Chapter 236

#236 Chapter: Tin Knight and the Witch by the River (6)

“Kill Giras and his lackeys, stir the country with the bone flute. Unravel Mombi’s true identity, destroy our old capital, and now you dare to attack even the Magical Tower right before my eyes.”

Rotbart Lognir spoke with a remarkably calm demeanor.

“Truly an incredible achievement. A magnificent display. You’ve made it this far with barely a handful of people. Regardless of preferences, I can’t help but acknowledge that.”

There was no hint of restlessness in him.

Even with all he had built coming crashing down, he remained rational in front of Adelheid, who could be called the root of all this chaos.

Perhaps this was what one would call the qualification of a king.

“Adelheid von Lenart. I know about you. I’ve done my research. You are the girl who lost her family to the plan we devised and fell into ruin. Your anger towards me is truly justified.”

Like a wise and benevolent king, he recognized Adelheid’s actions.

He judged her quest for vengeance to be valid.

“However… even if the direction is right, it doesn’t mean that the blood spilled along the way can be justified. Many lives met their end because of your actions. Among them, there were those who had no relation to your father’s death and merely lived as members of the Magical Tower. And that’s not all. A city was demolished, innocent residents there were killed, and wars broke out due to your actions, causing tremendous damage.”

Yet, this was a clever deception.

While not denying the objective itself, he condemned her sins with sharp words.

“How far do you intend to go? How far will you proceed? Your father and the soldiers from your fief have been slaughtered, do you wish to eradicate my kin as well? Will you massacre even innocent children, like my granddaughter whom you just passed by, who know nothing of this?”

In response to Rotbart’s words, Adelheid remained silent.

She simply listened to him without expressing her anger to tell him to shut up or crumbling under the guilt of facing the truth she had been avoiding.

Rather, it was this silence that heightened Rotbart’s wariness.

And finally, Adelheid opened her mouth.

“If it were a knight, he would have just started fighting without listening to your story.”

An out-of-context remark that seemed rather random.

“But I didn’t want that. I felt that wouldn’t be sufficient for understanding. So, from now on, I will explain what will happen if you fall to me.”

Though addressed to Rotbart, her words were closer to soliloquy.

“I do not intend to wipe out your bloodline entirely. If there are those who surrender, I will accept them. They will declare the truth about Friedel’s tragedy and take responsibility for that sin.”

Her hand holding the sword remained limp, and there was no sense of tension from her body.

“Your name will be passed down as the instigator who, with short-sighted ambition for the throne, lost even the wealth and glory you clutched in hand and deprived your descendants of any chance of glory. Even if the day comes when your descendants rise again, they will not celebrate you. Rather, they might spit on you as the reason for their downfall.”

With a lightness as if she were casually chatting on a morning stroll, she determined Rotbart’s future.

“‘If that old man hadn’t acted so foolishly,’ ‘If he had just stayed still, he could have continued to rule as the head of the Tower,’ ‘Why do we have to suffer because of that jerk?’ ‘Everyone is cursing us, so why should we say we’re his descendants? How about we change the castle name instead?’”

Her purple eyes shone lazily as they fixed on Rotbart.

“You will go down in history not as a king but as a traitor. The name Lognir will be remembered as a symbol of disgrace, not glory. Your descendants will not recognize your deeds or efforts; they will instead view you as an incompetent, pathetic, and ugly old man, using you as a cautionary tale. Do you think what I say is unrealistic?”

Rotbart did not respond.

However, his gaze had dulled.

The rational old man, thus, acknowledged that the words spilling from the girl before him were not mere fantasies but a reality that could sufficiently come to pass.

The fact that he could never accept that future as well.

“I believe you now understand it’s not the time to worry about others.”

Realizing the answer in his silence, Adelheid smiled.

There was an unexpectedly poignant quality to that smile.

“If you understand what your situation is, struggle all you want. ─I’ve come to shatter that head-on.”

And that poignancy transformed into ferocity, like a beast in an instant.

“…Did I manage to awaken a sleeping lion?”

Rotbart lamented as he raised his right hand and pierced his left chest.

With a soft gasp, fresh blood flowed forth.

Not a single drop of blood spilled onto the throne; it was absorbed by the crystalline pillar behind him.

The crimson-dyed crystalline structure seemed to briefly melt and, moments later, greedily engulfed Rotbart’s body as if it were alive.

The crystal melded into his empty heart, and soon enough, his very flesh fused with the crystalline pillar.

Rotbart carelessly tossed away the red flesh that was once his heart.

“Very well. I will acknowledge my mistakes. But that’s all. You may lead my death, but you will not leave even a scratch on the glory of Lognir—!!”

Rotbart’s voice echoed throughout the entire floor.

As he became one with the crystalline pillar, the core of the Magical Tower and the essence of the ley lines, his magical power surged to hundreds of times its original state.

With every step he took and movement he made, a chilling red aura surrounded him.

In response, Adelheid was already channeling her own magic.

Golden flames and purple lightning intertwined, forming a force unimaginable from her small frame.

