Argyrion entered the unidentifiable ruins, divided into four directions: up, down, left, and right.
And the invasion team that proceeded to the east vanished without a trace, leaving only horrific screams on the communicator.
Clearly, something was wrong. The commanders of the other three invasion teams were busy exchanging opinions.
Splash.
It seemed like the sound of water was coming through the communicator.
Amidst the mixed static, an ominously unsettling voice floated through.
“Haha, everyone. Where are you in such a hurry?”
*
The commander of the western invasion team activated magic the moment he saw the suspicious figure. It was his instinct as a Blasphemia agent.
A lightning bullet with both the power and speed for crowd control. Five lightning spears were shot, targeting different vital points.
However, the flash of lightning did not reach the man. The ‘water’ that surged up as soon as he prepared his magic blocked it and soon charged at the commander.
As the barrier embedded in the artifact activated, the water rushed at the commander with even more intensity.
‘The barrier is continuously accumulating impacts. This doesn’t feel like ordinary water based on its weight and density. This is…!’
Splash. The man stepped on the water again.
“I’m sorry to meet you like this. You could have remained good friends with the Ten Towers.”
A clear mockery in his words. Argyrion’s agents had little difficulty identifying his identity.
“Ten Towers…!”
So the signal was indeed forged by the Ten Towers? Or was it a result obtained by torturing a prisoner?
“Thank you for gathering here like this. It’s unfortunate that I had to come out to meet you directly since you were delayed in coming down.”
The arrogance unique to those from the Ten Towers was evident. It was a self-aggrandizing display that couldn’t exist without believing in their absolute superiority. Argyrion gained several clues from the man’s words.
This ruin was a well-constructed trap. The deeper one went, the greater the cost to escape—an antlion pit.
“Run away now! It was indeed a trap!”
“Oh dear. Didn’t I prepare plenty?!”
“What’s happening?! Situation report, now!”
“All the signals were traps from the Ten Towers! Get out any way you can!”
As he gathered magic once more to attack the transparent ‘water’, the speed of the liquid’s rush increased. His intuition from being a Blasphemia agent couldn’t help but excel in situations like this.
“Liquid-type Servant that tracks by reacting to magic! Suppress all magic and retreat to the surface to return! I’ll stall for time here!”
Those he led did not succumb to unnecessary emotions and die alongside the commander. They suppressed the fluctuations of magic as much as possible and quickly evacuated.
Argyrion’s commander glared at the mage of the Ten Towers standing before him, just beyond the barrier. The ‘water’ was endlessly flowing down, obstructing visibility and gnawing away at the barrier.
Yet, he could unmistakably recognize the irritating smirk that hung at the corner of the man’s mouth.
It was always like this. Those ‘chosen ones’ belonging to the Ten Towers always…
Had the expression of a cruel absolute ruler intoxicated by the power to trample lives like a child playing with ants.
The durability of the artifact was reaching its limit. He had to manually re-establish the barrier. To interfere with the mage of the Ten Towers for even one minute or second…!
“Damn Ten Towers! How easily you betrayers…!”
The gritting commander launched a spell. The Flame Magic invoked before the barrier completely broke was able to temporarily dry up the stream of water.
Finally, his vision cleared. Now he could re-establish the defensive magic—
He locked eyes with Orthes’s eerie blue glow.
The ominous blue color that entered through his retina brought back faded old memories blessed by extra-dimensional powers. A blue light nightmare.
“You…! You are!”
“Oh my.”
Orthes activated the High-Frequency Blade. The next moment, the commander’s entire field of vision turned into that chilling blue light.
*
A warning alarm flashed in Talo’s mind. A message directly sent to his computational artificial brain from the observation drones scattered around the Temple.
“Fluid object observed near the entrance.”
Talo smiled, pleased.
“Everyone’s quicker on the uptake than I thought. It must be because they were raised by our Ten Towers.”
Did he abandon the idea of directly exterminating the liquid metal user because he knew that they were not inside the temple but on the surface?
It was a quick and accurate judgment. Typically, the stronger the servant, the weaker the mage’s personal defensive capabilities.
In most cases, strong servants are synonymous with massive magic consumption. Therefore, the combat method using servants either requires the mage to stay close to be protected or never engage directly, letting the servants fight alone from a distance.
If there was a spellcaster handling the servants far from the combat scene, it was reasonable to deduce that he was the type with low personal fighting power focusing solely on magic supply.
