Chapter 355: The Ascendant’s Cradle (1)
Despite letting out a sigh, Evelyn Marcia immediately blocked Lennok’s path, intercepting the woman who was approaching him.
As the woman, wielding a scythe and hammer, bent low, Evelyn Marcia also reached for her waist.
The two superhumans, twisting their knees towards each other, clashed simultaneously.
Thump!
The impact was so severe that the gate standing nearby shook violently for a moment.
It was Evelyn Marcia who frowned first.
“The power…!”
“Die? Kill? You or me?”
Muttering as if possessed by a ghost, she pushed Evelyn Marcia back with the hammer in her left hand.
At the same time, she flung the scythe in her other hand overhead, firmly embedding it into a crevice in the gate. Then, grabbing Evelyn Marcia by the collar, she leaped upwards.
Rumble!
Their bodies slammed into the towering gate pillar, and they began to fight, using the wall as a foothold.
It was vertical maneuvering, exchanging blows while their bodies were perpendicular to the ground.
The man smiled, seeing Lennok looking up at them.
“She’s holding out much longer than I expected. When she grabbed her by the collar, I thought it would be over quickly.”
“……”
“Even though she looks like that, I hear she’s one of the top warriors in Baracheda. It’s hard to believe, but her combat ability is trustworthy.”
Lennok turned his gaze to the man upon hearing that.
“So you didn’t come all the way here on your own. Were you sponsored by an organization called Baracheda?”
“Hmm, perhaps you don’t know what the Baracheda Liberation Front is?”
The man chuckled and swung the machete in his hand.
“Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say. Let’s get started. To be honest, I said that, but you look much weaker, so I was taking it easy.”
“……”
“Soon, some guys will officially pass through the gate and come out with the key. Things will get troublesome if they realize we’re here… so we should deal with them quickly.”
Lennok stared silently at the man fiddling with his machete, then reached into his sleeve.
Click.
“Hmm?”
As Lennok pulled out a revolver from his sleeve, he cocked the hammer.
Without minding the slight frown on the man’s face, Lennok raised the muzzle and pulled the trigger.
Not at the man in front of him, but at the two individuals still clashing fiercely on the gate wall.
Tat-tat-tat-tatang!
Five targeted shots, layered with auxiliary magic.
“Annoying…!!”
The woman, who had been focused on pressing Evelyn Marcia, abruptly changed her expression as she tried to deflect the five bullets Lennok fired.
Immediately after her back sharply arched backward, the narrowly missed bullets exploded, scattering frigid cold in all directions.
If they had hit in any way, the freezing magic imbued in the bullets would have burst, disrupting the fight.
Only then did the woman, who hadn’t even glanced down, look at the treasure hunter with an irritated expression.
“…What are you doing?”
“Damn it, this is troublesome if you come at me like this!!”
Grumbling, the man immediately gripped his machete and charged at Lennok.
Veins bulged between his bushy forearms, and the blade accelerated to an invisible speed.
Kkrrriik!!
His swordsmanship was incredibly seasoned, completely unlike his seemingly unfit physique for combat.
He instantly suppressed Lennok from all sides, pressing the blade against his chest, and shouted.
“Die!!”
“No.”
Ka-ang!!
Lennok, who had deflected the man’s machete with a shield, raised his revolver.
He fired the last remaining round in the cylinder directly at the blade tip.
Tang!!
The bullet, lodged into the side of the man’s machete, struck true and began to coat the blade in frigid ice crystals.
“…!!”
The surprise was fleeting; the man’s judgment was swift.
He unhesitatingly threw the machete into the air, then pulled out a spike-like dagger from his waist and charged.
“The sixth shot. That was the last one…!!”
Thud!!
The man froze in mid-air as if time had stopped.
Lennok looked down at his face and shook his head.
“Perhaps because you’re a treasure hunter, you don’t have a knack for dealing with people.”
“Guh, hngh…!”
In the man’s chest, which was convulsing violently, the very machete he had thrown behind him was now impaled, sticking out from his lower back.
Lennok had used the material transfer ability embedded in the Compassion of the Archangel to transfer the machete, then pulled the handle with a magic thread to impale the blade from behind.
Was it because he thought Lennok was a marksman vulnerable in close combat? Or did he not expect his discarded weapon to boomerang back?
Either way, crushing an opponent’s expectations was something Lennok was exceedingly familiar with.
Lennok grabbed the shoulder of the man, who was stumbling and bleeding from his mouth, and said.
“I won’t kill you immediately. The information you’ve gathered wandering through this labyrinth, it must be considerable if you managed to discover this secret passage.”
