Chapter 161
Chapter 161
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 161
Chapter Title: Perfect Counter
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“Your power forms a perfect counter to Tureina’s.”
Just before departing for Mount Shinwa, Valensidis reached this conclusion after receiving several pieces of information from me.
“The power Tureina wields is Dragon Poison—a force created solely to battle the Dragonkin. It’s a 5-star incantation that extremely restricts the strength of dragons.”
“No way that mist is…….”
“Exactly. But to maintain it indefinitely, it requires a catalyst. That’s the pipe Fride bequeathed to Tureina.”
Fride’s pipe……?
Valensidis sketched the pipe’s general shape on the ground with a twig, as if this were the key.
But there was no need for that. I’d never once forgotten its shape.
“So to face Tureina, you need to strike first with a surprise attack and seize the initiative. If you use Bell Quirius to control the incantation etched into that pipe, your chances of victory will rise sharply.”
“Wait, I can’t interfere much with incantations.”
I could only slightly meddle with the structure of relatively basic ones among 1- and 2-star incantations, or 3-star ones.
In truth, original Bell Quirius would make such attempts meaningless, but the flame-attuned Bell Quirius has the ability to incinerate that power the moment it interferes to a certain degree—barely neutralizing it. In other words, I can’t steal it.
But from 3-star incantations onward, with their dense and sturdy structures, they were beyond my reach, as someone unfamiliar with chant-based Altigma.
“Have you forgotten whose disciple Tureina is?”
I almost laughed for a moment.
Who are you asking right now?
“No need to worry. Once activated, it’s an incantation, but the formula engraved on the pipe is a hybrid of formulaic Rudiyën, chant-based Altigma, taboo Orvios, and amplification Delvasherz.”
“……!”
“Fix Bell Quirius onto the pipe and control its power. You might not be able to use Bell Quirius elsewhere, but Tureina won’t be able to deploy her Dragon Poison mist either.”
Valensidis finally looked up and met my eyes directly.
“From here on, it’s a pure battle of skill. Best steel yourself.”
* * *
The anomaly in the ritual could be observed across the entire Crimson Mountain Range.
The unidentified mirage that had writhed in a horrific form above Mount Shinwa, devouring heaven and earth, was gradually losing its power and fading.
Miria hauled herself over the cliff edge and sprang up as if rebounding, racing up the steps of the Bellakior Temple.
“Aki!”
The temple, which had gracefully guarded the mountain’s peak for a century as an angelic guardian, was shuddering as if on the verge of collapse from repeated clashes of immense forces.
Miria leaped through a crack in the temple’s outer wall and spotted Aki weeping atop the Polantir Altar.
Choking poison boiled from all directions, her body drenched in sweat in an instant—not to mention the scorching heat that made it hard even to keep her eyes open. The temple interior was utter pandemonium.
In the midst of this no-holds-barred clash with the legendary shrine maiden, Rain had somehow erected a powerful flame barrier around Aki.
The barrier shielded Aki from the large and small debris raining down as the temple crumbled, yet to Miria’s bewilderment, she passed through it effortlessly.
“Aki.”
“Adu bu but.”
The moment she sheathed her sword and scooped him up, Aki buried his face in Miria’s chest. As if he never wanted to see anything scary again.
“It’s dangerous here. Let’s get out.”
Patting Aki’s back, Miria turned—and her eyes caught two strange things.
One was an orb rolling on the altar, cracked and scorched, with unidentified ominous syllables endlessly flowing from the fissures.
The other was on Aki’s opposite side: a frozen boy. With a serene, tranquil face, slumbering within the ice……
Why was this?
A dizzying shiver raced through her mind.
“This is…….”
Miria couldn’t fathom the reason herself, but she stared blankly at the boy’s face, oblivious to the single tear tracing down her left cheek.
At that moment, something sealed within the ice’s surface by advanced magic was released.
What is this?
A letter?
A long string of text unfurled in the air, and she unwittingly read snippets here and there—but there was no time to read the entire thing.
The next instant, a colossal clash of forces blew away two or three pillars, and the Bellakior Temple began collapsing amid a deafening roar.
* * *
“Right now, what the hell are you……!”
Tureina felt like she was wandering through a nightmare.
Every time she unleashed magic, incantations, or that power recklessly, the fog in her mind thickened further.
The final memories that defined her existence as Tureina were blurring. Fragments of the last world where she could walk alongside Lin, at Lin’s side.
Even when she clutched a handful, they slipped through her fingers like grains of sand. Her life, her memories—truly, not much time left.
“…….”
As the destructive force toppled Bellakior Temple’s pillars, collapsed the ceiling amid dust clouds, and shook the stone floor, the boy bit his lip in agony.
Memories of expressions.
Countless expressions flashing through his mind.
