The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 263: ROYAL BATTLE [2]
Chapter 258: Royal Battle [2]
The smell of dissolving granite was acrid, burning the back of the throat like vinegar mixed with sulfur.
The west wall of the Arcadia fortress was no longer a wall; it was a sagging, weeping sore of liquified stone, hissing as the unnatural green rot ate through layers of defensive enchantments.
Above the devastation, the sky was pristine. The fifty mages of the Sanctum of High Magi floated in perfect formation, their robes fluttering in the wind, untouched by the filth below. They were gods looking down on insects.
Velia Ancrose, their captain, raised her staff for another volley. She looked bored.
Inside the fortress, however, the "insects" were preparing to bite back.
Michael Wilson stood before the bubbling pool of sludge that used to be the rampart. He didn’t look worried about the impending collapse of their cover. He looked like a chef inspecting ingredients.
"Gideon," Michael said, his voice cutting through the hiss of the acid. "Is it ready?"
Gideon, the pale necromancer usually shunned by the student body to the point of invisibility, was kneeling in the mud. His hands hovered over the toxic slurry. Veins of dark purple mana pulsed from his fingertips, worming their way into the green rot.
"The... the structure is unstable, Monarch," Gideon stammered, sweat beading on his forehead. "It’s highly volatile decay energy. If I agitate it too much, it’ll turn into a gas that kills us all."
"I don’t need you to stabilize it," Michael replied, adjusting his glasses. The lenses reflected the sickly green glow. "I need you to infect it. Bind your [Miasma] to the particulate matter. Make it sticky. Make it heavy."
"But... it’s liquid," Gideon argued weaky. "It won’t reach them up there."
Michael stepped forward. The temperature in the immediate vicinity plummeted. The humidity in the air crystallized instantly, turning into diamond dust.
"It won’t be liquid for long."
[Skill Activated: Ice Domain]
[Sub-Skill: Flash Freeze]
Michael stomped his foot.
CRACK.
A wave of absolute zero expanded from his boot. It didn’t spread like a wild blizzard; it moved with the precision of a scalpel. The wave hit the bubbling green sludge.
In a nanosecond, the boiling rot was silenced. The heat was sucked out of it so violently that the liquid didn’t just freeze into ice; it sublimated and shattered. The structural integrity of the decay magic snapped under the sudden thermal shock.
The deadly sludge was instantly transformed into millions of microscopic, frozen crystals. They glittered with a malevolent, neon-green hue.
"Now, Gideon!" Michael commanded.
The necromancer yelped and poured his mana into the frozen dust. The green crystals turned a dark, bruised purple at their cores. They were no longer just frozen acid; they were mana-draining parasites waiting for a host.
Michael turned his head. "Maria. You’re up."
Maria Frostheart, the heiress to the North, stood by the remaining stone pillar. She held a rapier of pure ice, but today, she wasn’t using her family’s signature cryomancy. She was channeling the wind.
"Do not disappoint me, Maria," Michael said calmly. "I need a localized updraft. High pressure. Carry this dust to the heavens."
Maria grit her teeth. She hated taking orders, especially from someone who wasn’t nobility, but her father was watching. And more importantly, she wanted to win.
She thrust her rapier upward.
[Skill: Wind Step – Reverse Cyclone]
A vortex of wind erupted from the fortress courtyard. It picked up the millions of toxic, frozen crystals, spinning them into a glittering, deadly cloud that shot straight up toward the hovering mages.
The VIP Stand
"What in the blazes are they doing?" Denish William scoffed, swirling his brandy. "Creating a smoke screen? Smoke won’t stop a bombardment."
Deiman Frostheart leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "That isn’t smoke, Denish. Look at the refraction of the light. Those are crystals."
"Ice?" King Elandor of Denmard spoke softly, his fingers tightening on the velvet armrest. "No. It is a delivery system."
The Elven King looked at the monitor displaying Michael Wilson. The boy’s face was impassive, calculating.
"The Sanctum used a rot artifact to bypass the durability of the stone," Elandor observed. "The boy froze the rot, pulverized it, and is now returning it to the sender. He turned their own weapon into ammunition."
"Vulgar," Denish muttered.
"Resourceful," Deiman corrected, a rare hint of approval in his voice. "He is using Maria not as a warrior, but as a siege engine. Efficient."
** The Sky Above the Arena**
Velia Ancrose saw the purple-green fog rising rapidly from the fortress. She sneered.
"Wind magic? They think a breeze will knock us out of the sky?" She laughed, her voice amplified by magic. "Ignore it! Shields up! Prepare the final volley!"
The Sanctum mages layered their mana shields. Translucent golden barriers appeared around them, designed to block fireballs, arrows, and lightning.
But they weren’t prepared for dust.
The frozen crystals were physical matter. When they hit the mana shields, they didn’t explode. They simply passed through the gaps in the weave, carried by Maria’s wind.
