Chapter 253 — 제라이츠

Chapter 253

Zeraits

Tremble, tremble!

Crown Prince Zeraits was shaking so violently he looked like an epileptic having a fit.

The veins stood out over his clenched fists. His face flushed beet red, as if he might explode any second.

『Push him just a little more and he’ll drop from a brain hemorrhage.』

Mephisto snickered at the sight.

『Still, he managed to swallow his rage. Hahaha!』

[Being royalty doesn’t make a punch hurt any less.]

『So the fist is closer than the law, is that it?』

[If he gets humiliated by me even once more here… he won’t even get to be called crown prince.]

『Fair point. What little authority he has left would be ground into the dirt.』

Mephisto shook his head.

He truly could not comprehend human hierarchies.

If someone rubbed you the wrong way, just settle it with your fists and be done with it.

Why twist and wind around it so many times?

In fact, he couldn’t accept that Crown Prince Zeraits—who had neither power nor knowledge—outranked Elric in the official order.

And this after watching humans up close for so long.

He couldn’t fathom why Mervinger should be “affiliated” with anyone, much less “beneath” them.

[Feels like it’s about time he took the bait.]

Whether Mephisto sensed it or not.

Elric was watching Crown Prince Zeraits’s reactions with a keen eye.

And just as he’d expected—

Zeraits’s head was flooded with rage, his pride already shattered.

“How dare you, how dare you!”

He wanted to shout for the guards outside to drag Elric out at once, but the ones posted outside the grand command tent belonged to Prince Kromhel.

He’d not only stolen his woman—now he was breaking his standing too.

He wanted to tear the bastard apart.

“If only I had power…!”

His thought led him there.

To the mini scroll tucked in his breast, waiting for him.

He didn’t know what it was.

But maybe it was enough to screw Elric over?

With that, Zeraits reached for the mini scroll without hesitation.

At that moment—

“So that’s what it was.”

“…!”

Zeraits froze mid-draw. Elric’s hand shot toward him and he moved to bat it away in panic.

But a burst of golden light flared from Elric’s fingertips first. Dozens of slender rays fired like bullets and wrapped the mini scroll.

Zeraits, desperate not to let it be stolen, tried to rip the scroll apart.

But before he could, a pull drew the rays inward and the mini scroll was sucked into Elric’s hand.

“What are you doing! Give that ba—!”

“A demonic scroll that calls forth an anomaly.”

Zeraits shot to his feet to roar, then went rigid.

Elric had already unfurled the scroll and was scanning it.

Inside, a grotesque magic circle was drawn.

On the right ran rows of what looked like script, ancient and unreadable, evoking an old grimoire, but they could not fool Elric’s eye.

He had Mephisto at his elbow, after all.

『An anomaly. Specifically, a summoning for a calamity beast of Famine.』

“Did he even know this summons a calamity beast?”

『And the price is, of course, the summoner’s soul… If he’d called it here, the humans nearby would have all been swallowed by the calamity. Population was nice and dense, too—would’ve been quite a spectacle.』

“It feeds on human vitality to grow. And he was about to casually rip open a scroll that summons a Demon King–class beast?”

『The guy who made this has chops. This sort of thing is normally the specialty of a Demon King—one of the summoner types. Did Azazel have someone like that?』

Mephisto stroked his chin.

There were demons who specialized in summoning, but it was rare to find one with academic skill this refined.

He found himself wanting to meet the scroll’s maker.

And if possible—

‘I want to eat him!’

If he could seize this facet of Azazel’s power, he’d surely step into a new realm he’d never had before.

Meanwhile—

“Are you out of your mind?”

Elric fixed the now-pale Zeraits with a hard stare.

He could tell the circle held a nasty, ominous magic, but he couldn’t read it all at a glance. That would take serious study.

So he parroted what Mephisto fed him, shutting off Zeraits’s escape routes.

“Wait! I can explain—!”

Only belatedly did Zeraits realize this was a snare Elric had set to hook him.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince.”

Prince Kromhel and his Imperial Guard, who had been waiting outside, strode in.

Kromhel’s face under full armor was expressionless.

A face carved from ice, a presence that didn’t even leak the aura people called the “Lion Banner”—it all made Zeraits all the more afraid.

“I hereby arrest you on charges of collusion with the demons and abetting rebellion. Under Imperial Criminal Code, Article 28, Section 6, you are stripped of all courtesies due a crown prince until the charges are cleared.”

