Chapter 826
Chapter 826
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 826
Chapter Title: Purple Rose (6)
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Golden magic torrents shake the earth.
The condensed, hyper-condensed power is no different from an unstoppable force of nature.
Every time Siu moved his limbs, massive destruction followed half a beat behind.
Originally, wielding magic power on this scale demands equivalent risks.
That's because magic is an art founded on rigorous calculations.
The more immense the power handled, the greater the backlash if intermediate steps are skipped or glossed over—it won't end with a mere fizzle.
If you're lucky, you'll suffer permanent damage to your magic circuits. In most cases, death awaits.
Yet the dream's effects were outstanding.
Even without perfect calculations, even under overload, even with contradictions in the spell structure, it somehow worked out.
The 10th hierarchy imbues magic power with color.
The 15th fuses instinct and self-generating magic.
The 20th twists the world's providence, ignoring natural laws and logic.
And Siu realized he held in his grasp a power that transcended even that.
A realm where wonders and mysteries manifest without limits.
Not rewriting the world's laws for use, but becoming a new law oneself.
Is this what reaching the 25th hierarchy feels like?
Freedom.
His mind, plunged into a trance, was no longer bound by rules or formulas.
Magic is merely a tool to induce phenomena.
The spells he'd used until now were no different from putting the cart before the horse.
How had he never realized such an obvious truth?
He himself had been the one imposing limits on the endless horizon.
Magic's possibilities were this infinite, this vast.
A white thrill piercing his mind, the exaltation of wisdom, lifted the corners of his mouth.
"Hah!"
But Eloa did not crumble easily.
She slipped through the ceaseless waves of golden magic power with clever footwork.
She deflected the consecutively swung mighty spear thrusts along her blade.
Even as she did, her eyes, gleaming left and right, detected changes erupting from all directions without missing a beat.
This power was undoubtedly unreal.
At the very least, it was on a different level from the Shin Siu she had known.
At first, she assumed it was power handed over by the Witch of Whispers.
Lilith's prowess was exceptional enough to eclipse her infamy, propelling the witches she touched far beyond their current realms.
But was this power truly from Lilith?
Lilith was evil.
Like the apple offered by a demon, shiny on the outside but riddled with worms inside.
Yet there was no such twist in the magic Siu was casting.
The golden magic power surging everywhere, interspersed with intermittent fractal-shaped lightning.
Its profound subtlety defied description as mere beauty, and it didn't suit Lilith at all.
But she had no leisure to dwell on it.
Eloa, innately low in magic reserves, versus Siu, whose power had been amplified dozens of times through bizarre means.
The disparity in their magic power was at least a hundredfold, even by rough estimate.
He was already wielding reserves comparable to a colossal homunculus.
But battles between witches aren't decided solely by magic quantity.
As Eloa had repeatedly emphasized while teaching Siu, there's no need to be stronger than your opponent throughout the fight.
If you can surpass their capacity in even a single compressed instant, the gap might as well never have existed.
-Boom!
Eloa's body exploded forward as she stomped the ground, charging straight into Siu's embrace.
Vast power lacks equivalent precision.
In point-blank range, he'd be unable to spam high-output spells.
He'd get caught in his own blast radius.
Moreover, when spear and sword enter close quarters, the sword's structure inherently holds the advantage.
-Clang! Clang!
Spear tip and sword blade clashing at high speed.
The sword clung to the spear shaft like a magnet, initiating a sword fight.
If Siu dropped the spear and reached out, he could almost hug Eloa—it was ultra-close range.
Colliding magics repeatedly sparked like embers.
He tried several times to shake Eloa off, but it was futile.
Siu's skills had improved by leaps and bounds, but surpassing Eloa, honed over a century of real combat, would take more time.
Once she'd closed the distance, Eloa clung tenaciously like a hound biting an arm.
Got it.
Amid the serpentine dance of spear and sword, Eloa spotted an opening.
-Flash!
Eloa kicked off Siu's knee and spun like a waltz, her body whirling gracefully.
The sudden impact to his lower body disrupted Siu's balance.
Using that momentum, she spun like a top in the narrow gap, thrusting three precise strikes in that fleeting moment.
Her tightly clenched fist targeted the vulnerabilities lined up along the centerline of his exposed torso.