Crying faces, joyful faces, surprised faces, flustered faces, peacefully sleeping faces, puffed-up sulky faces…… But a face gripped by such fear? That was a first.
‘So it was real…….’
He took one step forward.
His vision warped strangely, and shattering pain wracked his body. Yet it didn’t hurt at all.
Because his heart hurt more.
‘She’s controlling the Dragon Poison mist with Bell Quirius, so she’ll definitely notice…….’
Clutching his chest, he took another step.
Some organ still unhealed by the Scroll of Clear Light ruptured, and a clot of blood surged up.
- Spat.
Am I going mad? Double vision overlapped on his retinas.
In one image, Tureina freely wielded 4- and 5-star magic and incantations toward him…… In the other, young Tureina struggled to cast 1- and 2-star spells.
Were past and present chaotically intertwining, transcending space and time?
- Dummy, you can’t cast that spell individually like that. Block it like this.
From the memory where he’d lightly dispersed young Tureina’s wind spell, he countered the fiercely charging wind incantation with flames.
- Why am I so weak?
- You’re not weak. I’m just strong.
As the past of shrugging and lightly tapping her forehead with a 1-star flame spell faded from his mind, transcendent flames viciously engulfed Tureina before his eyes.
- Still, not bad for just a year of training.
He vaporized Tureina’s hastily erected water barrier into massive steam, following up with a direct hit that forced her to one knee, spewing blood.
‘Her magic attribute combinations and usage are exactly like mine…….’
Ah, so alike. Too alike, making counterattacks effortlessly easy.
Not déjà vu.
The way he’d used magic 300 years ago, combined attributes…… All of it matched astonishingly, admirably so. It had to be that way. It could only be.
‘And her incantation style is a perfect copy of Fride’s…….’
Just a little.
If only a bit sooner.
He should have realized. Accepted it.
“To think that pathetic little squirt grew this much…….”
The unease he’d felt meeting Ribeni and Ribadin—if he hadn’t blindly defended her as his disciple, but suspected and investigated……
“Fine, everything’s fine, but why didn’t you protect the most important thing……?”
Debris from the collapsing ceiling shook the temple, kicking up fierce dust, and through the gap, rain poured heavily. Tears of the Abyss.
“I told you…….”
Did she judge that maintaining this large-scale incantation left no room for the Scroll of Clear Light, so a clash of abilities wouldn’t decide it?
“No matter what…….”
Through the rain and settling dust storm, his first disciple charged ahead…… And soon, staff and stone staff clashed, sparking embers.
“Black magic is──!”
Just like 300 years ago, when they’d clumsily traded blows, and whoever landed first would cackle and flee as the winner.
──Absolutely forbidden!”
He twisted his stone staff into the path of her staff aimed at his heart, disrupting its flow, spun his body, and slammed the staff’s base into her abdomen, sending her crashing into the outer wall.
“I told you dozens, hundreds of times…….”
He knew.
The reason this extraordinarily clever disciple, who’d never once disappointed him, had no choice but to touch the Abyss.
Because of an impossible wish, a desire unfulfilled even after 300 long years.
“Hey, you pathetic brat…….”
Unable to let go of that wish, unwilling to, she’d clung to it alone for 300 years, even dipping into the Abyss.
A true master would have flushed with anger and scolded her. If truly for her sake, he should have raged to correct right and wrong.
But what he did was squeeze out a pained voice through tears blurring everything into hazy white light.
“How could you use the power Fride and I taught you with such a heart like this…….”
Fearing she’d be hurt in heart rather than body, and begged not to emerge until the fight ended—Pipi soared from Selesia’s embrace.
“Tureina, Tureina, Tureina.”
Circling desperately before her eyes and calling her name, the girl from the past—coughing blood, lifting her head—trembled in her gaze.
What is this parrot?
Surely something irreplaceable, precious. But it wouldn’t come to mind. That memory, those feelings from that day.
Yet gazing at the boy looking down with a face about to burst into tears, a shiver raced through her chest.
No, it wasn’t “why.” Finally, faintly visible: the soul’s essence she’d sought so long…… Mingled and changed with the dragon’s soul, but.
For the first time in so, so long—after 300 years—this emotion she felt again…… What was its name?
Thus, though the truth remained inscrutable, she dazedly drew forth the words she’d cherished in her heart like a shattered treasure her whole life.
“……Master?”
That was the final moment when master and disciple, torn apart for eons of 300 years, could exchange voices.
The magic circle deeply engraved into the temple floor with dozens of circles, runes, and letters began blazing blindingly, as if scorching the retinas.
The inscrutable power, the unreal aura—its source was the Beltar Sacred Stone, its cracks steadily widening.
「Ha shi ke bal drudem, we shall fulfill His will…… Part the veil of fate…… With the fall of light, the path to His throne……!」
Amid pressure shaking heaven and earth, as if about to collapse, in the storm whipping robes wildly, thick abyssal tendrils flowed from the circle like tentacles, seizing Tureina.
