Chapter 167: Merciless
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 167: Merciless
BANG!
The gunshot from the direction of the professor's building made Isilof flinch and whip his head around.
A Positron Bullet?
The sound was all too familiar to him. It was one of Isilof's own favorite spells.
A Tier 7 spell. Only a handful of wizards at the university could cast it.
But who could it be?
Chihuahua also looked toward the professor's building, his eyes filled with anxiety.
"Chihuahua. That couldn't be..."
The Fang of the Assembly felt the same.
"Dagger Raptor rarely uses scrolls."
In fact, he despised scroll magic. The only reason he would ever use one would be to remove the Curse of Dampness.
In that case...
"Caleb?"
Isilof and Chihuahua thought of him at the same time. The rookie wizard who had gone after Dagger Raptor might have used a scroll. But how?
How, when Dagger Raptor was supposed to be in the scroll vault?
"No!"
Chihuahua bolted toward the professor's building.
"Damn it!"
Isilof ran after him.
"Chihuahua!"
The Fang followed.
*
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Two university professors burst into the alchemy lab.
"This way!"
Professor Robin, a Tier 6 wizard known as the Assembly's "Apple Phone," followed the red thread down the stairs behind a bookshelf.
"Isel!"
But what she found at the bottom of the stairs was a gruesome scene.
"Wh-what is this..."
Ice particles and clouds completely shrouded the area. Trapped in the middle of it all, Dagger Raptor was dying.
A bullet hole from a Positron Bullet was punched through his chest.
Inside the ravaged wound, ice particles—likely from a direct hit by a 'Frozen Heart' spell—burrowed into his body, causing blood to gush out continuously.
The pool of blood on the floor had frozen, forming a sheet of red ice.
Dagger Raptor's shoulder was broken by Psychokinetic Fracture magic. He had also been hit with a 'Delirium' spell, leaving him slumped on the floor, unable to regain his senses.
Purple necrosis spread across his side.
It was a touch-based spell, not something that could be fired from a scroll.
A magic arrowhead.
It looked like an Elf Archer had landed a direct hit.
What in the world... happened here...?
Spells fired from scrolls could be fatal even to Dagger Raptor.
But that was only if they hit.
How was this possible, unless Dagger Raptor had just stood there and taken every single hit?
Was he frozen...?
The ice fragments and clouds scattered everywhere were slowly dissipating. The spell's duration was almost up.
It was a spell Professor Robin didn't recognize.
In any case, even as the clouds cleared, Dagger Raptor couldn't move. The accumulated injuries were too severe.
"Don't move!"
Professor Robin lunged forward, quickly aiming her wand at Caleb.
But then, the unexpected happened.
"You don't move either, Professor."
Suddenly, Isel poked the back of Robin's neck with her wand.
"I-Isel?!"
"The Assembly's civil war within the university ends here. We've captured your leader. All of you, surrender."
"What is the meaning of this, Isel?"
"Drop the wand!" Isel yelled.
The wand fell from Professor Robin's hand, clattering on the floor. Still unable to grasp the situation, she raised her hands, her face a mask of confusion.
"B-But Chihuahua said he verified you with Lie Detection Magic...?"
To be honest, all the Assembly members had been suspicious of Isel joining them.
They had accepted her anyway, firstly because the Assembly was so short on manpower they were grasping at straws, and secondly, because of the Lie Detection Magic. Chihuahua had told them he'd used it to verify Isel's allegiance.
"But how..."
"You shouldn't have relied so much on a spell like that." Isel glanced at Caleb.
"I was going to find the scroll vault and inform Professor Meldini, but it seems I was a step too late. And you even got Dagger Raptor..."
"It's all over now," Caleb said.
"Kill Dagger Raptor, and restrain Professor Robin for confinement. Then we'll arrest the rest of the Assembly remnants and go support the Public Security Headquarters."
"..."
Professor Robin's lips trembled as she asked Isel, "Those three from before...?"
Robin and Isel had hidden three Possessors near the doggy door of the west tower. The Blooming Goblin, the Old Tree Ghost, and the Eyelash Frog.
"Professor Hailey has probably captured them by now. It's over, Professor Robin."
Isel channeled magic into the wand aimed at Robin.
"Ethereal Chain Restraint."
*
Thank god.
Things were going just as I'd hoped.
If we capture Dagger Raptor, the Assembly will be crushed.
That was the outcome I had hoped for most in the first half of this war.
The information Isel had passed on, the stories Blackdog had told me, the reason the Assembly was loyal to the White Lion.
After hearing that whole narrative, I realized one thing: they were just a disorderly mob.
Their loyalty was pathetic, and while the bond between the Possessors was strong, they hadn't shed their modern-day sensibilities.
