Translator:imperfectluckEditor:Kurisu
At 4:00 pm in the afternoon on Year 7, 5th month, 13th day of the Dawn Generation, a powerful earthquake shook Starwood City which was located in the central portion of the Sala Dukedom. This earthquake’s cause was unknown, and although it didn’t cause that much destruction relative to its power, the shock waves spread out surprisingly far.
The nearby residents of Starwood City experienced violent trembling which caused some buildings to collapse. Fortunately, the great majority of residents was already in hiding for their safety.
The earthquake’s ripples spread so far and wide that even countries thousands of kilometers away could feel obvious tremors.
According to the witnesses, the earthquake occurred right after the undead started retreating for an unknown reason. And, the earthquake’s epicenter was in the middle of the undead’s territory. Apart from the earthquake itself, some golden lights could also be seen.
If that was all that was known to the public, this earthquake wouldn’t have even been worthy of mentioning in history. But in the next week’s edition of the Mage Country’s most authoritative weekly magazine named “Truth”, there was such a report about this earthquake.
“The most powerful magical energy shock waves ever recorded in history were detected emanating from the Sala Dukedom. According to magical energy wavelength theory, the only possibility for why this occurred is that the greatest energy explosion ever recorded in history must have happened here. This energy explosion has already surpassed the energy potential of all known forbidden spells. If this was accomplished by some senior archmage, then we must all congratulate this individual for creating a new record.
“According to our mages that went out to investigate, they didn’t discover any evidence of a large explosion as expected. Theoretically speaking, the strength of such an explosion should have been capable of sending an entire mountain range into the skies, changing the continental plates, and even creating several new volcanoes. Strangely, our mages didn’t discover any signs of these at all. Not only that, even Starwood City, the city closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, was completely intact...”
Although the great majority of mages wouldn’t focus purely on magical might, it would be inconceivable for them not to react to such a powerful magical energy wavelength. But since theory contradicted what they’d found at the scene, this incident caught even more attention from the mages. And after this weekly edition of the mages’ “Truth” magazine was published, countless archmages began to research this incident.
The magazine stated a hypothesis that some archmage must have made a breakthrough and cast the most powerful forbidden spell in history. However, not only was there no sign of an explosion anywhere, there wasn’t even any evidence of a mana vacuum that should have been caused by such a powerful magical energy wave. Although there were signs of an archmage’s activity, there were no traces of such a powerful forbidden spell.
In that case, that meant that either there was something wrong with the mages’ standard accepted theories on magical energy, or this explosion that should have been strong enough to explode half a continent didn’t even manage to kill a single fly. The unknown would always make people curious, and nobody could stop the mages’ curiosity.
News started spreading that the magical energy sent out from this explosion was seventy percent greater than the strongest recorded forbidden spell in history. Then, the mages received another abnormal piece of news that made them all fall strangely silent. Suddenly after that, large-scale destructive forbidden spells became the mages’ most popular research topic.
“If it’s only destructive force and the explosion’s radius, we won’t lose to those old artifacts...”
Alright then, this explosion which the mages ended up attributing to the work of some several tens of thousands year old artifact actually harmed the pride of the mages who researched destructive explosions as their ultimate goal. In the next two years, the mages actually succeeded in inventing three new mega powerful forbidden spells. It seemed that giving the mages some stimulation wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Anyways, I should stop talking about the mages’ boring sense of pride now. Neither will I talk any more about the effects on history that this incident, later called the Starwood Explosion incident, caused. At the very least, this explosion’s power had definitely been recorded in history.
“Is Conservation dead? She should be dead, right?”
“I don’t know. My clone was destroyed instantly. Also, I strongly object to what you’ve just called me. What do you mean, treasure chest mimic Harloys? If you ever put my name together with such an ugly creature again, I’ll... I’ll... what are you even afraid of? You’re so shameless and you’re not even afraid of death. It’s so hard to threaten you.”
As the silly cat insulted me, she kept trying to think of something I would be afraid of, while I was analyzing how much easier than expected things were this time.
Revealing a surprise intention at the end was no new or fancy trick at all. However, countless assassins had used the same trick throughout history, providing the best evidence of its effectiveness.
