The titanic dragon that loomed over half of the city moved leisurely through the sky...toward the royal castle. As I watched from the coach, a small “No!” escaped me.

  The royal castle of the Kingdom of Clays had originally been built similarly to a fortress, and in times of emergency, it served as a command center from which my father—the highest authority in the Kingdom’s military—could issue orders to its surroundings.

  If my father ran away now, it was possible that he would make it out in time. His physical ability was more than enough for him to escape...but I knew that he would never choose to. From the look of things, I thought it likely that much of the citizenry was still within the city. In a situation where they had to be evacuated, my father would always stay to act as their shield.

  After all, he was himself one of the greatest military assets in the city and the Kingdom, as well as one of the strongest individuals in the entire world. Although he had retired from active duty, he showed no signs of having weakened, and with him were the Six Sovereigns, whose combat prowess made them worthy of their titles.

  I already knew what was going to happen: my father the king would lead the Six Sovereigns into a direct confrontation with the Dragon of Calamity, all so that as many people as possible could escape the city.

  But even so...

  “Please...run...” I whispered.

  No matter how much of a veteran and hero my father was, he was no match for his opponent. All that awaited him was certain death. The city would fall, and its king would die. The Kingdom of Clays would—

  “A dragon, huh? This is my first time seeing one. They’re so big.”

  My mind had been full of nothing but projections of the worst, but Instructor Noor’s voice brought me back to my senses. Amid my inner turmoil, I mustered all of my effort to speak in the calmest tone I could manage.

  “My father is over there. If that dragon reaches him—”

  My next words caught in my throat and stayed there.

  “Should I go help him?” Instructor Noor asked.

  “No, I...fear it is already too late.”

  I wondered why I had even bothered to state the obvious. What could possibly come of telling Instructor Noor about my father? We were still far away from the city—there was nothing we could do from where we were. And even supposing we did reach him, we would still be powerless to change anything.

  “I’m pretty sure I can just barely make it,” Instructor Noor said. “If I run, that is.”

  I stared at him in surprise. “Truly? From so far away?”

  “Yeah.”

  From what I could tell, he was entirely serious.

  “If you do the same thing you did when we fought that goblin, I think I can get there in time,” he finished, speaking as though it were the easiest feat in the world.

  Although my thoughts were preoccupied with my unease, his words reached me. He couldn’t possibly mean...

  “Do you mean my [Windblast]?” I asked. “I suppose I can use it, yes, b-but...”

  The spell wasn’t supposed to be used in such a manner. Back then, I’d only fired it at Instructor Noor’s back because the dire situation had demanded it. Moreover, he had just fought back-to-back intense battles against a Black Death Dragon and Deadman Zadu, which were bound to have drained him considerably. How could I ask him to head straight toward the Dragon of Calamity?

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I’ll only get in the way if I go...” Instructor Noor began. He was the picture of calm, as though the current situation didn’t bother him at all. Smiling at me, he raised the Black Blade in one hand as he continued, “But there’s still a chance that I’ll be able to do something to help. That city’s done a lot for me—and so has your dad—so I’d like to do what I can.”

  At that moment, I remembered just who was standing before me.

  “You’re...right,” I said.

  Just like that, my hesitation was gone. Why had I ever doubted whether we could make it in time? Of course we could. After all, Instructor Noor had just said so. My decision was immediate—I would do everything in my power to get him there.

  [Windblast] was an advanced, wind-attributed offensive spell. Ordinarily, it wasn’t supposed to be fired at people; it was high-class lethal magic that contained enough force to blow away an entire stone fortress or, on a direct hit, blast the average monster into tiny pieces. That was why, back in the forest, I had been so hesitant about using it on Instructor Noor. Even after agreeing to his plan, I didn’t think I’d put even half of my strength into the spell...

  But I wouldn’t hold back anymore. There was no need to. Last time, Instructor Noor had walked away without so much as a single scratch on him. A spell that would have seriously injured anyone else had to him been no more than a helpful tailwind. And that wasn’t all—everything about him deviated from the norm. My narrow-minded common sense couldn’t take his measure. So, to live up to his expectations, I prepared myself, body and soul, to fire a [Windblast].

  There was no need for any hesitation or restraint. Not when the person in front of me was none other than my Instructor Noor.

  “All right,” I said. “Ines, lend me a hand.”

  “As you wish, my lady.”

  Following the orders I gave her, Ines used her [Divine Shield] to create multiple barriers of light. She then formed them into a single cylinder, which she placed on its side. I got Instructor Noor to stand at one end, which was pointing toward the royal capital, while I stood with both of my hands on the other.

  “Here I go,” I said. “The impact will be incomparably stronger than last time. Do forgive me.”

  “What?”

  The next instant, I put all of my focus into preparing myself. I would need to gather all of my mana and fire it at Instructor Noor’s back.

  I formed multiple instances of [Magic Barrier] on the palms of my hands and—as an extra precaution—gave each a coating of [Reflect] and [Reflect Magic]. My [Windblast] was going to be amplified and compressed by Ines’s cylindrical [Divine Shield], an absolute protective barrier, so I needed to be ready for the impact.

