Chapter 1370: Variation (9)

Blood-red pillars cascaded through the storm clouds, and a spell formation of gore twisted into a grotesque smile.

A crimson veil enveloped the airship, accompanied by an eerie, incomprehensible cackle.

At the heart of the fierce battlefield, a Demonic Worship Ritual unfolded, centered around the transcontinental immigrant fleet.

Lennok, leaning against a cockpit wall strewn with the corpses of the captain and first officer, slowly raised his gaze.

“Looking at the airship’s interior, it seems I was mistaken about something.”

Lennok murmured, extending his senses to assess the situation unfolding within the ship.

“Most of the immigrant fleet’s crew seem to be demon worshippers or their associates. Battles are raging with the revolutionary army all over the ship.”

[Yes. Your esteemed insight, Tower Lord, is correct.]

From beyond the satellite phone, the Admiral’s voice, now utterly deferential, could be heard.

[If you hadn’t stopped the worship ritual progressing in the engine room, the entire airship would soon have become the object of the ritual. Truly wise.]

Perhaps he only came to his senses after realizing Lennok was next to Ermont and immediately hung up.

Realizing there was no escape, Cromwell obediently answered the call Ermont made again.

As soon as he answered, Lennok tucked his staff away, listening to Cromwell’s suddenly amiable explanation.

“If the ritual is underway, there’s no reason to delay. Lead me to the engine room.”

[If the Tower Lord wishes, I can guide you, but… as a Lightning Sorcerer, you shouldn’t need to move personally, should you?]

The Admiral asked, his voice bewildered.

[There are many storm clouds near the airship. Wouldn’t simply summoning your lightning be enough, Tower Lord?]

“You don’t understand Demonic Worship well. If you try to destroy a spell formation used in their rituals with brute force, the backlash is severe.”

Lennok replied, placing a hand on the bulkhead.

“Unless I dismantle the formation myself, there’s no telling what side effects might occur. I’d rather not risk damaging the airship after coming all this way.”

While passing the Tribulation’s Trial in Kundara, Lennok had dealt with a Demonic Worship spell formation known as the ‘Demonic Heavens Style’.

It was a trial where, if the spell formation’s structure wasn’t properly analyzed and dismantled, the formation itself would undergo Demonification and become hostile to the challenger.

If the worship ritual taking place in this airship’s engine room was similar, he would first need to examine the formation personally.

At the very least, if he was to take the airship directly to the Central Front, he needed to refrain from any actions that would damage the hull.

Upon hearing Lennok’s answer, the Admiral let out a sound of admiration.

[Indeed… that’s something I’ve never heard before. The Tower Lord’s magical insight is truly as vast as the sea.]

“Cromwell, did you eat something bad? Why are you flattering him unlike yourself?”

[Hey, you bastard. That’s my line!! You should’ve told me immediately that the Tower Lord was right there!!]

“Why would I, in my right mind, bring Adamant Thunder along for this? This was an unfair and unjust directive from above. As a soldier, can’t you empathize a little?”

[Don’t give me that bullshit. You shameless black wizard…! I’ll never help with anything you lead again. From now on, call Hylaea.]

While Ermont and the Admiral exchanged insults, Lennok leaned against the bulkhead blocking the captain’s cabin, slowly drawing up his mana.

“I’ll go out when the gunfire intensifies. Be ready.”

“Alright, understood.”

Ermont, pulling a pistol holster from the dead captain’s waist, drew up his black magic from the opposite side of Lennok.

Immediately after Ermont, pistol in hand, drew a simple circular magic formation with his black magic, as if tracing over the bulkhead—

“Bang!”

KABOOM!!!!

The bulkhead blocking the captain’s cabin exploded outwards, revealing the full scene of the airship’s corridor.

Demon worshippers and revolutionary soldiers clashed fiercely in the blood-soaked corridor.

Soldiers frantically fired their rifles, and blood-soaked monsters raged, screaming from all directions.

“Aaaargh!!!”

“Hold them back, hold them back!!!”

“Maintain the line!!”

