For a patient suffering from the serious illness of ego inflation, the most unbearable thing wasn’t criticism or insult.

There existed a mysterious translation device in their inner world that completely ignored whether the condemnation directed at them was justified or not, and drew the transcendent conclusion, “The other person is angry at me! I’m superior to that guy!”

If the Tower of Protection mages had burst out in anger, calling them cowards or despicable, Valdeus wouldn’t have cared. Of course, being a narrow-minded person, he would have bullied them more.

That was why it was even harder for Valdeus to accept this situation where he was completely ignored and things were flowing as they pleased.

He grabbed the tower head’s collar in his possession and lifted it up as if to show off, shouting, “What are you all doing?! You guys, surely you don’t mean you don’t care what happens to the tower head?! If so, I’ll crush her head right now!”

“Wait, please wait a moment!”

“Then make those guys stop right now!”

“They are not under our command! Even if we want to stop them, we’re in a situation where we can’t even speak to them in the first place!”

“Don’t talk nonsense! You’ve been cooperating well until now, and now you want me to believe this?”

“It’s not a lie! After the tower head was captured, contact has been completely cut off for a while now!”

“Kuk…”

As if revealing complex inner thoughts, Valdeus’ movements slowed down.

***

“Since the opponent has taken hostages, the enemy will try to use them in some way.

“There are many methods. They might use them like a throw-away card from the start to test us or break our morale, or they might use them to tie our feet at an important timing.

“At that time, we mustn’t show that we’re being swayed by the opponent. To be more precise, we shouldn’t mix words with the opponent in the first place. For those trying to gain the upper hand through dialogue, the most disliked opponent is one who just beats them up first, like Sir Tin.

“But we can’t completely ignore the hostages, either. We’re not just fighting to bring down the Tower of Control, but our goal is to widely reveal the truth of this incident and restore the honor of Friedel domain. We need Hermina’s help for that, and even if we can’t get her back, we shouldn’t completely fall out with the Tower of Protection.

“Therefore, we need to force confusion on the opponent. If we rampage as if ignoring the hostages’ safety on our side, while the Tower of Protection main force moves as if there’s room for negotiation, the enemy will have no choice but to ponder their judgment. It’s impossible to sway us as they thought, but the value of the hostages doesn’t completely disappear either. They can’t help but have a lot to think about in terms of what move to make next.

“—That hesitation is precisely the gap we should aim for.”

***

The sound of high heels clicking.

Gale, who had teleported behind Valdeus, swung her staff and struck the back of his head.

Whack!

It was a strike so powerful, it completely shattered all the defensive magic unconsciously activated and his luxurious defensive magic tools.

“Gack!”

While Valdeus was undoubtedly a mage of excellent skill, there was nothing he could do when surprised by Gale, who was a rank above him, in a situation where his mind was distracted elsewhere.

A beat late, other mages around tried to respond, but Gale was faster in grabbing Valdeus and holding him out like a shield.

“If you don’t stay still, I can’t guarantee the hostage’s safety—this is what you were going to do, so you understand, right?”

At Gale’s words, asked with a polite attitude yet containing humor and mischief, the mages couldn’t move.

While they hesitated, Gale activated her magic.

『Binding』

『Protection』

『Acceleration』

The character for binding became a rope and tied up Valdeus, the character for protection enveloped the group, and the character for acceleration assisted Gale’s movements.

In the blink of an eye, Gale moved to the Tower of Protection’s formation and handed over the two people she brought.

Most had dumbfounded faces wondering what on earth this situation was, but the few who had heard the plan in advance showed emotions of joy.

“Well done! You really did it!”

“Now we can fight those guys without hesitation!”

The mages began analyzing the contents by opening the leather pouch Valdeus had, and befitting excellent magic tool craftsmen, they quickly understood its structure.

When they put mana into the strangely shaped roots, the mages who had been transformed into plants returned to human form one by one.

