Chapter 1041: Milestone (28)
Hundreds of wizards lay unconscious and collapsed amidst the crumbling spires, corridors, and decks.
Between the shattered, broken, and cracked floating Magic Tower floors and the desert’s sand dunes.
On the fragments of the deck where the roar had subsided, Lennok, wreathed in lightning, stood alone, gazing at the sky.
Whoosh!!!
From beyond the cloud-covered sky, a colossal eye of lightning opened, tearing open the darkness.
A chilling sight, as the intensely blue lightning rotated like a pupil, looking down upon the ground.
This was the exact same phenomenon as when the Thorben War Magic Tower appeared above District 49.
‘Lyraiel said the Hall of the Thunder God was the power source of the Magic Tower.’
The reason this enormous War Magic Tower could transcend space and appear above Vulcan.
It’s understandable if this foreshadowing phenomenon occurs because it utilized the power of the Hall of the Thunder God, a sanctuary.
If the lightning eye floating in the sky is a symbol that appears at the moment of contact with the Hall of the Thunder God.
Lennok thought so, pulling out a cigarette and putting it to his lips.
Fzzz!!
“Hmph…”
Lennok, lighting it and exhaling smoke, slowly turned around.
Fatigue was evident on his face from the consecutive battles, but not a single scratch could be seen on his shirt.
The spell bombardments poured out from the Thorben Magic Tower. The engagements with the War-Mages reinforced by Lyraiel.
Aerial combat through summoning and Magic Tower manipulation, and even territorial battles, pushing the War Jurisdiction to its limits.
He had single-handedly destroyed nearly half of the tower’s combat power, but Lennok felt no particular emotion about it.
Because he knew that the main forces, the strongest wizards led by Level 8s, had not yet fully engaged.
“……”
Groooooan…!!!
Lyraiel floated above the broken spire, silently looking down.
A man in a blue mask appeared at the stern of the half-destroyed deck, quietly watching Lennok.
And even a young-looking woman, smiling broadly, holding a house-sized lightning hammer.
Lyraiel, who hadn’t intervened beyond deploying her Domain, was one thing, but the other two were powerful individuals whose levels were hard to gauge.
The man with the chilling aura in the blue mask and the woman wielding the Tower Lord’s Blunt Thunder were clearly immensely skilled practitioners.
If he were to face them head-on, Lennok wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of analyzing and scrutinizing their magic as he was now.
But Lennok already guessed why they had only appeared so late.
“It’s also something to consider that the tower’s individual combat power is excessively strong.”
Lennok, with the cigarette in his mouth, looked at Lyraiel and spoke.
“To divide forces in combat so as not to interfere with each other. Don’t you think that’s ironic?”
“On the contrary, Adamant Thunder,” Lyraiel replied quietly.
“That is precisely why, at this very moment, we must attempt it, even once, against a Transcendent like you.”
“……”
“To gauge our chances against an irresistible Transcendent by clashing the tower’s main forces. It was something that had to be calculated eventually, from both theoretical and practical standpoints, from both justification and actual benefit.”
Lyraiel’s gaze, fixed on Lennok, settled into an utterly calm expression.
“With this, Thorben’s lightning will be able to shine even sharper and more dazzlingly. But……”
She hesitated, then smiled bitterly and shook her head.
Even she, who had expanded their War Business and traversed countless battlefields, couldn’t help but be astonished by Lennok’s display of power.
Most importantly, the divine technique Lennok demonstrated at the end, which shattered Domains—
“I never even imagined you would directly touch my grandfather’s Jurisdiction.”
“Because I’ve directly sparred with Akendrias El Thorben,” Lennok responded, smoking his cigarette.
“Facing the Tower Lord’s Domain gave me a sense of what his Jurisdiction would feel like.”
“……”
“I merely thought that if I could overload the War Jurisdiction beforehand to open the Hall of the Thunder God, I could save time.”
“Saving time… that idea and intuition already transcend even the highest levels of attainment.”
As Lyraiel lost for words and smiled bitterly, Lennok turned to the man in the blue mask and asked,
“So, are you my opponent now?”
He had only brought out his False Morning Star to neutralize the Domains of the Saint Wizards and quickly overload the War Jurisdiction.
If the high-ranking wizards of the Thorben Magic Tower wanted more, he had no intention of backing down.
Moreover, the man in the blue mask was clearly a Level 8 practitioner.
While he couldn’t tell if he was on par with the Tower Lord, he was undoubtedly an incredibly powerful individual.
“Let’s finish this quickly before the Hall of the Thunder God fully opens.”
Crackling!!
As he lightly rotated his shoulders, lightning exploded from Lennok’s shoulder blades.
Tilting his head back, Lennok explosively drew upon his magic power, staring intently at the man in the blue mask.
“Or, should I start first?”
“……”
The man in the blue mask offered no reply to Lennok’s words.
His indifferent reaction made it seem as if he had no intention of speaking with Lennok at all.
