Gascogne brought news that the Workshop District was intact.
Last night only a few factory buildings were burned; there were hardly any casualties.
Belengar and Ged had just gone through an attack and didn’t dare leave, so when Gascogne came over to say hello he passed along the good news on the way.
By now daylight was blazing, and Gos Velen’s city guard units were becoming active; they were acting like their asses were on fire as they rushed to protect the Workshop District and the bridge outside Airetusa’s main gate.
The scheming done under cover of darkness doesn’t dare show itself in the sunlight. Once someone gets caught with solid evidence, it stops being a game.
No one yet knew the extent of the Warlocks’ losses, but as long as they still held enormous influence, then after what happened last night no one wanted to run into their gun muzzle at a time like this.
And in truth, the Warlocks’ losses weren’t all that great.
Thanks to Lann summoning powerful help last night, the preparations he’d made in advance allowed him to wipe out that entire ship of Squirrel Faction fighters with extreme efficiency.
Don’t be fooled by how the Great Mages fight like they’re about to blow Sandy Island to pieces; when it comes to what really cuts into the Warlocks as a group, it’s still those Squirrel Faction insurgents.
Ordinary Wizards aren’t proficient in combat; faced with Squirrel Faction fighters who only want to kill, they often get slaughtered at the very first clash.
The Great Mages, on the other hand, each had an opponent to keep them occupied and had no time to unleash large-scale killing on anyone else.
If those Squirrel Faction fighters had died any slower, then in this Wizard Assembly at Airetusa, the dead would be far more than just this handful.
Even though there still wasn’t any statistic for the death toll, judging from Lann’s journey across the entire Sandy Island from beginning to end—
it was likely that those ordinary Wizards who were making merry in Airetusa’s banquet hall or dormitories, completely ignorant of how the rebellion had begun, were killed in smaller numbers than the Great Mages meeting in Gastang Palace.
They’d merely been scared out of their wits.
But no matter what, after last night, the Warlocks’ "unity" no longer existed.
The political and independent status they had once won as a collective in the kingdoms of the Northern Territory could now be expected to weaken with the collapse of their organization, perhaps even disappear outright.
Before last night, the Wizards stood behind the Kings, offering counsel and restraining impulsiveness like wise men.
After last night, being allowed to play the role of an echoing yes-man would already be a stroke of luck worth a prayer.
Looking at the many injured Wizards hanging their heads outside the Crystal Cultivation Laboratory, and at Gedemitis undergoing surgery inside, Lann could only shake his head.
Now, regardless of whether they were the new generation of Wizards who liked fame and wealth, or the old generation who wished to remain independent and continue developing Magic technology, all of them had taken a heavy blow.
It wasn’t long before Matty poked her head out of the laboratory. Exhausted, she waved to Lann, and the Demon Hunter walked over.
"Gedemitis is awake. I don’t know who to go to. Tishaya is sunk in a terrifying gloom, Margaret doesn’t dare leave her side for a moment, Triss is mixing healing Magic Potions, and I have to keep saving people..."
"I’ll go see him." Lann agreed without waiting for Matty to finish.
Once he stepped into the laboratory, it was exactly as Matty had said.
Tishaya sat behind the desk she used in her daily work, utterly distraught; not a trace remained of her usual dignified calm. Margaret stood beside her with a tense expression.
Clearly, the current lady dean had never imagined that the teacher she’d always seen as infallible and never panic-stricken would one day require her care, leaving her a little at a loss.
Triss was in the middle of pouring Magic Potion down the throat of the unconscious Geralt.
Gedemitis lay on a surgery table that had been brought over temporarily.
At the moment, the old man’s eyes were empty as he stared at the ceiling.
His nightshirt was thrown wide open, and a gruesome gash had just been stitched up. As soon as Lann approached, the Roaring Bear Head Necklace on his neck started bouncing madly.
Clearly, the Magic Power lingering on that wound alone was already very dense.
To save Gedemitis, Matty had used the top-grade stockpile in Airetusa without the slightest hesitation.
"I hadn’t expected Viggo Fortez to be so decisive. The instant he realized that even while controlling the djinn’s Magic Power he still couldn’t beat me, he immediately resorted to the Wishing Technique."
Unlike his usual vigor, Gedemitis’s voice was dry and hoarse.
"Heh, back in the day, Geoffrey Monk himself handled more than a dozen djinn flasks and didn’t use them as bluntly as that."
The Old Wizard mocked himself as he spoke of his own negligence.
"That’s because Geoffrey Monk himself was strong enough," Lann answered in a low voice to comfort him. "The djinn were just his toys, and the Wishing Technique was more like a collector’s item to him. Viggo Fortez treats the Wishing Technique as a tool in earnest."
Breaking a Wishing Technique isn’t something that can only be done by using higher, deeper forces to cancel it out.
