Chapter 68
Chapter 68
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 68
Chapter Title: Waiting
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Each footstep left a deep imprint.
*Squelch.*
*Squelch—*
I had to forcibly wrench my foot from the ground to take another step.
My whole body felt like a sloshing water jug.
Suffocatingly heavy and terribly large.
One that would spill its entire contents if it tilted by even a single drop.
I paused to catch my breath every so often.
I didn't rush.
Lift a foot, plant it forward. Lift it again, plant it forward. Repeat, repeat.
One step.
I thought only of the next step.
I forgot my surroundings.
The aura raging like a storm, I forced it to stay within my body.
[Dieee! It's still there! Still there! Die! Pleeeease!!!]
The dragon's thoughts echoing in my head, I suppressed them completely.
And I walked.
And so,
The ‘Apostle’ still hadn't noticed my presence.
Instead,
*Crack.*
The leg I was extending lost its strength and buckled.
It was because the unfamiliar aura was constantly tearing through my body.
My muscles were ripped, my flesh torn.
*Thud!*
The only reason I could take that final step was because I had drawn upon the ferocious aura in place of my muscles.
I used the dragon's aura to form muscles and serve as ligaments.
Offering my own bones, flesh, and muscles as a sacrifice.
*Crack! Thud! Snap! Thump!*
My gait right now would probably look ridiculous to anyone watching.
Like a puppet being forced to dance by an unskilled puppeteer.
But still,
I was moving forward, wasn't I?
That was enough.
That was all that mattered.
* * *
People get lost more easily than you’d think.
The same path looks different on the way there and on the way back.
It’s different by day and by night.
Enough to make someone with a poor sense of direction wander.
But Lorraine's research institute was on another level entirely.
It was a living hell, filled with thick dust in every direction, the debris of collapsed buildings, people bleeding and screaming, and abyssal leeches pouring from the sky.
The researchers were trapped in that pandemonium, screaming, not even knowing where they were.
[Everyone, listen up!!]
The voice that rang out then must have been their salvation.
[Marking complete! Follow the light and gather in the central seminar hall!]
It was Lorraine.
Having finally rushed outside, she had drawn brightly glowing arrows in the sky and on the dust-filled pathways.
Only then did the researchers, finally able to find their way, begin to stumble forward.
That one person.
When she, who always wore spotless white robes, appeared covered in dust, a ray of light pierced through the hellscape.
*Crumble!*
When she flicked her right hand, the debris of a collapsed building floated into the air.
*Fwoosh!*
When she flicked her left hand, a cluster of pure white light healed the survivors trapped beneath the rubble.
“Go! Hurry! Now!”
With every spell that sprayed from her hand, a new chance at life fell before those who were dying in despair.
“Thank you!”
“Thank you, Director!”
“If you have the strength to thank me, use it to run!”
*Grit.*
Lorraine bit her lip.
The sharp pain jolted her numbing body awake.
Of course, spewing out spells as if she were breathing was anything but normal.
Lorraine was currently mobilizing everything to burn herself at 120%.
A desperate sprint, with no thought for what came after, betting everything she had.
But such a sprint is doomed to a spectacular crash the moment it encounters a single variable.
*Grrr.*
He was definitely a researcher.
Lorraine knew his face and his name.
After all, she had personally selected every single person in this institute.
Her name was Jenny. She had a fiancé, she’d said.
But… the woman she rescued from the rubble was in a bizarre state.
Her eyes shone with the light of a nocturnal beast, and all her joints were twisted.
“Jenny?”
That was…
It was less a person and more something akin to a monster.
*Graaaah!*
When it lunged, spewing gray smoke, there was nothing Lorraine could do.
She was already operating at 120% capacity.
The moment she canceled the [Kinesis] spell to block it, the floating debris would come crashing down, killing the very people she had just rescued.
Lorraine's mind went blank for a moment.
Her cold reason demanded she preserve her own life, even if it meant crushing the survivors again, but for some reason, she couldn't move a finger.
*Kyak!*
And just as the thing came close enough to tear at Lorraine's neck,
*Sizzle!*
A current of pale yellow electricity whipped through the air.
