Chapter 201
Chapter 201
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 201
Chapter Title: The Mage of Mages (21)
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Splash!
Satisfying.
Crunch, crack!
The sensation of tough, oily flesh crumbling between his fingers, like chewing into a well-marbled cut of meat.
Grind, crack!
Crunch!
This fishy, sweet aroma. The sound of the jawbone shattering from the bastard who sank its fangs into him.
The feeling of muscles bursting from the inside, unable to withstand its own power. The burning sensation as the mutant's blood seeped in and rebuilt his body.
Perfect. The power coursing through his veins like finally releasing a taut bowstring, that liberation—it was so exquisite his body trembled.
“Kyaaak!”
“O-Oh god, stay back! Stay baaack!!!!”
Maybe because he was in such a good mood. He could grin and brush off the people he’d just saved staring at him like a monster, some even hurling knives his way.
‘Not bad at all. Sheep need to fear the shepherd dog a little to obey properly, right?’
He’d personally pulled them from the collapsing temple ruins, yet here they were, treating him like some freak.
What could he do? He’d just have to graciously understand.
‘Yeah. They must be scared. I don’t exactly look human right now. And when a guy like that reaches out from between the temple stones and rips off someone’s head, it’s natural they’d point and scream like that.’
So instead of wiping them all out in one go, he’d gone to the trouble of picking out only the ones infected by the parasitic mutants. He’d even absorbed every drop of the mutant blood that burst from his grip right there, so it wouldn’t splatter on the citizens.
Thanks to his patience, those citizens avoided being eroded by the infection factor or getting swept away wholesale with the mutants—and could reward him with their screams and looks of disgust.
How kind of him.
Crunch!
He took a moment to catch his breath and clambered up the temple bell tower to survey the city. What a sight.
Mutants disguised as guards had risen everywhere, encircling the city outskirts with flames. Fleeing citizens were surging inward, toward the inner keep.
When a whole city’s worth of people tried cramming through the narrow inner gates, chaos was inevitable.
Bickering over who went first was commonplace, along with someone snatching dropped luggage. Crowds trampling the fallen to death at the gates, or people shoved into the rear moat with necks snapping.
The situation was graver still.
No named monsters, but boasting fully restored production, mid-tier grade 5 to 4 mutants filled every visible alley. Among them, even grade 3 queen’s guards mixed in, clashing evenly with the knights.
That much seemed manageable, at least. It’d take time, but with that many sword users around, even the family head alone—judging by what he’d shown in the drawing room—could clean it up given enough time.
But if the undead swarming the Blue Line followed...
Maybe drawn by blood and death, or perhaps the black mages had stirred them up more.
He leaned toward the latter. Because among that undead horde was one of the three wraith knights that had hounded their party so relentlessly in the mountains.
Slash-!
Craaaash!
‘As expected. The family head’s a master-level knight. No need to mention the wraith knight I’ve fought myself.’
The one always at the front with the halberd. The bastard who’d chased their rear and cleaved the hilltop with a downward strike—it was crossing blades with Vyrilen’s family head. A master swordsman’s duel, where each clash sliced buildings in half and scarred the ramparts deep.
And two more of those things remained. This was no small crisis.
Rip, criiip—
And that made it unbearably thrilling. Enough to charge ahead without a thought for front or rear.
‘Crazy. Utterly insane.’
His mind must be gone. He was a data soul NPC. A vegetable’s brain hooked up, overlaid with backup data to move—and here he was, thrilled at the approach of a delete key-wielding monster unleashing sword beams.
GG wasn’t just a game anymore. Die here, and he might really get a permanent brain death ruling.
Reason screamed to bolt and hunt mutants that matched his level and looked tasty instead of those skeletons.
But his body was already surging forward.
“Grrr... It’s fine. Doing good... grrrr.”
With the system barrier gone, he could feel magic and his mutant body more clearly than before, granting even greater power.
