#46 The Cult's Prodigal Sons (3)
#46 The Cult's Prodigal Sons (3)
A barrier of black mana surged upward. Even before a wall of magic so vast it swallowed the light, the Wolf did not stop.
[Când trage fulgerul, respirația ta se va opri]
—The third incantation. The spell still had not manifested. That meant at minimum a four-verse formula. When the Silent Mouth swept his remaining hand through the air, the black mana heaved like an ocean swell. Just as it seemed about to crash over the Wolf and sweep him away, that black sea turned into a sea of fire.
"......!"
The flames blazed on, refusing to die, pushing back against the mana. That alone was not enough to reach him, but the mist slithered into every gap—slithering in, prying deeper and deeper. The Wolf wrenched his mana to its limit and forced his head through. His eyes burned red. The moment the Silent Mouth met that crimson glare, he felt it—for the briefest instant, he was being overpowered.
Pure murderous intent, seething demonic energy whispered into the Silent Mouth's ear. —I will kill you. I will never let you escape.
Over and over. How many times?
—Inside that terrifying bloodlust, the Silent Mouth sneered. So what? A puppet in the end. Kill it as many times as you like—it will only cost a little time. Nothing more than a false body that can be reproduced endlessly.
To him, then, killing intent never truly struck home.
The Wolf's jaws thrust through the mana barrier. Just as his maw began to gape open, the mage's hand clamped down tight on it.
[You people don't understand anything! You understand nothing at all! Fools who cannot see the forest and stare only at the trees!]
He stared into the red eyes; the mage's mana resonated as their gazes locked. The only thing reflected in each other's pupils was the single will to kill.
[Fulgerul tăcut ia totul]
Zealotry—the mad mage's faith. Four verses completed, yet still the spell refused to manifest.
'Grand magic...!'
It did not even reveal its shape the way storm clouds would. Only the final incantation remained. The Silent Mouth tightened his grip on the Wolf's jaw.
[Tch. Nothing but a waste of time... Just die already. You worthless insect.]
Black mana gathered at his fingertips and flooded into his clutching hand. Worse, the Wolf's entire body—having forced its way through the barrier—was rotting, crumbling to ruin. Even as he decayed and sloughed away, the Wolf's eyes still blazed with light.
[......!]
—The killing intent shining in that glare told the mage the Wolf had not given up. Yet the black mana had already reduced him to a wreck, half-dead at best. But the very fact that the Wolf had forced his way in meant a gap had opened.
Through that gap, the mist seeped.
—Mist required time to pierce mana. But once a hole already existed, black fog could no longer be blocked. Into the space he had pried his body into—through that breach—the black mist advanced, wrapped in wind, straight at the mage. The mage tried to retreat, but shadow and reaching tentacles fixed his feet in place so he could not move. At the same time, flames licked upward from his toes, burning the Silent Mouth alive.
[You—!]
The hand he had packed with mana found the Wolf's jaw gone, already dissolved away. The extended hand instead pierced the Wolf's eye socket and tore through the eyeball. The mage's black hand shattered the Wolf's skull, reaching for the brain—and in that instant, the strength drained from the mage's hand. The fingers that had stabbed the eye went limp, caught uselessly in the Wolf's orbital socket. The black mist that had infiltrated had swallowed the Silent Mouth's wrist and severed it.
[Acolo, moartea ta a fost destinată, așa că acest tunet va fi ultimul sunet pe care îl auzi—!]
The situation had reversed in a heartbeat. The black mist closed over the frantic caster. He tried to Blink, but the Wolf was not about to permit that.
'Baphomet.'
The Wolf had already found the thread in that fight. Just as the Executioner's gray mana had blocked Perry's Blink. The difference between skill and mana meant little here. As long as he could not pierce the black fog swallowing him, his mana could go nowhere.
[You, you vermin—!]
And the same was true of the final incantation. The last verse needed for the spell to manifest never passed through the black fog—the sound itself was swallowed whole.
Black mist summons silence.
"......!"
His upper and lower jaw had not yet regenerated. Instead, the Wolf reshaped and transformed his tentacles. Thorn Tentacles—each thorn became a fang.
[———!]
The beast's canines at last clamped down over the mage's entire body, piercing, rending, tearing him apart.
[......This, this—!]
The mage had no options left. The only move remaining was to drag his enemy down with him. Self-detonation. In the end, the Silent Mouth rampaged with every scrap of mana he possessed. Once he detonated, that immense power would sweep away everything. But even this final gambit was nothing more than a death-throe.
Crun-nch—
The sound of something being chewed. The mage stared between the Wolf's teeth as if refusing to believe what he saw.
—A crimson gem, glowing red. That was the medium he had planted. Without realizing it, the mage looked down, saw his own innards spilling free, and his expression twisted in fury.
[You, you piece of filthhhhh—!]
A vast vortex of mana churned as if about to explode at any second—but the mage, unable to draw his mana up any further, could no longer be the Wolf's opponent.
—Hssssssss.
The black mist, wreathed in a fierce gale from somewhere, at last swallowed the Silent Mouth whole.
[————!]
Driven to the edge, the mage screamed and thrashed, his soul tearing apart in agony. The rampaging mana detonated upon his own body—
[Never... never think this is the end——!]
—But he was already falling off the cliff.
With that dying curse, the mage exploded. Blood and flesh scattered. The jungle floor was painted red. The Wolf watched it all to the very end, then quietly murmured.
"You're the one who'd better not think a little thing like this is the end."
—The Wolf's killing intent had not yet subsided.
***
Now, while the mage was plummeting below the cliff, the opportunity was at hand. Victory had unquestionably gone to the Wolf, but his body was far from intact. His whole frame was a wreck, and both upper and lower jaws had been blown away.
