Chapter 673: Central Council Senate (1)
Click!
As Kaiser’s pocket watch activated, its hands began to spin backward.
Lennok slowly approached, holding the artifact that rotated counter-clockwise, and carefully brought it to the platinum gem.
Rattle, rattle, rattle!!!
That alone caused the will-thought entity’s time to reverse little by little, unleashing the torrent of power that had been intensely condensed.
A pure white shockwave swept through the entire laboratory and soared high into the sky.
Whoosh!!
“Hmph…!!”
Lennok immediately absorbed and analyzed the Ascendant’s will-thought, which had been unraveled backward through Kaiser’s regression magic.
The chancellor of a ruined kingdom and the commander of platinum. A war proxy who had annihilated civilizations countless times.
The Ascendant Hermes Orokhnier’s final, lingering will-thought, left to Lennok in his last moments.
Instead of being swept away by the winds of reality, that will-thought remained by Lennok’s side, taking the distinct form of a necklace.
In Machina, it was merely an Ascendant’s will-thought matter that could only be preserved.
Upon returning to Vulcan, Lennok had devoted himself to studying it the moment he had time.
“Orokhnier’s Mass Manipulation Magic isn’t a miracle that creates something from nothing.”
Lennok murmured, carefully observing the analysis values displayed on the laboratory screen.
“If it were, he would have succeeded in his ascension and reached this world long ago. His Mass Manipulation Magic is, strictly speaking, closer to the reproduction of memories using a catalyst.”
“Reproduction of memories?”
“It’s a method of restoring the memories he himself shattered and destroyed, using platinum as a catalyst. Conversely, it means he can only manifest it through his spell if he himself has destroyed it.”
Beep, beep!!
As he filled in the empty fields with estimates and activated the simulator, the gem’s form on the screen began to change.
It could transform into the shape of platinum soldiers, massive cannons and rockets, all sorts of weaponry, or fragments of buildings.
A finite cycle of recreating and restoring all traces of destruction that he himself had brought down.
That was the ability of the Mass Manipulation Magic possessed by Hermes Orokhnier.
“Perhaps the Mass Manipulation Magic Orokhnier learned was not originally a power specialized in combat. Considering his background, closer to a scholar, it might have been an ability optimized for production or crafting.”
“That Transcendent’s power wasn’t specialized in combat?”
“I wonder if it’s a state he reached because he significantly twisted its direction during the process of building up his Hierarchy.”
Because Lennok had peered into Orokhnier’s memories from beyond the door, he could vaguely infer how Orokhnier had developed his Mass Manipulation Magic.
Orokhnier was not interested in resonance; he was a being who later used his talent to rise to a position above all others.
Living a longer life than others, he would have had ample time and aptitude to refine the skills he had acquired.
Perhaps he refined the Mass Manipulation Magic, originally intended for production or crafting, eventually turning it into a platinum army capable of waging war.
“Ultimately, obtaining the qualification depends on the wielder, rather than the essence or limitations of the power…”
That’s why Orokhnier’s answer, which only ascended his Ideological Domain and not himself, was wrong.
The irony is, perhaps, that Orokhnier must have known that fact, yet chose that path anyway.
It might have been the desperate yearning of an Ascendant who realized he had no more hope for himself.
But Lennok could understand the heart of the fallen Ascendant who had already failed.
Because Lennok was no different from them.
Even when he faced countless answers that had already failed and been discarded, and declared them wrong.
How could Lennok be so certain that the solution he would offer would be more correct than theirs?
Perhaps Lennok too would be left at the end of a failure as ugly as, or even uglier than, theirs.
But even knowing that, Lennok could not stop chasing the trailblazers who had gone before him.
He was looking for a method, not hope.
He was creating an answer, not a qualification.
If he had to question everything and seek answers, if even the process was a product of causality leading to the conclusion—
“…At least, I don’t want to have regrets.”
As Lennok muttered that and manipulated the controller, the gem’s form blurred, and the laboratory began to vibrate.
Rumble!!
The Platinum Gem left by Orokhnier was a condensation of will-thought gifted by an Ascendant.
The will of such a Transcendent was a dangerous object, capable of interfering with the space-time of the area just by its presence.
Although he was controlling the output through various devices, even that was enough to distort the laboratory’s space-time.
But Lennok knew this and had no intention of stopping his research here.
‘The Mass Manipulation Magic left by Orokhnier is a power with endless utility.’
Lennok’s gaze, fixed on the spreading platinum radiance, deepened.
‘Even if I can’t perfectly master it, knowing how to properly handle its principles will be enough.’
Mass Manipulation Magic, which recreates the memories he himself broke and destroyed through mass formation.
