Chapter 1403: Paradise Lost (14)

KWWWWAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

The purple-dyed landscape of Paradise Lost split, and beyond it, giant structures rose one after another.

Tetrahedral altars resembling pyramids. Dozens of these colossal structures, each spanning thousands of meters, rose in succession everywhere the eye could see.

In the blink of an eye, a catastrophic and magnificent spectacle unfolded as the vast landscape of Paradise Lost was overturned, collapsed, and seemed to split apart.

Sensing an immense and grotesque presence rapidly rising from beyond, Lennok quickly lifted his gaze.

“This is…!!”

It was coming.

Just as a chill ran down Lennok’s spine at the utterly sudden manifestation and he raised his mana with all his might, a purple ripple spread circularly through the air, sweeping over the spot where the Cradle had been.

KWAAAAAAAANG!!!!

“…….!!”

Retreating from the Spell-Words exploding like bombs, Lennok grabbed the fallen boy’s corpse and used Flicker.

He burst out of Paradise Lost at incredible speed, breaking through the half-destroyed, melting walls of the Cradle.

CRACK!! CRUMBLE!!!!

“Keuk!!”

As soon as he was outside the Cradle, the scene of Paradise Lost collapsing and disintegrating in real time unfolded before him.

Landing among the purple bushes and sliding to regain his balance, Lennok lifted his gaze with a hardened expression.

“Does she intend to summon her true body to this very spot…?!”

KWWWWAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

The Spell-Word Stones, deeply embedded in the ground, were uprooted, revealing the tree roots connected beneath the steles.

The roots embedded in the Spell-Word Stones were connected to the rising structures all over Paradise Lost like a brain and nerves—a bizarre sight.

At the center of the Spell-Word Stones and altars, connected as densely as neurons, was a bathtub that formed the core of this giant brain.

KUUOOOOOHHHH!!!!!

On the surface of the massive bathtub, thousands of meters in size, unknown, bizarre characters were densely engraved, emitting light.

The magic tool of the Ikanthara demon worshippers. An immense size, as if the bathtub that could forcibly keep any being alive had been magnified thousands of times.

Inside it, a white, lumpy mass squirmed ceaselessly, extending hundreds of strangely grown tentacles in this direction.

Gurgle. Gurgle. Gurgle. Gurgle.

“Jinwa….”

A bizarre form where not only the flesh but also the mind and soul had melted into a squirming mass within the bathtub.

Was it just an illusion that its appearance resembled a snail, endlessly writhing inside a broken shell?

Jinwa (陳蝸). Her epithet, the ‘Benevolent Snail’, had, in a way, accurately pointed to her true nature.

If that was the case, then even when she became an Ascendant, Jinwa’s body was already—

[OBEY]

[REVERE]

[WORSHIP]

“…….!!”

KWAAAAAAA!!!!

Lava erupted from the places where the Spell-Word Stones had been uprooted, and the gloomy paradise was engulfed in brilliant flames.

The Spell-Word Stones, connected to the nerve fibers, floated in the sky, resonating violently and endlessly scattering transcendent Spell-Words.

[PRAISE THE BIRTH OF THE NEW GOD]

[I SHALL MAKE A GRAND DECLARATION BEFORE THE COMING MIRACLE]

WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNG!!!!

The sentences slowly carved into the air, the commands echoing like whispers, manifested as an absolute law in Paradise Lost.

[I WILL PERCEIVE]

[AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND]

[I WILL PRAY]

[AND YOU WILL COMPLY]

[I WILL ENTREAT]

[AND YOU WILL BEG]

The Spell-Words, which had been but simple one-word commands, took the form of sentences and began to materialize.

As if obeying that will, all matter and existence in Paradise Lost knelt in place, bowed their heads, and prayed.

[I SHALL BESTOW MERCY]

[YOU WILL HUMBLY ACCEPT IT]

[AND IN THE END, YOU WILL SUBMIT]

Trees, lava, corpses, rocks. A horrifying sight as all of Paradise Lost, regardless of inorganic or organic matter, submitted according to the Spell-Word.

