Chapter 895: The Eye That Sees Fate (31)
Lapis’s shoulders flinched violently as she knelt before the sanctuary, drawing a ritual magic circle.
“……!!”
Krrrrrrrumble……!!!!
A clap of thunder echoed from the distance a moment later.
But it wasn’t just the sound that truly startled Lapis.
Her face pale, Lapis lifted her head, murmuring as cold sweat dripped down her face.
“How can a human’s will-thought be this….”
The sharp and gruesome will-thought of lightning brushed past her senses, faster than thunder.
Even at such a distance, the roar of that lightning seemed to shake her very soul.
A will so ferocious it was hard to believe it belonged to a human, yet one that was infinitely hard and sharp.
Just how many superhumans had he faced to acquire a will-thought honed to such an extreme?
The moment she realized this, Lapis’s heart began to waver.
Were the things she had been contemplating even remotely feasible?
Had she been tormenting herself with an absurd assumption all along?
“Lady Lapis.”
Watching Lapis, who couldn’t hide her agitation, Partisha gently swept her wing across her shoulder.
“It’s alright to give up if it’s too painful.”
“……Partisha.”
“I never liked this ritual from the beginning. What you were trying to do in this ritual, Lady Lapis, was ultimately……”
Unable to continue, Partisha hesitated, then looked at her with trembling eyes and said,
“Evan Martinez. He is a man with a stronger will than any wizard I have ever seen.”
“……”
“That man will surely help you, no matter what choice you make. I will take care of things here, so please, preserve your well-being and safely—”
“No.”
But at Partisha’s words, Lapis seemed to steel her resolve, slowly shaking her head.
“It’s impossible if not now. Evan also trusted me to see this through.”
“But……”
“What I’m worried about… is something a little different.”
The barrage of flame and lightning clashing outside the fortress reverberated all the way here, its aftershocks felt in full.
Yet, amidst it all, the two wizards’ mana and will-thought did not mix, each shining distinctly in their own way.
What if there was a secret beyond this that couldn’t be understood even with the knowledge and experience passed down with the duty of the Lighthouse Keeper?
What if she had to discuss a standard that had never once existed in the entire history of the continent?
How was Lapis supposed to accept that fact?
The answer ultimately lay at the end of this ritual.
“I’ve already decided what to do. I won’t turn back anymore.”
In the middle of a wide meadow, maintained in a stillness as if time had stopped.
At its edge lay an old coffin, containing a rift to the Outer Sea.
The rift, once no bigger than a needle, had now widened to a size that Partisha could likely enter.
The battle raging outside the fortress. The clash of mana and will-thought that surpassed the limits Evan had described.
As if in response to its aftershocks, the rift to the Outer Sea had been gradually expanding.
With a little more time, it would probably expand to a size a person could pass through.
She had to time the ritual to that exact moment and send her own will beyond the world’s boundary.
“Let’s begin, Partisha.”
Lapis wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeve, then stood up with a hardened expression and gazed at the sanctuary.
“If we don’t want to miss the moment Evan promised, we need to complete the ritual now.”
The Hexagonal Fortress, located between the 50s districts and the undeveloped zone, and the urban area on its outskirts.
While development and maintenance often lagged in a city’s outer areas, the streets around the fortress were different.
It was a transit point that had to be passed through to periodically bring supplies into the quarantine zone.
As such, the city streets around the fortress were more active than other undeveloped districts.
But that bustling scenery had been getting brutally torn apart ever since the two wizards’ battle began.
Kra-woooooong!!
As a wave of fire swept through the street, glass panes flowed like water and signs melted and fell.
Acrid lava bubbled up from the ground, erasing any place to stand.
Lightning fell from the sky, cutting through the hot wind and scattering all sorts of debris.
Krrrrrumble!!
The empty city streets instantly transformed into a hellscape.
An extreme environment where an ordinary person would not be out of place if they were reduced to a skeleton in an instant.
But this vast battlefield, where only two wizards existed, had already become a stage watched intently by all sorts of interested parties.
Among them, a pitch-black space observed the situation with particular stealth and silence.
“It has begun.”
Pandemonium’s Simulated Consciousness Space.
A mental intermediary artificially processed from Agilon’s will-thought.
In the consciousness space Hylaea had convened, several screens were floating, each displaying a different location.
Several people watched with interest the ceaseless waves of fire and streaks of lightning.
Hylaea bustled between the empty chairs, quickly checking off her tasks.
“Central network monitoring, complete. Screen composition, finished. Surveillance zones assigned to avoid overlap, so what’s left is……”
Snapping her head around, Hylaea asked something wriggling in the far side of the space.
“Agneta. How is the stabilization work on the consciousness space?”
“Almost done~”
From the darkness of the space, the upside-down spider, Agneta, waved a hand leisurely.
Her spider legs moved busily, weaving magic scribes and stitching them over the space in layers.
