novelraw Chapter 27 : Chapter 27
Chapter 27 : Chapter 27
Chapter 27: Terror (3)
“Tsk, it was almost done.”
The voice that erupted from the child’s mouth was not that of a child.
In an instant, the tone twisted into the greasy and heavy voice of a middle-aged man.
The form was the same.
The clear eyes distorted into black, the height shot up, and veins popped out from the once frail limbs.
The skin gradually dried up, and the face transformed into that of a middle-aged man.
The neatly parted hair and the well-groomed beard stood out.
Soon, the disguised child’s form completely crumbled, as if shedding a thick costume.
The Black Mage of Deception, Balzac.
Because it was what he had been doing since the moment he was born, his act was never caught.
As always, his method was to steal the hearts of others with a fabricated face feigning sincerity, dig into their weaknesses, and bring everything crashing down.
It was the same this time.
He needed a stage that would give the audience the most dramatic emotion.
So what kind of subject would be appropriate?
Familial love, and pity.
That was the key.
So he deliberately chose the father and son.
The father who cried out his son’s name even while unconscious, and the child who was shaken by the loss of his father.
The tragic situation woven from the two of them caused sufficient confusion and pity in everyone in this space.
Especially for those with sensitive senses and a strong sense of responsibility, like Seol Hayun, it became a fatal weakness.
And he had stabbed at that weakness.
He had created an opening and approached Seol Hayun perfectly.
To be precise, he had made Seol Hayun approach him on her own.
She had approached Balzac without any suspicion.
Close enough to touch if he just stretched out his hand.
If the Magi dwelling at his fingertips touched her, everything would be over.
Seol Hayun would have fallen unconscious and into Balzac’s hands, and after that, he could have turned everyone left into useful corpses.
He had come to that moment, right before touching Seol Hayun.
However, everything went wrong at the last minute.
“……That kid.”
Balzac glared at the boy standing there with an indifferent expression.
‘Ryu Jinwoo,’ was it?
When he was first kicked, he had intended to just continue the act.
But when Ryu Jinwoo’s sword aimed for his neck without any hesitation and began to dig into his flesh, he realized.
The kid hadn’t just noticed a sign.
He was sure.
As if he knew everything.
‘Damn bastard.’
That was what was unpleasant.
A feeling that he had missed something.
Until now, he had thoroughly toyed with every opponent he had met, but in front of this kid, he didn't feel like he was in the dominant position at all.
‘How in the world did he see through me?’
Black hair, ordinary clothes.
And yet, the blue eyes staring as if to pierce through Balzac himself.
There was something. About that boy.
An inexplicable chill ran down Balzac’s spine.
***
“Tsk, it was almost done.”
Balzac muttered lowly.
Those words were true.
If I hadn’t intervened, Seol Hayun would have been caught in his hands.
After that, she would have been directly touched by the Magi he had prepared, her body paralyzed, and she would have become a hostage.
Seol Hayun, being Ju Yeonhwa’s granddaughter, was of immense value on her own.
From the moment he secured her, Balzac would slaughter everyone left here.
He would commit all those scenes while Seol Hayun watched.
That was the originally planned development.
Seol Hayun would have returned safely through a hostage exchange.
However, the Mystery Hall incident would have left her with irreversible trauma.
And at the time of her promotion to the second year, the moment she was directly exposed to ‘Magi’ again.
The trauma would mix with the Magi, and a collapse would occur.
She would live like a time bomb and explode at the point of becoming a second-year.
The moment Seol Hayun collapses, she goes beyond simply rampaging and running wild, and completely devastates her surroundings.
A flow that I want to avoid the most.
That is why I am more relieved than anyone else here at this moment.
Balzac took a step back from me.
Slowly, creating distance.
He openly exuded a sense of caution.
“You have good instincts.”
He said lowly, his lips twitching.
“No one has ever seen through my disguise until now.”
It was a tone that feigned some composure, but the anger and bewilderment mixed at the back of his throat were not hidden.
“I don’t think it was that great.”
When I retorted lightly, Balzac’s brow furrowed slightly.
“That arrogant attitude, I really don’t like it.”
He narrowed his eyes and adjusted the distance once more.
A moment of silence passed, and he spoke lowly.
“Nothing changes just because you know my identity. This place is still sealed off. You’re no different from rats in a trap.”
The Magi contained in Balzac’s fingertips slowly shimmered.
“The order has just changed. I will kill you and take Seol Hayun.”
With those words, he threw his body backward.
His black robe fluttered, and something scattered in all directions.
Thududud-
Red lumps poured onto the cold floor.
Their identity was none other than pieces of flesh.
The sticky and bumpy pieces of flesh wriggled and crawled on the floor.
Swish- swoosh-
At some point, they began to tangle and entwine with each other.
They mixed, twisted, and grew in volume, creating a certain shape.
“……”
A sight that everyone could only watch, captivated.
As the result was gradually completed, horrified remarks erupted from here and there.
“Is that a person?”
“Horrible……”
The pieces of flesh had clumped together to create the twisted form of a human.
The flesh humans that Balzac creates.
Balzac collects ‘corpses.’
A method of splitting and clumping the flesh of corpses into a single mass, and then taking it out and using it at the desired time.
From the lumps of flesh he had scattered, numerous undead began to be born.
But the interesting thing was that the identity of the Balzac I was looking at was none other than the master of the undead.
In other words, Balzac was a being from the demon world, and the human form he had taken was just something made from a corpse.
What was clear was that the main body was somewhere in that bastard’s body.
