I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 139 - Rikrakkamur (2)

Chapter 139 – Rikrakkamur (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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By the time the battle between Rikrakkamur and Alon began…

“Thank you very much, Saint Yuman.”

“It is not thanks to me, but to the grace of Sironia.”

At the border wall, another monster wave had just been repelled.

“Yes… Thanks to Sironia’s grace, there were almost no casualties.”

“That is fortunate.”

Answering like that, Yuman looked down beneath the wall.

Below the hastily repaired wall, which had been smashed apart only a few days earlier, soldiers were clearing away monster corpses.

The wall itself still had not been fully restored.

“When are the mages supposed to arrive?”

“We sent an urgent message and they are on the way, but it seems it will still take a little time.”

“That worries me.”

Yuman’s expression darkened.

Even now it is not yet catastrophic, but…

After the expedition left to kill Rikrakkamur, Yuman had already repelled two monster waves himself.

Relatively successfully, too.

Even so, the reason he still felt impatient was the broken wall.

If the wall had held, there might have been no casualties at all.

Even now, despite Yuman having joined the Allied Army, casualties still continued to occur.

The monsters kept crashing in and breaking the repaired sections of the wall again and again with uncanny precision.

No matter who Yuman was, he could not bring back a soldier who had been killed instantly in a single blow.

The mages need to arrive as quickly as possible.

Of course, the losses were low.

Holding the line with this level of damage was an impressive feat in itself.

But for Yuman, the question of how low the damage was did not matter.

What mattered was human life itself.

The existence of casualties alone weighed on him.

He was a saint.

He lowered his gaze and looked carefully at the soldiers’ bodies lying among the monster corpses.

Their condition was gruesome, but he did not avert his eyes.

Instead, he quietly offered his mourning to the dead.

After the situation had been roughly cleared up…

While discussing with Kiryana’s aide how they should deal with the next monster wave…

“…Someone in the north?”

“Ah, it is only a rumor and not a reliable one.”

Yuman heard something rather strange.

“…So when the soldiers went out on border patrol, they say they saw something like a person in the north?”

“Yes. Well, it is just a rumor among the soldiers. There is no need to pay it much mind. I only mentioned it because it happened to come to me.”

“…If it is not too much trouble, could you explain it in a little more detail?”

Yuman’s face had grown serious.

The aide, who had only brought it up lightly to relieve the mood, looked confused but continued.

A short while later…

“…So the rumor is that someone with white hair was seen in the canyon region to the north?”

“Yes. But as you know, there should not be any people in the border region. Both we and the Empire control it. It was reported to Lady Kiryana, but everyone dismissed it as the soldiers seeing things.”

“Hmm.”

“However, after Cardinal Yutia arrived recently…”

The aide paused and continued.

“The men who claimed they saw that figure started saying the person they saw might have looked similar to Cardinal Yutia. That is the rumor.”

“…”

“Ha ha. Saying it out loud, it really is absurd. There is no way the Cardinal would have been there.”

The aide awkwardly scratched his head and added that the soldiers had seen the figure only from very far away, so it was unreliable anyway.

But Yuman, after hearing it…

…looked toward the north, where fierce fighting would now be taking place, while thinking deeply about something.

####

A gigantic crystal plunged down, pierced Rikrakkamur’s body, and burst apart, and under the blue moon an ice flower bloomed.

Rikrakkamur began thrashing wildly with a skin-crawling scream.

Each sweep of its tail flattened the surrounding trees.

Bristling tentacle-worms that spilled from between its sharp teeth scattered madly in every direction.

The ground shook so violently from the simple twisting of its body that it felt as though the whole continent might be experiencing an earthquake.

Amidst the surrounding monster shrieks, Rikrakkamur’s red eye rose.

A red eye that had already lost its reason.

At the same time, black slime began bursting out from the end of its enormous streamlined body.

It was the same kind of substance Alon had discovered at the gate before.

A slime that devoured all mana.

It was the law granted only to the monstrosity Rikrakkamur, the power that rendered every mage’s strength meaningless.

In an instant, it began melting away the enormous crystal Alon had created.

No…

It was erasing it outright.

The crystal that had accurately pierced Rikrakkamur’s body disappeared.

Alon’s magic, woven from a combination of applied mana manifestation and spellwork, vanished before the irrational law of the world granted to the monstrosity.

Like a mirage.

Even within that irrationality, Alon prepared his next spell.

He had known Rikrakkamur from the beginning.

That meant he had predicted its actions sufficiently.

And he was still confident that he could win.

He checked his mana.

He had manifested the spell for only about two seconds in order to conserve it, and even so, only about half remained.

