The man stepped out into the parking lot of Potter’s Field wearing the military uniform of the Aionios Empire. His towering height of 190 centimeters, broad shoulders, black hair, black eyes, and sharp jawline gave off a powerful impression. His body, built of nothing but springy resilience like a wide-tread tire, showed clearly through the uniform.
A single star gleamed on his shoulder.
It signified the Shield of the Empire.
The man looked around and frowned. Soon he wiped the expression from his face, tugged down the hem of his jacket and smoothed it flat, then tapped his booted feet against the ground and straightened his trousers until not a single crease remained. With his attire in order, he leaned his upper body into the seat and took out a bouquet of White Oath Flowers.
It was a bouquet that signified silent resistance—a declaration that this death was unjust.
The surroundings the man was looking at were bleak. Trash lay heaped in piles and strewn about in disarray, and field rats swarmed everywhere. Every puddle of standing water had turned into a sewer that gave off a stench, and the air that hung heavily over everything was steeped in demonic energy, harsh and murky. It was thick enough to poison a person and inflict internal injuries.
Caw, caw. Kraaw, caw.
Flocks of crows flew eerily, dotting the sky. All the surrounding trees had withered and died, and the weeds that had pushed up through the cracks in the ground had lost their green. It was a zone that did not permit life. The sky was so thick with dark clouds that it looked ready to pour down rain at any moment, so it was dim even though it was early morning.
“Please use this.”
Hemiljulle, the young mage who had found a halfway decent spot to park and gotten out of the military vehicle, handed the man a gas mask fitted with a demonic-energy filter and a purification rune.
“Thank you.”
To the man, demonic energy was an unfinished resource. At first, he had only gone so far as to close his circulation pathways to block it out. Gradually, he had moved beyond the stage of breaking it down and purifying it within his magic circuits and had become able to realign demonic energy itself.
Finding it hard to refuse the kindness of the mage, who had prepared one for him as well, he gladly accepted it and put it on.
Following Hemiljulle up the unpaved dirt path, the man stopped dead at the entrance. He had imagined an ordinary public cemetery where the unclaimed dead were buried. No walls, just a single perfunctory memorial stone, and rows of graves without headstones.
The moment he came up the narrow, sloping path, a vast stretch of flat ground appeared. A rusted iron gate, cobbled together haphazardly, stood firmly shut, with a [No Entry] sign whose lettering had faded hanging loosely from it.
‘A public cemetery that’s off-limits?’
The man slowly turned his head left and right. With the gate at the center, endlessly tall and long walls stretched out on both sides, their appearance reminiscent of a prison. Yet it was not their imposing scale that had stopped him dead. It was the material he had discovered the walls were made of.
Skulls were embedded densely in the walls, and they were not replicas.
It was clear at a glance that the bodies had been carelessly left out instead of being buried in the earth, so that maggots, flies, and the attacks of wild animals would make them rot quickly and turn into skeletons.
The man looked at Hemiljulle, who had guided him here.
“They say there are more than seventy other places like this along the Empire’s frontier. They built walls out of the skulls, and the remains separately...... It is estimated at over five million people, and here they are believed to have killed more than eight hundred thousand...... I am sorry.”
This was the northeastern frontier of the Empire.
He had heard it on the way here. During the ten years he had spent exiled on Devil’s Island under a false charge of treason, the Empire had massacred more than five million foreigners.
“The Purification Alliance, you said?”
“Yes. They are still powerful.”
It was a warning to be careful.
“Genocide, is it?”
“I am sorry. ......Let us go in.”
Having heard the man murmur hollowly as if to himself, Hemiljulle bowed his head to him and started walking. He passed the man, inserted a key made of magic stone into the iron gate, turned it, and pushed the gate. Screaming—creeak, krk, creeeeak—the iron gate barely opened.
Taking his first step inside the gate, the man stopped dead once again.
It was a public cemetery, yet towers of skulls stacked three meters high rose up like enormous trees. Beneath them, unburied remains formed mounds everywhere. And the remains separately....... He understood now why Hemiljulle had trailed off earlier.
The man was horrified and struck pale at this place where even death had been wantonly desecrated.
How evil must a person become to do something like this?
Could anyone believe that human beings had done this?
When the Empire was doing this, had its citizens simply stood by and watched? Had no one tried to stop it? Was there not a single Good Samaritan?
“Everyone who opposed it and everyone who resisted was executed. That number exceeds five hundred thousand. Since then, only one voice has existed in the Empire. I am sorry for having survived like this, so shamelessly and so disgracefully.”
As though he had read the man’s thoughts, Hemiljulle explained the circumstances.
As hell entered his heart, the man’s once-sturdy steps faltered.
Hemiljulle led the man past dozens of skull towers and mounds of remains and stopped him in front of one mound.
“It is presumed to be here.”
Presumed. Not certain.
