Chapter 264: Return (1)

Phooosh!!

A fountain of blood erupted in mid-air, dyeing the ground crimson.

Walter’s headless corpse and an utterly exhausted Mila tumbled down together, intertwined.

Thump!!

“Ugh!!”

[…A rather unpleasant smell.]

Davi, who had been plastered flat on top of Mila’s head, hopped down to the ground and sighed.

“…Cut me some slack.”

Just as Mila, sprawled on the ground, groaned and tried to pick herself up.

“An excellent finish.”

“…!!!”

A voice came from Walter’s headless body.

It gurgled in Walter’s chest, then a mouth sprouted near his heart and began to speak.

“But this won’t stop me.”

“He wasn’t a cultist, he was a monster…!”

The magazine Lennok handed her had run out long ago.

Mila tried to grasp the hilt-less dagger in her bare hands, but Walter snatched it from her grasp with disheartening ease.

“Ugh…!!”

“Are all the mercenaries living in this city as skilled warriors as you?”

Walter’s head, now fully sprouted from the chest of his headless body, grinned widely.

“You’ll soon find out as I look around. My heart trembles at the prospect of spreading the faith after so long.”

Once he killed Mila, who had been the most bothersome, escaping the university wouldn’t be difficult.

The mana manipulation ability of the lightning user was extraordinary, but unless they were a physical combatant, it would be easy to shake off pursuit.

Once he hid in the underground waterways, disappearing into the city would be instantaneous.

Just as Walter thought so and was about to plunge the dagger’s blade into Mila’s chest.

Lennok, who had been calmly forming a hand seal far away, muttered.

“That won’t happen.”

Zzzzzzt…!!

A powerful wave of lightning, extending from Davi, resonated and pierced directly through Walter’s body.

“Ugh…!!”

A strange regenerative ability that kept him conscious even after his head was completely blown off.

In the preceding battle, Mila had killed Walter at least five times, yet in the end, she had given him an opening.

It was only natural that Mila struggled against a power that far exceeded the realm of spells or psychic abilities.

But conversely, thanks to the critical opening she created, Lennok was able to seize the timing to directly intervene without expending much effort.

Whoooooosh!!!

Through a bolt of lightning that pierced Walter without hesitation, Lennok and Davi resonated simultaneously.

The disparity between body and consciousness arises because of the temporarily incarnated body.

Once that gap was somewhat measured through sensory perception, it became possible to cleanly target Walter’s consciousness and interfere with it from this side.

For this fleeting moment, which would not have appeared in a normal human body and consciousness, Lennok had been assisting Mila’s combat while continuously searching for an opening.

Zzzzzzzzt!!

Lennok’s mana, which had penetrated Walter’s body, instantly spread throughout his system, capturing and analyzing every phenomenon occurring within that body. Davi immediately received, recorded, and analyzed that information.

It wasn’t just physical information; it was a sensitivity that delved into the very imagery of the consciousness residing within that body.

Lennok’s exquisitely sensitive mana perception reacted to Walter’s mental world, immediately delving into his memories and consciousness.

Walter’s expression completely changed as he belatedly realized something was going wrong.

“W-wait… What are you doing…!!!!”

Thud!!

Walter’s headless body thrashed on the ground even after falling, but Lennok’s mana perception, having spread throughout his body, didn’t stop.

As Lennok’s consciousness flashed, he immediately switched his viewpoint, following the faint thread connected to that body.

Crossing a chaotic and messy world of consciousness, towards the individual watching all this from beyond.

Fwaaaaaaah!!

I see it.

A street lined with exotic wooden buildings topped with tiled roofs.

A dense, chaotic urban area packed without an inch of space.

A balcony on a high-rise, tiled-roof building overlooking most of that street.

A middle-aged man kneeling and praying.

“Stooooooop!!!”

Walter, finally realizing that Lennok was reversely analyzing his spell and peering into his core consciousness, shrieked, but it was already too late.

“You were closer than I thought.”

Lennok, opening his eyes, looked down at Walter and smiled.

“Palgung Fortress, huh… This is going to make things quite a bit easier.”

“Goddaaaamn you!!!”

Walter, who had been screaming like a madman, his earlier composure completely gone, suddenly stood up and began to flee.

His form, having been thoroughly exposed to its very roots by Lennok’s lightning, could no longer even maintain the shape of a proper human.

Only an unknown entity, like a ghost, floated behind his back, holding his body together.

“Where do you think you’re going…!”

Lennok immediately tried to grab him but faltered for a moment due to the recoil of deeply peering into another’s psyche.

His mana perception was abnormally sensitive, making it difficult to properly control the power.

If he were to use magic to seize Walter here, he might accidentally blow up the entire Necromancy Department Research Building.

