The Incubus Mage Who Conquered the Church
The Incubus Mage Who Conquered the Church
In the past month, I had mastered a total of four new spells.
Stone, a basic earth-attribute spell.
Stone Wall, a low-level earth-attribute spell.
Mud Throwing, another low-level earth-attribute spell.
And Liquid Ring, a low-level enhancement spell of the water attribute.
The basic spell Stone just summoned rocks, making it practically useless in actual combat.
So, looking at it that way, my arsenal of combat-usable spells had grown by a total of three.
Earth-attribute magic leaned heavily toward defense, which made it exceptionally suited for protecting the caster's body.
To stop the Paladin charging straight at me with ferocious momentum, I cast earth magic.
"Stone Wall."
As I recited the incantation, I vividly visualized the magic rune in my mind. Its winding strokes traced themselves out in rapid succession until finally completing a single runic character.
Having finished casting in the space of a heartbeat, I unleashed the spell to my front.
Stone Wall.
A spell that summoned magical barriers around the caster.
A wall of stone erupted upward directly in front of the charging Jake.
"Urk!"
Thud! Jake, in a full sprint, couldn't overcome his inertia and slammed straight into the stone wall.
The mass of a Paladin hitting it scattered fragments everywhere as the wall shattered spectacularly.
But by stopping Jake in his tracks for a moment, the stone wall had done its job.
"It's that Incubus mage! He cast a spell to raise a wall!"
"But Sir Paladin will still win!"
I could hear the voices of the churchgoers around me kicking up a noisy racket.
I quickly recited another incantation and sent mana spheres hurtling at Jake. A rapid-fire incantation launched three consecutive mana spheres that slammed into his massive frame.
Thwack!
One shot was skillfully aimed right between his brows, but Jake swung his sword and sliced the mana sphere apart.
"Shame. Could've cracked your skull open."
"...Hmph."
Jake, having witnessed the power of my spell, stopped acting so leisurely. Unlike when he'd been hitting on Kate, his words grew sparse.
Jake was glaring only at me with icy eyes.
After a brief standoff, Jake abruptly recited a prayer.
"Great Baldur, beneath the glory of Asgard, grant divine strength to your follower."
The moment the prayer ended, a dazzling aura bloomed from Jake's plate armor.
From a distance, I could hear Kate screaming at the top of her lungs while the other nuns restrained her.
"Look out, Mongma-nim! That's the Paladins' holy spell, 'Divine Aura'! When they use that, a Paladin's physical abilities double!"
"Sister Kate! Whose side are you on?!"
"Mmmph!"
The nuns clamped their hands over Kate's mouth.
But thanks to her, I now knew the identity of that dazzling aura.
'So it's a divine spell that boosts physical abilities.'
However, the enhanced physical prowess Jake now displayed far exceeded anything I'd imagined from just hearing the description. The moment Jake drew a breath and kicked off the ground, it was genuinely hard to believe my own eyes.
"Hup."
Thud-thud-thud-thud! The massive Paladin charged at me. Even clad in plate armor weighing dozens of kilograms, the bastard was running with the nimble speed of a track athlete.
If he got a hold of me, I was dead.
"Stone Wall!"
I raised a stone wall, but Jake, wreathed in divine aura, body-smashed right through it without slowing down and charged in tough as nails.
I lashed out with my Water Whip while firing mana spheres, but it wasn't enough to stop his bull-like rush.
At last, Jake closed the distance to right in front of my nose.
"Broken through."
A chilling voice from the Paladin.
He swung his holy blade at my neck. The moment that blade imbued with Divine Power came flying at me, the hairs on my body bristled and goosebumps rose.
If I hadn't mastered that new spell, I would have been beheaded on the spot.
"Mud Throwing!"
Mud Throwing was a spell that hurled magically generated mud forward.
Honestly, the mud was soft and the amount thrown was small, so even a direct hit couldn't deal any real damage.
But as a tool for momentarily blinding an enemy, no spell served the purpose better.
