Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Episode 158
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Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Episode 158
38. A New Era (4)
A duel?
I have no intention of dragging this out.
After all, he's a dead man anyway a sacrificial lamb to keep our momentum going in this war.
His death will serve as the signal marking the beginning of the battle that decides this war's outcome, and we'll push straight through to the Croysen Empire's Imperial Palace from there.
That's why I pulled my Magic Staff out of the subspace.
A beloved weapon that now fits into my hand like part of my own body.
For a Mage, a Magic Staff is a supplementary tool that shortens casting time and amplifies power, but for me, it's also a bludgeoning weapon and a means of defense.
I twirled the Magic Staff and surveyed my surroundings.
-Ziiing.
Then I could see filming drones hovering here and there.
Not just ours from the Kingdom of Rhinehearts Croysen Empire drones were up there too, so it seems the Empire is quite interested in this battle as well.
"Duke Lawrence, I've already figured out how you fight. Others might have been caught off guard by your unorthodox style, but not me."
At Marquis Heidel's words, I just flicked my finger.
A gesture telling him to come at me without another word.
The Marquis, taking it as an insult, furrowed his brow but soon composed himself and drew his swords.
He looked like a wrestler straight out of a fighting game, yet he wielded two thin single-edged longswords in a swift-blade style.
He formed Aura Blades on both swords and assumed a combat stance.
"Then let us begin."
"Yes."
The duel began, and silence hung between me and Marquis Heidel.
But then I took a single step forward toward him.
-Swoosh!
Marquis Heidel's figure blurred and appeared right in front of me.
Arms spread wide gripping his swords, leaning forward in a stance ready to lunge.
His posture reminded me of a mantis out hunting.
"Hmph!"
Then Marquis Heidel stomped his foot hard with a long exhale.
-BOOOOM!
A lightning-fast Strike lashed out, sending Aura fragments scattering along with a powerful shockwave that made the ground tremble.
As he stomped with the opposite foot, a second strike came flying; another stomp, a third strike.
As the strikes piled on fourth, fifth, sixth he began picking up more and more speed.
-Boom-boom-boom-boom-BLAM!
Every single Strike from an Aura Master carries destructive power on par with a missile.
With attacks pouring down like a machine gun, the very air and earth around us screamed in agony.
But not a single one of his attacks touched me.
If it were a Grandmaster, that might be different but against an Aura Master, even a 7th Circle barrier is more than enough.
I projected the 7th Circle's Great Shield and carefully took in every one of his movements.
Attack power, speed, combat style everything.
'The most important thing in battle is understanding your enemy.'
That's why I drew out his opening attack to gather information on him.
-Crack!
As expected, the title of being a Grandmaster-in-waiting isn't idle talk despite my magic being stronger than that of a typical 7th Circle Grand Mage, my barrier broke after enduring only four attacks.
Though, judging by Marquis Heidel's stiffened face, he too was surprised by how solid my barrier was.
"What the ?"
I simply let the barrier break, cast it again, let it break again, and cast it anew freely feeding him openings.
And after about thirty seconds, when I judged I'd fully grasped my enemy, I dismissed the barrier on my own and swung my Magic Staff.
"A Mage should act like a Mage."
He sneered, as if I were out of my mind.
But the Magic Staff deftly slipped past his swords and drove into his guard, cracking him under the chin before he could even react.
Force Armor's automatic defense kicked in but since I'd packed a 5th-circle explosion spell into that swing, a considerable impact must have gotten through.
-CRACK!
"Guh!"
The Marquis, his chin bright red, stumbled back a step in disbelief.
A dumbfounded look.
Of course.
Even if they say my fighting style differs from a typical Mage's, he must have been certain he held the absolute advantage in close-quarters combat.
I admit he's skilled.
No matter how much I stacked Buffs on myself, I couldn't beat him in pure strength and speed, and his swordsmanship honed over a lifetime carried considerable subtlety of its own.
"But our combat experience was on a whole different level."
Had Marquis Heidel, as a grand noble of the Empire, truly experienced real battle a hundred times?
