Ch.143Turbulence (5)

Kine craved power.

From the moment her family in the Bacchus Order was massacred, and she was taken in—half-forcibly—by Ortes.

Wasn’t Ortes’s first temptation to her, “Do you desire power?” For Kine, power was the answer to all problems.

The pursuit by Blasphemia, the massacre of the Bacchus Order, the salvation of her brain-dead relatives—all these problems could have been solved if she had power.

That’s why she studied Ortes. That Ortes, who punished the betrayer of the Bacchus Order with his own hands, manipulated Argyrion from behind the scenes, and plotted to bring down the Ten Towers—he was who Kine “wanted to become.”

The more she studied Ortes, the more he became an “inexplicable existence” to her. Less a person and more like a test problem.

If survival is proof of strength, then Ortes was undoubtedly strong. However, the way he proved that strength was truly bizarre.

Ortes’s greatest weapon wasn’t his body or his sword, but his tongue.

Wasn’t the current state of magical society born from Ortes’s wordplay? From what she heard during her private lessons with Carisia, even the Ten Towers Elder that Argyrion supposedly defeated was actually a case where Ortes had intervened.

Ortes could bring down a Tower Elder with his own power. But Ortes’s rhetoric threatened the entire world.

It was truly remarkable eloquence. From the moment he deceived Demos in Elysion until now, most of the world’s chaos could be attributed to Ortes’s orchestration, and that would not be an exaggeration.

Kine honed her abilities to acquire such a lethal weapon.

And now, as the Panoptes agents and other participants hurled stones at that nameless adversary, its effectiveness was proven.

Watching the scene from the side, Knemon thought:

That bastard Ortes is ruining the world.

***

I was moved by the unexpected reinforcements.

‘It was worth taking them in, feeding them well, and giving them a good place to sleep!’

At a glance, the mental parasite’s allies were unable to accept the sudden change in the situation. What I needed to do here was simple.

Stop the parasite’s metamorphosis, take Carisia, and defeat that figure who was probably Argyrion.

I needed to concretize a method to use the mana conduits. The mental parasite was receiving mana from the mana core even at this moment.

If I severed the connection between the entire mana conduit system and the mana core, it would naturally lose ground in the power struggle against Carisia and the Blasphemia agents.

But this was an amateur’s idea. It was uncertain how long it would take to destroy the mana conduits. If our allies’ mana was depleted before the conduits were sufficiently destroyed, we would be in real trouble.

Above all, it would only damage the assets of our company’s shell corporation… no, Knemon’s assets.

A master’s approach would be to create new value through battle, but unfortunately, I wasn’t an investment genius. What I chose was a mid-level approach.

Preserve value as much as possible. Maintain the facilities while destroying only the mental parasite.

And I had a method for that. The parasite’s metamorphosis was clearly a high-dimensional magic that would require considerable strain on my eyes to fully analyze.

However, right now, complete understanding wasn’t necessary. If I wanted to completely modify the spell formula to my will, perhaps, but now my goal was simply to troll by pouring cold water on the opponent’s well-prepared feast.

I didn’t need to understand it properly—just smash it recklessly. Originally, the more high-dimensional the magic, the harder it was to clean up once an error occurred.

As the mental parasite blocked the beams Carisia was firing wildly, craters had formed here and there around the Amimone Tower. The mana conduits were visible beneath the deeply gouged ground.

I took out the mana engraving drive to use for overwriting.

Click.

Click.

‘It’s not working?’

This was the first time this had happened after countless uses of spell overwriting. Was the magic engraving drive defective?

The mana initially charged in the drive was depleted.

The drive had been working fine until just now. As I tried installing another drive, I could see the mana inside being sucked along the mana conduits.

Damn it.

The mental parasite’s mana suction force was too strong. In that brief moment when the drive was activated, before the spell could be completed, the mana that should have been injected into the spell formula was being absorbed by the parasite.