"What is—" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
Velia choked.
The moment the crystals entered the warm air surrounding the mages, they melted. The rapid phase change from solid to gas released the payload Gideon had infused into them.
[Skill: Necrotic Miasma]
A heavy, cloying fog enveloped the formation.
"I can’t... breathe!" a mage to Velia’s left gasped, clutching his throat.
"My mana!" another screamed. "It’s eating my mana!"
The gas didn’t just attack the lungs; it attacked the mana circuits. The Rot Artifact’s original purpose was to dissolve bonds—stone, metal, or wood. Now, in gaseous form and twisted by necromancy, it was dissolving the link between the mages and the ambient mana.
"Maintain altitude!" Velia shrieked, coughing into her sleeve. "Purify the air!"
She tried to cast a wind spell to clear the fog, but as she drew mana, a sharp pain spiked through her chest. The gas reacted to active mana usage. The more they tried to cast, the more it burned.
"It hurts!" a student cried out.
Then, the flight spells began to flicker.
One mage, a second-year with lower reserves, lost his buoyancy first.
Zip.
He dropped like a stone, screaming as he plummeted thirty meters down.
SPLAT.
He hit the mud. The swamp cushioned the fall enough to prevent death, but the impact was brutal. He lay there, groaning, covered in filth.
"Man down!" Velia yelled. "Stabilize!"
But the chain reaction had started. Coughing, blinded, and panicking, the Sanctum mages lost their concentration. The perfect formation broke.
Two more fell. Then five. Then ten.
It was raining mages.
The Fortress
Leon Lionheart watched the enemies falling from the sky. He wasn’t cheering. He looked horrified.
"Michael," Leon said, his voice trembling slightly. "This... this is chemical warfare. They’re choking. Look at them."
"They are enemies," Michael said, not looking away from the carnage. "They initiated the use of biological agents. We merely redistributed them."
"But this isn’t right!" Leon stepped in front of Michael, his golden eyes flashing. "We are heroes, not executioners! We should fight them with swords and magic, not poison gas! This is villainy!"
The air in the fortress grew heavy. The other students—Eric, Aiden, Alex—looked between the two leaders. They were uncomfortable, but they were also alive because of Michael’s plan.
"Villainy?"
Michael turned slowly to Leon. He didn’t raise his voice, but the sheer weight of his presence—the [Aura Holder] skill leaking out—made Leon take a step back.
"They bought an artifact from a terrorist organization to melt the flesh off your bones, Leon. If that gas hadn’t been frozen, it would be dissolving your legs right now."
Michael pointed to the mud where the Sanctum mages were crashing, floundering in the muck, coughing up purple bile.
"You want to be a hero? Fine. Go save them."
Michael turned his back on Leon.
"Arthur."
Arthur Pendragon stepped forward. The swordsman’s face was grim, but his resolve was iron.
"Order, Monarch?"
"Leon is paralyzed by his morals. You are not." Michael gestured to the muddy killing field. "The enemy is grounded. They are disoriented, mana-depleted, and separated."
Arthur drew his sword. The blade shimmered with a holy light, a stark contrast to the grim reality of the battlefield.
"It is war, Leon," Arthur said softly to the stunned Lionheart. "Honor is for the living. The dead have no use for it."
Arthur turned to the troops—the martial artists, the vanguards, the strikers.
"Arcadia!" Arthur roared. "Advance! Show no mercy!"
"RAAAH!"
The Arcadia students, fueled by the adrenaline of survival and the sight of their tormentors falling, surged out of the fortress gates. They charged into the mud, weapons drawn.
The Mud
Velia Ancrose hit the ground hard. She rolled, her expensive robes instantly soaked in the foul-smelling swamp water. She gagged, wiping mud from her eyes.
"Form... formation!" she wheezed.
But there was no formation. Her mages were scattered, crawling in the mud, trying to purge the poison from their systems.
Through the clearing fog, she heard a sound. It was the rhythmic splashing of boots running through water.
She looked up.
Emerging from the mist like demons, the Arcadia team descended.
Eric William, glowing with light mana, smashed his shield into a bewildered mage’s face. Aiden, crackling with lightning, dashed between the fallen, stunning them before they could even stand.
It wasn’t a battle. It was a harvest.
"Get up!" Velia screamed, scrambling backward. "Fight back!"
She raised her staff, trying to summon a firewall.
A shadow fell over her.
She froze.
Standing before her, unblemished by the mud, was Michael Wilson. He hadn’t run; he had walked, yet he arrived before the others. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable behind those glasses.
"You like looking down on people, Velia," Michael said, his voice calm amidst the screams of her teammates.
He tilted his head.
"How does the view look from down here?"
Velia grit her teeth, humiliation burning hotter than the poison in her lungs. "You... filthy... Extra!"
She reached into her robe for the second artifact.
Michael sighed.
"Predictable."
(End of Chapter 258)
