Just as Reivan, Helen, and the giant serpent they were riding on passed Lageton's city walls, Reivan realized that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to make his heroic entrance this way.
Zouros had an effect on spirit beasts, after all. One that involved scaring the spiritual crap out of them with its mere presence.
Reivan had an alternative option because he could summon Dom as a steed instead even though his lupine companion would despise being used as a mount. But due to various reason, he chose to ride someone else.
'Sormon have mercy, this is so embarrassing.'
When they got close enough, Reivan called Zouros back and shamefully piggybacked on Helen. She could fly on account of her affinity with the [Wind] element, so they would reach their destination much faster by doing this. He felt a little reluctant to do so, but he wasn't heavy enough to trouble her in any way, given how strong she was too. It was a good thing Sir Xander—Valter’s descendant and the one slated to fill in as Reivan’s guardian knight here in Samsara—wasn’t here, otherwise, the ride would get pretty awkward.
Reivan had sent him away to scope out the situation in the northern portion of Arkhan since he was justifiably curious about the situation there.
In any case, given the battle situation, it would be ill-advised to approach his forces so suddenly. Friendly fire was unlikely, but the chances weren't zero. Flight always had the weakness of being in the enemy's line of sight, but in this case, it worked to their advantage because their own allies could see them coming and know they weren't enemies. That was why Helen was unironically the better mount than Dom in this particular situation.
Besides, sneaking up on that giant ball of lava wasn't feasible. In the first place, they didn't even know how its sensory organs worked, so how could they skirt around it?
'Seriously though. That thing is ginormous. What the fuck.'
It had looked huge from far away, but it looked even bigger up close. So much so that it was messed with his sense of perspective. The sheer scale of it made him wonder how to go about defeating such a foe. But as it turned out, the forces in Lageton had taken out a couple of them, so that meant it wasn't actually impossible.
In any case, he now had some leeway to examine the battle.
"Don't move around so much," Helen complained.
"My bad." Reivan chuckled sheepishly. As expected, he was a little bigger than Helen and found it hard to mount her properly. It was a lot easier when it was that kind of mounting, but this wasn't that kind of situation.
After squirming into a somewhat stable position without annoying his wife, Reivan redirected his attention to the battle.
Surrounding the Lava Demon were twenty or so darkin circling in the sky, firing streams of black fire when they sensed an opportune time to attack. Using fire against lava seemed like it should prove fruitless, but somehow, it was working. Where the dark flames licked, everything vanished.
Reivan still didn’t quite understand why or how it worked. But it did. And that was a good thing.
Other than them, there were also numerous knights running around on the ground and firing off various elemental attacks, never staying in one spot for too long. Streams of highly pressurized water, bolts of lightning, and surprisingly aerodynamic boulders among other things kept on pelting the giant glob of volcanic lava, shaving off parts of its sun-like body. Some, probably knights from House Mercer, were flying similarly to Helen and blowing away the lava wholesale.
Surprisingly, there were quite a few battlemages too, each flying on avian-type spirit beasts while firing off streams of blue light that shaved off some of the lava as well. Where these lights struck, the lava would harden and fall off, landing on the ground in an ashen splatter.
‘They’re not really aiming for anything in particular… Just shaving away at its body, huh?’
Reivan was horrified to realize that because the Lava Demon didn’t have any glaring weaknesses or exposed vitals, the only way to kill it was by whittling it all down.
It was an undertaking that must have taken an incredible amount of time. Not to mention the sheer heat the Lava Demon constantly released was enough to burn someone’s hair off even if the person wasn’t that close.
‘Plus, it’s not as if the thing just stands there and allows itself to get fucked.’
Sometimes, tendrils of lava would reach out and make a grab for the many flying creatures buzzing around it like flies. Sadly, this wasn’t very effective because the darkin, knights, and the spirit beasts were all keeping a respectable distance from the orb that allowed them ample time to react.
Another form of attack seemed to involve simply shooting clumps of lava at people, which was much more troublesome to deal with but also accelerated the Samsaran forces' goal of shaving away at the monster's body.
‘That’s it, though. It’s not that complicated.’
Really, it seemed the only extraordinary thing about these so-called Lava Demons was how tenacious and hardy they were. The bastards were certainly difficult to kill, he’d give them that. But over all, they didn't seem like much of a threat if they were barred from getting close to cities. Luckily, they didn't seem to have the intelligent malevolence to ignore the knights, darkin, and mages to instead make a beeline for Lageton. It seemed more bestial, in that it would simply go after whatever was closest.
