Ch.138The Declining Imperial Family (9)

Judith looked at herself in the mirror, examining herself from different angles.

“Ugh,” she groaned, scratching her head before getting dressed and coming outside.

A man was leaning on the sofa, drinking wine as if it were water.

“Nolan. Are you going to act like a drunkard even in this situation?”

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“Ugh, so negative. You’re the worst man ever.”

Nolan put down the wine bottle and asked seriously.

“Your wound?”

Judith smiled brightly and patted her stomach.

“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. I had a hole this big in me. …And there’s not even a scar.”

“So a great mage’s healing magic surpasses imagination…”

“You’re a great mage too, Nolan.”

“To be honest, I’m not even close to that kid’s level.”

“That’s honest of you.”

Judith sat down.

She looked at her legs with a gloomy expression.

“It’s not just that wound that disappeared.”

“…What?”

“Remember? Yesterday, when I fell on the street and hurt my knee.”

“Yeah, I teased you for an hour about being a knight who trips.”

“That wound is gone too. Similarly, without any scars. Hey, Nolan. Does healing magic automatically heal other parts of the body too, not just the targeted area?”

Nolan’s pupils dilated at Judith’s words, and he shook his head with a trembling voice.

“That’s impossible.”

Judith smiled faintly as if she had expected that response.

“It’s like… it didn’t just heal the wound.”

Judith said in a small voice.

“It feels like time went backward.”

“That’s absurd!”

Nolan reacted violently.

“Interfering with time is impossible through magic! Only a god could—”

“Lower your voice. Don’t forget we’re in Windsor Castle.”

“…Only a god could do such a thing.”

Nolan sat down as if all strength had left his body.

For a while, no conversation passed between Judith and Nolan.

Judith was the one who broke the silence.

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel real that I’m alive.”

“…”

“I thought for sure I was dead. I was thinking, ‘This is it—time to go see grandma in heaven,’ but then suddenly I was here.”

“Same here. That bastard List definitely stabbed me in the heart.”

“Speaking of which, is your Mana Heart okay?”

Mages store magical power in their hearts.

So if the heart is damaged, in severe cases, one might never be able to use magic again.

“…I’m in the same state as you.”

Nolan chuckled. Even though he was experiencing it himself, he couldn’t believe it.

“Just like time has gone backward, there’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

“It must be a user of The 5th Magic, right? Like that magic from before.”

Nolan had to acknowledge what he had been trying to deny.

“The magic that stopped the captain. That was definitely magic of a completely different dimension.”

A drop of sweat fell from Nolan’s brow.

“If someone can already skillfully handle The 5th Magic, it’s a disaster. The Empire will fall.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that, you know.”

Judith fidgeted with her fingers.

“Is it a disaster for the Empire, or a disaster for humanity?”

Nolan sighed.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Judith.”

But Judith didn’t stop.

“I think that kid isn’t bad, surprisingly.”

“…”

“After all, he saved our lives, didn’t he?”

“The reason he saved us.”

Nolan said coldly.

“Is simply to keep us under surveillance. You probably didn’t hear him say, ‘I might as well take out some insurance, just in case.'”

“Are you stupid?”

Judith laughed, waving her arms.

“A kid who can use such incredible magic has no reason to keep us alive. He must have spared us out of pity.”

“Let’s stop talking about this.”

Nolan looked tired.

Judith silently looked at Nolan, then lay down on the sofa.

“I wonder what will happen to us now.”

“What will happen? We’ll probably live the rest of our lives imprisoned here.”

“That’s troublesome. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with the worst man like you, Nolan.”

“The feeling is mutual, damn you, Judith.”

“…We survived, but what about the others?”

Nolan closed his eyes.

“Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Let’s go help them!”

Judith exclaimed brightly.

But strangely, her words lacked strength.

Nolan quietly replied.

“Let’s just sleep.”

“Okay.”

Judith fell silent again.

But soon she opened her mouth again.

“But if we look, maybe there’s something we can do…”

“Judith!”

Unable to bear it anymore, Nolan jumped up.

Judith was startled and fell off the sofa.

“Stop it already!”

“No, that’s not what I—”

“Whatever method we try, it will only lead to a miserable death…”

But just then.

Click—

Someone opened the door and entered.

Nolan and Judith’s gazes simultaneously turned toward the door.

There stood a blonde girl in armor, with a tense expression on her face.

Judith tilted her head with a bewildered expression.

“…Amelia Windsor?”

**

Ruide was on the rooftop.

With eyes burning blue, he stared intently at something in the distance.

“There they are.”

He put down List, whom he had been holding with telekinesis.

“Kuhuk.”

Ruide glanced at List, who was gasping for breath, and said:

“You can go now. Get away from here as fast as you can. If you try anything foolish, Prime Empire will immediately disappear from the map.”

“That’s quite a threatening threat.”

Ruide now looked straight ahead as if he had no more business with List.

He could see Galahad and Shearer walking down an alley, covered in robes.

Ruide stepped into the air without hesitation.

As he fell and watched his surroundings rapidly change, he thought:

‘You dare kill someone from the North and try to escape?’

Colon was a kind person.

He always worried about Ruide sleeping outside.

He wasn’t hostile to outsiders either, willingly running the “mercenary lodge” that everyone else was reluctant to operate.

