Chapter 251
Chapter 251: Capture Them Alive First
Night had fallen. Viktor sat in the Carriage as it returned to his manor in the Royal Capital.
The manor had been fully renovated.
The servants waiting outside bowed in unison at the sight of their master's arrival and opened the Carriage door for Viktor.
He stepped down from the Carriage, hands tucked in his pockets. Behind him, Cocotte drifted out of the Carriage on a cushion of white magic, floating gently through the air.
Even without her soft white cloud beneath her, she had fallen asleep as soundly as a dead pig.
"Mm. Good work."
The white cloud up above drifted down and circled around Cocotte several times.
A Magic Formation in the air faintly lit up. Viktor used magic to set Cocotte down onto the cloud, then said quietly:
"Take her back to the garden."
The cloud naturally dared not defy Viktor's command. It carried Cocotte on its back and shot off toward the garden with a whoosh.
In the blink of an eye, it had vanished from sight.
Viktor watched the direction the cloud had disappeared in, his thoughts turning inward.
This round of the Dungeon had been a great success, and no small part of that was owed to Cocotte's help.
As a 5th-Tier Mage, Cocotte's contributions far exceeded what she had been capable of at the 4th Tier.
If he had to draw a comparison—the Dungeon system had been upgraded.
Though the Magic Mirror deserved credit for that too, having made the world all the more convincing.
Still, the matter of Cocotte reaching the 5th Tier had yet to be reported to the Mage Council.
After all, since returning from the Elven Forest, she had been continuously occupied with the tasks Viktor had entrusted to her.
So despite having become a 5th-Tier Mage, Cocotte had yet to learn a single 5th-Tier spell.
Viktor gazed out at the darkened garden, searching through his memory.
In the game, most of the practical 5th-Tier spells could be learned from the Magic Archive in Endymion.
It seemed he would need to make another trip to Endymion at some point.
The thought made him shake his head slightly.
He turned and entered the manor. The quiet courtyard made even his footsteps feel lighter.
Stepping inside, he caught sight of Leah standing at the foot of the staircase just as he passed through the front door—as if she had happened to come downstairs at that very moment.
Her arms were folded across her chest as she looked at Viktor and spoke.
"You're back?"
"Didn't you say the examination would take a long time?"
Viktor gave a small nod and replied evenly.
"Mm. It hasn't ended."
The live-combat examination for the new students was set to run for 3 days.
For those 3 days, the students would remain inside the Mirror World.
Viktor, however, had come back early.
Because he didn't need to be there watching over the new students the entire time.
The other Professors and the Principal were at the Academy, observing the students through the mirrors.
Even the Empress had personally remained at the Academy.
Likely because of Auréliane.
But in any case, with the Empress present at the Academy, the students' safety was hardly a concern.
No place was safer than somewhere in the immediate vicinity of an Imperial family member.
This was also the longest new student examination in the history of the Royal Magic Academy.
Of course, any student who chose to give up mid-examination would be safely released through the mirror's bright surface.
Her gaze kept drifting to the side, her expression stiff and awkward.
It had been that way ever since she discovered that Viktor had read her diary. She genuinely had no idea how to act around her own brother anymore.
Viktor, however, seemed completely unbothered—as though that incident had never happened at all.
He passed by Leah calmly and made his way upstairs.
Leah parted her lips, wanting to say something:
"Gwen, she..."
Is she alright?
But in the end, she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud.
Her voice was so faint, so very faint—only Leah herself could hear it.
Viktor hadn't caught a word of that question, softer even than the hum of a mosquito.
She let out a quiet sigh, watching Viktor grow smaller and smaller in the distance, and let her lips close again.
Viktor gently pushed open the wooden door of the Study and began browsing through the neatly arranged shelves.
The fighting that had taken place nearby had not reached here. Every book rested undisturbed in its place.
His fingertips skimmed lightly along the spines until they came to rest on a thick, ancient tome.
Driven by magic, the book floated gracefully into Viktor's hands.
He opened it and began to read.
It was a collection of mythological stories about the Gods of ancient times bestowing consciousness upon their followers.
Each God's gift carried its own distinct character, and the fervent emotions imbued within them gradually transformed over the ages into varied forms of faith.
Years later, those who carried absolute faith came to be revered as emissaries of the Gods.
They devoted themselves entirely to their faith, driven by the belief that this was the only way to call the Gods back.
They were convinced that only through such devotion could they demonstrate to the Gods that humanity still needed Them.
Viktor read through carefully, then gently closed the book.
The Devotees of the Goddess were not all alike—and there was certainly more than one Goddess.
Naturally, the zealous followers devoted to different Gods were just as varied.
They had, for the most part, completely distorted the Gods' original intentions, executing the divine will in all the wrong ways through their narrow and stubborn interpretations.
And yet within the pages of this book, their actions had been grossly romanticized.
In the game's backstory, the zealous Devotees of different Gods shared a single common purpose: to find the Child of God.
In their belief, the Child of God was a human being in whom divine power had been made manifest in perfect union—the ideal candidate to summon the Goddess back.
To the devout, the Child of God was the purest and most sacred representative of the divine in the mortal world.
It was therefore not difficult to understand why those zealous Devotees had set their sights on Gwen. They had their reasons.
They regarded her as the Child of God, belonging directly to the Goddess of Justice.
And yet, the irony was that the future Gwen—after awakening to her unyielding stance of absolute justice—would show no mercy whatsoever to the Devotees of the Goddess of Justice.
