The Cruel Earth Mage (4)
The self-introduction was brutally concise, the kind that needed no further explanation. “I am Abidus-Nubi. A black mage.”
A black mage who needs no further introduction.
—BOOM!! BOOM!!
The black mage spoke and sent his golems marching forward. I bared my teeth at the sight of that insanely massive construct. Why the hell was the black mage who was supposed to be in Sarport Forest popping up here of all places?
‘Those fucking idiot village guild leaders!!’
They’d acted so high and mighty, bragging about their heroic plans, yet they’d been completely fooled even with their eyes wide open. This was a world where spatial teleportation magic was treated like an ancient relic. There was no way that bastard had broken through the encirclement to get here. Or maybe he’d dug some kind of tunnel like a North Korean commando? All bullshit. The black mage had been hiding here from the very beginning!
‘So that’s why! That’s why the Silver Class survivor made it back alive!’
—KWAAAAANG!!
A lightning bolt of realization struck inside my skull. The Silver Class survivor had played dead after encountering the black mage and somehow made it back. The alliance had launched a surprise operation targeting Sarport Forest based on that adventurer’s eyewitness account.
But that story was complete nonsense. No matter how stupid a black mage was, he would have noticed adventurers chasing him. Any sane bastard would have hidden or fled to avoid detection. Even if spotted, he would have run or hidden rather than slaughter the pursuit team. Killing them would only alert Sargadis to his presence!
And if he absolutely had to kill them, he would have done it meticulously, like a virgin surgeon performing his own vasectomy—carefully erasing every loose end. Confirming your kills was basic for anyone who lived by the sword! There was no way a criminal like him would have forgotten to destroy evidence and hide the bodies!
‘──It was deliberate.’
The thought flashed through my mind. My elite graduate-student brain had pieced together the missing information and completed part of the puzzle.
‘He let them live on purpose! It was all a trap!’
That was why he hadn’t confirmed the kills. It wasn’t that he couldn’t or forgot. He had chosen not to. By sending them back with information about him, he had drawn Sargadis’s main fighting force into Sarport Forest!
‘This isn’t the only trap! Both Sarport Forest and the golem spawning ground are traps!’
The black mage who was supposedly spotted was probably fake too. All you’d need was a small golem wearing a robe to hide its surface. Load a dummy onto an autonomous golem and low-level adventurers would think they were seeing “a black mage controlling a golem.” Had he calculated all of that and sent the fake to attack the Silver Class team on purpose? If so, he must have laid another trap on the forest side. Maybe the plan was to trap Sargadis’s main force inside a barrier like this one and strike the city directly!
“POOOOO──!!”
It had taken me roughly ten seconds to reach that conclusion. The reinforced golems had already closed to within ten meters of us. I abandoned the reasoning that wouldn’t help right now and focused entirely on the fight.
"Detect Coagulation!"
⟨ Coagulation Detection ⟩
—Whoooosh!!
When Tirsi finished her chant, a wave of light burst forth. The sparkling motes clung to the golems like wind-blown dust. Suddenly, bright glowing spots appeared on their torsos!
“The glowing areas are where mana has coagulated! Those are most likely the cores!”
“Thank you!!”
“Aim there! Fire arrows!!”
The adventurers formed up by teams. I raised my sword into an upper stance. Since they had hardened into stone, I could skip Freezing Hand.
“Get the fuck out of my way!!”
—THUD!!
My sword, carrying all my strength, sliced through rock and shattered the core. I didn’t feel any regret over the ruined loot. Nothing was more precious than my life.
“Hah!”
Larilura fired Magick Missile from Ringling No. 3’s fingertips. Franc threw a knife that failed to pierce the golem’s hide, so she switched to a hammer.
"Fireball!!"
⟨ Fireball ⟩
“Axe incoming!!”
—THWACK!! THUD!!
The other adventurers were doing their part too. The reinforced golems could somehow be handled.
—BOOM!! BOOOOM!!!
The real problem was that golem. Just looking at the approaching giant made my vision darken.
“Fuuuuck! It’s huge as shit!!”
Thirty meters tall. That was my rough estimate, but it felt about right. Thirty meters? Can you even imagine how massive that is? I couldn’t until I saw it with my own eyes. Back on Earth, when novels described enemies thirty or fifty meters tall, I never thought they sounded particularly big. A normal high school sports field was two hundred meters long. Having run the fifty-meter dash myself, I used to think, What? Only thirty meters?
