Chapter 253: White Lion (3)
Lennok had no intention of settling the fight with him here from the start.
This was separate from the fact that his environment and condition made it difficult to deploy his Domain right now.
The imagery of the Domain Lennok had acquired would undoubtedly cause uncontrollable repercussions once revealed.
In other words, if he wanted to keep his secret, he had to kill his opponent within the Domain once it was deployed, no matter what.
Standing before him now were Turan, the White Lion, and Gionis Verbane, the Archmage of heat-elemental magic.
If Lennok were to deliberately expand his Domain to face both of them at once, there was no guarantee he could kill both and silence them.
Why complicate things? Deploying a Domain was merely part of a plan to set the stage exactly as he desired.
And even before he knew about Domains, Lennok was well-versed in such matters.
Crraaaack!!
The gunfire from afar never ceased, and once the balance was broken by the continuous impacts on the stone slab, it couldn’t be restored.
It wasn’t just shaking from the impact.
The stone slab, dozens of meters in radius, could remain perfectly suspended hundreds of meters above the crater because a delicate balance had been struck, utilizing the power of the natural environment to its utmost.
The moment that balance collapsed, the magical force vanished as if it were a lie.
Screech…
The tilting stone slab slowly began to crumble.
It was an illusion, as if the starlight filling the night sky was suddenly shooting upwards. It was a sign that the ground was giving way beneath them.
Simultaneously, fierce winds enveloped the three of them from all directions, twisting their bodies.
Whoooosh!!!
“…He’s out of his mind.”
Gionis, belatedly realizing they had reached a point of no return, broke into a cold sweat.
“You’ve decided to completely destroy the sanctuary of the Blaiver Tower, which has stood for hundreds of years, just to escape this situation…!!”
“Isn’t that much better than letting the entire Western Continent branch be taken over?”
Lennok replied indifferently, slowly moving backward and subtly heading towards the tower.
“Where do you think you’re going, you arrogant bastard?!”
Turan instinctively knew Lennok was trying to secure survivors just from that brief movement and tried to stop him, but Gionis grabbed his shoulder.
“Turan, snap out of it!!”
“Wha…!!”
“This isn’t the time to fight Van. We need to escape, now.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?!”
Turan let out a drawn-out roar, channeling his mana.
The beast’s ferocious gaze glinted, overwhelming his ally in turn.
“After succeeding in cornering him like this, you’re saying we have to back out now?!”
“…”
“What about all my suffering, enduring by eating tasteless humans?!”
“Look at the direction we’re falling.”
At Gionis’s chilling voice, Turan, as if doused with cold water, turned his head.
“Southwest. That’s the direction where the Divine Bow is waiting. If we continue this way, we’ll be surrounded by that wizard and the Divine Bow.”
“…”
“Considering the tilt and the degree of erosion of the stone slab, that wizard was exchanging blows with us, having thought this far ahead from the very beginning.”
He had thought the tilting stone slab was just tumbling down randomly, but was even that a misconception?
Speechless, Turan hung onto the slab and looked down at the ground.
There was no need to guess the weight of this colossal stone slab.
The massive rock, with its immense mass, accelerated its descent over time, rapidly approaching the ground.
The moment the figure of the archer, gleaming with green light, came into view below.
Turan also understood what Gionis was saying.
That wizard, observing the situation while clinging to the stone slab with them, was trying to flip the entire situation with a single trick: dropping the Blaiver Tower’s sanctuary.
If things continued like this, they would completely lose the meaning of having spent a long time occupying the Blaiver Tower and creating a favorable environment for themselves. Instead, they would be mercilessly beaten by Evelyn and him within the scenario Lennok had orchestrated in a single day.
“…!!”
Having understood that much, Turan said no more.
He simply hoisted Gionis onto his shoulder and crouched low.
Crraaaack!!!
As the White Lion’s thick thighs rapidly swelled, the stone slab he stood on crumpled and twisted.
Turan, unleashing the full power of his gathered grip and leg strength, leaped.
Booooom!!
As he leaped from the stone slab with his bare body, the half-tilted slab completely flipped over and spun once.
At the same time, Turan, carrying Gionis, flew straight towards the crater.
