Chapter 685: The Oldest Bloodline (7)

Baegon, as Lennok had encountered him, was arrogant and volatile, yet an exceptionally talented wizard.

Talented wizards, in particular, are often blessed with a rational intuition that allows them to perceive everything objectively.

In that sense, it was strange that Baegon believed himself to be the Nether King’s disciple without any corroborating evidence.

Conversely, it was also true that Myeong had no reason to deny Baegon or lie.

‘Beyond death. The gap between illusion and reality. Mission and tool.’

By piecing together the words Myeong muttered while he was still disoriented, one could glimpse a sliver of the truth.

If, as Ermont claimed, Myeong suffered a severe mental issue during the process of acquiring and preparing for his qualifications—

If the shock or backlash was so great that his personality fragmented, to the point he couldn’t remember his own words or actions, then wouldn’t Baegon’s behavior, up to this point, make sense if Myeong couldn’t be defined as a single person?

“A sharp observation. Even more so because it’s not entirely wrong.”

But Myeong only smiled silently at Lennok’s question.

“However, it’s not in the way you’re thinking. The foundation of the power I possess is fundamentally different from your talent.”

“…Different?”

“Everything is different. Even the unwanted shackles of my bloodline, and this cursed black magic.”

Was he implying that this transcendent power, this black magic that felt so grand, held no value?

Yet, Myeong showed no hesitation in disparaging his own strength.

“It’s not me, but a miracle created by twisting the curses and sacrifices I bore. You don’t need to be too concerned.”

“…”

So Lennok’s conjecture wasn’t entirely wrong, but it wasn’t the complete truth either?

Myeong didn’t explicitly deny not being a single person, but instead cast doubt on the idea of his personality being fragmented.

It was an answer closer to explaining the origin and nature of his power, rather than Myeong as a conscious entity.

In that case, then—

“Is it because the nature of that bloodline is also related to the existence of an Outer God?”

“…”

“The oldest wizard family, symbolizing the Annihilation’s Tree… where did it all begin?”

Myeong didn’t answer that question immediately.

Instead, he slowly retracted the darkness that had consumed Baegon’s presence, pushing it back into the coffin.

As his will receded, the shadowy giant’s grasp, slowly losing its form and vanishing into the darkness.

Hundreds of chains that had stretched out from inside the coffin folded inward, rotating.

“It’s not difficult to reveal ancient histories and the shameful secrets of a family…”

Only the sound of submerging chains quietly echoed, overlapping Myeong’s voice.

“But when external matters are intertwined, it becomes bothersome to explain in words. Haven’t you already seen it and returned from Machina?”

“…What?”

“To challenge transcendence is not a blessing or a privilege. Rather, it’s a curse-like restraint.”

Myeong spoke, addressing the silent Lennok.

“That’s why, sometimes, even if it means resorting to force, it’s necessary to temporarily halt them.”

“…”

“I succeeded in leaving a small margin, but there are others who couldn’t.”

For a moment, Lennok felt a chilling sneer infuse Myeong’s tone.

“Apostates who forget their true nature and dream of miracles akin to corruption… Perhaps we are always looking back at ourselves, laughing.”

He had obtained the qualifications to challenge ascension, yet he deliberately delayed it.

And the fact that there existed apostates who couldn’t achieve this and couldn’t be stopped.

Despite seeming to struggle with even conversation, Myeong was trying to explain things as simply as possible.

This was likely due to the enormous black coffin, created by the power of the Annihilation’s Tree, which Baegon had opened.

The power of the black coffin, directly related to the oldest bloodline, was forcibly holding Myeong’s consciousness, which shouldn’t inherently exist here.

However, it seemed the black coffin’s power couldn’t hold Myeong’s will for long, as his will-thought began to fade.

Myeong seemed to notice this himself, and scoffed.

“Yes… it’s merely a brief respite. Even this very moment wasn’t planned.”

“…”

Rather than losing connection, it felt as if Myeong’s will itself was gradually wavering.

A tired voice, as if simply existing in this place was becoming increasingly difficult.

“I’ve given Hylaea a hint, so check…”

“…Alright.”

