WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression
Chapter 65
As the two crystals exploded, they split into hundreds of shards around the knight, and the knight’s body and his shield both were cleaved in two.
Boen recited an incantation and merged the shards back into 10 crystals. The remaining soldiers, no more than a dozen or so, hesitated, not daring to approach. When a looming shadow fell over them, they promptly dropped their weapons and fled.
Turning around, Ethan saw Laken climbing up the cliff. The carriage wheels were completely wrecked and merely dragging along. As soon as the carriages were pulled up, a few battle mages got out, spitting curses and clutching their backs and hips. Still, some were at least keeping an eye on their surroundings.
Once Laken saw that all the carriages had made it up, she lifted her transformation. It looked like she was reeling herself back in from the inside, gradually shrinking until she returned to human form. Panting and on all fours, Laken braced her hands against the ground.
Ethan took off his coat and draped it over Laken’s shoulders.
“You okay?”
“ ‘You okay?’ ‘You okay?’ Uueegh? Huh? A hand? No, oh… my tail. Where’d my tail go?”
“Laken?”
“Uh… who? Laken?”
Ethan was about to call another battle mage or maybe slap her awake when Laken shook her head and came to her senses. Her gaze focused, and she recognized the coat Ethan had put over her and slipped her arms into it.
She swayed as she stood, so Ethan supported her.
“Ah, I’m fine now. I just used up a lot of mana.”
Ethan had seen mages like that before. When a mage overused their mana, it sometimes affected their mind. Apparently, Laken temporarily lost reason when she was drained.
“It’s not a big deal. Oh, thanks for the coat.”
“Close the front of it too.”
“No way, it’s uncomfortable.”
“Close it.”
When Laken refused again, Ethan insisted on fastening her coat himself.
As Ethan fussed with her coat, Laken glanced around.
“So where’s Master Butcher?”
“The professor hasn’t come up ye—”
“Were you looking for me?”
Rivielton appeared from near the cliff, brushing dirt off his clothes. It was so unbelievable that Ethan stared back and forth between Rivielton and the cliff’s edge a couple of times.
To the other battle mages, Rivielton said, “Before the enemy returns in force, we’ll proceed according to plan.”
The infiltration force split into two groups: an assault team and a support team. The assault team’s role was to attack the enemy command directly. This included the far more dangerous threat of the Undying King and his knights, so most of their combat power was allocated here. Meanwhile, the support team—Ethan, Boen, and Laken among them—would try to avoid combat and head to the city walls to open the gates. It wouldn’t be easy, but the enemy would be focused on defending the walls, which was preferable to facing the Undying King.
Rivielton took a bundled flag from the wrecked carriage’s luggage compartment and handed it to Ethan.
“This is…?”
“A banner bearing the coat of arms of Cora. Once you open the eastern gate, raise it on the wall. Just waving it will have a huge impact on morale.”
“Understood.”
Cora was a citadel city encircled by a fortress wall, but from the cliff, the eastern gate was closer than the northern gate that cut across the city. The more experienced battle mages split up to handle the other gates.
To avoid reinforcements, Ethan, Boen, and Laken took a somewhat roundabout route inside the city, just as Osmal had indicated, and arrived at the eastern wall.
Spotting the wall’s command post, Laken said to Ethan, “There are a lot of them. I’ll join the other battle mages in attacking the wall’s commanding officers and grab their attention. You and Boen circle around and open the gate.”
“Will that be okay?”
“They haven’t noticed us yet, so we’ll have enough time to chant our spells. Once the first spell goes off and they’re in disarray, that’s your moment.”
“All right.”
Ethan and Boen made their way around a wooden barricade built along the inside of the wall, then waited behind the corner of a small brick house. Before long, a huge explosion erupted at the enemy’s command post, and all the soldiers on standby immediately grabbed their weapons and rushed toward the chaos. Only four soldiers remained by the pulley mechanism that lifted the eastern gate.
Boen got to his feet, but Ethan grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Why?” Boen asked. “We have to go now.”
