Chapter 825
Chapter 825
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 825
Chapter Title: Purple Rose (5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In truth, Eloa's magic lacked any real technical flair.
Unlike Lydia, who was also ranked 23rd, she didn't employ any mysterious techniques.
She didn't unleash wide-area spells harnessing particles and waves like Amelia, nor did she summon massive tidal waves like Lurye.
All she used were contract-based spirit reinforcement, the subtleties of footwork, the Transcendent Realm, and swordsmanship that had reached the domain of magic.
Compared to the great witches who defied the natural order with all sorts of wondrous spells, it was perfectly normal to feel like there was nothing special about it.
Her combat style was exceedingly simple as well.
It consisted solely of two sequences: approach and slash.
An ignorant challenger might think, I can take her.
After all, a one-pattern style made it that much easier to find a counter.
In fact, countless challengers had faced Eloa with similar thoughts.
And the instant they clashed, they realized it was a foolish misconception.
Insert just one word into that misconception, and it perfectly described their plight.
Eloa always closed in.
And she always slashed.
She bulldozed through minor spells with a body wrapped tight in anti-magic contracts.
She cleaved away massive, lethal magic with her sword.
Even desperate attempts to widen the distance when it seemed hopeless were outpaced by her even swifter advance.
And once she entered Eloa's range, the fight was as good as over.
Because a relentless barrage would begin, rendering defense, blocking, or evasion utterly meaningless.
This was Eloa Tiferet's unbreakable one-pattern.
The strongest one-pattern, in other words.
Hundreds of desperate life-or-death battles and thousands of subjugation attempts.
She had never once been defeated, earning her the title beyond even that of "Witch of Contracts."
Martial God.
On the cramped spiral staircase, Siu faced Eloa and felt her overwhelming presence from the standoff alone.
He had always watched her back in battle, where her presence felt reassuring—now it had twisted into pure intimidation.
"I make a contract."
-Hummm!
Eight characters shimmered along the flat of her contract sword before fading away.
The output was on another level entirely from their training spars, her presence swelling thick and heavy.
Eloa's petite frame suddenly seemed like that of a giant.
"Be careful not to get hurt."
The pink glow of her mana reflected coldly as her sword sliced in diagonally from the left.
Siu parried the mid-level thrust with his spear shaft and braced himself.
Or at least, he tried to.
But—
-Boom!
"Guh!"
A clash of mana against mana.
Both their strengths had long surpassed human limits.
The shockwave from that single exchange crumbled the tower stairs, the granite walls shattering like cookies.
His bones and muscles screamed under the relentlessly pushing force.
They warned him they'd snap if he held out any longer.
-Rumble rumble boom!
Siu burst through the collapsing tower debris and immediately unfurled his wings of shadow.
Converting them into propulsion scattered shadow particles like iron filings as he flew over the lavender thicket.
He had known this all along.
Going for close quarters against his master was a losing game.
Siu thought he had put enough distance between them, but what he saw was a rather terrifying sight.
-Thud boom! Thud boom!
His master, charging through the sky.
She was literally running across the air.
Not using flight magic like Siu, or even kicking off thin mana platforms.
With reinforced leg strength—pure physical power—she exploded the air itself to propel forward.
Each step pulverized the atmosphere like an explosive blast, unleashing deafening booms and blasts of white pressure waves.
Cone-shaped shockwaves trailed belatedly in her wake, churning the forest below.
Her speed clearly outpaced Siu's retreat.
"...Yeah, this defies logic."
A chill ran down his spine.
Even though he had started fleeing well ahead, she would catch up soon enough.
But Siu hadn't just been sitting idle.
Shadow particles he had deliberately scattered during his escape.
Particles lurking in the forest, awaiting orders, transformed en masse into ribbon shapes.
Originally, ribbons could only be manipulated when in contact with Siu's body, but he had advanced that one step further.
Using force fields to install "magic circles."
This method allowed him to control even external ribbons.
-Shwick!
Violet ribbons surged up like carnivorous plants from amid the waves of purple forest.
They reached out like a massive hand toward Eloa in hot pursuit.
No matter how formidable Eloa was, she couldn't ignore the physical force of ribbons woven on the Virgin's Loom.
If even one tangled her and slowed her down, thousands more would sequentially bind her tight.
-Hummm!
But—
Pink mana exploded once more at Eloa's feet.
