<225 - Dark Princess>
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[Ambush with the Rain]
Did you know that the Sebiche Ducal House accepted an outstanding magician who brings rain as a retainer?
Are you aware that this incredible magician is the captain of the Watchers?
If you didn’t, I offer my condolences in advance.
Fog Wizard Cloud is indeed very strong!
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While intervening in the Sebiche Ducal House’s event, the strong enemy appearance event [Ambush with the Rain] is notoriously known among players for its low probability of occurrence.
First of all, the subordinates casually throwing bombs are not anyone to take lightly.
Bang! Bang!
All the glass windows shatter, and the entire building shakes.
The bomb’s power easily surpasses anything you’d find in an FPS game’s grenades.
That’s because these bombs are enchanted with mana enhancement.
Zzzzzt
The lingering mana vibrating in the air is also malicious.
The mana pattern embedded inside the bomb opens up the moment it explodes, disturbing the naturally existing mana patterns, making it difficult to cast new spells.
Even if the enemy takes magical countermeasures to survive, they are hindered from unleashing follow-up spells.
‘No one has survived after enduring this bomb magic combo until now.’
The Watchers were overflowing with confidence.
They caught up just in time.
The escape route was blocked by Captain Cloud, who altered the weather conditions.
The transfer magic circle at the Transfer Station is surely protected by a defensive magic circle, but not the people in the Waiting Room.
From the moment the bombs were thrown, they were already certain of their victory.
Gag!
Gurk!
But the bombs were ineffective against veterans who knew how to counter them.
“It’s outside!”
“A kid with an umbrella?”
“Wait, that’s…”
Chief Scholarship Student Oknodie.
A major player who appeared in the Foundation like a comet.
Rumor has it that the Director has a special fondness for this child.
“Oh really. I hate rain events for this reason. I end up covered in dust, and my clothes almost become a mess.”
The child twirled an umbrella playfully.
Beyond the playful act, a bloody gleam flickered.
“If we don’t kill them all, the event won’t end.”
Small shards flew through the air from behind the umbrella.
The Watchers realized what the ambush that knocked down their comrades was.
‘A stone?’
When they recognized it, they couldn’t help but laugh.
They shot strong projectiles with great force.
It’s a common combat method of the strong.
The Watchers not only had proper training but also adequate defensive tools.
As soon as they detected projectiles flying at a certain speed, a defense barrier unfolded.
“But why did the ones hit first scream and fall?”
If attacked like this, the defensive barrier shouldn’t allow them to fall.
As the barrier unfolded and the stone collided, the answer unfurled before their eyes.
“!?”
Instead of bouncing off, the shard naturally seeped into the barrier.
Three Watchers succumbed once again.
“Retreat. I’ll handle him.”
A voice echoed like it reverberated through deep mountains, sounding disorientingly twisted in the thick fog.
The fog swallowed the sound.
The dense fog did even more.
It stole all sight and sound, making one wander in fear as if they were lost in a vast ocean.
But the Foundation’s Chief Scholarship Student threw stones as if they knew no fear.
Its trajectory precisely tracked Cloud’s hidden location in the fog.
“!!”
Cloud saw it.
The barrier unfolding from the protective ring on his finger.
He simultaneously witnessed.
The stone seeping through the barrier.
While his subordinates perished at the sight, Cloud learned a lesson from the deaths of his earlier subordinates.
The barrier could be bypassed.
The enemy had a method to neutralize it.
[WATER SHIELD]
A barrier of water formed by concentrating the moisture in the fog took the hit from the stone.
Not using a tool but his own magic, Cloud realized.
The secret behind the stone piercing the protective barrier was that it harmonized with the barrier’s mana pattern.
‘It’s magic. A highly sophisticated disruption magic unfolded through mana control.’
The stone was imbued with magic.
At the moment of collision with the barrier, a barrier formed around the stone itself, creating confusion in the defense barrier for an instant.
This is not an external threat, but part of the barrier itself.
Like-attracts-like; the same attributes do not repel each other.
After infiltrating the barrier, the magic stored in the stone is released from inside.
The barrier now rebounds projectiles.
Not outward, but inward.
“The genius of the academy’s top student is indeed remarkable.”
Ordinary magicians could never even imagine performing such a feat.
Amateur prodigies might conceive it, but they can’t grasp the theory.
Talents can comprehend theories, experiencing an even greater wall of despair.
Only those born as geniuses who can challenge the bastion of genius, reliant on luck and probability, can finally make it happen.
Zzap!
The successive stones that struck the Water Shield unleashed a powerful electrical charge.
Cloud twisted the water’s path to avoid electrocution.
He felt it.
This is the culmination of intellect and talent possible only for geniuses.
A combat method permitted only to those able to make optimal judgments at every moment.
Next year.
Perhaps in six months.
If he dedicated just a little more time to his studies at the academy, a monster unimaginable to the present might be born.
But it’s not now.
Gifted individuals possess their own pride.
An incomplete genius cannot surpass the intellect of a completed prodigy.
Even if it is a fleeting advantage.
Victory and defeat can hinge on an instant.
‘From the moment you made a sound, you must have tracked my position through the fog.’
Oknodie wasn’t the only one to discover the enemy’s location.
