Chapter 724
Chapter 724
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 724
Chapter Title: Path of the Asura
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Magic that manipulates concepts is ill-suited for combat.
Compared to other spells that deal with tangible things in the real world, it is far too vague.
This vagueness leads directly to high difficulty and instability that slips out of control.
Moreover, stabilizing the spell in this process demands a tremendous amount of mana.
Unlike other magics where you can visually sense the boundaries of what needs to be controlled, everything must be handled through pure sensation, making most conceptual magics inherently passive by nature.
To compensate for these shortcomings, the majority of witches who handle concepts rely on their own unique 'totems.'
Just as the Witch of Luck employs clovers to achieve this, Lydia's totem was gold coins.
Rather than directly interfering with the concept of 'value,' she pre-sets the degree of interference through the gold coin.
After all, a single misstep could sweep even her away in an uncontrollable rampage.
-Ting
The clear chime rang out as the spinning gold coin fell.
The key point here is that this gold coin was not merely a simple totem.
Lydia had incorporated the totem itself into her conceptual magic to overcome a weakness her predecessors could not resolve.
She didn't just use it as a gauge for controlling the spell—she wielded it as a catalyst and material for manifesting the magic.
By having the totem pay the price she herself would have borne, she boosted efficiency. And by limiting the feedback's impact to the gold coin even in failure, she minimized risk.
She caught both stability and efficiency in one fell swoop.
Of course, it demanded a massive toll with every proper fight, but Lydia possessed the wealth and power to procure sacrifices at will.
"Prove it."
Rinne was still locked in a fierce struggle with the poison moths.
Lydia watched her leisurely and began her incantation.
The moment the gold coin forged from a 20th Hierarchy witch's brand hit the floor...
The solid marble trembled like rippling waves.
-Splash!
And as if to prove it was no illusion, a sound echoed like skipping stones across a pond.
The gold coin sank endlessly into the floor.
Cold, black waves.
It descended silently into the depths of a solitary, malevolent river untouched by sunlight, finally touching someone's hand.
-Grooooar...!
A low-frequency roar like a scream filled the corridor.
The sound of rushing water, which had begun unnoticed, soon drowned out the patter of rain against the windows, flooding the hall.
This entity had consumed a gold coin ground from an entire 20th Hierarchy brand and still demanded a full quarter of Lydia's mana.
It was the mythical being that guided the living to the world of the dead in exchange for gold—the ferryman of the River Styx.
Its two eyes gleamed with an aggregate of madness too insane to behold directly.
It was cloaked in a robe woven from shadows.
Its bony white hands gripped a massive scythe.
Every breath exhaled a thick miasma of death gas so potent that an ordinary human would perish instantly just from exposure.
The hazy silhouette behind Lydia and the flowing River Styx caught Rinne's eye amid her tussle with the poison moths.
She even sensed the reaper of death slowly raising its scythe for the harvest.
True to Lydia's reputation for bizarre rituals, even battle-hardened Rinne couldn't identify this strain of magic.
Yet if that scythe completed its arc and swung, no dodging, blocking, or fleeing to the ends of the earth would save her.
Rinne's superhuman instincts screamed the warning.
"......"
The worthless poison moths weren't particularly fast.
An athletic civilian could dodge them without issue—they moved that sluggishly.
The problem lay in their numbers and the strict rule that even a single touch was forbidden due to their tricky magical properties.
Rinne tallied the remaining moths.
No matter her superior swordsmanship and physical prowess, there wasn't time to evade them all and reach Lydia, who was mid-ritual on a massive scale.
That had been the point of the summons from the start.
For a close-range dealer like Rinne, they were the perfect familiars for buying time.
Irritating obstacles swarming from all sides.
A guillotine of death rocketing toward the sky.
In a desperate pinch that would plunge anyone into panic...
"Heh..."
Rinne laughed.
A thrill she hadn't felt in ages.
The razor-edge tension of staking her life against a superior foe.
Power surged through her body.
Fiery vitality burned in every muscle fiber, every cell.
Her lungs blazed with relentless breaths like a steam locomotive.
Rinne's body launched straight ahead—toward death.
The poison moths her sword couldn't fully swat away collided with her like bugs smashing into headlights, slowing her visibly each time.
"...You're kidding?"
Lydia frowned at the sight.
It was like watching moths dive into a bonfire.
Of course, she wasn't defenseless—the black mana of her monochrome world coiled around her as she charged.
But trying to bulldoze through poison moths that even demanded full sword focus was an insult to Lydia.
Hierarchy was weight class.
