novelraw Chapter 145 : Chapter 145
Chapter 145 : Chapter 145
Chapter 145. Road to Extinction (6)
The snakes, which had been caught by the deployment of large-scale magic twice, revived in an instant.
[Talpi]
Normally, this word refers to an animal shedding its skin.
However, when transformed magically, it turns into a unique healing technique that concentrates all sustained wounds into a slough and then sheds it.
Naturally, it is a magic of considerable difficulty.
Therefore, it is a magic that is not easy to apply even to one or two summoned beasts.
Yet Cheonjan applied such magic to thousands of summoned beasts simultaneously.
A scale that was unbelievable.
A mana control ability whose precision could not be fathomed.
Riman immediately grasped just how astonishing this was magically.
'Monster bastard...!'
WHOOSH!
The snakes, having shaken off all their wounds, pounced toward Riman again.
A wriggling wave.
A wave of death where venomous fangs flashed at the end of every spray.
At that moment, Riman summoned a black whip from his ring.
Immediately the next moment, the snakes struck Riman.
CRASH CRASH CRASH!
A roar erupted, dust and smoke soared, and a whole block of the city shook.
A massive sinkhole appeared where the snakes struck.
But Riman was not inside that deep hole.
Because Riman was clinging to the wall of the building right next to it.
"Phew......."
That moment when the snakes were about to strike.
Riman shot the black whip and embedded it into the building wall.
Then, pulling his body with the black whip while simultaneously detonating a shockwave under his feet, he moved at high speed, dodging the wave of snakes.
"...Thought I was dead."
It was truly a hair's breadth.
If his judgment had been even slightly late, that sinkhole could have become Riman's grave.
RUMBLE.......
Riman looked down into the sinkhole.
The sound of wind humming and swirling inside the cavity, water and gas spewing from burst pipes.
And the deep, deep darkness.
At that moment, thousands of eyes flashed within that deep darkness.
The snakes soared up again.
WHOOSH!
The snakes that had dug down into the sinkhole shot up toward Riman.
The number of snakes had increased even more than a moment ago.
Riman immediately began to run up the building.
And the grey snakes began to chase after him.
CLANG CLANG CLANG!!
The wave of grey snakes climbed the building.
The windows and walls where the bastards swept past were practically ground away.
At that moment when the spectacle of a tall building crumbling like some snack unfolded.
Riman felt it instinctively.
That if he carelessly saved his strength here, there would be no next time.
Riman closed his eyes.
Mana gathered beneath his closed eyelids.
And the moment he opened his eyes again.
The colors of the whites and pupils of his eyes were reversed.
[Extreme Eye], Open.
SHAAAAA...!
All visual information entering Riman's eyes was dyed in black and white.
After projecting black light of visible light level from the eyes, recognizing the reflected light
allows for re-perceiving the world in a contradictory state, altering the state of reality.
At this time, the world is perceived only in black and white in Riman's eyes, and since black unconditionally overwrites white, the power of Riman's magic increases significantly.
The core of magic was not how one analyzes the world, but how one perceives the world, after all.
Thus, the power of Riman's magic increased greatly.
Of course, a load was placed on his mana circuits and body itself, but that wasn't important right now.
Doing something about the snakes in front of him was more important for now.
Riman quickly constructed a spell in his head.
'Self of a meteor, scattered starlight.'
FLARE!
Giant black fireballs rose behind Riman's back.
[Hyeonghwa (Firefly Fire)]
The large fireballs began to pour down toward the snakes just like that.
BOOM!!
The impacting fireballs broke and scattered, sweeping over the heads of the snakes.
The scales of the grey snakes burned pitch black.
Some were completely turned to ash and crumbled away.
And.
Watching this scene, Cheonjan muttered.
"To burn them to ash completely so they cannot even attempt recovery through [Talpi]......."
Impressive.
"But... just because you burn the leaves doesn't mean the stem collapses."
Cheonjan's hand took another new Su-in.
An extremely small and light movement.
But the ripple that gesture summoned was immense.
SLITHER......!
From between the buildings, from the darkness of the alleys, grey snakes swarmed out.
Countless wriggling things newly summoned.
Snakes were summoned again as much as Riman had burned away.
A curse slipped out of Riman's mouth.
"Fuck...!"
Kill them and they recover, burn them and just as many are newly summoned.
With overwhelming regenerative power and insane numbers, they began to pressure Riman.
Of course, Riman did not stop his offensive either.
WHOOSH!
Flames rushing and exploding swallowed the snakes.
Carbonized and crumbled carcasses of snakes, and flames not yet extinguished, fell below the building.
Black things poured down.
Fire, and things caught in the fire.
Fire is hot.
Things caught in fire also harbor heat.
Things possessing their respective heat fall down and down, guided by gravity.
Into that deep hole, below the sinkhole.
However, who would have known.
That even this profuse falling was entirely Riman's intention.
The gas pipes and water pipes passing under the sinkhole were all broken.
Therefore, an enormous amount of water and flammable gas had accumulated in the sinkhole.
And into such things, hot things poured down.
Things hot enough to wake the silent gas explosively.
BOOM!
An explosion occurred inside the sinkhole.
What occurred simultaneously with the explosion was high heat and blast pressure.
It instantly vaporized the water accumulated inside the sinkhole.
POOF!
An enormous amount of steam soared out of the sinkhole.
The humidity in this area soared rapidly.
To the extent that even Riman on the building rooftop felt the moisture brushing his cheek.
"...Good."
Riman said to Saya.
"Cloud, make one."
"Shaa!"
SHAAAA...!