Meanwhile, I spent every single day in a virtual world where real-world senses were shared through Opportunity, fighting hundreds and thousands of monsters to build my combat experience.
That was a difference that could never be ignored.
-THUD!
"Guh!"
Just as swordsmen break through the wall called "realm" when the time comes, I too had reached a state where my eyes had opened and my thinking had loosened.
Now, as long as I could track it with my eyes... I was confident I could deflect or repel any attack with magic.
I formed a condensed barrier on his wrist as he swung his sword rapidly, blocking his attack's path, and my Magic Staff slipped into the opening he left, striking his chin again in succession.
"Damn it!"
Marquis Heidel spat out a curse in humiliation.
He'd studied my fighting style and must have challenged me to a duel with confidence of his own.
"Is there nothing else?"
But once the lid was off, the gap was palpable.
If the spell imbued in my Magic Staff had been a 7th Circle spell instead of a 5th-circle explosion spell, his head would have been blown clean off long ago.
At my provocation, Marquis Heidel gritted his teeth.
"You're an absurd monster."
For a moment, conflict flickered in his eyes.
[Injecting substance.]
And then, an unexpected situation unfolded.
"Ha, so he came out planning to die from the start."
Whatever device was hidden inside the bracelet the moment Marquis Heidel touched it, a substance-related message appeared and his form began to change.
His whole body flushed as if burning, veins bulging grotesquely.
It was a kind of doping.
-BOOM!
The substance he'd just taken raised not only his physical abilities but also the quality of his Aura.
The barrier that had withstood four attacks was shattered in an instant.
I'd heard of such substances before.
"Berserker Potion."
A potion that forcibly drags one's realm up a full step just as hard to obtain as an elixir.
Its duration was short, and it wrecked the body after a single use, so it was a last-resort kind of substance.
It had no effect on Grandmasters, and only worked on Aura Masters and Knights below that rank.
In other words, he could now temporarily wield Master-class martial power.
-ZING!
As if awakening, faint sparks crackled around him, and every exhale released steam and thick breath vapor.
An extraordinary aura, an extraordinary presence.
Looking at him like that, I said:
"You've done well. Let's end this here."
"What?"
And just before Marquis Heidel's momentum peaked
-CRACK!
I blew his head off in one strike.
An ending so anticlimactic it made his fierce momentum look absurd.
-THUD!
Marquis Heidel's headless corpse toppled like a dead tree.
"...."
Thanks to that, both armies watching the duel had no reaction at all.
A moment later, when I waved at the camera drone, the two armies' reactions split starkly.
Cheers from our side, groans from the enemy.
-ZING!
"Ah, right."
But then, a signal rang out that the battle wasn't over yet.
Because I could feel Force surging from the headless corpse.
The self-destruct device Marquis Heidel had kept hidden until the very end began to run wild.
-BOOOOOOM!
A violent explosion swallowed the entire area with a shockwave that seemed to shake heaven and earth.
A suicide attack using an Aura Master's corpse its power was beyond what I'd imagined.
[Supreme Commander, Your Excellency!]
[Your Excellency!]
Naturally, our Kingdom of Rhinehearts army was horrified and called me over the comms repeatedly.
But I casually walked out of the blast zone as if nothing had happened, grabbed a camera drone, and shoved my face into it like taking a selfie.
"The duel is my victory."
I'd already confirmed the self-destruct device was hidden on him with Myriad Mirror, so of course I came out unscathed.
All that's left now is the advance.
"It's been twenty days since the war began, hasn't it?"
It was time to wrap things up.
* * *
The Emperor of the Croysen Empire was called the Iron-Blooded Emperor a cold monarch with no blood or tears.
Always rational, steadfast, and unflappable the very model of an Emperor.
But such an Emperor had recently been losing his former self.
In the past few days, the Emperor, looking as if he had aged ten years, pressed his palm to his forehead and bit his lip.
"Haah... This is driving me mad."
Should he say there were no surprises?
Or had he simply never imagined they would lose this easily?
The Emperor let out a deep sigh at the death of Marquis Heidel.
It was not grief over a loyal subject's death, but a lament of why he had to die so foolishly.
