The slender-armed mage, Geseress, was inwardly flustered by Phyllis’s death.
Of course, considering that he specialized in mobility rather than combat and that he was originally not a combatant but a coachman, it was not strange.
Even taking all that into account, he did not know whether that knight named Tenitia could sever his neck in one blow.
In truth, it did not matter much.
There were plenty of Infiltrators below them at Phyllis’s level.
Who said that an Infiltrator would die if their head was cut off?
“Heeee!”
Tenitia gritted her teeth as she watched the horse’s head and its centipede-like body start thrashing about.
She first stomped the horse’s head with her heel, completely crushing it, and then charged at the centipede-like body’s side.
If she wasn’t careful, the severed body legs might start thrashing about, so she thought she should cut off one of its legs entirely.
Not a bad judgment.
Geseress thought so as he stood up.
He took in the sight of the young mage standing before him.
The stone spikes were very hard and sharp, but they didn’t affect his body, which had no flesh.
The lightning magic was basic level 4, and it had taken him 30 years to use level 4 destructive magic.
The pompous-looking mage before him seemed to just have turned twenty.
She maintained an unbothered expression, as if this was quite easy for her.
‘Ah.’
How radiant and enviable she was.
He thought about the backs of those who had gone before him.
He once said he would catch those backs in this very hand.
Geseress’s violet eyes shone as he rose back into the air.
She was so beautiful that he didn’t want to destroy her.
He thought to bind her adequately, capture her, and take her with him on his way back.
Just as he was about to chant the binding spell.
Flash!
A second lightning bolt slammed his body into the ground.
“Who do you think you are reaching out to? With that talent, you will never be able to rise this high!”
Princess Sererassie sat perched on a wall, smiling coyly.
The moon, peeking through the clouds, cast a silhouette over her face, illuminating her differently colored eyes in blue and yellow.
She lightly tapped the wall with her heel and lazily gestured.
“You seem a bit surprised?”
Geseress looked at his body, which was starting to smoke.
‘Hmm.’
Since there was no blood flowing through his body, he was almost immune to electric shocks.
But somehow, the mage before him was penetrating his body with electric currents.
It was astonishing and brought him joy.
“Reverse field.”
The black mage, with his four arms spread wide, rose back into the air.
A translucent purple reverse field surrounded him.
It could block level 4 spells like ‘lightning’ more than ten times over.
Geseress prepared the binding magic, forming seals with his four hands.
In an instant, magic strong enough to bind luminous giants was completed.
Seeing this, Sererassie thought.
‘How wretched and insignificant he appears?’
To her, doing what others could do with two hands using four meant acknowledging that her skills were not even half as good as others.
It was too pathetic to act relaxed and pretend to have realized something great.
“Trash to trash, dust to dust. A garment whose first button was fastened poorly ultimately cannot be worn. Dispel!”
Geseress was sure the magic would not work.
No matter how genius one was, one could not surpass the amount of mana built up over time in a short period.
Just as expected, his binding magic still glimmered intact among his four hands.
“It was impossible…!”
“That will soon vanish on its own.”
What Sererassie dispelled was not the binding magic, but the reverse field.
That was several times more difficult.
Flash!
A third bolt of lightning struck Geseress’s body.
His concentration faltered, and the binding magic he had so painstakingly created shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
As he fell back to the ground, he thought.
At this rate, he wouldn’t even be able to take her, much less the enemy mask.
That would mean the priest would not forgive him.
The act of vengeance had to be carried out.
Before his body hit the ground again, he regained his balance, surrounded by the reverse field, and shot up directly to the wall where Sererassie sat.
Flash!
Flash!
Flash!
Lightning bolts shot down from the massive clouds.
“What…!”
Geseress shouted with a feeling that went beyond confusion to incredulity.
Sererassie remained perched on the wall, smiling coyly.
Only then did Geseress realize he could never leap over that wall.
“!”
Just now, Sererassie did not simply say ‘lightning.’