The man’s parents, the man’s wife, and the man’s children—classified as unclaimed, without so much as a headstone, dumped in a tangle in the Empire’s public cemetery. That he had to lay flowers without even knowing where exactly they had been discarded, that such an unreal scene was reality, was heartbreaking.
‘If I’ve stepped into a nightmare, let me wake up. Please.’
Hoping desperately, the man laid down the White Oath Flowers he had brought.
As the whole world became a black-and-white monochrome screen, only the pure-white bouquet of White Oath Flowers he had laid down stood out, as though it alone had gained color—white petals and green leaves. Sorrow and rage, resentment and lament poured out.
“Huu...... Haah......”
“We plan to build a family tomb and move them there. I am sorry.”
If the man opened his mana, they would be able to find his family through the unique magical residue that remained even after death, he said.
Hemiljulle bowed his head before the sighs the man let out and the tears he shed.
“No. I would ask you to take your time.”
Finding his family’s remains, moving them, and erecting headstones had become a secondary matter to the man.
The Empire pinned a false charge of treason on the man who had led it to victory in the Seven Years’ War against the surrounding great powers, instead of granting him a two-rank special promotion. An Empire rife with racism would never grant a general’s rank to a foreigner. It fabricated evidence of treason, passed judgment, and exiled him to Devil’s Island.
Ten years there.
His firm resolve to take revenge had been weathered and eroded by time. Ten years was a span long enough for rage, of course, and sorrow and longing and grievance...... for everything to grow dull.
Because he had not wanted to return alive alone, the man made Devil’s Island his home, trained, disciplined his mind, and chose a life there.
The man regretted it.
I, I shouldn’t have done that.
His false charge of treason had been cleared after ten years by a young mage, and after receiving a two-rank special promotion, he had come here to find his family.
Now that he had seen the site of the genocide with his own eyes, his dead rage was born anew.
The countless compatriots of the man who had died unable to keep their dignity as human beings, the multitude of five million foreigners who had died in this Empire—he had to console their souls.
The monsters of the Purification Alliance who had led the massacre of five million did not deserve to live.
Hunting them down, killing them, and raising at least one skull tower of their own beside these skull towers—wouldn’t that be a proper memorial?
It should have been the work of a god.
There was no god in this land.
Which meant this was an Empire not worth existing.
The man’s mind turned quickly. He would return to the capital, give back his rank, and go back to his father’s homeland, where he had been born. There, he would build up his strength and start a war with this Empire. During the war, he would hunt down the Purification Alliance, kill them in the most vicious way imaginable, and then raise a skull tower made solely of the Purification Alliance in the middle of this Potter’s Field.
Just as he was thinking of what he had to do, a nuisance was arising. Twelve cold killing intents were closing in around him, very blatantly and at great speed.
They did not even try to hide their presence.
‘Twelve of them? It’s not like they’re the Twelve Apostles.’
‘All that just to kill me?’
The Empire had no intention of accepting a foreign division commander.
“You there, young mage.”
“Yes, please speak.”
“Ask nothing, and walk straight into the car. Then lie flat on the floor.”
The man took off the gas mask and opened his Mind’s Eye. When he gathered energy in both hands and scattered it around him, the demonic energy all around was realigned. He raised his magic power to firmly thicken his magic current and opened the ether pouch attached to his belt. Ninety-nine darts rose out of it and deployed around the man like hidden gambits.
If he surrounded the car with protective magic, Hemiljulle would be safe. The man scattered his magic current all around to slow the speed of their approach. Once they entered the domain of his gravity-enhanced magic current, depending on each individual’s ability, they would either be trapped inside it or slowed to anywhere from three to more than twenty times slower than their usual speed.
Hemiljulle’s eyes went wide at the wall of darts standing behind the man like an enormous rampart and at the size of the rippling magic current. Only then did he guess what was happening.
“Uh...... I will lend my strength as well. If all twelve architects have come......”
His eyes also asked whether it was even possible to create this without a spell formula, but explanations could come later.
“You are not a military officer, are you? I shall accept the thought alone.”
The man pushed Hemiljulle into the military vehicle with telekinesis and added a mana barrier to the door. He also wrapped the car’s body in protective magic for safety and clad Hemiljulle’s body in an ether holy armor suit that had reached the realm of the divine.
At the point where his magic current ended, he erected twelve pillars of mana. Those pillars would drag the twelve inside and bind them until their mana was spent...... or so he had thought, but the twelve assassins revealed themselves with ease.
Without panicking, the man sent the ninety-nine darts deployed around him flying like a flock of birds.
When launched, the darts became mana-attuned and locked onto their targets. The moment one lodged in a body, the magic array implanted in the dart activated, and its overlapping blades burrowed inward to destroy organs and muscles. They were the size of a pinky finger, so the instant someone scoffed at them, their heart would be torn apart and they would die.
