Youngest 255
by CristaeEpisode 255
Father stared fixedly at my lips.
‘He’s not looking at the lips I kissed Khalid with—he’s looking at the wound near my lips. Yes, it’s the wound near my lips he’s concerned about. The wound near my lips…’
As expected, Father clicked his tongue lightly and produced a small bandage from his coat. Ever prepared—the mark of a man with three reckless children.
“Who would lay a hand on someone else’s daughter’s lips…?”
Rip, tap.
“How dare they… glare… huffffff.”
Rip, tap.
“…Unbelievable.”
Who puts a bandage on someone’s lips in the shape of an ‘X’, honestly?
“What’s this, my hand’s moving on its own.”
In an instant, I had become the very portrait of ‘beyond communication’, and my expression betrayed clear exasperation.
The Duke, possessed of beastly instincts, gave a short sigh and turned back to the entrance of the tower.
“Let’s go for now. Rose went up ahead.”
“Mmmh? Mm-mh mmmph? (Huh? Mother went alone?)”
“My wife is terrifying when she’s angry.”
For reasons unknown, Father now stared smolderingly at Khalid.
“What’s this, my eyes are glaring on their own.”
“Mm gmm-mm gn mm-mm mm-gh. (Fine, so let’s hurry.)”
I pushed at his broad back as far as my arms could reach.
Just as we were about to cross the threshold, I noticed something high up along the sheer tower wall.
…Wow, so it actually works.
As I stirred my mana lightly, a booming crash echoed nearby.
The mutated magical beast legion was now surging, black and wild, through friend and foe alike, sweeping humans aside in their onslaught.
“I’ll handle this.”
Khalid drew his sword with a curt word.
“Go ahead. I’ll follow after I finish things here.”
Before we could reply, he was pounding into the earth, already moving. I, overwhelmed, couldn’t bear the bandage anymore; I ripped it off and stuck it only to the wounded area.
“Khalid, be careful!”
He glanced back, gave me a brief smile, then wreathed his blade in mana. It looked like his signature mana–swordplay combo—now boasting perhaps five times its usual attack power.
“…Objectively, he looks pretty cool, doesn’t he.”
“What on earth have I raised?”
Father, standing beside me, shook his head from side to side.
Rosetta Zevert stormed up the tower, her hair wild as a specter.
Combat mages swarmed her from every side, attacking relentlessly, but not one could bar Rosetta’s path.
All her senses and nerves felt stretched to the limit. Her body and mind seemed already cleaved apart; she felt no connection to reality.
Rosetta was elated.
At the top of this climb—
Right there.
Her daughter’s abductor awaited.
“Out of my way!”
She shouted hoarsely and charged forward.
Not a day had passed without her thoughts returning to this day.
The sensation of loss was not easily forgotten. She always remembered the first stirring of Rubian within her, that rush of awe and anticipation.
The moment she first truly felt the child’s existence.
She had thought she’d found someone she could love with everything she had.
Leviathan was the one who filled her empty world, the one to whom she could entrust her entire being.
That was why she had resolved to pass on all the love and kindness she’d learned from him to this child.
But that was the end.
The time she could not care for her beloved daughter—those days would never come back.
She didn’t need to ask Leviathan what visions he’d seen in that southern cave. She knew, having spent countless days imagining the same things herself.
And when the vain delusions dissolved, all that remained was a gaping, abyssal emptiness and a sense of injustice.
“Kh—!”
At last, she reached the tower’s summit.
Having silently dispatched the mages standing guard before the great stone door, Rosetta stealthily pushed it open.
The first thing she felt was the clammy air, clinging to her skin. After that, the stench of blood—overpowering.
It was an impossibly vast space for the top of a tower.
‘Judging by all these strange instruments, it must be a laboratory of sorts.’
Sinister, black fog filled the interior, making visibility almost nil, yet Rosetta’s instincts read every presence.
Ten mages in hiding.
And one especially foul aura, deeper inside.
‘The Mage King!’
Without hesitation, Rosetta advanced.
She surveyed the clutter of instruments, tables, and chairs, marking potential blind spots. All the heavy curtains covering the large windows along the wall were drawn.
A low, animalistic moan grew louder from within.
Rosetta quickened her pace.
Sensing trouble, a few mages lunged at her—but they only became sacrifices, falling before the murderous aura she radiated.
It felt as though molten iron seethed in her skull. Oddly, her body felt light. She might have been wounded in several places, but that was of no importance now.
“Kh… You… monster. Even now, you’re smiling.”
One of the dying mages managed to gasp in her grasp.
“Yes. I’m a monster.”
“Keugh—!”
“But so is he, over there.”
“Gah…”
“Let’s settle which of us is the greater monster, shall we?”
The Mage King sat atop a high dais, sprawled on a massive, solid throne.
A thin veil hung before him, concealing all but his silhouette.
Rosetta smiled.
A throne, in such a place.
Did he imagine himself a god, gazing down on the world below?
“Disgusting.”
Rosetta stormed up the steps like a vengeful demon and, without hesitation, ripped aside the veil.
Three steps remained.
There, slouched on the throne and connected to countless coffins, sat a man.
“…”
His veins were pitch black.
As if insects crawled beneath his skin, his flesh writhed in odd, irregular spasms.
The Mage King’s eyes opened slowly.
He twisted his lips as he beheld the woman charging toward him.
“Reckless and imprudent.”
At once, black mana flooded the air.
Before she could even react, Rosetta was bound head to toe, as if seized by black chains.
“To think I’d have to use my full power just to deal with a mere woman…”
There was a guttural, inhuman growling beneath the words.
The Mage King had accepted the blood of dark beasts, transforming his mana into dark magic.
When that black blood first coursed through his veins, he realized—
‘This is it.’
This—the power he had longed for.
‘It was never about summoning circles for dark magic.’
This was the answer from the start!
‘Half the blood remains.’
Once it’s entirely corrupted, he would be the one, the only god of this continent, this world. The goal was in sight.
“What are you waiting for—kill her now!”
“Yes, yes!”
At his sharp command, four mages sprang to attack.
Rosetta, shuddering, forced herself to press forward. Veins bulged in her forehead, her fists clenched tight.
Strange magic circles flared into being by the dozen all around her feet.
At the very moment they began to glow—
A curtain across the distant window billowed violently.
“Kreeeee!”
Blood burst from the throats of the mages about to unleash their spells.
“Hazel!”
Rosetta shouted.
Hazel, who had climbed the tower wall, came rushing in, plunging a dagger into one of the Mage King’s coffins with staggering speed.
Pshhhhhh—!
“No, no!”
As the transfusion halted, the Mage King sprang up from the throne.
In a rage, he flung Hazel far across the room with a blast of mana.
Smash! Hazel would have hit the wall hard, if not for several other mercenary maids, who had infiltrated with her, catching her in the nick of time.
Rosetta moved in that instant.
She shot forward like an arrow, closing the distance to the startled Mage King in an instant.
“How dare you—interfere with me—again!”
Her cold blue blade touched his temple.
The blood of the dark beast, unable to enter his body, pooled across the floor.
‘This—damn it. She took on the entire tower’s forces alone?’
The Mage King trembled as he stared into Rosetta Zevert’s pale face.
Furious, but not without options.
‘Only half-integrated—but still, this is power far beyond what I had before…’
He stirred his seething black mana.
Clink.
“…?”
What was that?
The Mage King slowly looked down, then, incredulous, stared at the metal fastened around his own neck.
A mana restraining collar.
“From now on, I’m going to kill you.”
Thwack!
With her enemy brought to his knees, Rosetta declared.