Even Lennok, who possessed Targeted Resistance, felt a sharp pain as if his brain was being stabbed with an awl from the power and scale of the Spell-Word.

However, even as Lennok erected a barrier to withstand the downpour of Spell-Words, he felt a powerful sense of unease.

[Master!!]

“I know. She’s incomprehensibly rushed. This is…!!!”

Something was wrong.

For Jinwa to suddenly bring out her true body in this situation was strangely abrupt.

Jain, the vassal of Yeongheo whom he met in Gateway City, had said that Jinwa had suffered a severe blow from her fight with the Nether King.

The boy resembling Myeong, who awoke from the Black Coffin, explained that Jinwa’s true body had lost its physical form and melted down.

Combining the information gathered from inside and outside Paradise Lost, it was clear that Jinwa was currently in a state where normal movement was impossible.

Moreover, he had judged that she couldn’t act rashly now, with the crucial schedule of a deal with the Three Grand Dukes ahead.

And yet, the moment she saw Lennok, Jinwa was dragging her true body out to this place with extreme suddenness.

A reaction so radical, even violent, that it was hard to believe it was simply because her Incarnation Body had been defeated by Lennok.

There had to be a reason why Jinwa was going to such lengths, pushing herself to reveal her true body.

As if… the conversation they had just before had touched a nerve—

“Jinwa’s true body is manifesting in the Ideological Domain, causing Paradise Lost to collapse.”

“…….!”

A voice that shouldn’t have been audible came from beside Lennok.

The corpse of the boy, held in Lennok’s hand, who had escaped the Cradle with him.

The blood-soaked boy, with his eyes weakly open, was looking up at the purple-stained sky.

“Originally, this Paradise Lost was a cradle to contain the embryo that is her. The reason it was such a dangerous hell was that it was a garden of knowledge that grew by using even the Ascendant herself as nourishment….”

“You….”

“But though the time is not yet right, she is trying to awaken on her own. The ruin and collapse unfolding in Paradise Lost now is something close to a backlash from that….”

The boy’s voice was faint and hard to make out, but Lennok had no trouble understanding the content itself.

The situation where Jinwa’s true body was manifesting, and simultaneously, the Spell-Word Stones of Paradise Lost were being uprooted one after another, revealing even their roots.

That must mean that for her to act directly, a backlash powerful enough to destroy Paradise Lost existed.

“At the point she has given up on the continuation of Paradise Lost and awakened, Jinwa will no longer care about the existing situation or contracts. Benefactor, you must preserve your own safety….”

“……”

When Jinwa came to the Cradle, she must have been confident that she could persuade or subdue Lennok one way or another.

But when her Incarnation Body was defeated by Lennok’s lightning magic, and even her true body took a hit, the situation was completely upended.

The moment she realized that Lennok’s lightning could damage even her true body, Jinwa chose to reveal it herself first.

Was this a declaration of her will not to hand over the initiative in this situation to Lennok, even if it meant Paradise Lost would be destroyed here?

The sheer, incomprehensible, blind obsession and madness that accepted ruin was enough to send a momentary chill down Lennok’s spine.

[INSECT]

KUUUUUUNG!!!

From the sky of Paradise Lost, now seeming impossibly distant, Jinwa, who had revealed her true body, cast her gaze down.

[I TRIED TO OVERLOOK THIS FOR THE SAKE OF PAST TIES, BUT YOU CHOOSE PUNISHMENT.]

Even though the white, squirming, snail-like mass only had bizarre tentacles, he could tell at a glance that she was ‘looking’ at him.

[DO YOU NOT YET REALIZE THAT YOU ARE NOT THE SAME AS YOU WERE THEN?]

“…….”

[THE SIN OF DEFYING A GOD WITH THE BODY OF A FOOLISH INSECT IS SO GREAT THAT TO BE TORN APART AND KILLED A HUNDRED TIMES OVER WOULD NOT BE ENOUGH.]

WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNG!!!!

Corpses rising from all directions formed the shape of bizarre, inverted characters, expressing her will before Lennok’s eyes.

