Chapter 224: 119. Big Eyes -4 (Part Two)
The grim reapers still inside the boundary of the gate waved their hands about.
Even though they hadn’t actually crossed over to this dimension yet, they could still exercise their authorities here.
The rotting hand of a titan suddenly emerged from the swamp summoned by the Liches. That huge hand tried to snatch me up, but I quickly swung the greatsword to smack it away.
Air compressed before exploding forward; the formless blade sliced apart the titan’s fingers.
The decomposing flesh splattered everywhere, but even those bits continued wiggling around before pouncing on me.
Those bits of flesh landed on my body, and the decomposing demonic energy collided with divinity to cause explosions.
My body began faltering.
This resistance from them… it was heavier than I thought. Did these undead really want to invade this world that badly?
Right at that moment, the grim reapers’ scythes, which should’ve been stuck within the boundaries, leapt out. Dozens of curved blades flew in my direction.
‘Fine, let’s see who’ll win today!’
I forced my body to move.
While still carrying all those bits of rotting flesh, I slowly inched forward, all the while evading the incoming scythes of the grim reapers.
The bone armour was crumbling away. Even Amon’s skull developed a crack.
But I still endured. I endured against the storm of scythe blades and crept towards the rune letters making up the warp gate.
“This, is, the, end-!!!”
I thrust the greatsword in the magic circle with everything I’ve got.
The blade sunk in deeply. Almost at the same time, the rune letters violently quaked before spectacularly exploding.
Divinity and demonic energy messily tangled up and formed a hurricane, instantly turning all the undead coming out from the warp gate into ashes and destroying them.
At the same time, one of the grim reapers’ scythe blades that was extending out from the black hole came to a stop mere millimetres away from my forehead.
The grim reapers were captured by the black ‘hands’ shooting out from the wall between the dimensions.
Cold sweat trickled down my back. Holy cow, if I was late by a millisecond, my head would’ve been impaled by a dang scythe of all things!
The guardians maintaining the wall between the dimensions began dragging away the grim reapers.
Those grim reapers were glaring back at me.
-One day…
Their voices sounded rueful.
Despite the black hands dragging them inside the warp gate, which was currently in the process of shutting down, the grim reapers were still smiling away.
-…We shall be freed from this place.
The warp gate gradually got extinguished.
As if to match that, my bone armour also began disappearing.
I plopped down on my butt and leaned against the greatsword still stabbed on the floor. When I looked behind me, the holy undead were busy getting rid of all the remaining walking dead.
The Liches were gone now, and the number of undead was decreasing quite quickly, so I figured that it’d be only a matter of time before they were fully taken care of.
“It’s over.”
The tension was leaving my tired body.
Gee whiz. I only wanted to act like a simple adventurer and enjoy my vacation time here, but…
“Well, at least I got to rampage around like crazy, so there’s that, I suppose.”
Yup, this vacation sure has turned into something completely unforgettable, hasn’t it?
**
(TL: In 3rd person POV.)
Adolf was running along the interior of the castle, accompanied by other adventurers as well as magicians affiliated with the fiefdom.
The Big Eyes seemed to be dead, judging from the creature’s flesh withering away and disappearing.
“Lady Alice? Sir Hans?”
In the middle of running, they ran into Alice and Hans. The two of them had considerably fatigued faces.
Adolf heard from the magicians earlier that, even if you were an Eltera-ranked adventurer, you still wouldn’t last ten minutes inside the belly of the Big Eyes.
Even then, those two managed to survive.
He could see Alice and Hans making awkward faces while waving their hands. Adolf hurriedly asked them, “Where is Lord Allen?”
Alice pointed behind her and replied, “He’s gone to eliminate the Big Eyes.”
When Adolf heard that, he became certain about something.
‘I knew it. He must’ve suspected that something like this might happen in this place.’
He couldn’t help but see things that way.
The Saint, Allen Olfolse, seemed to seek out locations where incidents were taking place so that he could solve them.
Without a doubt, he must’ve come to this city after detecting that something bad was about to happen here.
Adolf and his group, now joined by Hans and Alice, headed to the feudal lord’s audience chamber.
The status of the chamber, which was located on the very top floor of the castle, could only be described as wretched.
Walls had crumbled down while the ceiling had a huge hole in it. There were also the corpses of all sorts of bizarre, monstrous undead practically overflowing here.
“…Are all these things undead?”
The adventurers, including Adolf himself, could only look on with a look of astonishment firmly frozen in their faces.
Huge lifeless eyeballs belonging to several Big Eyes were rolling around on the floor, while many other undead were gradually dissipating away even as they stood there in shock.
Adolf stared at the disappearing undead and swallowed back his dry saliva.
