Chapter 153. Capital City’s Collapse.
When he arrived above the Starry Sea Empire, Lacius circled the capital, mapping it in his mind.
He calculated the key areas, including the Temple branch, the palace, the factory area, and the noble district, before drawing out a processed magic material and preparing to cast a fourth-circle earth-fire element spell.
After a long preparation, Lacius imbued the spell with a great deal of his own mana and faith energy and shot it towards the ground.
He immediately drew another processed material and, once again, cast the same spell that was boosted by his mana and faith energy before shooting it towards the ground.
The fire element heated the ground, making it easier to alter, while the earth lament shook it.
About two minutes after Lacius cast the second spell, the earth rumbled as a magnitude 8 or even 9 earthquake struck the capital city.
***
Edgard, one of Silvia’s early teenage grandsons, had just gone to visit his father at the textile factory his family managed when he sensed the ground tremble.
The earthquake quickly intensified, causing some mechanical part to fall from the factory’s machines.
When he heard the roof start to squeak dangerously, Edgard quickly ran out of the factory with his father, one of Silvia’s sons who was uninterested in the throne and had survived Teo’s purging.
Around him, the workers had also run out in a panic.
Before all the workers could escape, a loud crash sounded nearby as a neighbouring factory building collapsed.
Like dominoes, the other factory buildings followed. Some of the massive machines even toppled, directly killing many workers.
Meanwhile, his father, an Earth Element blessed, tried to stabilise the ground around their factory using his power. But as a level 2 blessed, his meagre power was nothing in the face of an earthquake that shook the whole capital city.
Although their factory held out for another ten minutes and became the last standing factory amongst the surrounding ruins, his father still ran out of mana, and the already unstable factory immediately fell.
Looking at the destroyed factory, Edgard’s father fainted.
Although they’re part of the royal family, they cut themselves off early, so they only received a small, impoverished territory and some textile factories in the capital as their main sources of income.
Losing the factory will directly put a dent in their economic situation.
Edgard looked around and called two loyal guards he knew, “Seth and Regis, help me bring father back to the mansion. Call other guards to protect the factory and maintain order. Ensure no one stole anything from the factory and warehouse. I’ll tell father to give everyone a bonus later.”
One of the two guards immediately left to alert the others before returning to protect Edgard and his fainted father.
Amidst the trembling ground, the four of them walked to the nobility district, where their mansion was.
Once they arrived, Edgard saw his mother hysterically screaming in front of the ruins of their mansion.
When she saw Edgard, she said in a voice filled with despair, “Your little brother! Your little brother is still inside!”
“My lady, please calm down. The doctor said you shouldn’t get too agitated,” a nearby servant tried to calm her. But she slapped away the servants around her and screamed, “You useless things, all of you should go save my son rather than trying to act nice now!”
When Edgard saw this, he smiled wryly at the surrounding servants.
“Please forgive the madam. She’s still shaken.” Edgard appeased the surrounding servants while patting his mother. “I’ll bring some guards to look for Ethan.”
“No! I can’t afford to put you in danger. Just send the guards and servants to search for him! We paid them to protect us, but how dare they escape while my son is in danger!”
The guards and servants looked at each other but didn’t move immediately.
When Edgard saw his mother growing more agitated, he told the surrounding servants, “Please help me look for my brother. I’ll give everyone who helps some extra payment, and I’ll also reimburse anyone who gets injured.”
Hearing Edgard’s promise, some guards and servants went to the ruined mansion amid the shaking ground. Although still young, Edgard had a pretty good and trustworthy reputation among the servants, and everyone believed his promise.
It took them more than twenty minutes before one of the maids returned with the lifeless body of a boy about ten years old.
Seeing the corpse, Edgard’s mother cried, “Ah! My son! My son!”
She ran to the maid, holding the boy’s corpse, whose head was slightly dented from an impact.
Edgard saw his brother’s corpse and mourned, ‘Although I’m prepared for the outcome, still… seeing it in person makes me feel as if everything is just a nightmare. In less than an hour, we have lost so many.’
He mourned his brother’s death together with his mother until the trembling ground subsided.
Not long after the ground stopped shaking, a loud explosion came from the Palace’s direction, drawing everyone’s attention.
***
A few minutes ago. Not long after casting two consecutive spells, Lacius calmly watched from above the capital city of the Starry Sea Empire.
Within fifteen minutes of the earthquake’s start, the factory district collapsed, and many expensive steam engines were destroyed, with workers dying in the ruins.
After twenty minutes, the noble district surrounding the palace collapsed, with almost every mansion in ruins.
The palace, which became the spell’s epicentre, collapsed soon after, killing many servants and guards working inside.
After more than an hour, 80% of the capital city was in ruins. Except for the Temple and some factories near the edge of the capital, the surviving buildings were mostly civilian houses in the city’s suburbs.
