Chapter 356: The Ascendant’s Cradle (2)
Sharp flashes of light glinted on the dark scales.
The staff, tracing a subtle trajectory in the air, twisted and turned, forming graceful arcs.
Each time the staff, glowing with unknown ancient script, was swung, it left behind an afterimage. More than that, it didn’t end there; the magical light from the lingering trajectory flashed once more, causing incessant small explosions that pressed in on Lennok.
Boom-boom-boom-boom!
‘I think I get it.’
Only after confirming the abilities of the staff in the man’s hand did Lennok understand the man’s strategy and nod.
A narrow battlefield, less than 5 meters wide. A potent voodoo curse that inflicted curses if even a little too much mana was used.
From Lennok’s perspective, having to counter the opponent’s attacks and defenses with minimal mana, the staff’s ability to cause successive explosions in a single swung area felt incredibly tricky.
The man, too, seemed so accustomed to it that it felt like he had devoured countless opponents this way.
His physique seemed far from battle-hardened, but as a high-level mana user, his movements were nimble and his weapon techniques precise.
Tat-tat-tat-tat!
Lennok tried to counter the man’s offensive with the ice stake he summoned, but as if waiting for it, the man encircled the stake and caused an explosion with his staff, shattering it.
Thump!
And, with each use of mana, the scales rose slightly higher.
At the same time, the swirling curse rotating above his head drew closer.
“Not much time left, is there?”
The man, gripping the staff as if to crush it, laughed and said.
“Soon you’ll have to choose. Either use mana and suffer the curse, or don’t use mana and get beaten to death.”
“…”
Was that confident remark a strategic bluff, or true certainty of victory?
Either way, it seemed clear that the curse itself was not something to be allowed without consequence.
‘It detects the act of raising mana itself. Destroying the Domain from within also seems distant.’
The moment he raised mana to break the Domain, he would be afflicted with the curse. Was it the power of voodoo?
The condensed cursed energy was clearly unusual at a glance. Not only would he lose a significant portion of his combat abilities, but it was also uncertain if he could even maintain consciousness.
The more he tried to counter it by raising mana again, the more curses would simply stack.
Fundamentally, if he couldn’t defeat the opponent in front of him, there was no way to escape this Domain.
The very fact that the grave robber had survived until now and skillfully used this Domain clearly demonstrated its power.
However, even as Lennok inferred all these facts, he spoke to the man about something else.
“Commander grade Superhuman. Right?”
“…What?”
“There’s something I want to say one last time.”
As Lennok said that and slowly began to relax his shoulders, the man let out a scoff.
“Alright, if it’s a dying wish, I’ll listen.”
“Honestly, the triggers and mind games you’ve set up are quite impressive. The mere fact that you devised a way to kill an Archmage-level ability user without fully completing a Hierarchy is proof of your exceptional ingenuity.”
The man flinched at Lennok’s words as he boldly stepped forward.
“But borrowing someone else’s Mind Imprint is tantamount to abandoning Self-transformation. That voodoo practitioner must have known this, which is why they allowed you to borrow the Domain.”
“…”
“Because they know that in your current state, you’ll never become stronger than yourself.”
“It seems you’re mistaken, but I have no interest in getting stronger.”
The man said, sneering.
“I just want to find treasure, make money, and live well. Did you think I’d immerse myself in boring spiritual training like those seekers?”
“No, what I’m trying to say is…”
Lennok, letting out a scoff, approached the man unguardedly and replied.
“If you had pondered that possibility even a little, you wouldn’t have chosen death like this.”
“…The more I listen, this arrogant bastard, seriously!!!”
Lennok’s words, laced with blatant provocation. The man, also confident in his victory, no longer held back.
After killing this wizard here, cooperating with the Baracheda Liberation Front warrior, and even taking care of the Divine Bow, the spoils and fame that would pour in would be unimaginable.
Using that, he would borrow an even more powerful Domain and acquire rarer, more valuable artifacts.
If he could only get his hands on the Ascendant’s relics in this Labyrinth, then talk of the ‘possibility’ that Lennok spoke of would be something he wouldn’t need to consider.
The moment he made his decision, the man moved instantly.
Whoosh!
As he rotated his mana with full force, he twisted his shoulder, gripping the staff tightly.
Lowering his stance and bending his waist, he traced trajectories that twisted in all directions.
In the air, the staff scattered as if splitting into multiple pieces, creating countless light trails, and the ensuing explosions resonated, bursting and striking human flesh.
CRASH!
And from the center of all those explosions, Lennok once again pulled out a thin, slender ice stake.
His violet mystic eye spun wildly, observing the Domain of Possibility projected in this place, visualizing it perfectly and drawing red and blue boundary lines.
A limited battlefield of 5 meters. There was no error in the observed Domain of Possibility, given his awareness of the opponent’s armaments and tactics.
Within the vision tinged with only two colors, Lennok reached out his hand without even a moment of hesitation.
As the seemingly nonchalantly swung stake rotated slowly, it parried every continuous strike of the staff the man wielded.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
“…!!!”
A counterattack so incredibly precise that it was hard to believe it came from the weak wizard he had been fighting just moments ago.
The man gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the staff, but it was useless.
As the staff and stake tangled and untangled in the air, the initiative in the exchange of blows swiftly began to shift towards Lennok.
“Aargh!!!”
A Commander grade Superhuman. The offensive launched with full power by a superhuman capable of facing an entire military unit alone.
The speed at which he swung the staff was impossible to observe with the naked eye. The impact force contained within it was lethal enough to pulverize bones.
But the moment Lennok thrust the stake in his hand, he severed and bound the man’s attacks before they could even begin.
“Ah, no… wait…”
The man, drenched in cold sweat, asked with a trembling voice.
“What is this… this… This is a joke, right?”
