Nastion dashed between shadows, racing through the frantic chase that led into alleyways, building debris, and down into the underground. Even someone like Nastion, who could teleport to some extent between shadows, couldn’t shake off Orthes’s pursuit.
It was a horrific monster. There was no sense of divine power that a half-god should possess; instead, Orthes wielded the earthly power with his own hands.
Perhaps the Divine Cult had crafted the newest god.
Not the natural forces like thunder, the sea, or the abyss, but instead, a master of the artificial in this age of human-made beings. The god of power, who shook the Cult and Blasphemia in one hand.
Nastion couldn’t die here. He felt compelled to inform Argyrion’s comrades of the truth behind this outlier.
But finally, he was at a dead end. Orthes’s blade aimed at the air, casting shadows under the dim lights of the underground passage.
Above it, Nastion bubbled up.
“You truly are a monster.”
“What are you talking about? I look much more human than you.”
Nastion’s shadowy form shrank and expanded in a rhythm, reflecting his master’s chaotic mental state. The surging shadows resembled a heartbeat.
“The line dividing human and monster lies not in appearance but within…”
Orthes shrugged once. It was hard to tell whether he was being sincere or just buying time.
Cornered in the underground, the mental parasitic ally finally revealed its true identity. Orthes tried to read its identity, but it was not easily deciphered. It was like reading text layered in dozens of layers—too many words piled up to make sense of it.
The only thing he could ascertain was the name. Nastion.
“I have no choice but to stimulate you mentally to draw out a reaction.”
“It’s Argyrion, right? How severe was the labor shortage in that village? I never thought you’d partner with a mental parasite.”
It was a simple question. By process of elimination, the only hopeless group that could team up with a mental parasite was Argyrion.
Nastion seemed to expect this too; he reacted calmly, devoid of heightened emotions.
“And you are the great enemy. What on earth did you do in the Golden Desert?”
“Nothing much. I just struggled to survive.”
Both sides were aware they were stalling for time, yet neither could guess the other’s intentions. Orthes sought to decipher Nastion’s shadow magic to block his escape, while Nastion waited for the right moment to complete the space magic by gauging the flow of magic threads.
“Survival? Survival, you say?”
Yet in that conversation, Nastion felt disbelief. Was the ultimate goal of that bizarre half-god, which was currently driving him to the brink, merely survival?
But thinking further, the will to survive must be the most primal and straightforward of desires, thus the strongest. Wasn’t Nastion himself preparing to take the step he would have never considered for the sake of his survival?
The spell was ready.
As Nastion encased the magic threads with his own body, Orthes pierced the very edge of Nastion’s shadow, their actions synchronizing.
*
As Blasphemia’s agents dismantled the connections of the magic threads and the Mage Tower Core one by one, something occupying the Amimone Tower gradually felt an instinctive uneasiness.
It was a similar instinct to how animals sense impending natural disasters like hurricanes. While animals use their developed senses to detect natural calamities, mages perceive extra-dimensional disasters through their sixth sense of handling magic.
Among the Blasphemia agents, only Niobe fully understood what was currently happening.
She had already experienced an extra-dimensional disaster with Orthes in Algoth City a few days ago.
“This is absurd.”
Although it was often said that a place which had once been consumed by the extra-dimension would likely tremble again, the Mage Tower Core of Amimone was powerful enough considering it belonged to the Apex Towers. Unless one were exceptionally unlucky—
Niobe realized that the Amimone Tower had mutated into some kind of monstrous entity, targeting humanity.
The dimensional wall stabilization feature provided by the Mage Tower Core was likely non-functional now. The moment her thoughts reached this conclusion, the physical form of the mental parasite twisted within the Amimone Tower’s space.
The very space of the Amimone Tower, scattered and dispersed, began to morph. It cracked into tiny fragments, yet still bore the semblance of the ‘interior and exterior of the tower,’ shimmering in a myriad of colors as it squirmed.
It was being tainted by the extra-dimensional.
She hurriedly looked around, searching for the only person who could be relied on in this situation—her senior.
But the senior was not there.
