Chương 113: B2 Chapter 55: Marionettes

His Majesty King Elston Kalor, the Crown himself, floated above the ground as he surveyed the forces arrayed against him. The barren field was filled mainly with nobles, though some had also brought a small force of elite guards. He smirked at the rebels' leader.

"I see you at least had the good sense to not bother bringing any commoner weaklings, Recindril." High Lord Recindril Tostral just shrugged silently with his swords in hand, ignoring the king's disrespect of his title, and Elston glared at him for a moment before flicking his gaze across the assembled ranks.

"Hmm. You gathered more than I expected. How many of the houses my guards have been protecting recently were just playing along while waiting for the right moment?" He paused, looking at one person in particular, and raised an eyebrow.

"You got old Uldron to come? Didn't he retire? Yes, I remember; five years ago, now. It must have taken something big to get him to join. Oh, and widow Ardana, too? My, my." Recindril finally snorted and shook his head.

"Predictable. So very predictable, Elston." Elston looked at him sharply.

"Watch it, or I might start this with teaching you a lesson for disrespect." Recindril smiled mockingly.

"Oh, pardon me: Your Majesty is so very predictable." Elston cocked his head.

"Oh really. How so?" Recindril gestured all around himself.

"Even now, seeing all of us arrayed before you, you are not taking us seriously. You could have cratered the entire area without warning, but you did not, because that would have been acknowledging us as a meaningful threat. You came here not to defeat us, but to mock us, to humiliate us, by proving beyond all doubt that you don't need to take us seriously. That we are nothing but ants compared to you." Elston smiled.

"Of course I did. You are ants, compared to me." Recindril narrowed his eyes.

"That remains to be seen. But, at the least, you will find that these ants have developed some sting." Elston engaged his mental accelerator the moment Recindril said that, just to be absolutely certain. Then he waited, watching to see what supposed trump card he would get to break, no doubt breaking the rebels' spirits along with it. A second later, he felt an intangible pressure weighing on his soul from all directions. He almost laughed, but held back as the pressure built higher, and higher still.

It was as yet too little to actually affect him, even slightly, but the buildup was fast, and growing faster. Threads of mana wove themselves into the air everywhere in sight, thickening things so that even the air would impede movement almost as if it was water. Not that water could meaningfully impede him, but the thickened air would try. Whatever this was, it wasn't the rebels themselves. It felt diffuse, coming from everywhere, but also focused specifically on Elston and his children.

It was like the world itself had taken objection to him, personally, and was still rousing its full might to action. A hint of familiarity tickled at his mind, but the memory didn't surface in full yet. The level of pressure quickly rose beyond what the rebels could personally exert with their own souls. That was no surprise, as it would have been utterly pointless otherwise, but Elston frowned when he noticed that it wasn't slowing down yet.

Elston experimentally flexed his own mana, pushing back against the still-rising pressure, and found it surprisingly resilient. Higher levels of mana density in their souls enabled people to exert more force, but without a proper foundation everything they did would be fragile. The work of a commoner, with no merged structures, or at best a single merge with no further support, would tear like cobwebs at even a light touch.

The work of an elite, with a few merges but at best Tier 8, would yield to a firm push and then break, splintering like wood. The work of an orichalcum-rank noble, at the limits of what they knew was possible—one merged superstructure of each tier, from 10 down to the lowest their Level would support—would hold firm like stone, but would ultimately crack and crumble when stressed hard enough. He pushed again to confirm his first impression. This pressure went beyond even that.

It was not the unyielding steel of a true royal's efforts, but it was impressively close. Dangerously close. It resisted like stone; cracked like stone under his crushing strength; but its cracks did not spread. He seized a portion of the web and cracked it, then released his grip. The web mended itself as he watched, rather than crumbling. He estimated this might be the result of someone still limited to Tier 10 merges, but with a full suite of 10 of them.

