Magnus held back his amazement and focused on the mounted charge.

For now.

Since he was gripping the cavalry spear with his left arm, he had to immerse himself even more.

Crunch!

The moment the command unit was smashed and the Mental Shockwave lifted, the skeletons’ fusion ended.

The awkwardly enlarged skeletons became even better targets beneath cavalry spears and warhorse hooves.

"Smash them to pieces!"

"Grind them up and spread them as fertilizer!"

"Pierce them!"

As befitted a Planetary Seat Blue Knight, Magnus thrust his cavalry spear deftly even with his left hand, crushing a mid-sized skeleton with three heads.

Light?

He wondered at the surprisingly comfortable feel for only a moment.

It’s the lightning. He scattered that intangible force that binds joint to joint. He even strengthened everyone here. He’s excellent as a commander, too.

He remembered Kyrie using Area Imbuement before the charge.

["Follow me!"]

Kyrie shouted from the front, swinging his cavalry spear.

With the first charge, he crushed the skeleton army’s vanguard, then slipped out to the left with precision.

Dozens, then hundreds of Blue Knights, knights, Navigators, and retainers galloped after Kyrie, throwing up a thick cloud of dust.

When you’re not sure, always do it by the book.

Kyrie perfectly executed a textbook cavalry charge in real life, pounding and pounding the skeleton army’s left wing.

"Discharge!"

"Let’s give those skeleton bastards a taste of something shocking!"

"You died once and came back because you want to die twice!"

The Blue Knights running tight behind Kyrie all unleashed Discharge.

Bzzzt—zzzt—zzzt!

Lightning in sky-blue, sunlight-yellow, autumn-leaf red, petal-purple, summer-green, and countless other colors violently raked the skeleton army’s flank.

Bang! Bang!

Skeleton limbs collapsed.

Fewer skeletons are bursting than I expected. When you fight humans, lightning naturally spreads thanks to weapons and armor, but with skeletons, two or three drop and it ends.

Kyrie measured the real efficiency behind the flashy effects.

Superhuman troops, especially Blue Knights, aren’t efficient here. Blue Knights should handle only large-class or commander units, and we should process the rest with sword-and-shield infantry and heavy infantry.

With Bio-radar and his single eye, he swept through the skeletons without leaving gaps.

["--, --!"]

The skeletons did not simply lie still and get carved up.

Black shouts rang out in pockets.

["---!"]

After a bizarre wave burst out like wind escaping, skeletons clung together in threes and fives, swelling their size and strength.

A command unit?

Kyrie drew another throwing dagger.

Thunk!

He fired Magnetic Railshot.

For an instant, his head throbbed and his vision swayed once, but he endured with Celestial Lightning Body above 1,700%.

Because it’s an Authority I haven’t used, the fatigue is worse than I thought. I need to be able to fire it reflexively, but every shot requires me to spam neural acceleration and high-speed thought and calculate it out.

Bzzt!

When he reinforced neural acceleration, his vision cleared again.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Magnetic Railshot kept firing from Kyrie’s side.

"I’ll target the command units!"

Magnus laughed boldly and floated throwing metal spikes into the air.

The magnetism of a magnetism-arts user who ranked within the top five of House Astreos was tremendous.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Bullets with the breakthrough force of a cavalry charge fired at a rate faster than Rikenta’s repeating crossbows.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Lowest-grade command units, the "skeleton buglers," burst apart in the blink of an eye.

So that’s bloodline.

Watching, Kyrie felt awe inside.

He believed that if he kept walking the Hero’s Journey, he would catch up someday, but the sense that the starting line was different did not change easily.

Of course, Kyrie was far from the cynics who sneered that inborn talent decided everything.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

All he did was keep making the effort

to live a life he could be satisfied with,

to avoid a fate where he died and fell into the Abyss.

Kyrie followed Magnus, firing Magnetic Railshot again and again.

At the same time, Magnus was marveling at Kyrie’s skill.

I should tell my little brother to offer up his eye too. No. Maybe a hand or a foot, or his appendix would be better? I heard history books don’t value an appendix much.

Magnus was a genius among geniuses, someone who had been expected to surpass even Nereus.

It’s only been a little over a month since I started teaching him.

He did well because it was fun, and it was fun because he did well.

The moment he learned Magnetic Railshot, he clung to it day and night, and it took only three or four days to succeed.

