by Road Warrior
Once the decision was made, the Emperor rose from his throne. He gestured with his arm to command the generals bowing toward him in the vicinity.
“Sortie every deployable unit!”
The Generals of the Human Empire let out a shout at his command before rushing out in perfect order. It was a display of power befitting the strongest nation. Fleets of airships, the pride of the Human Empire, soon took to the air around the Floating Palace.
“We will deploy five fleets. The direction is north-northwest. The target is the Enemy of the World.”
The noses of the airships that had lifted into the air faced north-northwest. The powerful sound of the marching horn rang out in the entire area around the palace, and the Emperor ordered an attendant to hand Sujin some particular items: a single sword embedded with a red ruby and a single glass bottle filled with some black liquid. The Emperor watched Sujin put the items away while he spoke.
“I’ve been told that you have a unique ability. The sword might not be anything special, but it has a legendary sharpness, and this glass bottle contains poison of a legendary strength.” The intention behind his words was clear.
“When the opportunity arrives, kill my old friend.”
–
“Brilliant reasoning.”
Sungchul allowed himself a faint smile as he turned around, tucking the scroll away. His figure suddenly disappeared from Vestiare’s sight.
Grab!
A rough grip clenched down onto Vestiare’s neck. He gave no time for her to reflect on the situation. Sungchul applied more pressure onto the hand holding her neck and it snapped like a flower. A pale apparition briefly appeared above Vestiare’s body before disappearing again. It was only then that Sungchul realized that it wasn’t Vestiare’s true body.
This is also an illusion. She’s playing a clever trick that’s difficult to see through at a glance with the Eye of Truth.
Her consciousness had taken hold of another’s living body as a vessel. The fog-like aura that was emanating from the entire body and her appearance that was still beautiful even beneath it made it hard to distinguish the truth. The woman whose neck had been snapped by Sungchul was a different woman. He didn’t recognize her face, but it would have been one of the Followers of Calamity.
Sungchul threw the corpse onto the ground and gazed at the illusion that had pulled away from the corpse with disinterest.
“I knew it’d turn out this way.” Vestiare’s illusion spoke with a smile.
“But you’ll end up moving according to our will.”
“Me? Move to your will?” mocked Sungchul.
Vestiare’s illusion laughed coquettishly as she floated up into the air. “I know you’re diligently learning magic, but how much have you progressed in only a year’s worth of time? At the most, you’d only have reached the level of a beginner mage. The road of magic is a difficult and winding path.”
“…”
“Sadly for you, there isn’t much time left for the humans. They haven’t yet realized that delaying the Calamity isn’t a solution.”
“You say some interesting things.” It was something he had heard many times before, but Sungchul pretended it was new information.
Vestiare’s illusion began her tale as though she was dreaming. “The world is crumbling. The tide of Calamity is crashing oppressively onto levees built by the humans. The foolish humans believe that it might be possible to buy time by plugging up the levee, but leaks will spring from all over until the flood of Calamity drowns the continent in death and anguish.”
“But, there hasn’t been any incident in eight years. The way I see it, there’s still plenty of time left.” Sungchul made an immediate judgement. He decided that Vestiare and the other Seven Heroes weren’t aware of his movements. They seemed to only know that he had overcome a magic-related objective of the Seven Heroes and other details that became widely known when he revealed himself to the world. There had been many opportunities for Vestiare to appear before him if she had seen through his movements, but she had shown herself at Harupaya Ridge four days after he had shown himself. It was only after the news had spread across the world that she had appeared.
It was a good thing that I adjusted the Deceiver’s Veil after I met with Kha’nes. These bastards don’t know much about me yet.
She didn’t even seem to know that Sungchul had acquired Meteor. Their ability to gather information was sub-par. Sungchul figured all of this out while he stared her down. Vestiare had a mystical expression on her face as though she still believed that she had all the information at hand.
