Chapter 519: Curtain Call (2)

Kiiiiing…!!

The ultra-long-range snipe of Inertial Deviation, coiling and rising from the darkness.

Evelyn’s ultimate technique, capable of chilling one’s neck with a single shot, flashed more than three times, soaring through the air beyond the limits of perception.

Three arrows, imbued to their limits with the Mind Imprint of Inertial Deviation, changed direction as if leaping through space from where they were, tracing an ethereal trajectory.

Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!!

Each shot was an almost certain hit, a bombardment possessing destructive power and speed comparable to a missile.

The moment Lennok dodged with a flash, the arrows changed their trajectory from that spot, covering different spaces and eliminating any escape options.

A skill that annihilated escape routes, impossible unless one had perfectly grasped the range, casting speed, and stacking count of Lennok’s flash spell.

Even a graze, let alone a direct hit, would tear Lennok’s body into pieces, just like the train car that had just exploded.

But Lennok, certain of that fact, instead brought his mana closer to the arrows closing in on him.

Confirming the black-green flash filling his vision with mana sensing, he activated Compassion of the Archangel just before impact.

Kagagagak!!!

A strange noise, as if space itself was being gnawed away, echoed, and the force field erupting around Lennok rotated, glowing.

He forcibly detached the arrows, which had reached just before penetration, with Translocation, diverting their trajectories.

The deflected arrows exploded, shattering the high-rise buildings of the satellite city around Lennok and Logier, who was moving behind him.

Kwang!!!

The Translocation spell cast by Lennok, who had enhanced his understanding of spatial manipulation through his battle with Amrita.

Since he handled Compassion of the Archangel’s ability, which only works on inanimate objects, as if it were his own, he could forcibly translocate the arrows.

However, Lennok only began using this ability after creating some distance, as Evelyn’s intent imbued in the arrows could potentially interfere with Translocation.

Arrows fired by activating Miniature Universe’s Inertial Deviation. The Miniature Universe’s Mind Imprint contained within them could suppress the Translocation ability itself.

As the distance increased and the intent within the arrows weakened, that possibility would diminish.

Lennok had anticipated this from the start, focusing solely on activating Translocation around his own body to distort the arrows’ trajectories.

Dududududu!!!!

Lennok’s form sped through the swirling dust and sandstorm, suspended by mana threads, without hesitation.

With his sense of balance paralyzed, if he didn’t force himself to move now, there would be no second chance.

The moment he swiftly maneuvered through the high-rise building district and exited into the city’s outskirts terminal.

A black pillar, falling vertically from above his head, crumpled and transformed into a gigantic sphere.

Kwaaaaaang!!!

The colossal sphere, made of black mana, consumed and rotated within the surrounding space, drawing everything towards it.

An incredibly powerful aggregation of gravitational force, enough to send shivers down one’s spine.

Lennok, realizing how Evelyn had used her ability, also hardened his expression behind his mask.

“Unbelievable. To convert inertia itself into gravity…!!”

She wasn’t simply gathering non-existent gravity to use as an attack.

It was the reaction of gravitational and repulsive forces that Evelyn had accumulated while drawing her bow and firing arrows.

She was gathering the inertia of the force generated during that process, imbuing it into an arrow, and firing it with extreme amplification.

The unleashed power of Inertial Deviation condensed the chosen force of Evelyn herself, unleashing it with a potency akin to a tactical weapon.

Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!!!

An incredibly powerful storm of gravitational force, as if trying to crush Lennok and Logier’s bodies whole.

If she could amplify a specific force with Inertial Deviation, she could unleash far greater power than this. So, what did it mean that she chose gravity to bind them?

Evelyn was clearly holding back to some extent, even at this point, to capture them alive.

If so, there was still a chance.

Thinking so, Lennok unleashed all his remaining flash spells.

He precisely identified and passed through the points of resistance created by the repulsion within the swirling sphere of gravitational force.

He used the power of The Seven Debts Jewels Mystic Eye to find faint connecting points to escape from inside the binding sphere Evelyn had unleashed, forcing his way through.

Kwaak!!

Lennok’s body, having successfully escaped the black sphere, staggered forward and tumbled.

Under the influence of the gravitational force swirling all around, all sorts of objects and debris floated aimlessly in the air.

Signs that should have been attached to building walls, broken car bodies, remnants of signposts and traffic lights danced wildly, shattering and crumbling everywhere.

The moment he was about to drag the unconscious Logier, who was foaming at the mouth, and exit the city.

“Got you.”

“…!!!”

Evelyn, who had landed beside him, swung her hand as if she had been waiting.

Whoosh…!!

A jet-black arrow held in reverse grip in her hand.

Lennok, intuiting the Miniature Universe’s power overflowing from it, pulled up his mana with all his might and sharply threw his body back.

