Chapter 290: Apostle’s Advent (7)
Though unseen, it was unmistakably felt.
A hellish heat began to rapidly warm the inside of the Domain as the sky started to tremble.
“No, no, no, no!”
Only then did Walter realize his predictions were entirely wrong, and he began to scream and struggle wildly.
The Apostle, which had shown no movement until now, suddenly spread dozens of legs wide.
The armor around its head split open, and the mouth revealed between the gaps let out a magnificent roar.
Wooosh! Wooosh! Wooosh!
A grating noise, like thousands of insects flapping their wings.
Hundreds of eyes, revealed between the armor, began to flash in different patterns.
At the same time, unknown monstrous characters emerged on the Apostle’s hard armor, painting everything in a pale glow.
[Ghost Ice Inverted Sea pre-connection confirmed]
[Deleted data recovery complete]
[5 seconds until Permafrost Cocytus loading.]
It spun above the Apostle’s head, transforming into a massive storm of frigid air.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Strange light embraced the storm of frigid air and covered the ash-filled plain.
Dry ash, with not a trace of moisture left.
But the frigid air spinning above the Apostle’s head froze and solidified even that ash in an impossible way.
A cold that began to interfere with the conceptual components of matter, not just matter itself. It was no longer even the concept of cold that could be defined by words.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The ash plain Lennok stood on rapidly transformed into a pure white sheet of ice.
The cold from the outer sea, freezing space itself, began to invade Lennok’s Domain.
“This is the power of the great god!!”
Walter, certain that he had suppressed the ash plain, which was undoubtedly the core of Lennok’s deployed Domain, roared with an intoxicated voice.
“The power from beyond, reachable only by the chosen, transcending the spacetime of a fixed future…!! We have now succeeded in grasping a fragment of it!!”
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The Domain, perfected as a single world, began to freeze entirely, and the boundaries of space blurred.
The ultimate technique of the Ghost Ice Inverted Sea, unleashed by Walter with all his might the moment he was reborn as an Apostle.
At this rate, the Domain, realized by gathering every ounce of his power, would collapse.
But even after confirming Walter’s desperate struggle, Lennok silently looked up at the Apostle’s grotesque form.
“Dieeeeee!!!”
Hiss! (Sound of sizzling)
The Apostle’s full power, imbued with killing intent. The torrent of Permafrost Cocytus approached Lennok, who stood on an ash hill.
Yet, Lennok merely cast his gaze towards the sky.
“…?”
A question arose within Walter, who belatedly felt something amiss in Lennok’s reaction.
Why, when there were no traces or lingering flames of fire left in this entire area, was the heat continuously intensifying?
No matter how powerful the Domain was, it would be utterly impossible unless a heat source that had burned everything remained in this spot.
If the answer lay at the end of the wizard’s gaze, then it was—
“The principle of Black Sea Demon Fall is not complicated,” Lennok said, as if sensing Walter’s thoughts.
“An intense heat source that condenses the essence of the flame series. It’s simply dropping that aggregate directly onto the ground.”
The lingering trace of the total solar eclipse illuminating the ash plain.
That star, which he had thought was merely a satellite eclipsing the sky, was falling towards the ground.
What had illuminated this vast Domain in dark light was not a satellite eclipsing the sun, but the fiercely burning black sun itself.
A localized heat source, manifested as a star, fell.
The intense gravity and heat pressing down on the ground churned the plain, which was a mix of ash and ice.
The dark sky rapidly began to brighten as the mass of heat, burning fiercely with black flames, descended.
Greeting the Domain’s sky, which began to cast light on his face, Lennok smiled.
“You chose the wrong place to exert your power.”
“Damn youuuuuuu!!!!”
Walter’s utterly desperate scream echoed, but by the time he realized, it was already too late.
Origin Hierarchy Spell Manifestation
[Heavenly Link Fall]
A small, intensely burning black sun slowly rotated and then dropped directly onto the Apostle’s head.
CRASSSHHHHHH!!!
