Chapter 63
11 min read ·
Caster of Greed
They said surprise attacks were supposed to be sudden. But Adrian's attack had gone beyond sudden and come completely out of nowhere.
Did that mean his abilities were ordinary? Not at all. Slaughtering every guard in the manor—the combat-type homunculi—before Avarus could even grasp the situation was anything but ordinary.
At first, he had assumed the blond knight was responsible... But watching Adrian smash through his Shield spells changed his mind.
'And they called him the wastrel of a count's house...'
Rumors really were untrustworthy, it seemed. Besides, these were unverified rumors he had merely gleaned from Viscount Veneron's memories. Adrian was certainly not the wastrel of a count's house.
But that still left one question.
'How did he discover my identity?'
Transmog was not a spell anyone could detect. Only someone capable of identifying a unique mana signature could even notice something amiss. And mages of that caliber were rare on the continent.
Above all, Adrian had torn through his layered Shield spells with his fingernails. That meant he was a knight who wielded aura, not magical power. More precisely, an aura-wielding martial artist.
Yet a knight, not a mage, had seen through Transmog? ... It made no sense. He could not even begin to guess how Adrian had done it.
'I'll have to capture him as a specimen and study him.'
He was well worth studying. But Adrian's abilities were far from ordinary. Had they met out in the field, he probably would have been a formidable opponent.
Here, however, things were different. This was a mage's dungeon. Avarus's domain.
"You came crawling into my domain of your own free will. Heh heh heh...!"
Inside the Infinite Silence barrier, Adrian was a trapped rat. The flow of mana stopped completely within this barrier. And without aura or magical power, humans were pitifully weak creatures.
Humans lacked the strength of ogres. They had neither the sharp claws nor the sturdy skeletons of beasts. Biologically, their only advantages were intelligence and stamina. Left alone in nature, humans were utterly vulnerable.
But Avarus was different. He had abandoned his humanity.
GURGLE!
His body twisted grotesquely, flesh swelling enormously as alchemically manufactured drugs mingled with his blood and altered his genes. Tentacles of swollen flesh emerged.
Adrian stood rooted to the spot. He was terrified. A smile of certain victory spread across Avarus's lips—
"I'll kill you!!!"
The swollen tentacles rushed toward Adrian. Dozens of wildly writhing appendages curled around his neck.
And at that very moment... Adrian bent his knees and dodged the incoming tentacles?
"What...?"
Avarus's eyes widened.
He had dodged that? Surely not...? It was impossible. That speed, those reflexes—they were impossible. No mere human could possess them.
... Was it a fluke? But that couldn't explain—
WHOOSH! WHOOSH-WHOOSH!
Adrian was dodging every incoming tentacle. Whenever a fleshy appendage tried to seize him, he evaded it with movements too fast to see. His ability to track moving objects, his reflexes—none of it could be called human.
"H-how...?"
He couldn't understand it.
At some point, Adrian had closed the distance. His sharp nails tore through the air. Avarus hastily bunched his flesh together to shield himself, but—
CRUNCH!
... It tore apart without resistance.
"What is this...!!"
The horror in Avarus's eyes eclipsed his pain. What Adrian had torn apart was no ordinary flesh. It was metallic flesh, as hard as steel, strengthened by alchemical drugs at the cost of his humanity.
And Adrian had ripped it apart with mere fingernails? Human fingernails, good for little more than scratching an itch? His head swam with confusion.
Yet Adrian's assault wasn't over. At this rate, he would die.
"Aaaaaaah!!!"
As Avarus roared—
SHRRRAK!
His torn flesh split, multiplying into ever more branches, and every tentacle and mass of flesh shot outward in an explosive surge.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
Tentacles filled every direction. There was nowhere to dodge.
Yet Adrian was dodging. He reacted to the tentacles filling the entire space and evaded their attacks. He even reacted to strikes coming from behind him.
"H-how in the world...!!"
His reflexes were beyond surprising. They were astonishing. Even so, he wasn't reacting to every attack. Here and there, a blow slipped through, leaving unmistakable wounds on him.
Once enough damage accumulated, Adrian would fall. That was the limitation of the frail creature known as a human.
But...
'He's regenerating...?'