That was enough to unfold several small-scale spells.

But it was far too little for a spell that could inflict a decisive blow on Rikrakkamur.

Even so, it did not matter.

His plan had already landed perfectly.

Rikrakkamur had been wounded and was now rampaging in a part of the swamp where the ground itself was visible.

That alone meant the plan was working.

“Unity of Shade.”

The moment Alon murmured that, Kkamangi, which had until then been inside the pocket on his chest, leapt out and opened red eyes all across its body.

Its tail ran down Alon’s arm and sank instantly into the ground.

Then Alon raised his hand and unfolded another spell, a shield.

Shadow Tree shot toward the shield deployed in Alon’s hand.

With a thunderous impact, Alon’s body shot upward into the air.

Having escaped the range of the black slime that way, he looked ahead.

There, the monstrous red eye of Rikrakkamur, a creature twice the size of even the Golden Dragon Rainisius, was fixed upon him.

A brief question passed through his mind, but his hands moved by instinct and formed a seal.

“Refraction. Repulsion. Azure Light.”

The phrases poured from his mouth.

The unfolding speed was clearly faster than before.

And then…

“Refraction Line.”

As if flicking something with his finger…

Alon fired the blue light formed at his fingertips.

Not at Rikrakkamur.

But at the cracked ground below it, ground that was already ready to collapse because the creature had been thrashing so wildly.

Boom.

Lightning fired from Alon’s hand struck the earth.

It was a spell small enough that, on its own, it could not really be called a decisive attack against Rikrakkamur’s body.

But that small force pierced the already unstable swamp floor, which was full of cracks.

And with that modest shock as the start…

The ground collapsed.

Rikrakkamur’s huge body began being dragged down into the abyss.

####

Kiryana stared blankly in one direction.

She was not the only one.

The knights did too.

The soldiers did too.

Everyone was looking at the same place.

At the place where Marquis Palladio stood.

Wearing a coat that rippled black like shadow, with pale gray mana wrapped around his left hand, he floated in the air in a way no one could look away from.

And beneath him…

Rikrakkamur, the thing that had terrified every soldier and knight who saw it, the thing even Kiryana had felt reverence toward beyond mere fear…

…was falling through the shattered ground.

The sound that followed was so overwhelming it seemed capable of tearing their eardrums apart.

The vibration was strong enough that the soldiers and knights briefly lost their footing and nearly collapsed.

And yet no one could take their eyes away.

The monstrosity was being dragged into a bottomless abyss.

And contrasted against it was Marquis Palladio.

That contrast alone inspired a distant, overwhelming awe.

While everyone stood there staring blankly at a single man…

“Ah…”

At the outer edge of the swamp.

In the densely wooded forest that none of them had paid any attention to…

Yutia was gazing at Marquis Palladio as if enthralled.

Behind her…

Crunch. Crack.

There came the sound of bones collapsing together, followed by dying cries.

At the noise interrupting her appreciation, she turned her gaze quietly.

There were monsters there.

A goblin whose entire skeleton had been crushed so thoroughly that its body had been driven into the ground like a paper doll.

An orc whose hide had been torn away.

A gnoll whose whole body had been twisted in opposite directions.

An owlbear that had pierced its own neck with both of its own arms.

Brutal corpses lay strewn everywhere, as though they had been ground apart.

Not dozens.

Not even hundreds.

There were enough corpses there to form a huge boundary line around the outer edge of the swamp.

And then…

“Ghk…”

One thing still made noise.

It was a troll.

A single troll that, despite being wrapped in black tentacles, still had not died because of its absurd regenerative power.

It was far larger than the others.

With its whole body bent out of shape, it no longer showed the ferocity typical of its kind.

Instead, it was looking at Yutia with eyes full of pure instinctive fear.

Yutia lightly raised her index finger to her lips.

“Now, now. You need to be quiet. You should not interrupt, should you?”

Smiling as if she were soothing a child, she slowly approached the monstrous troll.

The red eyes beneath the blue moonlight gleamed.

“Come now. Do not look at me. Look over there instead.”

With that, the tentacles wrapped around the troll forcibly twisted its neck so that it faced the place where the marquis stood.

The troll tried to scream in pain.

But…

Crunch.

The tentacles caught its jaw, tore out the tongue it had thrust out, and cut it away.

The troll writhed in terrible agony.

Then, forced once more to face the place where Marquis Palladio stood, it cast only its eyes back toward Yutia in fear.

In the middle of that cruel scene, Yutia still wore the same gentle curve at the corners of her lips.

“You too should offer reverence and faith.”

She whispered.

“The reverence and faith he needs.”

Quietly.

“To my one and only god.”

She gave the order.