He wasn’t using mana.
Lennok’s movements as he swung the stake were unmistakably those of an ordinary human.
Yet, with just that, he bound the man’s offensive from the very start, making it impossible for him to even exert force.
It was proof that all of the man’s martial arts and methods of using power had been entirely analyzed and deconstructed within Lennok’s mind.
How else could he possibly know the man’s fighting style better than the man himself?
“Honestly, that talent is wasted.”
Lennok said that and thrust the stake directly into the man’s thigh.
Thwack!
“…!!”
The Commander grade Superhuman’s tough body. The stake, thrust in with Lennok’s weak physical strength, barely pierced him before breaking and turning into ice dust.
But the man, despite the light impact, couldn’t easily stand and writhed.
“If you had fully integrated that way of thinking into a Hierarchy, your Mind Imprint would have taken on a much more formidable form than this.”
“Ugh…!!”
“I took my time to confirm that. Because in this Labyrinth, someone’s ‘possibility’ seems to hold a much greater meaning than expected.”
Lennok’s eyes, looking down at the fallen man, sank deeply.
Even without this method, there were plenty of ways to deal with the man’s trickery.
Considering the capacity projected by Lennok’s Mind Imprint, simply deploying his own Domain within this space could have derailed all of the man’s plans.
But knowing that, he still observed and pressured the man until the end, because of the boy’s illusion Lennok had seen through his monocular.
If that illusion truly was a split-off possibility of Jindun, and if that applied to everyone who entered the Labyrinth…
Then there was a need to confirm that possibility, even if it was in this manner.
“But it seems the differentiation of possibility itself doesn’t happen this way. If it were a shift in perspective as I thought, it wouldn’t be strange to have seen another illusion that awakened a Miniature Universe…”
“Wh-what crazy talk is this…?”
The man looked up at Lennok, who had pulled out his monocular and was surveying his surroundings, with a terrified expression.
His gaze at Lennok no longer felt like he was looking at a fellow human.
“You don’t need to know.”
Lennok put away his monocular and replied.
Instead, Lennok lowered his stance and met the eyes of the kneeling man.
“Now, release the Domain, and spill every piece of information you know.”
“G-get lost… Why would I…”
“No.”
Lennok cut off the man’s words and spoke again.
His violet mystic eye spun rapidly, maintaining eye contact with the man.
The man felt, somehow, that he couldn’t tear his gaze away from those eyes.
“You will obey me.”
“D-don’t… make me laugh…”
“Release the Domain. And answer the questions.”
“Ugh… Ugh-gh-gh…”
The man’s eyes, staring at Lennok’s ceaselessly rotating mystic eye, suddenly rolled back, and he began to foam at the mouth.
It was the same reaction as when Lennok had defended Lapis against the Elderbine assassin. But the outcome was starkly different.
“…I joined hands with the Baracheda Liberation Front three months ago. It’s been one month and two weeks since I noticed the labyrinth’s anomaly and began preparations. The time and place of contact with the Liberation Front executive were Valeron’s Garden, an ancient ruin in the north…”
The man, his expression blank, began to spontaneously spill his memories without Lennok even asking.
This was the result of appropriately combining information injection using the mystic eye’s gaze-sharing with the hallucination ability possessed by the Elderbine assassin.
By confusing the senses as the assassin had used the mystic eye, and then adjusting the amount of information injected, it became possible to force near-reality hallucinations onto the target who met his gaze.
As a result, the subject would unknowingly regurgitate the information Lennok desired, without even realizing they were spilling details.
The fact that each mystic eye possessed different abilities, and that it was nearly impossible for another mystic eye wielder to replicate them, was not important.
What was important to Lennok was merely whether he could observe and remember the flow of power when the ability was activated.
From Lennok’s perspective, with his ability to manipulate down to the particle level, if he could just disassemble and understand the principle, he could at least somewhat imitate it.
‘I probably can’t use this on the same person multiple times, but this is enough.’
He was merely combining the mystic eye’s hallucination ability to control the information injection speed; the immense overload on the brain remained the same.
Even if used to extract information, it was always a last resort.
However, Lennok didn’t have many immediate ways to make a seasoned grave robber talk.
Because killing someone and making them spill information were completely different matters.
Listening intently to the man’s rapid outpouring of words, Lennok rummaged through his pockets.
A few old items that appeared to have been found inside the Labyrinth, and some tools seemingly used for grave robbing.
And three artifacts, including a pendant, that looked rare at a glance.
Lennok took out the pendant, soaked in blood, and opened it to check inside.
Inside the pendant was an old photograph. A bizarre scene came into view: a single scale floating in a dark space.
The scenery in the photograph was perfectly identical to the scales Lennok and the man were currently standing on.
It wasn’t difficult to grasp its meaning.
Lennok roughly wiped the blood from the pendant, silenced the man, and asked.
“This artifact. Where did you get it?”
Though unexpectedly stuck at the gateway, it was worth the time invested.
An artifact that allowed one to borrow another’s Domain. If not for the existence of this artifact, he would have blown the man’s head off the moment he tried his trick.
Having lived in a mega-city and seen all sorts of treasures, this was the first artifact that so directly interfered with a human’s Mind Imprint.
Even if he couldn’t immediately understand its principle or how it worked, he needed to find out the item’s origin.
But the words that flowed from the man’s mouth completely surpassed Lennok’s expectations.
“…The Labyrinth.”
“What?”
“It’s a relic of an explorer who met Jindun in this Labyrinth and returned alive, a very long time ago.”
The moment Lennok was left speechless by that unexpected answer, the grave robber continued without waiting for his reaction.
“The Labyrinth’s deepest part, The Cradle. They say those who awoke Jindun received something as a gift, based on the questions and answers he posed. I came to this Labyrinth because I desired that.”