His wounds were regenerating in real time, at a speed no human healing ability could explain.
"W-what...!!"
At last, what Avarus felt went beyond horror.
"You! What are you?!"
"I told you. A wastrel."
It made no sense. This could not be happening. It was impossible. What part of that was a wastrel?!
The flow of mana stopped completely within this domain. Neither magical power nor aura could be used. Nothing of the sort. Only biological, physical capabilities worked here.
That meant everything Adrian was doing came purely from his physique. These were strictly biological abilities. But... how could that make sense? Could that thing even be called human?
Avarus had abandoned his humanity too. Yet they were different. On a biological level, an unfathomable gulf separated them. Adrian was on another level.
Human, yet not human. A predator that devoured monsters. But how could such a thing...?
"No need to feel so inadequate."
Adrian spoke as though he had read Avarus's mind.
"Even the Archmage couldn't explain me."
Avarus went deathly pale. A predator and a monster. Almost without exception, it was the monster that got eaten. To catch a predator, being a mere monster wasn't enough.
In that case... he had no choice. He had to dispel Infinite Silence.
* * *
CRASH!
Suddenly, I heard glass shattering. At the same instant, instinct sounded a warning, and I hastily pulled back.
KRAKOOM!
Black lightning struck the spot where I had just been standing. Lightning magic. Had I reacted even a fraction later, it would have hit me directly. It wouldn't have killed me, but it certainly would have cost me a considerable number of calories.
'Did he dispel Infinite Silence?'
I looked up to find electricity crackling at Avarus's fingertips. That certainly seemed to be the case.
That made things a little troublesome. Avarus's magic was quite difficult even for me to counter. I was a little taken aback.
In my previous life, he hadn't dispelled the Infinite Silence barrier. But back then, the Archmage and the Spirit Mage, heroes of the allied army, had been there. If he dispelled Infinite Silence? Those two would beat the living shit out of him.
He had a better chance of winning by sealing their mana and facing me instead. That wasn't the case now. Only Kai stood beside me.
Apparently, Avarus thought he could handle someone like Kai. He was sorely mistaken.
As though he had been waiting for this, Kai kicked off the floor and lunged. With Infinite Silence dispelled, his aura had returned. But the same was true of Avarus's magical power.
FWOOSH!
This time, flames bloomed at Avarus's fingertips. With a single sweep of his hand, fire engulfed the entire room—only to vanish abruptly. Bursts of light flashed everywhere in place of the flames.
'A fake?'
Fake Magic. It applied what knights commonly called feints—false attacks—to magic. To distinguish it from the feints used by martial fighters, it was called a "fake" instead.
The Archmage, a hero of the allied army, had been a master of Fake Magic. By adjusting the amount of magical power needed for a spell, and sometimes withdrawing it, the caster dispersed a spell just before it manifested and produced a different one instead.
The endlessly shifting spells confused opponents, leaving them unable to tell which spell truly threatened their lives.
Of course, it wasn't easy to use. It demanded delicate control over magical power. Yet Avarus was using Fake Magic with consummate skill.
He was nothing compared to the allied army's Archmage, but that was simply because the Archmage was beyond all expectations. Avarus's Fake Magic was not to be underestimated. Even so, Kai was reacting to every single fake.
"And what the hell are you?!"
KRAKOOM! CRUNCH!
Not once did Avarus's Fake Magic deceive him. He identified the real spells precisely and countered them perfectly.
In truth, countering Fake Magic was both simple and difficult. All you had to do was read magical power. That was how mages distinguished one another's fakes.
But Kai was an aura-wielding knight. He couldn't read magical power—
'Is he reading the flow of mana?'
That seemed to be it. Magical power was a subset of mana, merely energy converted from mana into a usable form.
No matter how delicately a caster adjusted their magical power, anyone who could read mana would instantly see through the fakes. Kai could do it because his aura, too, was a subset of mana. Magical power and aura were derived energies branching from the same root: mana.
In other words, Kai understood the essence of aura and was reading mana itself, rather than magical power, through his senses alone. But that was easier said than done.
'Was that even possible?'
Of course, with my mana sensitivity approaching zero, I didn't know much about it. That was also why Avarus's magic was so difficult for me to deal with.
