Chapter 419
Chapter 419. One Who Will Soon Be a Black Star
Crossing the lake straight was too risky in terms of exposure, so he had to avoid it.
Arthur, as before, looped around the lake and headed for Reruze.
KUUUUUUNG!!
A shock sounded from far away.
It sounded like something collapsing, or a heavy impact.
Who had made that sound.
Since it came from the direction of Reruze, he figured it was likely one of the Black Stars.
“Or another problem has occurred.”
As he moved toward Reruze, Arthur asked Reto about Jess Milo’s direction of movement.
[The direction is the same. Reruze.]
“You do not know the exact distance?”
[What I can feel is only the presence she is shedding. And even that, with her presence thickened now, I can only sense faintly.]
“That is a bit disappointing.”
If he knew her exact position, the risk would drop sharply, which was a shame.
After calculating her direction, Arthur nodded.
If there were no variables, she would soon arrive at the northern rampart he had brought down.
After a brief hesitation, Arthur angled his course a little.
He judged that approaching the northern rampart directly was dangerous.
Because the Black Stars will all be gathered there?
If he was exposed, there was no going back.
To reduce risk, it seemed safer to approach from the western rampart, then carefully edge north.
Arthur picked up speed.
Hoooo—
Through the sound of a bitter wind and the rough flurry of snow, a large shadow came into view.
Reruze’s western ice rampart.
Pressing himself tight to the wall, he searched for signs. He saw no troops watching the area.
Same for the top of the rampart.
Sensing no clear presence, he quickly scaled the wall.
Once atop the western rampart, Arthur hid among the long shadows cast by the watchtowers.
Surveying the surroundings, he furrowed his brow.
“Why are there so few troops??”
A handful of soldiers stationed in the towers.
And only a few scattered along the wall, that was all.
Even just a little earlier, when he left the city, it had not been this sparse.
The sentries were far too few.
Where had they all gone?
His doubts were brief, Arthur decided to move first.
Hoo
With a short breath, he suppressed his presence even more.
Piercing this level of watch was not very difficult.
Arthur turned his gaze north and began moving quickly along the long rampart toward the northern wall.
Tak, Tatatak
Late night, a dark rampart.
The cold snowfall made the surrounding view even darker.
There were many watchtowers, which meant many spaces to hide among the shadows.
With nimble motion Arthur slipped into shadow, moving without pause through concealed gaps while avoiding soldiers’ eyes.
He did not neglect to keep watch around him as he moved.
Is it the same here, too?
As he moved, he checked the sentries, and it was similar.
All the guard forces had dropped drastically.
He was feeling the strangeness when,
KWAAAAAANG!!!
“......!”
The ground suddenly shook.
No, the entire rampart actually shook.
Not once, the shocks continued at regular intervals. Something was being destroyed. The closer he got to the northern rampart, the stronger the shockwaves felt.
Soldiers on the nearby watchtowers and rampart screamed and flattened themselves.
Even the guards could not keep their wits about them.
Arthur moved boldly, and moments later he entered the soot blackened air.
The remains of a collapsed wall.
He reached the edge of the northern rampart.
Smoke, the residue of the explosions, still covered the surrounding wall.
When the collapsed wall at the center of the blast began to come into his blurred view through the smoke, Arthur halted on the spot.
The masters of divine names were caught by Divine Eyes.
Approaching any closer would be dangerous.
Arthur looked around and spotted one intact watchtower spared by the blast.
Perhaps due to the shock, the tower was empty.
Climbing the tower, the smoke thinned at that height. From cover within the tower, Arthur could watch the state of the broken wall from afar.
“Hmm..”
After taking in the situation, Arthur let out a low groan.
He saw the ice wall, one side completely torn down by the massive explosion.
KWAAAAAAAA!!!
And through that fallen wall, a tremendous volume of water was pouring into the city.
The northern district had already turned into a sea.
Black shamans were plugging the enormous gap with sorcery, and thanks to that, the flow looked to be slowly diminishing.
But that was only a stopgap.
Looking around, he saw that besides the broken section, the ice rampart was splitting and cracking like a crater in many places.
Crrrrack!
The cracking was so severe he could hear it even here, and it was progressing quickly.
Arthur narrowed his brow at the sight.
This result was far beyond his expectations.
“Why?”
Looking over the ice ramparts carefully from the tower, Arthur let out a soft exclamation a moment later.
“The ice walls.”
He realized that most of Reruze’s ramparts were made of ice.
The massive blast he had focused on the northern rampart had created a huge fissure, and Samuel Barber’s detonation along the entire wall had created cracks big and small in every section.
The problem was that most of the rampart was made of ice.
Once a crack formed, it was eating into the entire wall at tremendous speed.
Normally, because of the harsh cold, even if cracks formed they would recover quickly. But a massive variable had erupted before his eyes.
The very frozen lake Arthur had targeted.
“I did not expect it to be this bad...”
The lake water had surged in like a burst dike and was acting as the decisive cause of the wall’s cracking.
If the fissuring continued like this?
