Chapter 312: Attack on Titan (Giants)
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
While the Truth Symposium’s archmages were taking the conference seriously for once, the outside of the Tower of Ten Thousand Spells was as noisy as a flea market.
At the marble plaza, a large group of gnomes and dwarves were currently carrying banners and flags, shouting and handing out their pamphlets. The people passing by would often take pamphlets of their own volition due to curiosity about what was going on.
“It’s not a crime to protest! We have ample reasons to go on strike!”
“We strongly request the mages to make laws improving the labor situation for non-human species! We’re not second-rate citizens!”
“Blackeye’s alchemy laboratory is now closing! Our bastard of a boss Blackeye lost 300,000 gold coins drinking, gambling, and visiting prostitutes! He ran off with his three mistresses! Blackeye! You’re inhuman! You scumbag! Pay my salary that I worked so hard for! You won’t meet with a good end! There will surely be divine retribution… which is why in order to make up for the unpaid salary he owes us, we, his employees, have taken out all of that bastard’s warehouse inventory to sell here at rock-bottom prices! Everyone passing by, don’t miss this great opportunity!”
Alright then, this scene of the gnomes and dwarves demanding salary increases or better treatment seemed rather comical, especially since the gnomes were trying to sell their products to potential customers in the midst of the commotion. However, there were certain special vocabulary words mixed into this protect, seemingly indicating a certain truth.
“We want peace, not war!”
The gnomes that always sold dangerous products, meaning that most people saw them as no different from weapons dealers. Now, however, they were holding up signs saying they wanted peace. The incongruous sight really made the bystanders want to laugh.
“Why is it that battles never stop, that our warriors keep bleeding, that our women keep becoming widows, and our children keep becoming orphans?”
Although this particular phrase on a banner seemed to be one that would easily incite others, it was actually quite comical for those in the know. After all… the frontlines didn’t have any of the Mage Country’s soldiers at all. Most of the soldiers in the Mage Country were only the private armies of nobles without any actual power that liked to keep up pretenses. That would be sufficient to maintain public order in the Mage Country. The only ones on the frontlines, facing off against the dragon knights, were the archmages.
“What exactly are they doing?”
“…I suppose it’s a type of performance.”
Everyone was confused at just what these gnomes and dwarves were doing, making such a scene in front of the Tower of Ten Thousand Spells. And, to be honest, even the gnomes and dwarves themselves didn’t understand what they were doing here, either.
“Hey—hey—hey‚—you old windbag, those mages are staring at us like we’re a bunch of idiots. How much longer do we need to stand around here and keep losing face?”
“Stop complaining, Kevin. We’re getting paid ten gold coins per day just to stand here and shout these things. Where else are we going to find such a great job?”
The dwarf Kevin wasn’t dissatisfied with the payment he was receiving. He simply felt that it was too silly that such a clean and handsome dwarf like him had to paint his face green and wave around this green banner. This shade of green reminded him of that icky and sticky celery pie that his Aunt Dai back home would always cook. All the dwarves standing together reminded him of the sticky pieces of celery, which really churned his stomach.
“Kevin, can’t you see that none of the gnomes over there are complaining? They even had to paint themselves red to represent the color of blood. Tsk—tsk—tsk! Red and green together, and add on the gnomes’ disgustingly ugly faces. It’s as if—”
“It’s as if we’re flies circling around a piece of meat!”
Well, setting aside the dwarves’ typical habit of complaining, the gnomes were shouting far more passionately than the dwarves who didn’t lack money in comparison. The gnomes were even looking around everywhere, hoping to see that the person who hired them would witness how hard they were working. The reason? So they could receive more incredibly easy jobs like this one. If they could please their employer, perhaps they might even be rewarded with a bonus.
“Is there even any meaning to all this? The archmages are simply ignoring us. Their conference or whatever has been going on for two days already, and nobody dares to go in and disturb them.”
“You don’t understand, then. Our employer is someone who never does anything meaningless. If he’s paying us money to shout these slogans of his, he obviously has something in mind.” The old dwarf suddenly paused here, intentionally withholding information until the young dwarf Kevin realized what he wanted. Kevin grimaced and brought out his secret stash of tobacco and filled up the old dwarf’s pipe. The old dwarf took a good puff on his pipe before continuing.
“Ha, our employer doesn’t really care about obtaining what’s written on the slogans that we’re shouting. He’s merely expressing his opinion that ‘I know you all intend to start a war, which I highly object to.’ Or, he’s saying ‘I know that you’re hiding something, which makes me highly displeased.'”
“…Why doesn’t he simply rush into the conference room and express his complaints directly? I doubt any of those magical puppet guards are a match for our boss.”
“That would be no different from utterly antagonizing the mages. Do you really know what it means to antagonize the entire Truth Symposium? Young Kevin, try using your brain for once. That’s why our employer gave us the orders to only stand around here and keep shouting, and that if anyone tries to chase us off, we should obediently leave. But, seeing as how we’ve been shouting here for so long but nobody has even come to chase us away, the mages’ response is to—”
“—they can do whatever they want. We don’t care. This information absolutely can’t be leaked.”
An archmage was currently making such a statement in the Truth Symposium meeting.
*Thud!*
But, the next instant, the door to the conference room slammed open. A blue-robed mage entered, and behind him was a huge pile of magical puppet guards that had been reduced to scrap metal.
“Roland, do you know what you just did?”
Yes, that was me, the unlucky fellow who had been ignored and not invited to the Truth Symposium conference, the leader of the workers union who told his employees to go on strike demanding their salary… whoops, I seem to have accidentally mentioned a concept from my previous world yet again.
