「The value of one exceptional mage is equivalent to that of ten exceptional warriors.
Warriors cannot project the same powerful firepower as mages, their means of ranged attack are extremely limited, and they cannot perform special miracles. Their weakness in close combat can easily be overcome by employing familiars.
After all, the role of a warrior can be somewhat replicated by simply handing a spear to a peasant, so it is far more efficient to focus on training mages.」
This statement, left behind by a mage supremacist during a past era of war, sparked endless debate among pundits, but the general consensus was that it was correct.
The reason was simple: mages were more ‘flashy,’ while warriors were more ‘plain.’
Unlike mages who shot fire, stirred winds, and unleashed torrents of cold, a warrior’s ultimate moves were merely hitting, kicking, stabbing, and slashing.
And those were things that anyone, not just an exceptional warrior, could do.
Of course, warriors would retort, asking if cutting a blade of grass was the same as cleaving metal armor in two, but people have always been drawn to easily understood visual effects.
But at this very moment.
Dorothea was keenly realizing just how troublesome those ‘plain ones’ could become when their level rose beyond a certain point.
“Stop them! Hold them back!”
“Show them the pride of Lennart!”
They were fast enough to easily catch up to the carriage on foot, they sliced through mana-reinforced bone armor with a single swing, and they launched surprise attacks without hesitation, regardless of rough footing or confined spaces.
Most troublesome of all was their robustness and tenacity. Getting hit by the carriage, trampled by hooves, battered by cannonballs, and covered in poison and curses, yet still stubbornly rising to attack again—their persistence was almost awe-inspiring.
The synergy created by the combination of the Lion Duke's bloodline's inherently high base stats and the balanced growth typical of a warrior was terrifying.
Those bastards rarely get sick, don't tire easily, and even need less time to rest?
For a commander, there could be no more reliable asset; for an opponent, no more troublesome foe.
It was as if to prove there was a reason the warrior-class members of the Lion Duke's bloodline had been the ones to support the Empire against the Magic State.
Still, Dorothea couldn't help but let a complaint escape her lips.
“…Seriously, they should have done this during the test. Why now?”
To her point that they wouldn't be getting ridiculed as has-beens or all-talk if they had shown this terrifying ability during the test, Sophia offered a clear answer.
“Perhaps they couldn't, even if they wanted to, during the test?”
“Why?”
“Because getting beaten up by Sir Tin and Lady Adel was probably more painful than getting hit by a carriage. Painful enough that even those tenacious people were taken down in a single blow and couldn't move.”
“……”
It was a conclusion that left nothing more to be said.
What could she say when the problem wasn't that they were weak, but that her own allies were just bigger monsters?
Conversely, it also meant that if people like this were to rise up in earnest across the Empire, while the Tin Knight's party would be fine, other people would be in serious trouble.
After a perilous journey that would have sent a normal carriage to the scrap heap dozens of times over, the Tin Knight, now with the ducal mansion in sight, spoke.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ kindly advises all passengers to brace for impact!]
As if to act as seatbelts, skeletal hands shot up from the floor, securing Dorothea and Sophia firmly in place.
Leaping from the driver's seat, the Tin Knight mounted the golem horse and unfurled his sword energy like a veil, wrapping it around himself and his mount.
Like a merciless cavalry charge breaking through enemy lines, the bone-armored golem horse slammed into the mansion's main gate.
CRRAAAAAAASH!
The massive, ornate metal gate, a testament to the ducal family's power, flew through the air like paper and clattered across the ground.
The impact was so immense that even the golem horse would have suffered critical damage without the Tin Knight's support.
Several members of the bloodline, rushing over at the roar that sounded like a cannonball had struck, stared with dazed expressions at the completely demolished gate.
The ducal mansion wasn't a single structure but a series of buildings on a vast estate. Standing before the most magnificent of them, Dorothea returned the horse and carriage to her storage.
And as if in replacement, she summoned a massive pile of skeletons.
The vast quantity of beast bones was instantly reborn as undead the moment they touched the black mana emanating from Dorothea.
—â â â !
A miracle that swelled the number of terrorists from a mere four to four digits in an instant.
Dorothea spoke.
“I'll hold this area to make sure no one escapes. You two clean up inside.”
“In that case, I should stay here as well. If you two are going all out, my speed would only get in your way.”
The Tin Knight and Adelaide.
The two disciples nodded and charged into the building without hesitation.
“Wh-what are these things!?”
“Undead! Kill that witch!”
Radicals emerged from all corners of the mansion and, upon spotting Dorothea and Sophia, tried to charge, but they could not easily break through the wall of undead.
Some of the more skilled fighters, mainly the direct descendants with golden hair and purple eyes, managed to carve a path by virtually pulverizing the undead, but even their blades could not reach their target.
Dorothea's staff alone created a barrier boasting immense durability, and now it was also imbued with the holy power emanating from Sophia.
It was a joint technique made possible by a magic tool from Orin, the Witch of the North, which prevented Dorothea's necromancy and Sophia's holy magic from canceling each other out.
Clang!
A young man with golden hair and purple eyes, who had been staring blankly at his sword shattering uselessly against the barrier, soon shouted with a flushed face.
