Chapter 26
The surroundings were swallowed by darkness.
When even the indoor lights vanished, Lee Seo-ah flinched and trembled. "G-Gobra, sir."
"It is all right."
Gobra extended his empty hand down at an angle and unfurled it. The seam beneath his wrist armor opened a fraction, spilling out a bright light.
12th Circle Guardian Magic: Choir of the World Tree
The magic scroll the Master had bought from a shop and handed over to Gobra was now activated.
Pale green leaves began to circle around Lee Seo-ah like translucent glass. Glowing like fireflies in the midnight dark, they carried the fresh scent of grass and soothed the girl’s uneasy mind and body.
A minimal safeguard. The Master had surely prepared something for Lee Seo-ah too, but Gobra did not trust him, and so this was better. At the very least, it put his mind at ease.
I will not allow even the slightest approach.
The darkness settled thickly, but to Gobra it was as clear as broad daylight. Yellow eyes beneath his helmet fixed coldly on the black, unidentified human.
At first glance it resembled a doppelganger, but Gobra’s long instincts whispered otherwise. That thing was human.
It was the first time since coming to this strange and interesting world that he had faced a human with such open hostility. Still, that was only natural. Just as not all goblins were the same, not all humans could be like Lee Seo-ah.
Nothing changed. As it had so many times in the past, all he had to do was eliminate the one standing before him as an enemy. That was all.
With his stray thoughts cleared away, Gobra let the greatsword slung over his shoulder drop downward. At that instant, something burst up from the floor.
A faceless black human form, its arms wrapped in sharply honed blades, lunged for Lee Seo-ah. Gobra twisted his waist, stepping back half a pace as he swept his sword horizontally.
The instant the blue sword light struck, the black figure exploded with a dull pop. Its remains scattered like filth, only to gather again and recover almost at once.
Gobra poured in even more mana. The blue sword light deepened, growing larger and denser. He twisted the arm he had extended, and when the blade fell vertically like a guillotine, the recovered black human split apart and vanished in a single stroke.
That took one second.
"Kyaa!"
Only after hearing something happen beside her did Lee Seo-ah realize it and collapse backward with a short scream, startled out of her wits.
He wanted to reassure her that it was fine, but it was not over yet. Black humans rose one after another from every direction and charged.
Tsking under his breath, Gobra stepped forward and swung his sword horizontally. A blue slash shot out in a huge semicircle and savagely cut through the enemies at the waist.
The impact rang out with a messy, hideous sound, like a swarm of caterpillars being crushed underfoot.
"Goreuk."
He turned his head slightly. A sharp spike of metal skimmed perilously past the side of his helmet. A black human had burst from a wall to attack.
He poured mana into his empty hand and shaped it. The extended sugang pierced through the thing’s chest and blew it apart.
Golden light flashed brilliantly within the helmet.
These black humans had no presence. No killing intent. Unless he read the slightest current of displaced air from their movements and reacted in time, even locating them was difficult.
More than that, one cut was enough to tell him instinctively: these things could not be erased with mere sword force. Even sword light could not completely destroy them unless he poured in twice his usual amount of mana.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The unpleasant noises never ceased.
These things were attacking Gobra, but their true target was Lee Seo-ah. Gobra stood guard at the child’s side, killing the black humans as they swarmed him like insects.
Not once had they managed to lay a hand on the barrier protecting Lee Seo-ah.
Still, Gobra narrowed his eyes and calmly assessed the battle.
This will not do.
They were easy enough to deal with, since they had no real finesse, but it was a pointless war of attrition. Gobra did not have mana to burn like the Master, who seemed to have it spilling out of his ears.
Crushing enemies with brute force or fighting through bizarre improvisation was not Gobra’s way.
Change the battlefield.
He kept moving, swinging his greatsword as smoothly as flowing water. The black humans came in waves, but he butchered them one after another.
"Goreuk."
When yellow light flashed from outside the helmet, Gobra drove his right foot heavily into the ground.
Rumble.
The black tide surging toward him hesitated for a moment, shoved back by the fierce wave of mana.
Seizing that opening, Gobra drew in a mouthful of breath and concentrated. Friction of mana. The vibrations it produced. The compression that followed. He filtered out every impurity soaked into the mana.
