Ch.171Conquest of the White Light (2)

In Carisia’s life, everything apart from Ortes could be summarized as revenge against Baekgwang.

Hydra Corporation was ultimately a means for revenge against Baekgwang. However, treating Hydra as a means didn’t imply that she was negligent in managing it.

It was because the target of her revenge was Baekgwang. While a simple knife might be enough to tear paper to shreds, destroying alloy steel plates required a weapon with corresponding destructive power.

From the establishment of Hydra Corporation, every task given to its members contained the intention of training them as weapons capable of confronting Baekgwang.

The standard for “confrontation” was low. Achieving victory in a direct battle against Baekgwang was nearly impossible. Carisia didn’t ask for much.

Until the final battle with Baekgwang’s Tower Master was over, she wanted just enough strength to protect Etna City. That was all Carisia wanted from Hydra Corporation.

Because she and Ortes would be sufficient for the most critical phase.

It was an order the directors couldn’t easily understand. “Defend Etna City”? There was no reason for Baekgwang to send an expeditionary force to Etna City. After all, the success or failure of the succession battle would be determined by reaching the Tenth Circle, and thus the battlefield would converge on Baekgwang’s territory.

At that moment, the directors felt a slight vibration.

Guuuuuung—

A strange sound, like an engine starting or mana condensing, resonated throughout Etna City. The slight vibration soon grew stronger.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

And then Ortes’s voice began to come through. As Carisia snapped her fingers, a hologram rose from the center of the conference room.

Ortes’s image appeared over an unfamiliar landscape. The directors could tell that Ortes was not in Etna City.

Ignoring the confusion flashing across the directors’ faces, Ortes continued nonchalantly.

“The mana density around Baekgwang Magic Tower is rising. In about 10 minutes from now, it will reach a density sufficient to attempt Eleusinian formation.”

“Kaicle has also begun work on his end. Have you sent the security code for the circuit to Director Arabel?”

“I just sent you the access code for the Blasphemia circuit. Please tell everyone there to prepare for the impact. I’ll join you soon.”

Beep. The hologram turned off. Amid clear confusion, some directors vaguely caught on to the tactics implied in the conversation.

Taros, who had been constantly searching for potential fuel in the mana waste disposal site at Bertrand’s request, growled.

“President, you can’t mean… Etna City itself…?”

Carisia nodded.

“In 9 minutes and 40 seconds from now. Etna City will move to the airspace above Baekgwang Magic Tower.”

Her golden eyes flashed. It was a familiar sight to Noiro, the Hunter Association president.

It was the look of a hunter sinking fangs into the nape of long-tracked prey.

***

Kaicle was fine-tuning the Ether Space installed beneath Etna Volcano. Bertrand and Geryones were with him.

“Is this kind of thing really possible?”

Geryones asked, half excited, half doubtful. He knew about Eleusinian theory, but…

“Humans and cities have completely different masses. And the mana required for that?”

“More than enough.”

Bertrand answered heavily.

“The Tenth Circle affects the mana composition of the continent with just its excess mana. We’ve blocked the Elysion supply and, additionally, redirected mana by reversing their spatial creation technology. Mana to handle the mass of Etna City? Our opponent isn’t some ordinary mana core—it’s the Tenth Circle.”

Bertrand said this while looking at Kaicle. The mana from their own Tenth Circle—the artificial one—would also be fully utilized in this operation.

A mechanism to expand a passage originally meant for a single human using the Tenth Circles of both sides. Geryones scratched his head with one of his six hands.

“Damn, being a practical fighter, I don’t understand the theory. So, what am I supposed to do, old man?”

“Formula adjustment. Mana needs to spread evenly throughout Etna City. Theoretically, we’ve completed it by endlessly reconstructing Etna City, but emergency repairs might be needed due to durability issues. If a red indicator appears on this panel, deploy immediately.”

The tenacious redevelopment of both above and below ground in Etna City was ultimately for this moment. A city-scale magic circle to assist the expansion of Eleusinian. The reason for modifying mana pipe layouts and developing underground spaces using Taros’s mutants.

“So I’m just a laborer. What about Kriton, who made great contributions to directly rebuilding the city?”

“That one has excellent physical abilities, not magical capacity. You need experience handling mana cores. He’s assigned to close combat in the Etna City siege battle.”

While Bertrand and Geryones continued their conversation with busy hands, Kaicle slowly activated the artificial Tenth Circle. The sacred artifacts endlessly invested until now. The artificial Tenth Circle activates using divine power extracted from sacred artifacts as a primer.

The lingering divinity in Etna City. The artificial Tenth Circle’s mana pulsates, following the footsteps of the Ascendant revealed by Ortes.

Lampades’ radar activates. A list of points responding to the artificial Tenth Circle’s mana from beyond the dimensional wall appears.

It filters out the signals of extradimensional beings simply reacting to power surging from inside to outside the dimension. It finds points where only pure power exists without any intention.

Connection. The artificial Tenth Circle begins to emit various colors. From beyond the sea of stars, the power of gods who have left this world begins to flow in.

Kaicle sent a communication to Arabel.

Arabel, connected to a spider-type special prosthetic body, was cursing her superiors.

Kaicle, Carisia. And most of all, Ortes.

‘Connecting our Ether Space with theirs? Easier said than done!’

It was essentially hacking targeting the Ten Towers. This was madness. Even with Ortes providing Blasphemia’s internal data, it wasn’t enough.

Without the foundational technology extracted and developed from the brain chips of the Torres School branch directors who had aimed to hack the Tenth Circle, they couldn’t have even attempted it.

