Chapter 303
Chapter 303
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 303
Chapter Title: The Secret of the Abyss (4)
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Amy, her Red Eyes blazing, shouted.
“You bastard! How dare a thief like you use the owner’s property as a barricade? If you’re a mage, fight me head-on! What, are you scared you’ll lose to me?”
“Haha! Why would I bother when our levels are so different? Especially since I know you’re not in your right mind, Armin.”
Arius placed a hand on the statue.
“The rehearsal is over. The reason I waited for you all before the main performance was because I wanted to share this historic moment with everyone. It will be a sight you’ll never see again in your lifetime, so please, enjoy the show.”
He cast Scale Magic: Resizing, and the eight-meter-tall statue of Ataraxia shrank to the size of a chess piece.
As the archangel statue became a figurine, Zion’s eyes lit up.
At that size, it would be easy enough to carry around. He could use Ataraxia anytime, anywhere.
“Hmm, this is quite excellent. Now then…”
“You bastard! That belongs to Shirone! I swear I won’t let you get away with this if you so much as touch it!”
Zion felt like he could fly as he watched Amy seethe with rage.
“Haha! What are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do anyway. Just sit back and watch as Ataraxia becomes mine.”
Arius grabbed the archangel figurine and, with a grunt, heaved his upper body upward.
But for some reason, it didn’t budge.
He strained until his face turned red, but it was no use.
“…”
Arius let go of the figurine and stepped back.
He looked around at the people watching him, then burst into embarrassed laughter.
“Hahahaha!”
Why wasn’t it moving?
Resizing was a magic that reduced the scale of space, so it had nothing to do with mass. Just as a small pebble to a human is a giant boulder to an ant.
‘And yet I can’t lift it. Mass that transcends dimensions? No, there can’t be a dimension that surpasses Scale Magic. Then what’s the problem?’
Unable to watch any longer, Zion pushed Arius aside and took his place.
“Move. Why are you struggling with something like this?”
Arius let Zion try. The kid’s physical strength was no different, but with Armang, he should be able to produce power comparable to Schema.
“Mages, I swear…”
Zion clicked his tongue and bent his waist.
He grabbed the archangel figurine and gripped his wrist with his other hand, and Armang responded instantly.
-Activating strength enhancement system. Increasing metabolic rate. Augmenting muscle fibers. Improving joint flexibility. Reinforcing ligament tensile strength. Recalibrating center of gravity.
“Grrrnnngh!”
As he straightened his back while holding Ataraxia, Zion was surprised by its unexpected weight.
But he, too, was overflowing with power from Armang’s strength enhancement program. He felt like he could move a boulder the size of a house.
Zion straightened his bent knees and pulled his upper body upward.
Finally, the archangel figurine began to lift about a finger’s width off the ground.
“We can’t just stand here! We have to get in there and take it back!”
Amy shouted, but Armin only watched Zion’s movements.
As a Scale Mage himself, he knew. Ataraxia wasn’t unliftable because it was heavy. Some other rule besides mass was clearly at play.
‘What is happening?’
Zion succeeded in lifting Ataraxia to his waist.
“I did it! N-Now… this is mine…!”
At that moment, a metallic shriek, like a scream, rang out, and the surroundings were dyed red. The peaceful temple was instantly transformed into a perilous scene.
The archangel figurine unleashed a shockwave, sending Zion and Arius flying into a wall. In contrast, Armin’s group was unharmed, as their psychic barrier shattered, absorbing the impact.
Zion used Armang’s power to regain his balance.
As his pride was wounded and he was about to rush back to Ataraxia, Arius, leaning against the wall, shouted.
“Don’t! Don’t go near it!”
A magic circle was inscribed on the floor, and a cylindrical curtain of light shot up, protecting the figurine. Then, the ancient language of heaven began to be rapidly inscribed on the curtain’s surface.
“We have to go get Ataraxia back, quickly!”
Reina notched an arrow, preparing to charge. But Armin stretched out an arm, blocking her path.
“Wait! That’s a Sealing Magic Circle.”
If alchemy was the engineering evolution of magic, then the Sealing Magic Circle was its spiritual evolution.
Mages didn’t recognize the dichotomous distinction between good and evil, but the religious world had long used Sealing Magic Circles to imprison countless beings they defined as evil.
Arius, too, realized this was the process of unsealing and grew tense.
‘Why is there a Sealing Magic Circle in Shirone’s consciousness?’
It’s impossible to imprint something into the fetal psyche within the womb without leaving a trace.
Even in the case of possession, there should normally be a statue, like Ataraxia. It was possible this was a mutation that occurred when Shirone was an embryo.
But the probability of a logical construct like a Sealing Magic Circle manifesting in Stage 1 of the psyche was lower than the chance of scattered parts in a whirlwind assembling themselves into a carriage.
The golden ancient words climbing the curtain of light completed their process. As the programming vanished, a sentence appeared in the center of the cylinder.
Arius quickly interpreted the heavenly language.
‘La Hadamah Judran Arab, Ya Ahud Min Al-Foud. O King of Chaos, shatter the wall of boundaries. I don’t know what it is, but I doubt anything cute is coming out. Huh?’
A new phrase was written below the sentence.
A characteristic of a Sealing Magic Circle was that it required the sealer’s signature. It was similar to the incantations of exorcists, like ‘In the name of so-and-so, I command thee.’ This was also proof that Shirone’s security device was an artificial construct.
“What…?”
Armin and Arius, who could both read the ancient language, froze.
As if written by a human hand, the slowly drawn lines of light placed a period next to the designer’s name.
