Chapter 565: The One Who Closes the World (3)
Thud!!
As Lennok pulled his hand away, Kaiser, his face pale, coughed up blood and collapsed.
The shadow, seemingly woven from the Milky Way, calmly stepped past Kaiser and slowly began to walk.
“……”
Lennok watched the two figures cross paths, splattering blood, and keenly realized the profound contradiction of the situation.
He had said he would deliver Kaiser’s dying wish, left after his death.
Then who was this man, now convulsing at the shadow’s feet?
What irony was this, to pierce Kaiser’s heart and then claim to deliver the dying wish of the already dead Kaiser?
But instead of voicing it, Lennok knelt and reached out to the fallen Kaiser’s shoulder.
“Cough…!!”
Blood profusely oozed from his chest.
He tried to staunch the wound with his fingertips, but the penetrating injury through his heart was already too severe.
Kaiser, his eyes unfocused, shook his head at Lennok.
“Calm down. Breathe slowly.”
“Too late… Already…”
Kaiser forced a faint smile with blood-stained lips and mumbled.
“A wound this fatal… cannot be overcome… my magic, too…”
“……”
Lennok understood what he was saying.
Complete destruction of vital organs like the heart. And simultaneously, Kaiser’s own lack of mana due to continuous exertion.
No matter how special or anomalous Kaiser’s constitution was, he was still human.
There was virtually no chance of survival from such a critical injury.
But even knowing this, Lennok didn’t give up on Kaiser. Instead, he silently placed his hand on Kaiser’s chest and began to pour mana into him.
Wooong…!!
“The one I know… no… run…!!”
“Run?”
Lennok echoed. Where could one run to in this sealed zone, where the path back to reality was blocked and the past timeline was encroaching?
There had been no other way from the start.
It was preposterous to abandon Kaiser now and seek another escape route with this newly appeared shadow.
Lennok already had a strong intuition about who this shadow was.
“Stop talking nonsense and focus your mind.”
Fwoosh!!
Lennok gathered his mana, brought it to Kaiser’s wound, and lightly flipped his palm.
“I’ll try to imitate it, but accepting it is up to you.”
He reversed the flow of mana particles through his fingertips and slammed it directly into Kaiser’s damaged heart.
Clang!!!
“…!!!!”
At that moment, Kaiser’s body gave a great lurch and began to convulse faintly on the spot.
The mana of Defying Heaven flowed through Kaiser’s entire body.
Lennok imitated the characteristics of the mana he had observed and remembered, supplying it throughout Kaiser’s body.
The reason Kaiser’s injury wasn’t healing through Time Reversal was not only the severity of the wound but also the lack of his Main Force mana.
If so, the solution was simply to supply Kaiser with far more of his inherent Defying Heaven mana than he originally possessed.
“Ugh…!!”
An absurd idea: to instantly imitate and inject another’s innate inherent mana.
If an ordinary wizard had attempted this, it wouldn’t be strange for not only Kaiser but also the caster’s own mana flow to be reversed, causing their entire body to explode.
In reality, what Lennok was supplying to Kaiser’s body was merely an imitation, with the very nature of the mana reversed.
He couldn’t reproduce the exact performance of true Defying Heaven mana.
However, if he could activate Kaiser’s innate constitution to its limit, using Lennok’s mana as a medium-
Crrraaaack!!!
The mana of Defying Heaven, overflowing from Kaiser’s body, became a new driving force, rewinding the time of his physical form.
Though trembling as if his breath would cease at any moment, his pierced heart muscle reconnected, wounds healed, and muscles rejoined on the spot.
The Defying Heaven mana surging through his body forcibly seized and rewound his dwindling life.
Lennok confirmed that new flesh sprouted and filled the gap in his sternum, which had been gushing blood, and his pallid complexion returned to normal before slowly rising.
Kaiser had not yet fully regained consciousness, but that didn’t matter.
He had used nearly half of the mana he had reserved for his Domain, but it was still fine.
Ultimately, without Kaiser Bajour’s cooperation, it would be difficult to resolve the current situation in one go.
Lennok had therefore decided to save Kaiser at this point, even if it meant sacrificing some of his remaining power.
Standing before the shadow, which waited silently as if for him, Lennok wiped the blood from Kaiser off his fingertips and asked.
“Alright, then. Shall we hear what this ‘dying wish’ of yours is?”
While treating Kaiser’s injury, Lennok had been completely defenseless, but surprisingly, the shadow had not attacked him.
Lennok had also somewhat anticipated this.
Because he knew that the words uttered by the shadow were merely the playback of a pre-recorded message.
The shadow that pierced Kaiser’s heart was not an intelligent being with a firm will.
It was merely a ‘device’ programmed to execute a pre-determined message and action towards anyone attempting to break this space.
Kaiser’s conjecture was wrong. Alkaid himself was not the one dreaming an unending dream in this spacetime.
[Whoever is hearing this message, this is the promise we made and the arrangement for what comes next.]
Alkaid had merely left behind an arrangement to ensure this dream continued and then departed.
The shadow, which had walked right up to Lennok, spoke.
[Because Kaiser Bajour himself wished to leave behind a ‘substitute’ even after his death.]
“……”
[This spacetime remains a fixed testbed to record and preserve his intellect from a time when it was still intact, for reuse.]
“Recycling a substitute, huh…”
Regardless of Lennok’s disgusted reply, the shadow faithfully replayed the remaining audio.
[The experiment continues. Spacetime repeats. Failure circulates.]
“What happens if that experiment stops here?”
The shadow did not answer.
Instead, from its raised fingertips, dazzling fragments of light began to swirl.