‘So you’ve been planning this all along?’

Arabel shuddered at Ortes’s grand scheme. So that’s why he meticulously collected all the brain chips while annihilating the Torres Magic Tower faction.

Sighing, Arabel extended her web. The Ether Space beneath Etna Volcano rapidly expanded to a size capable of engulfing the entire city.

From the edge of the expanded Ether Space’s influence, Arabel’s web stretched out. Into the Ether network lines secretly laid by the Ten Towers for Panoptes to use anywhere in the world.

The security magic directly prepared by the Ten Towers opened pathetically before Blasphemia’s authorization code. The Eleusinian space formed above Baekgwang’s domain and Etna City’s Eleusinian space connected through Panoptes’s circuit.

At that very moment, a certain noise reverberated throughout the world.

A solemn yet chilling roar that sounded like glass breaking, like continental plates fracturing and grinding in a violent earthquake, like a chorus of thunder following a shower of lightning.

***

“Hey, thanks for this.”

“No problem. Looks like I’ll be doing this all day today.”

The glib boy was Prodito, a priest of Piraios, the god of gatekeeping. He had transported Ortes near Baekgwang through the sacred path of spatial movement. A location just barely outside the influence of the Tenth Circle Baekgwang.

“Is the plan still the same?”

“Yes. From now, within about an hour. If we fail to capture Baekgwang, we fail completely. If we succeed in capturing Baekgwang…”

“Continue the succession battle, but retreat if you fail. I’ll pass it on. Call anytime if you need anything.”

“Haha. I’d love to, but activating sacred paths within the Ten Towers’ domain would be dangerous in many ways, wouldn’t it?”

Prodito grinned widely. Even now, they were pushing the limits of risk. If a sacred path were activated within the Tenth Circle’s sphere of influence, they would be detected immediately, so its use had to be minimized.

At least until Blasphemia’s rebellion intensified according to Ortes’s plan and sabotage of the Ten Towers’ internal communication lines occurred.

“Good luck! Let me read your palm sometime when you’re free!”

Prodito disappeared again through the golden door. Ortes looked up at the sky.

At that moment, Etna City’s crust and Baekgwang’s firmament connected.

A solemn roar echoed throughout heaven and earth.

Crack. The sky split. Like an object hazily visible through a glass window, an unknown silhouette loomed in the upper sky.

Ortes knew what it was.

Etna City had arrived.

A shadow cast directly above Baekgwang Magic Tower. Anti-air attack magic is fired. But it doesn’t reach Etna City. What’s reflected in the sky is still just a shadow. One thin wall of providence separating space from space remained.

Large-scale attack magic created by the infinite mana of the Tenth Circle reached the cracked sky. The limit of space was approaching.

Finally, the sky shattered.

Fragments of destruction poured down. Pieces of space containing the sky’s scenery fell like rain. The spatial fragments embedded in Baekgwang’s barrier acted as anti-formula devices, disrupting the barrier’s constituent formulas.

Beyond that, Etna City slowly revealed its majesty. The smoothly hemispherical ground of the city evidenced that such an attack had been prepared for a long time.

Ultra-high-output flight engines created by the overflowing mana of the artificial Tenth Circle, plus semi-permanent generators utilizing the volcano’s heat.

The bottom of the hemispherical Etna City was densely covered with flight engine nozzles. Light and mana spewing from the nozzles flowed down along the cracks in the sky. Excessively condensed, liquefied mana fell like rain.

The falling mana rain was an erosive weapon, each drop neutralizing the influence of the Tenth Circle Baekgwang. The protective barrier covering Baekgwang Magic Tower slowly melted away.

Eventually, the flight engines’ radiance gradually subsided. All engine output was converted to forming a protective barrier around Etna City. The implication was simple.

Descent.

It was the revival of an extreme mass weapon, the first since the Demon King.

Etna City descended with pieces of the broken sky. Baekgwang’s response was swift. Instead of attack magic, they poured all mana into defense.

Empowered by the Tenth Circle’s mana, Baekgwang Magic Tower succeeded in reconstructing its barrier despite the tight timeframe. The descent seemed about to be halted.

At that moment, engines mounted on the upper part of Etna City ignited. Unlike the bottom engines designed for floating, these were acceleration devices designed solely for this one descent.

They counteracted Baekgwang’s mana with the artificial Tenth Circle. From the heart of Etna Volcano, Carisia adjusted the artificial Tenth Circle’s mana supply in real-time, accelerating Etna City.

And thus came catastrophe. Baekgwang’s barrier shattered brilliantly. Baekgwang’s response deserved praise just for managing to divert Etna City’s descent trajectory slightly away from the tower’s main body.

But Carisia had anticipated even that. That Baekgwang would block even this attack. It was an obvious expectation, followed by obvious preparations.

The angle of the acceleration devices shifted. The trajectory of the fall was no longer vertical but diagonal.

Etna City cut into Baekgwang Magic Tower like a blade. Despite the enormous mass difference, Baekgwang didn’t collapse thanks to the Tenth Circle’s power.

Now it was the turn of two people.

Carisia used the overflowing mana of the artificial Tenth Circle and the already unstable space to teleport.

To the upper level of Baekgwang Magic Tower. To where Etna City’s tip had penetrated like a horn.

Beyond Baekgwang’s ruptured wall, countless hostilities surged. Carisia smiled fiercely. She had been waiting for this moment.

“Baekgwang──!”

Her lifelong dream declaration resounded.

“The ghost you deleted has returned! I will reclaim my name!”