novelraw Chapter 107 : The Person I Had Been Waiting For (3)
Chapter 107 : The Person I Had Been Waiting For (3)
Chapter 107: The Person I Had Been Waiting For (3)
Puuk-!
I drove a single white spike straight into the gaping maw of the lycan.
It was identical to the black spike magic Tyrant had developed, but what filled it was Flewd.
That was why it was transparent—its defining trait was that it couldn’t be seen by the lycan’s eyes.
Without showing even a hint of pain, the lycan tried to pull out the spike embedded in its snout with both hands.
“I really meant it. Doesn’t it hurt?”
The more I looked at it, the more I was reminded of 450 years ago.
If there was one defining trait of Sylarid’s summons, this was it.
As if the very concept of pain didn’t exist, no matter what was pierced into its body or even if its limbs were severed, it only focused on the enemy before its eyes and charged ahead.
What’s more, even though Kiena, the caster, was still asleep, its strength didn’t weaken—instead, Sylarid’s aura only grew denser by the moment.
Puk!
Pubuk!
Grrrrr…….
When I drove white spikes into each of the lycan’s four legs like stakes, it ended up looking like a prisoner awaiting execution at the guillotine.
Even so, its struggle didn’t stop.
Since Kiena was asleep, I thought that adding a bit of physical damage would make it disappear on its own.
But judging by how it looked now, there was no way other than to completely annihilate it.
Through the white spikes embedded in the lycan’s body, I began injecting a massive amount of air into its insides.
Then the lycan’s body grotesquely swelled up, and finally…….
Pueong-!
It vanished without leaving behind a single fragment, disappearing at the very moment of the explosion.
It seemed that only because Kiena’s capabilities weren’t yet complete was it able to vanish so simply.
Four hundred and fifty years ago, during the Battle of the Full Moon, the lycans we faced alongside eight swordsmen were well over fifteen meters tall.
Just having a few of them standing beside Sylarid was enough to make each lycan feel like a massive fortress.
If Kiena had been able to summon even a single one of those lycans, this facility wouldn’t have remained intact.
I looked at Kiena.
She was still sleeping soundly, unaware of the world.
I withdrew the sleep magic.
At that moment, at the very top of the main campus.
The sealing stone guarded by Tyrant began to convulse, alternately emitting black light and emerald light.
This signified only one thing.
It was a phenomenon that appeared only when the Sylarid sealed inside struggled desperately to break free.
The black coloration of the sealing stone was now crossing from sixty percent to seventy percent.
It meant that about 70% of Sylarid’s power had been absorbed.
However, every time Sylarid struggled, the absorbed power leaked back out, causing the black and emerald colors to rise and fall uneasily.
There was only one way to stop this.
It was to eliminate all the monsters summoned at the altar on the lower floors.
When Sylarid began to act, its influence caused monsters to be summoned from the altars below, and only by dealing with all of them would Sylarid cease its activity.
Tyrant placed his hand on the sealing stone and gauged the mana surging from it.
Lately, Sylarid’s activity had been abnormally frequent, and the power it emitted was different from usual.
He sensed something ominous in that mana.
“Gatekeeper.”
“Yes, my lord Full Moon.”
“Check through the mob. See which rank of altar has begun activity.”
The Gatekeeper immediately checked through the mob capable of monitoring the state of the altars.
This was slightly different from a surveillance mob.
Most importantly, the main campus had no surveillance mobs like Etar’s branch school.
Since it was a place Tyrant completely controlled, there was no need to monitor the students in the first place.
What the Gatekeeper checked was an altar-detection mob installed only on the sixth floor.
The sixth floor housed the 8th-, 9th-, and 10th-rank altars.
Because the moment a 9th- or 10th-rank altar became active, it would be a disaster requiring the deployment of the entire faculty of the main campus, it had been installed separately on the sixth floor alone.
After confirming the state of the altar through the detection mob, the Gatekeeper replied with a stiff expression.
“……It’s 9th rank.”
“……What?”
9th rank.
