Chapter 287 Independence -16
Chapter 287 Independence -16
Alex stared at Lowchen with naked irritation.
He couldn't comprehend why Lowchen, a fellow member of Ouroboros, would take Jiha's side. Jiha caught his expression and sneered.
"Hey, you're the one who was going on about how we were on the same team a second ago. Well, there you have it."
"......."
Alex had never intended to let either Jiha or Lowchen walk out of this alive. He'd been prepared to cut down even a member of his own organization without a second thought if it meant monopolizing the spoils. Complaining now about Lowchen's retaliation was pure hypocrisy—blaming the victim for hitting back.
'We're all thinking the same thing... Still, letting Lowchen live turned out to be the right call.'
Jiha hadn't stormed into this party hall without a plan.
He'd anticipated Lowchen's arrival, and he'd predicted that, in the end, Lowchen would cooperate with him. With Pairan held captive, Lowchen had to turn on Alex.
The odds shifted to two-on-one. Alex scowled and shook out his arm.
Then three blobs of pitch-black darkness flew in, each at a different speed. Jiha darted backward, and Lowchen hurled himself to the side.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
'Rectangular blast pattern. Range looks like four meters by four.'
Jiha coolly assessed the ability and signaled Lowchen with a glance. His expression remained sour, but he moved to establish a gravity field around Alex's position.
But her injuries kept her body from obeying instantly...
"Impudent wretch!"
Alex read the move and charged him, launching a bolt of Black Darkness toward Lowchen's back. The dark mass arced upward. Unable to twist aside, Lowchen had no choice but to meet Alex's blade head-on...
KWAANG!! CLANG!!
Even as the explosion at his back swallowed him, Lowchen kept crossing swords with Alex. Alex had set the blast radius to catch him from behind while attacking from the front, leaving Lowchen no choice but to endure it.
If he'd been healthy, Lowchen would have torn him apart without breaking a sweat, but his wounds were far too severe. And being caught in the blast had shredded his back into a bloody mess, worsening his condition drastically.
Alex smiled down at him.
"Your rampage ends here. It's about time you died, Lowchen."
"...How long have you been planning this?"
Lowchen swallowed a groan and forced the words through gritted teeth.
Alex had to know that laying a hand on Pairan would turn Lowchen into an enemy. This looked like nothing less than a deliberate choice.
"I have my reasons..."
Alex murmured, keeping his voice low as he smiled. He was choosing every word with care so the hundreds of notable figures watching wouldn't grow suspicious.
"I have things precious to me, too. So please, understand, and die."
Alex poured Mana into his sword, and Lowchen's arms began to tremble violently. Stolen though it was, he was wielding Unique Grade Mana, and it was too much for a critically injured Lowchen to hold back.
From the start, dragging out a fight against a Unique was a losing proposition. While the two were locked blade-to-blade, Jiha seized the opening and lunged at Alex's back. But Alex instantly launched a bolt of Black Darkness behind himself.
The most terrifying thing about Black Darkness was that no one could predict where it would detonate. Planting it in advance let him control the field...
"You're an idiot, aren't you?"
Instead of retreating, Jiha sprinted faster and leaped.
Boom! Boom!
The explosions erupted well behind him. When Jiha pushed forward instead of pulling back, Alex flinched in surprise and jerked his body backward.
Lowchen, still locked against his blade, didn't miss the opening and struck in the same instant.
"Grrk!"
Alex's knee buckled, and his brow contorted. Even crippled by severe injuries and barely able to move properly, Lowchen was still a master.
As Jiha landed, he brought his sword down on the staggering Alex's head without a shred of hesitation. Dignity and decorum be damned—Alex threw himself backward into a roll and scrambled to put distance between them.
CRAAASH!!
Jiha's Mana-charged blade split the floor open, leaving a massive scar in its wake.
"Wh-what the...? Is he insane?"
Panic creeping in, Alex scattered five more motes of Black Darkness. Jiha just scoffed and charged straight forward. Lowchen, grasping the intent, surged after him.
