Chapter 94
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 94
Chapter Title: Overload
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High Overlord Samael.
A new variable had appeared on a battlefield where a single moment's decision determined everything.
As if to give him no time to think, the monster raised a finger toward Rex, who was slumped on the ground.
Rex immediately blew the horn in his hand, and soon, white bones burst forth, tearing through the ground and the air.
Several slender finger bones latched onto Samael's arm.
New bones attached to the old, and in an instant, they formed a massive skeleton soldier over three meters tall.
The soldier grabbed the High Overlord's arm and lifted it upward. The jet-black light that had begun to gather at the High Overlord's fingertip erupted high into the sky. A large hole was torn in the dark clouds, and for a brief moment, a patch of blue sky was visible through the gap.
*Thud!*
Samael struck the giant skeleton soldier's ribcage with his other fist. The ribs shattered into dozens of pieces, like buckshot from a shotgun.
“...!”
The fragmented bones scraped against the exposed bedrock and flew high into the air.
*Bwoooo!*
Rex stared at Samael and blew the horn once more, louder this time. He had no axe in his hand, and his legs were broken.
The enemy before him was not someone he could face bare-handed.
*‘...This is no time to be tied down by a creature like this.’*
Rex left High Overlord Samael to the legion of skeletons crawling out from the fissures and pushed himself up, planting his two broken legs on the ground.
He glanced up at the sky for a moment.
Looking away with a High Overlord right in front of him was not a wise choice, but he couldn't help it.
“...Dammit.”
And then Rex saw it.
The sight of bright red blood drawing a thin, long line across the black sky. The image of Maltiel's jet-black claws pulling that red thread from the boy's body.
*‘...Blood.’*
At the same time, Rex's large frame froze instantly.
*‘Where was he hit? The neck? The cheek? Dammit, the wound is hidden from view. Is it deep? Poison? Maltiel could have injected poison in that brief moment.’*
Defeat.
For a moment, that word flashed through the mind of the valiant warrior who had burned with fighting spirit, undeterred even by his broken legs.
*‘...I should have stopped him from going after Maltiel in the first place.’*
Regret boiled up from within his chest.
*‘I made the wrong decision. I knew the Overlord was too much for Lord Bin, so why didn't I stop him? I should have tried harder to dissuade the General. If it had only been the soldiers, the Overlord wouldn't have been so aggressive.’*
The possibility of a different choice tormented him, too late.
*‘...Was it for revenge? Did I let personal feelings interfere with the mission? Did I really make such an idiotic mistake?’*
Soon, anger at himself pushed aside the regret and took root in his heart.
*‘Is the future of the Allied Forces going to end like this? How long will it take for another talent like him to be born? No... is it even possible for someone with Lord Bin's talent to ever be born again?’*
In the next moment, fear and worry for the future were layered over his self-directed anger.
“You're lost in thought.”
Swept up in a wave of countless emotions, Rex failed to even notice the High Overlord approaching from right behind him.
“...Dammit!”
By the time Rex came to his senses, it was far too late.
Samael's fist pierced through Rex's abdomen.
Rex's horn shattered into pieces.
***
About three seconds before a large hole was torn through Rex's body.
“I've wasted enough time on useless things.”
Maltiel, having summoned Samael, withdrew the hand he had pointed at Rex and swung it toward the boy.
“Push him back.”
The boy was once again able to unleash his full power from his fingertips. As slow as the boy's reaction speed was, he wasn't about to stand by and watch while Maltiel was distracted summoning Samael.
At the boy's command, the dark clouds let out another cry. White lightning enveloped the boy's back, then traveled down his arm and gathered at his fingertips.
Of course, Maltiel was well aware that the boy would have no trouble reacting to his attack.
*Whoosh—!*
Maltiel twisted his body in mid-air, dodging the lightning that erupted from the boy's fingertips.
The movement of the arm, the direction of the fingertips, the balance of the body, and the faint twitch of facial muscles. There were countless clues for Maltiel to predict the trajectory of the boy's attack.
No matter how much of a genius mage he was, the boy lacked experience and physical ability.
In the end, this was a battle Maltiel was destined to win. What good was unleashing powerful magic if the attacks never landed?
“Now, what have you prepared next?! Is this all you've got?”
Having narrowly dodged the attack, Maltiel laughed loudly and extended his sharp claws.
The reaper's scythe descended upon the boy's shoulder once more.
A flash of his life filled the boy's dark vision.
A chilling sensation, like frost settling on his back, descended upon him, and just as everything seemed to be over...
“Overload.”
The boy's lips barely managed to utter the word.
*‘Too late to shoot lightning. My claws have already touched your skin.’*
Maltiel's jet-black claws scraped the boy's skin. Blood vessels tore, and red blood gushed out.
The outcome was decided. No matter how powerful a spell the boy used to incinerate Maltiel, he couldn't stop the hand that was now tearing into his skin.
*‘I've won...’*
*Whoosh—!*
The next moment, Maltiel's fingertips sliced through empty air.
“...Huh.”
Maltiel's claws had clearly reached the boy's neck.
And at that moment, the battle was as good as over.
The boy's body, unlike his superior magical talent, was pathetically fragile, whereas Maltiel's movements were so swift that even the continent's most elite soldiers couldn't keep up.
Reaction speed, stamina, strength—the boy's body had nothing to boast of, and Maltiel was well aware of his fragility.
That was why Maltiel was certain of his victory the moment his claws touched the boy's neck. It was a simple, insignificant thrust, but the boy had no way to avoid it.
...No, he had thought there was no way to avoid it.
“...”
Maltiel's claws merely grazed the boy's skin, failing to inflict any further injury.
The boy had jerked his neck back with the swiftness of a wild animal, and Maltiel's claws flung the red blood on their tips beyond the dark clouds.