The confusion in his mana perception lasted about 2 seconds. Considering he had almost perfectly synchronized with another’s psyche, it was an incredibly fast recovery, but in that time, Walter had run away, dodging the lightning Davi emitted.

Whoosh!!

Lennok immediately realized which direction Walter was heading and shook Mila.

“Mila, you need to get up.”

“What? Wasn’t it all over?”

“He’s heading towards the Elemental Magic Department.”

Lennok said with a slightly hardened expression.

“It seems he’s after Priscilla and Penia.”

“…Damn it.”

Mila, who had been sprawled on the ground with a slightly unfocused gaze, got up.

Pulling out her phone from her pocket, she immediately called Priscilla.

“Silla. Are you there?”

As she made the call, she immediately headed towards the Elemental Magic Department Research Building.

Mila gritted her teeth and chased after Walter, running hard, with Lennok following close behind.

He could guess why Walter was targeting Priscilla and Penia.

If he had temporarily incarnated by taking Lan Fei’s body, there was a very high probability that he had also inherited some of Lan Fei’s memories.

Considering that the blood used in the incarnation process was a mix of Lan Fei’s and Penia’s blood, Walter might think it’s possible to take over Penia’s body as well.

And if all those assumptions were true, there was only one conclusion.

Lennok, panting as he ran behind Mila, muttered.

“He can’t end the spell whenever he wants… There must be a condition that he has to remain in the incarnated body for a certain period of time.”

Otherwise, there’s no explanation for why he didn’t cancel the spell and escape the moment his main body’s location was exposed.

Davi, floating above Lennok’s head and looking down at him, said.

[It seems Master is going to die before that bishop.]

“…There’s no other way… Whew!”

It’s been a long time since he’s sprinted at full speed without the help of a pill.

If he had even a cigarette, he might be able to run like a normal person with the pill’s effects, but he had no choice but to pant and follow behind Mila.

Fortunately, the Elemental Magic Department Research Building wasn’t far from the Necromancy Department dorms.

A large open space in the center of the research building.

In the middle of it, Priscilla and Penia were confronting Walter.

Priscilla was sweating, and Penia looked exhausted from bleeding excessively.

But neither of them had lost consciousness; instead, they were burning with fighting spirit against Walter.

Gurgle, gurgle…!!

Walter’s mouth popped out of his lump of flesh, which could no longer be called human, and spoke.

“I won’t say much. If you hand over that woman, I’ll quietly withdraw.”

“…”

Priscilla, grabbing Penia’s shoulder, whose face was pale and hesitant, shook her head firmly.

“Get lost.”

CRASH!!!

Immediately after, Mila, who had sprinted quickly from behind, kicked Walter’s back and sliced off the bizarrely protruding flesh.

“I don’t know what you’re so confident about, struggling like this.”

Mila said, stomping on Walter’s body with her combat boot.

“Do you really think you can escape from here? Shall we see how long you can cling to that body?”

The moment she blew off Walter’s head, the battle was already over.

The fact that he couldn’t properly regenerate his head afterward was proof that the power contained within that body was almost exhausted.

Yet, Walter still struggled, clinging to a sliver of hope.

“It seems there’s a misunderstanding.”

Walter gurgled and laughed.

“I’m not doing this because I enjoy it. It’s not pleasant to enlighten savages who haven’t awakened from their dreams.”

“What?”

“But because I believe it’s important to spread the great will across this land, even enduring such insults… that’s why I can make this decision without hesitation.”

At that moment, the faint, blurry tentacle-like shape that had been subtly floating behind Walter’s back began to be sucked into his body.

The blurry shape, which had been simply regarded as part of a necromancy spell, entered his body directly – a bizarre sight.

Lennok, who had rushed up behind them, panted but immediately channeled his mana to disrupt Walter’s consciousness, but it was no use.

It was a higher-dimensional spell operating on completely different principles and laws than magic.

Another branch of body manipulation, which twistedly manifested the illusions one believed in, powered by faith and mental strength bordering on madness.

At that moment, Walter’s body, which Mila had been stomping on, began to swell uncontrollably.

Crackkkkkle!!!

Massive amounts of flesh, unbelievable to burst from a small boy’s body, spread out as if to engulf the entire Elemental Magic Department Research Building.

“Waaaaah!!”

“I, I-is this what…!!”

Other students from different departments, who hadn’t yet grasped the situation, came running out of the research building with horrified expressions to witness the sight.

But even more striking to Lennok’s eyes than the abnormal growth speed was how, despite swelling so rapidly, it began to take on a concrete form and maintain balance.

At that abnormal growth rate, Lennok also immediately began to move.

“Davi.”