Elston carefully moderated the speed of his changing expression, concealing the magnitude of how quickly his mind considered the possibilities even as he leveled a stern glare at Recindril. If the rebels had a noble among them with a soul plan like that, and Level high enough to matter, that noble would be at their head, confronting me personally as a rival Crown. A spell's strength springs from its caster, leading to the same point. Could it be a structure dedicated to resilience against opposing force?

Possible, I suppose, but I have felt the impact of such structures before, and this feels different. It could be an enchanted item, whether runic or dungeon-spawned. Wait, dungeons. That's what feels familiar about this! The web in the air and the diffuse source of it all feel like being in a dungeon. There's no dungeon anywhere near here, though, and certainly not one this high-level. So, a dungeon-spawned relic… Or a runic relic forged from a dungeon.

He paused for a moment to assess the pressure, which had finally stopped rising. But its Level is higher than mine! How?! Elston let none of his consternation into his voice, keeping his tone level and his speech at a normal speed.

"You toy with a relic beyond your station, Recindril. Where did you get it? I doubt you have anything to pay the Gold Flight for such a thing, if you could even contact them. Is the Torellian Empire meddling? I can teach them a lesson next, if necessary." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Recindril laughed.

"This mess is of your own making, King Elston. You have ignored the needs of your own nobles for too long, and–" Elston didn't care to listen to any more of Recindril's prattle. He barked orders for his children at his true speed, knowing they would match closely enough to understand.

"Hinren, Lornera, find that relic and bring it to me, intact if possible. Brenelle, Patrimmon, stay with me and teach these idiots a lesson they'll never forget, but leave Recindril himself alive to the end to witness it in full." With that done, Elston willed his body to move forward, and the world obeyed. The air pushed against him, thick and cloying, but it could not stop him. It did slow him, however, and that was annoying.

He reached out with his mana, no longer merely experimenting, and tore apart the mesh that was dragging at his every movement. His charge sped up, but he had only created a hole in the effect, not destroyed it entirely. He had to keep shredding it ahead of his path, and it closed back in behind him after he passed. He willed his arms to become weapons, and his flesh morphed and changed to manifest his intent. His hands flattened and sharpened, his fingers merged, and his arms lengthened.

He kept his elbows as normal, but his forearms became 4-feet-long steel blades, sharper and tougher than any metal ever forged by mere smiths. Orichalcum lined the edges of his armblades, and its dark orange color glinted momentarily as he swung. The heads of the two nobles directly behind Recindril fell, severed cleanly in a single stroke. Annoyingly, Recindril was able to react quickly enough to try to attack Elston as he passed by, and was already half-turned and tracking his attack.

Recindril was clearly not affected at all by the relic he was using. Elston mentally snorted to himself. Of course they're not affected; they'd all barely be able to stand! Five arrows sped straight at him, accompanied by a volley of spells and mystic attacks, along with the next line of nobles swinging three swords and an axe at his face, chest, and legs. They had clearly been prepared for his sudden offensive.

He flew up a dozen feet, successfully dodging two of the arrows and several of the less physical attacks. The rest changed course to track his movement, however, and more joined the onslaught with every passing moment. Burning streaks of fire, shards of mana-imbued metals, and more exotic threats of death chased him into the air. Elston swung his blades again, and doubled arcs of pure cutting force flew out into the mass of rebel nobility below.

The projected arcs split the first line of nobles they hit like wheat, but merely cut bone-deep in the second, and barely touched the third. He tsked under his breath and sent another, then swept his blades up to intercept the first wave of incoming attacks. He cut two of the guided arrows out of the air and let the last one bounce off the flat of his blades.

As for the spells and mystic attacks, he projected his mana outward in a dense thicket of blades tuned for cutting other mana constructs, each one thrusting out and slicing violently, then withdrawing to repeat the cycle. The various structures of mana coming at him broke apart before they could even touch him. Flames sputtered out, metallic shards tumbled off course, and feelings of ethereal menace vanished like bad dreams.

