I looked at the pieces of scrolls in my hand.
Is this really going to solve anything…?
The scrolls contained a forced contract and spirit binding, along with some trivial curses and a scroll of lightning rod’s veil.
You could tell that quite a bit of effort had been put into capturing the Lightning Giant at Torres Tower.
But then again, it was a situation where I had to run away without even getting to use all that prep work.
In the midst of my escape, there seemed to be no time to grab scrolls, and many had been left discarded in the last chamber of the Deep Level.
Most were charred by the lightning and had lost their proper shapes.
At least I managed to grab the biggest scroll and wrap the other pieces in it.
Watching the Eroder and the Lightning Giant create destruction scene right out of a monster movie, I imagined the process of excavating the ruins from the original work.
Well, it’s clear the excavation was a success.
The protagonist of the original was the Mage King, and the comrades had increased with every episode of the Ten Commandments, so Astrafe wasn’t given much emphasis.
But it was different during the chapter tied to Torres Tower. She played a clear leading heroine role.
Torres Tower appeared as a strong mid-tier Mage Tower, presenting a significant threat as Astrafe’s and, furthermore, the chapter’s main antagonist. If they had suffered such a devastating failure in the excavation, they wouldn’t have the strength to continue.
It’s 2074 now. Even with three years until the Mage King’s resurrection in 2077, that’s too short to clean up this mess.
Had things been as they were in the original, the Eroder wouldn’t exist, but I doubted the excavation team at Torres Tower could stop the rampaging Lightning Giant.
By the circumstances, it meant that they had succeeded in excavating the giant safely.
If I hadn’t been here, the development speed of these ruins would’ve slowed down by at least a few weeks, if not a few months. With stable development, they could have entered the Deep Level without waking the giant…
Did they force a contract using the scrolls?
That alone felt insufficient. I turned my gaze toward the giant.
The writhing Eroder was spreading across the giant’s full body, transforming into a shape reminiscent of human bones. If the giant was like an architectural structure, it had become a sort of skeleton.
To put it metaphorically, it was like a human anatomy model composed of shimmering silver bones, flesh made of dark clouds, and blood vessels filled with lightning.
It was close to a creature that might appear in mythology.
From a combat perspective, the state of being separated from the Eroder would be much stronger, but in terms of appearance, this was far more intimidating… huh?
The Eroder was continuously absorbing the giant’s magic power. The giant, composed of lightning elemental magic, should have been nearing total dissolution.
Yet, the giant’s body remained unchanged, neither expanding nor contracting. The Eroder was growing slightly larger, but the rate of increase was evidently slowing.
The giant is absorbing the mana from within the Eroder.
As the Eroder’s volume expanded, the area of contact with the giant increased, thus the amount of mana being drained also increased. Consequently, the overall absorption amount would decrease, slowing the growth rate. Soon enough, when their absorption amounts reached equilibrium, the Eroder’s growth would cease.
It was somewhat understandable that the Eroder absorbed magic power and stored it as mana without losses. Trying to understand an extra-dimensional product with the standards of this world was foolish.
However, on the other hand, it was hard to comprehend why the giant could absorb mana and store it as magic power without any losses.
The process of converting mana into magic power. Losses should naturally occur in both the conversion of absorbed magic power and in the absorption process itself.
Making the loss during the absorption process zero is the effect possessed by the Talisman of Thunder, right?
I had certainly felt the presence of an artifact deep within that last chamber.
I gazed at the giant. Soon, when the Eroder burrowed down to the giant’s extremities, the amounts of absorption would become completely identical, causing a momentary halt in movement.
It’s like two fists pushing against each other. They are pushing each other away with exactly the same force, so they can’t move at all.
The moment one side gains the upper hand, that precarious balance will collapse, and the victor will devour the loser.
To suppress such an ultra-evolved monstrosity, it would have been too much for the Torres Tower alone—it would need the involvement of multiple Apex Towers or one of the Ten Towers.
Rejecting the option of unleashing the monster to increase the worries of the Ten Towers, I thought, What if Argyrion decides that such a monster could be created intentionally?
If the united strength of the Ten Towers saw Argyrion as a serious threat rather than just “a larger, more capable Eroder,” then the war of the three realms would spell disaster.
There was only one way to prevent that catastrophe. Discover the identity of the Lightning Giant, and figure out how to clean up this mess…
Life!
I needed to awaken.
*
Before I knew it, Crete Island was awash in the midst of a storm. The sky, darkened with shadows, poured down torrents of rain and crackling lightning.
As the Eroder burrowed beneath the stormy clouds, the giant’s movements halted. But the ongoing storm and ominous silence proved that neither was rendered powerless.
The mages finally feared the might of the victorious being once the battle finally concluded. During the brief silence, tending to wounds and being able to cast defensive magic again was a small blessing.
Argyrion’s mage, Lugret, didn’t consider it a blessing at all.
A silhouette appeared from beyond the peaks covered in dark clouds. The hazy shadow didn’t approach the mages.
It wasn’t the departed Karuto.
At some moment, clear blue beams of light shot forth from that silhouette as if they were the eyes of a human.
And at that exact moment, the giant’s movements ceased.
Lugret recalled the man who had been laughing while attacking them, now controlling the Eroder. Curiously, he couldn’t remember any aspects of his appearance except for his laugh.
But he firmly believed that here, a being was preparing some magic, emitting blue eyes.
