* * *

“Wh-what's happening now?”

Alex was bewildered. Someone had swept away the shadow monsters climbing the walls, and he had thought he could finally catch his breath. Now London was suddenly shrouded in mist. He couldn't bear the anxiety of wondering why, or what new disaster it might bring.

He wasn't alone. The other Magus Guild players were watching the mist just as anxiously.

That was when a sound familiar to them all rang out.

DONG!

“That sound...!”

“Could it be?”

Alex and the other players looked astonished at the strange tolling, like a thousand lumps of metal clashing together. A moment later, their faces twisted strangely.

DONG! DONG! DONG!

It wasn't just because the tolls, normally spaced apart, were ringing at an oddly rapid pace. Strange shadows had appeared on one side of the hill, which had been black with shadow monsters just moments ago and was now covered in mist.

They were the ghosts of London, made of shadows like the monsters but distinctly human in shape. From one of the thirteen shadows at their head, a strange intent reverberated throughout London.

[“I ask you, witch. Is this a righteous battle?”]

“Ναί (Yes).”

[“Is this a battle for the weak?”]

“Ναί (Yes).”

[“Is this a battle to vanquish evil?”]

“Ναί (Yes).”

[“Can you swear before God that this is true?”]

“I cannot swear before God, but I can swear on my soul and my honor instead.”

[“Then so be it. In accordance with the ancient covenant, we shall draw our swords to defend this land.”]

At that moment, Alex's eyes nearly popped out of his head. It wasn't merely because the ghosts of London, which had looked like faint shadows in the mist just like the monsters, were gradually becoming clear and taking on distinct human forms.

A thousand knights stood there, every one clad in gleaming metal armor and carrying a sword. Among them, thirteen stood out in particular—and the crowned knight at their head made Alex's pupils tremble.

“... That.”

A ghost wearing a crown? The British Empire had had dozens of those. Several kings had also distinguished themselves as valiant knights. But as far as Alex knew, only one king had ever wielded a sword like that.

“Th-that, th-th-that can't be! Ex-Excal—!”

KABOOOOM!

Unfortunately, Alex's cry was swallowed up. The instant the crowned knight swung his sword, starlight burst from its tip and swept away shadow monsters in droves.

But that was only the beginning. When a knight enveloped in sunlight charged, the monsters burst apart on their own. Monsters that met the gaze of a knight holding a sword as transparent as glass turned into chunks of ice. A knight with a bow released his string, and an arrow zigzagged through the air to pierce their heads. A one-armed knight thrust his spear, and its blade grew ninefold to impale the monsters.

Others included a knight wielding a flaming sword and one who deflected the monsters' attacks with his muscles. The thirteen knights rampaged, each using strange arms and equipment—swords, spears, armor, and more. Watching them and the thousand knights fighting the monsters behind them, Alex swallowed hard.

'My God.'

The metallic sound announcing the Misty hours, which he had always thought was a bell, had actually been the clatter of their weapons and armor. Above all, the identity of those thousand figures, which he finally understood, left him aghast.

For these were figures known more through legends and folktales than history books. They embodied the power of the Silver Age, which had dominated the world until the dragons' resurrection ushered in the Bronze Age.

“Magic Knights!”

* * *

[“Magic Knights actually existed?! They weren't just something from fairy tales?”]

“Of course they did.”

Cir chuckled. Tossing another item from her pouch into the magic circle, she continued languidly.

“The world at the end of the Silver Age was a complete mess. Even a Great Witch or a Saint could lose their life with one wrong move.”

Great Witches and Saints were said to be the supreme beings of the Silver Age, but they were essentially scholars. Because magic required a price, they were vulnerable in combat unless they had prepared beforehand, and an encounter with an avatar could put them in tremendous difficulty.

“So we had no choice but to find guardians who could fight our enemies for us and protect us.”

Human weapons armed with all manner of magical weapons and artifacts to stand against witches and priests. Masters of combat who had created countless legends as defenders of the faith or witch hunters, as witches' champions or heretics.

Those were the Magic Knights. Until the experts of the Seven Dragons Society appeared, no one could match them in close combat. They were the mightiest warriors of the Silver Age.

[“So basically, Magic Knights were enhanced armored infantry equipped with cutting-edge weapons in the Silver Age?”]

“If you must make a comparison, they were also rather like modified humans. Creating superhumans through magical blessings and curses was fashionable back then.”

[“That's f***ing broken!”]

Cir replied blandly to the horrified Yu Na-gyeong.

“Why make such a fuss over that? They were only on the level of what you children call high-level players these days.”

[“Being able to modify ordinary people into high-level players is already broken!”]

“Unfortunately, mass production wasn't possible.”

[“You even tried mass-producing them?!”]

“Of course. But unless a knight had trained both mind and body to their limits, nine out of ten would run amok or destroy themselves. In the end, we had to settle for a small elite force.”

[“Just what were you doing back then, my dear witch?!”]

“Nothing much. At most, I dreamed of conquering the world.”

Yu Na-gyeong looked dumbfounded at those words, so fitting for the Demon King of the Silver Age. Then she shook her head. She marveled at the thousand-odd Magic Knights driving back the tens of thousands of monsters climbing the hill.

[“Anyway, seeing this, I understand why the Great Barrier of London was called the strongest magic of the Silver Age.”]

