Chapter 410
Dean Molsen—the Count’s name.
Dean was born with extraordinary talent.
“He has a gift for sensing magic.”
“He learns swordsmanship quickly, too.”
“He’s smart enough to work as an administrator in the capital.”
Exceptional talent, a supportive family, and excellent teachers.
Dean grew up that way.
He lacked nothing. His world was made of magic, his father, and his mother, and there was little that didn’t go his way.
For a young man like him, the world was easy.
His twenties passed.
His thirties slipped by.
He killed two uncles who coveted the position of head of the family.
He did it with a sword, not magic.
It wasn’t a big deal, but his father was impressed.
“He’s my son, but he’s truly amazing.”
That was when Dean realized something else.
Taking a life was easy, too.
Around that time, he inherited the family.
His father looked at him with fear mixed in.
Why?
Because once Dean began handling the family’s major and minor affairs, his father kept making choices that were obviously wrong if you thought for even a moment.
Dean corrected things from behind. He spoke plainly to his face. Sometimes he even let contempt show.
The eyes that had once held pride changed, little by little.
And when Dean directly refuted one of his father’s decisions, his father shouted,
“It’s for the prestige of the nobility!”
A crude excuse. A lie dressed up as dignity.
Was Dean supposed to pretend he believed it?
He didn’t.
“It’s ugly.”
With those emotionless words, his father gave up on the family.
His mother had never been affectionate to begin with.
Dean became the head of the family like that, and a few years later, his parents were caught in a scheme by a neighboring territory and ended up buried in debt to Krong.
His mother gambled.
His father drank.
Most nobles would have turned a blind eye to it.
The neighboring lord didn’t.
He drove Dean’s father to the edge, and Dean’s father hanged himself.
His mother followed soon after.
‘Was I too indifferent?’
But just because they were parents, did that mean they had to be affectionate?
Even so, shouldn’t he take revenge?
He decided he would.
Half a year was enough.
“Forgive me.”
The neighboring lord knelt.
Dean cut his neck anyway.
The revenge brought no satisfaction.
That was when the Molsen Count family—moderate until then—began to swell.
Three years passed.
Dean watched people gather.
Because of what he had done, the family’s military power and authority expanded like never before.
And that was when the question formed.
‘Why do I have to stay trapped here?’
The moment he asked it, the answer came just as quickly.
There was no reason to.
A bird had to break out of its egg to fly.
Dean decided to broaden his world—out of the egg, into something wider.
‘The throne.’
His desire for power awakened.
Since everything had been easy so far, he thought that would be easy, too.
And it had been, right up until the moment someone broke through ten thousand Wraiths and came to block his path.
—
“How?”
“Good.”
Dean asked, and Encrid answered with indifference.
His arm was shaking, but he could still move.
That was enough.
“Huh.”
Dean let out a breath.
He looked past Encrid.
The barbarian was resting an axe head on one shoulder, staring blankly.
The bored swordsman with the ruined blade was shaking blood from his hair.
The burly man beside him was setting a twisted forearm with a soft smile, as if it didn’t hurt.
He saw the assassin who had targeted him before the last Wraith was summoned.
A short stiletto sat in the man’s right hand, like a question.
Are you ready to die?
Dean lifted a hand to his chin and looked them over again.
Unexpected.
If everything failed and he died, he’d assumed three Knights would surround him and that would be the end.
He’d even thought Naurilia would be ruined with him.
This was different.
He was only shaken for a moment.
Then embarrassment drained away, leaving emptiness behind.
And in that emptiness, he laughed.
Dean laughed and asked,
“Isn’t it natural for the most capable to stand at the highest place?”
Why were they blocking his path?
“That’s why I came.”
Encrid’s answer was short.
At that, Dean wanted to grab Encrid by the tongue and yank it out until it was long.
That bastard always spoke like that.
He even wondered what it would look like if he stretched a tongue by force.
“Well, it’s not something words can settle.”
Dean reached out a hand.
Black soot gathered in the air, shaped itself into a bird, and flew.
The explanation was long, but the bird appeared the instant he moved.
If Esther had been here, she would have recognized it as Sharlner’s Life-Stealing Raven, a necromantic summoning spell.
No one here knew the name.
They didn’t need to.
A dagger flew and struck the bird.
Bang!
The bird exploded mid-air.
The thrown dagger shattered into three pieces and bounced away.
Dean frowned.
‘Artifact?’
No. What lunatic enchanter would inscribe a spell like that onto a throwing dagger?
That wasn’t just wasteful—it was insane.
A scroll had been rolled up and thrown with the dagger.
Only one person would do that.
Jaxson.
He held several similar daggers in his hand.
“I’m the one who will sit on the throne.”
Even now, Dean’s conviction didn’t waver.
Breaking through the Wraiths didn’t mean he would simply yield.
While continuing to send out Sharlner’s Life-Stealing Ravens, he cast other spells.
A crimson lump formed in the air and became a living sword.
They flew on their own and targeted Encrid.
A man shaped like a bear stepped in and blocked them.
“A pitiful soul that can’t even go to the Lord.”
Audin muttered and moved.
Hands and feet—too quick for his size.
Each crimson sword he struck exploded in mid-air.
‘These bastards.’
Dean recalled some of the Wraiths.
Several groups that had been chasing down soldiers collapsed and vanished on the ground, puffing away like fog.
“Arise, Wraith General!”