Still covered in her cloth, Carisia, who had been watching Niobe’s sighs and the improvised responses with a furrowed brow, halted the projection of light.
It was a moment for contemplation.
*
The moment the creature turned, instinct kicked in, and she thrust her High-Frequency Blade forward. The physical attack seemed ineffective, the blade passing through emptiness, but that was not what mattered.
She was able to grasp a clue about its identity just as it was trying to unleash magic. Each shadow that made up Nastion’s body was a spell in itself.
Whether the human self of Nastion was created through magic or whether it was some magic intended to make an artificial intelligence was uncertain.
However, if its identity was magic, then she was its natural enemy.
The casting of the Magic Imprint Drive spell latched onto its flesh. Suddenly, the form of shadows twisted chaotically.
Nastion’s body cast off its human form and morphed into countless shapes. At one moment it was a hexahedron, then a dodecahedron, then reverted to a flat shadow to become a triangle, finally expanding endlessly like a fractal structure.
The size of the shapes diminished as they approached the end, but the changes were infinite. As she tried to observe, only an endless repetition of shapes continued to unfold before her. The burden on her brain skyrocketed in an instant.
Her vision blurred. The amount of information became unmanageable, triggering a panic signal in her brain. She quickly shut her eyes.
‘No way?’
Was that spectacular transformation just a protective measure against her eyes? The emotions she felt attacking Nastion were confusion and fear. There was no room or opportunity for such a high-dimensional counterattack.
Something, other than Nastion’s own will, retaliated against her attack. It could either be an automatic defensive function set by its creator or a second persona within Nastion itself, unknowingly embedded.
Her blurry vision began to clear.
Before her eyes, Nastion had returned to a human form. However, it was not a typical human; parts of its left arm and a portion of its left thigh appeared to have been gnawed away.
“I cannot die here. No, I cannot die without informing Argyrion of your information…!”
Behind Nastion, distortions of space were already writhing. And that writhing was rapidly eroding the surrounding space.
Metallic silver threads spread towards the surrounding space. The radiating silver magic was pulling and swallowing the space.
Nastion threw his body into that space. The High-Frequency Blade she had thrown pierced its heart—an organ that no longer existed.
And he vanished beyond the silver abyss.
“Ha ha, damn it.”
This is bad.
The abyss that had swallowed Nastion began to extend threads toward her. She imprinted the spatial data of the encroaching silver threads into her brain.
What she had been chasing had vanished, and now she was the one being chased.
The monster that emerged from the underground better be a crocodile or a vampire at worst.
*
The distorted space writhed, spewing forth extra-dimensional magic. The soil soaked with ominous magic began to undergo peculiar mutations.
“AAARRRGH!”
“Transformation of soil properties! Strong acid! A mage capable of transmuting soil-type magic or one with strong corrosion resistance is needed!”
The mental parasite observing the chaos below flicked back to the final words left by Nastion, much like a dying declaration.
“We have failed. We completely Misunderstood that. To achieve the divine cause, we must return and reveal the truth.”
It was a declaration of determination to flee alone, but the parasite felt no betrayal towards Nastion. If the situations were reversed, they would have certainly acted the same, and Nastion would have understood that. This was a sense of duty that only those who served their creator could comprehend.
With the farce already uncovered, the thought of preserving one’s life didn’t cross their mind. They merely hoped for the strength to uphold the plans the creator had prepared.
For some reason, after the space teleportation magic unfolded, the dazzling yet murderous beam attacks stopped. The magic had likely been depleted. The agents of Blasphemia were also too occupied with countering the extra-dimensional encroachment to maintain their assault.
Two-thirds of the connections with the magic threads had been destroyed, yet there remained enough magic to attempt the divine cause.
The parasite felt a deep joy rising within. It was okay to stall for time.
But wouldn’t it be even better to completely defeat Orthes?
The light of the parasite became a raging storm, shaking Algoth City. The fragmented spaces coalesced around the Mage Tower Core. The next step of the incomplete divine cause, which had been continually interrupted, began anew.
All the shards of space gathered. The parasite felt an overflowing sense of omnipotence, realizing it no longer had to use the name of a parasite.
And then it saw the golden eyes staring back at it.
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