Book 15 Chapter 17
On the ruins of that day,
Destiny's Rival (4)
[The best timing to seduce a woman is when she's crying from despair, you know.]
Zernix clenched his hand. The destruction of the magic circle rotating on his palm led to the emergence of power.
Geometric singularity distortion.
To explain this more simply, it crushes whatever is inside by folding the end of this space and the end of that space together, like folding paper.
Cha-aaaa-ang…!
However, as if to mock that spatial crushing, the blade of the holy sword poked out from beyond the singularity and cut the distorted space into dozens of pieces.
‘Damn it, I don't know if it makes sense for someone who's only 20 years old to have such power.’
Having escaped, Rista once again concentrated her leg strength on her tiptoes and leaped.
A swordsman's or martial artist's leap is truly simple. If you know the target location, it's easy to counter.
But this woman was different.
Simultaneously with her leap, she formed magical footholds 360 degrees around Zernix.
She kicked off these footholds at speeds impossible to follow with the eye, changing her position, then accurately aimed for his blind spot.
‘Pae-querrier's physical ability enhanced by dragon spirit injection… predicting her movements is impossible.’
Zernix instantly parried Rista's slash, which appeared in a gap to the right of his vision, in a place his sight couldn't reach, with a 'parallel line barrier'.
‘But has this woman also figured out the true nature of my barrier?’
No, to say so, her method of power is too crude.
It's just instinct.
She just knows that if she keeps doing this, it will eventually break through.
[These savages… the barbarism of swordsmen!]
There's no time, not even for a moment, to cast wide-area magic. All he can do is use barriers and counter-magic.
"Lynn, snap out of it! Lynn!"
Frida, who was deploying a barrier to block the aftershocks of the clash between these peaks and pulling Lynn out of the poisonous spear's throes, felt something strange.
Her whole body… it's wet?
The abnormal phenomenon wasn't over. Her entire body should have been torn apart by the poison, but she was completely fine, too fine.
‘What on earth happened…?’
Now that I think about it, it's strange.
That poison melted even the city's flagstones earlier, but her body is still intact?
"Gyu-ung!"
At that moment, from Lynn's arms, a tiny, snowflake-like creature popped out.
Originally fist-sized, it was now millet-sized and seemed utterly exhausted and debilitated.
Frida's eyes widened.
"Sval, you… were you the one?"
At the moment of impact, did it freeze her entire body? Did it wear frost like armor to take all those attacks?
‘Is it possible to use the power of freezing so artistically and precisely?’
Is that possible?
It might be.
No one knows Sval's true identity. There's only the vague explanation that it's a being freed from Ballag.
‘Ah, I see. This is just her body and brain freezing instantly, causing her to lose consciousness from a momentary shock.’
It was then.
Zernix acknowledged the superiority of power and began to employ a despicable tactic.
[The compatibility between a swordsman and a wizard is truly the worst. In that case, I have no choice but to use the method beloved by the Creator of Magic.]
All those resurrected by Zernix's abyss are bound by that abyss.
Just as Zernix is bound by the first pillar.
Even without the binding, with his magical knowledge and skill, this would be no problem. What is this?
[A shield!]
The hole in the ceiling that Rista broke through, from the first floor of the prison all the way down to this deep underground.
Through there…
The resurrected residents of <Ikegrad> began to pour down.
"!"
Rista's mind went blank.
How? How?
Frida, who had entrusted Lynn's protection to the Hagnises, summoned her broom and her lips moved, shouting something.
"They're already dead, don't worry about them!"
But can I do that?
I want a genuine smile to bloom on everyone's face, but is it really right to abandon all of them?
‘Can I do it?’
If she used the stepping technique that treads on fragments of time, if she repeated it continuously, she might succeed in saving everyone.
However, however…
Her lifespan, already so much shorter than an ordinary person's, would be consumed at high speed, and she might not be able to stay with everyone until the end of this journey.
‘He called it a shield. He plans to buy time with this to do something.’
Saving all those people and subduing that unidentified puppet. Can she do both?
‘Because she has to do it, that's why she's the hero, isn't it?’
