Chapter 128
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 128
When Turan first fought a fallen god, it wasn't the sudden surge of overwhelming mana that surprised him.
It was their techniques—an axe strike that summoned a blizzard, or a sudden, frictionless glide across frozen earth—skills whose underlying logic defied all reason. That bizarre magic, achieved by blending the symbols of various bloodlines to produce far more potent and peculiar results from the same amount of mana, was the most unpredictable and difficult element to overcome.
The green radiance manifesting before his eyes now was no different.
Instead of trying to block or parry the incoming attack, Turan chose to evade, utilizing high-speed maneuvers powered by the Soul of Fire.
Was it thanks to the practice he’d gained dying repeatedly in the Arena? Unlike before, when his movements had been somewhat excessive, he could now dodge attacks by moving only as much as was strictly necessary.
Circling to his opponent's flank to seize the initiative, Turan immediately slung a stone he had readied. It was made of granite—the hardest of ordinary rocks—prepared for the moment his supply of steel balls ran out.
However, just like before, the stone vanished in a flash of lightning before it could even touch Kadram’s body.
‘So it doesn’t just melt metal?’
Unlike the metallic steam from earlier, this time only dust and smoke drifted away. Then again, truly powerful lightning could shatter even boulders. If the man could block this, it seemed unlikely that ordinary physical projectiles would ever break through.
Turan immediately switched his relic to the Sun bloodline, manifesting a massive halo of light behind his back.
Judgment Light.
Born from the harmony of fire and light, this was matter yet not matter; naturally, it did not interfere with lightning. A whip of light detached from the ring, lengthening as it lashed out at Kadram.
“Mmm…!”
As expected, instead of standing tall and taking the hit as he had before, Kadram let out a low groan and retreated. As the golden whip swept through the space where he had stood, trees were sliced away in heaps, and flames erupted.
“I don’t know how you managed to get your hands on the Mimic’s power, but—”
Ignoring the man’s babbling, Turan immediately swung the whip of light again, pressing his assault. If the opponent lost his rhythm because he was too busy talking, that was a point in Turan's favor.
However, instead of fumbling in a panic like the Baraha elder, Kadram immediately shut his mouth and traced a circle with both hands. Then, just as he seemed to reach out toward the flying whip—
‘He’s parrying it?’
The whip of light, upon making contact with Kadram’s hand, didn't burn or cut his flesh. Instead, it seemed to coil around him for a moment before being deflected away. It was a sensation entirely different from blocking with mana-infused hands; it felt as if the control over the magic itself had been seized by his opponent.
As the deflected whip flew fiercely back toward his own neck, Turan quickly withdrew his mana, extinguishing the Judgment Light. He then used the surrounding burning trees as a medium to conjure and fire a fireball.
But this, too, was caught in the circle Kadram drew with his hands and sent spiraling back toward him.
‘He’s turning my own power against me.’
Interfering with another person’s magic in such a way should normally be impossible. As Turan increased the distance to buy time to think, Kadram fired a burst of pale green light from his hand, just as he had done before.
Turan twisted his body quickly, clicking his tongue as he felt blood trickling down his cheek.
‘This is getting troublesome…’
The man had melted his greatest weapon, the steel balls, and returned any attacks that lightning couldn't stop using those strange techniques. On top of that, he continued to launch incredibly fast and threatening attacks of his own. Compared to the Baraha elder he had met before, this opponent was superior in every way—from combat experience to equipment and technique.
Suddenly, a thunderous roar echoed from the side, and a wave of chilling air rushed in. Ymir, who had been idling in the back, was walking toward them, gripping his ice axe tightly.
“I thought you said you weren't going to fight?”
“Looking at how things are going, it seems like this’ll take a while. Besides, I can just use this body up and swap it for another one anyway.”
As if he had been drawing out the power of a Berserker in the meantime, Ymir’s eyes were bloodshot as he looked Turan's way. Within him, the two symbols of the Berserker and Frost hovered and blended, but unlike before, they flickered with extreme instability. Perhaps it was because it was a ‘hastily donned body,’ as he had said himself.
Seeing the ground being covered in ice as Ymir stomped his foot, Turan predicted the following attack and threw himself aside. Ymir, who had swung his axe while sliding across the ice, widened his eyes.
“What? How did you know?”