Solar plexus.
Diaphragm.
Lower abdomen.
No use relying on solid armor to deflect the blows.
Eloa's single punch, channeling power into one point, would steal consciousness regardless of combat will.
-Boom!
A white sonic boom and shockwave erupted.
Despite the combo, it rang out as a single thunderous roar—swift strikes fused into one.
Eloa was stunned.
An incomprehensible anomaly unfolded before her eyes.
She had definitely landed three attacks.
Yet the flat armor's center, where no curve should exist, deflected the impacts like rubber.
Sensing he couldn't dodge, Siu had compressed a distortion field and deployed it like gauntlets over his armor.
He twisted the shock meant for his body into 'distortion.'
"This works too, huh."
Siu grinned triumphantly.
Even in battle, Eloa couldn't help but smile faintly.
A disciple's growth is always a teacher's joy.
Impressed and proud, praise slipped out unbidden.
"Impressive."
The exchange was brief.
Eloa had no intention of conceding here, and Siu knew it.
"What?"
Without a moment to catch his breath, the ultra-close combat continued, bringing Eloa her second shock.
-Slash!
They were clearly clashing swords at point-blank, yet without warning, the spear tip whipped up from under her chin.
An impossible thrust that ignored physical laws, as if space itself were disregarded.
Eloa evaded only because of her superhuman reflexes, outside conscious perception.
-Slash! Slash! Slash!
Sharp whooshes accompanied the red branch thrusting into her guard once more.
Only then did Eloa grasp how Siu's previous attack had worked.
The spear bends.
Like viewed through a refracting lens, the upward thrust curved bizarrely toward her.
Spear strikes popping from front, back, left, right— even Eloa struggled to counter.
"Hup!"
When her own wildly swung sword twisted oddly and sliced empty air, Eloa let out a hollow laugh.
The interval that always granted her victory was no longer invincible.
Realizing this, she boldly widened the distance.
But that was merely a temporary retreat.
Wasn't that why she'd maintained distance all along?
The space Eloa yielded gave Siu room to unleash massive rituals.
-Kiiiiing!
As if waiting for her to pull away, three rings hovering overhead spun ferociously, unleashing vast magic power.
Unrealistically pure, immense mana surged through the red branch.
The red branch stabbed the air.
A vivid point imprinted in empty sky.
Change began there.
-Goooooo...
First, a palm-sized vortex formed.
Magic power, mutable by a witch's interpretation, follows one absolute law.
Highly concentrated mana attracts other mana.
The method witches use sigils to 'assimilate' ambient mana relies on this principle.
And Siu maximized and exaggerated that law through distortion.
A singularity with zero surface area pulled in surrounding mana with infinite gravity, contracting.
Spirals softly coiling around the point voraciously devoured nearby mana.
The vortex, feeding on mana, expanded exponentially, generating geometrically stronger pull.
-Greeeeek!
Space itself twisted grotesquely under impossibly condensed mana, emitting a death rattle.
Even now, Siu strained to contain it, but it was enough to neutralize most witches.
Any spell caught in such pull would unravel midway.
—————!!!!
The colossal force dragged the atmosphere into convection.
Thick sleet-bearing nimbostratus swirled, carving a massive vortex in the sky.
Eloa beheld the wondrous sight and prepared for what might be their final clash.
While Siu grew stronger, Eloa hadn't idled either.
To protect him in repeated crises, she'd vowed hundreds of times to grow even more.
She never imagined she'd debut the results against him first.
-Crack!
Sword gripped in both hands.
She steadied her breath, erecting a single sword in her mind's eye.
The twelve runes on her contract sword's side blazed, filling with a single pact.
Eloa's self-generating magic, in its primordial form: Word Spirit.
A contract with the world that transcends causality, prioritized above all else.
Such contracts possess the property of inevitable fulfillment.
Eloa's lips moved.
"I... will cut... you."
A pillar of light crossing the dark night sky down to earth.
The profound mana tremor spreading outward stood unyielding, lofty amid the golden storm torrent.
A terrifyingly massive vortex blocked Eloa's view as it charged.
Yet her choice was always frontal assault.
Her form, heavily kicking the ground, shot forth elongated.
The blurred strike intersected the spiral.