But their thoughts were short-sighted.
If he was a novice, perhaps a fledgling level like a disciple among the Ten Towers, such ‘common’ judgments might have worked.
However, Talo was already an elder of the Ten Towers.
Common magical knowledge meant nothing to him.
Though he was still in the process of completing his magic, dealing with inferior magicians not belonging to the Ten Towers was no problem.
Assigning two of the three computational auxiliary brains to chant magic, Talo plunged his palm into the ground. Metallic components buried hundreds of meters below the soil gathered. The designs of weapons of mass destruction were output from his fingertips.
A military factory launched using the soil as raw material. That was why the mages of the Silver Iron Tower were called a one-man army.
He could see the seeds of Argyrion rushing in. He sincerely hoped that all personnel deployed here would arrive.
“That way, I won’t have to do the work twice.”
In this pleasant environment, Talo wanted to leisurely excavate artifacts. He flicked his finger.
The autonomous moving units aimed at the targets.
*
“Where did they come from?!”
The Argyrion members who had escaped to the surface were astonished.
Having maintained communication inside the ruins to avoid being individually picked off, they had fled from the wicked servants of the Ten Towers, ‘water’.
As they paused to regroup and decide whether to retreat, the form of magical machinery slowly approached from the horizon.
Should they return inside the ruins and scatter via another exit?
However, a cold metallic glint shining from the sky blocked him. All exits were being watched. If they dispersed, they would simply be defeated individually.
When they entered the ruins, they hadn’t felt any other mage’s magic. Yet, here they were facing such a tightly-knit encirclement of magical machinery?
Even deploying Space Magic would be nearly impossible. Not because of the Ten Towers’ insufficiency in transport capacity, but because if such large-scale movement of space magic occurred, Argyrion would surely have sensed it.
Unless it were the tactics of superstitious followers acting through Divine Power…
The commanders of Argyrion quickly assessed the situation.
If there was just one mage capable of deploying this large-scale unmanned battalion through small-scale teleportation, there was only one possibility: The mage of the Silver Iron Tower. Among them, an elder-level.
“They plastered traps all over the ruins, and sent in an elder-level mage to the outside?”
“This is dangerous. It’s possible that our rescue signal was leaked not by a counterfeit, but by comrades captured as prisoners.”
The elders of the Ten Towers do not act recklessly. For those focused on ascension, worldly conflicts are nothing more than trivial disputes.
That an elder would take action suggests there might be some kind of plan known only to the upper echelons of Argyrion.
“If we retreat, we’ll need to completely re-evaluate the list of our missing comrades. Have they betrayed us?”
“They may have developed magic capable of reading memories even from the brain blessed by the Divine. The power of the Ten Commandments is boundless.”
They coldly evaluated the situation. Even if all Argyrion agents deployed here were summoned, it was questionable if they could even take down a single elder.
“I’ll do it.”
Therefore, they made their choice.
One Argyrion commander drove a silver stake into his heart. As the silver stake slowly dissolved, it circulated through his veins. His skin turned silver, and his body began to contort grotesquely.
Starting from the hole in his heart, the human body folded into a circular shape. With a crunching sound, a silver ring expanded.
The hole in the heart also grew larger. And through that hole, silver waves began to flow in.
It was power descending from the ‘Divine’.
As silver waves drenched the body of Argyrion, they too began to mutate. Their skin turned silver like the commander who first pierced the silver stake, but it didn’t stop there.
Their bodies transformed as if dressed in shining armor, and blade-like feathers sprouted from their shoulders to form wings.
Grateful for the abundant power and grace, they spread their silver wings and took flight. The mana carried in their wing beats freed Argyrion from the pull of the earth.
At that moment, the fire of the magical machinery began. Amid the smoke from the gunfire, the special bullets containing various attributes shone brilliantly. The angels of the Divine that took to the skies charged to annihilate their enemies while the doors of grace opened.
From afar, Orthes sighed.
“Goodness. Now they’re flying?”
*
Observing Orthes with the power of the Great Temple, Kore muttered.
“What a crazy scammer…”
With just a few words, he drove Argyrion onto the land and engaged in battle with the mages of the Ten Towers. Does this human manipulate magic with only his tongue?
My site has received a lot of DMCA notices, lol. From now on, I will update the MTL on https://darkmtl.com/.
The site is fast and lightweight because there are no ads yet. However, the theme is different from Cybor-TL, so take some time to familiarize yourself.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.