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Chapter 241 - In Vain (2)

Ptz!

Henry appeared in the middle of all that. He looked around him; he took in the carnage between the allied and the imperial forces.

Henry felt sorry. He had confidently promised his allies that he would bring them Arthus’ head, and with that, victory... Yet here he was, empty-handed and ashamed.

Henry cast Blink to move to the Bombardment Spire, where the Wisdom was planted. As Henry suddenly appeared in the spire, Lore, who was guarding the Wisdom, greeted him with a joyful expression.

“Archmage!”

“I’m sorry, Lore. I failed.”

“...Sorry?”

Henry didn’t hesitate to share the bad news. He didn’t want to waste time making excuses for why he hadn’t been able to behead Arthus.

“I’m sorry, but I\'ll explain the details after the war is over. From now on, all Archmages will follow me.”

With that command, Henry pulled the Wisdom out of the ground, and was about to float into the air, but then...

“Henry!”

“Huh?”

Just as he was about to soar into the air, he heard a familiar voice. When Henry turned his head in the direction of the voice, he saw Hector.

“Hector?”

“Henry!”

With a look of excitement, Hector flew over to Henry.

Lore was startled to see Hector in his spirit form, but Henry raised his hand to indicate that he was an ally.

“Henry! You son of a bitch!”

As soon as Hector saw Henry, he started swearing and throwing punches. However, Hector’s punches went straight through Henry’s head, so only his cursing had an effect.

Henry was stunned. Hector didn’t just curse at him; he was genuinely furious.

The magic barriers, which Hector had never seen in his previous life, must have been the work of wizards, and Henry was certainly the one who had ordered the wizards to set the barriers up. Therefore, Hector blamed Henry, as he was responsible for those damned magic barriers that had made him waste so much of his time.

Henry said with a frown, “Hector, where the hell have you been? Do you know how much I’ve been looking for you?”

“That’s for me to say, you asshole! Do you know how many days I’ve been traveling across the entire continent because of that damned magic barrier?”

“Magic barrier?... Ah!”

“Ah? You bastard! Anyway, I’ll save my anger for another time! I have something urgent to tell you.”

“Is it really that urgent? If not, I’d rather hear it later.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re in the middle of a war.”

“I know that, asshole! But do you know who Balak is?”

“Balak? Of course.”

“That guy’s on his way to Salgaera right now!”

“...Really?”

At the moment, Balak was on his way back after subduing the Chowan Tribe in Deucekain to fulfill Henry’s orders.

With an expressionless face, Henry continued to look at Hector as he ranted.

“You know Balak, right? That huge bastard. I was attacked by him, and so the armor you made for me got completely ruined... Anyway, he’s on his way to Salgaera right now. I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding, and because of that, Balak knows that all the wizards are in Salgaera,” continued Hector.

With great enthusiasm and sincerity, Hector explained his findings to Henry, but the more Henry listened, the more he sighed.

“Hector...”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for that information, but the Balak you’re worried about... he’s under my command now.”

“What?”

“You heard me right. While you were away, I succeeded in recruiting Balak to work for me, and a little while ago, I was in the Highlander region to kill Arthus.”

“W-what?”

Hector was genuinely shocked because he had no idea what had been going on the whole time he had been absent.

Henry also gave Hector a brief summary of the things he wasn’t aware of, but as Henry was in the middle of explaining, Hector interrupted, “W-wait! Then do you also know that Arthus is organizing a Chimera army in Killive?”

“A Chimera army? What do you mean?”

“Finally, something you don’t know. Listen, I wandered around the north after I visited Salgaera because of that damn magic barrier. And there I stumbled into Killive, and I heard about this from a sixteen-year-old boy named Baeb, who was hiding in there.”

When there was finally something Henry didn’t know, Hector explained everything he had seen and heard as best as he could.

As Henry listened to Hector, he thought, ‘There are human experiments going on in Killive?’

Henry had heard that Arthus had recruited Balak, but he had never found out what had happened to the remaining prisoners at Killive. He also hadn’t expected Arthus to raid the surrounding villages of Killive.

This was terrible news.

If what Hector was saying was true, it meant that even now, Arthus’ wizards that used black magic were slaughtering civilians to increase the size of the Chimera army.

‘Arthus, you fucking bastard...!’

Henry was so enraged that he was trembling slightly.

Although Arthus had gained control of the empire, he had disappeared without a trace when Henry tried to fight him.

Henry finally realized what Arthus’ true intentions were.

Arthus didn’t want a unified continent or an empire to begin with. He simply needed a strong empire or a unified continent for what he wanted to accomplish.

‘Then all the more reason for us to not fight against each other.’

Henry started to organize his thoughts. After all, Arthus had already abandoned the capital and disappeared. In other words, the Aenia Empire was no longer an empire without an emperor to rule it.

In that case, the imperial troops no longer had any reason to fight against the Allied Powers, since they had just lost their emperor.

