I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 122 - Half Magus (1)

Chapter 122 – Half Magus (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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In the end,

the monster was dealt with jointly by Seollang and Alon.

Of course,

Seollang’s overwhelming ability was more than enough to toy with the creature mercilessly.

However,

the Outer God’s abnormally fast regeneration kept its stubborn life going.

Once the battle dragged on,

Alon used the Necklace of the Eye-Devourer to identify the weak point hidden beneath the monster’s mouth,

and by piercing the human-shaped weakness concealed there,

he finally killed it completely.

By the time the dark night had passed and dawn was beginning to brighten,

“Thank you. Truly, truly thank you.”

Inside the half-destroyed lord’s castle,

Alon met a certain man.

He was bowing so deeply it was nearly a kneel,

the eldest son of Count Lumiere.

No-

since Count Lumiere had died at the ball hosted by Duke Komalon,

he was now effectively the count.

As Alon looked at him,

he soon shifted his gaze past the broken castle.

What he saw were displaced residents who had lost their homes,

soldiers groaning in pain,

and a territory that had been completely smashed apart.

There were a few places still intact,

but only a very few.

The sight was one step away from total ruin.

Watching it,

Alon let out a quiet sigh.

Soon after,

he heard a more detailed explanation of the Kingdom of Ashtalon’s situation from the count.

“…Duke Komalon is moving around with Outer Gods in tow?”

“Yes.”

“And the Outer God here was also one of the creatures Duke Komalon released?”

“…That is correct.”

“Where did he head next?”

“I cannot say for certain, but judging from the direction he has been moving, it seems likely that he is heading toward the territory of Duke Merkillan.”

The count spoke with a heavy face.

Alon nodded.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“I will repay this debt without fail…!”

The new count vowed it again and again.

Turning away from him,

Alon took a few steps,

then,

“Ah. Master!”

he spotted Seollang,

who was receiving the reverent gazes of the knights.

There was, however,

one unusual point.

“Let go! If you carry me like this, it ruins the dignity of royalty!”

A man was dangling from one of her hands.

Seeing the soot-covered man,

who was struggling desperately to stand upright because being seized by Seollang by the scruff of the neck was apparently too humiliating to bear,

Alon asked,

“…Who is that?”

“Ah, this?”

“Do not call me this! I am royalty! I am Karsem, royalty of Colony!”

Royalty of Colony.

Alon let out a low sound of recognition and recalled the information stored in his head.

Troublemaker Karsem, was it?

Karsem,

the second prince of Colony,

the troublemaker.

In Psychedelia,

he was introduced with more or less that exact image,

and naturally he was not a major character.

To begin with,

even in Psychedelia,

true to the title of troublemaker,

he mostly appeared as the sort of person who caused accidents that the protagonist’s party then had to clean up.

After thinking for a moment,

Alon looked at Karsem.

Certainly,

for someone called royalty,

Karsem’s behavior did not look particularly dignified.

His whole body was stained with soot.

Alon had only just looked at him when,

“You there! Show proper respect!”

Karsem pointed at him without warning,

apparently in need of some target on which to vent the humiliation he had suffered from Seollang.

At that,

Alon wore a strange expression.

Certainly,

since he was royalty,

it was true that proper courtesy should be shown.

But given that the game itself had labeled him a troublemaker and that many people in the game treated him as an arrogant brat,

he really was rather lacking in manners even now.

To some extent,

Alon understood it.

Karsem had not yet even reached his twenties.

And unlike other royal houses,

Colony had effectively marked its first prince as the next king from childhood,

so the second prince had essentially been neglected when it came to succession training.

That thought crossed Alon’s mind only briefly.

In the end,

he decided that showing courtesy was still proper,

and just as he was about to lower his head,

“Master. Wait a moment!”

“Waaah-!”

Seollang suddenly grabbed Karsem by the scruff of the neck and dragged him behind a ruined building.

“…?”

Alon had only a moment to wonder what that was about,

when,

“Sorry, Master! There was something I had not been able to tell him!”

he saw Seollang return,

walking side by side with Karsem as if they had suddenly become friendly.

And then,

“Ah, hello, Marquis Palladio. I- committed a discourtesy… ha… hahaha.”

“…??”

Alon only had a brief instant to feel puzzled by Karsem’s now excessively meek attitude,

before he noticed something else.

The fear faintly soaking into Karsem’s eyes.

“…”

Alon looked toward Seollang.

Swish, swish.

Seollang was looking at him with an impossibly loose and cheerful smile.

…Alon felt a certain subtle fear.

####

“…So you came to Ashtalon to rescue Karsem?”

“Mm. Half for that reason?”

A little later,

Alon finally heard why Seollang had come here.

