Chapter 333: Chapter 333

* * *

Lawrence shook his head and gazed into the grim eyes far above. It always seemed to Lawrence that if he could stretch him out thin with a rolling pin, he could easily cover a castle.

The man before him was a High Demon, unable to squeeze himself into any building, always bracing himself against the cold rock walls.

“……Ashvka.”

His dirty, bloodshot eyes fixed on Lawrence at his massive feet. He shook his heavy body lightly, and the sound of insect wings vibrated loudly from within his tawny hide. As Lawrence remained silent through the violent noise, Ashvka spoke up.

“My turn…… has come…….”

“Yes. You’ll have to come with me. Emilia Swell, our new lord has commanded.”

“Loyalty…… to, the Lord……”

Despite his gruff, dull tone, Lawrence didn’t laugh at Ashvka or belittle him. No one in the Demon Realm would treat Ashvka lightly. He tugged at the corners of his mouth sarcastically in front of Ashvka’s closed eyes.

“With House Hywyl’s healing power and your wide-range power, the Empire will be no match for you. When you finish your prayer, please speak. The Lord has opened the summoning circle.”

After destroying the Empire, he would remove the filthy impurities his younger brother left behind. He must carve out a place for Hywyl in the new world of Emilia Swell.

* * *

The Demon Realm’s attempts to focus all its power on the Empire, to regenerate its magic circle and sow chaos in the Human Realm, failed. And the result. Progress, which had been diligently dwindling throughout last night, had bottomed out as soon as the next morning dawned.

「Demon Realm Summoning Progression: 03%」

「Human Realm Invasion Progress: 18%」

‘Even if these progress numbers go to 0%, the war won’t end immediately. We’ll still have to seal it.’

Their grand ambition to summon the entirety of the Demon Realm was slowly being crushed. But the seals that held them in check had already been broken. The demons could cross over into the Human Realm at any time. To end this war, they must seal the Demon Realm once and for all, just as the Seven Knights did so long ago.

‘This time, I won’t let them dream of rising again. I will leave them with no power, no leader to protect the realm. ……Emilia Swell. That princess must be eliminated.’

Unfortunately, he still hadn’t found a way to get her out of the Demon Realm. Perhaps he’d have to descend into the Demon Realm himself before he could find it.

‘The good news is that the victory still belongs to the humans, who have defended themselves well from the beginning of the war until now.’

The loss of life was inevitable, but the country didn’t collapse as a whole. The important thing was that they didn’t play the demons’ game from the start. From now on, they had to focus on not letting their hard-won victory slip away.

‘The immediate concern is how and from where are they trying to strike again.’

The fighting had lulled, but the demons still had the upper hand. The humans had no intention or means of crossing over to the Demon Realm.

They must be waiting for an opening. Now that their plans had been thwarted, they would be more cautious, and they would strike before the reorganization was complete, or during a long lull in the action.

‘Still, if possible, I wish they would come when the reorganization is complete.’

For the rest of the world, the knights of the Empire had been frozen for four days. Their stamina had been drained by breaking through the ice, which refused to budge, and their fatigue levels were much higher than those who had been watching the state of the Empire from afar for days.

“Commander, I brought you breakfast.”

“……Ah. Thanks.”

While Cadel was lost in his thoughts, Van came up beside him with a meal. Despite being in wartime, the Knight Order had remained near the gates, and the traveling gateway to the city had allowed them to eat well-cooked meals.

Cadel accepted the tomato soup and soft bread Van brought him. His appetite was full, but his tense state of mind made him reluctant to eat anything heavy. As he slowly munched on the soup-soaked bread, Van, who had been glancing back and forth between his plate of meat and Cadel’s, narrowed his eyes.

“Is that really okay? I’ll give you some of my meat.”

“No, that’s enough. I want to lighten my body.”

“You’re light enough as it is.”

“That means…….”

He tried to refuse, but when he saw Van with a fork dipped in a large meatball and a serious look on his face, he lost the will to explain. When Cadel opened his mouth to ask for just one piece, Van quickly softened his expression and stuffed the meat into his mouth.

“You need to eat a lot to gain strength, Yeohwan.”

He laughed at the casualness of the name. The way Van spoke was respectful, but he was still called Yeohwan. It had been like that ever since he told Van that when they were close, Van could just call him by his first name without the surname ‘Shin’.

He wondered if he should tell Van that it was more natural to add ‘hyung’ after his name. He thought about correcting the weird half-respect address, but in the end, he shook his head. The thought of hearing Yeohwan hyung coming out of Van’s mouth made him cringe with awkwardness.

“What’s everyone else doing?”

“Lumen said he was warming up in a corner somewhere, Lydon was eating some dessert some perverted magician had brought along, Garuel was asleep when I came out of the tent, and Yozen hadn’t been seen since I woke up.”

“What? You didn’t see him? You don’t know where he is?”