———!!
Unable to even scream, its body convulsing, the thing—no, Researcher Jenny? That something—collapsed stiffly.
Judging by its rising and falling chest, it didn't seem to be dead.
“Lorraine! Are you okay?!”
Kask abruptly appeared and asked, protecting Lorraine while emitting a yellow current.
Lorraine answered, dazed.
“Ah, yes.”
“What was that? Wasn't that a researcher?”
Lorraine furrowed her brow.
“The largest head. I think it’s that one’s doing.”
“The one in the middle? The one that darkened the sky at first?”
“Yes. That one… I was wondering what kind of ability it had… and it was this. A curse that corrupts the very source of life. No, an .”
The largest of the Apostle's seven heads was finally given a name.
The authority to corrupt the source.
The researcher who had inhaled its curse had been transformed into something like a magical beast.
Lorraine massaged her brow at the bleak situation and looked back at Kask.
“When did you follow me out?”
“Me? I was here from the start. You didn’t know?”
She hadn't. Lorraine had no idea.
Perhaps she had been too focused.
She had wondered why the leeches constantly falling from the sky seemed to avoid her in particular…
It seemed Kask had been providing cover from behind.
*CRASH—!*
Having finally rescued all the survivors from under the debris, Lorraine lowered the rubble she had kept afloat back to the ground.
‘Have I rescued about 50% now…?’
But something was strange.
‘Why… is it getting tighter?’
In theory, the more researchers she saved and sent to the central seminar hall (the command and control room), the easier it should have become to deal with the Apostle.
With more mages, reloading would be faster, aiming would be faster, and the mana well's heat dissipation and the shield's recovery should have been faster. That was only natural.
But reality was the opposite.
No, things were getting faster, but…
‘That thing is getting even faster.’
The Apostle.
It was moving more frequently, more nimbly, continuously spewing out beams of annihilation, leeches, and protective orbs.
Then, at a certain moment,
*CRACK!*
It struck first.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Tumbling across the shaking research institute, Lorraine slammed her fist on the ground.
It was the work of .
It had folded space again to ram the institute, shattering the shield that had been almost fully restored.
Like taking a direct hit to the jaw while staggering to your feet, the incomplete shield broke easily. The impact was enormous.
‘An impact of this magnitude would have shaken the mana well again, wouldn't it?’
If so, they wouldn't be able to regenerate the shield. Even if they forced it, its durability would be unreliable.
The mana well was not only the power source but also the buffer that absorbed the backlash.
But she could see it clearly. Another head, , was opening its maw toward them.
The moment that hit directly… everything would be over.
“No!”
She had promised to protect it. She had promised Lansen!
That she would hold out until the end.
“This can’t be happening…!”
The people of this institute.
The people who had come all this way, looking only to me…
“I won’t let it!!!”
She ran.
Her emotions, faster than her reason, told her what she could do now.
“Lorraine!”
Kask, who had hurriedly followed her, was horrified.
“What are you doing now!”
Lorraine had placed her hand on the obelisk that controlled the main shield.
Kask tried to forcibly pull her away, but.
*Shudder—!*
The moment her pale, mint-green eyes began to glow, he couldn't move an inch.
Kask was so shocked it felt like the back of his head had gone numb.
“Lorraine…! Did you just use a Magic Eye on me?”
Tears of blood trickled down from the corners of Lorraine's eyes.
‘She really used a Magic Eye on me? Even though she wasn’t born with the bloodline of the Magic Eye… she forced it…? She went that far, to stop me?’
Kask was dumbfounded.
No, he was furious.
“You’d go this far… just to sacrifice yourself and die alone?!!!”
He could hear Lorraine muttering calculations.
Kask wanted to rip his own ears off.
He knew all too well what those calculations meant.
“Are you crazy?! You're going to absorb the backlash with your own body? Instead of the mana well!?”
A crazy idea to draw power for the shield from the mana well, but to substitute her own circles and life force for the backlash the shield had to endure.
And the absurd computational ability to actually make it happen.
*Vwoooom—!*
It was actually happening.
A shield was rising rapidly.