“He uses Thought Acceleration. He must have learned it from Meisa.”
“No, it’s not that… It felt like he already knew what was coming.”
Ymir tapped his shoulder with his axe, looking troubled for a moment, before clicking his tongue and lunging at Turan again. The moment Turan soared into the air with flight magic to avoid him, Kadram fired a dark blue sphere at him.
‘That’s…’
Like the green radiance from before, it was a spell whose nature was hard to guess. At the very least, its speed wasn't particularly fast, so it didn't seem difficult to dodge. However, the moment Turan evaded the dark blue sphere by a reasonable margin, it suddenly exploded with a roar, coiling lightning in all directions.
Naturally, Turan, who was within range, could not escape it.
“Urgh…!”
It was a sensation he had felt quite often while sparring with Meisa—the feeling of his entire body being paralyzed by a numbing shock. Seeing that his attack had landed, Kadram smiled from a distance.
Fortunately, even in a paralyzed state, he could still move if he used flight magic. Seeing Kadram flying toward him, Turan habitually used wind magic to interfere with his path.
“Ugh!”
Unlike Meisa, who treated such interference as nothing, Kadram reacted with surprising sensitivity to the disruption of his flight. Turan had expected that a being who was practically a god would have practiced magic for thousands of years and thus possess transcendent skill.
But before he could even mock the opponent’s unexpectedly crude flying skills, Ymir leaped from below with explosive leg strength, swinging his axe at him. Turan triggered the Soul of Fire again to evade, but the opponent changed his trajectory by creating an ice platform in mid-air, as if he had been waiting for that move.
“Got you—!”
Having already leaned his body to one side to evade once, it was difficult to move again. Turan instinctively drew his dagger to defend—
‘Ah.’
Perhaps because the paralysis from the lightning hadn't fully worn off, his posture was clumsy. The dagger shattered, and the axe buried itself in his chest. Using yet another technique, a brilliant flower of ice bloomed over the wound.
“Gah…!”
Each petal was like a blade, and the flower—more than capable of shredding the very place it bloomed—mangled his upper body. If Turan hadn't been a powerful high noble, and if he hadn't possessed various defensive artifacts, including the Guardian magic tool, he would have been hacked to pieces and died on the spot.
Hurriedly kicking his opponent away and retreating, Ymir, who had landed on the ground, shouted in disbelief.
“Seriously, why are you so sturdy?!”
“I told you not to kill him!”
Crashing to the ground, Turan quickly scattered the Water of Death in the form of steam toward the approaching Ymir, forcing him to inhale it. It was an attack that even a top-tier noble couldn't help but suffer from if they were careless, but Ymir froze the mist and shattered it just by looking at it.
“That won't work twice, you acid-terrorist bastard.”
Turan was confident he could overwhelm either of them in a one-on-one fight, but facing both at once was simply too much to handle. If he could just stay airborne and hold out somehow, he might get help from Meisa or Solif—
“Where do you think you're going!”
At that moment, as Kadram reached out toward Turan, the surrounding atmosphere fluctuated wildly. It even affected the area he was controlling for his flight magic. Tumbling to the ground, Turan quickly picked himself up and took a deep breath.
“Haa, haa…”
Was it because of the heavy bleeding, or had some of the wounds reached his lungs? He hadn't even moved that much, yet he was already gasping for air.
Kadram approached with a leisurely stride and asked, “Well? Will you surrender?”
Turan stared at him silently, trying to catch his breath and save what little air he had left.
Beside him, Ymir, who was twirling his ice axe, pointed at Turan and said, “But seriously, what is this guy? His magic skills are insane. Even Meisa, who was made with a purpose, wasn't this good, was she? Can something like this really happen by chance?”
“Who knows. Even where we lived, there were talents that surpassed all limits.”
“I’d love to use him as my next body—”
“Watch your mouth. We have an audience. Use formal speech.”
“Ah, right.”
Kadram shot a glare at the flippant Ymir before turning his gaze back to Turan.
“It seems you have no intention of surrendering. I won't give you much time. The tide of battle isn't entirely in our favor.”
Of course, Meisa and Solif were also quite exhausted from facing a large number of enemies, but the number of Arabion mages facing them had significantly decreased. In a many-to-one fight, if the one person consumed their stamina, the many had to consume their lives.