[What should we do?]

“That level of growth without any process whatsoever. It’s an overload spell that sacrifices the body to devastate this entire area. If we don’t stop it here, things will get troublesome.”

If its power could be estimated just by looking, it was a drastic method that not only completely sacrificed the incarnated body but also affected the main body.

Essentially, a suicide bombing.

If they couldn’t intervene here, it wouldn’t be strange for the entire Elemental Magic Department to be completely destroyed.

As he had promised to handle matters smoothly with the department administration through Archwood, he should do what he could.

Of course, that absolutely did not mean revealing his carefully maintained cover identity here.

Abandoning his assistant professor status for just one Guido Cult bishop would be too great a loss.

Fortunately, even without such an extreme choice, there were plenty of efficient options.

“If we give it a little more time, other professors at the university will start to intervene. Just holding it back until then will be enough.”

[Understood. I will immediately analyze the internal mana flow and configure the cooling efficiency optimization scenario.]

“Good. In that case… Hm?”

The moment Lennok, with Davi, was about to channel mana to suppress the lump of flesh that was Walter.

Suddenly, an immense surge of mana erupted from the sky.

The pressure on his shoulders was so intense that even Lennok flinched for a moment.

Immediately after, a downpour began to pour from the cloudy sky.

Kwoooosh!!!

The sudden deluge instantly turned the surroundings into a flood, but before anyone could be horrified by that fact, a series of strange phenomena occurred.

Instead of pooling on the ground, the rainwater that poured down instantly shot upwards, trapping the swelling lump of flesh in the middle of the research building.

The lump of flesh wriggled as if annoyed by the mass of water constraining it, but—

As if even that small resistance was unacceptable, the mass of water began to spin at high speed, grinding the lump of flesh.

GAAARRRGGGHHH!!!

[KWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!]

Only then did the lump of flesh finally let out a strange scream mixed with pain and began to writhe.

No trace of reason could be felt in that barbaric scream. Walter’s consciousness had already vanished from that lump of flesh.

“Oh…”

And Lennok stood, watching the lump of flesh being ground down, soaked by the pouring rain.

More precisely, he was watching the spellcaster’s ability to perfectly control that massive flow of water, rather than the lump of flesh itself.

The students from the Elemental Magic Department who belatedly rushed out also stared at the phenomenon with astonished faces, but they probably couldn’t fathom how precisely mana had been manipulated to create such a miracle.

Beyond simply manipulating the flow of water according to will, the mana controlling the current was split into dozens of strands, each rotating at different speeds.

Water vortexes rotating at different speeds collided with each other according to the flowing mana, creating powerful friction even within the liquid.

In the twisting, intersecting rotations, the lump of flesh was torn and ground down, no longer able to swell, but instead shrinking in size.

The moment the lump of flesh struggled, trying to burst out of the water mass, the water that had been mercilessly grinding it with dozens of strands suddenly began to freeze.

CRACKLECRACKLECRACKLE…!!!

Along with an utterly chilling cold, white frost spread everywhere, and even the falling rain froze, turning into hail.

The twisted lump of flesh, torn and ground, solidified, trapped within a white column of ice.

High-level rapid freezing that felt as if time itself had stopped.

Only then did the belatedly recovered students begin contacting various places.

Even without them, others would already be moving to manage this situation, but Lennok had no intention of stopping them.

“Evan…!!”

Mila, who had been unable to approach the lump of flesh recklessly, quickly approached Lennok upon seeing him and asked.

“Is that okay? Are they on our side?”

“Yes. Fortunately, they seem to have arrived at just the right time.”

“Do you know them?”

“Rather than knowing them…”

He couldn’t help but notice it the moment the immense mana suddenly appeared in the sky.

It was a mana pattern Lennok remembered more clearly than anyone else.

Moreover, such precise and diverse attribute manifestation and water current manipulation…

If this magic didn’t belong to the mage he knew, then whose could it be?

Instead of satisfying Mila’s curiosity, Lennok gazed at the sky with a faint smile.

“See for yourself.”

A white ice pillar, twisted into a spiral and frozen solid.

Ice stairs intricately carved into the slope, preserving the exact form of the water currents as they twisted and rotated before freezing.

Someone was slowly descending the stairs from the very tip of that ice pillar.

“I didn’t expect to see such a monster in my research building the moment I returned.”

As she brushed back her soft blonde hair, the cloudy weather cleared, revealing a bright sky.

As sunlight poured down on the research building, her hair shone dazzlingly.

Her sea-blue eyes looked down at the ground, curving gently.

Aris, spotting Lennok at the end of her gaze, smiled playfully and said,

“I’m sure I wrote in a memo that I trusted you to look after the students.”