Chapter 815: The Knot (2)
A brilliant, pristine white light descended upon Lennok’s shoulders.
The cursed flames that had sought to devour him recoiled along the light’s boundary, writhing as if in pain.
The Priestess’s light, having descended upon his shoulders, flowed down his arms, reaching his wrists.
The radiance, which had been slowly rotating below his wrists, soon transformed into a small tattoo beneath Lennok’s right wrist.
Kiiiiiing…!!
A small vortex seemed to ripple beneath his skin, as if a stigma was being etched into him.
He realized this was a miracle occurring as the Priestess transferred her own ability for the sake of a single person.
The Ghost Lord, who had been about to merge with Mugan and vanish, frowned in displeasure.
“A tool of the cult. So weak, with even your soul’s power dwindling, yet you try to leave a legacy?”
“……..”
“How can you be so devoted, serving a mad god who doesn’t even care for you?”
Instead of responding, the Priestess stepped forward to meet Lennok’s gaze.
As if the insults and slanders thrown by the Ghost Lord held no meaning at all.
Even if her doctrines and faith were insulted, diminished, and denied, she did not waver for a single moment.
The Priestess’s composure in the face of denial and rejection must have stemmed from her unwavering conviction in the faith she had chosen.
Lennok had known the strength of her faith since he first met her.
“You look tired.”
“……Same to you. Neither of us has much time left, I suppose.”
Lennok replied, his lips parched with blood, barely parting.
The Priestess smiled at Lennok’s gruff reply, as if she had expected it.
“Now I understand for certain. You truly are different from that person.”
“…….”
“With transcendent talent like theirs, you gaze beyond this world, conjuring answers that defy past and future. Yet, even so……”
The words remained unfinished, lingering only within the Priestess’s inner thoughts.
Her gaze, returning to Lennok with a faint smile.
Had the Priestess, observing Lennok, already found her own answer?
As Lennok stared at her fading spirit, which seemed on the verge of disappearing, instead of asking her to elaborate,
The Priestess turned her head and spoke.
“You once told us that our doctrine was flawed.”
She slowly looked towards Mugan’s firmly closed main gate, beyond Lennok.
“In this world, human life is like a candle in the wind…… merely a warmth that quickly vanishes with a gentle breeze.”
“…….”
“The curses observed in this sanctuary taking the form of candles must also be…… because Yorta and the Cult both once defined humans that way.”
“Now, do you wish to say otherwise?”
“……..”
Even knowing time was short, Lennok indulged her in this exchange.
Just as Lennok himself didn’t have much time left, he knew this was her final moment.
Her journey with Lennok, condemned to death by Jinwa’s Spell-Word and existing as a spirit.
But that brief companionship was now at an end.
The Priestess’s ability, forcefully drawn upon in her unstable spiritual state.
He knew that in unfolding the Cult’s miracle against an Ascendant, even her remaining presence had completely vanished.
The Priestess had barely managed to find him, just to bid him her final farewell.
The Priestess, who had been silently gazing at Lennok with warm eyes, spoke.
“Your words might be true. Perhaps it was wrong from the very beginning.”
“…….”
“But in this unreasonable world, which is far from just…… we hope.”
Speaking thus, the Priestess slowly extended both hands and grasped Lennok’s.
“Even if we ourselves cannot exist beyond the conclusion, we hope for someone who will save this corrupted world.”
The moment Lennok’s stiffened hands were enveloped by hers,
Lennok’s body began to glow brightly with the same pure white spiritual energy as the Priestess.
“And this, surely, must be the role given to me.”
Fwoooosh!!!
It wasn’t just his body covered in light.
The moment the Priestess gripped Lennok’s hands and instilled an unknown will-thought into him,
The fissure that had completely closed before Lennok’s eyes began to slowly reopen.
Crrrack!!
As the spatial fissure opened before his eyes, the Priestess’s own presence rapidly faded.
A miracle, as if a new pathway for spatial transference was being opened at the cost of the Priestess’s own existence.
Lennok felt a familiar sense of déjà vu at the sight and murmured involuntarily.
“……Apostle spell.”
An Apostle spell. And among them, it was the one Lennok had witnessed multiple times before.
Amrita, the 10th Apostle, whose spell Lennok himself had experienced countless times against cult members, and whom he had ultimately even vanquished.
The High Priestess Seina Naydree was attempting to use Amrita’s Scale, an Apostle spell, on Lennok.
Completing the human sacrifice, which was an essential cost for the spell, by offering her own existence.
Snap! Snap!
Lennok felt his body being pulled beyond the spatial fissure, as if he was being instantly transferred from his position.
A strange sensation, as if the input values of the spatial coordinates centered on Lennok were changing, allowing him to escape Mugan’s sanctuary.
The Priestess watched him, slowly releasing Lennok’s hand that she had held.
