Chapter 268
Even as Albion snapped back at El-Cid, the air around her stayed calm. Aside from that one sharp comment, she didn’t even attempt to stand up. It was obvious she was being careful not to disturb Karen, whose head rested on her lap.
Guardian Knight...
Repeating Albion’s earlier words in his mind, Leon finally grasped she had meant it seriously. He couldn’t quite hide the shock on his face as he spoke.
“Wait... you really made Karen your guardian knight?” he asked Albion.
“I did,” Albion replied.
Looking pleased by his astonishment, she let a faint smile touch her lips and stroked Karen’s hair again. The ash-grey strands tangled and slid between her long, slender fingers with a soft rustling sound. She really seemed to have taken a genuine liking to Karen.
At a loss for words, Leon stopped pressing Albion and instead let his questions spill out inwardly.
Is becoming a dragon’s Guardian Knight... really something you just hand out like this?
—Of course not, you idiot!
El-Cid brushed the thought aside with a shout and explained, —I only turned it down because it was pointless and too much of a hassle for me. But three hundred years ago, there were countless people who would have gladly thrown away wealth, honor, even their own family if it meant becoming a Dragon Knight.
What?! It’s that big of a deal?
—Duh. Once a Guardian Knight receives a dragon’s true blood, their lifespan multiplies by nearly ten, and their affinity with spirits, their physical capabilities, and their mana control all skyrocket. If a warrior at the Aura Master level becomes a Guardian Knight, they’d have enough power to take on three or four of the same rank at once and still win.
Just by accepting the power of a dragon, creatures who were, by birth alone, on equal footing with transcendents, that sort of transformation wasn’t unusual. There were many who dreamed of escaping death, and many who aimed for strength. Even more longed for legendary glory.
Dragon Knights were the one shortcut that could turn all those outrageous desires into reality in an instant. It was said that in the old days, most so-called “dragon slayers” weren’t trying to kill dragons out of hatred, but rather to steal their true blood and escape mortality.
—Not that you can become a Dragon Knight just by ripping out and eating a dragon’s heart while it’s still beating. Most of the idiots who believed that rumor and went dragon hunting ended up getting slaughtered or crushed in retaliation. There was even a time some fool went after an easy-looking hatchling and got an entire kingdom wiped off the map for it.
Calling them fools, El-Cid trembled. There was something he really wanted to say to Albion, not Leon.
El-Cid spoke out loud. “Hey, lizard, what’s your angle? A dragon’s Guardian Knight doesn’t just receive power; they’re supposed to shoulder obligations worthy of it.”
“Hah. Is this really coming from the one who turned it down without a second thought?” Albion shot a chilly look at Leon’s waist, where El-Cid rested, and explained, “As you know, my body is no longer in a proper state. I’ve lost my wings, my horn, and my heart is at less than half of its original capacity. Much of my identity as a dragon has faded. Because of that, the blessing I can bestow on this child is diminished... but the binding force it carries is weakened as well.”
“That’s all just guesswork. Your condition could still get worse than this. Weren’t you being a little too hasty?”
This time, Albion openly snorted. “Since when do you care about me? You dragged me back from the brink just to keep me alive, acted like you’d stick around and chat so I wouldn’t get bored, then slipped away to the heavens without so much as a goodbye.”
“Hey! You think I went up there because I wanted to?!”
“Why is that my concern? The only fact that interests me is that it took you three hundred years to show your face again.”
With that, she turned her head as if she had nothing more to say. El-Cid, clearly furious now, erupted.
“Unbelievable... I don’t even have blood vessels anymore, and I can still feel my blood pressure spiking! I sent you messages by oracle a bunch of times, remember!?”
“How am I supposed to recall every nonsense you muttered while I was half-asleep?”
“Don’t lie! I clearly remember everyone telling me you even prepared a guest room every time I came, insisting I sleep over, and then wrecked the place when I—"
“T-that never happened!”
Caught off guard by her own past being thrown back at her, Albion flushed and fell into a petty, noisy back-and-forth with El-Cid. Sensing nothing good would come from getting caught between those two, Leon unbuckled the Holy Sword from his waist, set it down in front of Albion, and turned his back on them.
