The stairs leading down to the basement were incredibly deep and long.

Even those who were bustling about saying they should hurry, and those grumbling about whether they really believed such a hopeless notion as the Lion Duke’s resurrection, gradually fell silent from midway.

The members of the Council of Elders were each bigwigs who made others tremble as the core of the Empire’s power, but the atmosphere of the underground was so solemn that even they unconsciously closed their mouths.

Despite the magic controlling humidity and temperature, an unknown chill and pressure seemed to overwhelm visitors.

As if saying, “Don’t even set foot here with half-hearted resolve or trivial business.”

However, the feet of the Council of Elders did not stop.

In their minds, there was no more urgent or important business than this.

When they opened the door at the end of the stairs, a stone chamber beyond it revealed itself.

The chamber was enormous in size, but there was little sense of splendor or grandeur.

It was as if it had only been made a certain size to secure space for engraving magic circles, with other decorations being unnecessary.

Without a single piece of gold or silver treasure, pursuing only practicality, its appearance seemed almost bleak for the tomb of a hero who supported the Empire.

While other elders visiting for the first time swallowed in doubt, perplexity, or inexplicable chills.

The head of the Council of Elders alone quietly approached the stone coffin and placed his palm on the crystal sphere embedded in the center of the coffin.

The crystal sphere, responding to the bloodline’s blood, turned golden, and the magic circle shone fiercely, sucking in the surrounding ley lines.

Ominous mana rushed into the coffin, and the circuits engraved like blood vessels all over the coffin pulsed incessantly.

Rumble.

A sound like stone scraping against stone echoed, and the coffin lid that had been moving on its own was thrown to the floor.

From inside the coffin, “he” arose.

“Oh, ooh…!”

“It worked, it worked! It’s done now!”

“Ancestor, great hero!”

The elders of the Council poured out praises with eyes full of emotion. Some were even sobbing.

The Lion Duke’s presence was that overwhelming.

Golden hair like burning flames.

Violet eyes that seemed to contain lightning.

His build was huge yet nimble, without unnecessary parts, and even the scars engraved all over his body seemed to add to his dignity.

For those who had lived admiring the Lion Duke’s heroic tales while inheriting the Lennart name, meeting their ancestor gave them an almost religious sense of fulfillment.

The head of the Council of Elders knelt before the silent Lion Duke and spoke, “Great Lion Duke, a crisis has come to Lennart. The Imperial Family has forgotten your military achievements and betrayed us, and now they’re trying to eliminate us. Please save your descendants…!”

《…》

The Lion Duke did not answer.

He didn’t even pay attention to the head of the Council of Elders at his feet or the others, but heightened his senses as if trying to find something.

His senses, which had reached the realm of transcendence, did not just check inside the stone chamber, but pierced through the entire surrounding area.

Searching, searching, and searching.

Thoroughly searching to avoid even the slightest mistake.

At the end, the Lion Duke realized.

What he had been waiting for was not here.

《Ah, aah, AAAaaaa■■■■■!!!!!!!!!!!!!》

A mournful scream leaked from his mouth.

Bloody tears overflowed from his eyes, and his face, which could be called handsome without lacking, contorted with wailing.

What was there was not the great hero who would remain in history.

It was just a man who had blown his last chance due to the greed and arrogance of fools.

“…”

The head of the Council of Elders broke out in a cold sweat.

Only then did he realize he had made some critical error.

“A-Ancestor, please calm dow—guh!”

One of the Council of Elders, who was late to grasp the situation, tried to say something to the Lion Duke, but those words didn’t continue to the end.

The Lion Duke’s right hand grasped his face.

Crunch, crunch.

Slowly, very slowly, the Lion Duke’s hand added force.

The old man tried to struggle and escape from the grip, but the Lion Duke’s arm didn’t even budge.

Only after the cheekbones were crushed, both eyeballs burst from pressure, and everything that could be called a face turned into a handful of debris did the Lion Duke carelessly throw away the old man’s body.

