Magic Is Learned For Nothing [EN]: Chapter 465

The Rising Evil Empire (1)

Legion was aboard a battleship-class vessel seized from the Imperial Army.

It was a flying artillery base boasting tremendous firepower, second only to an aircraft carrier.

The largest battleship was the enhanced transport ship, capable of deploying thousands of enhanced assault troops from the sky at once. It was a shame they hadn’t captured an enhanced transport ship, but Legion decided to be content.

This alone was a blessing.

The kingdom had the capability to construct battleships up to the destroyer class.

However, building just one wouldn’t solve the problem.

First, a base to operate the battleship was needed, along with numerous personnel and funds for maintenance crews, aviation personnel, assault troops, and so on.

The funds required beyond constructing the battleship were more than ten times the construction cost.

Was it over after construction?

No.

The funds to operate the battleship and airbase were enormous.

In other words, the kingdom had the ability to build a battleship but not the ability to operate it.

A pie in the sky [an unrealistic or unattainable goal].

Yet, Legion had captured five such battleships.

Legion was the only noble in the kingdom capable of operating a base.

Thanks to operating the Wyvern Squadron, he had an air force. Of course, it needed to be scaled up to twice its current size, but it was much more advantageous than starting from scratch in an empty field.

The funds to operate the battleships could be procured by squeezing other nobles.

Half-threatening them by saying, “I’ll protect you.”

Duke Syzinfy would object, but what could he do? They would want the battleships to be nationalized. Then, he would just agree.

He wouldn’t hand over the technology that Bide had secretly extracted. Was he crazy? To hand that over.

Of course, he wouldn’t hand over the skilled soldiers who knew how to operate the battleships either.

Even if they took them, they would only be floating scrap metal.

It was 100 times better for him to operate them.

King Lauzel wouldn’t be too dissatisfied either. Other royals might complain loudly, but what could they do when the king ignored them?

The next king after Lauzel might be dissatisfied, but by then, he would be old and dead.

He would think about the future later.

Having concluded his thoughts, Legion loaded all the materials necessary for war onto the five ships.

The battleships had dozens of times the operational range of wyverns. Wyverns needed to rest when they were tired from flying.

They had to eat and sleep. If their stamina dropped, they had to return to base and rest.

But battleships didn’t need to do that. He wondered what kind of technology they used to enable semi-permanent operation.

If the battleships had just a little more mobility, even a Wyvern squadron would have suffered significant losses.

The more he learned, the more he realized how amazing the battleships were.

“Awesome.”

Dreyzer said, looking down at the ground from the sky. The ground, viewed from hundreds of meters above, didn’t seem to be caught up in war at all.

It was peaceful and beautiful.

“But are we really going to attack?”

Dreyzer asked, looking at Legion.

“Of course? If not now, when will we have the chance?”

Legion retorted as if it were obvious.

“Wouldn’t it be better to gather our forces completely? The Imperial Army won’t be able to exert any power anyway, right?”

“800,000 troops can’t exert power?”

“They have nowhere to return to.”

“No. Even if the Empire has fallen, their forces remain intact. So, what do you think the commander-in-chief leading those 800,000 troops will do?”

“Wouldn’t they try to rebuild the Empire?”

“How?”

“They’ll retreat for now and plan for the future.”

“Their base is gone, though?”

“They’ll establish a base somewhere else… Ah…”

“The guys pushed back by the Stone Head Church will return. Think about it. They pushed our kingdom to the brink of annihilation. They’ll wipe this place clean and form a new front line. The kingdom will be devastated. A massacre will occur. They’ll do anything to revive the Empire. The kingdom’s people? They’ll kill them all if they get in the way. They’ll kill everyone in Porto Poman except the women. That way, it’ll be easier for them to build a new base.”

“Now is the perfect opportunity.”

“Right?”

Dreyzer nodded in agreement.

He understood why Legion was in such a hurry when the Imperial Army retreated.

Why he activated all the information guilds to gather massive amounts of information only about the Stone Head Church and the Empire.

It was to grasp the overall situation at a glance.

Knowing that, Dreyzer didn’t understand why he hastily deployed the battleships that weren’t even fully modified.

He finally understood Legion’s thoughts.

And he was truly impressed.

He realized once again why he had risen to the position of Duke at such a young age.

It wasn’t just luck that allowed him to reach this position.

Even adding up a series of incredible strokes of luck wouldn’t allow someone to rise so rapidly.

Essentially, Legion’s own abilities were exceptionally outstanding.

Come to think of it-

He had become a Transcendent Grand Master before him.

Transcendent Grand Master.

It wasn’t just about seeing the world in a new light.

When a Sword Master becomes a Grand Master, their perspective on the world completely changes.

It’s like… a Sword Master feels like a child.

It’s the difference in perspective between an adult and a child looking at the world.

Of course, he thought that becoming a Transcendent Grand Master from a Grand Master would evoke a similar feeling.

But he didn’t get a completely new feeling.

Instead, he felt that his body had completely changed.

It’s like…

If he used to lift a sword weighing about 10 kilograms…

Now, he could lift a ton of iron without any difficulty.

