BOOM!
It was over.
At the very moment Antonio personally triggered the reversal ritual, a wave of pure despair flooded Teresa’s heart.
“Am I truly as the female magician prophesied? Do I bring nothing but misfortune to those around me?” The Princess fell into a daze of confusion.
Sizzle!
With the core of the floating battleship as its epicenter, a pitch-black power spread with terrifying speed. It was a darkness of absolute silence. At the center of the explosion, amidst the infinite, blinding white light, sat a void of deep shadow that stood in stark contrast to its surroundings.
That silence was a total vacuum. No joy or sorrow, no past or present, and certainly no future. It was the manifestation of utter nothingness.
Hum!
However, at the precise moment this dead silence and emptiness were about to swallow everything, a golden figure materialized out of thin air.
His expression was calm, devoid of both sorrow and joy, as if the power currently threatening to consume heaven and earth had absolutely nothing to do with him. Even though his movements were peaceful and his posture ordinary, that very “ordinariness” implied a supreme, transcendental power.
At least, that was how Princess Teresa, positioned near the heart of the blast, perceived him.
“Green… Mr. Green?”
She looked timidly at the figure stepping slowly forward. Her voice lacked the intimacy they had shared before; instead, it carried a hint of estrangement.
Is he… is he really Green? The same traveling bard I met in the tavern?
“Who… who are you, really?”
Teresa had never imagined a day where she would feel so lost. Even when she was exiled by her father, the Emperor, and arrived at the fortress penniless as a commander in name only, she had never felt this helpless.
She wanted to help. Watching that suffocating, desperate force of destruction ripple across the hall and toward the entire fortress, Teresa desperately wanted to stop it.
But she could do nothing. In fact, simply maintaining her conscious state had nearly exhausted her entire supply of mana.
Antonio had paid with his own death and the annihilation of his soul to stage this final tragedy. In this moment, “winner” and “loser” had lost all meaning. The struggle for the Imperial throne seemed like a trivial joke.
Yet, in this clash of power on an entirely different plane, Green appeared remarkably at ease. He lightly moved his finger, pointing it at the swelling core of the floating battleship—a core whose mere afterglow was enough to strike terror into the heart.
“I command you: return to your original state.”
Like a deity—no, at this moment, Green was a deity walking the mortal realm—he issued a decree powerful enough to reverse the laws of reality.
Whoosh—
Everything froze. The core of the floating battleship, the bringer of death and unavoidable fate, was forcibly reversed.
“This part was not in my script.”
Green’s voice was as light and cheerful as ever, filled with an easy friendliness that sounded like a joke shared between close friends. Yet, in this moment that should have been the end of everything, his voice was also startlingly absolute and beyond question.
Sizzle—
As if responding to Green’s seemingly absurd “command,” the dark power actually began to turn back on itself, withdrawing at lightning speed.
The collapsing buildings, the soldiers being swallowed, the souls already turned to ash… everything. Even the fortress, which had been nearly reduced to rubble with no stone left standing, was restored the moment “Green” spoke.
Time began to flow once more. Color returned to Teresa’s vision.
Drip, drop.
A wine cup was knocked over by Teresa, its liquid staining the tablecloth red. The hall was brightly lit.
The others seemed completely unaware of what had happened, staring wide-eyed at the center of the banquet as if their memories were still stuck on the moment Antonio attempted to self-destruct.
“Your Highness, are you alright?!” Colonel Ryan leapt down from the high platform, looking at Teresa with concern.
“I… I’m fine.”
Teresa realized with shock that the destruction had been erased so silently and completely that it felt like a hallucination. It was like a dream. But was it really just an illusion?
“The envoy… that envoy just now…” Teresa murmured, dazed.
“Hmph!” Hearing her mention him, Colonel Ryan’s face filled with indignation. “He was despicable! Commander, those big shots in the Capital have absolutely no regard for human life!”
“Yes… yes, they don’t.” Teresa’s eyes wandered. The world-ending power she had just witnessed could no longer be described by mere “disregard for life.”
“Fortunately, Mr. Green stopped him in time, or we would have had a tragedy on our hands.”