Rista moved, at a speed that truly transcended time. At that moment, a smile formed on Zernix's lips.
It's over.
He thought he would succeed if he could just buy about 3 seconds of calculation time. This should be enough for 3 seconds. Five layers of magic circles began to rotate above his palm.
- Never forget. Hand seals are about imitation…
At that moment, Lynn…
On the horizon of consciousness farthest from her body, she was seeing someone else's memory, not her own.
- Never forget that the process of imitating the heart of light…
The old man indicated by the memory's compass was older than any she had seen in her dreams until now.
- Freely you have received, freely give. We, who have received the teachings of magic, are the happiest in the world. Know that this blessing is sufficient, and you too shall become channels to convey this blessing.
He painfully coughed up phlegm mixed with blood, and other disciples carefully held a spittoon.
- Master tried to teach us about hand seals, but none of us understood the principle. The inheritance of hand seal magic is desperate…
A rosary was wrapped around the old man's hand; when he dropped it onto a notebook, the beads instantly liquefied and seeped into the book like a golden current.
That form was too familiar.
No, that, that book… it's the 『Osarius Vibon』.
- You are channels. I, too, as a channel, have conveyed the blessings I received to you, so you must fight to pass on those blessings to future generations, as I did…
Then someday…
Someday that is yet unknown but will surely come…
Someone will come to complete that blessing and convey it as hope to this land, so you must fight to prepare for that day.
- This is my last teaching and request to you… and the inheritance of a calling.
The dreamscape slowly scattered, and only a pure white… tearfully pure white space filled her vision.
It was a procession.
Those lined up, holding the wrists of those behind them affectionately, were pouring the rosaries of light onto their palms as golden currents.
The beginning was the old man from the dream, and the end was strangely Lynn herself.
Before Lynn was 'that person'.
Dean Atlante, my master.
Atlante also lovingly held the boy's hand, smiling with utmost joy, and was pouring a golden current onto his palm.
That current of light formed an ecstatic light, unlike any in previous inheritances. It built. A mirage of light unfolded.
It was the light of awakening.
One of the cornerstones leading to the cutting edge of that wisdom, the truth that all mages dream of, scattered into hundreds of pieces of knowledge and flashed through the boy's mind.
It was not new knowledge.
It was the process by which all the knowledge she had received from the Dean at the Osarius Tower until now was refined into wisdom that emitted joyful, sorrowful, and deeply moving light.
Chwa-reureureureuk…!
Poured onto her palm, the current of light that flowed down the surface of her forearm took shape.
It was a rosary.
Each of the hundreds of pieces of knowledge she had just seen seemed to have been crafted into beads, transforming into a rosary of light beads that encircled her entire forearm.
"!"
Suddenly, Lynn opened her eyes.
The rosary from her dream was embodied in reality, woven onto her forearm with a warm, weighty texture.
The 『Osarius Vibon』 was gone, and the hand seal woven into the hand-shaped statue on the coffin lid was also gone.
The power that had been divided in half was now united, woven into the boy's forearm.
"Gyuung!"
Sval, overcome with joy, rubbed its soft fur against Lynn's face.
In the chaos on the verge of destruction and slaughter, the feeling Lynn experienced was, shamefully, not desperation or urgency.
Clarity, exhilaration… that dizzying thrill when a long-unsolved conundrum is solved in an instant.
"Osarius-style Hand Seal, 4-star."
Lynn formed a hand seal with her left hand. Though there was no right hand to pair with it, the light of magic brilliantly obeyed the boy's command.
The answer was in the rosary.
The rosary unfolded around the hand forming the seal, assisting with the inscription of magic circles, runes, and mathematical formulas.
"!"
For that one moment, the world stopped.
Everyone thought so for a moment. Because everything that was falling had suddenly frozen.
It was Zernix who first noticed that an invisible psionic cord had bound and held them all.
[What…?!]
Hand seal magic is imitation.
What's important is not the words or actions, but the core within them.
If the core for forming a hand seal is present, the precise completion of the hand seal is no longer important. That is the starting point of one-handed hand seals.
"Osarius-style Hand Seal, 5-star. Earthbound Anti-Dust Realm."