Chapter 67
Chapter 67
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: Signal Flare
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Seeing the dark metallic surface flying toward his chest, the imp mage let out a shrill scream and deployed his Mana Shield with all his might.
A blue barrier tightly covered the imp's body, and a crude sledgehammer crashed down upon it.
CRASH!
A deafening roar, like a battering ram striking a castle gate, echoed as the blue barrier shattered into pieces.
The imp, having lost all its mana along with the excruciating pain of having its mana core ripped out, spewed blood from its eyes, nose, and mouth.
With a guttural groan, the imp collapsed.
Death by shock from the pain. Instantaneous.
Fwan-fwan swallowed nervously, watching the imp die in a single blow right before his eyes.
‘No, how is this guy human? He's nothing short of a monster. It only makes sense if he has an ogre for an ancestor, right?’
Witnessing Si-woo's might, capable of dispatching a mage of the same level in one hit, Fwan-fwan reflected on his own actions.
He tried to recall if he had ever made a mistake in front of that crazy human.
Meanwhile, Van's face had grown considerably gaunt in a short time.
Even the fur covering his face couldn't hide his pale complexion; it seemed he'd realized that one wrong move could get him killed by Si-woo.
‘Is this the kind of strength you can only get from a physical technique? Damn it, he's more like an orc warrior. How is he a human mage? And an Ogre Weapon on top of that? Ha, it's as if he was raised on ogre's milk instead of his mother's...’
At the same time, he grew curious about what Si-woo's Talent was.
A Talent that mineralizes the skin, making it shine platinum and drastically increasing physical abilities?
He had never heard of or seen such a Talent before.
Leaving the imp mage's death cry behind him, Si-woo now charged toward the elven woman.
Seeing Si-woo charging at her like a stubborn buffalo, the elven woman, horrified, drew her bowstring.
[2nd-Circle Elemental Magic: Wind Kill]
An arrow formed from converging currents of wind flew toward him, but Si-woo swung the Ogre Hammer with a deadpan expression.
The heavy chunk of metal sliced through the air and struck the wind arrow.
As the Wind Kill dissipated like a gentle breeze against an iron wall, Si-woo charged through.
Whoosh!
Witnessing the massive chunk of metal aiming for her head, the elven woman bent backward at the waist.
Startled by the wind pressure from the hammer grazing past her eyes, her nose began to bleed.
Having avoided being turned to pulp by Si-woo thanks to her speed-enhanced agility, the elven woman gritted her teeth in determination.
“Hah!”
Using the recoil from her waist, the elven woman sprang into the air like a coil, somersaulting over Si-woo's head.
Now behind Si-woo, the elven woman took out a white orb from her inventory ring.
‘Hm?’
As a signal from his danger sense sent a sharp tingle through the back of his head, Si-woo's expression hardened.
Was it thanks to his heightened concentration, born from a slight tension?
The elven woman's movement, as she prepared to throw the white orb at him, felt like it was in slow motion.
“Die!”
The white orb exploded before Si-woo's eyes, unleashing the condensed power of wind held within.
BOOM!
The immense wind pressure overturned the ground, sending dirt and dust shooting up like a fountain, and the surrounding trees were snapped like twigs.
This was the power of a magical tool storing a 3rd-Circle elemental magic, a Wind Bomb.
The elven woman laughed triumphantly, as if a ten-year burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
However, her laughter didn't last long.
A black shadow shot out from the dust cloud and struck her in the chest.
It was a surprise attack from Si-woo, who had used Barathrum to deflect the magical tool's power.
Smack!
Sent flying like a ball hit by a baseball bat, the elven woman was embedded in the trunk of a nearby conifer like a dart.
It was a powerful impact that would have shattered the Mana Shield of an ordinary 2nd-Circle mage.
But the elven woman didn't seem to have taken much damage; aside from a look of horror, there was no sign of pain on her face.
It was just that the artifact around her neck, a ‘Shield Doll’ necklace, had shattered in its place.
The elven woman's pale lips trembled.
‘Even though the Shield Doll necklace, which holds a spare Mana Shield, broke, my own Mana Shield still took a hit. This means that if I hadn't had the doll, I would have...’
Seeing Si-woo preparing to attack again, the elven woman sensed her impending death and shouted in a shrill voice.
“Stop! I am Anes, a Noble-born of the Ventus Magic Tower!”
Hearing Anes's words, Si-woo furrowed his brow.
‘Noble-born? Hmm, a blood relative of the Ventus Magic Tower's upper echelons? Well... it doesn't matter. I don't care about the status of a woman who's about to die anyway.’
Perhaps sensing Si-woo's intention to move regardless,
Yahalong raised a hand to stop him.
