The massive explosion was loud enough to be heard by people far away in Ouro City...
Many curious onlookers glanced in that direction. That should be the northern road outside Ouro, right? Why was there an explosion?!?
They couldn't figure it out.
Maybe a mountain landslide? But there hadn't been any heavy rain recently.
For ordinary people, it was just something to glance at out of curiosity, since it was so far away. Besides, they had just seen off the Count, so perhaps he was using some special method to bid farewell to the escort. In any case, it had little to do with them.
But it was different for the small town near the mountains just outside Ouro City. Many people stopped and gazed into the distance. Not long ago, the Count himself had led his team past here, and now such a commotion had occurred.
The towering dust cloud made many feel uneasy... Hopefully nothing bad was happening at a time like this!
The north was already at war, and while the south was relatively peaceful, the common folk here still didn't want the conflict to spread this far. Otherwise, the south's military strength would be no match for the Borgs.
Among everyone, only Claude, standing on the city wall, understood what had happened.
"Sister, look! Look! That's my new creation, a big one..." Claude excitedly boasted to Esmeralda beside him.
From far away, atop Ouro's high wall, they could only see the thick smoke rising into the sky.
"Is that the explosive you made?"
"Of course! I re-proportioned and compressed it. I told Brother Sean it would be fine. See for yourself." Claude couldn't hide his excitement. In their earlier discussions, Sean had always said gunpowder could be even more powerful, and if mixed with iron filings and sharp objects, its explosive lethality would leave enemies dead or crippled.
"So this is what you've been busy with these past few days." Esmeralda looked at her younger brother.
Since the entire move from Koga City to Ouro, with Count Weigel's support, the Skov Gun Shop had reopened and secured an excellent factory location. With raw material support from the local Morgan and Diwala families, business was thriving.
But precisely because of this growth, they had been swamped lately.
Claude, on the other hand, still found time to visit the Count's mansion often... Yet recently, he had been staying at the factory without coming home—turns out he was working on a new type of explosive.
"Exactly! Brother Sean said if it works, this explosive will become Ouro's reserve weapon. It'll be mass-produced and purchased by the Count's estate."
Looking at the thick smoke drifting high in the distance, and recalling the earth-shaking blast just now...
Whether it succeeded or not was still uncertain.
………………
But at this moment, those on the front lines were left speechless.
So this was the power of explosives when piled together!
Just thinking about it sent chills down their spines...
If they had been a little slower to run out, who knows what state they'd be in now!
At the moment of the explosion, the surrounding trees were flattened by the massive shockwave, and what flew into the sky were likely the revolutionaries who had been sent airborne.
Good heavens...
So this was true annihilation.
Whether it was Joseph, As兰特, or the four mercenaries, they all couldn't help swallowing hard—there was even a taste of gunpowder in the air.
"Count... Count, are they done for?"
Sean was still holding the grimoire, slowly lowering it.
"Probably. Even if there are survivors, they'll be half-crippled," Sean said.
He looked toward the smoke-shrouded mountain forest.
It was impossible to enter now. The smoke and dust were forming something like a mushroom cloud, spreading outward. He had just mimicked the male witch's method from before, using compressed flammable gas to ignite the gunpowder.
Since the gas had no visible trajectory, no one could see it being thrown, and hydrogen's low density made it easy to control at his current level. He hadn't expected that combining it with Claude's specially formulated gunpowder would exponentially increase the power!
Indeed.
Ability didn't matter in scale—as long as it was used correctly, it could dominate.
"Should I send someone in to check, my lord?" Joseph asked from the side.
Everyone was speaking loudly now, because Sean looked around and saw that everyone had a status effect over their heads, followed by a countdown that wasn't synchronized.
"Don't go in for now. We're heading back," Sean said.
In front, Barnier and the others were still staring dumbfounded at the distant destruction, with the status effect over their heads.
"Let's go. What are you thinking about?"
But the other turned around helplessly.
"My lord, you've heard before about our team's missing mechanic, right?"
"Have I?"
"Yes! But I never expected him to be the strongest in the whole team." His expression suddenly turned grim, almost like he was about to cry.
Uh...
Sean frowned.
These four mercenaries with their peculiar thought processes were always hard to figure out in conversation.
The three girls beside him were more normal. The blue-haired girl was their team's witch, and she was more curious about his magic than the departed member.
"Count, you can use magic too?" Her eyes were fixed on the grimoire in his hand.
"Of course. Haven't you heard I came from the Sky-Covering Wings?"
Back then, he had mingled among the women just so he could use magic openly one day. Now, his wish had come true! In Ouro, there were already many gossipy rumors about the Count, the hottest being that he was once a member of the Sky-Covering Wings headquarters in Rietis—the only male in a den of witches.
When Sean said this, everyone suddenly remembered that was indeed the case.
"Right! My lord. When I was fighting the rebel leader earlier, I heard him say some of their people had already infiltrated the city to rescue the prisoners," Aslanat suddenly recalled, having been silent until now.
The Count's estate?
"We're going back," Sean ordered quickly.
That the revolutionaries would take the chance to sneak into the city was something Sean had anticipated. But he had brought all the capable officers with him, leaving only regular soldiers to patrol in the city. His own household guards, numbering a few hundred, weren't particularly strong. He wasn't sure if something might go wrong.
Sean led the group back...
By the time they returned to the Count's estate, it was already too late. The prisoners had been broken out—or rather, they had escaped.
There hadn't been much of a conflict. Aside from a few jailers being injured, the others didn't even know what had happened in the dungeon. They only said that someone claiming to be Captain Joseph's men had come to take the prisoners away.
This nearly made Joseph draw his sword and cut down several soldiers on the spot!
It was only Sean's intervention that stopped him.
"My lord... I didn't order them taken away."
"I know. There's probably someone among the enemy skilled in disguise," Sean said.
Just like the witch Lucille back then...
Disguise.
His grimoire even had detailed records of similar methods.