Ch.179White Light

The confrontation between Baekgwang and Carisia resembled their first encounter.

A mirror-like battle. Bombardment by conversational light beams is blocked by beams fired from precisely the opposite angle.

Who gained the offensive first was meaningless. Whoever attempted an attack would immediately have their magical power absorbed through magical interference.

Since both parties’ capabilities differed from ordinary magicians, and since the Ten Commandments supporting both sides supplied infinite magical power, their spells were merely delayed in completion rather than completely collapsing.

While one side’s magic slowed in completion, the other’s intercepting magic would finish. The result: mutual annihilation.

Under the star-filled celestial sphere, starlight wielded by two grand magicians embroidered the earth.

‘Magical power…’

For now, they were equal.

This place was where the Ten Commandments Baekgwang was enshrined, the domain that Magician Baekgwang had crafted over thousands of years. Thus, it possessed properties that repelled intruders like Carisia. Though she attempted to usurp ownership of the domain using her own physical qualities, it was in vain. Carisia felt the magical power consumption of her spells increasing exponentially.

Nevertheless, the inexhaustible magical power of the artificial Ten Commandments guaranteed recovery beyond the amplified consumption.

If the fight dragged on longer, who knows, but for now, it was fair to consider them equal.

Their power was certainly equal. This was evidenced by how their bombardment spells collided and precisely annihilated each other without either side giving way.

If both magical power and strength were equal, then speed would determine the outcome.

And in this, Carisia had the advantage.

Not because Carisia completed her incantations faster. This was Baekgwang’s domain, its center. Even Carisia couldn’t overwhelm Baekgwang in this place.

However, Carisia could identify “attacks she could afford to take.”

Phoebus’s crystal, processed into a necklace form. Limited precognition of the nearest future unfolded in Carisia’s mind. Carisia accepted hits that wouldn’t cause instant death, trusting in her localized defensive magic and magical physical regeneration.

Thus, she diverted resources from interception to attack. Sharper, stronger.

Baekgwang’s attacks were fast, but Carisia’s strikes were more lethal.

This aroused considerable excitement in Baekgwang.

Carisia’s combat logic was a dangerous tightrope walk that Baekgwang would never choose. A life-risking feat on the edge of a precipice.

Through observation, it was clear that not all attacks landing on Carisia were fatal wounds. She undoubtedly had the ability to distinguish the severity of incoming attacks. Baekgwang wasn’t surprised that Carisia possessed such ability.

Some degree of future prediction was possible even in Blasphemia. Like the prophet in the basement. She must have acquired abilities from the cult of vanished gods through similar methodology.

What truly surprised Baekgwang was Carisia’s unhesitating acceptance of injuries. No matter how accurate the precognition, it would fail when faced with attacks faster than the speed of reading the prediction.

Someone of Baekgwang’s caliber could realize such a method of disruption. Now, the flood of light beams fired in less than one-second intervals was to probe the speed at which Carisia read her predictions.

Carisia must also have known her predictive defense was gradually being exploited. Yet her persistence with such a method meant a variable that would change the course of the struggle was imminent.

Baekgwang wondered if it was an ally but denied it. There couldn’t be anyone in this world that creature would trust.

The reverse was also true. There existed no one in this world who would trust that creature.

Baekgwang gradually increased the density of her attacks. Dozens of concentrated starlight were set to impact with microscopic time differences—zero point followed by countless zeros below the decimal.

Carisia knew Baekgwang was testing her capabilities.

And she knew Ortes was approaching. The increasingly clear visions of the future as he neared proved this.

Three, two, one.

Rumble!

Baekgwang’s and the artificial Ten Commandments’ magical powers overlapped and tore apart. Pain like ripping apart the magical circuits of magicians connected to the Ten Commandments from within. Agony like burning each terminal of nerve cells assaulted them.

This was the moment Carisia had been waiting for.

Carisia humbly acknowledged that everything about her was inferior to Baekgwang. Her forces were incomparable to the Ten Towers, and while her experience was unique, it was meager compared to Baekgwang’s thousands of years.

However, there was one thing she was confident she surpassed Baekgwang in.

The number of failures and pains she had endured. Those desperate days of survival with Ortes.