I’d distracted Conservation’s attention by talking to her about reviving the Tark Republic. Then, I’d pretended to talk about the real topic she’d wanted to hear. The box I’d handed her contained six memory crystals with Aso’s scattered memories, along with one fake memory crystal that was actually the highly dangerous Salo’s Crystal. And, I felt completely justified in calling Harloys a treasure chest mimic. The entire golden box that contained the seven crystals was actually one of Harloys’ clones, and the fake layer on top of the Salo’s Crystal to disguise it as a memory crystal was also one of Harloys’ clones.
In the end, being able to explode with such frightening power was both because of luck as well as my scheme. While I’d come up with the scheme, the scheme had only succeeded because the heavens were on my side for once.
Conservation had been so emotional that she’d immediately activated a memory crystal to look at the familiar smile and listen to the familiar voice of her now deceased lover who had died because of me. Of course, after activating one memory crystal, she wanted to see even more, so she directly activated the other six memory crystals... And, exploding a Salo’s Crystal just happened to require the archmage to inject their own mana into it! This was the exact same way to use most other magical tools as well.
And, when Conservation had noticed that one of the seven memory crystals was flawed, in her anxiety she’d only assumed that the memory crystal had been damaged, which prevented it from playing the recorded memories within. In her rush to see the memories, she’d greatly increased the amount of mana she’d injected into the Salo’s Crystal.
The archmage’s mana alone wouldn’t be able to create such a tremendous explosion. The mana would only act as a catalyst to activate and overload the Salo’s Crystal, and once this process began, it would be almost impossible to stop.
I had no idea if it would be possible for any archmage to survive the explosion, but it would be almost completely impossible for the archmage who acted as the catalyst to survive. That individual’s physical body would become an energy circuit for the Salo’s Crystal. The moment that the crystal exploded, the body would explode together with the crystal. Activating the Salo’s Crystal to explode it would be no different from complete suicide.
And if the Salo’s Crystal exploded, the explosion’s might would naturally be directly proportional to the crystal’s contained energy as well as the activating archmage’s magical power and mana reserves. But in the great majority of situations, the archmage’s mana pool wouldn’t even be worth mentioning in comparison to a Salo’s Crystal’s energy level. Thus, the typical explosion would be mostly a set radius. But this time, the activating archmage was Conservation, who possessed mana energy levels far beyond what was considered standard...
And so, when the emotional Conservation had noticed that her mana had been furiously sucked away to power up the Salo’s Crystal, it was already too late for her. I had no idea if she was familiar with the Salo’s Crystal, one of the most powerful inventions from the Haletdam generation, but if she managed to somehow survive, she would surely remember it for the rest of her life.
Of course, I wouldn’t possibly gamble everything on the possibility of Conservation being fooled. If she had calmly accepted the gift of the crystals without taking a look right in front of me, then the Harloys treasure chest mimic clone would have injected her own mana into the Salo’s Crystal to forcibly explode it. Then, I would drag Conservation into my unique personal world of Hell to kill her. But of course, if that had happened instead, the explosion’s power and success rate of my scheme would both have been greatly reduced.
It was precisely because that Salo’s Crystal had exploded with Conservation’s full magical power that this explosion went down in history...
“I’ll transform myself into Princess Peach! And, I’ll run outside, naked, together with Eaglestorm! No, I’ll take my clothes off while I’m running! I’ll do it right outside one of the fairies’ magazine publishing companies! I’m going to make you into a headline!”
Hearing this, I couldn’t help but laugh as Harloys was still actually trying to think of something that I would be afraid of. Seeing how proud the silly cat looked, I didn’t say anything else... and immediately lowered my head!
“Please don’t!”
Lowering my head wouldn’t cause me any embarrassment at all. But if I really became a headline like that, even I would be embarrassed. But right as we started relaxing from having killed Conservation, a screeching soul voice scream caused my eardrums to throb.
“Roland! Damned Roland!”
Alright then, judging from that familiar voice, my trouble wasn’t over yet. But, suddenly, yet another angry and very familiar roar came from a different direction.
“Roland, so this is where you were!?”
At this moment, the females I had been hiding from just happened to arrive. I didn’t know where I could run off to anymore...

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