Chapter 1375: Variation (14)
Fwoosh-!!!!!
The silver star held in the Demonic Giant’s hand emitted a pale light, glowing brilliantly.
Within the dark, muscular hand, a fist-sized silver star rotated majestically.
That alone warped the surrounding atmosphere, shifted gravity in real-time, and made the view tremble.
A sacred light, reminiscent of a star in the night sky, yet contaminated and defiled.
The Primordial Mysteries, granted only to a select few among the highest-ranking Long-lived Beings.
Primitive Magic: Star-Linking Eight Extremes Style.
The moment the Demonic Giant, its senses synchronized with Lennok, chanted the Primitive Magic, eliminating all risk.
A silver storm emanating from the Demonic Giant fiercely pressed down and pushed back the entire surrounding area.
Kwagwagwagwa!!!!!
“Ugh, this is no joke……!!”
The horror was enough to make not only the ghosts clashing at the center of the battlefield, but even Saul, standing behind them, bow his head.
Saul, watching the situation from behind the Ghost Giant, looked up at the silver star with a strange expression.
‘Star-Linking Eight Extremes Style. Is it a mystery allowed only to Kundara’s highest-ranking True Bloodline? How is the output……!!!’
True to its name, a path to the extreme of dominance, breaking stars apart, the output itself was unrealistically powerful.
The spellcraft’s structure was a straightforward method of summoning and detonating stars, yet the result was beyond comprehension.
The contamination mixed within its heat was also excessively severe, a magic even the caster couldn’t control.
Even if one knew how to manipulate it, the caster would normally self-destruct before they could properly wield it.
If the caster of Primitive Magic were an ordinary human, that would have been the case.
Crackle-!!!
The corrupted contamination flowed up the Demonic Giant’s forearm, which gripped the silver star.
But the contamination covering the demon’s arm couldn’t corrode its body, merely being swallowed by endless darkness and disappearing.
The contamination of starlight, which inevitably carried risk, was neutralized by chanting Primitive Magic through the Demonic Giant.
Nevertheless, faint beads of sweat formed on Lennok’s forehead as he manipulated the silver star.
“Even after receiving direct instruction on the technique, practical application is a different story. To have prepared so much, and yet only be able to handle about three of them……”
“……”
Slowly opening his eyes, Lennok deliberately raised his hand.
“But for now, this will be more than enough.”
Kuoooo!!!
A scorching hot wind blew incessantly across the battlefield where the bombardment had fallen.
The superheated air expanded on the wind, then halted before the flashing starlight.
A bizarre phenomenon, as if all the atmosphere in Paradox Blue revolved around the starlight held in the Demonic Giant’s hand.
“This is troublesome. If I’m not careful, I’ll die.”
Saul, lowering himself with a troubled look, placed one hand on the ground and bowed his head.
“I heard from the Zero Seat. Ophelia said you were a wizard who appears once in an eon.”
“……”
“I didn’t expect to meet you today, but given the circumstances, I suppose I have no choice but to give it my all.”
Moving three ghosts to the front, he pulled out another talisman from his pocket.
“No.”
But Lennok said calmly, looking at Saul.
“It’s not the beginning; it’s the end.”
“It’s too soon to tell. No matter how powerful a spellcraft one possesses-”
Kieeeeeng-!!!
At that moment, the silver star held in the Demonic Giant’s hand fiercely glowed, and Saul’s words abruptly stopped.
“……!!!!”
All the parts and wreckage of war machines scattered across the plain, as well as the sky and the ground.
The contaminated sacred light violently glowed through the Demonic Giant’s arm, rotating slowly counter-clockwise.
The moment the demon, holding the starlight with its bent hand, aimed forward as if flicking its fingers.
Primitive Magic: Star-Linking Eight Extremes Style
Three External Methods
[Piercing Star]
Flash!!!
The starlight, shot at tremendous speed, pierced the Ghost Giant’s chest and vanished beyond the horizon.
An immediacy that made proper reaction impossible. A déjà vu of a faint echo ascending through the horizon.
Immediately after, a colossal silver pillar surged beyond the plains of Paradox Blue, sweeping across the ground like a tidal wave.
Kwaaaaaaaah!!
