Chapter 59

Duchy of Saxony.

Deep into the night, they moved within the darkness. The hardline elders of the Black Magic Tower, who did not hesitate to become monsters of truth, moved to carry out the Black Holy War.

“For the Black Magic Tower.”

“And for the Dark Mage Tower Lord.”

Their mission was singular.

When they built a life with the woman they loved and started a family, and when Dale was born. Within the warmth of that family, the ‘Lord of the Black Magic Tower’ they knew died. And with his death, the very ideology of the Black Magic Tower perished.

Therefore, they would eliminate the family warmth that weakened the Dark Mage Tower Lord and resurrect the monster of that era.

“Elena of Saxony, Liese of Saxony, and…”

“The Black Prince is no exception either.”

Even if Dale possessed the empire’s greatest talent and was the heir apparent to the Black Magic Tower, that child was precisely the one exerting the most powerful influence over the ‘Black Duke’s weakness’.

The hardline elders of the Black Magic Tower, their resolve set, spoke in unison.

“Veritas vos liberabit.”

Behind them, the endless ranks of ‘Death Knights’ gripped their sword hilts tighter. The Saxon family’s black sword held in the Death Knight’s hand emitted a black, pallid gleam toward the duke’s house they were sworn to serve and protect.

The pitch-black aura blade.

The Black Crusade had begun.

The assault began under cover of the dawn’s darkness.

Ding, ding, ding.

The bells of Saxony Castle, rarely heard ringing, were tolling. It was the alarm signaling the enemy’s surprise attack.

“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!”

“Arm yourselves immediately and prepare for the attack!”

“Assume combat readiness immediately and draw your swords!”

An enemy raid. Not in Saxony City, but from the very heart of the city, the Saxon Duchy Castle, the alarm signaling an enemy attack was suddenly sounding. It could only mean one thing. Those who could enter the Saxon Duchy Castle without a single doubt.

The Elders of the Black Magic Tower.

And even the Death Knights they commanded.

The Saxon House’s proud Knights of the Night Raven re-grip their swords against their foes. Against the Saxon House’s own black-armored immortals, who never rest nor cease.

Against their former comrades wielding pitch-black aura blades.

There was a girl who devoted herself to sword training alone until deep into the dawn.

She was clad head to toe in black armor, wielding Saxony’s two-handed greatsword within the custom-made armor of a Knight of the Night Crow.

“……”

When the bell within the castle walls rang out, signaling the enemy’s approach, Charlotte felt no hesitation.

Thinking and weighing options was not a knight’s role. A knight’s virtue lay solely in execution. Therefore, it was time to grip her greatsword firmly and fulfill her duty as a knight.

For the sword, the girl with the empire’s greatest talent sought to test her skill.

“Wait, Dale.”

Charlotte Orhart, daughter of the Divine Sword, whispered softly.

Why were the elders of the Black Magic Tower seizing the opportunity of the Black Mage’s absence to attack Saxony’s ducal castle?

Why is the Death Knight, who should be the most trustworthy of all, swinging his greatsword at the Saxon House’s Night Raven Knight?

Surely it’s the hardliners of the Black Magic Tower, rejecting the Black Duke’s regime, staging some sort of coup.

But for Sir Helmut Blackbear, the Mad Sword, one of the Seven Swords of the Continent standing at the pinnacle of the Night Raven Knights, that fact held little importance.

As Charlotte Orhart knew well, thinking and calculating were not a knight’s role.

To wield his sword for his lord. To eliminate enemies and protect his lord and his lord’s bloodline, even at the cost of his own life.

That is execution.

Therefore, Sir Helmut the Mad Sword grasped his beloved blade ‘Madness’ once more. He aimed it at the Death Knights who dared to wield Saxony’s Black Sword and began pouring into the castle corridors, and further, at the elders of the Black Tower of Magic who advanced under their escort.

“Mad Sword Helmut…!”

“How dare you.”

Sir Helmut, the mightiest knight of the North, spoke.

“To thrust Saxony’s blade toward my lord without fear, and to sully the honor of our proud Knights of the Night Raven.”

Accelerating the black aura within his body as if exploding, Sir Helmut Blackbear muttered.

“You worthless vermin, how dare you, how dare you, how dare you…!”

With a roar of madness that seemed to tear the heavens and earth apart.

“I’ll tear your flesh and bones to shreds!”

Crunch, crunch! Crack!

At that very moment, something began to twist.

Sir Helmut’s black armor, its steel plates, began to buckle, unable to withstand the explosive growth of the raging, gigantic body. No, it wasn’t buckling.

The black heavy armor itself twisted and distorted along with the shape of the body…

──Sir Helmut Blackbear’s rampaging body and the black armor were fusing together.

There is a saying: Magic is the power to transform imagination into reality, and furthermore, ‘a sword that has reached a high level of mastery cannot be distinguished from magic.’ Therefore, the power to turn imagination into reality is by no means the exclusive domain of magicians.

For swordsmen who have reached the pinnacle of both sword and aura as knights, they can imbue their swords with their very thoughts, wielding a power akin to that of a mage.

Just as magicians who have reached the highest level each possess their own world of thought.

The knight can be reborn into the ultimate form of combat by projecting that ideology solely onto his ‘sword and armor’ and ‘flesh’.