Because the djinn itself wants to kill its captor, if the Old Mage had been prepared—if he’d even just set up an illusory heart on himself beforehand—eight times out of ten the djinn would only rip out that illusion.
Of course, if it could simply kill everyone present outright, the djinn wouldn’t say no.
When a Mage uses the Wishing Technique in battle, it’s more like fighting the enemy and matching wits with the djinn at the same time; it’s far from as invincible as common folk imagine.
"Ah, regardless." The Old Mage let out a deep sigh. "The Warlock Brotherhood is now nothing but an empty name."
Back then, the united Wizard organization, clenched together by the iron-fisted first-generation Wizards, the strongest Humans alive, was now collapsing under internal strife.
What happened last night had already filled the Wizards with suspicion and fear; under circumstances like this, no organization can be squeezed into a single fist.
And without an organization’s backing, lone Wizards have even less strength and voice when facing secular royal power.
The tug-of-war between Wizards and Kings, a silent struggle that had lasted over five hundred years since the Northern People first landed, was now, at last, about to reach a verdict.
Even as, at the same time, whether the entire North could continue to exist under Niflgaard’s iron heel was itself a question.
"But you don’t look like a man whose heart has turned to ash, Gedemitis."
Lann narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at the Old Wizard who only sighed, yet did not appear dejected.
"Heart turned to ash?" The Old Wizard gave a cold laugh. "My previous heart had almost killed me, and now there is a new heart beating in my chest. Why should my heart turn to ash?"
"As long as you’re not dead, nothing is over."
"The Warlock Brotherhood is a mere shadow now, but I’ve heard..."
Gedemitis tilted his head, looking at the Demon Hunter standing by his window.
"You have a new idea in Yaden, and have already begun to implement it? For racial equality."
Lann bent down, lowering his head closer to the Old Wizard, and both of their voices instinctively dropped to a whisper: "You’re well-informed, Gedemitis."
"In the past, when the Warlock Brotherhood still existed," the Old Wizard said calmly, "we had to maintain some semblance of dignity with the Kings of the Northern Territory. Now... we need to find ourselves a new partner, one that can stand firm."
"Sachia Sase, a gorgeous blonde beauty—you can make first contact." Lann patted the Old Wizard’s hand. "Honestly, I rather admire your grit."
"When you’ve fought your heart disease without pause for several hundred years, you won’t tire that easily either."
Gedemitis spoke with a smile, but immediately turned grave again.
"But I can only be confident in my own resilience. Tishaya... she’s serious by nature, even a bit obsessive, and she’s never suffered a setback like this before, Lann. I’m very worried."
He didn’t spell it out, but Gedemitis’s meaning was already clear enough.
The Old Wizard, with effort, turned his head, looking at Tishaya, who sat behind her desk, lost in a daze.
Lann said nothing more, merely frowned as he watched Tishaya.
The healing was still ongoing, and the pressure wasn’t that great.
The Wizards would soon recover their health, but their trust and confidence in the Warlock Brotherhood had vanished with the rebellion, never to return.
-----------------
In a castle in the South of the continent, a sudden shift in air pressure swelled the air as a portal opened.
A body whose left and right sides no longer matched was spat out of the portal like a struggling dead dog.
It hit the floor with a wet smack like rotten meat, then rolled across the stones.
Viggo Fortez, his clothes burned and fused to his skin, lay there for a long time before suddenly jerking as if coming back to life, sucking in a huge breath.
"Haa!"
His throat sounded like a leaking bellows; even his breathing carried the rasp of torn lungs.
A quarter of his body had been sliced away vertically; such a monstrous wound ought to have been a straightforward death sentence.
No, Death might even have been kinder.
Yet faced with agony that made life worse than Death, Viggo Fortez only grunted and screamed; giving up never once crossed his mind.
Using his only remaining left hand and his unmaimed left leg, he inched his body along the floor, grim and unyielding, crawling toward some place deep within the castle.
The huge vertical wound that split Viggo Fortez’s torso dragged across the floor, picking up dust and grit, turning into bloody sludge smeared over his body and face.
But in the Warlock’s eyes there was only a cold, relentless resolve.
The bisected human form writhed on the floor like a maggot; under the dim light, the scene carried a shrill, sinister horror.
"Whew~"
Then, a lilting whistle, perfectly in tune with the mood, rose from the shadows beyond the lamplight, as if drifting in from far away.
Yet that patch of darkness lit by the lamps was just a corner of wall where not even a single person could stand.
Cheap boots stepped with light, carefree strides, the footsteps drawing nearer.
"Viggo Fortez, Viggo Fortez..."
The owner of the whistle playfully repeated the Wizard’s name on the floor, strolling along at a leisurely pace that kept exact time with the Warlock’s painful crawl.