novelraw Chapter 439
Chapter 439
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Chapter 439
Kuralion’s staff is, originally, a relic that possesses the ability to transmit knowledge.
However, rather than using it for the transmission of knowledge, I used it for the sharing of memories, or perhaps their transfer.
The first time I used it that way was when I met Leon Cascadia of the Closed World by using the transcendent being’s core.
In truth, using Kuralion’s staff without any preparation had been something close to a gamble.
Originally, I had intended to shake things up from the inside by placing my memories into it and transferring them to her.
But then.
As if it had been ready, Kuralion’s staff resonated.
And the librarian, having noticed something beyond that, threw aside what he had been doing and gave me advice.
This is the result of that.
Isna, having even stopped resisting, clutched her head, dropped to her knees, screamed, and writhed in agony.
It was not that Kuralion’s staff was destroying her will.
Rather, Yog, having realized that the memories engraved into the staff were dangerous, was tormenting her in an attempt to keep her from accepting those memories.
As a result, just like the pain that occurs when white blood cells devour germs, an enormous purification reaction was occurring within her.
At a glance, I could even see something whitish around her body writhing as though screaming.
The grotesque eyes attached all over that whitish figure’s entire body moved madly in every direction, making it even more bizarre.
Looking at that thing made me feel as though my mind might go strange, but.
Thanks to the Book of Genesis, it had no direct effect on me.
[It is a meaningless struggle. It is already too late to save this insignificant lesser creature. The will of the lesser creature has already been shattered, and control of the flesh shall pass to me.]
Before long, the eyeballs that had been rolling about here and there all fixed on us at once, and a chilling will flooded into my head.
Perhaps because it felt revolting, as if an overwhelming presence were being forcibly shoved in, Lispa and Luna’s expressions looked poor.
Wooooong!! Woooong!!
That was when it happened.
Kuralion’s staff, which had fallen to the floor, began trembling on its own.
As though.
It were trying to convey something.
At the same time, the suffering Isna staggered and raised her head.
In her eyes swirled a yellow light that gave off a strange feeling unlike before.
Craaack!!!
At the same time, the ground beneath my feet began to squirm and churn, and soon transformed into something like the mouth of a grotesque living being before gaping wide.
Kwaaaaaang!!!!
At the same time, tentacles covered haphazardly with countless eyeballs, suckers, and grotesque mouths shot out from the surface and tried to coil around me.
Paaang!!!
Accelerating in an instant, I approached Isna.
Then the tentacle on the side of Isna’s severed arm swung toward me, smashing the Tree of Falling Blossoms apart as it came.
[Such a petty trick.]
Yog, knowing that once I accelerated in an instant there would be no further acceleration after that, accurately dug in at the exact moment I stopped accelerating.
However, there was one thing the bastard was mistaken about.
It was true that I accelerated only briefly in order to prevent strain on my body, but not once had I ever thought that doing it twice was impossible.
Srrrk…….
The grotesque purple tentacle that had sprouted from Isna’s arm merely pierced the afterimage I had left behind after accelerating once more and vanishing.
Thud!!
After that, what I did was not attack Isna.
Nor was it to attack the whitish afterimage coiling around her.
It was to retrieve Kuralion’s staff lying sprawled on the floor.
[If possible, I had hoped this would not come to pass. But that would be greed. Now is the chance. Tear him away.]
A familiar thought stabbed into me for only the briefest moment.
A message from Leon of the Closed World.
I immediately sorted out my judgment and shouted.
“Luna! Lispa! One big shot.”
I did not explain at length.
That one sentence alone would have been enough for both of them to understand.
Luna and Lispa, who had been suppressing the twisting space in my stead, scattered in all directions the instant the space sealed shut and drew up a pure white light as though surrounding Isna.
Isna’s counterattack followed immediately.
The grotesque mouths that had appeared beneath my feet a moment ago sprang up in all directions, and from within those mouths horrible tentacles poured forth and flew precisely toward us with their sharpened tips.
Paaang!!!
At the same time, Lispa plucked Lyra’s strings, creating a melody that blocked their movements and opened a path for me.
Amazingly, the melody she created moved gently like the flow of water and even forcibly sealed shut the newly appearing grotesque mouths so that they could not open.
Ssswaeaeaeak!!!