The entire Reruze rampart might collapse.
The result was the situation before his eyes.
The Sword Demon and Azolett were moving busily to block the cracking.
Bang! KABOOM! BAM!
The Sword Demon was smashing the nearby buildings like a madman.
The shockwaves and blasts were created as the Sword Demon’s blade destroyed structures around him.
His shockwaves shattered buildings to pieces.
Around the already shattered buildings, thousands of soldiers swarmed like ants, hauling debris toward the collapsed wall.
“Move it!”
“If the wall collapses, it is the end! Bet your lives!”
The Dark Storms drove the soldiers on as they carried rubble to the wall. It was so urgent that the Dark Storms themselves joined in, helping with the work.
Every last one looked like a drowned rat.
And thanks to the brutal cold, their faces were blanched blue, but no one stopped as they threw themselves into repairing the rampart.
When the debris piled near the wall, Azolett moved.
Using webs, she packed the piled rubble into the broken fissures.
Indeed, parts of the wall were being blocked with webs and debris.
But it was not enough, and her face twisted mercilessly.
“Not enough! Bring more!”
While the black shamans stopped the largest fissure, they were trying to pack the cracks elsewhere with rubble to prevent collapse as much as possible, and everyone in Reruze, including the Black Stars, was taking part.
However,
Crrrrack!
“N, no!”
Like a burst dike that would not stop, it was on the verge of giving way. The black shamans and Azolett were frantically filling the cracks, but the speed of widening outpaced the speed of packing.
If the frozen lake were small, it would be fine, but its size was more than enough to cover all of Reruze.
In the end.
“B, boss!”
Azolett, in a panic, looked for the Sword Demon.
The Sword Demon gripped his hilt with his face turned to stone.
A terrible fury ran along the trembling hilt, but the Sword Demon could only watch the situation before him.
He was more confident than anyone at destroying and killing, but he had no way to stop a great lake surging in.
KUUUUNG!
At last, a cry rang out from the center of the blast.
The black shamans who had been plugging the gap with sorcery staggered back.
Perhaps they had pushed their sorcery beyond its limits, for all of them were coughing blood.
“Hack! A, any more is impossible!”
“You crazy bastards! Block it even if you die! If the wall collapses, I will kill you lot first!”
Azolett shouted viciously, but all were helpless before a colossal calamity.
Unable to hold, the black shamans were swept away by the raging current and vanished, and lake water once more poured in like madness through the huge gap, and the entire ice rampart began to twist rapidly.
Crrack! Crack!
“...I, it is collapsing!”
Everyone stopped their work and clutched their heads at the sight.
Here it comes!
“......!”
In Arthur’s ear, watching from the tower, came Reto’s urgent cry.
Grasping the meaning, Arthur’s eyes widened as he looked toward the broken wall.
whooo—
A faint breeze suddenly blew around him.
It was a soft, faint breeze that lightly swayed Arthur’s hair.
But the moment that breeze touched his skin, he groaned and flattened himself. Then, in haste, he drew up his power to the limit to shield his whole body.
Crrrrack!
Grrr
A groan slipped out on its own.
When the wind touched the watchtower on which Arthur lay, the tower began to freeze snow white with a chilling sound.
The other watchtowers Arthur could see around him were the same.
Every tower turned snow white in an instant.
Arthur looked around at the scene sweeping in with a cold that went beyond harsh, that was horrific.
It was a wind of pure white.
As if painting the wall with pigment, the wind began to dye the entire rampart white.
It was the same for the people working around the wall.
Crrrrrrrrrack!
There were no screams, no sign of life.
The moment the wind swallowed them, they too were dyed like pure white paint.
Hundreds of soldiers turned into white statues in the blink of an eye, and even the lake water pouring in from all directions froze in an instant.
As if time had stopped, silence flowed around the wall.
Moments later, a snow white world spread before everyone’s eyes.
“...Insane.”
Azolett stared blankly at the sight and let out a curse.
To freeze all of Reruze in an instant.
Even though the crisis of the wall collapsing had vanished, she could only scan the area with a tense face.
What on earth had happened.
A moment later, the Sword Demon appeared before her.
“...B, boss???”
“...”
At that call, the Sword Demon did not answer.
He kept his mouth clamped shut and stared at the frozen surge.
The water that had been overflowing through the huge fissure had frozen in that very shape, a colossal form.
Staring in that direction with a hard face, the Sword Demon spoke.
“Who are you.”
At that question, a small figure dropped with a plop between the great gap.
A presence that contrasted with the pure white.
Black hair fluttering.
A dry face, and eyes.
A man wrapped in a pitch black robe walked slowly toward the Sword Demon.
A small violet doll perched on one shoulder caught the eye.
And behind him, Rengua followed with a polite bow.
In this moment, everyone stared frozen at that man.
Standing atop a great mass of ice, the man looked down at the Sword Demon.
Then slowly pushing back the hood of his robe, he spoke.
“My name is Kamel Blazer.”
For an instant, the dry man’s lips curled slightly.
“One who will soon become a Black Star.”