“Like you said, I just need to stabilize it while layered over the material world instead of closing it completely, right?”
“It was a hastily arranged schedule, so there might be members who are late.”
Hylaea nodded and gestured to Agneta.
“If there’s a problem with the work, tell me immediately. That Cursed Divine Word from outside the continent, not all of it has been dispelled yet, has it?”
“Oh my, are you worried about me?”
Agneta let out a dazed laugh and shook her head.
“It’s not bad enough to keep me from working, so don’t worry. The Director might be watching, so I have to do my best~”
Leaving the strangely motivated Agneta, Hylaea shook her head and turned her gaze away.
The members who had arrived first were already seated apart, staring intently at the screens in various postures.
Looking over the faces of the participating members, Hylaea muttered in disbelief.
“Unbelievable. People who wouldn’t even show their faces when called to a meeting……”
Just as the Doctor had mentioned before, the event of Adamant Thunder and Evan clashing seemed to be quite a hot topic.
Despite the hastily arranged schedule, a large number of members who were usually hard to contact had attended.
Considering that most of the members gathered here were eccentrics you could hardly get a glimpse of without an appointment made two quarters in advance, it was truly ironic.
But the other members paid no mind to Hylaea’s monologue.
The battle between Adamant Thunder and Cheonbeon had just begun.
And its aspect was flowing in a stranger direction than expected.
“There’s been no direct combat since the first clash.”
Deimus, a corps commander of Deadrise, spoke up, staring intently at the screen.
“They’re keeping their distance and focusing solely on mana emission. It’s a very deliberate move.”
“Oh my, now that you mention it, that’s true. Are they trying to force the other to make the first move?”
“Ugh, no way. This isn’t a fighting game, I doubt they’d have a battle of wills like that……”
As Freya and Ermont tilted their heads, Maiya spoke with a sneer, as if the idea was ridiculous.
“They’ve begun the work of shaping the environment to their advantage.”
“Shaping the environment?”
“No matter how much you prepare before a fight, there’s a huge difference in efficiency compared to doing it during the battle.”
Sitting with her legs crossed askew, Maiya gestured with her head towards the surging waves of fire and lightning on the screen.
“They know the stage has been set, and there will be no interruptions until the fight is over. Both of them are dead set on laying the groundwork.”
“Does that mean……”
“A provisional regionalization process based on the tier they use. Is it about temporarily imbuing the space with a property transformation?”
At the Doctor’s summary, Maiya nodded.
“It won’t take long. They’ll move as soon as the property transformation is complete.”
Clashing with large-scale techniques at the very beginning to spread the aftershocks was a way to arbitrarily imbue the entire city district, tacitly acknowledged as the battlefield, with a specific property.
It was the process of setting the stage to increase spell-casting efficiency and mana recovery speed, and to procure the necessary attributes and will-thought for the fight in real-time.
Realizing that the two wizards were doing the exact same thing to the battlefield without any prior discussion, Soryu’s expression soured.
“What a disgustingly monstrous way of thinking… Do all battles between mages of that tier play out like this?”
“Why are you getting so disgusted by something like that?”
Ermont, sitting next to him, giggled.
“It’s only natural that a prince who inherited a bloodline ability from birth wouldn’t understand the lowly commoners.”
“……”
“What, you want to go a round right here?”
At Ermont’s reaction, which seemed to strangely defend Evan, Soryu turned his head with a cold expression, and Freya burst into laughter.
“If you’re gonna fight, do it over there so we can all watch, you morons!!”
“Save this lowborn black wizard~”
“Any word from the other members yet?”
Leaving Ermont’s dramatic voice behind, the Doctor turned his gaze toward Hylaea.
“I didn’t expect Croken or Myeong, but I thought the Clown might have shown his face.”
“He declined himself.”
Hylaea shrugged with a reluctant expression.
“He said if he came, the consciousness space would completely collapse.”
“Hmm, that’s……”
It wasn’t entirely wrong, so even the Doctor fell silent for a moment.
The Clown was a top-tier ability user who had reached the pinnacle of illusionary spellcraft. A madman who intentionally kept his psyche unstable.
Meeting him in reality was one thing, but if the Clown were to intervene at a relay point for a consciousness ritual, the space itself could be distorted.
Moreover, if the Clown himself had declared it, it was practically a certainty.
“A shame. I believe Kizard’s insight is on a level that doesn’t fall short of Maiya’s……”
“You’re probably the only one who calls that madman by his name.”
Hylaea muttered, looking fed up, but she still glanced behind her.
“More importantly, it bothers me that there’s no reply from Victor. I’m worried something might have happened.”
“……Victor?”
“For someone with his personality, he’s usually decent about replying. And it’s not like he wasn’t interested in Vulcan.”
“……”
At those words, just as the Doctor fell silent, seemingly in thought.
Fwoosh!!
The back of the space unfolded like a dark curtain, and a mage wearing an obsidian mask walked out.
