A soldier charged forward. Meld ignored José, blocking the soldier's sword with his knight's sword before delivering a powerful punch to the other soldier. Meld sensed that while his enemy's strength had increased, his attacks had become cruder. He could already predict the two soldiers' movements. He dodged the incoming sword with his fist and delivered a beautiful counterpunch that pierced the soldier's jaw.
Meld then launched a sweeping kick at another soldier, taking advantage of his unsteadiness and striking him on the head with the spine of his sword. A resounding sound echoed, and the soldier fell to the ground.
"Your vice-captain's name makes you cry?"
Fighting technique was José's true strength, but right now, he relied solely on brute force. After getting used to José's movements, Meld complained, parried José's sword, and grabbed his shirt, delivering a perfect shoulder throw.
The impact of his back hitting the ground knocked the air out of Jose's lungs.
"Just lie down for a while."
Melde's fist, like a cannonball, hit Jose's chest. Jose convulsed, then his body went limp. Glancing at the fallen Jose, Melde stood up and threw a backhanded punch behind him.
The last soldier's body turned in the air and flew to the rear.
"Damn it! I even called the vice-captain here, and yet you're still so miserable. You're clearly from this world, bastard! Are you a monster?!"
Hiyama coughed non-stop, but managed to stand up and curse. Meld looked at Hiyama with a slightly sad look in his eyes.
"My level doesn't deserve such high praise. The only difference between us is our experience in human combat. After all, I am the captain of the kingdom's knights. I can fight monsters, but I won't lose to you in a human fight."
The implication is - just surrender.
However, Hiyama grabbed his head, his bloodshot eyes moving around, seemingly unable to hear what Meld said.
"Do you think you've won?"
Hiyama looked unusual, his eyes tinged with madness. Meld gasped at the sight of his dark, filthy gaze. Meld knew that kind of look; it belonged to someone who had fallen to the point of no return.
"Daisuke, you—"
Meld opened his mouth to say something, but then something unbelievable happened that made him shut up.
The soldiers slowly stood up, including José. They seemed to feel no pain, their faces showing no signs of pain, their bodies moving normally. They stood up with blank expressions and empty eyes.
"You're wasting your energy, hehe, because those guys won't stop even if they die!!"
"What? What does that mean—"
A mocking smile appeared on Hiyama's face. Before Meld could ask, two knights entered the room. Other knights and soldiers stood outside the door, each with a 'empty' look in their eyes.
It was impossible to make them lose their fighting ability, as they possessed incredible strength, and considering they had been brainwashed, their skills had not diminished much either.
Meld suddenly thought of——
There was such a loud noise, why didn't anyone come?
He finally realized he was trapped. The other party might have used some kind of barrier to suppress sound and vibration. Now, within the palace, no one was aware that Meld was under attack.
(I was tricked. I trusted the palace's defenses too much.)
Meld had never imagined that such a large-scale infiltration would originate from the heart of the kingdom. The layers of defenses here were impenetrable, never breached before, evidenced by the centuries-long struggle between humans and demons.
There was only one reason for the breach. Meld looked at Hiyama and thought: With Hiyama's intelligence, it's unlikely that he could have carried out an attack of this scale alone. Nine out of ten times, there must be someone assisting him, or there must be someone else behind the scenes.
(Then, this situation doesn't require a fight to the death. I must survive and try to inform others of this situation.)
The entrance and exit were completely blocked. Meld retreated into the room little by little, while Jose and the "Empty" people approached step by step.
"Just prepare to die, Captain Meld."
Just as Hiyama finished speaking with a distorted expression on his face—
"No, I will endure the humiliation and escape."
"What! You!"
Meld turned abruptly—and ran toward the window.
There was a loud crash, and the window shattered. Meld smashed through the window with his body and jumped out. Meld's room was on the fourth floor of the palace. Generally speaking, falling from such a height would not only cause serious injuries.
“—Wind Wall!”
Meld used wind pressure magic to slow down his fall and landed successfully.
Hiyama and the others would probably jump down and give chase immediately, but Meld didn't think that would be considered an escape.
