Fled Without Realizing I Had Prevented the Apocalypse

Pajijijik.
Faint electricity flows where the lightning grazed past.
The ground turned black as even the water created from melting snow due to the sudden high temperature evaporated.
“Phew…”
I caught my breath while looking at the trace I had created.
Perhaps because it’s been a while since I used lightning, using it still feels awkward.
Although moving my body itself seemed to have improved much compared to before due to continuous use, I felt a deficiency in handling magic.

“Is it because I spent too long as the Sword Demon?”
While staying in the Empire, I continued fighting with only sword and fist while restricting all the magic I could handle, so it wasn’t strange that the sense of handling magic felt a bit awkward.
Even in the battle just now, rather than fighting as a magician, it was closer to a boxer’s fight with electricity enveloping the entire body.
“Well, I’ll get used to it while I’m here.”
Although it’s unavoidable because magic fights completely differently from sword or fist, I can’t keep moving like this forever.
When I used the name Heavenly Thunder, I did use my body, but in the end, I was a lightning magician.
Rather than as the Sword Demon or Kyle Amalan, since I returned to the North as the Heavenly Thunder, it was right to thoroughly show my aspect as a magician.
Unless I was going to come to the North as a completely different person, the Emperor’s request was clearly directed at the Heavenly Thunder.
“Blue lightning falling from the sky and… a white mask with a lightning pattern.”
As I was shaking off the remnants of magic power left on my body, I heard a faintly trembling voice.
“Could it be the Heavenly Thunder?”
“…There was still someone alive?”
I moved my steps towards where the voice was coming from.
In the direction the voice leaked from, an orc was breathing heavily while leaning his blackened body against a rock.
An orc full of wrinkles, apparently quite old at a glance.
The level I could feel through detection was 5th rank. In their words, a 5-star warrior.
“I should have felt something was off when lightning suddenly struck from the clear sky, but to think you would return to this North.”
“…Do you remember me?”
“How could I not remember?”
The orc breathing roughly spat blood from his mouth.
It’s lightning that instantly incinerated even the 6th rank wolf beast-man.
Even though I’m not used to handling lightning, it’s not to the extent that I couldn’t kill the orc in front of me.
He probably just lasted a bit longer because he was away from the lightning’s range and was a 5th rank warrior chief.

In reality, the orc’s insides were burning away.
He’s barely clinging to life now, but he’ll probably turn to ashes soon.
“Suddenly invading our land, you who struck down the flying and crawling warriors of the North.”
The orc, as if knowing he was going to die, gave up resistance and opened his mouth.
“I’ve never forgotten. The sight of you standing alone on the plains, wielding natural disasters to block the Khan’s army…”
“If you remember that sight, why did you come down?”
I could tell without looking closely.
The orc in front of me is terrified.
Because he’s related to one of the many achievements I made while active as the Heavenly Thunder five years ago.
And as far as I know, the warriors of the North are beings who don’t know fear.
Beings who must bite and kill the opponent in front of them even if their life is cut short.
That’s why for the barbarians of the North, warriors gripped by fear are weak beings.

Because for them, fear was dishonorable.
Therefore, dishonorable warriors couldn’t step onto the honorable battlefield.
“Ha!”
To the question I asked while harboring doubt, the orc raised his voice.
“Why did we come down, you ask? There’s only one reason, isn’t there!”
“……”
“To subjugate the cowards living comfortably in warm places under the name of the Khan!”
Under the name of the Khan.
Those words are ones I haven’t heard since the Khan’s life was cut short five years ago.
And I thought I wouldn’t hear them again in the future.
However, seeing that they’re entering my ears now, it seems the information obtained by the Empire’s intelligence department was true after all.
I threw another question at the orc to gain more information while I was at it.
“The name of the Khan, you say. Has he returned?”
“He has returned. To grant us green lands after finishing his long journey.”
“The Khan should have surely died.”
“He does not die. He merely departed on a journey for a while. The Khan is eternal, and will also be immortal.”
I can’t grasp whether it’s because he’s on the verge of death or if those words are truly as they are.
Come to think of it, it was often difficult to converse with the barbarians of the North originally.
I could obtain fragmentary information, but if I tried to know a little more in detail, they would soon spout vague words.
‘For now, the Khan has returned to the North. Should I be satisfied with just finding out this fact?’
The information the intelligence department had guessed turned out to be true.
As discovering this fact alone was already a sufficient harvest, I was about to slowly turn my feet towards Winter Forest, leaving the dying orc behind.
“…Heavenly Thunder.”
Until the dying orc called my alias.
“Lightning of the sky. Nightmare of the North. Fear of the warriors.”
“……”
“The Khan has gone against the Heavenly Principle, transcended causality, and driven away the curse that had long plagued the North.”
Extraordinary words flow from the orc’s mouth.
These are not things that can leak from a mere 5th rank barbarian.
Each word was imbued with power.

