Lobelia was weak.
Time had not been on her side, and so she hadn’t been given enough of it.
Originally, she wasn’t supposed to face this opponent until two years later.
That meant she had to fight now, in an unfinished, still-weak state.
Retreat was never an option in her life, so she challenged him again and again, only to be shattered each time.
“Haa…”
Her opponent was the Great Warrior of the barbarians. The one who had once utterly crushed her.
Lobelia had grown stronger since then, but the gap between them had yet to close.
That’s why Lobelia never once thought of defeating him.
No matter how battered he looked, she harbored no arrogance.
Right now, buying time was the best she could do.
And she believed.
“I’d like you to keep me company until the one meant to face you arrives.”
“Is this the fulfillment of a pact? That would be ideal… if it’s possible.”
Boom!
In a flash, Vidar appeared right before Lobelia.
“I’m not sure that’s even possible.”
Kuuuuung!!
A brutish hand tore through the space in front of her.
Lobelia barely dodged the attack, and even then, a chill ran down her spine.
“What the…”
Vidar’s momentum had not weakened in the slightest.
And despite calling Lobelia a mere novice, he didn’t hold back his strength in the least.
Given his true objective, his actions could only be described as the height of inefficiency.
One would expect him to conserve his strength for facing the Emperor—
Yet Vidar gave his all, even against Lobelia.
“You’re overthinking things.”
“What?”
“Isn’t it normal to go all out in a fight?”
“You really don’t make this easy.”
A gust of wind tore past.
Lobelia hadn’t even been struck, and yet she felt as if her very soul had been wrenched from her body.
“Hup!”
Bzzzzzt!!
In response, Lobelia became even more cautious as she continued to harass Vidar.
She didn’t try to close the distance for an attack.
She simply maintained her range, firing crimson lightning from afar.
It was a humiliating tactic for someone confident in close combat, but it was a price she was willing to pay for her objective.
“Hah!”
Even Vidar didn’t blame her for such tactics.
He didn’t despise cowardice because another name for cowardice was simply strategy and tactics.
Not acting recklessly and doing your best within your limits wasn’t something to laugh at.
“I like it!”
Vidar especially liked the choice Lobelia made.
Despite her position as a member of the imperial family, she showed no arrogance.
Now he understood why she was considered the closest among the imperial members to becoming the next emperor.
The most important quality in a leader is not making poor judgments. And Lobelia had not made a poor judgment.
“That’s what makes it even more so.”
A chilling smile.
Vidar laughed as he watched Lobelia narrowly evade his attacks time and again.
“You need to die.”
For someone fighting to bring down the Empire, it was the obvious choice.
Vidar clenched the hand he had outstretched.
Creaaaaaakk!!
As he stepped forward, the ground shattered and splintered beneath him.
An overwhelming blow delivered through a rotation from his leg to his waist.
“……!”
Lobelia saw it.
Vidar’s attack wasn’t aimed at her. This blow was meant to destroy everything in sight with a single punch.
The punch never made contact.
Just the force of striking the air shattered the space in front of him.
Boooooooooom!!
A blow that destroyed a portion of the imperial capital in one sweep. It wasn’t some special technique. It was simply an all-out or rather an overexerted strike.
A blow like that didn’t need a name.
Because anyone could do it.
“Hoo…”
But even for Vidar, this strike came at a cost.
Given that he just fought against the Black Knight and two Archmages, delivering such a blow was already a burden.
Still, it was something that had to be done.
“Persistent. You’re still alive, huh?”
“Guhk!”
Vidar pulled Lobelia from the rubble of the collapsed building.
He went to the trouble because, as he’d said, he intended to kill her.
She was dangerous.
If left alone, she would become a monster no less than Abraham.
Thinking about a future where he wasn’t there, eliminating her now was the right decision.
“Looks like I couldn’t buy enough time.”
“……Indeed. A lamentable thing.”
Lobelia dangled helplessly in midair, her arm gripped by Vidar’s hand.
She couldn’t withstand even a single blow from him. Though it was a strike made not just with full strength but even to the point of overexertion, considering the range of that attack, surviving it wasn’t something to be particularly proud of.
“Hup!”
Pazzzzzzt!!
Despite hanging limp, Lobelia suddenly sprang up and landed a kick to Vidar’s face.
“Desperation, huh… Consistent, at least.”
But Vidar easily blocked Lobelia’s attack.
That meant he remembered their last fight.
Back then, he had allowed a single blow to land.
It had been in a situation just like this.
Because he remembered that moment, Vidar was able to block this ambush.
“Your strength has definitely grown.”
The tingling sensation he felt in his palm…it was proof that Lobelia’s final act of defiance hadn’t been in vain.
Had it hit, he might have shaken her off right then.
If that had happened, they might have had to repeat their previous exchange all over again.
“Well then, die now.”
Vidar grabbed the leg that Lobelia had tried to kick him with and swung her without hesitation.
Lobelia was hurled with tremendous force toward a pile of rubble.
Even if she tried to break her fall, barehanded as she was, it was a blow no human body could endure.
A fleeting moment.
While being hurled with overwhelming force that left her unable to resist—
Lobelia twisted her body as much as she could.
Of course, no matter how she twisted her body, it wouldn’t change the inevitable future.
She would die here. Aware of that, she acted.
Crackk!
Her captured leg broke.
Lobelia had broken her own leg and, using the momentum, drove a follow-up strike at Vidar.
Bang!
This time, she couldn’t charge it with crimson lightning.
She forcefully twisted her body to land a kick to Vidar’s chin, but it couldn’t be a fatal blow.