The clash between the aging king of the Magical Tower and the young lion created a tremendous shockwave throughout the tower.

Boom!

***

The monopoly of the tower’s wizards was at a serious level.

Even a 2nd Grade Wizard would receive knight-level treatment in other territories, and finding a 3rd Grade Wizard would be rare even in a Count’s household.

However, in the tower, 2nd Grade Wizards were merely at everyone’s feet, 3rd Grade Wizards were seen as somewhat remarkable professors, and it was rumored that each tower had dozens of 4th Grade Wizards, meaning about 90% of the continent’s capable wizards were concentrated in the tower.

Honestly, if we take into account the period before the South Witch began mass-producing wizards in the Empire, it wasn’t just a rumor but a fact.

With the tower, a treasure trove of talent, clashing head-on, high-level magics that an ordinary person could never hope to witness exploded everywhere.

Great flames and storms of cold were boring enough, and careless thrown magical swords flew freely through the sky piercing enemies, or Wizards without blindfolds would glare, petrifying enemies collectively, and countless bizarre phenomena occurred—enemies caught in hallucinations and illusions ended up stabbing themselves.

One of the characteristics of wizards, that their lethality was remarkable while their defenses were relatively weak, also contributed to maximizing the damage on both sides.

Even knights who were skilled in enhancing and protecting themselves had to brace for death as they were showered with high-level magic raining down like blind arrows, leading to dreadful rapid losses on both sides.

Regular soldiers amounted to nothing more than meat shields, and even the magically armed soldiers of the defending side were only holding out a little better; yet, with the controlling side’s firepower outpacing that of the defenders, the overall damage remained similar.

Reluctantly, expensive golems, magical automatons, homunculi, and spirits had to take on tank roles, but to wizards, this was like using cash to plug a hole in the wall instead of newspaper.

“What are you doing! Hurry up and raise the undead! There are corpses everywhere!!”

“Why do you think we accepted you Necromancers? If not now, when will you be useful?!”

Thus, the controlling wizards pressed the necromancers hard.

Unlike the defending tower, mostly filled with enchanters and enchantresses, the tower of control was a mixed bag of various schools.

Among them, a few necromancers were included, and they had to bear the scorn of their peers.

“Dude, I just revived 10 bodies! Didn’t you see them turn to ash the moment we sent them out?!”

“Isn’t it easy to use magic with corpses lying around? You crazy guys. Why can’t you just burn the enemies all over the place? Do you think mana just flows into us like this?!”

It’s undeniable that a battlefield where corpses were strewn about and the aura of death was prevalent was the ideal setting for necromancers.

There was no need to gather materials from elsewhere, and the magical energy emanating from the deceased spirits greatly reduced the mana consumption for necromancers while simultaneously increasing the strength of the undead.

But that had its limits.

In a situation where wide-area dealers could wipe out dozens of soldiers with a single attack spell laid across the field, the undead could hardly do anything more than serve as moving firewood. What could they do before being obliterated without even swinging their swords at the enemies?

No matter how favorable the conditions were for the necromancers, in these circumstances, they could only do worse than pouring water into a bottomless pit.

And fighting with methods other than summoning the undead, such as curses or poisons, was problematic due to all the enemies being wizards.

Unlike regular folks, their bodies contained a large quantity of mana, so light curses were easily shrugged off, and higher curses that would work even on them required several days of rituals with proper altars to be effective, which made them unfeasible in such urgent situations.

While they were stewing in the sorrow of being from the weakest school—

[“If the ‘Tin Knight’ is rampaging on the battlefield, I recommend cleaning things up so the transforming witch can operate freely!”]

“Got it. Just have to clear the surroundings, right?”

The wave of black magic spread across the battlefield.

“Ugh!”

“This is…!”

The first to realize the nature of it were the fellow necromancers.

As if they had seen the impossible, their reactions made other wizards ask what the situation was, but that was unnecessary.

Because it took barely a few seconds after the magic spread out that the corpses lying beneath their feet began to rise en masse.

And across the battlefield, tens of thousands of corpses rose up at once.

Expressions of shock emanated simultaneously from both the controlling and defending formations.

“Oh, I messed up. My range was too wide.”

As the black witch waved her hand nonchalantly, the corpses from the defending side rushed across the ground, neatly lining up in a spot where they wouldn’t cause trouble.

In contrast, the corpses from the controlling side rolled their eyes and viciously clawed and bit into what had once been their comrades.

The controlling wizards hastily tried to wipe out the undead with spells, but even those with only parts of their limbs remaining refused to stop moving.

As one side began to unilaterally reinforce their tankers while both sides had similar firepower, the previously evenly matched frontlines started to shift dramatically.

Dorothea used the additional undead to steer the overall flow of troops where she desired.

Then, a massive gap opened up between Mombi, who was rampaging in the center of the battlefield, and the White Knight.

Mombi seemed to notice the situation and tried to burrow into the formation of the defending side, but a Tin Knight stepped in to block her.

Mombi’s claw met the sword of the Tin Knight.