Chapter 207: A Writer and a Mission
"Haven't Sieg and Captain Hugin sent any messages yet?" Edward asked as he ran alongside Wang Yu. The two of them were heading toward the edge of the divine realm projected by the God of Terror.
He was very curious about what had happened while he was trapped in a prison of memories. Had the Nightblades not rallied against this threat?
"Nothing at all." Wang Yu pulled the communicator out of his pocket and gave it a glance—no incoming messages.
"Something's wrong with this space. Sue and you broke free from the God of Terror's grasp far too easily. Do you really think that's possible? This was Selwyn's trump card—it can't be that easy to overcome."
Wang Yu gazed up at the pitch-black sky. That distorted, hulking shadow hovering up there remained still, utterly motionless. Even so, Wang Yu could feel it. The terror it exuded, relentless and suffocating, only continued to grow.
"You're right," Edward went on. "The city guards and the Nightblades wouldn't just sit still. I wouldn't even be surprised if they tried something reckless like you did when you bombed the area with reality anchors last time.
"But we've seen no sign of anything, no explosions or magical traces. All I'm sensing from this divine domain is suffocating silence."
Edward turned and helped the flagging Sue onto his back—she'd been struggling to keep pace with the two knights. He continued to piece together the situation as they ran.
"The problem is with this domain. It has to be," Edward concluded. "We're in the God of Terror's realm. Anything that doesn't belong to Him will be affected, even the mana signals from our communicators..."
Wang Yu retrieved his communicator and tried to send another message. As expected, although the device was operational, there didn't seem to be any mana fluctuations at all. The space swallowed it whole.
"What a mess," Edward muttered, his voice tight. "I wonder if Stevenson Academy of Magic or the royal family has any way to counter a domain like this—or its master."
He clenched his teeth. The momentary relief of freeing himself from his memories had faded. Once again, divine influence was suffocating him with dread and cold fear.
Something brushed against his right arm, soft and furred. He didn't need to look at it to know what it was—Sue's tail, draped over his shoulder.
"Ha... I can't let fear overtake me just yet."
A searing beam erupted from a magic circle in the sky, lancing down and striking the black, hemispherical field that had engulfed the heart of the royal capital.
But the moment it touched the edge of that dark dome, it dissolved into nothing. Not even a ripple remained.
"Elemental magic is ineffective," came the immediate report from the academy's battlemages. "Though the domain hasn't shown active aggression, every spell we've hurled at it—every enchantment—has failed against the shadow and its ever-growing sphere.
"Current analysis suggests the area functions similarly to a deity's divine domain. Its power may be diminished, but it's still able to neutralize any non-physical spell that attempts to penetrate its boundaries.
"Once the magic enters that space, it's converted into the same overwhelming mental energy that floods its interior—pure terror."
The magicians at Stevenson Academy of Magic who were in charge of probing the boundary quickly delivered their findings to their superiors, including the principal of the academy himself.
The region within the black hemisphere had lost all contact with the outside world. Every means of communication had failed.
And despite the royal family's earlier directives, even multiple bombardments by Stevenson Academy had proven completely ineffective.
"I refuse to believe the royal family has nothing that can counter such a force," the principal said coldly. "Continue analysis and maintain regular spell bombardments. Scale the power gradually. We may simply not be using enough mana to break through that threshold."
He stared at the projection of the hemisphere, a section of void spreading through the capital at a measured but unstoppable pace, and rotated the dial on his communicator to contact the royal family.
"Have the Nightblades begun their operation?" he asked.
"They have," came the reply. "They're the experts in this field. The mission has been assigned to their current commander, Hugin Smokes. If necessary, he'll activate the last resort.
"Additionally, many agents of Selwyn's Abyssal Gate have emerged from hiding in the city. The Nightblades and city guard are engaged in suppressing them. The royal guard is en route. We request the academy's support—battlemages, if possible."
The voice was polite, but the principal's expression darkened.
The principal's tone turned cold. "As I've repeatedly mentioned, Stevenson Academy of Magic is a fee-paying institution. It doesn't screen for magical talent.
"It's devoted to the pursuit of truth, not for training soldiers or battlemages. We've already lost many excellent professors in the fight against Selwyn."
There was a smoldering fury beneath his measured tone, barely concealing disdain for the royal request.
"If we've offended you, we apologize," the royal voice responded, almost meek. "We don't know what has angered you so, but... does this mean the academy cannot send assistance?"
Was that apologetic tone merely a façade? How much of it was sincere?
"No," said the principal, setting the communicator down on the table. "I will go personally. This kingdom, this city, is my home. And this academy is my creation. I will not allow the capital to be devoured by the divine realm of a so-called ‘God of Terror.'"
With that, he stripped off his formal robes, revealing the close-fitting garb of a battlemage. From beneath the table, he drew forth an unassuming short staff.