“That scroll is my gift to you. Please hurry up and kill the Demon King. If you don’t, even I can’t say how the Calamity will change.”
Sungchul looked at the scroll in his hand that contained some sinister power. It reeked. It reeked with a fetid rotting stench. If Sungchul had not obtained Magic Power, this might have been the sole, irrefutable offer. However, he had other options available to him.
“This scroll looks like a trap.” Sungchul stared her down as he spoke. It was obvious, but her expression remained unchanged as she withstood his accusation.
“Every rose is bound to have thorns. To use it or not is up to you.”
“I see.” Sungchul threw the scroll onto the ground.
Vestiare’s lips twitched slightly. “You can’t take care of the Demon King without it.”
“Is that so?” Sungchul glanced at the scroll without a shred of interest before answering unemotionally. “I want to raise my Intuition.”
The wind blowing up the mountain ridge ruffled Sungchul’s hair and clothes as it blew past. On the other hand, Vestiare’s appearance was unaffected.
“The scroll doesn’t require Intuition,” she replied.
“No, this is my personal desire apart from the scroll. It’s been quite fun dabbling in magic recently.”
Vestiare wasn’t fully aware of Sungchul’s current situation, but when Sungchul brought up the topic in a cunning way, a warning light flashed across her eyes.
“Are you perhaps attempting to get rid of the Demon King by learning magic?”
“I’m just the type of person to stick to stat points, personally. I only feel good if I manage to raise it, even by a single point. In any case, I could consider using it if there was some quest.”
This was a battle that Vestiare could not win from the very beginning. It might have worked if she had approached him with the offer earlier, but her window of opportunity had already passed.
“I don’t make bad offers.” Sungchul was planning on taking his time to deal with the Demon King, even if it took another month or so.
This man… just what is he planning? Vestiare fell into deep thought trying to decipher his intentions. Could it be that he already has the magic power to kill the Demon King?
She could not see through Sungchul’s stats because of his Soul Contract – Deceiver’s Veil, but Sungchul shouldn’t be at that level yet. If Sungchul had, the Demon King would have long since departed from the land of the living.
Another possibility was that this was an old-fashioned bluff. Vestiare had seen plenty of men trying to pull a fast one. But, I can’t lower my guard just because this man is bluffing. I can’t know if this man has already attained the magic power to kill the Demon King somehow.
Vestiare held a smile once again after organizing her thoughts. “You’re saying that you’ll be satisfied with a quest that can raise Intuition, correct?”
Sungchul nodded. Vestiare then chanted a spell with a hushed voice that formed countless magic formations around her entire body.
Sungchul could see that these weren’t ordinary magic formations, but communications or an urgent request to a god.
Is she making a quest?
It usually took a great deal of time and dedication for a human to make a quest. It was because they were creatures far apart from gods, but Vestiare, who had become a Calamity herself, seemed to have little difficulty in ma
king a request of a god. When the countless magic formations around her body had disappeared, Vestiare held a faint smile as she pointed below her own feet. There was an image resembling her own face below her feet. When Sungchul laid his hand on the image, bright letters appeared in his eyes.
[Admiration of Beauty – To draw 33 portraits of Vestiare who is the most beautiful in the world.
Reward – +1 Intuition, Vestiare’s portrait drawn on Jewel Papyrus]
The quest contents were one thing, but the rewards were also quite something. It only raised a single point of Intuition as he mentioned earlier even though it was possible for Vestiare to raise it by more than 10 points at a single time. The worthless portrait was just tossed in there.
Sungchul burst out laughing, and Vestiare watched him with leisure as she casually spoke again. “I made the quest as you requested. You aren’t someone that doesn’t keep their word, are you?”
“My, you’ve made a shit of a quest.” Sungchul held a bitter smile and picked up the scroll that had fallen to the floor.
“I’ll be waiting then.” Vestiare flashed a captivating smile toward Sungchul and disappeared like smoke. Sungchul looked around the vicinity where she disappeared. Other than the gazes of devils in the distance, he couldn’t feel any presence of magic.
