With Asta secure, Lencar closed his eyes and shifted the focus of his composite sensory web. He cast his awareness outward, bypassing the localized skirmishes and the frantic fleeing of the citizens, searching for the true epicenter of power in the besieged capital.
He found it in the northern district.
The mana radiating from that specific sector was so overwhelmingly dense, so intensely hot, that it felt like standing on the edge of an active volcano. It was a suffocating, majestic pressure that commanded absolute respect.
Lencar pushed his sensory magic closer, visualizing the battlefield through the vibrations in the air and the displacement of shadows.
Fuegoleon Vermillion, the Captain of the Crimson Lion Kings, was fighting.
It was a masterclass in magical warfare. Fuegoleon was not merely throwing spells wildly into the dark; he was commanding the battlefield with the tactical genius of a seasoned general. He stood in the center of a wide, cobblestone avenue, his crimson cape billowing around him despite the lack of natural wind.
Dozens of heavily modified soul corpses charged at him from all directions.
Fuegoleon didn't flinch. He raised a single hand, his face a mask of absolute, unwavering authority.
"Flame Creation Magic: Ignis Columna."
Pillars of concentrated, white-hot fire erupted from the ground beneath the advancing undead. The heat was so intense that the cobblestones instantly slagged into molten rock. The zombies weren't just burned; they were entirely vaporized, their necrotic mana completely eradicated by the sheer, purifying force of the Captain's flames.
Lencar observed the efficiency with a critical, appreciative eye. When Lencar had fought Ignis Vermillion during the exam, he had seen raw, wasteful power—a boy relying on the volume of his flames rather than the structure of his spells.
Fuegoleon was the exact opposite. Every single spark of his mana had a purpose. He used minimal movements to achieve maximum devastation. He was simultaneously incinerating the enemy while shouting precise, tactical orders to the junior knights fighting on his flanks, correcting their stances and directing their fire to cover the vulnerable evacuation routes of the citizens.
He is a true leader, Lencar thought, feeling a profound sense of respect for the man. He fights not just to destroy the enemy, but to elevate everyone fighting beside him.
Lencar maintained his sensory connection, watching as Fuegoleon systematically dismantled the undead horde. Minutes bled away. Ten minutes. Twelve minutes. The Crimson Lion King pushed deeper into the district, chasing the source of the necromantic energy, completely unaware of the invisible, perfectly placed snare that was waiting for him.
Lencar's heart beat a slow, steady rhythm against his ribs. The tension in the air was palpable, a heavy, static charge that preceded a massive lightning strike.
Then, exactly fourteen minutes after he had shifted his attention to the northern district, Lencar felt it.
It wasn't a sudden explosion of fire or a blast of dark magic. It was a subtle, incredibly complex shift in the foundational geometry of the ambient mana surrounding the entire Royal Capital.
The dormant spatial runes, the ones Valtos and the Eye of the Midnight Sun operatives had painstakingly painted across the city over the last several weeks, were waking up.
Miles away, hidden in the pitch-black, damp confines of a subterranean sewer tunnel far beneath the burning streets of Kikka, a solitary figure knelt on the cold stone.
He wore a dark, heavy cloak, the lower half of his face obscured by a fabric mask. His hands were pressed flat against a massive, glowing array of purple runes etched directly into the floor.
Valtos closed his eyes, his mind stretching outward, connecting with the dozens of spatial anchors he had planted. He felt the intense, blazing mana signatures of the Magic Knight Captains moving exactly as Lord Licht had predicted. The captains were arrogant. They had rushed to the front lines, prioritizing the immediate threat of the zombie horde over the subtle, invisible danger lurking beneath their boots.
They had taken the bait.
Valtos drew a deep breath, channeling a terrifying, immense amount of his own spatial mana into the primary activation matrix.
"They have all entered the marking area," Valtos whispered, his hoarse voice echoing off the slick, curving walls of the sewer.
He opened his eyes. They shone with a cold, absolute fanaticism.
"Activate."
Back on the surface, Lencar's sensory web screamed in sudden, agonizing overload.
The ambient mana of the city didn't just shift; it violently contorted. It felt as though someone had taken the physical fabric of reality, grabbed it by the edges, and violently yanked it out from under their feet.
Lencar opened his eyes, his disguised face turning sharply toward the northern district.
Massive, swirling portals of dense, dark purple spatial magic erupted from the cobblestones without a single second of warning. These were not the localized, controlled tears that Lencar used for his Void Step. These were massive, gaping sinkholes in reality, perfectly targeted and utterly inescapable.
Through his sensory net, Lencar watched as the ground simply vanished beneath Fuegoleon Vermillion.
The Crimson Lion King, in the middle of casting a massive fire spell, didn't even have time to shout a warning. The spatial gravity seized him, pulling him downward. The blinding white-hot flames of his magic were instantly snuffed out by the cold vacuum of the portal, and the great Captain was swallowed whole by the void.
The portal snapped shut, leaving behind only cracked cobblestones and an echoing silence.
But it wasn't just Fuegoleon.
Lencar felt identical spatial anomalies triggering across the entire capital.
In the eastern district, Nozel Silva was mid-flight on a platform of mercury when the sky tore open directly in his flight path, dragging the Silver Eagle Captain into the dark. In the western plaza, Jack the Ripper was laughing maniacally, his mana blades extended, when a purple sinkhole opened beneath him, pulling him down before he could sever the edges of the spell. Charlotte Roselei, leading her Blue Rose Knights in a defensive phalanx, was swallowed by a vortex that appeared directly beneath her boots.
In a matter of three seconds, the Clover Kingdom lost its greatest defenders. The heavy hitters, the tactical commanders, the very pillars of the military's strength, were completely removed from the board.
The sheer logistical calculation required for such a maneuver was staggering. Lencar, a master of spatial coordinates himself, could deeply appreciate the terrifying genius of Valtos's spell. To simultaneously track, target, and displace nearly a dozen high-tier mages across a sprawling city required a mind built entirely of mathematics and cold precision.
But a spell that massive, that incredibly complex, was bound to have flaws. When casting a net that wide, you rely on predictable, quantifiable data. You rely on the assumption that your targets possess a standard, readable mana core to lock onto.
Which meant the spell was completely unprepared for an anomaly.
Lencar instantly shifted his sensory focus back to the ruined courtyard where he had left Asta.
The spatial trap had been triggered there, too. Valtos had likely recognized the threat the three young, incredibly talented knights posed to Rades's vanguard and had included their coordinates in the mass teleportation sequence.
A massive, swirling purple circle appeared on the muddy ground, perfectly encompassing Asta, Noelle, and Leopold. The spatial gravity engaged, a humming, vibrating pressure attempting to latch onto their magical signatures and pull them into the designated holding dimension miles away.