"The rest of you—handle academy affairs yourselves. I'm not in the mood for politics. Let's see if you're all as competent as you are hardheaded when you argue against me."
As he embedded a mana crystal into the head of the staff, none of the gathered professors who often challenged his authority dared say a word. They had forgotten, perhaps, that beneath his ever-patient exterior, their principal was a mage who might one day become a legend.
"And as for you lot," he added toward the communicator, "do you really want to know why I'm angry? That grand ceremony—how the hell did someone capable of divine descent slip through your defenses?"
"...It was our failure," the voice replied after a pause. "Their disguise was masterful and far beyond what we could detect."
"Hmph. Best pray that's true. Fang isn't here to clean up your mess."
The principal gave a derisive snort and raised his short staff. Without so much as a chant, mana surged and space warped.
"We'll deploy all the forces at our disposal to correct this mistake," the royal voice pledged, but heard nothing in response. The principal had already teleported from the room.
The professors said nothing. They only wiped the cold sweat from their brows and moved swiftly to reorganize the academy's affairs. After all, no matter what, they were scholars who had earned their titles.
In a pitch-black room, only a single faint glow shone from the magic crystal lamp atop the table at its center.
On one side sat a brown-haired boy, youthful and pale, eyes wide with fear as he stared across at the man before him.
"Mmff—!" the boy tried to speak, but his limbs were bound tightly to the chair, and his mouth was sealed with a thick band of cloth. All his words dissolved into meaningless muffled sounds.
He struggled, but the oversized chair beneath him only creaked softly. His restraints did not loosen.
"Charles, are you still unwilling to give up that demon inside you?" The man spoke with an unsettling calm. "Most demons are brutish and idiotic. But some... some possess cunning, the kind of intelligence that rivals men."
"I know you say it's been helping you, but you must understand that's how it seduces you. This illusion of assistance is a trick to make you abandon your birthright.
"The Ryders' blood is potent, with an innate gift to glimpse and follow the threads of fate. That's what gives us our standing in the kingdom. And you, heir to the house, would throw it away?
"As your uncle, you don't know how deeply it pains me to see this. I need you to understand that someone who treats you kindly isn't necessarily your friend. Behind that mask of warmth may lie the deepest malice. I barely convinced the family head to let me handle your correction. If you stay stubborn, I'll lock you in here until you come to your senses."
He kept speaking, persuasive, relentless—until the end, when persuasion gave way to threat.
Charles' eyes widened with terror. Then, suddenly, he nodded furiously, again and again.
"Oh? You've come around that quickly?" the man said with a slight smirk. "Very well. I'll remove the gag. All you have to do is read the contract on this parchment aloud, and you'll sever the connection."
He placed a sheet of densely written parchment on the table and leaned forward to untie the gag.
"You almost choked me to death, you bastard! You bound me this tightly and even covered up my nose—were you trying to force me to submit or to kill me?!"
The boy's angry and unfiltered voice filled the room, causing the man's smile to freeze on his face. This was hardly appropriate for the Ryders' heir presumptive.
"I swear, you've lost your mind. You want me to give up on someone who's been helping me this whole time, keeping me out of danger and talking to me to maintain my sanity? Malice? Ha! Your whole world's full of it, not mine!
"Unbelievable. What if your powers showed you a vision where your mother was fated to die? What would you do then? Just sit back, sigh, and go, ‘Ah, yes, fate has spoken,' and watch her die?
"Oh wait—maybe you really are that kind of person. Maybe if your wife and daughter were both marked for death, you'd sit there grinning like a fool, thinking, ‘How poetic, this is fate.'"
Breath ragged, Charles launched into a relentless barrage, an unbroken torrent of sarcasm and fury that left the man before him utterly stunned.
"You..." The man opened his mouth, dumbfounded. The boy before him felt utterly alien.
"You what?! I don't believe in whatever shit-stained ‘fate' you think you saw. I went through hell with One to save my mother. That's how we became companions. You claim that One wants to harm me? Are you deranged? What a joke!
"Yeah, sure, I won't lie—what I went through was probably the worst experience of my life. I thought I was gonna starve, suffocate, die down there. But I held on. I clenched my teeth and refused to sign your bullshit devil's pact, no matter how hopeless it felt.
"Thank the gods my father finally realized something was off after a week. He kicked down the door with the guards, pulled me out of that hellhole, and gave you the beating you deserved.
"And do you know what I felt, watching him beat the shit out of you?" Charles asked, his expression twisting with a mixture of glee and fury.
"W-What?" the man stammered, his brain already scorched by Charles' torrent of abuse.
"It was the most goddamn satisfying thing in the world!"
Thwack!
With a roar, Charles suddenly broke free of his bindings. He landed a resounding slap on the man's face in one clean swing. The sound rang out sharp and loud, echoing across the room.