Saya's mana extended out and began to manipulate the surrounding climate.
Grabbing the steam that filled the air and using it as a catalyst, she began to create a cloud.
Steam became fog, fog became a cloud, and the cloud became a dark cloud.
The drifting steam soon became a huge dark grey mass, and the humidity soared without limit.
And finally, the cloud covered all the snakes.
WHOOSH-
An event that happened in just a few seconds.
Cheonjan watched the spectacle of the weather in front of him changing instantly with considerable interest.
"...Even among my top disciples, there shouldn't be a child capable of such a thing."
Cheonjan was a professor before he was a President.
Therefore, the more he saw the ability, the more he coveted the talent called Riman.
With that level of talent, he was confident he could teach him and take him to a higher place.
Perhaps, even to the position of the next President of Sanhae Magic Tower.
However, the value of all talent is judged by the era.
Talent that does not conform to the era fails to bloom, or must be crushed.
In Cheonjan's view, Riman's talent was the latter.
In the era Sanhae would create, Riman's talent was unnecessarily sharp.
So it needed to be crushed and broken.
That was why he had come personally.
"...So, what on earth do you intend to do with that cloud?"
There was no need to wait for Riman's answer.
Because Riman moved on to the next step immediately.
He burst the water accumulated underground to raise the humidity, and with that, created a massive dark cloud to envelop the snakes.
With this, all preparations were complete.
Preparations to create the worst lightning.
ZZZT...!
Black sparks began to fly from the tips of Riman's ten fingers.
'Intersecting flash, expanding imprisonment.'
Thin, long, and tough, weaving the lightning drawn out like fibers to make a net.
[Lightning Net]
ZZZ-ZZZT...!
Spreading a net of lightning inside the cloud.
Lightning began to spread into every corner of this massive cloud.
The lightning diffusing into the cloud ruptured the moisture particles, and the ruptured particles terrifyingly amplified the electric shock.
ZZZZZZZZT...!!
Like a rain-soaked sponge, the electric shock instantly permeated and spread throughout the entire cloud.
It was instant for the dark cloud to become a thundercloud.
Naturally, the snakes inside the cloud were also exposed entirely to that brutal electric shock.
Inside the dark cloud, the snakes began to fry.
SIZZLE!
CRACKLE!!
The movements of the snakes stopped all at once.
The wriggling streamlined bodies twisted this way and that, distorting hideously.
Thousands, no, tens of thousands of snakes were thus trapped in endless electrocution without even reaching Riman.
The dark cloud covered the snakes' eyes, and the electric shock scorched the snakes' bodies.
It was a surreal sight.
A sight where countless snakes covered the wall of a skyscraper, and a thundercloud covered those snakes again.
Seen from a distance, it looked like a giant tower built of lightning and clouds.
"Hoh......."
Cheonjan admired.
To manifest magic of that scale so skillfully.
That wasn't all.
'He used the water from the burst water pipes, added fire energy to vaporize it, and used it as a catalyst for the cloud. And even the amplification of the lightning strike through that... he is utilizing the surrounding environment almost perfectly.'
The Magic Tower was full of people who had accumulated much more knowledge than Riman.
But in Cheonjan's view, there was almost no one more adept at utilizing magic than Riman.
'Genius... no, even calling him just a monster wouldn't be wrong.'
But because of that, Cheonjan couldn't understand.
Why Riman bothered to do such a thing.
'Simple electric shock cannot deal effective damage to my snakes. This is a fact he must have already experienced once earlier, so why electric magic again...?'
So Cheonjan quietly observed what Riman was doing.
Is that a genius's mistake right now, or part of a bigger picture?
'Let's see what you've got.'
To Cheonjan, Riman was someone who had to be removed right here and now for the sake of the world.
Even so, Cheonjan watched Riman quietly.
He was curious.
If a young man who reached that level at that age struggled with desperate resolve, how far could he go?
"Come...!"
Will you show me a new realm?
Or will it stop at just a young genius's childishness?
I will watch until the end...!
ZZZZZZZZT...!!
The lightning amplifying inside the cloud had reached its limit before long.
Riman felt it too.
It was impossible to amplify the electric shock any further.
The time had come.
The moment to pour out all this suppressed and contained power at once.
'Grey matter and madness, pillar and arrogance.'
ZZZT...!
Pitch-black electric shock began to rise above Riman's right palm.
Then, the electric shock trapped inside the thundercloud began to resonate as if responding to it.
Lightning surges.
Matching Riman's mana, responding to Riman's will.
Riman intuitively knew.
That it was right now.
While grasping a handful of the electric shock engraved with magic, Riman thrust his hand forward with all his might.
And that palm was aiming at Cheonjan.
[Cheonroe Byeokjang (Heavenly Thunder Thunderbolt Palm)]
RUMBLE...!
Thunder that seemed likely to tear the eardrums of the entire city bursts out of the thundercloud.
And at a speed faster than that, lightning spews out from inside the cloud.
It is enormous.
A stream of pitch-black lightning strike, difficult to even dare think of as lightning, shoots out of the thundercloud.
That was not simple lightning.
Because that lightning had the shape of a giant arm.
A sight as if a thunder god, wrapped in clouds instead of clothes, was reaching out from the clouds.
A giant palm likely capable of grasping a small building in one hand, that grip made entirely of lightning.
It descends.
Toward Cheonjan's head, pouring down like divine punishment.
"...Ahahahaha!"
Cheonjan burst into mad laughter without realizing it.
"You crazy bastard! Yes! You should do at least this much!!"
BOOM!
The thunderbolt struck the ground.