Chapter 8: Side Story
A scream echoed through the air, marking only the beginning.
“Enemy of the revolution!”
“Attack! Attack!”
With cries of “enemy of the revolution,” countless revolutionary warriors blocked Dale’s path.
Rows of spears and muskets formed a line, and one by one, the iron-clad soldiers in magical armor joined them.
As a city bordering the Empire, the revolutionary forces began to gather, filling the area with their presence.
Yet, Dale remained unfazed.
“I still don’t understand this revolution.”
“Shoot! Kill the enemy of the revolution!”
Bang! Bang!
Black powder from matchlock muskets scattered everywhere, but nothing changed.
Crash!
A wall of ice shot up from beneath Dale’s feet, absorbing the black powder as he stretched out his arms.
Shatter!
The ice wall crumbled, transforming into countless shards that scattered in all directions. The revolutionary army’s proud formations meant nothing in the face of this.
Screams filled the air, and blood splattered.
“What is so noble and sacred about this revolution that you revere it so?” Dale asked, genuinely puzzled.
He posed the question, then calmly walked forward, stepping over the fallen, screaming revolutionaries.
“Liberty, equality, fraternity…!”
At that moment, one of the revolutionaries spoke up. Dale chuckled at the words.
“Is that what you call a revolution?”
“What we want is… to overthrow the oppression of the emperor and the nobles… so everyone can be equal…”
The revolutionary’s words were cut short as blood poured from his mouth, his final words spoken.
Dale lifted his head, taking in the scene.
The city’s entrance was blocked, the drawbridge raised, and revolutionaries on the city walls aimed their bows and muskets at him.
“Neither free, nor equal, nor fraternal,” Dale scoffed coldly.
The city of Troie, a key stronghold of the revolutionaries bordering the Empire, was a strategic point they could not afford to lose.
Thus, the number and quality of the revolutionary forces stationed there were unmatched.
The idea of a single warrior overwhelming a hundred was a tale of legend. Or so it should have been.
But after the revolutionary forces guarding the city’s entrance were annihilated by one man, and the city and its army began to resist him, the conflict quickly escalated into a full-blown “war.”
The man extended his arm, and the corpses of the revolutionaries began to rise.
The army of the dead, who should have remained lifeless, swam across the city’s moat and climbed the outer walls.
Black powder rained down, molten metal and stones were hurled, but nothing changed.
No matter how wounded, with broken bones and torn flesh, the undead never stopped. Even as their flesh melted in the molten metal, they continued.
For the revolutionaries defending the city, it was a terror beyond comprehension.
Fear and panic spread, but nothing changed.
These were not the kind of undead that required focused effort to reanimate. Simply bringing them back and making them move was enough.
That sufficed.
They climbed the walls, devoured those aiming weapons from above, and turned them into more of the undead army, slaughtering their enemies.
The emperor’s foes.
The undead scaled the city walls and began their massacre, rendering black powder and blades meaningless.
Unless they were torn limb from limb, unable to move a single finger, these beings never rested or stopped.
“What… what is this?”
“How can one person wield necromancy on such a scale…?”
Despairing laughter erupted from all around, disbelief evident.
The concept of necromancy, the magic of raising the dead, had not vanished from this era.
Yet, even a dark sorcerer struggling to revive a single corpse was a rare sight in this world.
It should have been.
But when this man resurrected countless corpses with a mere gesture, it defied the understanding of the age.
Even Yufi, witnessing the dead rise to slaughter their former comrades, could only gasp in shock.
Yet, Dale remained indifferent.
In this hellscape where the boundary between life and death crumbled and screams echoed, he walked on, unfazed.
The drawbridge had long been raised, and the deep moat between him and the city was of no concern.
Crunch, crunch.
With each step Dale took, ice formed beneath his feet.
As he moved, another layer of ice appeared beneath him.
Step by step.
Dale ascended the ice staircase, unchallenged and unstoppable.
Seeing this, Yufi belatedly followed him up the “staircase of ice.”
Despite walking on ice, it wasn’t slippery at all. She couldn’t have known that the friction of the ice was adjusted for her benefit.
Dale created a staircase of ice in the empty air, ascending to the city walls, where no one could oppose him.
That was the end of it.
