Chapter 825: Knot (12)
The moment Song-ha gripped the hilt of her greatsword and channeled mana.
A powerful sense of déjà vu, as if her entire perception was splitting vertically, filled her vision.
Shwoosh!
The swordswoman’s Sword Intent, which superimposed the momentary will-thought of gripping the blade with the unsheathing motion itself.
Immediately after that fleeting instant, when she felt a flash burst from the end of the scabbard.
A keen edge, surpassing all limits, transformed into a cleave that split the pillar of the crematorium ruins vertically.
Craaack!
The chilling, grating sound of the blade tore at Lennok’s body beyond mere perception.
A chilling, silver trajectory flashed like a star, accelerating as it descended.
The wizard’s figure blurred with a Blink, flickering in place.
But then he was pushed back as if ricocheting, slowly sliding across the crematorium floor.
KABOOM!
“…!!!”
Yet, it was Song-ha, not Lennok, whose eyes widened in surprise.
“You took that hit? I thought you’d obviously dodge it?”
“…You’re not wrong.”
Lennok grumbled, picking himself up as he heard her words.
Though he was pushed back and slid, the damage itself wasn’t significant.
Song-ha’s cleave was unbelievably fast, but if he reacted properly, he could somehow block it.
The problem, as Song-ha pointed out, was that Lennok didn’t dodge the cleave; he tried to ‘block’ it.
“You’re right. I should have dodged, not blocked. My judgment was mixed.”
“Mixed…?”
Song-ha repeated Lennok’s words, her eyes momentarily sparkling with curiosity.
“You’re more interesting than I thought.”
Clang!
Song-ha tilted her head back, gripping the greatsword’s hilt tightly.
As her pure white hair streamed back, covering her face.
A hallucination surged, as if her senses were being sucked back into her fingertips.
“Since it’s come to this, how about we play a little more until you decide to hand over that Papyrus?”
Whoosh!
A line of pure white light diagonally cleaved the ruin wall, slicing through dozens of ossuaries in an instant.
Precise sword artistry that split a gap as thin as a fingernail.
But perhaps what was truly astonishing was that such swordplay was performed with a greatsword far exceeding her height.
The moment she repeatedly drew and sheathed the greatsword, she sent her will-thought far along the elongated blade.
A cleave, containing explosive power, range, precision, and versatility, spun, targeting Lennok alone.
Thud-thud-thud!
Lennok focused on dodging the pouring cleaves with Blinks and widening the distance, rather than parrying them.
But even amidst that, Song-ha seemed to gain certainty as she saw Lennok momentarily falter.
Thump!
She lightly pushed the blade aside, slightly opening up space.
Violent wind pressure swirled around Song-ha, scattering ash at her feet.
The swordswoman’s figure, vanishing into the veil of ash, instantly appeared before Lennok, thrusting her sword.
Creak!
“You’re not a proper spellcaster, are you?”
Song-ha asked, immediately resting the greatsword’s blade on Lennok’s shoulder.
“Since before, you keep trying to block what can’t be blocked, and parry what could be dodged.”
Holding the greatsword in a reverse grip, she extended the tip to tap Lennok’s chest.
“That’s the reaction of a very seasoned warrior, rather than a spellcaster. You’re trying to twist the situation, but your body isn’t moving with it.”
She wasn’t wrong.
In fact, Lennok parrying Song-ha’s cleaves a few times wasn’t his original intended countermeasure.
It was the Warrior’s Faculty, forcibly acquired and linked with the Temple of the Naked Unbound Sea, that remained in Lennok’s body and reacted.
Song-ha immediately noticed Lennok’s subtle reactions and realized the source of that discrepancy.
“Why a warrior like you would become so weak, and why you’re learning specialized spellcraft… I’m really curious.”
Song-ha tilted her head and asked,
“Did you put some kind of geas on yourself?”
“That’s what I’d like to ask you instead.”
Lennok retorted, glancing at the blade resting on his shoulder.
No matter how he looked at it, Song-ha’s current cognitive and reasoning abilities clearly weren’t operating under the self-imposed restrictions she claimed.
“Maintaining such cognitive ability even with a tripartite split of your intellect is absurd. If you possessed such sagacity, you wouldn’t use that ability in such a way.”
“Are you complimenting me?”
“Hardly.”
Lennok sneered.
“The fact that you can only understand my words that way is proof that your geas isn’t fully under control.”
If intellect were to be quantified, where would the standard lie?
When does one begin to understand words, to speak a language, to learn characters, and to converse?
In this world, where all sorts of eccentric and monstrous beings run rampant, such a standard could not exist in the first place, and even if it did, it would be useless.
