Chapter 7
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Counter
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‘...They're evenly matched.’
The orc, Rex, covered head to toe in blood, thought as he watched the standoff between the Overlord and the boy.
Against the Overlord—an overwhelming monster whose mere presence on the battlefield made one's legs tense and sent a cold sweat down their spine—the white-haired boy was holding his own in a taut confrontation.
“You are at least a 7th-circle mage. Considering you've reached that level at such a young age, you'll likely reach the 9th circle soon enough.”
“Well, you seem to know everything already, so there's no need to hide it.”
He hadn't heard their entire conversation, focused as he was on the battle. But even the fragmented sentences were enough to grasp the situation.
‘The boy looks sixteen, maybe seventeen at most. And yet, a 7th-circle mage...’
Born a warrior who had spent his life swinging an axe, Rex could maintain his reason and continue to think clearly even when adrenaline was coursing through his veins.
The boy he had unwittingly allowed onto the carriage heading for the capital was a mage with the greatest talent on the continent.
And the Overlord had taken such great risks to appear here himself for the sole purpose of eliminating that white-haired boy—a genius mage who had reached the 7th circle at the youngest age in history.
Once those two facts settled in his mind, the next order for his troops naturally formed.
“...All units! Change the objective of this battle from ‘survival’ to ‘escorting the boy’! That boy is a precious talent who must not die here! We must escort him to the capital, no matter what!”
The boy's single life was more valuable than his own, and indeed, more than all his subordinates' lives combined. It didn't take long for him to reach that conclusion.
The righteous notion that all lives are equal held no water on the battlefield. How many mutants could a single spell from a 7th-circle mage incinerate? How many lives could it save?
On the battlefield, the value of a life was not equal. Having lived his entire life as a warrior, Rex knew this well.
If someone had to die here, it would be them, not the boy.
“Dammit, we can barely save our own skins...! Where's the mage!”
“The order is to escort the mage! All units, form Formation 3 around the mage!”
“Volley of arrows from the right! Raise your shields! A single graze means instant death!”
Just then, the flames burning the leaves and branches caught onto the fletching of the arrows flying from the forest, causing their trajectories to veer wildly.
K-k-k-k-k-k!
The volley of arrows, saturated with mana, hammered against the infantry's massive shields.
These arrows, imbued with powerful mana, would normally have pierced through the shields and impaled their bodies without issue. But with their fletching burned away, their trajectories were thrown off, preventing them from performing as intended.
“Hmm...”
The Overlord, still in a standoff with the white-haired boy mage, glanced at the soldiers rushing to protect him with an expression of considerable annoyance.
‘An unknown mage... I don't know his level, nor what kind of magic he uses.’
The Overlord did not move himself.
He didn't want to show any openings against the 7th-circle mage before him—or perhaps a mage of an even higher circle.
He merely cast a sidelong glance at the soldiers rushing toward them.
CRASH!
The moment his gaze shifted, massive, burning trees began to fall in all directions.
At the same time, the ground began to shake violently, and flaming leaves rained down upon the road.
“As ordered.”
A six-meter-tall mutant, created from a giant orc barbarian, appeared, wreathed in flames and wielding an enormous axe.
The mutant slammed its massive foot down heavily and swung its house-sized axe at the soldiers.
CLANG!
The hero orc, Rex, met the blow with his own axe, creating a massive shower of sparks. The difference in their weight class was immense, but thanks to his relentless daily training, he somehow managed to block the colossal axe.
“Go! Protect the mage!”
The soldiers, who had momentarily frozen at the appearance of the giant monster, began to move again.
“Tch.”
The Overlord clicked his tongue in annoyance and slightly raised a finger, pointing it at the soldiers running toward the boy.
Pitch-black mana gathered at his fingertip, beginning to vibrate violently as if it would burst at any moment.
The boy's blue eyes.
Did not miss the moment the Overlord's attention shifted to the soldiers.
An immense amount of electrical current flowed from the boy's arms and legs. His white hair stood on end, and an eerie energy, as if lightning was about to strike, enveloped him.
‘...Is he planning to attack, aiming for an opening?’
Maltiel noticed the mage preparing to unleash a massive electrical charge and sneered inwardly.
‘He took the bait.’