“Attacks that affect large areas are better against it than lethal ones,” Helen muttered loud enough for him to hear given their proximity, though the wind blowing past his ears almost made him miss it. “Don’t you have that thing? With the swords and the ice.”
“I do, indeed.” Reivan nodded. “We gotta get a little closer though. We’re still too far.”
“On it.”
Along the way, the darkin and knights noticed Reivan and Helen’s arrival and were visibly relieved when the new arrival wasn’t an enemy. No doubt, some of them were disappointed after finding out that their reinforcements were just a young woman with a dude on her back.
They quickly realized that the “dude” in question was Reivan Aizenwald though.
“Hello, everyone~!” Reivan waved at them as the distance closed. And when he was finally at an optimal distance, he summoned about a hundred swords and sent them to surround the gigantic Lava Demon on all sides.
Though he was limited to sixteen flying blades while fighting elites, he could control a lot more if he didn’t need very fine-tuned manipulation of each one. He just made a bunch of swords through his soul armament and went ham, launching them forward as fast as he could without even bothering to aim properly. There was no refinement or grace to the trajectory—only brute force pointed at a general area.
Reivan didn’t know if the giant ball of lava was sentient enough to ignore the blades because pure physical attacks were ineffective against it, but it made no move to defend against the blades.
‘Yeah, it's not that smart at all, huh?’
All one hundred blades suddenly burst out with a thick cloud of frost, managing to cover a significant portion of the giant lava creature. It was such an intense display of icy energy that the heat filling the air until now was temporarily replaced by a freezing cold.
When the white mist cleared, about sixty percent of the Lava Demon fell off as hardened lava.
Seemingly seeking to fix itself, what remained of its body was pulled into the center, reforming the creature into a sphere once again—except it was a lot smaller than last time.
‘Well, I definitely did tons of damage.’
Reivan chuckled breathily, a little lightheaded from how much mana he’d spent all at once. “Helen, look. I did that. I’m awesome, right?”
Helen nodded. “Mhm. Really awesome.”
“Heh. That’s right. Butter me up, baby.”
“You’re the best. The strongest.”
It may have sounded somewhat sarcastic, but Helen wasn’t the type of person to use that particular weapon a lot—unlike Jiji. That meant her compliment had a bit of sincerity to it, though he didn’t know how much of it was just said to flatter him.
“You’re drained though.” Helen pointed out with a smidgen of worry tainting her voice. “We should go back now.”
After a little while, Reivan managed to banish the dizziness of mana exhaustion. “Didn’t you want to fight something? You know, get the muscles moving.”
Helen turned her head to the giant lava ball that was now being ganged up on even more fervently by knights, darkin, and battlemages. Then she shook her head. “Seems boring. I’m fine with just going back like this.”
‘Guess she has a point.’
From everything he’d observed, this Lava Demon was similar to an MMO raid boss.
They were huge and extremely hard to kill. But if you studied their attack patterns, had decent equipment, and good teammates, then defeating it was a breeze. It would be a long, boring, and repetitive raid of cycling attacks over and over, but it would undoubtedly work as proven by previous iterations.
And victory was all that mattered in the end.
Such things didn’t appeal to his wife much. If she was going to fight, she wanted to use the opportunity to improve her skills by using the opponent as a whetstone—even if the battle ended up being a lot harder overall. This adversary wouldn’t provide that level of challenge, however.
In fact, he also didn’t find the Lava Demon worthy of his attention when he saw what it could do up close. He may complain about it sometimes, but his temperament was similar to Helen's in a lot of ways including, but was not limited to, being a bit of a fighting maniac.
‘At least I looked pretty impressive to my subordinates!’
In Aizen’s royal family, it was imperative that one’s subjects didn’t consider the ruler as someone who only stayed safe in the confines of the palace. They had to know that if push came to shove, the ruler would fight alongside them, rolling around in the dirt and mud to defend this tiny little corner of the creation that they called home.
Administrative skill was important and so was foresight, but in a world of violence and the supernatural, having a hard fist to use when necessary was the best. Though it was a small and ultimately insignificant bit of help, the point was that Reivan proved to his citizens that he wasn’t just going to order people onto the battlefield without the willingness to go there himself.