“Wait! Si-woo, stop!”
Although the Ventus Magic Tower belonged to a different free city, it was inevitable for Noble-born mages, the direct bloodlines of the towers, to have some interaction.
Yahalong had heard Anes's name before.
‘This woman is a blood relative of a Ventus Elder. Killing her now will bring serious repercussions.’
Most Noble-born mages carry an expensive artifact called a Dying Image.
It was an artifact that recorded an image of their killer and transmitted it to their family—a tool for revenge.
Yahalong said to Anes.
“If you're a Noble-born, you must have a Dying Image. Show me.”
Anes turned her head to the side, showing the back of her ear.
Seeing the golden characters engraved behind her ear, Yahalong clicked his tongue.
A crest-type artifact, and an expensive one at that?
This added credibility to Anes's claim of being a Noble-born from the Ventus Magic Tower.
“It seems you really are a Noble-born... but you're the one who attacked first, and now you're begging for your life? You've got some nerve. Aren't you ashamed?”
“Shame or not, my life is precious.”
“Right, *your* life is so precious. I guess your party members' lives weren't. Heh heh, how admirable. You fought alongside them, yet you don't show a hint of mourning.”
Anes replied with a cold smile.
“For a fellow Noble-born, you're acting surprisingly naive. Aren't the underlings we bring along just consumables anyway? You'd have done the same in my position, so let's not pretend otherwise.”
Yahalong, clearly showing his displeasure at Anes's attitude of equating him with herself, changed the subject.
“...So? What do you want? Surely you're not expecting us to let you go for nothing.”
Anes carefully observed Yahalong's party, one by one.
A spatial mage, essential for smooth elemental stone exploration; a goblin with outstanding support abilities, freely using poison needles and dark magic; and Yahalong, a troll mage who could stand on the front line, wielding earth elements.
And finally, the human mage, Lee Si-woo, with his absurd offensive power.
Deciding she had nothing to gain from antagonizing them, Anes spoke.
“I'll make a counteroffer. How about you join us?”
Yahalong snorted and said,
“‘Us?’ Hmph. From where I'm standing, you don't seem to have any companions to refer to as 'us'.”
“I'm not like you, entering the mountain range unprepared. Though they're scattered for reconnaissance right now, I have four other parties.”
“Four parties? You mean...”
“That's right. I have twenty reinforcements. And you messed with us. Do you grasp the situation now?”
Unlike Yahalong, who had entered the mountains on impulse, Anes seemed to have consulted with the tower's upper echelons and prepared a large-scale team.
One might have been intimidated by the strength of Anes's team, but Yahalong stood his ground, unfazed.
“In the Niam Mountains, which are no different from a den of demons, having too many people just draws unwanted attention. Forget it, I'm not interested.”
“Well, if you refuse, so be it.”
As soon as the negotiations broke down, Anes raised her bow and aimed it at the sky.
A startled Yahalong tried to stop her, but Anes had already drawn the bowstring.
The wind arrow shot into the sky, rustling loudly as it broke through conifer branches on its way up.
Watching the arrow explode with a *pop* and disappear in midair, Anes curled her lips into a smirk.
“Troll, my reinforcements saw that signal flare and will be here soon. So if you lay a single finger on me, you're finished. Stop with your nonsense about compensation and get lost. Since you're afraid of the consequences, you're not going to fight me to the death anyway, are you?”
Yahalong ground his teeth at Anes's threat.
He realized he had been played by this cunning woman's scheme.
Yahalong pointed a finger at Anes, about to spit out a curse, but was stopped by Si-woo, who rushed over.
“Yahalong-nim, we need to leave immediately. We've drawn too much attention.”
“But just leaving this woman here...”
“It's already too late to kill her. Let's go.”
In truth, Si-woo didn't want to leave behind a future problem like Anes either.
But right now, Anes wasn't the problem.
The moment the signal flare had exploded, a chill had run down his spine, and the hairs on his arms had stood on end. He had a very bad feeling.
‘Something is coming.’
Thump, thump.
His heartbeat was so loud it felt as if someone was beating a drum inside his chest.
With his heart pounding like a frightened wild horse, Si-woo gasped for breath.
He found it difficult to breathe, like a patient with arrhythmia, and felt nauseous.
This was what happened when his danger sense reached its peak.
Si-woo wiped the cold sweat trickling down his cheek with the back of his arm.
‘The divination said the left path was the safest. But we met the mages from the Ventus Magic Tower here, not far from the fork. So whatever is on the other path must have... seen the signal flare.’
And whatever it was, Si-woo had no intention of encountering it.
