Chapter 211 — 언령(言靈) 혹은 언령(言令)
Chapter 211
Word-Spirit (言靈) or Word-Command (言令)
“This is impossible…!”
Count Calliger gaped as he watched Elric spew a howling gale of mana.
He had tunneled his way here by magic, thinking to strike while Elric was distracted by the guardian dragon.
Yet he found neither a timing nor a blind spot worth aiming at from behind.
If he was going to ambush, he had to hit Elric in a single stroke.
Otherwise, Elric would turn the tables on him.
And besides—
With winds like that raging off him, Calliger wasn’t even sure an ambush was possible.
He could try, perhaps.
But he had no confidence he would succeed.
So he kept hunting for an opening, but now Elric had fully opened his eyes.
On top of that, he had eaten a Dragon Heart.
Calliger had once been an archmage; he knew exactly how absurd that was.
The Dragon Heart—an elixir passed down in magical lore as legend. No, a divine draught.
If he’d taken that, the man who already barely felt human would shed even more of his humanity.
Behold!
Even now—though he couldn’t have fully digested the Dragon Heart—he’d torn off one of the Demon King’s wings in an instant!
Boom!
Rrrr—
Elric hurled himself toward Reda, who had been flung high into the air.
The mana gale rising from where he’d leapt turned to a blizzard; ice-dust scythed in all directions.
“How dare you… how daaaaaare you!”
“How dare I? Please. You’re about to die.”
Reda bellowed and tried to force Elric back, but Elric only snorted and crashed into him head-on.
Every sweep of the ice spear cracked the heavens with thunder, and the blizzard came ceaselessly. Even Reda could be seen getting shoved back, helpless against the onslaught.
It was a feat Calliger could hardly even track.
In the blink of an eye, Elric seemed a different man entirely.
Above all, the pressure riding his every word made the air itself quiver.
Dragon Fear.
The aura that, when dragons lived, made all things tremble and bow their heads, was tearing through the field.
Calliger shivered, too, from the Dragon Fear Elric had left around the nest.
How—how in the world am I supposed to bring that down?
Elric had been a tiger. The Dragon Heart had given that tiger wings.
Before Calliger could so much as lift a hand, the gap had yawned so wide he could only clench his fists.
He no longer had the faintest idea how to catch Elric.
But what shocked him most was this:
With that level of presence, Elric had certainly sensed someone nearby—yet he never spared Calliger a glance.
Which meant he hadn’t considered Calliger worth noticing in the first place.
At this rate, there was no way to snipe him mid-fight with the Demon King.
Was he truly going to stand here and take it, helpless, hands tied?
Just then, in his helplessness, Calliger’s body trembled.
Vmmm—
He felt a faint vibration underfoot.
A very subtle tremor.
What is that?
At first he thought it might be aftershocks in the ground from the Dragon Fear Elric had unleashed.
But on closer feel, this tremor was of another kind.
Could there be some guardian he’d failed to sense? He widened his sensory field downward.
Then he felt it: an empty space.
Another hidden… room?
Instinct told Calliger there might be something there.
Come to think—dragon nests sometimes turned up with hidden hoards.
Not only coins and gems, but rooms with magical tomes and artifacts holding ancient secrets.
Scholars often guessed that dragons had a hoarding instinct.
If so—
Why not the guardian dragon, too?
Even if he couldn’t take down Elric Mervingor, if he could at least secure something like this—
If he stayed here like this, the timing might differ, but his ruin was inevitable.
But he could still plan for the future.
To give Rodeo and the others a chance to rise again, he’d need a hoard worth betting on.
He had Interrecia, but it wouldn’t be enough.
In the end, Calliger set his jaw, flooded his leg with mana, and stamped down hard.
“[Exploding Thunder].”
Kra-kooom!
Earth sluiced into the lower hollow, revealing a new chamber.
Calliger slipped down carefully.
It was a very narrow room—barely wide enough for a person.
Contrary to his hopes, there were no shelves of treasure.
But from the moment he entered, his eyes were locked on one thing.
A large chest at the deepest end of the room was shuddering violently.
What in the world…?
A fierce presence seeped from the trembling chest.
Something about it resembled Dragon Fear.
For a heartbeat he tensed, wondering if it was an explosive the guardian dragon had used.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He layered multiple defensive spells and threw the lid wide.
Clack!
And he saw—
“This is…!”
Three fossilized eggs, neatly set on a bed of fine silk.
Recognizing dragon eggs at a glance, Calliger’s eyes went round.
* * *
“How can this be…!”
Reda barely knocked aside the spearpoint that stabbed for his left shoulder, teeth grinding.
He could parry the assault, but his body was growing heavier by the breath, and he couldn’t gather himself.
Even when he managed to block an attack, the shockwaves and flurries gouged rough wounds into his flesh.
Moments ago, those flurries hadn’t harmed him at all.
Now it was as if each fleck carried a charge of mana—enough to drive him mad.
