Riding our momentum, we charged into the imperial palace of the Ancient Empire.

“Graduate student ahead!”

“I’ll take it!”

“Wind blades!”

The imperial palace of Soletaraon felt foreign, yet strangely familiar.

“This way!”

“I found the stairs!”

“No. We’re going outside!”

The geography itself, with palaces and towers of various sizes built along the mountain ridge, resembled Astreos. Its mysterious, majestic atmosphere, created by rows of massive pillars, resembled Rikenta. Its dome-centered structure resembled the grand cathedrals of the Myriad Star Church.

“Up!”

Thanks to that, even though this was our first time here, we avoided the absurd disaster of getting lost like fools and being annihilated.

“Chain Discharge!”

“Heat ray!”

“Gravity waves!”

“Gaze of Thirst!”

“Stone Formation!”

But there was no room to think clearly.

Because of the complex layout, the countless pillars, and the endless rooms, even Bio-radar struggled to grasp the space properly.

“Three figures in the twelfth room!”

“The twelfth what?”

Even when my Bio-radar could detect them, explaining that to the other Elector Princes and superhuman soldiers was difficult.

In that place, Bachelors, Masters, and graduate students bared their teeth and rushed us.

[“----!”]

Bachelors clung to the ceiling, then dropped the instant we passed through the door and unleashed mental waves.

Thud-thud-thud!

Masters kicked off the floor with ostrich-like legs, charging in and swinging crimson-bone blades.

Craaaack!

Graduate students the size of houses appeared by tearing through the ceiling and tried to crush us with their fists.

“Myriad Stars!”

But we advanced.

And advanced again.

[“Shine upon us all with Your light! Shine upon every servant who follows You, young or old, man or woman, good or evil—shine upon every servant!”]

Saint Sirius deployed a celestial-sphere force field and blocked the mental waves.

“They’re coming!”

“It seems I must teach them proper manners before me!”

“Viceroy. If their heads burst, they won’t remember anything.”

Erica, Valherios, and I swung fists and blades, slaughtering the Masters.

“Lightning.”

“Dragon’s Breath.”

The graduate students either collapsed under Andromeda’s lightning or were swept up in Vicher and Vichera’s flames and reduced to ash.

The encroachers and corpse army rushing in along the way were torn apart by Narji and Severic’s currents or frozen solid by their cold, while Tyren raised the earth to connect collapsed stairways and passages.

I linked Chain Discharge with swordplay.

Crackle!

Once I stunned them with Chain Discharge and cut off their heads, the rest somehow worked out.

“Corpse army!”

Another chamber.

“WOOOOOO!”

Countless corpses charged toward us.

Their flesh had not even rotted yet. They were freshly made bodies.

Among them stood someone in a white coat.

Blue hair. Eyes filled with the arrogance of an intellectual.

[“■■■■■■■!”]

Doctor-class.

A mental wave powerful enough to be fatal even to us was about to explode outward.

“Damn!”

“You!”

Erica threw herself toward me, trying to shield me while I stood at the front.

Because I had pushed Neural Acceleration to its limit, the sight of the mental wave erupting seemed slow.

A translucent black aura spilled from the creature’s maw.

Visions unfolded one after another—endlessly boiling bubbles, blasphemously writhing tentacles, hollowly fluttering feathers, springy eyeballs, and crystals that had not changed for a thousand years.

I instinctively activated the perk I had just received.

【Blue Radiance Lion’s Roar (23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds)】

[“■■■■■■■■■!”]

Fwoooooosh!

A shout wreathed in blue electric flame erupted from deep within my stomach.

It felt the same as drawing up lightning reinforcement.

I felt the pleasant fatigue that came after spending an enormous amount of mana.

Both sides should have been sound, yet the aftermath was not felt by my ears, but by my eyes.

The blue electric flame contained in Blue Radiance Lion’s Roar tore the translucent black illusion apart, burned it, and devoured it.

The shockwave that raced along the walls and ceiling felt less like sound colliding with sound and more like authority colliding with authority.

Rumble!

“Huh?”

“Ah!”

“What?”

The Doctor’s mental wave was canceled out.

The blue-haired Doctor standing ahead rolled his eyes in confusion.

“Leave not even bone dust behind!”

“We shall hear your screams!”

The Doctor had no time to unleash a second mental wave.

Fwoooooosh!

Vicher and Vichera clasped hands, opened their mouths wide, and breathed flames powerful enough to melt the entire room.

“That settles it.”

“It seems he was effectively their final defensive line.”

After the blue-haired Doctor fell, their resistance weakened considerably.

“Given the structure, the main palace should appear soon. Their headquarters must be nearby.”

“Then let us split up and search.”

We raced in every direction, trying to find the passage that led to their headquarters.

“Hm?”

Apparently, I had found it.

Even at a glance, an incredibly grand colonnade led deeper inside.

[“There’s something over here!”]

I announced it with Lion’s Roar and ran inside.

Bang!

I kicked the locked door open with all my strength.

“Huh?”

The inside was filled with unbelievable things.

The place seemed to be the audience chamber of the Ancient Empire’s Emperor.

It was wider than most training grounds, and the ceiling rose dozens of meters high.

Temple-like stone pillars lined both sides in long rows, while the walls beside them were made of stained glass, splitting the afternoon sunlight into countless shades and colors.

The sunlight struck the stone pillars and cast shadows in bands across the audience chamber.

They stood within those shadows.

“You’ve come?”

Neatly cut black hair. Yellow eyes gleaming like a beast’s.

“I am Department Dean Piaget, one who has become one with truth.”

Around the tall man in a white coat so pale it seemed isolated from the world itself stood more than ten Doctor-class beings and dozens of graduate students.

At a glance, they were anything but ordinary.

Perhaps the final struggle would unfold here, not in the previous room.

Yet their expressions seemed prepared for something far greater than a mere battle.

“Sister.”

I used several more dozen seconds of the Telephone Conversation that had three minutes remaining to relay the current situation and location to the Elector Princes.

And less than ten seconds later, I regretted that decision.

Snap.

The instant Department Dean Piaget snapped his fingers, the heavy cloth draped along the left side of the audience chamber fell away.

Shhhhh.

“Ha.”

My mouth fell open.

There stood an absurdly enormous glass bottle—no, something closer to a glass tube.

Inside that glass tube was a mass of elixir of sacred radiance, glittering in five brilliant colors.

Even at a glance, it was top quality.

Its purity might even surpass the second-refined luxury product we called fortress elixir.

A Hall of Purity creature that appeared to be graduate-student-class was submerged within it.

“I shall teach you the truth of us humans.”

Department Dean Piaget smiled as if he had waited a very, very long time for this moment.

I wanted nothing more than to run from it.

That quantity.

That purity.

It was too much to claim they had stolen the goods we traded with Flammerios.

If the royal family or Church discovered this, all our effort to have the elixir of sacred radiance officially recognized would be wasted.

Public opinion would immediately turn.

They would denounce Andromeda and me, insisting that we must have overlooked something after all.

Especially now, when the suppression campaign was nearly finished.

Hum.

I deployed Bio-radar.

Tap-tap-tap-tap!

The Elector Princes were drawing closer and closer.

No choice.

I slowly turned so the enemies would not feel threatened.

Wooooooom!

I gripped an explosive balsam grenade and drew up a considerable amount of mana.

KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRAK!

Blue-green and scarlet light flashed, and a Railgun fired.

BOOM!

Even a stone building that had endured for thousands of years could do nothing against a Railgun.

The corridor and palace structure leading into the audience chamber collapsed completely in a single blow.

Tyren would clear it away at once if he arrived, but he had run down the opposite corridor from me, so it should buy at least a little time.

“You bastard!”

“Clear it.”

The Doctors and graduate students went on high alert and began transforming parts of their bodies.

“No. It’s fine.”

Step. Step. Step.

Piaget smiled faintly, as though he had read my mind, and slowly approached.

“A lecture before everyone would be fine, but one-on-one instruction is not bad either. Especially when the student is the famous Lightning Blade Kyrie.”

“Talk, then.”

Step. Step. Step.

I also approached slowly, watching for the timing to shatter that glass tube.

“Regardless of your misunderstandings about us, I believe you would at least agree that people should live honestly according to themselves. Only by finding one’s true form can one live as one truly desires.”

Piaget began speaking.

“That’s difficult to deny as an Astreos.”

For the moment, I nodded.

“How insincere. Hm. You must believe we created the mutant demonic beasts. You must believe we created that dreadful corpse army and all those pitiful, hideous encroachers.”

“Don’t tell me you’re about to say something heartless—no, shameless—like that isn’t true.”

“In fact, it is not true.”

“……”

Piaget repaid my sincere nod with shameless nonsense.

“We merely helped them find the pure nature sleeping inside every human being.”

“Isn’t ‘pure nature’ usually supposed to mean something very good?”

“All humans are encroachers. The Holy Seats failed to save us.”

The truly shameless thing was that those words caught my interest, even if only slightly.

“What?”

It was only the level of let’s hear what nonsense he’s going to spew, but interest was interest.

“The evil Dragon Emperor of the Ancient Empire and his twin, the depraved Grand Duke, made us this way.”

Piaget pointed at one graduate student.

Crack-crack-crack!

The graduate student half-mutated.

He looked like a cross between a pufferfish and a human.

Blood and fluid dripped from the red flesh exposed between spiked carapace plates.

With his other hand, Piaget pointed at the elixir of sacred radiance.

His gesture truly looked like that of someone presenting in a lecture hall.

“You call this medicine the elixir of sacred radiance, I hear.”

“Yes. We named it that because it resembles five-colored starlight.”

“The Dragon Emperor of the Ancient Empire called it the elixir of eternity. Or simply eternity.”

“The Ancient Empire?”

I found that absurd.

“You’re saying the Ancient Empire of Evil created that elixir?”

“Yes.”

“Then have you people existed since then too? What a truly pathetic organization, surviving for thousands of years without ever managing to get officially recognized.”

I put as much sarcasm into it as possible, but Piaget did not react.

“You’ll be even more surprised when you learn what this was made from.”

“Pure mana, wasn’t it?”

“Into it, he dissolved the souls of ancient demons whose names no longer remain, god-devil bodies in which spirit and flesh were one. Along with the Dragon Emperor’s wicked blood magic.”

I clicked my tongue.

If that was true, then the elixir of sacred radiance was very far from pure.

“Ancient demons?”

“They were called by countless names. Sleeping gods, old things, demons, those who came from the stars... The Dragon Emperor and the depraved Grand Duke even tried to exploit those dreadful primordial evils. They summoned those old things one by one, killed them, devoured them, and repeated the process until they finally succeeded in turning them into medicine. Then they spread that medicine across the entire world.”

“As someone from the ruling class myself, I know spreading anything is not as easy as it sounds. That’s not something you accomplish in a year or two.”

“The elixir of eternity unites spirit and flesh. It binds soul and body together. Once consumed, that power is inherited eternally through the bloodline.”

“What?”

“After only a few generations, it spreads throughout all humanity. Thousands of years have passed since then, so by now it has likely reached even the Eastern Continent.”

As royal brother of Astreos, Grand Duke of Wind of Rikenta, Imperator of the Elector Princes Coalition Army, and future Guardian of the Realm of the Empire, I should have told him to stop spouting utter nonsense.

But as a bloodline that inherited a contract through blood, and as someone who commanded countless knights, I could not stop myself from feeling something.

Even if we set aside great houses because we contracted with the Holy Seats, the “bodily transformation” of quasi-superhuman soldiers—retainers, squires, and knights—definitely had strange aspects.

If a parent struggled desperately and became a retainer, their child could also become a retainer with only a certain amount of effort.

The same was true of squires and knights.

That was why knight-lord families could exist.

No.

In truth, we were the same.

A great house was also a knight-lord family that had contracted with a star.

Electric arts, for instance, could not even be started without a knight’s physical ability—especially durability and recovery.

Piaget was saying all of that came from the elixir of eternity created thousands of years ago by the Dragon Emperor of the Ancient Empire of Evil.

At times like this, I was truly grateful I had a stigma.

One question would be enough to verify the truth.

I grasped the space with Bio-radar.

If I got just a little closer, I could probably destroy the metal components of that glass tube with magnetism alone.

“So you’re saying the power that flows in when someone drinks the elixir of sacred radiance isn’t pure mana?”

I asked, pretending to be tempted.

Chapter 243

Comments