An unbelievable re-acceleration.
Reaching speeds even Siu's eyes couldn't fully track, she soared into the sky like a phoenix, effortlessly shaking off the ribbons' pursuit.
"Haaap!"
Was she about to pierce the atmosphere? No— a meteor-like slash plummeted straight down.
Coordinate teleportation wouldn't align in time.
He barely blocked it, but absorbing the full impact was impossible.
He couldn't avoid being slammed into the ground.
Purple petals scattered lightly instead of dust.
Eloa landed gracefully right before Siu, who had just managed to touch down.
"You can't beat me just by running away."
"You're right about that."
Siu's eyes caught the ninth contract gleaming on Eloa's sword.
It had been forged the moment their sword and spear shaft collided.
A contract with an innate tendency to form on its own.
That was Eloa's self-generating magic.
If mutually established, Siu could perceive its contents as well.
This enforced contract was: "Lose buoyancy and lift relative to friend and foe."
No more free flight like before—and widening the distance from Eloa was now utterly impossible.
"You're truly formidable, Master."
And she wasn't even going all out.
She had wrapped her contract sword in thick, cushioning mana to soften blows for Siu's safety.
Even with familiarity from their spars, he couldn't claim even the slightest chance of victory.
"...So stop this pointless resistance and hand over the brooch."
Persuasion wouldn't work.
Eloa would never stop.
Regardless of reality, in her mind, this battle was to save Siu from Lilith's scheme.
She would seize the brooch—even if it meant letting him suffer a bit—to restore her beloved disciple to his senses.
"I can't do that."
"Siu..."
"I'd never beat you, even if I died and came back to life."
"If you know that, why won't you listen?"
Eloa's face twisted as she watched Siu maintain his battle stance.
He hadn't come here without a plan.
His goal was to stay as far from the lotus as possible.
Fighting near the lotus—the core of Eloa's dream—would invite interference.
Siu had recently been venturing into a new realm.
Like Lydia's gold coins or Linne's black-and-white world, it was magic dealing in "concepts."
More precisely, incorporating the red branch's original ability, "distortion," into magic—but so far, he had only achieved low-level uses like deflecting impacts, with no major breakthroughs.
Unlike other magic that manipulated visible things, wielding concepts was infuriatingly vague and dangerous.
A single mistake or lapse in focus could easily lead to a fatal wound.
"Let me correct myself. In reality, I could never beat you, Master."
But this wasn't reality.
It was a dreamlike space of wishes and desires, where concepts came true.
A place where he could manifest an "ideal self" impossible in the real world.
"But in a dream? That's a different story."
-Kiiiiing!
A ring materialized above Siu's head.
A vivid golden fractal pattern hovered over the pitch-black ring.
A new self-generating spell he had woven by layering "repetitive amplification" onto the "Angel's Ring" during his previous fight with Rosie.
The explosively surging magic stirred a fierce gale around him on its own.
It boasted tremendous power, but excessive strength always had its limits.
A time-limited ultimate technique that granted vast mana at the cost of a heavy toll.
After barely five seconds, his mana circuits would overheat like a furnace, bringing excruciating pain and backlash.
However—
"Bloom."
He distorted it.
Unlike the rigid, tightly woven framework of the real world, he manipulated the dream world, soft as pliable clay.
-Kiiiiiiing!
As the ring's rotation hit critical speed, on the verge of flying off its orbit, it began to morph.
Shaking like the blurry afterimage of a high-speed object, it settled into a clear transformation.
Three rings, each with a single concentric circle, rotating slowly around one axis.
Like an intricate mechanical device with meshed gears, geometric cogs stabilized between them.
This was a spell Siu had once envisioned but never realized in reality.
It required distorting multiple layers of logical errors—beyond his current abilities.
But things were different now.
Siu had materialized the most powerful magic he could imagine, in its most ideal form.
Mana surged endlessly, power without limit.
Even a natural mana prodigy like Lurye couldn't sustain this much force indefinitely.
Vast energy, like that governing celestial motions, emitted a heavy, creaking ultra-low frequency.
"What in the world are you...?"
Meanwhile, his master perceived this world as reality.
Such sleight-of-hand illusions were impossible without breaking free of the dream.
To make her realize it was a dream, Siu just needed to show her.
Show her something that could never happen in reality.
For instance, Siu overwhelming Eloa head-on.
Dream and reality clashed.