  Next, to maximize the output of my spell, I layered on [Enhance], [Charge], and [Burst], then used [Condense] to compress the mana I had gathered in my palms. At the same time, to dramatically increase its power, I activated [Multicast]—a skill that Instructor Oken, the Spell Sovereign, had taught me. Three spells in each hand was the limit of what I could currently manage. Adding both hands together meant I was capable of a sixfold casting.

  I was focused on the upcoming task—on firing every single speck of power through Ines’s cylinder of light and into Instructor Noor’s back. This was the absolute limit of what I could do, at least insofar as what I’d been able to think up on the spot.

  In the time that it took me to take a single, deep breath, I’d completed all of the preparations. This was as far as my ability could take me. At best, it would only break the speed of sound; it wouldn’t be enough to reach the Dragon of Calamity. But with Instructor Noor in the equation...

  “Here I go...” I said. “[Windblast].”

  I fired my sixfold-cast spell, enhanced with everything I had. Almost immediately, I felt a tremendous impact through both of my hands as they were violently blown away from the cylinder of light. The bones in them had shattered, and Instructor Noor, who had taken the spell directly in his back...

  Had vanished without a trace. It was as though he had simply disappeared into thin air.

  “Instructor...?”

  Not even a beat later, a large crater appeared in the road leading toward the royal capital. Then another, and another still. The massive depressions emerged in quick succession, like a giant leaving footsteps in its wake, and the earth between them split apart, creating a lengthy fissure which stretched toward the city like a bolt of lightning.

  The ground juddered and rocked, and all the trees within my field of vision shook as if they had been struck by a terribly violent earthquake. From the sheer force of the vibrations, it felt like a vast meteorite had crashed into the earth.

  At the same time, far off in the distance, I saw something leap high into the air. It was the silhouette of a person, wielding a sword in one hand.

  “May fortune favor you, Instructor.”

  The shape continued straight ahead. Then, in the blink of an eye, it vanished into the backdrop cast by the Dragon of Calamity in the sky above the royal capital.

  Chapter 33: The King’s Final Moments

  From the highest point in the capital, the king looked out over the city he ruled. The royal castle’s spire had been constructed to facilitate the issuing of citywide orders during emergencies, and from it one could clearly grasp the state of the surroundings.

  Thick black smoke as far as the eye could see. Houses, churches, and marketplaces engulfed in flame. The sheer number of homes that had been destroyed was beyond counting, and the sounds of furious combat could be heard from all over the city. And in the sky, there was the titanic black dragon that had appeared out of thin air.

  The king stared, burning the images into his mind. “So this is the ‘trifle’ he spoke of?” he wondered aloud. “How poorly I have judged his character. I never imagined that he would resort to such a blatant use of force.”

  “He” was Emperor Deridas III, the ruler of the Magic Empire. As the king gazed at the approaching dragon, he ruminated over the final—and failed—negotiations he’d had with the emperor several days prior, as well as the man’s final parting words.

  “Such absurdity they would try to force down our throats,” the king muttered. “Relinquish our dungeon and all of its resources? Preposterous.”

  For the Kingdom of Clays, acceding to such a demand would be equivalent to closing the book on a thousand years of storied history.

  Unlike the three nations that bordered it, the Kingdom of Clays was small. It was less than a tenth of the size of one of its neighbors, and its natural resources—waterways, mines, forests, and more—were scarce. Despite all this, it had a sole, critical asset: the Dungeon of the Lost, said to be the oldest dungeon in the world. It had been by trading the ancient relics and magical tools found within and enriching its treasury, and also by maximizing the use of most of its territory as farmland, that the Kingdom had managed to sustain itself throughout history despite its meager size.

  The Dungeon of the Lost was the reason why the royal capital was called “the Adventurer’s Holy Land.” It was also the origin point of the Kingdom’s founding. Even after countless generations, it stood as the core of the Kingdom’s economy and a keystone of the people’s livelihoods. Every citizen in the land benefited greatly from its gifts.

  Yet the Empire had demanded everything. For the Kingdom, conceding wouldn’t have just impacted the lives of the populace—it would have guaranteed the collapse of the very Kingdom itself. The emperor had been fully aware of this, but he had made the demand anyway.

  Deridas III was mad with greed...but the king still remembered a time when that hadn’t been the case. Although the emperor’s tendency to make outrageous demands hadn’t changed, the man had once been perfectly capable of reaching common ground. At the very least, the king’s impression of him had been that he was a ruler who balanced ambition against reason.

  However, the emperor grew older, and each year took a greater toll on him than the last. Backed by his empire’s sophisticated industrial technologies, he had annexed the neighboring nations that possessed dungeons and zealously used their ancient relics and magical tools to raise the Empire’s research to even greater heights. And with each successful reproduction of such resources, the Empire’s might—both armed and political—had become greater.

  That was when the emperor truly changed. He stopped hiding his greed and ambition, and became a man who scorned even the idea of maintaining the equilibrium between his empire and its neighbors. Perhaps he’d considered such notions to be unnecessary after acquiring the power to enforce his selfish desires.

