Chapter 224 — 깃발을 들다

Chapter 224

Raise the Banner

“You cur!”

“Get away from the High Priest!”

Just then, a Praetorian lunged at Elric in a panic.

“If you insist.”

Elric smirked, let go of the ice lance buried in the High Priest’s chest, and slipped back.

Blades whistled through the space he’d vacated by a hair.

Elric stretched out a hand and made the gift he’d left behind shine a little brighter.

【Burst】.

KRA-KA-BOOM!

“Graaagh!”

“High Priest…!”

“Guh!”

“Urk!”

The moment the lance exploded, scores, hundreds of ice shards fanned out in all directions.

The High Priest, struck dead-on, had his entire upper body blown clean off.

More than half the Praetorians nearby also took the shards straight on.

The unlucky ones had their heads pulped on the spot. The luckier ones still lost chunks of their torsos, and even those who barely kept their lives were soon howling as a frost toxin raced across their bodies.

“Hul.”

Watching them, Elric quickly called Hul’s thought-form.

Tzz—zz—

Elric’s shadow gave a faint ripple.

Heh-heh. What now?

“See if there are any sigils tied to lightning. There should be at least one.”

Sending me on errands now? I’d like it remembered I’m a Demon King, at least in name.

“If you don’t like it, just come back.”

Hoo-hoo. Not very Melvinger of you, being so serious. Can’t even joke. What kind of lightning? Does rank matter?

“Preferably high-grade. If not, low works too. Oh, and a gravity-related sigil while you’re at it.”

Quite the shopping list. Fine. I’ll look.

A sigil that held lightning. And one that governed gravity.

Thunderwall Form. The combination needed to complete one of the Progenitor’s spells.

Tzz—zz—

By now, Elric had already drawn a long new ice lance from the thick sheet of frost underfoot and closed his hand around it.

Up ahead—

Between the scattered ice fragments, magi oozed back together, sticky and viscous. The ruined upper body re-knit, and the High Priest took shape again.

“Melvinger…!”

His face was drawn and exhausted, contorted with pain and rage.

“So you regenerate too?”

『Being an Apostle of Azazel, I suppose. No—at that level it’s practically restoration, isn’t it?』

Watching at Elric’s side, Mephisto barked a laugh, amused.

『Though maybe it’s just that all of Azazel’s lot look alike—he seems familiar somehow…?』

[How would you know someone from the present era, Mephi? Even for demons, most would be long dead by now.]

『Hm. Is that so?』

Mephisto cocked his head with a peculiar look.

[But why is that guy so weak?]

『What?』

[He’s the head of Grigori, an Apostle of Azazel, right? Shouldn’t he be stronger than someone like Reda at least?]

Mephisto let out a helpless snort.

『It’s you who’ve been growing at a ridiculous pace. From what I’ve seen, that one isn’t weak by human standards.』

[He’s still lacking.]

『An Apostle is the proxy of the one he serves. In that sense, it’s only natural he’s weak.』

[Hm…? If he’s Azazel’s Apostle, he should be that strong by default—ah. That’s not it.]

Elric finally caught Mephisto’s meaning.

Azazel may desire to revive, but he had not truly returned to this land.

A crucial distinction.

It meant there were limits on the power an Apostle of Azazel could draw on.

If Azazel were present, his magi could be siphoned almost without end. But if he’s an “absent” being…?

『Then he can only be feeble. Looks like there’s only a “Name” left. What does he plan to do with that?』

Mephisto’s derisive snort was only natural.

Still, being an Apostle did offer the High Priest one advantage.

[Turn that around, and as long as Azazel’s “Name” remains, that guy can’t die, right?]

『Something like that.』

[Man! I’m a bit jealous.]

『You could do the same.』

[Huh? I could resurrect like that too?]

『Easily.』

[How?]

『Become my Apostle.』

[Are you insane?]

Step, step—

Elric walked, trading his usual idle chatter with Mephisto.

His two eyes, however, were anything but idle, his mind’s eye flung wide open.

【Bear down】, and 【Bear down again】.

He raised blizzards in succession to keep the Praetorians at bay, then picked off only those stubborn enough to force their way through.

Elric moved faster than ever.

Ever since he fully took in the dragon’s blood—no, ever since he swallowed a dragon’s heart whole—he’d become a born fighter.

Dynamic vision, reflexes, the strength in his lance arm.

Even Herman had found himself applauding more than once, and even now the dragon blood was rapidly rebuilding Elric’s body.

Even Batu grew that strong off a small dose of dragon blood.

And Elric had devoured a dragon’s heart.

No need to say more.

Let it flow, cut aside—

And when an opening appeared, strike, again and again.

All the while, Elric closed the distance with the High Priest and waited.

For someone to interfere.