"S-Save me."
Just like Professor Robin now.
I had hoped that if we took out the organization's heads—the White Lion and now Dagger Raptor—they would lose their will to fight.
I'm glad.
They're all cowards.
"Please, save me..."
Bound by ethereal chains, Professor Robin knelt on the floor, prostrating herself as she begged.
"I'm not going to kill you."
To be honest, I didn't want to kill the Assembly's Possessors.
To me, they were like fellow Koreans I'd met in a bullet-ridden war zone in the Middle East.
Beyond friend or foe, we shared a common origin, a sense of kinship.
I could even understand why they tried to sell out Sohen to go home. Not that I wanted to be on their side.
Maybe I was the fool for risking my life, crossing the line between life and death in a labyrinth I'd fallen into from a game, all to protect this other world's people and their city.
"Professor Robin."
So, instead of killing her, I needed to find out everything I still didn't know.
BANG!
First, I had to finish off Dagger Raptor.
[Positron Bullet Scroll]
I tossed the torn scroll aside and watched Dagger Raptor's body go limp before crouching in front of Professor Robin.
"What does the Labyrinth Master plan to do with the Possessors?"
I had to know.
No matter how skilled the Assembly's wizards were as players, to the Labyrinth Master, they were nothing more than disposable grunts.
They were getting their asses kicked by Meldini and Isilof, after all.
There had to be something more. Another reason why the Labyrinth Master had kept the Possessors on the surface.
"That's..."
"You have to tell me if you want my help."
"I-I only heard it from the White Lion. The truth is, the Labyrinth Master..."
Just as Professor Robin was about to explain...
BOOM!
The floor suddenly shot upward. It was a 'wall'.
CRACK!
As if created by structural transformation magic, the wall rose from the floor and encased Dagger Raptor's corpse like a cubic tomb.
A door was set in the middle of the wall, stamped with the Labyrinth Master's insignia.
"..."
Back Attack touched his forehead.
It was a familiar sight to him.
Familiar to all of us.
This was...
*
"Did you kill the White Lion?" Bishop Azello panted, completely out of breath.
"He's already been dealt with!" shouted Magistrate Delphin.
She was commanding the forces at headquarters in place of the Consul, who was out on the battlefield.
"What about the body?"
"It's still intact."
"Huh?" Bishop Azello tilted his head.
"What is it?"
"Cardinal Servan ordered us not to harm the White Lion. He told me to hurry and stay the execution."
"Why stay the execution? We should grind the corpse to dust so it can't be resurrected!"
"It's about the Gourmet Whale floating up there," Bishop Azello said. "That thing is a 'Labyrinth'."
"...What?"
"Think about it. Remember the research data on the Ossuaries. Caleb said he couldn't bring them out of the Labyrinth. Our own cross-referenced research confirmed that."
"..."
"But right now, the Gourmet Whale's mouth is full of Ossuaries. It even has monsters from the inter-floor villages."
Just as an aircraft carrier is an entire military base floating on the sea, the Gourmet Whale is the Labyrinth's mobile fortress.
The laws of the Labyrinth apply to any area under the Gourmet Whale's control.
"Sohen is a Labyrinth right now. It's become a 'surface floor' of the Labyrinth."
"That's why we don't know what will happen if the White Lion is killed," Bishop Azello said. "Cardinal Servan believed that in the worst-case scenario, the White Lion could be resurrected with the status of a Surface Floor Boss. But the fact that nothing has happened yet means..."
"That another boss has appeared?" Delphin stared stiffly in the direction of the university.
There was another Inter-floor Lord there. One whose identity the Public Security Headquarters had yet to confirm.
"Dagger Raptor?"
*
"It's an Exit Room."
A sigh escaped Aimus's lips.
Click!
The doorknob turned smoothly, and from within, Dagger Raptor emerged.
"The White Lion was supposed to be the one to resurrect." The gatekeeper of the Labyrinth's surface, the Demon of the 1.5th Floor, brushed the ice fragments from his body.
"When the Labyrinth erupted and we launched the operation to rescue the White Lion, we knew the Public Security Headquarters would kill him. The Gourmet Whale was a countermeasure for that."
His cold eyes stared me down.
"Things have gotten complicated. At this rate... we might not be able to rescue the White Lion." Dagger Raptor chuckled.
"But there is one thing that makes me happy. You know what it is? The White Lion is definitely dead, too. And what does it mean that I was resurrected instead of him? It means I'm stronger than the White Lion."
It was similar to how an adventurer becomes possessed by madness.
Every floor of the Labyrinth seizes the mind of the strongest adventurer on that floor and turns them into the Exit Boss.
Here in Sohen, for example, it was Dagger Raptor.
