The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#396 Tyrant (23) - The Secret Plan "What a waste, such a terrible waste. The body is perfection itself. If only it had a soul to match, it would have been more desirable than any treasure in the world." As though genuinely regretful, the demon let out a deep sigh. So dejected was it that even its tail and wings drooped limply. At those words, Trisha recalled something the Emperor had once told her. That his current self was merely half. Something was missing from the original Crown Prince that Trisha knew. If so, then that other half was— "Hhk!!" —Slash! A streak of silver that burst in without warning forcibly cut off Trisha's train of thought. Balduer, who had closed in right under the demon's nose without anyone noticing, had severed one of its wings. The membranous wing fell away, and the demon's brow twitched. Balduer, his eyes blazing, roared in fury. "How dare a wicked demon spew such reckless nonsense at the Emperor of the Empire!! Your Majesty! Do not lend your ear to the demon's cunning words!" "No, is it reckless nonsense and cunning words just because I'm stating the plain truth? Honestly, human logic hasn't changed one bit, then or now." "Silence!!" Balduer's sword tore through the air, while the mana materialized by the demon's gesture surged like a wave. Seeing this, several knights moved to strike at the demon's back to support Balduer, but they failed to achieve their goal. The moment they entered within a certain radius of the demon, their bodies rapidly withered and crumbled away into dust. Trisha's eyes swiftly took in the state of the battle. 'So the drain effect hasn't disappeared.' Everyone else, the moment they drew near the demon, still had their vitality, mana, and souls alike drained away and devoured entirely. For now, Balduer was the only one who hadn't withered away even after entering the range. And she was soon able to realize why. Mana control. He was fighting while gripping the mana inside his body tightly, suppressing it so it wouldn't leak out. The principle itself was extremely simple. The problem was that while the principle was simple, the execution was anything but. 'It's like doing intense exercise while holding your breath.' Just as intense movement demands heavy breathing, a battle between high-level fighters likewise presupposes an immense flow of mana. Enduring to keep the mana within one's own body from escaping while simultaneously putting out combat power at the 6th Rank level meant an enormous amount of fatigue and strain. For anyone at the 4th rank or below, enduring was meaningless to begin with, and even a 5th rank could hold out only a little longer before it was taken from them too. In other words, anyone below 6th Rank would fall victim just by being near that demon. And it wasn't even simple harm — they'd all be consumed entirely as nourishment and a reserve mana tank! Given that even the Tower Master and the Boriel family head could do nothing but harass it from a distance, there was no small chance that even a 6th Rank of a type that handled mana externally by default, like mages, would simply fall victim as well. "Kh." Even Balduer apparently found it hard to keep fighting for long within the demon's drain range, and he tried to put distance between them again. The demon turned its surging mana into something like a grasping hand to seize Balduer, but at that moment, Republic cannon shells and bullets rained down on the demon's head. KABOOM! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! 'That timing just now…' It wasn't a coincidence. It had been timed deliberately to the exact moment Balduer put distance between himself and the demon. Hitting with bullets might be one thing, but landing cannon shells like that was difficult, so they must have predicted its movements entirely in advance. No wonder they'd managed to smash a 6th Rank with something like a decapitation squad charge, Trisha thought, a little appalled, but she also felt a measure of relief. They were allies, after all, at least for now. "Hoo." After using its mana like a giant fan to blow away the gunsmoke around it, the demon scattered the mana within its body outward once more. The more allies died, and the more magic and sword aura ran rampant across the battlefield, the more every soul and scrap of mana became the demon's food, absorbed and dyed in the demon's color before being scattered across the battlefield once more. And it seemed that the mana scattered that way could move like the demon's own hands and feet whenever it chose to. 'What kind of broken cheat is that.' Trisha could guess why the demon had been deliberately releasing power from earlier. The demon's own level had already reached a realm hard to even call 6th Rank, so it was likely warding off the world's expulsion by shaving off and discarding bits of itself into its surroundings — mana, of course, but even its own soul and stature. The problem was that the power it discarded that way didn't simply end there — it lingered around as a resource the demon could use at any time. Of course, scattering mana so excessively like that meant anyone nearby would notice immediately, so it was a method that threw away any pretense of concealment — but a drawback that didn't matter when it was openly rampaging like now. Trisha also knew of the Crown Prince's teachers from her original world, who were stronger than anyone here. And yet, even if all of them came swarming in, she couldn't be certain they could defeat that demon. "—Trisha. I'm afraid I need to ask something of you." "Yes?" At the Emperor's words, Trisha blinked. "From now, inscribe the formula I tell you at the location I specify. With you, I don't suppose I'll need to prepare a separate spell tome for it." Trisha swiftly committed to memory the magic circle the Emperor explained aloud and traced on the ground, along with its contents. Partway through transcribing it, she understood. It was insane. "Brother, this…" "A Tyrant has his own Tyrant's way of doing things." Trisha hesitated for a moment. About five seconds, to be precise. For her, that was quite a long hesitation. "I hate bad endings, so if you don't want your adorable little sister to hate you, you'd better behave yourself!" The Emperor didn't answer. He merely let the corner of his mouth lift slightly before returning his full attention to command. Trisha dashed off at once. *** "Don't stop the bombardment!! It's fine even if the barrels warp, keep pouring it on without a moment's rest!!" "The mana around the demon is catching every single shell!! Some of them are even being thrown back…!" "Have you forgotten how to deal with a powerful enemy!! The whole point is to keep draining its mana and attention endlessly like that!" "Your Majesty. We've prepared auxiliary formulas as a countermeasure against the drain, but in the end, they too are a power made of mana. Once inside the range, the formula itself will be absorbed." "It doesn't matter. It