Just one person had killed off all these countless undead, which also included the multiple Big Eyes.
‘He’s grown much stronger compared to back when he was in the northern region.’
Adolf turned his head.
A boy was slumbering away while leaning his back against a greatsword above a shallow lake of holy water.
As he slumbered away, particles of divinity gently radiated from his figure.
That sight was truly mystical and sacred to behold.
As if…
“…He’s like a brave warrior from a fairy tale, isn’t he?”
It was as if he was the brave hero who vanquished the demon king.
Alice quickly walked up to Allen and checked his condition. Thankfully, he was merely asleep from the accumulated fatigue.
He wasn’t suffering from divinity exhaustion like in the past. He wasn’t even injured either. Without a doubt, it must’ve been all thanks to the effects of the Aztal Rune.
Alice quietly held Allen’s hand. She then glanced at the undead ‘dying’ away, and recalled all the incidents that this boy prince had resolved up until this point in time.
‘As I thought.’
Maybe, his highness could really be…
‘…The Saint.’
The Seventh Imperial Prince could very well be the real Saint possessing the ‘god’s fragment’.
**
Aihrance’s capital city, Irion.
Currently, a central committee conference was taking place in the nation’s royal palace.
Understandably, the entirety of Aihrance’s royal court was in an emergency mode due to the Big Eyes incident.
High-ranking nobles and the royal court magicians were gathered in front of the round table. All of their attention was currently focused on the parchments of data held in their hands.
And all of them were deeply terrified. The reason for that was quite simple: the warp gate connected to ‘purgatory’.
The technical know-how to cross dimensions was already shocking enough to behold, yet the more unbelievable part of this story was that all of them were still alive and breathing, despite a pathway to the actual purgatory had opened up practically next door to the capital city.
“As you can all tell from the data…”
The magicians of the royal court explained to the gathered nobles.
“Logically speaking, this warp gate’s structure should not be possible to construct, sirs. Even if Aihrance’s magic tower pours all of their resources into researching it, just deciphering a portion will take a decade, maybe even more.”
The magicians who were affiliated with the magic tower had to eat some humble pie while explaining the situation.
Even they couldn’t hide their shock at the fact that an organisation of Necromancers managed to create a warp gate of this magnitude.
The nobles’ complexions while listening to the explanations grew increasingly paler.
“In that case, what are the odds of the survivors of this organisation called Nemesis opening another warp gate?”
“We believe that it’ll be impossible, sirs. The structure of the gate is just too complex. It’ll be difficult to complete such a spell even if our nation decides to focus all of its resources, and as such…”
“Then how did they create it in the first place?!”
The nobles asked back, but the magicians could only shed cold sweat drops.
Their silence caused a commotion to break out among the nobles.
However, an old lady in the middle of their ranks finally decided to say something. “Vampires could have potentially supported them.”
The nobles quickly shifted their attention over to her. The once-noisy conference hall instantly became deathly quiet.
They were now staring at the master of the magic tower, who was also the master of Aihrance itself…
Queen Rox Aihrance.
She was an old woman with a gentle but slightly wrinkled face framed by her golden locks, but in truth, she was already well over eighty years old.
Aihrance’s Queen slowly interlocked her fingers.
The nobles paid close attention to her next words.
They had been monitoring the Seventh Imperial Prince of the Theocratic Empire in order to uncover his reasons for entering the kingdom.
Everywhere he went, he seemed to start various incidents, only for him to ultimately resolve them in the end.
From the empire to Aslan, and even the matter of the Lome Kingdom too…
A hidden faction was trying its hardest to upset the balance of the continent, and the young prince was going around wrecking their plans almost single-handedly.
And the meaning behind such a prince now showing up in Aihrance could only be…
“…Your majesty, are you suggesting that Vampires are hiding within our nation?”
The nobles had no choice but to think that way. And that thought caused them to pale even further than before.
“So that’s the reason why those Necromancers knew about such a warp gate…”
“The possibility of them acquiring Vampires’ research data that spans several millennia is undoubtedly high.”
“B-but, does that mean Vampires are indeed hiding within our nation?!”
When the nobles began raising their panicked voices, their queen calmly spoke up again.
“The odds are, they are hiding not just in our nation’s borders but also within this very royal palace as well.”
The nobles hurriedly clamped their mouths shut at her observation.
The Vampires that sucked out one’s blood and devoured human flesh were hiding within the royal palace?
Just imagining it sent shivers down their backsides.
“And so, we now need to decide on what we should do about the matter of the Seventh Imperial Prince.”
Queen Rox Aihrance spoke while scanning the nobles’ faces in the conference hall.
A considerably smooth smile floated up on her face.
“I wish to invite him to the royal palace.”
< 119. Big Eyes -4 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