“I already had something to do here, and while I was at it, the king asked me to rescue him too. But Master? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Seollang tilted her head curiously,

and Alon answered her.

“No, I was merely surprised that you listen to the king so well.”

Of course,

in this world,

listening to the king was common sense.

But because of what he had seen before,

Alon had spoken without meaning to.

And then,

he suddenly recalled the strength Seollang had displayed the night before.

…At that level, it feels like she could ignore a king and it would still be fine.

When he reached that point in his thoughts,

Alon looked at Seollang anew.

It was obvious to him that Seollang was strong.

And from what Deus had shown recently,

he also knew that the talents of the Five Sins were extraordinary.

But even taking that into account,

the martial force Seollang showed last night had clearly surpassed the Baba Yaga he knew.

Of course, Deus was the same in that regard.

The moment Alon recalled what Deus had shown when subduing Basiliora before,

“Because I was promised something good!”

Seollang’s reply pulled him out of his thoughts.

“I see…?”

“Yes. I already had things to do anyway, so I accepted!”

Seollang looked as if she were saying,

I am kind, right?

Looking at her,

Alon patted her on the head.

“Eh-”

Seollang’s tail swayed happily,

showing that she was in an extremely good mood.

As Alon kept patting her,

an odd sound came from the side.

Turning his head,

he saw Karsem,

who had only just been making the ugliest face imaginable,

now staring in shock.

It was the sort of face one made upon seeing something that absolutely should not exist.

Why is he reacting like that?

Alon only had a moment to wonder.

“Then are you done with what you needed to do here?”

“Mm? What part do you mean, Master?”

“…Should you not handle your original task first?”

As Alon jerked his chin toward Karsem,

the prince, who had been silent until then,

hurriedly opened his mouth.

“I-I think so too. Should not the first priority be taking me back to Colony?”

His speech had returned from formal honorifics to casual speech,

but the confidence he had shown earlier had vanished,

leaving only a timid Karsem behind.

Seeing that,

Alon found himself wondering just what Seollang had done to him,

but,

“Could we not just stop by on the way?”

“…No matter how I think about it, that place is dangerous.”

“As long as you do not die, it is fine, right?”

“…That is true, but even so-”

Karsem looked deeply uncomfortable.

Then Seollang turned her body slightly,

showed Alon her back,

and stared fixedly at Karsem.

“…Ahem. Fine. We shall do that.”

Karsem immediately changed his answer.

“He says yes, Master!”

…Once again,

Seollang had made the impossible possible.

In any case,

about an hour later,

Alon set out together with Seollang for Duke Merkillan’s territory,

where Duke Komalon was said to be heading.

And at the same time,

“Marquis.”

“What is it?”

“Earlier, you asked what Seollang did while she had her back turned, remember?”

“I did. Why?”

“I saw it.”

“…When?”

“Right when she was dragging him over there.”

“So what was it?”

“…It was not like she was making some especially terrifying face. She was whispering something, though.”

“What did she say?”

“…Honestly, I was watching from a distance too, so I did not catch it perfectly, but it was something like-”

Evan hesitated for a moment,

then said,

“…Looks like this bastard forgot what kind of personality I have…?”

“…Seollang said that?”

“Uh. I might have seen it wrong since I was looking from far away, but it was something like that.”

At those words,

Alon wore a blank expression.

…To be honest,

he did not really believe it,

but considering Karsem’s reaction,

it somehow sounded plausible,

so Alon could not get rid of the strange expression on his face for quite some time.

####

Filian Merkillan was a clear genius.

Within Ashtalon,

he was the youngest Swordmaster,

and despite his youth,

he was effectively one of the three strongest figures in the kingdom.

Of course,

he had recently met a being called Deus Macalian,

who stood on an entirely different level from him,

but even so,

Filian Merkillan had not broken.

No-

rather than break,

he had used the memory of that thorough defeat as a stepping stone,

and over the past several months,

he had been growing even faster.

His talent made that possible.

And yet,

despite being someone who had not given up even after facing such an overwhelming existence,

“…Ha.”

for the first time,

Filian was learning the feelings called emptiness and resignation.

Before him,

with his back to his own territory,

there stretched a dreadful sight.

What he saw was corpses.

Corpses missing their upper bodies.

Corpses split in half.

Corpses chopped all over.

Corpses reduced to little more than trunks after their limbs had been torn apart.

Corpses.

Corpses.

Corpses.

Wherever one looked,

there was nothing but corpses.

Knight,

soldier,

mage.

It did not matter.

Everything before his eyes was only a corpse.

And in front of those corpses,

there spread an inhuman hellscape.

A giant rag-like creature stitched together from human skin,

its whole body covered in flayed human faces,

chewed through people with hideous teeth.

