The Extra Prince Sets Out To Conquer The World

The negative-dimensional mana that had filled the forest soared up to the sky due to the explosions I caused throughout the forest.

As a result, the black fog that was the remnant of negative-dimensional mana disappeared, and the view opened up, making it look like an ordinary forest.

“My lord, the dullahans…!”

As the negative-dimensional mana disappeared, the forms of the dullahans maintained by the forest’s mana began to disperse.

“Scarecrow, it looks like those will disappear. Still no thought of handing them over? Abassael and I could maintain them.”

Although the dullahans were created by the scarecrow’s power, it was only possible to maintain them when the contract of servitude between Dorothy and the scarecrow was fully maintained.

“You can’t even maintain them anyway. Wouldn’t it be better to just hand them over to us to maintain our strength rather than letting them disappear? We’re buddies with the same goal. You’re going to break the seal, right?”

At my brazen smile, the scarecrow was conflicted.

“Isn’t this because you blew away the mana!”

“What’s with that? You had to blow away the mana maintaining the seal at least once to break the seal anyway. I told you it was preparation to break the seal. Oh no? The dullahans are all~ dying~.”

At my fussing, the scarecrow looked at the dullahans.

The spiritual bodies of the dullahans began to crumble and fall like sand in an hourglass.

“Tch! Fine, I’ll hand them over. But in return, you must definitely break Dorothy’s seal.”

“Hahaha, don’t worry. I told you I came to meet Dorothy. Now that I’ve come all this way, I have to at least see her face before leaving.”

The scarecrow struck the end of the staff with the lantern on the ground.

Then, 32 blue will-o’-the-wisps emerged from the lantern.

Those pale flames were the souls of the dullahans the scarecrow had harvested.

The will-o’-the-wisps transformed into the shape of severed heads.

The dullahans were roaming around without heads, but the heads were kept by the owner?

Well, it would be easier to control that way.

“They’re all quite hearty fellows.”

I tried to accept the souls of the dullahans by matching the wavelengths of mana and souls with necromancy using Billy’s grimoire.

“Ugh! This frail body again!”

However, this frail body couldn’t accept over thirty souls. Ten at most?

Even then, if I accept the souls of those who were transcendents in their lifetime, three is the maximum.

“Abassael, how many can you accept?”

“If it’s just accepting them, I can accept them all. However, if I do that, it will be difficult to utilize them right away.”

Ah, I see. I have to consider utilization too. Excluding the two who were transcendents in their lifetime, the remaining twenty-nine became transcendent-level after becoming undead.

When they become undead, they physically weaken, but their mana is amplified, so those who wield mana usually become stronger than when they were alive.

“Alright, then I’ll take this guy and this guy, and Abassael, you take the rest and hand over about half to Jade later.”

Silua, who controlled puppets, didn’t need undead subordinates.

“Understood.”

Abassael and I accepted the souls of the dullahans.

I received the souls of Iron Fist Lucille Hur and a male swordsman, while Abassael harvested the souls of the previous “Arcana 07, The Chariot” and the rest.

Just as the scarecrow stored the souls in a lantern containing ghostly fire, I stored the souls in “Billy’s Grimoire”, and Abassael stored them in the magic staff he used before obtaining the “Phoenix Suit” from the subspace.

If it weren’t for a magical tool specialized in necromancy like Billy’s Grimoire, I wouldn’t have been able to accept the souls of those who were transcendents in their lifetime with my magical skill level.

After obtaining the souls of the dullahans, Abassael and I immediately collected the bodies of the dullahans.

“Ugh, the souls of those who were transcendents in their lifetime are indeed burdensome.”

Abassael cast a sealing spell on the magic staff and put it back into the subspace.

Then, not long after, negative-dimensional mana poured out from the center of the forest like a tidal wave and began to fill the forest with negative-dimensional mana again.

At that sight, the scarecrow was bewildered.

“Huh? What?! The mana is being filled again!”

The bewildered scarecrow spoke to me with an angry face as if demanding an explanation.

