Chapter 97
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 97
Chapter Title: A Pathetic Excuse
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Maltiel made his choice.
He would ignore the chilling bones crawling up from beneath his feet and the orc charging at him, life on the line.
Maltiel had little intention of leaving this battlefield alive in the first place.
Three Overlords were already dead. It was a foregone conclusion that the tide of war would now turn in the Allied Forces' favor. Even if he survived, he wouldn't be able to change that great current.
Maltiel lacked the power to reverse a flowing river.
But he could at least build a levee to weaken its course.
‘If I just kill Bin, the war will one day return to our hands.’
The river, now flowing fiercely, would eventually lose its strength. When the Sword Saint grew old and died, they could reclaim the advantage.
For Maltiel, that was enough.
It didn't have to be him standing on the quiet plains in fifty or a hundred years.
Maltiel gathered all thirty percent of the mana remaining in his body and condensed it at his fingertips.
The bones climbing up his body applied pressure, trying to turn his fingers in a different direction.
As the slender finger bones pulled at Maltiel’s hand, skeletal soldiers materialized from thin air and threw themselves at him, trying to knock him down.
But an Overlord’s concentration was not so easily broken by such clumsy interference.
Maltiel drew every last drop of mana from his body, compressed it before his finger, and released it.
A pitch-black light engulfed the battlefield.
‘…’
Swallowed by the black light, Maltiel frowned.
An unidentifiable sense of unease had suddenly burrowed deep into his chest.
Bin must have been hit directly by his magic. No matter how much he had pushed his reaction speed beyond the limits of a superhuman, it was nigh impossible to dodge his magic from that distance, in that posture.
The moment Maltiel’s magic touched the boy’s body, everything should have been over.
If Bin had wanted to dodge the attack, he would have needed to predict the timing of Maltiel’s spell and move a step ahead. But what Maltiel had seen in that final moment was the boy standing still as a statue, gathering lightning in his hand.
The white-haired boy had focused all his attention on converting the mana emanating from his hand into lightning, as if he had no intention of dodging.
…Yes. The boy had looked as though he had no intention of dodging.
But that didn't mean he seemed to have given up everything and accepted death. The boy's eyes, as he prepared his magic, had blazed with resolute determination.
“Fifteen seconds.”
The boy’s low voice reached him.
A thin, transparent, sky-blue barrier enveloped the boy, who held a storm in his hand.
“…I bet that you couldn’t deploy a barrier while using another spell.”
After the unease, a slight sense of helplessness washed over Maltiel. He still hadn't figured out the conditions for that barrier, which always protected the boy at the most critical moments.
“My last card didn’t come through.”
Had there been enough time, Maltiel would have surely identified the weakness of ‘Spirit’s Protection’ and exploited it.
But as mentioned several times before, time was not on Maltiel’s side, and he had no leisure to sit around analyzing his opponent’s spells one by one.
“Let’s end this.”
Maltiel urgently tried to move, to escape the boy’s grasp, but the bones wrapped around his entire body hindered his movement.
For a fleeting moment, the Overlord’s body was fixed in place.
As if he couldn't miss this chance, the boy kicked off with his slender legs and rushed toward Maltiel.
It was the first time the boy had ever closed the distance on Maltiel.
It was a dangerous act, but also an extremely cold and calculated judgment.
Maltiel had absorbed his adjutant and been restored to peak physical condition. Although he had exhausted all his mana, his threatening physical abilities remained.
The time Rex’s horn could hold Maltiel in place was, at most, another half-second.
It was far too short a time to prepare a strike powerful enough to incinerate a full-health Overlord without a trace.
‘Blooming is not fundamentally an offensive spell. It’s a type of buff skill that awakens a mage and allows them to combust every last bit of their mana into lightning.’
There are two processes involved in a magical attack.
The first is the process of converting mana within the body into an element, such as fire or lightning.
The second is the process of shaping that elemental power into a specific form.
Blooming merely served as a catalyst, drastically shortening the first process and boosting the mage’s capabilities. Shaping that overflowing power into lightning that strikes from the sky or a current that erupts from one’s fingertips was another matter entirely.
‘Maltiel will only be held in place for half a second at most. There’s not enough time to create an attack powerful enough to incinerate Maltiel’s body, which is practically at full strength.’