Although greatly damaged, the Temple branch built between the nobility and the residential district remained standing.
Lacius nodded in satisfaction before flying onto the ruined palace.
Below, he saw Teo fleeing with many officials, nobles, guards, and servants.
Before descending, Lacius prepared a fourth-circle fire-and-lightning-element spell and cast it towards Teo.
The spell caused a massive thunderbolt to strike the ground near Teo. The explosion killed everyone around him, except for a Peak Level 3 guard with divine strength and Teo, who had created a water shield around himself.
Even so, Lacius’s preemptive attack still left the Level 3 guard at the Peak badly injured, while Teo’s water shield immediately exploded into mists, sending him flying from the impact.
Without any unnecessary eyewitnesses, Lacius slowly descended.
Seeing Lacius’s appearance, Teo and the surviving guard looked with shock.
The person in front of them was someone every creature in the Crystal Cube world knows, with statues of him standing in every Temple.
Seeing the God of Magic, one of the two gods worshiped by the Temple, both felt awe, fear, and confusion at the same time.
While those two were frozen, Lacus wasn’t just standing still. He used his blessed power to cause a stone spike to shoot out of the ground in front of the guard and Teo.
The guard barely escaped thanks to his strength, but Teo was caught off guard and injured his left arm.
The injury brought him to his senses.
He didn’t ask how or why the God of Magic, or someone who looked like the God of Magic, had attacked him. Instead, he immediately launched a counter-offensive and shot several rotating water bullets towards Lacius.
Mid-flight, Teo cast an ice-element spell and froze all the spinning water bullets.
In response, Lacius merely waved his hand, and a wall shot up from the ground to block the ice bullets.
Lacius immediately counter-attacked, using his blessed power to make the earth wall he had summoned slide towards Teo.
The earth wall slid like an out-of-control truck moving at 100 km/h.
Teo didn’t choose to fight it head-on and instead summoned a jet of water to push him above the earth wall.
When it failed to hit Teo, Lacius shifted the earth wall’s direction and let it slide toward the Level 3 guard.
As the earth wall came close to crashing into him, the guard tried to jump out of the earth wall’s range, but Lacius suddenly controlled the earth wall to split in the middle.
The split pushed the two halves apart, sending them to move left and right instead of forward.
One of the halves struck the guard directly.
Even with his Level 3 divine strength, the guard still died instantly from the impact.
After killing his target, Lacius released control of the earth wall, but its inertia kept it sliding until it hit the ruined palace’s wall.
Amid the rising dust from the collision between the earth wall and the palace, the second round of battle between Lacius and Teo began.
Teo immediately created a water wall, froze it in front of and beneath him, then pulled out a processed magic material and began casting a spell.
Lacius saw Teo standing on the layer of ice and smiled. “Pretty smart, but you should’ve made a sphere instead of a wall.”
Lacius used his blessed power to control the unfrozen ground behind Teo and raised an earth spike that shot towards Teo.
Feeling the danger, Teo stopped imbuing the processed material with mana and evaded the earth spike.
Lacius gave Teo no breathing space, summoning reinforced earth spikes in quick succession that could easily pierce even magical metals.
After a few seconds, Teo sensed the danger and used his blessed water power to summon a jet of water beneath his feet, which let him fly to the sky.
Lacius saw this and quickly cast a second circle lightning-element spell towards Teo.
In mid-air, Teo tried to cast a spell, but sensed Lacius’s lightning attack and broke his focus to escape.
After interrupting Teo’s spellcasting attempt, Lacius muttered, “I am done with testing my power. So, it’s time to end this swiftly before more people are drawn to this area.”
At Teo’s surprised expression, Lacius unleashed his full power.
Instantly, several three-metre-thick pillars of earth shot from the ground. Within seconds, they reached fifty metres, surpassing even Teo’s altitude.
Teo evaded the earth pillars in a panic.
When he thought that was the end, the Earth pillars around him trembled and began shooting an endless stream of sharp pebbles.
Teo could only respond by creating a vortex-like water shield around himself to parry the pebbles.
While Teo was suppressed, Lacius created a reinforced, sphere-shaped earth wall around himself and launched his second move.
He cast a third-circle fire-element spell and imbued it into his Earth pillars.
With the assistance of his Earth-element-blessed power, the fire spell exploded inside the Earth pillars, hurling rocks of varying sizes in all directions.
Teo finally couldn’t escape and died instantly amid a meteor-like rain of stones, his body mangled by the impacts.
Not only Teo, but even the surrounding area was devastated by Lacius’s spell, which could only be described as summoning a small-scale meteor rain.
The spell also killed many people who tried to investigate the situation in the palace.
Leaving the protection of his Earth sphere, Lacius took Teo’s corpse and flew away.
It took a while before some people began to gather around the palace again.
This time, some people recorded the aftermath and posted it on the internet, making the destruction of the Starry Sea Empire’s palace known to the public.