But conversely, without the system’s protective veil, GG’s pernicious mental corruption pierced his mind more sharply.
He knew full well surrendering to the mutant blood’s savagery and power wouldn’t end well.
Yet he couldn’t stop yielding to that dual impulse toward destruction.
It was a compromise for survival.
The vivid sensations at his fingertips, sensations too real to dismiss as a game unlike before—they dragged up the reality he’d tried denying. The possibility that he was just a data fragment.
Calling it a grand “data soul,” but really no more than a game character’s save file—a pathetic existence. The horrific anxiety and mental corruption from that, the terror of his last defining data warping.
And mixed in, a sliver of hope: that warped data might be recovering by following the memories of his original self, already turned monster.
A cocktail of nightmarishly chaotic emotions bombarded his brain with questions.
If he died, would “he” die?
Or would it restore the server data, reviving “Professor four months ago,” wandering this world to awaken the original?
Was he truly Professor’s first data soul? Such horrific questions.
Now that the facts he’d ignored loomed before him, that tiny liberation from self-abuse and destructive urges was vital. To keep from going mad.
So if this petty mania could stave off the vast despair of denying his very existence...
Sacrificing this data-forged life to cling to it would be right. As always, his way of surviving.
The Professor, brain boiling like stew, accepted it as the path to life as ever—and hurled his last thread of reason into the madness. A smile crept back to his stiffening lips, fulfillment swelling from head to toe, impulses of savagery and power driving his body.
“Grraaaaaah!!!!”
The monster charging the death-wielding wraith wore not a shred of hesitation.
****
Rumble!
“Ughhh!”
“Gah! Cough! Graaah!”
Ottoman sighed in relief as the mutants were swept away by the fierce water jets.
He’d grown bored waiting for Professor and Lucilla, who’d left grandly by carriage that morning, so he’d stepped out for a city stroll. Then ominous mana waves erupted from the inner keep’s direction.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me? Let’s settle on three Sevia leaves for 450 silver—”
“Graaaah!”
“Whoa, [Water Chain!]”
Splash!
Suddenly, the bold herb merchant flipped out and lunged at him with his whole body.
“L-Let’s talk it out! If the price doesn’t suit you, just say so—no need to get violent like that!”
“Graaaah! Graaaah!”
“Hey now! You really... Hmm?”
Something was off. Water Chain was a third-circle spell, no weak incantation a civilian could shrug off—yet this guy was matching it evenly. Good diet, maybe? As that thought crossed his mind, similar scenes erupted everywhere.
“J-Jane! Wh-What’s wrong— Graaaah!”
“Uwaaah! H-He’s gone mad! Someone pull this bastard off!”
Ordinary folk laughing and chatting suddenly turned feral, piling onto people.
Rumble rumble rumble!
Squish!
Squelch!
Crunch!
Giant earthworms bristling with teeth burst through the sturdy flagstones.
“Tunnel worms! Dear god!”
His mouth spat shock, but his trained body was already forming seals.
“Sink! [Sinkhole!]”
In the crisis, an abbreviated cast—no time to draw water. The effect fell far short of the full spell.
Still, it worked wonders on the nearby tunnel worms spewing mutants.
The ground supporting their bulk caved in, sucking part of their long bodies down to the groundwater.
“Greeeeh—”
With eerie cries, the local tunnel worms all plunged underground. But Ottoman’s face stayed grim.
Crack!
Crack!
Crack!
Sharp teeth sounds pierced flagstones from the opposite alley, and beyond some unseen building.
‘It’s an assault. Beyond what I can handle alone!’
So he’d rushed back to the tavern, linked up with the group prepped amid the spreading screams, and now they held the rooftop of the tallest nearby building against the horde.
“My actual attack power is so lacking...”
Ottoman lamented his lack of proper offensive magic.
“Graaaah!”
Borca blocked the mutants somehow climbing the stairs.
“You scum! If only the sun had set...!”
With the sun still high, black mage Aldrich could only hurl oil bottles or shove climbers with long poles.