That was why the boy ran, reaching his hand toward Maltiel.
Simply to transfer this overflowing power to his opponent, completely and in the shortest time possible.
It was the closest thing to a perfect move the boy could make.
‘He’s coming.’
But from Maltiel’s perspective, it was not an entirely indefensible move.
The boy was fundamentally slow.
Although he had elevated his reaction speed beyond the limits of life through bio-currents, that was a story confined to reaction speed alone.
It took far too long for the boy to run toward Maltiel and extend his hand.
Bin was well aware of this fact. To expect Maltiel not to read his sluggish movements would be more than arrogant; it would be nothing short of unintelligent.
And yet, the boy had judged it ‘didn't matter.’
He had thought that even if Maltiel saw his every move, he couldn't dodge or counterattack while his whole body was bound.
*Zap…!*
Indeed, the boy’s fingers were about to touch Maltiel’s chest.
In that instant, an immense amount of energy, far more than any living being could possibly handle, seeped into Maltiel’s chest where he made contact with the boy, and…
The Overlord’s body tore apart as futilely as a withered leaf.
Blood, bone, flesh, or skin.
Not a single trace that a living being had ever existed remained. Only the faint, hollow sound of a low spark could be heard.
“Not bad.”
Just as a sense of relief that his judgment had been correct began to blossom in the boy’s chest, that loathsome, dreadful voice echoed in his ears once more.
‘…The core.’
In the corner of his vision, the boy spotted a bead, the size of a fingertip, flying away.
Maltiel had readily accepted that his ‘body’ was bound by the bones and couldn't dodge Bin’s attack.
So he had immediately twisted his own muscles and bones to push the core lodged inside him out of his body.
Abandon the body, preserve the core.
The biggest reason Maltiel was able to make such a judgment was the boy’s sluggish movements.
He had had enough time to calmly assess the situation and devise a breakthrough.
He’d had time to calculate the probability of his plan succeeding, and even the leisure to think about what moves to make afterward.
In the end, for the boy to stand on a battlefield where Overlords and generals fought…
“You’re too slow.”
That was always the problem.
“In the end, you are nothing but a pitiful mortal. You can never be perfect. The life forms of today have too many structural flaws. It would be far better to clear them all away and start anew.”
From the core that had escaped Maltiel’s body, bone and flesh began to sprout. A newly growing black arm was leisurely raised, aiming for the boy’s neck.
“You’re right. We can never be perfect.”
The boy answered calmly, watching Maltiel regenerate bone and flesh from the black core.
“Me, and even those incredible generals… in the end, we’re all just little humans.”
*Crunch!*
“That’s why we live by helping one another.”
The sound of rusted, dull steel crushing bone and flesh echoed.
A steel prosthetic arm had pierced through Maltiel’s newly regenerating body and plucked out the core hidden within.
“…What.”
The owner of that prosthetic arm, on which the number 6 was largely inscribed, was Belzark’s son, Rex.
“An orc once told me that all who live on this continent move forward by complementing each other’s shortcomings.”
*Crr-ack…!*
Then came the sound of the orc’s prosthetic arm twisting. Screws popped out, and a long pipe of unknown purpose clattered to the ground.
“Life is about relying on one another. Something you’ll never understand.”
“…A pathetic excuse to hide your imperfection.”
*Shatter!*
As if he was sick and tired of hearing Maltiel’s voice, Rex completely shattered the black sphere within his prosthetic hand.
The chunks of flesh that had been trying to sprout around the core until the very end instantly rotted away, turning to gray ash and disappearing.
“Hah, huff… haah…”
Rex stood without bending his two broken legs. The large hole in his abdomen was infected with poison, turning it a dark black.
Rex’s arm slowly gave way. The heavy steel began to slide from his shoulder, and the prosthetic clattered to the ground.
The sound of tearing steel rang clearly in the boy’s ears. The orc, seemingly without the strength to even lift his head, stared only at the ground.
“…You can rest now.”
The boy spoke quietly, looking at Rex, who had a hole in his abdomen and was gasping for breath as poison spread through his body.
Hearing the general’s command, Rex smiled faintly, as if finally unburdened, and let the strength leave his legs.
It was the eighteenth day since Rex Belzark had arrived in Vellaland.
The fourth Overlord had lost his life.