Chapter 56

Retribution (3)

Losing one’s composure in an emergency meant death. Damian Aslan had learned that principle with absolute certainty during years spent crossing battlefields. It was probably the only reason he had not lost his mind right now.

“Say that again,” Damian said through gritted teeth. “What did you say?”

“The entire outer defense force has been broken through!”

“…”

Instead of folding the soldier in half at the waist, Damian drew a long, deliberate breath. Rage boiled in his mind, urging him to do exactly that, but the remaining fragment of his composure reminded him that it would accomplish nothing.

Fortunately, he still had one effective measure left.

“…Contact the standing knight order.”

House Aslan was one of the premier martial families representing the Empire. Naturally, that meant it maintained its own elite knight order, separate from the Imperial military. Superhumans on an entirely different level from ordinary soldiers should easily be capable of dealing with even this absurd situation.

Unfortunately, an event that poured fuel over Damian’s burning anger occurred almost immediately after he reached that calm conclusion.

BANG!

One wall of the inner castle corridor exploded outward. It looked as though a planted bomb had detonated behind it, but standing beyond the destroyed wall was a single person with one fist extended.

Damian laughed in utter disbelief before he could even process the fact that a human had just done the work of a battering ram. He recognized the face beyond the wreckage.

“…Lionheart?” he uttered in shock.

Before he could even ask what she was doing here, everyone nearby collapsed. The qi raised by Lionheart after smashing through the wall gathered into tiny, condensed spheres. Those spheres scattered and shot toward the foreheads of every soldier around her with deadly accuracy. The struck men went down without so much as a cry.

“…What in the world are you doing?!”

“I have quite a few questions for you, Young Lord.”

The instant Damian heard her voice, the realization that something had gone catastrophically wrong struck him. Lionheart usually wore a mask-like expression and spoke in a strictly professional tone, but the woman standing before him now looked terrifyingly different.

“The disaster of the Aslan territory, the Night of the Hunt, is almost upon us. Yet I saw no preparations anywhere in the territory for a demon beast crisis.” Calling her expression ghostly would not have been much of an exaggeration. She was furious far beyond any ordinary degree. “Civilians are going to die. The casualties will be endless. What preparations have you made to prevent that?”

“…”

“From what I observed while coming all the way here, you made none.”

“…I don’t think that is a question you have the right to ask after committing an outrage like this without warning, Lionheart,” Damian growled, attempting to deflect Noel’s rebuke.

If they argued the core issue seriously, Damian would obviously be at a severe disadvantage. Even so, anyone could see that Noel’s side had crossed far more lines first.

“Our family affairs are ours to handle,” Damian insisted. “They are not matters in which outsiders may interfere as they please.”

“…Is that the entirety of your answer?” Noel sounded genuinely dumbfounded. “You are about to drive countless people to their deaths, and your answer is that outsiders should stay out of family business?”

“Yes. That’s enough for me.”

The man standing beside Noel listened to the exchange and released a soft sigh. “I don’t need to hear anything else. There goes the last of my guilt.”

Before Damian could ask what nonsense he was talking about, the man stepped forward. Rather than demanding to know who this stranger was, Damian hurriedly looked around for assistance. The man approaching him obviously carried hostile intent, but he did not look particularly impressive on his own.

Damian’s eyes remained fixed on Lionheart. Who this man was did not matter; what mattered was that he had arrived with Lionheart and was treating her with obvious familiarity. If Damian harmed him, Lionheart might retaliate directly.

“I can tell exactly what you’re thinking,” Noel’s voice cut into Damian’s thoughts. Then she gave an answer completely opposite to what he expected: “I’m not going to do anything, Young Lord.”

“…?” Damian stared blankly at her after hearing the unexpected declaration.

Noel crossed her arms as though she genuinely intended to remain a spectator. “Listen carefully. I will do nothing.” She even repeated the statement, emphasizing every word.

“What are you talking about—”

“She means asking her to help you just because you know each other won’t work,” the answer came from the man stepping forward. He rolled his neck from side to side as though warming up for exercise. “Because I’m about to beat some sense into you.”

“…”

A vein even thicker than the last bulged on Damian’s forehead. He might not compare favorably with Lionheart, but Damian was still the eldest son of House Aslan—one of the Empire’s most prestigious martial families. He possessed enough skill to dismantle an average supernatural ability user while mentally planning his schedule for the next month.

“…Fine,” Damian ground his teeth and drew his sword.

There was little point in continuing to exchange questions and answers with invaders who had breached his family’s inner keep. He did not know who this man was or what abilities he hid, but the bastard was clearly preparing to attack.

Damian narrowed his eyes as several glowing spheres appeared around the stranger. They belonged to a type of supernatural power notoriously difficult to control, yet the man had manifested three almost instantly: the Law Force of the Tribal Alliance.

The man looked unimpressive at first glance, but everyone carried at least one hidden blade.

‘He won’t be an easy opponent.’

Damian tightened his grip on the sword and focused. Every muscle in his body drew taut, and the combat techniques engraved into him through years of intense training settled into readiness.

He still did not consider defeat a realistic possibility. Even if his opponent could handle Law Force, Damian himself was a powerful warrior. This would undoubtedly become a fierce battle.

“Wait. Give me a moment.”

“…”

Then again, the expected battle might not happen right away. The stranger spoke casually, squinting as he looked back and forth between Damian and the floating spheres of light. He was clearly waiting for something.

“There’s still a little left,” the man muttered.

“…What?”

“It should happen soon. Just wait a moment longer.”

Damian stared at him in complete disbelief.

The man—Aiden—continued standing there, regarding him with unfocused eyes that entirely lacked tension. He did not seem to view Damian as a dangerous enemy in a life-or-death fight; he looked at him more like a simple target that needed to be knocked down.