El-Cid was still shouting in his head, but Leon blocked out the telepathy and looked in another direction. To where his other companion, Elahan, was sitting formally on her knees.
“Your Eminence,” he called to William. “May I ask what you’re teaching Elahan?”
“No.”
“I-I beg your pardon?”
Leon stared blankly at the unexpected answer. William tilted his head about thirty degrees and spoke again.
“I was joking.”
“A-ah... I see.”
Apparently, it wasn’t just that he lacked social grace—his sense of humor was awkward, too. Still, the conversation flowed properly after that.
William explained, “I was in the middle of teaching her how to counter the Demon King’s unique ability, Heaven Denial.”
“Heaven Denial...!”
“Yes. In practice, it’s a power that renders everything based on natural order ineffective, leaving only the Holy Sword capable of inflicting true damage. Without a way around it, you’d have to defeat the Demon King in single combat.”
The reason the dragons could not intervene in the advent of the Demon King three hundred years ago also lay in Heaven Denial. The power that had corrupted Albion—Corruption—was derived from it, and the closer a being was to the natural order, the more lethal it became. It struck humans hard, dwarves harder than humans, elves harder than dwarves, and dragons hardest of all.
Albion, who had been one of the ten strongest dragons alive at the time, had barely managed to cling to her sense of self. Dragons weaker than her wouldn’t even be worth mentioning.
Aside from the Holy Sword, there were only two ways to oppose Heaven Denial: sacred spells that forcibly returned all phenomena to where they ought to be—to the proper order—and the Aura Blade, which imposed one’s own law on reality and rewrote it.
“But those methods only ‘work’ on it. They don’t push you to a level where you can actually kill the Demon King,” William explained.
Unless one were a monster like Rodrick, who could shatter heaven and earth alone, indirect methods were ultimately inefficient. Against a Demon King whose raw power left dragons in the dust, there was no realistic way for mere cardinals or Aura Masters to win if they also had to fight under such handicaps.
Which was why, for over three hundred years, the Holy Church had researched a way to overcome Heaven Denial’s overwhelming advantage. All so that they wouldn’t have to risk everything on a single Hero again.
“It took us three centuries just to prove the theory. If Heaven Denial nullifies forces born of the natural order, then all we had to do was create a sacred spell that nullifies Heaven Denial itself. It was a simple, brutish idea... but it worked.”
Instead of merely borrowing power from the natural order like existing sacred spells, this new method would reach out and interfere with the very providence that underpinned that order. At one point, the Church’s purists had tried to halt the research, accusing it of twisting the goddess’s true will. But in the middle of that council, the goddess herself descended an oracle: “It’s fine.”
So, the research continued. However, a problem still emerged. The technique was so difficult as to be nearly impractical.
Having brought his explanation to that point, William glanced over at Elahan, who was still deep in a trance.
“Hmph. Turns out it was a needless worry,” he muttered with a hint of bitterness in his expression. “I only explained the theory and demonstrated it a few times, yet she’s already grasped the feel of it and begun forming the core structure of the formula.”
“Is that... impressive?” Leon asked.
“‘Impressive’ doesn’t begin to cover it. It took me over a hundred years to reach that level. It’s kind of funny for a High Elf to say this, but talent is profoundly unfair.”
Grumbling, William gave a small shrug. Leon felt like he’d just seen the man’s human side for the first time. It stirred a faint sense of affinity.
“Your Eminence.”
“What is it.”
“Karen becoming a Guardian Knight, and Elahan mastering that special sacred spell... how long will it take?”
“If I had to give a rough estimate... at least a week, perhaps up to ten days.”
Rolling that number around in his mind, Leon finally picked El-Cid back up and reattached the Holy Sword to his belt. Albion, who had been arguing up until then, spoke.
“Can you do it?” she asked.
He didn’t bother asking what she was talking about. Instead, Leon just smiled and nodded once.
For Albion, that was enough. She gestured toward the Nether Valley, in her own way sending him off, gently, almost.
