Chapter 1081: Kundara (14)
“From the moment I saw you, I knew you harbored other intentions.”
“…….”
“If you had remained still, you would have peacefully received the antidote and left. Yet, you stubbornly clung to past ties and ruined everything.”
Nives whispered, a chilling smile she couldn’t hide on her lips.
“That is the limit of foolish seekers like you and Maleon. It is your destiny to obsess over trivial matters and ruin a grand endeavor.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
Lennok asked indifferently.
“So, is the antidote ready to be exchanged for the elixir?”
“No. There is no antidote for the likes of you.”
The serpent replied.
“Only a penalty for a thief who invaded my sanctuary without permission.”
Whoosh!!!!
As Nives drew forth her magic, the poisonous liquid in the lake defied gravity and floated upwards.
A chilling scene unfolded: spheres of poison hovered in the middle of the poisonous lake, rotating around her as its center.
“It was ridiculous that I had to bow my head to you to reclaim the Elixir of Ascension, which was originally mine.”
“…….”
“Now that it is clear you are a ruffian who trespassed into my abode, the Elder Council will not condemn me even if I unleash my spellcraft directly.”
Nives flicked her tongue out, as if gazing at a delicious prey, and whispered.
“I will kill you.”
[Poison Incarnation]
[Blood Siphon]
Splat!!!!
The floating poison droplets rapidly compressed in place, then shot towards Lennok at tremendous speed.
Indigo poison, accelerating like a laser, rained down on where Lennok had stood, like an aerial bombardment, piercing through the swamp’s surface and vaporizing it.
Boom boom boom!!!
Hisss!!!
The rumbling of the twisting ground and the sizzling sound of wet earth evaporating echoed simultaneously.
Suffocating, acrid poisonous smoke billowed up, drenching the surroundings thickly, momentarily obscuring even the lakeside scenery.
[Heaven-Shaking Wave]
Bang!!
From Lennok’s lightly clapping hands, a shockwave of magic burst forth, pushing away the poisonous fog.
He appeared perfectly unharmed, as if he had taken Nives’s poisonous spellcraft head-on without a scratch.
“First, it was poison that melted inorganic matter, and now it’s poison that dissolves organic respiratory systems.”
Lennok clapped his hands together a few times as if dusting them off, then asked.
“Is even that chemical reaction an intended outcome of your Poison Spellcraft?”
“……Tsk, Olivera!!”
Nives clicked her tongue and called out to Olivera, who stood with her back to the lake.
She appeared completely oblivious to the commotion, tidying her black robe after completing a ritual purification.
Nives glared at Olivera’s back and said.
“The human you brought to Kundara is trying to kill me. Cooperate.”
“…….”
“You know whose side you should be on here, don’t you?”
Nives pressed, focusing power into her pure white pupils.
“Use The Seven Debts Jewels Mystic Eye. I must eliminate this wicked Short-lived Being here and now.”
“…….”
At Nives’s words, Lennok also silently stared at Olivera’s back.
Even if Lennok didn’t wish it, his mind considered and thought through other possibilities.
He knew there was a part of him that didn’t expect much, even as he hoped, so he excluded his emotions.
The moment Lennok solidified his will-thought to prepare for the worst, thinking thus.
[I see what you think of me.]
For the first time, Olivera spoke.
[To still consider the worst-case scenario even after coming this far, it’s absurd.]
“…….”
[However, that’s not bad either.]
Olivera slowly turned around, her eyes closed.
Dark poison, like tears, flowed from beneath her eyelids.
[To doubt and cling to regret like that is proof that you still harbor human sentiments.]
“……Olivera.”
[In this endless journey, it should be fine to keep one fellow traveler like you until the very end.]
Olivera raised her right hand, and the moment her slender finger pushed open her eyelid.
A brilliant rainbow radiance burst forth, instantly enveloping Nives’s colossal body and pressing it down.
Boom!!!!
“What……!!!”
[I made my decision long ago, and I have no intention of changing it in my remaining life.]
Leaving the flustered Nives behind, Olivera opened her right eye and smiled as she looked at Lennok.
