Free Web NovelChapter 310: Vanitas [2]
"Ugh..."
Soliette slowly opened her eyes.
The very first thing she noticed was how unbearably stiff her body felt, almost as though she had been unconscious for an extremely long time.
Even lifting her head slightly required far more effort than it normally should have, while a dull ache lingered throughout her entire body alongside a strange sense of disorientation clouding her thoughts.
For several moments, her vision remained blurry.
She blinked once, then twice, as the world gradually began coming back into focus.
"...."
And the very first thing she saw was a pair of golden eyes staring directly at her.
"...Archmage?"
The voice sounded familiar.
Yet Soliette’s thoughts still felt sluggish, as though her mind had not fully caught up with reality yet.
"Who..."
Her brows furrowed while trying to properly process the figure sitting beside her.
"...Princess?"
"Yes," the woman hovering before her answered immediately. "I am Astrid."
Princess Astrid let out a breath of relief afterward, almost as though she had been waiting for Soliette to properly regain consciousness for quite some time now.
"Archmage," Astrid said seriously, "how many fingers am I holding up?"
Soliette blinked again. "...What?"
Astrid raised her hand higher insistently.
"How many fingers?"
Soliette stared at the raised hand in silence for several moments before finally answering in a tired voice.
"...Three."
Astrid relaxed afterward. "Oh thank God."
"Oh thank God."
Only then did Soliette slowly begin properly observing her surroundings.
The place they were currently in looked like some kind of enclosed alleyway hidden between abandoned buildings.
There were several other people gathered nearby as well.
However, none of them were focused on Soliette and instead surrounded someone else.
As Soliette slowly turned her head toward the figure lying nearby, her expression immediately changed.
"...E-Elsa?!"
The moment she recognized the woman, Soliette immediately attempted to stand.
But the instant she forced herself upward, her legs nearly gave out. Before she could properly collapse forward, Astrid quickly moved to support her.
"Slow down, Archmage," Astrid said hurriedly. "You’ve only just regained consciousness."
Soliette barely paid attention to her.
Her gaze remained fixed entirely upon Elsa.
"...What happened to her?"
"She’s alive," Astrid answered quickly. "But she only regained consciousness shortly before you did."
"...What exactly is happening?"
At that moment, Ezra quietly stepped forward and began explaining.
"To put it simply... Archmage, you and Headmaster Elsa have been missing for nearly two months."
"...."
"...."
Silence immediately filled the alleyway afterward.
Meanwhile, both Soliette and Elsa remained completely frozen.
The words themselves sounded so absurd that neither of them could properly process them immediately. To the two women, it genuinely felt as though they had merely lost consciousness briefly before suddenly waking up here.
Two months?
That was impossible.
And yet, the expressions surrounding them made it painfully obvious nobody was joking.
Soliette slowly lowered her gaze afterward while trying to organize her thoughts, but the harder she attempted to remember what had happened before losing consciousness, the more scuffed her memories became.
Then suddenly, a horrifying realization slowly surfaced across her face.
"...Vanitas."
The moment his name left her mouth, Soliette abruptly stumbled forward once more before grabbing Ezra tightly by both shoulders.
Because of the noticeable height difference between them, she had to tilt her head upward just to properly look at him.
"T-That’s right..." Her voice shook. "What happened to Vanitas?!"
"So—"
"No, wait... what happened to everyone else?!"
For several moments, nobody answered her immediately.
Elsa slowly forced herself upright despite still looking visibly exhausted.
"...I think I understand what’s happening."
Ezra, Astrid, Silas, and Cassandra quietly exchanged glances with one another before eventually beginning to explain the situation surrounding the Empire and everything that had transpired during the past two months.
By the time they finished, neither Soliette nor Elsa could properly believe what they had just heard anymore.
"Vanitas... is the Emperor now...?"
Disbelief immediately surfaced across both women’s faces afterward.
"Wait a moment," Elsa suddenly began. "How exactly did you kids even find us? And more importantly... what were we even doing here in the first place?"
"That’s—"
Cassandra opened her mouth to answer.
However, before she could continue speaking, Astrid immediately cut her off.
"It was purely coincidence, Headmaster," Astrid said. "We just happened to find the two of you while moving through this district."
Astrid’s golden eyes quietly remained fixed upon Elsa while continuing to speak.
"Thank God we found you before anyone else did."
* * *
"Kafka, get over here."
The ritual had already been completely prepared by the time Vanitas spoke.
By relying purely on memory, he had painstakingly recreated the same ritual formation Archmage Zen once used when using his younger sister, Melissa, as a vessel.
Now, Vanitas had reproduced that exact same process once again, except this time, the vessel standing at the center of the formation was Selena, or more accurately, Fyodor.
Enormous magic circles continued rotating on the floor while ancient symbols illuminated the walls.
Meanwhile, Kafka slowly approached.