“Kromhel! That’s not it! Listen to me! Right—this is a setup. That isn’t even mine. Elric Mervinger tried to force it into my hand! He’s the one colluding with—!”

“What are you waiting for? Take him.”

At Prince Kromhel’s command, Zeraits was dragged out.

He thrashed and demanded they let go, but the Guard paid him no mind.

From here, he’d be thrown into the same prison as common criminals. His crown prince’s authority would plummet, and odds of a comeback would be nearly zero.

“Haa…!”

Kromhel kept his cold gaze on Zeraits until he’d fully vanished, then finally sighed and took off his helm.

His hair was soaked with cold sweat.

It meant he’d wrestled with no small amount of inner conflict to get here.

Whatever Zeraits thought of him, Kromhel had considered him an elder brother to the end.

“…That’s something I never want to do again.”

“The jackals around you are going to run even wilder.”

“They will.”

Kromhel gave a bitter smile.

Elric was right.

Once Zeraits was stripped of the crown prince’s seat, the other princes and princesses would bare the ambitions they’d kept hidden.

For now, Kromhel might look closest to the throne, but he couldn’t afford to relax.

Once a seat collapses, there’s no law saying it won’t collapse again.

From here on, it was a chicken race with lives on the line.

“How did you know our brother had something like that?”

Elric gave a crooked smile and flicked his fingers.

Caw! Caw!

Crows cried raucously outside.

Kromhel’s face shifted.

“…You’ve been watching the whole time.”

“Something like that. And I figured the Grigori remnants weren’t the type to sit still.”

“You didn’t find any dirt on me, did you?”

“Who knows.”

Elric ended with a shrug and began pouring mana into the mini scroll.

Whoom—

The scroll shed a radiant halo. At the same time, the contents within popped free one by one and orbited in the air.

Letters danced; fragments of a broken magic circle scattered to the winds.

He was discarding the magic inscribed on the scroll itself.

And while dismantling it… Elric chased the magic’s origin.

He was attempting to hack the spell, back-tracing the coordinates off the data left within.

Since it was magic a Demon King had used, chasing it like this was nigh impossible.

But Elric possessed his house’s ancient knowledge, far beyond ordinary men—and Mephisto’s brain besides.

“Then I’ll leave the cleanup to you.”

Letting Kromhel’s reply pass by his ear, Elric turned back to the scroll.

『Hurry! Move! What if they run!』

[Stop rushing me. And how would they even know about this?]

『Figure of speech! Just go! I’m starving—my head’s spinning!』

[You’re really making me not want to help.]

Grumbling, Elric spoke the trigger word.

“【Open】.”

The moment the word fell—

Whooosh!

The shattered letters formed a sooty portal.

“Then, Your Highness, see you later.”

Elric dove into it.

Now—

It was time to put an end to this damned war.

* * *

The plan Elric and Prince Kromhel drew up was simple.

A diversionary operation.

Using the scroll seized from Crown Prince Zeraits, Elric would hunt down the Grigori remnants and wipe them out.

Meanwhile, Kromhel would immediately move the Grand Headquarters and launch a grand offensive against the mountain tribes.

That way, all eyes in Batu would be glued to Kromhel and the Grand HQ.

Elric would pursue the Grigori remnants, then appear in the very heart of the mountain tribes’ camp and strike from the rear.

Because, fleeing, the only place the remnants could throw themselves was the mountain tribes’ lines.

And—

Elric’s prediction hit the mark.

The moment he opened the portal and emerged—

“What the…?”

“E-Elric Mervinger?”

Lapis and Lazuli, in the middle of a meal, jolted in shock at the sight of Elric popping up atop their banquet table.

『These must be it. The provisions for this king.』

Mephisto smacked his lips at Lapis and Lazuli.

Just looking at Azazel’s last remaining Demon Kings made him feel as if his strength had already returned in full.

The two Demon Kings hastily triggered their sigils to block Elric’s approach, but—

“【Thunderwall Form】.”

Elric was already unfolding the spell he’d prepared.

Progenitor Magic. Almost no one could hope to escape the explosion of compressed thunderforce.

Kra-ka-koo!

Rrrrrumble—

A massive heatstorm blasted out in all directions, and the place where Elric stood went up in a roaring detonation.

The Mage Who Devours Talent