“Yahalong-nim, now! We have to leave right now!”
Yahalong, who had thought Si-woo was getting worked up over nothing, was about to get annoyed when he saw his deathly pale face and was startled.
Realizing the situation was taking a serious turn, Yahalong shouted.
“Van! Fwan-fwan! We're leaving this place at once!”
At Yahalong's call, Van and Fwan-fwan quickly followed.
Anes sneered at them as they fled like colts with their tails on fire.
“Instead of running away scared like fools, wouldn't it have been better to accept my offer and join my team, Troll?”
She seemed to think Si-woo's party was fleeing because of her approaching reinforcements, but none of them responded to her mockery.
After Si-woo's party left, Anes, now alone, pulled herself out of the conifer she was stuck in.
Looking back, it was a stroke of luck that she had even survived.
After reaching the 2nd Circle, she had been confident she wouldn't be pushed back by mages of the same level, but that confidence was shattered by a single human mage.
In all her life, she had never seen such a monstrous brute.
‘Was his name Si-woo? I'd better avoid him if we meet again. Honestly, even with reinforcements, I couldn't guess how much damage we'd have to take to handle him. But... why are these bastards taking so long to get here?’
Annoyed by her reinforcements' tardiness despite the signal flare, Anes took a smartphone out of her pocket.
Her hand, about to text her party members to hurry them up, froze.
She had spotted several mages staggering out of the forest, fleeing for their lives.
“What...?”
One of the mages spotted Anes and cried out desperately.
“Lady Anes, help us! It's—it's chasing us...!”
The mage couldn't finish his sentence.
A black shadow dropped from the sky and fell upon him.
Slice.
A red line appeared on the mage's neck, cut by something sharp.
Beyond the head that fell limply to the ground, a blinking red light stared at Anes.
“Ah...”
Eyes that blinked like traffic lights.
Skin made of metal and machinery.
Pulsating wires instead of blood vessels at the joints.
A silver knife protruding from the back of a mechanical hand.
A mechanical lifeform with all its biological organs replaced by machines, the pinnacle of magi-science.
At the appearance of the Ancient, Anes immediately turned and fled.
“One of the Four Kings... No. This can't be happening. This can't be!”
Silently watching the back of the panicking Anes, a silver Gatling gun emerged from the Ancient's shoulder.
On its four diamond-patterned barrels were engraved symbols reminiscent of fire, water, wind, and earth.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The Gatling gun spun furiously, unleashing a torrent of 2nd-Circle elemental magic.
Arrows of fire and wind swept through dozens of conifers ahead, while spears of earth and water mercilessly pierced the fallen trees.
It was obvious what had become of Anes's slender figure, caught in that deafening barrage.
But perhaps it wanted to leave no room for doubt.
Its blinking red eyes scanned the area ahead, which had been scorched as if by a carpet bombing.
Beep.
After confirming via infrared scan that the life signs of the elf called Anes had vanished, the Ancient nodded.
Whirrr.
Noticing the Gatling gun's barrels spinning idly, perhaps due to depleted mana, the Ancient flicked its hand, and the weapon retracted into its shoulder.
A few survivors, collapsed at the Ancient's feet, begged with tears and snot streaming down their faces.
“S-save... please save m...”
From the small of the Ancient's back, a mechanical tail of intermingled silver metal and black wires shot out.
The tip of the mechanical tail, swaying toward them like a snake's head, transformed into a sharp awl with a strange mechanical sound.
Stab!
The body of the mechanical tail, lodged precisely in one survivor's heart, pulsed.
The survivor's eyes rolled back into his head as his body withered like a mummy.
It looked as if it was absorbing all of the survivor's mana and life energy.
Seeing this, the other survivors screamed and scattered in all directions, but it was a futile gesture.
Their life signals had already been 'marked' by the Ancient's system.
The Ancient eliminated the survivors one by one, like a hunter harvesting its prey.
After finishing off the last survivor, the Ancient stretched like a predator that had just finished its meal.
Then, the Ancient suddenly stopped moving.
Among the fallen conifers, it had discovered the traces of a familiar yet strange energy.
“This is...? No, it can't be.”
With a sense of urgency, the Ancient roughly tossed aside the fallen trees on the ground.
Soon, the Ancient arrived at the very spot where Si-woo had connected to Barathrum to evade Anes's Wind Bomb.
Scanning the residual energy that had flowed from Barathrum, the Ancient tilted its head.
“Who are you? Who in the world are you...”
Its voice trailing off, the Ancient's red eyes scanned the ground.
Beep.
Footprints leading away from the devastated land.
Scanning the trail of Si-woo's party, the Ancient began to walk.
It had chosen its next prey.