“No, wait. Look there.” Ethan pointed to the top of the wall.
There, an enemy battle mage was chanting a spell facing outward. Whatever he was casting might be deadly to their allies.
Boen nodded. “All right. I’ll open the wall gate.”
“What about the pulley? Doing that alone’s gonna be tough.”
“I specialize in control. Specifically, levitation and projection—rotation is basically… well…”
“…Right. Don’t know why I asked. Let’s go.”
Ethan and Boen leaped out at the same time. Boen took out his crystals, and Ethan sprinted toward the wall.
Using the basic parkour technique of a wall run, he ascended about half of the six-meter height. Then he gripped a protruding stone and hoisted himself the rest of the way with a climb-up, and Ethan sprang up onto the wall. A soldier who’d been gazing over the city from a distance spotted Ethan, shouted, and came running, but most of the soldiers manning the rampart were hiding behind the battlements and arrow slits, busy firing arrows.
Rolling onto the top of the wall, Ethan broke into a full sprint toward the enemy battle mage, who noticed Ethan… but only an instant before Ethan swung his sword. A hair’s breadth from being struck, the mage abandoned his incantation and dodged.
The mage pointed at Ethan and shouted, “Intruder! Stop him!”
Of course, battle mages avoided direct combat as long as possible. Because they had soldiers stationed around them, Ethan quickly found himself surrounded. It was similar to the confrontation with the knight earlier, but dealing with a knight and dealing with a battle mage were two very different challenges. A knight, no matter how skilled, had to approach and swing his weapon to kill you. A battle mage, though, could just chant spells from behind a protective ring of guards.
‘This could be trouble.’
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Seeing sparks dance along the staff’s tip, Ethan tried to use the banner to push aside the guards and close in, but it wasn’t working… but then, just as the mage’s incantation was about complete, the ground shook.
Rumble…
It was a powerful tremor—siege magic unleashed by Osmal’s subordinates. The soldiers on the rampart all lost their footing; they stumbled or fell, and parts of the battlements crumbled away, and some arrow slits collapsed. Only Ethan, bolstered by Ruure’s Breathing and his internal energy, remained on his feet.
‘This is my chance.’
He vaulted over the guards and drove his sword into the chest of the fallen battle mage. The magic staff rolled away, and blood spread across the ground. Realizing they no longer stood a chance, the guards fled.
Ethan peered down over the wall upon hearing cheers rise outside, and he saw that the gate was now wide open. He pulled down the Ysoren emblem, a gauntlet symbol, and replaced it with Cora’s crest of red and white polka dots crossing over a shield.
With the first line of defense broken, the Undying King’s forces began retreating straight to their second defensive perimeter. On the other side, Ethan saw Laken smash her fist into the breastplate of the last resisting knight, denting it, and he quickly climbed down from the wall to meet her.
“What do we do next?” Ethan asked Laken.
“We link up with the assault team. The other gates are in Osmal’s hands, I’m sure.”
It was hard to gauge the overall battlefield precisely, but since the gate had been opened in under an hour, their numerical advantage should still be intact. Conquering the entire fortress of Cora was only a matter of time. The real issue was the enemy command, including the Undying King.
“No, you two are coming with me.”
Ethan turned to see a man approaching with Boen, wearing an eyepatch over his left eye and a prosthetic automaton leg: the battle mage Admoel.
“Why?” Laken asked. “Where are we going?”
Admoel replied, “Looks like you didn’t see. Before we began our advance, a few skeletal wyverns flew into the city.”
“So Eurogia has entered Cora?”
“Right.”
Wica, the captain of the Byutlas Guard, approached next to Admoel and stared at the now-wide-open gate. “They gave up the wall too easily. They must be up to something.”
Admoel nodded. “Wica’s right. Eurogia is definitely preparing to cast some sort of magic. We don’t know exactly which magic, though.”
“But wouldn’t Eurogia’s group be at headquarters too?” Laken asked. “They’d want to be protected.”
