After Lisbon’s match, the main draw of the tournament continued quickly and was eventually won by Rosellis the adventurer. It seems I just earned seven more silver coins. Let's buy Flam a meal, too.

- The winner’s award ceremony will start now. The winner of the martial arts competition, please come up to the platform.

When the winner was called up by the announcement, Rosellis, the winner of the martial arts competition, proudly carried her ax and climbed up to the podium.

At that moment, the event staff blocked Rosellis from coming up to the platform. "I'm sorry, but the weapon...”

I couldn't hear them very well because they were far away, but roughly, it seemed like he wanted her to put down her weapon. Perhaps it was because the saintess was going to bless the winner of this martial arts competition personally.

Usually, the captain of one of the knight divisions stationed in the capital or a high-ranking priest of the Great Temple awarded the trophy. This year, however, as it was rare for the saintess to come to the capital, she appeared in several events wearing a veil.

As the civil servant acting as event staff held up Rosellis, another civil servant rushed to the platform, scolded the event staff who had stopped her, and apologized.

Rosellis smiled and waved her hands before continuing to go up to the platform. As Rosellis walked up, the stadium resonated with a hymn. The saintess came up while being escorted by the paladins from behind the stadium.

"It's an honor to meet the famed platinum plate adventurer."

As Hillis spoke, Rosellis burst into a cheerful laugh, "Hahaha! It’s usually the opposite, Miss Saintess."

The priests briefly looked angry but did not open their mouths when they saw Hillis's gesture. On the other hand, Hillis's paladins responsible for escorting her for the past half-year looked at Rosellis with an interested look on their faces, not minding the situation at all.

The escorts’ reaction was very different from yesterday even though I was more polite than the winner of the martial arts competition. Maybe they were discriminating against me.

Hillis and Rosellis briefly smiled and talked, and the trophy was handed to Hillis.

"Congratulations on winning.”

"No, it's natural that I won, so it's not something to be congratulated for.”

Hillis handed Rosellis the trophy in her hand and congratulated her.

Rosellis scratched her head shyly, then suddenly gave off a burst of killing intent and pulled out the huge ax on her back. At that moment, the paladins became on guard and pulled out their swords at the same time.

In that instant, the situation developed so fast that despite watching from the stadium, I didn't even feel anything strange. Rosellis turned around and used her ax to deflect a magic spear that came flying towards her from somewhere.

"Protect the Saintess-nim!"

At the cry of the paladin appearing to be the leader of the escort, the paladins held up large shields to protect Hillis.

"Commission time!" Rosellis left Hillis behind and proceeded down the platform. She exuded killing intent as she went down, and the adventurers in the crowd pulled out their weapons and surrounded her.

Wait, what's going on? I couldn't understand the situation for a moment, so I blanked out, but I suddenly came to my senses when I felt the massive amount of mana in the sky. Floating in the air, a mysterious man wearing a half black, half white mask was flying.

What’s up with that very similar-looking mask?

"What a shame! Saintess! I wish we could have met earlier!" The Half-half Mask lifted his wand high.

"F**k?!" I momentarily spat out curses and took out a white half mask and the wand, Dragon Heart, from the pocket space.

"Die!" A very dark and pure-looking black mana formed on the Half-half Mask’s wand, and an enormous amount of magic arrows poured down. It was a complete disaster.

"Barrier! Barrier! Barrier!"

The mana stones of my magic wand spun as fast as atoms and poured out mana. I created three layers of a barrier that surrounded the entire stadium and blocked the black mana arrows. If they had not been stopped, the magic arrows aimed throughout the stadium would have caused massive casualties.

"This crazy bastard! Who’s supposed to deal with the aftermath?" If things took a turn for the worst, besides the New Year’s Festival being ruined, I would be forced to give up my vacation to deal with the aftermath.

I will never allow such a thing! No one can die here!

"Who is it!?" As his magic was suddenly blocked, the Half-half Mask seemed to be looking for the person who had set up the magic barriers. Since you’re looking for me, I'll break your head myself.

"It's me! You son of a b**ch!" As I jumped out of the corner of the stadium and shot a magic bullet, the Half-half Mask quickly avoided it.

"Who are you!?"

While I was briefly distracted, he tried to break the barrier again by shooting magic bullets with black magic.

"Hahaha! This is a bulletproof barrier, you son of a b**ch!"

His anger growing at my shout, the Half-half Mask suddenly doubled the number of magic bullets being shot. Perhaps the flag was set incorrectly, but the very top of the barrier shattered from the strengthened magic bullets, creating a hole and allowing magic bullets to enter. However, the Half-half Mask’s magic bullets were blocked without a fuss by the second barrier.

"Tsk! Rise! Puppets!" The Half-half Mask clicked his tongue and made hundreds of shadow dolls inside the stadium with black magic.

Seeing that the shadow dolls were created by a simple order trigger, it seems he made preparations all over the stadium in advance. Chet, if I had been in charge of the main draw stadium, I would have found them. 

I didn't know there were such devices here because I came to the stadium for the first time today. I could feel a repugnant evil aura from each shadow doll, and they were eating away at people’s vitality.

"Kill the living! Release your hatred!" 

At the cry of the Half-half Mask, the faceless shadow dolls jumped into the audience with swords made of shadows.

"Stop them!" Rosellis cried out.

The adventurers began to engage the shadow dolls, but the evil aura that the shadow dolls possessed was too powerful for a living person to handle. Once a person began to die, it was clear that the shadow doll would become stronger from the unique mana that came from death.

