Chapter 97

Maltiel had made his choice.

To ignore the chilling bones clawing from beneath his feet, and the orc charging toward him, throwing his life away.

From the start, Maltiel had held little expectation of surviving this battlefield.

Three Grand Sovereigns had fallen. It was practically a foregone conclusion that the war situation would tilt toward the allied forces, and even if he survived, he wouldn’t be able to reverse that great tide.

Maltiel didn’t possess the power to overturn a flowing river.

However, he could erect a bank, strong enough to weaken the current.

‘If only Bean dies, the tide of war will one day turn back to our favor.’

Even the furiously flowing river of today would gradually lose its strength. Once the Sword Saint grew old and perished, they could reclaim the advantage on that very day.

For Maltiel, that was enough.

It didn’t necessarily have to be him standing on the tranquil plains fifty or a hundred years hence.

Maltiel gathered the remaining thirty percent of his magical power, all that was left inside him, and concentrated it at his fingertips.

The bones that were crawling up Maltiel’s body pressed down, trying to twist his finger in another direction.

As the slender finger bones tugged at Maltiel’s finger, skeletal soldiers crawled out of thin air, throwing themselves forward in an attempt to topple Maltiel.

The Grand Sovereign’s concentration would not crumble from such clumsy sabotage.

Maltiel gathered all the magic within his body, compressed it, and discharged it from his fingertip.

A pitch-black light engulfed the battlefield.

‘…’

Maltiel frowned, buried within the pitch-black light.

An inexplicable sense of unease had instantly burrowed deep into his chest.

Surely, Bean had been struck directly by his magic. No matter how much the boy had increased his reaction speed, surpassing even the realm of superhumans, evading his magic from that distance, in that stance, was next to impossible.

The moment Maltiel’s magic touched the boy’s body, everything would have ended.

If Bean had wanted to avoid the attack, he should have anticipated the timing of Maltiel’s spell and moved a step ahead. But in the final moment, Maltiel saw the boy standing there like a wooden statue, gathering lightning in his hands, focusing solely on converting the magic discharged from his palm into lightning.

The white-haired boy seemed to have no intention of dodging the attack, concentrating only on converting the magic released from his hand into lightning.

…Indeed. The boy seemed to have no intention of dodging the attack.

Yet, it wasn’t as if he’d given up and accepted death. A resolute determination blazed in the boy’s eyes as he prepared his magic.

“Fifteen seconds.”

The boy’s quiet voice drifted out.

A thin, transparent azure shield embraced the boy’s body, gathering the storm within his grasp.

“…I wagered he couldn’t deploy a barrier while using another spell.”

After the unease came a slight helplessness that washed over Maltiel. He still hadn’t grasped the conditions for that barrier, the one that always seemed to protect the boy at the crucial moment.

“My last card ain’t playing.”

Perhaps, had time allowed, Maltiel would have surely deciphered the weakness of the ‘Blessing of Spirits’ and exploited it.

However, as he had stated time and again, time was not on Maltiel’s side. He had no leeway to leisurely analyze each of the boy’s spells.

“Let’s finish this.”

Maltiel desperately tried to flee from the boy’s grasp, but the bones encasing his body hindered his movements.

For a fleeting moment, the Archlord’s body was frozen in place.

As if he couldn’t miss this chance, the boy kicked off with his slender legs and lunged toward Maltiel.

For the first time, the boy was the one closing the distance.

A dangerous act, but a supremely calculated one.

Maltiel had absorbed his lieutenant and resurrected with his health fully restored. Though he had depleted all his magic power, his formidable physical abilities remained.

The amount of time that Rex’s horn could restrain Maltiel’s movements was, at most, only around 0.5 seconds.

Too little time to prepare an attack powerful enough to utterly incinerate the Archlord in his fully restored state, leaving not a trace.

‘Bloom isn’t fundamentally an offensive spell. It is, in effect, a buff skill that awakens the mage and burns all the mana within them into lightning.’

There are two processes required for an attack utilizing magic.

The first, the process of converting mana within the body into elements like fire, lightning, and so forth.

The second, the process of shaping that elementally transformed power into a defined form.

The Bloom only dramatically shortens that first process, acting as an accelerant to amplify a mage’s capabilities. To shape that overflowing power into lightning striking from the sky or a surge of current erupting from fingertips was another story entirely.

‘Maltiel will be rooted in place for barely half a second. Not nearly enough time to craft a powerful enough attack to completely incinerate Maltiel’s, near-perfect body.’