Watching the worshippers charge, taking bullets bare-chested, and the soldiers desperately laying down suppressing fire, it was hard to tell who the terrorists were.

Ermont didn’t hesitate for long.

“Alright, you’ve all worked hard!”

Bang! Bang!!

He pulled the trigger, impartially shooting a revolutionary soldier in the back of the head and a worshipper between the eyes.

The black wizard, seizing a rifle from a soldier who fell spattering blood, spun around towards the aghast revolutionary army.

“Black wizard, you son of a—”

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!!!!

Before he could finish, the rifle in Ermont’s hand spewed fire, riddling the soldiers fighting at the front of the corridor with holes.

The surviving soldiers, not to be outdone, likewise turned their muzzles towards the black wizard and pulled their triggers.

“Aaaargh!!!”

“Die!! Die!!!”

The sight of terrorists spraying bullets at each other intertwined with worshippers tearing humans apart with their bare hands.

As blood and flesh splattered, filling the air with a metallic stench, and screams far more terrible began to subside.

Ermont, looking refreshed, raised his head, wiped blood from his cheek, and grinned.

“Alright, clean up complete!”

“Th-the revolutionary army won’t… won’t let you get away with this….”

The beret-wearing soldier collapsed at his feet, glaring at Ermont with bloodshot eyes.

“Black wizard… they’ll execute all your family, relatives, and acquaintances and hang them in the pyre…!!”

“Ah, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

Bang!!!

Ermont, shrugging, pulled the trigger once more, shooting the soldier between the eyes.

“My family became dew on the execution grounds centuries ago. How can you kill people who are already dead?”

[I suppose I’ll have to come up with some plausible excuse for the revolutionary army later. This has become a headache, considering I arranged this whole affair.]

“The revolutionary army are just terrorists who wanted to steal the airship for themselves, so who are we to pity? Let’s just do our job.”

The Admiral offered a bitter laugh from beyond the satellite phone, but Ermont paid him no mind, twirling the rifle nonchalantly.

“My marksmanship has really improved since I took over the Legion Commander’s body. Shooting guns is fun these days. It’s been worth switching bodies after all this ti—”

KABOOM!!!!

At that moment, Ermont’s body was slammed into the corridor wall, tumbling about.

A blood-soaked demon worshipper stood in the spot where Ermont had been, its eyes rolled back in its head.

“C-cough, cough…!! Wait… weren’t you supposed to handle the worshippers…?”

Ermont, half-buried in the wall, coughed up blood but still looked at Lennok with an incredulous expression.

Lennok, meanwhile, stood immaculately clean, not a drop of blood on him, calmly observing the battleground.

“Why should I?”

“I took care of the revolutionary army! So naturally, it’s only right that you handle the worshippers!”

“You’re the one who arbitrarily backstabbed the revolutionary army. Wouldn’t you call that karma?”

“Are you actually saying that…!!”

“However, seeing this monster up close, I admit I’m intrigued.”

Lennok tilted his head, observing the blood-soaked monster violently tearing apart the revolutionary soldiers’ corpses.

“On the surface, it looks like nothing more than a common mutant, but internally, its biological organs are coordinating quite plausibly. Is this the endpoint for a human undergoing demonic worship?”

[Tower Lord. I don’t think ‘common’ is an appropriate word for a mutated worshipper, sir…]

“It’s not just a monster; it’s closer to an alien. I don’t understand the principle behind this.”

Perhaps influenced by the Demonic Worship Ritual unfolding in real-time, the worshippers mixed among the crew were no longer even human.

Monsters with claws protruding from their blood-soaked flesh. Their features were gone, yet they possessed internal metabolism.

It wasn’t merely the presence of blood vessels and a nervous system; there was even a form of hormonal regulation taking place.

It felt less like a monster from this world and more like a new lifeform subject to the ecosystem of the Outer Universe.

“Krr, uh-oh…!”

WHOOSH!!!

The worshippers, emitting indistinct groans, swung their arms at incredible speed and turned towards Lennok.

The blood-soaked monsters roared fiercely from all directions, intent on tearing the flesh from anything living.

