Chapter 77
Although the Royal Knights were said to have been half-destroyed by the Second Prince’s rebellion, they were still the Royal Knights.
In terms of quality, they might have been somewhat lacking compared to the past, but their ranks had been replenished.
But if their opponent was Jade, numbers held little meaning.
Moreover, Haynes had witnessed Jade’s exploits during the civil war with his own eyes.
“I was thinking of only a few people.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to let everyone experience the power of spirit arts firsthand while we’re at it?”
“Then shouldn’t we exclude those who were with Jade during the civil war?”
“Seeing something and experiencing it firsthand are different, aren’t they?”
Haynes grinned.
It was as if he were saying he had no intention of letting this opportunity pass him by.
Yet at those words, the faces of some people Jade recognized turned pale.
Having seen Jade’s spirit arts during the civil war, they were far more nervous than their comrades.
“Hmm.”
“And isn’t this a good opportunity to show your disciple and the spirit unit how to deal with knights? Fighting monsters and beasts is entirely different from fighting people.”
“You always manage to make me do it somehow.”
“When else will you get an opportunity like this?”
Haynes did not deny it.
As he had just said, an opportunity like this was exceedingly rare.
On the one hand, he wanted to teach those who had newly joined the Royal Knights how frightening spirit arts could be.
It was far better to experience something once firsthand than to hear about it a hundred times.
“Understood. It benefits me as well.”
“Prepare yourselves!”
“Yes!”
Clatter!
At Haynes’s command, the Royal Knights, who had been waiting at the ready, raised their shields.
In other words, they were fully armed.
Not only that, but their entire bearing had changed as well.
“You asked me to use only spirit arts, right?”
“Wouldn’t it be cheating if Marquis Jade used his sword as well?”
“To teach them the cold reality, I think it would be better to use the sword too.”
“Ahem! Today, please use only spirit arts.”
Although even the vice-captain was carrying a sword and shield, Haynes did not expect the Royal Knights to defeat Jade.
Even now, Jade could wipe out the Royal Knights by himself.
That was the power of a Master, which was why Haynes asked him to use only spirit arts.
He believed spirit arts alone would be more than enough.
“Understood. Then let’s begin.”
No sooner had Jade finished speaking than the Royal Knights charged as one.
They meant to seize the initiative by striking first.
Yet the astonishing thing was that they maintained their formation.
Jade was mildly impressed by how much training it revealed.
“Sylph.”
Of course, he was not merely admiring them.
As he watched, he summoned the Sylphs.
Yet the number of Sylphs that appeared to Jade’s left and right was staggering.
When they saw what looked like several hundred, perhaps even several thousand, the vice-captain and squad leaders charging at the front were aghast.
“Don’t be alarmed! Advance!”
Although he could sense their shock without even looking, the vice-captain gritted his teeth and shouted.
He had expected something like this, so he encouraged his subordinates and planted his feet even more firmly.
But before he could even kick off the ground, the Sylphs flew in.
They overwhelmed the Royal Knights with sheer numbers.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Seeing the pale-green Sylphs surge forward as one, the Royal Knights raised their shields.
Their first priority was to block the fierce assault of the Sylphs charging like a swarm of bees.
But spirit arts weren’t something they could simply block.
Whoosh!
Jade controlled each and every one of the countless Sylphs individually.
When their initial assault was stopped by the shields, Jade changed the Sylphs’ direction.
Rather than pound against the shields, they flew over them.
Then they cut off the knights’ breathing.
“Ghk!”
When a dozen or so Sylphs covered the knights’ noses and mouths, the knights panicked and struggled.
Yet the more they struggled, the more desperately they gasped for breath.
The more they moved, the more oxygen they consumed.
Of course, the knights didn’t just stand there and take it.
They were startled at first, but soon used their aura to dispel the Sylphs.
Since they were low-ranking spirits, they could force them back relatively easily.
“Damn it!”
“There are too many!”
The problem was that cutting down their numbers made little difference.
So many had been summoned that no matter how many Sylphs they dispelled, more continued to rush at the knights.
Kyaaaah!
The Sylphs also launched sound attacks.
They unleashed a horrifying noise right beside the knights’ ears, like fingernails scraping across a steel plate.
“Aaaaargh!”
“Hup!”
The high-pitched shrieks and howls that burrowed into their unprotected ear canals made the knights stagger.
The noise shaking their cochleae temporarily threw off their sense of balance.
The Sylphs did not miss that opening.
Some of them transformed into hammer-like blunt weapons and struck the backs of the knights’ heads.
Thud! Thud!
The number of knights knocked unconscious had already climbed well past twenty.
More were still collapsing even at that very moment.
“Good grief.”
At the sight of the knights being helplessly subdued, Haynes wore an incredulous expression.
He had not entirely failed to anticipate this, but they were leaving themselves far too open.
Haynes did not like that at all.
“Get a grip! Use mana to block your ears and defend against the sound attack!”
“Bleeegh!”
The vice-captain, the highest-ranking officer among them, tried somehow to restore order, but it was useless.
With bizarre noises erupting everywhere, no one could hear him no matter how loudly he shouted.
Besides, sending mental commands would mean worrying about his mana reserves.
Even the vice-captain could barely fend for himself, let alone look after anyone else.
“Ghk!”
Though he was also channeling aura into his shield and dispelling the Sylphs rushing in from all directions, it only lasted for a moment.
The Sylphs instantly surrounded him and attacked again, so the vice-captain grew more exhausted as time passed.
Taken individually, there was nothing particularly impressive about a Sylph, a low-ranking wind spirit, but there was no way to stop so many of them rushing in at once.
Moreover, the Sylphs weren’t merely attacking.
‘I understand now why the captain said that. Marquis Jade’s spirit arts are on another level.’
