Chapter 495: Between Immortality and Mortality (3)

The moment black eye-glow erupted from Lennok’s eyes.

A sinister premonition assailed Amrita, as if her cognitive abilities were entirely seized and blocked in an instant.

“……!!”

An utterly unpleasant sensation, as if her body and mind were ensnared by invisible chains.

Even for Amrita, who wielded the Power of Revelation akin to foresight, it was an inexpressible dread, impossible to endure for long.

In the fleeting moment Amrita desperately tried to flip her body and distance herself from Lennok to avoid it.

Kwooong!!

Lennok, who had naturally seized that very moment, immediately slammed his palm into Amrita’s solar plexus.

“Khagh……!!”

A shriek of horror burst from Amrita’s lips.

But unlike the pain, Amrita’s body swiftly responded to the subsequent attack.

Swoosh!!

Amrita’s form vanished from its spot, reappearing behind Lennok only to disappear again, thrusting the tip of her blade.

Even with a stiff body still throbbing with pain, she effortlessly leaped dozens of meters,

and in every fleeting moment she brushed past her opponent, she relentlessly plunged eerie sword-light into vital points.

Immediately after, the spatial afterimage remaining on the blade tip distorted, twisting Lennok’s flesh and bones as if wringing them, and a series of explosions engulfed the wizard’s body.

Doo-doo-doo-doo!!

A series of offensives and defenses so fierce they felt horrifying.

Amrita’s movements had already surpassed cognitive ability to such an extent that they could no longer be described as mere speed, surging a step ahead.

The extreme afterimages made it impossible to even properly perceive her, let alone keep up with ordinary feints and attacks.

“Die……!!”

Amrita’s scream, laced with malicious and sinister enmity.

But Lennok’s response was entirely different from being unilaterally pushed onto the defensive just moments before.

He flickered his black-burning eye-glow, scrutinizing Amrita as if piercing through her entire being, and moved his hand.

Lennok’s counterattack, thus begun, was repelling all of Amrita’s sword strikes without even a single flicker.

[Triple Incarnation - Repulsion]

[Blood Blossom Line]

Hwa-reureuk!!

Waves of fanned-out flames precisely located and swept over the dozens of leap points where Amrita appeared.

[Six-Step Red: Monstrous Flame Wheel]

Six pillars of fire, rising from within the waves, swept and rotated through the entire area.

[Eight Flames World]

Constantly proliferating fireballs rotated like asteroids, concentrating their heat.

[Vermillion Starfall]

Eventually, they transformed into a massive wave of heat rays that pierced Amrita’s body.

Kwaaaah!!!

“Aaaahhh……!!”

Following Lennok’s gestures, red waves and heat rays danced wildly, mercilessly striking Amrita’s body.

The fierce, sharp exchange of blows from moments ago vanished like a lie, replaced by the overwhelming dance of heat magic that crushed Amrita.

Amrita, too, struggled frantically, resisting with all her might to somehow overturn the suppressed situation.

But Lennok dismantled all her resistance, as if reading her every move a step ahead.

“This isn’t right……!!”

She glared at Lennok as if to kill him, but every Apostle spell she tried to use was shattered before it could fully manifest.

If she tried to escape with a leap, explosions would preemptively erupt as if he already knew her destination.

If she evaded with distortion and poured out attacks, he would reverse-calculate her trajectory and deliver a counterattack.

Exchanges involving variations, transference, and leaps were thoroughly suppressed at the initiation stage, giving her no time to react.

A sense of powerlessness, as if he understood all of Amrita’s spatial combat tricks and experience more perfectly than she herself did.

Amrita gritted her teeth until they felt like they would shatter.

“How in the world……!!”

The Power of Revelation possessed by Nidri, the High Priestess.

It was an ability meant to hear the voices of the Outer Gods floating beyond the Outer Sea, but the privilege granted to a High Priestess wasn’t limited to just that.

The power to see what others couldn’t and hear what others couldn’t, through endlessly potent and sensitive spiritual insight.

That’s why High Priestesses, even without receiving direct revelations, could see and hear more probable futures than others.

Amrita had been using the High Priestess’s Power of Revelation in combat to maintain advantageous engagements from a vantage point practically akin to foresight.

Yet, from a moment ago, she hadn’t gained the upper hand even once in her battle with Lennok.

It was impossible unless the wizard before her possessed foresight abilities more powerful than Amrita’s.

Was this heretic, who didn’t even believe in gods, endowed with greater spiritual insight than herself, an Apostle and a High Priestess of the cult?

Amrita vaguely suspected the truth but couldn’t readily believe it.

“It’s not spiritual insight.”

Lennok watched Amrita’s reaction and slowly brought a hand to his eye.

Black eye-glow flowed from his right pupil like water.

The pitch-black eye-glow, as if spotted, slowly trickled down like mist.

A strange form, as if eye-glow, which should inherently be formless mere light, moved with weight.

“Because it’s a power specifically designed for beings like you who wield anomalous powers.”

Unlike his left Mystic Eye, which directly projected his Mind Imprint, his right eye was a Mystic Eye opened with the help of Olivera Ron Maize.