In the fleeting moment the silver wave overflowed, Saul spun his body as if flung, sliding sideways.
Narrowly escaping the trajectory of the bombardment, he looked back with a dumbfounded expression.
“……I retract what I was about to say earlier.”
The ruins, once piled high with debris, now had a gaping hole, as if carved out with a knife.
An unrealistic landscape, as if a portion of the distant horizon had been circularly erased.
“Even nuclear weapons wouldn’t do this. Is this really magic used by humans?”
Whoosh!!!
As a bewildered Saul gestured, the remaining ghosts leaped out from within the starlight wave.
A Warrior Ghost with a long blade scattering murderous intent, and a giant Ghost Giant with four arms.
Within the collapsing crater, the demon holding the star and the ghosts clashed fiercely, tangling like ferocious beasts.
Kwagwagwagwang!!!!!
The Warrior Ghost thrust and scraped its blade, while the Ghost Giant swung its four arms, exchanging blows head-on.
Even as they fought with monstrous ferocity, the two ghosts, clinging closely, tried their best to avoid contact with the starlight.
Regardless of their immense power, both ghosts seemed to grasp how to counter that spellcraft.
But-
Kieeeeeng……!!
The silver star in the demon’s hand swelled abnormally, rotating violently in place.
The centrifugal force alone intensified the surrounding gravity, momentarily causing the ground to sink.
It simultaneously crushed the Warrior Ghost and the Ghost Giant charging from both sides.
Kwawoooong!!
[……!]
A minor trick of rotating starlight to momentarily strengthen gravity.
With just that, the Warrior Ghost’s blade snapped. The Ghost Giant’s arm bent backward.
The situation had been overwhelmingly reversed the moment Primitive Magic began to be deployed.
“This is absurd. The Legion fought against an Ascendant who wields such magic?”
Saul, putting distance amidst the raging storm, shook his head, moving his ghosts.
“If it weren’t for my ghosts, I would have died from starlight contamination long ago. This is too unfair……!!”
Kwaaaang!!!
The Ghost Giant with the broken arm stood in front, and the Warrior Ghost with the snapped blade sped through the debris.
As the blade clashed with the chains wrapped around the Demonic Giant’s forearm, scattering sparks, the Ghost Giant approached.
Before the starlight could rotate in the demon’s hand, it deflected the forearm and deeply thrust inward.
Whoosh-
Black and pale muscular forearms crossed in the air, simultaneously striking each other’s solar plexuses.
A massive shockwave exploded like a shell, ripping through everything in concentric circles.
Kwaaaaaaaah!!!!
“Hee-aat?! Ugh!! Heee-ee-eekk!!!”
The ground cracked and shattered, fragments flew everywhere, and craters collapsed all around.
Ermont, rolling on the ground, screamed as a tidal wave of earth poured down like a landslide.
“Stop, stop!! We’re really going to die at this rate!!!!”
While Lennok and Saul kept each other in check, the summoned entities, unable to target the casters directly, furiously pummeled each other.
The battle of monsters whose physical dimensions and weight far surpassed those of humans.
With massive summoned entities clashing, the repercussions of the fight were unrealistically enormous.
The collision of colossal beings, filled with a distinct weight and gravitas different from Transcendent ones.
[Kieeeek!!!]
[Grrrroooowl……!!]
Amidst the monsters rampaging in the heart of the ruins, the number of ghosts Saul summoned continued to grow.
Beakless carrion crows shrieked, and blind ghost wolves rapidly raced around the ruins.
Saul’s ability to operate multiple powerful ghosts capable of clashing with the Demonic Giant, while incessantly summoning more.
How extraordinary and immense must his innate spirituality be to command so many ghosts?
If he had joined a cult instead of a mere warband, a new saint might have been born to that cult.
But Lennok, seeing the horde of ghosts filling the plain, did not stop.
“There is a superiority that cannot be overturned, no matter how much you increase the numbers.”
Boom!!!!
The Demonic Giant swung its fist, crushing the wolf’s head, and tearing off the carrion crow’s wing.
Ignoring the Ghost Giant gripping its arm, it firmly grasped the starlight in its hands.
“This is the last time.”
Kigi-gi-gi-gig……!!