Colonel Ryan naturally walked toward the center of the hall toward Green, who was standing with his eyes closed.
“What bad luck.”
When the bard reopened his eyes, a flash of annoyance crossed them. “My ‘Apostle Mode’… I wasted a use for nothing.”
“We owe that explosion to you, otherwise Her Highness…”
When Ryan mentioned the annihilation of the battleship core, his tone suggested the explosion was just a common self-destruction, not a cataclysm capable of erasing thousands of people and the entire town.
“No, it was nothing.” Green looked at the Princess and blinked slightly as if signaling her, then waved his hand noncommittally. “I just happened to react quickly.”
“Your Highness, we must protest to the Capital immediately. This was a blatant assassination!” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “To think a Legendary powerhouse would use such dishonorable means to kill you.”
“However, Ryan…” Vice-Commander Martin, standing nearby, showed little emotion; instead, he looked grave. “Before we protest to the Capital, we have another problem to handle: the Emperor’s decree.”
“Occupying the disputed territories of the Orc Kingdom?”
As Chief of Staff, Ryan finally seemed to remember his actual job, and his face immediately fell. “Damn it. With our current strength, even if we draft the militia units formed by the former Sheriff, we can’t possibly form a sufficient force.”
Colonel Ryan paced back and forth. “Why don’t we just set this mission aside?” He looked at the Princess with a sharp glint in his eyes. “Since they used such underhanded tactics, we are well within our rights to refuse an unreasonable order!”
“This…?” Teresa hesitated.
Despite her secret desire for the throne, an imperial decree—especially one issued by the Emperor himself—had always been something that must be obeyed without question. It was almost an instinct. Even after surviving an assassination attempt, the option to “refuse the order” hadn’t occurred to her.
But now… Teresa took a deep breath, her face a mask of indecision.
Looking at these soldiers—men who had performed great deeds yet were belittled and nearly consumed by their own leaders—Teresa realized for the first time in her life just how far the country she loved had fallen.
“Ryan, stop joking!” Martin barked, unable to listen to Ryan’s “fantasies” any longer. “Have you forgotten the consequences of defying an Imperial decree? It won’t just be one Legendary envoy then; it will be several elite ace legions, dozens of floating battleships, and perhaps even the Royal Knights…”
Royal Knights.
Green’s gaze deepened. When he was tracking the Puppeteer hiding in the palace, he had indeed sensed several auras belonging to peak Legendary powerhouses. Indeed, now was not the time for a total fallout.
“But with the handful of men we have, how can we complete the task? Even if we do, and we pay a staggering price in lives, won’t we just be handing the credit to those bastards in the Capital on a silver platter?” Ryan thought of his men who died in the ambush, and his temper flared.
“Gentlemen.”
Seeing that Martin and Ryan were about to erupt into a shouting match, Green smiled and intervened. “Actually, you both have a point. But you’re forgetting one thing.”
Noticing their confused looks, Green pointed toward a “spectator” nearby—someone he had specifically invited to witness the envoy’s farce.
“Mr. Andy?” Green asked softly. “I wonder, what advice do you have for our current predicament?”
“Ahem.”
The spectator chuckled and stepped forward. “Martin, you’re as conservative as ever. Have you been teaching at the military academy for too long?”
“You are… Andy, the border merchant?” Martin looked at him in shock. He couldn’t understand why Green would call this profit-driven merchant an “honored guest,” nor why the man was suddenly acting so familiar with him.
“Yes, I am Andy the merchant. But I am also…”
Ssh.
Old Andy placed his hand over his greedy-looking face.
Crack, crack…
The disguise shattered, revealing an aged face beneath.
“Andy, the former Chief of Staff of the Eighth Legion.” He stated his true identity.
“You… you’re still alive?!” Martin’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Wait, then the Commander’s child, Miss Anna…?”
“Have you heard of a certain chamber of commerce that’s become quite famous recently? Miss Anna is currently the one in actual control of it.” Looking at the dumbfounded Martin, Andy smiled triumphantly. “I don’t die that easily, you know.”
“As a reunion gift for an old friend, Martin, I’ll give you a piece of intelligence for free. For example… the fatal weakness of the Orc Kingdom’s army?”
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