Kill the Princess, and the Demon... King... (2)
Kill the Princess, and the Demon... King... (2)
The unique abilities of the Three Great Families exist in a relationship of mutual promotion and mutual restraint.
Calamity Flame melts the Azure Sea. The Azure Sea can seep into Taesan and quicken life, and Taesan can become kindling for Calamity Flame.
It can thaw so they do not freeze solid, and it can melt them without a trace.
It can become nourishment that sprouts life, or it can seep in and completely encroach.
It can serve as firewood, or inversely smother and extinguish.
Depending on the degree, it becomes mutual promotion or mutual restraint. In moderation, it promotes; in excess, it restrains.
Fwoosh! Hong Yeon-hwa raised her sword once more. Into Flame Bloom, the expansion ability that concentrates Calamity Flame's output into her blaze, the vitality of the area became kindling under Taesan's guidance.
On top of that, the Calamity Flame, having devoured even her sticky emotions, swelled beyond moderation.
She brought the sword down. The Calamity Flame riding the slash swept away the motley undead and golems and tore down the barrier wall.
The barrier, its interior already disrupted by the interference of Taesan and the Azure Sea, had no means left to properly withstand it.
"Haaah..."
Embers sparked on Hong Yeon-hwa's breath as she finished one round of attacks.
Even Hong Yeon-hwa, who had steadily cultivated her dominance over the Calamity Flame, was now barely in control of it. Her emotions blazed along with the flame-like Calamity Flame, dyeing her vision crimson.
But she wasn't worried.
"Hey, mind your output a little. Tower of Growth or not, aren't you going a bit wild?"
A presence approached with quick steps from behind. A cool palm touched her back. Hisss! The chill of cold energy seeped in where their skin met, cooling the excessively raging Calamity Flame.
"At this rate, you'll drag our allies into it."
"I was controlling it."
"Yeah~ sure you were."
Baek A-rin shrugged and swept her spear through the air. Cold energy swirled around the spear blade. At its command, the rampaging water energy turned to cold energy and poured out in all directions.
— C-c-c-rack!
Not only the parts the Calamity Flame hadn't burned, but even the places where its embers remained froze solid. The dancing embers were pinned in the void, frozen exactly as they were.
The barrier wall inside, just revealed, was dyed pure white.
Crack! The waist of the cold-chilled barrier, its interior already compromised, snapped and broke. Shards of the barrier wall poured down, and a mixture of white frost and hazy dust rose.
Hong Yeon-hwa, who had been steadily fixing her eyes on the sight while reining in the Calamity Flame, shot a glance at Baek A-rin.
"Seems like you're dragging allies into it just the same?"
"There are no allies nearby, so not an issue."
Baek A-rin shrugged again. Frost spread across her pale skin. Though she spoke with a rather cheerful tone, her body and mind that had poured out cold energy with full force were freezing.
'......'
Baek A-rin's gaze sank as she confirmed the devastation she had wrought.
She felt uneasy. It felt like she had fallen in priority. She had thought Hong Yeon-hwa was still hard to surpass, but before she knew it, others had brushed right past.
And in the middle of all that, he had singled out and taken Ellia away, which made her feel all the more unsettled.
"That went for me too, you know."
Shaking her head from side to side, Hong Yeon-hwa placed a hand on Baek A-rin's shoulder. Fwoosh! A properly kindled fire warmth melted the cold energy filling Baek A-rin's body.
"Phew... That's better."
Baek A-rin, who had been accepting the fire warmth for a moment, rolled her stiff shoulders and let out a deep sigh.
Calamity Flame and Azure Sea must always moderate their output and be vigilant against side effects, but if they could thus offset each other's side effects, the burden largely vanished.
Thanks to that, as long as their mana and stamina held, they could even spam techniques at high output.
"You've pushed in quite a bit over here."
While the two rested, Lee Ji-yeon trudged up from behind.
Behind her, tree roots were surging up from the earth, having drunk deep of the Azure Sea's water energy.
Tree roots, each one as thick as a sturdy building, rose and stabbed into the barrier wall, taking root anew inside. The roots shattered the spell formulas and sucked them dry, dominating the barrier wall.
Moreover, the earth under Lee Ji-yeon's control was shaking the workshop, opening a path so that reinforcements could follow from behind.