“……”
“Evelyn should be roughly finished by now, too…”
Evelyn Marcia hadn’t let herself be grabbed by the collar by the hammer-wielding woman’s first attack for no reason.
It would be helpful if she created distance between herself and Lennok on the battlefield, even if Evelyn Marcia didn’t actively aim for it.
Evelyn Marcia was deliberately engaging the Baracheda Liberation Front warrior to leave Lennok and the man alone.
She knew that the fewer variables there were during combat, the easier it became to subdue the opponent.
It was necessary to find out how they learned about the secret passage, and the source of that information.
As Lennok thought this, looking up at the two people running along the labyrinth wall,
“…He fell for it.”
The man, who had been clutching his stomach and trembling, quietly muttered.
The moment Lennok turned his gaze, the man pulled something out from his embrace.
A fist-sized pendant. It was wrapped in a silver chain, and an ominous magical power swirled within it.
There was no way Lennok would let his opponent use a trump card now.
Lennok thought so and immediately drew on his magic to suppress the man’s limbs, but at that moment, a colorless wave emanating from the crystal ball made him stop his hand.
The man, not missing that brief window, immediately opened the pendant’s lid and plunged it into his wound.
Crunch!
As the pendant, drenched in the man’s blood, glowed with various colors, a colorless wave surged from the floor, forming a giant spherical orb that swallowed both of them.
Paaaaah!!!
Evelyn Marcia, who was still fending off the Baracheda warrior’s attacks, looked down with a surprised expression.
“Evan!!”
“He used that already. He’s much stronger than I thought.”
The woman muttered stiffly, shaking her head.
Evelyn Marcia turned sharply to the woman in front of her upon hearing that.
“You said Baracheda Liberation Front. I wondered why your common continental language was awkward, so that was the reason.”
Among the countless armed groups on the continent, they maintained an unusual stance as an unlicensed military organization.
Not only did they not use the common continental language established by the Ascendant ‘Jinwa’, but their organizational system and logic were also evaluated as being alien to existing norms.
The most famous rumor about them was simply that they came from ‘outside the continent’.
If they were immigrants who crossed the ‘Sea of Understanding,’ which is impossible for human power to navigate, wouldn’t it make sense for them to be outside the linguistic sphere of influence?
“When Van told me you were wearing Gearsight equipment, I didn’t believe it… It seems you’re reaching out to all sorts of organizations. Is that why that treasure hunter is with you?”
“That, man. Talks too, much. Annoying. Will die, soon.”
“Will die soon…? He died, but activated a Domain?”
Evelyn Marcia, not ignoring what the woman said, frowned deeply.
“Is it a unique Domain that only activates when certain conditions are met? No, it’s far too high-level for his mastery….”
She quickly replayed what had just happened below, then realized the answer.
“That pendant. He borrowed the power of an artifact. It was a ritual device of relic-grade, specifically to aid in Domain activation.”
“Quick, witted.”
Click!
The woman pulled the scythe out of the gate crevice and muttered, readjusting her weapons in both hands.
“Quick-witted children, die young too.”
“I’m not a child. Can’t you tell?”
Evelyn Marcia muttered indignantly, lightly stroking her left forearm.
Immediately after, a short bowstring sprang out from the top of her suit, forming a shortbow.
“I planned to stall for time and then capture him two-on-one… but the situation has changed.”
Her green eyes began to shine brightly in the dark labyrinth.
Facing that ominous aura, the woman also immediately drew on her magic.
Baracheda Liberation Front. Among them, as one of their top warriors, she had a relatively accurate assessment of Evelyn Marcia’s skill.
Regardless of needing to deal with her here, Evelyn Marcia was a warrior whose chances of victory in a solo fight were not easily predicted.
Her skill was so exquisitely formidable that it was hard to believe her true nature was an archer.
“Let’s finish this quickly.”
Wooosh!!!
A rigid black room with no distinction between floor and ceiling.
In that space, where only a faint vibration periodically echoed, Lennok silently looked around.
“A Domain, huh…”
He had suspected it when he saw the pendant’s wave, but he truly didn’t expect him to actually activate a Domain.
His fighting style and demeanor were far removed from that of a sorcerer. Furthermore, the treasure hunter’s own mastery seemed far from having completed a Mind Imprint.
But this jet-black space that now imprisoned Lennok was undoubtedly a Domain.
“Kill you?”
The man, who had emerged from the darkness, grinned.
Somehow, the wound on his lower back had completely vanished.