I never expected spell overwriting to be blocked like this.

I looked up at the still finely shredded Amimone Tower. No choice.

I’ll have to be an investment amateur.

And deal with the fake news that gave me wrong investment information.

***

Nastion managed to collect himself even in the midst of his bewilderment. The assault that began with stone-throwing and evolved into a storm of attack spells was ineffective unless it could fundamentally capture Nastion’s essence.

‘What on earth did he do?’

It was clear that the childish and crude insult—”that guy is just a bad guy”—had served as a trigger for the spell. But Nastion couldn’t possibly deduce the structure of that magic.

All he could figure out was that something like a curse had weakened mental resistance. The next part, which shook people’s will and specifically deluded them, he couldn’t analyze in time.

‘Did he anticipate this far…!’

This was clearly another of Ortes’s schemes. The counter-incitement that led to attacking him immediately after Ortes incited them to attack his ally.

How vast Ortes’s plan was, and exactly how far he had prepared his strategies and tactics, was now completely unknown territory.

“Blasphemia! Change your target! Not the tower itself, but the mana core connected to the tower! As things stand, this is just an endless war of attrition!”

Finally, the most effective attack method was directed. Nastion wondered why Ortes, who must have predicted this entire situation, was only suggesting this method now.

‘To avoid suspicion?’

The mental parasite and the false god had been enemies of the Divine Faith Order for ages. There was never a single record of direct confrontation with magical society. If he had suggested an effective attack method as soon as it appeared, it would have raised considerable suspicion later.

So he first prevented the metamorphosis with attacks, and then began the full-scale offensive after an appropriate amount of time had passed. Truly a fearsome opponent.

Not simply the ability to devise strategies, but the skill to move all participants in the battle according to his plans. Even Nastion himself, who prided himself on his wisdom, found that all the wisdom he had mustered, even the desperate move he had just made, had been rendered useless by Ortes’s schemes.

Nastion saw Ortes, who had directed the attack, running toward him. Dangerous.

That man would understand his essence. One blade wielded by Ortes would be more lethal than the grand magic unleashed by the motley crew of magicians attacking now.

With the false god, who could have restrained Ortes on this battlefield, being restrained instead, Nastion had no counterattack left to attempt.

Ortes, who had been running along the building wall, kicked off at the peak of his acceleration. It was the moment when two spells aimed at Nastion collided, causing an explosive flame.

A cleverly obscured line of sight. Ortes’s attack came from behind.

It would have been undetectable if not for Nastion, whose entire body essentially functioned as a sensory organ.

Nastion collapsed his floating body and immediately fled into the shadows on the wall.

Cheers of “Evil is gone!” erupted among the magicians who had rushed in. From the shadow on the wall to the debris of buildings, and then to the shadow of another building. Nastion, who had changed positions several times, observed Ortes as he landed on the ground.

Their eyes met.

Although Nastion had no sensory organ that could be distinguished as “eyes,” he sensed it that way.

Despite his concealment having no afterimage or time lag, Ortes recognized his position as soon as he burrowed into the shadows.

One thought crossed Nastion’s mind. A truly unfamiliar word that had not occurred to him for centuries since obtaining his shadow body.

Survival.

‘Can I survive?’

From that demigod who had turned the entire city of Algoth into his stage.

Nastion thought frantically. From the shadows on the wall, from the shadows of streetlights, sometimes from the shadows of birds.

Deliberately ignoring the fact that Ortes, who kept tracking him no matter where he hid, was getting closer and closer.

Repeated thinking in extreme situations produces extraordinary answers.

The reason spatial magic is strictly controlled is because of the possibility of calling the outer dimension.

But Argyrion had no reason to fear the outer dimension.

The massive mana source needed for spatial magic was already prepared, wasn’t it?

He must act before all the mana conduits connected to the false god are cut off.

The pitiful actor decided to blow up the stage to escape the director’s theater.