She said ‘designated lightning.’
One needed to unleash a massive thunderstorm, which could be considered level 6 magic.
No matter how genius one was, one could not wield level 6 magic in their early twenties.
“Royal Family!”
“Have you finally realized? What kind of mage do you think you could become with such observation skills?”
Sererassie laughed sadistically while Geseress activated his blink magic.
His body was enveloped in violet light and he repeatedly appeared and disappeared 30 meters above, then 60 meters above.
Each of his four hands formed different seals, and spells like ‘psycho blade,’ ‘spear of strength,’ ‘psycho scatter,’ and ‘psycho chain’ burst forth from all directions.
Sererassie looked at Geseress with a pitying gaze.
“Is that all you’ve gained despite being in such a state?”
Dispel.
It was different from when she fought Parnesia.
She had already accumulated a massive amount of mana in the atmosphere using the energies of incantations, allowing her to cast spells without tapping into the mana pooled in her heart.
Dozens of spells scattered with the sound of shattering glass.
Taking advantage of the moment, Geseress broke through to chase the enemy mask.
Purple flames flared in the air.
It was impossible to strike him down precisely at his material form while shifting back and forth between material and immaterial states.
“I told you, it’s designated lightning, not a chain lightning.”
What Sererassie cast was the magic that made that possible.
Flash!
Every time Geseress blinked and appeared in the next space, lightning struck down.
His tightly bound black body gradually caught fire, crumbling and dispersing into the air.
Sererassie sent him a gaze mixed with pity and contempt.
She felt pity for a human and disdain for a mage.
‘Is it something a mage should do, accepting the truth that someone gives and proclaiming it as true strength? A priest could do that. But you are not a priest; you are a mage.’
Even if someone were to reach the end of magic first, she would congratulate them rather than be jealous.
Because she had her own truth to reach in her own way.
‘The process of searching for truth is the real path to true truth.’
Knowledge is power, and receiving knowledge ultimately means receiving power.
‘How could power given by others become your truth?’
Sererassie shook her head while watching Geseress fall to the ground.
He was not worth researching.
At that moment, Rudi, who had been nearby on the roof, called out to her.
“Princess Sererassie.”
“What is it?”
“Um… it seems there are more Infiltrators over there.”
Sir Barbatos, the commander of the Black Iron Knights.
A man with an imposing figure over 2 meters tall and a beard that looked like it hadn’t been shaved for three days, resembling a prime black panther leading the pack.
The first time he accurately remembered the name of the royal, Valenciaunos, was a year ago.
When he had arrested Tenitia on suspicion of stealing Urglim’s penpoint, Valenciaunos had moved the Platinum Knights to file a petition for her release.
Barbatos heard it from a Platinum Knight named Bonnel, who had said, “But if you all file the petition, it will be an indispensable release due to your plea, thus helping preserve Sir Barbatos’s dignity.”
The moment Barbatos heard that, he was convinced.
Valenciaunos was definitely not a thoughtless bandit.
Even when rumors circulated that he frequented red-light districts and slums like it was nothing, killing, beating, and committing crimes, while annihilating the remaining royal family.
Even when it was said that he beheaded a duke and kidnapped a saint, attempting to assassinate a northern duke.
He quietly believed in Valenciaunos.
But when he heard Valenciaunos’s words, passing off an armored Infiltrator named Mandragon to him, he first started to doubt Valenciaunos.
“If the saint suddenly runs toward you, you’d better hit him hard and send him back somehow.”
Was that even something a person would say?
The very idea of hitting a saint was beyond Barbatos’s understanding.
He thought he should chastise Valenciaunos sternly to correct his ways, but Mandragon’s exoskeleton was unexpectedly sturdy, and his eyes glimmered with desperation, so he let it slide for now.
Despite his appearance suggesting he would sharpen his brain like his sword skills, Barbatos was an excellent knight with both strategy and tactics.