But despite the demanding conditions and extremely poor energy efficiency, Lennok knew that the potential inherent in this spell was limitless.
Innumerable formidable individuals and superhumans Lennok had defeated. Strategic weapons and fortresses.
If he could borrow Mass Manipulation Magic to draw out a part of those memories, he was convinced that any cost would be worth bearing.
“The organic beings I’ve dealt with so far, with my tail trimmer…”
Davi, who had been mumbling, suddenly flared up with an unusual amount of enthusiasm.
“That’s a great idea, Master. Let’s start right away!!”
“…Exactly where in my research did you deduce ‘tail trimmer’?”
Lennok replied, flabbergasted, and pushed the laboratory’s power supply lever to its limit.
Wooooong…!!
To understand the principles of the spell, he would have to forcefully scrape out the last bit of output from Orokhnier’s remaining will-thought.
Lennok was prepared for the entire laboratory to be destroyed, intending to push the Ascendant’s will-thought to its extreme using Kaiser’s power.
Creak, creak, cre-cre-creak…!!
The sound of glass shattering, illusions waving in the air, and the sensation of time stretching out slowly covered and gnawed at his senses.
The feeling of foreignness, as time and space inverted and gradually shifted, began to affect Lennok’s dulled senses.
The screens of the expensive research equipment shattered one after another, and disconnected wires writhed like snakes everywhere.
The storm of magic, mixed with the platinum radiance, created non-existent matter in reality.
A strange sight, as if parts of the laboratory were covered in platinum scales.
“Master…!!”
Even Davi couldn’t easily endure it in Lennok’s arms, and sporadic explosions from the interrupted auxiliary computations threatened to detonate parts of the mansion.
But Lennok, without even blinking, directly used his magic to cut into the platinum radiance.
The wizard’s intuition, extending boundlessly, pierced through the Ascendant’s will-thought, tearing open its core.
Screeeech!!!
With a chilling sound, like a door being twisted and torn, just before the laboratory space was crushed and distorted.
Lennok, having withdrawn his consciousness from the will-thought, pulled back his hand.
Whoosh…!!
Paaang!!
With a sound of the entire atmosphere being sucked in, a massive shockwave rose, lifting the research equipment into the air.
Just before expensive measuring equipment, easily worth tens of millions of cells, turned into junk.
[Reverse Gravity]
Lennok snapped his fingers, casting the anti-gravity spell, preventing the equipment from falling uncontrollably and breaking.
Slowly reducing the magic and gently lowering the equipment back into the laboratory, Lennok glanced back.
The platinum gem lay on the cleanly annihilated workbench debris. The crystal, wrapped in pure white radiance, had no scratches whatsoever.
Lennok slowly approached, picked up the gem, and murmured.
“This is as far as I can go. Any further will be difficult.”
Lennok had intuitively stopped because while it was possible to find meaning within it if he went all the way, memories of his battle with Orokhnier might flow backward and erupt into reality.
Lennok’s mansion was currently located in the Section 20 area.
If memories of a battle with an Ascendant were to flow back and manifest there, it would not be strange for tens of thousands of casualties to occur.
Since he had confirmed the method, the rest would have to be verified elsewhere, in an uninhabited location.
Lennok, having retrieved the gem, left the laboratory and locked the door.
Lennok, without hesitation, quickly went up to the first floor and grabbed his coat.
Davi asked with a puzzled expression.
“Are you going out to experiment right away?”
“I’d like to… but it seems something I need to deal with has come up first.”
“Something to deal with…?”
While Davi was still bewildered, Lennok raised his hand.
Click!
Lennok pulled out a pure white revolver from his pocket, immediately channeled his magic, layered supplementary magic, and pulled the trigger.
Crackle…!!
A brilliant blue magical light gathered like veins along the white barrel, then vanished with the gunshot.
The randomly fired bullet ricocheted off various parts of the corridor wall, like a billiard ball, and instantly vanished towards the stairs.
Immediately after, blood began to drip from beneath the empty stairs.
“…Kgh!!”
Thump!!
With a gasp, something writhed as it fell between the stairs, then fled.
Lennok lowered his gun, his gaze cold, watching it disappear.
“An uninvited guest has come to the mansion. Shouldn’t I go greet them?”
Click!
A regular sound echoed through the quiet mansion corridor.
Lennok strode unhesitatingly down the hallway, leaning on a staff with a flowing, water-like design.
Above Lennok, who stood expressionlessly in the living room, a shadow, long and curved like a scythe, fell.
Swish!!
A flash of light, its mouth grotesquely torn open like a ghoul’s, ruthlessly tried to bite Lennok’s neck.
But Lennok did not turn to face it, nor did he channel magic to react.
