The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family - Chapter 329

Chapter 329: The Meddas Bell

The pitch white of his eyes slowly receded. The color returned. Not the soft, familiar blue of the sky, but a terrifying, crystalline shade—two chips of arctic ice. Roman Lionhart opened his eyes fully.

The silence was a thick, suffocating blanket. It pressed against his eardrums, far heavier than the sound of the seal shattering moments before.

He lay on the cold stone floor, the lingering warmth from the evaporated ice only a ghost against his skin. He lifted his hand. It was perfect. No scars. No roughness. The skin was smooth, utterly flawless, like a porcelain statue freshly fired.

He pushed up. Slowly.

The mana core inside his dantian felt vast, boundless. It wasn’t the contained, controlled furnace of a Golden Core Ranker; it was a hungry sun. Five centuries of suppressed power—the failed breakthroughs, the banked ambition of countless Lionhart Patriarchs—had surged into his being. The sheer volume was dizzying. His consciousness strained, trying to map the new topography of his power, but it was too much, too immediate. It felt like trying to hold an ocean in a teacup.

Too full. The feeling was not invigorating; it was suffocating. Every breath he took felt like it displaced a thousand volts of raw energy. The air was thin, the world around him dull.

The seven Elders were still collapsed on the floor around him, their bodies trembling with exhaustion. They looked like discarded rags.

“Patriarch,” Elder Laurent whispered, his voice catching, dry as desert sand. He struggled to lift his head, his gaze sweeping over Roman’s rejuvenated body. “How do you… How do you feel?”

Roman stood fully, the weight of the five centuries settling into his muscles, yet feeling utterly weightless. The power was so great, it was already overwhelming the boundaries of his physical form. He was vibrating on an invisible frequency.

He looked down at them, his newly bright blue eyes piercing.

“I feel like a dying man,” Roman replied, his voice flat, devoid of satisfaction or triumph.

The Elders exchanged frantic, silent glances. A man who had just ascended to the peak of continental power, potentially matching the mythical strength of the founding ancestors, had answered with a declaration of death. They knew it wasn’t the lack of power speaking; it was the unbearable cost. The promised halving of his life, compressed instantly into his seventy-year-old body, was already beginning. He held the power of a god but had the lifespan of a candle in a gale.

Elder Laurent, despite his exhaustion, managed to push himself onto his knees, his eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with Roman. It was the terror of consequence.

Clash.

The thought slammed through the mind of the Fourth Elder, Elder Gorn, pulling a visceral spasm of fear from his thin frame. The Covenant was broken. The Monarchs were unsealed. The Stone, the Fire, the wind—they were all free now, torrents of power unleashed.

Eleven of them, already.

He pictured Eleven unsealed human beings, each capable of leveling a mountain range with a flick of the wrist. They were no longer politicians or warriors. They were walking calamities.

What if they clash?

Goosebumps erupted across Gorn’s withered arms, an instinctual biological reaction to a threat that could vaporize the entire continent. Monsters dealing with monsters. The irony was a bitter, stinging bile in his throat.

“In trying to deal with monsters,” murmured the Third Elder, Elder Phobos, his gaze flicking contemptuously toward Roman. Phobos was the chronicler, the cynic. He thought of the young Lionhart, Klaus, his sudden fame and terrifying potential. He thought of Alex, tethered to the arcane. He thought of the vanished Sabrina Petrova. They were the threat—the pretext. The Monarchs, frightened of the unknown powers associated with these youths, had seized their chance.

They became monsters themselves.

Phobos’s internal thought became a cold, bitter accusation. “You didn’t break the Covenant because you were afraid,” he croaked, finding his voice despite the overwhelming exhaustion. “You broke it because you wanted to. You used those brats as an excuse to start a continental war, just to find a reason to break the seals your ancestors created.”

The Fifth Elder, Elder Theron, a staunch traditionalist, reinforced the point with dread. “What your ancestors feared will happen again, Roman. Cataclysm. The end of our lineage, not by outside force, but by our own boundless ambition.”

Roman finally turned his head fully, his new eyes scanning the collapsed circle of Elders. Their fear was palpable—a thick, stale scent of panic mixed with the dust of the ancient chamber. He felt no anger at their accusation, only profound weariness. They were trapped by history, blinded by the very Covenant they had just helped him break.

“Your fears are irrelevant,” Roman stated, the sound of his voice now carrying an authority that was no longer political, but fundamental—the sound of an element. “The Covenant preserved a stalemate, not peace. It forced us to rely on subtle poisoning, political maneuver, and petty warfare that eroded our strength slowly.”

He took a step, the stone floor feeling brittle beneath the raw power that pulsed from him. The Elders flinched back, startled by the sheer presence of his power.

“I feel like a dying man because the cost is real,” Roman continued, the tone ice-cold. “But it is a necessary death. A quick one. We will end this war as fast as possible. The continental war you fear is only a distraction, a necessary stage setting.”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking up into the dim light of the corridor. “There is a bigger threat coming from the Arkadia Continent. A threat far greater than any six unsealed Monarchs clashing over territory.”

The mention of Arkadia—the source of ancient dread, the memory of cosmic conflicts long before the Covenant—shocked the Elders into silence. It wasn’t an excuse; it was the core reason. Roman wasn’t fighting the other Monarchs; he was fighting time.

Without another word, Roman began to ascend the stairs, his back now perfectly smooth and scarless, the remnants of the Seal vanished into his core. He didn’t look back.

He emerged into the subdued light of the second floor, the quiet hallway immediately feeling too small, too contained.

A shadow peeled itself from the wall near the landing. It was Melo, Roman’s most trusted shadow and intelligence chief. Melo wasn’t a man who moved; he simply materialized, appearing next to Roman as if he had been there all along.

“Patriarch,” Melo acknowledged, his voice a low, precise murmur, his gaze betraying no surprise at Roman’s suddenly youthful appearance.

Roman didn’t slow his stride. He was already striding toward the main wing of the estate, the scent of fresh cut grass and distant cooking suddenly assaulting his amplified senses. He needed action. He needed the noise of war.

“The seal is broken. The war is official,” Roman commanded, his voice barely above a conversational level, yet Melo absorbed the directive perfectly. “Ring the Meddas Bell. I want all my Generals and all Captains of the Rikxia empire armed forces in the Grand Hall within the hour.”

Melo, normally unflappable, hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Even…”

Roman didn’t need to hear the rest. Even the children.

“All those holding official military titles and ranks,” Roman clipped, overriding Melo’s incomplete thought. “Not those without titles and ranks. Only those who carry the burden of command.”

“As you command,” Melo replied, the shadow dissolving from the wall as quickly as it had formed. The air cracked with the energy of his departure.

Roman continued his walk, his polished boots silent on the marble. He felt the terrifying, raw power of the Covenant coursing through him. He had become a weapon. A dying, necessary weapon.

He was the single-largest source of untapped, volatile power on the continent, yet he felt profoundly, intensely vulnerable. He was ready for the fight. And the world would soon know it.

A moment later, the first chime sounded across the estate. A single, powerful ring that was loud, clear, and commanding—the official, unmissable call to war. The Meddas Bell.

It begins.