Chapter 526 – The World of the Dead (4)
“… Kut!”
─Break!
Spurred from her seat as her golem was self-destructed by Lalilura’s opponent, Veronica bit her lip nervously at the sight of her being attacked by hostages being manipulated.
“Franc! Was he really the warlock who died then?”
“… In my own words.”
Pressing her ear, Fran frowned.
I knew what happened at Lucregens after hearing from Nord and Lalilura. However, it was nothing short of a miracle to catch that small conversation in the midst of the commotion caused by the evacuating audience.
《Fellow audience! Number, order! Please evacuate in order!”
“Don’t give a damn!! Can’t you see that?! It must be a black magician!!”
“The guards were also caught, so what’s the order!! Won’t you go away?!”
In addition, even if they wanted to rush to the audience right away, it was not easy to break through the crowd of people running back and forth. The speed of evacuation was strangely slow, as if they had resorted to tricks at the exit.
Tirsi, who was looking down at the battle of Lalilura, grabbed the wand.
“Everyone. We use our strength to break through.”
“Of course I intend to do so, but if I leave this place as it is, it will only reverse the problem.”
The death of an innocent citizen, and the adverse effects it would have on Nord’s reputation and business in the future, were also problems.
However, it is a much bigger problem that the barrier has been lifted. Giving up the hostage’s life and attacking it would be no different than pouring water into a bottomless pot.
No matter how many puppet hostages are destroyed, Corutus, the warlock, will only be able to recruit additional ‘weapons’ whose evacuation is delayed.
“Veronica. Let’s start over from the barrier. Can you?”
“Yes. Don’t leave half of it.”
Veronica answered Dana’s question and pulled out her mithril medallion.
While Fran and Dana were training while looking back at themselves, Lalilura was making a new puppet, and Tyrsi was researching the Advent magic, Veronica wasn’t just wasting her time.
This medallion was one of the magic items she researched/analyzed and created over several months.
While creating new slabs destroyed during the battle with the Troll King, he also crafted other items linked to the slate’s inventory.
There are also disadvantages because they are connected to the same space. Unlike the slate that Nord had, the size of the items he could take out was limited, and the mana consumption was not small.
However, there are also advantages that account for such disadvantages.
-Jing.
Putting her hand into her medallion, Veronica took out the ogre’s——no, Huld Polk’s seal.
─Shu oh oh!
Veronica absorbed the mana contained in the seal. She had recovered her bitter mana by forcibly analyzing Nord’s spear.
“Goes! Use magic at your own pace! I’ll get the timing right!”
“Please!”
Similarly, Dana, who had recharged her mana in the seal, jumped out to the front audience seat where there were no crowds. She intended to circle around the other side to put the wide arena completely within the barrier range.
-Jing. As Dana ran, she pulled out a notebook from her medallion.
The existence of this note was also the reason why her family linked the inventory.
It is Nord’s new attempt to overcome the inadequacy of contact methods that he realized during the troll king crisis.
Place two notebooks in the subspace shared by the family. Then, write the words you want to convey to your opponent far away on the note and put it back in your inventory.
It was his idea that by doing so, you could send and receive messages quickly and easily beyond the limitations of space.
“Chit.”
But Dana took out her notebook and clicked his tongue.
Through the experiment, it was confirmed that message exchange was possible, but the note taken out of the subspace was blank. Nord hadn’t left a message.
‘Are we fighting, or are we forgetting to check the message?’
If you haven’t checked, it’s not a big deal. It must mean that things are going well for Nord.
However, if the warlocks knew about the raid and disclosed it to him, it meant that even though he knew about the raid, he was fighting so hard that he couldn’t leave or read a message right away.
Such an assumption made Dana nervous.
‘That idiot, you shouldn’t be impatient… !’
Isn’t it her husband who often becomes impatient when her own life is often staked, and her wives’ comfort is at stake?
It was like that before. When she mistakenly thought she was about to be kidnapped, he was the one who threw everything behind her and rushed to her lab.
Will he be different this time? It was a luxury to wish for.
Of course, there was faith that he would act with appropriate judgment even in nervous situations.