In that instant, bewilderment filled the mind of the Overlord, the master of reason and cunning.
*‘Bin's physical abilities are beyond subpar. Even calling them pathetic would be a compliment. I know this well from our battle in the forest that night.’*
Yet, even amidst his confusion, his thoughts raced.
*‘His muscle mass and cardiopulmonary function tell the whole story. No matter how carelessly I struck, the probability of him dodging it was practically zero.’*
Dodging Maltiel's attack.
In truth, there were more people in the world capable of making that sentence a reality than one might think.
The Sword Saint, of course, could do it, as could the human general in his party who handled assassination and reconnaissance, and the elven general in charge of sniping.
Even soldiers who weren't general-class but were reasonably skilled could pull it off a few times.
It wasn't an attack Maltiel had put his all into; it wasn't particularly fast, and the angle was such that it could be dodged with a slight turn of the head.
“Ha.”
Nevertheless, Maltiel couldn't stop the bewilderment from running rampant in his mind.
Because the one who had dodged his attack was none other than 'Bin'.
After the bewilderment washed over his mind like a tsunami, a sense of strangeness caressed his hands and feet.
Maltiel struggled to find the source of this sensation that enveloped his entire body, and in his focus, he failed to hear the dark clouds roaring noisily above his head.
*‘It wasn't so much that he dodged... it feels more like he was made to dodge. It wasn't a sense of him acting proactively.’*
The sound of a spark suddenly erupting from within the boy's body. The electric current coiling around his entire frame.
*‘His body temperature shot up. Something, something is happening inside him right now.’*
Lightning, electricity, current.
*‘Current...?’*
Words and phrases chaotically flashed through the Overlord's mind.
*‘The scorching body temperature, the faint crackle of lightning still audible from within his body.’*
Soon, a possibility emerged in the mind of this Overlord, who was thoroughly seasoned in war and battle.
“You've tampered with your bio-electricity.”
Human muscles move in response to bio-electrical currents managed by the brain or spinal cord.
Most living beings analyze external stimuli through one of the five senses, converting it into an electrical signal. This signal is then analyzed by the brain or spinal cord. Based on this analysis, a command is then sent to the muscles.
When a trained boxer takes a punch to the ribs, the pain generated in the ribs is the 'stimulus'. Based on that stimulus, the brain sends out an electrical signal as a 'command', such as 'endure' or 'don't move'.
The speed varies greatly depending on a person's talent and tireless effort, but for most humans, it takes a minimum of 0.1 seconds for a 'stimulus' to be transmitted to the brain and for a corresponding 'command' to be issued.
0.1 seconds.
A length of time that is nothing to some, but to elite soldiers who constantly walk the line between life and death, it was an incredibly precious and crucial interval.
That brief instant it took for the bio-electrical current to travel through nerve cells, pass through the brain, and return was more than enough to separate the victor from the vanquished.
That is why the boy thought.
Let's just get rid of this short 0.1-second delay.
His movements were already sluggish enough; he didn't have time to wait for his brain's judgment for every little thing.
A daring idea that ordinary humans couldn't even imagine, something that even the 9th-circle lightning mages of the previous generation, hailed as the pinnacle of their art, had never attempted.
The boy had decided to tamper with the very mechanism of the bio-electricity that governed his body.
*‘If an object approaching at a certain speed or faster touches the skin, all the muscles in the body will immediately move to avoid that stimulus.’*
The 'stimulus' current, which should have traveled to the brain or spinal cord, was instead reborn as a 'command' current by the boy's magic, right at the point where the stimulus originated.
The message delivered to the muscles by this newborn 'command' current was simple.
[Contract. Now.]
Bypassing the brain made a more detailed and precise command impossible.
*‘For now, this is enough.’*
Developed by a frail boy whose strength and endurance fell short of even an average person's.
A method that raised his reaction speed alone to a level that far transcended the principles of ordinary 'living beings'.
A dangerous shortcut.
“Make one small mistake, and all your nerves will burn out.”
The boy's dangerous shortcut was akin to a kind of 'illegal tuning'.
It was the same as tearing apart the insides of the robustly built 'human' organism and strapping on custom-made engines to suit the user's taste.
It would be stranger if problems *didn't* arise.
A single error would cause the boy's body to move erratically, and in the worst-case scenario, his neural circuits could be destroyed, leaving him crippled.
“So?”
The boy said, stretching his hand above his head. His face was filled with nothing but cold fury and determination.
Compared to the possibility of letting the Overlord before him escape, the fear of becoming a cripple was nothing to him.
“I just need it to work without any problems for today.”
For this 'what if' moment, the boy had saved up his mana for nearly 30 days, using no magic at all.
To maintain peak condition, he had focused solely on resting for three days before the decisive battle, and the day before, he had even borrowed a private tent to spend the entire day in meditation.
The highly concentrated 'Blooming', activated by compressing an enormous amount of mana.
A delicate yet reckless feat, usable only in the extreme state of awakening brought on by that 'Blooming'.
This was the boy's own original and reckless masterstroke, one that no one else in the world could imitate.
“How many more times can you react to my attacks? Three, maybe? Five if you're lucky. It's only a matter of time before something goes wrong!”
Before long, the boy's fingertips, reaching high toward the clouds, finally touched the storm clouds that were brimming with lightning.
“I just have to kill you before any problems arise. A simple and certain solution.”
The next moment, the dense, thick cumulonimbus cloud that had settled over the battlefield vanished. The blue sky once again looked down upon the battlefield, and in the boy's hand was a mass of intense light, so brilliant that one could not even look at it directly.
“Unleash.”
The white light that erupted 2,000 meters above did not branch out into countless tendrils like other lightning bolts. A single, thick bolt shot straight toward its target.
And that target, of course, was the Overlord Maltiel.