only needs to be absorbed in its place and hold out for the brief interval while the knights engage and withdraw again. Cast it on the knights at once." "Yes, Your Majesty!!" A battlefield where steel and gunpowder ran rampant. Without any agreement between them, the Imperial Army and the National Army had, on the spot, finished dividing up their roles. More precisely, since the two leaders were each running their armies that way, most of those beneath them ended up fighting in that pattern without even realizing they were cooperating. The main attack was handled by the National Army, which, thanks to its tactic of pouring pure physical firepower from a distance, was relatively less affected by the demon's drain. When the demon closed the distance to attempt a drain or hurled shells back, knights bearing various auxiliary formulas would close in to block it. Naturally, it was the Imperial side that bled comparatively more. If a knight failed to rotate out with the standby team before their auxiliary formula ran out, their whole body simply withered away and they became a casualty, and because their position forced them to stay locked with the demon, there were also plenty of cases where they got caught in gunfire or bombardment aimed at it. Balduer, Kirie, Chelleno. The three 6th Ranks joined forces against the demon, and as the soldiers of both sides, literally in the middle of a war, threw themselves at it just as relentlessly, as though hunting it alone, even the demon that had seemed invincible gradually began to lose momentum. A single remaining wing. A body gathering more wounds by the moment. Mana visibly draining away more and more. Nathan Bort of the Republic was certain of it. That the enemy was monstrous, and it was absurd that only by pouring in this much force could they even glimpse a chance at bringing it down — but one way or another, a path to defeating it had become visible. And so, Nathan naturally began to think about 'after the demon is defeated.' It wasn't carelessness. As a leader of a nation, as a commander leading an army, nothing was as dangerous as neglecting to think ahead. If they, having invaded first, then went and thought something like [We fought off a powerful enemy together, so let's be friends from now on!], that would be the height of shamelessness, and an irresponsible mindset for anyone leading subordinates. Nathan 'naturally' couldn't help but consider what came next. But whatever the reason, it was also true that part of his thinking had turned toward a distant future rather than the present right in front of him. And because of that, he ended up missing a few things he could have noticed had he focused solely on the battle before his eyes. The demon's reaction when Balduer severed its wing, unexpectedly indifferent. The severed wing that had vanished without a trace at some point. And, in the current situation, from the demon's perspective, which was the more troublesome side between the Imperial Army and the National Army? "Got you." And so, disaster arrived. Behind Nathan. Right in the middle of the National Army's formation. A woman emerged from within the shadows. A woman draped in bewitching allure and an ominous air. A clone bearing the exact same appearance as the demon currently under concentrated attack unleashed an area-wide drain with everything it had. ──────. Nathan, who was closest of all, didn't even feel the pain. By the time he turned around, his body, already stripped of every kind of energy, had already crumbled into fine sand. The guards who should have protected Nathan followed their Premier before they could even open their mouths, and the staff officers around them became the next victims. Unlike the True Body, which always had to regulate how much it absorbed, the Clone had no need to hold back its output. Every living thing within a certain radius withered away in an instant. Those who had cried out for freedom and equality while scattering blood and flame had arrived at their destination: a handful of sand. The Clone, whose absorption capacity was smaller than the True Body's, melted away without being able to maintain its physical form. The wing that sprouted from its center didn't hold out much longer before it, too, exploded. "Ah…." Someone on the Imperial side let out a dazed sigh. There was no flashy explosion, no shockwave, no loud screams or spilled blood. Just as though part of a finished painting had been erased with a rubber, the National Army's main force vanished before their eyes. And that also meant the burden being placed on the demon had lessened by just as much. Pssshhh. Among the knights on the front line, those relatively weaker at mana control, or whose auxiliary formulas had been consumed the most, withered away first. As their numbers dwindled, the pressure on those remaining increased, and so new casualties followed one after another. "Hhk…!" Balduer alone still managed to hold the demon back head-on, but even he, with his eyes bloodshot and his skin turning a sickly dark hue, was far from fine. Just as Kirie, in desperation, prepared to indiscriminately summon monsters from another world, and Chelleno tried to gather up the gunpowder weapons left behind by the National Army to refine them for reuse— At the Imperial Palace, a massive wave of mana spread outward centered on the throne. KRRRUMM! The wave spread, and as though affected by it, another wave burst forth from yet another building. Before long, the mana pouring out of every major building across the Empire converged onto a single point. A flash of gold streaked forward. KABOOOM! A sword brimming with golden aura collided with mana itself, hardened black. At the man who had charged all the way up to its face — the Emperor — the demon frowned. "You, what are you? How?" The demon had already seen through the Emperor's skill. His talent overflowed. But he had trained far, far too little. Given enough time later, perhaps, but the Emperor before it now was an opponent of a lower caliber even than the other 6th Ranks. And yet, what about now? Mana overflowed from him. Continuously. Endlessly. So much that no matter how much it absorbed, there seemed to be no end to it. "It's nothing so impressive. I merely tinkered a little with the mana flowing through the land." "You turned the ley lines into your own mana tank? Are you insane?!" The land. The Empire's mana was flowing into the Emperor. And just as a single ripple kept giving rise to new ripples, it was steadily widening its range outward from the capital region. Naturally, that was not an amount of mana a human could handle. Even a 6th Rank demigod, if mana were poured directly into their body without the aid of proper equipment or facilities, wouldn't last even a few seconds before their body and soul burst apart. Only a transcendent could endure something like that. "Your soul is already broken!! You can't achieve Transcendence, not like this!!" At the demon's bewildered cry, the Emperor smiled. "I know."