"...What exactly do I have to do?"
"Unfortunately, I overestimated my ability to properly interpret the structure of the final seal."
His gaze slowly shifted toward Kafka afterward.
"Fortunately... you’re here."
Kafka remained silent while listening.
Because, despite his age, even he himself understood exactly what Vanitas meant.
Kafka Rossweisse was fundamentally abnormal.
His existence itself violated the logic ordinary magic relied upon, allowing him to sever mana, spells, and magical structures before they could even manifest.
And because of that absurd ability, Kafka possessed something Vanitas currently lacked.
The ability to brute force the dismantling process itself.
Some portions of the seal protecting the dragon bones were simply too incomprehensible to properly decipher through conventional means within the limited amount of time Vanitas still had left.
Certain layers of the seal no longer even behaved like ordinary magic anymore, existing instead as conceptual structures intertwined directly with the ritual’s foundational logic itself. freewёbnoνel.com
Normally, dismantling something like that should have required decades of study.
But Kafka ignored that requirement.
Because what Kafka severed was not merely mana itself, but connection.
The connection between mana and manifestation.
The connection between formulas and completion.
The connection between cause and supernatural effect.
It was why even unfinished spells broke the moment Kafka interfered with them. His ability forcibly interrupted the pathway magic traveled through before reality itself could fully recognize the phenomenon being invoked.
And the dragon bone seals, despite their complexity, still ultimately relied upon that same principle.
As ancient and incomprehensible as they were, the seals still required continuous synchronization between their layered structures in order to remain stable.
Kafka could not properly interpret or understand the formulas themselves the same way Vanitas could.
But he did not need to.
All Kafka had to do was sever the synchronization holding the layers together.
Without him, Vanitas was no longer certain he would survive long enough to completely unseal the dragon bones himself.
His cancer had already begun deteriorating his body far faster than before.
Even now, maintaining his current condition required immense effort, while the pain spreading throughout his body steadily worsened with every passing day.
"Fyodor," Vanitas said calmly. "Get into position."
"Right."
The playful demeanor Fyodor usually showed gradually disappeared afterward as he slowly stepped toward the center of the ritual formation.
Beneath his feet, enormous magic circles continued rotating across the floor as Fyodor calmly took Selena’s body toward the center of the formation.
Then, Vanitas slowly raised one hand.
The surrounding magic circles immediately began intensifying.
Countless runic sequences illuminated simultaneously throughout the chamber while ancient inscriptions embedded into the floor gradually activated one after another.
The overwhelming amount of mana released from the ritual alone caused the walls themselves to tremble as though reality itself was resisting what they were attempting to accomplish.
"Listen carefully," Vanitas began. "The moment I begin dismantling the outer layer, the seal’s internal synchronization will begin fluctuating."
His gaze remained fixed upon the dragon bones.
"When that happens, I need you to sever the unstable connections immediately before the structure attempts to repair itself."
Kafka nodded afterward.
"Fyodor," Vanitas continued. "Are you ready?"
At those words, Fyodor slowly raised his head.
"I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time."
To Fyodor, this was enlightenment.
The realization that, despite never truly being chosen by Araxys, despite centuries spent misunderstanding his own role, despite ultimately realizing he had merely been preparing the path for someone else, he would still become part of the descent regardless.
For him, there could have been no greater ending.
"...Honestly," he said, "I could not have asked for a more beautiful conclusion than this."
"...Disgusting bastard."
"Hehe."
Fyodor merely giggled in response.
The next moment, the ritual finally began.
Vanitas slowly raised one hand while countless interconnected magical formulas unfolded around the seal protecting the dragon bones.
Layer after layer of ancient magical structures surfaced into view, revealing incomprehensible sequences so complex that even observing them for too long caused ordinary mages to lose their sense of direction.
"Kafka."
At Vanitas’s call, Kafka immediately moved.
The moment unstable synchronization points appeared throughout the seal’s structure, Kafka severed them whenever Vanitas instructed him to.
His ability interrupted the connections holding the formulas together before they could properly stabilize, causing portions of the seal to collapse one after another despite their absurd complexity.
Rumble——
The chamber trembled. frёewebηovel.cѳm
Several layers of the seal immediately destabilized while ancient mana surged throughout the room like a storm. Yet before the collapsing structures could fully reconstruct themselves, Kafka severed the synchronization again, forcibly preventing the seal from recovering.
Crackle——
The third layer gradually began breaking apart one segment after another.
Then another.
And another.
Until finally...
Crackle——!
Something within the dragon bones itself responded.
The entire chamber immediately darkened.
The light illuminating the ritual formations disappeared entirely as though swallowed by something far deeper than darkness itself.
Even sound abruptly vanished alongside it, leaving behind only silence.
The world turned black once more.
——Welcome back.
And Vanitas was dragged back into the void.
