Ch.151The Great Witch, Aurelia. (3)

# Heavy.

It feels like I’ll burst under the crushing weight of this immense mass. But before that thought could fully form, Olivia’s instincts drove her to unleash more lightning. If she were pushed back, she would die.

Should I have fled to the sky?

A regret that came too late. Having decided to block it, she had to succeed.

Rumble, rumble…!

A pillar of lightning surged from the ground, colliding with the Zodiac falling like a meteor. Though the point of contact was violently burning away, the Zodiac’s body was frustratingly massive. It would crash into the ground before its body could be completely destroyed.

‘One… more!’

Crack, crack. After clenching her fist a few times, some of the magical power pulsating around her heart gathered at her fingertips. Olivia stretched her hand toward the sky and released a blast of cold.

Freezing.

She wasn’t trying to freeze the Zodiac. There would be no benefit in freezing a mere summon. Instead, Olivia froze ‘speed’ itself.

By freezing gravity itself, she could nullify it. It was an act that defied natural law, but she had no choice.

To block that thing, there was no other way.

Whoosh…!

An enormous amount of magical power drained from her, incomparable to anything before. It made sense. This was magic born from mental imagery that defied natural law.

Impossible as it seemed, the dominion of a magician who had reached the truth made it possible.

She could freeze what couldn’t be frozen. If Olivia wished, she could even freeze flames without extinguishing them.

What she was doing now was similar.

That mental image manifested through her staff in an instant.

In that moment, the Zodiac’s body stopped its free fall.

And became motionless.

Crackle, crackle!

The lightning greedily devoured the Zodiac’s body. The headless giant’s howl echoed thunderously.

Olivia remained vigilant. In that instant, she had used three great magics. And Aurelia, whose location remained unknown, had only used one great spell so far.

‘I don’t know when something strange might appear next.’

That question was answered as soon as the Zodiac’s body was destroyed by lightning.

The swamp, which had been devastated by the lightning, regenerated in an instant. More precisely, it returned to its state before Olivia had used her magic.

‘An illusion?’

No. As a precaution, she had spread her spiritual perception in all directions since entering the swamp. No matter how sophisticated the spell, it couldn’t penetrate Olivia’s mental imagery in her state of complete concentration.

Then.

…Did someone turn back time?

“She read the memory of the land and restored it to how it was before the damage,” Rockpa said.

“…That’s possible?”

“Haha… That’s why my master is a Grand Spellcaster.”

Rockpa’s laughter didn’t continue.

Because the second attack came as if it had been waiting.

Splash…!

The dark swamp erupted and swallowed the group. Unpleasant mud that rejected light filled their vision. And it emitted a sticky poison.

‘…This is!’

A poison that disrupts the flow of magical power. It reminded her of the Hydra’s deadly poison that the Master of Dark had used.

Olivia was confident she could block this spell, but she wasn’t confident she could do that while simultaneously detecting Aurelia’s location.

“You hurry and find Aurelia’s location!”

Rockpa immediately acted on Olivia’s command. Spiritual power gathered around him and spread in all directions. Normally it would be impossible to penetrate his master’s spiritual power, but Olivia had created an opening that made it possible.

Burst!

The poison that couldn’t withstand Olivia’s magical power scattered like an explosion. At the same time, their blocked vision cleared.

‘…Spellcaster.’

Olivia felt something strange about that occupation.

To her, Aurelia had always been the Great Witch. She knew the “setting” that Aurelia had been a spellcaster before being captured by demons and forced to become a witch, but she could count on one hand the times she had seen Aurelia use spells.

Just as Kiel had always been the Sword Master, she had always been the Great Witch, and that fact had never changed.

‘…Why didn’t I sense it?’

Why hadn’t she questioned why Aurelia had quietly holed up in a swamp hut during the annihilation cycle?

In fact, she had known.

Because that troublesome opponent had accepted death so readily.

That relief had covered up the sense of déjà vu.

Spirits poured down from the sky. This wasn’t like the Great Demon Belphegor forcibly summoning souls from the human world. If it were, spellcasters would have been treated the same as black magicians.

