Chapter 213

Chapter 213
## Chapter 213

Jeron’s Ordeal (2)

—

A scattering of royal soldiers managed to survive the initial ambush and were fighting back, but their resistance was futile; total annihilation was only a matter of minutes.

Assasins systematically breached the carriages one by one, executing the passengers without an ounce of mercy. To make matters worse, the enemy mages had erected multi-layered isolation barriers around the perimeter, completely shutting down any standard method of retreat unless one resorted to “In the Hero’s Footsteps”.

Faced with this desperate bottleneck, Hesperon’s mind went into overdrive, processing the chaos at breakneck speed.

‘What on earth are they plotting, launching an assault of this scale right in the heart of the capital? How do they intend to cover up a bloodbath like this? Are they initiating a full-blown coup?’

According to the comprehensive background intelligence he had gathered earlier, Staub, the Commander of the Imperial Guard, was supposed to be a neutral party—or rather, a loyalist aligned directly with the Emperor’s inner circle.

He was even under the impression that Riley had been actively attempting to recruit the commander to her side.

‘Curse it all, the man has been entrenched deep inside the imperial palace for so long that my intel on him is far too shallow. No, analyzing their political motivations is useless right now! I have to find a way out of this trap!’

Even amidst the tumult, the mental link from “Bond of Unity” allowed him to distinctly feel Riley’s internal state.

True to her royal upbringing, the princess was desperately testing every countermeasure at her disposal, but each of her fleeting hopes kept shattering against an invisible, unyielding wall.

‘…So when that bastard mentioned thorough preparations, he wasn’t talking about defending against the Immortal King. He meant ensuring that we were completely locked down.’

It was a grim, suffocating reality. No matter how many tactical permutations he ran through his head, every single path led to a dead end.

Yet, despite the overwhelming odds… she refused to submit.

A young woman who had not even reached adulthood was fighting tooth and nail to master her terror, maintaining her dignity and resolving to resist until her final breath, even as the cold shadow of execution loomed directly over her.

If he chose this moment to tuck his tail and flee using his own escape options…

‘How pathetic would that make me?!’

As the literal architect pulling the strings behind this world’s curtain, undergoing such a humiliation was completely unacceptable!

‘I refuse to throw in the towel without throwing a punch. There is still a slim margin for a counterplay.’

However, executing that fragile strategy required one indispensable resource.

Time.

The protective ward surrounding the princess’s transport was on the verge of fracturing entirely, and two heavy knights were already marching directly toward his own carriage.

Even with his cognitive functions artificially accelerated, the enemy was closing the distance far too quickly.

-Hannibal Strauss: Tsk, what an incredibly reckless and wasteful gamble. It is far more logical for one of us to slip away unharmed than for both of us to throw our lives away here.

-Hesperon: You don’t understand. Right now, I’m nothing more than a mid-tier spellcaster. My greatest political leverage is my direct relationship with Riley, the primary claimant to the crown.

Though their consciousnesses were intertwined, allowing them to exchange complex thoughts in a fraction of a second, their fundamental priorities clashed too sharply to find immediate common ground.

Recognizing this, Hesperon broke down his reasoning in terms Hans could appreciate.

-Hesperon: If I tuck tail and run right now, I remain a nobody—just a mediocre mid-tier spellcaster. I’d rather bet the house on this long shot. If this gamble pays off, I secure a position as the most trusted confidant to the future ruler of the empire.

-Hannibal Strauss: Oh—? When you frame it like that, you actually make a compelling point. Frankly, replacing a mage of your current caliber wouldn’t take much effort anyway.

-Hesperon: …That was unnecessarily harsh.

-Hannibal Strauss: Very well. It’s a massive detour, but given the massive political dividends of a successful wager, the danger is acceptable.

-Heinrich: My skirmish just concluded. I will begin channeling the necessary preparations immediately. I pray this succeeds; I cannot bear to see any harm come to the princess.

-Heinz the Second: Hmmm, buying time, is it? We need a stalling tactic.

-Howard: Hold on! Now that I think about it, I have a prototype device I’ve been tinkering with. It’s still highly unstable and incomplete, but…

With those final words, the emergency council taking place within his super-accelerated thoughts dissolved, and reality slammed back into motion at normal speed.

—

Boom!

A heavily armored knight, who had drawn his blade and was in the middle of tearing open the door to the servants’ transport, was abruptly forced to skip backward.

An occupant had violently kicked the carriage door off its hinges, unleashing a sudden, aggressive sword strike in the same fluid motion.