Henry turned his head. Below the rampart, countless soldiers were still engaged in ruthless combat, trying to cut each other down.

Henry’s head was throbbing. Even though he realized the truth behind this battle, it was unlikely that anyone would listen to him telling the truth.

‘Damn it...!’

Henry was deeply distressed, but he still had to come up with a solution, and he had to do it fast.

The people who had been caught up in this mess of a war were shedding blood purely because of Henry’s quest for revenge and because of Arthus’ evil scheme.

After thinking hard for a few minutes, Henry finally managed to come up with a viable solution.

‘That’s right! I can do that!’

After figuring something out, Henry immediately cast Blink.

***

Ananda and Hela.

Kington and Ronan.

Allen and Valhald.

Logger and McDowell.

Walker and Von.

The battle continued.

Soldiers fell one after the other; dozens of bodies had piled up on the ground as the commanders kept rampaging.

The commanders kept swinging their swords, not caring how many soldiers, allies or enemies, had died.

“Is this all the abbot of the Church of Peace is capable of?”

“You damned whore!”

Hela freely swung her Snake Tongue around, keeping her distance. As for Ananda, he threw his fists along with a foul language that was unbecoming of an abbot.

This was the same for Logger. Empowered by countless Holy Codes, Logger chased after McDowell, but he found it difficult to keep up with him as he was too fast.

Boom! Boom!

On the other side, waves of Aura kept appearing and disappearing; it was the result of the fight between Walker and Von. The two showed off their skills by constantly extending and retracting their Auras.

Because of Allen and Valhald, some areas of the battlefield were covered in ice that was melting off. Allen swung his sword relentlessly, trying to impress Valhald, whom he considered his role model, his hero.

It seemed as if this battle had been going on forever, and as everyone was getting more fatigued, a loud voice rang out from the blue sky above the battlefield.

“Attention, everyone!”

It was none other than Henry.

Despite the fact that there were no mountains that would cause his voice to echo, it resonated across the battlefield nonetheless.

All the fights halted as everyone looked up at Henry.

Hundreds of thousands of eyes faced Henry. It would’ve been a great burden for anyone else to have so many people stare at them, but Henry didn’t care how many people were looking at him. He just lifted the Wisdom high up.

“Link!”

Link was a spell that connected the minds of wizards. They usually used it to share mana and magic among themselves in order to achieve power that was one Circle greater than their individual power.

The moment Henry cast Link, his eyes glowed with a pure white light, and the Wisdom in his hand vibrated along with his mana.

Ptzz!

Emerald-colored mana exuded from Henry’s entire body akin to a wave due to its large amount. As his mana covered the blue sky, it became darker.

Eventually, the sky turned black, as though there wasn’t a sky anymore, but the space beyond. It wasn’t just the sky—the entirety of the ground beneath the troops turned black as well.

As the soldiers looked up, they couldn’t see any stars, or anything for that matter. It was just infinite darkness.

Everyone frowned in confusion.

“What... is he doing?”

The commanders of the Allied Powers cocked their heads, unsure of Henry’s intentions. The Saint, the Twelve Apostles, and Masila all had the same reaction.

“The Holy Code, the Holy Code isn’t working..!”

Saint Irenae hastily performed a resistance Holy Code, thinking that Henry was playing some kind of trick, but her Holy Code didn’t stop whatever Henry was doing as though it was harmless.

Everyone had no choice but to sit back and watch Henry.

As the entirety of Zipan was plunged in total darkness, Henry unleashed another burst of mana.

“...!”

“T-thats...!”

In the darkness above them, Arthus figure appeared, and across from him was Henry.

‘It worked!’

Henry’s method to end the war was none other than what Viram had used in order to teach him the history of Shahatra.

It was indeed a brilliant idea.

An image created with an illusion was based on the person’s memory. Of course, Henry didn’t have the ability to create such an illusion, but he did have a lot of mana.

On the other hand, High Priest Viram had the ability to perform the illusion to show everyone Henry’s memories, but he lacked the mana to perform it on such a large scale.

Thus, Henry used Link, a spell that allowed him and Viram to share their abilities with each other. As Henry combined his mana with Viram’s ability, they slowly replayed Henry’s memories for everyone to see.

Henry slightly filtered his memories to make it easy for everyone present to understand. This would’ve been a difficult task for a mere civilian, or even wizards below the rank of a mage, but for Henry, the only 7th-Circle Archmage on the continent, it was a piece of cake.

Henry showed them everything he had seen and heard, starting with the fact that he was the disciple of the late Archmage. He then showed them the raid of the imperial palace that took place during the war, the evacuation of those inside the palace, and his confrontation with Pim and Rim, Arthus’ Chimeras.

His memories played slowly and clearly.

When Arthus finally waved goodbye to Henry and disappeared, the image of his memories faded into darkness.

“...”

A somber, stifling silence enveloped the battlefield, and everybody stared at Henry in shock.