Spellcasters make fair contracts with spirits. The spellcaster resolves the “lingering attachments” the spirits had in life, and in return, the spirits follow the spellcaster’s commands.

Olivia couldn’t bring herself to destroy those spirits.

So she settled for freezing them and binding them with chains of lightning.

“Was it like this every month?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“…”

Olivia’s expression became complicated.

People go mad when they live for too long. This isn’t limited to humans. Long-lived races including elves, even dragons.

– Remembering eternity is not a blessing. It’s a curse.

Even when crossing world lines, she had asked to inherit memories in each cycle. At the time she said that, she hadn’t thought things would get this big.

She had fallen into a past cycle and had a chance to talk with Aurelia.

There was no special meaning. She just wanted one more person who knew her “secret.”

So she had extracted a vow, almost threatening her.

And the result was…

“I found her.”

Olivia pressed her lips together and turned her head.

Not far away, she saw a small hut. A familiar hut.

– In the end, it came to this.

The very hut she had seen in the annihilation cycle. Though she hadn’t seen it directly but through a screen, she still remembered it vividly.

As Olivia tried to walk straight toward it, Rockpa blocked her.

“You mustn’t go in now. As I told you, my master won’t regain her senses until the full moon passes. If you go, far from calming down, she’ll unleash spells incomparable to what you’ve seen so far.”

Rockpa’s eyes spoke the truth.

And it was also his personal experience.

Because that’s how his senior brothers and sisters had died.

Grooooar…!

No sooner had he spoken than another terrible sound echoed.

Soul manipulation.

The spirits bound by lightning chains broke free and began to gather in one place. Eventually, they merged into one massive entity.

It was smaller than the Zodiac, but its ominous presence was no less intimidating.

The Grim Reaper.

A massive Grim Reaper appeared, wearing a chilling robe. The Serial Murderer’s eyes sparkled at the sight.

“I, I…!”

The Serial Murderer looked at Olivia with puppy-like eyes, as if begging to go for a walk.

Of course, Olivia knew what that look meant.

The look that said he wanted to kill that Grim Reaper.

After a moment’s consideration, Olivia said:

“Go. Tell me if it seems dangerous.”

Olivia turned away from the Serial Murderer who bounded off happily, and looked back at Rockpa.

“You just said it yourself. That I have a way to cure Aurelia’s curse.”

“Yes. But… haven’t you realized yet?”

He was right.

Olivia had come to the Moon’s Mystic Realm to find a way to resolve her own curse, not to help the spellcaster—no, Aurelia.

Until she met Rockpa, she hadn’t even known the “spellcaster” was Aurelia.

There were six hours left until the full moon passed.

‘…I can’t hold out that long.’

There was too much to worry about.

It was already overwhelming just to maintain herself, and now she had to worry about the Serial Murderer and Aurelia getting caught up in this.

Fortunately, since Aurelia wasn’t in her right mind, attacks weren’t coming relentlessly, but it was challenging enough as it was.

If another giant like the Zodiac were summoned, then…

“I’m going in.”

“What? After everything I’ve said…?”

“I heard everything. You said that if we hold out until the full moon ends, Aurelia’s mind will return.”

“Yes.”

“Can you be certain that will happen?”

Fierce blue eyes stared at Rockpa. He bit his lip hard. He wasn’t certain. Clearly, his master had regained her senses when the full moon ended before. But there was no guarantee it would happen this time.

Olivia understood Rockpa’s silence.

“Have you realized the method?” he asked.

“No. But it’ll come to me as I push through.”

An incredibly crude answer.

But when the person saying it is Olivia, it’s different.

Olivia pointed at the Serial Murderer with her fingertip. He was evenly matched with the Grim Reaper Aurelia had created.

“That guy can probably handle anything up to just below the Zodiac’s level. His regeneration is good too, so we don’t need to worry about him separately.”

“…I’ll try to block the summons as much as possible.”

Rockpa immediately understood what Olivia meant.

If there is someone to break through, there must also be someone to hold the line and prevent it from closing again.

“Go.”

Olivia didn’t answer.

[Using magic, ‘Blink’.]

Brilliant mana enveloped her as if to protect her.