Chapter 240
Chapter 240
'Could he truly be a great spirit, as the elders say?'
Dulliang watched Cassian.
Occasionally, the fortune-tellers and shamans he'd met on the road spoke of great spirits.
They resembled humans in appearance but were not human at all.
They radiated light from their bodies and displayed superhuman strength, it was said.
The most profound advisors, capable of imparting the deepest wisdom and elevating humans into something more.
"Nice one, Teacher!"
Perhaps the reason these people called him "teacher" was because the great spirit was fulfilling its purpose.
As faith in Cassian quietly bloomed inside Dulliang.
Cassian was struggling.
'......Whew. This isn't something you do lightly.'
After opening all eight Mana Roads.
Using mana and releasing Aura had stopped being difficult.
No matter how much Aura he expelled, his body felt no pain.
And now, for the first time since reaching that state, a single slash had left him profoundly drained.
That was how formidable the World Eater Fantasy's power was.
'The Wolf King and Ulf did this so easily......'
All he'd done was reshape the terrain of a single mountain.
No—scaling it back, he'd merely altered the entrance of a single mountain range.
Yet the Wolf King, Ulf, and the shamans had reshaped the entire northern Empire's geography.
'I still need to get stronger.'
The world was overflowing with powerful beings.
Even those powerful beings had failed to endure and died.
He held the advantage now, but the future was uncertain.
Cassian steadied his breathing.
And in the meantime.
"Oh ho, what do we have here?"
Rozalin and Hati pushed deeper inside and unleashed their Aura.
Clearing out the Underground Magic Tower mages and remnants of the Imperial intelligence units who'd been hiding.
"Over there too."
Yuria radiated Holy Power, filtering out anything that emanated foulness.
Thanks to the World Eater Fantasy, the enemy had been exposed with no time to hide.
Cutting throats was truly easy.
"E-EEEEK!"
A few tower mages fired spells in resistance.
"Tsk tsk, as if."
Rozalin flicked her wrist casually, and a wall of stone surged up and blocked every attack.
Better still, the deflected spells arced upward, automatically formed into barbs, and counterattacked.
"Gakh......"
"Auto-counter's incredible. I didn't even do anything. This is death by natural causes."
Rozalin actively taunted the dying as she watched them fall.
By the time Cassian had recovered his stamina, not a soul in the plaza was left standing.
"Goodness......"
"Try not to be too shocked. That's just how they are."
The mercenary led the stunned Dulliang toward the people who'd been ejected outside.
"We've got our own work to do."
The people were somewhat dazed.
Eyes open but unfocused.
They looked as though they were sleeping with their eyes open.
Even touching their shoulders or speaking to them drew no response.
"Tch. Looks like they've been cursed. Hey, little Saintess."
Yuria glanced at the mercenary, then waved her hand.
A deluge of Holy Power cascaded from the sky like a waterfall.
The force was so intense it felt like being physically pummeled.
"Urk?!"
Even Dulliang and the mercenary, who were unaffected, felt their bodies shaking under the pressure.
The effect was immediate.
"GASP!"
People drew huge, gasping breaths as if hauled from water, snapping back to consciousness.
They stared at the two strangers in bewilderment.
"Wh-who are you?"
"Are you all right?"
"Wh-what...... what is this."
They looked around in utter confusion.
Every face was stricken with fear.
"It's all right. The people here have been dealt with."
"People? Then what about that thing?"
"Thing?"
"The frost wyrm! The serpent! The serpent!"
"Serpent?"
The mercenary didn't follow, but Dulliang did.
The "frost wyrm" they mentioned was a creature native to Aislard.
"Great Spirit!"
At his call, Cassian responded.
"Below!"
That one word was enough.
"Hati!"
At Cassian's shout, Hati sprinted over, scooped Dulliang and the mercenary onto each shoulder, and ran.
Almost simultaneously, the ground began to rumble.
"Everyone run!"
The newly conscious people screamed and scattered in every direction, not knowing where to go.
Once they'd all cleared the area.
A colossal serpent erupted through the earth.
CRAAAAAASH!
A snake whose entire body looked sculpted from ice.
Its head resembled a dragon's, and its body bristled with centipede-like legs along its length.
Even with its lower half still buried in the ground, the visible portion was easily over ten meters.
— SHAAAAAAA!
It exhaled a blast of freezing air and spread its jaws wide.
The four-way split of its maw revealed rows of razor teeth that looked ready to devour anyone whole.
"Still alive in that state? Pathetic."
As Rozalin's taunt suggested, the frost wyrm was in terrible shape.
The World Eater Fantasy had taken its toll—its body was mangled and torn, barely a patch of it intact.
Green blood oozed from between shattered ice plates, and several of its legs had been ripped off or crushed.
Above all, one eye had been completely obliterated.
"Easy pickings for me."
Against a target in that condition, the matchup was brutally one-sided.