Since those Mombi had captured and brought were all veterans who had contributed to the Tower of Protection for a long time, the remaining leadership also welcomed them with joy.

In other words.

Those gathered here right now were the core of the tower that absolutely must not be lost.

Tower Head Hermina’s eyes glowed coldly, and her fingers changed into blades.

Like the hands of a clock turning, she swung the blades while greatly rotating her body.

The mages within the rotation radius of the blades instantly turned into countless pieces of meat.

Clang!

If she had completed a full rotation, it might have ended the war itself in a single moment.

But the movement of the hour hand for the clock of death stopped its movement at 3 o’clock—starting from 12 o’clock.

The White Knight.

The magic doll that was the strongest and latest of this era in pure specs forcibly stopped her attack.

“It’s a fake that changed appearance! Fall back!”

The mages here were also skilled, so they were quick to recognize the situation.

They forcibly grabbed their companions who were still dazed or slow to move and quickly escaped outside the rotation radius of the blades.

Tower Head Hermina of the Tower of Protection.

“Tsk, what a shame, what a shame. If done well, it could have ended comfortably.”

No, the Witch Mombi, who had transformed into her appearance, clicked her tongue as if regretful.

Valdeus, who was rolling on the ground tied up with rope, blankly raised his head and looked at Mombi like that.

“G-Great Teacher…?”

“Yes, son of Lotbart. Watching you was quite interesting. Even clowning becomes art when it crosses a certain line.”

It was words and gestures that seemed to praise with affection, yet also mock with ridicule.

Perhaps to the Witch Mombi, both were the same thing.

Only then did Valdeus realize.

The fact that the person he called Great Teacher had never once called him by name.

Valdeus’ head drooped.

Swish!

Right after, the White Knight’s spear tip rushed towards Mombi’s head.

The White Knight’s attack, enhanced by Gale, contained enough power to pierce even steel walls, but Mombi blocked the White Knight’s attack just by raising one hand.

The body reconstructed through transformation magic had a human exterior, but its contents were far removed from ordinary people.

On top of that, there was the powerful defensive magic inherited from Orin.

Seeing that leisurely defense, Gale’s expression hardened.

The White Knight, who had been ordered to respond immediately if anything happened, failed to fully deflect the sudden surprise attack and took damage. This, coupled with the overwhelming defensive power put on display clearly highlighted the difference in specs compared to their first encounter.

Gale, who was first-class as both a mage and technician, immediately saw through its structure.

She’s handling the surrounding mana as if it’s her own, using the tower as a relay point.

Enhancing basic abilities using ley lines was a very simple and basic ability for a mage’s workshop.

She probably focused only on basic abilities because Dorothea’s party moved so quickly that she didn’t have time to set up a new workshop to her liking, but the problem was that the opponent was strong enough to overflow with just those basics.

“Gale, you’re quite uninhibited against your mentor’s body. Don’t you know that if I die, that’s the end for your mentor as well?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t know much despite using the same body as my mentor. She’s someone who would be more heartbroken by one mage shedding tears due to your misdeeds than having her own finger cut off.”

“Hmm. Then aren’t you curious where the real Tower of Protection head is? I might tell you if you kneel down and lick my shoes right now.”

“Knowing her personality, if we say we couldn’t fight properly and messed everything up because of her, it seems like everyone here would have to kneel and listen to sermons for a week, so I’ll pass.”

“Tsk, what an unlovable mentee you are.”

Mombi shook her head.

If there was some taste of hesitation or anguish, she would have played around by gently poking at it, but with such an iron wall, there was no gap to dig into.

Above all, even the Tower of Protection mages, who still had hesitation remaining, could be seen steeling their resolve after seeing the corpses of their colleagues who died from Mombi’s attack and hearing Gale’s words.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.”

But Mombi didn’t dwell on it much.

She was a capricious witch, after all.

If the scheme went awry, then next was just to crush with force.

Mombi’s hand blade and the White Knight’s spear clashed again.

