Vol 3. Chapter 51: Grandlord of Enslaved Souls

“Nonsense! Utter drivel!” Before Isatia finished, Kantesius flew into a rage. “How could I fear being overthrown by my own soldiers?? They are nothing but ants who take orders from me and depend on me—guards who must be loyal to the royal house! Without me, they have no meaning to exist. That is the law of Marsmo!”

“As for whether I stand alone—so what if I do? A truly mighty king, a king who ascends to a god’s seat, needs no one’s support!” Kantesius barked. “Heh! Little girl, only a weak ruler like you would lean on subordinates’ strength—on so-called loyalty.”

“You’re too naive. Hearts change. People are unreliable and uncontrollable. Only brute power can make them forever, utterly loyal to me!”

“If you can’t even understand that, you have no chance of winning,” Kantesius cried, voice pitched high.

“Barbarian king, you’re already cornered. Your soldiers are merely making a futile struggle—buying the last scraps of time for an irresponsible monarch,” Isatia said, her tone unruffled, like a judge calmly pronouncing the final sentence.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Spirits dead a thousand years should not linger in the world of the living. Go back to where you came from. Rot should not keep crawling out of its grave.”

“Really?? Little black-haired girl, you’re assuming far too much.”

“You think a king who has attained the divine seat—the great King of Marsmo, king of kings—will be felled by a few mere slaves??”

“I am not you, cowering behind lackeys. I understand that from beginning to end, the only one I can rely on is myself!” Kantesius loosed peals of mad laughter, lifted his spiked mace, and with one sweeping blow pulped the last few of his own men still making a cornered stand.

Isatia’s dark brows drew tight. “That’s how you treat subordinates who fight and die for you?”

“When the king commands them to die, they must die. That is the rule I set.” Kantesius rolled his neck and shoulders, loosening his limbs. “Queen of foreigners, you’re just a little girl after all. You don’t think these tricks alone can defeat the great Kantesius, do you?”

Isatia did not answer. In concert with her mind, her heavy imperial knights leveled enchanted lances and keen steel and surged at Kantesius.

This was Isatia’s [Saint’s Favor], the place where the Lanteville family’s history had settled and condensed; this was the Lanteville domain and the Empire itself. If battle was joined here, the Lantevilles were invincible.

Within this place, the weapons in the imperial heavy cavalry’s hands were no longer ordinary—each was enchanted, magic-blessed, hacking savagely at Kantesius.

The imperial knights attacked as one, closing around Kantesius with a three-hundred-sixty-five-degree seamless assault that sealed every line of evasion.

But against the knights’ staggered onslaught, Kantesius didn’t even try to dodge—he simply let them whip flails down toward his skull, and drive enchanted blades for his heart.

These heavy knights had weathered a hundred battles in life—the one-in-ten-thousand elite of the Tyrel Empire—experts at killing, masters of the single blow.

And then, in the next instant, every enchanted weapon glanced off.

At the same time, an armor surfaced over Kantesius—a flowing carapace, gray as water in motion, its surface crowded with dim, bared bones, each frozen in a ghastly expression—skinless faces twisted as if their souls had been sucked out at the moment of death.

As the knights’ weapons struck Kantesius, several soul-like forms burst free—visages contorted in agony—and afterward, Kantesius stood unscathed.

Even blades and swords within the [Perennial Imperial Diadem] can’t mark him??

Isatia’s brows knit hard. She had never encountered this.

“Oh right, little girl—I haven’t introduced my Spirit Soul, have I?” Kantesius stepped forward, smug. “This is my Spirit Soul—armor forged from Marsmo’s mandate.”

“I am Marsmo itself!”

“The mandate of the realm??” Isatia had never heard of a Spirit Soul like this. Normally, manifesting some abstract conceptual faculty was [Saint’s Favor], not a Spirit Soul. She paused, considering.

Meanwhile, outside the Marsmo Royal Palace, Vinny noticed a violet gleam running over the ring-city’s watchtowers in the distance—as if they were exerting their functions.

Then, in an instant, Isatia’s eyes penetrated the “armor” on Kantesius.

“The mandate of the realm? ...All you’ve done is turn the people under your rule into your shield,” Isatia said, voice sinking. Once she understood what Kantesius’s Spirit Soul truly was, she couldn’t keep a heavier note from entering her tone.

“Heh. Looks like in here my Spirit Soul is transparent to you. Good. Since you know, you must realize it, yes? You cannot defeat me,” Kantesius snorted.

“Even away from my divine throne, I will not die. My slaves will die in my place!”

“When the dead die again, their souls are scattered to nothing,” Isatia said, steady gaze locked on him.

“So what if they are? It is their duty. From birth they are fated to give everything to their king,” Kantesius laughed. “This armor is woven from their souls. Now you see why they do not dare rebel against me?”

“Because their souls have long been under my control. In all their lives they cannot resist me—including those soldiers.”

“Don’t you put on such false benevolence? Come on then—cut me! No matter how you strike, all you’ll cut are those base slaves. They’ll all die in my stead. Hahahahaha!” Kantesius roared.

“I did not misjudge you. You are indeed a coward who only dares hide behind others—an incompetent,” Isatia said, lifting her gaze. “These pitiful people were born into the wrong time, forced to be manipulated by the likes of you. Even in death they know no rest—still tormented and clenched in the fist of a devil.”

“All I can do is nail you, the bully, into your grave and avenge them.” As she spoke, the imperial knights locked ranks and leveled their lances, forming a wall of spearpoints and shields, charging Kantesius like a splitting wedge.

Crack!! The flawless spear-and-shield wall slammed into Kantesius—and again several agonized souls flew free—after which Kantesius caught the wall.