And right now, not only would it be difficult for me to find it, but even if I did, it would be impossible to destroy it.
Then isn't this an incredibly desperate situation?
Not really.
In the first place, Balzac was a weak being even in the demon world, and he was only persistent until a skill to destroy beings from the demon world appeared. If you knew how to deal with him, he wasn't that threatening of a being.
Thanks to that, if I just followed the plan, I would be able to get out of this situation without any major problems.
The bastard continued to scatter flesh, and they gradually began to take shape.
The first to appear was a form relatively close to a human.
However, its skin was peeled off, and its muscles and tendons were exposed.
Its bones also protruded at strange angles.
The empty pupils stared blankly into the air, but when Balzac gestured, it turned its head and looked at me.
After that, a beast-type entity that crawled, dragging its limp front paws on the ground, and even special entities with sharp bone needles embedded in their arms like awls instead of hands appeared.
Finally, with a metallic sound that made the floor rumble, a huge being raised its head.
An undead with its skin covered in black armor.
“That’s……?”
Seol Hayun, who had taken a seat next to me at some point, reacted first.
Her eyes widened, and she looked at me and quietly gestured with her eyes.
The being that had appeared last was the grotesque being we had just been fighting, similar to the one that had attacked us before Balzac’s identity was revealed.
“It’s your future. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Balzac sneered, letting out a bitter smile.
At some point, the flesh humans had surrounded him. As if guarding an important person.
At a rough glance, dozens of undead had been created.
With a single gesture, he had created monsters comparable to a single platoon.
The silence created by the brief confrontation was fleeting, and when Balzac gestured, his army began to move.
***
“Gaaaaah!”
“Don’t come! Don’t come! You bastard!”
Screams erupted from here and there.
Seol Hayun bit her lip and gasped for breath.
She successively unleashed her spells, sensing the movements of the undead that popped out from behind her, from next to her ear, and from outside her vision.
[Flower of Flames: Falling Flower]
A flashing red flame poured onto the heads of the undead that surrounded her.
At that moment, a scream was heard from behind her.
When she turned her head, she saw the sight of an undead snatching a citizen’s leg.
There was no time to delay.
Seol Hayun once again focused her magic power at her fingertips.
Flames sparked on the body of the undead that her magic power-infused fingertips pointed to.
Guh! Gweeeek!
The undead, with its body on fire, staggered and fell with a strange sound.
Fortunately, the woman was unharmed.
However, this was just a small act of resistance in a chaotic mess that seemed to have no end.
“……There are too many.”
The words she had intended to swallow came out of her mouth without her realizing it and lingered emptily in the air.
Just in her immediate vicinity, there were at least a dozen undead.
Some of them were already charging at the citizens.
They each resisted with self-defense weapons or magitools.
But most were either too terrified to move properly or were caught and then covered by the undead, trembling and letting out screams of pain.
“Seol Hayun! Don’t lose focus!”
Ryu Jinwoo’s voice echoed at that moment.
She turned her body reflexively.
One was already right in front of her.
[Flower of Flames: Proliferation]
Kwang!
With an explosion, flame vines burst out from the floor and wrapped around the undead.
Following that, Ryu Jinwoo’s sword accurately cut the neck of the captured undead.
Behind the swift sword strike, the flesh split along the faint line that had formed on the neck, and the head fell to the floor with a thud.
A clean combination, their teamwork was not off by a single inch.
A gaze exchanged in a brief moment, a movement that followed.
It was closer to an instinctive combination for survival than a simple cooperation.
But no matter how much they supported each other, no matter how much they cut and burned, there was no end to it.
‘If I had my way, I’d want to burn this entire area, but…….’
The undead were certainly weak to flames.
But now, with enemies and citizens mixed together, she couldn't use it carelessly.
And above all.
Thuuump-!
The armored, large-bodied entity continued to rampage violently, putting pressure on them.
The tanker-type entity they had fought before.
An opponent that was overwhelming enough on its own.
And now, that monster was rampaging, mixed with numerous undead.
‘Can we hold out?’
Anxiety crept into a corner of Seol Hayun’s heart.
On the other hand, Balzac still looked relaxed.
Despite having summoned so many puppets, he didn't seem overwhelmed at all.
Above all, he was protecting himself perfectly.
Not only the undead that surrounded him as a meat shield, but also the dense Magi that lingered around Balzac.
He wasn’t giving them a single opening.
“Krrruuuh!”
At that moment, a standard-type undead charged at Seol Hayun.
With its face stripped of flesh and its arms shaking, drooling.
Fwoosh-
A red flame flared up and covered the beast’s face.
Pshk-!
The next moment, a dagger-like presence flew in from the left.
“Kuh……”
A bone spear was lodged long in the back of her hand.
She had twisted her shoulder to dodge it, but the blade grazed her, and blood seeped from her cheek.
She immediately tried to counterattack.
But she couldn't help but lose her center.
The moment she took a step back, having lost her balance.
Whooong-!
A huge shadow loomed from above.
The tanker-type entity.
A huge body floating in the air.
Its massive arm rushed at her menacingly.
‘I can't dodge it.’
The moment she realized that, her body was pushed hard.
“Huh?”
Someone’s hand had pushed her back.
Kwaaaang-!
A huge roar echoed, and flesh and dirt flew.
Dust and heat were violently spewed out.
Gradually, as the dust cloud slowly cleared, the scene began to be revealed.
The spot that the huge fist had crushed was hollowed out as if it had been hit by a bomb.
And in it, someone was lying down.
“……Ryu Jinwoo?”
Seol Hayun muttered in a trembling voice.