"Is your mana enough?"
"No, I'm burning through it. Breaking down a workshop and taking over its dominion is no ordinary feat. It's costing me several times more than normal ground."
Lee Ji-yeon shook her head with an obviously fatigued face.
Baek A-rin checked her own body while surveying the surroundings.
The area nearby was scorched and frozen from the consecutive strikes of Calamity Flame and Azure Sea. Thanks to the barrier walls having collapsed like dominoes, a fairly wide space had been carved out.
Behind them, the tree roots Lee Ji-yeon had summoned were entangled with the remaining intact barrier walls.
But a little farther out, barrier walls still stood. Also, unless she froze the entire ground solid with the Azure Sea, those toppled barrier walls would soon rise right back up.
Breaking these walls down once was not the end.
If they entered just because they'd toppled a wall, their exit would be blocked when the next wave of barriers rose, leaving them trapped inside the mage's workshop.
Therefore, they needed to wipe out the workshop's spell formulas entirely with a powerful enough output, like uprooting grass, and leave their own dominion in its place.
"Whoa... they called it a Demon King Castle and all that."
The problem was that doing so was on a level most wouldn't even dare to attempt, which was why up to now, even breaking a single wall had been a struggle.
Baek A-rin looked toward the barrier walls beyond with a newly astonished expression.
It seemed like just the day before yesterday that she had been watching Lee Ha-yul dabble in the magic he'd just learned, and now, he was somehow operating a workshop on this massive, special-grade scale.
The Changhae Family had many monsters and dungeons, so there were numerous defensive installations built throughout their territory.
This single workshop seemed far superior to the family defense installations Baek A-rin had looked around as a child.
"Even so, I think we've almost made it."
Lee Ji-yeon, having caught her breath, spoke, and Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek A-rin also stared straight ahead.
Above the pitch-black barrier wall that was now frankly tiring to look at, the edge of the citadel came into view.
Hong Yeon-hwa, who had perched on a rock fragment, wore a sickened expression without realizing it.
"Isn't that the workshop's inner core? Then it'll be way tougher than here..."
"Let's probe it from a distance first. Who knows what spells might fly out if we just go charging in."
"A pre-loaded high-grade magic might come flying... I might not be able to fully block the high-grade magic my junior uses."
— Creeeak.
Just as they rested and chatted idly, the base of the barrier wall swung wide open like a door. The three of them instantly leaped to their feet and took combat stances.
— Creeeeak...
The door opened, and a white figure hesitantly poked its head out. It was Lee Ha-yul, rolling his eyes around as he nervously gauged their reactions.
"Ha."
Hong Yeon-hwa, having held her sword upright, felt the corner of her lips twitch. The sight of him gauging her mood like a puppy that had done something wrong was impossibly cute. Without realizing it, she almost rushed over and scooped him into her arms.
"Wow, you already broke through all that and got here?"
...When Ellia revealed herself next, the look in Hong Yeon-hwa's eyes sank frigidly. Her twitching lips drooped right back down.
Lee Ha-yul, who had been nervously gauging her, flinched. Watching his expression intently, Hong Yeon-hwa gave a slight nod.
"...I'll ask this first. Why did you take Ellia?"
"That's... I was trying to block your recovery personnel."
Lee Ha-yul brought out the excuse he had prepared in advance.
"In this kind of anti-army combat, support-specialized superhumans are important, right. Even if there's almost no pain and you resurrect, sustained combat ability changes when you have recovery personnel..."
Though their importance was relatively lower because this was the Tower of Growth, in an actual battlefield, recovery personnel were talents more precious than gold.
As they often say, there are at least some superhumans who can eat sword gruel and carve through monsters, but few superhumans who can heal and support others.
Even if you slit a monster's throat, the flesh of a superhuman whose belly was ripped open by a monster doesn't grow back... unless they have a special unique ability, then it does grow back.
"On top of that, since you revive here, I held her so she couldn't return. I figured everyone would ally together and strike here soon anyway, so I did it ahead of..."
To confess that he had wandered the citadel like a puppy with separation anxiety, that he couldn't stand it and brought Ellia back, that he had been acting spoiled—it was far too embarrassing.