The difference in martial power was beyond imagination.

And the master had achieved that first.

Excluding any prejudice against him, he was clearly a remarkable genius who would go down in history.

Flap flap-

Porto Poman comes into view.

It had been in a life-or-death crisis, but now it had regained its peace.

With the Imperial Army retreating from their doorstep, everyone in Porto Poman must have felt like they had narrowly escaped death.

The five massive battleships captured by Legion were painted completely differently from before.

They were hideously black. The front of the ships was deliberately painted with sharp, fierce glares. From a distance, it looked like a giant head was flying in the sky.

But one symbol was clear.

The flag symbolizing the Alexander family.

Seeing that flag, many citizens waved their hands towards the five battleships.

Moreover, nearly a hundred wyverns were flying as if escorting the battleships.

The kingdom’s people felt an unknown thrill as they watched Legion’s battleships and Wyvern Squadron.

“How is the situation on the continent?”

Dreyzer asked Legion. His information processing skills weren’t as good as Legion’s.

No one in the entire territory was as capable as Legion at picking out only the most important information from the vast amount of data and grasping the key points.

Even that ability of his wasn’t known to others.

Normally, he left such troublesome tasks to Gibbs and Silke, the heads of the Duchy’s information guild.

He only stepped in directly during emergencies like this.

That’s why most people praised Gibbs.

“Our guild leader! The best!”

Gibbs kept his mouth shut, knowing that the lord’s information processing skills were far superior to his own.

Even if he said,

“Our lord is much more talented.”

The subordinates wouldn’t believe him. He had tried to persuade them several times at first, but they said things like, ‘Yes, yes, I understand. Guild Leader, you’re sucking up to the lord too much. You seem desperate for success. It doesn’t look good,’ so he gave up.

Anyway, the information Legion received from Gibbs wasn’t very bright or wholesome.

“The entire Eastern Continent has been engulfed in the flames of war. They were very cunning. They used the Empire to draw all the attention here and backstabbed all the kingdoms. The first to fall was the Empire.”

“Dragons, right?”

“Huh? How did you know?”

“Just a guess. How many are there?”

“According to survivors, there are over hundreds.”

99 percent of humanity doesn’t see dragons themselves. Only a very small number witness dragons.

That’s why they remain legends.

But for such beings to appear in hordes of hundreds. It was a definite calamity.

“You know how powerful a dragon’s breath is, right?”

“Who doesn’t? Even the breath of adult dragons has the destructive power of at least an 8th circle attack spell. A wyrm-class dragon would be 9th circle, and an ancient-class dragon would exceed 10th circle.”

“That’s right. The breaths of those dragons exploded all at once in the Imperial capital.”

“Hundreds of them breathed at once?”

“In three waves. The Empire’s capital has vanished from the map.”

“Are they continuing to advance east?”

“No. They seem to have polymorphed [changed form] differently. It seems they destroyed the Imperial capital and are now leading their respective forces eastward. It seems that races following the dragons had already gathered at the border. All eyes were focused here, so it didn’t stand out much.”

“So, what’s the current situation?”

“The Anikaa Three-Kingdom Alliance has been devastated. The Northface Kingdom is destroyed, the K5 Kingdom is destroyed, and the BB Rule Kingdom is destroyed. Almost all small and medium-sized kingdoms with less than 100,000 troops are finished.”

“That’s a huge problem.”

“Yes? Huge? Ah, yes, huge. So, how much time do we have before they push all the way here?”

“If the remaining kingdoms put up a good fight, four months. That’s the maximum. If they continue to collapse as they are now, they’ll reach here in a month.”

“We have to calculate based on one month.”

“We have to assume the worst-case scenario.”

“That’s right. That archbishop bastard.”

Legion recalled the archbishop he had met in the Vampire Kingdom. The man with the jet-black hair was impressive. Among all the strong individuals he had met so far, he was the strongest.

How strong would he be now?

Frankly, he had no idea.

He must be confident to commit such an absurd act.

One thing was certain.

He was now stronger than the Dragon Lord, who was called the strongest in the human realm.

That’s why he even made the dragons participate in this war.

Legion gritted his teeth and told Dreyzer the story he had heard from Gibbs.

“So, we only have a month left?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s their goal?”

“Sharonz told me.”

“What is it?”

“The extinction of weak races. Reorganizing the human realm into a meritocracy [a system where advancement is based on ability]. They intend to conquer even the Demon Realm, the Celestial Realm, and the Underworld. Those bastards.”

“…They’re crazy.”

“That’s right. They’re crazy. Imagine turning this place into the Demon Realm.”

“Ah, how terrible.”

Peace would be over.

Only a world of killing and being killed would unfold.

“I haven’t even opened Wyvern World yet. I had such big dreams… Those bastards. Even if I had opened Wyvern World, I wouldn’t be this upset.”

“Don’t tell me… are you fighting them because of that?”

“Is there any other reason? How much money did I put into Wyvern World?”

Dreyzer looked at Legion with eyes that said, “Our master is crazy after all.”

Like other heroes-

“For the peace of the world!”

“For the survival of humanity!”