Nevertheless, Lennok was convinced that the conditions Song-ha used to ‘restrict’ her own intellect were different from what he thought.
“You entrusted the restriction and adjustment for controlling your cloning ability to someone else.”
Lennok said with a cold laugh.
“Did you decide to live your entire life as someone else’s tool, without any reflection or introspection on your own talent?”
“…Well. I’m stupid, so I don’t really know about things like that.”
Song-ha mumbled with a blank expression.
“That’s not very interesting. And I don’t want to hear it for long.”
The moment Song-ha tightened her grip on the greatsword as she mumbled this.
Kwoooong!
A pure white coffin crashed down before Lennok as if plummeting.
The pure white coffin, appearing out of nowhere and falling with a roar.
Hiss!
The coffin door opened, and a figure, entirely covered in pure white light, staggered out.
Its appearance was finely fractured and cracked, and on its right arm, a pure white gauntlet was strapped.
“It’s not real, is it a ghost?”
Song-ha mumbled, frowning as she scrutinized the incarnate body.
“I see… It’s a type of Avatar. I’ve heard there’s spellcraft like this.”
Whoosh!
Dozens of magic scribes surged from within the pure white coffin and wrapped around the incarnate body.
As the magic scribes pulled taut and contracted, the incarnate body, guided by Lennok’s hand gestures, took a stance.
The incarnate body, which had once housed Dorye’s essence and then ceased to move due to the backlash of being designated an Apostle.
But by forcibly stimulating the incarnate body using the High Priestess’s authority, there were endless ways to utilize it in combat.
The subtle art of manipulating the incarnate body like a puppet by connecting magic scribes to its form.
Lennok intended to test this against Song-ha in this very place.
“Now that I think about it, Ethan seemed to have said something similar.”
Song-ha nodded, placing her hand back on her greatsword, and said,
“Alright. Shall we see just how powerful the Military Spirit City’s avatar is?”
Whoosh!
No sooner had she finished speaking than a blurred, distorted cleave rained down on the incarnate body’s head.
Its overwhelming length was enough to cleave both the incarnate body’s figure and even Lennok’s figure, holding the magic scribes, in two.
But the incarnate body’s reaction was entirely different from Lennok’s.
It crossed its arms, raising its gauntlets upward, and met Song-ha’s cleave head-on.
CRACK!
A shockwave erupted from the clash of blade and gauntlet, reverberating everywhere, and the incarnate body trembled violently, scattering.
Thud-thud-thud!
The incarnate body writhed, shedding ethereal fragments like collapsing glasswork.
But the incarnate body paid no mind, twisting its unbalanced form to slip beneath the blade.
Rolling once, the incarnate body sprang to its feet and dashed fearlessly towards Song-ha.
Thump, thump,
With two swift steps, the incarnate body’s figure instantly accelerated.
It swung its gauntlet, striking a clean hit on Song-ha’s face, whose expression had drastically changed.
Eight Forms of Ninefold Dorye Martial Art
First Form
The Ninefold Dorye martial art, acquired from his battle with Dorye, was explosively reproduced through the incarnate body’s movements.
An ink-black afterimage, surging around the gauntlet, rose like a tornado, sweeping over Song-ha’s figure.
KWA-KWA-KWAANG!
The cavern of the crematorium ruins shook violently, scattering ash and rock fragments everywhere.
Amidst the acrid smoke, sword light flashed, coiling around the incarnate body’s figure.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!!!
Throughout the smoke-filled ruins, the incarnate body and the swordswoman’s shadow intersected and clashed.
Shattered ethereal fragments scattered, and the greatsword’s aura that danced among them painted the sky in disarray.
“Yes, this was it.”
Whoosh!
Song-ha, flipping her body in mid-air and gripping her greatsword, nodded blankly, as if in understanding.
“You acted so ambiguously because you could move like this.”
KABOOM!
A pure white gauntlet plunged into Song-ha’s sternum as if being sucked in, even as she fell backward.
But instead of parrying the incarnate body’s punch, Song-ha sharply twisted her body, forcibly shifting her axis.
A miraculous feat of changing body direction and trajectory in mid-air without any support.
Snap!
Song-ha’s expression hardened, and the will-thought emanating from her fingertips transformed into the shape of a Miniature Universe.
She sheathed the greatsword, which was longer than her own height, back into its scabbard.
[Return: Reverse Blade]
Not an unsheathing, but a sheathing.
Not standing on the ground, but in the air, with her body inverted.
The swordswoman performed every step of swinging a sword in reverse.
Shhhk!
A sword-strike surged from within the incarnate body as if being pulled out, coiling into Song-ha’s greatsword.