“Yes. First of all, he didn’t seem to be anywhere near…….”

“I’m here.”

Cadel and Van turned at the sound of a voice in their conversation. Behind them, where there had been nothing a moment ago, stood Yozen with his usual smile.

“Oh my god…….”

One could get used to these surprises. Cadel sulked as he spilled half of his soup.

“When did you get here?”

“Just now.”

“If you’re here, please let me know. Have you eaten?”

“I’ve got more important things to do.”

Was there anything more important than eating? As Cadel looked at Yozen in confusion, he took something out of his arms. It was [Ullo].

“……Huh? Did you take that from my tent?”

“Turn it on.”

As Cadel infused mana into the [Ullo] Yozen handed him, the communication device, which had been silent the entire time, began to buzz.

[……gicians, please come to the eastern gate. A magic circle is being created. There are no demons in the vicinity, but an intangible force is creating a massive magic circle…….]

Panicked shouts mingled with calls for backup. After a moment of concentration, Cadel looked up with a stern face, and Yozen spoke up.

“Looks like they’ve already found it. Demonic energy has been detected at the eastern gate for some time now.”

Upon waking, Yozen spread out his dark energy to cover a wide area, and detected a trace of demonic energy near the eastern gateway. He immediately sought out Cadel to relay the information, but something had happened in that short time.

“As they say, there are no demons yet. The demonic energy is only getting stronger.”

“Intangible force is creating a magic circle……. What does that mean? Maybe we have an invisible enemy.”

Cadel stirred, rubbing his pale cheeks as his subordinates speculated on the identity of the strange magical circle.

“It’s a summoning circle, and they plan to summon a High Demon to the eastern gate, just as they summoned Sellev.”

When he first joined the Empire, Cadel witnessed the creation of a magic circle in the middle of nowhere, and out of it emerged Sellev, a High Demon that makes him shudder to think of it again. The circle she emerged from was an advanced summoning circle that could spawn an infinite number of ‘Red Men’.

‘Apparently, they won’t wait for us to reorganize.’

The summoning circle had to be destroyed somehow before it was complete. Cadel grabbed [Ullo] and ran to find the battalion captains.

* * *

“Damn, what the hell is going on this morning?!”

A frustrated Dreyfe shouted, and the [Ullo] in his hand was violently battered. He tried to reactivate it again and again with a magic stone, but the result was the same.

“I’ll have to go see what’s going on myself.”

As soon as Cadel relayed the information about the summoning circle, Battalion Captain Dreyfe, Jeriel, and Pierre activated [Ullo]. But beyond the communication device, there were no reports of what Cadel had heard earlier, and his questions went unanswered. Communications were good elsewhere, so something must have gone wrong at the eastern gate where the summoning circle had appeared.

“It’s too much of a waste of mana to move all these knights. I guess we’ll just have to make do with what we can.”

Pierre glanced back at his waiting men and clicked his tongue briefly. The gateways were connected by transportation gateways, allowing for immediate reinforcements, but the amount of mana required to move a battalion at once was daunting. Even using magic stones had its limits.

Cadel said, stopping three battalion captains who were hurrying to pick up their subordinates.

“The Scarlet Scales Knight Order will be at the eastern gate. We’ll communicate with you as soon as we arrive, so keep [Ullo] on.”

“What? The entire Knight Order is going?”

“We have the Guardian Knight Order and the Heaven Time Knight Order to the south, so that’s more than enough. If demons have already been summoned to the eastern gate, mediocre support is not enough. I’ll check the status and request more help, so stay on standby.”

That was what made the small, elite Knight Order so good: the ability to move in groups. Cadel called his subordinates together, leaving behind the three battalion captains who couldn’t think of a better plan.

“The connection to the eastern gate has been lost. At worst, the summoning circle is complete and the gate may already be under siege. Be prepared to fight as soon as you arrive.”

The subordinates nodded grimly at Cadel’s command, then stepped through the traveling gateway he had activated.

Lumen was the first to step through. Closing his eyes against the traveling gateway’s unique glow, he felt the afterglow of light on the inside of his eyelids and tightened his grip on the scabbard.

The first sense to return was hearing. A wailing scream pierced the momentary silence, followed by an unidentifiable vibration that rumbled through his head. Smell was the next to return, a thick, nauseating stench of rotting flesh.

He opened his eyes quickly, realizing that Cadel’s worst fears were coming true. Bare blue eyes took in the scene before him, and a great agitation flashed across his otherwise numb face.

The horrified faces of the knights and their desperate struggles to somehow hold the gates shut. Bodies drying up and decomposing. An unrealistic amount of insects flying around, blackening his vision.

And a presence so overwhelming that it pushed them all away. It was like a messenger of death that had come to destroy the world or a shadow of infinite despair that crushed hope. Lumen gulped and swallowed dryly as he looked up at the vast body that blocked out even the sun.

It was an eternal nightmare.