Chapter 299
Chapter 299
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 299
>Chapter Title: Dreams... Come True?
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Dozens of lightning bolts scorched his flesh to a crisp.
Had he blocked them with a barrier, it would have shattered. Had he taken them bare-bodied, death would have come in a single strike. It was destructive magic of that caliber.
Yet amid the relentless barrage of thunderbolts.
“…….”
Aster’s hand clamped down on Leodis’s wrist like a vice.
Trying to force power into muscles stiffened by electrocution sent aches rippling through his entire body, but Aster’s bloodshot eyes brimmed with killing intent.
“You…… you’ve mastered Light of Healing too?”
“…….”
It was a remark upon seeing his charred flesh regenerate, but Aster gave no reply. Instead, he focused his mana into the hand gripping Leodis’s wrist with savage strength.
Kiiing—
Transcendence unlocked.
His field of perception expanded, splintering an instant into hundreds. Those eyes held Leodis in their gaze, yet somehow gained a third-person view, overlooking everything around them.
A world illuminated by the blaze of lightning.
The churning sea gaped up at the two like the maw of an abyss, while the fishing pier lay half-destroyed in ruins. Debris from fishing boats shattered by the battle’s aftermath drifted out to sea.
Rumble—
The thunderheads blanketing the sky let out a roar.
Lightning flickered between the clouds.
A crackle seemed to echo, but sound could never outpace light.
Even in time fractured into hundreds of instants, lightning was lightning. The faint flicker of current soon spread with a crackle across the entire cloudbank, only to converge back at its origin faster than it had spread.
And—
Craaaack...!
“……!”
Indescribable agony whipped Aster’s head back.
An unavoidable reaction.
Even a grand archmage who had attained transcendence was still human, helpless against the neural fireworks sparked by the current.
He could have circulated mana for defense, but Aster left only the bare minimum for protection and whipped all his mana outward instead.
Amid it all, his transcendence-expanded perception held firm.
In that time splintered into hundreds of instants, Aster locked eyes on Leodis.
Had Leodis unlocked transcendence as well? Those eyes stared back at Aster with clear intent.
Like glass marbles, utterly transparent, they observed him.
Childlike in their innocence and seriousness, as if a boy peering at an ant through a magnifying glass. Aster met that gaze, then shifted to his third-person view of the world.
Once more.
Rumble—
The thunderheads roared, lightning flickered. Current sparked from a single point, seeming to spread again……
Craaaack!
Another thunderbolt struck down.
Excruciating.
Enhanced perception amplified every sense, and splintering an instant into hundreds meant the duration of that pain stretched just as long.
But Aster endured it all, drawing forth mana to manipulate the ambient mana. His four circles spun fiercely, binding the surrounding mana alongside his own power.
At the same time, the force of transcendence seized the reins of that mana with brutal strength.
Mana, circles, and transcendence.
With those three powers gripping it tight—
Craaaack...!
Aster seized control of the area amid the crashing bolt.
It began around Leodis.
Like a master butcher slicing along the grain of muscle, the mana around Leodis was excised. No, not merely removed—carved away.
That was when surprise flickered in Leodis’s eyes.
“……!”
Not even enough mana remained to sustain his levitation spell; his body plummeted under gravity. Of course, Leodis’s perception lingered in that fractured instant too, so his form hung frozen in midair like it was nailed there—but it was an ill omen.
Thus, Leodis directly tapped the mana in his core to recast levitation. And right then—
Grrrrrind, grrrrind……
Into the mana-void around Leodis surged an enormous volume of mana. No, it wasn’t surging in.
Crunch, cruuunch...!
High-density mana flooded the space around Leodis, filling it completely. And binding it tight.
Bound though it was, physical freedom remained infinite. It simply packed the area so densely that not a sliver of his mana could leak out.
For a mage, it was a deprivation far worse than physical restraint.
That was when Leodis’s gaze shifted.
Emotion crept into eyes that had watched impassively. Impatience, or wariness—impossible to tell. The feeling was too faint.
But separate from that faint emotion, his reaction was immediate.
Screeech…… screeeeech!
A monstrous flood of mana erupted from Leodis’s core. Like a dam bursting…… no, like a tsunami crashing in, it shoved aside the entrenched mana.
But it was a step too late.
The mana Aster had already claimed stood firm like unyielding ramparts, allowing not the slightest gap. ……Not even enough to form a barrier.
But.
Rumble—
The thunder spell Leodis had unleashed endured. Or perhaps, freed from its caster’s control……
Crackle, crack……
The lightning thrashed even more violently.
Aster had to hurry.
The signs of the thundercloud were ominous.
Even in fractured instants, it spread and swelled at light’s speed, pregnant with power incomparable to the prior bolts.
With only minimal mana devoted to defense, taking a direct hit from that would surely prove fatal.
Aster accelerated his mana array.
