Chapter 145
Chapter 145
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 145
Chapter Title: Erased Name (8)
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The thing the armored freak had called the "forest's abyss"—Galen had no idea what it really was, but he understood it to be something like a deadly poison. It was just like an assassin's strike.
You wouldn't even realize you'd been poisoned until it started destroying your body from the inside.
It wasn't as if Galen was just too dull to notice. Even priests who could rival warriors in sensory acuity through the Miracle of Fortified Flesh hadn't detected the poison mist at all, mistaking it for a plague.
It didn't kill on contact outright, so its lethality was just a touch weaker, but its stealth was unparalleled.
At least after acquiring Annihilation Mist, a new sense had awakened, barely allowing him to perceive the forest's abyss.
But with his fledgling grasp of that sense, all he could manage was to barely detect the poison mist infiltrating his own body.
That was why it had taken him so long to notice.
"...Huh?"
"What's wrong?"
"Brother, is the enemy's personal realm still unstable?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. It's getting worse by the minute. It'll probably go completely haywire soon, right?"
"Is that it...? No, not quite. It feels a bit different..."
"What does?"
"On top of what we've been sensing, there's this other unpleasant feeling creeping in. It's fuzzy for me too, but..."
Lilia, gifted with innate special senses, had picked up on something faint first. But since it was just a hunch, she couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was.
Still, Galen knew full well how sharp her instincts were, so he didn't dismiss her words. He carefully scanned his senses again—and just barely caught it.
Of course, by then it was already too late.
By the time his pitiful Annihilation Mist sense finally detected the forest's abyss after straining for dear life, the poison mist had already ridden the wind and was on the verge of entering Galen's lungs.
In that split-second moment, manipulating his body to halt his breathing was a feat no mage could pull off.
"Cough, cough!"
She was right beside him, so naturally she was affected too. Lilia inhaled and immediately broke into violent coughs.
Priests weren't immune to poison. They could simply purge most toxins with the Miracle of Purification, and for those that resisted, bolster it with the Miracles of Vitality and Healing to endure with their bodies.
A priest of Lilia's caliber had an immense reservoir of holy power within her, enough to counter even the deadliest poisons the instant they entered.
Even so, Lilia experienced a momentary dizziness. The poison mist was monstrously potent.
She spat out black blood laced with the poison mist her holy power had forcefully expelled, then whipped her head away.
If a high bishop like her was faring this poorly—
"Guhk!"
"Brother!"
Lilia hurriedly caught Galen as he clutched his chest, vomiting blood and collapsing.
Her judgment was instantaneous. She scooped him up by the waist and leaped backward.
In a single bound, she covered dozens of paces, putting distance between them. Propping Galen up at an angle, she unleashed a torrent of holy power.
"Cough, cough!"
Galen kept vomiting blood. He was taller than her, and with Lilia slightly crouched and holding him from the front, he was slumped against her shoulder. Every time the blood refluxed, it stained the pristine white shoulder and back of her priestly robes a dark crimson.
"Brother! Stay with me! Brother!"
Lilia paid no mind to the clothes. She kept pouring holy power into him while desperately calling his name. If he lost consciousness now, he might never wake again.
Even after multiple treatments from Hamel, the residual poison mist had clung tenaciously to Galen.
But this new poison mist was incomparably vicious.
Even sturdy warriors or priests would be in mortal danger, while mages or civilians would perish in seconds.
"Cough, guhk, cough."
Fortunately, Lilia's response was swift and overwhelming. Galen barely clung to consciousness.
In the meantime, he rallied what little recovered mana he had from Annihilation Mist, mustering every drop to block the poison from rising past his throat. As long as his mind was intact, he could cast spells.
"Li, Lilia."
"Don't talk!"
"I'm... cough! Fine."
He vomited another gush of blood, which oddly eased the pressure in his chest. Ignoring her protests, Galen pressed on.
"That weird feeling you mentioned earlier... the new one. That was the poison mist, right?"
"Seems like it."
Galen's mind raced at full throttle. Extreme focus shoved the pain aside for the moment.
In the slowed time of accelerated thought, the pieces connected one by one.
She had been shocked when she heard he'd been poisoned. It meant poison hadn't even crossed her mind.
Yet the armored freak had been spewing poison into the air from the start. That's why Galen had been poisoned, why the townsfolk collapsed, and why Hamel had endured the mist to treat them.
Even Lilia, with her special senses, hadn't felt the poison's encroachment.
It had to be because of what happened before she arrived—
'Fire.'
Galen found the answer and drew up his mana.
The star's power flowing from his bracelet mingled evenly with the mana of Illusory Explosive Flame.
Roarrrrr!
Flames erupted before Galen's eyes and spread with ferocious momentum. He focused solely on the fire, holding back any explosions.
As he charged forward, the blaze expanded sideways too. The flames swirled like waves, growing in size.
Startled by the sudden brightness, Lilia glanced back. Galen twisted with her and whispered with a grin.
"Mind supporting me from the side? I need to see to set it ablaze."
"Ah, sure!"
