Chapter 395: Pruning (3)

“Chairman…?”

“Ayoon seems much better prepared than I thought. Don’t you think we should reveal a bit of our hidden cards for this kind of display?”

The veil trembled, and her eyes glinted faintly.

As if she wouldn’t miss a single thing that was about to unfold.

“Whether it’s Adamant Thunder or Ayoon… there’s something I want to confirm from both of you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered interfering with the subordinates’ affairs.”

Turning away from Virgil, who nodded in understanding of her decision, Olivera Ron Maize muttered leisurely.

“The victor seems decided already, but I can’t give up the pleasure of savoring the process.”

In Olivera Ron Maize’s mystic eye, as she turned her gaze out the window, the figure of the wizard, already striding without hesitation, was reflected.

‘It’s already been a few years since the Pilenom Autonomous Region incident.’

Thump!!

He received the massive axe blade, brought down right in front of him, with a shield, lost in thought.

Ayoon wasn’t the first sorcerer to use drugs to elevate their mental state.

The fire-attribute wizard who sided with the drug lord in the Pilenom Autonomous Region.

Didn’t that wizard, who betrayed Blaiver Tower and received drug supplies, also dabble in drugs to boost his personal achievements?

It’s not uncommon for wizards to go mad when faced with insurmountable walls, nor is it rare for them to borrow external power to alleviate that madness and progress further.

However, the drugs compounded with various magical techniques in this world are so potent and dangerous that even high-level sorcerers find it hard to escape their grip, which is why few dare to touch them.

Lennok, too, only favored certain pills as a means to alleviate his penalty, but he had always thoroughly distinguished and controlled drugs that interfered with his mind, hadn’t he?

If even Lennok, born with the talent of mental immunity as a perfect wizard, was so cautious, there was no need to explain how dangerous it was for other sorcerers.

Drrrooorrrr!!!

A mechanical device, invisible just moments ago, activated in the middle of the street.

One side of the sidewalk opened up, and a massive saw blade rushed beneath Lennok’s feet, followed by heavy hammers aimed at his back.

The moment he received it with his shield, talismans stuck to the surface of the hammer glowed, changing the hammer’s shape.

The metal object, transformed into a sharp drill, bored directly into Lennok’s barrier, spinning to target the caster’s life.

Kaga-ga-ga-gak……!!

Flames seared his side, chilling cold was poured over his neck.

A fire hydrant in the middle of the street, incredibly far away, squirmed, transforming into a massive magic cannon and firing, and a poisonous mist wafting around his nose tested his patience.

A fierce assault, as if the entire street had risen up and was rushing at one person.

The Life Gate and Death Gate that inherently exist in Qimen Dunjia.

Disregarding all those rules, the more he moved, the more the mechanical devices of the Domain, having met the appropriate conditions, burst forth and exerted even greater power.

Woo-ji-ji-ji-jik!!!

“You idiot… are you not going to use your head at all?”

Ayoon, watching from somewhere, muttered in a voice filled with exasperation.

Lennok was smashing through Ayoon’s Filthy Accumulation Binding Array head-on, taking the hits and breaking through.

“Perfection doesn’t exist. No matter how powerful a wizard you are, you can’t hide your weaknesses forever…!!”

“Weaknesses?”

Lennok laughed.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t really hidden anything recently. Perhaps you just haven’t caught on yet?”

“Th-This director dares…!!!”

“I don’t know why you’re saying that.”

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-duk!!!

Black ropes entangled Lennok from all sides. Talismans tied like knots between them glowed, adding to their strength and tenacity, and though they clung on to bind their target, they snapped uselessly.

“This is a demonstration doubling as the new CEO’s inauguration. I’m doing my best; shouldn’t you be happy?”

Lennok looked up at the empty sky and said.

“It’s a chance for you to show all your hidden cards down to the bottom.”

“How dare a lowly man like you mock me!!”

Ayoon would know that a sorcerer’s power comes from absolute informational superiority and monopoly.

Realizing Lennok was toying with him, Ayoon let out a furious roar and began to push his Domain even harder.

A rain of blades poured down, and a barrage of gunpowder and bullets swept through the street, while pre-prepared Taoist sorcery relentlessly assailed him, torturing him until he couldn’t even breathe.

A wave of attacks, somehow trying to find a part Lennok couldn’t deal with.

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!!!

Sharp spearheads rained down from the sky like needles.

The green liquid contained within exploded, dyeing the surroundings with poisonous mist, and using a spark that ignited somewhere as a trigger, it transformed into a wave of flames.

Amidst the heat that could instantly reduce a living human to ashes, Lennok merely continued to advance, alternating between shields and armored defenses.

But contrary to Lennok’s leisurely response, his face was cold and grim.

He understood with certainty that, contrary to the exquisite and complex power of the Filthy Accumulation Binding Array, the current situation of conversing with Ayoon itself was odd.

‘He recovered enough to communicate normally the moment the Domain was deployed. Considering the intensity of the drugs he used, it’s excessively unnatural.’

It went without saying how thoroughly Ayoon had prepared to create the Filthy Accumulation Binding Array.

He spent a day installing various devices and talismans throughout the street to create an environment where the Domain could be deployed, and used high-strength drugs to push his mind and body to the limit.

The power and precision of the Domain, unleashed with a mind and Mind Imprint so forcibly elevated, were enough that even Lennok couldn’t ignore them.

And if he had strained his mind and body to such an extent to activate the Domain, it should have been impossible for him to speak properly now.