“If it was going to be like this, I wouldn’t have given them to you! Give them back!”

“Hmm, I don’t want to~”

If the mana maintaining the seal could be removed this easily, the witch Dorothy would have tried to remove it before being sealed.

Still, as long as the source of mana wasn’t infinite, smashing the wedges that were the safe houses and sweeping away the mana once must have dealt a big blow to the seal.

“You swindler!”

The scarecrow gripped the staff and glared at me, exuding fighting spirit.

Then Precia stepped in front of the scarecrow and placed her hand on the hilt of her sword.

“You are being too rude to the Young Master who is helping you. If you direct your fighting spirit at the Young Master one more time, I will cut you down.”

Precia and the scarecrow glared at each other and raised their spirits.

If the scarecrow were at its peak, even Precia’s life would be in danger.

However, against the current scarecrow who had spent a long time with its connection to the witch almost severed, Precia could win.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an easy opponent, so she would have to fight to the death for a few hours.

At Precia’s spirit, the scarecrow lowered its staff first.

Even with a straw head, it seemed to know that fighting among ourselves here would only benefit the enemy.

I patted Precia’s head and said to the scarecrow,

“Don’t worry. The seal is almost broken…”

-Wooooo.

Before I could finish my words, a woman’s crying voice that made goosebumps rise all over the body echoed from the direction of the center of the forest.

The scarecrow also seemed to be stimulated by the crying voice, puffing up its body and exuding killing intent.

“Karrrr!”

Whether it felt threatened by the crying voice or instinctively realized that its master was in danger, the scarecrow, who had half lost its reason, changed the staff into a giant scythe and ran towards the center of the forest.

Judging from the crying voice, it seemed that the Arcana guys who had entered the forest earlier had started to tamper with the seal at the center of the forest.

As expected, Arcana also had business with Dorothy.

It was just in time.

If they hadn’t opened the crack in the seal, I would have been in trouble.

Thanks to that, it became easier.

“Now, let’s follow them too.”

I detonated dynamite to make the magicians who had continuously entered the forest run like hell (physically), and sent a letter to Jade to join me.

Everyone in the forest was heading towards the center.

*****

“Yay! This makes the thirty-seventh one!”

Silua nodded with satisfaction after disassembling Arcana’s safe house with puppets and burning it with ghostly fire.

Behind her, Gilbert stabbed a sword wrapped in sword energy into the crack of the safe door, cut off the door, and collected the things inside.

Kwajik!

“Let’s see… Opals in this pouch, flash bombs separately…”

Behind Gilbert, who was recording the looted items in his notebook, Yard sent out mana threads around him while concentrating.

“As expected, I can’t find them. There must be Arcana members who entered the forest before us.”

Yard’s mana threads were connected to his senses and could also be used as a scouting spell.

He himself assessed it as nothing compared to Yuan’s spirit techniques, but his mana threads could detect things that even Yuan couldn’t, so they couldn’t be underestimated.

“They’re probably at the center of the forest, right? Jade oppa said they would be there too.”

At Silua’s guess, Yard nodded.

“That’s true, but since Yuan told us to search in case he had a purpose other than the center of the forest.”

Yard retrieved the mana threads and rotated his shoulders, shaking his arms as if they were stiff.

It was the fatigue that came from the heavy mana consumption even with the bracelet that helped them use magic.

Then, an explosion was heard from the outskirts of the forest.

“Eek! That startled me!”

“An explosion?! In this environment?”

Due to the massive explosion, the negative-dimensional mana and black fog that filled the forest were carried by the ascending air current and disappeared into the sky.

At the location of the three people relatively close to the center, the negative-dimensional mana didn’t completely disappear, but the pressure felt from the thick mana was noticeably reduced.

“Could it be the Young Master’s doing?”

“Even if it’s Yuan… No, if it’s that Yuan, it might be possible.”

At Gilbert’s question, Yard couldn’t firmly deny that it wasn’t Yuan.