In the instant those souls burst out, Kantesius slid into a spirit state—invulnerable to blade or spear. Seizing that heartbeat, he clamped a lancehead in his grip and, with monstrous strength, hoisted a knight and smashed him into the floor. The spiked mace came crashing down.

Caught out for only a blink, the knight reacted at once—rolling clear—then booted at Kantesius’s ankle, trying to break his balance.

But Kantesius’s base was iron-steady; the kick couldn’t budge him.

Kantesius pressed the attack. Seeing the knight couldn’t dodge, three resplendent golden spears locked into a formation—becoming a shield—and took the blow for the knight.

Isatia had moved.

The golden spears summoned by her Spirit Soul coordinated their assault with the knights.

These imperial knights capable of appearing within the [Perennial Imperial Diadem] were elite among the Lantevilles’ hereditary guard across generations. Once they witnessed that Kantesius’s Spirit Soul rendered him invulnerable for a span after each hit, they left no more openings for him to seize.

“Boring. Do you think this way you can wear out the slave-souls on my armor? Naive. Since my apotheosis, my [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls] has drawn the souls of every slave and soldier—and even the common folk—across all Marsmo’s history. I forged them into my armor. They are its original parts.”

“You cannot kill them all. Hehehe.”

“You are an unmitigated fool of a barbarian—ever convinced you can control the whole board,” Isatia said, gaze fixed deep on him, aristocratic eyes laid bare with contempt and disgust. It was the first time she had spoken such insults; for Isatia’s upbringing, these were the harshest words.

“I can even foresee how wretched you will be when you lose power.”

“Little girl, what you should be thinking about isn’t my fall, but what happens to you when you lose—when you’re stripped of your subordinates’ protection. What end awaits you,” Kantesius said with a cold smile, as if seeing through all.

“Do you truly think you can even get to me now?” Isatia replied, expression cool.

“Hey! Don’t try to put me off. I’ve lived for over a hundred years—King of Marsmo for over a hundred. You think I can’t see it?” Kantesius jeered. “I’ll grant, your trick is marvelous—copying my Marsmo Royal Palace in here, and even penning me and my men inside.”

“Indeed—as you say, this is your turf. I can do nothing to you. But you can do nothing to me either.”

“Most importantly—this extradimensional field of yours can’t stay open forever, can it?”

“Right now—maintaining it is already pushing you to the limit, isn’t it?” Kantesius sneered.

“Can you really finish me before you run out?”

“Is that so? An amusing claim,” Isatia said with a light laugh, dismissive. “Then let’s see who gives out first.”

With that thought, Kantesius suddenly noticed a few familiar figures among the soldiers attacking him.

He looked—and snorted.

“Heh. Still playing at this? Joining ‘Marsmo soldiers’ with your imperial troops to strike me?” Kantesius mocked. “Don’t think I don’t know—these are parlour phantoms spawned by your field, mindless puppets. My soldiers cannot disobey me.”

At the same time, not only Marsmo soldiers appeared—behind the imperial knights, ranks of imperial mages in black-violet cloaks had formed up. Covered by the knights, these mages unleashed rolling magical bombardments on the encircled Kantesius.

Kantesius had it partly right. Within Isatia’s [Perennial Imperial Diadem], only imperial knights and imperial royal knights possessed true minds; the other soldiers were generated puppets—soulless constructs.

Beyond that, every building within the [Perennial Imperial Diadem] had its own function. For example, the forward watchtowers granted Isatia the power to see through others.

Even so, several generations ago, any enemy who entered the [Perennial Imperial Diadem] would never have left alive. But now—

That was precisely why Isatia had come here.

At this moment, outside the Marsmo Royal Palace—

“Strange. If this is Isatia’s [Saint’s Favor], why’s the weather this bad? She should be able to control it, right?” Vinny raised a hand against the sky and looked again at the countless buildings in the distance, unable not to marvel.

The power of a [Saint’s Favor] was truly inexhaustible, the utmost reach of imagination—able to hold a colossal city-state and imperial palace like a forest of brick.

To sum it up: Mirexia’s [Saint’s Favor] is wrathful gold dragon-form; Aesphyra’s [Saint’s Favor] manipulates time; and Isatia’s [Saint’s Favor] brings people into her own spatial domain—within which she is near invincible.

Two destiny-touched heroines bearing Carillian blood—staking out time and space, the two mightiest conceptual forces.

However—

Vinny was worried. Could Isatia really pull it off??

He had seen Aesphyra force-trigger her [Saint’s Favor] before. As a rule, the stronger the [Saint’s Favor], the harsher the backlash. As things stood, if Isatia suffered recoil from her own [Saint’s Favor], her end would be no better than Aesphyra’s.

Moreover, from Isatia’s earlier tone, Vinny had sensed it—the construction degree of her Marsmo civilization was gravely insufficient. The only reason she had opened her [Saint’s Favor] here at all was the aid of that eagle-talon gem—and doing so likely carried immense risk.

If Isatia couldn’t behead Kantesius here—if he dragged things out until her [Saint’s Favor] failed—that would be trouble.

Still, this wasn’t a Divine-Authority field anymore. Kantesius’s undying trait had been erased. A stone-age king—barring surprises—should be easy to kill, right?

Vinny thought, gazing into the distance.

He suddenly noticed something.

He’d realized earlier that most buildings in Isatia’s [Perennial Imperial Diadem] were already very old—many scarred by savage cracks and gaps.

He didn’t know if that was just the style of the [Perennial Imperial Diadem], but the buildings gave him a constant sense of long disrepair, tottering on the edge.

Especially the massive clock tower at the city’s very center—like a true antiquity—covered in cracks. It made you honestly fear it might collapse in the next second.