Chapter 144: Entrance
It all happened very fast.
Lakyus hadn't even processed it yet when Gazef's body was already moving, his sword driving straight for the Wrath Demon General's hand.
"Your Highness!"
His shout rang out through the night — and then he was sent flying by the Wrath Demon General swinging the First Prince at him like a weapon.
The charred, human-shaped object that Barbro had become was gripped by the Wrath Demon General around the lower half of his body and swept horizontally through the air.
Gazef couldn't pull back in time. The blackened mass caught him square in the chest.
The dull impact sent the Warrior Captain tumbling backward. He rolled twice across the ground before a broken stone pillar stopped him.
He pushed himself up. Blood at the corner of his mouth.
The Wrath Demon General paid no attention to the flying Gazef.
His golden-flame eyes looked down at the thing in his hand that no longer resembled a person.
He opened and closed the massive fist, as though testing the resilience of this "First Prince sword" he was working with.
Barbro's body swayed loosely in the Demon General's palm, all four limbs hanging limp — the way a puppet hangs when no one's pulling the strings.
Flames burned along the Demon General's palm, scorching the First Prince's skin.
Barbro was trying with everything he had left to open his mouth. He looked like a fish that had been thrown onto land.
But his tongue had snapped off at the first impact with the ground. Only a ragged, blood-soaked stump remained, moving uselessly in his mouth.
He wanted to demand why this wasn't following the script. He wanted to beg.
He couldn't make any sound at all.
Only a garbled rattling leaked out from somewhere deep in his throat at irregular intervals — like a machine in its final moments before it gives out completely.
His eyes could still move.
Those blue pupils were bloodshot and swollen, the flesh around the sockets bruised black and purple.
He stared up at the Wrath Demon General's fanged face, his eyes full of an incredulous fury.
But as the Demon General kept swinging him back and forth, the fury in those eyes slowly gave way to something else.
Pleading.
Lakyus offered a silent apology to her brother.
She couldn't believe she had let that performance shake her faith in what Lucian told her. How foolish.
Lucian was never wrong.
She tightened her grip on her sword, her golden hair moving in the waves of heat.
Her gaze rested on the thing in the Demon General's hand that no longer had a human shape, and a grief she couldn't name rose in her.
The Kingdom's first in line to the throne had charged into a fight without the first understanding of his own limits.
Lakyus was about to press forward and help Gazef try to get the First Prince out.
But someone was faster.
Brain pulled himself out of the blacksmith's rubble. He was covered in dust, a dried cut at the corner of his mouth — but the fighting spirit in his eyes hadn't diminished at all.
He'd recovered.
Brain had downed every healing potion he'd been freeloading at the Warrior Captain's house.
He was aware you could just pour them directly onto the wound, but Brain had always felt drinking them made them work better.
He had been meaning to ration those potions — Gazef had worked hard to buy them. But the hit he'd taken had been severe enough that getting back on his feet fast mattered more than saving the supplies.
Gazef's wallet was going to have to take the hit. Sorry about that.
He'd barely finished recovering when he came up to find his closest friend getting launched by the Demon Lord.
Gazef was pushing himself up from the rubble, blood at his mouth, the chest plate of his armor caved in.
Brain's eyes went red in an instant.
"You bastard!"
He roared it, drew his sword, and charged.
Brain activated [Flowing Acceleration]. The blade caught the moonlight like a silver thread of lightning, moving at a speed that shouldn't have been possible.
The Wrath Demon General didn't even glance at him. He threw the First Prince directly at Brain.
The blackened human shape came tumbling through the air at a speed that rivaled a stone from a catapult.
Brain's instinct told him to dodge. He had no time.
Bang.
Three seconds back on his feet, and Brain was launched again.
The two bodies collided in midair, rolled twice through the air together, and crashed through the wall of a half-collapsed house at the roadside.
Brick and rubble came clattering down, burying them both.
By this point, the First Prince looked something very much like a lump of charcoal.
After being used as a thrown weapon on top of everything else, he had come apart entirely.
Brain struggled to push the scorched body off himself. One of Barbro's arms had separated at the shoulder and was now resting on Brain's chest.
The arm was disturbingly light. The bones inside had burned to carbon — they crumbled at the slightest touch.
Gazef watched from where he had half pushed himself up in the rubble, pain written across his face.
He was kneeling in the broken stone, his chest aching — but every bit of his attention was on the thing that no longer looked like a person.
The eldest son of King Ramposa III, the man he had sworn loyalty to. The Kingdom's heir.
Dead. In front of him.
The Warrior Captain turned his eyes to Lakyus.
Those eyes held pain and self-reproach — and beneath it, a thread of something thin and nearly desperate. Almost too much to hope for.
Because Lakyus was a cleric capable of Tier 5 faith-based magic. [Resurrection].
If Lakyus could bring the First Prince back, there was still a way to undo this.
But Lakyus looked only once, and shook her head.
The body was destroyed beyond recovery. Even Tier 5 resurrection had its limits. Damage at this level was far outside anything [Resurrection] could reach.
Perhaps only resurrection magic at the level of the divine — something no human could touch — could bring the First Prince back now.
The light in Gazef's eyes went out, degree by degree.
He lowered his head. His fists clenched until blood seeped through his fingers and dripped onto the broken stone and dust below.
Brain climbed out of the rubble, the severed arm still in his hand.
He looked at Gazef. Every word of comfort he could have offered died before it reached his mouth. In the end he simply set the arm down gently on the ground, then stood up beside Gazef.
In that moment of despair —
A jet-black greatsword fell from the sky.
Black blade, wide flat, tip driving deep into the earth — nearly half a foot into the ground. The hilt was still vibrating faintly, resonating with a low, sustained hum.
Then.
Momon landed.
The black full-body plate armor caught the firelight with a cold metallic gleam. The blood-red cape cracked and snapped behind him.
Narberal dropped from the sky close behind, landing just after Momon.
By some coincidence, Narberal's landing position placed her foot directly on the First Prince's severed charred arm.
The arm made the clear, crisp sound of charcoal breaking.
Narberal looked around, as though searching for something.
Finding nothing, she asked with a note of genuine puzzlement:
"Has anyone seen His Highness the First Prince?"
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