Before the Creeping Tentacles
The Shakallu-Enshar Magic Circle I'd seen in the previous loop looked exactly as I remembered. The revolting room packed with fetus corpses, too.
The only thing different was that Cain's Fang wasn't sitting on the altar.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
Aleister Crowley's power, which I'd witnessed on the way down to the basement, had been astonishing.
Even Kang Jia, who wielded Suggestion Voice, had to struggle for minutes to kill just one of those janitors. But she'd chanted some spell and massacred them in droves, then led us down to the basement while shaking her massive ass like it was no big deal.
"Then let's begin."
As I stepped onto the magic circle, a bizarre incantation poured from Aleister's lips. The words wormed into my ears like living maggots, lodging deep in my brain.
Gurgle-gurgle-
Black smoke-like fumes immediately erupted from the circle with a whoosh, swallowing up the piles of corpses.
"Hmm…?"
And as soon as that grotesque corpse-devouring ended, something like a doll emerged from the black smoke.
It took the shape of a very tall man. At least 190 cm, with a gaunt build.
His hollow eyes, sunken from what seemed like centuries without sleep, flickered with reflected candlelight. Irritable eyes.
A twisted hooked nose. Cheeks covered in deep wrinkles and scars.
Beneath thin lips that always seemed to sneer at anyone they met, stiff chin whiskers jutted out.
His overall Middle Eastern features came with sallow, yellowish-brown skin.
Is that Gra'hthul's true body?
He glanced around, sizing up the situation, then spotted Aleister first and glared at her with utter disgust.
"You thieving bitch. What balls you must have to summon me like this. Using a high-level magic circle, no less. You wanna die?"
"Shut your trap, you fucking geezer. You offered your own disciple as a sacrifice to those tentacle-head freaks?"
"Keh-heh-heh-heh. You brain-dead whore. Calling yourself my disciple now? You stole my legacy and parade it around like it's yours, and that's all the bark you got? You maggot-infested rag!"
Vicious, raw curses flew back and forth.
"You goddamn mutt!"
Aleister's eyes rolled back as she raised her hand, unleashing a swarm of black particles.
Shit.
Before I got caught in the crossfire like a shrimp between whales, I bolted toward Kang Jia, who was standing blankly by the door.
Boom!
Whoosh!
The black particles Aleister fired coalesced into dark orbs and shot out like cannonballs, but Gra'hthul swatted them away casually with his hand.
Crack-
Sizzle-hiss!!
"My God."
Those seemingly harmless black orbs shattered, and the fragments that hit the cement walls and floor melted them like super-acid on flesh.
I checked Gra'hthul's hand—it was pitch-black like ink-stained wrinkles, completely unscathed.
Advantage: Gra'hthul.
"Pathetic. So pathetic. How many years has it been since you stole my great knowledge?"
"You… fucking… bastard… 400 years. A whole 400 years."
"And this is all you've got? Not even fit to pretend to be my disciple!"
Grind!
"You wrote that bullshit on your last papyrus, and I fell for it—spent 400 years as a lackey to those tentacle-headed freaks."
Judging by her claims of being the Queen of Lancashire in England, her age was probably way over 400. She'd been active in the human world with her magic knowledge from the start, only to fall into Gra'hthul's trap in her old age.
"Kweh-heh-heh-heh-heh! You idiot bitch! To actually believe that."
Gra'hthul clutched his belly, laughing like a maniac as if it was genuinely hilarious.
"You fucking prick!"
Whoosh! Boom!
More super-acid black orbs flew. Were backstabs just a black mage trait?
I glanced at Jia—she gawked with her mouth hanging open like she was watching a 4D movie, just spectating the fight.
Kim Su-hee on my back slept soundly, oblivious to the world.
That instant—
Shrieeeek!
Whoosh-!
Sizzle-hiss!!
"Gah!?"
Cold sweat poured down both my cheeks.
One of those black super-acid orbs had grazed right past my temple, melting the wall. If even a drop of that hyper-concentrated acid had touched my skin…
Chills ran down my spine.
After seeing Aleister fight Jia with pure suggestion—no physical force—and handle the janitor with metaphysical chants, I'd stupidly assumed black mage duels were all like that.
I never dreamed they'd pull alien-movie-level attacks like this!
This wasn't working.
"Hold on!! Stop!!"
If the fight dragged on, I'd be the first to die, so I yelled.
"Huh? What's this worm?"
Gra'hthul swatted away Aleister's attack with a mocking 'try again' smirk, then eyed me sullenly.
"Eyes off him, geezer. He's my prospective disciple."
Aleister claimed a master-disciple bond I'd never agreed to.
"Stop fighting. We'll all die like this!"
Thankfully, they didn't seem ready to kill me, so I stepped forward. Gra'hthul's eyebrow twitched.
"Hoh…? Hmm!.. Oh ho…!?"
Gra'hthul stared at my face, letting out weird exclamations, then nodded vigorously.
"I see. Kweh-heh-heh-heh! Yes. That's it! You're the one—the bizarre entity that soul-linked with me recently."
"Pardon?"
Gra'hthul walked toward me slowly, ignoring Aleister completely.
I hadn't noticed when we met in the black world after death, with him in book form, but facing his true self head-on was oppressively intimidating.
I'm 178 cm, above average, but he loomed much taller, bending down to peer at me.
And he said something the current him shouldn't know.
"You… crawled back up, didn't you…?"
Whoa!
This guy knows…?
"H-how…?"
"I see my trace in your soul. The stain of reversing causality along the space-time coordinates I designed… That stain has a unique quality no other black mage but me would recognize…"
First time.
No one had figured out I'd regressed without me saying it outright.
How much did this guy know?
Tension spiked instantly. Sure, the previous loop's him had helped via the save point, but I had no clue how the current Gra'hthul would react.
Plus, black mages were destructive, self-centered psycho bastards.
As I tensed, Gra'hthul peered into the depths beyond my eyes, just like Aleister had.
No ominous aura, no brain-splitting pain.
He was just trying to pierce through me with his intuition.
"Oho… What tremendous magical talent. You're no disciple for that whore… You must've been my apprentice in the future…"
"Pardon?"
Why did they all claim me as their disciple on sight?
Crazy fucks.
"You must've unraveled the secret of time reversal far in the future!"
This… is somewhat fortunate.
The Gra'hthul who'd given me the library coordinates for the Equinox Book blood ritual hadn't grasped the fatal secret: I could only regress by dying.
So he thought it was like time travel in a sci-fi flick.
"Kuh-heh-heh…! Yes, to toy with space-time like that befits my future disciple. Not some whore like her! Kweh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"
He chuckled to himself, lost in delusion, thoroughly pleased.
As I pondered how to react to Gra'hthul's one-man show, Aleister approached.
"Hey, geezer, I told you to fuck off. This cute little one's already promised to be mine."
Like hell I did.
But I couldn't utter a word.
A psycho chick who fired acid globs from her hands, and an even stronger psycho geezer right in front of me.
Meanwhile, I was playing babysitter to Jia—an oblivious kid who knew nothing but me—with Su-hee as dead weight on my back.
Did I really need to learn magic?
If I had the insane talent they claimed, it'd be nothing but upside. At minimum, it'd give me enough power to resist these psychos and stop getting tossed around by events.
Plus, forming a master-disciple bond might make rallying the sages easier for my goal.
The issue: who knew how these lunatics treated disciples.
What to do…
Ask to learn real magic?
Two grotesque beings with tentacles sprouting from their hoods—looking as nightmarish as ever—performed their bizarre worship ritual and vanished hurriedly somewhere.