He simply stood in a spot with a clear view of the living room, and lightly tapped the staff in his hand once.
Click!
At that moment, the entire scene of the living room inverted, and the shadow’s body was plunged headfirst into the ceiling.
Crash!!!
“Cough!!”
“I barely feel any magic.”
Lennok tapped the staff once more, and this time the figure was inverted again, slamming into the floor.
Lennok looked down at the quivering figure with its head buried at his feet and murmured.
“First-class innate ability. Is it psionics or bloodline abilities? No, it feels more primal than that…”
Lennok, lost in thought for a moment, nodded.
“Right. It’s closer to a racial trait. Was it not human to begin with?”
“Choke…!! Uwaaah!!”
As he snapped his fingers again, the opponent’s body, which had been buried headfirst, abruptly inverted without warning.
Lennok carefully observed the man who revealed his bewildered face.
“Looking at his lower jaw and teeth, he shouldn’t be incapable of speech. Why isn’t he talking?”
Though he had guessed it was an Inhuman, looking at his appearance, he was almost indistinguishable from a human.
The only differences were his unusually dark skin and faint presence, making him difficult to notice.
Furthermore, his body seemed to contain almost no magic, so it would have been difficult to perceive his presence with ordinary detection abilities.
“You’d better say something if you don’t want to become a living experiment subject.”
Lennok smiled strangely and stepped on his neck with his foot.
“I’m quite curious how you managed to breach the mansion’s barrier and security systems.”
“N-no… I didn’t know!!”
Perhaps Lennok’s threat of using him as an experiment subject didn’t sound like a joke.
The man, who had only been groaning, urgently shouted his reply.
“You didn’t know?”
“T-that’s right… I didn’t know. I didn’t know this house belonged to a wizard like you…!!”
The man pleaded, not even attempting to stop the blood flowing from his side.
“If I had known, I would never have come in. Please spare me… No, please spare me!!”
“…”
He had such excellent stealth abilities to infiltrate the mansion, yet he didn’t even know who Lennok was?
Feeling something amiss, Lennok immediately checked the mansion’s barrier and security systems.
“…I see. Did the barrier’s power weaken during the process of breaking down Orokhnier’s will-thought?”
“W-what?”
Leaving the bewildered man, Lennok murmured, lost in thought.
“I experimented with the intention of blowing up the lab, so a backlash is understandable, but for an intruder to enter immediately is absurd.”
Lennok’s cold gaze turned to the man’s collar.
“You were targeting this mansion from the beginning. Weren’t you?”
“No. Please…!!”
Wham!!
As Lennok struck the man’s chest with a shock magic, items spilled from his front.
Wads of cash received from bounty hunting, a few magic books, and an old artifact embedded with a gem.
Lennok smiled, looking at the thief who had meticulously plundered items in such a short time.
“No?”
“…Ugh, uwaaah!!”
Just as the desperate man spasmodically swung a small scythe at Lennok.
Bang!!
The pure white revolver spat fire, piercing the man’s forehead.
A rapid-fire shot, almost instantaneous, unleashed with a casting aid magic. The man, unable to react, collapsed backward with a faint death rattle.
Lennok turned his back on the young man’s corpse and silently surveyed the quiet mansion.
The scenery was so serene, it was hard to believe a thief had just broken into the mansion.
Lennok smiled, looking at the mansion that appeared perfectly natural, with no visual signs of anomaly.
“There are more, aren’t there?”
No answer came.
But Lennok didn’t mind, and spoke as if explaining to an unseen presence.
“Targeting the mansion after the ‘party’ was planned. If you saw the stolen goods piled up in the garden, you’d know one person wouldn’t be enough. And crucially…”
Lennok pointed the revolver at the young man’s corpse and smiled.
“He was desperately waiting for something right until he died. Wouldn’t that be because he had companions?”
“…”
“If you’re not going to come out, there’s nothing I can do.”
The moment he tapped the staff again, the scenery of the mansion began to subtly waver.
Creation-type Unique Magic: Spell Application
Phase Summoning: Conceptual Conflation
“Shall I gather them all in one place and then think about it?”
[Aramathos’s Guise]
Rumble-rumble-rumble…!!
The scenes of the corridor, living room, ceiling, and kitchen distorted, rotating as if overlapping and then unfolding in one place.
A sight of Lennok’s mansion violently heaving and writhing as if alive, according to his will.
Stomach acid-like liquid seeped from various parts of the walls and ceiling, pushing out foreign objects that had been subtly hidden within.
Sizzle!!
“Uwaaah!!”
Screams erupted from everywhere, accompanied by sounds of flesh melting.
