Chương 102: Chapter 155: Mavar's Ultimatum

It wasn't often that Ryland was facing levels of annoyance that actually got a rise out of him. But in certain instances, such as his current circumstance, he certainly couldn't fully push away the effects of frustration. Especially when it was wholly justified. Ryland was attempting to help Mavar. He hadn't interfered thus far as the Demiurge had been facing a singular foe, one whom he was defeating rather handily. But the Order had chosen to intervene in proceedings.

Recognizing that Gracious was in serious danger of being annihilated, and probably not wishing to lose yet another member on Rhel after Ryland had ended Pious, the Flourinus Order had sent in reinforcements to save Gracious. Successful reinforcements too. Whatever version of Chivalrous it had been, he was clearly competent enough to devour even the Demiurge's magic. Which was why Ryland had decided to even the playing field again.

Except, it seemed, the Demiurge was strongly protesting any establishments of fairness. This was his operation, and he intended to see it through himself. Even if it led to an idiotic increase in chances of failure. At least, that was all Ryland could gather from how the incisive golden strands were poking at and attacking his skeletal arm. Ryland took a deep breath before speaking.

"Are you so prideful that you've grown foolish, Mavar?" His words boomed away from him, buffeting Zevo, Ophelia, Harker, and Suthor and making them stagger.

"Your idiocy will ruin your own efforts." If the insulting statement made someone like High Academ Zevo mad, then Ryland's expression of power didn't give him the opportunity to express his displeasure. The Demiurge chose against replying verbally. Instead, he answered by redoubling his efforts to push away Ryland, to prevent him from interfering in the battle. For a strong moment, Ryland almost felt petty enough to do just that.

He'd pull away, leave Mavar to deal with his own mess, and it would inevitably crumble all around him. But pettiness was selfish, and while his anger at Mavar's hubris was righteous, his real goal had never been to aid the Demiurge in the first place. Ryland clutched Chivalrous's head in a stronger grip, despite the rising intensity of Mavar's power bleeding pure golden magic into his surroundings, and dragged the monstrous visage of the Order mage through his small rift.

Its edges were sharp, cutting into the bulbous flesh of Chivalrous's distorted head.

"Answer me and I will release you," Ryland said.

"Where in the Realms are the other missing children?" The others were attempting to have a say in proceedings. Specifically, Zevo was still against Ryland daring to interfere with his precious Demiurge's great work while Suthor was now highly alarmed that Ryland was after his own companions. But he ignored them all." [Animus Cleave]," he incanted.

Since Chivalrous was mistakenly believing he could simply ignore the new threat and continue gluttonously eating the magic away, Ryland decided to remind him of his real priorities. The spell circle with his Soul Glyph of Genesis as its Centreglyph dug into the connection keeping Chivalrous tethered to Gracious, who was far too busy repairing himself to notice. It ripped apart those links and immediately began dragging Chivalrous away.

"We don't have them!" Chivalrous suddenly cried, words barely legible as he tried to swallow down the magic he was still busy consuming.

"Just that one you've already got. That one stayed behind." Ryland squeezed him." [Concentric Time]." Multiple barricades enveloped Ryland as the world turned into a blitz of annihilating magic, allowing him to focus entirely on his primary goal.

"You will answer me correctly, or I will rip your very soul through this hold I have upon you and do to you a thousand times worse than what I did to Valorous." Credit to Chivalrous, for once, his ever-chewing maw finally paused. Those beady little eyes of his were screwed shut in fear.

"I'm telling you the truth! We don't know where they are. They've already departed on their stupid mission."" What mission? And departed to where?"

"Back where they came from. Back to their homes. Back where they can tell everyone what an utter tyrannical world they've been forced to live on for generations now." For all that he was busy sending out magic that had probably turned this third of the entire Realm of Rhel entirely inhospitable for the far foreseeable future, it appeared that Mavar was still paying attention to Ryland's conversation with Chivalrous.

Just as the Order mage's revelation was uttered, so too did the avalanche of endless eradicating magic freeze. Which turned out to be just what the Order was looking for. Gracious took full advantage of the sudden relief. No longer needing to deal with the prospect of complete and utter obliteration from the Demiurge, Gracious the First and Gracious the Second both immediately attacked Ryland." [Painted Hellhound]!" He wasn't harmed, of course.

With [Eternal Bastion] reinforced with [Concentric Time], nothing could get through and actually damage him. But they had never targeted him to begin with. Instead, a flood of magical, painted incisors bit into the exact location where he was keeping a hold on Chivalrous. They didn't harm him at all.

