Demon King of the Royal Class-Chapter 430

Radia Schmidt stared wide-eyed at Ellen’s sword, embedded in her chest.

“What... in the world...?”

The awakening as a Swordmaster in the middle of a battle...

It was an unbelievable event, but someone had accomplished it right before her eyes.

She hadn’t thought it would be an easy fight, which was why she had used the life-burning power of Berserk.

Radia had thought such things only happened in stories.

But the reality unfolding before her had resulted in the sword that was now piercing her heart.

Swoosh!

“Ugh...!”

As Ellen withdrew Lament, Radia’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to the ground.

The girl wielding two relics had become a Swordmaster when it had become too difficult to face her with just the power of the relics.

She was a genius for whom even the word ‘genius’ was insufficient.

‘What have I been building up until now? Could one become a Swordmaster so easily by gritting their teeth and focusing in a fight they couldn’t afford to lose? How could such an existence even exist in the world?’ Radia thought.

Radia Schmidt was a genius, and she hadn’t thought there were many geniuses at her level.

Radia felt a sense of déjà vu.

At this moment, Radia felt something similar to what she always felt when she saw Olivia Lanche.

Always unparalleled even among the Temple’s Royal Class, which was said to gather only the geniuses of geniuses... A genius she hadn’t dared to think of approaching.

A genius she’d ended up revering and admiring to the point of worship...

Was the girl before her also that kind of genius?

Radia knew that she had been born with ridiculous talent, yet this was an even more unreasonable existence.

Radia Schmidt had been sacrificed to the unreasonable.

What would happen if these two returned to the empire?

She didn’t know the details, but it seemed like a chain of unfortunate events would occur. That was why she hadn’t wanted to let them leave alive.

But she’d failed.

Something was bound to happen to Reinhart and Eleris.

Alse’s Divine Power did not possess the power of healing.

Therefore it was impossible for Radia Schmidt to heal her own wounds like other holy knights could.

The backlash from using Berserk and the fatal wound was getting to her, and her consciousness was gradually fading.

‘I hoped... you would return safely...’ Radia thought.

Coughing up a mouthful of blood, Radia Schmidt tried to hang on to the fading edges of her consciousness, but it slipped away faster than her attempts to hold onto it.

She had hoped for Eleris’s safe return, but instead, this had happened to her.

What would that vampire think of her death?

Radia didn’t know.

But Radia knew that the kind vampire would shed tears for her.

They say the gods plan everything. That everything in the world moves according to their plans.

Was her death one of those plans?

‘I don’t know...’

As she slowly closed her eyes, Radia sank endlessly into the depths of unconsciousness.

If all of this was a plan of the gods, then she could no longer find a reason to love those gods.

***

Kneeling in front of Radia Schmidt’s lifeless body, Ellen stood quietly in the blizzard.

“Hey... What did you do?” Charlotte asked in shock as she approached Ellen through the blizzard.

“It was because I had to win,” Ellen said as she dismissed Lament.

She had awakened something in herself during battle.

Transitioning from being able to use Mana Reinforcement to being a Swordmaster... that had happened during the battle. But unlike her previous breakthrough, Ellen did not collapse or cough up blood.

Woong...

Ellen tested the faint power of Mana Reinforcement rising in her right hand.

Kurung!

The mana that had been boiling in her hand flared up like a flame, rising higher than Ellen’s height.

She couldn’t refine it into the shape of a sword, but she could create an intense emission.

With her ability in Mana Reinforcement, and now being able to attain external emission, she now had the strength to avoid defeat, but she thought that this level of talent was a bit strange.

She knew she wasn’t ordinary, but wasn’t this a bit excessive?

Ellen felt relieved to have avoided death, yet she was experiencing a strange sensation of becoming unfamiliar with herself.

Charlotte looked at Radia Schmidt’s body, which was growing colder by the moment in the icy winter wind.

“So, who was this person?” she asked.

Charlotte had watched the tournament, but since she wasn’t a combat major, she hadn’t paid as much attention to the situation as Ellen had. Even after facing Radia Schmidt in battle, she didn’t know who she was.

“Radia Schmidt. She was a sixth-year student of the Royal Class last year. So she’s not a student now.”

At those words, Charlotte furrowed her brow.

“... Radia Schmidt?”

Charlotte had heard that name through other channels. She knew Radia Schmidt as a missing Temple Royal Class student, presumed dead in the attack on Leverier Lanche.

“This person... I thought she died during the last attack on the Order of the Holy Knights. She was presumed to be part of the Nameless Monastery...”

“... Are you sure?”

“... I heard she had extremist tendencies... But how do you know about the Nameless Monastery?”

“It’s not hard to find out.”

Reinhart had taken a black-haired Temple female student to Elena’s shop, and Radia Schmidt was at the place where Elena’s statue was located.

The person who had accompanied Reinhart was very likely Radia Schmidt.

Olivia Lanche had forfeited her match when she met Radia Schmidt in the Open Tournament, and Reinhart had gone to watch that match. After that, even Olivia didn’t know where Reinhart went.

Olivia had headed to a monastery in the southern capital, baited in by the Nameless Monastery’s plan.

If so, it meant Reinhart visited Elena’s shop with Radia Schmidt around that time.

And Radia Schmidt hadn’t died in the attack on the Order of the Holy Knights, but was at the ancient castle of Epiacs.