“Bertelgia.”
Maybe from holding his expression for too long, he could feel a slight cramp on his lips.
“Hm? Why are you calling?”
“It’s time to learn drawing.”
Vestiare would never be able to imagine that that one Intuition point was exactly what Sungchul needed; nothing in this world that is worth having comes easy. Clouds in the southern skies rumbled as massive magic formations began to appear. Sungchul who had been sloppily drawing pictures of Vestiare looked toward the southern skies. Dozens of Airships had popped out from the magic formation. The Golden Flag of the Sun flapped high in the air. The main fleet of the Human Empire made its appearance on Harupaya Ridge.
Chapter 17 – Bid For Redemption
A single man was laughing in a rumbling voice in an airship with his hair waving in the wind.
“Kekeke.”
He was Admiral of the 4th Fleet of the Human Empire Minamoto Daisuke. He had risen to his current position after accumulating unclear accomplishments that remain a topic of controversy to this day.
He calls himself a tactician, but when he introduces himself, he shares that his success is because he had read through so many books on warfare that his head is filled with the Three Strategies of Huang Shigong* and his gut with the ability to respond to anything. However, his strategies were one-dimensional and distasteful, and more than anything, they resulted in large casualties. If there was anything else of note, it was that he was a Summoned. He was summoned from Japan, as could be guessed from his name, but whether he was Japanese or not was a topic of debate. According to a Summoned from Japan that had spoken to him, all of Minamoto’s conversation is limited to “Yosh!” and “Hai!”
Regardless of all of these bad rumors about him, Minamoto was a truly powerful swordsman. With his hip-length hair flying wildly in the wind combined with his shouts befitting that of a madman while swinging his katana, he looked like the incarnate of an Evil Yasha itself. He was a figure that had brought terror to both enemies and allies alike. This Minamoto arrived at the peak of Harupaya Ridge undertaking the weighty mission of subjugating the Enemy of the World. He held a cylindrical scope to his eye as he observed Sungchul and began to mutter under his breath.
“Mm. To be able to sit on the peak by himself while confronting a massive army. Isn’t this the ‘Empty Fort Strategy’** by Zhuge Liang?”
His strategist mind began to work overtime, but his concentration didn’t last very long. The overseer of the subjugation of the Enemy of the World, Dimitri Medioff, had summoned each fleet commander to the deck of his flagship, Andragoras. Minamoto was displeased, but he had no choice but to obey.
Minamoto kept grumbling as he stepped onto the miniature ferry to board the deck of Andragoras. The other fleet commanders were also gathered on the deck for a strategy meeting. The head of the meeting, Dimitri, looked at each commander in the eye as he spoke in a serious manner.
“According to the reports, the strength of the Enemy of the World well exceeds our expectations. I don’t need to reiterate what kind of strength is capable of driving away a hundred thousand demons alone. So, we will need to seek out a method to oppose the Enemy of the World with the utmost seriousness.”
Dimitri looked at each of the commanders after his speech. They all kept their silence. None of them was able to come up with a good solution. Their opponent was a monster among monsters that had walked up to an army of a hundred thousand demons as leisurely as one walks into one’s home and had struck down their commander. Dimitri’s gaze shifted over to Minamoto, who was the last to arrive. Minamoto was filled with anticipation as he was prepared to relay some kind of plan he had just come up with and mulled how to express it. But Dimitri tactfully avoided locking eyes. Unfortunately, Minamoto wasn’t one to be so easily discouraged.
“Head Commander, I have a good idea.”
Dimitri briefly let his emotions show on his face. What kind of stupid thing does this crazy bastard have to say this time?
Dimitri didn’t wish to open the floor to him, but Minamoto was still one of the fleet commanders. Dimitri let out a sigh as he spoke bluntly. “Say your piece.”