‘But seeing it in person is completely different!’
It was enormous. Insanely enormous. The sheer scale was raping my sense of perspective. It was more than three times the height of a three-story high school building! It looked wider than a decent-sized gymnasium! And that big-ass golem was walking straight toward us.
No exaggeration—I had the gut feeling that in about three minutes, the only things left inside this barrier would be people who couldn’t escape. If that thing charged us, that feeling would almost certainly become reality. Even I, the one saying this, wanted to bolt immediately.
“Team Viridian! Formation Three!!”
A Gold Class adventurer shouted. A four-man team—mage, rogue, and even the priest who had been in the rear healing the wounded—blocked the black mage’s path. The black mage looked down at them and let out a creepy chuckle that echoed across the battlefield.
“Good. Allow me to test the specs of my newly created Khnumut!”
—Vwoooong!!
The giant golem raised its fist. Its movements were slow, fitting its size, but because it was so large the speed was still considerable. Tall people have longer strides and thus move faster—it was the same principle.
“Scatter! Support! Search!”
Responding to their leader’s commands, the Gold Class team faced the insane super-giant golem without flinching. Damn, these guys are reliable as hell!
“Nord! The barrier is moving!” Franc shouted while hammering a golem.
The barrier? I looked back and forth between the magic circles in the sky and on the ground. The blue wall that had been behind us had retreated more than thirty meters. Its movement speed was incredible.
“The center of the barrier is that giant golem! Every time the golem advances, the barrier retreats!” Tirsi explained, her observation skills as sharp as ever.
Now that I looked closely, she was completely right. The sky and ground barriers were moving in perfect sync with the golem’s movements!
‘But wait──’
Was that even possible? The blue barrier gave off a holiness that made me want to believe it was divine magic. No matter how you looked at it, this magic had nothing to do with black magic. Magic had affinities. Just as Franc couldn’t learn Freezing Hand, and humans who learned black magic suffered side effects like their bodies being eaten by insects or their flesh rotting.
‘Yet the ground barrier is definitely black magic.’
The evil mana writhing across the earth left no room for doubt. Divine magic and black magic! Using both at the same time? Even a black-mage grandfather couldn’t pull that off! It would be linguistic suicide—like a corrupt high priest selling his parents to a demon at a discount and then trying to use magic of completely opposite natures simultaneously! It was as contradictory as a warm iced Americano!
Therefore── the principle that resolved this contradiction would surely contain that black mage bastard’s weakness or a way to break his pattern!
“Open, Bekan!”
While dealing with the smaller golems, I observed the giant one. The eye power granted by Earth Hero Vectorman turned my gaze into that of a hawk. I could clearly see the Gold Class team’s battle.
"Tremendous Fire!!"
⟨ Catastrophic Flame ⟩
The mage attacked the black mage with fire magic, aiming at the sorcerer sitting defenseless atop the golem. Before the crimson tongues of flame—spewing like a flamethrower—could swallow him, the black mage waved his long staff.
"I have adorned my house with gold (iw ir.n.i n.i pr sXkrw m nbw)."
⟨ Golden Shield ⟩
A spherical golden shield appeared and protected him from the flames. Not a single hair singed, the black mage twisted the corner of his mouth into a smirk.
“How crude. Human magic at its lowest. I shall kill you first.”
“Like hell I’ll die to a bug-ridden bastard!”
The mage dodged the golem’s fist. He was surprisingly agile—clearly someone who knew how to use mana. Watching that, I realized something.
‘I get it! The origin points of the barriers are different!’
There was a tiny discrepancy in the movement of the two barriers, sky and earth. It was minuscule, but my eyes caught it.
‘The sky barrier is controlled by the black mage. The earth barrier is controlled by the golem!’
I smashed the core of one golem and asked Tirsi, “Tirsi! Can golems cast magic?! Without receiving mana from a caster?!”
“It’s extremely complex and difficult, but yes, it’s possible!!”
Thanking her for the quick answer, I reached a conclusion. That black mage bastard was a mage with high aptitude for divine magic. A genius capable of covering this vast area with a barrier! It was easy to understand if I compared it to the defensive magic Tirsi had used in the sewers last time. She had drastically shortened the duration to expand the range, yet this guy was maintaining a barrier that covered the entire wasteland for such a long time!