The moment their figures crossed and passed each other, a tremendous amount of shockwave erupted centered around the engagement zone.

Paaaaang!!

Evelyn’s eyes, as she held down her scattered hair with one hand, gleamed strangely.

“You blocked that?”

“….”

Around the arrow aimed at Lennok’s brow, dozens of mana threads were wound like a ball of yarn, holding it still.

Kkigigik…!!

A near-divine display of power control, using the tension and reverse rotation of the threads to their absolute limit to withstand Evelyn’s strength and speed at the most precarious moment.

Suppressing the power of Inertial Deviation contained within the arrow from almost all directions was a feat Lennok himself had unconsciously achieved.

“I thought your spells were unique, so you’re a dual-attribute wizard after all.”

Evelyn smiled, pushing the arrowhead straight towards Lennok’s mask.

“It’s the most unique talent I’ve seen recently. Looks like you’re not all talk.”

“Hoo, hoo…!!”

Kiiiiiik…!!!

The mana threads wrapped around the arrow trembled tautly, as if they would snap at any moment.

Evelyn’s arrow shaft, bound between them, was pushing back against the tension of the mana threads, dropping down directly in front of his face.

It was a critical moment, but worse was the fact that the painkiller Lennok had taken to move his body was rapidly wearing off.

His forcibly paralyzed sense of balance returned, and his overworked body was now properly protesting with recoil.

His stomach churned wildly, and his head swam.

Despite that, he was only holding onto the mana threads with his unwavering mana manipulation.

His body was nearing a state where it wouldn’t be strange for him to collapse at any moment.

Evelyn shook her head, as if guessing Lennok’s condition.

“Just give up. You knew it wouldn’t work from the start, didn’t you?”

“Ugh…!!”

“Even escaping alone is a losing battle, and you’re trying to get away with a literal dead weight?”

Kiiik!!

Evelyn tilted the arrowhead instantly, touching Lennok’s mask, and gave a cold laugh.

“To gamble like this, knowing who I am. You’re quite greedy for a Pandemonium member.”

The obsidian mask Myeong had given Lennok was sturdy, but not enough to protect his face from an attack by a strong individual like Evelyn.

If he allowed a direct hit, the mask would probably shatter in one go, revealing his face.

Should he quickly cast a disguise spell now to prepare for such a situation?

Lennok thought so, yet he squeezed out a laugh from his churning stomach.

“It’s not over until it’s over, is it….”

“You still say that, even seeing this?”

There was no need to explain it in words.

It was obvious that Lennok had effectively lost in the rapidly unfolding chase.

Lennok, using the psychological advantage of knowing Evelyn’s abilities beforehand and employing Translocation via Compassion of the Archangel, endured Evelyn’s sniping a few times and created distance.

Evelyn, too, realizing the unusual level of Lennok’s countermeasures, immediately changed her pattern and swiftly overwhelmed Lennok.

The moment she realized her Inertial Deviation snipe wasn’t working, she unleashed a focused attack, elevating her Miniature Universe to its extreme.

She exploded the sphere of gravity gathered by inertia manipulation, buying a momentary delay, then immediately closed the distance to attempt close combat.

Her decision to cleanly resolve the situation with a single preemptive strike against Lennok, who had escaped the sphere, was truly sharp beyond measure.

If Lennok had decided to truly face Evelyn, things wouldn’t have gone this way.

Conversely, cornering Lennok, who was unwilling to fight head-on, so swiftly was only possible for someone of Evelyn’s caliber.

But Lennok, feeling the cold weight of the arrow against his mask, forced a relaxed demeanor and replied.

“Behind you, watch your head.”

“Ha, that’s all you could come up with, such a pathetic-”

As Evelyn snorted and sharply turned her head to one side, a car license plate and a sign, flying from behind her head, collided.

Kwang!!

The moment Evelyn immediately raised her head and pressed the arrow firmly onto Lennok’s mask, intending to pierce it.

“…?!”

Her eyes widened, and she froze for a moment.

Lennok, not missing the opportunity, immediately used a flash spell and escaped.

Paaat!!

“You…!!”

A piqued Evelyn immediately sharpened her senses to pursue Lennok.

Kiiiiing!!

The intuition of an archer and a hunter. Manifesting spiritual-like sixth sense to its limit, discerning the opponent’s movements and intentions from beyond the realm of foresight.

“There…!!”

Evelyn, having vanished as a streak of black light, traversed the ruined street debris as if seeing three moves ahead, directly snatching the shadow.

Deop-seok!!

The faint outline of a jet-black glove shaking at the end of the robe.

Its appearance, difficult to recognize at first glance, was a custom-made item from the Black Palace Workshop, now discontinued and hard to obtain.

It was one of the few traces of her opponent that Evelyn had noticed from the beginning.

Evelyn, gripping the wrist still wearing the glove, pulled her hand into the shadow robe and seized the opponent’s vital point.