Faint, shadow-like ethereal beings were dragged out, slipping, and were flung about, unable to withstand the vibrations of the corridor and ceiling.
Those who couldn’t endure it and tried to flee desperately searched for an exit, but with the illusion of space distorting, the escape routes merged into one.
The entire mansion was merging with and becoming the stomach of a gigantic living creature, digesting and spitting out foreign matter.
Lives and substances that were not originally Lennok’s were pushed out and slipped away as if chased by stomach acid and corrosives.
Ultimately, they were all collected and shoved into the far end of the mansion garden.
“Haa, haa…!!”
The dozen or so thieves, suddenly exposed and chased out, glared at Lennok, panting with bloodshot eyes.
Though they tried to ignite their fighting spirit, their flesh was already melting from the stomach acid, revealing their raw skin and blood.
“Kill him!!”
The Inhumans rushed madly at Lennok, panting like beasts.
The peculiar thing was that all the weapons they held were daggers glowing green.
They had been hidden throughout the garden, suddenly appeared, and just as they approached Lennok’s nose, trying to stab him with their daggers—
Whirrrrr!!!
They all missed, deflected by the spinning shield flow right in front of Lennok.
Creation-type Unique Magic: Synthesis
[Mental Scream]
[Shockbuster]
[Dual Incantation: Psycho Shocker]
Faint ripples emanating from his fingertips split into dozens of flashes of light, simultaneously rotating in different directions.
A creation magic, formed by combining Mental Scream, which forcibly elevates the human mind, and the shock magic Shockbuster.
Crackle!!!
The intense mental shockwave thus generated was wielded as if to shatter the Inhumans’ consciousness.
Dozens of Inhumans began to convulse, their eyes completely rolled back.
“Aaaaargh!!”
Dozens of superhumans, completely lost their reason, brandished their killing intent indiscriminately at Lennok.
The moment Lennok raised his staff, a surge of magic seized the thieves’ limbs, making them dance in perfect unison.
Thump! Thump! Thump!!!
Pulled by the manipulation magic, they clasped hands and embraced each other, ruthlessly plunging their blades into each other’s hearts.
“Ga…sp…”
The Inhumans, standing in a circle, leaned on each other with daggers plunged into their hearts.
They died standing, without falling like dominoes.
A bizarre sight of dozens dying simultaneously and bleeding in the middle of the mansion garden.
The moment Lennok looked at them, turned his back, and was about to re-enter the mansion.
A low voice echoed from behind him.
“You are too merciful to thieves who have come to your home.”
Thwack!!
Half a dozen young men, with identical faces, were thrusting blades into the bodies of the fallen Inhumans.
After stabbing the heart once more, they ruthlessly cut off the Inhumans’ necks and dropped them on the spot.
The moment the suddenly appearing twin young men, who had displayed such merciless executions, all turned their gazes.
Whoosh!!
The young men’s bodies overlapped and merged into one person on the spot.
A strange ability to create clones of himself. But no magic could be felt during the process.
“A psychic?”
“It has long been a principle that burglars who enter a home should have their heads displayed on a pole.”
The young man smiled and said.
“If you wish, I can help you dispose of the trash. What do you say?”
“…”
Lennok, who had been silently contemplating, spoke, leaning on his staff.
“You deliberately cut their necks, even though they were already dead.”
“Excuse me?”
Lennok tilted his head, pointing at the Inhumans who had died with daggers in each other’s hearts.
“And you cut them almost simultaneously. Does that mean they don’t die otherwise?”
“…”
Lennok smiled coldly.
“You, you know who these Inhumans are.”
The smile on his face faltered slightly, and his fingertips twitched at that moment.
Then the young man’s body was instantly bent in half and slammed into the mansion wall.
Crash!!!
“Ugh…!!!”
An overwhelming difference in power, which the young man couldn’t even sense a premonition of.
If he hadn’t instinctively raised his arm, it wouldn’t have been strange if his ribs had been crushed.
Lennok asked, holding the young man’s body against the wall as if to display him.
“Appearing at the very end to take credit wasn’t a coincidence, was it? What kind of guy are you?”
“Cough, cough!! J-just give me a moment…”
The young man coughed dryly and replied.
“…I can explain.”
“Go on.”
As Lennok said that and raised his hand, a tree trunk rose from the yard and transformed into the shape of a chair.
The young man, who had been staring blankly at Lennok as he naturally leaned back in the chair, quickly collected himself and opened his mouth.
“My name is Armand Martins, and I hold the position of Central Council Aide.”
“Central Council?”
The moment Lennok subtly furrowed his brow at those words.
The young man, who called himself Armand, pulled out a shimmering golden letter from his pocket.
“I am here today as a herald of the Central Council Senate.”