I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 29 - What Is a Duel Meant to Protect (1)

Chapter 29 – What Is a Duel Meant to Protect? (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Most of the members of Eclipse, the knight order led by Deus Makalian, held Alon in high regard.

But naturally, they only acted that way because he was Deus’s benefactor.

In truth, the feelings they actually held toward Alon were mostly close to indifference.

At least in the eyes of Eclipse’s knights, aside from the fact that he was Deus’s benefactor, Alon was not someone particularly special.

If they had any stronger feelings at all, it was only that some of the younger knights felt jealous when they saw the way Deus treated him.

Other than that, it would not be wrong to say there was no emotion there at all.

In other words, the feelings the knights had toward Alon were not especially positive.

But at least at this moment,

“Vice Tower Master, may I ask a favor?”

“Y-yes, yes… what favor…?”

the knights could only stand there with their mouths hanging open.

“Could you brew a Lemiteon Potion?”

“A Lemiteon… Potion?”

“Yes. Is that impossible?”

“N-no, not at all, I can do it. I absolutely can…!”

The knights of Eclipse, no, not only the knights of Eclipse but even the knights of Silver Shadow who had been getting cursed out by Penia just moments ago, all wore stunned expressions.

They knew that the Vice Tower Master standing before them had a personality just as broken as her genius in magic.

No, it was not only them.

Anyone who had come north even once on expedition could not help hearing stories about Hysterical Penia.

Because whenever one came north on campaign, the mages conscripted from the Blue Tower at the same time always began by lamenting Penia’s terrible personality.

It was impossible not to know.

And because these knights knew what an outrageous personality Penia had,

“Hm. Then let me ask just in case. Do you happen to have, or could you perhaps make, a Tonic of Distinction as well?”

“Uh, uh… I don’t have one, but I think I could make it….”

“Then could you perhaps brew that too?”

“Uh, but it takes quite a lot of time, and I also have my own work….”

“I need it badly.”

“I-I’ll do it. I’ll definitely do it…!”

they simply could not believe the sight before their eyes.

Penia, the Vice Tower Master of the Blue Tower and a sixth-circle mage,

was being absurdly obedient to Count Palladio’s words.

No, more than just obedient, she was twisting herself in knots trying not to offend him in any way, and the knights could not believe it.

And naturally,

“Th-this is insane….”

the same was true of the mages who had come from the Blue Tower with Penia and had been suffering in real time under her abuse.

“What… is that?”

“Am I seeing things?”

“Ha-has the Vice Tower Master actually gone crazy?”

The mages stared at the scene with gasps as though they were watching the end of the world.

“No, she made that once before and complained for weeks that it was too exhausting to ever do again… and now she’s saying she’ll make it?”

“No, I’m not seeing this wrong, right? Nobody cast illusion magic on me as a joke, right?”

“You idiot, if someone had enough mana to waste on illusion magic, they’d be using Silence on the Vice Tower Master while traveling with her.”

They had gone beyond the knights’ simple shock. With their leftover mana, some of them were even secretly trying Dispel, wondering if another mage was playing a trick.

And then:

“Thank you.”

“No, of course, this is only natural.”

“How much payment will it require?”

“P-payment?”

“Since I’m making a request, it’s only natural to pay for it. If you tell me the amount, I’ll send it to the tower later.”

“Ah, um….”

“Though if the price is rather high, it may be delayed. My finances have not been particularly healthy these days.”

“J-just… one gold coin.”

“…One gold coin? Isn’t that too cheap?”

“No, it’s fine…! Yes, perfectly fine…!”

“…If that’s the case, then I won’t refuse your kindness.”

As the final touch, Penia was smiling and nodding along even after the prices of two potions that normally took hundreds of gold coins to brew had been crushed down to a single gold coin.

The knights and mages wore blank expressions, and before long all of them turned to look at Alon.

By the time astonishment had risen onto the knights’ faces and a kind of reverence had risen onto the mages’ faces,

‘…She definitely seems to be misunderstanding something, but thanks to that, getting the potions was easy.’

Thinking that, Alon returned to Evan.

“…No, Count, since when did you become close enough with the Vice Tower Master to speak casually to her?”

“Hm? I was only speaking casually because I’m a noble.”

“What…? No… I mean, someone at the Vice Tower Master’s level is basically treated as quasi-nobility, so I was under the impression that speaking respectfully to each other was the basic etiquette….”

“…Is that so?”

“Yes.”

Realizing that he had been somewhat rude to Penia,

“Ah.”

Alon let out a low sound of realization.

* * *

Some time later, after receiving the Lemiteon Potion and the Tonic of Distinction from Penia, Alon heard more from Deus.

“A retreat?”

“Yes.”

As Deus explained the situation, Alon nodded quietly.

They definitely didn’t look fit to fight.

He remembered the mass of wounded men he had seen on arriving at the outpost, along with the fear-soaked expressions on the soldiers’ faces.

The knights had looked better, but not much better.

The only people who still seemed remotely composed were the mages who had come not to fight, but to study rituals.

And they ran first.

Alon glanced around.

The mages who had been bustling about earlier were already gone after Penia handed over the potions.

They had clearly taken one look at the danger and chosen flight.

“What do you intend to do?” Deus asked.

“Stay here,” Alon answered without hesitation.

There was a reason he had come all the way to Caliburn, gathered a pile of items, and even borrowed the Ring of Madness from the royal treasury.