He already knew he was a genius.

Kids who only get called talented take about a month when they cling to it all day. Kyrie did it in a month while practicing casually in a carriage.

So comparing himself to others was meaningless. He only compared one person to another.

If it were me, could I have practiced like that and succeeded?

Kyrie made Magnus compare him to Magnus himself, through a different path.

As an outstanding lightning-arts user, it should have been harder for him to adapt to magnetism arts. Could he be a close relative of mine?

Lightning arts and magnetism arts shared the same root, but there was a major difference in knack.

Magnus even considered looking for a father or uncle who had visited the capital’s red-light district.

He’s an incredible magnetism-arts user. I’ve never been pushed in control and dominion anywhere, but how is he converting every last drop of lightning into pure magnetism without letting any spill?

Meanwhile, Kyrie was feeling a wall as he watched Magnus.

Yeah. That’s bloodline.

Talent that surpasses bloodline.

Each was drawn toward the other as they flung Magnetic Railshot.

Among the skeleton soldiers, the skeleton buglers disappeared quickly.

Even when other soldiers blocked with their bodies to protect them, the thin daggers and metal spikes burrowed between bone and bone and blew the buglers’ heads away.

"We won!"

"Long live Lady Andromeda! Long live Young Master Kyrie!"

"Long live Young Master Scipio!"

They won.

It was only natural.

If they brought nearly a thousand superhuman troops of Retainer-rank and above and still lost to the same number of skeleton soldiers, they should quit being Blue Knights.

From here on, how they used the victory was what truly separated the strong.

"Your Highness. We need additional reconnaissance."

Scipio declared boldly before Kyrie and Lady Andromeda.

"Lightweight units selected for mobility, only one large body, and a higher bugler ratio than normal soldiers. It was a scout force. There’s a high chance the main force is lying in ambush nearby."

He needed a few more victories.

Andromeda will cut me out. The best way to cut out an adopted-heir Blue Knight is incompetence. And if my merits fall short of her much younger little brother, that’s incompetence.

Scipio and the Blue Knights of the Mounted Patrol 3rd Regiment also ravaged the corpse army’s right wing and smashed many skeletons.

But it was nothing compared to the impact of the Magnetic Railshot barrage Kyrie and Magnus poured down.

Merit was always relative.

The best way for Scipio to keep his seat was to expand the board.

"It was the same three years ago, when we came with the former Senior Adopted Heir Traysan. It was the same over ten years ago, when we came with the former Sub-patriarch Oceanos."

He did not hesitate to play even a risky move, mentioning his former lord who had been swept away and the former Sub-patriarch who had vanished, the current Sub-patriarch’s blood brother.

It’s die or faint.

"And whose name are you putting in your mouth?"

He should have hesitated.

Lady Andromeda did not tolerate an adopted heir who had been Traysan’s lackey speaking the name of the blood brother Traysan had killed.

The Sub-patriarch’s fury bared itself transparently, and electric sparks jumped between her teeth.

I’m dead.

Scipio regretted the overbold gamble.

"Older sister."

Then someone utterly unexpected reacted in a way utterly unexpected.

"I think he’s right. In the first place, isn’t it strange that a corpse army in the thousands came this far? We’re almost there. Let’s recon once more."

Kyrie stepped between Lady Andromeda and Scipio.

"Brother-in-law... damn it. This is awkward as hell. For now I’ll just call you you. Endure it even if you hate it. You lost. Anyway, you too. You’ll never admit it, but you know who the former Sub-patriarch Oceanos was killed by. And you, who followed that traitor, put that traitor and the former Sub-patriarch Oceanos in one sentence? If you want to kill yourself, I can help."

He stopped Lady Andromeda, and he also lashed Scipio.

Scipio thought he had read the meaning embedded in Kyrie’s words.

It sounds like he’s blaming me, but he’s actually worried. If he truly hated me, he could just keep his mouth shut. The Sub-patriarch would smash my head. This is him helping me keep my position. Was it not a misunderstanding?

Suddenly, it felt like gears clicked into place and something became clear.

Earlier, he charged separately from me. He protected me so my merit wouldn’t merge into his.

The time they had been wary of each other during the Grand Cathedral assault suddenly felt foolish.

He shouted before tens of thousands of soldiers that he wanted Lord Traysan’s seat. He only chose Andromeda as a tool for advancement, but he didn’t forget his own identity? If he has any sense at all, there’s no way he doesn’t know how the main family grinds adopted heirs like us into paste.