The pain of bones tearing, the thirst of withering alive in the desert, the regret for things lost.

The sum of pain that Baekgwang, reigning from the pinnacle above the heavens for thousands of years, would never have felt.

Carisia smiled more refreshingly and ferociously than ever before.

Before the pain that seemed to pierce her body from toe to head could complete a circuit through her body, Carisia began to run. She forcibly suppressed the rampaging magical power and corrected her muscles that instinctively tried to contract with magical power.

Starting from her breathing, she controlled each movement of her body with magical power. Her mind became clearer in pain. An environment was created where she could move perfectly through magical power and mind, ignoring all reflex actions caused by external stimuli.

She looked at Baekgwang. Not collapsed. Well, if she collapsed so easily, she wouldn’t qualify as the fear Carisia had dreaded all her life.

Baekgwang’s bombardment continued in response to her charge. But Baekgwang’s shots weren’t accurate. Whether due to unexpected speed or pain not yet escaped was unknown.

Carisia didn’t care. What mattered now was…

Smashing that face.

Carisia’s black gauntlet turned golden. Close-quarters combat she hadn’t used once since Baekgwang’s declaration of succession battle.

Everything was for this one moment when Baekgwang would show an opening. To use a combat style remarkably similar to Baekgwang’s own, to give the impression that Carisia was nothing more than her imitation.

But what Carisia truly considered her specialty wasn’t bombardment or curses.

Part of her body converted into photons. A weightless leap translated into equivalent speed. A spell she had conceived since Ortes once asked the strange question, “Can you kick at the speed of light?”

Just as Sprigo or Talo unified their bodies with their attributes, Carisia could realize similar magic.

Thus, Carisia’s charge left a streak of white light. Movement so fast it appeared as a line rather than an afterimage. She clenched her fist tightly and, while reassembling her body into material form, interfered with the particle composition of the space in front of her gauntlet.

That space was where Baekgwang’s face was located.

Space distorted, creating a white light point. A suddenly forming ultra-hot light sphere. Baekgwang responded even in a time too brief to call an instant. The components of the magic disassembled, slowing its completion, and layers of protective magic piled on Baekgwang’s body.

Carisia pushed her gauntlet into the incomplete plasma. The magic circle loaded inside the gauntlet met the incomplete mass of magical power, finally completing as one spell. The black gauntlet was dyed with white magical light.

If that series of movements advancing the gauntlet were compressed into one word.

It was an ‘uppercut.’

The entire forearm wrapped in the gauntlet transformed into a lethal plasma aggregate. Beyond Atomic Fist (原子衝拳), it was Atomic Arm (原子衝腕).

A white flash that devoured space directly hit Baekgwang’s face. Her head began to evaporate before even feeling the impact of the collision. I’ve wo—

“Kuhk…!”

Carisia saw the white shoe embedded in her abdomen. An elegant appearance completely unsuited for combat.

However, that heel had created a round hole piercing through Carisia’s clothes and across her abdomen. The result of a light beam fired from the heel tip.

Baekgwang’s evaporated head had somehow been restored.

Then, Baekgwang, having dropped her staff, raised her fist. No way—

Magic identical to Carisia’s Atomic Arm was constructed. The difference from Carisia’s magic was the absence of external devices like gauntlets to protect her arm and assist in completing the magic.

A clean straight punch followed. An elegant straight line aimed at Carisia’s heart, with nothing to add or subtract.

She hurriedly raised her right arm to block. Two light points collided and exploded.

It was Carisia who fell.

Slowly, Baekgwang opened her mouth.

“Everyone makes that mistake. That magicians of the old era would be weak in physical combat.”

She smiled faintly.

“I killed the Demon King with these arms, these hands.”

Carisia felt her regeneration couldn’t keep up. Baekgwang’s magical power lingered in the wound, hindering recovery. She layered defenses while fallen. Not yet.

Not yet.

Seeing this, Baekgwang, still smiling, prepared for execution. As the Milky Way gathered in the sky forming a hemisphere, the Milky Way reflected on the ground also transformed into an inverted hemisphere. The two hemispheres connected to form a unified halo.

Just as light gathered from the halo—light capable of disintegrating any defense—formed at Baekgwang’s fingertips.

The door opened.