‘But the problem is that the standard of ‘appropriateness’ is different from ours!’
With the thought of going back even a second faster, there was a high possibility that she would rush the match without taking care of her body.
He even lost his arm in a fight, and that wasn’t going to get better even if he died.
‘… Yes, the ring!’
Dana, who was moving through her crowd, grabbed her wedding ring at an idea that came to her out of the blue.
─Ugh!
The power of the ring clearly conveyed Nord’s condition. It was the ability of a double star pumpkin that could monitor the condition of a partner.
When she prayed for the power of her ring, Dana was able to grasp Nord’s physical condition.
‘There are no wounds. Is the mana consumption intense because you are fighting using auras? It means that there are enemies on the level of regular members of
Dana clicked her tongue and brought the pen to her notebook. Then Veronica also shouted as she finished her spell.
“──Warriors will sit happily in the beer hall (ðar wigan sittaþ, on beorsele bliþe ætsomne)!!”
Where Veronica took her wand, a mandala of runes unfolded. It was the rune magic she had learned from Adelaide a few months ago in the Holy Land of Gorgalia.
《Wall of Glory (Niwajmariz Veggr)!!》
“──Now!”
Dana also opened the shield at the right timing. It was the old magic of Ulster, acquired through the sorcery book written by her mother.
─Charleureuk!
Two types of shields covered the arena and the audience seats after the evacuation in the form of a dome.
With this, no more hostages could be taken. Dana wrote in her notebook while holding her shield.
—Immortalis appears in the arena. Presumed to be a warlock who fought in Lucregens. Claims to have risen from the dead.
Dana, who was jotting down the information her fran had managed to catch in the noise, paused her pen for a moment before scribbling her last line.
-I will deal with it as planned. Don’t be scared and do your thing.
***
The mana blade came like a tidal wave. She stepped on a footstool on No. 6’s back and manipulated the magic called Lari Lu that used to pass the time.
The puppet’s arm rotated 180 degrees. Her mana claws sharpened the wind.
─Kaga River!!
The storm of blades that reproduced Armalth’s secret sword was blocked by No. 6’s mana claws. Even the slashes that could not be blocked were not enough to pierce the shield magic deployed by No. 5.
Ku-gu-gu-gu-!! As she runs through the empty auditorium, she is pursued by a hostage controlled by her nemesis.
The speed is not that fast. It was because she did not turn them into undead or use her Corutus’ own mana to strengthen them.
But she couldn’t consider it purely good. As the sound of her muscle fibers tearing was vividly audible, Larry Lura veered in her quick run to her right.
<
A healthy brown-skinned woman attacked, biting her bloody foam.
─Chuck! The bright red color of her liquid splashed on Lalilura’s shield, which twisted her puppet’s body to evade the attack. The arm muscles of her hostage as she pounced on her were torn in a mess and splattered with blood.
The woman, who seemed to be an ordinary citizen, had good-looking blue bruises in her eyes, despite her dark brown skin.
〈… Ugh!〉
It’s like this even though Ralilura hasn’t counterattacked yet. Her face frothed with blood as if she had long since lost consciousness. She might be better off that way than to suffer the pain of tearing her body apart.
‘Due to her exhaustion of mana, even her muscles burst.’
It was because she forced ordinary people to use powerful martial arts.
If the hostage she controls dies or not, the attack will use up all her mana and break her muscles.
Did he think that even if he died, he could transform into an undead and control it? Even those who tried to slash and javelin from a distance were soaked in blood.
Even if I forced myself to spit out a joke, it wouldn’t solve the problem. Corutus said as if mocking Lalilura.
‘Why is that? Are strangers more important than your life or the lives of other women?
─Puck! Repelling her approaching hostage with her fists, she frowned in her drops of sweat.
He may not know if it is only him, but if he puts the lives of his older sisters on the scale, he will prioritize his family over the lives of all of them. It was a natural thought without being selfish.
Rather, isn’t it much more strange to prioritize the lives of strangers over the safety of one’s family? Lari Lura didn’t want her hypocrisy with her family’s life.
But–
‘──Are you inducing me to consume mana?’
The key to this hostage situation was not so easy math.