"But why Ellia? There are plenty of other recovery personnel, no?"
Baek A-rin, who had been listening while maintaining vigilance, gave a nod. Her eyes, cooler than usual, fixed squarely on Lee Ha-yul's gaze.
"I can also provide plenty of allied healing with the Azure Sea's water energy, you know?"
[Uh... Baek A-rin, you're hard to suppress...]
"You would've been quietly captured with just a rope or two."
[?]
"Junior, I can also recover multiple people..."
[...Seonbae, you're also hard to suppress...]
"Oh? Guess I wasn't even on the list to begin with?"
"Dream on..."
Lee Ha-yul broke out in a cold sweat. The more he made excuses, the more it felt like he was sinking into a swamp. He knew it was heading in a bad direction, but no sharp solution came to mind.
Ellia, without any particular thought, reached out and gently ruffled his white hair. Because seeing him anxiously stomp his feet looked so pitiful it stirred her maternal instincts.
"......"
That didn't look good to Hong Yeon-hwa, who was already in a foul mood. Her brow furrowed.
"Mm, I understand."
[Delight]
"So I'll just capture you and take you along too."
"?"
Lee Ha-yul's celebrating face went blank. His mind couldn't process what she meant.
"...Capture me and take me along?"
"Like you said, in the tower, eventually you just revive, right? From our perspective trying to capture the occupation point, it's troublesome if Ha-yul revives and keeps coming at us. So I'll capture you and tie you up."
"Eek."
Hong Yeon-hwa stated it calmly. Baek A-rin and Lee Ji-yeon nodded in agreement, each drawing their own armament.
Frost gathered on Baek A-rin's spear, and rocks that surged from the ground refined themselves into a double-bladed axe.
"What do we do with a hostage?"
"Dunno. Since you revive, I'll just kill you."
"That's too much."
Lee Ha-yul's face darkened.
This was troublesome.
Hong Yeon-hwa, Baek A-rin, Lee Ji-yeon.
He had frequent mock spars with all three. Thanks to that, he had gathered plenty of information on them and could respond skillfully.
That information was mostly on them barely utilizing their unique abilities. Most of their sparring had used only body reinforcement techniques, aura techniques, and magic.
Facing all three while they freely exerted their unique abilities without fear of injury was difficult. As if that wasn't enough, those three abilities were of types that supported each other, so when they stuck together like this, they were incredibly troublesome.
The 12th Iteration didn't get killed by the alliance... and especially by those three, for nothing.
In the 12th Iteration, those three had all survived and grown into full adulthood.
No matter how low the player's physical ability was at the time, even if they had taken damage fighting the Tower Master of the Dead in a war of annihilation and had their army worn down.
The reason the 12th Iteration had died without properly resisting was because the combined assault of those three was that troublesome.
Moreover, for some reason, Lee Ha-yul had a feeling he would also have to fight while protecting Ellia...
'Ugh...'
Before even getting into that, Lee Ha-yul didn't want to fight them here in the first place.
Suppressing them was difficult. Since this was the Tower of Growth where you revived anyway, killing them was easier than suppression.
...No matter that there was no pain and you revived, he didn't want to. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn and his head feel like it would split.
Lee Ha-yul squeezed his eyes shut and stretched out his hand. Everyone was casting wary looks at the sudden action when something flew in from far away and was caught precisely in Lee Ha-yul's hand.
A pure white flag. On the large cloth fluttering in the wind, the number 1,000 was written, and a thin line of light rose from the flag into the sky.
"The special flag?"
The special flag that had been issued to Lee Ha-yul at the start and carefully enshrined in the citadel. Lee Ha-yul, gripping it tightly, gave his arm a wide swing.
In that brief Ah— moment, the flag sliced through the sky and landed plunged deep into the plains below the Rocky Mountain.
"Huh?"
"Oh?"
Right into the middle of the crowd of cadets who had been reorganizing the battle lines and preparing to begin their full-scale offensive.
They blinked at the flag that had suddenly flown down from the sky and planted itself there. And soon, they confirmed the score embroidered on the cloth.
1,000 points.
If there were three occupation points each, multiplied by 3, that meant 3,000 points.
If they failed to capture Occupation Point 1, it would be a decisive victory-clinching score.