Capturing Turan here wasn't the end; they had to capture the others, especially Meisa. After all, the reason they had gathered here in the first place was to catch her.
As Kadram manifested the green radiance in the form of a disc to finish things, Ymir, who was beside him, let out an exclamation.
“What is it?”
“My time’s up.”
He spoke with the tone of a civil servant ready to clock out. Before anyone knew it, he had withdrawn the power of the Berserker bloodline, and his bloodshot eyes had returned to normal.
Kadram groaned with an exasperated expression. “You…”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m slacking off; my ability just hit its limit. I’ve softened him up plenty for you, so good luck, okay?”
With those mocking words, Ymir’s body crumbled into dust. A single soul drifted up from the remains. It seemed to be a side effect of using excessive power with a hastily possessed body.
Kadram watched blankly as Ymir’s soul vanished toward the northwestern snowy plains, then sighed and turned his head.
“This is exhausting… Why is it that people don't get any more sensible just because they get older?”
Even as he said that, he didn't seem particularly worried about dealing with Turan. If Turan were in perfect condition, it might be different, but in his current state of critical injury, Kadram could easily subdue him alone. It would just be a bit more tedious.
However, that composure didn't last long. It was because he saw the hand that the blood-soaked Turan was pointing at him.
And the small vortex that had appeared above it.
*
While fighting the two possessed vessels of the gods, Ymir and Kadram, Turan had judged that it would be difficult to overcome the situation through conventional means. The strength the Arabion-Nagin forces had invested in this trap was that irrational. If the three of them were at the same level as Meisa when she had first escaped, they would have been subdued long ago.
He felt like asking just how highly they had evaluated him to commit such a force indefinitely.
But opportunity always walks hand-in-hand with crisis. Even while being pushed back, Turan observed the symbols of the two gods who were hounding him. Especially Kadram, who possessed the same Storm bloodline as Turan.
Unfortunately, he couldn't steal the technique Kadram used to scatter that green radiance. To do that, one had to blend the symbols of a Great Mage who controlled wind and the Shoal bloodline that controlled water, but he could only use one of those through his relic. Even with the relic active, the symbol did not manifest in his soul.
However, a moment ago, Kadram had used two more spells. A spell that exploded lightning and a spell that controlled and disrupted the surrounding atmosphere.
In that moment, Turan had witnessed the clouds within Kadram turning pitch black, swirling and intertwining with bolts of lightning. That was likely the ultimate way to use the Storm bloodline—a mixture of lightning and wind—required for those spells.
It was slightly different from how the Arabion family head had mixed four bloodlines in the past, but regardless, now that he had seen it, it was time to use it.
Therefore, even while being constantly pushed back, Turan had secretly activated his Spiritual Awareness and struggled to manipulate the symbols within him. Since he hadn't opened his eyes, Kadram hadn't noticed.
Fortunately, since he had practiced for a long time in the hideout, it didn't take very long. In the first place, what he lacked wasn't the ability to manipulate the symbols, but the knowledge of how to manipulate them.
Just in time, the moment Ymir made his exit, Turan succeeded in replicating the change the opponent had created.
“You… how…?”
Instead of answering the man’s mutterings, Turan lowered the small vortex that had formed on his hand like a feather. The cute vortex, only a few inches long, devoured the air it encountered and instantly grew to an enormous size.
“A cyclone…!”
A shocked Kadram exerted the power of his Storm bloodline, creating dark blue spheres around him to block it. With a screeching sound, the vortex clawed frantically at the barrier, leaving marks like the talons of a beast.
‘Wind having cutting power?’
Naturally, no matter how strong the wind was, it was impossible to exert physical force in such a way. Wasn't that the reason why, when he had first awakened the Storm bloodline, he had given up after trying everything to apply wind magic to combat?
In other words, he was now using magic to manifest a phenomenon that couldn't normally exist, just as the fallen gods did. Furthermore, this irrational magic was somehow regarded as a ‘possible occurrence,’ so it didn't even consume much mana.
“To think you were keeping such fun toys to yourselves. How stingy,” Turan muttered softly, focusing his consciousness inward.
From the moment the two symbols of the Storm bloodline interacted, several invisible handles had appeared in his mind. The vortex he had just created was the result of pulling one that felt relatively easy to grasp.
In other words, there were still many, many techniques he had yet to try.