The armor of thought.

Avatar.

Like the man who had been reborn as a ‘monster in black heavy armor,’ his jet-black steel armor, his raging flesh, and the greatsword in his hand fused into one.

A heavily armored tank in human form stood there. Scattering jet-black aura, its black greatsword ‘Madness’ fused as one with its hilt and arm.

“Even death will not forgive your foolishness…!”

The black-armored monster roared as it thrust off the ground. The ‘Black Greatsword’, fused with its own flesh, swung through the air.

Whoosh!

“I’ll kill you! I’ll tear every bone in your bodies to shreds!”

The jet-black berserker roared.

Kwoong! Kwoong!

An absurdly overwhelming sense of pressure emanated from it, as if a massive tank had taken human form. It was an overwhelming pressure akin to an armored vehicle crushing an infantry unit as it charged forward.

It was no metaphor. Sir Helmut’s body was the armored vehicle itself, forged from black armor.

The Death Knights, the pride of the Black Mage Tower’s elders, were being slaughtered like mere foot soldiers.

Lord Helmut’s greatsword ‘Madness’ swung, and each time the Death Knight’s flesh and bone were torn to shreds beyond recognition, even by his own brothers.

“The mad dog of the Duke of Saxony…!”

The elders of the Black Magic Tower watched in horror.

Even the relentless flood of Death Knights could not overcome him, and even the dark magic poured forth by the elders of the Black Magic Tower dared not pierce his black heavy armor.

The black-armored body that even the magic of a 6th Circle Elder struggles to penetrate. Even mages who have reached the pinnacle of sorcery are nothing more than mere mages before a knight wielding an avatar.

Moreover, the outcome when a mere mage allowed a knight to close the distance was too obvious to mention.

Blood spattered.

Drenched in the spattered blood, the blood-stained black-armored berserker roared.

Even the 6th Circle Black Tower Elders could not help but feel terror in the face of that overwhelming presence.

The black-armored monster charged forward, shattering everything that stood in its path.

Before him, the elders of the Black Magic Tower simultaneously unfolded the ‘World of Thought’.

The northern region’s foremost monster guarding the Saxon Duchy.

The role of the elders stationed here was, from the outset, to bind that monster’s feet. They harbored no expectation of defeating it alive.

They would simply pour forth their maximum strength to bind this monster’s feet until their comrades completed their mission within the castle. Steeling their resolve to become martyrs for the Black Holy War.

Dale was running through the castle’s corridors. For the things he had sworn to protect with his own hands.

It was then.

In the castle corridor, a familiar shadow blocked his path. The adopted son of the Crimson King, the heir to the Scarlet Magic Tower, stood there.

‘Ray Yuris……!’

Of all times. Sighing inwardly, Dale retorted coldly.

“Have you come to block my path?”

“Why would you think that? Aren’t we friends?”

Ray Yuris asked back, looking puzzled.

“It seems the elders of the Black Magic Tower have divided their invasion force into several groups and entered the city.”

“……”

“It seems Lord Helmut Blackbear will be tasked with holding back the main force… and in the meantime, a handful of them will be attempting to infiltrate the upper levels of the castle.”

After calmly assessing the situation.

“And I’m more than ready to fight for my friend.”

He revealed his bio-fused artifact, the ‘Dragon’s Jawbone’, along with two circles rotating around his heart.

‘A mere second-circle mage thinks he can stop a Black Tower Elder?’

The fight wouldn’t even be worth having. But the title ‘Son of the Crimson King’ wasn’t earned for nothing.

‘He must have something else to rely on.’

Anyway, that wasn’t something to think about right now.

“…Thank you.”

There was no reason to hesitate any longer. He simply left Ray Yuris behind, generating black-blue magic centered around his heart as he crossed the hallway.

For what Dale must protect. For Dale’s mother and his young sister.

At that moment, the Crimson Magic Tower of the Imperial Capital.

At the tower’s uppermost level stood that man. The one reigning at the pinnacle of the Crimson Magic Tower, the Blood-Red Duke, called the empire’s foremost dark mage.

“Is Ray doing well?”

Sipping the crimson liquid rippling in the glass, the woman beside the Crimson Ball opened her mouth. She was a beauty with fiery red hair.

“We shall see, Lady Scarlet. My dearest sister.”

“Oh dear. I sometimes worry that your expectations for Ray might be a bit too high, Brother.”

At Lady Scarlet’s words, the Crimson Prince silently sipped the crimson liquid in his hand. It was not wine.

“Hmm, the taste isn’t too bad.”

The top floor of the Crimson Tower. Lady Scarlet turned her head and saw chunks of flesh hanging upside down like in a pig slaughterhouse.

Hanging from a hook, the flesh dripped blood, and beneath it lay a wine bottle catching the blood.

At first glance, it might seem like the perverse taste of a nobleman indulging in the raw blood of an animal.

But the beings hanging from the metal hooks on the ceiling were certainly not pigs. Nor were they dead.

To the two siblings present, they were beings scarcely different from pigs slaughtered by humans.

Just as it is not strange for humans to slaughter and eat cattle or pigs… so too was it the natural order of the food chain for the predator above humans to devour them.