Whether it’s because he’s drawing all his energy right before death, or if just speaking that information itself draws such power.
I couldn’t know either.
Probably even the orc himself wouldn’t know.
However, the orc spoke with a trembling voice.
“The nightmare is now over. As we’ve overcome the fear you planted through the Khan’s achievement, now it’s time for that damned sky to come down. Heavenly Thunder.”
The orc’s hand, though trembling, was tightly clenched into a fist as he said this.
I wondered why the warriors of the North, who consider fear dishonorable, sent out someone bearing dishonor as an honorable vanguard.
It seemed that with the Khan’s return, a new rule had emerged in the North in the meantime.
A rule that fear is dishonorable, but those who overcome it are most honorable.
I don’t know why the barbarians who have lived like that all their lives suddenly changed their rules, but it’s undeniable that things become more troublesome as their rules have become a bit more flexible.
The fact that overcoming fear restores honor means that even warriors bearing dishonor return to the battlefield and fight more desperately.
“Looks like he really did come back.”
Breaking old-fashioned traditions and creating a single enemy for the warriors of the North.

Naturally pursuing efficiency in that process is the Khan’s way.
I don’t know how, in what way he has returned again, but…
“It’s time for that damned sky to come down, you say?”
I muttered the last words the orc had said while looking down at his cold corpse.
Does the dead orc know how arrogant the words he just spoke were?
That it’s something a mere 5th rank shouldn’t have uttered.
He probably doesn’t know.
“……”

Since he’s already dead.
He probably won’t know in the future either.
“Because it won’t happen in the first place.”
I left one sentence that no one could hear in front of the corpse, and moved my steps towards Winter Forest.
**
“Your Majesty.”
Omnipotent. The emperor ruling the largest country on the continent.
And one of the few 8th rank transcendents even looking across the entire continent.
Sion Frederia von Reichers.
“Your Majesty.”
The Emperor, who holds such enormous power and duties that even nobles of the same Empire would take months to years to get an audience, is now.
“You must wake up now.”
“Mmm…”
Lying askew on the imperial throne symbolizing the Emperor’s authority, dozing off.
Fortunately, the Empire’s Prime Minister who was in the middle of a meeting shook her body to wake her up, but someone who was asleep until just now couldn’t be in their right mind.
“…Where were we?”
“We were discussing the number of legions to send in response to the Forest Margrave’s request for support.”
“Ah, right. Right.”
As the Prime Minister reminded her of the meeting’s topic, the Emperor, finally coming to her senses, clapped her hands.
“If the Margrave personally sent a request for support, we should send reinforcements as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, we are currently planning to gather three Imperial Knight Orders and private soldiers from nearby nobles to send as support. The estimated arrival time is one week.”
“One week. Just as I told him.”
The Emperor slowly nodded.
The deadline she directly mentioned to the Heavenly Thunder was one week.
If the Empire’s reinforcements arrived within that time, the Heavenly Thunder could immediately head towards the North.
“However, Your Majesty. Isn’t it possible that the Margrave might not be able to hold out during that one week period?”
“That won’t happen.”
The minister’s cautiously raised opinion in the meeting was immediately cut off by the Emperor’s words.
The Emperor’s natural trust that they could hold out for the long time of one week despite the urgency warranting a request for support.
Even though the Forest Margrave has long played the role of the North’s gateway, they’ve already been breached once, so how could she have such trust?
“You seem to be misunderstanding something.”
As if grasping the minister’s doubt, the Emperor opened her mouth.
“It’s not the Margrave I trust.”
She doesn’t trust the Margrave who has been the North’s gateway.
Then who does she trust?
“The Heavenly Thunder.”
The Emperor ended the meeting after uttering that one word.
It was while leaving behind the confused eyes of the ministers who didn’t realize even after hearing the alias Heavenly Thunder.
“You could have told them at least a little, couldn’t you?”
The Empire’s Prime Minister follows behind her.
She opened her mouth with an expression that said this was the Emperor’s usual behavior.
“A secret weapon is only effective when it remains secret.”
And the Emperor nonchalantly brushed off such questioning from the Prime Minister.
If someone saw this, they might be surprised that someone could question the Emperor like this, but it was natural for these two people.
The Prime Minister is known as the only one in the Empire who can stay by the Emperor’s side.
Of course, the Prime Minister was also one of the few who knew about the Heavenly Thunder’s identity.
That’s why she couldn’t help but react like this.
Because she knew what kind of person the Heavenly Thunder was.
“You said you gave a deadline of one week, so who should we send?”
“The Khan’s return has become almost a fait accompli. Then the importance of that gateway will increase even more.”
The Emperor, who had been pondering the Empire’s personnel selection for a moment, soon recalled the Heavenly Thunder’s face and slightly raised the corner of her mouth.

Then she slowly threw a question towards the Prime Minister.
“The first princess of the Raziel Kingdom. And where is the second star of this place now?”