Chapter 182

Prophet Marqion (4)

Cel ducked, avoiding the terrifying power of the golem’s fist. The fist, which instead slammed into the ground and buried itself elbow-deep. If it had struck Cel, it would have shattered her whole body. Despite this, the three knights rushed toward the consecrated golem without any hesitation.

Klang!

Thud!

Ether collided as the swords clanged off of the stone. The more they cut it, the more their own ether was being mercilessly worn out. But they couldn’t stand back or fight with tricks. If the line were breached, the civilians left would be caught in the fray. Guilard, noticing the dilemma of the defending side, burst into laughter.

“Hahaha. How long can you face the loyal artificial life imbued with this great sanctification?”

“There wasn’t a good guy with a long tongue like you.”

At Cel’s provocation, Guilard’s face distorted.

“I will put you in the fires of salvation first. You won’t be leaving this garden alive!”

The consecrated golems movements were incomparable to the previous ones. Its fists dug up enough dirt to block out their view as its actions were becoming much more elaborate than before. There were three golems left now, gradually tightening around the knight reserves. Arthur and Cel, no longer able to avoid them, infused ether into their gauntlets to withstand their attack. The magic tools were broken and scattered easily, but they managed to incapacitate two of them in the collision.

The only one left was the largest, with that malicious purple ether.

Kuo!

“[My faithful servant, punish those unbelievers!].”

Klang!

Arthur ran at the golem. On its own will, the golem jumped back while holding onto Guilard, evading Arthur’s sword. The golem was learning through the combat as if it had an ego. Early, he had used too much ether in defending those evacuating. Now, it wasn’t enough to finish it off.

Kleio sat down on the ground, his legs unable to support him, as his hands gripped the dirt. The children were being pushed back by the final golem, which left a purple afterimage with each movement. He, too, lacked the ether to use his magic.

‘Somehow…!’

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Hester Ward was enjoying all of this like it was some show. Most of the mansion had turned into ruins due to the heavens-shaking vibrations from before, but one part of the north wall had barely maintained its shape. The wizard, who hid in a precarious position on the balcony, held a leisurely balance even at the breathtaking height.

‘It’s the first time in my life to watch such a special show.’

Though she was a scholarship student of the Defense Forces, she was just a commoner girl wizard to the nobles. She had never been able to enjoy the box seats before in the opera. Not that she would buy a ticket to such an event anyway. Until she had been properly paid, Hester hadn’t wasted a single dinar. She was a scholarship student, which meant she was exempt from the dorm and tuition fees, though other expenses had to be covered by herself. The costs she needed to cover soared to the sky from transportation expenses, accommodations, wands, magic books, and mana stones.

Of course, the teachers were kind. They took pity on the commoner girl, offering support from the Defense Forces occasionally. However, that artificial show gave her a sense of humiliation. She had received a scholarship, so she had to become a soldier and bear arms at the order of a talented noble boss. Having etheric sensitivity, she hoped to become a great wizard to escape the back alleys. Had she really known what being a sorcerer meant, she wouldn’t have made the same choices.

Hope demanded a cost that Hester, born as an illegitimate child, couldn’t afford. The list of bills left by the dream of not wanting to live like her mother and sister was terrifying. It wasn’t just material costs that had to be paid in return. No, more than that.

She was born as the illegitimate child of a laundry lady in Novantes, a southern resort. She worked as a maid at a noble’s summer villa. Of course, as soon as her mother was found pregnant, she received a small sum of money and was kicked out, and the summer cottage was put up for sale. Her mother raised her and her two sisters in poverty. Her older sister, who was very beautiful, walked away in the arms of a businessman at the age of nineteen.

Around that time, Hester started stealing. The first thing she stole was a dusty spell-book. The punishment for a thief, no matter how young, was a harsh beating. Even though the bookstore owner didn’t catch Hester, she had been roughly reprimanded by her mother when she returned home. Still, the thrill felt good, so she continued to steal. She then stole chalk and a blackboard for practice. She had never been caught, which was why she was able to enter the academy.