CRASH!!!

The airship’s windows, designed to withstand thousands of meters of altitude, shattered, and a violent gust of wind began to tear through.

The worshippers, crawling on all fours, pursued Lennok down the swaying ceiling and corridor, making it difficult even to stand.

They tore through the doors and walls of the navigation and engine rooms like paper, splattering sticky bloodstains everywhere.

CRUNCHING ROAR!!!!

“Aaaargh!!! No, are you really just going to watch?!”

Amidst the chaotic melee, with the ship’s corridors and furnishings scattering into debris, Ermont conjured black mist and tumbled about.

“When you’re beating up people, you pull out every spellcraft imaginable!! Why are you so stingy when it comes to monsters!!! You crazy murderous miser!!”

“I’ve always thought you had a knack for using oddly bizarre expressions. Is it the power of experience?”

Tap.

Activating the Corrupted Golden Rule, he simultaneously tapped the crumbling wall with the back of his hand.

He touched the severance point of causality, stimulating the collapse point that prevented an object from existing as an object.

The cracks in the wall instantly expanded, collapsing entirely and burying the monsters charging at Lennok alive.

“Grrrgle!! Ka-aaaargh!!!”

As the monster, pinned beneath the debris, thrashed and salivated, Lennok reached into his coat.

What emerged from within his coat was a pure white bullet, roughly the size of Lennok’s fingertip.

The bullet, made of platinum and emitting an elegant glow, had something intricately engraved on its surface.

Click!!

He picked up a fallen pistol from the floor, loaded the platinum bullet, and then spun the gun around deftly.

Ermont’s expression turned strange at Lennok’s movements, as if he were meticulously checking if the pistol was safe.

“What is it? Why a bullet, and all of a sudden? You’re going to kill that monster with that?”

“Be still.”

Instead of pulling the trigger on the monster rising from the debris before him, he seemed to be deliberately wasting time.

Lennok, using the Corrupted Golden Rule, peered intently into the pistol’s interior and murmured.

“A normal gun is indeed limited to one shot… but I can’t help it if I want to conserve my magic gun.”

“What have you been doing for the past—”

Bang!!

Before Ermont could finish, Lennok re-gripped the pistol and pulled the trigger, aiming for the monster’s gaping maw.

With a heavy gunshot, a pure white light flashed from the muzzle, and simultaneously, the monster’s head snapped backward.

“…Grrr…”

The monster slowly turned its head back, revealing no penetration wound, not even a scar.

With a flash of red light in its eyes, it cracked its neck with a sickening crunch and began walking towards Lennok.

Ermont sighed, shaking his head.

“It didn’t do a damn thing. It’s not like it’s a silver bullet to kill a vampire or anything…”

“No. It hit its mark perfectly.”

Lennok, folding three fingers, his eyes gleaming.

“If you don’t want to get caught up in this, step back.”

“Eh?”

Jura’s Libra: Extreme Art, Fifth Law

Property Transformation: Synthetic Manifestation

CRUNCH!!!

At that moment, another worshipper, flying in from the side, violently collided with the worshipper standing in front of Lennok.

Beyond merely pushing each other, they slammed together like trucks, a massive rupture crushing and merging their flesh.

As Ermont faltered at the sight, the worshippers rampaging everywhere began to react in the same way.

“Huh?”

SMASH!! CRUNCH!! GRIND!!!

All over the ship, the blood-soaked masses of flesh that had been raging began to collide, combine, and then were crushed and pulverized.

Centered around the monster where Lennok had embedded the bullet, monsters from all directions were drawn in like magnets, undergoing ‘synthesis’.

Soon, they began to smash into each other, pulverizing themselves and dying, continuously merging into a single entity.

CRACK! CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!!!

“…”

“Synthesis using crude materials usually results in failure.”

As Ermont stared blankly at the scene, Lennok discarded the pistol he held and started walking.

“If left alone, they’ll crush each other to death in self-destruction. Let’s go to the engine room.”

“…What on earth is this? Is it even magic to begin with?”

