Magic Academy's Bastard Instructor Chapter 258: Iron Lotus [4]

There was no such thing as unconditional loyalty. That was sothing reserved for family, or perhaps for a lover.

But for knights on the battlefield, whose nas would never be rembered and whose only chance to be rembered was to die for a cause, what did loyalty truly an?

Was it submission to the crown, ruled by an Emperor already infamous as a tyrant, who terrorized all who were outside his privilege?

The answer was obvious.

"F-Fuck this!"

For those who had obeyed quietly until now, unwilling to cause trouble, throwing their lives away on the battlefield for an Emperor who would not hesitate to behead them the mont they stepped out of line, this fight was no longer worth it.

They had signed up for war, yes. But not for this.

They had never expected the Cthulhus to be so powerful. Day after day, they watched these creatures sink ships and tear apart trained soldiers just like them.

Naturally, the formation began to crumble.

Those whose loyalty to the crown had always been conditional turned to flee.

The result was a catastrophe.

"Where are you going—"

The shout never finished. The mont the line broke and attention fell, a Cthulhu crashed into the retreating knights. Claws and fangs tore through armor as if it were paper.

Screams rang out, cut short one after another.

Panic spread faster than any command could follow.

Those who turned to run only widened the gaps, and through those gaps, the sea’s horrors poured in.

What had been a battlefield beca a slaughter as n died one after another, not because they were weaker, but because they had looked away for a single second.

——Hey, you damned Aetherion bastards!

A commander from the Celestine knights roared.

——Pull yourselves together!

He planted his feet and raised his weapon, standing as another wave of Cthulhus crashed forward. Where the Aetherion ranks wavered, the Celestine line held.

———!

At that mont, a bolt of light flashed. One by one, Cthulhu heads fell as a single figure stepped into view.

"Y-Your Highness!"

Franz Barielle Aetherion stood at the front, blood staining his cheek as he cut through another wave with a single slash. In that mont, many rembered what they had forgotten.

Before he beca Emperor, Franz Barielle Aetherion had been a Crusader. A knight who graduated at the top of his class. A valedictorian. One of the greatest of his era and counted among nas such as Friedrich Glade and Aston Nietzsche. A champion of the 2008 Summit, who had once bested knights and mages alike.

The crown had not made him strong.

He had earned it long before.

A man who had everything. Authority, power, and strength that wasn’t just for show.

"Your Highness, your n are—"

"I know," Franz cut in, not looking back. "Let them."

He stepped forward, blade still dripping as he looked at the advancing tide.

"Those who flee were never knights to begin with. They were rely fortunate fools who learned how to wear armor, but never truly learned the principles of chivalry."

Slash——!

"They were never knights to begin with."

Franz surged forward. His blade glowed with a golden aura. One after another, Cthuhlhus fell before him, unable to withstand the force of his advance.

So of the Aetherion knights hesitated. They swallowed hard, sha burning in their chests. Just monts ago, they too had considered turning their backs and running. But now, they watched their emperor charge ahead alone, unprotected by anything but his own resolve.

Hesitation gave way to resolve.

They had forgotten.

This battlefield was not for Aetherion, nor was it for the Emperor.

"Ah..."

It was for the future of the entire continent. If the monsters breached this line, the Dominion would fall, and after it, Aetherion itself.

"Ch–Charge!"

Their hos would burn. Their families would die. Everything they hoped to protect would be lost if the enemy was not stopped here.

That truth cut deeper than fear.

Let bygones be bygones.

Steel was raised once more. Feet dug into bloodstained ground. Those who had hesitated stepped forward, reclaiming the line they once thought of abandoning.

"For the continent!"

"Oh?"

Many of them had cursed Franz Barielle Aetherion in private. So had prayed for his downfall. Others resented him in the back of their minds, waiting for the day the tyrant would fall by soone else’s hand.

Yet now, watching him lead the charge, sothing fundantal had changed.

In this mont, without even aning to, Franz Barielle Aetherion had beco a source of inspiration for every knight on the battlefield.

Whatever tyrannical whims he had imposed in the past no longer mattered. As they pushed forward, those mories were cast aside under sothing more imdiate and more powerful.

Hope.

Knights fell. Lives were lost. Yet Cthulhus fell far faster than human flesh ever could. Each advance was paid for in blood, but it was paid nonetheless, and the line did not break again.

His own empire might have wished for Franz Barielle Aetherion’s death.

But on this battlefield, in this mont, they chose to follow him.

Leaning back with a cigarette in his mouth, Vanitas watched the scene below.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the judgnt that sothing else is more important than fear, huh?"

The simple understanding that if they did not stand here, no one else would. That the lives behind them mattered more than their own. That history did not care whether they had been saints or sinners, loyalists or dissenters.

It would only rember whether they held the line.

And so they did.

——Stand!

Wounded n rose again, gripping their weapons with shaking hands. Orders beca unnecessary. The line reford through shared purpose.

"V-Vanitas Astrea!"

Vanitas turned as a mage from the Bundesritter Information Service hurried toward him.

"What?" Vanitas tilted his head.

"W-We’d like to consult you," the mage said. "I... I believe we’ve picked up a signal."

"So?" Vanitas raised a brow. "That Vice Admiral of yours will just get in the way again."

"It was Vice Admiral Neuschwan who requested your presence..."

Vanitas scoffed. "That stubborn old fart. If he wants my help, he should have co and apologized in person."

"...."

The cigarette slipped from his fingers. Vanitas crushed it under his boot.