Rodlin, who had been standing quietly and focusing on internal repairs, also opened her eyes. “I will accompany you, Master.”
“Thanks. I’m counting on you.”
The young man and the girl once more stepped into the Nether Valley’s dreadful fog, vanishing from sight, to stand against the oncoming end of the world. Trusting the two who would remain behind, the Hero hurled himself back into the demon realm.
***
El-Cid explained, —The dimension connected to the Nether Valley is one of the realms commonly referred to as an afterworld. Specifically, it’s the prison-dimension Tartaros, where the gravest sinners are confined.
Tartaros?
Leon sliced apart a ghoul lunging for his neck and fixated on the unfamiliar name. For some reason, even the sound of the word carried a foreboding weight.
El-Cid elaborated, as if responding to that unease. —It’s the lowest layer of the Underworld. A pit even gods can’t escape from. Of course, the section linked to the Nether Valley is only the outskirts. That’s why Cerberus is stationed there. If this were the deeper zones, even if I were alive, I couldn’t guarantee your safety.
That sounds lovely, Leon said inwardly.
—And judging by what the dog said, several inmates have escaped using this demon realm. If they’re ones bound near the entrance, they’ll just be small fry, but don’t take it lightly. Even their “small fry” would surpass S-rank threats of our world without breaking a sweat.
Not that this was a place where Leon could let his guard down anyway. As he took that warning to heart, he soon noticed something else. The number of monsters was decreasing. This was a domain he had stepped into once before, a world closer to the dead than the living.
In a world where being dead was the default, Leon was no longer treated as an intruder but an invader. Without Anubis’s blessing, simply existing in this zone would have shaved years off his lifespan without him noticing, wearing his spirit thin.
At that moment, Leon sensed a disturbance even faster than Rodlin’s detection magic. The Stigma of the Observer sharpened instantly, illuminating the mist before him.
“There.”
His sight pierced several kilometers of fog. An enemy he couldn’t distinguish a moment ago now stood out in sharp clarity.
Leon’s grip tightened around his sword and muttered, “That must be the escaped prisoner Cerberus mentioned.”
El-Cid agreed. —Looks like it, yeah.
And how could he not? The figure ahead was almost too fitting. If he had to put it into words, a wraith knight.
Pale blue light glowed within the visor of its helmet, and the full suit of armor, ancient and ornate, sat atop the skeletal frame of a wyvern. It looked centuries old, perhaps even older. Leon narrowed his eyes just as the knight opened its mouth, but the language it spoke didn’t resemble anything in this world.
“What’s it saying...?” Leon asked.
—I have no idea. Never heard anything like it, not even three hundred years ago. Could be a language from a completely different world.
It certainly didn’t sound friendly. Leon leveled his blade at the wraith knight, whose visor was locked squarely onto him.
His posture made his message perfectly clear: “Come.”
With a roar that almost sounded like ecstatic laughter, the wraith knight shot upward. Its wyvern mount didn’t even flap its wings.
There was no time to wonder how it was flying. The knight ascended hundreds of meters in an instant, then plunged down vertically for a full-force lance charge.
Leon responded by unfolding the paired wings of Icarus Wing.
“Rodlin! Maintain perimeter watch!”
“Yes, Master!”
Leaving her behind in case of unexpected interference, Leon ascended straight up to meet the wraith knight. Vertical versus vertical, hseat versus frost. Opposing forces and trajectories clashed as they hurtled toward impact.
“Grand Chariot.”
Leon was a beat slower and held the worse position. To compensate, he drew a secret technique first.
Dazzling light gathered into his blade and surged upward. Against a lance charge, a piercing counter was the most effective answer.
“Wavering Light, Seventh Form: Alkaid.”
The sword light elongated like a knight’s lance, sharp and focused. Leon thrust forward, matching the knight’s own charge.
And then, a massive vortex erupted from the wraith knight’s lance. This was no ordinary technique. Named “Lance of Vortex,” it was spear-work based on Aura Blade, twisting the surrounding space according to its own law.
A lance of starlight met a lance of storm.