In other words, a monster equivalent to a 9th Circle Mage was about to emerge.
Among all the altars that had been active so far, the strongest had been 8th rank—this was an unprecedented situation in three hundred years.
“……Mobilize the Royal Guard immediately. There isn’t a mage on the main campus capable of suppressing a 9th-rank altar right now, is there?”
“That’s correct. However…… as you know, Royal Guard Captain Daemon is currently injured…….”
He had already heard the report.
He had assigned Daemon the mission of executing Vice-Captain Ignito, but the result was something even Tyrant found hard to accept.
He didn’t know what kind of trick Ignito had pulled to inflict a critical injury on Daemon and escape, but the fact was that Daemon had been completely outplayed.
He was in such poor condition that they should be relieved he hadn’t lost his life.
“You’ll take charge of the Royal Guard temporarily until Daemon recovers.”
In his haste, Tyrant added another new position to the Gatekeeper’s duties.
“……Will that really be all right?”
“We need to block the 9th-rank altar first. If we suppress this altar, we’ll be able to absorb a significant portion of Sylarid’s power as well. Of all times, a 9th-rank altar…….”
Tyrant found the situation just as troublesome.
Ed Etar was now making blatantly suspicious moves.
Battles kept breaking out in the Underworld.
And now, at a time when the Royal Guard needed to be fully utilized, even a 9th-rank altar was showing signs of activation.
Since his body was bound to the top, he had no choice but to use the Royal Guard to handle everything.
Still, it wasn’t a hopeless situation.
That was because when Sylarid struggled violently and then fell asleep, his power was absorbed into the sealing stone more quickly.
Clinging to that one hope, Tyrant issued the order to recall the Royal Guard to the main campus.
“Then I will proceed as ordered, my lord Full Moon.”
Leaving those words behind, the Gatekeeper departed from the top.
Left alone, Tyrant pondered something briefly before pulling out his own mob.
‘Even so, I can’t completely withdraw surveillance over the Underworld.’
Then he contacted two people simultaneously.
-It’s been a while, Tyrant. Did you contact me because you were lonely?
-I heard things have been noisy lately. I figured you’d be reaching out like this.
From the mob, the voices of two women flowed out one after the other.
“Enough small talk. I’ll get straight to the point. Livia, Kabir. I have an order for the two of you.”
-Oh my, an order? You really haven’t learned any manners, even back then.
The first to respond was Lamik Livia.
She was the head of the water-element representative family, Lamik, and the current headmaster of the Lamik branch school.
She replied with a sneer.
-For a lady, you should make a request, not give an order, if you want the result you’re looking for, Tyrant.
The one who answered next was Mirne Kabir.
She was the head of the wind-element representative family, Mirne.
“Enough noise. This is an order as the Archmage who leads you.”
-Well, I don’t like it, but it’s an Archmage’s order, so what can I do? Isn’t that right, Kabir?
-That’s right. Go on, Tyrant.
“Ueoeok…….”
In the basement beneath the Underworld tavern, a festival of flames fierce enough to melt the world was underway.
Rezi was struck by flames that stole his senses, collapsing on the spot as he cried out in pain.
“Ah, damn, you’re pathetically weak. You want me to pass down our family’s magic to trash like this?”
The one in charge of his magical instruction was none other than Sparkle.
She had been dismissed from her position as a 2nd Class professor at the Ed Branch School and was currently in the Underworld together with Former.
“Get up. There’s no time to whine.”
“…….”
To put it somewhat extremely, Rezi honestly wished he would just die right now.
That was how excessively eccentric the teaching methods of Sparkle, the Ed Family mage assigned as his private tutor, were.
Cursing was the bare minimum, and when she used magic, it was as if she were trying to kill a mortal enemy of her family, so Rezi’s body was left in shambles.
At present, large portions of his body were reddened from burns, tormenting him with throbbing pain.
‘How can she call this whining? If she has eyes, she should just look for herself.’
If he took even a little more of this, even the bones inside would be cooked.
And yet she called this whining.
Did she really not see this with her own eyes?
