WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 71

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Ethan knew Wica's fighting style. He'd lived through it before. Before she said a word, he was already ducking, and Wica fired her hand cannon from a standing position. The charging knight caught the cannonball full in the chest and went down hard. Staying low, Ethan launched himself at the next one with a Tusk Breaker he'd had ready. It didn't drop the knight outright, but it sheared the shield clean off and took the left arm with it. A mortal wound.

'Manageable.'

By Ethan's internal measure, roughly seven years back, the Undying King's knights that Jimonail had commanded were overwhelming opponents. Thick bronze armor, movement that matched a mid-rank knight, but without the unpredictable and destructive body magic that real knights brought to bear, they were closer in practice to low-rank. The knights in front of him now were showing movement that matched a mid-rank knight at minimum.

'Which means I've risen to match them.'

Had Ethan's attack not been a surprise, the knight would have shown his full ability. But enduring the pain of a severed limb and the blood loss while still fighting was something few could manage. Six exchanges of blades, and Ethan ended it with Scale Slash, taking the knight's head off at the nape.

"Ethan!"

Boen, this time. While Wica reloaded from a seated position, Boen's crystals rained down on the next knight. The knight trusted his heavy plate and charged straight for Ethan, experience told him that a volley of projectiles came at the cost of precision. Reasonable, for ordinary magic. But the crystals that seemed to bounce off suddenly drove themselves into every seam and gap the heavy armor couldn't cover.

Three knights down in moments, and the panic on the enemy's faces was plain to see. The fourth stumbled back, and in the confusion, the fifth, who looked like the squad leader, retreated all the way to the landing of the north steeple.

"Fall back! Fall back! We'll be overrun! Hold the landing!"

Sound thinking. Under normal circumstances, a corridor meant one-on-one fighting with close-range weapons. Right now they were facing three-on-one against two people freely wielding ranged weapons. Falling back to fight around the corner at the landing was the better play.

Wica had already finished reloading. She put a shot in the fleeing fourth knight's back as he turned to run. The only surviving squad leader looked at Ethan once, then toward the far end of the corridor.

'Something on that side?'

And then scrambled up the stairs in a panic.

"After him," Wica said.

"Yes!"

When Ethan reached the landing at the north steeple at the corridor's end, he saw someone running toward them from the direction the squad leader had been watching. Rivielton.

"Professor!"

"Ah, Ethan, Boen, Wica. Everyone all right?"

Half of Rivielton's breastplate was soaked through with blood, his usually well-groomed hair in disarray, and his breathing rough. Not a scratch on him, though.

He smiled. "You all look terrible."

"We're fine. You were in the east steeple, weren't you?"

"You knew? Embarrassing, falling for such a simple trick."

Wica brushed the soot from her clothes. "Your opponent was your opponent."

"Well. The execution was impressive, I'll grant them that."

"Rivielton-ssi, what about the other battle mages?"

"No need to worry."

Rivielton glanced back. The passage to the east steeple, and something was wrong with it. Impossibly long, the end nowhere in sight.

"When we realized we'd walked into a trap, they'd already placed a Somi Palace on the passage to the east steeple. Nothing complicated, but they'd extended its length enormously. So I left the others behind and came ahead alone. They'll arrive by this evening. That should be fine. At least I made it in time."

He started up the stairs. "The Undying King should be above. I'll be moving fast. Can you keep up?"

"I'll do my best," Wica said.

"Professor," Ethan said, "are you sure about that sword? The stairs are going to be cramped."

What Rivielton carried was the greatsword he wore into battle. Greatswords were at their best dealing with multiple opponents in open rotation, but indoors the sheer size limited what could be done with them.

Rivielton clapped Ethan lightly on the shoulder. "Stay close behind me, Ethan. There's a lot I can teach you."

"Yes, sir."

Rivielton broke into a run up the stairs. Three to four steps at a stride, on stairs with ceilings too high to brace against, and just getting up them was taxing enough. What was truly impossible to keep pace with came after.