The name of the lost one was inscribed.
McClain Guffin
The Master of the Incarnation (1)
‘No way! No way! No way!’
Arius’s mind raced faster than ever before. It was an emotion composed of 80 percent excitement, 19 percent terror, and 1 percent denial.
The Sealing Magic Circle designed by Guffin was undoubtedly a security measure to prevent the plundering of the fetal psyche. There was no other way to explain why it had remained silent until now.
‘But… why? Just, why?’
Stage 1 was the domain of the genetic level. Could a relic of Guffin’s be hidden in such a place?
Guffin’s work had ended 18 years ago. So when was this Sealing Magic Circle created?
Arius recalled Shirone’s age.
‘Eighteen years old. But which eighteen? Before the Reset? After the Reset?’
There was no way to know. But a thought, like a blind faith, came to Arius.
‘Could it be… at the moment of the Reset?’
The Fissure Field verification experiment proves the discrepancy between time and energy. Although the discrepancy is but a fleeting moment, it causes the universe to experience a fissure.
There was no guarantee Shirone was born from the fissure. There was no plausibility, no evidence to support the fact.
But Arius was seized by a powerful conviction.
If Guffin had truly designed this security measure, no existing mage would be able to disable it.
But why wasn’t it installed in Stage 11, where interference from others is most severe?
‘Because he had no other choice.’
It was installed in a fetal or embryonic state.
‘Does this mean plundering was impossible from the start?’
No diver, not just Arius, could break through Guffin’s Sealing Magic Circle.
But he hadn’t given up hope yet.
‘It all depends on what comes out of there.’
The being trapped in the Sealing Magic Circle poked its head over the magic circle.
It resembled a rhinoceros, its skin a grayish-white. It was covered in bumpy protrusions, so tough that even a sword couldn’t pierce it. It had seven eyes—one in the center and three on each side.
The leg that broke through the Sealing Magic Circle touched the floor.
As the beast pulled its other leg up and extracted its body, the temple floor collapsed, and it tumbled down into the ground below.
Judging its size by its face alone had been a mistake. Its body was a hundred times larger than its face. Its belly was wickedly bloated, and thousands of horns, bent like lightning, were embedded in its back.
It was as if the manifestation of Egoist’s rage from Stage 7 had appeared in its true form.
“Damn it all!”
Arius cursed in annoyance and backed away.
The Demon God Behemoth.
The king of beasts, who had reigned long before the history of mankind.
‘I appreciate antiques, but this is ridiculous. Just how ancient is this geezer?’
Even in heaven, Behemoth was a being that appeared in the myths of creation. Even powerful Maras would have to bow deeply to Behemoth, which was why he was called a Demon God.
Behemoth, awakened from its long slumber, remained still for a moment. Then, it cracked its neck, stretched its body, and looked down at the people with its seven eyes.
“Foolish humans, according to the contract of sealing, I shall annihilate you.”
Having issued the order of extermination, Behemoth caused electricity to form at the tip of each horn on its back.
As thousands of lightning bolts lit up simultaneously, everyone’s face turned pale.
“Dammit! We have to get out.”
Arius opened a Door and escaped immediately.
Zion, on the other hand, looked longingly at the archangel figurine. But the moment his gaze shifted to the electrical power of Behemoth, which seemed ready to incinerate space itself, he let out an involuntary scream and ran for the Door.
“We have to get out, too! Follow me!”
Armin shouted to the two women.
This time, there was no need to think twice.
A Demon God was a Double S-class being by the standards of the magical society. This meant it possessed a power equivalent to 370 Grade 9 combat mages.
In practical terms, it would take more than 20 Grade 6 mages to stand a chance, and that was assuming they knew how to defeat it.
Furthermore, in a real battle, various variables arise depending on traits and combinations, so one needed at least 1.8 times the practical standard of combat power to have a stable chance of subduing it.
In short, a party of this size wouldn’t even be able to scratch it.
Amy and Reina didn’t have time to look back as they threw themselves at the Door, and Armin immediately followed, casting Flicker.
Thousands of lightning bolts intertwined in chains of charge, forming a web-like electric field. The bolts, having surpassed their saturation point, spread out in all directions, searing the space.
The Door, having absorbed the powerful energy, vanished with a pop.
***
Armin’s group was shot out of the Door as if from a cannon. Amy and Reina tumbled across the floor, and only Armin managed to land on his feet.
“Are you alright?”
Amy coughed repeatedly.
“Suddenly, I couldn’t, breathe. Cough!”
The moment they jumped into the Door, a powerful blast of hot air had surged from Shirone’s mental world. If they had been any slower, they would have been roasted by Behemoth’s lightning.
Arius had already fled, and only Zion was left behind. But he, too, seemed to be in a state of confusion, taking no action even after seeing Armin’s group.
Amy looked at Shirone, who was hanging upside down from the spiderweb.
The time field hadn’t been released yet, but he couldn’t last long like this. Eventually, the field would have to be undone, and what would happen next, no one could predict.
“I think his blood vessels have already been cut. What do we do?”
“What did you imprint on Shirone’s consciousness?”
Amy shook her head in despair.
“I couldn’t think of anything. So I just wrote ‘Shirone.’”
“Good. If you couldn’t form a concrete strategy, something abstract is actually more helpful. We can use Shirone’s own consciousness. I’m going to release the time field now. Brace yourselves.”
“B-But…!”
Amy wasn’t mentally prepared.
Now that she had altered the flow of his consciousness, Shirone might instinctively find a solution, but if he failed, his neck would be severed in the next moment.