"Summon! Chirps!" A summoning magic circle was created from my wand, and bird-shaped alchemic magic lifeforms sprang out and circled around me.

Besides the catalysts, the birds were made of pure mana and were not really alive, so they would be able to withstand the evil aura of the shadow dolls to some extent. In the past, there was a time when I used a chirp to send a letter to my hometown, and it was almost caught.

Considering that it beat the soldiers in Warrant and smashed the firm building at the time, a single chirp’s power was probably stronger than the adventurers below who were struggling to survive.

"You dare! Death will be your friend when that person comes!" As I was trying to deal with the shadow dolls first, the Half-half-a-lot-of-radishes took aim at me and attacked. (1)

A sticky-looking darkness quickly flew out towards me from the masked guy’s wand.

"Go, chirps! Take care of those black things!" To start, I gave orders to the chirps. Three hundred chirps flew fast and rushed to the shadow puppets. With this many chirps, I don't know about injuries, but there probably won't be any deaths.

The sticky darkness that flew towards me was blocked by the barrier, but the darkness quickly began to melt it.

"Aigoo! Barrier! Barrier!"

I didn’t know what kind of magic that darkness was, but no matter how strong a normal barrier was, it seemed like the darkness was impossible to neutralize. This didn’t surprise me since I also knew one or two magics that could do the same. 

For now, I added two more barriers, but it was just to buy time. It didn’t seem like it was going to be able to stop the Half-half Mask’s magic. 

What should I do?

While I was analyzing the magic of Half-half Mask, divine power began to radiate out of Hillis's body. "God commands, find my land!"

At the same time as Hillis’s shout, the stadium began to be filled with divine power. The shadow dolls began to weaken rapidly due to the divine power.

"I won't let you do that!" 

I flipped my middle finger at Half-half Mask’s cry. "What are you going to do about it! Add attribute! Light!"

Since it was darkness, I guessed that light might help, and I covered the barriers in light. Then, as it seemed to have worked, the speed of erosion from the darkness decreased significantly. Yet, it didn’t seem to be perfect, as light magic was not my specialty.

But also, the flow of divine power felt unusual. This was something that required one to be at least a madosa to be able to evoke.

"To the south! To the south! As the starlight of hope guides us, the saint leaves with his decrepit donkey!"

At the saintess’s prayer, a holy light centered around Hillis began to appear from the floor, its size large enough to engulf the stadium.

"The holy land that the saint will finally arrive at will certainly be the right one!"

The evil aura that the shadow dolls had now disappeared completely.

"How dare you make such proclamations! This is the domain of God!"

I could feel the nature of the space itself changed from Hillis's cry. This was definitely a domain proclamation. This magic, called the ultimate magic, had an absolute adverse effect on magicians other than the caster.

The domain proclamation was extremely rare, even among madosas who had crossed the wall of the Magic Way. Considering the level of difficulty, I couldn’t stop being amazed that the saintess could use this magic.

However, as I was in Hillis’s domain now, it was difficult to use magic even if I tried because my mana kept scattering. Since divine power dominated this space now, that Half-half Mask bastard was probably worse off.

I released my barrier magic. With this, there was no need to use my mana and maintain my barrier magic. When my barrier disappeared, the darkness eating away at the barrier became buried in divine power and was extinguished.

"Keuaaakkkk!"

When the barrier blocking the divine power from the Half-half Mask disappeared, the divine power in the stadium rose to the sky. When the divine power touched Half-half Mask, he twisted and screamed in pain.

"Wow, is he a true black magician?"

Even some black magicians don't suffer this much from touching divine power. Then, let’s aim for this opportunity!

"Chains of Restriction, add light attribute!"

Twenty chains of mana shot out from my wand and tied up Half-half Mask.

"Kkeuaaahhh!" Half-half Mask struggled in agony while he was tied up by my magic chains.

It would not be easy to escape from these two high-level magic spells. This was especially true with the addition of the light attribute, which was especially effective against black magicians. Fortunately, in the situation below, there were minor injuries, but no one was seriously hurt or dead.

I opened the summoning magic circle again and called back the chirps, "Come back!"

The chirps that were destroying the core of the shadow dolls throughout the stadium quickly gathered at my command and returned to the summoning magic circle.

Let's see, I sent a total of 300, and 273 returned. Approximately 10% of them were killed by the shadow puppet’s evil aura. Among the returning chirps, about 60 were severely injured by the evil aura, and the rest had minor injuries. If I hadn’t released the chirps, the stadium’s occupants probably would've all died.

The ones with minor injuries were no problem as they would automatically repair themselves, but I had to fix the 60 severely injured ones myself. For 20 of the 60, it was probably less expensive just to destroy and remake them, so the loss was not small.

It took approximately one platinum coin to make five of them, so the total damage was a loss of about ten platinum coins. (2) Also, the repairs called for about five more coins, so the damage would be around a total of 15 platinum coins.

It looks like a year's budget for a Count’s large territory was going to be blown away. Well, I think it’s better than a vacation being blown away?

Notes: 1) In Korea, some people say half and half with a lot of pickled radishes when ordering Korean fried chicken (half order of regular, half order of spicy) as pickled radishes come free as a side dish. Since the character is being referred to as Half-half Mask, the author was making a reference to how people order fried chicken.

2) 1 platinum coin to make 5 chirps. Author wrote that 20 chirps would need to be re-made, which would be 20/5 = 4. So that’s 4 platinum coins, not 10. But that’s only taking into account the severely injured chirps that returned. Author mentioned that 27 died and didn’t return. So that’s 47 chirps. Roughly 50. 10 platinum coins would make 50 chirps.