However, they did rip into Chivalrous, who screamed as most of him was torn loose from Ryland's grip simply through those incisors cutting off the bits of him that Ryland held. Extreme, but also, extremely effective. Before Ryland could get over his momentary surprise and cast another spell, Chivalrous had already gotten over his wounds and cast the same spell he had been trying to for a while." [Wound Corridor]."

Unsurprisingly, Chivalrous and Gracious were swallowed up by the ugly wound in reality that they had conjured. It didn't take long for silence to fall after that. The world itself seemed to slow down as the Demiurge's apocalyptic magic finally calmed. Zevo and the rest were all staring at the exact spot where Ryland's little rift had been. Where Chivalrous and Gracious had been moments ago. The Demiurge slowly landed among them, expression unreadable. He was still clad in his overwhelming magic.

It made his face shine like he had placed eyes, a nose, and a mouth on a sun, his armoured robes rippling gently in the wind with the sheen of silvery mirrors. An aura embraced them, a volcanic storm threatening to explode into being at the slightest wrong movement.

"Your own hubris has ruined your plans, Mavar," Ryland said, trying not to glare at the man. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. He didn't reply. His expression was difficult to read, though his depthless dark eyes held the faint hints of disgust. At himself, at Ryland for interfering, at the fact that he had failed to contain the Order, it was hard to say.

"I don't understand," Ophelia said bravely. She wasn't stupid. She was well aware that she was standing between mages who could wipe her off the face of Rhel. But despite that, she was determined to comprehend what was going on.

"What exactly is happening here?" Ryland honestly had to respect her gumption. He also appreciated the fact that it gave him a good opening.

"You're not really present here, are you, Mavar? Because you're still worried what exactly the Order is planning now that you've forced the issue. But there's no point. What's done is done. You can't put the spilled milk back in the bottle." While the Demiurge didn't reply, Zevo once more hurried over to assist his leader.

"Please take care of your tone, sub-Academ Ryland. Whatever issues you may have can all be settled with peaceful grace. There is no need for insulting theatrics." His mischaracterization of Ryland's words was intentional. A silly attempt at reversing the conversational spears to point at Ryland instead of Mavar.

"As you can see, Ophelia, it turned out that the Flourinus Order was behind the Hand of Freedom, who were the ones causing the ruckus created by Harker and the missing children."

"Their plan was to steal the children away?" Ophelia asked.

"How did they do it? We know it wasn't a kidnapping of any sort."

"It was voluntary. Or at least, it was made to look voluntary. But as I told Suthor, they aren't really free. Not at all."

"That's a lie!" Suthor said.

"We have tasted true freedom for the first time in our lives!"

"I don't understand…" Ryland ignored everyone else and all their various acts to look squarely at Mavar. Even now, he wasn't protesting, his thoughts not necessarily on his current location.

"Kindly Mavar's Soul Glyph is the Soul Glyph of Unity. One that he has Inscribed into all Rhellians' manasouls." That statement had them all going silent. Ophelia was the one who was alarmed the fastest, her eyes widening in horror at the implications. Zevo appeared conflicted, while Suthor was triumphant. Harker, meanwhile, was still on his knees, still staring at the Demiurge with a blank expression.

"And the reason he hasn't tried to stop me from telling all of you is because there is no point in doing so," Ryland said.

"The word is now out. It seems the Order had a countermeasure prepared in case they were ever targeted on Rhel, and now, they've successfully executed it."

"A countermeasure…?" Ophelia blinked as realization settled in.

"You mean the students! The missing ones." She looked at Suthor, clearly considering how he had been acting all this while.

"They're going to be revealing it to the rest of Rhel. Wait, no. To the rest of the Realms."

"Exactly. And it's too late for even the Demiurge to do anything about it." Ophelia took another few seconds to absorb all that before whirling to face the ruler of Rhel.

"Serves you right after hiding such a deplorable secret from us all. To think I was fighting on your side…" Ryland wasn't quite sure how much that all applied here. He was certain there were some people in each of the invited Realms who knew about Mavar's application of his Soul Glyph of Unity. The problem was that they had still decided to keep it a secret from most people, which made sense since this wasn't something that could just be dropped on others. It needed careful consideration.

Which was why the current situation was bad, at least from the Demiurge's perspective. Word was most likely already out, in the time frame that the Order had no doubt planned, and now things were in a giant mess. Ryland honestly wasn't sure how Mavar would dig himself out of this. Thankfully, it wasn't any of Ryland's business.

"You have no right to decry how we live our lives," Mavar finally said. His eyes were back in the present, focusing once again on their current location.

"None whatsoever. In much the same way that I have no need to decry all the ills on Vyrd and the other Accorded Realms I will be forced to tolerate when we join the Accords." Ophelia really wasn't daunted, not even when she was being addressed by the Demiurge directly.