At any rate, I could remember only two knights who countered magic that way. Kai, the Legion Commander of Bitter Cold. And Ian, the Hero and Supreme Commander of the allied army.
'Just as I thought.'
Kai wasn't a hunting dog. He was a war dog.
* * *
SLASH!
The blazing orb, a Fireball, was cut apart with absurd ease. Sliced by aura, it scattered into the air and vanished.
"Impossible...!!"
Avarus's already pallid face turned stark white. What kind of knight was this? A knight seeing through Fake Magic was ridiculous to begin with. Just as aura belonged exclusively to knights, magical power belonged exclusively to mages. A knight could never read the flow of magical power.
At that moment, a sword swept into his vision. Beyond his wide-open eyes, blue aura spun furiously.
KRRRUNCH!
Caught in the spinning aura, chunks of Avarus's flesh were ripped away. And still the knight charged at him with murder in his flashing eyes, burning with hatred as though facing his sworn mortal enemy.
... He was a rabid dog. The only difference was that he didn't bark. In trying to pressure Adrian with magic, Avarus had unleashed a rabid dog instead.
What if he had simply maintained Infinite Silence? At least he could have kept that rabid dog chained.
But he had already used Infinite Silence once. Activating it again would require at least six months of work. There was nothing he could do about it now. His escape routes were gone.
Adrian, the predator, was the perfect counter to his biological abilities. That knight, the rabid dog, was the perfect counter to his mana-based abilities.
Checkmate. In other words, only one option remained.
"Aaaaaaaaagh!!!"
Avarus unleashed all his magical power.
* * *
ROOOOAR!!
A tremendous gale erupted as though the entire space were exploding. Caught in it, Kai was hurled backward. He barely steadied himself by driving his sword into the floor. I likewise managed to hold my ground only by plunging Dragon's Claw[A] into it.
The gale swept away everything nearby, with Avarus at its center.
"Behold!! The power of the Great One!!!"
His distorted eyes grew bloodshot. Bones snapped with a crunch. Muscles tore with a sickening rip. His grotesquely swollen body reached its limit.
Blood poured from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears—from every opening in his face.
"Bwahahahahaha!!"
Yet Avarus burst into laughter, as though something delighted him.
'What's wrong with him?'
Seriously, what was he doing?
Not that I could ever understand that greed-crazed lunatic, but this was somewhat different from my previous life. Granted, dispelling Infinite Silence had already been a change, but he hadn't died like this back then. He had quietly let me rip out his heart.
Which brought me to whatever Avarus was holding.
'That's...'
I had never seen it before. Not even in my previous life. Still, the substance in that fairly large glass bottle looked just like an elixir.
Most likely...
'That must be the elixir he claimed could cure Seraphia.'
Apparently, he hadn't had it in my previous life because he had already given it to her. In other words, there was a good chance this was the elixir that had awakened Seraphia as the Sovereign of Bitter Cold.
When I activated Predatory Instincts[S], information about the elixir appeared before my eyes.
◆Elix? r of N? th? ※[?]
: When this ※lix? r is ★sed, sta☽ina and mana are re? ∇ored [??] **. This frees the u∎er com☼letely from all di※eases, wou◈ds, and cur✪es.
Upon ? se, dorm∑nt abilities awaken ** simult‡neously, and a" abili♢ies exceed their bi∎∎gical lim? ∇※.
However, the u☽er is com※letely removed from the f☽ow of ti☽e and ∇rapped in [※※※ ※※], suf∑ring the ago∇y of eternal life.
But the text appearing before me was garbled and distorted. That meant this was information even Predatory Instincts[S] couldn't identify.
'How is that possible?'
It made no sense.
Predatory Instincts[S] was the accumulation of survival instincts built up by countless living creatures struggling to survive in countless natural environments. It allowed me to innately know information about every organism, environment, and object—a priori.
For even Predatory Instincts[S] to fail to identify something, it had to be something no living creature on this continent had ever experienced. In other words, it was not of this world.
"I offer my soul to the Great One!!"
Avarus cried out like a fanatic. At the same instant, the elixir's bottle shattered as though exploding—
ROOOOOOAR!!
Pitch-black darkness burst from within and swallowed the entire space.