Chapter 87
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 87
Chapter Title: Trap (7)
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Even switching carriages along the way to take the fastest route, it should have taken more than a week to cover the distance. Yet Zmol arrived in just two days.
That meant he'd flown with every ounce of strength he had.
But Cedric had already left by then. Zmol had expected as much.
It meant he hadn't hoped Cedric would just sit around waiting for two days.
He'd already been lucky to track his movements at all.
Zmol immediately prepared to depart.
"Where to?"
"He headed south."
"And after that?"
"We confirmed he boarded a carriage. Toward the southern city of Miren."
A strange glint flashed in Zmol's eyes at those words.
Déjà vu.
He couldn't help it.
Last time, he'd heard a similar report, only to end up with Cedric vanishing without a trace.
So he had no time to hesitate now.
Zmol hurried toward Miren. If he'd left two days ago, he should be arriving right about now.
If he caught up quickly, he might finally seize Cedric's true form this time.
However, upon arriving in Miren, Zmol—who'd thought his luck had held—soon retracted that notion.
What good was tracking him if he missed him by a hair's breadth again?
Zmol wandered aimlessly around the area, but Cedric was nowhere to be found. As if he'd been erased from existence here.
Nearly a month passed in the blink of an eye.
The promised meeting time he'd arranged with Jackal was approaching.
In the end, he had no choice but to turn back.
He hadn't completed his mission, but survival came first. Dying would make everything pointless.
With that, Zmol turned away without regret and headed to the meeting spot.
He'd chosen a place where Transcendents could gather in secret, just like how Ad always appeared in remote spots whenever seeking him out.
Zmol arrived deep in the forest and was about to step into the meeting area when he suddenly sensed something off.
Zmol was a Dragon Rank Transcendent.
At the very least, he could detect and manipulate natural mana across a far wider range than a Probe Rank one.
And Moonlight Afterglow—all of them were Probe Rank. He'd chosen them precisely because they were easy for him to handle. Most of their work skirted the edge of their pact, making it simple to cut ties if something went wrong.
The damp earth scent and quiet darkness enveloped the area.
Long before arriving, Zmol had felt an inexplicable unease. An anxiety without apparent reason.
If it had felt like a real threat, he'd have fled immediately, but it wasn't quite that strong.
What suddenly came to mind was Garn.
Garn, killed in a single blow by Cedric.
An ambush.
There was no harm in being cautious. Even if he was a bit late, no one would dare blame him.
Zmol decided not to head straight to the meeting spot but to observe from afar first.
And there, in the distance, he spotted eleven figures.
All Transcendents of Moonlight Afterglow, from Harman to Jackal.
They had gathered as promised.
Jackal must have carried out his orders.
So what was this lingering sense of wrongness?
Zmol narrowed his eyes.
Wasn't it coming from them?
Zmol shifted his gaze from them and scanned the entire forest.
Even after surveying the whole area, he couldn't pinpoint the source of the odd feeling.
"...An illusion?"
Perhaps it was just his own anxiety playing tricks.
That only made it more unpleasant. His instincts always had a reason behind them.
Zmol reluctantly decided to return to the meeting spot.
He just needed to give a brief explanation and the order to lie low. No reason to stay long.
Zmol stepped into the area where the Moonlight Afterglow Transcendents were gathered.
As eyes turned to him, he cleared his throat and spoke.
"Jackal, you've assembled them on time."
The moment his benevolent, praising tone echoed out—
Zmol's brow furrowed slightly. He felt the oddness again.
This time, it was no faint sensation—a powerful sense of dissonance.
But Jackal responded far too casually.
"You're awfully late, old man."
"... "
Zmol silently scanned the other Transcendents before addressing Harman.
"Harman."
"...?"
Harman blinked wide in confusion.
"Answer me."
"What's wrong?"
The speech felt subtly off, but nothing majorly amiss.
Zmol slowly narrowed his eyes, calling out to each one in turn.
Every name he uttered brought a perfectly normal response.
Meanwhile, the ten Transcendents were gradually closing in around him.
It wasn't strange since he'd called them, but...
The ten Transcendents were slowly narrowing the circle.
Zmol decided not to ignore his ominous feeling.
Moreover, while the other ten drew closer bit by bit, Jackal was steadily falling back.
That gave Zmol certainty.
"...Something's wrong. No matter how I think about it."
The moment Zmol began drawing up his mana—
Explosive mana erupted from the bodies of the ten Transcendents nearest him.
It wasn't like they were actively channeling power; it felt more like long-planted bombs finally detonating.
Zmol caught that subtle difference.
In that split second, a mana barrier rose around him first, followed by dazzling light bursting from the ten Transcendents' bodies.
The light swallowed the forest in an instant.
No living body could emit such blinding radiance.
And Zmol's sharp eyes didn't miss it.
KABOOM!
A terrifying chain of explosions began. The ten Transcendents' bodies detonated one after another.
'...Self-destruct?'
No.
He knew better than anyone how desperately they clung to life. Suicide? Impossible.
They weren't them to begin with.
Then what? How could they be so perfectly identical?
