The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 395 Tyrant (22) - Commentary Suddenly, part of the imperial palace building collapsed as though it had turned to sand, and from its center, some woman leapt out. That was the limit of what more than half the people on the battlefield could even perceive. It was that out of nowhere, and that sudden. Above all. "Ah…." The woman was beautiful. Beautiful enough that soldiers with blood rushed to their heads in the middle of a battlefield of killing and dying stared at her, utterly entranced. But some with sharper insight saw through the woman's true identity and their eyes went wide. "A demon? Why is there a demon in the imperial palace...?!" It was a demon that the first generation had sealed and left as a dying testament to later generations, but one whose existence had, at some point, been forgotten. This had come to pass because the Empire had not been powerful and stable in every generation, nor always ruled by a wise sovereign. But there was no one left to explain the circumstances, and so they had to deal with the situation using only what they could see right now, or what little information they already had. Common sense. Demons are dangerous. The visible situation. A demon had suddenly appeared on the battlefield, and around it were corpses withering away until they turned to sand. Conclusion. It had to be brought down right now. "What are you standing around for!! Capture it before the demon pulls some trick!!" The first to spring into action was the Republic side. This was because the demon had appeared right next to the Republic unit that had been attempting a flanking strike toward the Emperor. Though the soldiers still hadn't fully grasped the situation, they reflexively aimed their guns and opened fire at their commander's order. Bang! Bang-bang! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Countless gun barrels spat fire all at once, and though most shots missed or were blocked by a barrier, some struck the demon's body and left wounds. They were hardly proper wounds, but the commander's eyes flashed at the fact that damage could be dealt at all. With nothing more than plain bullets carrying no special mana, and without even attempting a prolonged war of attrition, they had still managed to inflict harm. If so, then it probably wasn't that powerful a demon. The commander's judgment was eminently sensible and logically plausible. Except for one thing. "What's this. Got some fun new toys, hm? Are these the main weapons these days?" Common sense itself simply meant nothing against certain special beings. The demon's gaze shifted slightly. In the next instant, every Republic soldier within the demon's field of view had their bodies wither away. There were no screams. There was no struggling, either. Because before they could even scream, their necks twisted up like mummies', and before they could even struggle, their hands and feet crumbled away like sand. "Gahck...!" The only one able to let out even something resembling a groan was the commander who had first given the order to attack the demon. He was one of the elites Premier Nathan had separately scraped together to carry out a breakthrough operation against a 6th Rank opponent, a powerhouse who, as a 4th rank, possessed skill not inferior to most of the Empire's knights. That was precisely why he was able to 'writhe in agony.' In other words, the only thing he had over an ordinary soldier was exactly that much: a little more thrashing and suffering. "H-hiiik!" "A m-monster!!" Cut down by a blade, shot by a gun, burned to death by magic. Dying from wounds grown too severe, dying of disease, and sometimes dying because of the terrain. Even the Republic's soldiers, who believed they had grown accustomed enough to ordinary battle and ordinary death, couldn't help the shock and terror of watching their comrades wither away alive and crumble to pieces before their eyes. "What is it? Why's he like that?" "Is that an ally...?" "I think someone said something about a demon?" The Imperial side, briefly baffled at the sight of the Republic's right flank thrown into a panic, soon grasped the situation and could do nothing but turn grim. "S-save me—" Thud, thud, thud. With every step the demon took, as though simply out for a stroll, those nearby withered away until they crumbled entirely into sand. The Imperial soldiers recoiled in horror and fell back, while the Republic soldiers who had been relatively closer were half consumed and half fled. The Premier's response was swift as well. "Three-line formation! Fall back and keep firing!!" "P-please wait a moment, Premier!! If we change formation now, the Imperials will—!" "You fool!! That thing is more urgent than the Imperials!!" But no matter how skilled the Premier was at command, there were limits to suddenly