Chapter 52 Good Bye
Finding the room where the phosium was stored was easy.
Delphine and the three of them raced down the hallway, following the pipes that led to it.
Somehow, there was no sign of the usual guards inside the factory.
“Such sophisticated automation…”
Belly muttered in a low voice, still aware of his surroundings as he ran.
“It’s far beyond the Empire’s science and technology. Who the hell is this Emperor…”
“There he is.”
Just then, Lynn, who was running in the lead, raised a finger and pointed somewhere.
It was an iron gate, locked by an unknown double device.
He immediately sped up and reached for the gate.
Thud-.
The lock on the giant iron gate made an intimidating sound, returning to the hall.
Lynn was the first to reach the door, and without hesitation, he yanked it open.
The heavy iron gate slowly revealed its dark chasm.
The three of them quickly made their way through the gap.
The room was dark all around, making it difficult to see their surroundings.
Without a word, Lynn grabbed Delphine’s hand, then flicked his other hand away.
With that, a ball of fire roared into the air.
The three of them drew in a collective gasp of surprise at what was revealed beneath the orange glow.
Rows and rows of iron shelves filled the room.
An unknown machine, shaped like a pair of pincers, picked up the farthest phosphorus and dropped it onto a moving belt.
That leads to a test tube, where it becomes a black crystal.
The amount of phosphorus that filled the room was staggering at first glance.
Delphine was amazed, but not nearly as much as Belly and Lynn.
The two of them, who had been removing the phosphorus from the items they had brought back from the Northern Continent, were in awe.
“This much phosphorus…”
“Where did they get this from, the Northern Continent?”
Was the Emperor in contact with the Northern Continent?
If so, why are the two layers of barriers isolating the Empire?
Rumors of monsters beyond, of barbarians in the North, of all the people of the North.
The questions grew, but they were unanswerable for now.
“We’ll take what we can carry.”
They soon began gathering as much phosium as they could from the shelves.
Soon the clear crystals were piled up in front of them.
“…”
Delphine wordlessly reached out to the pile.
Her white straight hand was about to touch the surface of the clear crystal.
“Wait.”
A low voice stopped her in her tracks.
The voice was unexpectedly not Lynn’s, but Belly’s.
He looked at her, hesitated, then spoke.
“They charged that black crystal with human life energy.”
“…”
“I was purposely ignorant until just now, but… Lynn is right.”
Belly said awkwardly, looking at Delphine, who was staring at him.
“We can’t just draw energy indefinitely without consequences.”
There was no telling what might happen to her if she charged that much phosium.
How could she have gotten this far without being prepared?
It was something she’d been thinking about since she’d first realized she could charge it.
Seeing the seriousness on his face, Delphine suddenly broke into a small smile.
“Why are you telling me about that all of a sudden?”
“Because… your ladyship…”
Belly hesitated, uncharacteristically lengthening his words.
He didn’t have to say it, he could feel it.
Perhaps it was because he no longer saw himself as a pathetic nobleman or a hidden card in a gambling game.
In fact, after today’s events, they were now friends, or perhaps even comrades-in-arms.
“Call me Delphine,” Delphine said with a hint of laughter in her tone.
“Let’s get to know each other better.”
Come now, nobles and commoners, what’s the use of such distinctions?
Their eyes widened, as if her words were quite unexpected.
Delphine looked at them and spoke calmly.
“My resolve is the same as it was at the beginning.”
If she was going to find out the truth and then pretend she didn’t know, she hadn’t started.
She would have stayed in the manor and played the nobleman, just like Ioannes wanted her to.
But no.
It was not such empty bravado that her mother had instilled in her long ago.
She would not walk around with her eyes closed and be swept along by fate.
“Del. Always do what your heart tells you to do. That will be your pride.”
Delphine turned back around and reached for the transparent phosium.
Perhaps Belly was right, and her life would indeed be given.
But even if she died here today, it wouldn’t matter.