Though their power varied with their blessings and magical artifacts, each of those thousand-odd Magic Knights clearly possessed strength comparable to a high-level player. Otherwise, they couldn't have swept away the shadow monsters like that. The thirteen knights leading them, in particular, each displayed power approaching that of a count-class player in the eighties or a duke-class player in the nineties.

A force like this could wage an all-out war against one of the ten great guilds, or even a clan of the Seven Dragons Society. If such knights could have been summoned in the distant Silver Age, the spell certainly deserved to be called the strongest.

That was why Cir's next words left Yu Na-gyeong utterly stupefied.

“What nonsense is that?”

[“Nonsense?”]

“I mean, what are you basing that on? The Great Barrier hasn't even properly begun to show its effects yet.”

[“... What?”]

As Yu Na-gyeong blinked at those incomprehensible words, Cir raised a finger and pointed ahead. Yu Na-gyeong followed it without thinking, then recoiled in shock.

Knights of the Blue Dragon Clan. Players from the Magus Guild. And now ancient Magic Knights, too. Unable to breach Seaserpent Castle, defended by that enormous force, the shadow monsters were converging on the witches' towers instead.

Yu Na-gyeong held her breath at the monsters' charge, which looked capable of knocking down a mere thick beanstalk in an instant.

[“AxeJoT (Turn upside down).”]

BOOOM!

With a strange echo, up and down reversed, and the charging monsters fell into the sky. Yu Na-gyeong stared blankly at the monsters flying into the distant heavens until they became stars, then startled. On a mirror chimney jutting from one corner of the pillar of five stacked houses where she and Cir stood, the ghost of a short woman with charming freckles had appeared, sitting there with a bright smile.

But that was only the beginning.

[“DiKaBra (Rewind).”]

A cold-faced woman's ghost appeared on the chimney of the house made of clocks and chanted. The charging tide of monsters reversed as though a video were being rewound.

[“RaroRurir (Be delicious).”]

A ghost wearing a cotton-candy hat turned the monsters clinging to the confectionery house into cookies.

[“AhvaCo (See ahead).”]

At a bespectacled ghost's incantation, the monsters' eyes turned pitch-black, and they attacked one another.

[“Ozrs (Come undone).”]

When the ghost of a woman holding a bunch of keys appeared, the monsters' limbs came apart like puzzles, and they tumbled across the ground.

The five women's ghosts had swept away the approaching monsters with a single incantation each. And there were more than five. From the twenty-seven Magic Halls forming the cores of the witches' twenty-three towers, women's ghosts appeared one after another, easily repelling the monsters merely by chanting spells.

Yu Na-gyeong's beak hung open as the ghosts' numbers rose beyond twenty-seven to fifty-four, then eighty-one, and kept climbing. Cir chuckled at her.

“Think about it. Surely I wouldn't have lost to a spell that merely summoned a few swordsmen.”

In the quality and quantity of her legions, including her Magic Knights, and in the breadth and depth of her magical knowledge, the empress of Rome had reached the pinnacle of the Silver Age in every respect. Gazing at the Great Barrier that even she had ultimately failed to overcome, she continued languidly.

“Avalon isn't mere necromancy. It is the culmination of soul magic and space-time magic.”

[“Space-time magic?”]

“Yes.”

When does a person die? When their heart stops? When their soul leaves their body? Or when that soul passes into the afterlife?

By thoroughly exploiting the gaps between those moments, one creates a space where the boundaries between life and death, this world and the next, and past and future are warped. That was Avalon. Having left Yu Na-gyeong dazed with this brief explanation, Cir continued casually.

“In other words, Avalon is a spell that creates a pseudo-afterlife.”

[“A pseudo... what?”]

“You sometimes see them in myths, don't you? Places like the Garden of Eden or the Peach Blossom Paradise, real yet not real. Think of it as creating one of those with magic.”

[“I have absolutely no idea what you mean...?”]

“If that's hard to understand, just think of it as a space infinitely close to the afterlife.”

Cir chuckled at Yu Na-gyeong, whose expression had grown about three times more vacant.

“So here, there's no need to laboriously summon souls as you would with necromancy. If we pay a little toll for them, they come on their own.”

[“They?”]

“Every soul, from the past to the present, with the will to protect London.”

The toll was expensive, so seeing souls cross over from the future was rather difficult, she added. After that terrifying statement, Cir tipped another item out of her pouch and smiled meaningfully.

“With that in mind, let me ask you: how many souls do you think there are who would lend their strength to protect London?”

Yu Na-gyeong had no need to answer. The souls of past witches from the twenty-seven magical lineages, already numbering in the hundreds, had appeared to protect their descendants. And blue shadows were sweeping like a tidal wave through the millions upon millions of monsters covering London. They had already given her the answer.

“Remember this. Magic always requires a price. But that is precisely why, if the price is sufficient, it is a mystery capable of accomplishing anything.”

[“...”]

They had guarded this place for hundreds of years, and had returned to protect it once again. Thousands... no, tens of thousands of knights in blue cloaks.

Watching the souls of the Blue Dragon Clan, Yu Na-gyeong could only wonder dazedly what sort of witch Cir had been in the Silver Age, to have faced magic this f*ing broken, this f*ing cheat-level, and gotten away with merely being sealed.