He wore a jet-black hood, his face and skin completely covered, the same attire as always.
But not a single member present failed to recognize him.
“Manipulator. You’re late.”
“Hey, what took you so long!”
“Victor~”
Soryu and Freya immediately scolded Victor, and Agneta excitedly waved her spider legs.
Victor passed between the scoffing Maiya and the smirking Ermont and sat in an empty seat.
At his cold reaction, ignoring everyone’s words, Freya tilted her head.
“What’s with you today? Did you eat something bad?”
“I know, right? Unless his stomach hurts from the elixir he sneakily ate all by himself in Kaiushyu—”
At that moment, a cold voice flowed from within the hood.
“Don’t talk to me. You worthless yu……”
“Yu?”
“……I’m not in the mood to converse with apes.”
“……”
“I don’t even want to share the same air, so get away.”
At Victor’s cold reply, the other members exchanged dumbfounded glances.
“Did his misanthropy relapse while we weren’t looking?”
“Well, come to think of it, most Special Attribute-type users were kind of like this.”
“Seeing him act like this now is actually kind of refreshing.”
“……”
Ignoring the chattering members around him, Victor crossed his arms and sank into his chair.
It seemed he intended to do nothing but literally watch the unfolding battle.
As Hylaea watched him from a distance and shrugged, and the Doctor stroked his chin in thought.
The clash of fire and lightning that had been ceaselessly blowing beyond the screen began to change slightly.
Kugugugugu!!
Deimus, who had been staring at the screen without a word until now, said,
“They’re moving.”
Simultaneously, a whitish figure flashed at incredible speed from the center of the city and collided.
Kwaaaang!!
Confirming Evan’s form soaring up from the sea of fire, the members stopped their chatter and all turned to the screen.
“Is it starting?”
“That one is moving first……!”
Tatung!!
Evan’s form shot up, ricocheting between the surrounding buildings, and then ran vertically up the outer wall of a high-rise.
The four streams of flame coiling behind him became wings over ten meters long, adding to his acceleration.
He collided with Adamant Thunder, who had just landed on the building’s rooftop, as if they were meeting from above and below.
Jjeo-eong!!!
A shockwave tens of meters wide erupted beneath the dark clouds, and the two wizards’ forms plummeted, piercing through the buildings.
Drrrrrrrk!!!
The outer wall of the skyscraper, tens of meters tall, burst open as if scraped by a giant’s hand.
Thousands of windows exploded simultaneously, and they tore through and burned down empty executive suites and offices.
At the explosive clash, which seemed to pay no mind to the battlefield’s destruction from the start, the others’ mouths fell open.
“Wow, holy shit!! That amount of mana……!!”
“Such incredible acceleration. Did a pyromancer have a technique like this?”
“He caught and dragged him down in a single attempt. He plans to eliminate the altitude difference and start from there.”
“They’re falling……!!”
Kwaaaaaang!!!
Just after the wizards’ forms fell into the heart of the sea of fire that Evan had created.
The sea of fire pushed out in a circle, revealing the point of impact.
Evan, rising to his feet with a clench of his fists and burning red eyes, and Adamant Thunder, dusting off his collar and walking out with an expressionless face.
The screen, showing the storm where fire and lightning mingled, suddenly grew quiet.
It was because everyone was thinking the same thing as they watched the two wizards finally captured in a single frame.
As if to voice that sentiment, Hylaea quietly murmured.
“Who will win?”
“Well, that’s……”
“Hold on. There’s someone whose opinion I’d like to hear first on that matter.”
At that moment, the Doctor cut off Deimus’s words.
Moving his white furball-like consciousness-body to turn his gaze, the Doctor asked the person sitting far away.
“Victor. If you were to bet money, which side would you bet on?”
“……”
With Victor not answering, the Doctor shrugged.
“It’s personal curiosity. Any answer is fine.”
“What, Doctor? Why so sudden?”
While Freya grumbled with a pout, Victor slowly lifted his gaze.
A faint, mocking breath escaped from behind the unreadable obsidian mask.
“No need to think about it.”
Victor said with a light snort.
“Naturally, I’ll choose the side where I can receive the most attention.”
“……Hmm?”
“The outcome of the fight is already decided, after all.”
To the Doctor’s uncharacteristically delayed question, Victor answered without hesitation.
“It is right to give the yu… the apes watching this moment a chance to praise and revere my insight and judgment.”
“Uh……”
“Praise me.”
Complete silence.
A quiet stillness flowed between the members who couldn’t understand his words, and the Doctor tilted his head.
“Hmm, this is a completely unexpected answer……”
“Enough with the useless talk, let’s focus.”
Maiya muttered, staring at the screen with a deadpan expression.
“As for who will win, it seems they’re about to show us directly.”
And then, as the battle began beyond the screen, not a single person in the den of fiends dared to speak first.