"That is enough..."
A cold murmur came from the silver-white armor. Those words were directed at Vortigern, but they were also meant for him.
Gawain felt even more ashamed.
Yet fortune and misfortune were intertwined. Being defeated by the Vile King Vortigern had snuffed out Gawain's arrogant belief that he would be invincible under the sun, allowing him to regain reverence and humility toward the world.
"Arthur, the Child of Prophecy? Hehahaha, laughable! Uther truly went senile if he thought the likes of you could stop me!"
The middle-aged man, whose hair was like shadow, whose dim yellow vertical pupils inspired dread, and whose hands and feet were sharp and clawlike, frowned and sneered.
The black mist around him boiled violently. The eerie patterns on the red-black demon sword in his hand lit up. The Demon Dragon beneath him raised its neck and roared, and enormous Magecraft light patterns linked together in midair, forming an inverted circular array.
At once, the sky seemed to be corroded into a pitch-black hole. As the magical patterns resonated, all the Ether of Britannia formed a nearly tangible black tide, surging madly toward that dark vortex.
Wherever the black tide passed, plants withered, the land turned to sand, and animals grew frantic with fear. The vitality and life force of all things were devoured by that great maw that seemed to open from the abyss itself.
So this is Britannia's White Dragon, the Vile King Vortigern?
Damn it, that's a Divine Spirit-level reaction!
Hidden beneath the trees, Samael secretly watched the battle. Gazing at the red-black streams of light rising into the sky from the fortress on Mount Badon, his snake-like pupils narrowed as thoughts surged through his mind.
As the gods withdrew and the heroes faded from the stage, the Roman Empire, which occupied vast lands, entered its most glorious age.
Glory had once belonged to Greece, but greatness had descended upon Rome.
And because the victorious queen Boudica and Rome's final divine emperor, the Rose Emperor Nero, had made a pact of coexistence, Britannia naturally became Roman territory as well, bathing in that glory.
But there is no empire that never falls. After generations of imperial succession, Rome's prosperity faded. The empire sank into chaos and neared collapse.
Amid that turmoil, barbarians rose everywhere and began bloody struggles over territory.
The declining Roman Empire had no strength to spare. It abandoned its own territory, Britannia, and withdrew all armed forces from the island.
And once Britannia lost the empire's protection, it could not escape the cycle of independence, collapse, and division. It soon split into several small kingdoms.
During this period, barbarian invasions and wars between tribes opened the long "Dark Age" known to later generations.
As the continental empire declined, the now-unrestrained foreign tribes, the Saxons, began invading Britannia in order to survive.
Facing the foreign invasion, the Celts rose in resistance and formed the southern kingdom led by Uther Pendragon.
Of course, he should now be called the late king, since unless something unexpected happened, that man was already very dead.
Still, it had to be said that Uther Pendragon was indeed exceptional. He had once served in the Roman legions, and both his military and political talents were worth praising.
At the same time, Uther Pendragon was a unique being granted Mystery by the island of Britannia, and he possessed considerable talent.
Because of his achievements in resisting foreign enemies and the support of the Celts, he was honored as King Uther.
However, war-torn Britannia was not dominated by King Uther alone. In truth, lords had risen on every side.
As one of the forces in the north resisting foreign enemies, Uther's elder brother, Vortigern Pendragon, naturally refused to bow beneath anyone. Thus, Vortigern, trapped in a land beset by enemies on all sides, used foreign tribes in his struggle for the throne, intending to annex the south and unite Britannia.
More than ten years ago, King Uther had been defeated and gravely wounded by the Vile King, whose power had somehow surged.
Seeing no hope of unifying Britannia, Uther began placing his hopes on the next king.
Yet the Mystery of the island of Britannia was weakening by the day, and he could not determine whether the next king would still be able to receive this land's protection.
Thus, Uther and the Magus Merlin formed a bold idea. The previous king, blessed by Britannia, had still only surpassed ordinary humans. That level of power could not defeat Vortigern after his strength had increased.
So the two decided to shape the new king into an inhuman existence from the very beginning.
Simply put, they performed a conceptual conception. The bloodline of the King of Britannia, the bloodline of the Red Dragon, Britannia's incarnation, and the bloodline of a noble woman as the womb to fuse the two.
In the end, the new king on that gentle slope was born with a dragon reactor, every drop of blood in her body containing Ether factors.
To build momentum for the new king, King Uther, before his death, thrust his own sword, the golden Sword of Selection, Caliburn, into a stone and sealed it with Magecraft.
That was also the origin of the inscription on the blade.
"Whoever can draw this sword from the stone shall be the destined King of Britannia!"
Several years ago, the great sage Merlin also released his prophecy ahead of time.
"King Uther's successor will be favored by destiny. This person shall be the incarnation of the Red Dragon, the eternal King of Britannia.
When the new king appears, the Knights of the Round Table shall gather, and the White Dragon shall be defeated!"
From then on, every knight in Britannia looked forward to the new king, while each harbored the restless thought that they might be the chosen one.
Meanwhile, because of that prophecy, the Vile King hunted the new king with savage intensity. Before the new king had even ascended the throne, her reputation had already been firmly established among the people and the knights.
Everything proceeded just as those two had predicted.
During that carefully planned coronation ceremony, the figure on the gentle slope successfully drew the Sword of Selection from the stone before all eyes.
Afterward, relying on inhuman power and legendary prestige, the new king gathered a great number of loyal knights and led her forces to victory after victory.
After twelve dynastic wars, she had nearly swept away every divided king across Britannia and driven back the foreign tribes again and again.
And the Battle of Mount Badon before them was essentially the foreign tribes' last desperate struggle.
After all, for Saxons who excelled at field battles and usually fought in a loose, scattered style to build a fortress and defend behind natural barriers was proof enough that they had truly been beaten into fear by the new king and her knight order. They could only rely on walls for a sense of security.
Even so, the nearly unsolvable mass charge of the Enforcement Knights still left the barbarians helpless.
And Vortigern, the Vile King who bore the protection of Britannia and was prophesied to be the only one capable of opposing the child of the dragon, had become the foreign tribes' last remaining lifeline.
Likewise, Vortigern, who had suffered repeated setbacks, also needed the aid of the foreign tribes to resist the Child of Destiny.
Now, the destined battle between the Red Dragon and the White Dragon had begun.
But as Samael watched the earth and stone flying over Mount Badon, the ground continuously splitting apart, and the Ether in the sky gathering in a frenzy, the sheer intensity of it was beyond anything he had expected.
The Age of Gods had ended. The heroes had gone far away. So why did the surface of Britannia still retain power close to that of a Divine Spirit and broadcast an explosive divine battle live before his eyes?
It was simply unbelievable.