On the spot, Scipio knelt to apologize, then immediately drove his troops and rode off.

If there’s an ambush, that bastard will fight it, and if there isn’t, it isn’t my fault.

What he did not know was that Kyrie had not the slightest intention of fighting Scipio over merit.

Go meet the dragon you saw and die already.

And there was another reason Kyrie wanted Scipio gone.

"Older sister."

"Hm?"

Kyrie held out his hand to Lady Andromeda, whose eyes were still shaking.

"Magnus!"

"Hm?"

He called Magnus too, and the three of them went down onto the battlefield where the corpse army had become corpses.

It was this way.

Kyrie rummaged around near the Whitebone Giant’s head.

Even calling it a head, it was less a true head than a structure where countless bones gathered into a head-like shape.

Crunch.

"Found it."

Kyrie pulled out a skull from inside.

An opaque color like cheap amethyst, with sunlight revealing a glimpse of dark red, vein-like crystals within.

"This is?!"

Lady Andromeda widened her eyes.

"When I looked earlier, they were using a similar power. There were mutated manbeasts here too."

"You deliberately sent Scipio away."

"Yeah."

"My little brother. You do think things through."

She patted Kyrie’s shoulder warmly and took the skull.

"Huh?"

"What?"

Her bright smile lasted only a moment. A beat late, Lady Andromeda flinched and stared at Magnus.

"You."

For an instant, resolve like kill-them-all entered her blue eyes.

"It’ll be fine."

Kyrie stepped between them again.

"Why?"

"You couldn’t not know. A prestigious cadet line that’s been blocking the Corpse Wasteland for hundreds of years. You already know about the Elixirs too, right? When I went looking for the Elixir of the Nebula, Magnus was the one who stopped me."

It was one of the rare times when what he thought and what he said matched.

"I won’t resent you, since you have sins, but I hope Your Highness the Sub-patriarch will value the cadet lines a little more."

"If you have sins, don’t tell me not to resent you. When Traysan fired the Electromagnetic Cannon at me, who was it that pulled out the Sacheol blade in strands and tried to take my neck?"

"..."

Magnus shut his mouth and lowered his head.

"You don’t have the right to show resentment no matter what I do to you. Swallow it like storm clouds, again and again, and prove your usefulness to me. I spared you because of that usefulness. Or challenge me right now. That alone is something anyone in this family can do."

Lady Andromeda settled the relationship between them with cold, regal authority.

"Since when have crystals like this been found in the skeletons of command units or large-class units?"

Only then did she ask.

"I understand it has been the case since a very long time ago. In records, almost since the time of the founder."

"Why hasn’t it been properly reported to the main family until now?"

"Even among greenskins, it is common for command units or large-class units to appear. These Whitebone units handle somewhat strange powers, but for us it was too natural. Above all, we did not witness mutations like the southern mutated manbeasts, primarily the greenskins."

Kyrie and Lady Andromeda exchanged looks.

The Whitebone have carried this Mental Shockwave power since very long ago.

The church heretics who gave it to Erica extracted it from Whitebone and weaponized it.

The mutation in the Corpse Wasteland is reverse export.

Then the heretics have a headquarters near the Corpse Wasteland, or at least a branch.

Lady Andromeda’s voice turned urgent.

"What major cities nearby have clergy of bishop rank or higher staying in them? Besides our house."

Kyrie clenched his fist hard as well.

It’s a chance to wipe out those bastards I saw in the dream. If he told me to become Emperor because only an Emperor could stop them, then if I wipe them out without becoming Emperor, wouldn’t it just end right here?

That hope shattered immediately.

"They’re everywhere."

Magnus blinked.

"The Corpse Wasteland is the center of the continent. Directly, it borders the main family, the royal family, Septentrios, Flammerios, and Terra, and with several free city territories in between, it touches every great house, from the Papal States to Rikenta and even Crosel."

"That figures."

Kyrie finally let a sigh slip out.

Thudududu!

"Your Highness!"

Just then, a messenger from the Mounted Patrol 3rd Regiment under Scipio rode in at a frantic gallop and called to them.

"We found ambushing undead! They are advancing against the infantry units. About five thousand, and there are at least five medium-to-large abominations over thirty meters!"

Chapter 139

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