Lilia quickly adjusted her stance. From facing him while propping him up, she slung his arm over her shoulder like comrades-in-arms. Now they both faced the same direction.
"Feeling... a bit alive now."
"Don't push yourself."
"Even if I wanted to move, you're holding me tight."
"Then don't move, seriously."
He had enough energy for banter now. Thanks to Lilia's real-time holy power infusion.
Roarrrrr!
Meanwhile, the flames had engulfed the earthen mound in a full dome, blazing fiercely. It looked like a colossal pyre. A spectacular sight.
The Burtane Family's ancestral Illusory Explosive Flame specialized in explosions, but after clashing with Vantis—who wielded fire magic—he had refined it, gaining the ability to directly manipulate flames like this. Perfect for this situation.
Galen murmured softly.
"While it was prepping that massive dirt golem, I set fires around to blind it. Looks like that burned away all the ambient poison mist back then."
"Come to think of it, they cremate bodies and burn belongings to halt plagues. Poisons are often vulnerable to fire."
"It carried deadly poison in its body, enough to taint everything just by breathing... So maybe all that poison burst out at once."
"Even buried in that grave, for the poison to seep out this potent... Explains the devastation from the great plague. But how did it even survive harboring that much venom?"
"Beats me. Even suppressing it with mana has limits, right? Wait, hold on?"
Galen paused mid-sentence.
He had idly assumed the armored freak's innards exploded under the pressure, releasing the poison all at once.
"Come to think of it... this thing isn't dead yet?"
Its personal realm lingered unstably.
The moment Galen realized this anew—
Fssshhhh!
He felt the mana of Illusory Explosive Flame being viciously shredded.
Part of the flames blanketing the mound vanished outright.
At the same time, the spirit still crouched atop the mound began to lose form.
"Damn it all."
"There's a fog-like mist over the grave!"
"That's its magic."
The mound was just a massive pile of dirt. Not an airtight fortress.
Small mercies: the armored freak itself hadn't broken free. But the forest's abyss and death fog had finally wormed through the gaps.
Gold-rank Illusory Explosive Flame and Spirit Creation offered scant resistance to the gem-rank fog.
Galen frantically restored the vanished flames to push back the fog while issuing orders to the spirit.
Shwoooo!
The cat-like form crumpled and simplified rapidly. Soon, the spirit morphed into something like an enormous upside-down bowl.
A massive lid of thick water enveloped the entire grave.
The death fog kept boring through the dirt grains, gnawing relentlessly at the spirit's body. Galen forcibly held its shape with Water Flow Manipulation.
At a glance, it resembled the scene before the armored freak was buried.
The fog trying to spread versus the waves holding it back.
"Th-this..."
But closer inspection revealed the difference.
The mana of Water Flow Manipulation and the fog's mana were in equal deadlock, same as before.
Yet the condensed poison mist mingled with the fog was melting the spirit's watery body.
"Does that even make sense?!"
Lilia cried out in shock. Poison in water should just make a toxic brew. Why was the water itself evaporating?
"The poison mist and fog must be interacting somehow... No, worse—this is bad..."
Galen gritted his teeth.
Fog alone, he could contain with Water Flow Manipulation. Poison mist alone, burn with Illusory Explosive Flame.
But mixed together? No counter. You couldn't mix water and fire.
The spirit-lid was thinning as it melted. He couldn't expand the already colossal spirit indefinitely.
If the lid broke and that condensed poison scattered everywhere, Cairoan would become a ghost town.
"What happened?!"
Hamel came running. He'd gone back to command the perimeter outside the sealed zone, spotted the massive pyre, and rushed over in alarm.
"It's making its last stand. One wrong move, and we're all dead."
Galen quickly briefed him. Hamel's face turned ashen.
"A-any way to stop it?"
"Evacuate the townsfolk east as best we can. I'll buy time. If I exhaust its mana sustaining the fog, I can burn the poison."
Of course, no telling when the freak's mana would run dry.
It was squeezing out every drop in desperation, so probably not long—but pure speculation.
No choice but to bet on that uncertainty. Only Galen, at gem rank, could counter gem-rank magic.
Hamel nodded gravely—
"Wait."
Lilia spoke up.
"Here's the gist: if we nullify its magic, we're good. Problem is, we don't know when that'll happen."
"Right."
"Then let me try something. Bishop Hamel, can you handle Brother's treatment for a bit?"
"That much is easy, but what are you—"
Hamel asked. Lilia turned to Galen.
"You said it earlier, Brother. That I always give my all. So I wouldn't regret my choices."
"Ah, yeah."
"Honestly, even if I give my best next time things go wrong, I might still regret it."
She paused, then beamed innocently.
"But if we decide together after talking it over, nothing will go wrong! It's been that way so far, right?"
Having come to utterly trust Galen, she no longer doubted his faith in her.
And that blossomed into unshakeable confidence in herself.
Different from the norm, but absolute faith nonetheless.
Thoom!
Like a heartbeat to a drum, a bizarre vibration emanated from Lilia, spreading outward.
"So it'll be the same now!"
From her flawless faith, the eighth miracle bloomed.