Oslowen, the Truth Overseer from the Mystical Blade, had just angrily shouted at me. However, I knew that he was simply speaking on behalf of the Truth Symposium, and that, in his own way, he was even trying to protect me. Otherwise, if I was unfortunate enough to antagonize the entire Truth Symposium, it would easily give my enemies an opportunity to attack me.
I looked around all the faces at the table in this conference room. It was quite nostalgic—there were plenty of people here that I wanted to kill or wanted to kill me. At the very least, Blackeye was definitely glaring viciously at me since he had been the target of my recent slander campaign.
“I know that you all want to hide the truth, but since I already know, what are you all going to do? Will you all actually try to kill me? Heh heh, if not, let us discuss the issue of those dragons and giants together.”
******
Chances would often arrive unsuspectingly, but only the prepared would be able to take advantage of them. A coincidence helped give me the key to the final piece of the puzzle.
“Halent is here to see me? He’s already waiting for me in Thorn Garden’s meeting room?”
I wasn’t surprised to hear this at the time. After all, I now knew that the Bardi Empire wanted to make peace with the Mage Country. I figured that perhaps Halent was acting as the Bardi Empire’s envoy.
When I returned to Thorn Garden and entered its halls, the cool, handsome, and taciturn Halent wasn’t the first person I saw as I expected. Instead, Beifeng, who was supposed to accompany our guest while he waited, had slipped out for a walk instead. When Beifeng saw that I arrived, he seemed to heave a sigh of relief despite how typically fearless he was.
“You can actually feel uneasy?”
“Well, he’s still a superior-ranked dragon. Although I know in my heart that it’s nothing much, I still feel instinctively uncomfortable.”
I nodded in understanding. Although dracons were called dracons for being related to dragons, they were actually just artificially created through a mysterious spell as an intelligent species which possessed only a minor amount of dragon blood. When comparing the dracon species’ ranks to that of all other dragons, they would be considered lower in rank than even the SemiDragons that lacked intelligence. Dracons were born to be the dragons’ servants and slaves.
Not to mention, the dracons in the underground world were originally the color dragons’ slaves. Since dracons were created by the dragons, and Halent here was a blue dragon’s descendant who had a high purity of dragonblood and could potentially become a dragon himself in the future, there was a huge difference between them in the dragons’ rankings. It was only natural that Beifeng would feel uncomfortable.
“Why did they have you be the one to greet Halent? Isn’t that just like having Little Red Riding Hood greet the Big Bad Wolf—er—the sheep greet the wolf?”
“Probably because they felt it was the most appropriate as I’m a Saint. I didn’t expect it either, though. Even though my power level has improved, the suppression effect I feel from my bloodline has increased as well. However, that Halent fellow gives me a rather unique feeling… the same feeling when I face Ein Mezus.”
“Little Red? A Dragon Queen’s level bloodline? …No wonder he was able to become the vice commander of the dragon knights despite his young age.”
I shook my head and focused my attention on the dragon knight archduke who was resting in the waiting room. His formerly clean face was filled with the haggard evidence of his travels, and his cape and armor retained plenty of sand. Despite his young age, his hair was beginning to whiten. It seemed that he had experienced much since I last parted ways with him at the Forest of Dreams.
“I have important news. I would like to meet with the Truth Symposium immediately. However, I’ve heard that they’re currently in a top-secret conference. Could you help me to enter?”
The moment he saw me, he immediately stood up and began speaking. It seemed that he was quite anxious.
“Don’t rush. Take it easy, tell me whatever you have to say.”
However, Halent had a rather vacant expression, as if he had received a huge shock from something that happened before I saw him. He seemed to have zero patience as he immediately activated a memory crystal.
“An important personage also told me to let you know about this.”
The magic of the memory crystal transformed into waves of mana that showed me a hazy scene in midair.
It was a wasteland. The sky was gray, the earth was gray, and every lifeform there seemed to be painted in bland colors.
The most attention-grabbing part of this scene were the sculptures that were all taller than the clouds. They had different appearances. Some were upright and holding swords, while others were sitting and reading books, and there were others roaring angrily at the sky. But, the identical apart about them was that they had ridiculously strong bodies and handsome faces as if they were heroes from legends.
Their existence was an undeniable truth, right from the ancient times.
However, these gigantic sculptures weren’t the only existences here. At these huge sculptures’ feet, numerous smaller stone figures were awakening from their deep slumber as they shook themselves and came back to life.
Once the perfect Seal of the Four Elements was broken, unsealing this dimensional space, they began awakening from their long, long slumbers.
All these tiny rock figures awakened and instinctively knew what they were supposed to do. They casually formed stone weapons from the environment around them and climbed up their ancestors’ bodies, trying to reach the top. They resembled ants attempting to reach the top of a human’s head.
However, their climbing was unsuccessful. They wouldn’t even reach the knees when they were suddenly ambushed by some flying “mosquitoes” that caused them to fall down and perish.
“What is this? A battle between ants and mosquitos for some sculptures?”
Halent could only smile bitterly upon hearing this.
“Those ants are actually giants—yep—ancient giants that are all taller than ten meters. As for those mosquitoes, they’re actually huge dragons. Those sculptures… they are the titan giants. The titan giants are about to awaken!”
Yep, these “tiny stone figures” that weren’t even the size of one sculpture’s little toe were actually considered by us to be giants. This scene, which resembled a game between ants and mosquitoes, was actually an epic battle between giants and dragons.
In comparison, those towering sculptures that reached the clouds were the titan giants, rumored to have powers rivaling the Gods.
Once the elemental balance was disrupted, the Seal of the Four Elements on these exiled titan giants lost part of its power. This sealed species from ancient times was about to return.
“It’s the Attack on Titan—er—I mean the slumbering titan giants are going to return!”