novelraw Chapter 264: After Story #4 — Hijacking (1)
Chapter 264: After Story #4 — Hijacking (1)
The Reaper Constellation Ω, the “Witch,” was a [Constellation] ranked in the single digits, worshiped across the entire world, but—
Not once had she ever overtrusted her own power and made a reckless call.
She was, by nature, a cautious woman.
She didn’t approach people or places she didn’t know well, and if she had to approach them, she made sure she understood them first.
In her life, only once.
There had been one time she approached something she didn’t know.
She made an exception and went to a certain man who kept wagging his tail at her sweetly, and after she was betrayed in the end—
The Witch started walking even more strictly on paths where the footprints were already visible.
For that reason, when she revealed herself in front of someone, it meant she already understood the other party down to the last detail. If the other party was a Constellation, she’d even figured out how many spoons were on that household’s table.
But today was a little different.
“.......”
It was a night of “Sakil.”
A night where the stars in the sky lost their light and you couldn’t see even an inch ahead.
The Witch and the assassins looked down from a high mountain at a certain Imperial training camp. It had originally been a Guard training facility, but right now it was a building complex occupied by Legion and that bastard’s forces.
“......Prepare for combat.”
At the Witch’s low voice, all twenty members of the Reaper Assassination Squad drew the daggers at their waists and their “silver threads.”
In the silence, each of them cast their [buffs]. From minor things like raising [stats], to coating poison, to even pulling out ancient souls.
The Witch raised a hand to her face and summoned an assassin mask, attaching it. A mask with demon-like teeth, below the nose, covered her lower face. Through all of it, not a single sound could be heard.
“Assassination.”
Everyone began moving in silence. Movements that didn’t leave behind even a single footprint. Following routes decided in advance, they burrowed inside. The assassination-detection equipment and mana barriers had already been neutralized.
They saw the sentries. The ones who knew nothing about what was coming were giggling among themselves.
A single line covered the night sentries. The “silver threads” coiled around them. If they ran like that, their heads and torsos would separate like cake, yet once again, not a single sound was heard. They merely floated, suspended between buildings.
After entering, the Reaper Assassination Squad immediately aimed for the next targets. What they were aiming for was only one person. A freak called Legion who’d been running rampant in the Empire lately.
Needles rode walls and doors, ceilings and floors, piercing the whole world and hunting people.
This was no longer simple assassination.
It was part of an ultra-highly developed group extermination technique.
‘Where is he.’
The Witch knew he was Agion’s younger brother. She even had a memory of seeing him once, long, long ago. She’d thought of him as something like a weapon Agion raised in secret—talent lacking, but jealousy reaching the heavens....
At the point Agion died, that bastard should’ve withered up too.
But—
That bastard had taken down, killed, and made disappear several [Challenger]-class powerhouses, and that was hard to understand.
The Witch collected every battle record of Legion, every circumstance that had surfaced externally, but she still couldn’t figure out what his power was based on.
‘.......’
Not knowing the opponent—
That came to the Witch as an intentionally unpleasant feeling.
The violations of territory were getting worse and worse, and even when she sent a cease-and-desist, he ignored it, so there was no choice anymore, but—
Not long ago, even an executive of the Reaper Assassination Squad who went # Nоvеlight # to stop him vanished as if evaporating.
‘......There’s no other way now.’
After quietly sweeping away everyone who got caught on the way, they reached the deepest part of the training camp position.
Legion’s room.
At last, when the assassins shot a thread from far away to open the door, a man was seated in the exact center of the room.
As if he’d known the assassins were coming.
He held a single short blade.
Facing the door.
In an instant, the Reaper assassins occupied the area around the room. Nearby, the room’s walls and the entrance. Farther out, even the outer windows and the floors above and below.
“......Black clothes and demon masks... I’ve heard of you. You’re probably the Reaper Constellation, aren’t you?”
The man lifted his head.
“Yeah.”
He resembled Agion, but his eyes were utterly vacant.
They were nothing like his older brother’s, which always glistened with desire. They were empty. Far too empty for someone with such vigorous activity.
‘A blind man.’
The Witch realized.
“Why did you come looking for me? And while killing my loyal subordinates. As the Reaper Constellation, as a star’s agent who oversees someone’s end, did you come to do your job?”
“Not really.”
“Then?”
“I don’t like it when someone rummages around in my territory. But you rummaged around too much.”
“......Is that so. ...And who decided that ‘territory’?”
“I did.”
“What meaning does something you decided have? I’m a man—if you decide from now on that I’m a woman, do I become a woman?”
“I can make it similar.”
This kind of pointless conversation wasn’t her taste.
Schring—
The Witch drew her sword, but—
“You’re wrong.”
Legion kept talking.
“Humans, you know... they can’t decide anything.”
He didn’t look like he intended to stop.
“Alright, baby. If you’re going to keep spewing nonsense, go find your brother and finish it with him.”
“No. You need to know. Humans, in the end, aren’t that different from all the other created things in this era. Like bugs or rats flying way over there. What’s permitted in the specifications God made isn’t that different.”
