Chapter 86
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 86
Chapter Title: Trap (6)
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The pattern was similar to the one with Jackal.
Birds carrying traps flew in from all directions, and the suppression traps activated first.
Nails shot out. Whips of fire lashed through the empty air. Sharp needles rose from the ground.
As expected, he easily blocked the initial traps.
Unlike Jackal, his movements weren't powerful—they were nimble. Mana-infused hand blades deflected the nails, and any traps he couldn't deflect, he dodged by the narrowest margins.
But this time, my goal wasn't to capture him.
Interspersed among the traps were the explosive ones that had dealt Garn a fatal blow before.
Boom!
Even Harman's nimbleness couldn't escape the wide radius of the blast.
The explosion was so powerful it swept away even the suppression traps. From that point on, Harman began getting pushed back hard.
Unlike Garn, who had taken the explosive trap completely unprepared, he avoided a fatal injury.
In the rising smoke, Harman clutched the arm he'd just used to block the explosion, his eyes darting around.
He seemed flustered by the sudden, massive blast.
"Zmol! Are you here? Answer me!"
His voice echoed.
He still couldn't let go of it, searching for Zmol. He truly believed Zmol had perfectly lured him here.
Or maybe it was the last lifeline he desperately wanted to cling to.
'It's only just beginning.'
The second sequence was waiting right away.
The next explosion detonated without delay. A massive roar shook the surrounding rocks, shattering them as they heaved.
The suppression traps that should have followed...
However.
Once the smoke cleared from the blast site, what emerged was an unexpected sight.
Half of Harman's face was blown off, and he staggered, still clutching one arm.
And in that instant, the ground began to rumble from the explosion's aftermath, triggering a landslide.
Rocks tumbled down in chains, the entire mountain vibrating as if shaking. Trees were uprooted, and mounds of earth poured downward.
Harman was swept away by the landslide without resistance. Whatever shout he let out vanished amid the roar.
I headed straight there, one hand gripping the screen transmitting the view.
I'd clearly confirmed half his face getting blown off. And him getting buried in the landslide.
But to be certain, I needed to see it with my own eyes.
By the time I arrived and looked down from above, the landslide was still in motion.
The mountain was so vast that the scale of the landslide was enormous.
'So much for handling this in secret.'
Well, it was somewhat predictable once I'd chosen this spot to take out Harman. But I couldn't exactly start a fight in the middle of some open plain either...
No matter how covertly I tried to handle it, battling a Transcendent made total concealment impossible. Especially a mage's fight.
Once the landslide subsided, I slowly descended to the surface. Using magic, I dug through the dirt to find Harman.
Finding his corpse took longer than killing him.
After rummaging for quite a while, a body crusted with blood and soil finally emerged. It was already in tatters.
His breathing had completely stopped.
Harman died without managing a single credible act of resistance.
It wasn't like Garn, taken out by one explosion, but just a few extra traps—no real challenge.
The custom preparations I'd tailored to Harman's traits felt utterly wasted.
'It was only the beginning...'
Were Philip's traps just that strong, or were Probe Rank Transcendents this weak...?
No, more importantly, it was the sheer power that let me whip up traps like that in no time.
Thanks to primal mana, it was like snap—trap created.
With enough time and mana, traps came as easily as breathing.
Even as a derivative power, it offered a glimpse of primal mana's immense potential.
Of course, huge credit went to Philip Deran for finishing the trap designs ahead of time.
At this point, I even wondered if I'd made too many traps.
'Well, I can use them next time.'
There were still nine more Transcendents left to deal with.
I'd declared I'd assassinate him, but he met death in an instant, clueless to the end.
It might have been the perfect conclusion for him.
Meanwhile.
Zmol lingered for a long time at the spot where Cedric had killed Garn and vanished. Staring down at the ground by his feet, he sank deep into thought.
What had him agonizing like this was, naturally, Cedric.
More precisely, he was spending all this time trying to figure out how Cedric could disappear so flawlessly.
Even a tiny clue, just enough to point him in a direction—that would suffice.
'Where would Cedric go after killing Garn?'
But if that clue had turned up easily, Zmol wouldn't have wasted so much time dawdling here.
'Wasted ten years, finally tracked down the hero... and now this crap.'
The corner of Zmol's mouth twisted. It mirrored his inner turmoil.
Chasing Cedric had always been like this.
Truth be told, Cedric had fallen into his trap all too easily at first.
From winning the Essence of Evil at the auction house to later receiving the hero's item from that wench Lina.
It all tied back to Ad's orders.
Ad's initial command had simply been to eliminate the hero's bud.
That order had dragged on for over ten years with zero results.
Just as Zmol was starting to get antsy, Ad showed up and handed over the Essence of Evil and the ancient hero's item.
According to Ad, those would naturally end up with the next hero in due course.
He was told to track relentlessly. No rash moves.
Zmol figured that command stemmed from certainty it would lead to the hero.
Putting both the Essence of Evil and the hero's item up at the auction simultaneously had been Ad's order too. Ad instructed to let whoever took the hero's item have the Essence as well.
The Essence that even Zmol himself hadn't consumed yet.
So he'd put both up for auction. Naturally, he assumed the one who bid on the hero's item would snag the Essence too. Anyone perceptive enough to recognize the ancient hero's item would sense the Essence wasn't ordinary either.
Of course, things didn't go as planned.
When Cedric took the Essence of Evil, Zmol saw it as a minor deviation—not worth fretting over.
He paid Cedric little mind, focusing more on Lina instead.
