WIEDERGEBURT Act V: Chapter 41

The frown that appeared on my face was not something I could stop as I stared unguarded gate. Even the two watchtowers that should have had someone manning the ballistea were unguarded. I felt something crawling up my spine. It was a shiver, a premonition that something bad had happened to Nevaria while I had been away. I’d never been one to ignore my bad feelings, and right now I was feeling particularly bad.

With a simple application of Spiritual Power, I flew over the unguarded gate and landed on the other side. Once again, there were no guards. Just where the heck were the Nevarian Spiritualists?

Nevaria did not appear to have changed at all in the years I’d been away. The buildings, the layout, everything was the same as I walked down the street. However, there was one major difference that I noticed right away.

There was no one outside.

I looked at the building on my left, glancing at the boarded up windows, then turned to my right. One of the windows was open. There was a person standing on the other side of a window on the second floor, but the moment they realized I’d seen them, they hurried back inside and shut the window.

The frown I’d been wearing grew.

I soon learned that the streets of Neveria were not completely empty, but the few people who braved it were all moving in a hurry. One man darted from building to building as he made his way to a bakery so he could buy some bread, then hurried back from whence he came. A young woman rushed her children along, constantly looking over her shoulder, as if expecting a Demon Beast to attack her.

In order to get a grasp on the situation, I tried going up to these people, to ask them what happened here. The moment someone noticed my approach, they squeaked and ran off before I could even ask a question.

“Excuse me,” I called to a young man rushing across the mostly empty street. He turned his head, eyes widening, and then raced the other way. “H-hey! Wait!”

I scowled as yet another person ran away from me. What was going on here? I didn’t think the reason these people were running was because they were frightened of me, but it seemed more like they were scared of everyone.

After pondering the idea of chasing after the man, I decided not to and instead hurried to the Nevarian Braves’ headquarters. Whatever was happening, I was sure I could get the information I needed there.

But I found another unpleasant surprise when I arrived at the Nevarian Braves’ headquarters.

“What… what happened here?!”

The Nevarian Braves’ base of operations was a four-story building that was longer than it was wide and shaped like the Rune, Uruz. It had been remodeled a few months before I left for the Northern Plains, becoming a majestic building that could contain several tens of thousands of people. That was what I remembered.

But that was not what I found now.

The building before me lay in ruins. The inside was gutted, walls were crumbling, and the roof had collapsed. It looked like this building had been destroyed a long time ago. There was nothing left of the home I had built with Fay, Kari, Lin, and Siv.

I took a step forward.

“Halt!”

When several figures appeared before me. There were six of them. I didn’t recognize anyone, but all of them had blonde hair, blue eyes, and refined features. Each one was dressed in a suit of armor with Runes on them. I realized with some shock that these runes were actually practical and formed a Rune Array that would protect them from Spiritual Techniques and Spiritual Attacks.

“This place is off-limits!” one of the men stepped forward.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to figure out what was going on here. These people all looked similar to each other, so I could assume they came from the same family. Recalling everything that happened before I left, I quickly came to the conclusion that these people were members of the Drage Family, which had been one of the most powerful and reclusive families in Nevaria.

“This place is off limits? Why? What happened here?” I asked.

The man gave me a strange look like he couldn’t believe I was asking this, while at the same time, the men behind him also shared looks. That strange chill crawling down my spine grew more powerful.

“How can you not know about what happened here?” the man asked. “Everyone knows about the Nevarian Braves Rebellion!”

What?

What?

I tried to keep calm as this man spoke of a rebellion, but my mind felt like it was tumbling around after being kicked by a Demon Beast. My stomach was doing flip flops. Something had definitely happened here, and I needed to find out what.

“I’ve been away from Nevaria for awhile,” I said, trying to sound collected.

The man before me frowned. His eyes suddenly narrowed as he stared at me. I didn’t know what he was looking at, but I tried not to look away because I thought that would make me look suspicious. Not that it mattered. A moment later, he leaned back with his eyes wide.

“You… you’re Eryk Veiger!” he exclaimed. The other five members of his group all looked startled by this proclamation of my identity, but the man in charge grinned. “I heard you left Nevaria for the Endless Desert. You’ve been gone so long we all assumed you were dead. Only Princess Sigrid thought you were still alive.”

The image of a young woman with blonde hair that bordered on silver, ice blue eyes, and pale skin appeared within my mind. I knew Sigrid, of course. She had joined the Nevarian Braves, and I’d let her because I didn’t trust her and wanted my forces keeping an eye on her. But why were they calling her “princess?” Because she was the princess of the Drage Family? Something told me that was not it.

“Everyone has been ordered to bring you to Princess Sigrid if we ever find you,” the man said.