Because it was opened based on her powerful The Seven Debts Jewels Mystic Eye, it was born with the ability of causality interference that her eye possessed.

While it couldn’t hold seven abilities like The Seven Debts Jewels Mystic Eye, it was still a Mystic Eye with enough capacity to accommodate more than one ability.

Therefore, instead of leaving the Mystic Eye’s ability empty, Lennok had steadily developed it in preparation for situations like this.

“Foresight through the Power of Revelation. Did you say it allows you to eavesdrop on the causality of your own death?”

Lennok smiled, watching Amrita’s increasingly distorted expression.

“It’s a very good power to be granted only to Apostles. We should share good things.”

“That’s impossible!! The Power of Revelation is the qualification and right of a High Priestess……!! It cannot be granted to a mere heretic……!!!”

Jiii-ing……!!

At that moment, with a shock that felt like her entire brain was rattling, she collapsed.

The Apostle touched her face with a stunned expression, as if she couldn’t believe her own senses.

“No, this isn’t right……!! Too much, too much……!!”

It wasn’t because the Power of Revelation had stopped working.

It was because she had realized the true nature of the unnatural feeling from the eye-glow extending from Lennok’s eye until now.

She had no choice but to scream, understanding what it was trying to do to Amrita herself.

With bare hands, she frantically tore and scratched at the skin of her face, plugging her ear holes and rupturing her eardrums.

With a horrifying face, blood pouring from her eyes and ears, Amrita shrieked in agony.

“It’s too, too loud……!!!!”

Lennok smiled.

“40 seconds since activation. It seems you’re starting to feel it.”

Cause and effect. Directly manipulating causality is an extremely dangerous act.

To the extent that even Olivera Ron Maize had to endure the truly enormous price of lowering her own Hierarchy to obtain that power.

Hadn’t The Clown also taken on tremendous side effects by deceiving causality in the process of manipulating his own Hierarchy?

Lennok had observed firsthand how monsters handled Geas and causality, and he clearly understood the dangers.

And because of that, he realized that if he could instead incite that danger, it could become a fatal weapon against those monsters.

It wasn’t about eliminating or suppressing the opponent’s causality manipulation ability.

Rather, it was about understanding that ability, intervening, and amplifying it to an uncontrollable degree.

Through this, the caster would self-destruct from an uncontrollable rampage of their own ability.

Mutual assured destruction of causality, repeatedly amplifying and causing the rampage of cause and effect.

A counter-intuitive ability, limited to opponents with the power to intervene in causality, but almost certainly capable of delivering a fatal blow.

Thwack!!

Lennok, who had gripped Amrita’s neck using mana threads, spoke.

“The link connecting cause and effect is too delicate; it will twist with even a slight addition of force.”

“Khagh……!!”

The black eye-glow that flowed from his right eye fell directly onto Amrita’s face, making her Power of Revelation erupt to an unbearable degree.

The will of the Outer God, so potent and overflowing that even an Apostle’s physical body could not withstand it.

Unable to endure, Amrita’s brain was utterly crushed, its fluid oozing from her nose and eyes.

“Even the gods you serve cannot be free from that absolute law.”

“Agh-gh-gh, guh-ugh……!!”

Lennok murmured, gazing at Amrita’s slowly fading presence.

“If I can capture that fleeting moment when the Outer Sea’s apocalypse interferes with the outcome, if I can shatter its immortality like this……”

He would definitely be able to reach that shark-headed dragon.

The moment Lennok thought this and tried to draw out mana while holding Amrita’s neck.

“……No.”

Amrita painfully opened her eyes and smiled.

“Not yet……”

“Is that so?”

Lennok also smiled gently at her.

“Then let’s continue.”

Hwaaaah!!!

He mercilessly slammed heat magic into the disoriented Amrita, giving her not a single opening.

As time passed, the heat magic, growing in scale and power, became intensely condensed within the designated space, increasing its density.

Even the mana particles mixed within the flames ignited and evaporated, burning away to add to its power.

“Aaaah…… Aaaahhh!!!!”

A massive blade of flame piercing her back, whips of fire binding and burning her shoulders, and stakes lacerating her calves.

And a fiery brand, seared onto Amrita’s shoulder like a stigma, burning incessantly.

She was still enduring after being hit dozens of times by magic that would turn an ordinary superhuman into ashes if even one of those spells were allowed.

“Aaaahhh!!! It’s hot……!!”

She writhed in agony from the heat that incinerated her entire body, clutching her bleeding head with trembling hands.

The Power of Revelation, amplified to its extreme and rampaging, consumed Amrita’s very being without mercy, swelling her in a direction that should not exist.

’Ah, ah……!!“

Jiii-ji-ji-jik……!!

White fur erupted on Amrita’s skin, and her body swelled in an instant, rapidly increasing in size and transforming into a shape entirely unlike human.

The form of a gigantic white fur ball she had once seen in the temple’s secret chamber.

But unlike that time, when it was crushed beyond recognition and merely dormant, Amrita’s true form began to transform into something more definite.

[Whoosh……!!]

A slender white giant with blood-red eyes and long, protruding ears.

A bizarre form, as if a giant white rabbit had been elongated into a human shape.