“The way I see it, Sungchul is using the ‘Empty Fort Strategy.’”
“I see. That’s a brilliant opinion.” Dimitri spoke drily while applauding before he turned away.
“But, I wasn’t quite done yet?”
“Ah, you had more to say? Looks like I made a mistake.” Dimitri’s face continued to broadcast that he didn’t wish to hear any more of what the man had to say, but none of those signals entered Minamoto’s eyes.
“The only method to avoid getting caught by the ‘Empty Fort Strategy’ is to rush him down without giving him any moment of breath.”
Dimitri started a conversation with the other commanders, played around, and even closed his eyes pretending to sleep while Minamoto spoke, but Minamoto’s speech continued on regardless. When Dimitri’s patience had reached its limits, a senior adjunct walked in like a miracle.
“Reporting!”
“What happened?” Dimitri greeted the adjunct brightly, but Minamoto seemed to be muttering something or the other while this occurred.
He quickly made some distance from Minamoto with rapid steps while gesturing the adjunct to speak.
“The Enemy of the World is gone!”
“What?” Dimitri immediately moved portside and observed the spot where Sungchul had been with a scope. He was gone. Sungchul, who had been lingering around like a caged animal in a zoo, had simply disappeared.
“The time to attack is now! Commander Medioff!” Minamoto approached closer and continued to speak his nonsense.
Dimitri sighed as he pointed to the peak of the ridge on the portside with his finger. “Go by yourself then. No one will stop you.”
Minamoto only now discovered that Sungchul was no longer there. His brain immediately began to toss around millions of strategies of war that he had only read about in his books. “This… is Sungchul’s trap! We must not pursue!”
–
A rocky valley filled with strange and bizarrely shaped rocks.
Sungchul, who was in some clearing hidden by rocks and its shadows, was focusing intensely on creating portraits. The topic was Vestiare’s visage, but Sungchul had no experience in art. He tried to copy the sample drawing left behind by Vestiare, but in the end, they all became some form of abstract art.
“Goddamn it!”
Sungchul threw down the abstract art that even he himself couldn’t identify and laid back onto the stone. As he prepared to take a breather, Bertelgia popped out of his pocket.
“Is the Demon Realm Frontline safe now?”
Sungchul, who had been staring up at the ashen sky through the crevice in the rock, shifted his head slightly and nodded.
“It is the main fleet of the Human Empire; the self-proclaimed protectors of Humanity and its allies. They might have put up all kinds of excuses to delay deploying their troops, but as they have made an appearance in the Demon Realm now, they shouldn’t just turn back when they can clearly see the danger with their own eyes.”
The only reason that Sungchul decided to move locations was because he could see that the balance between the humans and the demons had been restored. There was no more reason for him to act as a human barrier. Sungchul had made a quick decision and made himself scarce. However, a bigger obstacle stood before him. Sungchul watched Vestiare’s portrait which he had laid on top of a rock with tired eyes.
“That damned woman. She gave me one bitch of a quest.”
No matter how much he drew, he could not produce even one decent portrait. Not a single one of them had been accepted, and Sungchul had to draw a total of 33. His future looked bleak.
“You’re so good at cooking and alchemy, but it looks like your artistic ability is quite terrible.” Bertelgia peeked over at Sungchul’s half-finished sketch of Vestiare which more closely resembled a goblin.
“…”
Sungchul did not speak any further. He stared blankly at the passing clouds through the crack between the rocks. After much time had passed by in this way, he heard the sound of paper rustling in the breeze. Sungchul, who had been resting with his eyes closed, turned his head and cracked his eyes open. A faint smile appeared on his lips.
Bertelgia was sketching something. She had placed a pencil between her two pages and held the drawing paper with a rock while she was scrawling something busily onto the page.
It looks like a kid playing with a crayon, thought Sungchul. He suddenly stood up from his seat and stole a peek at what Bertelgia was doing. His eyes soon grew wide from shock.