Ch.145Upheaval (7)

Carisia thought.

What is the best choice she could make here, right now?

She should have followed when Ortes disappeared alone, chasing after someone suspicious. A sigh mixed with regret escaped her lips.

Was it a mistake to remain on the front lines against the psychic parasites to fill the void left by Ortes’s disappearance?

Carisia, having withdrawn her optical camouflage, headed toward Kine.

“Oh, boss?”

Kine was bewildered by her boss’s sudden appearance, while Knemon looked at her with a deeply troubled expression. Carisia added without further explanation:

“Everyone, fall back.”

“Why…?”

Kine’s question was reasonable. The magicians she had gathered through political maneuvering were essentially all the magicians in Algoth City. Retreating with this force would be a foolish choice.

Right now, even with just Blasphemia and Carisia, the psychic parasite was being forced into a disadvantageous position. If everyone attacked together, couldn’t they seize victory in one fell swoop?

Carisia calmly shook her head.

“You’ll get caught up in it.”

Knemon was the first to understand the true meaning behind that quiet declaration. Unlike Kine, who was wondering if the psychic parasite was really that strong, Knemon knew about the means “sufficient to entangle others” that were like the bubbles of erasure.

“What are you planning to do?”

The steadiness in Knemon’s voice came from having already prepared himself. Whatever means this woman, Ortes’s master, would use would surely far exceed his imagination.

“Just an ordinary method. It’s a byproduct of a field that anyone in large-scale construction would study at least once.”

After saying this, Carisia put her optical camouflage back on. Knemon convinced Kine, who was asking if they shouldn’t help, and pulled the magicians back.

***

Niobe, who was commanding the battle against the Amimone Tower mutant, sensed that something had changed. It wasn’t just that the mutant’s transformation speed was accelerating.

“No more fire support?”

The large-scale attack magic that Ortes would have activated had ceased. It seemed the artifact’s magic charge had run out.

In this case, Blasphemia would be at a disadvantage in a war of attrition. Niobe recalled Ortes’s response when an extradimensional storm hit Algoth City previously.

He had told Niobe to leave Algoth City, saying it was her duty to report to Blasphemia headquarters. Ortes wasn’t visible now, but he would surely say the same thing.

“Abandon Amimone Tower! Pull back the front line! I’ll buy time by taking on the mutant’s attacks, everyone retreat! Upon retreat, report the current situation to headquarters and await further instructions!”

She could see other Panoptes agents besides Blasphemia, who were dealing with the cult followers, also retreating. This should fulfill her duties as a commander.

Niobe calmly accepted death. If she maximized the internal magic power of the magic stones implanted in her body through Blasphemia’s enhancement procedure, it would create considerable explosive power.

She could at least inflict enough damage to force the mutant to focus on regeneration. Just as Niobe was about to utter the self-destruct code—

The mutant’s attack stopped.

It wasn’t that it had met its death. Slowly distorting space and exhaling extradimensional magic like breathing, it was staring at something.

“Staring” wasn’t a metaphor but a literal description. The distorted spaces were rearranged in the air, forming something like a giant face. Two enormous eyes formed from chaos were fixed on a single point.

It was the direction from which attack magic had been firing until just now.

Niobe could feel something massive pulsating with magic power at the place the eyes were staring at. It was a wave strong enough to momentarily make her lose balance and stagger.

“Senior?”

Ortes must have recharged the artifact with magic power again.

***

Carisia unleashed her magic power without reservation. She deactivated all auxiliary spells like optical camouflage and concentrated her magic power at a single point in the air. The psychic parasite, which had half-succeeded in deification, couldn’t ignore the movement of such massive magic power that would undoubtedly transform into a grand spell to strike it.

This method was essentially a gamble for Carisia herself. Her own magic power was too vast for a mere individual to handle, and even she couldn’t escape the limitations of being an individual.

Therefore, she merely concentrated her magic power without trying to incorporate it into a specific spell formula to complete it as magic. One mistake could risk vaporizing the area around Amimone Tower, including Carisia herself.

If the parasite realized that she was simply gathering magic power without preparing a subsequent spell formula, it wouldn’t have paid her the slightest attention.

