Episode 166
Imperial Year XX, Month X, Day XX, Third Day of the Feast of Saint Santiago, Weather: Clear
The experiment has failed once again. We are facing significant challenges in procuring children for the experiments. My fellow experimenter, the demon sorcerer Prelati, seems utterly indifferent to my struggles. Should the next demon-summoning ritual fail, Prelati insists that I leave Britannia and join the ‘Demon Worshippers’ Society’ in the Empire.
Attaining the fifth circle was a special trial, one that required the power of Eris and Shub.
Yet, separate from that, Dale had to prove himself as the successor to the Black Tower Master in front of everyone.
The Tower’s trial, the 21st level of the Black Tower.
There stood the black sorcerer, known as the ‘Black Prince,’ who had reached the fifth circle.
Five circles began to spin around his heart.
Among them, the fifth circle, composed of inky tendrils, started to writhe, generating a massive amount of dark magic.
With each heartbeat, the blackened blood coursed through his body, infusing his flesh with the power of darkness.
His body, fused with the ‘Book of the Black Goat,’ had become one with the most terrifying darkness, transforming into something biologically unrecognizable as human.
At this point, Dale wasn’t sure what to call his own existence.
Strictly speaking, it was unclear whether the thing coiled around Dale’s heart should even be called a ‘circle.’
But Dale was no longer merely Shub’s ‘host,’ just as Shub was no longer merely a parasite to him.
Nothing had changed.
A more complete fusion and symbiosis.
With each heartbeat, his blood flowed faster, the blackened blood roiling like tar.
The avatar of the Shadow Lord was superimposed over Dale’s human form.
The dark armor and body.
He lifted his head.
“I-I surrender! I surrender!”
”…”
The Shadow Lord nodded silently at the young black sorcerer, who knelt, pale and trembling.
As he ascended each step, nothing changed.
The black sorcerers below, even the dark creations crafted by the elders of the Black Tower for the trial, were no exception.
The heir to the Black Tower moved forward to claim his place, and no one could stand in his way.
It was a free pass, hardly a trial at all.
Having defeated the guardians of each level of the Black Tower, Dale finally passed through the lower levels and arrived at a new place.
The upper levels of the Tower.
From here, the opponents in the Tower’s trial were black sorcerers of the fifth circle or higher, who used these levels as their workshops. They too participated in the trials each year to determine their standing, and to prevent chaos from engulfing the entire Black Tower from the 50th to the 100th level, certain rules were in place.
First, the battles were fought from the lowest level upwards.
Second, the challenged could freely utilize their workshop.
For a sorcerer, a workshop was a fortress and domain, and in the Black Tower, battles fought in these workshops were akin to siege warfare.
Sorcerers fortified their workshops to protect their positions, requiring more than just superior strength to breach them.
A siege.
If a fourth-circle sorcerer was considered a full-fledged sorcerer, a point where most ordinary talents hit a wall and despair…
A fifth-circle sorcerer was an established power within the Tower.
They could use an entire level as their residence and workshop, receiving immense benefits from the Tower, from funding to materials for dark magic.
‘The problem is they squander all those benefits fortifying their levels into defensive bastions.’
At the 50th level, a fifth-circle black sorcerer’s workshop.
Waiting for Dale was an army of the dead.
They had acquired and resurrected the corpses of orcs and other creatures that flooded the Saxon duchy each year, arming them into an army… and transforming the level into a military stronghold to desperately maintain their position.
Dale turned his head.
He spoke quietly to the elders of the Black Tower, who were surely watching his trial.
“Some elders once rose up to revive the dead spirit of the Black Tower.”
Ignoring the fifth-circle black sorcerer and the army of the dead before him.
“In some sense, it’s true that the spirit of the Black Tower is stagnant.”
Dale spoke, and the elders of the Black Tower held their breath.
“Sorcerers who don’t even premise their magic on combat, desperately fortifying their workshops… the effort and cost wasted in the process are beyond words.”
As a warrior who had lived his life on the battlefield, Dale accelerated the five circles.
“Sorcerers who don’t know real combat, playing war games in their little pond, is there any point?”
Proving himself in the Tower’s trial was an essential goal.
