Chapter 325: Cybernetic Abilities (2)
Thump-thump-thump!!
A colossal wave of steel, rising like a tsunami, is absorbed entirely into Treffen’s humanoid body.
A strange sight unfolds as the wave of machinery, centered around a single person, rotates and converges.
Even after absorbing hundreds of times his own body weight in metal, Treffen’s physical form does not change.
However, the metal and weight, compressed to the extreme, must be accumulating within his body, converting into terrifying power.
“Give up.”
Treffen declared.
“If you relinquish control of the computational core and withdraw now, I will spare your life.”
“……”
“Allow me to witness, from where you stand, how I trample this filthy city.”
“I didn’t know the Fortress Commander possessed such a merciful disposition,” Lennok scoffed.
“You won’t give up bombing the megacity, but you’re willing to spare an enemy right in front of you?”
“Of course. All of this began with the City Council’s arrogance and failure.”
Boom!!
As Treffen took a step forward, the deck instantly caved in and sank deeply.
Treffen’s weight, having absorbed tens of thousands of metal parts, already far exceeded that of an ordinary human.
“They still cling to the Prohibition Edict, unwilling to give up ownership of the Defense Force’s military supplies and weapons. Once I’ve defeated you, who will dare to stand for the City Council?”
“……”
“It won’t take long. I will advance to the Central Council, tear limb from limb those who deceived me, and display their corpses atop the council building.”
Behind Treffen, who had gathered his entire being into one, the wall of the mechanical sphere pulsed.
Dozens of thick power cables surged out from the wall, connecting to Treffen’s back simultaneously, beginning to charge his power source.
Lennok watched this, unable to hold back a laugh.
“Lieutenant General, do you still not realize that what you’re saying doesn’t make sense?”
“What do you mean?”
“You babbled about a ‘fervent wish for ascension,’ and now you’re talking about revenge against the City Council… For a transcendent who has shed Hierarchy, that’s quite inconsistent.”
“……”
“Or, have you just not properly decided who you are yet?”
Treffen’s inorganic metallic skin faintly twitched.
A sputtering reply, as if he hadn’t quite understood Lennok’s words. A strange, slow voice reverberated.
“No… I was always going to ascend for those City Council bastards… no, revenge… revenge? Why did I need revenge…?”
“……”
A truly chilling monologue.
Only then did Lennok realize why Gearsight hadn’t actively employed this method and nodded.
“Does one’s ego waver this much during the process of shedding Hierarchy..? The failure of the Ascension Gate must have been similar.”
The mind of a level 7 Archmage who had lived for nearly a century would surely be as unyielding as solid rock.
If even Treffen’s ego, possessing such strong mental fortitude, could waver so precariously, it wasn’t hard to predict what would happen if they forcibly put others through the ascension process.
Was the failure of the Ascension Gate, secretly implemented in the machine city Machina, hushed up due to such fatal side effects?
“So that’s why the researchers had to stick close inside the sphere, assisting the Lieutenant General. Were they even adjusting his wavering consciousness in real-time…?”
Now that Lennok had seized the computational core and sent Davi to infiltrate Gearsight’s backup network, erasing their consciousness data, there was no one left to adjust Treffen’s ego balance.
At this point, which will Treffen’s will prioritize?
The injected yearning for ascension, or the personal emotion of seeking revenge on the City Council.
His ego wavering implied that these two priorities were clashing on the precarious boundary of his consciousness.
If he were a simple machine, he would cleanly determine his actions based on given data, but Treffen, despite having replaced his body with a Mobile Fortress, was fundamentally still human.
Could injected data overcome the values of a consciousness unchanged for decades?
The answer came soon enough.
“…Useless worries.”
Treffen, who had been silent, raised his head, his face grotesquely distorted like a vengeful spirit.
“Enough to think about after I kill you and burn Vulcan!”
“So he’s postponing drawing a conclusion at this point… He was a much more stubborn man than I thought.”
Lennok thought so, yet gazed back behind him.
The mechanical forces that had been newly restored just as Treffen completed his adjustments.
But their forms, which had completely suppressed the forces Lennok had commandeered, had vanished without a trace.
Treffen had disassembled even the parts used to form the mechanical soldiers and absorbed them all into his own body.
Clank, clank, clank!!
“Maximizing combat ability against a single individual… You expected it to come to this from the start, didn’t you?”
He likely intended to gather all his power to face Lennok, while maintaining only the minimal form of the mechanical sphere to constitute his body.
The reason he even maintained the mechanical sphere’s form was probably because it was difficult to abandon the advantage of manipulating space-time within the Miniature Universe.
But Lennok, fully aware of all these facts, patiently listened to Treffen’s words.
Lieutenant General Treffen, in a sense, was an Archmage-level physical ability user who had shed his humanity in the most perfect form.
Lennok knew that he wouldn’t be able to ascertain the true extent to which his consciousness and personality, having physically replaced his entire former body except for his heart, had been maintained or corrupted, if not now.
“…Heh.”
Treffen, who had been silent, let out a low chuckle.
A laugh so ugly it was hard to believe it came from a veteran over seventy, who had maintained a solemn demeanor until now.
“If you knew, why didn’t you run away sooner?”
Treffen, whispering like a child, took another step forward.
Boom!!
A heavy footstep reverberated nearby. His weight had swelled enough to shake the entire mechanical sphere.
“I can’t.”
Lennok, accepting the tremor, also stepped forward without hesitation.
Lennok spoke, looking at Treffen’s profile, who had discarded his human body but not his face.
“I, too, thought from the very beginning… that it would come to this.”
The steel angel, with dozens of wires spread like wings behind its back, and the wizard with a lit cigar, stepped forward and crossed paths.