His thoughts couldn't go further. Even with the pre-formed barrier, the power wasn't something he could shrug off.
CRUNCH!
One might be manageable, but ten in chain reaction?
Zmol drew up every bit of his mana possible while simultaneously structuring natural mana into spells.
Layered barriers stacked around him in overlapping formation.
BANG! BOOM BOOM BOOM!
The forest shook.
A massive explosion roared out.
The shockwaves rattled the barriers with a deep hum.
And they shattered under the second blast.
He'd conjured several in an instant, but could they withstand all ten explosions?
'If I just endure this explosion...!'
Sudden as it was, since he'd reacted first, he thought he could hold out somehow.
Thanks to his circles—nine rings overheating madly as he wove the barriers tight.
Shaking off the ambush shock, his mind raced fiercely again.
And then the realization hit late.
'...Explosion?'
In that instant, a scene flashed through his mind like lightning.
The horrifying blast that killed Garn in one hit.
Cedric's magic, wasn't it?
He hadn't connected it because it looked like suicide.
...Was all this tied to Cedric?
How?
His thoughts halted there again.
Something intrusive breached his perceptual boundary.
Things were rapidly closing in from all directions.
The nagging feeling that had bothered Zmol.
Now he knew: something concealing powerful mana.
But knowing now meant nothing.
"...More?"
The words slipped out involuntarily.
Resignation? Despair?
If all that was explosion magic, Zmol couldn't survive.
KABOOM!
The final explosion.
After the tenth blast ended, a brief silence fell.
The smoke cleared, revealing Zmol's figure.
His clothes were in tatters, most of his skin scorched by the heat.
Yet he still lived.
He'd barely endured the tenth explosion.
The surroundings were utterly devastated. No trace of a forest remained.
A massive crater beneath Zmol, blackened earth, remnants of trees burned or swept away by the shock.
Zmol trembled there, hands shaking as he drew up mana again to somehow reform a barrier.
Then, a faint voice came from beyond the smoke.
"Your mana has the property of condensation."
Zmol's gaze lifted.
As the smoke parted, he could finally see the sole survivor: Jackal, floating in the air some distance away, looking down at him.
It was Ivan, disguised as Jackal.
Zmol's condensation property allowed him to densify mana into something incredibly sturdy—compressing its structure tightly.
Thus, he specialized in tough, hard-to-pierce defensive spells. The barrier he'd formed during his talk with Jackal worked on the same principle.
Ivan had unleashed full explosions from the start precisely because he knew this trait.
He figured a Dragon Rank Transcendent would sense the anomaly just before activation and block it adequately.
This entire setup was Ivan's preparation tailored against Zmol.
"You little shit...!"
Ivan, in Jackal's form, shrugged.
"Not a little shit."
As Ivan replied, mana erupted from another something drawing near.
BOOM!
Another explosion shattered the barely formed barrier.
The impact hurled Zmol's body back, kicking up dirt.
Dozens of spells flew at him from all sides, but he had no mana left for barriers.
Well, he could squeeze out a little, but would it matter?
Then, several bird-shaped constructs flying from the sky changed course. Some stopped, others closed in tighter—like selective targeting.
Ivan muttered.
"A few left this time too."
In truth, assassinating those ten Transcendents had left behind traps one by one, and he'd dumped them all on Zmol.
The few birds that drew close oxidized with mana, manifesting something other than explosion.
Scorching whips lashed out, seizing Zmol's arms and yanking them.
His body was forcibly dragged to the ground. Moments later, spikes pierced through both his palms and his abdomen.
Zmol rasped through boiling blood.
"Why... why side with that bastard...? Couldn't wait just a little longer."
He still didn't know Jackal's true identity, assuming only that he'd been bought by Cedric.
Time to reveal the truth.
"Oh, before that."
Ivan approached the bound Zmol. Mana gathered in his palm, assembling intricately.
A single opaque orb.
Ivan thrust it straight into Zmol's heart—where his circles resided.
Horror flooded Zmol's eyes.
"How... how did you...!"
Zmol was a mage.
Unlike martial types, they could cast without gestures once mana recovered.
So he'd coated the circles' mana with a 'blocking' seal.
Yes, a spell exploiting Zmol's own trait. Forged by Ivan.
Of course, if unbound, moving his body would break the seal—it wasn't some ultimate magic. The bindings made it effective.
Normally, covering a whole area would be more useful, but even that meant little against Transcendents. They could just leave.
Not many chances to use it like this.
Having fully subdued Zmol, Ivan looked down at him.
His shadow fell over the fallen man.
Zmol stared up with trembling eyes. Was his blurring vision from spreading blood?
...No.
The figure that had looked like Jackal grew hazy in Zmol's eyes, reverting to its true form.
Black mask and long coat. Even the build shifted subtly.
Seeing the completely transformed appearance, Zmol's breath caught.
"Ce... dric..."
"Told you, not a little shit. ...Oh, and before you spout nonsense, let me say this first."
Through the black mask gleamed ordinary-colored eyes. Yet the pressure in that gaze was anything but ordinary.
"Ad abandoned you long ago."