A circular sword energy spread out centered on Isna, then narrowed in an instant as it aimed for her.
As if trying to prevent damage to the body, Yog manipulated Isna’s body and unleashed tremendous power, knocking away the ring of sword energy.
With Lispa having removed the interference, there was no longer anything between Isna and me obstructing the way.
I dug in in an instant, planted my foot hard right in front of her, and threw a punch.
Tududududung!!!!
In the blink of an eye, seven or eight restrained attacks flew toward her, and Isna defended against them with her one remaining arm and the whitish shape roaming around her.
However, perhaps because she was not in a proper condition.
Or perhaps because of the gap in capability, I did not know.
She only managed to fend off the dangerous attacks.
She could not stop the pressure point strikes that slipped through the gaps like flashes of light.
[Sealed Blood]
Whether an Outer God resided within her or not, in the end Isna’s body was still that of a human.
And.
The Sealed Blood I had just driven into her was also a pressure point technique that momentarily incapacitated a human body.
It was also a method I had often used in the Labyrinth against humanoid enemies.
So I snatched the sword that had been flung up into the air as though hooking it out of the air, and gripped it with both hands.
And then.
I slashed upward diagonally with precise accuracy across her body.
Her body must not be destroyed.
But.
I also could not let that fact be exposed to him.
It was something I had been thinking since the moment I cut off her arm, but I could not let Yog become convinced that I absolutely could not destroy Isna’s body.
That was why I had to pressure him by attacking sharply enough to make it seem as though I truly intended to destroy her body, while leaving only the minimum amount of openings.
Realizing that defending with her remaining one arm would be difficult, the yellow-stained eyes flickered once.
At the same time, the space where she and I stood twisted by force, leaving a wound on my arm as though it had been cut by a blade.
If even this body, which normally would not be wounded by most attacks, was left with a sword wound, then it must have been remarkably sharp.
But that did not matter.
Perhaps because her condition was so bad, Isna tried to quickly get away from me.
But.
Distracted by my pressure, Isna failed to properly perceive Lispa and Luna.
In an instant, Lispa’s melody rippled like a rope and coiled around Isna, who had leapt into the air.
“Hryaaap!!”
And she reacted far too late to Luna’s attack, as Luna approached by folding space and springing upward.
Of course, it was not that she failed to react entirely.
Between Isna and Luna, several transparent curtain-like layers appeared as though overlapping each other.
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Each layer was a barrier of authority that simply rejected physical mass.
She must have judged Luna’s attack dangerous enough to drag out something like that by force.
Perhaps.
She may have paid quite a heavy price for it.
But the two pairs of wings sprouting from Luna’s back—and, in addition, another two pairs of wings that looked as though they were made of light—for a total of four pairs, spread open and began forcibly twisting the surrounding space.
Before long, something like a giant clock pattern ticked behind her back, and the minute and hour hands began moving rapidly.
In an instant, the minute hand spun dozens of times, and when the hour hand made one full rotation from twelve o’clock and pointed to twelve again—
the clock itself made a clacking sound and spun around once.
As though.
Some gigantic mechanical device were turning, it shone brilliantly and overwhelming power overflowed.
Then her fist flew forward.
Not content merely to crush the layered defenses in one blow, it pierced straight through them.
Jjeoeoeong!!!
With the illusion that time had slowed for a moment, Luna’s fist, drawn back behind her, slammed precisely into Isna’s solar plexus.
Crack!!
The first sound was something breaking.
Then it was followed by the sound of something hard being crushed and shattered.
The instant her fist touched Isna’s body, all the empty space in the surrounding area cracked and broke apart as though it were fracturing.
Luna’s hand-to-hand combat ability boasted power that was, for all intents and purposes, close to a calamity.
In fact, her physical strength could momentarily surpass even mine.
An archangel is not just some random dog’s name.
If the primary force used by a four-winged archangel, who in truth protects dimensions and acts in place of God’s will, is a fist, then there is no need to even speak of its power.
With an incomplete descent, and with Yog having developed an opening due to Kuralion’s staff, it was not something he could withstand.
Struck by Luna’s fist, Isna’s body folded into the shape of a ㄱ and was flung straight into the wall.
Kwaaaaaang!!!
And, completely shattering the solid wall, she was sent flying beyond it.