But the one he’d been waiting for never showed.

“Guess he really was abandoned.”

Belot, who should have thrown himself in to protect an Apostle, didn’t so much as show his nose. Neither the scene painted by his mind’s eye nor the perception field his Gullet Sense picked up detected him.

No matter how good your stealth, a body that big could only hide so much—meaning he’d fled far away already.

“I’ll have to search the shadows later.”

But no matter where he ran, as long as a shard of Hul’s thought-form remained in his shadow, he was a rat in a jar.

Shraaa—

Tumble—

The last Praetorian’s head dropped from the ice-lance’s edge and rolled.

The High Priest still shook with rage.

But for all the fire in his eyes—

With no protection at all, he was like an old man in a one-room hovel: utterly pitiful.

“Melvinger…! Not killing you sooner was my gravest mistake…!”

“Yeah, yeah. Everybody says that. If you were going to, why didn’t you?”

He’d heard the same from Viscount Kuranshivil and Count Kalligore; it was getting tiresome.

Elric dug a pinky in his ear, then smiled coldly.

“You keep coming back, right? How long do you think that’ll last?”

“Lord Azazel is the shadow of the great Demon God. So long as He exists, your ambition will never endure—!”

“I’m curious. Mind if I run a test?”

Elric’s smile turned unreadable.

Found them. Tiny, but—

Will these do?

[Plenty. It’s an experiment anyway.]

Right on cue, Hul’s thought-form whispered in his ear.

【Seep in】.

With the incantation, he absorbed the sigils Hul had found.

Magi seeped along the floor, and small tattoos etched themselves across his left shoulder and upper back.

New concepts surged into his mind.

One bore the nature of a bolt cleaving down from the heavens.

【Leap up and blaze】.

The other sank, heavy and deep, toward the bottomless below.

【Sink down heavy】.

Thunderflame. And Gravitic Pressure.

Compared to his current Frost or Hyungsal sigils, they were weak—but they were enough.

Crackle—crack!

Lightning flared from his fingertips, blossomed into flame, then whirled in and gathered to a point.

Whirr, whirr, whirr, whirr—

He used the Thunderflame sigil to kindle lightning, then the Gravitic Pressure sigil to compress it to a hard, high density.

The curious part—

Oh. Would you look at that?

As the spell took shape, the energy sphere drank in a ludicrous amount of mana.

Even considering Elric’s already vast reserves, the pull was absurd.

And the more mana he fed it, the faster the nascent sphere spun as it solidified.

Drinking in lightning, it slowly formed a Thunderbolt Sphere.

Only when the sigils were overheated to the breaking point—far beyond what their rank and his mastery should have been able to bear—did the mana draw finally stop.

What remained, compressed to its limit, threw off searing heat and lightning like a miniature sun.

Crackle—crack!

Crackle—

Lightning crawled over the sphere’s skin, leaping so violently it looked ready to explode at once.

If he didn’t have the Frost sigil, Elric might well have been injured.

『Disgusting. The shape.』

Mephisto’s face twisted, as if the sight had dredged up a memory.

So the shape is about right.

Judging by his expression, Elric had managed to mimic the Progenitor’s spell.

And then—

“That is…!”

Even the High Priest, from whom Elric had expected no such reaction, stared with eyes gone wide.

“H-How do you know that spell…?”

“Huh? You recognize it?”

『Ho. No one outside our era should.』

Mephisto’s eyes glittered. So he had been right—this face that “felt familiar” wasn’t just his imagination.

Which meant…!

“Let’s run the test first.”

Elric spread his palm and released the pressure on the raging sphere.

Thunderwall Form.

A spell said to be left by the Progenitor bloomed from Elric’s fingertips for the first time.

KRA-KA-BOOOOM!

Rrrrrrumble—

* * *

“Wow, shit. That almost screwed me.”

In the collapsed citadel, Elric pushed himself to his feet.

The Thunderbolt Sphere packed far more punch than he’d calculated.

Lightning was vicious by nature. Compress it to the limit and detonate it, and the result was power beyond prediction.

And so the citadel had been reduced to rubble.

If he hadn’t hauled up every shred of ice bulwark and Hul’s shadow to cover himself partway through, Elric would’ve been badly hurt too.

“If this is what low-grade sigils can do, what happens with higher ones?”

As Elric clicked his tongue, he sensed Herman and the others rushing toward him.

“Elric!”

“Are you hurt?”

The sudden collapse of Grigori’s stronghold had clearly spooked them.

Feeling sheepish about explaining it was his blunder, Elric glanced down as a faint tremor pulsed from beneath his feet.

Tzz—zz—

Magi flowed together again, and the High Priest re-formed.

Elric grinned.

“Damn. He comes back even after that?”

The Talent-Devouring Mage