“Let’s go back,” Reivan said. “It’s almost time for bed too. I really want to see how you can be so sure our first kid's going to be a boy...”
Helen hummed in agreement before turning around and flying back to Lageton.
Reivan stopped her though, asking to be let down. He initially thought he’d get used to piggybacking on his wife, but he was wrong. It was still uncomfortable and embarrassing at the same time.
‘I showed up to my subjects like this! Whatever dignity I gained by showing off is ruined. Zero-sum!’
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After being let down, he summoned his cranky wolf mount to ride instead. And just as he’d expected, the orange light coming from behind them gradually dimmed halfway through his trip back.
It was a sign that Samsara’s forces were just a few steps away from victory.
As he smiled in satisfaction at this, his body suddenly tensed up and transformed into lightning to create distance from his previous location. Helen had done so at the same time as him, turning into a gust of wind that took to the skies. Dom had also followed after him, apparently taking his lead but unsure of what was happening.
Moments after they both got out, a dozen black-clad men came swinging out of the ground with their spears, maces, and axes.
Reivan grimaced at the unexpected assailants. “Who the fuck are you idiots? Do you know where you are right now?”
Not waiting for a response, Reivan stomped on the ground.
‘Good thing I still have just enough in the tank to do this.’
From the spot he’d stomped, an impenetrable darkness spread outward. Eldritch tendrils grabbed at the mysterious assailant’s feet and gradually drained them of magic power.
This was the same technique he used on the public exhibition match where he first fought Gwen. Except the affected area was much smaller but he also afford to be more ruthless by adding barbs to the tentacles so they would be harder to escape. Additionally, the drain was much faster because of training and general insights on how to improve it.
The absorbed magic power immediately restored a good portion of his depleted mana given that there were twelve targets.
‘Good stuff. Now we’re back in business.’
Reivan snapped his fingers as even more tendrils spawned to wrap around the assailants.
The assailants were immediately but silently alarmed, trying to cut off the tendrils and make a run for it. But before they even finished cutting off one, more would have grabbed at them. It was a never-ending cycle, and little did they know that their own magic power was what fueled the tendrils.
Perhaps because of that hopeless situation, one of them took something out. Judging from how the arm’s muscles tensed, Reivan expected that something to be thrown.
As expected, some kind of throwing knife was lobbed toward him, but with a casual wave of his hand, the knife stopped mid-air and flew gently into his hand. With a casual inspection, he discovered it was laced with some time of acidic liquid that gave off a pungently acrid smell.
‘Poison. This is strong, but weaker than the poisons I’ve memorized. Hah. They tried to poison the guy with a poisonous body...’
“Your preparations are lacking.” Reivan sneered as he gloated. When fighting other sentient creatures, angering them often invited mistakes, so it was always a viable tactic to try as long as one didn't truly grow arrogant. “You think your meager abilities can take me down? Go back to your mothers and suck on their tits a bit more then come back.”
“Rein, you’re being too much…” Helen grimaced at him. “Isn’t there no need for mind games with opponents this weak?”
“Ah. I guess you’re right. My bad.”
“It’s okay. Just don’t waste time like that next time.”
‘She’s pretty good at this too.’
Her words seemed to anger them more than his, in fact. Their struggles against the shadow tendrils were growing more rabid. Was it because the insults came from a pretty woman? Men certainly got hurt by insults from women more than barbs from other men, after all.
Sadly for them, their struggles were futile.
Flying swords stabbed them from behind, the razor-sharp tip emerging out of their stomachs. Their bodies immediately tensed up in pain, but nobody could muster up any strength as they bled to death on accursed grounds that sapped them of both stamina and strength.
Eventually, the assailants grew limp as every ounce of energy in their body was drained out.
“Gonna interrogate them?” Helen guessed.
“Not me. I’ll ask some more experienced hands.” Reivan shrugged, taking out a small vial that contained a liquid healing potion that Saintess Frey asked him to try out. He’d tried it and it was good, but the holy power in it couldn’t be replicated by his ability, making it useless for him to try replicating.
Frey sent him crates of the stuff, so he needed reasons to burn through them.
Controlling the vial remotely with [Formless Will], he floated it over one of the more cooperative prisoners. The cork was soon popped and the leafgreen liquid poured into the man’s body.
“What do we do with the others?” Helen gestured at the other eleven assailants.