The Mazoku were a race that was cunning by nature and enjoyed deceiving their opponents.
As the Overlord, Maltiel could have erased the humans rushing to protect the mage from this world in an instant, without so much as a gesture or a glance.
And yet, he deliberately turned his gaze and his finger toward the infantry.
It was to signal to the mage before him that now was the perfect opening to attack.
‘The moment you attack, your head will fly.’
Maltiel had always employed this kind of tactic.
By pretending to show an opening, to be weakened, to be cornered, his opponents would always throw a full-power punch at him.
Maltiel loved those desperate strikes, the ones that came with a thunderous roar as if the attacker was pouring their very soul into the blow.
Because the more desperate the attack, the more fatal the counter was when it landed.
‘Come...!’
A massive flash of light began to erupt from the boy's fingertips. A tremendous amount of lightning energy, enough to send a chill down one's spine just by looking at it, shot forth.
“Convert.”
The Mazoku's crimson eyes and black hand turned back to the boy.
The Overlord Maltiel, who had been waiting for this very moment, immediately discharged the mana gathered at his fingertip into a single point, unleashing it toward the heart of the boy, who would be fixed in place while casting such a powerful spell.
The pitch-black line cut through the hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity the boy had unleashed, extending endlessly.
That black line, which bored massive holes through the trees, rocks, earth, and bodies of mutants in its path as it stretched on without end, created a scene as if a god had taken a quill pen and drawn a long line across the world.
“It's over.”
Despair filled the eyes of the soldiers who had been rushing toward the boy at full speed.
Right now, the only being on this battlefield who could hold back the Overlord was that white-haired boy.
If they lost him, they would all die.
Just as a sense of futility and sorrow began to settle in everyone's hearts...
“Shit, that was a close one.”
A curse, delivered in a cool and composed voice, rang out from above their heads.
“...Ha!”
The boy was not dead. Confirming this, the Overlord let out an involuntary sound of admiration.
The boy had never intended to attack in the first place.
It was unclear how he had done it, but he seemed to have known from the start that the opening the Overlord had shown was a fake.
Watching the boy, who had unleashed the massive voltage not at the Overlord but beneath his own feet, using the recoil to launch himself high into the sky, the Overlord broke into a wide grin on his ghastly face.
‘He saw through it! He knew I showed him a fake opening! That's why he pretended to cast an attack spell and fled into the sky instead.’
Frustration at having his ploy seen through and admiration for the boy's cool-headed judgment erupted simultaneously.
He didn't know how it was possible, but the boy seemed to know exactly what Maltiel was going to do next. It was as if he had studied for this somewhere beforehand.
‘His plan is to thoroughly mock me while maintaining his distance. He just needs to buy time until 'he' arrives!’
The Overlord looked at the boy's bland, cold expression and his blue eyes, and became certain.
‘This boy isn't just gifted in magic. He has a keen eye for the flow of battle and an outstanding ability to deceive his opponents! The foresight to completely see through my tactics and the composure to remain expressionless even in the most extreme situations!’
The Overlord spread his wings wide and flew straight up toward the boy.
‘This is no mere seed of a monster. I must kill him here and now!’
Until now, he had always prioritized his own safety in battle.
This was because if he died, all the Mazoku under his command would become non-functional, creating a huge vacuum in the demon army.
But just now, the judgment and composure the boy had displayed tipped the scales in the Overlord's mind.
He had decided that killing the boy here and now would be more beneficial to the demon army in the long run than protecting his own life.
The 2,000 Mazoku under his command and the 300,000 mutants they controlled.
The Overlord judged that the boy's life was worth trading all of that for.
“Ogiar de Astella!”
As the Overlord shot upward like a bullet, the thunderous voice of an orc reached his ears.
A house-sized axe, thrown by the five-meter-tall giant orc, came flying at the Overlord as he flew in a straight line toward the boy in the air.
“Protect himmmmmm!”
The orc hero, Rex, who had lost an arm and suffered a massive wound to his stomach, shouted as he looked up at the Overlord and the boy floating under the moonlight.
At Rex's feet lay the five-meter-tall orc mutant, hacked into dozens of pieces.
At his words, the soldiers began to pick up scattered weapons and hurl them with all their might into the Overlord's flight path.