Those words sent a jolt up my spine, but I maintained my outward calm. “And if I refuse to come with you?”

The man sneered. “Then you can die!”

I stared at the man as he and the other five men surrounding me erupted with Spiritual Power. Each one of them had bright red flames so strong the air around them distorted. It wasn’t long before those flames disappeared as if they were being sucked into their bodies. A light layer of red surrounded their skin, showing they had entered the Second State of Spiritualism. It only took a few seconds.

Once they had entered the Second State of Spiritualism, they began to rhythmically dance along the ground, stomping their feet and waving their arms. Like this, their Spiritual Power surged from their bodies before each one launched their attack. Six powerful flames erupted from their hands and formed six fire dragons that shot toward me.

Except I wasn’t there.

The fire dragons slammed into each other and exploded. The detonation was so loud it wouldn’t be surprising if everyone in a several kilometer radius heard it. Fire rose into the sky and formed a dome around the area where the six attacks struck. It took several seconds for the flames to disperse, and when it did, all that remained of the place was a several meter large crater.

“Did we get him?” asked one of the men.

“What do you think?” I asked as I appeared behind him.

I didn’t let him say anything as I speared my hand through his chest. I didn’t use any Spiritual Power. There was no need to fight against those Rune Arrays. With nothing but pure strength, I broke through the steel breastplate and the man’s flesh, my hand going all the way through his body and coming out of his chest.

“JASON!!!”

The other men screamed when they saw what was happening. They rushed toward us, vengeful bellows tearing from their mouths, but I removed my hand and kicked the dying man so hard he sailed through the air like a bolt of lightning, slamming into two of the six men who attacked me. Not only did all three go down, but the armor they wore shattered from the force.

I disappeared once more.

This time I reappeared in front of the man who had been talking to me. His eyes went so wide I thought they might fall out. Before he could scream, I punched his face so hard that it caved in. He was already dead when he hit the ground. His limp body rolled across the street like a ragdoll.

Two men were dead, which meant only four were left.

I didn’t worry about the two I’d knocked over yet. They were groaning in pain, so dazed they hadn’t even pushed their friend off. I instead focused on the two who hadn’t been knocked over, who were now just standing in place like they didn’t know what to do.

I summoned the Dragon Tail Ruler from my storage ring.

The Dragon Tail Ruler was a weapon I’d had forged years ago. It was a two meter long ruler, a massive weapon that was more like a giant butcher’s knife than a sword. The hilt was 30 centimeters long, and the blade was 170 centimeters long. Its greatest feature were the segmented sections that could come apart. Each segmented would remain connected when I channeled the lightning element through them, allowing me to swing the weapon like it was a dragon’s tail.

That was what I did right now.

The segments came apart as I swung the Dragon Tail Ruler, each segment remaining connected by a thread of pale blue lightning. My two targets tried to dodge out of the way. They quickly split apart and moved, but I tracked them, adjusting the Dragon Tail Ruler’s angle with minute applications of Spiritual Power.

Blood erupted from the chest of the man who’d run left. The Dragon Tail Ruler pierced his armor like it was made of paper, destroying the Runes before they had a chance to activate. I wondered if this man even realized why those Runes didn’t activate. While the Spiritual Power I was channeling through my weapon would indeed be disrupted by those Runes, I was not using the Spiritual Power to attack. The force of my attack had simply been so great that it pierced the breastplate before the Runes could do their job.

With the man hanging limply from my weapon, I twisted my wrist and channeled my Spiritual Power again, making the Dragon Tail Ruler curve around. The other man had stopped when he saw what happened to his companion. It was only for a moment, but that moment was enough.

My weapon impaled him through the back and came out the other side, blood exploding from his chest and dripping down his armor. The Dragon Tail Ruler had severed his spine as well. All he could do was gape at the massive slab of metal protruding from his chest.

“Ah…” he released a strangled sound as he died.

By this point, the two men who’d been lying in a daze had recovered, but they were so shocked by the scene of carnage that they could do nothing as I stomped on the ground and channeled my Spiritual Powers through it. The earth around them split open. They and their dead companion fell into the hole I created. Screams of surprise erupted from them, but I stomped my foot again, and the earth quickly covered them up, burying them alive.

For a moment, a silence so profound it felt like I was inside a vacuum surrounded me. I looked at the three corpses still visible. After pondering them for a moment, I decided to bury them as well. I used the earth element gained through my connection with Lin to bury them so deep no one would find them. Once they were buried, I disappeared within a Flash Step. All that noise from out battle must have attracted some attention. I needed to leave now before people came over to discover what happened.