  As the Empire had grown in strength and thrown its weight around with increasing frequency, the Kingdom’s other two neighbors had started to follow suit. A nonaggression pact was formed between Deridas, Mithra, and Sarenza, then the three nations proceeded to annex the smaller territories within their reach in a brazen grab for natural resources, political influence, and armed might.

  “Do they truly crave power so dearly?”

  The focus of the three nations, as well as the source of the Magic Empire’s might, were dungeons and the resources found within them. From their depths, one could recover any number of earthshaking relics, many of which were without equal in their usefulness when it came to invading another country. If the proper research was invested into them, they could even be reproduced, augmenting a nation’s military might and making war a trifling affair.

  Such was the dark path that Deridas III had decided to follow—and even now, he showed no signs of straying from it. Considering his immense greed, it was no surprise that he now wanted the Dungeon of the Lost so desperately; he was convinced that it would grant him even more power.

  But what good would come of perpetuating such a cycle? Power existed to ensure the happiness of a nation’s citizens. Keeping that power in check and only wielding it when necessary was a perfectly valid way to rule too.

  However, when the king had voiced that belief, the emperor had sneered.

  “Such notions are why you have been eternally stagnant, stuck as the ruler of a tiny kingdom. You were never fit to be a king.”

  And the emperor’s tirade hadn’t ended there.

  “‘Crushing a tiny kingdom such as yours would be a mere trifle. If you fail to accept my terms, do so having made peace with your fate,’” the king repeated, remembering the threat. “Hmm. A man of his word, that emperor.”

  The king had understood that the emperor was dangerous. He had expected him to devise some kind of scheme, but this massacre... Not only had it come sooner than the king had ever anticipated, but it was also more merciless and much grander in scale.

  Although the emperor had made his intentions perfectly clear, deep down, the king hadn’t taken him seriously. He had been convinced that the man was still human—that he only wanted the Dungeon of the Lost beneath the Kingdom, and that he was merely indifferent to all of the culture and history residing above it.

  Perhaps the man had been right, and the king wasn’t fit to rule. King Clays was a stubborn man, and politics had never suited him. It was much more his nature to mindlessly swing his sword than to order his vassals about. Even just a short while ago, he had been running around the city, combating the monster outbreak—he’d slain three Goblin Emperors himself.

  But that had been the most that the king’s aging body could manage. He’d left the rest to his vassals and his son Prince Rein, choosing to ascend to the royal castle’s spire so that he could fully dedicate himself to the role of coordinator, observing the battlefield and adjusting the positions of his troops. However...

  “This is where my reign ends...”

  The truth was, it was Prince Rein at the helm of this situation. After the prince’s coming-of-age at fifteen, the king had entrusted him with the command of the Kingdom’s intelligence operations and domestic affairs, in the hope that the roles would help him gain experience as the successor to the throne—and the prince had quickly exceeded the king’s expectations.

  Seeing this, the king had then given the prince the authority to command the Six Army Corps of the Royal Capital, along with orders to slay a thunder dragon. The prince had achieved the task with splendid skill—beyond the king’s wildest expectations, in fact.

  The king knew that his son had already far surpassed him. The Kingdom no longer needed King Clays to flourish.

  Due to the prince’s excellent foresight, the current crisis had been prepared for well in advance. Prince Rein’s orders to evacuate the citizens had also been timely and well judged, by the king’s reckoning. Casualties had been kept to a minimum so far, and although cleanup of the monster outbreak was an uphill battle, the Kingdom’s forces were steadily making ground. Perhaps they even had the upper hand now.

  In contrast to the situation, however, the king was in a sorry state.

  “It was my failure that led to all of this. I do not even have the right to beg their forgiveness.”

  The Dragon of Calamity loomed before the king’s eyes, steadily drawing closer. It was the worst crisis a nation could ever face—the embodiment of despair itself, a symbol of ruin spoken of in legends across the entire continent—and it had been brought here by the king’s misstep in negotiations with the emperor. As he gazed at its titanic silhouette, a sudden thought occurred to him.

  If only they were here with me now.

  Sig, the Sword Sovereign.

  Dandalg, the Shield Sovereign.

  Mianne, the Bow Sovereign.

  Carew, the Sovereign of Shadows.

  Oken, the Spell Sovereign.

  Sain, the Sovereign of Salvation.

  The Six Sovereigns were the king’s vassals and good friends, with whom he had fought many a life-and-death battle. They were comrades he could trust like no other. Had they been here with him now, then perhaps there would have been a sliver of hope to the situation.

  But the Six were currently scattered across the city. To quell the chaos as quickly as possible, they had been dispatched to separate districts to take command of their own respective battlefields.

  Things were no longer how they had used to be. The Six now held major posts within the framework of the Kingdom—a Kingdom that could not afford to have all of its best assets tied down in a single place.

  The king thought back on what he’d already long since realized—that the sequence of chaotic events that had engulfed the city in the flames of war had likely been no more than a large-scale diversion meant to keep apart the Six Sovereigns, the Kingdom’s main military assets.

 

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