There was no way to sweep aside this much snow and ice-dust with demonic power alone.
Worse, the frost venom that kept seeping into him made his movements sluggish.
The cold was one thing, but the biting chill that ran down his fingers whenever their weapons met was driving him insane.
No matter how he shielded himself with demonic energy, his fingertips still throbbed, and the freeze crept to the bone.
At some point, even his sense of his own body had begun to dull.
Damn that Dragon Fear…!
Reda knew too well that it was a “power woven into presence” that dragons prided themselves on.
They were a race that could instinctively pour mana into every motion and breath.
Elric was grasping that—intuitively—and making it his.
But more than anything, what drove Reda crazier was—
“You’re… using me as your test bed…?”
The more Elric pressed him, the stronger Elric became.
How to put it?
As if he were rapidly mastering powers he hadn’t even realized he had.
Just as he had figured out how to wield Dragon Fear,
He was quickly checking off the gifts of dragon’s blood and trying them out on Reda.
The ice sheet spreading underfoot.
The flurries that kept carving wounds into Reda’s body.
And the savage, driving strikes.
Whip, whip, whip, whip—
It was a wholly different battle from a short while ago, when Reda had driven Elric one-sidedly.
Of course, that didn’t mean Elric truly possessed enough power to overwhelm the Demon King.
So you can still afford to look away!
Crunch!
Whenever Reda barely forced Elric’s spear aside, Hyul’s thought-form slipped in from a blind spot.
At some point Hyul had shrunk it to a smaller size; its teeth tore viciously through Reda’s shoulder as it darted past.
And right behind—
Swiish—
Kra-kooom!
Sailor’s hurled javelin smashed home without fail, ripping open another wound.
Sailor alone was an opponent Reda found hard to guarantee a win against.
With two more piled on top, Reda’s life was pure hell.
“Oho! Still alive after that? I’m getting to throw spears to my heart’s content today, huh?”
Cackling like this was the time of his life, Sailor’s laughter stabbed into Reda’s ears.
These wretches… you dare mock me…?
Bloodied and ragged, Reda’s eyes bulged with engorged veins.
Everything happening now was humiliation beyond compare.
From the moment he’d awakened, he had borne the identity of Azazel’s vessel.
Of course, even within the Grigori he’d always stood as a ruler; a flick of his finger was enough to make anything happen.
He had talent to match, earning the high priest’s trust. Nothing had ever truly checked him.
And he believed without doubt that he was the perfect reincarnation for Azazel to descend into.
Judah? Compared to that half-wit, Reda would be ashamed to be mentioned in the same breath.
Belot? A musclebound idiot.
Lapis and Lazuli? Those fools, chasing only their own pleasure and profit, could never be vessels fit to receive Azazel.
It was him.
There was no one else worthy to wear the crown of madness.
And yet—
Then why…!
Thud-thud-thud!
A spearhead ripped across his thigh, and Reda felt a new, unfamiliar emotion.
He could clearly see the spear’s path—yet he couldn’t avoid it.
He had bled too much demonic power; the frost venom was eating into him; his body no longer moved as he willed.
The fear that he might die—
Crept over his whole body.
And Elric did not miss that opening.
It works. My attacks are landing.
To Elric, that was what mattered most.
He could now fight Reda on equal terms.
Unlike before, when his blows bounced off without leaving a mark, he now had a very real chance at killing him.
That was the magnitude of the power given by dragon’s blood.
Crack, crack—
Crrrack!
Even now, dragon’s blood streaked through his body, rapidly remaking his tissues.
The spear he’d thrust a moment ago and the one he thrust now—just a single breath apart—carried a gulf of power between them.
And the way his mana moved—why was it so natural?
Where before he had to designate circulations and set up mana fields one by one, now, with mere will, his mana flowed exactly as it should.
As if that were the most natural thing in the world.
To pour intent and will into it.
To draw out mana exactly as he meant to.
That, more than anything, felt like the core difference between True Speech and Word-Command.
Let’s end this.
Since he’d seized the momentum, Elric decided not to delay: he would finish Reda here.
He didn’t know when he’d get another chance like this.
My body’s nearing its limit.
Dragon’s blood gave power without end, but his stamina and mind were draining fast.
Even just keeping control of his changing body was no easy feat.
“I’ll help.”
Whether it had read his will or not, Nahatram—possessing him—began to sketch a new spear form.
Elric recognized it as the “Beak” from
He saw countless strands around him swirl and funnel into his spearpoint.
He stamped his right foot and drove the ice spear forward.
Bingyeol (Ice Fracture)!
Zzzr-zzzr-zzzr—
Booom!
“No—!”
Half of Reda’s skull froze, then shattered and popped into the air like a firework.
Elric moved to trigger Bingyeol again to finish it—
“Get out of the way!”
Mephisto’s urgent shout cut in.
Swiish—
Kra-kooom!
Belot was charging straight at them, like a boulder hurled by a siege engine.
The Mage Who Devoured Talent