In the silence, those who grasped the situation subtly scanned their surroundings, and most exchanged a glance with each other at least once.
"...Grab that!"
Their feet kicking off the ground all happened at the same moment. Those who had been climbing the Rocky Mountain with a fairly amicable attitude now aimed swords and spears at each other.
"Ah..."
Lee Ji-yeon let out an admiring sigh as she confirmed the formation about to become a free-for-all. A portion of those who had been chasing through the path she'd painstakingly opened turned their backs.
"Argh! Forget it! First, capture! We can fight over the occupation points and take them too!"
Shaking her head vigorously, Hong Yeon-hwa kicked off the ground. Lee Ha-yul, now wearing a tearful face, slid the barrier wall shut — click.
[Match Terminated]
[Score tallying will now conclude.]
"Huff... Ugh..."
The match end signal resounded across the pitch-black sky. At that, the strength drained from the legs of Baize, who had been madly kicking off the ground.
His body tumbled over. Fortunately, his sturdy superhuman body didn't suffer so much as a common scratch, and since he had been covered head to toe in dust and dirt from the start, it was no issue.
"Owww... Hahh... My lungs ache..."
But his chest hurt. No matter that he was a superhuman, Baize, whose constitution was relatively weak as a researcher-type mage, was gasping for breath like a madman.
"Whoa! This bastard is fucking incredible at running! How the hell did you survive?"
"I don't know either, stay away from me for a bit..."
A cadet who looked similarly like a beggar grinned while looking at Baize sprawled on the ground. Baize barely managed a retort and subtly shifted his gaze.
A pure white pole clutched in his hand. When he raised his eyes, he saw the equally pure white cloth spread out on the ground.
The special flag worth 1,000 points.
Baize obtaining the special flag had been coincidence. The cadets who had been brawling like crazy were all blown away by one cadet's self-destruction, and the flag that flew into the sky landed precisely right in front of Baize.
He'd grabbed it in a daze, and while he was busy getting startled and dodging the cadets who swarmed from all sides, the match had quickly ended.
It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that had come to Baize, who had spent the entire tower entry observing and learning from the seniors' magic.
"But didn't they say they'd do some kind of event with this?"
"I heard this is the trigger for the event... well, are monsters being summoned here or something?"
The cadets who had gathered nearby blinked, looking at each other. Then they stared at the flag for a moment before calmly stepping backward, putting distance between themselves and Baize.
Baize furrowed his brow.
"You loyalty-lacking... They give a brief rest period, make an announcement, and then start—"
[The next schedule, the event match, will now begin.]
[Gimmick activated.]
"Starting right away."
KABOOOOM! A pure white light struck down from the night sky. At the sight, like a meteorite crashing down, gazes focused in from far away.
Baize squeezed his eyes shut. It felt like he would go blind from the excessively intense light.
A moment later, the light that had been felt through his eyelids ceased.
'Huh?'
Baize blinked. He saw a person. A man looking down at him where he lay sprawled. His face was invisible because he wore a helmet.
More than that, his senses concentrated on a different part.
A mage must have good awareness and detection abilities for mana. Because in order to manipulate it, one naturally needs to perceive it first.
Baize could not properly detect that person's mana.
It wasn't that it was concealed. It was openly laid bare, as if daring anyone to look.
But it made his head spin. Like looking at an optical illusion with his eyes, the mana was twisted so madly that merely detecting it made his stomach churn.
The man's firmly shut mouth opened.
"■ ■■, ■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ (This bastard, even now as scrawny as an anchovy)."
The man who had sized up Baize let out a snickering laugh.
[Authority 「Growth」 manifests.]
[Trial of Growth activates.]
[Authority 「Knowledge」 manifests.]
[Authority 「Observation」 manifests.]
[Tower of Knowledge Internal Observation Record 「5th」 browsing.]
[Authority 「Harmonization」 manifests.]
[Connecting Tower of Knowledge and Tower of Growth.]
[Authority 「Space」 manifests.]
[Tower of Knowledge Internal Observation Record 「5th」 access.]
...
[Embodiment of the recorded existence.]
[Incomplete Manifestation]
[Fifth Playthrough Cycle]
[Foolish General's Reverse Path]