With a splat, brain matter and blood soaked the ground.

At this terribly gruesome hand movement, the head of the Council of Elders trembled.

The Lion Duke hadn’t slowly squeezed the old man’s head because he lacked strength.

While he could have crushed it in an instant if he wanted, he deliberately slowed down to inflict maximum pain.

The emotion contained in that act was clear.

A desperate anger and hatred that wouldn’t even allow a peaceful death.

There was one who bowed, asking him to calm his anger.

His waist was trampled, separating upper and lower body, and he died miserably, wriggling like an insect.

There was one who tried to run away screaming.

All elements necessary for movement, two legs and two arms, were torn off like dragonfly wings, and he died convulsing in place.

There was one who, with eyes rolled back in fear, recklessly charged in as a last resort.

A rough hand grasped his neck, and the next moment, as if by some magic, his head along with the spine was pulled out and rolled on the floor.

Neither apologetic pleas for forgiveness, nor supplications for salvation, nor condemnations filled with resentment, nor even simple begging for life were heeded.

The Lion Duke slaughtered all of them without discrimination.

Here, there was no honor, no dignity, no pride.

The anger of one who had been denied the wish he had wanted to fulfill, even if it meant clinging to the last attachment to life and becoming a mere ghost was so tremendous.

“Ah…”

I was wrong.

Leaving only that thought behind, the head of the last surviving Council of Elders burst like a watermelon.

The Lion Duke, having massacred everyone in the basement, slowly began to climb the stairs.

With each step forward, dense darkness enveloped his body, forming new armor and a sword.

After the Lion Duke had left like that.

A black shadow rose from the basement.

Someone with a shape close to human, but whose features couldn’t be discerned due to the dense darkness, looked at the corpses strewn on the floor and said.

《How foolish, how utterly foolish. But I admire it. To think you could instantly plunge into the abyss a soul that hadn’t been corrupted despite being enveloped in the darkness of the underground for hundreds of years. The stupidity of fools is sometimes better than the schemes of the wise.》

The shadow’s gaze turned upward.

Two eyes hidden in darkness caught sight of the knight and witch on the ground.

Emotion leaked from the shadow’s body.

It was clear hostility, but at the same time, familiarity.

It was courtesy towards a formidable yet honorable rival, not the despicable and contemptible heavenly realm.

《Please show your skill. Prove that you haven’t rusted. For a report to the great king that our enemies have miserably fallen would be unsatisfying for me as well.》

The shadow.

The prime minister of the underground left only those words behind before disappearing as if scattering.

The underground, where only death remained, was thus abandoned.

No one paid any more attention to the corpses that must have dreamed their own grand ambitions.

***

You, who had finished analyzing Werner’s super armor after an intense battle and were contemplating between “steadily chipping away his health to finish him off” vs “investing more mana than natural recovery to end it in one go”, suddenly sensed something strange.

Underground.

Something terrifying was coming up from beneath your feet.

You slowed your offensive against Werner.

The Tin Knight’s body was ringing alarm bells that it would be dangerous if you got distracted by something irrelevant now.

Werner also showed a puzzled look at first, but he too sensed the same thing as you a beat later and hardened his expression.

It was from then that screams, and sounds of destruction began to echo throughout the mansion.

Realizing that you had no immediate intention to attack, Werner turned his back and started running towards the back he had been guarding until now, and you followed suit.

And you discovered—

A mysterious warrior grasping a greatsword—clad in pitch-black armor.

The path he advanced on was full of nothing but blood and corpses, and among them, not a single one had died cleanly, each and every one thoroughly mangled in various parts of their bodies.

Only the blood-soaked golden hair and violet eyeballs rolling around like marbles proved that they were of the Lion Duke’s bloodline.

Splat, splat.

The gaze of the warrior walking through the river of blood turned towards Werner, who was ahead of you.

The next moment, the warrior’s body closed in right in front of Werner.

