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“All troops, charge! Don’t give them any chance to regain their senses!”

The progress in conquering Cardiff went smoothly. Even if you put aside Tiara’s effort in opening up the outside gate of the castle, they were still extremely lacking in defense as they didn’t know anything about Newport having been already conquered by us.

Castle walls and defensive weapons were all only effective as obstacles when you are using them to defend against a siege attack. It was completely useless against enemy forces that decided to sneak inside instead of conducting a siege, which meant that the 5,000 troops along with us didn’t face any obstacle sneaking inside of the castle.

Only after we passed the outer walls and arrived at the entrance of the inner castle did the enemy forces realize that we had invaded their castle, which led to them scrambling to defend against us but by then the inner castle gate had already been destroyed completely.

“Capture the teleportation gate and military training grounds!”
“I will take care of the teleportation gate and dorms.”

Esther volunteered to take one-half of the troops and capture the teleportation gate.

“Will you be fine?”
“Yes, I swear that I will capture it right away.”

Seeing Esther grip her small hand into a tight fist and have her eyes ablaze with drive, I nodded my head.

“All right. Don’t overextend yourself.”
“Okay, do your best as well, sisters!”

I wonder how hard it is for her to keep up her bright energetic appearance in this situation? I couldn’t do anything else but simply believe that Esther will do her best to endure this. It’s not like she will be arrested as an accomplice for a crime that she had no relation to, but I couldn’t help but still be worried.

Even if Esther won’t experience any harm from it, it won’t be the same for Stella. If she is proven to be related to the people of the incident, not only would she be sent to jail, she would also be completely shunned by the whole society that she is in. On top of that, because of how important honor is to a noble household, she may end up being expelled from the household as well. It would actually be weird if Esther, who has to think of all that, still looks fine and not worried.

Honestly, I felt that it would be good for her to just quickly push aside all that worry and focus even if it would look weird from other people’s perspectives. Though this may sound violent to Esther, I had an antagonistic relationship with Stella, and I didn’t plan to just leave her alone even if I had never come across this incident.

In the end, it felt like the situation had solved itself without my input.

“She deserved it, honestly…”

Staring at the back of Esther as she went off in another direction, I quietly spoke to myself.

“Hm?”
“Ah, I’m just talking to myself. Let’s quickly move to the military training grounds then.”
“Come on…”

We started to move together with the troops towards the military training grounds again. Just as we arrived, we saw enemy forces in a massive hurry trying to set up a formation to defend against us.

“Wha!? They’re already here…!”
“It’s Artoria…!”

The enemy forces that saw us come in became completely pale in the face. Seeing that they had lost all morale even before the fight began, I knew that this battle would also become a complete massacre.

Katalina shot off her spell right away towards the enemy forces, and with my skill following right after, it was the sign of the beginning of this massacre.

It was a decision that I could make only because I’ve ordered the healer team to make sure to focus all of their healing spells on me beforehand.

“D-dodge it!”

A foolish order came from someone who looked to be the enemy’s commander, but it was too late. The only way to avoid getting damaged by an activated skill is to damage the user enough to cancel the completion of their skill, or by doing your best to physically dodge the skill, but the enemy forces were all in a tight formation in a relatively confined space. Not only was there a limited amount of space to dodge the attack, but they were also going to be hit with two different skills at the same time which made them completely confused in which way they should dodge.

Boom!

Soon, a powerful sound of explosion together with a brilliant-looking visual effect appeared right in the middle of the enemy forces. The formation that they were barely able to form became scrambled to pieces.

“Chaaaarge!”

Even though we didn’t order them, the allied troops shouted out loud as they charged towards the enemy forces. They knew that right now was the best moment to strike the enemy.

“65 kills.”
“63 kills.”

We both say the number of enemy kills we scored at the same time. The reason why there was a relatively less number of enemies killed even though the damage of our skills was so high could be because the skills we used weren’t specifically tailored to have a large area of effect.

But in any case, did I just lose to her?

“Fufu, looks like it’s my victory since I had 2 more kills than you.”
“Hm…”

Though it’s a bit of a shame, it was nearly impossible for the other class users to measure up to a mage user’s kill number. They could easily use ‘double cast’ skill to get way ahead in kills with a single attack after all.

I felt my pride getting hurt a bit but I accepted my loss. Even if I were to win, it would do more harm to me than good which was why I gave up.

It seemed like knowing that she had beaten me in kills improved Katalina’s mood as she was enthusiastic about destroying the enemy forces.

“Looks like she’s having fun.”

Of course, I made sure to not let Katalina hear my comment as I spoke to myself in a quiet way. I then realized that I would end up not getting any kill point at this rate and charged towards the enemy’s forces.

It’s certain that there was no other way to raise your experience points than killing other users. Though the titles I received on the way here also helped, the fact that I was nearly level 920 now was a very significant thing.

