Free Web NovelChapter 4: Setting the Board [2]
The Holy Mark on his left arm, which was barely visible against his skin earlier, was now glowing with a golden luminance.
It didn’t take Rian long to understand what this luminance means.
"Holy mana..."
The Mark he’d received from Jeanne was emitting a dense, radiant Holy Mana.
Its output was on par with his Dark Mana from his past life, it was even more than that if he dared to say.
’So I was right.’
His body could use Holy Mana now, all thanks to the Sacred Mark.
But it didn’t last long.
"...Ah. It stopped."
The Mark dimmed, and every last trace of Holy Mana vanished with it.
’Hmmm... what triggered it though?’
Rian thought back on what he’d been doing.
He’d just used Dark Magic to turn those birds into his undead.
Was it because he’d cast Dark Magic?
It was well known that Holy and Dark magic were violently reactive to one another. So it would make sense, the Holy Mark detecting his Dark Magic and rousing in response.
Looking down at his left arm, he decided to test it.
He pulsed his entire left arm with raw Dark Mana.
"..."
Nothing happened.
’Strange. Then what about—’
He cast Curse Art into the same arm.
"..."
Let’s try Necromancy Art.
This time Rian felt a faint vibration in his blood vessels, and the way the skin of his arm grew warmer.
The Holy Mana welled up once again.
"...I see."
Necromancy Art is the real Catalyst here.
But he didn’t understand why it only reacted to this specific branch of Dark Art.
"...Ah, shit.."
A sudden dizziness washed over him, and Rian pressed a hand to his temple.
He’d just used Grade 10 magic so many times since he regressed.
His Mana was nearly dry.
He wasn’t as powerful as his old self yet.
Casting Grade 10 arts demanded far more than this body could afford at this point.
His sixteen-year-old body could only comfortably handle up to Grade 6 before it started running dry.
And yet, even with his near empty mana, Rian didn’t look the least bit worried.
Because an empty mana meant nothing to him.
He had a way to refill it, as much as he wanted, so long as he stood in a place dense with Dark Mana.
A place like, say...
Rian’s gaze drifted back toward the banquet hall behind him.
Through the glass, he could see his Dark Mana Fuels walking, eating, and chatting with each other.
Dozens of high-ranking mages and powerful aristocrats were inside the banquet hall.
A smile tugged at his lips.
With the last dregs of mana he had left, Rian cast his original art he had created for this specific case.
Origin Art: Gluttony.
Rian had created this art after defeating the Demon Lord of Gluttony.
That Demon’s massive body had run on a mechanism unlike anything Rian had ever seen before.
It lets it heal instantly and never, ever run out of mana.
Killing the wretched thing had been an absolute pain in the ass for both him and Jeanne.
After it was defeated, Rian had cut the giant corpse open to study it, and what he found had been an eye-opener.
The Demon Lord of Gluttony’s body drained mana directly from everything around it, from the living creatures, the plants, the rocks, the ants underfoot, every single thing that held even the faintest trace of mana.
It had taken Rian three full years to refine and reconstruct that same mechanism as a magic of his own.
And because Rian wanted no one to notice he was draining their mana, he’d tuned the technique so that the amount skimmed from each person was so minuscule that it would slip entirely beneath their notice.
And so, Gluttony was born.
Gluttony became the very reason, why Rian had became unstoppable during War.
He practically never ran out of mana to begin with.
But surprisingly, for a magic modeled after something so devastating and complex, Gluttony was a mere Grade 5 Magic.
Rian didn’t understand the reason behind it, and neither did he have the time or luxury to find the answers during the war time.
If it works, it works. End of discussion.
As he cast Gluttony and topped his mana back to normal, a beautiful voice cut in from behind him.
"So Lilly was right, you don’t have any friends, huh?"
Rian tugged his sleeve down, hiding the Holy Mark, before turning toward the voice.
A pair of amber eyes blinked at him, bright with curiosity.
"Oh Mara? Why are you here?"
"Huh? Why can’t I be here?"
Mara Vaulcheer strolled up to the railing and leaned against it, her arms crossed, right beside him.
’...please don’t tell me she sensed my mana?’
For a while, neither of them said anything.
She just stood there, as her long white hair drifted in the wind as she looked up at the sky.
Rian assumed she’d only come out for some air, so he decided to leave her to it and slip back to his own plans.
"Can I have a moment?"
Rian stopped.
"You can, but I can’t give you more than five minutes. I’ve got other important things to take care of."
Mara narrowed her eyes.
"What other work could you possibly have at your own birthday..."
She trailed off, then shrugged.
"Whatever. Five minutes is plenty for me."