“You still seem to have too much power,” Aiden noted softly.

“…”

Damian stood there, wondering what in the world that was supposed to mean.

Then he heard someone running frantically down the corridor. It was a squire belonging to the territory’s knight order, moving with desperate urgency. A thick vein rose on Damian’s forehead at the sight. How long had it been since he sent for them? The knight order had taken an absurdly long time to arrive.

“Where is the knight order stationed here?!” Damian barked.

“Y-Young Lord!” Despite Damian’s murderous tone, the trembling squire had no choice but to deliver his report. “The knight order has been annihilated!”

“…”

“They encountered one of the invaders, and every single one of them was defeated!”

The veins on Damian’s forehead slowly receded. At this point, the situation had become too absurd for anger to remain his dominant emotion. To summarize: three people had torn his entire territory apart, and the knight order—his final line of defense—had been destroyed by just one of them.

In contrast, Aiden finally began nodding after hearing the squire’s report. “No remaining forces, weaker than me…”

Hearing him check off those conditions sent a sudden surge of foreboding up Damian’s spine—the moment his battlefield-honed sense for danger finally proved its value.

Another supernatural power began rising from Aiden’s body alongside the Law Force he had already drawn out: pure white qi, the exact power Lionheart used. Then came a burst of divine power carrying intense heat. Both forces emerged simultaneously from the same human body.

Damian’s eyes widened at the impossible sight before him.

‘He just used Law Force! How is he using two other supernatural powers at the same time?!’

He never had the opportunity to finish the thought.

“…Then all that’s left is beating you.”

A fist wrapped in a blinding combination of powers rushed directly into Damian’s vision. That was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness.

✦ ✦ ✦

“…Hmm.”

Aiden looked back and forth between his fist and Damian’s face, which he had nearly turned into pulp with a single blow. Fresh surprise welled up inside him.

“Why are you the one looking surprised after crushing his face in one hit?” Noel, who had been watching, could not resist commenting.

Even that remark did not change Aiden’s reaction.

‘…Did I get stronger?’

All he had done was mix pure white qi with First Vow and wrap the resulting power around his body. Without using Meyer’s technique or any other complex skill, he had overwhelmed Damian in a single strike through raw physical power alone.

It had not been long since Aiden watched the Lord Protector fight Noel and felt himself shrinking in comparison. He still could not so much as graze Meyer in his dreams, and if he fought Noel or Katya for real, he was convinced his head would be smashed apart almost immediately. He had not expected someone as capable as Damian to be unable to resist even one blow.

“Isn’t that obvious?” Noel added softly.

“Pardon?”

“I don’t know what you think of your own abilities, Mr. Aiden, but if your points of comparison are me and Her Highness, who in the world could confidently call themselves strong?”

“…”

“The only people I can immediately think of who could match that standard are His Majesty at his peak and the current Pontiff.”

“…Ah.” Aiden nodded slowly.

Noel continued in the same calm tone. “Your basic capabilities have reached the point where you can overwhelm an average knight with little difficulty. You are not yet numbered among the most famous powerhouses on the continent, but you are very clearly outside the category of an ordinary supernatural ability user.”

Considering how greedily Aiden had consumed unique skills, perhaps it would have been stranger if he were still weak. And right now, he was planning to add another powerful weapon to his personal arsenal.

“Hmm.” Aiden looked toward the spheres of light wavering in front of him. “I beat up someone powerless, so now I only need the Restriction to become polluted.”

“…Someone powerless?”

“It seems the Goddess of Ascension interprets the phrase ‘powerless person’ from several angles.”

Words were strange things when interpreted by a deity. Apparently, saying someone was ‘powerful’ did not refer strictly to individual physical strength; it could also include political authority and the number of troops under their command.

“That’s why I needed to remove everything around this man first,” Aiden explained.

“…”

“I had to reduce him to a state where he had nothing except his own body before the god would definitively consider him less powerful than me.”

“…So,” Noel spoke with open disbelief, summarizing his actions, “you destroyed the territory’s standing army and knight order just to weaken him enough to pollute a single Law Force ability?”

“That’s what happened.”

“…”

Noel holding her head as if a massive headache had arrived was becoming an increasingly familiar sight. At least she did not object any further. Perhaps she understood that Aiden had done this only because he intended to deal with the consequences afterward.

“In any case, it won’t have been for nothing. The Law Force certainly looks corrupted now,” Noel remarked, glancing at the core of energy, which now flickered with dark, unstable stains. It had twisted into something that visibly felt wrong, much like when he had failed his previous consecration.

System Message ▶ A deviation from the Restriction has been detected. Urgan is enraged. ▶ Law Force operation is canceled. The backlash of failure distorts the operation of Law Force and results in physical damage.

The system window confirmed Noel’s assessment. This was enough to show that the preparation was complete.

Aiden drew a deep breath and pushed one supernatural ability into each floating sphere. Pure white qi and colorless flame fused with the darkened clusters of Law Force.

The result appeared immediately in the form of new system messages:

System Message ▶ Through the effect of ‘Unique Trait: Omnipotence,’ combining supernatural abilities has developed a new effect! ▶ By synthesizing ‘Pure White Heart’ and ‘Savior’s Oath,’ you have developed ‘Brilliant Radiance’!

System Message

▶ Through the effect of ‘Unique Trait: Omnipotence,’ combining supernatural abilities has developed a new effect! ▶ By synthesizing ‘Pure White Heart’ and ‘First Vow,’ you have developed ‘Purifier’!

‘…Oh.’

Even at a glance, both new abilities looked extraordinarily impressive.