Considering that I was level 900 when I first logged into the game, in a span of a month and a little more I was able to raise my level 20 times. Gaining this many levels at this tier was something that’s completely unbelievable. The excuse of saying I’ve gained this much EXP because I’m in the middle of war still may not be enough to justify it. Even if level 1,000 was the actual limit of how high your level can get, they can easily implement an ‘advancement’ system or something else that makes reaching that limit completely meaningless. When I thought about that, I understood the reasoning yet again.

But besides that, if I had raised 20 levels in total then Katalina must be close to reaching level 900 as well, and made me realize that once this war is over, I should go over and check the overall ranking order. I felt that since it’s only England server that’s experiencing such a large-scale war like this, the ranks of the users in the England server will increase dramatically as opposed to ranked users in other countries where they had no big-scale wars.

“Damn it…”

I glanced at the enemy commander who was just beginning to collapse due to my strike and then looked around. Just as I assumed from the beginning, the enemy forces were no match for us.

Additional enemy reinforcements kept coming in but the main forces were already in such disarray that we were able to easily subjugate the troops that came in one at a time.

This was the same situation over at the teleportation gate as well.

“This is starting to feel like bullying some child.”
“You’re right. You can definitely see the disadvantage in having an alliance where all guilds are equal in priority and command.”

If this place belonged to the Camelot alliance, we would be able to just cut our losses and give it up the moment this location is taken over, but that wasn’t the case for the Tempest guild. As this was their main headquarters, if they were to lose it they would be experiencing massive losses directly to the guild. So therefore they couldn’t do anything but keep sending reinforcements even if they were against being in an alliance against Camelot.

I sent a whisper to Lucas.

They are practically taking each other down here. All the enemy formations have been split up.]　
[Is that so? It seems like Cardiff will fall into our hands soon, so please go ahead and report that as to raise our allies’ morale.]　
[Is that true? You truly are amazing, to conquer such a huge castle in a record time like that. I will also send you good news soon.]　
[I will be waiting then.]　

After finishing off the whisper conversation, I gathered up the elite troops and moved over to the castle hallway. Though enemy troops were blocking the path, we destroyed their defenses without much trouble and pushed all the way to the castle lord’s home office. I gave the order for everyone following us to stand back so that Katalina and I could step into the home office first by ourselves.

“In the end…”

Surprisingly the only user inside of the lord’s home office was Stella. Though her expression was obviously dejected from knowing what’s going to happen, her two eyes were still filled with hatred towards us.

“Hmph, serves you right.”

Katalina spoke in a sarcastic manner towards Stella.

“Hmph! If Duchess Elizabeth weren’t with you, you’d be in the same situation as me.”
“Well, I won’t deny that. But Ellie decided to take my hand, and now you’ve ended up like this.”

Katalina didn’t seem to be affected by Stella’s provocation at all.

“Ugh…”

Stella glared at Katalina as if this was all unfair, but Katalina simply stared at Stella with a bitter smile.

Since I didn’t have any reason to step between them and stop their conflict, I simply stood there spectating the situation.

“But in any case, it seems like Duchess Elizabeth is quite skilled in her ways.”

It seemed like Stella knew that it was going to be all over soon, which led to her trying to take a shot at me since she knew she won’t have a second chance.

“What do you mean by that?”

I asked her back with a naturally suspicious tone of voice.

“I’m talking about Esther. How were you able to win her over to your side like that? I knew that my relationship with her wasn’t all that good but I didn’t think that kind child would ever step up to me as an enemy like that. Perhaps you thought that just having Katalina wasn’t enough for you? Well considering your status, Duchess Elizabeth, I guess having two wouldn’t be…”
“Why you…!!!”

Hearing Stella’s ridiculous provocation, it was Katalina who became enraged.

“Hmph, the truth will be spread far out into the world of high-class society. On top of that, Esther is currently living at Duchess Elizabeth’s place, am I not right? At this point, it’s all said and done.”

Stella knew she had the upper hand, making a bitter smile on her lips. Considering her skills, she certainly could make this a big issue that’s talked about among the high society with no problem. Whether the truth was right or not, everyone already knew how powerful she was in influencing the high-class circles.

“So?”

With a smile, I answered her back and seeing that Stella looked frightened but still held a bitter smile.

Did she think she still had a chance to grasp victory in her hands?

“Let us have a negotiation then. On the condition that you do not publicize everything related to the incident, you can take me in the Camelot alliance.”

A really shameless person isn’t she? Of course, I had no intentions of taking her in and all sympathy I could have had was gone after seeing how she could go as far as to sell off her own blood-related sister like this.

“Is that all for the condition?”
“That’s right.”

Thinking that I was going to accept her negotiation, a deep smile filled with elation started to form on her lips.

Slash!

And at that moment, the Excalibur that was held in my hands drew a frighteningly quick arc in the air, cutting off Stella’s neck before she could even take a defensive stance. Staring at Stella as her body became cold and deteriorated, I spoke in a cold and subdued voice.

“Go ahead and try if you can.”