However, a frontline knight of the Empire was not so easily caught off guard by a basic ambush.

“Struggling at death’s door? How tedious.”

“Keep your guard up. That’s the personal apprentice of Viscount Pristine. He handles magic.”

“A spellcaster? A mage wielding a blade…”

Before his comrade could even utter a full warning, Hesperon’s entire form erupted in a blinding surge of cerulean mana, his physical velocity multiplying instantly.

“Cheap parlor tricks! You honestly think that sluggish speed will work against me?!”

To an elite warrior, the sudden burst of speed was entirely readable.

A dense, suffocating vapor billowed from the knight’s form, and his broadsword, completely coated in a radiant, sharp aura, sheared clean through the mage’s weapon in a single collision.

Seeing his target completely disarmed and exposed, the warrior brought his blade down for a terminating strike.

Boom—!

Suddenly, a fist supercharged with multiplied kinetic force slammed directly into the center of the knight’s breastplate, accompanied by a violent eruption of pitch-black mana.

“Gah?!”

Creak—

A heavy metal gauntlet, heavily modified with reinforced, spiked knuckles specifically for brutal hand-to-hand engagements, tore into the reinforced steel armor with a sickening, grating screech.

“Wh-what kind of sorcery is…!”

The physical trauma of the punch was only the beginning of the assault.

A lethal, concentrated hex poured out from the gauntlet, bypassing the protective aura enveloping the warrior’s body to directly seize control of his nervous system and restrict his muscles.

Had it not been for his residual aura acting as a buffer, the sheer potency of the curse would have left him entirely paralyzed on the spot.

Even so, survival was already completely out of his reach.

Whoosh—!

The knight’s decapitated torso tipped backward into the dirt, painting the ground in a fountain of crimson.

“You absolute monster!”

Simultaneously, a sharp ring echoed out.

Clang!

The second knight, having sprung into motion the exact instant his partner was ambushed, engaged his weapon against a dark, ominous blade that had materialized out of thin air into Hesperon’s grip.

True to its malevolent nature, a sickening dark mana swirled around the edge of the weapon, which was already dripping with fresh blood.

The dark energy mirrored the volatile aura currently radiating from Hesperon’s own skin.

Leaning his full weight into the lock to press Hesperon down, the knight spat through clenched teeth, “A practitioner of the dark arts? Where did you unearth a foul, desecrated relic like that…!”

“Ugh, I merely borrowed it from a close acquaintance!”

The warrior grimaced in deep disgust at the flippant reply, but he did not lose his composure.

Ultimately, it changed nothing. Whether the boy reinforced his muscles with forbidden arts or attempted to block a refined warrior’s aura using the unstable malice of a cursed weapon…

Clang—! Clang! Clang—!

…he was merely an amateur swinging around a hazardous toy in front of a master-level combatant who had reached the absolute apex of martial refinement.

‘No, calling him an amateur does him an injustice. The reports labeled him a mere academic mage, but this fluid hand-to-hand transition and this precise blade work—what is the meaning of this? He isn’t just relying on enhanced reflexes to survive.’

The fact that this boy could somehow read his trajectories and actively exchange high-speed blows, even while relying heavily on the artificial assistance of heretical tools, proved he possessed extraordinary combat talent.

It was an impressive display of resilience, even if he was clearly operating at his absolute limit.

Crack—

‘But your luck runs out here.’

The knight let out a sadistic grin, noting the visible fractures spreading across the dark blade under the relentless pressure of his overwhelming aura.

It was an inevitable outcome; no object forged from dark mana could endure consecutive, direct impacts from a master-level combatant indefinitely.

‘You might have stood a fraction of a chance if you could coat your steel in a proper aura, but that pathetic trickle of magic is utterly worthless. A mere scholar trying to play the part of a vanguard knight—learn your place!’

Aiming directly for the structural flaw in the dark blade, he brought his weapon down with absolute certainty of a fatal blow.

Yet, the moment their weapons collided once more, the warrior’s pupils dilated in sudden horror as he felt the dark mana within the blade rapidly compressing and expanding outward from the fracture lines.

“What?… This energy?!”

The realization came far too late to salvage his position.

Crack!

The cursed blade burst into a thousand jagged shards under the immense internal pressure, and the fragments, slave to a specialized tracking hex woven into the forge of the weapon, detonated outward in a single, focused arc.

Boom—!

An avalanche of razor-sharp shrapnel tore through the immediate area like a directional claymore mine, carrying a devastating payload of dark mana.