The Demonic Giant’s hands fiercely gripped the silver star, twisting it violently as if to shatter it immediately.
Following its gesture, the starlight raged fiercely, emitting an awful, grotesque tearing sound like a scream.
Primitive Magic: Star-Linking Eight Extremes Style
The rotating starlight itself fractured, violently shaking.
Simultaneously, the entire ruin boiled with hellish heat, melting the ground and metal, and lava began to flow like a river across the surface.
A fierce glow pulsed as if forcibly tearing apart the inseparable bonds of matter, threatening to melt the entire battlefield.
The ghosts, realizing the meaning of this prelude, charged at the Demonic Giant from all directions with incredible speed.
A fierce struggle to somehow stop the star’s ‘collapse’ that the Demonic Giant was attempting, right then and there.
But each time the Demonic Giant grasped and twisted the star with both hands, the surrounding time drastically slowed, and all attacks stopped before reaching their target.
“This is……?!!”
Each moment the starlight collapsed, gravity itself intensified, as if the timeline itself was being affected.
Only then did Saul’s expression harden as he intuitively grasped the spellcraft’s principle, and at the fleeting moment Ermont prostrated himself at Lennok’s feet.
Lennok whispered the incantation.
“Be born.”
Eight External Methods
Star Annihilation Cycle
In the fleeting moment where everything flowed slowly, as if time had stopped.
In front of the Demonic Giant’s widely spread arms, the starlight split and overflowed.
The two starlights, forcibly separated from the Demonic Giant’s hands, rapidly condensed and pulled at each other.
Transcendent heat repeatedly split and merged in an instant, superimposing within a single space-time.
And at the moment a new star was reborn in that place.
The secret of the Star-Linking Eight Extremes Style descended upon the world.
[Supernova]
Kwaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!
The starlight spread like a nebula in all directions, carrying transcendent heat and melting the battlefield.
Debris scattered everywhere melted into molten metal, and even the ghosts that had charged from all sides lost their forms and vanished.
At the center of the battlefield, where the nebula surged, a colossal silver distortion point violently rotated, swallowing everything.
“U-ugh……!!!”
A runaway of transcendent heat and contamination. Ermont, prostrated on the ground, gasped and retched.
Even though he was next to Lennok and thus received relatively less of the backflowing energy, it was difficult for him to even endure its aftereffects.
Ermont, retching repeatedly, looked at the Demonic Giant standing alone majestically in the distance with a blurry expression.
“I-is it over?”
“……”
Seeing Lennok not answer, Ermont stammered.
“Surely, the First Seat of the Warband……”
“I think I understand why Ophelia told me your name beforehand.”
At the voice coming from beyond the collapsing nebula, Ermont showed an incredulous expression.
At the center of the melted explosion zone. Saul, his face singed, looked up at Lennok with a strange expression.
“If I had met you without knowing anything, I would have thought some Outer God was mimicking a human. The way you handle spellcraft and your techniques are already beyond human.”
“……”
“Honestly, there wasn’t a wizard like you even during the Holy War. I don’t know if the world has changed since I last saw it, or if I’ve just become strange.”
“H-how……”
Ermont stammered.
“Even a Transcendent wouldn’t be able to withstand that explosion barehanded, would they……?”
“Even if the Ability Awakening Warband has high tolerance, they wouldn’t place someone who can’t directly use abilities among the Ten Seats.”
Lennok said.
“If you are the first ability user in the Ten Seats ranking, your inherent power shouldn’t be weak, yet you insist on fighting only with ghosts, which is strange.”
“……”
“After using Supernova to eliminate all the ghosts and directly attacking you, I finally understand. Is it possession or necromancy?”
Lennok smiled faintly, looking down at Saul, and asked.
“It’s not simply commanding ghosts, but possessing your body with them and directly wielding dozens of Innate Abilities…… That’s probably closer to your true power.”
Whooosh!!!!
A chilling ghostly aura coiled around Saul’s body, slowly encroaching on its surroundings.
At the same time, an eerie wail echoed from him, beginning to chill the area.
Saul’s true ability: commanding all sorts of ghosts, yet rarely using the abilities possessed by vengeful spirits themselves.
The moment Lennok, slowly massaging his wrist, walked towards Saul.
“……No. I’ll stop after all.”