Yet, Ayoon was perfectly exchanging telepathic messages with Lennok, and even using the Domain as his weapon in a thoroughly planned manner.

There was another reason why Lennok, who had intended to crush Ayoon’s drug-addled body the moment he deployed his Domain, changed his mind.

Lennok walked through the surging sea of fire as if nothing was wrong, lost in thought.

‘Mental immunity? No… A monster like Myeong would need that kind of power. Perhaps it’s more likely he borrowed power from such a being…’

“Borrowed…”

Lennok, whose thoughts reached that point, stopped in his tracks.

Immediately, green flames, catching up to his stopped movement, covered Lennok’s body, sweeping through the entire street.

Lennok muttered, ignoring the sticky heat that felt like it was burning his entire body.

“So that’s it. Did the Chairman notice this and deliberately…?”

“Muttering like a madman since earlier… I’m starting to get annoyed.”

Ayoon’s voice, now sharp, resonated loudly.

“As you say, dragging out this battle further will only be a childish display of power.”

Uddr-dr-drrrk!!!

At that moment, something was thrown in front of Lennok.

Something unrecognizable rapidly swelled, beginning to transform into the shape of a massive monster.

“Grrrrr!!!”

A monstrous humanoid with the head of a beast, a combination of a dog and an ox.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such monsters proliferated and swelled, glaring at Lennok from all over the street.

The filthy mana emanating from their bodies clung like wildfire to the bladed weapons in their hands.

“From now on, I’ll just crush you with sheer power. So you can see who truly stands above…!!”

“Understood.”

Whoosh!!

A sound like a faint breeze brushing past.

With a small noise, barely discernible unless heard directly on the spot, the bodies of the monsters charging at Lennok were sliced into pieces.

Only the faint traces of arcane threads glowing throughout the street hinted at what had occurred.

Lennok, who had cleared out the monstrous humanoids with a single manipulation magic, unhesitatingly turned back and began to walk along the path he had come.

At that moment, Ayoon’s voice, which had never lost its confidence until now, began to waver slightly.

“W-Wait… What are you trying to do?”

“You said Qimen Dunjia works by the rules of the Life Gate and Death Gate, didn’t you?”

Lennok said, walking with an expressionless face.

“If it’s hard to properly grasp the structure from inside the Domain, what about from the other side?”

Weee-iii-iiing!!

The ring on Lennok’s left index finger made a faint noise and slowly began to glow.

At the same time, the gem in the center of the ring flickered faintly like an eye, illuminating its surroundings.

Though nothing seemed different on the surface, the landscape seen through Lennok’s eyes, with the ring on, slowly changed.

It was the eye of an ancient being, observing this world in a completely different way from an unseen, underlying space.

Lennok was analyzing the structure of the Filthy Accumulation Binding Array from an imaginary dimension through Feigenbaum’s Eye, which he had acquired in Jindun’s labyrinth.

A conceptual imaginary space that is not actually existent but is necessary for the structure of the magical technique.

Jindun had originally used this only for analyzing the inverse of barrier magic and refining his own techniques, but Lennok could tell that the ring’s ability was not limited to just that.

Visualizing non-existent space also applied directly to the inverse of Domains and Mind Imprints.

For Lennok, who had reorganized his Mind Imprint into infinite branching points and possibilities, it was possible to perceive and analyze the inverse and structure of other people’s Domains by using this ring’s ability as a filter.

He had deliberately taken Ayoon’s attacks and advanced precisely to confirm how the inverse of the Domain operated and unfolded.

It was like looking at a massive, already constructed machine from its deepest point, in reverse.

All of Ayoon’s efforts and intentions prepared to face Lennok in this demonstration were observed in reverse from the deepest part of the Domain and pulled to the surface.

“The Taoist sorcery of Qimen Dunjia. Given that the Domain maintains a form close to spatial erosion, it must be an ancient technique.”

Lennok said with an expressionless face.

The ancient form of a Domain, confirmed through the ancient black wizard Ermont.

The very fact that it exists as a form similar to reality erosion, instead of being deployed to cover the entire space, is proof that the fundamental principle of this Domain has been passed down from ancient times.

“That its original form has been preserved without being lost proves how powerful Taoist sorcery is… but conversely, because it’s a form of erosion, it’s actually vulnerable to interference from an imaginary dimension.”

At the end of the Domain, analyzed by Lennok, the caster’s location was naturally deduced.

Lennok’s unhesitating steps stopped near the 4-lane road where the demonstration had first begun.

It was the exact spot where Ayoon had completely disappeared.

“Originally, I was going to break through the Life Gate and Death Gate in reverse to destroy the Domain itself… but I’ve changed my mind.”

He had thought that by disregarding and shattering the fundamental principles of Qimen Dunjia, he could somehow pinpoint the caster’s location, but there was little point if he could see the blueprint clearly from the inside.

Click!!

As soon as he swept his left sleeve, a heavy shotgun appeared.

Instead of a magazine, he infused it with mana, and as soon as it was loaded, a formidable pressure began to stream from the muzzle.

Weee-iii-iiing!!!

Mana gathered inside the shotgun, dividing into three streams, then merging and intensely rubbing together, emitting explosive heat.

Mana repulsion, a simple imitation of Maiya’s Miniature Universe, developed by the best enforcer of the Machine city.

“Wait… Not there!!!”

“When a person speaks, they should look at each other.”

Ayoon frantically sent a telepathic message, shaken by the ominous tremor, but Lennok paid him no mind and raised the shotgun with both hands.

“Now, I’ll dismantle your technique from its roots and show it to everyone.”