This specialized suicide weapon, engineered explicitly to obliterate everything within its immediate blast zone, featured a highly restricted kill-radius to maximize its internal lethality, but…

Thud!

…its destructive payload was devastatingly absolute against anyone caught within that targeted zone.

Even a frontline warrior who had ascended to the pinnacle of master-level martial arts could not withstand it.

“Haa, haa— Raw combat levels aren’t the end-all-be-all. This is the sheer beauty of premium item optimization.”

Hesperon drew ragged, heavy breaths, staring down at the warrior’s remains, which had only avoided being torn to ribbons because of the residual density of his high-tier aura.

No matter how extensively he reinforced his physical frame with auxiliary buffs via “Introduction to Magic” and layered tactical abilities like “Hand-to-Hand Combat” and “Super Strength”, defeating elite warriors of this caliber using his raw stats alone was mathematically impossible.

To tip the scales in this crisis, he required massive external variables…

Specifically, the top-tier gear accommodations provided by “Avatar Cloud”.

‘And because these tools are optimized for dark arts, their sheer output is phenomenal.’

The performance was top-tier, which made sense given that these specific artifacts had been personally curated and masterfully upgraded by the Immortal King himself.

Naturally, tapping into such malevolent power demanded a steep toll.

Crackle—

“Hmm.”

The single-use dark blade, now reduced to a useless hilt, dissolved into fine gray ash, and a virulent, corrosive hex began creeping up his right forearm from the palm that had wielded it.

Simultaneously, a toxic stream of corruption was bleeding out from his ring, his amulet, his cuffs… and every other stat-boosting accessory he had equipped to artificially elevate his speed and destructive capacity, actively shaving away at his life expectancy.

‘Well, it’s not like my literal lifespan is of any actual consequence to me… Regardless, they are staring holes through me right now.’

Suppressing the copper taste of blood rising in his esophagus, Hesperon kept his feet planted and maintained a defensive stance.

Given the sheer noise and devastation of his counterattack, it was only natural that every remaining hostile knight in the immediate vicinity had completely locked their targets onto him.

“…A heretical artifact. Was that boy secretly a practitioner of the forbidden arts all along?”

“Negative, he lacks the foundational casting signature. Those auxiliary magic items are generating the phenomena… Though at this stage, his background is irrelevant.”

“To think Sir Wilhelm could be cut down so effortlessly…”

One veteran warrior had been dismantled in an instant, and another had been completely obliterated by an unpredictable, explosive trap.

Having watched two of their elite peers drop in rapid succession, the surrounding hostiles no longer dared to rush him carelessly.

‘The tension here is absolutely palpable.’

They certainly weren’t giving him breathing room, either. The razor-sharp aura radiating from the surrounding formation was suffocating, conveying a silent promise to butcher him the moment he showed a single opening.

-Heinrich: Apologies for the delay. However, this should provide ample relief for the moment. I will deploy additional reinforcement waves the second the channels clear.

While he was cautiously monitoring the closing ring of enemies, a luminous holy crest, brimming with Heinrich’s concentrated divine energy, manifested directly over his right hand, forcefully purging the creeping corruption that had been eating at his flesh.

‘Ah, that provides some much-needed relief.’

Even though the divine power was being channeled indirectly through a proxy symbol, the raw quality of a Saint’s intervention was undeniable.

Sensing the sudden shift to a pure, blinding holy signature, the knights who had been preparing their vanguard skills hesitated, their brows furrowing in deep confusion.

“…Such an absurd concentration of divine energy. Is that an authentic holy relic?”

“The signature is destabilizing rapidly, meaning it’s a temporary enchantment. But an output of that magnitude implies the direct intervention of an Archbishop.”

“First he deploys forbidden heretical artifacts, and now he wields high-tier holy relics? What sort of anomaly is this person?”

‘I’m a premium-geared alt character being heavily bankrolled by the literal main protagonist. Pay-to-win mechanics are truly wonderful.’

Hesperon offered a sarcastic inner commentary while keeping his external expression deadpan and focused, but the tactical reality remained incredibly grim.

Even though he was dedicating a massive portion of his mental processing to maintaining the “Bond of Unity” throughout the physical engagement, his progress was still falling short of the required threshold.

‘I just need a fraction more time… ‘

He cast a subtle, scanning glance across the immediate battlefield.

The occupants of the secondary transports had been systematically butchered, save for a handful of individuals who were clearly embedded traitors aiding the ambush.

However, due to the massive tactical disruption he had caused by killing the two vanguard elites, a decent number of loyalist knights had managed to hold their ground without being overwhelmed.