CRUNCH!
Dagger Raptor stomped on the wand still lying on the floor, shattering it.
"Laying a Curse of Dampness with a magic circle, chasing me as I ran to the scroll vault to remove it, remote wand control, and that fucking cloud magic."
Dagger Raptor smirked.
"Honestly, I'm impressed. I'll admit it. It's been a long time since I've been beaten so one-sidedly. But there's something you didn't know. You couldn't have seen it from here. It was too far. You didn't know what was inside the Gourmet Whale's mouth, did you?"
"..."
"It was filled with Ossuaries."
Even if Dagger Raptor died, his soul wouldn't depart. It would be stored in an Ossuary. And by summoning an Exit Room, he could be resurrected.
The unfair bullshit that plagued Caleb's party every time they entered the Labyrinth wasn't actually some unjust, random phenomenon.
Behind every event, there was an explainable cause and effect, a mechanism at play. We just didn't know about it.
We just didn't know that a whale could carry a Labyrinth in its mouth.
"Your knowledge of the Labyrinth was lacking. And that,"—human wisdom is too fleeting to fathom the laws of the universe—"was your fatal mistake, wizard."
Dagger Raptor's hand shot up.
"Isel!"
It looked like he was about to harm her, but he wasn't.
WHAM!
A powerful hand from within his wing shot out and grabbed Professor Robin by the neck.
"You fucking bitch. I go easy on you, and you start running your mouth."
"Huk... ghk." Robin struggled frantically, but she couldn't break free from Dagger Raptor's grip.
"If you wanted to go home so badly, you should have trusted the Master and stayed loyal to the end."
"S-Save..." Tears welled in the terrified Possessor's eyes. But Dagger Raptor had no mercy.
SPLAT!
Where the blade feathers swept past, only shredded flesh and bone rained down.
"Ugh...!" Isel stumbled back, covering her face in shock.
Yernil and Back Attack turned pale.
Aimus reflexively opened his parasol, though it wasn't the skill needed at that moment.
That excessive defense was a testament to his shock and tension.
And.
"You..."
As the professor's body was torn to pieces, I saw an overlapping image of Dalstream.
"You son of a bitch..."
"No longer a bitten apple." Dagger Raptor cackled amidst the blood.
"Now she's a shattered apple!"
He said, crunching on her fingers.
"Pulverizing Ray!"
The spell shot from the fully charged focusing lens of the wand, but it couldn't penetrate the steel wings.
"I'll give you a proper taste too, so just wait." Dagger Raptor approached, squelching through the remains of the corpse.
"I've never tasted anything like this. Hmm. Yes. Just like that bitch from 12 years ago. Trying to destroy the university reminds me of back then."
He cackled.
"When I went to kill Henry. His lover or whatever, the daughter of some Halfling professor, was in the house. She abandoned her boyfriend and tried to run, so I caught and ate her."
"..."
"Not much to eat on a Halfling, though. Just got an earful from the White Lion for nothing. He kept bitching at me, asking if I'd swallowed some treasure the Halfling had. It was a losing deal. Ah?"
Dagger Raptor, lost in his own monologue, suddenly stopped talking.
Clack, clack.
The sound of shoes echoed from the stairs.
"Brillin did not run away alone."
Meldini was descending, his hands trembling.
"I found out through a psychometry investigation. Brillin was running to the university to get me."
"Is that so?"
"She was a brave wizard. Do not tarnish her final moments by calling her a coward."
"And what about you?" Dagger Raptor pulled out a single blade feather.
"If that Halfling had gone and asked you for help."
"..."
"Would you have abandoned the university to save Henry? Because he was your daughter's boyfriend?"
"Shut up."
"No, you wouldn't have. You didn't even go to save your own family. I know why, too. To protect the university's wizards? That's not it. You..."
Dagger Raptor pointed a finger at the professor.
"You were scared."
"I told you to shut up."
"You were the coward. Afraid you couldn't protect your own family. Afraid that even if you fought for them, your son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and wife would all die in the end. Rather than be remembered as a pathetic loser who couldn't save his family even after trying his best, you chose to at least preserve your honor as a wizard who fought to the end at the university. That was it, wasn't it? Such a calculating move, worthy of a profess—"
DONG—!
The sound of the bell changed.
DONG! DOOONG—! DONG!
The tolling, rapid as a racing heart, was a hymn of victory.
It was the trumpet of the Ethereal Galaxy, heralding the arrival of a new Ascended One.
"I will kill you."
A tear fell from the professor's eye.
"An Ascended Wizard."
Meldini was the only wizard at the university capable of using two Tier 8 spells.
The professor's body began to transform, taking on the translucent blue texture of the Ethereal Galaxy.