Had their judgment been even slightly delayed, they would have had to endure the simultaneous bombardment fired by Evelyn and Lennok.
“But even that’s too late.”
The ground, now close enough to be within Lennok’s sight. The edge of an unnamed hill in the Claronis volcanic zone.
“Hup…”
Evelyn lightly inhaled and drew her last arrow.
A long, black spear from which green ripples emanated.
That equipment, normally used for close combat, spread its wings wide, rooted itself to the ground, and transformed into a massive ballista.
The archer’s back as she slowly turned, drawing the green-glowing string between the wings of the exquisitely intricate mechanism.
A jet-black arrow, held between thumb and forefinger, took on a mana-twisted rotation and soared into the air.
Whoooooosh!!!!
The arrow, accelerated by two shockwaves in mid-air, chased after Turan’s form.
The jet-black flash, stretching out in a long arc, streaked across the cold night sky, outpacing the sound.
The delicate precision of a projectile accurately pursuing two figures, who were rapidly moving away from the stone slab in the barely visible night sky.
There was no time to even admire that miraculous archery.
“Kuaaaaaaaah!!!”
He couldn’t avoid it.
Turan, instinctively realizing that fact, screamed at the top of his lungs and threw the two-handed axe he held with all his might.
The heavily displaced axe spun in mid-air, moving to deflect the arrow.
Screeeech-!
In response to its trajectory, Evelyn’s arrow also reacted.
“…!!!!”
That was the realm Evelyn Marcia had reached by completing the seven definitions of Self-transformation.
The pinnacle of interference, reached only by those who, as perfected warriors, faced themselves and successfully embraced their Miniature Universe.
Inner World Projection.
Miniature Universe Manifestation.
Inertia Manipulation.
Kiiiigigigigigigig…!!!
The head of the arrow, fired at supersonic speed, rotated strangely in mid-air, spiraling around Turan’s thrown double-edged axe as if stripping it away.
That technique, twisting in impossible directions and relentlessly pursuing the target’s heart, had already far surpassed human archery.
The arrow, having twisted its direction at a right angle in empty air, plunged straight into Turan’s back.
Kagagak!!
“Hraaaah!!”
With the White Lion’s low roar, the beast and the wizard, who had been arcing towards the Blaiver Tower, plunged perpendicularly towards the ground.
Kwoooong!!!
Only after confirming that sight did Evelyn slowly lower the bow she was holding.
A moment later, the stone slab, dozens of meters across, fell behind her, emitting a tremendous roar.
A powerful earthquake, capable of shaking the entire volcanic zone, struck the nearby arid rocky area.
Kugu gugugugugu!!!
A wave of impact that overturned the entire ground.
Rocks that had been embedded for a long time leaped from their places, and the slowly flowing river of lava splashed in all directions.
The stone slab, falling from hundreds of meters, left a long trail in the southwest vicinity of the volcanic zone before finally coming to a halt.
And amidst that carnival of impact, only the tower standing at the center of the stone slab remained perfectly intact.
Just before it hit the ground, in that fleeting moment, Lennok wrapped hundreds of mana threads around the tower, attaching them to its surroundings, thereby protecting it from the impact of the fall.
Only after confirming Lennok’s figure standing atop the tower, gripping hundreds of mana threads, did Evelyn finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Haa… That was close. You know that, right?”
“It’s not going as smoothly as planned.”
Lennok, who had been clinging to the top of the tower, slowly descended to the ground, waving his arm.
In response to his gesture, the dust filling the vicinity scattered in all directions with the wind.
“I never imagined Gionis would so openly try to recruit me. He must have been that confident in succeeding with his plan.”
Lennok said that, looking up past the crater, towards the direction of the Blaiver Tower’s main headquarters.
“I managed to rescue the hidden Elder Council members and the Machine City envoys… but now the Forge and Mauser are the problem.”
Lennok didn’t just decide to drop this sanctuary, which had been floating at the top of the crater, for no reason.
He had already learned from experience in the Autonomous Region that bringing something floating in the air down to the ground was the most effective method.
It wasn’t merely about destroying the stage Gionis had set.