Still, it would land cleanly.
With that thought, Lobelia felt the sky growing distant and the ground approaching fast, and she shut her eyes tightly.
And at that moment—
Baaang!
She heard the sound of something breaking.
“Sorry, but I’ll have to step in. For the best possible future, she can’t die just yet.”
“……Oracle?”
When Lobelia opened her eyes again, she realized her position had changed.
The shattering glass sound she’d just heard seemed to be part of Oracle’s teleportation ability.
Now, Lobelia was in Oracle’s arms.
“You could’ve rescued me a bit sooner.”
Lobelia grumbled as she felt the pain from her twisted, broken leg.
“If that final blow hadn’t landed, I wouldn’t have been able to pull you out.”
The Oracle responded to Lobelia’s grumbling with grumbling of her own.
She was aiming for a future where Lobelia would become the emperor, but that didn’t mean she respected Lobelia.
“My teleportation isn’t all-powerful, you know. If he hadn’t let go of your leg at the last second, you would’ve splattered like a tomato on the ground.”
“You say the most chilling things without batting an eye. The way you choose your words… You’re eerily similar to someone I know.”
“I’ll drop you.”
“Yes, yes. Since you clearly know who I’m talking about, I’ll stop there. My apologies. That was uncalled for.”
Lobelia shook her head at the Oracle’s unsettling voice.
It seemed the Oracle knew quite a bit about Johan, too.
Come to think of it, that was only natural. Someone who had once practically impersonated her was bound to catch her attention.
“So, what now?”
Still cradled in Oracle’s arms, Lobelia pointed at Vidar.
Vidar, perhaps feeling the aftermath of the kick Lobelia had landed earlier, was rubbing his jaw.
Opening and closing his mouth a few times as if checking his condition, Vidar soon broke into a grin and said,
“They just keep coming. Would’ve been easier if you all showed up at once.”
“Her Highness Lobelia seems to think she knows when to make an entrance, but I had no intention of stepping in.”
“That so?”
Vidar once again thought back to the moment Lobelia had appeared. What if she’d stepped in from the beginning?
She likely would’ve ended up like the rest of the knights who were wiped out in droves at the gates.
Back then, he hadn’t even been tired or injured. Even if Lobelia had bothered him, he could’ve dealt with her in no time.
It might sound cold, but her timing had been spot on.
“So then, who are you supposed to be?”
“I……”
The Oracle paused for a moment to collect her thoughts.
How should she introduce herself?
It was her first time stepping onto the stage since the battle with Kult, and she hesitated.
Would it be better to reveal her real name?
Considering Vidar’s nature, that might win him over more easily.
But in the end, the Oracle could only shake her head.
She was already standing at the edge of a cliff.
“Just call me Oracle.”
“So you were the Empire’s prophet. Prophets, honestly….they all seem to exist just to complicate things.”
“Sounds like you’re aware of another prophet besides me?”
“Hmm? Ah, is that so? Well, those who see the future often know nothing of the past.”
Vidar blinked at her question, then nodded slowly.
For a moment, he looked almost stupid.
But behind that was—
“I’ve got no reason to tell you.”
—the savage bloodlust of a beast.
Though he answered in the calm tone of casual conversation, Vidar suddenly closed the distance in a flash.
It was practically a sneak attack.
Crash!
But his opponent was an Oracle.
Vidar’s strike sliced through empty air, and only the delayed sound of shattering glass echoed in his ears.
“How rude.”
“Hah. What do you expect, manners from a barbarian? Before you know it, that pretty white neck of yours might get torn to shreds.”
There’s no point in ambushing someone who reads the future.
For the Oracle, who perceived this space and this moment, a sneak attack was actually easier to deal with than a direct assault.
“Ah, right. We were talking about prophets, weren’t we? That rudeness just now? The whole manners thing? Let me repay you for that.”
“……”
Unbelievable. The sheer audacity.
The Oracle shuddered at the way Vidar acted, as if he didn’t even understand the meaning of the words.
But there was nothing she could do.
She could see the future, yes. But she wasn’t as powerful as Lobelia.
She had special abilities that allowed her to respond to some extent, but the moment Vidar adapted, she would be dead.
For now, it seemed better to just listen to his nonsense.
“It’s not much of a story, really. There’s always been a prophet in the Empire’s history. The one before you died over twenty years ago. Met the exact end she predicted, or so I heard.”
“How do you know that…?”
“How could I not? While your kind was busy erasing everything, we were digging it all up and writing it down.”
Vidar burst into loud laughter, claiming that the barbarians knew more than the so-called civilized people of the Empire.
That arrogant behavior only made the Oracle more afraid of him.
Because hidden beneath that raw, unfiltered exterior was the mind of a cold, calculating scholar.
Thinking of it that way, every move he made must have meaning.
“Now then, prophet. Answer me. Have you ever predicted your own death?”
“…Yes.”
“That’s the end of every prophet. All of them foresee their own deaths. And yet, strangely, not a single one ever tries to resist that horrific fate. Why do you think that is?”
“Because… they believe it leads to the best possible future.”
“And whose ‘best’ is that?”
“……”
“Exactly.”
Thud!
Vidar took a step forward.
Thud!
He slowly moved his huge body until he was standing right in front of the Oracle.
There was no hostility. Even in the future she had seen, he hadn’t made a move.
“You were designed that way. Poor little matryoshka.”
“….…”
“Get lost. I’ll let you go this once for old times’ sake.”
Vidar walked right past the Oracle and made his way toward the audience chamber, where the Emperor would be waiting.
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