[Lead the way. Let’s go meet Kaiser Bajour.]
“Olivera Ron Maize!!!!!!!”
Enraged, Nives thrashed madly, lying prostrate in the swamp.
“How dare this ungrateful insect!!!!! Betray my favor and take the hand of a Short-lived Being!!!!!”
[You are mistaken, Nives Orosia.]
Olivera, adjusting her loose robe and walking barefoot out of the swamp, responded languidly.
[My staying in your nest until today was not a matter of receiving favor, but of repaying it. It was the price for helping you with my Mystic Eye so you wouldn’t be devoured by the Curse of Metamorphosis.]
“Shut up!!!”
[It seems you’ve already forgotten, after repeatedly attempting Metamorphosis by clumsily imitating an Ascendant, nearly assimilating into The Snake Guarding the Well.]
Thwack!!
Olivera, walking casually through the swamp filled with poison, stood beside Lennok and retorted.
[I allowed it when you informed Adamant Thunder about the Ninth Tribulation and offered assistance. But I never imagined you would try to bind him with such a strange thing as an elixir.]
“Foolish……. Truly foolish……!!! Even with the answer determined, to stubbornly seek the untrodden path; that is merely the limit of your kind!!!!”
Crrrack!!!
An enormous serpent writhed submerged in the swamp, snatching a pure white shed skin with the tip of its tail.
The moment Lennok realized it was Nives Orosia’s own shed skin after completing her Metamorphosis.
Nives, rising with her shed skin in her mouth, began to unfurl colorless ripples.
“I will not stop until I tear you two apart and kill you both here!!!!!!”
“……!!!”
Flash!!!!
Colorless waves, accompanied by a chilling roar, began to engulf the surroundings.
Lennok’s expression hardened as he realized Nives was about to deploy her Domain.
Nives’s Snake Blood Palace, located in the Poisonous Forest, was her Poison Jurisdiction, painstakingly built over a long time.
Deploying a Domain within a Jurisdiction meant—
Domain Deployment
Origin Hierarchy Mental Image Actualization
[Foggy Dome Serpent’s Affliction]
Kwoo-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!!!!!!
Nives’s Root Mindscape was directly superimposed onto the colossal jungle forest.
Snake venom, harboring all manner of diseases, spread like a dense fog, melting the entire vast jungle.
And a single, pure white glowing serpent floated in the sky, madly spewing forth magic power.
Hisss!!!
The entire jungle melted into poisonous liquid, contaminating even the ground Lennok stood on.
Lennok, using Flicker to avoid the surging waves of poison, accelerated and clicked his tongue.
“I didn’t expect it, but she’s controlling both a Jurisdiction and a Domain simultaneously? This has gotten tricky.”
Though the principle was unclear, Nives was simultaneously using her Poison Jurisdiction and Domain abilities.
Receiving spell-enhancement effects from both the Jurisdiction and the Domain, and unleashing the accumulated poison and unique Domain spellcraft would dramatically increase Nives’s combat power.
The spell application ability worthy of a supreme Long-lived Being and an Elder Council member of the Eighth Tribulation, who had lived for a very long time and accumulated hierarchies of power.
‘If this turns into a Domain battle, I won’t be able to avoid exposure to the poison. Should I have killed her before she fully exerted her power?’
“……Hmm?”
Suddenly, Lennok, who had been frowning and looking up at the floating serpent, widened his eyes.
Behind Nives, her shed snake skin glowed intensely and rotated like a halo.
It coiled itself into a giant ring, filling the space within with darkness.
The shed skin itself was grotesquely transforming into pitch black, independently of Nives’s will.
He had definitely seen that sight somewhere before.
When Lapis visited Vulcan, he had learned about the fate of an Ascendant through Heavenly Sight’s memories.
The sight of Pyeonram’s consciousness body dying and corrupting, becoming a ‘Gate’ connecting directly to the Outer Sea.
“No way…….”
Lennok asked, disbelievingly.
“Did you use your shed skin as a sacrifice to create a ‘Gate’ connecting the Domain and the Jurisdiction?”