As he continued calculating the tactical layout, a sudden, violent shiver shot up his spine.

Sensing an immediate, lethal drop in temperature, he snapped his gaze toward the source.

Sure enough, Staub, the mastermind behind the betrayal, was standing a short distance away, staring directly back at him.

He was positioned right before the shattered doorway of the royal transport.

—

Staub held Hesperon’s gaze for a brief moment before casually breaking eye contact.

There were far more critical objectives to secure than that singular anomaly.

He had monitored the boy’s performance; while the specific artifacts he carried were admittedly problematic and unpredictable, the mage’s actual core power level was completely unremarkable.

Now that his subordinates were fully alert and wouldn’t underestimate him, they would have no issue neutralizing him.

“…Sir Staub. What is the meaning of this treason?”

“You have my formal apologies, Your Highness. Is this not the fundamental reality of statecraft? Our political objectives simply no longer align.”

“Do you truly believe you can execute a massacre of this scale within the borders of Jeron and survive? His Majesty will hunt you to the ends of the earth!”

“You need not lose sleep over our survival, Princess. We did not initiate an operation of this magnitude on a whim.”

Staub delivered his response to Riley’s fierce condemnation with absolute composure.

An astronomical amount of political and material capital had been invested into this ambush, and his faction was far from the only hand moving the pieces on the board.

It was an unfortunate twist of fate for Riley; after miraculously slipping through the fingers of the Immortal King, she would now simply be recorded as an unfortunate casualty, cut down by the pursuing forces of the Immortal Army before the capital’s vanguards could intervene.

The synchronized insurgent strikes currently tearing through the civilian sectors of the capital were explicitly orchestrated to validate this narrative. Every piece of physical evidence, magical residue, and bribed witness had already been perfectly aligned to secure the deception.

‘And that includes silencing every living soul present on this road.’

A freezing, merciless smile touched his lips as he looked down at the young royal.

“I must apologize once more, but our operational window is narrow. It is time for your departure.”

He had humored her desperate dialogue out of lingering aristocratic respect, but their remaining time was rapidly evaporating. There was a hard limit to how long they could delay the capital’s regular responses, regardless of their diversions.

“Hold on! Don’t tell me you intend to—”

Riley tried to string together more words to stretch the encounter, but Staub completely dismissed her, casually drawing a compact dagger from his dimensional storage artifact.

…Calling it a conventional blade was generous; while it featured a standard hilt, the weapon itself was shaped like the vicious, curved talon of a monstrous predator.

“Oh, there is one final detail I should apologize for. Your passing will not be elegant. The attributes of this tool ensure it will be agonizingly violent and messy.”

The crimson-hued talon radiated a sickening, pulsing vapor that seemed engineered to violently rend flesh and bone. It was another high-grade cursed weapon, thoroughly saturated with heretical dark magic.

“Now that I reflect on it, that troublesome brat over there was making quite a scene with cursed relics earlier. My initial strategy was to frame him as a secret operative of the Immortal King, but it would be far more poetic to arrange the crime scene so he appears to be the primary assassin who personally took your life.”

His gaze drifted back toward the pocket of chaos where magic and steel were still colliding.

He had felt an irritating anomaly in the ambient mana, and it appeared the troublesome brat was somehow still breathing, actively anchor-tanking the remaining loyalist soldiers and throwing the entire execution schedule into disarray.

The boy was systematically patching up the royal knights using a high-output holy relic, stalling structural collapses with defensive boundary charms, and had even deployed a crimson sphere that whipped up a localized gale of blood, completely disrupting the targeting lines of the enemy spellcasters.

Because of the volatile array of cursed implements and hazardous artifacts he kept pulling out, the vanguard units were struggling to close the distance safely.

“…Tsk, a collection of utterly useless sub-ordinates. It seems I must handle that nuisance personally. My schedule is packed, so let us conclude this affair.”

Staub clicked his tongue in deep irritation, his expression darkening.

Without a shred of hesitation, he drove the talon dagger directly toward Riley, cutting off any further delay.

Or more accurately… he drove it toward the exact coordinates where Riley ‘should have been standing’.

“…What?”

Slamming into nothing but empty air, Staub slowly rotated his head, tracking his honed physical senses back toward the center of the battlefield where the desperate melee was still raging.

And there, right in the thick of the danger zones, Hesperon stood.

“Whew, that was cutting it incredibly close.”

Riley was held securely against his chest, her eyes wide with shock, while the mage let out a low, ragged chuckle, dark blood leaking steadily from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth.