At the news that the Mage Tower had collapsed, a deep sigh of relief slipped from Estella’s lips. But it was too soon to relax. There was still one important fact left to confirm.

"What about Telior? Did he die?"

Estella’s eyes were earnest as she waited for an answer. The marquis looked at his daughter’s bloodless face with pity and slowly shook his head.

"It seems he did not. The black radiance never appeared."

When the great Towerlord died, a black radiance was supposed to shoot up into the sky over the entire Empire. But ever since Estella had returned to Wintfall, though she had looked up at the heavens every day, there had not been so much as a single dark cloud in the sky.

Estella squeezed her eyes shut in dismay. Of course he wasn’t someone who would go down easily.

She had clearly felt the massive explosion behind her back. It hadn’t been an ordinary bomb; she had poured all of her mana into the Desiderium core crystal orb and released it as burning heat. The destructive power she had felt in her hands had been stronger than that of any weapon she had ever touched. There was no way a person could survive that blast.

"Then Aslan must have realized that I was the one who attacked the Mage Tower."

She had gone into this prepared from the beginning, but if she had completely blown it away, the evidence would have vanished. Estella didn’t want to give Aslan even a speck of justification, and she was so angry at herself for failing to finish it properly that her hand went white as she clenched her fist tight.

"If Aslan knew, he wouldn’t have stayed still until now. From how quiet it still is, it seems he has his suspicions but no proof. Instead, I heard a rumor that, after a recent imperial summons, dozens of mages entered the imperial palace. There was a grand announcement that they would root out whoever attacked the Mage Tower and rebuild it."

As she listened to the marquis’s account, Estella’s gaze grew heavy.

What on earth was Aslan thinking. From what she had gauged, Aslan was not someone who thought or acted in a simple way. He was bound to have some scheme she hadn’t even imagined. Even if no evidence or witnesses remained, he would be sure in his own mind that it was her doing.

But one thing was clear: Wintfall had gained time to fully prepare for the coming battle. With the Mage Tower in that state, there would be no more abnormal phenomena of monsters attacking in hordes for a while.

"Aslan won’t have the leisure to look Wintfall’s way for the time being."

At Estella’s words, the marquis nodded with a sigh. It was true Estella had done something tremendous for Wintfall, but he could not be wholly glad. When he thought of the ordeal his daughter must have gone through because of it, his heart ached so much he felt he could jerk awake in the middle of the night, and he could hardly bear how pathetic he felt for having stayed comfortably in Wintfall.

"Estella, I have no intention of sacrificing you to protect Wintfall. If someone told me to choose between Wintfall and you, I would choose you without hesitation."

At her father’s weighty words, Estella’s chest grew tight. Without his saying so, she felt she could tell how badly he had been shaken by what had happened.

"Father, but—"

Estella was about to say that there was Luka, too. But once again, Marquis Cassian spoke first.

"There is nothing in this world more precious to a parent than their child. So Estella, from now on, you must never…"

The marquis trailed off and pressed his lips together. Looking at Estella, gazing back up at him with clear eyes, she looked exactly as she had as a child. In his eyes she was still this young and fragile, and yet before he knew it, she had become a knight who charged unhesitatingly toward the enemy.

"Yes. From now on I will be careful never to get hurt."

Knowing it was a promise she could not keep, Estella nonetheless lied so she could ease her father’s heart, smiling brightly like a child. Only then did it seem like the indescribable sorrow on the marquis’s face faded a little.

"Father, I have a favor to ask."

"No."

"How can you say no before you even know what I’m going to ask."

Estella asked with a smile playing at the corners of her lips. The marquis, having refused in haste, realized only belatedly that he hadn’t even heard her out. Still, he couldn’t readily promise to grant it, thinking that whatever it was, it would somehow be bad for Estella.

"What is it."

"Please spread a rumor."

"A rumor?"

It was a much easier request than he had expected, and that only made the marquis more uneasy. When Estella smiled so slyly and asked for something, there was always some hidden meaning.

"A rumor that I died."

"What?"

Of course.

There was no way Estella would ask a favor that was easy to grant. The marquis’s brows crumpled like a sheet of paper as he asked again.

"Please make sure the rumor that I died reaches Aslan’s ears."

"Estella!"

The marquis’s anger shot up to the top of his head. He felt he knew why his daughter was making such a request, but he felt he absolutely could not tolerate it. Yet he also knew he would be unable to refuse. When it came to Estella, he had always been weak.

"The thing that must be bothering Aslan’s eyes the most right now is me. If a rumor spreads that someone like that has died, he’ll be less on edge than he is now."

"It’ll be found out soon enough."

"Then for now, have me wasting away with a lingering illness, and how about holding a funeral in about two weeks. It would be best to say the cause was some unknown poison."

The marquis looked down at his daughter with frustrated eyes, unable to understand why she only ever asked things that were so hard to grant.

"And I’d like as few people as possible to know that I’m alive."

"Are you saying we should deceive Lucius as well."

"Yes. The captain can’t lie. He’ll give it away right away. You know that, don’t you. He’s someone whose outside matches his inside."

Lucius was a man whose likes and dislikes showed plainly on his face. That was his strength, but at times, like now, it became a weakness.

"What about Luka? Isn’t he too young?"

The marquis found it hard to reach a decision, both because he worried whether Luka could put on a convincing act, and because he knew how deeply Luka would be hurt when told Estella had died.

"Luka is very smart; he’ll never give it away. He’ll act better than you, Father."

At Estella’s words, the marquis didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. The one thing he was sure of was that, if things went as Estella foresaw, Aslan would feel considerably more at ease when he heard the rumor of her death.

Drip, drip, drip.

"Haa, haa… guh, uuuuuh…"

The immaculate, pure white room, so bright it threatened to blind, was filled with the acrid smell of burning, the sound of a dense liquid falling at regular intervals, and groans that were closer to the cries of a beast than a human. It was a room so wide that a word spoken there would echo, yet the only furniture in it was a single bed placed in the center and a table cluttered with complicated experimental apparatus of unclear purpose.

The heat created by the explosion of the Desiderium core crystal orb was not something any fire of this world could have produced. Into that orb, which was a massive condensation of Telior’s long-cherished wish and sticky desire, Estella’s special mana had been added, turning the crystal into a bomb in its own right and melting the Mage Tower like candle wax in an instant. Telior’s greed had been that enormous, that ravenous—enough to melt the Mage Tower away in a heartbeat.

Aside from the underground levels where simple laborers and low-ranking mages worked and everything on the third floor and below, the Mage Tower had vanished without a trace. In other words, the Tower’s high-ranking mages had disappeared along with the explosion.

The one lying in the bed, his whole body wrapped layer upon layer in bandages soaked with blood and pus, was Telior. Unable to die and writhing in pain, Telior lay sprawled like a grub while Aslan looked down on him with eyes full of disgust.

"Ts, ts. Some Towerlord you are. You really should have trained more diligently in your spare time."

Aslan’s languid voice spread through the wide room like a song.

Watching Telior’s body from head to toe as if he were enjoying a very amusing play or reading some thrilling gossip, Aslan eventually let out a light sigh when his eyes fell on the man’s stubby limbs.

"With your arms and legs melted away like this, you’ll never be able to dance a waltz again. How tragic."

Telior had once been rather tall. But within the great blaze, his limbs had melted away, leaving only up to his elbows and knees. They might have been able to attach prosthetic arms or legs, but that was only possible when at least some skin remained.

"What a cruel woman. To leave a man in such a horrible state."

No matter where they searched, they could find no direct evidence that Estella had done this to the Mage Tower. The only survivor and eyewitness had ended up in such a pitiful condition that the truth of the incident was completely lost in the fog.

But Aslan was convinced there was no one besides Estella who could have done such a thing.

"Don’t worry, Telior. I will, by any means necessary, see that revenge is taken for you. So do not under any circumstances die; cling to that stubborn life of yours and keep breathing. For the Empire, and for the sake of the future Towerlord, I’m sure you can manage at least that much. Everyone will be grateful for the Towerlord’s hard work."