“How dare a lowly Short-lived Being recognize this ultimate art.”
Whoosh!!!!
Nives, floating in the sky, sneered down at Lennok.
“Originally, superimposing a Domain and a Jurisdiction in one spacetime is not something permitted to beings like me.”
“…….”
“However, by using my shed skin as a catalyst, I have linked the two spacetimes. This is a miracle far too great for worms like you.”
Nives declared coldly.
“Die regretting your foolish choice not to offer the elixir.”
“No, that’s not it.”
Lennok shook his head.
“If you used your own body to create a ‘Gate,’ it’s essentially a Well. You’ve just created a passage in your Domain that could connect to the Outer Sea.”
“……What?”
“And there is an Ascendant in this world who is more sensitive to that fact than anything else.”
The Ascendant who guards a Well does not wish for other Wells to appear in other spacetimes besides the one they protect.
And it wouldn’t be strange for a Transcendent, who casts her senses across the entire planet, to be aware of what Nives had just done.
“……That can’t be.”
Nives, understanding Lennok’s words, paused for a moment, then immediately denied it.
“There’s no way it’s watching here now. How could an inferior being who can’t even maintain her own memories be here?”
“…….”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I won’t be swayed by a Short-lived Being’s lies!!!! I’ll kill you right now-!!!!”
She was wavering.
Nives’s overly excited and raging reaction itself was her Reverse Scale.
The moment Lennok realized his bluff, which had successfully provoked that emotion, had worked, and was about to draw forth his magic to exploit the opening.
“Right. There’s no way.”
From behind Lennok, an indifferent voice cut him off.
At the edge of the Domain, being consumed by poison, stood a white-haired girl with an expressionless face.
Her sharp appearance was etched with complex, unknown ritualistic writings on her brown skin.
As if a human body felt awkward, she fidgeted with her fingertips and said.
“Because I’m already here.”
[……!!!]
A chilling silence.
An unreal anomaly, finally perceived with the rapid expansion of senses.
Olivera, immediately realizing the opponent’s identity, gasped in shock, and Lennok’s expression stiffened.
“Wait, no way……!!!”
Even though he had considered it not impossible for that Ascendant to know what Nives had done, and had used that speculation as a bluff.
Even Lennok himself hadn’t imagined she would already be here.
In this Outer Tribulation City, which Lennok had reached after crossing the Veil and traversing the Universe of Mist for a long time.
Was she so lightly manifesting her will here, simply by perceiving the existence of a ‘Well’?
The moment Lennok trembled and was captivated by such overwhelming transcendence, beyond imagination.
Pyeonram, Padme Kiesa, raised her gaze towards the sky.
“Are you a Long-lived Being being devoured by the Curse of Metamorphosis, to be assimilated into me?”
“…….”
At a single glance from Pyeonram, Nives froze in place, unable to do anything.
But the Ascendant passed by Nives indifferently, as if she held no interest.
“She is a being who will crumble on her own, so there’s no need to pay attention.”
The Ascendant slowly approached Lennok, raising her indifferent gaze.
“There was something more important.”
“……You.”
A breath-stopping silence.
The intense commotion and battle from just moments ago seemed like a lie; time itself seemed to have stopped here.
It was as if all the power and will of the Domain bowed its head to a single Transcendent.
An overwhelming wonder, barely perceivable by human senses, which he felt for the first time in reality.
Suppressing the chilling sense of incongruity that was hard to believe even when directly facing it, Lennok finally managed to open his mouth.
“It’s been a while, Wizard.”
Padme Kiesa, with an expressionless face, asked Lennok.
“Are you planning to become an Ascendant in this city?”
“…….”
The Ascendant’s question, appearing out of nowhere, struck at the very essence of what was happening in Kundara.
But Pyeonram’s subsequent words surpassed all the thoughts Lennok had harbored upon seeing her.
“I owed you for the end of Heavenly Sight.”
Pyeonram, still awkwardly fiddling with her fingertips, said casually.
“If you wish, I will help you become an Ascendant. Will you attempt it?”