“You… you wicked witch! Do you think you can oppose the Lion Duke's bloodline and walk away unscathed?!”
“I think I'll be just fine.”
“What?”
Dorothea returned a sweet smile to the dumbfounded young man.
It was the ‘smile of a wicked and bewitching witch,’ one she rarely showed when the Tin Knight was around.
“Of course, if I were dealing with the proper Lion Duke's bloodline, I wouldn't dare touch you so easily. The achievements and honor your ancestors built over hundreds of years are real.”
But, Dorothea continued.
“You all just threw that achievement and honor away. Not just onto the dirt, but straight into the mud.”
“Nonsense! We were only fighting back against the Empress's unjust persecution!”
“Then you should have made your case openly and honorably.”
With a look of pity, Dorothea gazed at the young man.
“Instead of a thuggish plan like ‘capture the enemy's leadership and seize the Empire,’ you should have stood before the people and declared that this was unjust. If you couldn't do that, you should have defended your position with your strength. If you couldn't do that either, you should have engaged in negotiations with patience. ‘I don't want to do this, I can't do that.’ You just wailed like children and ended up dragging down the people who were actually trying. A fine job you've done.”
“Don't talk like you know anything! What the hell do you know?!”
“At the very least, I doubt your ancestors would be pleased to see you now.”
“No! They would be cheering us on!”
“Hmph.”
Dorothea's gaze became infinitely arrogant and insolent.
Truthfully, if she put her mind to it, she could have simply buried him in the waiting undead horde instead of engaging in this argument, but seeing them insist on their own righteousness even on the verge of death, she felt that simply burying them wouldn't be satisfying enough.
“…I was only planning to provide support since this is Adel's problem to solve, but…”
Only Sophia, who was standing right beside her, heard the low murmur.
Dorothea stretched her left hand—the one not holding the staff—into the air and drew circles, as if swinging something invisible.
Three precise times, counter-clockwise.
Holding the chain ring that had turned into a bird cage, Dorothea declared.
“—All of you who have a word for your descendants, come forth.”
Thump.
In that moment, the air pulsed.
The Lennart Ducal mansion.
From the land where those who carried the Lion Duke's blood were born, lived, and eventually laid to rest, faint, will-o'-the-wisp-like spirits rose into the air.
And toward them, Dorothea poured out her mana.
“Gasp…!”
“Hah!”
Gasps echoed from all around.
The spirits, once hazy as heat shimmer, had absorbed Dorothea's mana and instantly taken on distinct forms.
There was a warrior covered in scars. There was a scholar in formal robes with a neat and tidy air.
There was a stiff knight who seemed the very embodiment of strictness and solemnity, and a half-naked warrior who exuded a wild aura.
There was a beauty of a grace that the word ‘peerless’ could not fully capture, an old man with a deeply wrinkled face full of wisdom, and even a child smaller than Adelaide.
They had three things in common.
One: Golden hair.
Two: Violet eyes.
Three: Every single one of them was glaring at their descendants with a furious expression.
“F-Father.”
The young man who had been screaming at Dorothea and asserting his own righteousness just moments ago, now trembled as the spirit of a middle-aged man approached him.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Why, why! We were just trying to protect the family! That's why! So—”
《…….》
The spirit said nothing.
It didn't scold the young man for his actions or rebuke his words; it merely stared at him in silence.
Perhaps that silence was the most powerful denial, the most scathing rebuke of all.
Thud.
The young man collapsed to his knees, as if all strength had left him.
From all over the mansion, sounds of sobbing and pleas for forgiveness could be heard.
“Don't be swayed! This is a fake! It's just that witch's sorcery!”
“Only we can protect Lennart! Fight to the end!”
“Dammit! Snap out of it! What are you—Gack!”
Of course, the world isn't a fairy tale, and there were those who, regardless of their ancestors' spirits appearing, felt no remorse and insisted they were right.
Well, they only met the fate of having their legs bitten and arms grabbed by the endlessly swarming undead before finally being buried in the skeletal horde.
Sophia was impressed.
“That's amazing. In many ways.”
“I'm glad there were more lingering souls than I expected. I heard the ducal family has strongholds in other places besides the capital, so honestly, I thought it was a fifty-fifty chance. …Hm?”
Suddenly, Dorothea's brow furrowed.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Her magic birdcage, the one with the power to gather and stabilize souls, had begun to tremble violently as if something was wrong.
Dorothea focused her senses to identify the cause and soon muttered in a daze.
“…The basement?”
In the deepest, most hidden part of the mansion.
The cage was reacting to an extremely foreign and powerful ‘something’.
A presence so brilliant, and also endlessly fierce. A mass that felt like the sun and lightning compressed into one.
“A soul? No, a residual thought? No, but for a mere thought, not even the main entity, how can its presence be this overwhelming?”
What was even more peculiar was another power that enveloped the mass like a shell.
A power that used mana but wasn't magic; an esoteric ability born not of logic and theory, but of emotion and primal instinct.
Dorothea had encountered such a power a few times before.
Once, in the tower of a woman who embraced wickedness to protect her daughter.
Once, on the island of a woman who chose isolation for safety.
The identity of that power was…
“—The People of the underground.”