Click, as if the air had released, the ghostly aura around Saul’s body miraculously faded.
The pale mist in the sky vanished, and the temperature returned instantly.
Saul sighed lightly, shrugging his shoulders, and said.
“I ended up here, but I really don’t want to fight. If it weren’t for the Zero Seat’s orders, I wouldn’t have come here.”
“……”
“If I’ve done this much against a wizard like you, Ophelia won’t say anything. I should stop here and go back.”
Saul scratched his cheek with a leisurely tone, as if the fierce battle just moments ago had been a lie.
Lennok crossed his arms and tilted his head.
“An interesting answer. Is this enough justification for you to retreat?”
“Justification…… Yes, it’s true I needed justification. It wasn’t like this before, but as I get older, I start to care about such things.”
Saul gave a bitter smile.
“It’s proof that I’ve become a shoddy adult, I suppose. Ah, was that too much like an old man?”
“I’m surprised you thought it wasn’t.”
“……Your tongue is quite sharp. Well, don’t look at it that way too much. I’m not saying these words empty-handed either.”
Saul, scratching his head awkwardly in apology, pulled out a pure white talisman from his pocket.
“Anyway, I’ve interfered with your work, so I’ll leave a gift as an apology. Will you accept it?”
Woowoong……!!!
A wondrous form glowed around the talisman, faintly imbued with a white mist-like substance.
Saul slowly placed the talisman he held between his fingers on the ground and deliberately stepped back.
“It’s a relic capable of containing and commanding souls or ghosts. Nothing is inside, so you can use it as you please.”
“……”
“It takes the form of a talisman, but it’s not a real talisman. You could say it’s more like a spiritual vessel made by refining a part of my spellcraft.”
Having said that, Saul smiled and winked at Ermont.
“It’s awkward for me to say it myself, but it’s a very valuable item. If things get hairy, you could even contain and command that black wizard’s cursed rituals with it.”
“H-hee-eekk……!! Don’t come near me!!”
“I don’t have a hobby of wasting valuable items on useless things.”
Lennok looked at the talisman with an expressionless face and shook his head.
“But I can tell it’s quite useful. Alright, I’ll take it.”
“You’re quick with numbers, which is good, isn’t it? Well, I expected a wizard like you to recognize it immediately.”
Indeed, even to Lennok’s eyes, the talisman was clearly no ordinary item.
If, as he said, it could contain and command specific souls or ghosts, its value would be inestimable.
Especially considering that in this world, souls exist as concrete concepts and units.
The fact that Saul was offering a part of his own spellcraft indicated his clear intent to pay a proper price.
“You gave up quickly for someone who came to retrieve Gileon’s wing. Is it fine for the Zero Seat’s mind to be maintained even without this?”
“Well…… Ophelia and I have known each other for a very long time.”
Saul scratched his cheek and turned around.
“I knew her even before the Zero Seat changed as she did now. So, it’ll probably be fine.”
“……”
“I can’t be sure, but she seems to have consumed a lot in Kabahim. So, she probably doesn’t need to rush for a while.”
Saul murmured as he slowly turned his steps.
“But next time, she might not accept this kind of excuse.”
Kuooooo……!!!
Lennok suddenly realized that a hazy mist had gathered thickly around Saul.
The sea of mist flowing beneath his feet rapidly slid, carrying Saul as it ascended in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, Saul, mounted atop a colossal ghost dragon hundreds of meters in size, looked down at Lennok.
“So, I hope we don’t meet again for such matters, Adamant Thunder.”
“……”
“Even without you…… there are too many old grudges I need to settle.”
No answer came.
The ghost dragon, carrying Saul who had turned without hesitation, instantly swam away into the sky and vanished.
Kuoooo……!!
An aura transcending the ghost dragon Yao Xin he met in Yorta, and a dimension apart from any ghost he had faced until now.
Had he been fighting without using such a powerful ghost all this time?
The First Seat of the Ability Awakening Warband.
A monster who, despite appearing suddenly in the middle of the ruins, immediately demonstrated the strength of his abilities and power.
Even those strangely powerful ghosts Saul commanded could be understood, considering his alias.
But it was also true that the thought of such beings now actively traversing the continent gave him a strange feeling.