He was vaguely aware of Brenelle, his heir, and Patrimmon, his second child, fighting similarly nearby, but he focused most of his attention on his own fight. As the initial volley spent its fury, a good two-thirds of the rebels rose from the ground en masse to engage Elston and his children in the air. He didn't allow them the time to converge on him. He crossed his armblades in front of himself, edges forward, and darted through the airborne crowd. Bodies split and gore rained in his wake.

A couple blades even managed to touch him as he passed, only to shatter on his unbreakable skin. The aggravatingly-sturdy dungeon-like mana thickening the air slowed Elston's charge after the first couple dozen feet, as he reached the edge of the zone he'd cleared of it. He refused to outwardly acknowledge the impediment, holding in place as though he had always intended to stop in that spot.

While he reached out with his mana to crush a new patch, he extended his armblades to each side and spun, eviscerating another half-dozen rebels. Two of his newest targets were merely elite minions, but they were what happened to be at hand. More spells, mystic attacks, and even a few arrows sought to tag him while weaving through the throng. Elston dodged many simply by moving on to new targets so often. Some even hit another rebel instead. The more clever ones tracked and followed him.

A few attacks even refused to affect anyone else, even if a rebel ended up in their path, or simply struck so quickly and directly that there was no time for movement. A crackling bolt of lightning actually managed to touch him, appearing from nothing in a single instant, but its power broke on the invincible barrier of his resistance. Elston lost track of time as he immersed himself in the rhythm of the slaughter.

He would clear a path of the hindering dungeon mana, charge and kill anyone in that path or near enough to reach from it, then repeat. It was tedious, more than anything else. There was no true danger in it for him. He made sure to keep track of Recindril and to avoid crossing the paths of his children's battles, but aside from that, it was just butchering wave after wave of idiots that he didn't even care to identify. It was more tiring than he'd expected, though.

Repeatedly forcing his way through the obstruction of the dungeon relic that somehow almost matched a royal's resilience—and that outmatched his Level—took a bothersome amount of effort. It would be nice when Lornera and Hinren found that relic so he could remove the tiresome nuisance. He could fight through the entire rebel force despite it if he had to, of course, but having that relic out of the way would make it less annoying. Elston paused for a moment after his latest batch of kills.

He felt a strange tension, and a bit of shaking, in the environmental mana. The rebels around him seemed to pause, too. Then a shockwave of mana rippled across the battlefield; a shockwave that carried the solidity and weight of royalty. Except… That solidity was cracked and broken. The weight was fading and dispersing. He extended his senses outward, ignoring the rebels around him and searching for the source of the shockwave. He found it quickly.

Across the battlefield, half a mile away, his son Hinren hovered motionless in the air, his eyes wide with shock. Then the impossible details registered to Elston's senses: A blade was projected out from the boy's back, having been thrust through his body from the front. Hinren wasn't hovering; he was slumped over and supported by the blade he was impaled on. And he was dead. Worse than dead; Hinren Kalor's soul was gone.

The sword in his chest was another impossible relic—not the source of the hindrance in the air—with near-royal solidity and unreasonably-high Level, and it had pierced and broken the boy's soul when it pierced his chest. For a moment, the entire battlefield, and reality itself, seemed to hold its breath. The only movement was the one wielding that soul-slaying sword, as he withdrew it and swung at Lornera as well, who was stunned motionless.

The dungeon-relic hindrance in the air faded to irrelevance in the Crown's mind as endless rage filled him, and his world narrowed to the target of his wrath.

"YOU DARE?! YOUR SOULS ARE FORFEIT FOR THIS! ALL OF YOU!" His bellow shook even the ground with its sheer volume, and several rebels recoiled and slapped their hands over their ears. His Majesty King Elston Kalor, the Crown himself, tapped the well of power, built over generations of Kalor monarchs, that was the orichalcum circlet on his head. A visible aura of orichalcum's dark orange sheathed his body, and his eyes turned the same color.

The Crown streaked forward across the battlefield, and souls split in his wake.