People praised the reign of Queen Carmela for saving the poor, but just because the poor could read letters and not fear dying of starvation right away, it hadn’t changed the fate of this young girl. She had often been grateful that she hadn’t ever been considered beautiful. Had she been, she would’ve smeared lye on her own face. Being able to continue life beautiful was the privilege of nobles and those well-off.

Hester appreciated the misery and the beauty of the battle beneath her. The wizard created the spar of God from his slender fingertips, and the third prince wielded a sword of fire gracefully, as a noblewoman with indigo hair and a girl like a May rose fought beside them. Which of them would survive? It didn’t matter to Hester if all of them died, but she felt that their ether would be a waste.

‘It’s a mistake to let the nobles run away, but instead, they’ll bite a bigger prey, so you did well.’

Hester shook her pockets full of mana stones, a material that was previously unimaginable to have. It was a treasure given to her by fools who enjoyed wealth and comfort just because they were born as noble.

From the beginning, Hester understood that some were born lowly, and some were born noble. Some were supposed to live to be ruled, and some were born with nature to reign. It made sense; Hester wasn’t an abolitionist. However, she didn’t want a country ran by spineless senators with unintelligent children.

So, she chose a truly beautiful and noble person as the ruler. The emperor’s sister and the king’s spouse, Juleika. Under her, Hester became the Mage Hester. Queen Juleika wasn’t one who ever showed off false intimacy or sympathy resulting from a sense of superiority. She was born as a person who stood above lawmakers and nobles. Trying to exploit a shallow understanding of authority against a lower-born person was unnecessary for a woman known as the princess of Brunnen. Despite being slandered by a stupid and sick king and on the brink of being overturned by an illegitimate son, Juleika was still beautiful and dignified.

“So Sir Hester, complete this unprecedented magic right. We allow you to establish yourself as the greatest wizard in the empire and the kingdom.”

That short, lukewarm order had taken Hester’s obedience for granted. The day she first met Juleika, she had taken the Hydra’s poison. She couldn’t forget the joy of the day when the evil demon-blood-stained garment, which she had fearfully stolen from Ezra’s poor laboratory, became Hydra’s poison. The covenant didn’t take anything great from her. What Hester had forgotten was only her mother’s name. That old life was now gone.

She had studied ten times harder than the others to keep her scholarship, so Hester knew more than a typical research wizard. When Hester, who passed the military service exemption even after graduating from school in second-place, entered the Mobile Defense Force’s mobile investigation team, those innocent professors were saddened that she hadn’t continued their research. Hester had spat under her smile. Zebedee was the second son of a lord who owned land in the south, and Maria Gentile was the eldest granddaughter of a sorcerer who received the defense medal for building the Absalom barrier. How could they understand her life?

The magic that had passed down from Queen Isolt was originally the study of nobility. Without a birth certificate and the church’s consecration record, she was in worse condition than those around her. Not many organizations offered opportunities to wizards from unknown origins who only had one school diploma. Hester Ward chose Ezra’s department only to report on equal conditions for promotion and the amount of risk pay. It was hard to work as a member of the mobile research division.

Hester felt a kind of fateful foreboding. All the toils and pains she had been through were to prepare her for this time. When she was writing the Demon Encyclopedia, she was only listed as Ezra’s co-author, but that was okay. Instead, she had entered the royal library to gather the information that would help Juleika. Experiments that cost the lives of others had been banned by Queen Carmela, who had been obsessed with the strange notion of natural women’s rights. That stupid mistake was the only thing Hester always laughed at. Man was an animal of the environment, and only what could be sustained in miserable suffering was true integrity.

‘If she had known that her proud eldest son would become a crazed killer and run wild, would the queen have pursued such a determined nobility?’

Carmela died first, and her husband shortly later. That’s why a memorandum that recorded their studies remained in the vault of the queen’s palace.

Juleika had unearthed that memoir.