Lennok roughly understood the situation and nodded.
“I see. Was this your aim from the beginning?”
“Something like that.”
The man dusted himself off and stood up, his expression much colder than before.
“Treasure hunters need to be quick with information. A fool who doesn’t know the skill or name of the Divine Bow doesn’t survive long.”
“……”
So all that strange nonsense he was spouting was a strategy in itself?
He had met countless formidable individuals, but this was the first time he encountered an opponent who tried to gain a strategic advantage by talking so directly.
Noticing Lennok’s intrigued gaze, the man smirked.
“I knew from the beginning that you weren’t some average opponent I could easily handle.”
“So you gambled with your life, then.”
“I figured if I showed off how much I knew about the labyrinth, you’d try to extract information from me rather than kill me right away.”
The man said that, pulling out something long from his waist.
A staff covered in unknown characters. As he poured magic into it, it slowly rotated, scattering a faint wave.
“Then, instead of cutting my throat without me noticing, you’d focus on inflicting a fatal wound, and my desired trigger would be complete.”
“A Domain that activates upon receiving a fatal wound close to death… I admit it. I didn’t predict that far.”
Lennok nodded with a wry smile.
“I also didn’t know an artifact existed that could borrow someone else’s Mind Imprint.”
“……”
The man’s eyes deepened.
Lennok’s nonchalant remark had pinpointed the exact secret of the Domain the man had deployed.
The pendant was a relic-grade artifact.
But its true nature wasn’t an item that forcibly created a Domain from a non-existent Mind Imprint.
The item the man used was an artifact that temporarily borrowed the Domain of another Archmage ability user.
He had obtained it after several near-death experiences, and it had been the greatest contributor to his survival as a treasure hunter until now.
As it possessed the superhuman ability to borrow another person’s Domain, its activation conditions were incredibly stringent.
Not only did mutual consent between the borrower and lender of the Domain need to exist, but it could only be activated for a single designated target.
Furthermore, it could only be used against the person who inflicted a fatal wound close to death upon the user, and its Domain activation could not be interrupted in any way.
Moreover, once the artifact’s effect ended and the Domain was released, the injuries incurred at the time of activation remained and accumulated in the body.
In other words, if the man failed to kill his opponent immediately after activating the Domain, his own death was inevitable.
But there was a reason the man had overcome all those adverse conditions to deploy this Domain.
“The owner of this Domain is a rather famous voodoo sorcerer in the Western Continent. I pay an enormous price every year to borrow this person’s Domain. But I’ve never regretted it. Why do you think that is?”
“Well…”
Lennok replied, arms crossed, looking around the black room once more.
“It’s probably because there’s an unusual ability that would allow you to win in this situation.”
“That’s right.”
The man smiled and nodded.
“If you use more magic within this Domain than you used to attack me just now, the accumulated voodoo curses within the Domain will layer upon you.”
“……”
“The Law of Retribution existing in voodoo magic. It’s the Domain of Convincing Scales, which doesn’t stop until the same price is returned.”
Crack!
At those words, the scenery of the black room split open, revealing the true form of the Domain.
A giant set of scales, barely wide enough for two people to stand on.
Sticky magical power raged below, and a sharp vortex of curses spun overhead.
A narrow scale pan with no escape was the entire battlefield given to the two of them.
“Domain: Convincing Scales [설복형도량]. Looks like all the conditions are met. Let’s begin.”
The man raised his long staff and smiled.
“The moment I used the artifact, you left me alone because you wanted to acquire it, didn’t you? Everyone who let me use my Domain thought the same thing. You will now die here because of that greed.”
“Are you done talking?”
“…What?”
Lennok raised one hand to his eye and replied.
“I was listening, wondering what you were going on about, and it never ends. Weren’t you just boasting about yourself halfway through?”
“……”
“You seem to think you’re cleverly using geas and triggers… but confusing the purpose and the means holds little meaning.”
His left eye rotated, transforming into a violet Mystic Eye.
A distinctly alien flow of cracks began to mix with the normally vibrant violet light of his eye.
The man stopped in his tracks at that unusual glare, and Lennok took a bold step forward.
Without even realizing that the form of his Mystic Eye was subtly changing, blossoming other possibilities, Lennok spoke.
“Different things appear within this labyrinth. I want to confirm here just how far my Mystic Eye can reach.”
“You son of a…!!”
“Let’s begin.”
The man swallowed his surging anger and charged, and Lennok immediately pulled out a frigid ice stake from his hand.
As their figures crossed, an eerie magical light began to flash on the scale pan.