Fortunately, the parasite didn’t yet have that level of discernment. Or perhaps Carisia’s acting skills, honed through her constant interactions with Ortes, were proving effective.

“You…”

It was difficult to tell how the parasite judged Carisia. At first, it considered her a perfect sacrifice, and for a moment when it was deceived by Ortes’s trick, it thought she was a new generation created by the Creator.

Now that all of Ortes’s eloquence had been revealed as cunning deception, it had no thoughts about Carisia.

However, facing her one-on-one now, it was filled with questions. The Creator’s boundless power was swirling within that physical body.

Ortes’s words couldn’t possibly be true. The Creator would be watching them from the distant heavens in unfathomable silence, unconcerned with the petty struggles of the lower realm.

‘But that is…’

It couldn’t be explained without the Creator’s power. The confused parasite decided to choose attack as the most efficient defense.

Since the enemy was preparing a grand spell, it would instinctively calculate to offset the damage with equal or greater firepower.

Carisia had spent a considerable amount of time with someone whose thoughts were quite difficult to discern. When trying to guess thoughts from the eyes, they were narrowed, and when trying to infer emotions from words, there was only polite formality.

The current Carisia could easily read even the inner thoughts of such a person. The parasite’s bewilderment was an emotion that was truly easy to understand.

All of the psychic parasite’s capabilities were now invested in constructing a new spell to overwhelm Carisia’s magic. Carisia analyzed the parasite’s spell formula and smiled.

She had won.

***

I felt an untimely sense of foreboding. Not just an ordinary chill, but the kind of foreboding that suggested my life might end if I didn’t realize something immediately.

But there was no time to ponder what this unexpected anxiety might be. The silver web chasing me was right behind my back.

In that moment.

The ‘eye’ sounded an alarm like a seizure. The whole world was dyed with red letters. I felt bewilderment before fear at this sudden event, because the content written in red letters was this:

Detonation in 10 seconds.

“Carisia!”

I instinctively blurted out the culprit’s name. What on earth have you done?!

***

Since arriving in Algoth City, Carisia had been steadily engaging in destructive activities. These were destructive acts carried out in anticipation of drawing Panoptes’s attention. This was done in parallel with the search for Argyrion.

Even though she hadn’t found Argyrion by the last day of the Tower Lord selection, the destruction continued steadily. The reason was simple.

It was to plant explosives.

As Kaichel and the other directors focused on creating the artificial Ten Commandments, sacred objects that were mere shells with their divine power extracted continued to accumulate. If it had been Ortes, he would have suggested selling them as antiques, while Mine Foreman Bertrand would have wanted to keep them as decorations for their historical significance.

Carisia thought:

Before using the artificial Ten Commandments as bombs, shouldn’t we make a prototype?

That’s why she began creating magic bombs by collecting sacred objects that, though emptied of divine power, still retained the function of storing magical abilities.

Of course, she hadn’t planned to plant such bombs in Algoth City from the beginning. She had only intended to throw bombs through portals if Argyrion tried to escape via spatial magic during their battle.

Carisia changed her plan and began planting bombs after hearing about the psychic parasite that had originally targeted Amimone Tower’s magic core. A trump card to use if the parasite ever occupied Amimone Tower.

The timing was also appropriate. As soon as the Tower Lord selection began, Carisia attacked other candidates, causing other factions to join the hunt. The intensification of competition was unexpected, but the expansion of combat was also advantageous for Carisia.

This was because Panoptes lacked the manpower to patrol the battle sites. Thanks to Panoptes tacitly approving the magicians’ off-field tactics with the attitude of “anyway, we just need to evaluate those who survive!”, Carisia was able to install explosives in appropriate locations.

The means of detonation was to transmit light of a specific wavelength according to a certain pattern. The high-level optical sensor capable of detecting infrared and above was a collaboration between Dwarf Bertrand and Lampades.

Carisia emitted the light wave that would simultaneously detonate the sacred object-encased magic bombs she had planted to overflow in the underground area around Amimone Tower. This happened while the parasite was expending its magic-sensing ability on the magic Carisia was releasing.

And there was light.