Chapter 185:『Commandment Frontline (6)』
The succession war at the Yellow Thunder Tower ended earlier than expected. Orthes had always believed that Hector’s Knights were more than capable of conquering a Ten Tower branch whose Tower Lord was absent.
And yet, before they even set out to attack their assigned tower, the Knights had joined forces with the Lamphades Tower to assault Yellow Thunder first.
Many of Yellow Thunder’s Elders had been deployed on the Argyrion expedition, and its Tower Lord was in a coma.
Under the combined onslaught of Lamphades Tower and Hector’s Knights, Yellow Thunder’s forces crumbled, unable to hold the front line.
With no functional leadership in place, proper command became impossible. The Elders could not unify their opinions, and their chosen solution to the collapsing front line was to take to the battlefield themselves.
The result was chaos. Each unit under an Elder effectively became an independent entity, and the complete breakdown of communication only fueled the disarray.
In this confusion, the Divine Cult delivered the killing blow.
Using Lamphades’s radar to pinpoint coordinates, Proditor’s clergy executed a precision teleportation strike. Assassination teams were sent directly to the comatose Tower Lord of Yellow Thunder.
It wasn’t the Tower Lord’s consciousness that responded to the attack, but rather the survival-driven auxiliary intelligence embedded within his body. This cold, calculated artificial intelligence controlled the left side of his otherwise paralyzed body by directly channeling electrical currents through his nervous system.
The left side responded faster than the right, where the faint influence of his dormant consciousness still lingered. From the Tower Lord’s left hand, destructive lightning surged forth.
Demus charged forward with a wild grin. In his hand was a sacred relic, one of the few that had regained its former power. Its name had long been forgotten, but the blade of its spear had been reforged anew.
Harnessing both divine power and martial aura, Demus was engulfed in a crimson wind that swirled like a storm. His right arm, gripping the spear, pulled back with immense force. His muscles rippled as he twisted his entire body to hurl the weapon.
From his toes to his fingertips, the rotational energy built up in his frame was unleashed in a single, destructive throw. The spear spiraled through the air with devastating power, piercing through the golden lightning emitted by the Tower Lord. Fragments of thunder scattered in all directions, but Demus pressed on, unfazed. His clenched left fist radiated with the combined force of divine power and martial aura.
The survival program recognized the threat. The incomplete state of the Tower Lord’s body wasn’t enough to deal with this zealot.
The program attempted to seize control of the Tower Lord’s right side as well. It prioritized the survival of the body, even at the cost of the consciousness inhabiting it. Memories, after all, were merely sparks in neural cells—so long as the body lived, they could be restored.
But just as the program prepared to override the Tower Lord’s right side, Hector struck.
Hector’s target wasn’t the Tower Lord himself. With sharp, precise movements, he attacked the invisible tendrils of magic that the survival program was using to seize control.
Just because something is unseen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Hector’s blade, shimmering with martial aura, pierced the heart of the intangible spell.
In an instant, the spell was forced into manifestation—a golden, geometric pattern glowing brightly before shattering into countless fragments.
The Commandment’s radiance attempted to reassert itself, sending pulses of power to regain control of the Tower Lord’s right side. But every time it tried, Hector’s blade cut through the connection. No matter how many times the survival program requested mana, Hector severed its supply lines with precision.
All of this was to buy time for Lamphades to activate the Thunder Talisman at the Tower’s core.
The innermost chamber of Yellow Thunder Tower, where the Tower Lord was kept, was filled with an overwhelming concentration of thunderous mana. But the Thunder Talisman began to convert that energy into a more stable form.
The Commandment’s infinite mana couldn’t be entirely transformed, but it was enough to disrupt the unstable magic the comatose Tower Lord was channeling.
The survival program made a cold, calculated decision. The intruders could not be repelled. Therefore, it needed to ensure that the title of "master of the Commandment" remained tied to Yellow Thunder Tower.
It began charging the Tower Lord’s body with a self-destructive spell, using his entire nervous system as a conduit. Golden lightning crackled within the Tower Lord’s body, preparing for a catastrophic explosion.
Demus recalled a moment from the past as he watched the glowing figure of the Tower Lord.
“This time, it will be different!”
He prepared to invoke the name of his god, Enyalius, for a finishing blow.
But Hector preferred a "safer" solution over a head-on clash of power.
“Lamphades! Make the conversion quick!”
Martial aura erupted around Hector’s feet. He leapt into the air, his movements more akin to flight. With controlled bursts of aura from his entire body, he adjusted his position mid-air with precision.
Hector’s blade struck true, plunging into the Tower Lord’s heart—the nexus where all the mana was converging.
The explosive torrent of thunderous mana was itself a flood of lightning, but the Thunder Talisman absorbed the energy, subduing the raging currents.
When the mana stored in the Tower Lord’s body was depleted, his form collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Lamphades couldn’t help but notice a resemblance between Hector’s strike and Orthes’s methods.