They killed such a person.

And now they were trying to leave this place as if nothing had happened.

No matter how he thought about it, it was unforgivable.

Tap—

Ruide landed lightly on the ground.

He wanted to handle this in a place with few people if possible.

He didn’t want the people of the North, especially Amelia, to find out.

So Ruide took out his staff.

Since he couldn’t destroy innocent buildings, he had to deal with this using magic of a fairly low rank.

He entered an alley shrouded in silence. In Ruide’s vision, the faint magical residue showing Shearer’s location was visible.

He followed that path. After a short while, he could see it getting stronger.

It was at the end of the alley. A dead end. Ruide turned the corner.

At the end, Shearer was standing with his arms crossed, glaring at him.

“It’s been a while.”

“It has been a while. Just to be sure, did you kill Colon?”

“Yes.”

They exchanged brief greetings. Shearer was also a small boy, but Ruide was much smaller, making Shearer look relatively larger.

“I like that you’re not making excuses.”

“Long explanations aren’t necessary, right? Neither for you, nor for me. We’re both past that point.”

“I agree.”

Shearer drew his sword. Ruide immediately pointed his staff and poured out magical power.

Crack!

Compressed electricity shot toward Shearer like lightning.

Shearer lightly swung his sword to deflect it.

Holding his sword with both hands, he slowly circled around Ruide.

Ruide twitched his eyebrow.

“Do you think you have a chance?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t.”

“Well, I think we’ll have to find out.”

Shearer’s body appeared to split in two.

His speed exceeded limits, leaving afterimages like illusions.

Ruide released strong electrical energy around his body.

Crackle—!

It was enough electricity to make someone faint just by touching it.

“Argh!”

Shearer let out a painful scream and fell to his knees.

He had tried to attack Ruide from behind but got burned by the indiscriminate release of magical power.

Even though he tried to withdraw midway, electricity was fatal to a swordsman like him.

White smoke rose from his left hand.

Ruide extended his staff with an expressionless face.

Sharp ice picks aimed at him.

When he lowered his staff, the icicles shot forward.

“Hyup!”

Shearer swung his sword with a battle cry.

Clang, clang, clang!

He dodged what he could dodge and deflected what he could deflect.

It looked quite spectacular.

Ruide felt a bit of interest.

“Let’s raise the difficulty a bit.”

The air behind Ruide rippled.

While the ice picks continued to advance, real swords from Windsor’s arsenal also began to shoot forward.

Clangclangclang!

Shearer’s sword moved twice as fast.

The sparks created from deflecting the swords looked like a curtain.

Surprisingly, Shearer was deflecting all these attacks with his sword without receiving even a slight wound.

“Seems you didn’t become a knight for nothing.”

“…No matter how strong you are.”

Ruide wanted to hear what Shearer had to say. He paused his magic for a moment.

Shearer aimed precisely at Ruide.

“In a one-on-one fight, a mage cannot defeat me.”

Ruide opened his eyes wide as if he had heard something surprising.

“How can you be so sure?”

“No matter how strong a mage is—if you don’t give them time to cast, that’s the end of it.”

As Shearer twisted his back foot—

Ruide felt as if he had been transferred to a different space.

Shearer’s pupils developed a cross-shaped light.

This was Shearer’s power.

The “spatial dominance” that made him a genius.

“<Analyze>”

Ruide uttered briefly.

Since there was no visible change, he needed to determine what kind of power it was.

The assessment came quickly.

‘It’s magic that makes only his time perception slower.’

It was the same space, but to Shearer, everything in this space appeared to move slowly.

Conversely, Shearer himself could move as fast as usual.

In other words, it was a power that allowed him to live 1 second as if it were 2 seconds.

Unfortunately—

To someone like himself who had mastered The 5th Magic, such trivial tricks didn’t work.

“I’ll make you regret killing my comrade, Ruide Christopher.”

Shearer moved.

Suddenly, about 9 afterimages appeared.

Ruide realized these weren’t illusions.

He was simply moving so fast, considering human frame perception abilities, that it looked like “clones.”

“Renewal Style—Clone Swordsmanship.”

Ten Shearers rushed toward Ruide simultaneously.

Amidst all this, Ruide merely held up his staff.

It was too flimsy and slender a stick to block Shearer’s sword.

Clang!

However, Shearer’s sword was blocked by Ruide’s staff and couldn’t advance.

The Empire’s greatest knight couldn’t cut through an ordinary wooden stick.

“What the—”

Shearer was quite surprised. He quickly regained his composure and applied more force, but the sword didn’t budge.

Of course it wouldn’t.

Ruide had reduced the physical quantity of this staff and sword to zero.

It was similar to cotton colliding with cotton.

“Is that all?”

Ruide looked up at Shearer and said:

“Do something more. This is boring.”

The scene where Colon was killed was a mess.

There were signs of sufficient resistance, and bloodstains in multiple places.

Although Colon was once a Windsor knight, he’s now a retired veteran.

No matter how strong the North is on average, they’re not stronger than the Imperial Knights.

In other words, Shearer and Galahad could have easily subdued Colon, but they played with him instead.

So, it would be troublesome if he didn’t do the same to them.

‘Struggle like an insect.’

He had absolutely no intention of killing him easily.

‘Before I kill you, I’ll completely shatter your mind first.’