“Tch.”
Most of them simply bounced off the Overlord's skin, unable to pierce it even when they hit.
However, Rex's massive axe was another matter; even the Overlord found it threatening enough that he was forced to twist his body in mid-air to avoid it.
And so, a momentary opening was created.
In that instant, the boy's blue eyes flashed as he once again gathered an immense electrical charge in his hand.
‘...You monster!’
An opening.
When facing the Overlord Maltiel, one always had to be wary of openings. Any weakness he showed was highly likely to be a deception meant to lure his opponent into carelessness.
But the opening he revealed this time was genuine.
It was because Maltiel had become so fixated on the thought of killing the boy that his vision had narrowed.
The boy's potential was so boundless that he had become unconsciously excited by it.
The tension of battle, felt for the first time in a long while, had narrowed his focus, preventing him from noticing that Rex was about to hurl that giant axe at him.
He had managed to react just in the nick of time, but his center of gravity was thrown off, and he was left without any proper defensive magic prepared.
“You like counters, don't you?”
The boy's arrogant voice echoed under the cloudless sky.
“...Excellent!”
The sense of duty that he must kill the boy, and the excitement of enjoying an evenly matched battle for the first time in ages, drove the Overlord to go all out.
‘I must kill him.’
‘This blow will end it.’
‘There's really not much time left until he arrives.’
The thoughts that spurred him on.
Although he didn't let out a thunderous roar, Maltiel's attack contained the same 'desperation' as the humans he had killed up until now.
And the more desperate the attack, the more severe the shock when it is countered.
“Release.”
The massive sphere of electricity gathered in the boy's hand compressed into a tiny, single point.
The sphere of energy, containing millions of volts, vibrated violently as if on the verge of exploding. The boy lightly sent the sphere flying toward the chest of the Mazoku who had charged right up to him.
For a moment, light flooded the pitch-black sky.
A massive bolt of lightning suddenly struck from the clear sky. Blinding flashes of light erupted from all directions.
The boy gathered all his remaining mana and focused it into that single point.
In the game, an ordinary NPC mage's mana stat was usually no more than 8 or 9. Even for a named mage, it was rare for their mana to exceed a level of 13 or 14.
But the boy's mana stat was nearly 20.
Stamina, Strength, Agility. Luck.
A natural talent obtained in exchange for all of those.
And now, the crystallization of mana that had steadily accumulated without leakage for three days inside the body of a boy with such an absurd mana stat... had transformed into a pure white light, gathered at his fingertip.
Even for an Overlord, if he took this blow head-on, his entire body would undoubtedly turn to white ash.
...If he took it head-on, that is.
The boy's attack ended up only scorching the Overlord's right upper body and his wing.
Just before the magic erupted from the boy's fingertips, the Overlord had seen the gesture and performed an acrobatic feat, twisting his body once more in mid-air.
It was practically a point-blank shot, but the counter punch containing all the boy's mana had missed.
This was the result of the blessed monster, the Overlord, using his superior kinetic vision to perceive the movement of the boy's shoulder, eyes, and fingers, recognizing the attack's trajectory, and perfectly predicting its timing.
However, the boy's eyes and hands failed to even register the fact that the Overlord had twisted his body again in mid-air.
In complete contrast to his divinely blessed magical talent, the boy's physical abilities, like his kinetic vision and reaction speed, were as good as cursed by the gods.
As a result, the desperate blow that contained the boy's all ended up exploding in the empty air, having inflicted only minor damage on the Overlord.
Thunder crashed, and a massive flash of light covered the sky.
Everything below was engulfed in flames, and the world flickered between darkness and light.
“Fuck, I should've put one more point into Agility...”
With those words, the boy lost consciousness.
The Overlord reached out with his remaining left arm and gripped the boy's neck.
It was a thin and fragile neck, like a newly grown tree branch.
There was no time to hesitate.
He seemed to have lost consciousness due to the side effects of unleashing such a massive amount of mana in an instant, but there was no telling when this monster might open his eyes and come for his life again.
The moment the Overlord tightened his grip, intending to break the boy's neck...
“That's far enough.”
The voice everyone had been waiting for echoed softly across the battlefield.