The bizarrely bent and broken limbs of the corpses trembled as if to display her fury.

[THAT DEBT SHALL BE REPAID WITH THE BODIES OF THE VERMIN YOU BROUGHT WITH YOU.]

PAAAAAAT!!!!

Before Lennok could even move, a vast ripple exploded outward from the center of the snail’s giant body.

In an instant, the Ascendant’s will swept across all of Paradise Lost, reading every thread of causality that existed in the garden.

Spell-Words began to rain down on the members of Pandemonium who were attacking the Spell-Word Stones throughout Paradise Lost.

“…….!!!!”

Soryu and the Conjunction Spell Master, Maiya and Sarin.

The members, who had been attacking the Spell-Word Stones from different directions, noticed the rapidly changing situation and reacted immediately.

They moved, lifting Hylaea as if grabbing her by the scruff, and heaved the blood-vomiting Ermont onto their shoulders.

The moment Agneta opened the Imaginary Dimension to pull the members away from the Spell-Word Stones at once, a tidal wave of grotesque characters covering the entire sky swept over the spot where the members had been standing at an incredible speed.

[INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT INSECT]

DUDUDUDUDU!!!!!

“Across the entirety of Paradise Lost… is she firing her Spell-Words indiscriminately?”

Did she awaken her true body and simultaneously read and intervene in the causality occurring throughout Paradise Lost?

A feast of authority, blocking Lennok’s detection in a single stroke and isolating the very spacetime of Paradise Lost itself.

Literally, an unrealistic manipulation of reality, as if this entire Ideological Domain was a world created just for her.

The moment Lennok sensed the members’ presences vanish and raised his mana with a cold, hardened expression, centered on the bathtub containing her true body, an innumerable number of Spell-Word Stones began to rotate, enveloping the space.

OOOOOOOHHHH!!!!!

[NOW THAT THINGS HAVE COME TO THIS, WHAT USE ARE PREVIOUSLY PROMISED DEALS?]

The surrounding atmosphere and mana were cut off as if time had stopped, and even sound and sight began to flicker and cut out.

Jinwa’s Spell-Word, completely excluding and severing all the constituent elements of the world within Paradise Lost from Lennok.

In the blink of an eye, the purple Spell-Word that had emptied and carved out spacetime scattered a grotesque light and whispered to Lennok.

[I SHALL DEVOUR ABSOLUTENESS HERE AND ASCEND TO THE GREAT UPPER HEAVENS.]

KWAAAA!!!!

Giants made of tangled earth and flesh reached for Lennok.

Wailing and screaming corpses drooled as they rushed toward Lennok.

The moment Lennok looked back at the spot where the half-destroyed Cradle had collapsed and raised his mana with a hardened expression, enveloped in sharp lightning, Lennok accelerated as if shot forward, beginning to traverse the collapsing Paradise Lost.

CRACKLE!!!

KUGWAGWAGWAGWA!!!

“The Ascendant’s intervention was to be expected from the moment we touched the Cradle, but this situation is strangely abrupt….”

The boy murmured faintly, his voice on the verge of fading out.

“No matter how powerful an Ascendant, she shouldn’t be rampaging so rashly before such a crucial deal. Unless… something touched a nerve that made her act this way….”

“Right after her Incarnation Body necrotized, Jinwa’s reaction became strangely violent.”

KWAGWANG!!!

Leaping over the waves of Spell-Words and the hands of the monsters, Lennok’s eyes glinted coldly.

“She reacted with an incomprehensible oversensitivity to my lightning magic. There’s definitely something there.”

The moment his lightning magic caused her Incarnation Body to necrotize, and the damage extended to the consciousness of her true body, Jinwa had reacted with extreme sensitivity to the fact that Lennok had once again obtained a spellcraft powerful enough to kill an Ascendant.

As if the very fact that Lennok could do so was something unreasonable.

As if that fact itself was an intolerable nerve to have been touched.

The conversation they had just before she destroyed Paradise Lost to summon her true body. The secret that made Jinwa rampage so recklessly lay within it.