The archer’s body, whose neck was seized, bent at a right angle, twisting all the joints hidden within the robe.

Udududuk!!!

With a horrific sound as if bones were twisting and shattering, the figure in the robe rotated in a gentle arc.

It then plunged into the ground, shattering the surrounding asphalt and unleashing aftershocks.

Kwaaaaaang!!!

An intuitive strike, purely relying on senses and combat intuition.

However, Evelyn’s face had been subtly scrunched up from the moment she successfully landed the attack.

“Wait, a successful hit at this point means….”

She pulled open the robe and checked the face inside.

What was revealed inside was not the masked wizard, but the face of the werewolf, who had been lying unconscious, bound entirely by mana threads.

“Heh heh, heheh….”

Drooling and laughing with crossed eyes, there was no longer any trace of intellect in his appearance.

Evelyn’s green eyes sank coldly.

‘My senses weren’t off. I was certain I had him, so how?’

“No way…!!”

The moment Evelyn confirmed the presence of the glove on Logier’s right hand, an idea flashed through her mind, and she checked Logier’s wrist.

The sight of a pencil, snapped in half and stuck in his wrist, caught her eye.

Enakphil’s five fingers. An item used for emergency evacuation of the user.

The opponent activated Translocation in the fleeting moment Evelyn caught him.

Instead of moving or escaping himself, he instead translocated Enakphil’s five fingers onto Logier and switched places.

He had switched targets to Logier with such exquisite timing that even Evelyn herself was momentarily confused.

‘Wait a minute, these items…!’

The Black Palace Workshop glove. Enakphil’s five fingers.

An unusually bizarre and utterly unique combat style.

A series of information, too coincidental to be intentional, mixed together, and the face of a certain wizard came to Evelyn’s mind.

In that fleeting moment she inadvertently paused, everything was already one step too late.

Paaaaang!!

Simultaneously, the bright lights of a transcontinental train flashed past above her head.

Evelyn, who had been about to board the train the moment she sensed its movement, soon let out a hollow laugh and swept her hair back.

“…This is what you were aiming for?”

She wondered why he was holding his ground; he must have been waiting for the brief moment a transcontinental train passed the city’s outskirts.

Once she lost his presence, Evelyn couldn’t tell if he had boarded the train or not.

Even if he had boarded, if he hadn’t, planning that, the pursuit would end there.

Given that the opposite was virtually true, Evelyn was in a situation where it was difficult to chase them further.

Since a large number of civilians were on board, destroying the train itself was impossible.

He was probably creating distance, drawing her attention, and biding his time for this very purpose from the beginning.

“Should I call this my mistake, or simply good luck….”

Evelyn, with an embarrassed laugh, looked at the glove that had fallen at her feet.

Her opponent had abandoned Logier without hesitation and fled, but Evelyn could instantly tell the operation had failed just by looking at the werewolf’s expression.

He couldn’t speak properly, only mumbling unintelligible groans.

All the memories in his head had already cleanly backflowed and been bleached out long ago.

The valuable information that was in Logier’s mind must have already been collected and taken by that masked wizard, who then fled.

She had no idea how he had manipulated a Hierarchy-level physical ability user to make his Mind Imprint and memories run wild, but she had been perfectly outmaneuvered.

Perhaps his entire engagement with Evelyn until now had merely been to buy time to extract all of Logier’s memories.

Evelyn looked at the glove she had taken from Logier’s hand with a strange gaze, then put it into her pocket and turned her head.

“…It can’t be, right?”

The combination of artifacts she had just seen did remind her of someone she knew, but…

Nevertheless, Evelyn knew deep down that the possibility itself was very low.

The lightning wizard she knew was not someone who enjoyed this kind of hand-to-hand combat or chase.

The possibility of her friend, who had been in seclusion for a long time due to news of a serious injury, getting involved in something like this was next to none.

Though they were uncommon artifacts, it wouldn’t be strange for a high-level wizard of that caliber to possess one or two.

A feeling closer to coincidence or bewilderment than suspicion or delusion.

Rather, what lingered in Evelyn’s mind was closer to self-mockery for having paused even for a moment at that thought alone.

Evelyn chuckled and shook her head, dismissing the thought, then immediately pulled out her phone.

“Pallard? I failed. I’m going back first.”

Evelyn pulled the phone away from her ear, muttering indifferently at the loud burst of words from the other end.

“Oh, I don’t know. What does it matter? I’m not even an Agent anymore, am I? If you’re going to talk like that, at least reinstate me first.”

[Censored static]!!

“I can’t quite hear what you’re saying~ Oh, it seems the connection isn’t very good, I’m hanging up!!”

Kwang!!

Evelyn, roughly mumbling her words and hanging up the phone, smirked as she watched a pillar of white light erupt from beyond Bailuts.