The squad leader Ethan had just seen gave up his retreat and lunged at Rivielton from above. On a clockwise spiral staircase, the attacker above always had the advantage. Rivielton swung the greatsword with both hands as though the matchup meant nothing, smashing it straight into the oncoming blade. Edge-on-edge contact wore down metal, not considered sound defense. But defense wasn't what Rivielton was after.

A bright light gathered along the edge of Rivielton's blade. In the same instant, the opponent's sword sheared clean through, and beyond it, the section of the steeple's outer wall where the blades had met was sliced apart as well.

The knight cried out. "That's, that's sword aura!"

"First time seeing it? Or..."

Rivielton drew the greatsword back and wreathed it in sword aura again. The blade stopped scraping the wall and started cutting through it.

"...Last time?"

The greatsword swept upward. Sword aura sliced through the step the squad leader was standing on, through the squad leader himself, and through the outer wall of the steeple's pillar. Whether the first blow had already done structural damage, the step gave way and fell, the body with it. Rivielton leapt across the four-step gap, glanced back at Ethan once, then charged on.

'He's asking if I can manage at least this much.'

Ethan had already been matching Rivielton's stride, so the jump itself was possible. The only obstacle was a psychological one, the gap had simply ceased to exist.

'He told me to follow. So there's no choice.'

More easily than he'd expected, Ethan cleared it and fell in behind. Another squad of knights was blocking the spiral staircase to protect the Undying King, Count Yumuran, and the command. Rivielton took each one in two to three strikes and barely slowed. The outer wall of the steeple started giving way in his wake, the sword aura he'd loaded into the blade delivering more structural damage than the stone could take.

Wica, climbing from below, called out: "It's collapsing! Watch for falling debris!"

Ethan threw an arm up to shield his head. After the roar, he raised his face and breathed in the stone dust he'd already inhaled more times than he could count. A cascade of rubble poured down like a waterfall and opened up the sky. Sunset in the west, and Cora, hemmed in by its walls, had gone dark as night. Below the steeple, soldiers with torches were tangled together, driving swords and spears at each other. Above all the chaos, the top of the steeple alone still stood, held up by the central pillar with its spiral staircase.

Boen had caught up behind Ethan.

"Ethan! We have to hurry. Look!"

Rivielton and Wica looked where Boen was pointing. Skeletal wyverns were descending on the top of the steeple. Come for the Undying King.

Ethan looked up. Knights were blocking the spiral staircase to protect the command.

"I can get you to the top."

"Wouldn't it be better to send the professor?"

"Right now I can only send someone close to me and lighter."

Rivielton, apparently overhearing, poked his head out from above the spiral staircase. "Boen, quickly!"

Ethan nodded.

Boen gathered his crystals and hooked them onto the sturdy rings at the joints of Ethan's armor. Then he drove Ethan upward with them, shooting him into the air. Ethan felt the force lifting him, a sense of levitation at the peak, and landed at the top.

Three people.

One was Doyeon, Margrave Yumuran. From the east of Yumaha, dressed in a style that looked like a regular knight's at first glance, but the pinned-up hair and the ornamental hairpin struck Ethan as foreign. Doyeon reached for the sword at the hip, but the person standing behind stopped it.

"...I want to... speak with this one."

"Then I'll board first."

Without hesitation, Doyeon climbed onto the skeletal wyvern perched at the steeple's edge and pulled the reins. The skeletal wyvern took off.

The second person was the Undying King, Cascail Eurogia.

"...It's you. ...Yes. ...That's right, isn't it?"

Ethan raised his sword and moved toward him slowly.

"What do you mean, 'it's me'?"

"Someone who can... stand against me... as an equal..."

"I don't follow."

"...An exceptional... existence."

Interest surfaced on Ethan's face before he could stop it.

"What does that mean?"

"...Don't you know? The world... follows heaven's will. But there are those who... defy it. ...Olson ...Lanaruie ...Krapomus Cluve ...Cario Arnesia..."

All heroes or archmages.

The Undying King raised a finger and pointed. Having seen what his magic could do, the gesture alone made Ethan flinch.

"...And you, Ethan Dora Charasen."

