Chapter 154

Heroes of the Allied Army (1)

One Sovereign and three heroes, all gathered in one place.

'Hmm.'

I calmly took stock of the situation.

First up: Seraphia, the Sovereign of Bitter Cold. She was the Countess of Whitewolf. Naturally, she would be in the county.

There was just one thing, though.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"... Oh! Brother! You're back!"

Seraphia cried out happily. Only then did everyone's eyes turn toward me.

"Yes! I'm completely fine!"

Seraphia spiritedly raised an arm. It was a slender arm without a hint of muscle, but her expression alone suggested bulging biceps. Her complexion looked very healthy, too.

I used Predatory Instincts[S] and Find Weakness[U] to examine her condition closely.

'She seems even better than before.'

She hadn't merely recovered; I could say she had been strengthened. As with Iliana's remedy, her constitution itself had changed to let her wield the Authority of Bitter Cold[P] more effectively.

"I'm full of energy, thanks to Sister Isolde!"

Divine power truly was the ultimate aura. As befitted a power capable of realizing anything one imagined, it had expanded Seraphia's potential. And since Isolde possessed the most powerful divine power of any Saintess or Saint in history, its effects seemed to have been amplified all the more.

... No, wait a second. What had she just said?

'Sister?'

Of course, Isolde was older than Seraphia. But the Sovereign of Bitter Cold calling the allied army's Saintess her sister?

... That caused some serious cognitive dissonance.

On that note, there was Isolde, the allied army's Saintess. She was—

"... Why are you here?"

Why was she in the county?

"I came to have my homework checked."

"...?"

What homework? Oh, could she mean what I'd told her when we parted in Violess?

["Try sleeping in under warm covers, smiling as you listen to the whispers of the wind, and being lazy while you gaze blankly at birds flying overhead. None of that is a waste of time."]

["..."]

["I'll check next time we meet. Don't forget your promise."]

She had come all this way for that?

"Actually, I came at Prince Leon's request."

"...?"

What was this about now?

Fortunately(?), Isolde explained the circumstances this time. It was a fairly long story, but the gist was simple.

'He realized immediately that Seraphia was critically ill.'

The excuse I'd made about magical-power contamination or whatever had been utterly useless.

Leon's Present Vision[L].

... The more I saw of it, the more fucking overpowered that ability seemed. Seriously.

And thanks to it... well, that wasn't quite how I wanted to put it, but Isolde's arrival had allowed Seraphia to be fully healed.

Still, Isolde's presence might draw unwanted attention to the county...

"I came alone, in secret. What you're worried about won't happen."

Isolde spoke quietly, as though she had read my expression. In that case, there was no problem.

Anyway, that explained the situation with Seraphia and Isolde.

Next was Iliana, the allied army's Archmage.

"... Why are you here?"

Why was she in the county, too?

"The letter you sent, Lord Adrian—"

At that, both Seraphia and Isolde abruptly fixed their gazes on Iliana. The atmosphere changed in a subtly peculiar way. Iliana's eyes darted left and right in apparent bewilderment.

"I-I-I received it... a-and came here..."

My letter had asked whether she could make Hyper Regeneration[A] potions. But my exact wording had been, "Could the blood of a human with regenerative abilities be made into regeneration potions?"

Nowhere had I asked her to come to the county—

"She said she came because she wanted to see you, Brother!"

"W-what?!?!"

Iliana cried out in alarm at Seraphia's sudden remark. She waved both hands frantically, visibly flustered.

"N-no!! I-I really c-came because I needed to ch-check something!"

"Check what, exactly?"

"W-what kind of blood you meant... I thought I'd need to see it... myself to be sure... The condition of the blood factors... and their mana reactions... things like that."

Iliana stammered, her gaze wandering everywhere. Then she looked between Seraphia and Isolde.

"It's true!!"

She shouted as if pleading for them to believe her. Her wide eyes were filled with desperation, as though the slightest tap would make her burst into tears.

She was so different from the Iliana of my previous life. This, too, caused considerable cognitive dissonance.