By reverting and combining Wraiths, he formed a new spell.
A mass holding a black greatsword appeared in front of him.
It was larger than Audin.
Ragna stepped forward and cut it down.
Dragging his feet, he raised his head and swung the broken sword without a word.
Before the greatsword could even lift, Ragna’s blade cut its throat, split its chest, and sliced its waist in half.
Encrid almost flinched again at Ragna’s talent.
What was that?
Three strikes in a single breath.
Each cut went a different way, yet it looked like one motion.
He’d erased the recovery between swings.
He calculated the trajectories while swinging, minimized movement, and made it possible.
A high horizontal cut, then a vertical cleave, then a middle horizontal cut again.
He poured the [Will] of Severance into all three.
Like drawing with a sword—too fast, too bold, impossible to block.
Even Encrid wouldn’t have been able to stop it.
After the swing, Ragna took two steps back and dropped to the ground with a thud.
He had clearly fallen, and yet—
“Well, time to watch for a bit.”
He spoke casually, as if sitting down had been the plan.
Dean nearly gaped.
What kind of man was that?
A Wraith General that an average Junior Knight would struggle against died to what looked like a single swing.
To Dean, it was one swing.
Something like fear crept into his chest.
He tried to ignore it.
He still had options.
Dean bit down on his tongue with his molars.
Crack.
A bitter rush of blood filled his mouth.
Red dripped down his chin.
He raised his left hand in front of his chest, and the blood didn’t fall.
It gathered on his palm.
“Come forth, Protecting Blood Clot.”
He waved the staff in his right hand.
The blood clot on his left palm writhed and swelled.
In an instant, it grew to the size of a person, arms and legs bulging out.
A form alone wasn’t enough. It needed something inside.
So Dean reverted even more Wraith soldiers from across the battlefield.
The battlefield thinned further.
Soldiers who’d been one breath from death suddenly lived.
Many possessed by Wraiths returned to themselves.
Dean didn’t care.
He was dumping everything here, regardless of what it did elsewhere.
Soon, a Blood Golem stood before him—crimson from head to toe, except for two empty eye sockets.
“You’ve done some strange work with magic, too. With tricks like that, did you end up tied to the Immortal Madman?”
Rem spoke as he drew something from his chest.
Dean saw what Rem was doing behind the golem and didn’t need to guess.
Rem pulled out a sling, dropped in a bead-shaped bullet, and began spinning it overhead.
The moment the golem appeared, the sound arrived.
Hoo, hoo, hoo, weeeeeee.
Rem used the bead amulet—the last totem he’d taken from the Immortal Madman—as a sling bullet.
He hadn’t expected to use it like this.
But it fit perfectly.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
The sound sent a chill down the spines of ally and enemy alike.
The golem’s gaze snapped toward the scream of wind.
It raised both hands.
It was about to gather them and spew a stream of blood.
Rem’s arm moved.
Weeeeing, hoo!
The spinning sound above Rem’s head cut off for an instant.
Then another sound burst.
Bang!
From the Blood Golem’s head.
A golem shouldn’t fall to mere physical force.
But that bullet wasn’t “mere” anything.
It was a crystallization of magic the Immortal Madman had gathered over ten years.
It exploded, and with it, the life force binding the golem collapsed.
That was why it burst apart.
“Ugh.”
Dean clutched his chest with his left hand and stamped the floor with his staff.
Loss and futility slammed into him at once, like his heart had stopped.
He knew the golem had died.
A gloomy emotion flooded in, endless and heavy.
That summon had been woven from his blood and heart.
It shouldn’t have been crushed so easily.
“These bastards!”
Dean roared.
Rem, after using the last tool, felt all strength drain from his body.
‘Am I going to die like this?’
No.
Even thinking that, he felt powerless.
Now the price for borrowing someone else’s magic was coming due.
Rem swayed and fell backward, dropping onto his butt.
Ragna happened to be right beside him.
Rem looked over and said,
“Time to watch for a bit.”
Ragna nodded.
Their eyes met.
They didn’t have the energy to curse each other, and now wasn’t the time to refuse one another.
For once, their minds aligned without effort.
Audin couldn’t keep destroying the crimson swords with only his body.
He endured the ban for a moment and drew on Divinity.
Those flying swords weren’t comparable to the Blood Golem.
They were spell-made creatures you’d only expect to see in the Demon Realm.
Dean’s ability was real.
That was exactly why Audin had no choice but to endure the pain the ban brought.
‘Father, forgive me.’
Audin raised his Divinity for a brief moment.
He didn’t let it shine.
He infused it into himself, to protect his body.
‘My left hand is a treasured sword, and my right hand is steel.’
Bare-handed, he was sword and rock.
With even a little Divinity, that became treasured sword and iron.
The moment Audin’s left hand touched a flying blade—
Clang!
The crimson sword that met the “treasured sword” shattered.
Then he struck with his right.
Thwack!
The bent crimson sword lost its power, flew off, and stabbed into the floor.
It folded at a right angle, the Wraith inside dissipated, and the blade turned to dust.
He crushed them one by one like that, and pain from the ban raced through his entire body.
His limbs trembled.
Then his body stiffened like a log, and he stood there, blank and rigid.
“Tch.”
Rem clicked his tongue at the sight.
Why wasn’t that guy falling?
“Hmm.”
Ragna glanced over and frowned.
It was irritating.
The religious guy should have fallen, too.