Chapter 147
Blue Blood (1)
The remaining Winterband soldiers surged from the outer wall toward the inner fortress.
The Botmer soldiers who had barely managed to occupy the southern inner wall were forced to fall one after another or be driven back.
The inner fortress soldiers had resisted fiercely enough for each man to be worth ten, but the outer wall soldiers were veterans to a man.
Some were Aura users, and even those who were not possessed martial prowess comparable to them.
Not only did they clear out the area inside the gate, they climbed onto the walls and began pushing back the enemies swarming toward Berkheim.
“You’re late, Lucas.”
“A male Horn Ape showed up and gave us some trouble.”
Berkheim looked terrible, but Lucas was hardly in better condition.
The wool stuffing from his gambeson was sticking out in every direction, and blood—whether blue or dark brown—had dried and caked all over him.
His wounds were neither as severe nor as bloody as Berkheim’s, but cuts covered his body, and exhaustion was plainly visible on his face.
If Berkheim’s role was to deal with the magical beasts that slipped past the outer wall and reached the inner fortress, Lucas’s role was to fight them at the outer wall itself.
He bought time while Count Goethe cast his spells and handled beasts that did not warrant magic or were resistant to it.
“Was it strong?”
“About as strong as the one I fought last time.”
“Then it was strong. Since you’re here, I take it the outer wall has been secured?”
“Ha, I seriously thought I was going to die.”
Berkheim collapsed onto the ground.
There was no strength left in his legs.
“Are you alright?”
“No, I’m not alright. If I fall asleep like this, at least I’ll die comfortably.”
“Get up. It isn’t over yet.”
“I really think I’m about to die, alright? Let me stay like this for a bit. My body won’t move. Just a moment. That bastard, what about him? He’s not someone to take lightly. Even for you—”
“That one?”
Lucas pointed in a direction with his sword.
The sword that had blocked Waller’s strike was already broken.
The attack had been terrifyingly powerful, but Lucas was not particularly surprised.
After all, he had seen countless monsters on the outer wall.
Berkheim turned his head and looked at Waller.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Waller was kneeling.
His bloodshot eyes streamed tears of blood as his entire body trembled violently.
Was it a side effect of overusing Aura beyond his limits?
Yet something about his movements seemed strange.
He had not collapsed, nor had he sat down.
It looked as though someone had forcibly driven him to his knees.
“Take a guess.”
“Ah, right! The gate! The gate—”
“You don’t need to worry about the inner gate.”
“Huh?”
Lucas tapped the ground with his boot.
“Hm?”
Looking at the floor of the wall passage, Berkheim frowned in confusion.
Normally, the top of the wall would be frozen solid from snowfall.
But this was different.
The entire wall was covered in frost.
Not just the floor—the walls as well.
A thick layer of frost enveloped the entire fortress wall.
It was truly a Frost Citadel.
A magnificent sight worthy of its nickname, the Winter Fortress.
“...Since when?”
Berkheim’s puzzled expression soon turned into a weary smile.
There was only one person in Winterband capable of causing a phenomenon on this scale.
“You’ve worked hard, Berk.”
Amid the fiercest fighting, someone climbed onto the wall with a leisurely gait.
Blond hair, blue eyes, a thick beard, and a face like carved stone.
Count Goethe.
“You’ve arrived. As you can see, I’m in no condition for proper noble etiquette.”
“Lie there comfortably.”
The Count, wearing a tattered fur coat draped carelessly over his shoulders, held a pipe in his mouth as he approached Waller.
“So it was you. The one who killed so many of my soldiers.”
“You... should not... be able... to use magic... on people.”
Waller glared at the Count as though he wanted to kill him.
“People? Do you truly consider yourself human right now?”
“If I just kill... you...”
Waller trembled as he raised a hand.
He intended to grab the Count by the throat.
But his hand never reached him.
Lucas casually swung his broken sword.
Waller’s arm was severed cleanly.
What flowed out was not red blood.
It was blue blood, like that of a magical beast.
Not blood infused with mana.
Blood literally composed of mana itself.
“...What?”