And so, the boy reached out a hand toward Maltiel and rushed forward.

Simply to deliver this surging power, as completely and as quickly as possible, to his opponent.

This was the closest thing to a correct move the boy could make, but…

‘Coming.’

From Maltiel’s perspective, it was not an unanswerable one.

The boy was fundamentally slow.

He may have pushed his reaction speed beyond the limits of life itself through bio-electricity, but that only applied to reaction speed.

Too much time passed as the boy ran toward Maltiel and reached out his hand.

Vin was well aware of this fact. To expect Maltiel not to read his sluggish movements would be arrogance verging on outright idiocy.

The boy nonetheless deemed it ‘irrelevant.’

Even if he saw his every move, his body was bound, unable to dodge or retaliate, so he thought.

*Crackle…*!

Indeed, the boy’s fingers soon touched Maltiel’s chest.

In that fleeting instant, an immense amount of energy, an amount no living being could possibly withstand, flooded into Maltiel’s chest where the boy’s hand made contact.

And the Archduke’s body was torn apart as easily as a withered leaf.

Flesh, bone, skin, or hide.

Not even a trace remained to testify that a living thing had once existed there. Only a desolate, low crackle echoed faintly.

“Not bad.”

The instant a sense of relief began to bloom in the boy’s chest, the certainty that his judgment hadn’t been wrong, that wretched, sickening voice reverberated once more in his ears.

‘…Core.’

The boy noticed a sphere, no bigger than the segment of a finger, arcing away in the periphery of his vision.

Maltiel readily conceded that his ‘body,’ anchored to bones, couldn’t evade Bean’s attack.

Therefore, he contorted his muscles and bones, forcing the core, lodged within him, to eject from his form.

Discard the body, preserve the core.

The most significant factor allowing Maltiel to make this decision was the boy’s sluggish movements.

It gave him ample time to coolly assess the situation, to devise a breakthrough.

Time enough to calculate the odds of his chosen escape succeeding, and even to consider the best course of action afterward.

Ultimately, the boy was simply…

“Too slow.”

That was always the problem when standing on a battle field of overlords and generals.

“In the end, you’re just a pathetic mortal. You can never be truly perfect. The beings of this era have too many structural flaws. It would be far better to purge them all and begin anew.”

From the core ejected from Maltiel’s form, bones and flesh sprouted. A newly grown, jet-black arm, aimed for the boy’s neck, rose with unhurried ease.

“That’s true. We can never be truly perfect.”

The boy replied calmly, watching Maltiel recreate flesh and bones from the jet-black core.

“Me, and even those impressive generals, are ultimately just insignificant humans.”

*Crack!*

“So, we live our lives receiving someone’s help.”

The sound of rusted, blunted steel crushing bone and flesh echoes.

The steel prosthetic arm pierced through Maltiel’s nascent body, extracting the core hidden within.

“…What.”

The owner of the prosthetic, emblazoned with the number 6 in large digits, was Rex, son of Belzark.

“An Orc once told me, all who dwell on this continent progress by supplementing each other’s deficiencies.”

*Crrrack…!*

Immediately following, the Orc’s prosthetic arm warped and groaned. Screws spilled out, and a long, unidentifiable pipe clattered onto the floor.

“Life thrives by relying on one another. Something you’ll never understand.”

“…A pathetic excuse masking imperfection.”

*Clang!*

Rex, as if utterly disgusted with Maltiel’s voice, shattered the jet-black orb within his prosthetic into a million pieces.

The flesh, which had been attempting to sprout around the core until the very end, decayed instantly, transforming into gray ashes that vanished.

“Haa, hiss… haa…”

Rex stood, his broken legs unbending. The gaping hole in his abdomen was infected with poison, turning a dark, abyssal hue.

Rex’s arm slowly collapses. Soon, heavy steel started to flow down from his shoulder, until the prosthetic fell to the ground with a thud.

The sound of tearing steel rings clearly in the boy’s ears. The Orc, no longer possessing the strength to lift his head, simply stared at the floor.

“…Rest now.”

The boy quietly spoke, watching Rex as he gasped for breath, a hole pierced through his abdomen and poison coursing through his entire body.

Upon hearing the General’s command, Rex finally cracked a faint smile, as if relieved, and let his legs give way.

Rex Beljark, eighteen days, give or take, since arriving in Valerand.

The fourth Great Lord had perished.