"Alright," he said. "I’ll humor him."

* * *

Vanitas stepped into the eting room. Voices overlapped in restless discussion, but the mont the mage beside him announced his presence, the commotion died down at once.

The first to speak was a bearded mage who seed to be balding.

"Astrea—no. Marquess Astrea. Please, take a look at this."

Vanitas nodded and followed him forward. Spread across the central table was a massive parchnt. Layered atop it were glowing magic circles, projected one over another like transparent planes. Ellipses intersected and overlapped, all of them glowing blue.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?" Vanitas asked.

"We built upon your frawork," the mage replied. "And this... this is the reciprocated signal."

Vanitas adjusted his glasses. His eyesight was no better with them on, but it was more or less habit at this point. He leaned closer and traced the patterns with his eyes the glow reflected across the lenses.

"These are..." He paused. "Coordinates?"

"...Is that so?"

At once, several mages crowded closer. Conversations stopped. Gears turned in their heads as recognition spread from one face to another.

Vanitas was the first to speak again. He extended a finger and pointed toward one section of the layered ellipses.

"If you look here," he began, "you’ll notice the distortion is fluctuating at intervals. If I’m correct, this convergence suggests a fixed origin point."

"That would place it sowhere along the southern current," one mage said, already tracing lines across the projection.

"No," another countered. "The curvature doesn’t align. If it were the southern current, the resonance would be elongated, not compressed."

A third mage shook his head. "You’re both assuming a planar spread. What if the leyline dips vertically? The signal could be refracting upward, not outward."

"That would require an abnormal mana gradient," soone else said. "The sea floor can’t support that kind of inversion."

Vanitas watched them for a mont without speaking. Then he tapped the parchnt once more.

"You’re overcomplicating it," he said. "The fluctuation isn’t environntal. Look, it’s responsive.

Silence descended. The fluctuations in the magic circle sparked and sputtered.

"The leyline is reacting to observation," Vanitas continued. "Every ti the systemata locks on, the origin adjusts just enough to avoid full exposure."

Several mages froze mid-calculation.

"...It’s moving?" one of them asked.

"No," Vanitas replied. "It’s anchored. But sothing is shielding it. That’s why your coordinates keep drifting apart."

He drew a short arc across the ellipses.

"Strip away the reactive variance and map only the constant return. What’s left is your true position."

Slowly, the projections realigned. Lines collapsed inward. Discrepancies vanished one by one.

A mage swallowed. "That would place the origin..."

"...Directly beneath the convergence zone," Vanitas finished. "Not in open water. Under it."

Silence fell once more.

"But that doesn’t answer anything," another mage said at last. "It’s good that we’ve narrowed it down, but coordinates alone don’t help. It could still be anywhere."

"There is a way," Vanitas said.

All eyes turned to him.

"How?" soone asked.

"A direct expedition."

"...."

A frontal advance. Vessels pushing far beyond the secured periter, deep into waters that had already swallowed fleets whole. In those seas, it was less an operation and more a death sentence.

Several mages exchanged uneasy glances.

"That’s... madness," one of them muttered. "We’ve lost too many ships already...."

"We don’t even know what’s down there," another added. "If the leyline is shielded, whatever’s guarding it won’t be passive..."

"And if the signal changes again mid expedition," soone else said, "we won’t be able to retreat..."

Doubt spread into the room like a slow poison. So stared at the projections, others at the floor. A few said nothing at all, already weighing the cost in their minds.

Vanitas remained unmoved.

"You’re thinking like scholars," he said. "Not like people at war."

"...."

"You can sit here and argue over margins until the sea eats the rest of the coastline," he continued, "or you can accept what this is. A gamble."

He tapped the parchnt once.

"The leyline isn’t hiding because it can. It’s hiding because it has to. Which ans whatever’s down there can’t afford to let us see it clearly."

That realization made several mages widen their eyes.

"If you want certainty," Vanitas went on, "you won’t get it from equations. You’ll get it by forcing the answer out into the open."

If they did nothing, the sea would not wait.

At that mont, Vice-Admiral Neuschwan stepped forward.

"And what makes you so certain a direct expedition would imdiately uncover the leyline, Vanitas Astrea?" he asked. "For all we know, we’d just be charging in blindly again, no different from before."

Vanitas did not bristle. He did not smirk either.

"It’s simple," he said. "Once you’re close enough, this frawork will respond."

He gestured toward the layered ellipses.

"The closer the expedition moves toward the origin, the clearer the response becos. It will stop behaving like a passive signal and start behaving like a guide. No, like a compass, rather."

Several mages leaned in.

"Yes," Vanitas continued, "we’ll be crossing hostile waters without full visibility. That much hasn’t changed. But this ti, we aren’t moving blindly. There’s a destination."

He tapped the parchnt once.

"And this," he said, "will make sure we’re moving in the right direction."

Roman Neuschwan stared at the projection.

"So you’re saying," he said slowly, "the mont we start receiving directional confirmation, turning back becos pointless?"

"Yes," Vanitas replied. "Because by then, you’ll already know you’re close."

Roman Neuschwan stood in silence for a long mont in contemplation before arriving at an answer.

"Prepare the ships."

At his command, the navyn beside him saluted and quickly exited the room.

"I’ll be clear," Roman said as he turned back to Vanitas. "I don’t trust you. And I never will."

Vanitas t his gaze head-on.

"That’s fine," Romancontinued. "Which is exactly why you’ll be coming with us. Consider it insurance."

"I was already thinking the sa thing."