This was the mage’s battle.
While knights could splinter instants into hundreds, the flesh’s limits kept them from transcending physical bounds. Mages, with accelerated perception, wielded mana and mana unbound by physical laws.
Knights too could unleash strikes free of physical law through imagery, but in the instant’s span, mages reigned freest.
And that freedom……
Aster tasted it for the first time.
And realized.
Why Aevilon had dragged out such a protracted fight.
Breaking through was the hard part; once you entered the horizon of instants and accelerated thought, an indescribable liberation washed over you.
This……
Yes.
It resembled the liberation he’d felt in his past life, eyes fixed on a wyvern as he fled the Decullan estate.
It was fulfillment, too.
The black sea like an abyss’s maw, the thunderheads overhead, the night’s enveloping darkness…… even the starlight and lunar halo veiled by clouds.
Until now, he’d perceived the ‘world’ through his own ‘existence’……
Now, he felt his ‘self’ because the ‘world’ existed.
Entering that horizon of realization, all preconceptions of ‘transcendence’ crumbled away.
True transcendence, attainable only by pushing it to its limits.
In that realm, Aster reflected on his battle with Destrow, his confrontation with Lortel’s patriarch Muhard, his fight with Aevilon.
And now, at last, he understood the world as they saw it.
‘You sly old bastard.’
Even facing Aevilon again, he wouldn’t suffer an easy defeat like before.
But what mattered now……
Aster pulled back from realization’s horizon and fixed on Leodis. Their eyes met, each reflected in the other’s retinas.
What an ugly mug. Burns from the lightning were healing in real time, but charred soot clung in patches across his face. Amid it, Leodis’s innate nobility shone through undimmed, but the face of Aster reflected in those transparent retinas looked like some gutter rat fresh from the alleys.
Seeing it stirred memories of days past.
- Hey, kid.
- I’m Damian.
- Whatever.
- My mom’s Bianca.
- You some kinda retard?
- I ain’t got no mom.
- Yeah, well, I ain’t got no dad either. Guess I win. Now beat it.
Pissed at losing?
Damian had said.
- Right.
- What.
- I ain’t got no dad either.
……Like hell you don’t. He’s standing right here in front of me, alive and well.
“Father.”
Aster pulled back from the instant’s horizon and fixed on Leodis. From his grip on Leodis’s wrist, whoosh—a tongue of flame flickered. No, it flickered briefly before sucking in surrounding mana, ballooning in size in an instant.
To Leodis, still ensnared in the instant’s horizon, the sight burned clear.
All the world’s mana rushed into Aster’s grasp. The ravenous blaze devoured it without satiation, like an insatiable jaw. That devoured mana became fuel, fattening the flames—and Leodis could only watch, helpless.
No barrier to raise, no spell to cast. He couldn’t even wrench free from that brutish grip.
Fwoosh—!
Thus, in that instant’s span, the moment he broke free.
Aster’s voice rang in his ears.
“Still…… you’re happy, aren’t you?”
And with that, the sound ended.
Screeeee—
The explosion swallowed even noise, flames searing every direction. The black sea evaporated in the heat, steam rising; the sky’s clouds vanished.
As if the sun had risen.
A brightened world.
Amid that blaze, Aster thought.
‘Dreams……’
Do come true.
* * *
Kokartana Coast, City of Kotana.
Kotana’s 7th Pier.
A sudden flash blazed across the pier where fishing boats came and went.
Flames erupting from the sea’s midst soon lit the world like the sun, so intense nearby residents jolted awake from sleep.
“W-What in tarnation is that…….”
“D-Did the sun rise?”
When the awakened locals rushed to the pier, they beheld a sight beyond belief.
Seawater bubbling like a boil. The half-wrecked pier melted in spots from the heat, a total mess. Beyond the perfectly circular hole punched in the clouds stretched spotless sky, dazzling starlight pouring down.
Would the descent of a heavenly god look like this?
The residents gawked in stunned silence, none imagining it as the aftermath of two mages clashing. No, they couldn’t.
Soon enough.
“The Sea God’s angry! The Sea God’s angry!”
“The Sea God always says yes.”
“Sea God, are you angry?!”
“He says yes.”
Some old fishermen even knelt toward the sea, bowing their heads.
Thus, a short distance from the chaotic pier, in shadowed shallows. A shadow emerged onto land.
No, two shadows.
A platinum-haired man and a gray-haired boy.
The man, carrying the boy over his shoulder, laid him on the sandy beach and paused to take in his face.
……Naturally, the man was Leodis von Blandoga.
“Hmm.”
Leodis gazed at Aster, eyes closed as if unconscious, and flexed his hand idly.
As if pondering whether to gouge out the eyes first or shatter the core.
For a moment.
Then Leodis drew a clean cloth from his subspace and…… meticulously wiped Aster’s face. Especially around the eyes.
……Saltwater would sting.