“It’s a new application of my spellcraft.”

Lennok readily explained.

“I found out that when engraving spellcraft onto a bullet, you can change its target. It’s probably possible because its original owner often used this spellcraft in such a way.”

“…”

“Engraving a powerful Extreme Art, ‘Synthesis,’ which was originally only usable on myself, onto a bullet to make it applicable to others… it’s a simple trick to bypass the spellcraft’s limitations. A decent method, wouldn’t you say?”

This was the Mass Magic Bullet, a new application of Mass Manipulation Spellcraft, which Lennok had learned from the Director at the end of the Ascension Ritual.

While engraving high-level spellcraft onto a bullet for instant activation was good, what was more crucial was the very fact that engraving spellcraft onto a bullet allowed one to change its target.

Using this method, spellcraft originally only applicable to Lennok himself, or only to others, could be applied in reverse.

Now that he could transcend the spellcraft’s limitations through the trick of using magic bullets, there must be ways to apply this in regular combat.

It was one of the new achievements he’d gained after several days of intensive research into Mass Manipulation Spellcraft, following the Director’s advice, but—

“You…”

Ermont, who had been listening blankly, now had all humor wiped from his face.

“Somehow, you’re very different from the crazy murderer I thought you were… It feels like you’re much more calmly insane.”

“I’m not sure there’s a big difference in the expression. More importantly, are you only realizing this now?”

“When I got beaten at Anathema’s temple, I just thought you were a crazy bastard, but seeing you on our side, it’s different.”

Ermont’s eyes, following behind Lennok, gleamed strangely.

“Your attitude and approach to delving into spellcraft has strange aspects. Don’t you feel it yourself?”

“…”

“Indeed, you didn’t just avoid going mad after reaching such a high rank. You’re broken in a way entirely different from others.”

Ermont murmured.

“There might be a decisive difference in that aspect.”

“If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have made it this far.”

Lennok turned his gaze, his face impassive.

“The smell of blood is getting stronger; it seems the engine room is close. Tell me the way.”

[To the left, sir. If you keep choosing the path without ventilation shafts at the forks…]

Lennok immediately began walking through the spacious airship towards the engine room, listening to the Admiral’s guidance.

Ignoring the revolutionary army and worshippers fighting all around them, how long did they walk?

“This is…”

Splatter…!!

Red handprints marked every visible surface—the ceiling, floor, and walls of the corridor, without exception.

A gruesome sight, as if countless people had been forcibly dragged away. The handprints covered everything, staining the entire corridor crimson, as if drenched in blood.

Only after opening the tightly sealed engine room door could Lennok finally peer into the airship’s deepest reaches.

WHOOOOOOSH!!!!!

Dozens of people, covered head to toe in blood, knelt in a circle on the engine room floor.

Their eyes closed, they ceaselessly offered incomprehensible prayers, repeating chants and performing the ritual.

At its center was an extremely complex spell formation, dyed dark crimson with blood, its shape almost impossible to discern.

“So? Can you dismantle it without side effects, as you said?”

“…I’m not sure.”

“Excuse me? You can’t just say you don’t know now!”

“The formation’s shape is vastly different from what I know. However…”

Lennok narrowed his eyes.

“Somehow, I think I understand the formation’s purpose itself… Could it be…”

“It would be difficult for an ordinary wizard’s insight to comprehend.”

At the edge of the spell formation, an old man in dark crimson robes was watching Lennok.

“That formation is the revelation of Hell, rendered into a form humans can accept. It’s no shame not to recognize it.”

“…”

“Fools who believe the magic and laws of the mundane world are all that exist will never truly perceive the possibilities of the great Outer Universe.”

The old man said, his expression chillingly rigid.

“Yet I never imagined that fool would crush our loyal disciples like insects. What bizarre sorcery did you employ?”

“Wow, did you hear that?”

Ermont chuckled.

“It seems the spellcraft you used earlier was quite bizarre even to the demon worshippers. I wonder who the villain really is.”

“Are you the mastermind behind this Demonic Worship Ritual?”

