Chapter 716: Breaking and Entering (9)
PMC Deadrise. A private military company formed primarily around superhumans who once served Kaiser.
The superhumans at its helm were formidable individuals renowned in the distant past, yet little information was known about the leader who commanded them.
All that could be inferred from the deep web was that he was a shrewd individual capable of controlling various powerful figures under his command without a single dispute.
But he had never imagined he would hear about him from Peshia herself.
“Kaiser’s son, you say…”
“You must have heard that name at least once, haven’t you?”
Ethan Bajour.
Kaiser Bajour’s only blood relative, a man who had inherited his talent incompletely and thus did not live long.
And Jenny’s father.
“……”
He had been mentioned a few times in passing while uncovering the project’s secrets, but Lennok couldn’t recall paying much attention.
The meaning: Kaiser’s son, long thought dead, was now the leader of a private military company.
Just realizing that fact sent a rush of possibilities through his mind.
“You must have intentionally suppressed information about your leader. What’s your reason for revealing it to me now?”
“Because there’s a possibility you represent his will.”
Peshia answered sharply to Lennok’s question.
“It is the legion’s discipline not to overlook even the faintest possibility concerning his matters.”
“……”
“If you truly represent his will—”
Peshia said, as if sensing Lennok’s hesitation.
“I will take you to the High Command of the Central Front Main Forces.”
The Deadrise headquarters, which had moved its main forces to the Central Front.
There, Gileon and many other close retainers who had once served Kaiser would undoubtedly reside.
Peshia was offering to send Lennok to the very heart of that military company.
“The equipment you possess is not something one could acquire by mere coincidence. However, it’s also true that there’s an inexplicable incongruity in your words and actions.”
Peshia’s eyes gleamed coldly.
“Regardless of you being a dangerous wizard, I believe an investigation into this causality is necessary.”
“……”
“If you wish, I can stop the operation right now and submit a report. So, I’ll ask you just once.”
Peshia asked.
“Will you come with me?”
Despite being aware of Lennok’s skill and nature, Peshia was the first to lower her weapon and make an offer.
She believed that even at the cost of potential losses or casualties, an investigation into Kaiser’s matter was essential.
For that, she was willing to halt the operation and treat Lennok with deference, arranging a meeting with the command.
However, Lennok knew, regardless of that fact, that he could not accept Peshia’s offer.
“…No. I have no such intention.”
Lennok, who had been silent, slowly shook his head.
“What I know is different from what you remember. At least, it was never in this form.”
“……”
Ultimately, what Lennok had heard were merely the memories and will Kaiser had left behind decades ago.
Without knowing how Kaiser had changed just before his death, this offer was likely to result in a loss.
Even as they spoke, the launchpad’s trembling grew stronger, and time was running out.
Kaiser’s son. The leader of Deadrise. And how that leadership viewed Kaiser.
Simply realizing that fact was an unexpected gain, and he had no choice but to settle the matter here.
“Whatever offer you make, my decision won’t change. If there’s anything else I should know now—”
Kagagak!
With a powerful flap of his wings, Lennok’s body instantly soared, coiling around the roller coaster tracks.
Hanging with one wing hooked onto the dizzyingly intricate tracks over the lake, Lennok turned to Peshia and smiled.
“As always, I’ll find out for myself.”
“…Yes. I thought you might ramble something like that. I knew it from the start.”
Peshia’s eyes turned pitch black as she stared at Lennok.
From the moment she revealed this fact, she had no intention of letting Lennok off lightly.
“Then I’ll just have to kill you and drag back your corpse…!!”
With Peshia’s ghostly shriek, she flew after Lennok, enveloped in a fierce current of air.
Along the grotesquely twisted tracks, Lennok and Peshia soared and clashed in their own ways.
[Grand Lightning Net]
[Rending Thunder]
[Ghost Extreme: Flying Form]
Dududududu!!!
Crashing thunderbolts and soaring spear gleams danced, ignoring each other.
In a flash, magical tremors crisscrossed dozens of times. Cracks formed by physical force invoked by will-thought warped space.
Drrrrk!!
The atmosphere screamed, the surface of the water boiled, creating a hellscape beyond the ruins.
Water boiled furiously over the lake, rising as steam, while conversely, the roller coaster tracks melted, raining molten metal.
The shadows of the two flashed incessantly as they flew along the breaking and melting tracks.
Jjeojeojeojeong!!!
“A pure spellcaster engaging me in mobile combat… Have you lost your mind?!!”
Peshia’s form ran maniacally along the tracks, her body unburdened.
With a superhuman sense of balance impossible for a human body, she gathered the wind and lashed it down.
Following her gesture, will-thought entwined around the long spear shaft, bursting forth with the light of a spirit.
Kuwawawawa!!!
It plunged into the lake, sending dozens of meters of water columns soaring.
Water splashing onto the tracks boiled and instantly evaporated.
Chiiiiik!!
Gripping the hot, melting tracks with bare hands, she climbed, striking dozens of spear thrusts in the blink of an eye.
The light of the spear blades intertwined, even overlapping in one place, creating a bizarrely shimmering illusion.
A state where, by merely repeating grabbing and thrusting motions at super-high speed, peripheral vision was cut away, distorting the view.
But Lennok, even while escaping with his Iron-Plated Wings unfurled, was fending off all the assaults.
[Ice Molding]
[Fading Thunder Haze]
Jjeojeojeojeok!!
He parried the sharp currents with his Iron-Plated Wings and barraged the severed tracks with ice magic.
He froze and stuck the lake water and steam in place, creating new tracks to climb onto.
Simultaneously, he continuously unleashed electric magic, narrowly parrying Peshia’s spear thrusts from behind.
Kkigigigik…!!!
He used the successive shockwaves as recoil, spinning his Iron-Plated Wings.
Holding his body with magical threads, he forcibly regained balance in mid-air and landed on the ice tracks.
Cheolk!
[Frost Wave]
[Gliding Sleigh]
Lennok’s form accelerated instantly, sliding on the frozen tracks with his Iron-Plated Wings laid beneath him like a sleigh.
Swaaaaaaek!!
The accelerating Iron-Plated Wings transcended sound in an instant, severing all the tracks Peshia was trying to climb onto.
Peshia, growing desperate, tried to shoot slashes to block his path, but the ice tracks were created much faster.
The blurred Iron-Plated Wings, almost invisible to the eye, accelerated along the highly curved tracks over the lake.
Paaaang!!
He escaped the lakeside and soared into the sky in an instant.
A giant Ferris wheel located in the center of the ruined theme park.
The form of the Iron-Plated Wings soared towards the Ferris wheel, which, along with the launchpad, boasted the highest altitude here.
“It’s not over yet!!!!”
Kwaang!!
But Peshia, too, began to pursue Lennok, climbing the collapsed arcade building at incredible speed.
The spirit form hovering behind her was that of a hideous gorilla with gouged-out eyes.
Like moving through a dense forest, she accelerated through the arcade buildings and attraction debris, catching up to Lennok’s flight speed.
Dadadadadak!!
Peshia’s figure, running at an astonishing speed that blurred her limbs, left a circular shockwave and vanished.
Paaang!!
Behind her, borrowing the form of a gorilla for acceleration, the massive figure of a rhinoceros appeared in the blink of an eye.
“Die, Adamant Thunder!!”
The rhinoceros figure had horns grotesquely twisted like a devil’s.
That was probably an extreme force, raising the charge power itself to match Level 8 Hierarchy.
If Lennok allowed that attack head-on, it wouldn’t be strange for his entire body to be crushed along with space itself.
Clang!!!
The armored wing-bases shook violently, and Lennok’s arm emerged from between them.
In a fleeting moment where their perceptions transcended time, Peshia, with beast-like instinct, seized Lennok’s arm.
The power of the Phoenix Hall, located on the wizard’s left arm. Just as she was about to tear off the binding bandage and snatch its power…
“Gone…?!”
Peshia’s eyes widened at the hollow sensation amidst the fluttering bandage.
Lennok had not possessed the Phoenix Hall from the start.
Before Peshia, realizing this fact, could react, a golden ripple erupted explosively between the two of them.
[Eight Reverberations]
Kwaaaaaang!!!
Peshia’s form was instantly driven vertically into the ground without a chance to perceive it.
“Kahak…!!!”
Peshia, unable to bear the pain, coughed up blood and groaned.
The impact was unbelievable, considering she had received Peshia’s charge while floating in the air.
It was an immense repulsive force, as if Peshia’s power had been precisely returned to her.
Peshia, impaled beneath the ruined carousel, and Lennok’s form, slowly floating down from mid-air.
“It seems practicing with Meryllda was worth it.”
Lennok smiled, looking down at Peshia.
“Beck Clinton’s charge technique. I figured you’d have something similar.”
“What…?”
The Ouroboros mind imprint manifested through the Nine-Fold Dorye martial arts.
The Eight Reverberations, a rebound technique created through it, allowed Lennok to temporarily transform the flow of force based on powers he had experienced before.
Beck Clinton’s charge technique, borrowing the spirit of a bison.
Lennok had surmised that Peshia would also be using that technique in a more enhanced form.
He had forcibly created a situation where she would use that technique, and then, by exploiting its very power, he had slammed Peshia to the ground in one go.
Although a side effect of convulsions, as if his soul was trembling, lingered after each use, he had to forcibly subdue Peshia here.
For that single moment when he could land the spell obtained from his deal with Olivera.
Lennok’s trembling hands slowly gathered, beginning to form hand seals.
Simultaneously, a massive amount of radiance erupted from the ground, instantly drawing a giant magic circle around Peshia.
“……!!!”
Paaaash!!!
A barrier of light, centered on Peshia, rotated in a gigantic sphere, then began to seize and press down on her body without mercy.
Peshia’s face contorted like a demon when she finally realized that Lennok was not trying to kill her.
“You despicable bastard…!!! How dare you try to capture me here!!!”
Lennok descended from mid-air and extended his other hand towards Peshia.
A gentle motion, as if reaching out to her.
But with that hand seal, the halo of light surrounding Peshia rapidly constricted, binding her body.
“Peshia Grisbern. Your soul will be—”
Paaaash!!!
Peshia’s body began to be sealed within the powerful light barrier.
In an instant, the radiance seized her limbs and reached her neck, engulfing her grotesquely contorted face.
Lennok completed his incantation and pressed his hands together.
“—sealed within the heavens of the mortal realm.”
Radiance-type Unique Magic
Supreme Seal of the Great Radiance Emperor
[Circumferential Consecration]
Paaaaaaash!!
Dazzling radiance completely enveloped even the Ghost Princess’s hatred, completing the Supreme Seal.
“Aaaaaahhh!!!”
Peshia screamed maniacally, struggling to rise, scattering blood from her entire body.
Her blood-soaked hands, veins bursting, reached out to Lennok, a demoniac figure howling in despair.
She broke her own limbs, sacrificing even her magic, to shoulder the Supreme Seal and rise.
At the moment Peshia, convulsing and chained, lunged, and Lennok, unshaken, completed his incantation just inches away, their forms overlapped.
Kwaaaah!!!
A dazzling pillar of light soared into the sky.
“Haa, haa!!”
Breathing heavily, she ran desperately.
The moment Tatiana saw the faint strands of electricity flashing past her eyes, she gritted her teeth and turned her head away.
“It’s coming…!!”
Paaaash!!
An immense amount of light erupted in the dawn sky. If she had looked directly, she would have been blinded instantly.
An overwhelming pressure, as if her entire body was being crushed by the mere vibration of magic.
Was this the battle of monsters who transcended Hierarchy and reached Level 8?
Even a moment’s loss of focus felt like her consciousness would be swept away by the rampaging magic and will-thought.
“Huk, huk…!!”
Even with a physique tempered by the battlefield, traversing the vast theme park at full speed was exhausting.
But during this brief moment Lennok bought, Tatiana ran desperately and managed to reach the launchpad.
Kugugugu!!
A scorching hot wind swept from beneath the towering steel structure that pierced the sky.
A control panel with complex symbols and ciphers, and a satellite assembled in front of it.
The rear was still open and unassembled, and the engine, leaking crimson light, trembled violently.
The launchpad in the center of the ruined theme park. The satellite mounted below and the engine within.
Even though the satellite wasn’t yet assembled, the launch countdown displayed on the panel continued to tick down.
Tatiana, her face pale, pounded on the control panel, biting her lip.
“No, it won’t stop…!!”
Tatiana hadn’t run here without a plan.
Having maintained her position as a Flame Pillar for a long time, she knew several magic codes that could forcibly intervene in the Magic Tower’s unique magic system.
If the engine was built using the Magic Tower’s magic system, it should have been affected to some extent.
Yet, all of Tatiana’s commands and magic codes failed to work.
The code inputted into the launchpad itself was a final command that could no longer be changed.
The sequence itself was fixed to an irreversible level.
Kwagwagwagwa!!!!
The only remaining option was to destroy the satellite itself and prevent the launch.
But Tatiana still hesitated to directly destroy the engine.
The engine was made from the materials of her fellow wizards, who had fought alongside Tatiana on the Central Front.
Unlike Tatiana, they had dedicated themselves to the Tower’s peace and well-being until their last breath.
As long as their deceased spirits were burned to extract power, merely destroying the engine wouldn’t save them.
Even if the engine stopped functioning, their sacrificed spirits would continue to suffer in the cycle of human sacrifice.
That’s why Lennok had given Tatiana the Phoenix Hall, helping her save her comrades herself.
But her power alone was no longer enough to properly activate the Phoenix Hall.
Chwaaak!
Holding the transparently glowing Phoenix Hall crystal, she slashed it across her forearm.
Even bringing the artifact to the bleeding wound and trying to melt it into her blood vessels, it wouldn’t react.
“Please…!!”
Despite being resolved to end this situation at the cost of her life, the qualifications no longer existed for her.
Just as Tatiana was desperately trying to activate the Phoenix Hall.
Kwaaaang!!!
The ceiling of the launchpad control room opened like a lid, and a scorching hot wind swept through.
Beyond it, someone stumbled out.
Tatiana’s face, which had looked up with a relieved expression, instantly contorted in immense pain.
Udeudeuk!!
“……!!!”
“So you had it after all. Didn’t you?”
The terrifying appearance of a ghost drenched in blood.
Her half-opened, inverted eyes and blood-soaked figure mingled, emitting a chilling murderous aura.
“Truly, all of you are cunning bastards. You secretly spirited the artifact away and handed it over in that brief moment, didn’t you…”
“Kulak…!!”
“While I was foolishly trying to snatch it from Adamant Thunder, you were trying to use the artifact to stop the engine.”
Peshia, gripping Tatiana’s neck with one hand and lifting her, immediately snatched the Phoenix Hall.
Drrrrk!!
Peshia, who had inserted the Phoenix Hall crystal into the engine’s power unit, dragged Tatiana and walked beneath the launchpad.
“Still, it’s enough. If I capture the Witch of Conflagration and add her as engine material before launching, we won’t lack power during launch.”
“B-but Halfman…”
“Are you asking because you don’t know?”
Peshia smiled brightly, her face covered in blood.
“It’s obvious if you see me here.”
“……”
Lennok failed to stop Peshia.
While Tatiana remained silent, unable to believe it, Peshia flung her body directly beneath the launchpad.
Kung!!
“Kuk…!!”
“About a minute left…? No time for processing.”
Peshia smiled weakly, her face exhausted.
“Just merge with the engine and die, ground to dust.”
Kugugugugu!!!
The vibration erupting from beneath the launchpad shook the heavens and earth, adding heat and flames.
The satellite’s rear, with the Phoenix Hall placed in its engine power unit, closed, and Peshia slowly retreated and leaned back.
“Kulak, kulak!! Haa…”
Her limbs were bruised and her entire body’s bones were broken and crushed.
The blood gushing from her mangled muscles and blood vessels was not proof of pain, but her life itself.
Peshia, feeling the horrifying sensation of her life spilling out of her body, raised her head.
Kwahhhh!!!
The countdown on the control panel ended, and the launchpad control room shook violently, erupting in flames.
The boosters mounted beneath the satellite ignited, propelling the fuselage into the atmosphere.
Tatiana’s body, collapsed beneath it, would have instantly turned to ash from the extreme temperature.
Just as Peshia thought so and waited for everything to end.
She realized that the launchpad’s flames and vibrations had subsided at some point.
“……What?”
The satellite that should have soared into the atmosphere immediately, the launchpad that had trembled as if about to burst.
The boosters that had relentlessly spewed flames were now silent.
In front of the collapsed Tatiana, someone knelt, looking down at her.
“Adamant…!!”
Peshia, rising as if in a seizure, instantly froze at the sight.
Not a wizard.
A human figure seemingly made of flames. A woman similar in age to Tatiana.
And she wasn’t alone; several flickering fiery illusions surrounded Tatiana.
Those figures, emerging from beneath the engine’s power unit, were preventing the satellite from launching.
“You damned spirits interfering…!!!”
Just as Peshia screamed and tried to reach out with her mangled arm.
An invisible barrier suddenly slammed down, blocking Peshia’s magic.
Kwaaaang!!!
“…I didn’t expect you to break the seal like that. Is it possible because you manipulate spirits?”
Not as injured or covered in blood as she was, but the wizard looked much messier and more exhausted than before.
Peshia gritted her teeth, staring at Lennok facing her.
“Adamant Thunder!!!!!”
“But I can’t let you interfere now.”
Lennok smiled.
“If you cherish Kaiser’s will so much, isn’t it polite to listen to someone else’s last wish?”
“Get out of the way right now. Before I kill you!!!”
“Just watch from there. It’s fine.”
Lennok ignored Peshia’s shouts and looked down at Tatiana and the fiery woman.
“It’s all over now.”
Partial Domain Deployment
Mind Imprint Paradoxical Projection
[Scarlet Firebird Cage]
Giant pillars of flame surged from all directions, wrapping around the surroundings and transforming into a cage of fire.
Kwahhh!
A cage of flames precisely enclosing and isolating Tatiana and Peshia.
However, the area it confined was not Peshia, but Tatiana and the woman made of flames.
Hwaaaruruk!!
The Scarlet Firebird Cage, the Ideological Domain of Pyromancer Gionis, who had raised his own Hierarchy by joining hands with the Den of Evil.
A cage of flames that sublimated his resentment, his very destiny bound to the Tower Lord, into a mind imprint.
Lennok had used the Phoenix Hall’s authority to temporarily overlay the image of that Domain here.
Of course, since the Scarlet Firebird Cage Lennok used wasn’t the real thing, it couldn’t overwrite space or burn Peshia.
But within a space constructed with the concept of a cage, it should be possible to leave the flame image lingering for a short while.
[…Tatiana.]
The faint figure of a woman stood before Tatiana.
She looked at her own flickering, flame-like form, then slowly extended a hand towards Tatiana.