... Anyway. I hadn't expected Iliana to come in person, but it was a good thing.

Lastly, there was Brumbar, the allied army's Blacksmith. He was—

"Why are you here, Chief Brumbar?"

Why was he here? More precisely, why was he in County 1 instead of County 2?

"The Arcanoheart's repairs are complete."

"Ah."

That I understood immediately. In other words, he wanted help digging an eleven-kilometer tunnel to mine the runesteel vein.

Now I fully understood why three heroes and one Sovereign were gathered together. It was time to sort things out. In other words, I needed to set priorities.

Checking Isolde's homework. Iliana's potion-making. Brumbar's runesteel vein.

The order was obvious at a glance.

Feractrum, the land of the dwarves, was currently threatened by two calamities. They could strike within the next six months. But that meant within six months in the literal sense: disaster could strike today.

We needed runesteel to protect Feractrum. I also needed to secure runesteel well in advance to use as bait for the empire.

I couldn't reel the empire in all at once. I had to attract its attention with runesteel while remaining beyond its control. And if the runesteel circulated in places the empire couldn't control?

'They'll try to control it directly, even if that means letting the Crow Dung Pot Trading Company into the empire.'

The empire would have no choice but to invite me into its territory itself. Ultimately, this was the foundation of my plan to catch the Emperor's eye and gain entry to the imperial palace. There was a great deal of groundwork to lay for that.

In short, the runesteel vein had to come first.

"Let's all go to County 2."

"Yes!"

"Seraphia, you stay here."

"What? W-why...?"

"There's a mountain of paperwork that needs your approval."

Seraphia was the Countess of Whitewolf county, and all the matters requiring her approval had piled up while she was unconscious.

The county had already made tremendous progress with the dwarves' help. Productivity had soared, technology had advanced considerably, and the fief itself had grown rapidly. Its administrative workload had exploded accordingly.

But the existing administrative structure couldn't cope with everything. Bernard had at least kept the county running to some extent, but final authority lay with Seraphia. There were far more than one or two matters awaiting her approval, including all manner of administrative issues.

"Can't I do it later...?"

"The deadlines have already passed. Nothing can proceed without you."

"... Okaaay."

Seraphia's small shoulders slumped like those of a fawn left alone in the forest.

* * *

Dwarves stood gathered on the tundra, with an enormous spherical structure at their center. Three rings floated and rotated around a round sphere reminiscent of a heart.

Countless conduits and connecting lines extended from the core's underside. Streams of mana light flowed through the conduits. Each time the sphere pulsed, blue and red currents arose here and there, moving as though the device were alive.

"A device that gathers mana from nature and converts it into plasma..."

Iliana's blue eyes shone. She studied the Arcanoheart's structure closely, then asked in apparent bafflement,

"How is this possible? Even using mana's quantum properties, the probability of it existing in a plasma state is extremely low."

"Probability belongs to magical studies. In other words, it is merely a human way of thinking."

Brumbar continued firmly.

"The earth simply exists. The formation of minerals is merely a result. What you're saying is no different from claiming that the earth created minerals based on probability calculations."

"... You mean it's a way of thinking that assumes there must be a cause because there is a result."

"Precisely. A result is merely a result."

The two were exchanging incomprehensible remarks.

'Is that why they became friends so quickly?'

But now that I thought about it...

'They were like this in my previous life, too.'

Iliana, a genius of magical studies. Brumbar, a master of magical engineering. They had understood each other's worlds from the very beginning.

For now, it looked as though Iliana was simply learning from Brumbar. But that was only because this was her first exposure to magical engineering. Once she understood his perspective—

"Then is there any need for the mana flows to cross here?"

"... Cross?"

"The mana flows in a spiral at the center... then here, right here, the flows intersect. That's making the output slightly unstable—"

Iliana moved her fingertips to guide the mana flow.

"If we change it like this..."

The spiraling mana now connected smoothly at the intersection. Brumbar's eyes widened.

"Did you turn the mana collision phenomenon to your advantage?"