"Are you insane? No one is letting a tyrant such as yourself join the Accords. I won't be surprised if preparations to leave the terrible way you've run your Realm are already underway."

"You think so, do you?" The challenge in his words made Ophelia hesitate for a moment. He wasn't floundering on the back foot, trying to defend himself and his actions thus far.

"Well, of course I do! So would any normal, rational person."

"Rational." Mavar scoffed. His power broke, fading away to reveal the normal man.

"If people were rational, this would never have been needed. But let me ask you this, Mage Knight. What exactly do you have faith in?" Ophelia was taken aback by that strange question too.

"I have faith in myself, of course. And in my Conclave. As well as several select people." She glanced at Ryland as she said the last part, which made him smile despite the situation.

"Then perhaps you will allow the Rhellians to exercise their faith as well." With that, he ended the conversation between him and Ophelia, turning instead to the rest of them with an implacable regard.

"I welcome you all to witness the unity of the Rhellians, with or without my Soul Glyph. For both the believers and the nonbelievers. And as for the criminal…" He turned hard eyes to Harker. The Goodman was suddenly as alert as a deer that had just spotted danger.

"I—" Mavar was in no mood to brook any quarters." [Return]." The spell circle didn't flash on him. It simply erupted out of Harker, blanketing him in golden energy before he could even properly scream. A brief instant later, he dissolved into auric motes gently floating off into the sky. No one particularly cared. Suthor and Ophelia looked a little horrified, while Zevo remained stoic about it. Ryland just turned to face Mavar, but he was already glowing with the power.

With one last look of harsh belief, he disappeared like a comet shooting into the heavens.

They all returned to the Rhellian Institute with Suthor in tow. As they travelled, which obviously didn't take long thanks to Ryland's [Translocate], he explained with great reluctance just what his fellow "missing students" were planning. Essentially, they would go about proclaiming to anyone and everyone they could reach that the Demiurge Mavar Val Arona, ruler of Rhel, was controlling all his subjects through magically Inscribing his Soul Glyph of Unity onto everyone's manasouls.

On the Realm of Rhel, there was no such thing as free will. Their main targets weren't fellow Rhellians. Most of those would simply lock the students up, perhaps send them to a very different kind of institution compared to their academy. Instead, they'd spill everything to those from other Realms. That was where they would be believed. That was where their concerns would be appreciated. Of course, Ryland and the others didn't need the explanation.

The effects of the students' plan—the Order's plan, if Ryland was being honest—were on full display when they returned to the institute. Things were in an uproar. The foreign students and everyone accompanying them from the other Realms had unsurprisingly called out such tyrannical behaviour from the ruler of Rhel. Ryland was minutely surprised that the other Realms had already investigated and found proof of the Inscribed Soul Glyphs of Unity, though it wasn't a difficult thing to find for adept mages.

"You truly didn't know?" Ryland asked High Academ Tyra when he got a chance.

"And you didn't think to tell us?" Sint asked in return.

"I decided to leave it up to others on when it might be best to reveal such a sensitive matter. As you can see, revealing it in this way has caused quite a lot of chaos." Sint didn't look like she was convinced about the exact priority of chaos versus everyone knowing about the Soul Glyph of Unity. But she had enough sense not to argue about the matter.

"I did not," High Academ Tyra said rather indignantly.

"And I find it highly insulting that I wasn't told."

"Well, I know the Headmaster is well aware," Ryland said.

"Possibly others besides. We would not have come this far into Rhel, otherwise." That evening, they were all getting ready for a big meeting. At the sheer hullaballoo that the visiting foreigners had raised in the academy, the Demiurge had agreed to meet all aggrieved parties to assuage their concerns. So it was that they all gathered in the institute's large banquet hall, repurposed for the general meeting, where Mavar stood upon a podium, overlooking them all. Ryland was feeling a bit hemmed in.

The room was practically stuffed with everyone who was concerned. Not just the members of the foreign institution, but also all the nearby Rhellians who were worried about the revelation.

"Greetings, one and all," the Demiurge said, his voice echoing across the entire hall.

"I am not one for long-winded speeches, so forgive me if I cut straight to the heart of the matter. You all are worried that the Rhellians aren't themselves? That they are being manipulated? Well, let us avail ourselves of the simplest solution." Everyone tensed. Almost all the Rhellians looked frozen, surprised, almost lost in some cases. Ryland frowned. He wasn't actually…

"What would that solution be, Your Eternity?" one of the older Jure High Academs asked.

"Simple. You're worried about my Soul Glyph? Then let us remove all the Soul Glyphs. All of them. From every single Rhellian here and elsewhere. And then, I hope you will understand and stand witness to the true unity of Rhel."