Just moments ago, Myeong couldn’t distinguish whether this was reality or another plane of consciousness.

Yet, he conversed, answered questions, and even recognized that Lennok had returned from Machina?

He couldn’t help but admire the transcendent mental strength that, despite being unexpressed, was so clearly evident.

“Before long… it’s always been that way.”

Lennok felt as if Myeong was quietly smiling from beyond the darkness.

“That’s why it’s not me, but you, who is needed.”

With those words, the darkness burning inside the black coffin flickered precariously.

The moment Myeong’s voice became completely indistinct, no longer audible.

With a deafening silence, the darkness vanished completely.

Flash!!

The black coffin, which had contained Myeong’s will, shattered into pieces on the spot.

The jet-black giant tree looming overhead convulsed from its roots, shriveling and shrinking.

It crumbled into a handful of dust, collapsing on the spot.

Boom!!!

The ground shook wildly with the disappearance of the giant tree that had supported the entire underground cavern.

“Haa… I survived somehow today too.”

Ermont slumped weakly to the ground, looking as if he had aged ten years.

“…It’s a bit undignified to ask now, but you’re not still planning to kill me, are you?”

Ermont subtly glanced around, preparing to make a quick escape. Lennok chuckled at Ermont and looked away.

“I’ll spare you. Now, take Glen and disappear.”

“Yes, thank you. But why the sudden change of heart…?”

Ermont asked, curiosity piqued even as he walked along the crumbling underground corridor.

Lennok replied, using his Mana Sensitivity to check the life signs in the surrounding area.

“Because if Myeong is keeping him, he must be useful.”

With Myeong currently unable to move freely for personal reasons, it seemed certain that Ermont was acting on behalf of Pandemonium’s operations.

This was likely due to a more personal reason or connection, rather than simply because Ermont was also a black wizard like Myeong.

Lennok knew this full well but had no intention of killing Ermont here.

Ermont’s expression turned sour at the answer.

“…Ugh. Considering you mentioned Hylaea, I thought you were ready to join Pandemonium.”

“…”

“Well, never mind. I’m not doing this because I want to anyway… Come to think of it, why am I even doing the scouting for him?”

The moment Ermont grumbled and tossed a gem into the air,

The crumbling walls of the underground cavern instantly solidified, transforming into a passage leading to the surface.

“Glen!!”

Ermont shouted, one foot already on the hardened, clinging passage.

“If you don’t come out quickly, I’ll just bury you all here and leave, whether you die or not…!!”

Bang!

At that moment, an explosion erupted above Lennok and Ermont’s heads, and dozens of people tumbled down.

Dozens of Glens, waving their limbs with blank expressions, and Armand desperately throwing punches among them.

Ermont’s expression turned incredulous.

“…Th-they were still fighting?”

“Cough!!”

Armand’s clones desperately struggled to shake off the surging Glens, but Glen only rolled around with an emotionless face.

Some Glens had ruptured mouths and broken noses from being beaten, but they didn’t care at all.

Unlike what he had shown in the Well of the Codex, here Glen didn’t seem to have any desire to fight.

Instead, he just kept talking to Armand, who was continuously hitting him.

“That’s not how you do it.”

“Shut up!!”

Wham!!

Glen, his face caved in and collapsed, spoke blankly.

“Moving multiple bodies at once is done by feel. It’s a headache, isn’t it?”

“Useless chatter…!!”

“Giving up is easy. Accept it.”

Armand resisted, trying to escape Glen even as they fell into the collapsing sand pit.

Ermont watched them, sighed, and shook his head.

“Who’s teaching whom… This is why it’s hard to deal with these guys.”

“Teaching?”

Lennok looked down at Glen, who was being mercilessly beaten by Armand.

“To me, he looks like nothing more than a punching bag.”

“That friend has a strange mental illness, you see.”

Ermont replied indifferently.

“If he sees someone using similar abilities, he tends to think they’re all him.”

“…”

“So he tries to teach them how to accept the hive mind or whatever it is, just like him.”

So that’s why he had been telling Armand to just give up.

If he thought of Armand as the same being, it also made sense why Glen was just passively taking the beating.