The Witch didn’t answer anymore. She simply raised her hand. Whether she did or not, Legion kept muttering.
“But I’m different. I’m the one who can really ‘define’ something. I can ‘command’ it. And in the end, Witch, I can dominate inferior things like you. Isn’t that amazing? At first I was clumsy, but now I’m perfect. How you do it is—”
The Witch snapped her finger. Ttaak.
“—【 Stop. 】”
And nothing happened.
The Witch’s eyes widened.
All the assassins except her froze in place.
“—That’s how.”
In an instant, her mind spun.
The way the assassin she sent died. Why the Guards and even [Challenger] and [Grandmaster] ranks had been taken down indiscriminately. The method where information didn’t spread and everything was controlled.
She began fitting this situation onto all of it.
“...A spoken command?”
“Others asked that too. Spoken commands. Coercion. Dragon speech, and things like that. But I told you, didn’t I? It’s not that kind of human technique.”
“Then.”
Legion raised a finger and pointed at the sky.
“Stars.”
At the same time, he slowly stood up.
“This is language and technique used on the level of stars.”
The Witch narrowed her eyes. Because she understood right away.
She, too, knew faintly. About ‘how this world was made.’ Constellations—especially high-ranking ones—sometimes caught glimpses of it.
Beyond the pretty wrapping paper of stars, there existed a ‘language’ that they couldn’t understand.
That language defined the form of stars, the shape of stars, the roles of stars, the power assigned to stars, the system by which stars operated......
And it defined all people and things, weather and terrain, and even defined ‘the value of space’ and ‘the current time.’
It was the language that wrote the foundation of the world.
‘......Abraxas said the name of that language resembled “horseshoe crab.”’
He said it was a language not permitted to humans. A language even Abraxas only ever “glimpsed.”
“By what qualification are you handling the language of that higher dimension?”
“I don’t handle it completely either. It’s just that a single sentence can define this entire world. I don’t need qualifications. Because it came looking for me.”
“......!”
“This is... power that should never be given to humans of this lower dimension.”
No flashy effect.
No explosion of mana traces.
No emission of any kind, but—
“Language that intervenes in order and twists even the causality of stars.”
“Where—”
Sensing something, the Witch’s hand produced Grim Reaper Ω.
「 Flash Step 」
Immediately, space folded in half and fired the Witch like a bullet.
Paaang!!
But Legion, as if used to this kind of surprise attack, began stretching space itself like taffy, widening the distance between them.
‘[Warping]... If it’s something that half-assed, you just end it before it even starts.’
The distance kept increasing. But if she broke this warping trick, time would already have passed to the other side.
It’s fine.
No matter how far he gets.
It isn’t like I can’t even bring him to mind.
‘Legion. As of 3:22 p.m. today, you die.’
In an instant, the world resonated with the Witch.
Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiii——
Mana symbolizes the will of existence.
This “Queen of the Underworld”’s will to slaughter—this intent to kill someone—went beyond the target and descended upon the entire space.
It was a battle-type 9th-level power classified as [Mind Sword], and a realm beyond even that.
Her consciousness had already bestowed a confirmed death upon the target.
Just that alone made Legion’s body, which had been sitting there, begin to tear apart.
“Kgh...!!”
Like paper ripping under a fingernail. Human flesh tore away.
Legion’s face twisted.
At the same time, the warping cracked.
Kkaenggeurang!!
At this point, Legion was already dragging his breaking body and moving away beyond the window. Even his footwork was high-level.
But death is the final order on a worldline that permits no error.
“I hereby declare.”
The Witch flew up.
“The strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the predator and the prey, I will love them all equally.”
As she raised her scythe, the building’s ceiling blew away in one piece.
Incomprehensible mana gathered and pooled at the tip of that enormous blade.
“Whatever being has contained itself within any boundary at all—death shall come to all things in the world with devotion that discriminates against none.”
No matter what trick you try to block it.
You can’t block this.
Everyone is born alone.
But the end stays in one place.
From before humanity even existed, from the microbial stage, history rested within this order, embraced in the bosom of Reaper Constellation Ω.
As the keeper of death who oversaw it, she was a mother who had to embrace this era’s world.
“As the Queen of the Underworld, I shall take the breath of an existence that has not been permitted.”
The Witch was certain.
「 Authority of Death 」
When she brought the scythe down—
The mansion, the ground, the sky, the world surrounding him split along a diagonal.
Kwaaaang—!!! Kwaaaang—!!!
An impact erupted as if an earthquake, thunder, and every kind of earthly disaster had arrived all at once.
Kwaaaang—!!! Kwaaaang—!!!
Kwaaaang—!!! Kwaaaang—!!!
Kwaaaang—!!! Kwaaaang—!!!
The sky collapsed. The ground shattered. Space itself warped and redirected the force.
At the center of that target, Legion was cleaved in two in a single stroke.
As if the end had come to one world.
The very existence of one person began to break apart.
Legion, with his teeth and lips completely ruined, the mouth that could barely move, barely managed to hold one word, like a dying scream.
“【 ......Reflect. 】”
In the next moment, the Witch was breaking apart.