As mana surged from both of them, the mechanical sphere tilted sharply diagonally and swayed.
CRAAAACK!!
In the blink of an eye, dozens of mana flashes exploded in rapid succession.
The rain of thunder and lightning, striking down from the air, met the frozen ice on the ground, exploding and pushing massive flames between them.
A barrage of firepower so intense that merely standing there would result in one’s body being torn to shreds.
Mana, once wielded, was twisted and warped to its extreme, turning into a blade that struck at the opponent’s vital points.
Treffen, piercing straight through the flickering inferno and electric currents, moved.
“Die.”
Thwack!!
With a light swing of his fist, the surrounding air warped, creating immense wind pressure.
The ludicrously compressed weight of his body, combined with the shockwave maximized by manipulating space within the sphere, was unleashed, breaking through theoretical limits and amplifying.
A momentary illusion of distorted vision.
The moment he felt the pressure bearing down on his shoulder, Lennok also unleashed mana with a low sweep.
[Lightning Well]
Fizzzzzzzt!!
Dozens of electric currents bursting from beneath his feet stacked up in a well-like shape, instantly surrounding Lennok and forming a massive barrier of lightning.
Immediately after, it received the pressure pushing down from above.
CRASH!!
The remnants of the electric current, unable to withstand the impact, exploded and scattered across the deck, but Lennok’s body remained unharmed.
Before he could even confirm it, Treffen reappeared before Lennok and swung his hand again.
WHOOSH!!!
Around Treffen’s right hand, mana compressed to its limit rotated counter-clockwise, drawing a narrow spiral.
Beyond Treffen’s lightning-fast assault, the faintly distorted view of the sphere revealed its power.
Thwack!
It pierced straight through Lennok’s head, scattering hot blood.
“There must be a condition.”
In the fleeting moment that movement ceased, Lennok’s voice came from behind Treffen.
At the same time, the image of Lennok with his head pierced vanished like a mirage, and the mana threads that burst from within him instantly wrapped around Treffen’s body like a spiderweb.
Behind him, Lennok, bent low with one hand on the ground, spoke.
“Even if you can manipulate space, it’s merely a consequence of interference… Is it a power limited to a combat-body with restricted consciousness?”
“…”
“You also increased the combat-body’s weight to its limit because you thought you could rely on spatial transposition to move your body, didn’t you?”
Lennok laughed, looking at Treffen’s back, who hadn’t turned around.
“To turn such a sophisticated Mobile Fortress into your own body, yet still plan to overwhelm me with a test of strength… Truly a soldier’s stubborn idea.”
“Too much talk.”
Rip-rip-rip!!
As Treffen turned, hundreds of mana threads binding his body snapped.
“Do you usually babble like that even in the middle of a fight?”
“If necessary.”
Each time he lightly swung his arm, the air in the vicinity swayed, and a sense of oppressive weight spread in all directions.
It goes without saying how powerful the weight, absorbed entirely into his body save for the minimum components needed to maintain the mechanical sphere, was converted into.
Holding such a heavy body was only possible for a fleeting moment.
But for a wizard, that split second is no less than an eternal opportunity.
As he formed a hand seal with his outstretched hand, [Lightning Well] erupted, and the scattered fragments of electric current began to gather in one place.
A well from which lightning burst forth. It was only for a moment, but the electric waves emanating from it were several times stronger than the mana Lennok had used.
Fizzzzzzzzzt!!!
Hundreds of electric fragments, swirling above the mechanical sphere, spiraled and plunged to the ground in an instant.
Treffen, belatedly realizing something was wrong, tried to cast spatial transposition, but it was too late.
[Mana Concentration]
[Recurrent Attainment]
[Electrofield Resonance: Harmonics]
[Thunder Convergence]
CRAAAAAAASH!!!
The spiraling pillar of light struck directly into the center of the deck where Treffen stood.
A quadruple incantation, where mana, its Property Transformation complete, was concentrated to its extreme, resonated, exploded, and unleashed its concentrated firepower.
The focused firepower was so intense for a moment that the underside of the deck completely evaporated, revealing the floor of the mechanical sphere.
An enormous amount of heat, enough to melt and even vaporize steel.
“Truly beautiful lightning magic. An old man with a rigid mind like me can’t even begin to guess its principles.”
Yet, even amidst that, Treffen’s consciousness showed not a single tremor.
From beneath the evaporated deck, Treffen looked up at Lennok with a half-melted face, his voice betraying not a hint of disturbance.
“However, if this is your full power, I am disappointed. For someone who spoke so confidently…”
“……”
“Isn’t it truly pathetic?”
His words were utterly provocative. The clear mana surge, unleashed the moment he confirmed his victory, could be felt even from here.
The very fact that he endured that attack head-on, without evading, was proof of how confident Treffen was in his current power, wasn’t it?
Weight that defied limits. And the ability to move unhindered by that weight.
Even Lennok found it impossible to guess the full extent of Treffen’s power, which simultaneously realized the contradictory aspects of being both heavy and fast.
So, he would simply cut him down.
Lennok looked down at Treffen and smiled.
“You seem to be mistaken. I didn’t use that spell just now to kill you.”
“Are you trying to bluff until you die?”
Lennok said, watching Treffen shake his head.
“I merely supplied enough power to my partner.”
“…What?”
Click!
At that moment, something appeared beside Treffen, digging out from under the deck.
A head taller than Treffen. Four profusely furred legs. Long, twitching ears and a tightly closed snout.
Even three slowly swaying tails.
Crack, crack, crack…!!!!
A fox, its entire body sparkling with dazzling electric light, calmly looked down at Treffen.
From beneath the feet of the Cyber-Electronic Spirit, which had never directly revealed itself until now.
A colorless wave slowly spread out.