***

Because I didn’t know what to do, I decided to first travel to the Imperial Royal Palace. However, I soon realized that was a bad idea when I saw members of the Drage Family guarding the entrance to the mountain upon which it sat. I was standing several meters away, a cloak with a hood now covering my body and distinctive green hair. When I looked at the Imperial Royal Palace on the mountain top, I saw that it hadn’t changed much, but the flag it was now flying had the Drage Family Crest.

While I was worried about my mother-in-law, I knew barging into the Imperial Royal Palace would not be a good idea right now. No matter how strong I was, the strength of one person could be defeated with numbers, and I couldn’t use my more powerful attacks for fear of damaging the surroundings.

I decided to travel to the Valstine Family Mansion. Unfortunately, when I arrived, what I found was a complex that was being guarded by more Drage Family members. They had the entire complex surrounded. What’s more, all of them were wearing that Rune enchanted armor. It wasn’t dweorg-made, but that just made me wonder who had crafted it for them.

After debating with myself for a long while, I finally headed to the Alchemist Association. I didn’t have much hope. However, I soon discovered that the Alchemist Association’s situation was different from the various noble families.

Using the Flash Step, I sped past the guards near the front steps that led into the Alchemist Association, appearing not inside the courtyard but on the building’s roof. I crouched low and looked into the courtyard. The normally bustling courtyard was mostly empty save a few guards dressed in armor. After debating for a moment, I flew off the roof, found a window on the second floor, and snuck inside.

I made my way through the Alchemist Association by memory, traveling through hallways and down stairs. This place was a lot emptier than it had been before I left. There were still quite a few alchemists wandering the halls, but it felt like more than half their numbers were gone. Not only that, but there were Drage guards on the inside of this building as well. It took more than an hour for me just to sneak through this place.

Hard as it was, I did eventually find myself standing in front of the Alchemist Association’s head office. The office of the Alchemist Association’s head was located right next to the refining room, a large set of double doors leading inside. I was using a very simple application of the light element to bend the light around me so I could remain hidden. Once I moved, the light would distort and alert everyone present, but most of the alchemists were fortunately busy refining and there were no guards in front of the office doors.

Taking a deep breath, I placed my hand on the handle. The door was locked, but I manipulated the iron within the lock using the lightning element to open it. A soft click echoed around me. It seemed so loud that I worried everyone could hear it, but no one turned in my direction, and so I opened the door a crack and slipped inside.

The office looked much different than I remembered. Feinrea Kunis was not a woman who enjoyed ostentation. Her office had always been bereft of decorations, with only a bookshelf, her alchemy supplies, and a small garden of homegrown ingredients to decorate the interior. Now there was artwork lining the walls, carpet covering the floor, and the garden had long since disappeared. Even the desk looked more opulent than I remembered.

And standing behind that desk was a man I did not recognize.

He wore the purple robes of a member of the Alchemist Association, but it looked too small on him, especially around his corpulent gut. He didn’t have much hair on his head. There was a large bald patch and a single curly que hanging over his face, which looked like a cross between a pig and a horse. Beady black eyes were set on a disgusting face and around three chins wobbled around his neck.

He and I stared at each other for a long moment. His eyes were wide. Mine were cold.

“What the fuck?! Who are—”

The man began shouting, but I suddenly appeared before him, reached out, and grabbed his face. I squeezed his face with my ironclad grip. I was not gentle about it either. Even if I did not understand the situation completely, I could make some educated guesses. In response to my actions, the man had grabbed my forearm and was trying desperately to remove my hand, but it was no use. This man was so weak. He would never be able to make me do something if I didn’t want to.

I pulled the man close and stared into his frightened eyes.

“I’m going to ask you some questions,” I said, my voice cold. “You are going to answer those questions. If you refuse, you die. If you lie, I’ll make you suffer. Do you understand? Blink once if you do.”

The man couldn’t move his head because I had such a strong grip on it.

He blinked once.

I pressed the man into the chair he had been sitting on, stood behind him, and kept my hands on his shoulders. The strength I used to press on him would be mildly uncomfortable. It was a constant reminder of what would happen if he lied.

“Who are you? What happened to Feinrea Kunis?”

Those were the first two questions I asked. I figured I would start with something simple.

“I-I am Olaf Singh Ortega,” the man stuttered. “I’m the… the new head of the Alchemist Association.”

“And Feinrea?” I asked.

While it was clear the man was confused by my lack of knowledge, he answered me, saying, “Feinrea was… she was declared a traitor to the crown when she refused to pledge loyalty to the Drage Family. I was put in charge after she and her ilk were run out of the Alchemist Association.”

So Feinrea was run out of the Alchemist Association and declared a traitor. That also explained why so few alchemists were present. I imagine most of the alchemists were loyal to her and left when she had been forced to flee, though now I could not help but wonder about her whereabouts.

“So the Drage Family is now ruling Nevaria?” I asked. “How did that happen?”

