Kine craved power.
From the moment she was forcibly taken in by Orthes after the family of the Bacchus Cult was wiped out.
Isn’t the first thing Orthes said to Kine when he seduced her, “Do you desire power?” To Kine, power was the answer to all her problems.
The tracking by Blasphemia, the slaughter of the Bacchus Cult, the rescue of her comatose relatives. If she had power, all of these problems could have been solved.
That’s why she studied Orthes. Her plan was to take care of the traitor of the Bacchus Cult with her own hands, to play mockingly in the background against Argyrion who created the traitor, and to bring down the Ten Towers. Orthes was the person Kine wanted to “become.”
The more Kine studied Orthes, the more he became an “inexplicable being” to her. He was more like a test question than a person.
If surviving is proof of strength, then Orthes was undoubtedly strong. However, the way he proved that strength was truly bizarre.
Orthes’ greatest weapon wasn’t his body or sword, but his tongue.
Isn’t the current state of the magical society the result of Orthes’ wordplay? She had heard from Carisia while receiving personal guidance that the Elder of the Ten Towers whom Argyrion supposedly defeated was, in fact, an incident handled by Orthes’ intervention.
Orthes could have brought down the Elder of the Mage Tower with his own power. However, Orthes’ rhetoric threatened the entire world.
It was truly a remarkable language. From the moment he deceived Demus in Elysion, most of the current chaos in the world could be attributed to Orthes’ orchestrations.
Kine sharpened her abilities to possess a weapon as lethal as his.
Now, as the Panoptes agents and other participants hurled stones at that nameless adversary, its usefulness was proven.
Knemon, watching the scene, pondered.
That bastard Orthes was ruining the world.
*
I was moved by the unexpected reinforcements.
“See! All that effort in raising and feeding them was worth it!”
At first glance, the allies of the mental parasite were unable to process the rapid changes in circumstances. My task here was simple.
To stop the parasite’s transformation and, along with Carisia, likely take down Argyrion that bastard.
I needed to materialize a method to utilize the Magic Power conduits. The mental parasite was receiving power from the Mage Tower Core even at this very moment.
If I cut off the connection between the entire conduit and the Core, naturally, it would weaken our struggle against Carisia and the Blasphemia agents.
However, that was a rookie’s idea. I couldn’t even estimate how long it would take to destroy the conduits. If our allies depleted their magic before sufficiently destroying the conduits, it would indeed be troublesome.
Above all, our company’s future paper company… I mean, it would just mean a loss for Knemon’s assets.
Creating new value through combat might be the strategy of a master, but unfortunately, I wasn’t a genius investor. The method I chose was halfway decent.
To preserve value as much as possible. To maintain the facilities while destroying only the mental parasites.
And I had a way to do that. The transformation of the mental parasite was undoubtedly a high-level magic that required my eyes to be strained significantly to be fully analyzed.
But right now, a complete understanding was unnecessary. Unless I wanted to completely alter the spell to my will, for now, my goal was to troll and dump cold water on the meticulously prepared banquet set by the opponent.
I didn’t need to understand it well; I just had to smash it haphazardly. Typically, the more high-level the magic, the harder it gets to clean up when an error occurs.
As Carisia unleashed her rays, the mental parasite blocked them, creating craters around the Amimone Tower. The conduits peeked through the deeply scarred ground.
I took out the Magic Imprint Drive to cover it.
Clank.
Clank.
“Is it not working?”
This was the first situation I encountered despite using spell overwrite countless times. Was the Magic Imprint Drive faulty?
The magic power charged in the drive had run out.
It had clearly been a fine drive until just a moment ago. The instant I tried attaching another drive as a test, I could see the magic power from within the drive being absorbed through the conduits.
“Damn.”
The magic absorption ability of the mental parasite was too strong. In that brief moment when the drive was activated, if the magic wasn’t completed, the power meant for the spell would be absorbed by the parasite.
I never expected spell overwriting to be blocked like this.
I still looked up at the crudely torn Amimone Tower. It couldn’t be helped.
I would have to become a rookie investor.
I also needed to deal with the fake news that gave me wrong investment information.
*
Nastion successfully gathered himself amidst confusion. What began as a barrage of stones had escalated into a storm of offensive magic, yet it was fundamentally useless unless it captured Nastion’s essence.
“What the hell did he pull?”
The insult “that bastard is pure evil” obviously acted like a magical incantation for the spell. However, Nastion could not deduce the structure of that magic at all.
All he could discern was that it was something like a curse that weakened his mental resistance. After that, he couldn’t analyze the elements that specifically shook a person’s will and led them astray.
“Did he predict this far…!”
This was undoubtedly one of Orthes’ tricks. The moment he provoked his allies into attacking, it led them into a reverse provocation to attack him.
Just how vast was the picture Orthes had drawn? How far had he prepared his strategies? It was all now a complete mystery.
“Blasphemia! Change your target! Not the tower itself but the Mage Tower Core connected to it! At this rate, it will only be an endless war of attrition!”
Finally, the most effective attack strategy was indicated. Nastion wondered why Orthes, who had likely anticipated all of this, was only now offering this method.
“Is it to avoid suspicion?”
The mental parasite and the false god had long been enemies of the Divine Cult. There had never been a record of a direct collision with the magical society. If it had presented an effective method of attack upon its appearance, it would raise considerable suspicion later on.
So initially, they must have stalled the transformation with an attack, then started the real counterattack after an appropriate period had passed. Truly a fearsome adversary.
Not just the ability to concoct schemes but the skill to move all participants in the battle according to his plan. Even Nastion, who prides himself on his wisdom, found that the entirety of his ingenious wisdom had almost been rendered useless by Orthes’ scheming.
Nastion saw Orthes, who had issued the attack directive, rushing towards him. This was dangerous.
That author would understand his essence. Right now, a blade wielded by Orthes would be far more lethal than the massive magic unleashed by the chaotic mages attacking.
In this battlefield where the false god, capable of binding Orthes, was now in turn bound himself, there was nothing left for Nastion to attempt as a counterattack.
Orthes, having run along the building’s wall, crashed into it at the peak of his acceleration. That was the moment two pieces of magic aimed at Nastion collided, resulting in an explosion.
His sight was cleverly obscured. Orthes’ attack came from behind.
Had he not been Nastion, with all body parts serving as sensory organs, he probably would have never detected that strike.
Nastion shattered his floating body immediately and fled into the shadow of the wall.
“Evil has vanished!” The cheer echoed among the mages. From the wall’s shadow back into the debris of the building, then again into the shadows of the structure. Time and again swapping positions, Nastion observed Orthes land on the ground.
Their eyes met.
Nastion did not have an “eye” that could be categorized as a sensory organ, but he instinctively felt it.
Certainly, there was no afterimage or time delay in his concealment; the moment Orthes burrowed into the shadows, he recognized his position.
One thought surfaced in Nastion’s mind. After centuries of acquiring a body of shadows, a truly unfamiliar word emerged.
Survival.
“Can I survive?”
From that demigod who had turned the entirety of Algoth City into his stage.
Nastion thought heatedly. In the shadow of the wall, in the shadow of the streetlight, at times in the shadow of a bird.
No matter where he hid, the fact that Orthes was drawing closer, continually tracking him was something he consciously denied.
In extreme situations, repeated thoughts yield unprecedented answers.
The reason space magic is strictly controlled is due to the possibility of summoning extra-dimensional beings.
However, Argyrion had no reason to fear the extra-dimensional.
Wasn’t there already a vast source of magic power prepared for space magic?
Before all the conduits connected to the false god were cut, action was required.
The poor actor resolved to blow up the stage to escape the director’s grasp.
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