But as Lennok watched Armand’s movements in the collapsing sand pit, his eyes suddenly glinted.

“His clone manipulation is much better than before. Is that nonsense actually working?”

“More importantly, if we just keep watching like this, it wouldn’t be strange if we all got buried alive in the sand…!!”

Thump!

At that moment, sand rapidly surged from beneath Lennok and Ermont’s feet, instantly propelling the group upwards to the surface.

A rapid upward draft, climbing hundreds of meters through the underground passage.

The sand dust writhed as if alive, expelling dozens of people simultaneously from the collapsed pit.

Whoosh!!

Ermont, Glen, and Armand were flung out behind the completely ruined oil facility.

“Cough, cough!!”

Ermont, belatedly realizing the situation, shook his head as he saw Lennok casually land behind them.

“Manipulating sand particles with mana, one by one… You’re not human either, are you? Perhaps you’re a sand mole hybrid or something?”

“I saved you, yet your mouth keeps flapping.”

Directly manipulating sand particles with mana was something Lennok had done effortlessly even before completing his Hierarchy.

From the beginning, Lennok had no intention of being buried alive in this vast desert.

“Ugh…!!”

“Blech!!”

Perhaps because Lennok had forcibly pulled them up by their collars, they all seemed to have swallowed a lot of sand in the process.

Lennok nodded as he watched Armand and Glen gagging and spitting out sand.

“The City Council is watching this matter. It would be best to move quickly.”

“Yes, indeed. Once those friends regain their senses, we plan to leave quickly.”

Ermont picked his nose and grinned.

It looked utterly awkward for Jawoon Audis’s dignified face to perform such a gesture, but what could be done if the black wizard who occupied that body chose to use it that way?

Lennok quietly watched Ermont and asked,

“The oldest bloodline. That statement isn’t just about Myeong, is it?”

“…”

“You seem to have your own reasons for being involved. Don’t you?”

Lennok, who had competed with Ermont in the Hanghasa Labyrinth under the alias Evan, had some inkling of his true identity.

An ancient black wizard who had survived for hundreds of years, retaining only his consciousness.

His Consciousness Transfer Spell, which allowed him to freely switch between human bodies, was a magic so complete that even Lennok acknowledged it.

If Myeong had deliberately kept such a black wizard alive, wasn’t it because Ermont, too, was deeply entangled in the curses and bloodlines that Myeong had mentioned?

Ermont, who had casually wiped the hand he was picking his nose with on his pants, silently raised his gaze.

For a moment, his eyes, which had shown no emotion until now, seemed to sink gloomily.

“Well, I’ve lived my entire life without ever caring about such things.”

“…”

“I just want to kill the weak, remove whatever obstructs me, and live freely, even shedding the shackles of the flesh.”

Ermont shrugged.

“Even if there is some connection, I don’t think it’s necessarily because of me.”

“Ugh, ugh…”

The unharmed Glen carried the Glen who was spitting sand, and the Glen with the caved-in face piggybacked the Glen with the broken leg.

“If you’re interested in the oldest bloodlines, it would be better to look for other families, not me.”

Ermont walked away, following the Glens who were looking back with hazy eyes, and smiled.

“As he said, this family has already been completely crushed, leaving no room for anything.”

“…”

“Let’s see. Besides Twilight Veil Bloodline and Reverent Void Bloodline, I think there were a couple more… If you look, you’ll probably find more, won’t you?”

The five oldest magical bloodlines.

Besides Myeong’s bloodline, which wielded black magic, did families like Twilight Veil Bloodline and Reverent Void Bloodline also exist?

“I heard that the Order Alliance on the Central Front deals with very ancient magic. You can’t say there’s no connection.”

Was he saying there was a high possibility that the oldest bloodlines were part of the Order Alliance, which gathered all the magical techniques in the world?

Lennok nodded.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

It was difficult to fully trust Ermont’s memories spanning hundreds of years, but it was better than nothing.

The fragment of the Annihilation’s Tree, Akrotrineer, had even abandoned the human it had possessed and sought to absorb Myeong’s mana.

