage still floating in the air.
"Phantom Steed."
The Fantasy held me aloft in midair.
"Teacher?!"
From a distance, I could hear Rozalin calling me.
A voice filled with anxiety.
There was a part I had not told her because I knew she would feel guilty.
'For all of that energy to converge on the Holy Sword......'
It had to pass through my body.
That was just how Aura worked, was it not?
The mana of the world is pushed into the tool called the sword through the staff that is the body.
And then it is fired outward.
The reason my body had been ill was that all of my Mana Roads had been severed.
'It is outrageously violent energy.'
Moreover, those energies were not pure forms of mana.
They were spells the mages had processed with their own will, and divine aura the clerics had manifested purely out of killing intent.
Could I really gather it?
'No — I have to gather it.'
I recalled my final moment with Inquisitor Serris, who had died in the Kingdom of Namress.
And the students of the Belmein Kingdom who had screamed and wept after losing their families.
'Solving the appearance of demons as quickly as possible is the path that saves everyone.'
I brought every Fantasy I had to the blade of the Holy Sword.
As though it had been waiting, the Holy Sword absorbed every one of them.
BOOM!
CRACK!
BANG!
To that place where enormous explosions surged.
I called up the energy toward it.
I was good at using Aura, but I did not know how to raise mana or how to direct it.
I was not a mage.
So — by the way of a swordsman.
'I will gather all the energies.'
I set my intent firmly.
At that, the world began to move toward me.
***
"Teacher?"
Rozalin's chest was pounding.
She had a strange premonition.
A feeling that something was about to happen — and that it would be in a bad direction.
In her past life, she had felt this kind of intuition several times on the battlefield.
Every time, Zelta would die, or her comrades would be wiped out.
She had felt this strongly in the final war too.
It was a sixth sense forged by long years of battlefield life.
"Here it comes."
With Sihan's words, the surrounding energy twisted subtly.
"Surrounding" felt like too small a word — the range was vast and enormous.
The tips of flames that had been leaping from the ground rose a little higher toward the sky.
The wind stretched farther, and the ice rain that was supposed to fall slowed slightly.
Even the clerics' healing became a little slower.
Their pain before resurrection lasted a little longer, and their prayers grew a little louder.
"......"
And then in an instant, the world stopped.
Because every energy that had been moving to hurt the other had lost control and now swirled in a single enormous flow.
The breadth was measured in kilometers.
White, purple Holy Power and magic in every color lost their momentum and drew a vortex.
It was as if the demon Ocean Hall, which had existed in the sea, had been manifested in three dimensions.
"What is this......"
"Unbelievable."
"O God......"
Faced with a scene beyond common sense, everyone who had been fighting to the death stopped in their tracks and watched the flow, dumbstruck.
Energies that should never have coexisted, energies that should have dissipated, were blending into a scenery of surreal color.
Even Sihan, who had crossed over from another world and possessed such vast experience, could not tear his eyes away as he watched the sight.
'How sublime.'
Berlith recalled, through that scene, the existence of an absolute being beyond the human domain.
If this was the power of a single person, could one even believe it?
And soon.
The energy began to slowly rise into the air in a whirling spiral.
"Teacher!"
While everyone was watching the energy, only one person was watching Cassian.
Rozalin gripped the carriage door as though she might leap down at any moment.
"We have to go there! We have to stop that!"
"H-huh?"
Rozalin had belatedly realized what Cassian was attempting.
He was going to accept all that energy alone and channel it into his sword?
That was no different from trying to block the flow of a dam with one man's palm.
He would be swept away by the energy and disappear in an instant.
"Get us over there! Now! Sihan!"
"Are you out of your mind?! If this carriage even gets close to that current now, we get swept into the energy! It is Ocean Hall!"
The Ocean Hall that had appeared in the sea had shredded hundreds of warships.
No matter how over-teched this carriage was, it would clearly be pulverized in no time.
"Sihan!"
"Too late!"
The tip of the energy surging upward in a massive triangular cone.
It became a single thread of energy that reached Cassian's body, and —
———!
With an enormous shock, Cassian's body shook violently.