Mind, spirit, body. He gathered them all into a single point.
Whirr--
The blue sword light clinging to the greatsword turned white. The air held its breath, swallowing every sound.
Under a silence where time itself seemed to stop, Gobra swung his sword calmly. Sideways. In a circle.
A technique created to kill his Master, reached only after ages of effort. Born from a bizarre delusion, it even severed curses themselves.
The Master had named it:
White Light.
Kiiiiiiing--!!
A vast and dazzling wave of light burst from Gobra’s center and illuminated the world swallowed by darkness.
＊＊＊
"No, no, no, nooooo!! What is that? What is that thing supposed to be?!"
Delta screamed at the top of his lungs, clutching his head with both hands. He had been told that all he had to do was take one little girl away, an ordinary civilian who didn’t even know mana existed. Delta, who had taken the job, had been delighted at what he thought was an easy victory.
But what was that? What in the world was happening?
Unable to believe what he was seeing, Delta kept rubbing at his eye sockets. No, he had not seen wrong. It was not a dream. The subspace woven together by his trait Shadow was being torn apart and erased in one fell swoop.
This was reality.
As the subspace vanished completely, what remained was a small knight holding a sacred greatsword. The sight of that heavy, overwhelming presence made Delta’s teeth chatter.
"You said it was just a familiar! You said it was a goblin! It isn’t! It isn’t!!"
The intelligence gathered by the Alliance was nothing like this. That was not some ordinary goblin anyone might see outside. It was something wearing a goblin’s skin.
Was it the strongest swordsman on the continent of Ragnarok Delta had seen in that world? Some great archmage of the tower who had broken through the 12th Circle? Compared to the thing before him, they were all ordinary men.
Those people might have been able to stand against Delta’s Shadow, but they could never have erased it completely in an instant like this.
Then was it some kind of advanced holy art?
Delta shook his head.
There was no distinct holy feeling in the white wave circling the small knight. Instead, it was an aura that felt horribly familiar to Delta.
That was mana.
Mana of such absurd purity that he had never even imagined it could exist. It moved on its own, as though it possessed will, drifting gently around the girl who was its target.
Even while looking at it, he still could not believe it. Could that thing, that monstrous thing, truly be called mana?
"Goreuk. You seem to have many thoughts."
"...!?"
At the voice so close beside him, Delta let out a soundless scream and recoiled. He had only looked away for a moment, but somehow the knight was already standing serenely in the air, his red cloak billowing.
Backed by moonlight, the knight’s eyes gleamed like those of a beast. When had he...? And he had not used flight magic like Delta either.
Looking more closely, Delta saw a very thin, tiny mass of mana gathered beneath the knight’s feet. He was standing atop it.
Insane physical ability and insane mana control. Delta, already shaken to the core, was now even more horrified.
No. No, this is wrong.
His Shadow was invincible at night. Only high-tier holy arts on the level of a cardinal could do it harm, and even then the damage would be slight, recovering almost immediately.
If someone were properly trapped inside the subspace woven from that Shadow, no one could escape. That had always been true, and he had believed it.
But that rock-solid belief had just been shattered. The knight before him was beyond what Delta could handle.
Go back first.
He had to report it. The existence of this knight. And then they would need to devise a countermeasure.
Swallowing dryly, Delta began to turn away, only to hear the knight’s low voice ring out.
"Trying to run?"
"Sorry, but that won’t be possible."
"Hieek?!"
As the greatsword in those two hands struck a point in the air, the white wave spreading from the knight rippled outward like surging water.
The air grew heavy, and the mana composing the flight spell was crushed in an instant.
"Aaaagh!!"
As the knight coldly looked down at Delta falling toward the ground, he declared like a judge handing down sentence:
"Gobra does not leave enemies alive."
As though to say he had never once done otherwise, the knight straightened his greatsword.
And then, a radiant white sword flash traced a long tail as it came down like a meteor.
＊＊＊
Kwaaaaaang!!!
A massive explosion erupted in the middle of the city. Even with an enemy right in front of him, Kim Su-hyun had no choice but to turn his head.
The remnants of mana spread from far away made his breath catch in his throat.
What the hell was that?!
"My, my. That’s where Delta went, wasn’t it?"
"...Epsilon. Delta’s reply has been cut off."