A sword strike that tore through the wind.

It was an attack that would have instantly slaughtered even a fairly skilled knight, let alone an ordinary person, without being able to react, but Werner was no ordinary man either.

The heavy club blocked the blade, and a fist struck the opponent’s chest with a dull sound.

However, that was all.

Even while receiving a blow that could shatter even rocks, the warrior’s body maintained its position without being pushed back.

Not only that, but golden and violet mana simultaneously gushed from the warrior’s entire body.

Werner’s eyes widened.

As if he had seen something unbelievable, he uttered that name, “Lion Duke…?”

《───■■■■■!!》

The man called the Lion Duke roared.

Sensing ominousness, you instantly put strength into the hand grasping your shield.

The next moment.

The Lion Duke’s sword being swung with terrifying mana and you releasing all the gems embedded in your shield happened almost simultaneously.

Boom!

It was something closer to a bombing rather than a slash.

Dense building materials either vaporized when caught in the attack or were scattered everywhere, swept up in its aftermath.

Your body, too, couldn’t withstand the shockwave and was pushed back violently.

Thud, thud.

You regained your posture with a tumble and tried to charge forward again, but seeing one of the fragments thrown into the sky falling in an unexpected place, you quickly changed direction.

Bang!

Your shield bash shattered a fragment about ten times the size of your body that was about to fall on Dorothea and Sophia’s heads.

The remaining smaller fragments were scattered, but they couldn’t penetrate the barrier automatically deployed by Dorothea’s staff.

“W-what is this? What’s going on?” Dorothea asked you with a face full of bewilderment as you landed beside her.

You thought it was understandable.

The Duke’s mansion. Compared to your memory, a building comparable to a decent-sized stadium had become half-ruined in just an instant.

The fact that it ended at “half” was thanks to you forcibly altering the sword’s trajectory by releasing all the mana in the gems embedded in your shield.

In the place where the slash was fully swung, nothing remained above waist height, so all living things inside the mansion would have been completely annihilated.

“Sir Knight!”

And from inside the building that left such a shape, your pupil rushed out and joined the party.

Of course, her appearance was far from normal, too.

There were wounds all over her body, and especially the wound above her left shoulder was so dangerous that it would have reached her heart if it had been just a bit deeper.

Dorothea, who had been perplexed by the sudden scene of destruction, saw Adelaide’s condition and turned serious, taking out medicine and ointment, while Sophia silently poured out holy power.

You silently guarded the place until the treatment was finished, protecting the party from the aftermath of the battle.

Dorothea opened her mouth to ask you while her eyes were directed at Adelaide, “Situation report. Just the essentials, briefly.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that in the middle of fighting with grandpa, something strange popped out from underground!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ testifies that grandpa called the strange guy ‘Lion Duke’!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if there’s necromancy that can resurrect historical figures!]

“It’s not that there isn’t any, but at least that’s not it,” Dorothea firmly denied.

As if she could understand the situation to some extent just from the mana and soul she sensed, even without seeing the enemy’s appearance with her eyes.

“Originally, souls can’t stay in this world for long after death. It seems they’ve taken some measures in their own way, but it’s still far from a complete soul. It’s likely holding onto some intense sense of purpose as a support, blowing away the excess and enduring. It’s more of a residual thought than a soul. And it seems to have put on some strange power, too.”

“…Miss Dorothea. If that ‘purpose’ became impossible to achieve, what would happen to the soul?” Sophia asked.

Judging by the wine-colored mana in her eyes, she seemed to have glimpsed something through the Chalice of Tuberose.

Dorothea answered, “It would be one of two things. Either disappear in despair, or—“

In the middle of her words, sand and dust swirled, revealing the figure of the Lion Duke beyond.

Under the blackened armor, two eyes like violet lightning looked at Adelaide.

He recognized the proof of the Lion Duke’s bloodline: golden hair and violet eyes.

“—Go berserk, cursing everything thought to have hindered him.”

***

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