A bizarre sight, as if reversing and collecting the sword-strikes she had previously delivered to her opponent.
At that moment, the incarnate body could no longer move, weakly collapsing while continuously shedding ethereal fragments.
Thud!
“Huu, huu…!”
Song-ha gasped for breath, coughing as she turned to look at Lennok.
Her complexion had paled, seemingly from overexertion to quickly neutralize the incarnate body.
“Excellent skill. But the avatar’s durability is too weak, causing judgment to lag a beat behind.”
“…”
“Since Miniature Universe was mixed in, it will be difficult for it to move for a while. I don’t know the principle by which the avatar operates, but—”
Clang!
Song-ha drew her greatsword and pointed it at Lennok.
“I’ll be taking the Papyrus.”
Lennok had thoroughly avoided fighting Song-ha directly.
Now that the incarnate body, his only means of close-quarters combat, had been dealt with by a mindscape ability, there was no ally to protect him.
Moreover, his opponent was a physical combatant of such high caliber that she could use Miniature Universe with a clone body.
But Lennok, knowing this, raised his gaze.
He confirmed that the fissure in the ruin’s ceiling was slowly growing larger, and Lennok mumbled,
“This should be enough.”
“What?”
Thump!
At that moment, the ruin’s ceiling and walls cracked, and water began to pour down.
It started as a small fissure, but the crematorium ruin’s ceiling and walls cracked, and water began to pour down.
Song-ha immediately identified the impact and its cause, her mouth agape in a dazed expression.
“Uh… did I do that?”
It seemed Lennok had forcibly expanded and damaged the fissures in the ruins that Song-ha’s sword dance had created.
Kwoooosh!!!
As the crematorium ruins were located deep beneath the river, the water pressure pouring into the area was explosive.
In the blink of an eye, the pouring water reached neck-level, filling the ruins and submerging them completely.
Gurgle!
Song-ha looked at Lennok with a surprised expression, submerged in the water.
Lennok, also submerged, faced Song-ha and slowly pressed his palms together.
Whirrr…!!
As he channeled mana, a chilling cold spread out from Lennok.
Mana so cold it could be felt even through the river water on Song-ha’s skin.
Song-ha immediately gripped her greatsword and channeled mana, but Lennok’s magic, already incanted, was a step faster.
Ice-attribute Unique Magic
Environmental Shaping: Freeze
Reinforced Incantation
[Cold Domain: Shackling Realm]
CRUNCHHH!!!
The water in the vicinity of Lennok instantly froze, bringing the waterway where Song-ha was located to a halt.
The dozens of meters radius around the ruin section where the two were located froze solid, transforming into a colossal block of ice.
“Ah, cold!”
Song-ha channeled mana to escape the ice restraint that held her.
But the incarnate body embracing her from behind was faster.
“…!!!”
So, creating the ice prison was a scheme to subtly close the distance with the incarnate body without being noticed?
He must be planning to use the incarnate body to cast a spell at point-blank range, directly embedding it into Song-ha’s body.
“Try it if you can.”
Song-ha gritted her teeth and tensed her abdomen, speaking.
“I can endure any destruction spell or curse!”
The idea itself was incredibly ingenious, but if she could just endure this one time, she could cut through the ice and immediately seize Lennok.
Given the types and power of spells that could be used at such point-blank range, she should be able to withstand it at least once.
“You would.”
Lennok smiled.
“But what about an augmentation spell?”
“What?”
Lightning-attribute Unique Magic
Augmentation-type Property Transformation
[Remaining Thunder Body]
[Four Books, Three Extremes]
CRACKLE-CRACKLE-CRACKLE!!!
Sharp, intensely flashing will-thought struck the crown of Song-ha’s head like a thunderbolt.
An augmentation spell that activated physical abilities and reflexes, enhancing reaction speed.
Lennok’s third revision of the augmentation magic he had developed previously, Four Books, Three Extremes.
It was an incomprehensible anomaly that the first magic he used on Song-ha was an augmentation spell that actually boosted her abilities.
“Wait…!”
But Song-ha’s reaction, having received the augmentation magic, was more violent than any attack she had seen so far.
The swordswoman’s head spun wildly as if her eyes were rolling, and she screamed.
“Stop it, what is this?!”
“It’s an augmentation spell that boosts reflexes and thought speed. It turns out the reaction is particularly violent when applied to a clone-ability user.”
Lennok chuckled, looking at Song-ha.
“Perhaps it’s because the basic conditions change for the other clones, making it difficult to maintain their unique abilities.”
“Stop it, damn it!!!”
