Chapter 94

High Lord Samael.

A new variable appearing on a battlefield where a single moment’s decision decides everything.

As if unwilling to grant even a moment for thought, the monster raised a finger towards Rex, who lay slumped on the ground.

Rex immediately blew the horn he held, and a moment later, pure white bone erupted, tearing through the ground and the air.

Several slender finger bones latched onto Samael’s arm.

Bone attached to bone, and in an instant, a colossal skeleton soldier, over three meters tall, was formed.

The soldier seized the High Lord’s arm and hoisted it upwards. The dark light that had been gathering at the High Lord’s fingertips exploded high into the sky. A gaping hole appeared in the storm clouds, and for a brief moment, a glimpse of blue sky could be seen through the opening.

Thump!

Samael struck the giant skeleton soldier’s ribcage with his other fist. The ribs shattered into dozens of pieces like shotgun pellets.

“……!”

Fragmented bones sprayed skyward, glancing off the exposed bedrock.

Booo!

Gazing at Samael, Rex blew the horn once more, with greater force. He had no axe in hand, and his leg was broken.

The enemy before him was not one to be trifled with, not even with bare hands.

‘…This isn’t the time to be held up by the likes of him.’

Rex entrusted the High Lord Samael to the legion of skeletons clawing from the rift, and, pushing off the ground with his shattered legs, he rose.

For a moment, he looked to the sky. To glance away from a High Lord was not wise, but he couldn’t help himself.

“…Damn it.”

And then Rex saw it.

Crimson blood etching a thin, long line against the black sky. The dark nails of Malthiel plucking that red thread from the boy’s body.

‘…Blood.’

At once, Rex’s large frame went rigid.

‘Where was he struck? Neck? Cheek? Damn it, the wound is hidden. How deep is it? Is there poison? Malthiel could have injected poison in that brief instant.’

Defeat.

The word flashed through the mind of the valiant warrior, who even with broken legs burned with resolve.

‘…I should have stopped him from going after Malthiel in the first place.’

Regret boiled up from within his chest.

‘I made the wrong decision. Knowing that the Archduke was too much for Lord Bean, why didn’t I stop him? I should have dissuaded the General more forcefully. If only soldiers had come, the Archduke wouldn’t have acted so directly.’

The possibility of other choices tormented him belatedly.

‘…Was it to avenge a grudge? Did I let personal feelings interfere with the mission? Did I make such a moronic mistake?’

Before long, anger at himself pushed aside the regret, taking root in his chest.

‘Is this the end for the Allied Forces? How long will it be until someone of his caliber is born again? Or… can someone with Lord Bean’s talent even be born again?’

In the next moment, fear and worry for the future were layered on top of his self-directed rage.

“Thoughts weigh heavy on you.”

Rex, swept away by a tidal surge of emotions, hadn’t even registered the High Lord approaching from directly behind.

“…Damn it!”

By the time Rex belatedly snapped back to awareness, it was far too late.

Samael’s fist ripped through Rex’s abdomen.

Rex’s horn shatters into a thousand fragments.

* * *

Approximately three seconds before a gaping hole tore through Rex’s body.

“Wasted time on trivialities.”

Having summoned Samael, Maltiel withdrew the hand that had pointed towards Rex and swung it towards the boy.

“Repel him.”

Once more, the boy managed to unleash his full power from his fingertips. Even if the boy’s reaction time was slow, he wasn’t so foolish as to passively watch Maltiel, distracted as he was summoning Samael.

The dark clouds, following the boy’s command, unleash another torrent. A blinding white lightning embraced the boy’s back before gathering at his palm, coalescing at his fingertips.

Of course, Maltiel knew full well that the boy would react to his attack with little difficulty.

Whoosh—!

Maltiel contorted his body in mid-air, evading the lightning erupting from the boy’s fingertips.

The movement of his arm, the direction of his fingertips, the balance of his body, the subtly trembling muscles in his face. Maltiel had countless clues to predict the trajectory of the boy’s attack.