“XEDihA! Lu! TOma! nEKAaaa!!!”
Notum shone brightest: shaking her bone soul jar snapped the ankles of charging mutants backward, toppling them in heaps.
The tougher survivors fell to Idrasil’s spirit arrows, sniped one by one. That barely held them off.
“What an... odd spell.”
“Huff, huff. Intruder curse. Anyone unauthorized stepping into the circle drawn with my blood can’t walk.”
“Ancestral spirits’ magic—bound to have unheard-of tricks for our generation. This area... seems mostly cleared.”
The bloodied wolfman approached, gulping church potion. Ottoman nodded, but Notum and Aldrich shook their heads.
“Not at all. A terribly familiar, dreadful spirit lingers near the walls.”
“Grrrk. Rotten souls. Too many to count with what I learned.”
“Undead. A horde, including high-rankers. This assault seems meant to draw them in. As you know, undead are drawn to life and death. A site of mass dying pulls them like magnets.”
“I see... If only Professor and Lucilla would join us, we could decide to break out or fight...”
“Isn’t that Professor over there?”
At Ottoman’s wistful tone, Idrasil—perched precariously at the roof edge—pointed toward the walls.
“Oh! Your eyes are far sharper than ours! Where? If he enters my sight, I’ll send a message spell—”
“There. The big black blood-soaked monster.”
Ottoman cast Far Sight toward her finger.
Peering through the overlapping water droplet lens, he spotted the monster she described.
He found it, alright.
“Professor’s... fighting that thing?”
“No. The necklace around its neck. The precarious priest robe at its waist—I glimpsed it this morning. Nearby trees all silent, so details are unclear, but matching visible traits: either Hero Professor, or whatever killed him and took his gear. Either way, it pinpoints our target, so I pointed it out.”
“B-Borca. What do your eyes make of it?”
“...Sorry, not as keen as an elf’s. Scent’s no help either. Too thick with blood smell—nothing else registers.”
Ottoman wanted to deny it. He’d known Professor’s body was unique, but could a human warp that far?
Yet no mistaking it: the church relic he’d seen endlessly on the road, Nelphia’s Light, shackled like a collar around the monster’s neck.
“No doubt about it.”
Aldrich spoke firmly to the dazed Ottoman.
“Saw the soul’s echo. Definitely Professor. Though... in a highly precarious state.”
“Something mixed in. Dank. Venomous. Cursed. Soul... corrupted.”
Notum and Ottoman grimaced, then hauled down the ladder used to climb up.
“We have to go.”
“To... there?”
The fiercest battlefield at a glance. Sword auras flashed at the gates, slicing everything around. The other side, where Professor was...
Boom—
Boom—
Whatever it was doing shook the ground, hurling houses and buildings skyward.
With the undead main force incoming on top. Stepping there was suicide.
“If it were mere danger, or even life-threatening, I might’ve weighed my life against his. But this isn’t simple death. A corrupted soul can’t reclaim its form even in three lifetimes. As a soul mage, this ties to my convictions.”
“Notum close with Professor.”
But the two descended resolutely, no turning back.
“The rest’s safety’s on you. When Professor’s gone, you usually lead most.”
“I’m going too. He’s my disciple—can’t abandon him as master. But Idrasil and Borca...”
“A wolfman left alone in the Empire without his hero party is just a masterless slave.”
“The Lady Mother said learn from ‘him,’ not all humans. She meant it, so I can’t cast it aside lightly.”
Each had reasons, but all vowed to plunge into peril for Professor.
Ottoman felt ashamed for his brief hesitation.
Splash!
He gathered the pooled water below and leaped down.
“If you’re all resolved, no need to delay. Hurry. We might save Professor before the undead main wave hits.”
Boom—
Ottoman quickened his pace, glancing toward the quaking impacts where Professor fought.
—Grraaaaaah.....
Far off, a roar like a fury-choked death knell shook the city.
****