“Tureina!”
Tureina, collapsed and vomiting blood—her life force began draining through the connected tendrils into the circle.
Seizing her body?
The boy felt blood refluxing in his veins.
Don’t make me laugh.
Bell Quirius—seven leaves of pristine divine halberds—flashed murderously.
Hundreds of books unfurling to fill his vision, vast knowledge rustling open in his brain. This was information overload.
Amid pain like his brain burning white-hot, he decoded the circle Tureina had crafted over her lifetime at mad speed—blood streamed from his eyes. A gush of nosebleed poured.
「Gu hu de, meaningless…… That human will be torn asunder in fate’s storm and become one body…… With the non-wish so desperately sought…….」
Darkness spewed from the Beltar Sacred Stone swirled into an overwhelming vortex of destruction.
No, not now.
He couldn’t cancel Bell Quirius’s activation here…… At that moment, Valensidis rushed forward, erecting a barrier.
“……!”
Valensidis was a powerful mage, but against ancient nobility, it was different.
“Hurry, Rain Ludwig!”
Cracks spread across the translucent barrier with despairing fractures, as the boy’s eyes frantically sifted the info flood.
Where is it.
Faster, faster, even faster.
Where, where the hell……?!
The word he sought amid the torrent of agony hit his consciousness—his mind—in the desperate moment just before the shield shattered.
Turemibesta 1.
Gushy = bix, ⅱ/ziy^ 1.98224.
The term denoting Tureina, its assigned symbol and number. Remove that phrase from the ability equation. Fill the excised equation with imaginaries.
This was correction.
The power too vast to nullify the entire magic circle. Excluding Tureina from the equation and redirecting the target was the best he could do.
「Mm, uuuuum……?」
The Beltar Sacred Stone’s unidentified voice let out a low groan.
The circle’s formula—meticulously blending incantation, magic, and black magic—twisted. The tendril draining Tureina’s life suddenly retracted, as if sucked away, releasing her.
Instead, it veered and lunged elsewhere: toward the frozen boy at the circle’s outlet. The abyss coiled around the ice like tentacles.
“It’ll be cold in there.”
Juyeo Soge Daeban was a sealing technique even Tureina couldn’t break on her own—less healing, more binding.
If he trapped that guy in it……
With part of the intricately meshed equation negated—like gears shattering under mutual friction—the circle’s power backlashed fiercely, rampaging.
“Tureina, snap out of it! Tureina!”
“Tureina, Tureina, Tureina.”
As black, red, yellow tendrils erupted from the circle, he cradled her face and shouted desperately…….
Ruuuumble……!
The ferocious rebound was bone-crushingly powerful. Without magic to shield his body, he’d have been shredded.
The problem: the temple’s framework, bereft of magic, couldn’t withstand it.
Cracks like spiderwebs spread through the barely intact temple.
“Rebound! We have to get out…… Rain Ludwig!”
By the time Valensidis turned and shouted urgently, it was too late.
A pillar groaned and collapsed, bringing down the third-floor ceiling in sequence—massive stones poured onto the boy cradling Tureina’s head, kicking up a violent dust storm.
No barrier could protect against that. When Valensidis barely escaped the fierce collapse, the temple lay in ruins, foundation alone remaining.
“What? Why are you alone? That kid? Did he not make it out?”
Miria, coaxing Aki outside, asked in a dazed voice—but there was no answer to give.
“A, ave, abuabat!”
Aki whimpered, reaching toward them…… And the silence of collapse filled with presences.
“Valensidis! Explain! Why didn’t he come out? Where is he!”
No need—or time—to explain.
The situation wasn’t over.
Primal terror raced through their minds, then with a roar, the temple ruins and earth tore and melted. And from within, something massive rose.
“······?!”
“······?!”
It was a mass of poison.
Jet-black feathers whipped everywhere, rotting trees and ground instantly where they touched—terror incarnate.
Elegantly flapping wings once, it landed smoothly on the ground. Valensidis recognized it, his mind going blank.
「Ah…… Baal pe gyu tagus, a truly fitting vessel to serve my will.」
Plain dark brown hair, unremarkable features, freckles scattered around the nose bridge.
Said to have died at eighteen in life, yet in black monk robes with blue stole, its frame was as small as a thirteen-year-old boy.
But its identity: the 11th Archmage, hero who quelled the turmoil 300 years ago and perished……
“……Lin?”
The differences from 300 years ago: a long gash in the forehead center writhing with a mutant crow’s eye, and three pairs of hideous crow wings sprouting from the back.
「Pedankeris, the time has come at last for all eyes to behold the truth of darkness. Kneel before me, Nariaduk, true servant of the king.」