No matter how gifted a sorcerer the boy was, he lacked experience, lacked physical prowess.

In the end, this was a battle that Maltiel could not lose. No matter how potent the magic he unleashed, what use was it if the attacks could never land?

“So, what have you prepared next?! Is that all?”

Maltiel, narrowly dodging the attack, let out a booming laugh, extending razor-sharp claws.

The Reaper’s Scythe descended once more upon the boy’s shoulder.

A fleeting panorama of memories began to fill the boy’s obsidian vision.

A frost, as if from behind, descended, and in that moment where all seemed destined to end…

“Overload.”

The boy’s lips barely managed to form the word.

‘Too late to unleash lightning. My claws have already touched your skin.’

Maltiel’s jet-black nails scored the boy’s flesh. Soon, vessels ruptured, and crimson blood poured forth.

The victory was decided. No matter how grand a magic the boy might use to incinerate Maltiel, he could not, at this point, stop Maltiel’s hand from tearing into his skin.

‘I have w—’

*Whoom—!*

In the next instant, Maltiel’s fingertips sliced through empty air.

“… Huh.”

Undeniably, Maltiel’s claws had made contact with the boy’s neck.

And at that moment, the battle was as good as over.

Unlike his supreme magical talent, the boy’s physique was utterly fragile and insignificant, while Maltiel’s movements were so swift that even the continent’s elite soldiers could not properly follow.

Reaction speed, stamina, strength—the boy’s body possessed none of these worthy of mention, and Maltiel was well aware of the boy’s frailty.

Thus, the moment his claws touched his neck, Maltiel was certain of victory. A simple, insignificant stab, but the boy possessed no means to evade it.

…Or so he thought.

“…”

Maltiel’s nails only grazed the boy’s skin, stopping short of inflicting any real wound.

The boy, with a swiftness like that of a wild beast, threw his head back, and Maltiel’s claws scattered the droplets of red blood clinging to them across the inky sky.

In that instant, a jolt of bewilderment seized the mind of the Archduke, the master of reason and treachery.

‘Veen’s physical abilities are beneath even the label of substandard. Pathetically low, in fact. I learned this well enough during the battle in the forest that night.’

Yet, even amidst this shock, his thoughts raced onwards.

‘Judging by his muscle mass and respiratory capacity, I can make a fair assessment. Even a carelessly launched attack like that one should have had a near zero chance of being avoided by him.’

Avoiding Maltiel’s attack.

The truth is, there are a surprising number of individuals who could make such a statement true.

Sword Saints, of course, and even the human general who handles assassination and reconnaissance within his party. The elf general specializing in sniping could have managed it as well.

And even soldiers far below the rank of general, those with a decent measure of skill, could have accomplished it a few times over.

After all, Maltiel’s attack wasn’t delivered with genuine intent, nor was its speed particularly overwhelming. The trajectory was such that a simple tilt of the head would have sufficed to evade it.

“Huh.”

Despite all this, Maltiel couldn’t stop the bewilderment from scrambling his thoughts.

It was ‘Veen,’ of all people, who had avoided his attack.

After the tidal wave of bewilderment washed through his mind, a sense of strangeness began to caress his hands and feet.

Maltiel struggled to identify the source of this sensation enveloping his entire being, rendering him deaf to the tumultuous roar of the storm clouds above.

‘Less like avoidance… more like it was averted. The sensation isn’t that of him actively doing it.’

Suddenly, the sound of sparking erupted from within the boy’s body. Electricity coiled around him.

‘His body temperature is spiking dramatically. Something, something is happening inside of him right now.’

Lightning, electricity, current.

‘Electrical current…?’

Words and phrases swirled chaotically within the Grand Warlord’s mind.

‘A heated body temperature, the faint sound of lightning still crackling within his form.’

Then, a possibility dawned on this Grand Warlord, seasoned by countless wars and battles.