From the trajectory of the projectile, he too sensed the enemy’s position.
[WATER BOMB]
Gathering water to explode like a bomb.
It’s a trivial technique.
A magic that you could use to create a hope torture by exploding enough water to wash your face.
For a 1st circle magician, it’s magic fit for petty tricks.
However, when it bore the properties of [High-Speed Induction] and penetrated the body through [Miniaturized Division], it explodes into mini water orbs that repeatedly break into the lungs.
As a result, the lungs fill with water, making breathing difficult, and combat power rapidly weakens.
In the fog.
In the rain.
All conditions are met to unleash the horrifying [Pulmonary Edema Induction] magic, immobilizing the enemy upon discovering their location.
Bang!
Compared to the earlier bomb, it was a sound insignificant, yet a sufficiently large explosion to take life.
‘Foolish one. This is the difference of real combat experience.’
There’s no way to resist a Fog Wizard’s water magic with something as flimsy as an umbrella.
Kneeling before the disparity in caliber.
Maintaining the distance till the end, he crushed the enemy’s breath.
There was no carelessness.
No time to face each other.
Slowly, thoroughly.
Finally, as the dog of the Sebiche family, he fulfilled his role without making a mistake this time.
‘Fall. Unfulfilled gem of talent.’
As Cloud mourned the demise of the talented young magician, for a moment he forgot he was an enemy.
The moment his breath became strained and intense chest pain struck at his heart, he realized something was wrong.
No way.
It couldn’t be.
Could that child have copied his magic and returned it during that brief moment?
In the coming wave of fear, instead of thrashing around, Cloud forcibly pumped more Water Bomb magic into Oknodie’s lungs.
As a veteran magician, he understood.
Oknodie had been hit first, while he had been hit later.
A child’s lungs are small, and an adult’s are large.
No matter how excellent her talent, she couldn’t close the gap in this engagement.
The intellect of the young genius may have evoked chilling fear in the seasoned genius, but it was insufficient to extinguish the fiery heart of a peak adult and the robust lungs.
‘You’re first.’
The moment you challenged me with the same method, this match was already settled.
The last desperate struggle would soon come to an end.
Give up.
Drop to the ground.
Just die already.
I’ve mourned enough.
Now, just die!
Each breath became more labored, intensifying his desperation.
Yet, she did not collapse.
That detestable child’s form remained unbroken.
It was infuriating.
What kind of trick is this?
Why couldn’t he bring her down?
It was maddeningly painful.
At the end of pain, consciousness blurred.
As the boundaries of reason faded, his refined intellect scattered chaotically at that moment of chaos, a striking intuition flashed through his mind like an order in chaos.
It was a damp fear rising like mold on the wallpaper during the rainy season.
It was a brutal hypothesis, one that heralded defeat and despair from the moment it was recalled.
[WATER BOMB]
He drew out all his mana, brutally detonating the water that had pooled in the distance in Oknodie’s lungs.
What would be difficult for an ordinary person would never affect a magician.
That attempt, which should have been futile, surprisingly succeeded.
Pow!
Oknodie’s presence collapsed.
Her ribs, chest, and entire upper body shattered like a bubble made of soap.
This wasn’t just a feeling.
It wasn’t a real body either.
It was a meticulously rendered false body and lung that deceived all of his senses.
‘I’ve been had.’
He had never fought on the same level as Oknodie, even for a moment.
From the start, when he thought he had discovered Oknodie and was trying to play the mind game, she had already shown that the genius of the Foundation’s Chief Scholarship Student had surpassed that of a promising youth.
The false form created in the fog perfectly deceived him, inducing him to believe they were locked in a struggle for life and death.
The truth was brutal.
Only he was enveloped in a suffocating crisis.
The illusion of cornering the enemy had caused all his nerves to focus on destroying the false body.
His strained response to endure the chest pain, the reflex to recoil in agony, even the dying reactions of his waning strength and consciousness.
All of it was simply a deceit to toy with him.
Even as he sensed it, he wanted to verify.
No, he wanted to deny it.
It must be an illusion.
It should be a misunderstanding.
It has to be.
Otherwise, it would be excruciatingly cruel.
To be brought down by magic in his own field of expertise.
Disruption. Detection. Asphyxiation.
He didn’t want to accept that he had been used against his own tricks by the Watchers of the Sebiche family.
“Oh, I thought I was going to die.”
A voice came from beyond the fog.
Water Bomb.
Mana didn’t follow the blurry will rising.
His finger struggling in a puddle was a sight to behold.
Ah.
I’ve fallen.
The water that had filled my lungs has burst.
This too was a manner Oknodie’s clone had created to faithfully reproduce the fatal blow he had struck.
“Unless I see it, the newbie magic is all forgotten, making it hard to use it first…”
It was a mutter filled with a light sense of achievement, as if following a slightly difficult exercise.
Tears streamed down Cloud’s eyes, feeling the cruelty that toyed even with the last moment of life.
In life’s final moments.
On the brink of death.
He thought.
That it was not a merely ordinary genius, but a devil that toys with human hearts and thoroughly tramples them.
A demon possessing the most extraordinary talent among demons, hiding a wicked nature beneath the guise of a small, youthful appearance—Dark Princess.