Summoning such an enormous number of Sylphs was impressive, but what truly daunted the vice-captain was Jade’s perfect control.
Jade was controlling each and every one of these countless Sylphs with absolute precision.
And he was doing so in a variety of ways.
Furthermore, the problem was that he had summoned only a single type of spirit.
Rumble!
Jade was a spirit summoner who could wield all four elemental spirits.
He had even formed contracts with high-ranking spirits of all four elements, so the vice-captain was overcome with despair.
The Sylphs alone were already this overwhelming, and imagining Jade summoning spirits of the other elements made the vice-captain’s vision go dark.
“Wow……”
Meanwhile, Della and the other children couldn’t take their eyes off the spectacle of Jade’s spirit arts.
They were merely low-ranking wind spirits.
Yet Jade was overwhelming the Royal Knights with those low-ranking Sylphs.
Of course, it was an assault through sheer numbers, but the important point was that he was subduing the Royal Knights using only Sylphs.
“So that’s the lord’s spirit arts.”
“That’s incredible……”
While Della gazed in pure admiration, Farzali and the prospective spirit unit members couldn’t hide their shock.
They knew all too well how difficult it was to perform spirit arts like these.
That was not something one could perform merely by having enough mana.
Only someone capable of perfectly controlling spirits could do it, leaving everyone speechless.
“Could we do that too?”
“If we work ourselves to death, maybe we could someday?”
“Before that, I think we need to increase our mana reserves. Even if they’re only low-ranking wind spirits, wouldn’t that many require as much mana as summoning a high-ranking spirit?”
“If we can’t form a contract with a high-ranking spirit, this method doesn’t seem bad either.”
Their surprise was brief.
The children soon began thinking of all sorts of possibilities as they watched Jade’s spirit arts.
They were lost in thought, imagining how they would use such techniques themselves.
And that inspiration was exactly what Jade had wanted.
‘Baden Village has a bright future.’
Haynes watched the children with a slightly envious expression.
They already possessed outstanding potential, and with Jade teaching them, it was obvious they would grow at a frightening pace.
They would grow at a speed the students of the Department of Spirit Studies could never keep up with.
That made Haynes both envious and worried.
“You can’t be tired already. We’re only just reaching the end of the first stage.”
“What?”
The vice-captain looked horrified.
They were barely holding out as it was, so he was shocked to learn there was a second stage.
But Jade was serious.
He had not come all this way just to stop at this point.
Drag, drag, drag.
Meanwhile, the Sylphs dragged the unconscious knights to a corner of the training ground.
They had knocked them out and moved them aside all by themselves.
“Since we’ve started, shouldn’t you experience all four elements?”
“Of course.”
Fwoosh!
No sooner had Jade finished speaking than burning lizards appeared beneath the orderly ranks of Sylphs hovering overhead.
Low-ranking fire spirits—Salamanders—had been summoned.
And once again, their numbers were staggering.
“Ughhhh!”
“……Wind and fire.”
“I’m already out of mana……”
A wave of scorching wind swept over the knights.
The heat radiating from the Salamanders naturally mingled with the wind generated by the Sylphs.
As a result, some of the knights’ faces were already turning red.
The heat kept rising, and breathing was becoming increasingly difficult as well.
‘……Maybe it would have been better to pass out sooner.’
The vice-captain squeezed his eyes shut.
The bold resolve he had possessed at the beginning had vanished long ago.
Now he only wished for it to end as quickly as possible.
Before long, a wind carrying flames enveloped the vice-captain and the knights.
“Hah!”
As the wind intensified, the vice-captain opened his eyes wide.
Then he concentrated all the mana remaining in him into his sword and shield and charged into the fiery wind.
He knew it was reckless, but that did not mean he would give up.
He intended to do everything he could.
“We’ll join you!”
“Aaaaargh!”
The knights joined the vice-captain from behind.
Although defeat was staring them in the face, the knights burned through their final reserves of fighting spirit as though they had no intention of giving up.
But they could not change the result.
“……He’s really strong.”
“That’s the spirit arts wielded by the kingdom’s greatest spirit summoner……”
“He didn’t even summon an intermediate spirit.”
The apprentice knights watching from one side muttered as their seniors collapsed in an instant.
Their eyes were filled with awe.
They could feel firsthand how powerful a high-ranking spirit summoner was, and why the Crown Prince was personally trying to train spirit summoners.
“What are you talking about? He didn’t even use his sword. Don’t you remember what the captain said? Marquis Jade is skilled with a sword too. I heard he completely crushed Roden at the Crown Prince’s birthday celebration.”
“His swordsmanship is better than ours, too.”
“He’s untouchable. Unless it’s the captain or Lady Arellia, there probably isn’t anyone in the kingdom who could face him.”
Watching the entire Royal Knights collapse without making it past the second stage, the apprentice knights whispered among themselves.
They kept sneaking glances at Jade as they spoke.
Chirp! Chirp!
At the sound of birds chirping outside the window, Della sprang upright in bed.
Normally, she should have been up long ago, but she had overslept.
Yet something about the scene was strange.
When she saw a lavishly decorated room instead of a shabby storage room and felt the softness of the bed beneath her, Della blinked.
‘It isn’t a dream.’
Della’s dazed eyes came into focus.
She could tell that it was not a dream, just as she had wished until the moment before she fell asleep the night before.
Worried that it might turn out to have been a dream when she woke up, Della had been unable to fall asleep until dawn.
If it was a dream, she wanted to savor the pleasant dream for as long as possible.
‘It really wasn’t a dream.’
The bed she was sitting on, the clothes she was wearing, and everything she could see were exactly as they had been before she fell asleep the night before.
Della felt relieved by that fact.