"The Giant of the Arena."

A magician who had reached the stage of Tacitus, the silent rite, deliberately chanted a spell.

He didn't just move his lips; he even formed hand seals.

In accordance with his spell, a magical creature made of rock revealed its face from the ground and then pulled up its shoulders.

Ragna watched the entire process with indifference and swung Sunrise.

A slicing cut from the upper left to the lower right.

The blade drew a half-moon trajectory, and the stone giant caught in it was cut exactly along the shape the sword had drawn.

The cut section even caught fire and blazed up.

His sword, Sunrise, was a relic.

As if it were a matter of course, it cut and sliced through the magical creature.

The severed stone golem scattered on the ground.

It was something that had already been repeated several times.

The magician had summoned golems several times.

Some were in the form of a giant, but there were also some that tried to constrict his body in the form of a snake.

Of course, it was all useless.

Ragna's simple sword slashes cut and sliced them all without even needing to destroy the golems' cores.

There was no regeneration.

Sunrise is the grim reaper that rises from the east.

It shows the miracle of chasing away the darkness and making it hide on the ground.

The darkness that has turned into a shadow can only live on by relying on the light.

Ragna made a few more cuts in the air.

He wasn't quite satisfied with his last slash.

It seemed it would be good to cut a few more times.

"Can you bring more?"

Ragna asked.

Weren't the number of golems too few?

That was the thought that came to him.

Krais hadn't sent Ragna outside the city for no reason.

Instead, he had entrusted him with the walls of the Border Guard.

The necromancer who handled Draugr had aimed for the more populous Rockfreed, and the magician who was now going berserk in front of Ragna was aiming for the Border Guard.

There was no grand reason.

A deep consideration or a strategic reason?

None.

They are magicians.

They were not people skilled in strategy and tactics.

The reason this magician had come here was supremely simple.

'High-quality iron.'

He had mastered the magic of handling stone and iron.

No, he went around saying he had mastered it himself.

Like the title 'He Who Grasps the River,' he too had a moniker.

The Master of Stone and Sand.

It was an arrogant title.

He had planned to form another army with the iron and stone here, and with that army, he planned to stand superior to other magicians.

What if he were to rush in with his golem army after those guys were drained from facing the once-in-a-generation genius, Esther?

This simple calculation had led his feet here.

"These are all just bastards busy filling their own bellies."

What Esther had said was the key.

Krais had thus reconfigured the tactical map based on the information he had obtained from Esther.

He had picked out the ones who were likely to target the city.

Of course, simply scattering the Madmen Knight Order wasn't all of it.

He had not been lazy in sending out reconnaissance teams between the cities to check the opponent's movements, and he had even asked Jaxen to move Georg's Daggers.

And he hadn't stopped there.

"It seems close to obsession and paranoia."

Abnaier had said, and he understood why he had not been able to win against this big-eyed friend.

This bastard was tenacious.

No, at this point, it was beyond tenacious; it was obsession itself.

"What if they aim for Cross Guard? What if they strike there to increase their phantom soldiers?"

He had even made Aspen's city a territory he had to protect.

And as if he had prepared for such a thing, he had poured his heart and soul into raising an army.

Under the Border Guard's standing army, there remained the strength to face magicians.

A part of Rem's charge unit and the ten swordsmen under Ragna had moved to Cross Guard.

At the same time, Fallen Clemen had moved, leading the elite soldiers.

The entire unit formed a defensive square centered on the Border Guard.

That was the form.

'This crazy psycho.'

Abnaier had marveled countless times.

Krais had even added Seiki to their ranks.

A part of his tenacity had worked, and a part had become nothing more than a useless march.

But no one had argued with his words.

If you were to ask why, the first reason was that the trust in the man named Krais was immense.

And the second was…

'If you defy those words, Enkrid and the Knight Order will step in.'

To the standing army who had directly faced Rem and Audin, Krais was an angel.

Krais, the angel of the salon, who was watching Ragna's fight from one side, felt a sense of impatience.