"Me? One of those heroes and archmages? My sister would love to hear that."

The Undying King started laughing, a wheezing, choked sound. An opening.

Ethan dropped into a stance, ready to cut him down in one go.

But the third person dropped between them.

"Stop!"

Ethan recognized who had descended on a skeletal wyvern.

White hair, pale skin, and deep red eyes.

"Jimonail Eurogia."

Jimonail looked at the Undying King. "Your Majesty, please make your escape."

"...Hah, this old body of mine moves so slowly..."

"I won't ask nicely again."

Still laughing, the Undying King walked toward the waiting skeletal wyvern.

"Wait!"

When Ethan tried to get past Jimonail's skeletal wyvern, she moved it to block him.

"Don't move, Ethan."

"Jimonail."

"Keep quiet if you can."

Ethan wasn't surprised to find Jimonail Eurogia here. For the Eurogia family to take part in a war, they had to form some kind of tie with the Undying King. Not as outsiders, as family. Which meant the Eurogia family had married into his court.

'Which raises the question of who in the Eurogia family it was.'

Even when someone became part of another family, you didn't hand a family member off to just anyone. Some marriage arrangements were favorable; some were wretched. And by any ordinary measure, noble or mage, marrying the Undying King was the worst imaginable. Sold off was not too strong a phrase for it. The one sold off to such an arrangement was always whoever had the least standing within the family.

Ethan looked up at her. Jimonail spoke with the setting sun casting its shadow over her face.

"What? Do you see me as some woman who got sold off to a cut-rate marriage?"

"No."

"Then are you going to condemn me for incest because I married someone who shares my family name?"

"No."

"No? So you weren't imagining me spending my wedding night in a bed with that corpse?"

"No."

Had he hesitated even a moment, Jimonail would have gone silent. He didn't. So she kept talking.

"Then what? Why do you look at me like that? Like I need your pity?"

"Is this really what you wanted?" Ethan asked.

"...What are you saying, Ethan?"

"If you wanted to prove your strength, there were other ways. What you have now isn't your power."

"There are no other ways, Ethan."

Jimonail turned and looked at the fading sun.

"I didn't inherit anything from our family. Not a sliver of that long legacy was mine to claim. Without an inheritance, when a family war came, I'd either be cast out or used as a pawn and thrown away. But His Majesty..."

The sun went fully down. The fires burning through Cora played across Jimonail's face.

"His Majesty gave me an inheritance. You shouldn't pity me. That Undying King, right there, he is His Majesty's gift to me."

At that, the Undying King on his skeletal wyvern finally couldn't hold back his laughter, letting out a great, wheezing cackle.

"...That I should be called a gift? ...Delightful! Delightful!"

The Undying King rose beyond any hope of catching him, and Jimonail took flight as well.

"Goodbye, Ethan. Next time, I won't leave you alive."

Jimonail's skeletal wyvern kicked off and the top tilted. Ethan ran down the crumbling, slanting face and just barely caught the stairs. Those collapsed too, but Rivielton, who had climbed close below, caught him with both arms.

"All right?"

"Yes, sir."

As Ethan, Rivielton, Boen, and Wica descended the fallen steeple, Osmal Saikal and his knights were waiting below.

Osmal took off his hat, dirtied with grime and blood, and looked out over Cora.

"We won."

The remaining enemy soldiers were retreating through the east gate, but half of Cora was on fire, and from the steeple, bodies could be seen piled thick on every road below. The walls were broken and crumbled, and the soldiers who had survived wandered in search of somewhere to rest or screamed where they stood, clutching their wounds.

"...We won," Osmal said again.

Everyone there knew it was a victory that had left nothing behind but wounds. No one said so to Osmal.

And Ethan thought that this might be something he could change.

['Quest: 3rd Siege of Cora (B)' Complete!]
[Reward: 480 experience points]
[Reward: B-Rank Lottery Coupon]

The first B-rank Lottery Coupon earned in the war. But what was more striking came after.

[You have reached Lv3!]
[...A new ability has been obtained.]
[Limbo grows larger.]
[...A new guest arrives in Limbo.]

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