“Get up!”
In the end, Sparkle walked right up to Rezi and kicked the burned areas of his body.
“Kuaaaagh! You crazy bitch, seriously!”
Unable to contain the unspeakable pain, the words he’d been holding back slipped out of Rezi’s mouth.
“Did you just talk back to me? Where does a pig bastard like you get the nerve…….”
“You’re in the wrong too, Sparkle. You should know when to stop.”
At that moment, Former entered the basement and stepped in to mediate.
“My goodness. Are you taking out your frustration over being fired from your professor position on him? How could you reduce him to this state?”
Former’s expression crumpled as soon as he saw Rezi’s condition.
Calling this tutoring would be wrong—it was more accurate to call it one-sided slaughter.
“I knew this would happen……. Sparkle, stop for now. At this rate, he might never be able to use his arm again.”
“…….”
Instead of answering, Sparkle only showed a dissatisfied expression.
‘So she can’t act out in front of Vice Headmaster Former either?’
When the two of them were alone, she was a tyrant beyond compare, yet she showed a relatively docile side before Former, which Rezi found nothing short of fascinating.
“I’ll go get Elder Vise. Wait here, Rezi.”
“Yes.”
Former left the basement like that, leaving just the two of them once again.
“You, did you even properly read our family’s grimoire?”
Now Sparkle’s questioning began.
For once, her voice was oddly gentle.
Rezi slowly nodded.
“Then how are you such a complete mess? Even if I told someone to do it on purpose, they couldn’t mess up this badly.”
“…….”
“Oh, right. You said you were a Class 0 teacher, didn’t you? Well, if you had any talent, you wouldn’t have become a teacher and would’ve gone straight to the 7th Circle. Ugh, why are they even trying to recycle trash like that?”
Sparkle continued to scrape at his pride.
Even so, Rezi endured it.
That was because Sparkle was a mage whose skill was more than enough to look down on him.
Instead, Rezi threw out a single question.
“There’s something I want to ask.”
“What is it?”
“Sparkle, you…….”
“Did I tell you to add ‘sir’ or not?”
“……Sparkle, sir, how many Circles are you?”
At first, Sparkle raised only her index and middle fingers, then spread all five fingers wide.
It meant 7th Circle.
“……7th Circle?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re way too different from the 7th Circle I fought before…….”
“How dare you compare some Nohill nobody to me?”
‘……She’s calling the head of the Nohill Family a nobody.’
It was nothing short of shocking.
They were both 7th Circle, yet the gap in their level was this severe?
Of course, through his time as a student at the Ed Branch School, he knew that even within the same Circle there could be vast differences in level.
But this was far too much of a difference.
It almost felt like Sparkle was actually around the 9th Circle and was deliberately lying by saying she was 7th Circle.
“Don’t try to compare the Nohill Family’s simple flames to the Ed Family. Compared to us, they don’t even measure up to matches.”
He had heard something similar before.
From Vise.
When Vise had first evaluated his magic, he had called it crude, saying that the Ed Family’s flames contained every emotion…….
Those words resurfaced in his mind now.
‘I understand what you meant, Family Head.’
He had already been hit by Sparkle’s magic several times.
Beyond just being hot and painful, there was always something heavy embedded within her magic.
And Rezi realized it.
‘That’s right. No matter how much high-Circle magic I see, it’s meaningless. I need to reproduce the Ed Family’s flames exactly. I lack the basics. I have to rebuild the basics from scratch. That’s my assignment.’
As he finished that thought, Vise and Former entered together.
“My goodness……. Sparkle, you really need to know when to stop. This is too much.”
Seeing Rezi’s condition, Vise recoiled in alarm and manifested water-element magic over Rezi’s burned areas.
The stinging pain of the wounds was washed away by the water, and Rezi’s burns began to heal.
“His condition is a bit serious, so rest for two days.”
As Vise delivered his diagnosis, Sparkle nodded in acknowledgment.
But Rezi spat out a reply burning with determination.
“No. I’ll continue. I can do it.”