An insect with a giant beetle shell spread huge wings and massacred soldiers.

Elsewhere,

a turtle-shaped thing with a giant plant on its back,

as though someone had made flower arrangements out of human arms and legs,

drank red blood through its mouth.

And besides those,

countless unknown Outer Gods,

things Filian had never seen once in all his life,

took lives as though hurling incomprehensible death in every direction.

Within that ash-gray world,

where ominous and uncanny red mana spread,

“…”

Filian unconsciously lowered his gaze.

What he saw there was his ruined armor,

a broken sword,

and a right arm twisted at an impossible angle.

Filian let out another faint, hollow laugh,

then raised his gaze forward.

“…This is such a cheat.”

At the end of his sight stood Duke Komalon.

The only one in that inhuman hellscape of Outer Gods who still had a human appearance.

He was watching the scene without feeling any emotion at all,

that man presumed to be the root cause of everything here.

Then a violent sound rang out,

and Filian turned his eyes forward.

There,

a turtle carrying a giant arrangement of human limbs like flowers was approaching to take his life.

Step.

Step.

Slowly,

but surely.

What escaped Filian’s mouth was only a hollow laugh.

Then,

“Brother! Run away!”

At the sudden voice,

he looked up toward the walls.

There,

he saw soldiers still holding the walls.

Every one of them looked pitiable,

standing only by force while fear consumed them.

And among them,

his younger brother,

who had run out with him insisting they would stop the Outer Gods together,

had eyes consumed by despair as well.

Even so,

his brother, Merkillan Gilan,

opened his mouth.

“Quickly! You must run! It is still possible if you move now! We will buy a little time! Please! Hurry!”

At that desperate cry,

Filian wore a blank expression for a moment,

then let out a small laugh.

And after that,

he stood up.

His body did not move properly.

Even so,

he rose,

grasped the broken sword in his left hand,

and shouted with all his strength,

“Everyone- retreat!!!!!!!! Drop your weapons and escape through the north gate!!!”

“Brother-!!!!”

Gilan called again,

but Filian did not answer.

Instead,

he ran forward.

If his younger brother was clever,

he would understand Filian’s intent better than anyone.

“Hup-!”

Filian wrung out every scrap of mana he had left and drew out aura.

It was miserably weak,

so weak that it hardly seemed capable of leaving even a wound in an Outer God’s skin.

Even so,

for now,

this was enough.

Beginning to run forward,

Filian looked at the Outer God with a dark smile once more on his lips.

The chance of victory was zero percent.

He understood that fact clearly.

But at this point,

probability no longer mattered to him.

From the start,

his goal had never been to defeat them.

Just… a little longer-!

All he wanted

was to drag things out for even a few more seconds.

He displayed an unbelievable feat,

cutting down the petals made of arms and legs that shot toward him.

Then,

he cut one of the Outer God’s legs.

The creature screamed.

For a short time after that,

he moved all around beneath the Outer God,

inflicting wound after wound.

But,

his limit came sooner than expected.

He looked at the utterly destroyed sword,

then at his two legs,

which no longer moved.

Then he raised his eyes.

Filling his vision

were hundreds of arms and legs shooting toward him to take his life.

To anyone,

it was clearly a certain death.

And yet,

Filian did not lose his smile.

He did not show despair.

He only smiled.

Because he believed he had done the right thing.

Because he believed he had not given up.

And so,

just as he was about to calmly accept death-

lightning appeared.

“?”

By the time he realized it,

Filian had returned to the front of the wall from which he had thrown himself out earlier.

At the same time,

he saw it.

Red mist was blooming from the body of the giant Outer God that had been trying to attack him.

And then,

crackling with lightning,

there stood a girl with golden hair streaming behind her.

The moment he understood that,

“Seollang?”

he unconsciously spoke her name.

Then he looked beside her.

There,

standing together with Seollang as she emitted a golden flash,

was a man.

From the gray coat wrapped around his body,

black mana scattered in all directions like sand blowing away.

That man-

Marquis Palladio-

looked down at Filian without emotion.

Then,

leaving behind only one low sentence,

“You have done well,”

he stepped forward.

The Outer Gods scattered throughout the field charged out in answer to those small footsteps,

but the marquis never stopped walking.

One step.

Then another.

He moved forward steadily.

And then,

“By the Covenant of Kalgunias, I command.”

Filian saw it clearly.

“Comrade, descend.”

With a tremendous roar of earth and dust,

there appeared a serpent larger than any artificial Outer God present.

Not an artificial creation,

but the only one here who truly possessed divinity through genuine faith.

A being that looked down on every artificial Outer God present.

The descent of Receiver Basiliora.