I edited this twice and both times it didn’t save for some reason -.- Thanks for reading~
After defeating the hero of the【Axe】, we advanced even further forward.
That being said, they sure prepared an amazing amount of split roads in this escape route. Not only are there a lot of split roads, they were intentionally made to be similar, so it"s hard to distinguish between them.
I don"t know how princess Flare threw this complicated path into her head.
I"m grateful that she memorized it, instead of having a map.
Breaking through here without knowing the path is probably impossible.
Princess Flare had great talent in magic, excelled at having control over people"s hearts, had a sharp mind, an outstanding appearance and the talent to fascinate anyone with her songs.
Other than her personality, she was a perfect girl.
Of course, because of her s.h.i.+t-like personality, everything went to waste.
In a way, it might have been for the best that she became my property (toy).
Thanks to me, her s.h.i.+t-like personality improved.
Until now, she took many acts of hostility to the Dioral Kingdom, making a countless number of them die.
And finally, she"s going to partic.i.p.ate in the killing of her father.
No, letting it end as just partic.i.p.ating is boring, so I"ll make Freya deal the finis.h.i.+ng blow to the Dioral king.
I wonder how interesting it would be to give her memories back after that.
… My memory manipulation uses【Transformation Heal】, and doesn"t delete memories.
It just makes them lose the key to pull out their memories.
I can return her memories if I feel like it.
The troublesome thing, is that I love ‘Freya’.
Showing her the things she"s done until now would be fun as revenge to princess Flare, but losing my precious property (toy) is regrettable.
"Kearugsama, it is embarra.s.sing if you look at my face so intently." (Freya)
Freya blushes, misunderstanding something.
What an idiot.
She hasn"t noticed what I"m thinking about at all.
"Well, I was just thinking about how cute you are." (Kearuga)
I either destroy her thoroughly and complete my revenge, or use her for life as a slave.
… I"ll decide after Freya kills the Dioral king.
I"ll think about which one would be the most enjoyable until the very limit.
"Kearugniisama, this is strange. After the first attack, they have not tried to attack anymore." (Ellen)
Ellen, our strategist, muttered that.
That reminds me, she"s a daughter of the Dioral king too. Princess Norn, huh.
I didn"t have that much resentment to her and it"s just a cute little matter of how she killed my close friend. Furthermore, even if she gains back her memories and knows that she opposed the Dioral Kingdom, she would just think, so what?
She honestly wouldn"t receive that much damage from gaining back her memories, so I"ll just keep her until I get tired of her.
"Now that you say it, it is strange." (Kearuga)
"Yes, although the Dioral king has fallen off the path of a human, he is not a foolish king. His achievements show that. And yet, it is strange that he only sent out a few soldiers." (Ellen)
"Ellen, what do you think is going to happen?" (Kearuga)
Since I believe in Ellen as a strategist, I ask for her opinion.
"… He may be planning to throw us off guard. For example, he might be pretending to be trying to protect this escape route." (Ellen)
"What point is there in doing that?" (Kearuga)
"This is just an example, but he might be trying to destroy this escape route and bury us alive, so he only sent soldiers at the start to make us not realize that. By showing off his soldiers, it makes it look like he is not planning to abandon this place." (Ellen)
"Interesting. Is there anything else?" (Kearuga)
"Stalling for time. Sending out soldiers in small groups is a foolish plan, but it is effective if his plan is to stall for time." (Ellen)
Both of them seem possible.
I feel an earth tremor. This is…
"It seems Ellen"s prediction was right." (Kearuga)
A creaking, unpleasant sound reverberates.
Cracks are appearing in the wall.
It was in princess Flare"s memories. Other people"s memories are quite hard to handle, and some information is unable to be pulled out without the right keyword.
In reality, although I knew she had memories about this method of caving in, I couldn"t pull it out from her.
This is the greatest trap in this escape route.
This path was made to let the royalty escape after the castle has fallen.
The designer of this escape route was a genius alchemist, and he thought there would be no meaning to leave behind this path after the royalty has left.
In that case, to protect the royalty that pa.s.sed through this path, they will be able to reliably destroy their pursuers by using this escape route.
That method is…
"A scheme to collapse the escape route and crush the invaders, huh. The guys from before were the preparations to make us unable to notice that." (Kearuga)
"Freya, please fire your strongest magic to the ceiling with all your power." (Ellen)
Ellen shouts.
"There"s no need to worry, I can handle this much with thirty percent of my power." (Freya)
"Full power! The stones used for this escape route are magic-proof. You can tell from the feeling of stepping on them." (Ellen)
What a waste of money.
If they made this whole escape route with magic-proof building stones, they could buy one or two smaller castles.