When the two of them hurled themselves at him without flinching at the threat of unpredictable detonations, Alex's panic deepened. All he could do was stumble backward, again and again.
"You're way too obvious."
Jiha's refusal to fear the Black Darkness came down to one simple reason. The ability itself was incredibly powerful: it allowed the user to designate a blast zone, trigger an explosion, and apply it in countless ways.
But all of that assumed the wielder was tactically brilliant.
If an opponent could guess where it would explode, its lethality dropped drastically. And Jiha had figured out its characteristics the moment he'd witnessed Alex crossing blades with Lowchen.
Alex would have been far more effective laying Black Darkness in front of himself and charging through it. If he'd set it around Lowchen and then attacked, she would have been half-dead on the spot.
Instead, he'd deliberately thrown it in an arc so the blast's edge would only graze Lowchen's back. There was only one reason for that.
"The explosion catches you too, doesn't it?"
Jiha sneered and flicked his sword toward him. Alex skittered back at once, his hand twitching as if to hurl more darkness—then hesitated.
Jiha declared it with absolute certainty. "Normally, this wouldn't be some half-baked gimmick. I'm sure of it..."
The rules of friend-or-foe identification for Special Abilities varied from case to case, but typically, the user was exempt. Pairan and Lowchen's gravity fields didn't hinder them even when deployed point-blank around their own bodies.
There was no way the Special Ability of someone as high-grade as the Unique Gashiel was so pathetic it caught its own user in the blast.
But Alex wasn't the original owner.
He was stealing Gashiel's ability and her Mana, so... he couldn't claim the user's exemption.
"That's the limit of theft."
Jiha sneered and thrust his sword forward. Alex reeled in shock and dodged to the side. His back hit something solid. Startled, he whipped his head around.
The crowd of onlookers had formed a wall, blocking his retreat. There had originally been a fair distance between them, but Alex's frantic backpedaling had driven him straight into the mass of people.
"Ah, Lord Alex..."
The crowd stirred with uneasy agitation. Even a child could see the situation was turning against the man they'd trusted and chosen.
Confirming that Lowchen was gathering himself in the back, Jiha walked forward with deliberate slowness. Alex tried to back away, gathering his Black Darkness, but when it came time to throw it, he couldn't.
"......."
If he aimed at Jiha now, the onlookers would be caught in the blast. Most of them possessed no combat ability whatsoever. Caught in Black Darkness, they would die on the spot.
Jiha closed the distance, positioning himself so the crowd fell within the blast radius with exquisite precision. Retreating was impossible now—the wall of people penned him in. Attempting to advance was useless; his Black Darkness was sealed off.
Now came the finishing touch. The very foundation that propped Alex up, the basis he'd used to declare his independence—Jiha meant to shatter it all.
"By now, Gashiel is..."
"GRAAAHHH!!"
Wracked with conflict, Alex reflexively launched his Black Darkness at Jiha.
BOOOOM!! B-B-B-BOOM!
Arms and legs flew in every direction as the people caught in the blast erupted in blood. When a neighbor's body burst open and a severed head went sailing, the crowd shrieked in horror.
"KYAAAAAHH!!"
"Wh-what the—!"
Nobody knew what to do. The black explosions—anyone could see this was Alex's doing. They'd held their ground because they'd believed he would never disregard their safety!
Hundreds of eyes locked onto him, but Alex scattered over a dozen more motes of Black Darkness without a shred of hesitation.
"GRAAAHH!!"
"E-EVERYONE GET OUT OF THE WAY!!"
People screamed and scattered, but it was far too late.
Boom! BOOOM!! Boom-boom-boom!!
With every hideous detonation, fleeing bodies burst apart and gore sprayed across the hall. These were people without even a sliver of Mana to protect themselves. Most couldn't even scream before they died instantly.
"Huaaaahhh..."
"Aaaaah..."
In the blink of an eye, over a hundred people lay dead. The survivors wailed in panic, desperately trying to escape the party hall, but the doors were firmly sealed shut.
"Let us out!!"
"Save us!!"