The sun, spewing black flames, shattered the Apostle’s armor with absurd ease and began to furiously incinerate the flesh inside.
The very culprit that had turned an entire inner landscape into ash now poured its full destructive power onto the outsider who had invaded this Domain.
Sizzle! Sizzle! (Sound of sizzling flesh)
The heat that burrowed into the Apostle’s body instantly melted its massive form and turned it into kindling.
The pain of a soul burning. A desperate shriek echoed.
“Ughhhhhh!!!”
Crack! Zap! Crack! Zap!
The Apostle’s body, with black flames burning fiercely on its back, fell to the ground.
Its squirming legs froze from the outer sea’s cold that it had unleashed, but the overwhelming heat of the flames coursing through its entire body made it unable to care.
Clang!
As the Apostle’s massive body crashed onto the ash plain, the Domain shattered, revealing the ruins of the mansion.
But the black flames burning Walter’s body did not cease, continuing to consume his body and mind entirely.
“Ahhhaaaa!!! Haaaaahhh!!!”
The Apostle’s body, which appeared from amidst the empty ruins of the mansion, rolled across the ground, indiscriminately destroying the surrounding streets.
Dozens of legs writhed spasmodically, stretching into the streets, and the black flames blazing between them turned the street into an inferno.
The ground shook, and massive tremors spread, and walls of fire, surging across the streets, swept through the central thoroughfare of the fortress like waves.
RUMMMMBLEEEEE!!!!
Lennok, standing at the center of that magnificent destruction, slowly stepped back and leaned against a crumbled wall.
Large drops of sweat incessantly streamed down his forehead as he slightly bowed his head.
“Hoo, hoo…!!”
An immense consumption of mana, making it difficult to maintain full consciousness.
Maintaining the Domain was impossible with the mana consumed by its deployment, the manifestation of his Mind Imprint, and the dropping of the small sun.
He had wanted to keep Walter inside the Domain until the Apostle’s body was completely incinerated, but if that was too difficult, leaving the manifested spell behind was the best option.
Just maintaining the black flames that were currently burning the Apostle was drawing all the mana from his entire body to its absolute limit.
“Da, Davi…!!”
Lennok reached into his coat with trembling hands, then gave up and called the name of the Electro-spirit.
Just manipulating mana to its extreme to maintain the spell was overwhelming.
In this state, he couldn’t rule out the possibility of dropping a mana recovery ampoule if he tried to take one out.
Davi said nothing.
Instead, it quickly pulled out an ampoule full of blue liquid from inside Lennok’s coat and injected it into the back of Lennok’s hand.
Pshk!
“Ugh…!!”
External mana directly injected into his bloodstream, piercing his skin.
The pain of mana addiction, where muscles and cells inherently reject mana, instantly began to corrode his entire body, but in this situation, there was no other choice.
For this reason, he had avoided using mana-related ampoules, but their effect would be faster than any oral elixir.
Even this would have been impossible if he hadn’t received regular treatment from Yakson to reduce the side effects of mana addiction.
Davi quickly climbed onto Lennok’s shoulder and began to lick him.
[Master. I will detonate the sewage pipes at the three-way intersection nearby. Please prepare for the impact.]
KWA-KWA-KWANG!!
With an explosion heard in the distance, a jet of water erupted from the ground and poured directly onto the wall where Lennok stood.
Immediately after, the surging heat from all directions instantly evaporated the moisture, but the skin-scalding temperature quickly began to drop.
“Hoooooh!!”
Only then, with a much easier breath, did Lennok quickly gather his mana and concentrate his firepower on the Apostle’s body.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!!!
The flames that had completely incinerated the flesh inside the armor now flared up, burning even the trembling, spasming cephalopod legs without a trace.
Beyond limits of heat and pain. At the center of self-destructive karma, Walter, realizing that his mind was reaching its end, screamed.
“This cannot be… To have received the will of the outer sea, yet still face death…”
“…”
“In the end, can one not escape the mortal coil without challenging Self-transformation…?”
The faintly glowing eyes through the carapace turned, searching for Lennok.