Olaf’s face became strange at my question, but I tightened my grip on his shoulders and the man began singing like a bird.

“Y-yes, that is right. It happened about three months ago. The Drage Family suddenly declared themselves the rulers of Nevaria. They said Empress Hilda was a traitor who tried to harm Nevaria and she was run out with her husbands. Several other families were run out as well. The Valstine Family and the Kriger Family were both driven out of Nevaria. There’s been a rumor going around that they are hiding out in the Demon Beast Mountain Range, but nobody knows if that’s true. However…”

“However?” I asked.

Olaf licked his lips, eyes darting around as if afraid someone might hear him. “However, the Drage Family has been sending people into the Demon Beast Mountain Range for the last month or so. It seems like they have been searching for something. Nobody knows what, but everyone believes they are searching for Empress Hilda and the others.”

I was quiet for a long moment. From what this man was telling me, I came up with several plausible scenarios to explain what happened. However, I wanted a bit more information.

“And what about this… Nevarian Braves Rebellion I have been hearing about?”

“You don’t even know about that—ouch! Ouch! You’re breaking my shoulders! Stop!”

I stopped, but that didn’t seem to help Olaf, whose face had turned pale from pain. I gave him a moment to recover, then prodded him.

“Well? What happened?” I asked.

“N-nobody is completely sure,” Olaf admitted. “However, one night three months ago, around the same time the empress was driven out, there were several huge fires. The biggest one was where the Nevarian Braves’ headquarters was located. An announcement was made the next day saying the Nevarian Braves tried to kill Princess Sigrid and that all of them were traitors and a warrant was placed for their arrest. I didn’t see anything myself, but one of my friends said there was a huge fight that went down inside of the building.”

I silently contemplated what this fat man was telling me. Olaf, meanwhile, shook in his seat, body covered in so much sweat I could feel it soaking my fingers.

It sounded to me like the Drage Family had planned a coup d'etat and successfully carried it out, but what I didn’t understand was how this happened. The Drage Family was large and mysterious, but they were not so powerful that Empress Hilda couldn’t crush them. She had the Nevarian Spiritualists and Imperial Royal Guards under her command. There was also my Nevarian Braves, which was smaller than her forces but no less powerful.

Something really rotten was going on here. I suspected there was some kind of subterfuge involved. No matter how powerful the Drage Family was, they could not force Empress Hilda to flee unless they used trickery to get the upper hand.

I asked the man a few more questions, but he didn’t seem to know anything else.

“I-I already told you everything I know,” the man said.

“All right. I guess there’s nothing more I can get out of you.”

“Then… you’ll let me go?”

“Of course not.”

Before the man had time to say anything, I channeled my Spiritual Power into his body and cut off the flow of blood to his heart. Blood was made of 92% water, so controlling a person’s blood was as easy as breathing for me. The man’s heart stopped completely. His death was painless, but he still had a look of horror etched onto his face.

I did not want anyone knowing I had returned. Therefore I could not leave any witnesses.

Sealing the body inside of an empty storage ring, I snuck out of the Alchemist Association building and buried him in the back. Then I ascended into the air and used Flash Step Version Two: Jump Step to speed across the sky. I was almost caught several times by someone manning one of the ballista in the watchtowers spread across Nevaria, but I moved so fast none of them could keep track of me. My destination was Demon Beast Gate.

When I arrived, I found a place to hide myself and observed Demon Beast Gate from afar. It was being guarded by a group of Drage Family Spiritualists. There were twelve in total. Four of them were guarding the bottom, six were guarding the top, and two were manning the ballistae in the watchtowers. According to what I saw when using Spiritual Perception, all of them were at the Second State of Spiritualism.

I did not know how long I stayed there. Minutes? Hours? Eventually, the Demon Beast Gate opened and several dozen people wandered back inside. I immediately noticed that all of them were suffering from various injuries. Most of them had blood running down their faces or one of their arms hung limp like it was broken. However, none of them were dead and their armor remained pristine. That was the benefit to having Rune enchanted armor like this. Even someone who had reached the Third State of Spiritualism would have trouble destroying that armor with Spiritual Techniques.

This sight certainly seemed like proof to back up Olaf’s words. It was clear the Drage Family was searching for something, or someone, or multiple someones. I was certain Empress Hilda, her husbands, the Valstine and Kriger Families, and hopefully the survivors of my Nevarian Braves, were all located inside of the Demon Beast Mountain Range.

Since I still didn’t want anyone to know I was here until I found my mother in law and the others, I decided not to enter the Demon Beast Mountain Range through Demon Beast Gate. Traveling until I was at least several kilometers from the gate, I ascended into the sky and flew over the mountains that surrounded Nevaria.