Was this the Apostle’s true form that Amrita possessed before she went completely mad?

Before Lennok could react, Amrita, with her revealed true form, rapidly began forming hand signs.

An overwhelming yet brilliant radiance erupted from Amrita’s body.

[Domain Declaration]

Paaaah!!!

The radiance that erupted and enveloped Lennok and Amrita dyed everything around them pitch black, then completely isolated the space itself.

A vast void that gave the illusion of absolutely no gravity.

An endless abyss where purple flashes and ash-grey glows shimmered. A scene of void infinitely similar to a sea of darkness.

Domain Declaration

Arbitrary Creation, World Beyond World

[Stripping Domain: Sea-Bottom Eroding Moon]

Amrita’s telepathic voice softly echoed from somewhere.

Lennok naturally raised his gaze behind him, then realized that the giant rabbit-like being was looking down at him with an eerie gaze.

[If you push the concept of space to its extreme, at its end, all layers of space-time are stripped away, leaving only an empty void.]

Amrita’s eyes, looking down at Lennok with her overwhelming physique, were truly chilling.

[The God I serve dreams every moment of a naked universe, where all the world’s shells are stripped away and nothing remains…….]

Behind Amrita, a gigantic waning moon appeared, slowly radiating light and rotating.

[For me, this is merely an utterly trivial miracle, borrowing but a fragment of that dream.]

“If that’s true, then this Domain isn’t truly above the sea, after all.”

Lennok quietly asked, looking at Amrita.

“If this place were conceptually identical to the Outer Sea, there would be no need for such a conversation the moment the Domain was declared.”

[…….]

“No, rather than that……”

He silently looked at the ring radiating light between his fingers.

The Spell Armament acquired at the end of Jindun’s Hanghasa Labyrinth, [Feigenbaum’s Eye].

What did it mean that this eye, which originally only reacted when illuminating imaginary space, was now operating within Amrita’s Domain?

“Was it a realm close to the concept of imaginary dimension?”

From a spell-theoretic perspective, imaginary dimension is not a concept that actually exists.

It is merely a virtual concept arbitrarily created to explain the laws and principles operating on the flip side of reality.

A consequential concept created not because it actually exists, but because of laws that can only be established by assuming such a void-like space-time.

Traces of complex and intricate design in this world’s space-time, where no flip side inherently exists, yet which can only be explained by assuming the non-existent.

If something non-existent was made to exist, wouldn’t that be due to the power of apocalypse Amrita serves, rather than spatial magic?

“You call it a Domain, but ultimately, you don’t fully understand that concept either.”

Lennok murmured, floating loftily in the imaginary dimension where up and down had vanished.

Even at the climactic moment of being trapped within an unknown opponent’s Domain, only mockery remained in Lennok’s gaze as he looked at Amrita.

“You’re merely upholding a power and will you don’t understand, entrusting your mind and body to an endless dream.”

[The great wills of the Pantheon foresee our every move and bestow upon us graces befitting them.]

Amrita retorted coldly.

[It is not a name light enough for a mere heretic to utter.]

With her resolute declaration, the colossal waning moon appeared beyond the void of the imaginary dimension.

With the faint, inverted moon behind it, the enormous imaginary dimension completely reassembled itself, beginning to rotate around Lennok alone.

Koo-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!!!!!

Amrita closed her eyes and floated, as if entrusting her body to the distant space of the Domain.

Swimming gracefully through the void, she, now inverted before Lennok’s eyes, spoke.

[Great reverence in all these moments. And endless gratitude to you.]

“……”

[Thanks to you making the Power of Revelation rampage, I was able to realize something at the crossroads of immortality and annihilation.]

Her voice was utterly distant, as if intoxicated by a profound ecstasy.

[The true paradise desired by that being. The unique future for us to stand in the paradise of Guido (Return). The end of the great Outer God’s dream.]

With both hands brought together and spread, Amrita spoke, offering them to Lennok as if presenting a gift.

[The answer is here. From this moment, it is for you. For this moment of bestowing great spiritual insight.]

The power of the Domain rotated as if consolidating into one, gathering at Amrita’s fingertips.

But just before the entire Sea-Bottom Eroding Moon Domain converged and pointed precisely at Lennok.

“No.”

Lennok chuckled and shook his head.

“I know. The apocalypse floating beyond the Outer Sea is not such a merciful or humane entity.”

[…….]

“Knowing that everything might vanish into a handful of echoes, how can you dedicate your mind and body to the apocalypse like that?”

Saying so, Lennok slowly brought his wrist to his mouth.

“That’s because you, too, are hoping for a completely different outcome, not a future submerged in ruin.”

Guido (歸度).

If the meaning Lennok didn’t know was hidden within that word, called the cult’s name.

Kiii-ing……!!

At that moment, a faint golden glow began to mix with the fresh blood flowing from Lennok’s wrist.

The Ouroboros’s double helix captured between his gathered hands.

Simultaneously, a golden kaleidoscope began to unfold behind Lennok.

The moment the snake devouring its own head and the kaleidoscopic landscape began to unfold simultaneously, surrounding Lennok from front and back.

“Domain deployment.”