“If there is a ‘next’ for us. If that ‘next’ must not be the answer of the cult.”
Fwoooooosh!!
Each time the fissure expanded and rotated above Lennok’s head, the Priestess’s spirit body vanished little by little, dissolving.
Her existence, which had persisted as a spirit body even after using Revelation Ability, now began to completely disappear due to the backlash of the Apostle spell.
Just as she had first guided Lennok to Mugan by bridging souls within the Spirit Realm,
She was now sending Lennok out of Mugan again, staking her own existence as the price.
As if this was her final role.
“That, surely, would be a miracle beginning from an existence like yours.”
“……You.”
Even as she sacrificed herself to guide Lennok beyond Mugan, her expression remained serene until the very end.
As Lennok silently watched her, the Priestess looked at him and smiled quietly.
“I think I can be at peace now, even if that is the case.”
The moment her dissolving spirit body scattered into fragments, erasing even her expression,
The fissure that had swallowed Lennok’s body soared, piercing through the entire Spirit Realm, beyond the collapsing sanctuary of Mugan.
“This…… Could it be the Cult’s Priestess sacrificing herself……!!”
The Ghost Lord, finally realizing that the Priestess had sacrificed herself to help Lennok escape, tried to grab him,
But his scream was swallowed and vanished beyond the crumbling space of Mugan.
Kwoooosh!!!!
Simultaneously with the complete annihilation of the Priestess’s spirit body, Amrita’s Scale, the Apostle spell, activated.
Using the ability of large-scale spatial transference, it launched Lennok’s spatial coordinates outside Mugan.
Whoosh!!
His vision wavered, his eardrums felt like they were exploding, and he felt his senses sharpening.
Then, as if a lie, all his five senses vanished, and everything turned pitch black.
Thump-thump-thump-thump!!
Effortlessly passing through the surging waves of souls above his head and below his feet, past the broken soul bridge and the watching Guide’s Ghost.
His senses flickered wildly, like a seesaw, oscillating between the coexistence of spirit and matter countless times.
Splattt!!!
Thud!!
Lennok’s body slid and tumbled down a flight of stairs in a massive tower corridor.
“……!!!”
His throat was parched, unable to even scream.
His vision returned amidst a strange pain that felt like his five senses were burning.
The corridor scenery beyond, he realized, was already etched in Lennok’s memory.
Military Spirit City Yorta. The Memorial Tower of the Myriad Ghosts’ Night Parade, located at its center.
From the Ghost Dragon’s Fortress, through the Spirit Realm, beyond Mugan. Lennok had finally returned to the Memorial Tower.
“Haa, haa……!!”
He pounded his stiff chest, desperately gasping for air.
If he didn’t forcibly maintain his breathing, he felt he would lose consciousness immediately, but he couldn’t afford to.
The interior of the Memorial Tower was the domain controlled by the spirits of the Court of Soul Pacification.
If they had heard what transpired within Mugan, they would surely not let Lennok be.
Either way, his current condition was close to the worst-case scenario.
“Cough!!”
He staggered up the corridor stairs, dragging his blood-dripping body.
Through mana detection, he felt countless spirits bustling about all four sides of the tower.
From now on, to avoid them and descend the tower to leave the city, would probably require considerable effort.
But in Lennok’s mind, the Priestess’s last moments still replayed.
Why did the Priestess sacrifice herself to help Lennok escape in her final moment?
Had her existence, now only a spirit, found its last place of meaning?
She had acknowledged the accusations and denials against the cult until the very end, yet she hadn’t tried to persuade Lennok.
She had simply sacrificed herself to help Lennok escape, as if even Lennok’s existence, which denied and rejected the cult, held meaning.
“Cough, cough……!!”
He covered his mouth with one hand, desperately suppressing his coughs.
Sticky blood dripped between his fingers, and his forearm, which had been bound tightly by Magic Scribes for too long, had turned purple from lack of circulation.
With hands that barely registered pain, he laboriously navigated the Memorial Tower’s stairs and pushed open a door leading downwards.
Crunch!!
Kwooong!!
Lennok realized his body had been struck and hurled against a wall.
“……!!”
Kwaaaang!!
The Memorial Tower’s walls collapsed where they stood, reshaping the tower’s stairs and spaces entirely.
Lennok’s body fell through the collapsing and reassembling spaces of the Memorial Tower.
Thud!!
Lennok found himself lying before nine massive steles.
The great spirits hidden in the Memorial Tower’s deepest sanctuary.
The beings of the Court of Soul Pacification who had once guided and led the Myriad Ghosts’ Night Parade, now fallen and even stripped of their physical forms.
“We did not imagine a mere living being would disturb Mugan’s sanctuary so grievously.”
Beyond the steles, the flames of their souls flickered wildly.