Is he trying to absorb the giant with the Eroder?
The reason for his appearance in this place must be to enhance the power of control magic by getting close to the Eroder. Karuto, who had stepped in to stop him, was probably dead by now.
Lugret anticipated what would happen when the Eroder successfully absorbed the giant’s magic power. Could he control the Eroder imbued with the giant’s magic power?
Even if he successfully mimicked control magic from Blasphemia, he probably wouldn’t have completely caught up yet. So he wouldn’t be able to give detailed instructions to the Eroder, only simple destruction orders.
That meant there was still hope. He wouldn’t be able to easily control the Eroder that had become too powerful, so he had to wait for that moment…!
However, the silhouette moved in a way that was completely different from Lugret’s thoughts. The blue light quickly extinguished. Then, a sudden acceleration. Lugret’s reflexes couldn’t keep up with the silhouette’s dash.
Once again, the place where the light lit up was in the middle of the open ground.
Inside the giant’s body. In the storm of silver threads and lightning devouring each other, two threads of blue light flared.
*
Life!
I sighed again and charged toward the hybrid of Keranos and the Eroder.
I recalled his information.
Keranos, the Thunder Mage. The last Tower Master of the Manubia Tower.
Manubia Tower was a powerful faction that defeated the first Thunder Tower and ascended to the second Thunder Tower.
However, he wasn’t a uniquely strong individual capable of contending with the Ten Towers alone. To engage in succession battles, the Manubia Tower had promised to share the wisdom of the Ten Commandments with various towers, ultimately succeeding in bringing down the first Thunder Tower.
He succeeded.
Before fully aligning with the Ten Commandments, the Manubia Tower’s lord died within ten days. Murder by betrayal from a comrade.
Due to the aftermath of the alliance confusion post-ten-thousand years, the third Thunder Tower went unformed for a long time, but eventually, the first Thunder Tower returned with a vengeance and regained its name by conquering other competitors.
The source of that absurd magic absorption ability was the Ten Commandments. One of the Mage King’s wisdom that the Manubia Tower had inherited during the Ten-thousand Years.
It was strange luck that the wisdom of the Ten Commandments had an effect identical to that of extra-dimensional products, just in a different direction.
The Manubia Tower had long been plotting revenge against the betrayers. Keranos, the last Tower Master of Manubia, believed that using this sorcery as a human was impossible, so he tried to take revenge on the betrayers by becoming a spirit…
But he failed.
Completely.
The reason remained unknown. My brain was already on the verge of overload trying to analyze Keranos. It was exhausting enough just keeping the influx of information from the Eroder and other mages from overwhelming me.
Due to the side effects of failing to become a spirit, Keranos’s ego had slowly begun to dissipate. Had I not arrived and accelerated the excavation speed, if more time had passed, only the function of absorbing magic would have remained, and his ego would have completely vanished.
The remaining facts were relatively simple to deduce. Originally, the Torres Tower would likely have bound the remaining body of the Keranos with a contract scroll to use as a magic power converter.
That was the true identity of the Talisman of Thunder. A talisman created by compressing the body of the grand mage who had transformed into a spirit.
There’s a funeral service that turns bones into jewels, and it was precisely just like that. The goal of the Torres Tower wasn’t mourning, but utilization.
Damn it. I thought it was a complete artifact just because the original work described it as something found in the ruins of the ancient Mage King era.
In other words, the current Keranos was raw material. Just material that ate people!
You can’t take the original’s description at face value unless all details are perfectly documented. There were certainly many aspects in the remnants of the Relic of Phoibos that were reduced from reality more than expected.
If the original Torres Tower compressed the body of a spirit into a tool through a contract, something similar should be possible now.
I took another deep breath. I had to sequentially connect the spells of those fragmented scrolls and link it to Keranos.
The Eroder was a bonus. Anyway, it was also a summoned creature from an extra-dimensional realm, so the forced contract spell should work on it, but…
It was fortunate that both were beings with almost no intelligence. Let’s start.
*
I opened my eyes. Orthes could perceive the essence inscribed in targets through intangible information.
The insides of Keranos’s body spun with residual magic power due to the dual absorption of magic power and mana. Like dozens of intertwined spider webs, a piece of the scroll was placed within that intertwined flow.
The activated scroll absorbed the magic power. Normally, just a little magic power would be absorbed and then it would disappear, but Orthes continuously stitched the pieces of the scroll together.
It was like a mosaic project using Keranos’s magic power and the Eroder’s mana as glue. Forming another flow by patching the remnants of spells that remained in the scroll.
A tattered form or a pattern of spells was drawn. A binding spell that spanned between Keranos’s lightning blood vessels and the Eroder’s silver bones began to take effect.
Crack. Keranos’s right arm folded. The bone made of the Eroder also mirrored that action.
Then the left leg, another limb followed. Like pieces of paper being crumpled together.
The being that had turned himself into a spirit through the sorcery of spiritification was, in essence, transformed into a form of spell.
As a result of layering the spells of forced contract and restraint over such a being, the power of the contract spell amplified to the level of presence that Keranos possessed.
An overwhelming binding that even the Eroder linked to him could not dare escape from.
The storm that was blowing with Keranos’s magic power and the dark clouds that draped the sky were all drawn in one place. Right above Orthes’s hand.
In the place where the storm had settled. Orthes stood holding a golden gem adorned with silver threads.
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