If one did not look at the face smiling from ear to ear, one might have thought he truly was grateful for Telior’s efforts and regretted his injuries. He even addressed the Towerlord with polite honorifics before the mages, despite being the emperor. But the expression on Aslan’s face as he bit his lips to stifle the laughter that kept bursting out between his words looked closer to that of a demon than a man.

At Aslan’s command, the mages he had summoned moved about the room like shadows, careful that even their footsteps made no sound as they watched his mood.

"He absolutely must not die. Do whatever it takes to keep him alive. He should at least be this useful for the Towerlord’s dignity. How noble he looks."

In the end, Aslan couldn’t hold his laughter back and shook with quiet giggles, his shoulders bouncing. When he finished speaking, the mages standing by the bed with large silver needles in hand lined up.

"Begin. I very much want to personally witness this astonishing scene today."

At Aslan’s order, the mages, their noses and mouths covered with hoods, hesitated for a moment, then slowly unwrapped the bandages around Telior’s body. When the bandages, caked with blood and pus, came off, Telior’s raw flesh, burned and red, was revealed.

"Urrgh, uuuuuh!"

A cry of agony escaped Telior’s lips, his mouth fused by the fire.

"Do you mean to keep me waiting."

At Aslan’s chilly command, the mages had no choice but to drive the long needles deep into his spine. Hollow in the middle like straws, the needles dug between Telior’s vertebrae with a grating sound.

"Urk, uuurk!"

With Telior’s scream, drops of sticky silver liquid began to fall one by one from the needle holes, and the waiting mages quickly held clear glass bottles beneath them. Like tree sap, the sticky silver liquid began to drip, one drop at a time, from the needle holes.

But by the time about three drops had fallen, Telior lost consciousness, and at the same moment, the silver liquid stopped flowing.

"Ts, ts, ts. The old man has no endurance. To think he can’t do even this much for the sake of the future Towerlord—how disappointing."

On one side of the room, they began once more to concoct a restorative potion by magic to prolong Telior’s life.

Drip, drip, drip.

Again, the sound of regular droplets echoed in the empty room. At a table set beside the bed, the mages quietly poured the red-core restorative potion they had prepared into long-necked glass bottles.

A moment later, a mage began dripping the restorative potion, drop by drop, into Telior’s nose as he lay slack like a corpse. Then Telior’s chest, which had been still like a dead man’s, began to rise and fall at a steady rhythm. Seeing this, a satisfied smile spread across Aslan’s lips.

"Hang in there, Towerlord. You’re doing wonderfully. How much Magnus sap have we collected so far?"

Magnus sap was the condensed essence of a mage’s life force and the mana accumulated over a lifetime. Each drop held decades of mana, and if injected into an ordinary person, it could forcibly open their mana circuits and create an artificial mage. The amount of Magnus sap stored in the Towerlord’s body had to be considerable. The problem was that this sap could only be extracted while he was conscious.

Now that Telior could no longer perform the Towerlord’s duties, there was no way Aslan would simply let him die.

"About three vials."

"And how much more do we need."

"Nineteen vials."

"How long will it take."

"If we extract without taking a single day off, about ten more days should be enough."

Aslan briefly knit his brows, displeased, but soon turned to the mage holding the glass bottle of silver liquid and smiled brightly.

"Good work. The future of the Mage Tower rests on you."

"Yes, Your Majesty. We will do our utmost."

"Ah, and if, by some chance, the Towerlord should pass away before we reach the target amount, you will not escape responsibility. See that you take very good care of him. Change his bandages often, too."

Aslan’s warning voice was gentle and sweet. But the mages listening to him shuddered with a terror that felt like all the blood in their bodies was freezing solid.

Without missing a single day, Aslan had Magnus sap extracted from Telior. And at last, on the day they reached the target amount of sap, news reached Aslan that Estella of Wintfall had died.

Chapter 238

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