He had realized countless times, in less than two days since starting this journey, how chaotic this world, nearing its end, would become.
Ermont, watching the scene with a pale expression, sighed.
“I-it’s over…… I really thought I was going to die this time.”
“Didn’t you do anything in this incident to say that?”
“I wanted to help too, but the compatibility was bad, you know, compatibility. Wasn’t the opponent an ability user who commanded vengeful spirits or ghosts?”
Ermont grumbled.
“As that person said, they might have interfered with my consciousness in some way. Doing nothing was just breaking even.”
Ermont was a user of Will-thought Transfer Spellcraft, which takes over others’ bodies. His consciousness itself was like his main body, not his physical form.
Ermont’s consciousness, having lived for hundreds of years and taken over others’ bodies, was already like a vengeful spirit itself.
That’s why Ermont had refrained from intervening, fearing he might be caught by Saul’s ability.
“Unexpected. Are you aware that you are closer to a vengeful spirit or a demon yourself?”
“Don’t say that. What if I get caught by that guy and become a really scary ghost?”
Ermont shrugged.
“I did my best not to be a hindrance in the fight. Wasn’t fulfilling my role just by not being a liability?”
“You’re good at eloquently disguising the fact that you were useless.”
“Ugh…… It’s not wrong, but I wasn’t just standing by and watching.”
Ermont scurried to one side of the ruins and gestured to Lennok.
“While desperately rolling around between the ground, I found a hidden teleportation magic circle underground. The one leading to Gateway City was still alive.”
“……You mean you were crawling on the ground like a bug during the fight for that reason?”
“Heh heh, I diligently guarded it so that that quack wouldn’t accidentally break it. How about it?”
As the debris was cleared, a blue magic circle, protected and covered in black smoke, was revealed.
It was subtly similar to the teleportation magic circle used when moving to the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors with Aileen.
“The power is almost exhausted, but it should be enough to transport the two of us. Shall we leave right away?”
“No. There’s one last thing to do before we leave this place.”
Lennok said, turning his gaze towards the fragments of ‘stars’ scattered throughout the ruins.
“Using it myself, I realized it’s more useful than I thought. Since it’s like this, I should take a few more.”
“Why are you talking so casually, as if you’re just taking a few gold nuggets? If you bring those lumps of contamination into Gateway City, it’ll be chaos.”
“Don’t worry about that part.”
Whoosh-
Ermont fell silent, watching the darkness flowing from the Demonic Giant’s left arm collect the star fragments.
“After being unbound, I thought I could use the darkness connected to the demon in this way. It seemed like a kind of subspace concept.”
“……I can’t say anything. Fine. Just do as you please.”
“Open it. We’ll leave immediately once I’m done.”
Lennok, holding Gileon’s wing, nodded, and Ermont, activating the magic circle’s trigger, stepped back.
The blue glowing magic circle shone brightly, and the moment it embraced Lennok and Ermont standing before it.
Flash!!!!
His vision flickered bright blue, and his entire body’s center of gravity was inverted.
A hot wind brushed past his ears. The sensation of everything blurring and distorting within the heat.
Lennok was now falling headfirst, inverted, hundreds of meters in the air.
“Kyaaaah!!!!”
Ermont’s noisy shout, heard a beat late, suggested what had happened.
Simultaneously slowing his descent by spreading Gileon’s wing, Lennok snatched and gripped Ermont’s nape.
Whoosh!!!
“Relax. If you struggle, I’ll just let go.”
“Cough! Ugh.”
Ermont, limp, hung from Lennok’s wing and raised a hand.
“Th-that way……”
At that moment, Lennok realized why the wind around here was so hot.
The midday sun was not in the sky now.
The beautiful afterimage of a Flame Flower floated in the distant blue sky.
The form of the city where the First Gate, transferred to Cheonbeon’s name after the Conjunction Spell Master’s death, was located.
A mega-city whose scale and prosperity were incomparable to when he last visited.
Gateway City lay before his eyes.
“W-we’ve arrived. Gateway City……”
“……”
Lennok didn’t answer, looking down at Gateway City spread out beneath him with a strange expression.
The red glowing Flame Flower, guarding the city’s sky, softly swayed as if recognizing Lennok.