Although it wasn’t for a long time, based on what he had seen of Yuan so far, it was something he could easily do and more.

“We should now go to the next…”

Just as Silua was about to say they should go to the location of the next safe house after completing Yuan’s plan, a thick negative-dimensional mana surged out from the center of the forest like a tidal wave.

-Wooooo.

Along with the mana, an eerie yet sorrowful crying voice echoed throughout the forest.

“Ugh!”

Gilbert grabbed his head at the crying voice.

Due to the sudden backflow of emotions, anger and depression soared, but he circulated mana throughout his body and expelled the negative energy out of his body.

“Silua, Mr. Yard! Are you alright?”

When Gilbert checked on the two’s condition, Silua had violet mana circuits protruding all over her body, protecting herself, and Yard was shedding tears.

“…Lila?”

Despite the anger and sorrow contained in the crying voice trying to envelop his entire body and bury his mind, Yard didn’t lose his senses at the longing voice.

No, he couldn’t lose them.

-Run away, Yard. Get out of the forest right now.

The voice he missed every day warned him to run away, worrying about him.

-Before the witch awakens, hurry!

At the gloomy and sorrowful crying voice ringing in his ears, Yard moved his steps towards the center of the forest.

“Where are you going?”

The one who stopped Yard by grabbing his arm was Jade, who had come to their side at some point.

“To the center, I have to go to the center of the forest…!”

Thinking he was affected by the crying voice, Jade grabbed Yard’s head and poured mana into him.

However, Yard’s eyes were as clear as before.

“Mr. Jade, please let go of me. I have to go. Lila is there.”

At those words, Jade narrowed his brow.

“If you’re talking about Lila, do you mean your lover?”

When Yard nodded with a desperate expression, Jade let out a small sigh.

“I understand. Then we should go to the center.”

“Thank you.”

“But before that, we need to join up with Yuan. Yuan is coming this way.”

At Jade’s words, Yard became impatient.

“There’s no time to wait!”

“Calm down! If you’re not there, who will recognize Lyla? If Yuan judges her as an enemy, he won’t show any mercy.”

Yard had no choice but to nod with a face on the verge of tears at Jade’s persuasion.

******

“It seems the management unit has properly messed things up.”

“The Hanged Man” clicked her tongue while looking in the direction of the outskirts of the forest.

According to the original plan, they should have slowly broken the seal and gradually awakened the witch, but judging from the amount of negative-dimensional mana flowing out from the sealing stone, she intuitively knew they had messed up.

If they had stopped the scarecrow from destroying the wedges that trapped the mana in the forest or at least drove temporary wedges into the destroyed places, there was no way this much mana would have come out.

Since the source of the power maintaining the seal was the witch Dorothy, the more the negative-dimensional mana in the forest was annihilated, the more they had to draw power from her.

“This doesn’t seem to be at the level of simply losing wedges.”

The usually playful voice of Javan trembled with unease.

Unless someone deliberately blew away the mana in the forest, there was no way it would come out to this extent.

“At this rate, the seal will be broken. Then we will have one more unstable factor, a disaster that could explode at any time.”

Even if the seal on the witch Dorothy was broken, if this much power was drawn out, the likelihood of an immediate all-out war with the weakened Dorothy was low.

However, even if she was weakened, the opponent was the greatest of the great witches.

If she ran away without any hesitation, they wouldn’t be able to catch her.

“We’ll have to take a risk. Fool, Lovers, Hermit. Get ready.”

At her call, the three people stood in front of the sealing stone.

“Hah… What rotten luck. To think we have to risk our lives.”

“The worst.”

Despite Rouerfel and Osmond’s grumbling, “The Hanged Man” ignored them and raised her magic staff high.

The sealing stone in the center began to crack as the sealing technique that made up the forest synchronized with her staff.

A altar emerged from inside the huge sealing stone.

The split sealing stone scattered with mana and each transformed into the shape of a beast and a steel golem.

The two familiars of the witch opened their eyes before the witch’s seal was broken.