"Yes. That can increase the output by about seven percent."

"... Impressive."

That was how the two heroes created synergy, growing at an explosive pace.

Iliana's Insight[L] let her instinctively understand the origins of the complex world and the flow of its fundamental energies, grasping their workings perfectly. Brumbar's Hyper-Phantasia[L] let him perfectly imagine every kind of concept, phenomenon, and substance, even the laws governing them.

Insight and realization. Iliana read the essence, and Brumbar made it reality.

"But that seven-percent increase in output could create back pressure..."

"We can address that by adjusting the conduits' angles."

Then and now, those two certainly worked well together.

Anyway.

"How can I help?"

Brumbar answered while adjusting the conduits' angles.

"Can you bore down eleven kilometers, with a radius of five hundred meters?"

"Whaaat?!"

Iliana cried out, her eyes wide.

"Eleven kilometers underground?! And a kilometer across?!"

"That's right."

"The ground will definitely collapse!"

"I'll use the Arcanoheart's gravitational field to maintain constant ground pressure. Then there's no danger of collapse."

Brumbar spoke calmly. Apparently, he had already completed the design using Hyper-Phantasia[L].

"Can you do it?"

"Is it all right if my method is violent?"

"It doesn't matter. The energy output from the Arcanoheart can keep most things under control."

"Then I won't hold back."

◆Activating evolved skill, Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L]!!

* * *

Adrian's right arm glowed red-hot. The energy boiling and surging within it, as though about to explode at any moment, was beyond estimation.

Energy compressed to that degree? No body could withstand it. Even Brumbar couldn't. He had withstood an ogre's blow, but he had no confidence he could bear that energy. His body would all but certainly be torn to shreds.

With a little exaggeration, that energy rivaled the Arcanoheart itself. How could a human body contain it?

Adrian should have burst apart long ago...

... Yet he was holding up.

No, he wasn't merely holding up. He was perfectly directing and controlling the condensed energy.

"W-what...?"

RRRRRUMBLE!!!

The immense condensed energy formed a red current. This wasn't a mere explosion of energy. It was energy given shape.

It rose in the form of a dragon and coiled around Adrian—

Only then did Brumbar realize something was wrong.

"W-wait—!"

But before he could finish shouting—

ROOOOOOOAR!!

The Frenzied Dragon's savage wrath erupted. The dragon blasted forth, tearing through the earth.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!

In an instant, an enormous hole opened in the ground. The entire stretch of earth caved in, and rocks shattered—

"!!!!"

"!!!!"

"!!!!"

Along with them, the common sense of Brumbar, Iliana, and the dwarves shattered, too.

"I-i-impossible...!!"

"That... that...?"

"Aaaagh!!"

Everyone was so aghast that they could barely form words.

* * *

Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L] tore through the earth as it detonated. The Frenzied Dragon, formed from flames, thrashed violently, churning up the ground.

ROOOOOOOM!!

An enormous blaze surged upward like an explosion. The ground shattered, and shock waves burst in every direction.

"A-an energy explosion on that scale...!!"

"And he's controlling it?!?!"

Everyone was utterly stunned. Iliana especially.

"... I-i-impossible!!"

She was practically screaming.

"That... He compressed energy of that density to induce a superposition reaction?!"

Iliana's Insight[L] had discerned the mechanism behind Wrath of The Frenzied Dragon[L] in an instant. The more one knew, the more one saw, and her astonishment was in a class of its own.

"E-energy compressed like that is guaranteed to collapse! It's already exceeded the limit for maintaining stability by dozens of times...!!"

Her blue eyes were open so wide they looked ready to split.

But I felt much the same. Not to Iliana's extent, but I was quite surprised.

'It seems more powerful than before.'

It wasn't merely a little stronger. A huge crater had formed at the epicenter where the Frenzied Dragon had rampaged. The scene looked as though space itself had been erased.

'Even the Sovereigns couldn't withstand this.'

It wasn't just the size of the explosion. Its sheer scale was on another level.