He studied various tactics and strategies for different environments and enemies, and enjoyed war games and chess.
“God of Radiance.”
Right now, he had just gained the upper hand against Mandragon and understood Valenciaunos’s intentions for saying something like that.
*
I shot a ‘spear of fire’ into the joint of the massive five-legged aphid Infiltrator and thought.
Everything was going smoothly.
I had noticed their movements from the beginning.
The clergy did well in evacuating the residents.
There were more of them and they were stronger than expected, but anyway, I had held them off for quite a while, and ultimately the saint arrived just in time, semi-melting that gigantic aphid.
Yes, I assert that everything was going well.
…The hardest thing about facing Infiltrators was not their teeth, claws, or bizarre magic.
It was the mental waves that could cause the citizens I needed to protect or the soldiers fighting alongside me to suddenly turn against me.
That’s why armies did not fare well against Infiltrators, and urban warfare did not fare well against them either.
I had suffered quite a bit because of that even before my return.
However, in this life, I had 40 years of experience.
I had managed to funnel them into the underground waterways, capture them in sparsely populated areas, or simply hadn’t interacted with breeds that increase in number—I had navigated through well with luck and skill.
That luck seemed to have lasted until now.
From my experience before returning, the more established the group of Infiltrators, the higher up they were, using mental waves and magic, while the lower ones used brute force.
It was easy to predict that the gigantic aphid would use mental waves.
Of course, that was why combat priests on the rooftops were praying to suppress the mental waves of the creature and scatter them.
Unfortunately, the creature was able to walk, and before the saint and I could cut off all its legs, it had slipped out of the encircled area created by the combat priests.
What do you think happened next?
“Kiiiiiiiii!”
Fortunately, nearby residents had evacuated to some extent, and the creature hadn’t completely escaped the priests’ influence, so it didn’t cause an event where 10,000 subjects transformed into monsters at once.
It wasn’t 10,000, but about one percent transformed.
Those were the ones who did not respond to the evacuation order or could not, or the tobacco traffickers who hid in the market instead of fleeing.
If they had all transformed into monsters at once, I could have accepted a bit of contempt from Barbatos or the saint and asked for reinforcements from the knights or holy knights.
Not transforming into monsters all at once was the problem.
The priests’ spells had strongly suppressed the aphid’s mental waves, and the people were transforming very slowly.
Matheos had performed miracles at the Alchenberg monastery last early spring.
He had saved people who would have died due to excessive contamination that under normal circumstances should have been cleansed.
I knew that there was always a price to pay for every miracle.
To put it bluntly, the fact that I was engaging in foolishness while in my right mind was also the price of the miracle of my return.
So what would the price be for saving those who couldn’t have been saved once?
“Help me!”
“Saint! I’m fine! Please check on my child first!”
From now on, I would never be able to turn my back.
“Duke Valencia! It’s not too late. I’ll go!”
Matheos turned around anxiously.
I glanced at my surroundings with a whisper of tension.
The aphid was emitting mental waves and was curling up.
It was clearly thinking of fleeing to somewhere.
Fortunately, Agari was already burning with divine power and likely couldn’t emit additional mental waves.
But if it escaped, it would eat humans to regain its strength, and then, without priests to suppress its mental waves, it would attempt to contaminate once more.
At that point, it was possible that 10,000 subjects could turn into Infiltrators all at once.
Could I defeat it solo after sending Matheos away?
It was difficult.
Matheos would need to pierce its exoskeleton one more time for me to ignite a fire within its body.
“Saint!”
Darrin, the injured child, and the mother pushing her rolling chair, called out mournfully.
I wished that my eardrums would burst right now.
Regrettably, the title of Duke did not allow for neglect.
Someone had to choose, take responsibility, and silence those who merely questioned, “What right do you have to choose?” without suggesting alternatives.
One had to drink a tear-stained cup while thinking there might have been a better way.
I grabbed Matheos’s wrist as he moved forward.