Lennok met his gaze silently, even as he received the strange, incomprehensible stare of an entity beyond human sensibility.
After a moment of silence, Walter’s laughter leaked out from within the Apostle’s body.
“Heh, heh… Good… This too, perhaps, is unavoidable… For the brethren who wander between fragments of past and future…”
“What… do you mean?”
Walter did not answer.
He simply gave up resisting the flames that consumed his entire body and allowed his remaining form to lie comfortably amidst the streets.
[From beyond where my heart gives out… in the name of the great god… I shall curse you to the very end.]
“…”
His keen intellect and hopes all burned to ash in the flames, and only a viscous hatred that refused to die out amidst the searing heat remained, swirling to the very end.
Lennok clearly felt that blatant resentment, yet he leaned against the broken wall, idly letting the smoke drift.
His coat was damp from the flood created by bursting the sewers, and his entire body was heavy with fatigue from the after-effects of the pill.
Lennok gazed up at the wall of black flames and muttered unintentionally.
“Not everything goes as planned…”
Even after Lennok had used up all his mana, the wall of fire he had unleashed did not extinguish and continued to burn.
The black flames, having lost their power source, greedily devoured their surroundings to avoid extinguishing, like a living entity.
They slowly closed the distance towards Lennok, no longer recognizing their master.
Even in the fiery abyss of heat, Lennok, holding a cigarette, slumped deep in thought.
The Domain he had manifested was a projection of the future Lennok was most likely to choose among the countless branching paths stemming from his connection with the Blaiver Tower.
The power of manifesting and dropping a localized small-scale sun, burning fiercely, was indeed extraordinary.
The problem, however, was that the landscape of the Black Sea Demon Fall he had conjured was not what Lennok had intended.
While the general direction of manifesting and dropping a small-scale sun wasn’t wrong, the landscape that unfolded beneath it was completely different from Lennok’s vision.
A vast plain, completely reduced to ash, as if his mind itself had burned out. Was this the future that awaited Lennok if he had chosen the Blaiver Tower?
It wasn’t an impossibility.
If it had been his former self, the factory worker who wavered and hesitated, rather than his current self, who was in the process of completing his own answers, it wouldn’t be strange for him to have envisioned nothing but a desolate plain after countless wars.
The Domain’s observation of branching points had illuminated even such a future within Lennok’s mind.
‘It’s precarious… It’s getting harder and harder to control.’
Lennok’s Domain was not yet a completed technique as a concept, but rather an unfinished blueprint with much potential still remaining.
It was an ultimate technique that he could barely manifest even by drawing upon all his capabilities and talents, forcibly raising his condition, and stacking multiple dopings.
Unlike his other spells, which were perfectly controlled in Lennok’s hands, this Domain was like incredibly delicate glass art.
Beautiful, intricate, and seemingly flawless, yet if mishandled, it could shatter into glass shards in an instant.
It was the same here.
A branching point created with boundless talent and capacity, utilizing his full potential.
The bizarre twisting and warping of the Mind Imprint’s direction towards a future that should not have existed.
This was likely because Lennok’s talent had reached a dangerous level.
The desolate ash plain that the Black Sea Demon Fall had shown was, in effect, a warning about another version of himself, who had veered off in a different direction.
Lennok sighed with a complex expression and extinguished his cigarette.
“Hoo…”
He couldn’t stay like this forever.
He had to escape this street as soon as possible before the fire, beyond Lennok’s control, incinerated him as well.
He wondered if Asi had escaped safely. Just as he was thinking such thoughts and shakily getting to his feet, at that moment—
“Van!!!”
A gentle wind stirred from across the street, and a woman with long navy hair tied back descended from the air.
“Van-nim!!”
Asi, carried on the woman’s back, waved cheerfully.
“Yo-you succeeded!! I believed in you!!”
“We’ll talk later.”
Soo-ryun, with a long guandao strapped to her back, quickly approached and supported Lennok.
Even the narrow path Soo-ryun had passed was rapidly being swallowed by the wall of black flames.
“We need to get out of here right now.”