He had come north to deal with the Outer God.

If he failed to destroy it before it became a full incarnate god, the future awaiting him would be catastrophic.

He was in the middle of reviewing the plan in his head when a terrible scream tore through the distance.

Alon shot up and ran out of the tent.

What he saw was a mage screaming madly and several more mages fleeing back toward the forward base.

And behind them.

The dead were coming.

“Th-the dead!”

“Aaaah!”

The soldiers screamed as old nightmares surfaced in their minds. Knights swarmed toward the gate and began drawing swords.

Fear filled the soldiers’ eyes.

Confusion and alarm spread across the knights’ faces.

Alon understood the situation at a glance.

An attack.

The Outer God had moved faster than the fleeing mages expected.

Then Fiola burst from the command tent and shouted:

“Everyone, draw your blades!”

The battle began.

* * *

The dead, when they charged mindlessly without tactics or strategy, were usually weaker than a properly trained army.

That was why even necromancers who raised corpses on this continent could never truly defeat disciplined soldiers with them.

But this army of the dead was different.

The soldiers drove spears into them.

Through hearts.

Through heads.

Through legs.

A normal corpse raised by dark magic would already have ceased functioning under that level of damage.

These did not.

Even with spears piercing their entire bodies, the dead kept walking forward.

That alone was enough to plant fear in the soldiers’ hearts.

And when one of them swung its sword and punched through a soldier’s throat, then turned immediately to attack the next man beside him, that seed of fear flowered instantly.

The battle line collapsed into chaos.

More deaths produced more dead.

More dead created more deaths.

A perfect vicious cycle.

And yet the soldiers still fought, teeth clenched and eyes bloodshot.

Because there was still hope.

The knights, clad in aura, were mowing down the dead by the thousands.

The mages who joined late were thinning their numbers even faster.

And Penia’s magic, in particular, was overwhelming.

“Icicle.”

Hundreds of dead advancing on the soldiers froze at once and shattered into useless fragments.

It was a spectacular sight.

And yet the soldiers placed even greater hope in the two Master Knights present.

Fiola.

And Deus.

Of the two, Deus’s presence was the more overwhelming.

Dozens of dead closed in around him. One was a soldier with a gaping wound in his head. Another was a knight with a hole through his chest.

Then, suddenly, every dead thing around Deus stopped moving.

As though time itself had halted.

Deus lightly drew his sword across the air.

That was all.

The hundreds of corpses around him split cleanly in half.

Hundreds with a single stroke.

It was slaughter on a scale worthy of something no longer human.

Hope began to rise again in the eyes of soldiers and knights.

Then:

Crash.

the Outer God fell into the middle of the battlefield with an enormous roar.

In an instant the movements of the dead shifted, and the soldiers’ gazes turned as well.

The overwhelming pressure one felt merely from its existence brought unmistakable tension to the faces of Deus and Fiola.

And after the gray dust cleared, everyone swallowed hard at the sight of the man revealed there.

He was certainly wearing barbarian clothes, but he had taken on a form that could no longer be called barbarian.

His bloated body and blue skin made it clear that the being before them no longer fit within the category of human.

And then:

[Savagery, do not casually ruin the punishment of those who know nothing of honor.]

With that voice, Ultultus’s voice, the dead began to rise again.

The corpses Penia had smashed to pieces stuck back together like slime and regenerated their bodies. The corpses cut down by Deus’s sword regenerated as well.

At that moment,

Fiola, who had remained silent until then, moved in an instant.

The moment the dead revived, he sharply judged by instinct that there was no longer any way to seize victory in this battle if it continued.

As the fastest of Caliburn’s knights, a Master Knight who possessed the ability called Divine Speed, he reached the Outer God in an instant too brief for Ultultus to even react.

He drove his sword forward.

The sudden strike pierced Ultultus’s heart.

“!”

Only the tip of the sword.

[Ha.]

Ultultus’s gaze turned to look at Fiola.

His face was full of contempt.

[Savages do not even possess honor. One who does not keep honor is no different from one who abandons his own existence. And furthermore…]

Crack.

[He also abandons the nobility of the soul.]

Thud.

The body of Fiola, who had been holding a sword just a moment before, collapsed to the ground.

His body no longer had a head.

But.

[I cannot grant an honorable death to one who ignores all such values.]

And with those words, Fiola’s body, its head burst apart, twitched and staggered back to its feet.

At that sight, everyone there understood the end of this battle.

Fear writhed on the faces of the soldiers, and despair spread across the faces of the knights and mages.

The same was true even for Penia and Deus, who had clearly transcended the realm of ordinary humans.

No, in truth they had felt that despair even earlier than the others.

Because they had opened their eyes.

They knew that the being before them possessed strength even greater than they had expected.

That was why, amid the dead from whom perfect screams and lamentation now rang out, they stood there in despair.

With the exception of one person.

“Great god of duels, Ultultus.”

When all others had fallen into despair, one man passed between the living and the dead and began walking toward the giant.

Step.

Step.

One step, then another.

Neither slow, nor fast.

“By the great Covenant of Kalgunias.”

And the man walking toward the giant wore an endlessly calm face even within that hellish despair.

As though he had gone through such a thing many times before.

And then he,

“I, Alon Palladio, in order to uphold the great covenant…”

Count Palladio,

“…demand a Babylonia duel.”

flung forward the bracelet glowing in a deep gray light and came to stand before the giant.