However, at least he had bought time to chant the higher-level magic, and Meld could use attack magic with strong flashes and explosions.
All he had to do now was to buy time. The knights and soldiers who were still normal would arrive, and then Meld's goal would be achieved.
"The crimson lotus that burns the heaven and earth—"
Meld's chanting stopped, no, it was stopped, but nothing happened. Hiyama and the others hadn't even jumped down yet, and the palace courtyard where Meld landed was empty.
No one used magic to interfere with his chanting, and he was not attacked.
“——”
But Meld's instinct refused to act and ordered him not to make a sound.
It was as if someone had grabbed his heart, and Meld felt a cold sweat trickle down his chin. His body felt stiff, and even his own breathing and heartbeat were unusually loud.
To use a metaphor, this situation is like a small animal being thrown before a predatory beast. The animal instinctively understands that there is no other way to survive except to hold its breath and wait for the disaster to pass.
"Whether it's the King or the Knight Commander, they all start strong but end weakly. They're only human after all, and I still need to intervene..."
It was a voice so beautiful it made one shudder, yet it lacked any emotion.
Hearing the sound, Meld's body finally moved. Like a machine that had forgotten to add lubricant, he raised his head stiffly and looked towards the source of the sound - the sky.
A figure stood in the sky, its back to the moonlight. Surprisingly, it possessed a pair of wings. Gleaming with a silvery brilliance, they looked both surreal and dreamlike.
However, Meld was not able to be moved by this, because his skin, mind, and body knew clearly that—
The other party is a being far superior to oneself.
The silver light intensified, and the figure looked like a miniature moon, a moon radiating beautiful light. However, that moon possessed terrible power, cruel and merciless.
Meld knew he would be treated horribly, and realized there was no escape.
“…God.”
Even the strongest knight in the kingdom unconsciously turned to the great being he had believed in since birth for help.
however--
"Yes, this is the Master's will."
The silver moon descended, and that moon was as big as a ball for children to play with, and it also had a death light that destroyed life.
Meld's vision was filled with silver light, and death was about to come.
Whether it was his own death or the malicious attacks on his subordinates and companions, if these were the wishes of the god he believed in, something even more terrible would surely happen next.
So, at the moment of death, Meld in the slowly passing time——
(I won’t ask you to take care of the aftermath… because that’s your enemy, so—)
—Go ahead and give them a good beating.
The object of the kingdom's strongest knight's dying prayer was not the god he had believed in until then, but a monster that crawled up from the bottom of the abyss.
In the room without its owner, soldiers with vacant eyes repaired the damaged floor and windows. A figure stood at a desk nearby, examining the objects at hand with great interest.
"I never expected that. As expected of the captain, right? It's a close call."
"? What are you talking about?"
Behind the figure, Hiyama walked over with an unhappy look on his face.
"Nothing much. By the way, how's your abdominal injury? You seem to have taken a pretty heavy blow."
The figure chuckled obscenely and questioned Hiyama. Hiyama, with a bitter expression, angrily replied, "It's just a minor injury like this. It's nothing."
Seeing Hiyama's reaction, the mocking expression on the figure's face deepened. Seeing the new window frame being installed, he tilted his head and asked:
"Where's that woman?"
"It's gone. She said we started off well but ended badly."
"I see. But her intervention was already within my calculations. It seems I'm blessed by God. Haha, I didn't expect there could be evil-minded gods."
Perhaps remembering the woman who had intervened, Hiyama's body trembled slightly. Originally, their plan should have taken more time and been carried out more carefully. However, with her presence, almost all obstacles to their plan were easily overcome.
Why did that woman help them? Although she said it was God's will, Hiyama couldn't tell whether her words were true or not.
She was an incomprehensible existence, possessing overwhelming power, and he was completely unable to compare with her.
To dispel the fear rising in his heart, Hiyama shook his head and changed the subject:
"Anyway, the biggest obstacle has been removed. As long as we don't get discovered by Yaegashi and the others, the rest will be easy."
"Yes, thanks to that woman, the King and the Prime Minister are under our control. The Church has never been an obstacle. After defeating the leader, no one can stop me now."