By all rights he should be dead. Yet Kim Joo-seop, who had been watching, could see that the Wolf possessed shockingly powerful regeneration. He had to finish him before that happened. The strange mist had also thinned, as if strained by exhaustion.
'Now, of all times...!'
Instinct told him this was his one and only chance. Kim Joo-seop drew his bowstring until it was taut, closing one eye to align his aim. The Wolf filled his sights. Just before he released the string, he scowled and turned his head.
There, a single Fairy Dragon was flying toward him.
"......?"
Eun Ja-rim and a few others knew of the Fairy Dragon that helped the Wolf, but Kim Joo-seop had not been told. Ordinarily, he would have killed any monster on sight, but a Fairy Dragon was a monster that neither harmed humans nor disrupted the ecosystem. Its presence inside a dungeon was puzzling, but just as there was no need to kill a slime, there was no need to kill a Fairy Dragon. He meant only to swat it aside with mana—but when the creature darted right up to the tip of his nose in an instant, he frowned.
A lazy gesture, like shooing away a bothersome fly. He swung without even putting mana into it—and the Fairy Dragon was knocked away.
"......!"
—And then Kim Joo-seop found he could not move.
"———."
A low growl rumbled beside his ear. He swallowed dryly. An icy chill shot down his spine and goosebumps prickled across his entire body. Every instinct screamed—no, both reason and instinct screamed together.
'If I turn my head right now...'
No. If he so much as moved a single finger, he would die. Without a doubt. Feeling like a condemned man awaiting judgment, Kim Joo-seop squeezed his eyes shut. When did it even...? Without a trace of presence, the Wolf had seized his back in an instant. Moments later, something bleak and cold swept once across the nape of his neck, and the sound of the Wolf's breathing filled his ears—amplified tens, hundreds of times over.
"Grrrr—"
He understood with absolute clarity. He had made a mistake touching the Fairy Dragon. He should never have done it. Every nerve in his body was focused entirely on the monster behind him when the Fairy Dragon fluttered back into his field of vision. It passed before his eyes, scattering light powder, and he felt a cold gaze sweep over him.
That single moment stretched into an eternity for him.
But before long, the Wolf turned and walked away. Even after hearing the footsteps recede, even after realizing he was alone now, Kim Joo-seop could not move. Frozen stiff, it was a long while before he finally gasped for air, his complexion pale. It was not relief at having survived that froze him, but the terror of how close he had come to dying.
His trembling hands laid his heart bare. —The Wolf had never let his guard down from the very beginning. He had known everything. If—truly, if—Kim Joo-seop had loosed that bowstring?
'Without a doubt...'
Dazed, he reached absently for the nape of his neck and felt the warm, thick blood that came away on his fingers. Another wave of visceral dread washed over him, tormenting him with fear. —A spirit broken, bowed before the terror of death. Cold sweat streamed down his face. ...He did not think he could move for a long while.
***
"......."
Perry was nuzzling his cheek against my jaw—the jaw that still had not regenerated—as if to say he was glad I was alive. I let out a bitter laugh. In truth, the moment I saw them swat Perry aside, I truly lost all reason.
—If I had stayed there a second longer, I would have killed him for certain.
But once again, the little one held me back. The same worry as with Hong Yuri. It's all right. Don't do it.
I exhaled deeply and closed my eyes. Suppressing fury is harder than I ever imagined. Forgiving someone is harder than it sounds. With every day that passes, Perry seems to become more and more my reverse scale.
Still, it doesn't feel so bad, and so I ended up laughing bitterly.
"Kyuuuu~"
Perry tugged my ear with the tip of his tail, then pointed between my teeth as if asking for something. —The medium. The thing the Silent Mouth required to operate a puppet. I had no idea how to make one, but Perry's eyes were sparkling. As if it were the most delicious treat in the world.
Our rations had run out long ago anyway, so I had no reason to refuse. I quickly handed it over, and Perry snatched it up with visible happiness. He swallowed it in one gulp, then pointed somewhere with the tip of his tail.
"You can sense it?"
Perry nodded, as if telling me to trust him. Down below, where he was pointing, a massive blood-red Armored Monstrous Figure was locked in battle against the Assault Team—a creature with unstoppable force.
The Assault Team appeared to be gaining the upper hand, but that was only on the surface. Unconcealable exhaustion and fatigue were gradually surfacing and dragging at their ankles. Juggernaut, by contrast, had no such thing as a limit to its stamina.
And according to Perry.
"He's inside that thing. Isn't he?"
Inside the flesh-mass Armored Monstrous Figure—inside Juggernaut. That was where the Silent Mouth was, Perry was telling me. The moment I saw him nod, black mana began to radiate outward from Juggernaut.
A human being—any living creature—could not possibly endure being inside Juggernaut's body. The endless repetition of regeneration, contraction, and expansion would crush them to pulp.
But this one was different. The Silent Mouth's true identity was 'the former Yellow Square Master.' A mage who had ceased to be human—a Lich. A monster who had cast aside his flesh and lived through eternity by sheer obsession with life.
A fallen mage who had sealed his own essence, spirit, and vitality inside an orb.
The creature's true body was that Life Vessel, containing everything he was.
I had only dealt with a single puppet. The fight was not over. The Silent Mouth was still alive inside Juggernaut. If I failed to bring him down, he would simply return.
'I won't let that happen.'
Because I had decided to see this through to the end. The Wolf sprinted at full speed toward the base of the cliff.
—Toward the battlefield where the Assault Team and the Prodigals, humanity and its turncoats, were locked in war.