But it was different from the shields before. The impact on this shield would become entirely Lorraine's.
Lorraine's mana might somehow block the strike from . But Lorraine herself would certainly die.
“Lorraine!!!”
Bound by the Magic Eye, Kask could do nothing but watch.
Lorraine looked at Kask with trembling eyes.
‘I’m sorry.’
How could she not know?
The feelings Kask had for her as he followed her around.
Sometimes, she had even imagined it.
A slightly different future with Kask.
‘But I guess… this is how it ends.’
Lansen said he would definitely cut it down.
So he asked me to hold on.
Is this my limit…?
A future beyond this—
Can I not see it?
*Thump—*
As Lorraine was thinking this, someone's hand covered the back of hers.
It was a large, warm hand, though wrinkled.
“As I thought. Director, you’ve already completed the implementation. All I need to do is take over.”
Lorraine jumped in surprise.
“Eodran? What are you doing…”
“Do not worry. I have left command to a competent senior researcher.”
“That’s not… what are you doing!”
Eodran didn't answer.
He simply drew mana from the seven circles he had built over a lifetime and laid his life on top of it.
“This is as far as I go. But you, Director, must go much further.”
“Stop! Stop it! This is something I have to take responsibility for…!”
“The responsibility you had to bear was paid in full the day House Scottvin fell.”
“Eodran!”
She couldn't
finish
her sentence.
Before she could, a gray beam of light swept over the shield.
*Swoooosh!*
The beam split to the left and right of the shield.
Eodran's body trembled as if struck by lightning.
Because she had to maintain the shield's implementation, Lorraine couldn't even take her hand off the obelisk and had to feel everything vividly.
“No! No…”
The moment the gray beam, which had seemed as if it would never end, finally vanished,
Lorraine tried to grab Eodran's hand.
She wanted to grab him, pull him into her arms, and sob her heart out.
But,
*Crumble—*
The hand that had warmly covered hers just moments ago couldn't be caught.
It was crumbling and fading away.
“No. No! Eodran, don't. Please!”
“Young Lady.”
Eodran called her Young Lady. Just like he used to.
“My entire life has been an honor because you were the one I served.”
“Please… Eodran!”
Lorraine desperately reached out to grab the disappearing Eodran.
But her hand grasped only empty air. Only the afterimage of him, already crumbling and scattering.
“Young Lady.”
The scattering particles of mana brushed against Lorraine's cheek, as if stroking it gently.
“May you always… be at peace…”
*Whoosh!*
Like smoke from an extinguished candle, Eodran's final afterimage scattered.
“Eodraaaan!”
Lorraine collapsed.
With nothing to hold onto, with nowhere to lean.
Her shoulders shook as she wept.
“Lorraine…”
Kask looked down at her with difficulty.
The binding of the Magic Eye was finally released.
He had meant to demand why she had done such a thing to him, but now, Kask had already forgotten.
Right now, his heart was simply tearing apart along with Lorraine's loss.
“Lorraine…”
The moment he bent down to take her shoulder,
*Flinch!*
Kask realized.
Mutteringmutteringmutteringmutteringmutteringmutteringmuttering—
Lorraine wasn't just crying.
She was crying and calculating. The formulas that spilled rapidly from her lips skipped several steps at a time, quickly reaching completion.
“Lorraine?”
“Calculation complete.”
Without even wiping away her flowing tears, Lorraine bit her lip and stood up.
“I was stupid. To think of saving them one by one…”
“Uh, uh…?”
“I just needed to ‘teleport’ them all at once.”
As she said this, she placed her hand on the obelisk once more.
She instantly connected to the mana well.
Deep within her pupils, a small flame flared to life.
“Eodran died so I could live. It has to be worth that much… doesn’t it!”
Her seven circles opened, and her magic met the mana in the atmosphere, combining into a far grander structure.
She,
“You promised, Lansen! I’ll hold on, no matter what it takes! I will hold on! So you must…!”
Drew an immense amount of mana from the well and shouted with all her might.
“Kill it! Kill it for me!”
That,
Calamitous disaster.
With her desperate wish, a brilliant blue light of mana spread throughout the entire research institute.