“That HQ is set to the northwest of Cora’s center—it’s not a good location for grand-scale spellcasting.”
“ ‘Grand-scale’? Are you suggesting Eurogia is about to cast grand magic?”
Grand magic, or archmagic, was known to be above the level of high-level magic. Many different schools had their own spells that fell under the category of “grand magic.” Usually, they targeted a vast area or a huge number of people, or else were extremely lethal. While there was no single agreed-upon definition, one common trait was that they were exceptionally difficult to cast. In the past, the earliest grand magics had been called “miracles.” Since these miracles had been reproduced in an extraordinary manner beyond typical spells, people had taken to calling them grand magic.
Very few mages are capable of using grand magic, and most that could needed assistance from other mages. Even with that help, they typically required extremely valuable magic tools and reagents, and sometimes even a long ritual involving a large number of sacrifices.
“That’s the only way they could turn the tide of the battle,” Admoel said. “By the principles of magic, the best spot is the center of the city. There’s even a fitting building there.”
“So what grand magic do you think they’ll cast?”
“There are several necromantic spells classified as grand magic, but if I had to guess, it’s going to be ‘The Undying Church’s Requiem.’ There’s a perfect building for it in Cora’s center.”
Ethan didn’t quite understand, but Laken, Wica, and the other battle mages all went pale.
Admoel tried to keep them steady, though, saying “I’ve already told Count Saikal and sent word to Baron Fabier. We just need to do our part.”
While they spoke, their escort soldiers brought horses equal in number to the battle mages. Admoel, along with his knights and mages, headed for the large central building.
At the heart of Cora stood a structure from ancient times, at least a thousand years old—a temple of the Undying Church with a massive dome at its center and four attached annexes. Mainly gray and white in color, it featured the so-called “death aesthetic” of decorating human skulls in a grotesquely playful style, making it conspicuous even within Cora.
The city normally used it as a council building.
Admoel, leading the way, said to Ethan, “I saw you fighting earlier. The enemy mage was casting a counter-incantation aimed at me. You helped out.”
“Ah, it was nothing. I appreciated your help too, with that spell that shook the wall.”
“A polite one, aren’t you?”
“So what exactly is this ‘Undying Church’s Requiem’?” Ethan asked.
“Sounds like someone hasn’t studied enough.”
“I’m still learning.”
“It looks like your friend knows.”
Ethan glanced at Boen, who was farther back and hadn’t been listening. Boen met Ethan’s gaze with a puzzled look. “ ‘The Undying Church’s Requiem’ is forbidden grand magic. Then again, there are so many forbidden spells that it’s almost meaningless, and the Mage Council doesn’t have the ability to stop them anyway. You know of the Undying Church, right?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve got a complicated ideology, but from an outsider’s perspective, their main thing is believing it’s best never to die, regardless of the shape you end up in. As long as the body can still move, they see it as better than death.”
“So what does it do?”
“…Hmm, hold on. Looks like we’re late.”
Admoel pulled on his reins and raised his hand for everyone to halt. Around a hundred men in total—battle mages and their escorts—gradually slowed. Off in the distance, from the Undying Church’s temple, a pale blue light shot up, thickened, and expanded outward until it covered them and stretched even farther before fading away. The battle mages weren’t particularly alarmed, but some of the escort soldiers cried out or cowered—yet the light had no effect on the living.
Admoel pointed with his twisted staff at what was now coming down the alley.
“Look there, Ethan. That’s the Undying Church’s Requiem.”
From a distance, they looked like regular enemy troops, but their movements were strangely slow and awkward. Ethan took out his monocular for a better look.
They were corpses, arms severed, arrows lodged in their bodies, some dragging themselves forward without legs, others missing their heads or even carrying their heads under in arms. The walking dead.
With a grin like he was spooking a child, Admoel said, “In short, the Undying Church’s Requiem is a spell that raises and controls every corpse in the surrounding area. Effectively, the enemy’s numbers will no longer decrease.”
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