Had she been kidnapped?

If so, neither Charlotte nor Ellen could understand why she had attacked them.

“We have somewhere we need to go first.”

They had originally gone to the castle to check out Elena’s statue.

An unexpected situation had arisen, confusing their deductions, but there was something they had to confirm first.

***

Part of the ancient castle of Epiacs had collapsed, but it was only a portion, and the rest of the buildings were still intact.

“Is this... the place?”

“Yeah.”

The pantheon...

Ellen and Charlotte entered the space lined with seven statues and looked around.

Some statues were so weathered that their forms were barely recognizable, but they soon found themselves standing before the statue they had targeted.

Among the seven statues, the only one they could recognize was Elena’s. Some statues had been altered by humans after the Council took over.

Charlotte compared the photo registered on Elena’s ID with the statue and slowly nodded. “It definitely... resembles her.”

Elena had claimed to be a dragon, and it was Ellen’s vague assumption that this place might be something akin to a dragon’s lair.

“What exactly is this place? Why was that person suddenly here, and why did she try to kill us?” Charlotte said.

There were countless things they couldn’t understand.

What kind of place was Epiacs, really?

Why did Reinhart go to Elena’s shop with Radia Schmidt?

Why was Radia Schmidt, presumably a part of the Nameless Monastery, isolated in this place, which seemed to be Elena’s base?

Why had she tried to kill them?

And what had Reinhart done that night?

“...”

Ellen stared silently at Elena’s statue.

Olivia Lanche had stepped into a trap, and Radia Schmidt, who had been part of the Nameless Monastery, would have known about the trap set by the Nameless Monastery to lure in Olivia Lanche.

Elena was a powerful mage.

Suppose Reinhart had somehow learned about the Nameless Monastery’s plan. In that case, given his personality, he would have tried to save Olivia.

Although it had grown truly difficult to understand what Reinhart’s personality was like, based on what she had seen so far, that would be the case.

Adriana had been kidnapped and used as bait to lure Olivia in, and Reinhart had learned about it through Radia Schmidt.

This content is taken from fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm.

—“... He saved you?’”

—“Yes. I don’t know why. A winged demon appeared and saved Adriana and I. It took us a distance away, left us there and disappeared. That’s the end of it.”

—“Why on earth would they...”

—“I’m the one who’s most curious about that.”

Olivia Lanche couldn’t understand why the Demon King had saved her.

She thought the Demon King might actually be a benevolent being, and she seemed to want to hate humans—no, she had grown to hate humans.

He hadn’t accidentally saved Olivia in the attack on the holy knights.

‘Did he intend to save her from the start...?’ Ellen thought as she gritted her teeth.

Dark emotions began to creep up from within her.

Anger, betrayal, and a sense of deprivation.

A strange emotion, whose identity Ellen herself couldn’t understand, began to envelop her entire body.

Whatever important secret Reinhart held, if it was related to the Demon King and his association with Reinhart, then he had taken a very great risk the moment he took such action.

Hadn’t he been caught by the tail because of that?

Reinhart wasn’t a fool.

He would have known that this could happen, that traces would remain, and that there had to be understandable reasons behind incomprehensible situations. He would have known this situation might arise.

Yet he had saved her.

All while taking a very great risk.

There was only one reason.

Because she was that precious.

“...”

Ellen ground her teeth unconsciously.

“Charlotte, there’s something you need to hear.”

It was an important secret of Olivia’s, and if it was wrongly revealed, it could cost lives. Therefore, Ellen had no choice but to keep silent about it.

But given the serious issue of tracking the Demon King and Reinhart’s involvement, there could no longer be any secrets.

The end was approaching.

These ambiguous deductions and the clues that had accumulated so far were beginning to connect, one after another.

Her vague deductions gradually began to take on a concrete form.

***

“Is that what really happened?” asked Charlotte.

“Yes.”

“Why are you telling me this now...?” Charlotte trailed off with a sigh. “Well. There’s no point in arguing about it now.”

After hearing from Ellen the details of the attack on the holy knights, Charlotte crossed her arms and fell into deep thought. She was making deductions similar to Ellen’s.

Olivia and Adriana had fallen into a trap, and the two of them had made it out safely because of the Demon King’s attack. However, they kept the story to themselves, fearing they might be accused of being collaborators with the Demon King if it became known.

“And Reinhart heard about it from the two of them and placed Adriana in the care of the Rotary Club, since she’s finding it difficult to decide her course...?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes,” Ellen replied.

If Reinhart had heard the story from them and then tried to find a way to help them, then such actions weren’t entirely unreasonable.

However, the two of them now knew about the suspicious circumstances that had occurred the day before.

And the fact that Radia Schmidt, who was likely related to that incident, had been at this location made it clear that both Adriana and Olivia didn’t know the full details behind the incident.

Charlotte quietly organized the new facts she had learned. She didn’t know the exact relationship between Radia Schmidt’s presence at the ancient castle of Epiacs and the mage Elena, but one thing was certain.

They could no longer skim the surface.

They had to stop thinking it might not be true out of fear.

Moving forward, they had to investigate Reinhart.

What could they do to investigate Reinhart?

Charlotte’s fingers were trembling, and it wasn’t just because of the cold.

As they got closer to the core of the story, as they felt the edges of the truth... Charlotte found it increasingly difficult to endure the situation.

“...”

It was no different for Ellen.