"What? Really?"
"It seems our plan has run into trouble."
At the quiet exchange of voices, Kim Su-hyun turned his head again.
There were ruined buildings and fires blazing everywhere. Monster corpses that should never have been within the city. And in the choking smoke, countless Hunters and Guardians lay dead or badly wounded.
The only people still standing were Kim Su-hyun and a few high-level returnees.
Even now, fierce battles raged all over the city amid screams and chaos. All of it had happened because the villains of the Alliance had launched a surprise attack on the city.
They had already identified the threat and prepared thoroughly, but the Alliance’s forces, which had disappeared years ago, were far beyond what they had been back then.
This was the result.
"What exactly are you plotting?"
The sharp-eyed glare behind his cracked lenses burned with fury. At Kim Su-hyun’s shout, the culprits behind all this devastation reacted.
A colorfully dressed male and female clown turned toward him, both wearing ridiculous masks.
"Kim Su-hyun. Getting older, and your brain’s already gone?"
"Our goal has always been the same."
"You still going to spout that nonsense...?"
Grinding his teeth, Kim Su-hyun glared at the two villains of the Alliance. Unlike ordinary villains, those two had acted with a single purpose from the moment they first revealed themselves.
And that purpose was something so empty and absurd that Kim Su-hyun could not begin to understand it.
"Nonsense? Watch your mouth."
"That’s right. The Demon King definitely exists."
"For the sake of His descent,"
"we’ll do anything."
Crazy bastards.
Kim Su-hyun swallowed his curse and twisted his face. The Demon King? That thing from fairy tales? The one even in Ragnarok was treated as a legend?
It was, quite literally, nothing but illusion and fiction. No one who had gone to Ragnarok had ever found even a trace of the Demon King, let alone proof of its existence.
They believe in an existence even Guardian-nim said does not exist. Bastards have lost their minds.
Shin Hyun-ah, the hero forcibly raised in preparation for the someday-appearing Demon King, had said she never even caught sight of its shadow before returning.
The Demon King was merely a deterrent, a tool to inflate the strength of a group. That had been true in every era of Ragnarok that had ever been reported.
And yet here stood madmen who revered such a thing.
Worse, they were strong.
Kim Su-hyun lifted his head. In the dim night sky, clusters of golden light flashed and blinked.
Sharp sonic booms rang out dozens of times, and shattered fragments of mana fell like the Milky Way, breaking apart as they dropped.
Guardian-nim!
Shin Hyun-ah’s five bodies were engaged in a fierce battle against three villains of the Alliance. In practical terms, it was a hopeless one-versus-three fight.
He wanted to rush over and help her immediately, but the two clowns blocking his path kept him rooted in place.
"Zeta. Has Delta really not replied?"
"He hasn’t."
"Hmm. What should we do? We still haven’t heard from Gamma, have we?"
"Correct. But that side is running much later than expected too. It may not be that communication has been cut off, but we have to assume something has gone wrong."
"Gamma? How unusual."
"We withdraw for now. We have to go back and figure out what happened."
"Agreed. I was getting tired of this anyway."
Withdraw? After barging in uninvited and leaving this carnage behind?
"You think I’ll let you do that!"
Kim Su-hyun shouted as he thrust both hands forward. Magic circles, ringed around each finger like bracelets, spun at high speed and manipulated the space surrounding the two clowns. A spell of twisting, refracting confinement: spatial separation.
"Pfft. What are you looking at? That’s just our afterimage~"
The two clowns he thought he had trapped scattered like illusions.
Before he knew it, they had reappeared far above him, laughing at Kim Su-hyun.
"You’d need at least the 12th Circle to tell my illusion magic apart."
"Enough playing around. I sent the signal to the three dealing with Shin Hyun-ah. It’s time to go."
"Got it! Oh, but since we’re just leaving, shouldn’t we give them a little present first?"
Epsilon flapped his oversized sleeves and spun in place. Black beads spilled out in a heap from inside them and poured downward.
"Damn it! That again!"
The falling black beads turned white.
And then, with a burst of light, something surged out in a flood.
"How in the world...!"
Their identity was none other than the monsters from beyond the Wall.
Since the Wall had been designed and built, those monsters had been denied entry, but now their terror was once again sweeping over humanity.
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