The Hero King, Reincarnate to Master the Art of War - Chapter 488

The force of the wind caught her off guard, and Meltina stumbled.

“W-What is this!? L-Liselotte…! Professor Rochefort!” She called their names, but neither of them was in the room. They might have been thrown out through the hole.

“What in the world happened…!?”

Meltina tried to approach the gaping hole to look outside, but the wind blowing in was too strong, she could easily be blown out as well. As a precaution, she drew her whip-sword Artifact and wrapped it around the room’s door handle.

She coiled the pale blue whip portion around her wrist, an improvised lifeline. Leaning out through the hole, she scanned for any sign of the two.

“Liselotte! Professor Rochefort! If you can hear me, please respond!”

But the only thing she heard was the same howling wind.

“W-What happened here!?”

“Was it an attack!? You there—what happened!?”

“I don’t know…! I came to check on them, and the room was already like this!”

“Then we really do have an intruder!?”

“In any case, we must seal that hole first! The damage could spread and compromise the entire ship!”

“All right, patch it up!”

The knights began working on a quick fix for the gaping hole in the wall.

“Please be careful! If you need it, use this whip as a lifeline. The non-bladed part is safe to hold…!”

“Understood!”

“We’ll take you up on that!”

Just as the knights were entering the room, another knight appeared behind them. But this one wasn’t wearing the standard uniform of Raphael’s Holy Knights.

She was one of the two personal guards of Chancellor Rigriff, the red-haired female knight.

“Lady Echidna…!? What are you doing here?”

“We’ll take over from here. You should return to guarding Chancellor Rigriff, anything could happen.”

“All right. I understand.”

The knight, called Echidna, nodded while resting her hand on the hilt of her sword. And in the next instant, she had drawn her blade with blinding speed.

The slash she unleashed mid-draw struck the door handle to which Meltina’s whip-sword was attached. Losing her anchor, Meltina’s body pitched dangerously forward.

“Eh…!?”

“What! Lady Echidna!?”

“What are you doing!?”

As the other knights shouted in shock at Echidna’s actions, Meltina’s body was thrown out through the gaping hole.

“KyAAAAaaaAAAH!?”

Thrown into the sky with nothing to hold on to, she was swallowed by helplessness and the endless sensation of falling. For a human who wasn’t meant to fly, the instinctive terror and dread were immense.

—But if she just let herself be swept away like this, she’d be no different from who she used to be. That powerless girl who had been shut away in Venefique’s palace and sold off to the Highland without being able to resist.

She wouldn’t give up. At the very least, she would fight back in any way she could. And now, she wasn’t completely powerless.

“But…! Not yet!”

Meltina extended her whip-sword as far as it could reach, aiming it at the hull of the flying warship, which was already starting to pull away. And the final blade of the whip managed to barely stick into the outer armor.

“I did it—aaah!?”

But the strike was too shallow, it couldn’t support her weight and slipped free. Now with no options left, Meltina squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the fall.

Then, just a moment later, she felt her body floating gently. And the warmth of another person’s body.

“Miss Meltina! Are you alright!?”

“Ah… Liselotte! Thank you, but are you alright too!?”

It was Liselotte. She had taken to the air with the Gift of her Artifact that had granted her a pair of pure white wings, and she was also carrying Rochefort in her arms.

Even while holding onto Rochefort, Liselotte managed to seize Meltina too. But because Meltina’s right hand was still clutching the whip-sword, Liselotte had no choice but to pull her in, pressing the two of them tightly together.

“Yes! As you can see, Professor Rochefort is safe as well!”

“Ahh, Princess… I’m glad you’re unharmed…”

Rochefort was conscious, but his face was pale and drained of life.

“In any case, we’re heading back! If we get too far, we won’t be able to return!”

Liselotte channeled power into her wings and shot back toward the flying warship at full speed.

“What on earth happened…?”

Meltina asked Liselotte, her voice tense with confusion.

“That was likely… an Undead created with mana essence! It suddenly fell from the ceiling like some kind of liquid, then took on a human shape and broke through the wall… That’s how Professor Rochefort got thrown outside!”

“M-mana essence…!?”

“Yes. It was small, but I believe it resembled the kind General Maxwell used!”

At those words, Meltina couldn’t help but remember the day General Maxwell’s forces stormed the palace where she lived. It had been under the false pretense that external peace advocates were planning a rebellion against the current Emperor, using Princess Meltina as their figurehead, a charge she had no memory or intention of.

Indeed, many of those around Meltina belonged to the so-called moderate faction. Her tutors had held such views since her childhood, and naturally she had absorbed that outlook herself, one she continued to uphold.

Since she had little freedom to leave the palace, she had tried to broaden her knowledge by inviting various scholars and intellectuals to speak with her. Many of them too had been moderates.

But she had never once thought of seizing the throne or leading a rebellion.

The current Emperor was her much older half-brother. Even if they shared only half of their blood, she never wanted to fight her own kin.

Yet, as a result of being falsely accused, guards and servants who had known her for years, her old tutors, and even their families were arrested and sent to Illuminus.

Only Meltina had been saved thanks to Inglis and the others, who happened to be there at the time, but the rest were said to have been turned into mana essence, an unnatural liquid made by melting down human beings.

To Meltina, mana essence was a nightmarish substance, a wound she could never forget.

“Miss Meltina! Meltina! Please pull yourself together! Your face’s gone white!”

Liselotte shook the arms holding Meltina gently.

“Ah—! I-I’m sorry…! Then, that means General Maxwell has infiltrated the ship…!?”

“Whether it was the man himself, I can’t say. But he may have collaborators or spies among us…”

“Ah! If that’s the case—”

“Do you have a lead?”

“The one who threw me overboard was Lady Echidna, one of Prime Minister Rigriff’s knights! She might be…”

“I see. Then it’s possible there’s a Venefique informant close to the Prime Minister.”

“In any case, we must save whoever we can…! And if Illuminus’ mana essence is being used, they may have been people I once knew and cared about. If so, I want to at least let them rest in peace…”

“Of course! I’ll fly us there at full speed!”

Liselotte’s wings beat harder, speeding toward the flying warship. They were nearly close enough to catch up.

But the next moment, a massive explosion ripped through the underbelly of the ship, blowing apart the storage bay for the flygears and their larger variants. And the debris from that blast was now flying directly toward Liselotte, straight into her path.