The man was knocked clean off his chair. Before he could recover, Charles was already on top of him, straddling his chest, unleashing blow after blow with both hands in a storm of open-palmed fury.
"Terror? I gave that up long ago. My only regret is that back then, I didn't have the strength to help my dad kick your ass. You call yourself a seer, a Fatewatcher? You're so weak I can pin you down and beat you senseless—me, a magician, not a brawler!
"Isn't that funny? Huh?! You thought I'd become someone like you? Keep dreaming! You've licked the boots of royalty for so long your brain's turned to mush. And now you think you can turn me against One?
"You want me to teach you how to judge people? You don't judge a person by what they say. You judge them by what they do. One has saved my life—more than once, at that. After everything we've been through, if I don't trust her, who the hell should I trust? You?!"
Still cursing, Charles unleashed one final, vicious slap. The man beneath him, along with everything around them, shattered into a cascade of broken, disjointed visions.
With a jolt, Charles snapped out of his nightmare. His consciousness surged back into his body—only to realize, to his shock, that he was running full-tilt down the middle of a street.
He nearly tripped on the next step, his rhythm off from the abrupt shift. Just as he began to fall, another presence within him seized control of his body, steadying his stance and saving him from a nasty tumble.
"You only managed to break free of the God of Terror's snare after I took control and pulled us out of his domain," came a familiar voice in his mind. "Still, thank you for trusting me."
Now back in control, Charles rubbed the back of his head, sheepish. He'd forgotten One could access his memories, which meant that she'd seen everything he said in the nightmare.
"Didn't expect to get a chance to beat the crap out of that bastard myself. Kinda grateful to the God of Terror, for once."
"Don't get too sentimental," Yi replied dryly. "It looks like the dark future we once glimpsed for Aleisterre may be coming to pass. The God of Terror has descended—somehow, Selwyn has managed to resuscitate a fallen god. No wonder the future was clouded from my sight."
"No need to panic," Charles said, flashing a grin. "We'll do what we've always done."
"Fair enough."
He pulled out his rarely-used staff and cast two speed-enhancing spells on himself. As he sprinted toward his destination, he continued speaking with One in his mind.
"You know what always rubbed me wrong about our family? They've spent so long relying on fate that they've become nothing more than royal lapdogs. They have no will of their own.
"I don't want to be a spectator. I want to be a playwright. Not to watch the script unfold—but to write it myself."
"A weaver of destiny. How's that for a title? Pretty cool, huh?"
"...it's rather too much, I should think," One replied with a sigh.
"Fine. Just 'writer,' then. And in my story, there's a stubborn, unlucky bastard who was supposed to die. But I'm the author now. And I say—he won't."
Back in the courtyard of the house on Redmaple Street, Avia stood watching the God of Terror's domain spreading toward the horizon. Concern flickered on her face, but she had faith in Wang Yu. "I wonder how things are going now..."
The central plaza was still a distance away. It would take time for the spreading field to reach Redmaple Street. Until then, she would wait for news from him.
Suddenly, she felt a disturbance ripple through the void. She pulled out the small statue of the Lady of the Night, a personal gift. Black, formless shadows curled and flowed across its surface.
As she raised it to her forehead, she received the goddess's message.
"Avia, I have a message from the Nightblades. They've been unable to reach Wang Yu through normal channels. I can't contact him directly either. I must rely on you to pass it on."
"Of course, Lady Darkness."
Avia frowned. Why would a message from the Nightblades require divine intervention? Wouldn't it be simpler for a Nightblade to come deliver it?
After all, just earlier, Nightblades had passed through the street chasing members of the Abyssal Gate. They had warned her to seek shelter before the domain reached them.
"There is an item that Wang Yu must deliver to the capital's shadow and cast into the Abyss. It will be arriving shortly. I ask that you claim it, then pass it on to him."
"Understood." Avia replied. The Lady of the Night sounded far more like a mortal than a divine being, an odd but not unpleasant impression.
"Someone will arrive with the item soon. It may be... unusual. But you'll recognize it."
"I understand."
The connection ended. Still pondering who the mysterious courier might be, Avia heard a familiar, unmistakable voice outside the courtyard.
"Avia, is Wang Yu here? If he's not back yet, I'll wait with you. There are Abyssal Gate operatives everywhere in the vicinity. Hugin was worried Wang Yu wouldn't make it through alone, so he sent me to back him up."
The sound of that voice alone dispelled Avia's questions. She stepped to the courtyard gate and peeked out. Sure enough, a thick, writhing cloud of living smoke was churning just outside.
From within the smoke came an unmistakable voice, accompanied by a perfectly sealed metal sphere.
The smoke demon who claimed to be Hugin's partner had arrived. He was certainly special and impossible to forget.