The undead under Dale’s command slaughtered the revolutionaries on the walls, then stood silently, unmoving.
They paid no heed to the terrified screams of the city’s people below.
Dale waved his hand again, and the undead collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.
”…!”
“Miss Yufi.”
At that moment, Dale spoke. In the midst of inexplicable fear, Yufi quickly bowed her head.
“Why did you answer ‘revolution’ to their question?”
Faced with his question, Yufi was at a loss for words.
“I… I just…”
“Were you trying to be considerate of me?”
”…Y-yes.”
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
Yet she knew. This man had no need for Yufi’s consideration. It was she who was receiving his one-sided care.
Still, she wanted to show him some consideration, even if it was laughable.
“Revolution or emperor.”
At that moment, the man spoke again.
“I would answer ‘emperor.’”
“Is it because you serve the emperor of the Empire, Mr. Dale…?”
In response to Yufi’s question, the man quietly shook his head.
“I’m not referring to the emperor of this Empire.”
“Then which emperor do you mean?”
“The emperor of an ancient empire, now lost to history.”
Yufi couldn’t immediately grasp his meaning. But then she recalled the words of Marquis Rosenheim.
The Great Magic Empire, and the Black Gold Emperor who reigned supreme.
“That emperor took on the role of a villain for a world where everyone could be happy, and didn’t hesitate to become a redeemer bearing all of humanity’s suffering.”
The man spoke.
“A redeemer bearing all of humanity’s suffering…?”
Yufi gasped at the sheer weight of those words.
Yet the gravity of what this man spoke of didn’t feel like mere fantasy.
“But he didn’t realize that taking on someone else’s suffering would, in itself, become another’s burden.”
”…”
“I was like that, and so was that child.”
Yufi couldn’t fully understand what Dale was saying. Yet she felt she could grasp it, if only faintly.
“The act of bearing suffering and sacrificing for someone else was, for someone, merely the beginning of new suffering.”
Such unilateral self-sacrifice.
In the end, such one-sided sacrifice only birthed new pain.
Just as Dale’s past as the Black Gold Emperor had been a facade of villainy for the world, Lize was no different.
Everyone was repeating the same folly.
“Sacrifice isn’t as beautiful an act as one might think. Just like the cause of revolution they shout about.”
Sacrificing to alleviate each other’s pain, paradoxically, only breeds more pain.
Just as the revolution, cried out for a better world, does.
At the end of that irony, Dale found himself here.
Despite Lize’s sacrifice for him, he endured more painful days than ever.
Lize likely never realized this. Just as Dale hadn’t.
The selfishness of unilateral sacrifice for a loved one was, in the end, just selfishness.
Lize never realized this until the end.
Just as Dale hadn’t in the past.
The self-sacrifice Dale performed for Lize, for the world, for those he loved, was, to him, an incomparable agony.
Now he understood.
“It was all… my foolishness.”
Dale spoke, a bitter smile on his lips.
After speaking, his shoulders began to tremble slightly.
Yupi was at a loss for words. She couldn’t even begin to understand. How could someone with such immense power be so tormented and filled with despair?
Was it possible that even with the strength to seize the entire world, there were still things beyond his grasp?
Emperor or revolution.
The question resurfaced in Yupi’s mind, but this time, she hesitated no longer.
Neither revolution nor emperor could ever truly be the answer to the world’s problems.
The bell tinkled softly as the man entered the tavern, and a heavy silence fell, as if sound itself had vanished from the world.
The man and the girl walked through the tavern, oblivious to the stares. Patrons, upon seeing them, hurriedly abandoned their seats, fleeing as if from a ghost.
The tavern owner could only watch the man with a face drained of color.
A sorcerer powerful enough to wipe out the entire revolutionary army stationed in the city with a mere gesture.
No one could defy him and live.
Yet, bowing to him would surely mean death at the hands of the revolutionaries later.
Despite this, the tavern was his livelihood.
“There’s no need to worry.”
As if understanding the owner’s dilemma, Dale reached into his coat and pulled something out.
A leather pouch.
It jingled as he handed it over. The moment the owner peeked inside, he fell back in shock.
The pouch was filled with gold.
“With this, I will buy your tavern and everything in it.”
The man spoke, and the owner found no reason to hesitate.