‘Then the side effects of black magic would hit him even harder!’
If his aptitude leaned toward divine magic, the backlash from the completely opposite black magic would be enormous. To overcome that weakness, he had made the giant golem cast the black magic in his place!
That golem might look like a giant earthen construct on the outside, but its true identity was a specially-made magic generator. Earth was a medium that symbolized death! Using it let him wield black magic with greater power and no side effects compared to casting it himself!
“But fuck, that’s not a weakness at all!!”
Overwhelmed by frustration, I shouted while toppling another golem. Well, technically it was a weakness. But it wasn’t a weakness we could exploit right now. If we could take down that giant golem, the black mage would lose his ability to use black magic. If we could take it down, that is.
How the hell were we supposed to defeat a thirty-meter-tall earthen golem with a massive frame? You’d need a missile to bring that thing down!
“God damn it all!! Your parents must have had zero fucking morals!!”
—CRUMBLE!!
Furious, I finished off the last small golem. Once its core shattered, the stone construct collapsed. With so few left, that was the end of them. The other adventurers had drawn aggro, so it hadn’t been too difficult to endure. I had personally destroyed three cores myself.
—Shwaaaaaah!!
Mana succession occurred, raising my proficiency by about twenty percent. I wasn’t sure what good learning another rune spell would do in this godforsaken hellscape, though.
“So… we’re not going to die right away?” muttered an adventurer who had been abandoned by his comrades. He was clearly trying not to think about the giant golem raid happening deeper inside.
I drank a mana potion and told my party members, “Everyone rest. If that golem gets any closer, we’ll have to run.”
“What about the barrier?”
“The barrier moves along with those things, so we can run in sync with it.”
Though we still wouldn’t be able to escape.
I pulled the bottle from my lips and handed it to Larilura.
“Larilura. You drink the rest.”
“Ah, okay~”
Larilura downed the remaining half in one go. Controlling her puppets consumed mana. Tirsi was drinking her own share, and since Franc couldn’t use mana, she didn’t need any.
‘What about the Sarport Forest side?’
Looking beyond the translucent barrier, I focused mana into my eyes. I even strengthened my five senses with the Kenaz rune. I could see it. It was too far to be clear, but there was a blue barrier over the densely wooded forest as well.
‘So they fell into a trap too.’
It was probably even more vicious and powerful than the one we were in. The guild leaders trapped over there wouldn’t be able to escape easily either.
“Huuuuurk!!”
At that moment, the skinny adventurer who had been complaining to the Gold Class adventurer earlier gasped. What the fuck now?!
When I turned around, I spotted something flying through the air between us and the giant golem.
—Whiiiish!!
—THUD!
It wasn’t a weapon. It was a mage coughing up blood as he crashed to the ground! One member of the Gold Class team fighting the giant golem had been sent flying by an attack!!
“Kahahahaha!! I wonder who the real bug is here! You’re like a beetle kicked by my foot!!”
“You son of a bitch!!!”
—Slash!!
The team leader roared and sliced at the giant golem’s leg. His sword cut through, but the golem had regenerative abilities and recovered almost instantly.
—Whoosh!
The rogue who had circled behind fired an arrow. He had taken advantage of the black mage’s attention being on the leader’s rage.
—Clang!
The arrow bounced off. The rogue’s face twisted. What protected the black mage was a blue divine magic barrier. It wasn’t the golden shield from before—it seemed to be a passively activated defensive spell.
“Kahahahahaha!! Khnumut! Prepare yourself!!”
RUMBLE—!
Obeying its master’s command, the giant golem reached into its own chest and pulled something out. When the massive hand swung, black gravel poured across the wasteland.
—Clatterclatterclatter!!
“Uwaaaaaah!!”
I nearly fainted when I realized what those stones were! Motherfucker!! Every single pebble that had spilled onto the ground was a golem core!!!
"The true voice of the son of the sun god, Amenemhet, declares through the revelation of truth (sA ra imn-m-Hat mAa-xrw Dd.fm wpt mAat)."
"──Rise as a god (Dd.f xa m nTr)."
⟨ Mass Golem Creation ⟩
The black mage chanted the spell loud enough for us to hear.
—CRUMBLECRUMBLECRUMBLE!!
Dozens of stone golems erupted from the ground.