The factor that claimed the biggest share in predicting magical combat outcomes, overturning skill gaps and even matchups at times.
Yet what Rinne was doing was unacceptable even if their hierarchies were swapped.
Taking the enemy's core attack head-on with minimal defense.
Was the witch dubbed Sword Ghost committing this blunder out of desperation?
Rinne's grinning face as she coursed toward suicide only deepened Lydia's unease.
Lydia focused her mind on completing the ritual without dropping her guard.
"If you're just gonna die pretty like that, what a waste of my gold coin."
-Slash!
By the time Rinne cleaved through the final moth swarm, her body had degraded to barely 6th Hierarchy level—at best.
Her honed physique and vast-yet-refined mana were now a total wreck.
The result of crashing into dozens of poison moths.
The black-and-white landscape that had enveloped her surroundings now flickered unstably, on the verge of shattering.
-Rooooaaarrr!!!!
The reaper had nearly raised its scythe fully.
Its horrific roar, utterly inhuman, threatened to buckle her legs.
The black-and-white world.
Rinne's self-generated magic that stripped spells of their true colors.
Many witches believed the black-and-white world itself was her perfected spell.
After all, only Tiferet Duke and Si-woo had witnessed what lay beyond and lived.
"......"
Rinne closed her eyes.
Her mind sank into calm serenity even with death at her doorstep.
When she opened them again, amid the space cloaked in black...
There stood crooked, stark white stairs.
So flimsy they seemed ready to crumble under one step.
No stairs could exist on a flat corridor floor—yet they were undeniably there.
These stairs were the projection of Rinne's psyche and philosophy within the black-and-white world.
The unyielding obsession she had always climbed toward—the strength she had pursued her entire life.
Even if only ephemeral death awaited at the top, she had vowed countless times to ascend, etching it into her heart as a spell.
Rinne charged forward.
When bitter solitude stabbed her heart, defiant obsession bloomed in response.
It was the cumulative weight of every moment in her life.
Each step up the stairs, turbulent inner demons swirling like turbulence, changed the aura around her.
The power Lydia had degraded by tampering with value began to return.
No one could arbitrarily judge this path.
No one could deny it.
No one could belittle it.
She would pierce her lonely fate to the end.
This was a derivative of the black-and-white world.
A spell that forcibly awakened all her potential with every step: 'Path of the Asura.'
"Insane."
Lydia felt a chill crawl up her spine as she watched Rinne sprint across flat ground like she was climbing stairs.
With each step, strength returned to her pathetically weakened body.
Her once-deemed-worthless abilities now sharply bisected the world in bolder black-and-white contrast.
The reaper, paid in gold for the harvest, hadn't finished its preparations.
But even with expectations dashed, Lydia still had options.
One: Race to see if Rinne's sword would rip into Lydia's chest first, or if Lydia would complete her spell and deliver judgment.
Two: Swing the reaper's unfinished-yet-powerful scythe to offset Rinne's assault, then expend another gold coin.
No need for long deliberation.
Lydia was a businesswoman, not a gambler.
She had plenty of spare gold coins for totems, and their value was clearly cheaper than her own life.
-Whoooosh!
The reaper's scythe swung.
Space tore along its path like a taut sheet of cloth sliced by a razor knife at its four corners.
From the rift came the wail of the damned, craving companions in torment more than anything.
"Haa... haa...!"
As Rinne climbed the stairs, exhilaration and ecstasy swelled to her chest.
She ascended fearlessly, even as the steps shattered beneath her feet.
In this moment, she forgot solitude, suffering, and her monotonous life.
A dance atop blades that made her want to hum a tune.
Her excitement peaked as she reached a height, narrow and precarious, she'd never climbed before.
Higher, higher, higher still.
She'd made it this far thanks to the honing that shaved down life's edges...
And her bouts with her new disciple.
-Halt
Rinne's footsteps, propelled by sheer obsession, came to a stop.
Ahead loomed stairs to a realm she'd never ascended.
Tempting stairs that could elevate her to new heights—or snuff her out.
Behind, without looking, she pictured her husband pleading for aid.
Si-woo's form, who had brought new shape to her life.
Her toes touched the new step, but after a brief hesitation, she held position.
She prepared a counter-slash for the incoming reaper's scythe.
In that instant, a white light like a beckoning hand flashed atop the stairs, but Rinne didn't glance away.
"Cut them down."
"Prove it."
————Kiiiiiing!!!!
Two diagonals crossed.
Black sword aura spiraled upward, tangling with the space cleaved by the great scythe, unleashing a scream.