After Emperor Aubrey's death, many wicked things had crept in through the cracks during that period of chaos.
The Goddess's followers had grown restless as well.
And so, the justice-executing Gwen had cut them down in numbers beyond counting.
For now, though, they still lurked in the shadows.
Viktor set the book down and narrowed his eyes toward the window.
A full moon hung high in the sky. The pale, white moon seemed to carry a faint trace of strange, dark miasma.
That sliver of darkness slipped around to the far side of the moon in an instant and vanished without a trace.
Beneath the moonlight, Weija's silhouette blocked the pale glow as it flew freely about, its wings beating with a soft, rhythmic sound that carried through the night breeze.
After a while, the Crow seemed to tire. It settled silently onto a branch.
"Insufferable Viktor—what kind of contractor makes their God spy on people!?"
Though Weija grumbled with indignation, it had still come to where it needed to be.
It perched on the branch and fixed its gaze unblinkingly on the Delin Family Manor.
The sprawling manor was utterly still. Even the lights were sparse, and beneath the pale wash of moonlight, it looked peculiarly desolate.
Then Weija's single eye deepened to an intense azure blue.
Through that gaze, it saw it.
Countless threads of black, like writhing dark stripes, were slowly, steadily crawling their way deeper into the Delin Family Manor.
Truly strange.
Weija had never seen any God possess a following quite like this.
Figures. Only those stubborn, high-handed Goddesses would have this kind of mindless, fanatical devotee.
Weija drew back its sharp gaze and pecked at its own black wings with its beak, doing its best to pass as an ordinary Crow.
At that moment, a Maidservant stepped outside. She held up a lantern, standing at the manor entrance and looking around—even tilting her head up to scan the treetops above.
Because of the deep darkness, all she could make out was a single Crow perched on a branch. She didn't notice that this Crow had only one eye.
The Maidservant's gaze swept away, and she turned back inside. Only then did Weija beat its wings and fly off toward the window of Gwen's bedroom.
It was no stranger to Gwen's bedroom.
Weija slipped in through the window and approached the bed.
It saw the silver-haired, resilient Knight—now lying unconscious atop the bed, eyes tightly shut.
She didn't appear to be in any visible distress, yet she simply would not wake.
As though she had sunk into an endless sleep.
Weija looked at the unconscious Gwen, and with something almost like amusement, a thought crossed its mind:
What if Viktor came and kissed her—maybe that would do the trick?
Those storybook tales were always full of that sort of nonsensical plot twist.
But Weija knew in its heart that an idea that absurd was never going to work.
It stood in place. A dark Formation gradually and mysteriously took shape beneath its feet. The chaotic tentacles stirred briefly, then slowly stilled.
Dark light gradually enveloped Gwen's body, casting an aura both mysterious and sinister.
Weija looked at Gwen and clicked its beak.
"Who knows why Viktor pays such particular attention to you, of all people."
"Tch. Consider this done for his sake."
It ruffled its feathers. A single jet-black feather drifted softly down onto the edge of Gwen's bed.
Then Weija seemed to dissolve into a puddle of black liquid, sliding down along the wall by the window until the Crow's entire form vanished completely.
The black feather remained beside Gwen's pillow, moving gently with the steady rhythm of her breathing.
In the moonlight, the black feather shimmered with a faint glow—like a jewel, gleaming with a mysterious radiance.
Weija beat its wings through the open sky, about to fly back toward the Clavena Manor.
But then, all at once, it blinked—and felt that something was wrong.
Its body spun in midair and veered off in a direction entirely opposite to the one it had intended.
***
In the woodland near the Royal Capital, a white figure moved without pause, cutting down one Magical Creature after another.
Blood seeped into the grass, slowly pooling together into a small stream that reflected the crimson moonlight.
The carcasses of Magical Creatures, bones showing through torn flesh, had been stacked into a small mountain, standing silently beneath the moonlight.
Safirose drew her sharp blade across a Magical Creature's throat, then tossed its body onto the pile.
She leaned against the mound of corpses and tore ravenously into her spoils, stuffing into her pouch every material that had dropped from the bodies around her.
As Safirose swallowed down a chunk of Magical Creature flesh, every hair on her body suddenly stood on end. Danger had arrived without warning.
A cold gleam flashed in her eyes as she locked onto what lay ahead.
Whoosh—!
An arrow, glittering like a shard of ice crystal, came hurtling toward Safirose—shimmering brilliantly beneath the moonlight.
Safirose sidestepped the fierce strike on instinct.
She turned back and saw an elderly man with a face full of deep wrinkles and white hair.
The old man's face bore the hardness of long years, and several deep scars were etched into his features.
He sat astride a horse, flanked by a group of powerfully built Mage-soldiers each carrying various implements.
Every one of them wore a white Cloak marked with the same insignia—like the only patch of snow across the entire grassland, standing out sharply against the surroundings.
"Tch, I thought it'd be some kind of Magical Creature. Didn't expect it to be a person."
The old man looked Safirose over clearly, and the ice bow that had materialized in his hand was gradually drawn back in.
His sharp gaze shifted to the man beside him as he asked:
"Livi, what do you make of her?"
The man riding alongside him nudged his horse forward and pulled back his hood.
A head of golden hair caught the moonlight brilliantly. A ripple of blue light, like the shimmer of water, passed through the man's eyes:
"Something's off about her."
"Let's capture them alive first."