Unable even to control her posture, Isna crashed to the ground and rolled several times, then coughed up a gush of black blood and slowly raised herself.
After Luna and Lispa followed.
And by the time I too had reached beyond the shattered wall.
I could see them.
The others who had been inside this labyrinth dungeon.
No, more precisely, a large number of explorers who had been investigating this integrated rift rather than a labyrinth.
With space having shattered, it seemed we had been flung into an entirely different space.
They widened their eyes in shock at the sight of Isna suddenly being thrown out as space shattered—and at our presence as well.
“Huh? Le… Leon Cascadia?!”
“Wh-…… why is that person here?”
A familiar voice came from somewhere.
They sounded like those chick rookie hopefuls I had seen in the Spirit Corridor.
Now was not the time to care about that.
Just as the thought conveyed through Kuralion’s staff had said, a change came over Isna’s body.
The whitish figure wandering around her grew even larger.
At a glance, it looked as though it had grown stronger, but I was certain.
Yog, who had seeped into Isna’s body, was only barely hanging on to her flesh and enduring.
In truth, the bizarre tentacles that had sprouted from her severed arm had completely vanished, and her yellow eyes repeatedly returned to their original color before shining yellow again.
There were more people around than I had expected.
The surrounding scenery was a wide grassland.
Unlike the labyrinth, it seemed that this place had seen the entry of many people.
But.
This picture had become strangely wrong somehow.
To anyone looking, did it not seem as though three people were trying to kill a woman who had lost one arm?
In fact, some of those nearby drew their weapons and surrounded Isna as though protecting her.
It seemed they could not see the whitish form coiling around her.
Without that, the current Isna would, quite literally, look like an injured person who had lost one arm.
“What do you think you’re doing! To attack a person in a place like this, not even inside a labyrinth!”
“Stop this slaughter that offers no merit at once!”
Their cries rang out as they approached to protect Isna.
That was when it happened.
Crunch!! Craack!!
Something invisible pierced through their bodies in an instant.
“Kuheok?!”
“Grrk?!”
Their bodies, staggering with their eyes bulging wide, began to wither and shrivel like mummies in the blink of an eye.
As though absorbing vitality or mana, Yog killed the two of them in an instant and exuded power.
After I had gone through all that trouble killing everything, to think it had already found an opening and was recovering its strength.
But.
It seemed that the arrangement left behind by me of the Closed World within Kuralion’s staff had exceeded Yog’s expectations a little.
Jjeoeoeong!!!
With a horrific sound, the whitish figure that had somehow been enduring while clinging to Isna’s body was suddenly flung out of her body.
[This insignificant lesser creature!!!!!]
The moment I heard the bellow of the bastard in utter fury, I instinctively understood, gripped the ghost sword tightly with both hands, and raised it high.
Sseogeok!!!
And then, without hesitation, I slashed only that figure cleanly within the path of my blade.
And, keeping the bastard precisely within my sight with my eyes, I explosively activated elemental mana.
[7th Circle Ice-Snow System]
[Ice Crystal]
In an instant, an enormous number of things like shards of ice sprang into existence throughout the entire area.
And then.
As though by prior promise, they collided, producing a phenomenon of electron separation.
The commonly known principle by which natural lightning is generated.
However, from there I drew it in by using an extreme compression process and lightning magic above the 8th Circle as a trigger.
The lightning particles born in all directions were explosively compressed for an instant, then burst forth and shot high into the sky before disappearing.
[9th Circle Explosive Thunder System]
[Genesis Origin]
It was a spell I had used before as well, but by using the effect of Ice Crystal, I manifested an extreme synergy.
The thunderbolt that seemed as though it would overturn the world was not merely an ordinary bolt of lightning one might commonly see in nature.
It was closer to a discharge phenomenon on an overwhelming scale—the kind one might only witness on a giant planet ravaged by colossal storms.
At this level, be satisfied and get lost already.
As though it did or did not understand my will, the bastard’s intent came through intact.
[Do you think anything will change by doing this? This insignificant lesser creature can never escape my grasp for all eternity.]
“No. The moment you were flung out, there won’t be a second chance.”
Isna had fallen to its brainwashing because her mind had been that unstable, and because she had possessed no means of enduring its brainwashing.
But.
The moment I drove it out this time, I intended to block both of those problem factors at the source.
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