Splat! A modest amount of scattered mud splattered onto the Paladin's face. With astonishing reaction speed, the Paladin dodged getting the mud in his eyes, but the angle of his sword swing twisted.
I barely managed to evade the blade that had been precisely aimed at my neck.
Thump! As I flung my body to the side and recited an incantation, my writhing Water Whip changed trajectory through the air and lashed Jake across his back.
"Gah!"
The moment my first clean magic attack landed, Jake's massive frame shuddered from the impact.
No matter how much armor you wore, there was no blocking the shock of a whipping from transmitting through your body.
Sensing an opening, I whipped Jake with desperate, life-or-death frenzy to pile on the follow-up hits.
Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!
The steel plate armor dented. But Jake, who had silently endured the whipping without even a groan, suddenly infused power throughout his entire body and shouted the god's name.
"O Baldur!"
At that instant, the range of the dazzling aura enveloping Jake expanded. What had merely shrouded his body now radiated divine energy in all directions.
'He's boosted his physical abilities even further.'
Presumably, Jake had pushed the Divine Aura to its very limit to forcibly draw out more physical prowess.
Blood vessels bulged on his once-handsome face, making him look like a steroid abuser in the throes of overdose.
The Jake from before, who possessed intelligence and kept his composure, was nowhere to be found now.
Was it a side effect of pushing his aura to the brink?
The enhanced Jake advanced on me, unleashing a guttural howl.
"Incu-buuuuuuuuuus!!"
A scream filled with killing intent.
I tried raising stone walls and keeping him in check with whipping, but Jake seemed to have lost even the intellect to bother defending against attacks.
He simply bellowed with a rage-filled howl, broke through everything, closed in on me, and swung his sword.
Crash! I rolled across the ground to dodge his slash just as his longsword cleaved the earth, splitting the ground with a deafening roar.
His strength had definitely grown compared to earlier, but the loss of his intellect meant his precision had dropped.
But what Jake did next made my eyes go wide in shock.
"Those are your own congregation, you fucking moron!"
"Graaaaaaah!!"
Because Jake, ignoring me, began wildly swinging his sword at the churchgoers around him.
I instantly extended my Water Whip and wrapped it around the bastard's gauntleted arm.
I barely managed to stop a churchgoer from getting her neck lopped off by a hair's breadth.
"Kyaaaaaak!"
"Sir Paladin has gone mad!"
"Hyaaaaah!"
Just binding Jake's arm for a moment made me feel like every drop of energy was draining out of my entire body.
I clenched my molars and shouted at the screaming churchgoers.
"Don't just stand there, run! This Paladin bastard has lost his fucking mind trying to kill me!"
"O-okay!"
The churchgoers who had gathered on church grounds to spectate the fight finally came to their senses and started evacuating.
Jake grabbed the Water Whip with his other hand and ripped it apart, severing the liquid whip.
Still, I'd saved a person's life, so for now, it was a relief.
I could remake the Water Whip as many times as I wanted.
"Liquid."
While I was restoring my Water Whip, Jake, still chasing after me as I fled, began laying waste to the church grounds.
Today was Baldur's birthday, the day of a grand event.
Tables laden with a sumptuous feast, sculptures depicting the gods of Asgard, decorations set up in various places, and countless churchgoers fleeing from the Paladin rampaging like a monkey.
Jake smashed it all to pieces, anything his hands could reach.
"You bastard! Those are your own believers, I said!"
"Graaaaaaah!! O, Baldur!!"
Every time the bastard tried to target the churchgoers, I fired a mana sphere to redirect his attention back to me.
Being chased through a church by a Paladin who had matured into a perfect fanatic was truly an exhilarating experience.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
The objects in my escape path were horribly obliterated. I managed to restore my Water Whip, but regular magic attacks no longer worked on Jake.
The only thing left to pin my hopes on now was the third new spell I had recently mastered.
'Liquid Ring.'
An enhanced form of the Liquid Magic that controlled fluids.
It was a spell I had never used even once in real combat. I'd shown it off a few times during quests as a spectacle for my lovers, but my proficiency was so lacking that I'd failed the casting every time.