shifting targets when their formations were tangled together in a complicated mess across the imperial palace grounds. Like a can being crushed, the Republic's neatly ordered formation buckled out of alignment. In a sense it was the perfect opportunity, but the Emperor did not order an attack. This was because he too had confirmed the demon's presence. The Emperor cut back on the use of the 'Eye' and instead deployed one of the two archmages who had finished recovering to some degree. "Tower Master. Never close beyond a certain distance — attack with spells from range." "Yes, Your Majesty." Tower Master Kirie and the other mages of the Empire each unleashed ranged attacks. It looked quite different from the indiscriminate magical bombardment carried out by those who simply gathered a huge number of mages at random, canceling out each other's spells with no synergy to speak of. Earth-type spells prepared vast amounts of flammable material, wind-type spells manipulated the flow of air, and fire-type spells set it all ablaze in an instant. A mighty spell capable of scorching an entire city to ash on a direct hit was, with its range sharply reduced, used against a single target. "Oh, hold on. That's awfully brutal. Are you really allowed to use something that dangerous so casually? This is demon abuse." The instant the demon's eyes lit up with a rather playful tone and gesture— Flash! The spells Kirie and the mages had formed instantly lost all power and were rendered null. "Wh-what!?" Kirie's voice cracked from sheer shock. Unlike most of the mages, who didn't even understand what had just happened to them, she alone had been able to fully grasp this phenomenon. She cast aside even her usual dignified composure and let out a sound that could have been a shout or a scream. "A drain? It just devoured the mana of an incoming spell with a drain!?" Soul absorption. A specialty of succubus-type demons. It was a powerful force that stole and absorbed a target's life force or mana, but it came with clear restrictions as well. First, it required physical contact with the target, and the target's body or mind had to be defenseless. It wasn't for nothing that incubi and dream demons were treated as weaklings among demonkind. They could only exert their power by lulling a target's mind into carelessness with pleasure in some dreamlike place, or by physically restraining the target's body — and once circumstances like that were in place, any other demon could simply kill the target outright and devour the soul instead. Stealing the mana of an incoming spell, no less? Any mage with sense and experience would declare it absolute nonsense. But the archmage, whose mind had grown relatively more flexible from associating with the Emperor lately, had just enough adaptability not to deny the reality in front of her, and so she revised her attack once again. "Beat it down with physical attacks!! Use spells whose results don't vanish even if the mana is cut off!" The Tower's high-ranking mages responded to the Tower Master's order at once. Instead of directly launching blades of wind made of mana, they used the wind pressure to launch debris and chunks of stone from the ground. Kirie too, above the demon's head, summoned a literally house-sized boulder and drove it straight down. This way, even if the mana were stolen, the mass of the rock itself would still crush the demon. As if to prove her judgment hadn't been wrong, the demon's leisurely steps came to a halt. The demon flapped its wings as if to move swiftly, but before it could, a bullet fired from somewhere pierced straight through its wing. "Open fire!! Don't let it get away!!" The Republic side, having already finished regrouping, poured out chained gunfire and cannon barrages, pinning the demon in place. The Empire, as if unwilling to be outdone, unleashed its own barrage, and tremendous shockwaves and heat ran rampant around the demon. Trisha, who was in some sense the most objective bystander among everyone on this battlefield, privately felt even a touch of bewilderment. 'Isn't everyone switching gears awfully fast here?' A third enemy appears in the middle of a fight, so strike that enemy first? The conclusion itself wasn't so rare, but there were far too many hurdles to clear before actually putting it into practice. And yet the Imperial Army and the National Army were both acting immediately, as if they'd blown away all those intermediate steps entirely. With the Emperor and the Premier, who had firm control of their own forces, abruptly redirecting their attacks without warning, those below had no room to think it over and simply followed along in a forced, flustered scramble. In other words. It meant that these monstrous people had set everything else aside, set aside even what that thing even was, and judged that it simply had to be