Ignoring Ermont, Lennok asked.

“The other worshippers aren’t in a state to communicate, so talking with them was difficult. I hope you’re sane.”

“What enables the ritual is not me, but the laws of Hell, so it’s difficult to say I am the mastermind.”

“The laws of Hell?”

“We sacrifice humans to summon demons and transform this airship into a perpetually moving territory of Hell. In this process, the sacrificed offerings are ‘completed’ as new materials and constituents of the ark.”

“…”

“The completed ark is not bound by mundane laws, thus becoming an entity that freely traverses the Material Realm and the Imaginary Dimension.”

The old man glared at Lennok and said.

“Originally, we were to use the ignorant masses aboard the immigrant fleet, but because of you, we were forced to sacrifice our own disciples… This sin will never be cleansed, even in Hell.”

“You have a long-winded way of saying you’re using humans as material to create a weapon of war.”

Lennok calmly asked, looking at the red-glowing spell formation on the engine room floor.

“If I destroy that, what happens to the ritual? Will there be a backlash, perhaps an explosion?”

“It’s already far too late, you foolish sinners.”

The old man’s expression twisted grotesquely as he looked at Lennok.

“Soon the ritual will be complete, and a demon will arrive in this world. I’ll make you pay the price for daring to steal our flagship…!!!”

Did the worshippers kneeling in the engine room also know what was happening inside the airship?

Yet, their inability to actively respond must have been because the ritual in the engine room was of such paramount importance.

Ermont said urgently.

“No, something seems to be going wrong, are you sure this is okay? Shouldn’t we at least rip off that old man’s neck?!!”

“…”

But Lennok didn’t even answer the frantic black wizard.

Instead, he merely narrowed his eyes, watching the ritual as if to confirm something.

FLASHING!!!!!

The red light erupting from the center of the engine room intensely warped, covering spacetime.

Everything before their eyes, appearing as if drenched in blood, began to ominously gleam and distort.

The worshippers, kneeling around the spell formation, began to fall one by one, coughing up blood.

“Come forth, Demon of Hell!!!!”

The old man, standing at the center of the spell formation, wrapped in red light, painfully mumbled.

“The corruption of the Outer Universe will guide us to a perfected Hell…!!”

WHOOOOOOSH!!!!!

At the edge of the spell formation, with the sound of space tearing, something colossal began to rise.

An eerie presence that overwhelmed everyone with its sheer form alone. The very essence of corruption, shrouded in grim darkness.

With black chains wrapped around both arms, massive, muscular forearms, and a giant—

[…]

The Demonic Giant summoned above the spell formation tilted its head, and Ermont’s expression turned utterly blank.

“…Huh?”

“O-oh, ooooh!!!!”

The old man, watching from above the spell formation, knelt with a trembling voice.

“It, it has appeared…!!! Ah, a very powerful demon has appeared…!!!”

“…”

“W-wait!!! I will now release your bindings according to the ancient covenant.”

With trembling hands, the old man pulled a black key from within his robes and plunged it into the spell formation.

“Use Ikanthara’s Relic to break the bonds on your soul and unleash your true power, bound to Hell…!!!”

The old man mumbled, glaring at Lennok with a hateful expression.

“Turn everything in this place into a hellish path of carnage!!!”

Click.

The moment the black key was inserted into the formation, a sound like a lock opening echoed.

A sense of unease, as if something long-bound was being released through the spell formation and the key.

Immediately after, the black chain wrapped around the Demonic Giant’s left arm clattered open and fell onto the spell formation.

Thud!!

The thick black chain had been coiled around the Demonic Giant’s limp, muscular arm.

The very black chain that had bound the giant’s arms like restraints ever since Lennok first saw Myeong.

At this moment, half of those restraints were released right here, simultaneously with the old man’s oath.

Vast darkness exploded from the giant’s left arm, spreading like wings and soaking spacetime.

KRAAAAAAAANG!!!!!

Ermont, watching the scene with a bewildered expression, turned to Lennok.

“Was that guy, by any chance, not a demon worshipper but more like a volunteer?”

“…”