“If you lay out such expedient methods in the right places, you can easily neutralize someone without much effort.”
Lennok threw his head back, extending his magic scribes above his head, and said,
“Though I don’t know if you understand what I just explained.”
Lennok had once experimented with Remaining Thunder Body on Armand Martins, a clone-ability user working in the City Council, and had observed various side effects.
Among them, Lennok remembered that the third improved version of Remaining Thunder Body, Four Books, Three Extremes, destabilized the existence of clones.
So, at the last moment, instead of destroying or killing Song-ha’s clone, he chose to destabilize its existence by flooding it with a buff.
“Ahhh…!”
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The ice block rapidly ascended, causing an explosive change in pressure that violently shook and overturned Song-ha’s clone.
At that moment, the ice block surged from hundreds of meters beneath the riverbed, erupting into a colossal column of water above the surface.
KWA-KWA-KWAANG!!!
“I believe I have already conveyed that sufficiently.”
Yorta, the Military Spirit City. The Grand Judgment Chamber, located on the First Underground Level.
This vast cavern was now used as a prison to confine Pandemonium’s specialized spellcasters.
Naimel sat there, handling the duties she normally would, in Lennok’s absence.
With the Elder Spirits of the Court of Soul Pacification absent, causing issues with the city’s external affairs.
Her task was to deal with the external forces arriving from outside Yorta.
“Yorta’s position on this situation remains unchanged.”
Naimel quietly bowed her head towards the figure beyond the mirror.
“We are prohibiting entry for all external visitors to the city and will not issue an official statement until the matter has been fully assessed.”
[Your words keep going in circles, Elder Spirit.]
A coarse female voice resonated loudly from beyond the mirror.
[I am saying that I have no reason to wait for that stance, Elder Spirit.]
“…”
Beyond the mirror sat a middle-aged woman in a military uniform.
She held a half-smoked cigarette in one hand, sitting askew, staring with a murderous expression.
Scars haphazardly etched across her face exuded the formidable aura of a hardened soldier.
[This is not a request for permission or cooperation; it is a notification. I will say this one last time.]
The woman in military uniform brought the cigarette to her lips.
[Our Deadrise Fourth Legion’s Eastern Garrison will deploy troops to Yorta to bring order to the chaos and stabilize the city.]
Naimel, having already gathered intelligence on the military factions and powers surrounding Yorta, already knew who her opponent was.
Deadrise’s Fourth Legion. A powerful military company, part of the forces stationed across the continent from the Central Front’s outer regions, extending its influence.
And the woman chewing on her cigarette beyond the mirror was a General leading the entire Fourth Legion, a seasoned commander who had been through countless real battles.
[We will send landing forces to cross the Headrain River and establish a bridgehead, then deploy mobile forces first. We will sequentially bring in troops to investigate the situation.]
The woman’s yellow eyes stared intently at Naimel.
[We will hear your objections after our forces are stationed in Yorta’s central district and have directly met with your leadership.]
“…”
Before Naimel could respond, she tiredly pinched the bridge of her brows.
The Legion Commander, who pressed her so fearlessly, was a difficult opponent, but the problem wasn’t just her.
Forces that had received news of the Memorial Tower’s collapse and the awakening of ancient spirits would likely be heading towards this city in similar ways.
The Elder Spirits, having inherited the city’s authority, would have to continue this struggle for power against external forces targeting Yorta.
But for now, the important thing was to somehow overturn this battle-hardened commander’s decision.
Just as Naimel thought this and slowly began to open her mouth.
Thump!
The barrier of the First Underground Level shattered and split open, and someone walked in from outside.
A shadow robe, thoroughly soaked. The presence of a wizard wearing a transparent, shimmering Obsidian Mask.
Naimel hastily turned her head, confirming Lennok’s appearance, and frowned.
“I don’t recall instructing you to return in such a boisterous manner.”
“None of my business.”
Lennok retorted, flinging the ice block he had dragged behind him.
“More importantly, I caught this on the riverbed downstairs. Check it out.”
[Are you the Pandemonium spellcaster who caused all that ruckus in Yorta?]
The Fourth Legion Commander chuckled, exhaling thick smoke from beyond the mirror.
[Interesting. What reason would Yorta’s Elder Spirits have to let you roam free like this, instead of confining you—]
Thump!
As Naimel flinched at the sight of Song-ha, thoroughly soaked and slumped, Lennok casually replied,
“They say she’s a General from Deadrise. A clone-ability user who calls herself Song-ha.”
[…Song-ha?]
At that moment, the Fourth Legion Commander’s expression, watching from beyond the mirror, subtly changed.
[General Song-ha?]