Dignity, reputation—all of it was hurled aside as people screamed and pounded on the iron doors. Not a scratch appeared on them.
"You sure came prepared."
Jiha, who'd extracted himself without so much as a singed hair, tsked. Alex had sealed the hall in case Lowchen or Jiha tried to flee. Now that very measure had become a shackle trapping everyone inside.
"......."
Alex watched Jiha with a sunken expression.
"Any regrets? Killing the people who believed in you with your own hands?"
"...They were all pawns I was going to use and toss away, anyway."
Alex brushed it off as if it were nothing—as if that had been his plan all along. Remarkably composed for a man who'd just butchered a hundred people. He could afford to be calm, knowing that no matter how the survivors raged, they couldn't escape this hall.
"What's your next move? Even if you kill me and Lowchen, how do you plan to shut the mouths of all these people?"
Jiha's tone dripped with sarcasm. What Alex had just done, even if the first blast was a mistake, was absolutely unforgivable. But the second wave had been entirely deliberate—a spasmodic slaughter.
Over a hundred dead, but the testimony of the hundreds of survivors could never be suppressed.
"I'll kill everyone and say you and Lowchen did it."
"That's a pretty flimsy story."
Slaughter hundreds of Waris's most notable figures, massacre them all at a party in his own home, and then seize power after that? No one would buy it—not even someone who knew nothing about the situation.
"Not your problem. You'll be dead here, regardless."
"Wonder what's happened to Gashiel by now."
"Using my sister's name to goad me won't work anymore."
Alex's face was remarkably composed. Having his ability's limitations exposed had cornered him psychologically, but once he'd started killing indiscriminately, his mind seemed to have settled. He'd resolved to kill absolutely everyone here.
"What are you talking about? It worked way too well before. You think you can act cool and collected now and suddenly be in your right mind?"
Jiha was genuinely baffled. This was the same man whose face changed color the moment Gashiel's name was mentioned. And now he wanted to play it cool?
"......."
But Alex steadied his sword with deliberate care and controlled his breathing. Jiha, too, checked his Mana reserves and reassessed the situation. Lowchen, having pushed himself past his limit, was in no condition to fight. Jiha would have to resolve this alone.
'His Special Ability probably doesn't end with Black Darkness...'
Gashiel's disappearance was recent, but Alex had become one of the Five Kings of Ouroboros long before that. It was obvious he possessed more abilities.
'Maybe he relied solely on Black Darkness because of his obsession with Gashiel? It really is a pathological fixation... but he's suppressed it for now.'
This was the most composed Jiha had ever seen Alex. Gashiel's name could no longer provoke him.
WHOOOM.
The party hall suddenly shook. Every person who'd been desperately pounding on the iron doors froze in place.
WHOOOOM!!
Something was trying to smash through the iron doors from outside. At the sudden development, both Jiha and Alex turned to face the doors.
"A-Ah..."
People recoiled instinctively, seized by fear. Something was trying to break through doors that hadn't budged when dozens of people pounded on them... Could that thing possibly be a messenger of peace?
"Everyone who doesn't want to die..."
Jiha started shouting toward the crowd.
CRAAASH!!
The entity battering the iron doors finally broke through and burst into the party hall.
CRUNCH!! THUD-THUD-THUD!!
"GRAAAHH!!"
A monster the size of a house barreled through, its bulk plowing over the people lingering near the doors before they could dodge. Flesh pulped and bones shattered. Jiha stared at the creature now standing atop crushed bodies, his brow furrowing.
"Now what the hell is that."
It was a four-legged beast with three heads. The left head was a goat, the right head was a lion, and its tail ended in a serpent's head. Three meters at the shoulder, five meters long, so enormously heavy that a single swipe of its forepaw could crush a human being outright.
"Grrrrrr..."
"You keep something like that as a pet? The feed bill must be a nightmare."
Jiha glanced at Alex with a sneer. But the composure Alex had shown only moments ago was gone... His face had turned deathly pale.
"...Sister!!"
"......."
He couldn't be serious. That monster couldn't possibly be Gashiel.