As Lennok stared at the man with an expressionless face, twisting his fingertips to conjure a bolt of lightning, the man spoke.
“If there’s something more important than competing with spells, it’s only right to prioritize that.”
“What?”
The man, instead of answering, cast his gaze towards the sky behind Lennok and said,
“Once the Hall of the Thunder God opens, there’s only one thing to do.”
“……”
A slightly different reaction from the Thorben wizards who were itching for a fight with Lennok.
The man reached out his hand to the side.
“I’ll help you.”
“What?”
Flash!!
A bolt of lightning fell from the storm clouds at incredible speed, grasped by the man’s hand.
The intensely blue lightning stretched long, transforming into the shape of a massive glaive.
A divine technique that went beyond merely shaping lightning into a weapon, but actively crafting it into a spell-armament on the spot.
The man, gripping the glaive imbued with a tingling presence, moved towards Lennok.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!!!
Just by slowly dragging the shaft, an ear-splitting noise echoed.
The atmosphere sharpened, as if a battle was about to begin immediately.
As Lennok watched the man, arms crossed, the man walked past Lennok.
At that moment, an intense Pillar of Heavenly General struck down from beyond the cloud-covered sky.
The intensely blue lightning pillar pierced directly through the center of the War Magic Tower.
Kwoooooosh!!!
An ear-deafening roar. A searing heat that seemed to turn all creation into lightning.
A colossal pillar of lightning, dozens of meters in radius, piercing through the half-destroyed deck.
However, the impact of the lightning, which seemed poised to sweep across the deck, did not spread to the surroundings.
Because the moment the man, gripping his glaive, twisted the blade into the pillar, the shockwaves radiating from all directions began to converge at a single point.
Kwoo-woo-woong!!!
The violently echoing roar transformed into a peculiar resonance, sweeping gently across the deck.
The man in the blue mask, who had been watching the striking lightning pillar, turned his gaze towards Lennok.
“The time that place is open is only brief. Hurry.”
“……You.”
Lennok narrowed his eyes and asked,
“You’re not merely at the entrance of Level 8. Are you not a descendant of the Tower Lord, a wizard like you?”
The glaive created by the man in the blue mask was not merely a weapon forged from lightning.
This man had literally caught the falling lightning before his eyes and directly created an artifact from it.
That glaive was, quite literally, a spell-armament imbued with the caster’s will-thought and mental image, optimized for its owner.
Because it possessed the perfection to be completed as a spell-armament, it could even withstand the backlash of the Hall of the Thunder God opening and act as a connecting bridge.
The mere fact that he could so skillfully imbue will-thought and mental image into matter was proof that he was not merely at the level of having just transcended a new rank.
“I was not granted the qualification to enter the Hall of the Thunder God,” the man said calmly.
“The blessing of lightning I received is a natural consequence of my birth… my case is different from those like you, who are ‘chosen’.”
“……”
Kwoooooo!!!
A colossal pillar of lightning pierced through the entire War Magic Tower.
The man pointed to its center and said in an indifferent voice,
“You only have one chance, both to gain something from that place and to leave something behind.”
“……”
“It would be wise to decide carefully.”
Lennok stared at the man for a moment, then turned his gaze to Lyraiel, who was perched on the spire beyond.
Lyraiel looked down at him with a calm expression, and next to her, the young-looking woman was now smiling brightly.
Noticing his gaze, she even shouted something and waved cheerfully.
There was no clear answer to be gained at this point, as the battle had entered a lull.
Thinking that far, Lennok walked past the man and into the pillar of lightning.
Crackle, crackle…!!!
The heat from the flowing lightning was so intense that his feet literally felt like they were burning.
But Lennok ignored the heat and lightning, plunging into it without hesitation.
Unless it was lightning mixed with a mental image, Lennok’s lightning resistance had reached a level close to immunity.
If the power of lightning existed as a phenomenon or concept, it could not harm Lennok’s body in any way.
Convinced of this, Lennok stepped towards the entrance of the Hall of the Thunder God.
“……”
Lightning at its extreme transcends space and time, constantly moving forward and backward.
When one realizes that the concepts of space and time are meaningless in the face of Foreknowledge, that is the path to standing at the very beginning, preceding causality.
Extreme lightning that precedes all affinities and causality, piercing through a human’s entire life.
Whoosh!!!
The moment he came to his senses, Lennok stood in the middle of an armory filled with brilliant white lightning.
An infinite path stretched endlessly before and behind Lennok.
Intense lightning barriers, glowing pure white, flickered on either side.
Between them, all kinds of weapons, whose origin and type were unknown, were arrayed.
It felt as if he stood alone in a grand hall forged from lightning.
A sense of solitude, as if abandoned in the world, and an overflowing sense of fulfillment were felt simultaneously.
It felt as if he had given himself over to an ancient and colossal current, and was only now finally recognizing it.
“……Indeed.”
Lennok understood that the Hall of the Thunder God was not merely a sanctuary serving as the power source for the War Magic Tower.