The countless Grimoires hidden in the sanctuary, and the members of the Elder Council and the Machine City envoys whom Gionis had kept barely alive.
By simply dropping this stone slab to the ground, he had succeeded in rescuing others who hadn’t yet been devoured by Turan.
Of course, while protecting the tower from the impact of the magnificent fall, he couldn’t prevent Turan and Gionis from escaping, but it was certainly a significant gain to have rescued the Blaiver Tower’s key figures for now.
“We were lucky.”
Lennok replied, massaging his stiff shoulder.
Although he had actively used levitation magic to cling to the tilting stone slab, it was still difficult to prevent strain on his body.
Only after pulling two cigarettes from his pocket and lighting them both at once did he feel the trembling subside.
“He must have thought I was a high-level ice magic user, as I was able to get a rough explanation.”
As Lennok briefly summarized what he had heard from Gionis, Evelyn’s expression subtly contorted.
“…It’s true there are many problems with the Blaiver Tower’s higher-ups. I don’t want to side with them either, but harming innocent others crosses a line. How could they trust a den of demons like Pandemonium?”
“Well… the problem is that they seem to be on the verge of success. From what I heard, preparations to transport the Forge are already complete.”
“If they start fleeing with the Forge, it’ll be hard to stop. It’ll be like moving with a bomb… We have to end this here, somehow.”
Lennok and Evelyn also didn’t believe that the two superhumans had died from the single arrow she had just fired.
They both knew too much about Pandemonium for that.
The important thing was to seize this moment and cut off their breath immediately.
“…”
He could feel Evelyn’s hand trembling faintly.
Although she showed no outward signs, she must have been under considerable strain from this incident.
In particular, there was no way there wouldn’t be after-effects from having used up all her mana to dissipate the heat while preventing the Brazier accident.
It was natural for her to be strained, having forced herself to attempt multiple ultra-long-range snipes in that state to cooperate with Lennok.
Neither of them was in normal condition, but no one bothered to mention it.
They both knew that battles could never be fought in peak condition.
The struggle between life and death was always unfair and irrational. Complaining or even worrying about that fact was a luxury.
Evelyn silently massaged her arm and turned her head backward.
The agents she had brought with her were busily pulling out and laying down the people who had been barely breathing inside the tower.
“How are their conditions?”
One of the agents, busy with first aid, replied.
“There are vital signs, but their consciousness is almost extinguished. They appear to be practically comatose. I smell Corpse Soul Magic.”
Corpse Soul Magic.
Corpse Soul Magic is a type of necromancy that involves artificially implanting a soul into a corpse or using it in the opposite manner. Naturally, it is a forbidden art thoroughly rejected by academia.
Lennok and Evelyn looked at each other and took action separately.
Lennok grabbed one of the Elder Council members and extended his mana inwards, while Evelyn brought her nose to the mouths of the people lying with vacant open eyes.
A conclusion was reached simultaneously, through different methods.
“They used drugs.”
Evelyn nodded at Lennok’s words.
“They drugged their food to loosen their consciousness, then applied dark magic. It’ll be hard for them to regain consciousness for a while. We probably can’t get help from these people.”
He had thought it highly probable that Gionis was acting unilaterally, disregarding the Elder Council’s will, but he hadn’t imagined he would go to such thorough lengths.
It wasn’t just about subduing them and making them obey; it must have been because there was a need to throw them as fodder to the White Lion.
It was clear how meticulously he had planned for this.
“Let’s move now.”
Evelyn, looking down at her faintly trembling hand, stood up and spoke.
“If we let them get away here, we’ll lose both Mauser and the Forge. We have to settle this here before they return to the Blaiver Tower.”
“Don’t worry. Your last arrow definitely hit.”
Lennok stood up and replied.
“They couldn’t have gotten far.”
He had already thoroughly searched the volcanic zone using mana detection a long time ago.
The exceptionally strong presences of the two hadn’t moved for a while after falling to the ground.
They must also know that there isn’t much they can do by escaping to the Blaiver Tower now.
From the moment he successfully shot down the fleeing White Lion, the battlefield was as good as decided.
It was time to hunt the wounded beast.