But once it reached Cedric, Zmol was convinced.
'Cedric holds the key.'
It felt right.
The man who'd first claimed the Essence of Evil and ultimately snagged the hero's item too. No way was it all coincidence.
He'd thought the plan derailed, but in the end, hadn't it played out exactly as Ad predicted? All according to the natural order.
Cedric was no ordinary figure.
Honestly, what kind of guy was this? If he hadn't been the key, Zmol might have stepped in personally to recruit him.
Tracking him felt like wandering a labyrinth.
Just when he thought he'd pinned down a location, the trail evaporated like mist.
As if he'd teleported right from the spot.
Of course, such magic would leave mana residue, but Cedric left none.
Every time Zmol located him and gave chase, Cedric vanished from some unexpected point. Then word would come of him popping up elsewhere—always far from the previous trail.
Unpredictable. No word fit Cedric's tracks better.
Of course, Zmol hadn't chased personally. He'd delegated to others.
And there was good reason he didn't run himself.
Even if found, all he could do was watch. Nothing more.
He couldn't kill him. He had to confirm if Cedric kept the hero's item to the end or passed it to someone else.
That was Ad's command.
He saw it as a long game. Delegating surveillance and getting reports seemed fine.
...Or so he'd thought.
That assumption was the problem.
Even when he learned Cedric had visited Lina—whom he'd been timing to kill—he sent Garn instead.
Cedric seemed to have a lead on the Moonlight Afterglow through Lina, so he ordered Garn to intercept and tail him covertly.
'And you botched it this badly? Idiot...'
Alone now, Zmol dropped the soft tone he used with underlings.
They were expendable anyway.
When he first found the battle traces between Garn and Cedric, he'd thought Garn attacked first.
But the more he examined it... the more it seemed Garn had been ambushed.
Traces of a powerful explosion.
No other signs of combat.
Garn, fleeing while bleeding.
Cedric's reputation for cruelty.
Garn dying after barely fleeing from a single fatal strike.
'Ignoring the pact entirely and killing Garn with one ambush?'
Zmol couldn't help growing anxious.
'Stronger than expected...'
That was the only fact he could glean.
And it stirred an odd unease.
That very fact was why Zmol resolved to go into hiding.
Cedric was chasing leads on the Moonlight Afterglow—and at the end of that trail was Zmol.
If this unpredictable powerhouse, capable of one-shotting even Garn, reached him first...?
Pacts be damned—he was a ruthless killer of Transcendents.
Even if Zmol handled Cedric himself, the battle traces would remain, and contact with Ad—who upheld the pact—would be severed.
Plus, there was another Transcendent tracking via shadow ghosts. A mage who wielded earth magic, apparently.
So if he couldn't catch him this time, he'd hide for good.
Zmol had given Jackal a full month—a generous window, he'd thought. But after racking his brains like this, even that month felt too short.
'...You're the ones who cut contact first.'
Zmol could spin a plausible excuse even if he failed to find Cedric.
Ad's side had gone silent first, without a word.
Hadn't Ad stressed its importance and demanded full focus when handing over the hero's item?
He even wondered if he'd been discarded.
Zmol was a freshly ascended Dragon Rank Transcendent.
Typically, new Transcendents focused solely on cultivation until reaching the Integration Realm and achieving magical unity.
Martial Transcendents gained vastly superior power upon Integration, but mages felt it most acutely. Mind, mana, and body fused into one, unlocking entirely new mana flows.
Dragon Rank wasn't that high among Transcendents anyway, and shaking off the pact's shackles led only to ruin.
But Zmol rationally realized he couldn't go beyond Dragon Rank. He'd already spent most of his extended lifespan since ascending.
Then Ad appeared before him.
Promising to guide him to higher realms.
That was the Essence of Evil—his reward upon mission success.
Now, he couldn't even predict what awaited at the end.
Zmol vowed this was his last shot. If chasing Cedric one more time led to the same result, he'd vanish with the Moonlight Afterglow crew.
Of course, "with" them meant each fending for themselves.
He had no bandwidth to look after them.
They could expose him, so warning them to hide early was the best he could do.
'In the end, the only way is to comb the entire area again?'
That was the conclusion Zmol reached after long deliberation.
Schmoozing people was his specialty, but it would waste more time...
'Just this once... if I catch his trail this time, I won't let him slip away.'
He resolved not to let Cedric out of sight for even a moment.
Not until he figured out how he vanished so completely.
Then, even if he hid now, Zmol could track him down eventually.
He'd have words for Ad when contact resumed—proof he'd completed the mission to the end.
He'd claim the Essence of Evil and join Ad's fold.
Gaining a faction's protection to grow in this cutthroat Transcendent society.
It hadn't been long since Cedric got the hero's item, but Zmol even considered he might be the hero himself.
Better that way. He could just hand him off to Ad later.
Zmol finally descended the mountain.
He canvassed the surroundings, but as always, no one had seen Cedric.
He'd pop up out of nowhere somewhere else.
Zmol gritted his teeth.
'I don't have time to wait for that...!'
No telling what he'd be up to while vanishing again...
As impatience mounted.
Word came from the underworld outfit Zmol had on retainer.
The exact situation repeating.
A figure matching Cedric's description sighted at the central-southern border.
Barely within Zmol's reach.
A slow smile spread across his lips.
'Lucky break.'
Relief washed over him that Cedric had stayed just inside his range.
Seeing it as his final chance, Zmol raced there at breakneck speed before Cedric could slip beyond the border.