Chapter 72
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: Blizzard's Embrace
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"Tower Master! What do we do!?"
"Tower Master!"
The Tower Master was half out of his mind amid the wails erupting from those around him.
He knew he shouldn't, but it was hard to guess their intentions.
*What are they thinking...*
That flame-shaped figure, the ominous aura.
No need for words—it was clearly a fiend.
Truth be told, he had the same question: *Why a fiend...?* But he'd already heard the full story from Professor Aiden due to the Magic Tower's contamination incident.
One more fiend wouldn't come as a huge shock.
That said, separately from that, the fact that a perfectly normal person had turned into a fiend pointed to something else lurking.
*Demons definitely exist.*
When Professor Aiden first mentioned it, he'd thought it was a stretch.
But now that things had come to this, he wished he'd believed it back then.
Even so, demons were an unsolvable problem.
The Tower Master knew that much.
Knowing of their existence would only draw in the Papal Office.
Even the Imperial Family would struggle with the political fallout, let alone a single magic tower.
So this regret was just...
*If only we'd prepared a little more.*
Then the tower wouldn't be this cornered.
The Tower Master gritted his teeth.
He wasn't ignorant of the devastation outside.
During the contamination incident, he'd endlessly imagined that colossal thing breaking out and gauged the potential damage.
Now it was even bigger.
The scale of destruction was beyond measure.
If Professor Aiden hadn't held the line there, the academy would have been reduced to rubble long ago, and the beasts would have pushed into the capital's residential districts.
The Tower Master looked at Elin.
It didn't seem like she'd simply brought the fiend to be saved.
That meant she had some goal in mind... but dragging a fiend here to a magic tower already overwhelmed by a corpse golem wasn't ideal.
The Tower Master's lips twitched as he sank into thought.
There was only one person capable of such an absurd stunt.
*Professor Aiden.*
It had to be that guy. There's no way the students would pull off something this outrageous without him feeding them some idea.
Conversely, it meant these students knew the corpse golem's forbidden secrets inside out—secrets it was packed with, leaving no weaknesses exposed.
*Hate to admit it, but...*
That professor was worth trusting.
The Tower Master made a swift decision.
"Embrace it. Rescue the students and draw it into the magic's range."
"But with that fireball inside the spell...!"
"Are we landing any effective hits on the golem right now? Our magic's better suited to suppressing flames anyway. We'll take them both out at once."
The mage who'd voiced doubts swallowed them at the resolve in the Tower Master's eyes.
Higher temperatures diminished the blizzard's advantages.
Even at peak efficiency, they were struggling; losing that edge would tip the scales irreversibly.
Still, the Tower Master's authority silenced a mere regular mage's qualms.
"Then how do we get that fiend into position?"
The blizzard was an area-control spell, almost like a stationary barrier in some ways.
Tower mages layered the same spell in overlapping waves, syncing for a resonance effect that dominated the zone.
Aimed at territorial dominance, it wasn't easy to expand the range without mages moving in person.
The Tower Master was no exception.
Tied down by the corpse golem, he couldn't dispatch mages to widen the field.
Which meant the students had to somehow drag the fiend into range themselves...
*Fiends avoid dangerous spots by nature.*
That flame-shrouded fiend would know it weakens drastically in the heart of a snowstorm.
It'd resist coming in any way it could.
They weren't just mindless beasts chasing prey anymore—they were in a standoff. Could the students truly restrain it even momentarily...?
"Mila!"
The mid-tier earth spirit took form, and in an instant, dozens sprang up everywhere—nearing a hundred in total.
Each encircled by those mysterious orbs from the tower, the lowliest spirits—ones that couldn't even scratch a fiend before—were now landing real blows.
The chief mages, recognizing it, let out gasps, forgetting the situation.
Those with poor eyesight marveled less at the orbs and more at commanding a hundred spirits solo.
"Whoa... What talent."
"Does that mana pool even allow it?"
"Even elite spiritists struggle with numbers like that."
It didn't matter that they were low- or mid-tier.
What mattered was a mere novice student outperforming a highly trained elite spiritist.
The Tower Master chuckled wryly over there too.
Talent or not, this growth was too sudden.
For a genius with a steep curve to leap levels like this, there was just one explanation.
A proper master had shown the right path.
No way there were two such figures.
As the blond professor flashed in his mind, the Tower Master exhaled sharply.
"Prepare the grand magic."
* * *
Elin felt the tears inside her surging with intense heat.
Heat rose to the crown of her head.
It muddled her mind and disrupted her calculations, but worse was the mana roiling like it would tear her veins.
The writhing mana belched violently.
*This thing... really...*
Any attempt to filter it through her mana just shattered the filter.
At her level, refining this ultra-dense mana flow was impossible.
She couldn't even shape it.
From the start, the mana gushing from the tears seemed unwilling to listen, as if declaring she wasn't qualified yet.
It rampaged wildly, crawling through her body.
Elin seethed with fury, but before mana overload consumed some organ, she had to vent the excess pooling inside.
Her pupils dilated.
Mana colored her hair.
Silver afterimages.