Rian folded his arms as well.
"Go on then."
"Rian, did you get an invitation letter from Caelistra Academy?"
’Ah. So that’s what this is about.’
Rian relaxed.
"I haven’t checked my letters in about two years. But I think I must have gotten one."
"Huh? You think you got one?"
It was true, though, he hadn’t read a letter in ages. But he remembered Lilly finding the letter from the trash can.
"I mean, Caelistra keeps its eyes on every promising talent in both the Holy and Dark Empires. It’d be strange if I didn’t get one."
"...yeah."
Rian caught the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.
’Did I sound too full of myself just now?’
...Well. It was all true anyway.
"But if you came all the way out here to ask me that, I take it you got yours already."
Mara nodded with a prideful smile on her face.
"It arrived just this morning. My father looked downright pleased when he saw it."
"Heh. Is that so? Lord Vaulcheer always did have a soft spot for you."
"...What?"
"O-oh. Nothing." He coughed. "Anyway, are you going to attend?"
"Of course. Only a fool would turn down an offer like that."
She leaned a little further over the railing, and her expression soured.
"Especially now, with everything happening between the Dark and Holy Empires, Caelistra is the only place that actually takes the demons seriously."
Rian shrugged his shoulders, then he asked the one important thing he wanted to ask her.
"Do you think the war between both the empires will end?"
Mara scoffed.
"Both sides are idiots, I’m telling you. At this rate it’ll be the demons who finish them off before they ever finish each other. Honestly? Some days I wish they’d just hurry up and do it."
She’d said it like a passing frustration, but Rian knew better that Mara weeped the most in his whole forces.
As they talked, the music loosened, drawing together into a single flowing melody.
The seats in the hall were full now.
"Are you just going to stand out here the whole time?" Mara asked.
Rian blinked.
"I’m not great with crowds. Let Lilly enjoy it, she likes the chaos."
Then something seemed to occur to her, and she turned sharply toward him.
"Oh, that almost slipped my mind, Lily’s had half the boys in there lining up to ask her for a dance. What about you? No one’s asked you?"
"I’d rather die—"
"Just say no one asked."
"....."
"Hah. And now I see why Lilly worries about you."
’What’s so worrying about this?’
"Relax, I’m just teasing." She waved a hand. "It’s fine, as you can see I am the same. Aside from Lilly and Juliana, I don’t really have anyone I’m close to here anyway. But it’s alright, they’re having fun and that’s good enough for me."
Rian studied her as she spoke.
"...No one asked you, either?"
"Oh. well..."
She tugged at her long sleeves as she talked, drawing them down even further over her hands.
Rian knew exactly why she did that.
The endless tugging at her sleeves was nothing more than her trying to hide all the scars she had on her body.
But the Mara he knew had never been bothered by those scars.
If anything, she’d come to wear them like an emblem as she got more during war, it the most beautiful mark of the strength she carried.
’Choosing her as the second in command was my best decision.’
Rian made a quick decision, but before that he sent a quiet message through the undead birds and checked if anyone had gotten anything.
Then he turned to Mara, and held out his hand for her.
"You and me, let us have a dance."
She looked at the stretched out hand, and then to his face.
It took her a second to understand what he meant.
"...Ah."
. . .
[At the Banquet Hall]
"I’m sorry, I really can’t dance anymore."
Lilly waved off the next boy in line.
He sulked and shuffled away.
That made eight dances.
’Damn you, Mother.’
She was tired.
If it weren’t for her mother’s request not to turn down a single dance offer, she’d be over at the tables right now, stuffing her face with all that delicious food alongside her friends.
Heck, she would even help Rian to pair him off with some pretty girl.
But no! All of it ruined, because her mother had demanded it.
"Haaah. I’m beat."
Beside her, Juliana slumped into the cushion as well, drenched in sweat.
"Oh, Juli~ How many today?"
Juliana weakly held up her fingers.
Lilly counted.
One, two. Three, four...
"Ten?!"
"Hehe..."
Juliana had a small, charming face framed by deep blonde hair and blonde eyes, it was a face that turned heads without trying.
Half the young nobles in the empire had proposed to her at least once.
Lilly giggled.
"Well, as long as you’re enjoying yourself—"
"Enjoying?! I don’t want to do it, I just, I just can’t say no!"
It was all true, Juliana was a hopeless pushover.
Lilly genuinely feared that if some young man cornered her and asked for her hand in marriage, the girl would actually blurt out yes.
"Anyway, where’s Mara?"
Lilly scanned the hall.
Juliana dabbed her face with a small tissue.