killed first. And the demon proved, in a single stroke, exactly why it was something to be wary of. Thoom! Judging purely by the volume of the sound, it wasn't actually that massive a noise. It probably didn't even measure up to the sound of a single cannon, or a single firearm being discharged. But Trisha felt the most chilling sensation she had felt thus far. Ironically, it was precisely because Trisha's senses and talent were so exceptional that this was so. Just as someone standing right in front of a massive building cannot see its full shape, what the demon had just done was on a scale that immense. Every kind of projectile being fired at the demon began to slow down. As though an object were moving slowly through water, as though something inside a viscous liquid were gradually growing sluggish, caught up in something that surrounded the demon. Mana. Not merely the level of wrapping around one's body, but an overwhelming mana so saturating the entire surrounding area that it even granted it physical substance. The demon's red eyes gleamed. The mana, now possessed of physical force, shifted into the shape of a huge hand and seized the massive boulder falling from the sky. And then hurled it with all its strength straight at Kirie, the original caster of that spell. ──────!! This time, a boom rang out on a scale almost too great for the ear to register. Kirie herself narrowly avoided instant death thanks to Balduer's interception, who stepped in front of her in that split second, and her own defensive spell, but the mage corps she had brought with her were not so fortunate. As though someone had set a fist-sized stone down in front of a line of ants and simply shoved it through, the mages — each one an elite talent — were crushed until not even the shape of a corpse remained recognizable. The Republic side, too, suffered just as catastrophic losses. The largest boulder had gone to the Empire's side, but all the smaller attacks before that had been showered entirely upon the Republic forces nearby. Those who had merely had a vital spot pierced by something like a bullet could almost be called the lucky ones, a peaceful death by comparison. Because there were many who had become one with building debris, fist-sized stones, cannonballs, all manner of mass, or who had been smeared across their surfaces as stains, crushed until their forms were impossible to recognize. And from the bodies of those who died that way, mana — and perhaps something that ought to be called a soul — was absorbed into the demon's body. The demon's presence, which had seemed to shrink momentarily as the price of that massive miracle, swelled full once more, and every wound it had taken was completely healed. "Ah, I overate." The demon muttered that, then shed off part of the power within its own body and scattered it widely around once more. Trisha saw the Boriel family head nearby trembling. As though even someone of the same 6th Rank — no, precisely because they were 6th Rank — could tell all the more just how absurd the being before them was. Even a 6th Rank doesn't go head-on against a mighty army in a straight contest of power. A demigod is at risk if several fellow demigods join forces against them. Which meant that thing was— "...Transcendence." And on top of that, built for fighting against numbers. The type whose performance skyrocketed to extremes the more enemies it fought at once. Whether aware of the terror around it or not, the demon crossed its legs and sat as though on an invisible chair in midair, passing judgment on its surroundings. "Pursuing one's own lofty station. Ah, common. Too common. There's a dime a dozen of those among the half-baked." The Tower Master. "Decided Transcendence was hopeless anyway and focused on worldly matters instead. Clever. Boring, though." The Boriel family head. "Someone who surges straight ahead when his convictions are rock solid, but turns muddled the moment they waver. He'd have done well to believe in a god, at least." The Empire's Foremost Sword. "The soul looks fairly tasty, a pass. But the look, well. It's really not to my taste." The Premier. "Hm? Hmmm? Ohh. Not bad? Like a gem. Still uncut, but even in this state it's better than most finished pieces." The demon's gaze turned toward Trisha. At that look mixing goodwill, appetite, possessiveness, and admiration, Trisha stiffened without even meaning to. And then, as if blocking the way in front of Trisha, the Emperor stepped forward. The demon's red eyes fixed on the Emperor's figure. Its wings fluttered, its tail swayed, and its hair streamed on the wind. Anticipation, excitement, an admiration even greater than it had shown for Trisha. And then. "Oh, what is this." A disappointment all the more violent for how great the expectation had been. "The outside's fine, but the contents are just rubbish."