A cool, water-like hue clung to her silver locks.
Her eyes gleamed with radiant energy.
*Shaping and refining are impossible.*
All she could do was borrow power from Radon, the ancient dragon.
Sparks crackled outside her body too.
Overflow.
A massive mana aggregation beyond her capacity.
Absurdly inefficient...
But the high-pressure blast—packed with raw energy—punched a massive hole through the fiend's body.
It was no longer mere water.
The pressure could pierce steel cleanly, penetrating without mercy.
*Ching!*
Sizzle—the boiling hiss compressed into a sharp burst.
The flames and fiend aura enveloping it halted abruptly.
The space-warping blaze wilted powerlessly.
The fiend aura, swirling like a veil to block Radia and Isel, shuddered and began crumbling to dust.
Elin's pressurized shot had smashed the solidified aura head-on.
*Crumble!*
The aura, gravely damaged, lost its form.
As it dissipated into smoke, Radia and Isel lunged like hyenas scenting blood, swords raised.
Their blades tore into the fiend like fangs.
Reading its desperate arm-raise to shield its head, Radia slashed the arm, Isel the leg.
Back when they'd planned to lure the fiend, Elin had foreseen this far.
A fiend that regenerates via flames wouldn't die even decapitated.
But losing its head would rob it of what little reason it had, so in a pinch, it'd instinctively protect it.
Thus, Radia and Isel swiftly shifted targets, severing arms and legs.
Elin had dug a pit to trap the limbless fiend.
At her shout, Radia and Isel pulled back without hesitation.
—*Krirrrrk! Kyaaak!*
Legless and tumbling into Mila's pit like a worm, the fiend could only weather the spirits' barrage.
Nearing a hundred strong.
Tier didn't matter; empowered by Elise's strength, their focused volley drew a agonized cry from the fiend.
—*Kirreeeeek, kiririk, kiryuk*
Earth smothered its flames, soil piles cut off air.
Wind spirits withdrew in unison, creating a vacuum that momentarily weakened the blaze.
Fiend aura flames burned in vacuum, but potency dropped.
And compared to its prior ferocious blasts, this was pathetic.
Then Elin's earth spears plunged down.
Dozens of meter-long spikes impaled the regenerating limbs.
*Thud thud thud!*
Not mere hardened dirt.
Impurity-free, filtered, compressed earth—flames couldn't melt it.
The fiend thrashed to escape the pit, but its limbs pinned, it stayed fixed to the ground.
—*Kieeeek?*
It spewed fire desperately.
Soil exploded outward; the crater melted under flames, dust billowing high.
But Mila remained calm.
Earth was the earth spirit's cozy cradle.
No matter the fiend's struggles, until legs regenerated, it was trapped in the bottomless pit.
Mila nodded at some point.
—*Done.*
Meaning they'd safely shifted it under the Snowfield Magic Tower's blizzard. Elin yelled to the unseen Tower Master.
"We've moved it below!!"
As seen at the tower before, the blizzard was an immense freezing barrier.
Even burrowing beasts piercing the ground froze solid against the layered surface frost.
Even if Mila moved it down, without the tower melting the ground frost, relocation was impossible.
But the Tower Master was a seasoned mage who could grasp intent from few words.
He shouted to his mages.
"We'll briefly lift the surface frost! The fiend's coming in—second and third squads, maintain frostwind and ice walls."
The intense storm, hail, and snow pinned the corpse golem.
No more beasts from below, so surface frost wasn't needed.
"We'll pour more mana into the storm. Suppress the golem while we drop the frost."
Mages complied, and Mila spat the limbless fiend onto the earth.
It flopped into the blizzard.
Above it, the Tower Master and chief mages unleashed their synchronized grand magic.
[Grand Magic ─ Azure Star of White Night]
A small orb of blue and silver hovered before the golem and fiend.
Ultra-low condensed chill within.
Just emanating it struck the ground with lethal cold.
As the ice-resistant golem grinned and advanced through the frost gap—
The star burst, dyeing the world blue.
Bluer, ever bluer.
Like a frozen star heralding doom, the ground filled with frost and ice.
The condensed power exploded fiercely, spreading chill exponentially.
From the blue sphere—ice, yet flame-like—smoke roiled endlessly.
The golem, shocked by the absolute-zero grand magic, shielded itself with both arms.
*Whoosh!*
The star's blaze left faint remnants.
As tiny crystals settled at the spell's end, the area froze uninhabitably.
The golem's arms turned pristine ice crystals, shattering downward from the weight.
As the golem regenerated its skin, the fiend shrieked, igniting flames.
Nothing to burn on this ice sheet.
The fiend, panicking to melt ice and fuel fire via regen, got swallowed by the oncoming blizzard.
This was its death knell.
The silent scream of a blizzard-loser.
On this barren snowfield, it burned its own body as firewood in final throes.
That affected the golem too, slowing its regen as the pair began mutual destruction.
Elin arrived then, aiming her gnarled staff.
"I'm joining in."
The corpse golem and fiend weren't dead yet.
Elin focused on the fiend, eyes blazing.