But now, I felt a confidence that I could finally pull it off.
'I can do it. My understanding of runic characters has deepened ever since taking lessons from Rumi.'
Casting magic was, in the end, the act of drawing runes in perfect form within my mind.
Learning the Primitive Runes had improved my overall skill at drawing other runes as well. After all, within the Primitive Runes lay the fundamental knowledge of how every rune in this world was composed.
I believed in the magic theory Rumi had taught me.
"Haaah, haaah."
After running for a while, my stamina was fully depleted.
Feeling my sprint slowing, I surveyed my surroundings.
There was no one left around. All the churchgoers must have evacuated outside.
'Did Kate manage to run? She's not hurt, is she?'
For a moment, I worried about Kate, but quickly refocused my mind on the duel with the Paladin.
Dealing with that fanatical holy warrior chasing right behind my back came first.
That was the only way I'd survive to see my lover again.
"Huff, huff."
I raised stone walls, threw mud, fired mana spheres, and laid down every kind of deterrent, but the distance between Jake and me steadily shrank.
When I finally reached the fountain right in front of the church's main hall, I stopped running.
"Graaahhhh..."
As I came to a halt, the pursuing Jake burst into a maddening laugh. As if finally realizing he could catch me, the bastard only increased his running speed.
It honestly felt like a bull was charging straight for me.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!!
I let the earth-shaking footsteps flow through one ear while focusing my mind. Inside my head, I began tracing out a complex runic character of 120 strokes at high speed.
The basic spell Water's runic character had 10 strokes.
The low-level spell Liquid's runic character had 40 strokes.
For most low-level spells, the runic character forming the spell's foundation capped at around 40 strokes. The more strokes there were, the exponentially higher the difficulty of drawing the runic character became.
If the sequence of drawing the magical strokes was wrong, the spell wouldn't even activate.
If the direction and thickness of the strokes were off, the spell's power would drop pathetically low.
All this work had to be carried out relying solely on the caster's concentration. A monstrous number of strokes like 120 was not a realm a third-rate mage like me could ever dabble in.
That was precisely why Liquid Ring was special even among low-level spells.
'Because wandering mages created this spell to overcome their own limits.'
Most wandering mages ended their lives stuck at the third-rate level.
Meaning their fate was to cast only low-level spells for their entire lives.
A handful of wandering mages chose to forcibly increase the number of strokes and thereby improve and strengthen the spell formula itself.
The result of that blood, sweat, and tears was precisely this enhanced Liquid spell I had now learned.
In exchange for bearing the risk of miscasting due to a wrong stroke, my ability to control liquids would now be multiplied several times over.
"Gahahaha!"
In the blink of an eye, Jake was right in front of my nose.
At that very instant, I completed the 120-stroke runic character and triggered the spell.
"Liquid Ring."
Boo-BOOM!
The moment the incantation left my lips, the fountain spouting water spectacularly exploded.
According to my will, the massive volume of water stored inside the fountain rampaged in all directions.
Since it was a church, even the fountain's water was Holy Water, a liquid imbued with divine energy.
A massive amount of water, surging like a tidal wave, instantly swept across the ground and engulfed both Jake and me.
"Graaaaaahhhk!!"
Unable to withstand the water pressure, Jake was knocked flat on his back, sprawling out pathetically.
But I, swept up by the same wave, remained standing, completely unharmed.
As the spell's caster, I had subtly altered the fluid's vector to make the wave slide right past me.
"Not bad at all."
I grinned in satisfaction, watching the magical waves churn across the ground.
I very much liked the brutal water pressure that could even hurl a Paladin flying.
"Cough. Coughing hack."
The huge Paladin who'd been chasing me looked like a drenched rat, hacking and gasping miserably.
I refocused my mind and launched a magical wave toward Jake.
The magic wave, spreading like a receding tide, greedily surged forward while sweeping away everything on the church grounds.
Whoooooosh!
At last, the magic wave swallowed Jake whole.
It was the moment the long duel that had started over my lover came to an end.