"Holy Lance, compress."
Just as Samael frowned in thought, a cold whisper like a Divine Spirit's proclamation echoed in mortal ears.
Hiss!
In an instant, the pitch-black curtain hanging from the sky over Mount Badon twisted violently and was forcibly pierced through by a spiral band of light, shining with a radiance like the stars.
The King of Britannia, mounted on the silver-armored warhorse Dun Stallion, held her knight's lance upright. Like a lighthouse guiding a ship lost in the deep sea, it dissolved the surrounding foul, sinister darkness completely, forming a citadel of light that cut off that black domain.
"Holy Lance, unanchor."
With that cold judgment, the spiral band of light connecting heaven and earth pressed forward and down.
Boom!
In an instant, the sharp Star Anchor of the Storm split and tore apart the kingdom of darkness Vortigern had summoned, striking straight into the outline hidden within the black mist.
"Graaah..."
The darkness boiled violently. Amid a terrible shriek, the pure-blooded Dragonkind beneath Vortigern fell from the sky, its chest pierced through by a horrifying wound.
Pink pulp from the dragon's heart, shattered fragments of dragon scales, and tiny pieces of bone as white as frost splattered in every direction.
A great volume of dragon blood turned into crimson rain, spilling from the hideous wound onto the scorched earth.
Vortigern, on the dragon's back, had narrowly escaped disaster, but he was far from unharmed. The iron armor on his right arm was shattered, and the red-black demon sword slipped from his hand.
"Arthur, don't get smug! Even if Britannia must fall, it will fall by my hand!"
But in the next instant, under the pressure of an absolute crisis, the injured Vile King's snake-like pupils shrank to pinpoints. His face twisted, his mouth split open to the roots of his ears, sharp teeth jutted out, and an inhuman roar burst from his throat.
Gray-white scales surfaced across his pale skin. Savage bone spikes burst from within his body, and his form swelled at once, tearing through the restraints of his iron armor. A huge shadow fell over the earth, revealing a sinister outline.
A dragon.
A pale dragon wrapped in black mist, descending with death.
"Roar!"
Its dragon claws struck down, and the fortress collapsed.
The dragon's head emerged. The black mist spreading around it devoured the soldiers' weapons, corpses, and the shattered rubble of the fortress, reducing everything to basic spirit particles and feeding them into the black hole that swallowed light.
Darkness surged back, yet the light, though faint, would never vanish. Even amid the storm, it continued to shine like a lighthouse.
In fact, because it had contracted, it became even more concentrated and sharp.
"Pitiful. Everything you have done is meaningless. The Mystery of this land has already been returned to my hand."
Facing a Great Dragon a hundred meters long and radiating the might of a Divine Spirit, the figure bathed in the spiral band of light spoke calmly. Her eyes remained cold and still, without the slightest ripple.
The King must have known long ago.
Vortigern was Britannia itself.
At the foot of the mountain, Gawain, bathed in light, looked up excitedly, his eyes shining with fanatic devotion.
That's right.
This is my limit.
But for my King, such hardship is merely her everyday life.
No. For the one before me, this cannot even be called hardship.
The Knight of the Sun's golden eyes, reflecting the starlight of the Holy Lance, filled with worship.
That magnificent spiral band of light, compressed to the utmost in the King of Britannia's hand, gradually spread outward. It illuminated the pitch-black sky along its path, restored the light, and scattered stardust, making the radiance swallowed by the world reappear.
No matter how vast that monster's Mana was, that Holy Lance could reduce the earth to scorched soil, even if the enemy was the entire island of Britannia given flesh.
At the same time, the figure spying from afar watched the two forces clash and collide over Mount Badon, nearly tearing Britannia apart. The corners of his mouth twitched hard, and his face had gone as black as the bottom of a pot.
"No wonder you came looking for me. Damn it, this is basically a miniature Age of Gods!"
"A miniature Age of Gods?"
The white-haired big sister crouching in the grass beside him blinked her dreamlike violet eyes innocently, her face full of curiosity as she waited for an explanation.
Samael sighed helplessly and could only patiently explain the situation.
Simply put, the Vile King was the manifestation of the island's will, the island's avatar.
And the king of a weak tribe who had drunk dragon blood had, for some reason, stopped being human long ago.
What he had become was not merely a White Dragon, but the island of Britannia itself. After the legendary [War of the Covenant], he was the world's final Mystery, the world's final fantasy.
Under these conditions, no matter where Vortigern stood in Britannia, he would enjoy the highest level of Authority and protection.
Beyond the erosion of the earth, the concentration of Mana in the atmosphere also rose around him to a level comparable to the Age of Gods, and Vortigern could use it all.
In theory, this was equivalent to turning all of Britannia into his territory.
Therefore, as the embodiment of this island's hidden will, the ground on which Vortigern stood was Britannia itself. It was the land of the Age of Gods.
And by even greater coincidence, what that King of Knights held in her hand was one of the twelve Spears of the End that this planet had once used to anchor the surface.
Vortigern provided the Mana, and the Holy Lance formed the tower that supported the world.
With the two combined, Britannia's Mystery had never been able to fade away, forming something like a small Age of Gods on the surface and allowing it to continue to the present.
Such a special environment had given birth to two Children of Destiny.
The White Dragon and the Red Dragon of Britannia.
One represented the will of the island. The other represented the legend that conquered Mystery.
But as they said, two tigers could not share one mountain. Britannia was destined to have only one master.
Thus, the confrontation between the Vile King and the King of Knights had become an inevitable battle of fate.
No wonder Divine Spirit-level lifeforms could still be seen blasting each other even in this era.
And no wonder the monsters gathered beneath the King of Knights, nicknamed the Round Table host club, were more absurdly powerful one after another.
"I knew it. When Gaia came looking for me, it couldn't be for anything good."
Watching the grand light show not far away, Samael's face darkened even further as he cursed inwardly.
That said, there was no way he could ignore this.
After all, Britannia as it existed now was like a cyst parasitizing the planet's surface, continuously drawing Ether nourishment from the Inner Sea of the Planet.
The reason they had gathered the surface Ages of Gods into the Inner Sea of the Planet was to reduce the planet's consumption, repair Gaia's damage, awaken the gods earlier, and store enough spirit particles in preparation for future disasters.
In other words, every strand of Ether leaking from Britannia, this bleeding wound, meant another second of delay before the companions he cared about could awaken.
People had those close to them and those distant from them. In a situation like this, of course he would side with his own people rather than with reason.
So, Your Majesty the Ahoge King, sorry about this.
Anyway, Britannia's Mystery was going to decline sooner or later.
Such was destiny. Everyone would just have to make do. A pit was a pit no matter who fell in.
Samael offered a wholly insincere moment of silence. While watching the battle with an eerie calm, he whispered with Mari, who had become thoroughly interested, and the two of them began quietly brewing mischief.
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