[This moment will repeat eternally until the conclusion arrives.]
The shadow’s form twisted bizarrely, spreading a vast curtain of Milky Way light in all directions.
At its core, an overwhelming heat source, whose true power could not be gauged, blazed.
[Variables that disrupt the circulation and fixation will be eliminated.]
Kii-iing…!!!
The moment Lennok realized that the light’s form perfectly mimicked Olivera’s Radiance-attribute system magic.
“Damn it…”
Lennok watched it, pulled out a cigarette, and chuckled hollowly.
“Nothing ever goes smoothly.”
KWA-A-ANG!!!
A massive flash erupted from the rooftop of the particle power plant’s heat exhaust, sweeping away everything in its path.
Drip, drip…
He heard the sound of blood dripping.
His consciousness, hazy as if shrouded in fog, slowly returned, followed by a shock that rattled his insides.
Thump, thump!!
The violent vibrations echoing from the floor made his body bounce slightly and fall.
Only then did the dull, searing pain rise from his abdomen.
“…?”
The moment Kaiser struggled to open his eyes and lift his head.
Something flew beside him and slammed into the ground, scattering blood as it tumbled.
KWA-A-ANG!!
“Cough!!”
The battered wizard lay sprawled in a similar posture to Kaiser, looking at him with a weak smile.
“Looks like you’re finally coming to.”
“…Van?”
There was no answer.
Lennok, who had pulled out his mana threads, gripped Kaiser’s neck, threw him far away, and then directly bore the brunt of the enormous heat source of light erupting overhead.
KWA-A-ANG!!!
As if struck by spatial delamination, lightning forms flickered through the fracturing space.
[Heaven-Piercing Thunderstrike]
The curtain of thunder, bursting like clapping hands, sliced through the waves of military spirits, widening the space.
[Adamantine Lightning Bind]
Chaa-reureuk!!
In an instant, lightning chains extended from all directions, forcefully prying open the widened space.
Through the gap, Lennok’s figure shot up and vanished as if recoiling.
Using Flicker, the wizard leaped through space more than five times on the spot, and dazzling crimson lightning blazed at his fingertips.
[Crimson Lightning Shift]
KWA-A-ANG!!!
The crimson lightning, dyed red by Property Transformation, collided with the shadow’s mana, cleaving the dark sky above the particle power plant in two.
[Perpetual Thunder: Immortal Training]
[Thunder Scourge: Life’s Demise]
Udu-du-du-duk!!!
Mana erupting from Lennok’s and the shadow’s fingertips exploded in all directions, transforming into waves of light and lightning forms via Will-thought.
Fragments of thunder ripped and evaporated the surrounding air, while curtains of military spirits encroached upon and eroded space.
Amidst the explosions and releases of two opposing powers, continuously inflating and deflating their destructive force, the mana of the two figures intertwined wildly, pounding on space in succession.
KOO-GWA-GWA-GWA-GWA!!!!
A super-high-speed battle whose thought process and combat logic were incomprehensible even when observed firsthand.
But as Lennok’s lightning desperately burned its light, the shadow’s diverse spellcasting became ever more magnificent and dense.
Lennok’s figure, barely holding on with depleted mana, slid far back, then stumbled and finally collapsed.
Thump!!
“Van!!”
At Kaiser’s shout, Lennok picked himself up and mumbled.
“It’s fine. It’s merely imitating spells; the method of use itself is extremely simple.”
“……”
“Just look at that first.”
Kaiser’s eyes widened as he saw the shadow standing before Lennok.
“That’s…”
“Alkaid’s arrangement, they said. Do you remember being stabbed?”
Lennok, who had taken out another analgesic ampoule and injected it into his neck, spoke.
“It’s the cause maintaining the anomalies of the sealed zone, and if things go wrong, it’s responsible for rewinding spacetime and endlessly repeating this moment. And…”
KWA-A-ANG!!
Lennok deflected the flash of light extending from the opponent’s fingertips with lightning, sending it spiraling skyward, and chuckled.
“It’s an unbelievable monster.”
Goooooo…!!
Iron-clad wings flapping behind the shadow’s back. Flashes of Radiance-attribute system magic shimmering at its fingertips.
A massive Ghost Ship floating above its head, and within it, the summoned beast Arjumarta, erupting with bright yellow light.
The opponent freely wielded the spells and powers that originally belonged to Kaiser’s comrades, as if they were its own.
Kaiser, who had been staring blankly, suddenly turned his gaze to the ground below the exhaust and lost his words.
“This is impossible…”
The previously intact ground of Ramahal District distorted and flipped over, and cracks erupting everywhere gnawed and raged through spacetime without mercy.
It was crushed and crumbled as if to utterly destroy and reset the existing spacetime.
In contrast to the landscape distorting and breaking all around, only the collapsed Kaiser and the form of the spacetime anchoring device remained intact.
Only then did Kaiser realize why Lennok had been lying there so utterly battered.
Even as everything around them broke down, Lennok knew that he couldn’t resolve this without protecting Kaiser.
Even his current battered state must have been the result of him enduring to protect the spacetime anchoring device and Kaiser’s body.
“It probably isn’t actually using Olivera’s or Onnion’s spells. That’s what the 8-level Peak of Extremes means.”
Muttering so, Lennok picked himself up and continued.
“It must have chosen the images remaining in this space to materialize its own power. But in this space, they are very real, and their power and characteristics are roughly similar.”
Lennok glanced at Kaiser and said.
“There might be a way, but before that, I want to hear your thoughts. After all, you were the one who devised this spacetime domain.”