It was natural for him to feel impatient whenever he faced a favorable situation.

Right next to him, Anne, the master of alchemy and Ragna's lover, stood with her arms crossed, exuding composure.

It was a place with its back to the city wall.

The magician had appeared near the east wall, not the gate, so the number of standing army soldiers nearby was small.

Krais had ordered those soldiers not to step forward.

"It's fine. This is all a prepared situation."

On the surface, should it be called the perfect image of a strategist?

Some commanders were even relieved to see such a Krais.

He couldn't let his anxiety spread to the soldiers, so Krais also pretended to be calm on the outside.

No, only his upper body was calm.

"Stop shaking your leg. He'll handle it."

"It's a habit," Krais answered Anne.

Anne trusted Ragna.

The man she knew would not die to such a shabby magic.

Moreover, Anne had also made her own preparations, influenced by Krais's surging anxiety.

And yet, with him being like this next to her, she was even more distracted.

"If you can't step in and fight yourself, trusting them is also a job. Didn't you know?"

Krais had learned the importance of learning through Enkrid.

He did not take Anne's words badly.

Rather, he listened to them.

'She's right.'

If you're not going to step in yourself, you have to trust.

He had done all he could.

Changing the face of a thrown die is something only a cheater would do.

'But what if such a cheat is necessary?'

A thought that suddenly came to him.

Beside Krais and Anne, who were exchanging pointless words, Nurat just quietly watched the situation.

Nurat's eye for talent was superior to these two.

That is why she also knew what a dangerous and sharp blade the Ragna fighting in front of them was.

'Is it right to fight a knight like that in a frontal confrontation?'

A prepared magician catches a knight.

An old adage of the continent.

Nurat thought that adage needed to be changed.

'It depends on what kind of knight you're trying to catch.'

Enkrid had preached the standard of a knight within the Border Guard.

If it was at the entry level of a knight that he spoke of, maybe.

'If you go beyond the entry level to novice, no, just intermediate.'

Enkrid had divided the standard of a knight into entry, novice, intermediate, and advanced.

The categories were broad.

It was because he couldn't set detailed standards.

The entry level was to unconsciously handle Will, and the novice level was to use techniques through that Will.

The intermediate level required achieving a change in the speed of Will.

It was to go beyond unconsciously handling Will and reach a level of consciously handling it again.

Just at that level, wouldn't one possess the skill to escape a magician's preparations?

Of course, it would differ depending on one's disposition and characteristics.

Not all knights are the same, after all.

This was something that all the members of the Knight Order, including Enkrid, said in unison.

Nurat, though she was not a prophet, felt as if she could see the end of the magician who was chanting a spell in the distance.

'Esther was right.'

They were arrogant.

And the result of arrogance was tragic.

Even as the three watched, the magician was busy muttering a spell.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his eyes turned red.

The blood vessels inside his eyes expanded, and the whites of his eyes reddened.

While the magician was chanting his spell, all the summoned creatures were sliced up and scattered on the ground.

This really didn't make sense.

Why?

Because his golems had no core.

It was a method of controlling them by placing the core that moved them in his own world of spells.

This was, of course, a secret he had not told anyone.

And yet, it didn't work.

'Spell Slaying.'

A long, long time ago, a Dragonkin had once fought to kill all magicians.

The skill the Dragonkin had shown then was spell slaying.

A sword strike that cuts the pulse of a spell.

Did the man in front of him do such a thing?

It was half right and half wrong.

Ragna had learned by watching Enkrid's sword strikes, and by accepting Esther's training methods, he had learned the concept of spell slaying.

However, it wasn't something that could be done just by doing it.

This was not something that could be solved by talent alone.

He had to be able to read the form of a spell with his senses.

In other words, a talent on a different level from the talent Ragna possessed was needed.

And yet, he knew how to imitate it.

The Ragna of now knew how to swing his sword morning and evening.

He had learned diligence by watching Enkrid.