The emotions radiating from their prime were so intense that their voiceless tones felt as if they were trembling.
“Since the failure of the Myriad Ghosts’ Night Parade, no sinner has defiled this city as much as you.”
“…….”
“Answer, Sorcerer of the Demonic Labyrinth. How will you atone for this sin, which even burning your soul cannot absolve!!!”
Thud!!
Simultaneously with those words, something bound from head to toe was weakly dragged out from beyond the black steles of the Court of Soul Pacification.
The spirit body of a young boy. His once confident expression had lost its strength, and the presence flowing through his body was so faint it seemed on the verge of disappearing.
His entire spirit body was pierced by dozens of stakes made of talismans, a gory sight.
Grand Arbitrator Oris, who guarded the first underground level of the Memorial Tower.
The Arbitrator who had taken Lennok to the Ghost Dragon’s Fortress and intended to buy time by meeting the Court of Soul Pacification alone, lay sprawled in a horrific state.
Oris, raising blurry eyes, looked back at Lennok from where he lay and grinned wryly.
“……Human.”
“…….”
“You…… seemed to have managed your task reasonably well.”
Lennok chuckled derisively.
“You’re still alive.”
“Heh heh, it’s been a while since anyone so foolish asked a ghost if it was alive……”
Oris said, then lay flat on his back.
“Ha…… But the plan failed. Neither you nor I will get out of here alive.”
“…….”
“You achieved the feat of triumphing against an Ascendant’s corpse, and enjoyed the miracle of escaping Mugan bare-handed, yet you’ll die here.”
Oris clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“It’s a pity for both of us.”
In response to his words, the tower’s ceiling where the spirits of the Court of Soul Pacification were located opened wide, and thousands of Military Spirits poured down……
The sanctuary of the Court of Soul Pacification, created by reshaping the Memorial Tower’s space.
Innumerable Military Spirits, enough to fill the entire void and more, awoke from all directions within the Memorial Tower, surrounding Lennok and drooling.
“Ahh, the flesh of a living being……!!”
“Is it the sinner who destroyed Mugan…….”
“A soul too deeply stained with sin to be confined in the tower…….”
The body of a living being, exhausted and dying after expending all its strength.
A soul so fragile it could be trampled without resistance.
Now, they could devour the utterly alien and unique soul and body of this spellcaster without leaving a trace, briefly sating their insatiable hunger.
A menacing aura, as if they would tear Lennok apart alive if the Court of Soul Pacification gave the command.
“Manipulation Wizard of Pandemonium. By the authority of the nine spirits who govern Yorta, we shall decide your fate.”
The spirits of the Court of Soul Pacification looked down upon Lennok, delivering a solemn judgment.
“You invaded the Memorial Tower, the foundation of Yorta. You defiled Mugan’s sanctuary, disrupted its essence, and ultimately drove everything to ruin and collapse.”
“Your sin shall be atoned for by burning your soul forever in the deepest depths of this tower.”
“Until the world’s end arrives, we shall tear your spirit and body to shreds and inflict only the most horrific pain upon you!!”
The spirits raged, unleashing fierce spiritual pressure, their power alone pressing down on Lennok’s shoulders, widening his wounds and causing blood to fall.
But even as Lennok writhed under the spirits’ pressure, he slipped a hand inside his robe and spoke.
“You seem to be mistaken…… I didn’t come here to take responsibility.”
Unlike Mugan, which was isolated in the middle of the Spirit Realm, this place was a reality Lennok was intimately familiar with.
All the power and artifacts Lennok had acquired throughout his life as a wizard functioned properly here.
The moment Lennok, clutching the Compassion of the Archangel within his shadow robe, unleashed his magic power,
Holy-attribute magic, sparkling like a rainbow through the gemstone, surged forth, showering upon the masses of Military Spirits.
Kiiiiing!!
“Aaaargh!!”
The Military Spirits, who had been surrounding Lennok and closing in, instantly lost their forms and collapsed where they stood.
The souls that had become vengeful spirits subservient to the Memorial Tower could not endure the holy-attribute magic for long, and were purified and annihilated.
Seizing the moment while the bewildered Military Spirits retreated in all directions, Lennok immediately attached a Magic Scribe to the Compassion of the Archangel and pulled.
The Priestess’s ability, transferred to Lennok by High Priestess Seina Naydree.
The moment he poured magic into the stigma etched on his palm and violently struck down towards the Compassion of the Archangel,
“……Ah.”
The Archangel of the Old World, dormant within the artifact, stirred as if stretching and awakening.
“A bothersome yet nostalgic call.”
As pale grey wings unfurled on either side of the gemstone, Kashuin opened its eyes.
“It is the ability of that person, whom I longed for even in death.”
“……!!!”
“Sanctuary Proclamation.”
The sanctuary of the Archangel, who served a failed god, unfolded in this very place.