“You seem to really hate Arzyna.”
“During the great war, Arzyna declared that they would do nothing to help because everything would be destroyed anyway. How could I like a country like that? Even kids like myself were finding ways to do our part back then, but those fools called our efforts meaningless. For a national government to be saying something like that—it was unthinkable.”
“It’s been proven which side was correct.”
“Well, clearly. But perhaps because of that, Arzyna just became more closed off than ever.” Derry frowned as he remembered how the Arzyna Kingdom had always refused any kind of contact, and he nonchalantly looked up at the blue sky.
“We need to keep tracking down Udo. I hope nothing bad...happens...” Derry’s mutters drifted off into the blue sky outside; or it should have, at least. As he happened to look up at the sky, he happened to notice the change.
“This can’t be...”
Just who had muttered those words? It might have been Aldrick, or...everyone currently outside in Greer. But most of those people hadn’t witnessed this personally and only knew of it as a tale from history.
Of course, Derry could not deny his eyes. Every morning, when he and people of his generation got up, they would check the sky and pray for it to be blue, for that dark day to never come again. But those prayers had been shattered. Their ordinary everyday life had been smashed to bits. That day, the day of destruction, had come again.
All of the moisture drained from Derry’s mouth, and his wrinkled face turned pale, tinted with a blue now...unlike the sky. In an instant...color changed, the sky changed, the world changed. The sky was red—deep red—without a single speck of blue in sight. It was certainly getting close to sunset, so it wouldn’t be that strange for the sky to be tinged with crimson, but it was a completely different story when even the clouds were a blood-soaked red. It was a traumatic sight for all living beings. Not even the transcendent dragons would have wished to fly in that sky again.
Derry’s eyes could tell that this was no natural phenomenon, but one caused by magic, which meant that the reasons behind it were limited.
“Fucking hell!” Derry came to his senses at once and cursed like he had in his young days. He pulled down a bookcase in the council chairman’s office and activated the magic circle hidden behind it. “In the name of Derry, Chairman of the Magic Council, I declare Red One! All combatants to battle stations! All civilians take shelter at the academy!”
The magic circle Derry had activated let his voice reach not only Greer, but all allied parties like the Rin Kingdom. The alarm he had just declared, Red One, was a doomsday signal, to be used only if the sky should ever turn red again; in other words, it signaled another great war...and the Great Demon King’s revival.
“Hurry!”
“Evacuate quickly!”
Even seventy years after the end of the war, the people in charge still regularly conducted training across the city by simulating the great war, so they immediately started evacuating the citizens just like they’d practiced, and those registered as combatants rushed out. This was proof that no matter how many generations went by, the terror of the war had lingered in everyone’s hearts, but it was this same terror that made everyone act so swiftly.
But their enemies were also swift. There was a good reason that, despite having so many great mages, Greer had been caught off guard and fallen behind during the great war. Space itself twisted. A single point, then ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand small points in space cracked and twisted, until they were all smashed apart.
“Gryaaah!”
Countless massive creatures started crawling out of the tears in space. They were hideous crosses between insects and reptiles, their bodies and faces a mixture of all manner of beasts and bugs. Their scales and fur mixed into mottled patterns, and each of these foot soldiers was as large as an elephant, their red eyes shining devoid of reason.
“Gryaaaaah!”
It was the army of darkness of the olden days. The vanguard troops, their numbers easily exceeding ten thousand, bellowed as they rubbed their twisted horns, claws, and mantis-like sickles together, creating an unpleasant din. It was the same as the past, just like the day these troops had used the forbidden technique of teleportation to launch a surprise attack on Greer. Even the Great Demon King had only been able to use this forbidden technique once, but since teleportation had been considered impossible, the surprise attack had worked perfectly, and this city-state had been one step away from collapse.
The great mages heading to intercept the dark vanguard gathered at Greer’s shining, golden walls. There was a mage clad in a hood and a woman hiding her face behind a mask with geometrical patterns drawn on it. An old mage’s staff rang as it hit the ground. There was a woman of nearly eighty years old who still looked as young as a child and a delicate, bespectacled man who observed the dark army with great interest, among many others, making for close to twenty great mages of all kinds. Every last one of them belonged to the Deep layer, and they had in each of them the strength of a thousand warriors.
“They came here by ignoring my teacher’s anti-teleportation measures, which means that...he really has revived?” Aldrick, the man wielding flames powerful enough to earn him the title of Incinerator, was also here.
“How long has it been since I experienced real combat?” So was Agnes, with her sharp glare.
“I don’t believe I’ve grown dull.” And Falke, who’d drawn his sword.
Many of the people here were Lara’s students, part of her family, or other super elites connected to her.
“Don’t think I’ll be a brat forever, dammit!” There were easily over a thousand mages stationed there, and the one leading them had once been a boy running small errands during the great war: Derry, a mage of the Hadal layer, which was recognized as the pinnacle of all magic.
Everyone’s fingers started shining, bright enough to rival the golden walls.
“Commence attack!”
“Perish!”
“Lightning crashes down!”
“May there be silence!”
“Turn them all into dust!”
“Flames, come forth!”
At Derry’s command, destruction broke out, following magic’s true objective, and the second battle of Greer, the Academic City-State, began.
“Gryaaah!”
The monstrous vanguard troops let out horrid shrieks as they advanced toward Greer. An army of over ten thousand, each soldier as large as an elephant, shook the outskirts of the city as it tried to break through the walls. All manner of magic was activated atop the walls in hopes of stopping their progress.
Aldrick the Incinerator had become Lara’s apprentice early on, and because he was one of the most sensible in a crowd of oddball mages, his fellow apprentices relied on him. This wasn’t him getting the short end of any stick; he was an outstanding man who chose responsibility willingly, and he was most definitely not just a fan of the Hero’s party.
“Flames, come forth!”
A torrent of dark red flames as eerie as the abhorrent, red sky—even more eerie, in fact—erupted from Aldrick’s five shining fingers. Fire in its rawest form, the great primordial destructive power, headed straight from the city walls toward the demonic vanguard. Even the monsters’ tough hides and armor stood no chance against a flame so merciless it could even counter the breath of a dragon and melt unwarded castle walls down to nothing. Swallowed by the inferno, a group of monsters burnt to a crisp before they could even bellow in pain, incinerated so thoroughly it was like they had never even existed.
Offensive spells often resembled natural phenomena that were easy to picture, as was the case with these flames. Being able to form a solid image of the intended outcome made the magic more powerful.
“Perish!”