Berkheim’s eyes widened.
There were times when warriors pushed Aura usage to the limits of their bodies and vessels.
At such moments, they displayed truly superhuman strength.
When a treasured comrade, lover, or family member was about to die—or had already died.
When they felt that unless they pushed themselves to the absolute limit, the monster before them would tear them apart.
The blood shed in those moments was not purely red.
Mixed with blue mana, it became a dark bluish-black or a blackish purple.
Even Berkheim, moments ago, had been close to his limit.
The blood caked on his arms was nearly black.
But it was not blue like Waller’s.
Unless one was a magical beast, red blood flowed through the body.
“Lucas, take his head.”
“Grrrghhh...”
Waller tried to resist the magic with a growl like a beast’s.
But the Count’s glowing blue gaze remained unwavering.
Waller could not escape the prison created by phase-shift magic.
Slice.
Waller’s head fell.
Blue blood burst from the severed neck.
“Your knight is dead!”
Holding the severed head aloft, Lucas shouted.
The tide of battle had long since turned.
Ordinary infantry simply could not stand against veterans who routinely wrestled with magical beasts night after night.
And Waller’s severed head shattered the morale of the Botmer soldiers.
The first to abandon the battle lines were the mercenaries.
The siege troops were already being pushed back, and the mercenaries’ desertion only deepened their defeat.
“Move! Get out of the way! Get down, you bastards!”
“Stop pushing! Fuck, stop pushing!”
“Stop coming up here! Stop climbing up!”
“Aaaagh—!”
At the front, Winterband’s veterans silently cut down enemy soldiers like farmers harvesting crops.
Meanwhile, below the wall, unaware of what had happened, more Botmer soldiers continued to force their way upward.
The result was utter chaos.
The soldiers who sensed defeat desperately tried to climb back down the wall, and many fell in the process.
The frozen wall’s slippery surface only made matters worse.
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“About what?”
“A human body is bleeding monster blood.”
“He wasn’t human. He was a magical beast.”
“No matter how I look at it, he seemed human.”
“He was a magical beast.”
“Ah... yes.”
“Count.”
“Hm?”
“Why did those bastards attack us in the first place? When nobles fight each other, don’t they usually at least come up with some kind of justification first?”
With the tension finally easing, a question suddenly surfaced in Berkheim’s mind.
“You seem to be forgetting that you’re a noble too.”
“Well, that may be true, but I’ve never actually acted like one. We’re just a long-established butcher family, after all.”
“Then let me ask you. Did Baron Botmer’s side ever send a letter addressed to me?”
“No. If they had, I’d have delivered it long ago. Hoo…”
Grunting, Berkheim forced himself into a sitting position.
The frost-covered stone chilled his backside.
“The baron must be in a hurry. As for a reason, he can always make one up.”
The Count drew a puff from his pipe.
“Let me have some too.”
Berkheim took the pipe from him and smoked.
“Hoo... I feel like I can finally live again.”
Clang—
Kang!
“Gah? Cough! Cough—!”
While smoking, Berkheim suddenly spotted someone exchanging blows with Lucas and nearly choked.
Waller’s headless body was swinging its sword at the Count.
Lucas blocked the attacks.
It was a corpse whose neck had already been severed, blue blood staining the ground beneath it.
The corpse exchanged several blows with Lucas before collapsing on its own.
After that, it never moved again.
“Just now... that corpse—”
“It was a magical beast. Judging by the looks of it, an artificial one.”
The Count looked down at Waller’s corpse with complete indifference.
“A magical beast can be created? That’s actually possible?”
“Someone did propose the possibility.”
The news Marcel Reich had brought that day, along with the long-distance communication device, had not concerned only the First Prince’s message.
“Berk, can you move?”
“Sorry, but I don’t think so. My eyes keep closing.”
“I see. Then hold onto the pipe.”
“Huh?”
Berkheim’s body suddenly floated into the air.
The Count’s phase-shift magic.
“Lucas.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s time to leave the fortress.”
“Understood.”
Lucas pulled a horn from the pouch hanging at his waist.
Boo— Boooo—
Boo— Boooo—
***
Isaac thought.