The Control side mages watching the situation also began pouring fire all at once, and the Protection side mages quickly entered a counterattack stance as well.

As blood and flames bloomed, the curtain of full-scale collision opened.

***

Mages became stronger in their own workshop.

Not to mention if it was a joint workshop created by over a thousand mages, purposely using an entire domain’s worth of massive ley lines as fuel.

Layered barriers. Dozens of each type of guardian to greet enemies, such as evil spirits, ghosts, elementals, golems, and more.

Traps normally left in an inactive state were all activated for the emergency, and intruders had to endure all sorts of traps like incineration, throwing spears, lightning strikes, spatial transfers, and more with every step they took, while simultaneously dealing with the attacks of mages who repeatedly hit and ran.

Overwhelming defenses and interception that would annihilate even a decent domain’s regular army without breaking through even the 1st floor.

The Tin Knight’s party broke through all of that without hesitation.

When the enemy’s offensive surged, the Tin Knight swept it away, Dorothea responded to magic, Sophia took dangerous traps with her body, and when the path was physically blocked, Adelaide smashed through.

Their majesty was so overwhelming that Cap’n Bill, recruited as a collaborator through contract, clicked his tongue in disbelief.

“They be real monsters I tell ya! Moreover, somehow their actions look extremely familiar, are ya guys even worse villains than me?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ argues that judging by Dorothea’s outfit alone is prejudice!]

“Will you two stop talking nonsense!? You’re so relaxed!” Dorothea shouted irritably, taking rough breaths.

While it was something she had prepared for to some extent, the tower’s defenses truly deserved the expression “brutal”.

If she hadn’t saved mana by using balloon undead that were only noisy on the outside but empty inside when attempting the initial undead mass attack, thinking the same method wouldn’t work twice anyway, she might have already collapsed from mana depletion.

It was also a great help that most of Bill’s pirate crew members remained on the 1st floor to block external support.

Trot, who was accompanying as a kind of wedge to keep Cap’n Bill and other executives, who would be randomly resummoned if away from the ship for too long, kicked the mouth of a fire-breathing dog hard and shouted like a scream, “It feels like we’ve been climbing for a while, what floor are we on now!?”

“The building structure and magic are twisted, so it’s hard to tell, but we’ve probably passed about halfway. Anyway, the old man we’re targeting should be on the very top floor—“

Dorothea’s words to hurry a bit more didn’t continue to the end.

Because one of the small skulls she possessed raised its voice.

The skull, engraved with Gale’s unique magic characters here and there, spoke fluently.

《Witch found! Witch found! Outside! Outside!》

“…Tch!”

Dorothea’s expression turned grim.

She had expected it might be so when Mombi, who mainly used transformation and surprise attacks, hadn’t attacked throughout their tower climb, but it seemed the target was indeed outside.

Inside and outside the tower.

They had agreed that whichever side found Mombi, the other side would join them there to fight immediately, so Dorothea’s party should now leave the tower and head towards Gale.

The problem was that the message didn’t end there.

《Witch! Defensive magic continuously auto-repairing! Subjugation impossible at this rate! To subjugate, must destroy the tower’s core supplying mana to the witch!》

《Will focus on buying time, hope you conquer the tower as quickly as possible and come to support!》

As if reflecting Gale’s not very leisurely situation, the skull’s tone was strangely urgent.

Dorothea frowned and looked at the Tin Knight.

The Tin Knight seemed to understand her intention and answered.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that to properly deal with that witch, they need at least four people, including himself, the White Knight, Dorothea and Gale!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ advises that if the other side is defeated before they can go, things will get quite tangled!]

“But we have no choice. We have to deal with the barrier somehow. We can only move as fast as possible.”

“No. You two should go back.”

As if cutting off those words, Adelaide stepped forward.

She looked up at the sky as if gazing at something that would be at the very top of the tower above her head.

“─I’ll see this through here.”

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken