Chapter 814: The Knot (1)
Seared and stretched long, then flashing as if ablaze, cleaving through everything.
Two opposing phenomena, different from each other, surfaced within the same space-time, and the Ascendant’s body burned with a sorrowful light.
“…!!!”
Whoosh!!
Dorye’s body, which no psyche or magic could approach, crumbled, enveloped in murky thunderlight.
“Ah…”
Dorye stared, as if unable to believe his body and soul severing connection and vanishing, then looked back at the sanctuary of Mugan, twisting and distorting with an indescribable expression. He raged, grieved, clung to lingering regrets, and then, shaking his shoulders as if utterly helpless with sorrow.
“…I see.”
In the end, he forced a bitter smile, as if accepting everything.
The will-thought Lennok used at the end was not merely a power that severed the connection between matter and matter.
Body and soul. Conviction and will. Faith and resolve.
Emotions and will-thoughts that could not be touched by hand or seen by eye, yet clearly existed and were real.
The heretical power that severed and cut off the very mind itself.
Long ago, the Ascendant Dorye died and was enshrined in Mugan, and what moved his body was merely a lost soul.
That was why Lennok, by severing even that lingering regret with his own hands, brought Dorye peace.
Even if that peace was not what Dorye himself desired.
Thud!!
Slowly kneeling, without even attempting to grasp his body as it scattered and vanished.
Dorye quietly looked back at Lennok and murmured.
“You… you were the one who harvested the seeds sown by the Pontiff, in your own way.”
“…”
In his final moments, had he understood something, accepting the conviction that was destroying his own body?
Dorye’s face, once filled with hatred and lingering regret for the Pontiff, was now enveloped in an uneasy calm.
“You chose an alternative possibility, one he did not select, to make it your own answer… How ironic.”
Dorye’s very existence was a transcendental fruition, completed through a pact with the Pontiff and established as an Ascendant.
But Lennok, using a divergence point the Pontiff had not chosen, directly shattered the Pontiff’s vessel.
Only after this entire battle concluded did Dorye understand that this was Lennok’s answer to him.
A meaning he hadn’t grasped when he was consumed by hatred and rage with all his heart and strength.
Even as Dorye exerted his full power against Lennok, Lennok was striving to convey meaning to him.
That fact seemed to explain the difference between himself and the spellcaster standing there, and somehow, it put his mind at ease.
The answer of a seeker who, though different from the Pontiff, had obtained a meaning comparable to his.
Paradoxically, witnessing it and bringing about the conclusion himself brought an unparalleled sense of peace.
Thus, Dorye had come to understand what Lennok desired and what conclusion he awaited.
“To have achieved such fruition without even challenging ascension…”
As the Ascendant’s body slowly scattered and vanished, even his whispers grew fainter.
Yet, even amidst that, Dorye kept his head turned towards Lennok, murmuring with a vacant, unfocused expression.
“What we never saw… you, directly…”
Eternal oblivion. True death.
Even facing the end that came after the battle, he clung to his will, trying to hear what came next.
An incomprehensible yearning to hear the conclusion.
A born nature that, even beyond death, could not abandon that hope.
Surely, that’s why Dorye, even in that dying moment, couldn’t let go of his lingering regret and accepted the Pontiff’s proposal.
And so, Lennok too gave Dorye an answer.
“I must build a stature comparable to this world, and create the answer myself.”
“…”
“And so I…”
Lennok, slowly turning his gaze toward Dorye, spoke.
“I intend to start by standing in the same place as the Pontiff.”
What if he had faced Dorye using the unique magic he employed as Adamant Thunder?
With the power of lightning and thunder, which he had wielded for the longest time, Lennok was confident he would never be defeated by Dorye.
Yet, the reason he had gambled, risking his life to create the Warrior’s Faculty here, was…
It was because he had ultimately acknowledged that he could not advance further without understanding where the Pontiff stood.
The qualification to impose and convince this entire world of his answer.
A profound realm that could only be achieved by abandoning and discarding something entirely different from anything before.
Surely, it didn’t mean becoming much stronger than now, or being perfected as a better being.
Rather, it might be a state that could only be reached by tearing himself apart, crushing and breaking himself until not even his original form remained.
But even so, knowing that those who had succeeded before him had surely done so.
And being convinced that without standing in the same place as them, he couldn’t even begin.
“…Yes. You… you might be different.”
Only then did Dorye raise a faint smile, as if he had finally heard the answer he desired.
“What none of us ever reached…”
Thud!!
Dorye’s body, unable to finish its words, slowly lost its balance and collapsed.
In the fleeting moment his body vanished into a handful of ashes, and the karma accumulated within it was completely sealed away and disappeared.
Nevertheless, until the very end, he kept his gaze fixed on Lennok’s eyes.
As if he wished to confirm what lay beyond, what he himself had never reached, never understood.
Lennok’s form, watching Dorye’s fading image, sank powerlessly to the ground.
Crackle, crackle…!!
The murky thunder and lightning that coursed through his body vanished, and the Kaleidoscope Mind Imprint also disappeared without a trace.
After the miracle that had allowed him to grasp the divergence point of becoming the Unbound Sea’s Apostle and directly confront an Ascendant vanished.
The backlash, a step too late, surged through Lennok’s body.
Tear, tear!!
“…Cough!!”
Breathing was arduous, only gasps escaping him. A searing pain, impossible to hide with medicine, surged through his entire body.
Blood, seeping through his shadow robe, dripped down like tears.
A searing tinnitus that seemed to bore into his ears, and a vision that blurred red, losing all focus.
All strength drained from his body, as if he might collapse and lose consciousness at any moment.
Lennok, sitting blankly and watching the dripping blood, struggled to open his mouth and force out a voice.
“Ah…”
Even as his vocal cords vibrated, he couldn’t be sure if he was truly producing sound.
A sense of loss, as if his very senses had gone completely awry and lost all direction.
The Temple of the Naked Unbound Sea was the madman’s possibility, Lennok choosing a divergence point as an Apostle he would inherently never select.
Therefore, while it was alien and powerful, its backlash was also designed to inflict severe damage.
Furthermore, the divergence point he used this time was a Domain unfolded after directly initiating the Consecration Ritual with the help of the Priestess.
As the Kaleidoscope Mind Imprint was strongly influenced by Lennok’s own experiences, the power of the Temple of the Naked Unbound Sea, unfolded even with the Consecration Ritual, was far stronger than before.
That was also why he could attempt the madness of engaging in direct hand-to-hand combat against the Ascendant Dorye’s body.
Conversely, the price for drawing upon the power of a non-existent Apostle was equally severe.
The madness that should never have invaded Lennok’s mind.
The power of the Outer Sea, which should not have corrupted his body, violently raged between his spirit and flesh, attempting to devour him.
“Haa, haa…!!”
Shhhk…!
Whirrr!!
Crak, crak, crak!!
Meaningless whispers sounded in his ears, and he felt the hallucination of something stroking his skin.
Clocks whirled and shimmered chaotically before his eyes, and the nauseating stench of burning corpses lingered at his nose.
If he hadn’t chosen the Incarnate Body as an Apostle to share the Domain’s backlash, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to lose consciousness and collapse right here.
Even so, Lennok raised a trembling hand and stretched it towards where Dorye’s body had collapsed.
“Recovery…”
Dorye had vanished after receiving his answer, but the ashes of the Ascendant’s crumbling body remained.
Although he couldn’t fully recover its original form, he had to secure the remnants left by its annihilation.
Lennok, who had collected the ashes by moving his shadow robe, forced himself to stand, clinging to the Magic Scribes.
Thud!
“…!!”
He stumbled weakly through the cursed candles illuminating the cathedral, repeatedly rising only to fall again.
But Lennok, drenched in sweat, continued to look back at the collapsing Mugan.
‘The Priestess is nowhere to be seen.’
Even after the battle ended, the cult’s Priestess, Seina Naydree, was nowhere to be found.
Had the spirit that had been desperately clinging to its existence, even as the Consecration Ritual began, finally vanished with its last remaining strength?
He turned his wavering magical senses to scan the sanctuary of Mugan, slowly moving forward.
CRASHHH!!!
The decisive battle with the Ascendant Dorye. The sanctuary was now perilously shaking, unable to sustain itself any longer due to the shock that had permeated all of Mugan.
If he were to lose consciousness and collapse here, he would be cast into the heart of the spirit realm, a place where living beings could not remain, without any recourse.
‘The main gate of Mugan, leading out to the Memorial Tower. That’s the only remaining escape route.’
The two passages connecting the sanctuary of Mugan: the main gate and the reverse gate.
Unlike the reverse gate Lennok had used to enter Mugan, the main gate, located on the opposite side, was directly connected to the Memorial Tower’s stairwell.
If he found the main gate within the sanctuary of Mugan, he could use it to cross directly into the Memorial Tower.
“Haa, haa…!!”
He painfully climbed over fragments of the shattered, collapsed grand throne and piles of chains.
He stumbled weakly among the candles, walking in the opposite direction from the reverse gate he had traversed.
Just as he finally reached the edge of Mugan’s sanctuary, where the main gate was presumed to be located.
Creaaak!!!
“…”
He witnessed a man standing amidst the raging flames shatter and collapse what was presumed to be Mugan’s main gate, a fissure.
The man, his entire body burning atop the candles raging within Mugan, glanced back at him.
The moment he realized it was the Ghost Lord who had sought to seize Dorye’s body, the Lord spoke in a calm tone.
“I cannot believe what I see.”
“…”
His voice seemed tinged with faint wonder.
“For a mere human… to fight and defeat the lingering vestiges of an Ascendant. Was that the miracle permitted to mortals?”
He had thought it vanished along with Dorye’s awakened memories, but it hadn’t disappeared after all?
No, it was beyond that level.
The Ghost Lord’s presence, as he burned his own spirit body in the cursed flames, was steadily growing even larger.
Lennok, watching the scene, struggled to cough and asked.
“What… are you trying to do?”
“To properly preserve this sanctuary that you Transcendants have ruined.”
The Ghost Lord replied, gazing at his own spirit body burning in the cursed flames.
“If left like this, the sanctuary will lose its center, shake, and eventually collapse. Therefore, I shall become the curse itself, reorganizing this sanctuary into an independent Domain.”
“You would burn yourself in the cursed flames, sublimating even your own soul into a curse?”
Lennok shook his head.
“Madness. If you attempt that, your soul won’t remain in its complete form.”
The Ghost Lord was not attempting to fight Lennok or kill him here and now.
He merely intended to seal off all passages leading outward, in order to become the very curse that imprisoned Mugan himself.
Surely, that would be a process of refining his own existence over a very long time, thoroughly transforming it.
Perhaps he might never awaken again from this state.
CRASHHH!!
Even as this unfolded, Mugan’s sanctuary violently collapsed, and the cathedral spread across its entirety slowly vanished.
Even the faint cursed candles illuminating the sanctuary fell one by one into the fissures of the crumbling sanctuary, disappearing.
“Once I become one with Mugan, I may be an entirely different entity than before.”
A strange smile seemed to form on the Ghost Lord’s lips as he subtly glanced back at Lennok.
“It’s unfortunate for you, but you shall become a spirit of this sanctuary, remaining here with me forever.”
The reason the Ghost Lord remained unshaken even after his plan to seize Dorye’s body failed.
It was because the Ghost Lord himself planned to undergo a complete metamorphosis into an entirely new being, a curse subservient to Mugan.
He believed that if he could bind Lennok’s existence here as well during that process, it would be ideal.
“Who says?”
But Lennok scoffed at the Ghost Lord’s words, yet painfully shoved his hand into his inner pocket.
His ruined body, ravaged by the Domain’s backlash, had reached its limit just getting this far. Finding a new escape route was impossible.
Unlike when he first entered Mugan, Lennok was now completely exhausted, pushed beyond his limits.
To survive, he had reached a point where he had to gamble one more time, no matter what.
Click!
His hardened fingertips, numb to sensation, fumbled and retrieved a single dark-red pill.
An extreme drug that forcibly injected magic into the body, at the cost of the user’s life expectancy.
Originally, it was a diluted poison created to forcibly send a target’s magic into a rampage.
It was a method Lennok had prepared for times when his condition was so compromised he couldn’t properly wield magic.
‘Dosage…’
Reducing the size of the drug to a precarious level.
Only enough to maintain incantations without losing consciousness.
Before Mugan’s sanctuary was completely isolated by the Ghost Lord’s will, he would deploy his Domain one last time to escape this place.
If he could deploy the False Star of Revelation to find a path to the material realm, he would be able to escape Mugan before he died.
The moment Lennok brought the reduced pill to his mouth.
[No.]
From behind him, a faint voice echoed.
[I’ll do it here.]
FWOOSH!!!
Even the cursed candles lost their light, and darkness slowly descended upon Mugan’s boundary.
Beyond it, a light so intense that even Lennok momentarily squinted burst forth.
A transparent, pure white flash of light.
Brilliant light of faith scattered around the Priestess’s spirit body, hands clasped in prayer.
The Priestess, Seina Naydree’s soul, stood precariously swaying, as if about to vanish at any moment.
“Seina?”
She did not reply to Lennok’s murmur.
Instead, she simply knelt silently behind Lennok, placed both hands on his shoulders, and whispered quietly.
[Sanctuary access authority transferred. Consecration Ritual restructured. Spellcraft circuit shared.]
“…What?”
[In the name of the 10th Naydree of the Guido Cult, I hereby transfer the authority of the Priest to you.]