The moment Lennok’s rapidly flowing thoughts reached that point, KIIIIK!!

Lennok, who had been fleeing the collapsing Paradise Lost, stopped and formed a hand seal.

“Continuing to run away won’t solve anything.”

FLASH!!

From beyond the sky of Paradise Lost, a brilliant blue lightning flashed, and something massive plummeted at incredible speed.

It crushed the Spell-Word Stones floating around Jinwa and blocking the sky as if they were tofu, then crashed to the ground.

KWAAAAAAAANG!!!!

[Summon: Piercing Thunder Key]

A colossal key of lightning, wreathed in blazing thunderbolts, was embedded diagonally in the ground, shimmering with a pure blue light.

Quickly forming another hand seal, Lennok reached for the Piercing Thunder Key that had fallen before him and chanted.

“Open the Hall of the Thunder God.”

KWAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

The key, glowing with blue light, rotated clockwise while still embedded in the ground.

Simultaneously, the entire ground where the key was planted opened wide as if a lock had been undone, revealing a sanctuary from another dimension.

The remnants of a utopia, dreamed of by Seekers who mastered lightning magic, transcending their own world.

“Wizard.”

The Ascendant of the First World, who had long slumbered within the immeasurable sanctuary of lightning, rose to her feet.

“This is the first time you have summoned me to such a battlefield.”

Crackle…!!!

A woman of magnificent stature, easily over two meters tall, looking a head or two taller than Lennok.

Over her fluttering dragon robe, sharp lightning bolts wrapped around her body, flickering like wings.

An aura so heavy it was ponderous, and so fierce and overwhelming it felt almost violent.

Her eyes shimmered a pure white like mirrors containing thunderbolts, and her gaze was arrogant, as if looking down on everything beneath her.

The Ascendant of the First World, born boundlessly noble, who had reached the answer on her own after a long time.

The Lightning Emperor. The moment the Transcendent of the Old World dwelling within the Piercing Thunder Key broke her long silence and manifested in reality.

“Lightning Emperor. My apologies, but there isn’t much time to explain.”

Lennok said to her quickly.

“Can you deal with that Ascendant for just a moment?”

“If it is a foe worthy of receiving my Lightning Sea Spellcraft, then I see no reason not to grant your request.”

The Lightning Emperor said leisurely.

“But are you certain? The one who must bear the price will not be me, but you.”

The Lightning Emperor was the guardian dwelling in the Hall of the Thunder God, an Ascendant from the First World who wielded Lightning Sea Spellcraft.

But even though Lennok knew of her existence, he had never summoned her directly in such a dangerous situation before.

Because she was not a being belonging to this reality, just manifesting consumed an immense amount of will-thought and mana, and the price had to be borne entirely by Lennok, the current master of the Hall of the Thunder God.

The duration for which he could maintain the summoning was ridiculously short, so in most cases, it wouldn’t be effective, meaning he never had a proper chance to receive her help.

But in a moment like this, where everything was breaking down and heading toward catastrophe, he had no intention of weighing the pros and cons.

“As long as you can hold her, even for a moment, that’s enough. Don’t worry about the rest.”

As he said that, Lennok brought his hand to the black ring on his finger.

“Then I’ll take care of what’s left.”

With the Ascendant’s true body descending, not only Lennok but also the members of Pandemonium were exposed to a threat.

Now that Paradise Lost was collapsing and Jinwa had awakened and begun to rampage, this was no time to be picky about methods.

To respond to this situation, he had to intervene directly with Jinwa’s true body and change the game.

And Lennok still had a way to lead this situation, which was heading toward catastrophe, to an ending that not even an Ascendant could predict.

An authority that was perhaps the most transcendent means Lennok could use, one that might even be close to Reversing Heaven.

A fortuitous opportunity he realized and obtained the moment he faced his own reflection in the mirror of the Ascension Relic.

A one-time miracle to superimpose and recreate a memory of the past that once existed onto reality.

Here and now, Lennok intended to summon his past self directly.