Reivan looked at them too and remembered how he would have lost his life if he hadn’t spent his childhood getting hit in the back of the head during training. His intuition saved his bacon once again.
‘Try to assassinate me, huh?’
He shrugged. “I only need to interrogate one of them, no?”
With another snap of his fingers, the swords stabbed into the other assailants twisted with a fleshy crunch as the scent of blood permeated the air around them.
It was a bit messy, but offering mercy to one’s enemies was risking the lives of his loved ones.
Reivan threw a glance at all the corpses and then snorted. He then walked over to the one he’d saved and took up the mask covering the mystery man’s face.
‘Huh.’
He’d expected some ugly bastard with a face that even a mother wouldn’t love. But what he found was a completely shriveled-up face that looked like it should be wrapped in bandages and belonged in a sarcophagus.
‘Shit.’
Immediately realizing what the assailant was, Reivan blew the body away with a quick and powerful pulse of [Formless Will]. He then kicked off against the ground to create as much distance from the Argonian Esper.
Just as he’d feared, the criminal he’d spared exploded in a shower of blood, flesh, and bones. Even the other eleven corpses did too.
Ghastly specters with long flowing white hair erupted from the unfortunate men. Shrieks of madness rasped out of the jagged mouths like a twisted welcome to the world of mortal kind. Long grey arms ended in sharp white nails while everything from the hips down ended in a spindly pair of legs that were nailed together, floating off the ground.
‘Fuck. It really is the empire, huh…’
He supposed it made sense. Reivan had sent Sir Xander to spy on the empire’s activities north so it made sense that the empire would do something to monitor Aizen’s actions in Arkhan.
‘They must have seen an opportunity to assassinate me and took it.’
If Reivan had stayed back, these assailants wouldn’t have revealed themselves at all.
‘Unlucky.’
Reivan clicked his tongue as he summoned a sword, preparing for combat. Most likely, some of the people fighting the Lava Demon discovered the anomaly happening to him and were rushing to his aid.
But he didn’t think he needed them. Though troublesome, he could handle a couple of espers. And besides, Helen was here.
‘They really got it wrong when they named these things espers.’
Reivan couldn’t blame the past scholars of Aizen, though. All the modern earth shit was left behind by the First King through notes, of which only some were crudely illustrated. The natives of this world justifiably didn’t understand certain nuances that only those from Modern Earth would understand.
These specters had psychokinetic abilities and could read minds. That was why the ancient Aizenians called them espers.
On the other hand, Reivan knew that wasn’t quite right.
‘They’re wraiths. Or ghosts, specters, phantoms, or whatever. Undead, basically.’
Because some people kept comparing his [Formless Will] to these things’ psychokinetic powers, Reivan did some reading on them and discovered that they definitely weren’t “espers”.
Espers didn’t possess people and eat their host’s flesh to eventually gain a body by which to interact with the world.
As for the psychokinetic powers, he supposed they were similar to “poltergeists” or something along those lines. Reading minds would also be easy if you literally possessed someone. That was most definitely not how espers, as he knew them, did it.
Sadly, Reivan couldn’t correct his nation’s naming mistake. Not after more than a millennia had passed since the christening. So he was forced to just live with this irksome fact gnawing on the back of his head.
‘In any case, let’s deal with these shits first.’
Capturing them alive was impossible since that required a lot of prior arrangements, so he could only kill these wrait—espers, he meant. He would have to kill all of these espers to prevent them from possessing some other poor sap.
“There’s twelve.” Helen kept her stoic gaze on the espers moving to surround them as she brandished a saber, with a dagger waiting on the other hand. “That should be six each if we split it… But how about we race to seven? No large area techniques.”
Reivan grinned. “Interesting. I’m up for it.”
“Loser has to come up with ten name suggestions for the baby.”
“Eh, wait a minu—”
“Ready. Go.”
‘You little…! Lemme talk!’
They came out to find a good time, but the good time had found them.
Not one to waste time, Helen’s eyes flickered with lightning before she vanished. Two of the espers immediately evaporated, a third one barely blocking her blade with its sharp claws.
Suddenly finding himself on the back foot, Reivan rushed the nearest esper by turning into lightning too. He wasn’t as fast as Helen, and he never would be, because her affinities were just built for speed.
Fortunately, he didn’t lack power.
Time seemed to slow around him as he reappeared in front of a hapless esper that didn’t know its unlife was turned into a competition between husband and wife.