There was a veil of madness in the figure's words, and even Hiyama, a fellow Fallen, subconsciously took a few steps back at the malice.
The figure crumpled something in his hand. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a letter. It was a letter Meld wanted to send to the boy, describing his concerns.
"Come on, speed up, like a stone rolling down a slope, towards the end, towards the future I hope for."
The corners of the figure's mouth cracked into a crescent shape, and his pupils contracted.
In the room that had lost its owner, laughter filled with malice and hostility continued for a long time.
Volume 6, Chapter 2: The King's Capital is Attacked
In the dim room, only moonlight shines in through the small barred window, creating a black and white contrast.
The internal structure is very simple.
This is a three-square-meter steel room with a wooden bed, a chair, a small desk, and a toilet without a cubicle. The cells in Earth's prisons are probably better than this.
This room looked like a prison cell no matter how you looked at it. There was a person sitting on the bed. She was leaning against the wall, her knees hugged, her face buried in them. She was Hatayama Aiko.
Aiko had been brought here for nearly three days.
She wears a bracelet-shaped artifact on her wrist, which completely prevents Aiko from using magic.
Even so, Aiko still tried to escape.
However, even if Aizi used the blood from her self-inflicted wounds to draw a magic circle, she still couldn't activate the magic. Trying to open the iron prison door by physical force was also impossible.
Even if he wanted to take the opportunity to escape when the silver-haired nun appeared occasionally, the strength disparity between the two sides was too great, and Aiko was always beaten and taken back to the room.
Moreover, the only window was equipped with iron bars, so the best you could do was to stretch your hand out.
However, even without the iron bars, this room was located at the top of a tower. Furthermore, this was the summit of the Sacred Mountain, the headquarters of the Holy Church. It would have been nearly impossible to escape the notice of church personnel. The summit of a mountain at an altitude of 8,000 meters was a world in itself, a natural prison.
So, despite her concern for her students, Aiko could do nothing. She silently lowered her head, her already petite frame shrinking even further on the bed.
“…She said this was all because of something my student had started preparing… What on earth is going to happen…”
Aiko raised her head slightly and murmured what the silver-haired nun had said to her before she was captured.
It seemed that her "master" thought that if Aiko told Kouki and the others what Hajime had said, it would have a negative impact. Furthermore, the "master" thought that what one of her students was about to do was quite interesting.
An indescribable uneasiness welled up in Aiko's heart.
She thought of Shimizu Yukitoshi, the student who had lost his life by going astray in Ur Town. Could it be that another student was about to do something irreparable? Aiko felt a surge of anxiety.
Imprisoned in this empty room, all I can do is think.
Thinking back calmly now, after her return, the palace felt strange and unnatural. Aiko's mind flashed back to the image of King Elisid and his ministers, with their tough, dangerous demeanor.
Aiko guessed that the silver-haired nun must have done something.
If the "charm" spell she initially tried to cast on her beloved son was truly literal, then the king and his ministers must have been subjected to a similar brainwashing technique.
However, Aiko spoke with Shizuku and Liliana after the meeting and did not sense that strange feeling from them.
She was relieved, but also felt a strong sense of unease, worrying that the other party might attack them while she was imprisoned.
While praying for the students, Aiko thought of another hidden worry—
The phrase "Exclude outliers".
For some reason, the words she heard before losing consciousness reminded Aiko of a student.
He is Aiko's savior, but also the one who left Shimizu Yukito in his twilight years. Despite possessing overwhelming strength and a strong will, he is a boy who listens attentively to Aiko.
And… a lot of things happened between Aizi and him. Even though she knew she shouldn't think about it, she couldn't help but think about him.
A memory that she tried so hard to forget but couldn't, resurfaced in her mind. Although she knew now was not the right time, Aiko's cheeks couldn't help but feel hot.
Aiko shook her head vigorously to drive away the memory, but she was worried about Shi's safety and inexplicably wanted to see him. Driven by these two emotions, she couldn't help but call out his name.
“…Nagumo-san.”
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