All of her confused emotions suddenly dissipated, leaving her with a surprisingly solid conviction.
The moment her outstretched hand touched the pile of phosium.
A power unlike anything she’d ever seen before drained from her body.
It felt like a sudden hemorrhage.
The sensation of blood being drained from her body, a sensation she’d come to expect.
At the same time, the transparent phosium that had been piled up all at once emitted a strange five-color glow that filled the room.
The radiance poured down over Belly and Lynn’s heads like a blessing from the gods.
“What the hell…”
The two muttered with overwhelmed expressions.
“We can win, we can…”
Belly, in particular, looked almost jubilant.
“We can win against this tyranny of three hundred years… If only she was by our side!”
Delphine was lost in thought, alone in the ecstatic light.
Her entire body was exhausted with an unknown feeling of exhaustion.
But to her surprise, even at this moment, it was Ioannes’s face that flashed into her mind.
‘Ioan. Now I am truly, completely against you.’
He is on the side of the Emperor and Veritas.
And Delphine is on the side of La Rouge and Freedom.
Today’s operation to retake the Phosium would be the beginning of their war.
At the thought of that, a strange feeling rose in her chest, and she wondered what it was.
“That’s it, now we just need to get out of here with the charged phosium!”
“I’ll teleport you.”
“Do you think that’s possible within this crystal?”
“Yes. With this much, it should be easy.”
Lynn chuckled as he picked up a large piece from the pile of phosium that lit up the room.
Soon a round white circle of magic rose up around them.
It was bigger and brighter than ever before.
Beyond the fading pile of phosium, Lynn held out his hand toward her.
“Delphine.”
Delphine was about to take it, but suddenly turned away.
For some reason, she felt as if Ioannes was getting closer.
“Delphine. Come on, we’ll be teleporting soon.”
“…”
Delphine squeezed the hand that was extended to her and waved goodbye.
‘… Good bye.’
To Ioan.
To her husband, who promised her eternal love, at least in form.
To the boy who had thrilled her as a child.
And.
To her own heart, which still longed for him.
Never again would she waver.
From this day forward, he was an enemy, an object of evil to be exterminated.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The bright light of the magic circle enveloped her.
One last time, before she disappeared, Lynn swung his hand holding the phosium toward the display case.
A gust of wind blew through the quiet, cool room, and the rows of shelves lost their balance and tumbled to the floor.
***
“I was collecting the black crystals when suddenly I heard a roar down the hall.”
“…”
Pride glanced over at the storage room where the phosphium was kept, his face impassive.
“So I came over, and found this…”
Walter looked quite surprised.
He was right, there were broken pieces of phosphorus everywhere, crumbling to the floor.
He has every reason to be frightened, knowing how much that crystal is worth.
“How did this happen all of a sudden, I wonder if some machine malfunctioned…”
Walter asked, looking terrified.
But it had been running perfectly for the last three hundred years without a single error.
It couldn’t be.
Pride, surveying the mess with a cool eye, suddenly spoke up.
“Some of the… is missing.”
“What? How in the world, I mean, how in the world did you know that?”
It was a fact that he, with his inhuman senses, knew.
Instead of answering Walter’s question, Pride spoke in a sullen tone.
“… A rat has been sneaking in.”
They were the only ones in this Empire who dared to oppose the Emperor and himself.
Walter’s face lit up in surprise once more.
“You mean to tell me that those revolutionaries have managed to infiltrate this far?”
To the untrained eye, it’s just a transparent crystal.
So there was only one reason to sneak in here and steal the phosium…
Someone’s working magic there, too.
They just don’t know who or how yet.
‘Who?’
So much for the secrets of this Empire.
Who the hell…
Pride stopped dead in his tracks, his sharp eyes scanning the disorganized storage room.
“Lord…, what is your business?”
Without a word, he bent over his tall stature and picked up something slender and shiny from the floor.
“Is this…?”
It was a lock of red hair.
Bright as if on fire.