But Dale’s true purpose lay elsewhere.
Just as he had once reformed the Saxon barony and brought change to the demon realm, he aimed to dismantle the outdated customs and stagnation of the Black Tower.
An army of countless resurrected dead charged to protect their workshop. The fifth-circle black sorcerer had revived an orc horde, and as they charged, Dale extended his arm.
Swoosh!
Simultaneously, inky tendrils erupted from the dark armor, lashing out.
Orc revenants, slightly stronger than ordinary soldiers, were no match for Dale now.
“A-ah…!”
It couldn’t even be called a battle.
“The Red Tower, on the other hand, is an organization that hones its magic with the intent to excel in war.”
Dale recalled the Purifiers.
“If the Purifiers attacked this 50th level, how long do you think this workshop would last?”
Dale asked the fifth-circle black sorcerer hiding among the revenants.
“Building such a flimsy fortress to desperately cling to your status will inevitably affect the younger black sorcerers on the lower levels.”
“But, Prince Dale! This is all in accordance with the traditions of the Black Tower…”
The fifth-circle black sorcerer finally spoke after a long silence, and Dale nodded.
“What the hardliners of the Black Tower should have changed was not attacking my father’s castle to prove their folly, but these very traditions.”
”…!”
The outdated practices that eroded the organization’s function and efficiency from top to bottom, and bottom to top.
Dale never expected them to change overnight. That’s why he had quietly waited for the right moment.
To stand as a legitimate black sorcerer, looking down on them, and to solidify his position as the undisputed heir to the Black Tower.
Dale waved his hand again.
Not to reveal the power of the dark armor, but the strength within his darkened body.
A storm of black magic began to swirl at his feet.
A wind of annihilation swept through the fortress painstakingly built by the fifth-circle black sorcerer.
Inanimate objects corroded, and the skeletal bodies of the revenants crumbled to ash.
“Eek!”
Sensing the fear of death, the fifth-circle black sorcerer fell back in terror.
But the Shadow Lord paid him no mind, walking calmly onward.
Beyond the scorched 50th level, to reach a place attainable solely by Dale’s own power.
Having declared his intent to overturn the Black Tower’s organization, Dale inevitably faced resistance from the black sorcerers who owned their levels.
Thus, the resistance from the black sorcerers opposing the ‘Black Prince’ after the 50th level was incomparable to anything before.
Yet, there was no way mere fifth-circle sorcerers could block Dale’s path.
Level 51, Level 52, Level 55…
As he razed the fortresses of black sorcerers desperately defending their workshops, Dale spoke.
Initially, he demonstrated power so overwhelming they couldn’t even think of defying him, but Dale’s strategy wasn’t just about suppression.
Just as he had transformed the demon realm into a land of unparalleled opportunity, he began to speak of rewards they could understand.
Securing the position of acting master of the Black Tower in the absence of the official master…
As he had done in the demon realm, it was time to change many things in the Black Tower for the future.
At that moment, the ‘Black Guard,’ an organization composed of the elders of the Black Tower, gathered in a chamber of the Tower.
Watching Dale’s trial from the 50th level, they couldn’t hide their utter shock.
But what truly shocked them wasn’t the reforms Dale proposed.
As a high-ranking mage of the Black Tower, they were privy to the secrets of darkness. They could sense something within Dale’s body—an unfathomable darkness that had become one with the “Black Prince.”
“It seems the young and brilliant prince has quite the admirable ambition. Truly a sight to behold,” one of the elders of the Black Tower remarked.
At that moment, Eris, the black-clad proxy sitting in the absent master’s seat, turned her head.
“And, embarrassingly enough, the prince’s words are indeed correct. Aren’t they as sharp as a needle?”
“Master…!”
Some of the elders couldn’t hide their surprise, but the old master simply laughed, undeterred.
“As my old friend Edgar once said, it’s undeniable that our ideology has stagnated and rusted.”
A few elders swallowed hard, and Eris, her monocle glinting, asked, “Do you have something to add?”
“I merely wish to affirm that the prince’s actions are justified and that he is more than qualified to take them.”
”…”
“Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment.”
With that, the old master rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m off to welcome the spirit of a new era,” he replied, chuckling as if thoroughly amused.