Though she had joined this operation as an external force, she was merely an old hag she had never met.

There was no need to pay much attention to a warrior who was virtually a battle maniac, overly obsessed with winning against Maiya Lonsdale.

Evelyn, turning her back without a shred of regret, slowly disappeared.

“…She’s gone?”

[It seems so.]

Clunk, clunk!!

At the very end of the transcontinental train’s connecting carriage.

Lennok, sprawled between partitions that were barely visible, quietly exhaled and leaned his back against the door.

Beyond the window, the warm glow and the scenery inside the cabin came into view, but he had no strength to get up, open the door, and step inside.

“Haa… My head is throbbing too much.”

Lennok, completely slumped and sighing deeply, groaned as he clutched his spinning head.

Davi popped out from his chest, coiled up on his chest, and spoke.

[It’ll take about a night for the drug’s side effects to wear off. It’s a new drug processed from the side effects of an antibiotic developed for severe patients, so its stability is a bit low.]

“So I’ll be stuck like this until we reach Vulcan, huh….”

However, for paralyzing Lennok’s poor sense of balance, which made his stomach churn with just a slight movement, and for forcibly manipulating his body, there was no better drug.

Lennok, with trembling hands, took out a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and mumbled.

“Still, it’s a relief that the last trick worked. If not for that, I might have been stuck there facing her for dozens more minutes.”

The final moment, when he was cornered right before being caught by Evelyn.

Lennok threw Logier as bait and made a gamble to evade Evelyn’s pursuit, succeeding by the narrowest of margins.

[It was reckless to even think about finishing the fine-tuning while fleeing in the first place. If not for that, you wouldn’t have been cornered so badly.]

“But if I hadn’t done that, it would have taken much longer than now.”

Fine-tuning involved organizing Logier’s memories, preserving them in a crystal ball, and then completely erasing all remaining memories from his head.

Lennok processed that complicated procedure entirely while fleeing from Evelyn, then used the now useless Logier as bait to escape.

The ability to deceive Evelyn even for a moment during that process was possible because Lennok unsparingly threw out the Black Palace Workshop glove he possessed and even Enakphil’s five fingers as bait.

After putting the glove on the imbecilic Logier’s hand, he translocated Enakphil’s five fingers to him, precisely timing it with Evelyn’s pursuit.

Simultaneously, he activated Enakphil’s five fingers on himself, forcibly switching Logier’s and Lennok’s positions.

Evelyn, who was aware of the Black Palace Workshop glove, realized immediately afterwards that something was wrong.

What Lennok needed was precisely that near-instant of breathing room.

Enakphil’s five fingers had a completely different operating principle from the flash spells Lennok had used until now.

It was to exploit the vulnerability of that gap that Lennok had saved Enakphil’s five fingers until the very end.

The gamble, perfectly timed with the arrival of the transcontinental train heading to Vulcan, paid off, allowing him to safely evade Evelyn’s pursuit.

The reason Evelyn gave up faster than expected was unknown, but escaping this crisis with a single glove and a few consumable artifacts was close to a miracle.

Lennok knew full well how difficult it was to escape from Evelyn without revealing his identity.

Lennok, who had been briefly reminiscing about the recent battle, then stumbled and moved his hands.

“My head hurts a bit, but since I have the time, I should start right away.”

[…You’re going to look into the memories already?]

“I finished the fine-tuning somewhat hastily, so its stability will be lower.”

Lennok said that, then took out a crystal ball glowing with jet-black radiance from his pocket and clutched it with both hands.

“I need to check it as quickly as possible to fully confirm Logier’s memories.”

Paaat!!

As he poured mana into the crystal ball, he felt his consciousness slowly sink into it.

Feeling the swaying train scenery gradually change into something different, Lennok murmured.

“The most intense and fatal memory remaining within Logier’s Mind Imprint. To fully confirm it, now is the only time.”

[Haaah….]

As soon as Davi’s sigh ended, Logier’s memories began to unfold before Lennok’s eyes.

Hwaaak!!

A city completely ruined, as if a war had just ended.

In a ruin that left only traces of a brilliant civilization, most of which was buried deep underground.

Logier was cautiously peeking at something, lying prone.

‘….’

So, his most intense memory starts like this, huh?

The moment Lennok, feeling somewhat exasperated, replayed the memory.

At the edge of Logier’s gaze, the scenery left at the end of the ruins began to appear.

[….]

A scene so empty and distant, as if the end of the world was visible.

The ground ended, and an unfathomable sky, like an abyss, scattered thick fog.

At its edge, two figures stood facing each other.

A black-haired young man with an ordinary impression, and an unknown figure riddled with noise.

‘This is….’

Lennok momentarily held his breath, forgetting he was seeing through Logier’s memory.

Two individuals, known even in Pandemonium as monsters of a different caliber.

The Director and Myeong stood facing each other.