Furthermore, it"s the height of madness to use it as a disposable path.
The citizens would cry from knowing their tax was used to make such a worthless thing.
However, it"s an awfully effective method in this situation.
Flicking this ma.s.s away with a physical attack is impossible. It doesn"t matter how skilled you are, the only thing that might work is war-cla.s.s magic, but even that can"t drive a telling blow because of the magic-proof stones.
If there was to be an exception, it would be a magic greater than ritual magic which takes a hundred people to cast.
Only one person in the world can cast something like that.
Freya readies her staff, and swells up a unreasonably overwhelming amount of mana. Following what Ellen said, she"s trying to fire her strongest magic.
From just the amount of mana, my gooseb.u.mps won"t stop.
This is the true power of the hero of magic, Freya.
Freya points her staff to the sky.
A sevenfold, three-dimensional magic square expands.
The cave in of the ceiling begins. At the same time as that, Freya completes her magic.
"I will fire a crimson h.e.l.l fire… rank seven magic,【Flame Emperor】" (Freya)
That was a crimson pillar stretching out to the sky.
It"s a magic from the age of the G.o.ds that is too ranks above rank five magic, the limit for humans, which is only allowed for the hero of【Magic】.
She"s already reached the height of her magic from the first world.
No, she surpa.s.sed princess Freya from the first world.
Even though she"s firing such a vast quant.i.ty of heat, I don"t feel any heat at all.
Magic transcends the laws of physics.
Because of her perfect control over it, she compressed all the heat inside the crimson pillar so that there would be no waste of energy that leaks out.
The crimson pillar pierced through the magic resistant building stones and continued onwards to the sky.
I can see the sky.
"Pretty." (Setsuna)
With her white wolf ears standing straight up, Setsuna raises a childish voice. This powerful force transcended fear, and instead inspired awe.
I can see the sky because it didn"t only pierce the escape route, but also because it pierced the castle"s top floor that"s even further above it.
What stupid power.
The earth tremor continues, and our surroundings cave in, but we were safe, because everything above us was blown away.
"Fuu, how was that, Kearugsama." (Freya)
"That was a captivating magic. Here, drink this potion." (Kearuga)
I give her a handmade, mana recovery increasing potion.
There are two types of mana recovery potions. One type of mana recovery potion, is the one where you melt mana and immediately recovers your mana when you absorb the mana into your body through drinking it.
The other type, is the one that increases your body"s natural mana recovery.
An average magician would be fine with the former, but for people like Freya, recovering a fixed amount hardly recovers anything.
Since she fired such an irregular magic, she needs to restore mana now or else.
Freya gulps down the potion.
"Well, since we can"t move forward, we have no choice but to go up." (Kearuga)
Breaking through the caved in escape route and moving forward is too troublesome.
Fortunately, we"re already at the bottom of the castle.
So, going up the hole Freya made is faster.
I press my hand against the wall.
I invoke my alchemy magic that I constantly have set on my abilities, because I like it. Soil and stones stick out from the gouged out wall, making a spiral staircase.
Even I can pull off this kind of trick.
"Kearugsama, amazing. Setsuna can"t do such a skillful thing." (Setsuna)
"I would like to use magic too." (Kureha)
"You don"t need to force yourself to do something you can"t. … I"m just a jack of all trades and master of none after all. You guys will be stronger if you continue polis.h.i.+ng your own strong points." (Kearuga)
I"m just somehow doing well by using the many cards I have.
I can"t reach Freya"s level in magic, I fall behind in sword skill against Kureha and fall behind in strategy insight against Ellen. Setsuna is inferior to us right now, but in the sense of talent, she has the most among us.
We go up the spiral staircase while still being on guard.
We fired such a showy firework so that we wouldn"t be buried alive after all.
Enemies should come straight away.
This time, there"s no reason why they would purposely not send out soldiers unlike before.
They should be coming at us with full power, trying to crush us.
See look, they"re here.
A countless number of soldiers wrapped in black haze look into the hole Freya made, and jump down.
There"s a high chance that the remaining two heroes are among them.
"Guys, listen. If we try to ma.s.sacre them all, time and stamina will be wasted. So, we"re going to breakthrough their crowd and head for the Rainara room. Under that room, his ambition, the spell device, will be there." (Kearuga) (TL Note: In v1 c7, it said the Rainara is "a white flower with a tinge of blue in it, and is this country"s symbol.")
The most beautiful flower in this continent, Rainara.
We"re heading to the pure oasis of the Dioral castle where that flower blooms, the Rainara room made under princess Flare"s order.
It"s just like them to hide a disgusting lump of desire under such a beautiful place.
Once we reach that place, it"s our win.
We"ll pierce through this mob and quickly pick up our win.