“He’s tampered with bio-electricity.”

Human muscles move based on the bio-electrical currents mediated by the brain or spinal cord.

Most living things analyze external stimuli through one of the five senses, converting it into an electrical signal; the brain or spinal cord then analyzes this transformed stimulus, issuing commands to the muscles based on this analysis.

When a trained boxer is struck in the ribs, the pain arising from the ribs is the ‘stimulus,’ and the brain emitting an electrical signal to ‘endure’ or ‘stay still’ is the ‘command.’

Depending on an individual’s talent and relentless effort, the speed varies wildly, but it takes most humans at least 0.1 seconds to transmit a ‘stimulus’ to the brain and receive a corresponding ‘command’ back.

0. 1 seconds.

An insignificant amount of time to some, but an invaluable and crucial duration to elite soldiers walking the razor’s edge.

That fleeting moment, when bio-electricity travels along nerve cells, through the brain, and back, was enough to determine the victor and the vanquished.

Therefore, the boy contemplated.

Let’s simply eliminate this 0.1-second delay.

He was already so slow, with clumsy movements, he didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the brain’s judgment every time.

An audacious thought that an ordinary person couldn’t even fathom, something even the previous generation’s ninth-circle lightning mages, considered the apex of lightning magic, had never attempted.

The boy resolved to tamper with the mechanism of the bio-electricity that governed his body.

‘If an object approaches the skin at a certain speed, all the muscles immediately move to evade that stimulus.’

The ‘stimulus’ current, which should have raced toward the brain or spinal cord, was reborn, by the boy’s magic, as a ‘command’ current at the very point where the stimulus originated.

The message conveyed by this newly born ‘command’ current to the muscles was simple:

“[Shrink, now.]”

Because it bypassed the brain, no command more intricate or precise was possible.

‘Right now, this alone will suffice.’

Developed by a frail youth, whose strength and stamina fell short of even the average person’s standards.

A perilous shortcut that elevated reaction speed to a level that far surpassed the natural order of ‘living things’.

“The slightest misstep, and your nerves will all burn out.”

The boy’s dangerous shortcut was akin to a kind of ‘illegal tuning’.

Recklessly tearing apart the innards of the sturdily built ‘human’ being and strapping on aftermarket engines to suit the user’s tastes.

It would be stranger if problems *didn’t* arise.

A single error would cause the boy’s body to move uncontrollably, and in the worst case, the nerve circuits would break down, leaving him crippled.

“So?”

The boy raised his hand above his head as he spoke. His face was filled only with chilling anger and determination.

Compared to the possibility of losing the Archduke before him, the fear of becoming crippled was nothing.

“Just one day without problems, that’s all I need.”

For the sake of this moment, the boy had refrained from using magic for almost thirty days, carefully conserving his mana.

To maintain peak condition, he had dedicated himself to rest from three days before the decisive battle, and even rented a private barrack the day before, spending the entire day in meditation.

A highly concentrated ‘Bloom’, triggered by compressing an enormous amount of mana.

A delicate, reckless feat only possible in the extreme state of arousal granted by that ‘Bloom’.

That was the boy’s unique and reckless play, one that no one else in the world could imitate.

“How many more times can he react to my attacks? Maybe three. Five at best, with luck. It’s only a matter of time before something gives!”

Not long after, the boy’s fingertips, soaring towards the clouds, finally touched the rain cloud, pregnant with lightning.

“I’ll just kill you before something gives. A simple, definite solution.”

The next moment, the thick, dark cumulonimbus cloud that had settled on the battlefield vanished. The blue sky gazed down upon the battlefield once more, and in the boy’s hand, he held a mass of intense light, so brilliant it was almost forbidden to look upon.

“Disgorge it.”

The stark white light that erupted from two thousand meters above did not spread into countless branches like other lightning strikes. A single, thick bolt moved straight towards its target.

That target was, of course, Archduke Malthiel.