Chapter 402 - 391: I Am Different From Him
Inside the council hall, the air seemed to freeze.
Duke Dorne’s question struck every heart in the room like a sledgehammer.
The legion commanders remained silent, but the doubt in their eyes spoke volumes.
The fall of Maurice had shattered the myth of the invincible Wizard they held in their hearts.
Allen leaned back in his chair, his gaze on Duke Barton. He showed no anger, not even a flicker of emotion.
King Alexander’s face turned livid. Just as he was about to issue a sharp rebuke, Allen calmly raised his hand.
"A reasonable question."
All eyes in the room instantly focused on him. Allen stood up and walked slowly to the enormous sand table.
"Not all Wizards are the same. Maurice was of the Witchcraft School. His power stemmed from his personal reserves of Magic Power."
Allen’s voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly to everyone in the hall. "One’s Magic Power is finite. It will eventually run out."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the battle-hardened commanders in the room.
"I, on the other hand, am a Golem Wizard of the Alchemy School. My power stems from the industrial war machine that backs me."
"What’s the difference?" Duke Dorne pressed, his voice hoarse.
Allen didn’t answer directly. Instead, he posed a question of his own. "Your Grace, which is better suited to defend a seven-hundred-kilometer front: a single, supremely powerful Holy Spirit Mage, or a well-trained, well-equipped army?"
Duke Dorne’s pupils contracted. His lips moved, but no words came out.
Every legion commander in the room held their breath.
"Maurice’s Witchcraft required preparation and could be depleted," Allen continued, his tone utterly placid. "My legions, on the other hand—"
"Are tireless and fearless. They require neither sleep nor sustenance. They can carry out their orders twenty-four hours a day, without interruption."
"For every one that is destroyed, I will build ten more."
"You can think of it this way..."
"I am the harbinger of war, the torrent that crushes all obstacles, and the avatar of certain victory."
That final, grandiose declaration plunged the entire council hall into a deathly silence.
After a three-second pause, Allen’s tone shifted. His finger traced a circle on the sand table over a vast stretch of wasteland east of the Royal Capital, Golden Stone City, directly adjacent to the coastline.
"But I need space."
"This area spans several dozen square kilometers. I require it to be my base. For the duration of my deployment, it will be under my exclusive jurisdiction. No one enters without my permission."
"That’s..." One of the nobles instinctively started to object. This was tantamount to ceding sovereign territory.
King Alexander raised a hand to silence him, his aged eyes locked on Allen. "What else?"
"A military transit accord. My legions must have unimpeded freedom of movement anywhere within the kingdom’s borders, by land or by air."
"A mutual defense pact. It will clearly define our duties. The Royal Army will handle interior defense and support. My legions will take over eighty percent of the main coastal front. Your only job will be to deal with anything that slips through the net."
"Intelligence sharing. I require all hydrological data for the eastern coastline from the last three hundred years, the kingdom’s most detailed texts on its system of Spirit Art, and the complete battle reports for every Heart Eater invasion of the past decade. The more detailed, the better."
The demands were laid out, one after another, each one seeming to test the very limits of the kingdom’s sovereignty.
Duke Dorne stood once more, his one arm clenched into a tight fist as he stared daggers at Allen. "You demand our land, our intelligence, our right of free passage. So... what do you give us in return?"
Allen turned, his gaze falling calmly upon the old man who had lost an arm and an entire legion.
His reply was a single sentence.
"I will save your kingdom."
In an instant, you could have heard a pin drop in the council hall.
"In exchange," Allen’s voice continued, shattering the suffocating silence, "I promise that for the duration of my assignment, regardless of the scale of the Beast Tide, the average annual casualties of the Royal Army will be reduced by at least seventy percent."
Seventy percent!
The number exploded in the minds of the commanders like a thunderclap.
One hundred thousand casualties a year, cut by seventy percent... That meant seventy thousand elite Spirit Mages would survive each year!
King Alexander’s hands, braced against the sand table, began to tremble.
He had lived one hundred and seventy years and had seen far too many young faces off to war. Seventy thousand wasn’t just a number; it was seventy thousand families.
"I agree," the old king’s voice was hoarse but firm. "I agree to all of your conditions."
He turned to his son. "William, starting today, you will serve as the royal liaison. You are to cooperate fully with Lord Wesley and accommodate his every need!"
With his confident pronouncements, Allen had the agreement drawn up on the spot, formalized with the most ancient form of Spirit Art contract.
As Alexander’s name and Allen’s signature flared to life upon the contract, Allen noticed the expression on Duke Dorne’s face. There was no anger, no resentment, but rather... a complex look of release, as if a great burden had been lifted.
’The old man hadn’t been provoking him. He was simply testing this new Wizard in his own way, determining whether he was worthy of being entrusted with the kingdom’s last hope.’
...
「Dusk.」
On the wasteland east of the Royal Capital, the area that had been designated as his base, Allen stood alone in the center of the vast, empty land. The afterglow of the setting sun stretched his shadow long across the ground.
In the distance, the walls of Golden Stone City were lined with people. Nobles, soldiers, commoners—the eyes of the entire Royal Capital were fixed upon that lone figure.
They didn’t know what was about to happen.
But a primal intuition told them they were about to witness a historic moment.
Allen slowly closed his eyes.
Within his perception, Cybertron hung suspended in a dimensional rift, a slumbering heart of steel waiting for its master’s call.
With a single thought.
That heart began to beat.
[Fortress Workshop: Full-Scale Deployment]
In that instant, the very sky and earth changed color.
This was no illusion, no metaphor. The world was literally being turned upside down.
Space twisted violently at Allen’s feet. Eerie blue fissures materialized from nothing, tearing across the land like a spiderweb and spreading rapidly in all directions.
And then—
Metal!
An endless torrent of metal erupted from those bottomless spatial fissures!
It was like a forest of steel, its growth accelerated a billionfold, sprouting with a madness that defied the laws of physics. Massive foundations roared as they riveted themselves to the bedrock, and thick armored walls shot up from the ground, soaring toward the clouds!
Innumerable modules coalesced from the void into solid matter, assembling the skeleton of a vast city in under three seconds.
A dome sealed shut overhead. Conduits like giant pythons spread between the clusters of buildings. A pillar of blue light, generated by an Earth Vein Magic Furnace, shot skyward, instantly piercing the twilight clouds and bathing half the heavens in an ethereal blue glow.
In mere seconds.
A towering city of steel had materialized out of thin air on the soil of the Aiselan Kingdom.
Its scale was only slightly smaller than that of the Royal Capital, Golden Stone City.
Its height dwarfed the proudest spires of the Royal Palace.
Its very existence was a complete subversion of all the known laws of their world.
On the city walls, tens of thousands of people involuntarily dropped to their knees.
It was not from any command; their legs simply could no longer support them.
The shock transcended fear, transcended awe, and struck the soul’s most primal instinct—in the face of absolute, incomprehensible power, prostration was the only possible response.
On the highest terrace of the Royal Palace, the old king, Alexander Aislan, gripped the railing, his aged body trembling violently.
He had lived for one hundred and seventy years. He had seen the world-destroying terror of the King of Heart-eaters and witnessed Maurice’s power to incinerate the land.
But never had he seen, nor could he have ever imagined, a sight like this.
One man.
Had created a city from nothing.
"This... Is this... the Wizard Civilization?"
The old king mumbled to himself, his voice filled with boundless shock and awe.