To others, especially a bastard like Rem, it would be far from enough to be called diligent, but compared to before, Ragna was a different person.

That diligence was half of it, and the other half was solved by the weapon in his hand.

The grim reaper born in the east had become a piece that could suppress and cut spells.

"Temperatio, Temperatio, hear my words."

The magician completed his spell, even sweating coldly.

The capillaries in his eyes burst, and tears of blood flowed.

Blood also began to gush from his nose.

He had offered not only most of his magic to the otherworldly being, but had also torn off a part of his world of spells as a tribute.

To a magician, the world of spells is the soul itself.

He had done something no different from tearing off a part of his own soul and offering it.

Ragna didn't think about why he was here.

He didn't know the backstory that Krais had deliberated on.

He had no interest.

He just knew that the time to swing his sword had come, and he had done so.

A faint light flowed from his red eyes.

It was a phenomenon that occurred because his entire body was filled with Will.

"The human mind is not perfect. In the name of the one who rules dreams, I speak. You will see only me and hear only my story."

The magician extended his hand.

The magic he had brought out was a kind of curse.

And he had been greedy until the very end.

'If I could have such a swordsman under my command.'

And so, he had chanted a spell of temptation as his last card.

Ragna planted his feet on the ground and dragged them, raising his sword.

The tip of his sword pointed to the sky.

All he had to do was bring it down, but the sword stopped.

For a moment, Ragna saw an illusion.

A supremely beautiful woman in a mesh dress was beckoning to him.

And in that moment, he recalled the freckled woman who had forced a potion into his mouth.

"Did you know that Esther enchants the commander's clothes every night?" the woman had said.

"I can't lose either," that woman had also said.

Anne.

The name of the woman he called his lover.

"You're going to look at another woman, leaving me behind?"

Anne is angry.

Ragna did not want that.

The illusion shatters.

The magician beyond the broken illusion is not a beautiful woman in his imagination, but a shabby old crone hidden in a robe.

"...You overcame that?"

It was a magic that the old witch had chanted, even by splitting her world of spells.

And it hadn't worked.

There were a few reasons for this.

One was that he had gained a resistance from having recently experienced the Salamander's mirage.

Two was that a knight's mental strength is on a different level from an ordinary person's.

Three was that the Sunrise he held was a relic that blocked most mental invasions.

And four was because he had a lover with whom he shared his heart.

Later, Anne would say that he had overcome that moment purely because of her beauty, and Ragna would not deny it.

Esther also kept her mouth shut, knowing that the other three reasons were bigger.

Ragna, who had broken the illusion, drew his sword.

Sunrise cut the spellcaster.

I know the enemy, and the enemy does not know me.

There is no strategy more excellent than that.

Krais had studied his opponent by portraying them through Esther, and the opponent had made no such effort.

Rather, everyone in Astrail had thought that Esther was hiding, using the city as a shield.

So they had just seen it as a nuisance.

No one had known that they would be intercepted on their way, and that even those who had secretly split off and were aiming for the city without joining them would die.

***

"Penadex, this is as far as it goes, right?"

The Child of the Stars calls his name.

The magician, who had been with Astrail from its beginning until now, faced the witch who had driven him into a corner.

If Esther hadn't been turned into a panther by a curse, she would have long since become a subordinate of the magician named Penadex.

He possessed that much power.

He was also a schemer who had made her target her own master.

But even such a magician could not be skilled in tactics and strategy.

Penadex's defeat was due to his arrogance and ignorance, but the decisive factor was the existence of Krais.

'A perfect checkmate.'

In chess terms, there was no way to escape.

That's what Penadex thought.

He could see another magician being beaten up on one side.

"What? Huh? Hmm? What did you say? I can't hear you, you're a cripple who can't even chant a spell."

A savage was subduing a magician as powerful as himself.

The sight was truly tragic.

So, was he going to be beaten like this?

Chess is a fair fight.

There are rules.

So if this were chess, it would be the end, but a magician was one who could overturn the logic of the world and cheat.