The twelve blocked them all with mana-infused dart shields. On top of that, they implanted bindings to fix the darts in place so they could not be summoned back to the man.
“The Purification Alliance?”
The group of twelve had known the man would raise his magic current, and they had known about his darts as well, which were as good as his own legion. They were people who knew him. Even knowing, the darts should have been hard to evade, yet their magic power far exceeded what the man had anticipated.
“Who are you? Take off your masks.”
“Not for the likes of you, bastard.”
Masked so that only their eyes showed, the twelve simultaneously began pouring out magic restraints. Twelve elements, intricately woven together, came pouring down. Before he had any chance to dodge, a binding began to rise from the ground beneath the man’s feet in the form of the ‘Rack of Judgment.’
“A mere immigrant as a division commander? That’s dangerous.”
“Crawling out of Devil’s Island alive—you’re always such a fool.”
“Dro, you’ve got your honor back, so you’d best die now.”
Having confirmed that the man’s ankles were bound, the group did not hesitate or hold back in threatening him. From the way they called his name, and from how they talked, the thought flickered across his mind: could they be his classmates from the military academy? He could not tell who they were. Their voices were masked by magic devices.
“Nikol, is it? Dolf, Hans, and Chloe too—it’s been a while.”
“You still think you know everything.”
He had taken a stab in the dark on a hunch, and they did not deny it.
“We always wanted to do this, and thankfully, the Imperial Palace and our captain wanted it too.”
Their captain would be Gaston.
As expected, they were his classmates from the military academy.
“Are you the leading players of the genocide?”
“We don’t do supporting roles.”
“From the captain down, we’re all leads. Co-leads.”
The Lords of the Twelve Elements. They openly boasted of the massacre.
Even as they spoke, each of them scattered magic of a different nature, completing the ‘Rack of Judgment.’
Each one of them could be considered equal to the strength of two or three companies. Among them, Chloe Dahl and Dolf Rudils were rightly regarded as Constellations. The combat power of a single one surpassed a battalion’s strength. Against them, it would be difficult for the man to break the binding.
The strongest on the continent.
The man, who had built his strength on Devil’s Island, was the Constellation of the Earth. Perhaps even beyond that.
He had believed he had become the strongest in the world, but facing the Lords of the Twelve Elements and Constellations all at once had been outside his expectations.
Hnnngh.
Khhgh, huff, huff.
Blood flowed from the man’s nose, ears, and mouth. Two of the mana pillars bored into his heart and began tearing at it. An enormous chain made of mana coiled tightly around his neck. The Rack of Judgment only grew sturdier little by little; there was no breaking it. The man’s tongue began to be forced out.
Should he swallow their mana instead?
The man recalled elemental theory. Thinking of the particular properties of the twelve elements, he condensed his mana. He twisted their mana trajectories one by one, in order, as if braiding a straw rope, and at last succeeded in interfering with them.
VWOOOOOOOM──!
The streams of mana extending from the Rack of Judgment had been boring into him as though to melt his heart and brain, bones and muscles—but their unique nature changed.
The dense, thick streams lost their original colors and swirled, then began to be absorbed into the man’s mana. The man became a sphere of chaos and seized his own heart, which was connected to the hearts of the twelve. He pushed the absorbed mana down below his dantian so it could not return to them.
“Hnnnnnngh, hngh, hrrup! Hup!”
Each time the man screamed with all his might, the bodies of the twelve became bound to him and stiffened like blocks of wood.
“Th-this bastard’s turned into a monster!”
“My mana’s melting away!”
“Pour in more, more! Sever his heart!”
The group realized that their own lives were being extracted by the man’s mana and worn away. As it passed the limit he could tolerate, the tendons standing out on the backs of the man’s hands began to swell. And not only the tendons. Die or pass out, either way—the man endured the expanding heat and forcibly drained their mana.
“N-no. My soul’s being torn out whole!”
“Stop. I said stop the mana supply!”
Gurgle. Khhuck.
Blood spurted like fountains from the temples of the twelve as well, and they poured blood from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. The door of death had opened for all of them. The man decided to drag the twelve through that door with him.
‘The Purification Alliance? You all die today.’
Even if he could not raise a memorial skull tower to offer to the corpses of five million foreigners, if he laid the deaths of the twelve who had led the massacre beneath this tower, wouldn’t that be at least a very small consolation?
As he endured tenaciously and greedily swallowed their mana, the elemental magic power of the twelve was finally exhausted, and an explosion went off. The twelve were dragged to the man’s feet and pitched forward, their bodies flattened.
A chain of explosions went off in the man’s blood vessels as well, and his brain began to freeze cold.
The moment the man collapsed atop the deaths of the twelve, words he had heard long ago pierced his ears.
“Assemble at the Grand Field within one hour!”
He was seventeen, back at the military academy he had been just about to enter.
***
TL Note: Potter’s Field — an English term for a burial ground for unknown, unclaimed, or destitute people.