Knowing why the oldest bloodlines were intimately connected to the power of Outer Gods would itself be a valuable clue.

Lennok thought so as he watched the black wizard’s receding figure.

It was easy to forget due to his frivolous and lighthearted demeanor, but fundamentally, he had a nature akin to a villain who cared little for the sacrifices of others.

Killing him here wouldn’t even cause much remorse or guilt.

If he had his way, he might have considered half-killing Ermont here and apprehending him to hand over to the Council—

But since he already had a foot in Pandemonium, there was no need to take further action here.

Having made that decision, Lennok erased the faint trace of doubt that remained in a corner of his mind.

“Huh? Why the sudden chill…”

Lennok chuckled, turning around from Ermont, who shivered and quickened his pace.

The aide, battered and sitting blankly in the sand pit, looked at Lennok.

He hadn’t heard about Myeong’s existence or the fragment of the Annihilation’s Tree due to fighting Glen, so there was no need to coordinate their stories.

“…Is it all over now?”

Lennok nodded at Armand.

“More or less. I’ll inform the City Council of the full story, so could you call another airship?”

Inside a room crammed with thousands of screens, covering every wall.

The display space, with screens even on the ceiling and floor, had piles of papers and research materials fluttering about.

Rustle, rustle!!

The sounds emitted from the screens replaced the silence, and the light from the displays substituted the room’s illumination, creating a bizarre sight.

Only the occasional tremor of collapsing paper piles could be felt.

Hummm!!

At that moment, one of the casually scattered wires on the floor of the room activated.

The man, stepping out from between the piles of paper, nonchalantly stepped on the wire.

-The Doctor.

Soryu’s cold voice quietly resonated in the room.

“I’m listening.”

The Doctor said, struggling to drop the bundles of paper he was carrying onto the floor.

Thud!!

-It’s noisy around you, are you alright?

“Don’t mind it. It’s nothing.”

The Doctor, perched on the paper bundles he had just thrown down, stretched out a hand, and a coffee cup materialized in the air, steaming warmly.

“It’s taking unnecessary time to filter out the dummy data pouring in from beyond the Outer Sea. Thanks to that, the observation room has become a mess.”

It was an instant creation: the cup, coffee grounds, and hot water were all conjured at their coordinates.

But a faint sense of satisfaction was etched on the Doctor’s face as he tilted the cup.

“I really like the taste of my brain rotting.”

-…

“Mixing cheap narcotics and hormone regulators feels like squeezing my brain dry. If I could also bathe in mana collapse radiation, it would be even better… but that’s a taste that would kill us both.”

The Doctor, slumped amidst the mountain of papers, muttered with a hazy expression.

“With Machina’s business and everything, spreading myself too thin just causes all sorts of problems… Who’s going to be responsible if the preservation device breaks down…”

-Doctor. Where is Ermont now?

“Ermont? Why him?”

-His Consciousness Transfer Spell is needed to infiltrate the Central Front. I don’t want to cause unnecessary commotion.

“Hmm…”

The Doctor drained the remaining coffee and adjusted his posture.

“Tell me more.”

-You know where he is.

Soryu’s voice suddenly sharpened.

-Is there a reason you can’t tell me?

“I’ll listen first, then talk.”

At the Doctor’s calm reply, Soryu was silent for a moment before answering.

-Yanikus Barbaria has joined the Eyes of Blue. He accepted his defeat cleanly after the decisive battle with the Lighthouse Keeper.

“…Barbaria? Are you talking about the tyrant of Kaiushyu?”

Yanikus Barbaria of JeByeok.

An 8-level physical superhuman and the tyrant who ruled the small to medium-sized city of Kaiushyu in the Western Continent.

An old monster whose prestige hadn’t wavered even as his body and mind were weakened by a long illness, the Doctor had heard his name before.

“I heard he was incredibly eccentric due to old age, but a young Lighthouse Keeper managed to make that old monster submit?”

-According to reports from the field, it seems he completely inherited the Lighthouse Keeper’s Unique Ability.

Soryu said in a low voice, observing the Doctor’s interest.

-The Domain of the previous Lighthouse Keeper was observed from her.