If he had put on a proper Supreme Commander's performance and died grandly, even a duel loss wouldn't have dealt much damage to morale, but this was a limp defeat that seemed to reflect the current state of the Croysen Empire.
"What are the Rhinehearts Kingdom forces doing?"
The Supreme Commander position Marquis Heidel had held was only a temporary grant for the duel anyway.
There was no disruption to unit operations.
"They're still standing by ah! Th-they're advancing now!"
"Of course they are."
With an unbroken win streak and a duel victory on top, their morale was at its peak of course they would move.
"What is the current strength comparison between the two armies?"
"It's about 55:45 in our favor."
"But the enemy has two Grandmasters."
"If you factor those two in, it's nearly even..."
The Emperor shook his head at the Intelligence Chief's words.
How had they ended up like this?
And against the Kingdom of Rhinehearts, which they had always dismissed.
The Emperor tried to think of where things had gone wrong, but nothing came to mind.
But...
Even if he couldn't pinpoint the moment, one face came to mind clearly.
'Duke Lawrence.'
It was the face of Adrian, the enemy Supreme Commander, who had just disposed of Marquis Heidel like it was a game.
-CRASH!
The Emperor slammed his fist on the armrest of the Imperial throne in irritation.
He wanted nothing more than to tear that man apart, but the problem was there wasn't a single opening.
Somehow, the enemy held the advantage in intelligence as well, and their elite combat strength was superior too.
'If we hadn't let our guard down from the start, would this war have gone differently?'
No, he didn't think so.
Adrian would have found some way to torment them regardless.
The emperor was one thing, but the problem was that the ministers also seemed to have no clear plan.
"Is there still no word from the Imperial Crown Prince?"
In the end, the Emperor's only remaining hope was the arrangement the Imperial Crown Prince had gone to secure in Dragonland.
It was somewhat risky, but if they could get their hands on it, it would be more than enough to turn the tide.
"Yes, that's correct. Whether he's entered the Gray Mountain Range or not, both communications and location signals have been cut off."
Dragonland has many areas with unstable mana.
The most notable of these is the place called the Gray Mountain Range, said to be where the Demon King, who descended upon the earth thousands of years ago, lies buried.
The loss of contact wasn't necessarily bad news.
It meant the Imperial Crown Prince was heading the right way.
"Hoo..."
The Emperor looked up at the ceiling of the Imperial Great Hall and pictured his son's face.
'Andre, there isn't much time.'
At this rate, the nation would collapse, arrangements or no arrangements.
The Emperor placed his hopes on the Imperial Crown Prince.
"Your Majesty, what shall we do about the battle?"
"Slowly pull the army back and buy time."
"If we do that, the capital will soon become a battlefield."
"There's no choice. If the capital becomes a battlefield, the Imperial Palace will be relocated to Endymion City."
Abandoning the capital and fleeing.
This was a choice tantamount to announcing defeat.
Whether the arrangement would truly become the card to overturn the war as the Emperor wished the ministers expressed their unease.
"Y-your Majesty!"
But at that moment.
The doors of the Imperial Great Hall burst open as the Minister of the Royal Household rushed in with a frantic expression.
The Emperor and his ministers were hopeful that the Imperial Crown Prince had returned.
-BOOOOM!
But then came a sudden explosion.
"An intruder!"
At the Minister of the Royal Household's shriek of an announcement, the faces of the Emperor and his ministers hardened.
"An intruder? Did Duke Lawrence divert some troops while drawing attention with the duel?"
The Emperor narrowed his brow, and the answer came not from the Minister of the Royal Household, but from the Heaven-Piercing Fortress.
[Intruder detected. Intruder detected.]
[A small armed force has broken through the defense line above the capital and infiltrated the Imperial Palace.]
[The intruders are Adrian El Lawrence, Duke of the Rhinehearts Kingdom, and eight others.]
But the moment they heard who the intruders were, everyone gathered in the Croysen Empire's Imperial Great Hall had to swallow a gasp.
"This is beyond unexpected..."
Why in the world was Adrian here?
The duel had only just ended moments ago.