"Eating, probably. Let’s just go join her befo—"
"Hey, look at that."
"Isn’t that the lunatic of House Orlok?"
"Huh? He actually came, wait... the girl beside him, no way..."
Both of them turned toward the commotion, both tired and unbothered, and the instant they saw it, every trace of exhaustion drained from their faces, replaced with pure shock.
There, walking to the center of the floor, was Rian, holding hands with Mara.
For a second, Lilly outright rejected what she was seeing.
It couldn’t be her brother.
Rian would rather die than set foot on a dance floor.
"L-Lilly..."
Juliana pointed a trembling finger.
"I can see it too."
. . .
Rian stepped onto the floor, holding Mara’s hand in his.
Just as he’d guessed, she didn’t pull away.
’Are you sure about this?’ she asked him this.
"You know how to dance, right?"
Mara shifted, a touch awkward.
"...I’ve practiced."
"Then it’s fine."
Rian’s hand settled at her back.
"...!"
He felt her flinch, before she recovered and rested her other hand on his shoulder.
Every eye in the hall was on them now.
Rian also noticed it, Mara’s gaze flicking nervously across the watching faces.
She was painfully aware of the long gloves that hid all her scars.
"They actually look good together. Shame, isn’t it? If not for those scars, she’d be a beauty without equal."
Some of it was close enough to anger even Rian.
"It’s rude to keep staring at other men, you know," he said.
"...Oh. My bad."
Mara turned her eyes back to Rian, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
Those deep, ocean-blue eyes, the long lashes, the sharp line of his jaw, and the faint curve of his mouth.
Up close, in the warm light, with his hand resting steady at her back, Rian was, she realized with a jolt....
Unfairly good-looking.
"...!!"
Heat flooded her face all at once.
She now wanted to look away, anywhere but at him.
But Rian’s voice caught her before she could.
"Everyone here is an idiot."
"...Huh?"
He glanced, unimpressed, at the whispering nobles around them.
"This whole empire is packed wall to wall with the most magnificently brainless collection of inbred peacocks I’ve ever had the displeasure of sharing air with."
A startled laugh escaped her lips.
"Pfft— are you insane, they will hear you."
"It’s fine, I am a lunatic afterall."
Mara pressed her lips together.
[Grrrrr—!!]
A message tore through Rian’s mind.
A vision the bird had seen appeared in his head in an instant.
Three hundred meters to the southwest, just beyond this hall, a cluster of hooded figures crouched over a giant crystal ball half-buried in the ground.
Rian studied the crystal ball with one of his undead birds.
It was a magic tool to isolate a space as big as this banquet hall from the outside world.
’Nothing surprising, I always knew it was them.’
After Lilly’s death, Rian had spent a long time searching for the reason.
Why did it happen? How could it have happened at all?
And eventually, he’d found his answer.
It had been the work of an insider.
There was no way a horde of demons could simply stroll into a guarded noble estate uninvited.
Someone had to have set it all up.
And in his past life, Rian had learned exactly who.
House Morgrath.
One of the Five Great Houses.
That house had created a lot of trouble for them in the war, leaking all the information to the demons, and even funding terrorism in the Holy Empire.
A strange grin tugged at Rian’s face.
Now they will all realise why Rian had been given the title ’The Angel of Death’.
He sent a transmission rippling out through his birds.
All the undead birds moved towards every hooded men at an unimaginable speed.
[..Acck!!]
[BAM! BAM! BAM!BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!]
[..w-what are thes---aggghhhhhhh!!!]
And soon after the vision ended.
A vision bloomed behind his eyes.
This time he was looking at a man in his fifties, draped in an expensive coat patterned with coiling snakes.
A woman sat beside him, it was his wife.
It was the head of House Morgrath himself.
His personal butlers and maids poured drinks for the couple while both Mr. and Mrs. Morgrath murmured with a single hooded figure in front of him.
Five guards stood close to him, he always brought men with himself.
The moment the hooded man finished speaking and turned to leave, Rian sent his next transmission, straight to the maids, the butlers, and the five guards surrounding Lord Morgrath, his wife, and all the other undeads he created.
More visions poured in from farther away, all from the same estate.
Through the eyes of servants placed all throughout the Morgrath household, Rian looked upon every last member of the house.
Young, old, it didn’t matter to him.
Every undead he had quietly created before arriving at banquet hall was now in position.
They were all ready to wipe House Morgrath off the face of the world tonight.
"...Rian? What’s wrong?"
Mara blinked up at him. For just a moment, the look on his face had been genuinely terrifying.
"Ah. It’s nothing, let’s have another dance."
It was a checkmate, before he finished setting the board.