Rozalin charged Aura into her sword and swung.
CAAAAAANG!
The Aura-laden blade detonated against the frost wyrm's body.
Massive shards of ice rained down.
"Heh heh. Hitting this thing after all those Demonic-Energy-coated bastards—now this has some bite."
Hati followed up immediately, twin maces swinging.
Each mace was the size of a human head, packed with Aura, hammering the frost wyrm's body in rapid succession.
More effective than even Rozalin's blade.
Crack, crack, crack—chunks of ice broke free and crashed to the ground, trailing plumes of frigid mist.
"Wh-what......"
The Aislard people watching went slack-jawed.
They'd barely recovered from one shock only to face another.
Long ago, people had brought this frost wyrm here and set it loose.
They'd called themselves the Underground Magic Tower.
They'd ruled the population through monsters, forced the sale of children across all of Aislard, and called it right.
When these people had tried to leave, others had told them the outside world was hell and that nowhere was better than here.
Those others had come from the world's largest nation—the Empire.
Aislard's outside was a hell, they'd said, and life here was the best it could be.
The market's people believed them, and everyone who visited the market believed the market's people.
All of that was shattering now.
At the hands of just five strangers from beyond.
"Whew."
Cassian, his stamina finally restored, raised his sword.
The extended exertion had left him slightly dizzy.
His internal Mana Roads still felt overheated, cycling sluggishly.
So.
'Cut.'
He wanted to finish this quickly and return to the Academy.
His sword traced a line from top to bottom.
CRACK!
With the sound of a great block of ice splitting, the frost wyrm's body fell open to either side.
***
Duke Crownhardt led the march south.
Roughly a thousand people had been rescued across Aislard.
Added to the Academy's two thousand, the group had swelled by nearly half.
The problem was that most newcomers were family units.
Men, women, young, old—from infants to the elderly, a wildly diverse composition.
They'd survived Aislard's extreme environment, but many had gone without proper food through years of famine and migration.
Facing the Kingdom of Triban with this group would mean certain defeat.
"What do you think?"
Duke Crownhardt asked Zelta.
"If they learn our group's composition, they'll absolutely try to block us."
Hand over the rebel prince in exchange for safe passage.
That level of coercion was plausible.
"You think they'd go that far with no backup plan? They can't be ignorant of our strength."
They'd even delivered explicit threats on the way up.
The prince himself had walked into the royal palace and issued a warning. If anything happened now, it was outright war.
But.
"I'd argue they're already out of backup plans."
With even the Empire crumbling.
The Triban royal house had lost its justification for pouring in enormous military budgets.
On top of that, they hadn't been able to suppress even a single academy, let alone the Empire—they'd been cowed entirely.
"More precisely, it's the king who has no backup plan."
In a situation like this, he'd be deposed eventually even if he did nothing.
Better to burn it all than fade quietly.
"The crown would survive. In that case......"
"Power transfers to his children. Is that your read?"
"Our Academy is just an academy, after all. We helped the Kingdom of Namress, but we never politically intervened."
Multiple factors would be at play.
Latrine agreed with Zelta's analysis.
"The student's assessment is largely correct. Our staff concurs."
But there was one thing the Triban royal house had overlooked.
"I see. Then we strike first."
The person leading this force wasn't Cassian—it was Duke Crownhardt.
And who was Duke Crownhardt?
A general who'd fought endlessly on the Empire's front lines against foreign peoples and monsters.
The crucial detail was that his theater of war had been the Empire's outermost border.
The Empire didn't defend borders—it actively expanded them.
"Is that really all right?"
Even Zelta was startled enough to stare at the Duke.
"If they're going to hit us anyway, hitting first is advantageous. Full combat readiness. We march on the Triban royal castle."
"......War."
"If they don't engage, we simply pass through. If they strike first, we crush them overwhelmingly."
Was this the right call?
Zelta glanced at the advisory staff with that thought.
The Crownhardt forces reacted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
They'd never defy the Duke's orders regardless.
'Teacher. I'm grateful that you have a demon's brain but a human heart.'
At least Cassian would never have ordered a preemptive strike on another nation.
In any case, Cassian wasn't here.
"Begin the advance!"
At Duke Crownhardt's command, the Akarind Academy students donned full combat gear and marched on the Kingdom of Triban.
"Huh? What? Huh?"
A student who'd come from Triban on exchange was lost in confusion.
"Wha? Huh?"
A soldier from the Kingdom of Namress moved in a daze, his body barely keeping up.
"No way......"
Akarind Academy's own students were equally stunned.
"Uh, um, is this a rehearsal?"
The Imperial-born students smiled awkwardly.
None of them had expected to invade another nation under the Akarind Academy banner.
But the most flabbergasted person of all—
"Your Highness! So you're reclaiming the throne and exacting your revenge!"
"Was your will behind this battle, Your Highness?!"
—was Prince Dwayne himself.
"Huhhhhh......?"