This was not a place created for the purpose of supplying energy to the Magic Tower.
The energy emitted from this sanctuary was merely a byproduct of the miracle of this space’s existence.
Just as the principle of the War Magic Tower’s flight was, so too was the existence of this space.
Perhaps the value that Thorben’s lightning pursued was, quite literally, close to inevitability—
[Another unfamiliar face has entered. It seems the humans of the mortal world have once again handled things sloppily.]
At that moment, a bored voice echoed from behind Lennok.
A gender-neutral voice, impossible to tell if it was male or female.
An ambiguous reverberation, impossible to tell if it was human or spirit.
But Lennok, seeing the location from which the voice originated and the entity it came from, fell silent.
Crackle, crackle…!!
A lightning spear, exceptionally large among all the weapons in this armory, tens of meters long, was diagonally plunged into the center of the armory hall, crackling with electricity.
[The Gate of Foreknowledge is so light; how can great deeds be accomplished? Absurd.]
“……”
Living lightning. Was it literally a lightning bolt with its own will?
As Lennok lost for words, looking up at the Lightning Spear, overwhelmed by its boundless and unfathomable will-thought,
The colossal Lightning Spear crackled with electricity and asked him,
[If you have a mouth, why not speak? Tell me, where did Akendrias die?]
“The Tower Lord is still alive.”
[What?]
“He told me about this place and invited me to enter.”
Lennok stared at the spear and asked,
“You seem to be the guide of the Hall of the Thunder God. First, I’d like to hear an explanation about this space.”
[…Are you saying Akendrias is alive, and yet you were granted the qualification to enter the Hall of the Thunder God?]
Only then did the voice understand Lennok’s words, a hint of amusement entering its tone.
[This is quite interesting in its own way. So, you’re saying you truly surpassed his achievements?]
“We haven’t compared our achievements. What do you mean by that?”
[Only one mortal, who has mastered lightning-elemental unique magic to its extreme, can enter the Hall of the Thunder God,] the spear said.
[The mere fact that you are here is possible because you stand at the forefront of those who bear the causality of lightning.]
“……”
[If this has happened while Akendrias is still alive, isn’t it because you have accumulated achievements that surpass his?]
“That……”
No, as soon as Lennok heard those words, he realized it wasn’t true.
Even after directly fighting the Tower Lord, Lennok couldn’t be sure he surpassed the Tower Lord in terms of lightning magic achievement.
Akendrias El Thorben’s power and insight were so profound and vast that even Lennok couldn’t fully comprehend them at once.
But Lennok thought he could guess why the spear judged him to be such a being.
The branching point reached by mastering lightning-elemental unique magic to its extreme.
The Root Mindscape of lightning that Lennok would one day inevitably reach.
The existence of the Eightfold Lightning Catholicon allowed the Hall of the Thunder God to judge Lennok as such a being and permit his entry.
‘Did the Tower Lord really anticipate this far?’
In his battle with the Tower Lord, Lennok had metaphorically expressed the answer he sought.
An answer where Lennok himself became the standard of learning, depicting solutions across past and future.
The Tower Lord, through that, had read that Lennok would be able to enter the Hall of the Thunder God without issue and had invited him.
[Talking to himself, then suddenly lost in thought… this generation’s candidate is quite strange.]
“The Tower Lord said I could complete the preparations I wanted here.”
Lennok asked,
“He spoke as if this space itself was arranged for that purpose.”
[…. ]
“Do the weapons existing in this Hall of the Thunder God serve as such a means?”
The spear did not immediately answer Lennok’s question.
[It seems you see these things gathered here as weapons.]
“What?”
[No matter. If you have such a challenging disposition, then Akendrias yielding his place is understandable.]
The spear said, [You are mistaken about one thing. The Hall of the Thunder God is not a place to store specific weapons or rituals.]
Crackle, crackle…!!
Brilliant white lightning flashed.
Along with it, the surrounding scenery began to accelerate at an immense speed.
The path of lightning moved endlessly in a straight line, without changing direction left or right.
[Lightning that reaches its extreme transcends all perception and speed, moving in reverse,] the spear said.
[Therefore, the enlightenment that transcends the Horizon of Thought is connected and passed down across space-time.]
“…Transcend the Horizon of Thought?”
[The Hall of the Thunder God is a sanctuary that etches all enlightenment concerning lightning that existed across time. It is the sole proof that the power of great lightning has been passed down across worlds.]
“……”
[So choose, human.]
Rumble rumble rumble!!!!
The magnificent hall of light was now swirling with the intense radiance of the diagonally plunged colossal spear.
The spear’s electric presence, oppressive to the point of arrogance, whispered to Lennok.
[What enlightenment will you etch here, and what Foreknowledge will you take in return? Everyone only gets one chance.]
“Take in return, you say.”
Lennok stared at the lightning energy flowing from the spear and asked,
“Does that include the talking Lightning Spear?”
[…What?]