“Damn it, they’re alike…”
Hector clicked his tongue. Without Orthes’s “eyes,” breaking down the structural formula of spells to cancel magic was the best he could manage.
But he couldn’t achieve the same finesse as Orthes’s formula overrides.
“That brat should’ve taken over as the Sword Duke after me,” Hector muttered.
The title of Sword Duke referred to the leader of the Knights. Since the order had been founded by a knight serving an ancient king who had been slain by the Mage King, they refrained from calling themselves "king" and instead adopted the title of Duke.
Now that Orthes’s supposed connection to the Mage King had been more or less resolved, Hector was ready to pass on his role and retreat into obscurity.
“If this is going to end with the revolution we’ve been aiming for, I might as well start preparing for retirement…”
Lamphades ignored Hector’s grumbling and surveyed their surroundings.
“I’m initiating the succession process.”
As Lamphades reached out to touch the Commandment—
***
「Yellow Thunder. What’s your status?」
The voice wasn’t emotionless; it was utterly lifeless, like a machine. Lamphades swallowed nervously.
“What’s going on? Did something happen to Orthes?”
「I’ll ask again. Yellow Thunder. Do you have the capacity to assist Nokmok?”
Lamphades took a deep breath. That couldn’t be. Orthes’s strategies had proven effective even against the Ten Towers. Whoever was behind this transmission, whatever their intentions, it was surely part of Orthes’s plan.
“The former Yellow Thunder Tower has fallen in the succession war. I am Lamphades, the new Tower Lord.”
A moment of silence followed. Lamphades waited, a mix of unease and anticipation tightening his chest.
「Ah, that’s a relief. It’s Carisia.」
The voice shifted instantly—from its cold, mechanical tone to something recognizably human, carrying a trace of warmth.
「Orthes has a question. Did you send a message to Nokmok?”
Lamphades responded calmly.
“Of course. Orthes warned us to be wary of Argyrion, and it seems he was right.”
Orthes let out a sigh of relief upon hearing Carisia relay Lamphades’s answer. If Lamphades had sent a message to Nokmok, it meant he had successfully secured the Commandment and activated the jamming signals.
With Lamphades’s interference in place, the only communication Argyrion could use was the direct Commandment link, which meant their schemes couldn’t spread further.
Though the mage coalition dispatched to Nokmok’s front was still a potential problem, Hydra Corporation wouldn’t immediately become a public enemy.
“Argyrion’s presence here, outside the extra-dimension, is an enigma,” Lamphades continued. “But to stabilize morale, either you or Carisia will need to confront Argyrion directly.”
Hector and Demus had already been dispatched to their respective front lines via Proditor’s clergy, while Lamphades and his mages worked to stabilize Yellow Thunder.
“For now, we won’t be able to assist Nokmok for at least a few hours.”
「They’re grateful. Focus on stabilizing Yellow Thunder. Orthes will handle Nokmok,” Carisia replied.
Lamphades found himself nodding in admiration. Orthes’s ability to manipulate the narrative was extraordinary, enough to make even someone like him feel a pang of fear.
Meanwhile, Argyrion pressed forward relentlessly. Empowered by the Silver Thread, which converted raw mana into magical energy, the battle for Nokmok was unlike any conventional succession war.
Typically, attackers were at a disadvantage in succession wars, as they had to erode the mana-dense atmosphere dominated by the defending Commandment. But Argyrion simply overwhelmed the process by converting vast amounts of mana faster than it could be absorbed.
Fueled by the concentrated efforts of their forces and the knowledge left behind by Sprigo’s World Tree research, Argyrion achieved unprecedented results.
***
Halto, perched atop a silver wave, watched as mages were consumed one by one. He had no intention of climbing Nokmok’s tower floor by floor.
Instead, he headed straight for the peak.
Branches surged like a tidal wave, crashing over Nokmok Tower. The moment Halto set foot toward the summit—
Dozens of spells rained down upon him in an instant.
Despite the Silver Thread’s ability to convert mana, these attacks were simple yet highly effective.
What was strange was that the spells’ attributes weren’t unified. They weren’t all nature-based magic. Instead, all ten elemental attributes of the Ten Towers manifested simultaneously.
“Who’s there?” Halto demanded.
“We knew you would come, servant of the Fallen Lord.”
From the shadows of Nokmok, nameless mages emerged. Even the Tower Lord hadn’t known of their presence. They were more magic than human, uninterested in the succession war and endlessly devoted to research.
Among the Elders, they were known as the Ancients—beings who had remained since the founding of the Ten Towers, having outlived countless successions.
In name, they were considered Elders, but in practice, they ignored even the Tower Lords, existing solely as machines of magical inquiry.
“You know the truth and still choose to side with the Ten Towers?” Halto asked.
“We exist for magic, not for some corpse king,” they replied.