Its reaction speed seemed extremely fast because it tried to block despite his sudden assault. But Reivan’s blade broke through its feeble claws and parted it in half.
‘That’s one!’
To speed things up, Reivan summoned his sixteen flying swords, not forgetting to imbue them with a special aetherblade art that made it possible to attack incorporeal enemies—like espers or knights who abused the technique of turning into elemental energy for a moment.
Espers completely nullified physical attacks against them despite being able to attack at the same time. That made them troublesome opponents for weaker knights.
‘Beginner-grade and Junior-grade knights, I mean. Gotta get used to those new ranks…’
He was technically very young, and yet, he was a Senior-grade knight after all. Youth and age had little to do with strength and ability in this world.
Reivan then rushed yet another esper and cut it in two with little resistance. That created an opening that two other espers wanted to capitalize on but Reivan just scoffed.
A giant snake's head bit down from above and swallowed one of the espers. Meanwhile, a large white wolf with golden crown-like horns jumped out of the shadows to tear the other esper apart with claws and fangs.
‘She said no large area techniques, but she didn’t say I couldn’t ask help from the tenants living in my soul!’
It definitely wasn’t cheating. Sure, he felt like shit because he was breaking the honor of a duel, but he felt too burdened by thinking of ten names for his child.
What if he came up with a shitty name? Wouldn’t his kid hate him forever?
He didn’t want that at all. Not one bit.
‘Three! Four more to go, boys! Help me out!’
Zouros enthusiastically snapped up another one while Dom casually turned another into a popsicle with a single breath.
Reivan was just about to kill his sixth one while targeting a seventh one with his remote blades when both of them were cut apart before his blades even touched them.
“I win.”
Reivan swiveled over to his wife to find her holding up a peace sign with a crossbow in the other hand.
A tiny green lizard—no, it was a dragon—landed on her shoulder and proudly puffed out its chest while looking at Reivan.
“This little one is very fast as well.” Helen smiled and tickled the mini-dragon’s chin, causing it to coo in a way he didn’t know dragons could. “I expect a list of possible names by next week, okay?”
Reivan sighed as his shoulders slumped. He did lose this one, so he reluctantly nodded. “Understood…”
Seemingly amused at him, Helen smiled. “You should get used to naming children. Aren’t you supposed to father dozens?”
“Don’t even remind me… I wish there was a book with a bunch of names.”
“There is one. But I don’t want you to use it. Come up with something on your own. Isn’t that a worthy birthday gift to your child?”
‘Why does she have to make so much sense…?’
Reivan sighed once again but resolved to get better at naming things. For his kids.
----------------------------------------
With the sheer gap in ability, the two Senior-grade knights made quick work of the twelve espers and returned to Lageton without any additional incident.
Reivan ended up losing the impromptu contest that Helen proposed. Despite the bitterness of his defeat, he couldn’t help but once again realize why the rest of the world called knights monsters.
Espers were by no means weak.
They were incorporeal, meaning you were fucked if you didn’t know magic, didn’t have a spirit beast, or didn’t know elementalism. Using Qi or Mana would be mildly effective, and essence even more so. But by the time you killed them, would you still be alive?
Not to mention how espers had no fear of death, unlike humans.
Fast reflexes, razor-sharp claws, great speed, and the ability to turn invisible or hide in someone else’s body for a while made them very troublesome if you weren’t overwhelmingly stronger or extremely prepared.
Yet either Reivan or Helen would have had no problem fighting all twelve. Heck, they had been ambushed when Reivan initially had low magic power, caught completely off-guard.
And throughout the entire battle of life and death, Reivan didn’t even feel an ounce of fear or alarm. He knew his capabilities and knew the enemy’s, so his confidence was maintained despite being focused.
The result spoke for itself.
‘We’re… really fucking strong. Oh, my days…’
Not just Reivan and Helen either. They were abnormalities, in a way. But the other Senior-grade knights weren’t that far off—a lot of them could have utterly toyed with dozens of espers by themselves. He supposed this was why people said that each knight had to be outnumbered at least ten to one if they were to be defeated. Preferably, it would be twenty or thirty, with each member having similar physical capabilities.
This little event had reassured him further: the rulers of this continent would be surnamed Aizenwald.
‘Now, I just gotta switch my surname to Samsara or something to make sure it’s not me…’
On his first day as a ruler, Reivan was already thinking of ways to avoid ruling more.