As always, one thought led to another.
Why had that happened?
Why had this happened?
The stories old Jonas had passed down while his life slowly faded away.
The events that had occurred within the kingdom and their family.
Between those events were countless gaps.
For example, the Blood Succession Ceremony.
Everyone within the royal family knew of the Second Prince’s madness.
The conflict between the royalists and the parliamentary faction had also continued for years.
Would the King, the First Prince, and the royalists really have failed to keep watch on the Second Prince and the parliamentary faction?
The ceremony must have been heavily guarded.
Elite guards, royal guards, powerful Aura users, and mages would have protected the First Prince.
Then why had it ended as the Blood Succession Ceremony?
Why had the King, the First Prince, and the entire royalist faction died?
They must have prepared.
The only explanation was that the Second Prince’s forces possessed military strength beyond anything they had anticipated.
Isaac could only think that way.
These thoughts had begun to take root while he was observing Evervine fighting Carlson.
Adele believed Evervine was pushing himself to his limits and simply possessed extraordinary willpower.
But Isaac wondered if that was not the case.
According to Lichtenauer’s writings, the beastification that occurred when Aura users reached their limits took different forms for each individual.
Usually, it reflected their inner image and will.
Yet both Chevalier and Evervine had displayed the exact same early symptoms of beastification.
And neither had progressed beyond that stage.
There had been mutations, but true beastification had never fully developed.
The Sixth Swordmaster, Evervine Feuerhar.
Kyle, who failed to become the Seventh Swordmaster.
Beastification.
Mutation.
The knights of Baron Botmer.
Baron Botmer himself, who had come from the Republic.
The parliamentary faction, the Empire, the Second Prince.
The Empire’s actions after the Kingdom became imperial territory and the Second Prince ascended as Grand Duke.
Karl’s claim that they were merely part of a much larger stage.
“Ugh.”
Isaac rubbed his aching wrist as he continued thinking.
It was the wrist Adele had nearly broken when he blocked her strike.
Apparently it had not fractured completely, but it was badly swollen.
Thanks to the Wolf King’s Rune Stone, he possessed exceptional regenerative abilities, yet this was not an injury that would heal quickly.
“You could have gone a little easier on me.”
“If I had gone easy on you, do you think those people would have been convinced?”
Adele shot back.
Outside the temporary command tent, battle still raged.
The ground shook, the air shattered, sword lights flashed, and fierce winds roared.
The soldiers and mercenaries fought their own battles.
The knights and warriors fought theirs.
Yet it did not seem likely to last much longer.
The battle was completely one-sided.
The warriors of Granak were overwhelmingly dominant.
Karl’s knights fought desperately, but it was not enough.
While they were occupied dealing with Vinfelt’s Aura users, Granak’s warriors were grinding the rest of Karl’s forces into dust.
Even Isaac felt a chill watching them.
Each individual warrior possessed combat power comparable to a respectable Aura user.
At the same time, a cold shiver ran down his spine.
If the Granak Tribe was this powerful, how had they been exterminated around the time the Second Prince became Grand Duke?
What exactly had happened back then?
“If things were going to end up like this, why did you even suggest negotiations?”
Adele asked Isaac, who had been staring blankly into space.
She did not seem particularly surprised that Karl had been stabbed.
If Isaac had not done it, she would have.
“I had something I needed to confirm.”
“Confirm?”
“Heh heh heh.”
Suddenly, laughter echoed through the command tent.
Inside, the heads of Baron Mark and Baron Hauzen merely rolled across the floor.
Nothing else moved.
The one laughing was Karl, whose mouth and skull had been skewered straight through by a sword.
His body shook every time he laughed.
Unable to support the sword’s weight, his head had been tilted toward the ceiling.
Slowly, it returned to face forward.
With his own hand, he pulled out the blade that had pierced through the back of his head.
The blood coating the sword was blue.
“Ah, honestly. This is absurd.”
Karl muttered while cracking his neck from side to side.
“Son... what is that?”
This time even Adele was startled.
“Now we get to find out.”
Isaac shrugged.