Ch.180Fear

The world created by Olivia was one where nothing existed except for the black mana forming the sky and the mysterious metallic floor covering the ground.

No sun shone, no wind blew, and day and night never changed. It was a space where only eternal darkness and blackness persisted.

However, that space meant for darkness and blackness was now covered in intense colors.

“You’ve improved to a somewhat decent level? Were you training alone while I was having sex with our master?”

“……”

Charlotte’s mouth twitched at Olivia’s provocation. She seemed to be trying her best to ignore Olivia’s words by biting her lip, but it wasn’t working well.

Understandably so. Olivia’s words were persistently and precisely hitting Charlotte’s sore spots. It was impossible not to react.

From the start, knowing intellectually that any reaction would be disadvantageous after Olivia had slept with the boy was one thing, but putting that knowledge into practice was another matter entirely.

“I should tear that mouth of yours apart before I carve out your lower abdomen.”

So, Charlotte chose to draw out more mana.

Blue lightning flashed in the blackened sky. Dozens of lightning bolts struck down from above, illuminating the lightless world.

In response, Olivia created black mana lightning from the ground and countered the blue lightning. As the flashes collided, thunder roared like a beast.

The thunder didn’t stop at once. The blue lightning had split into dozens of branches, and the black lightning had similarly divided to match it, leaving dozens more remaining.

With the scene demonstrating what violence of sound truly meant behind her, Charlotte snapped her fingers. The blue lightning changed form.

Dozens of dark blue teleportation gates opened in the sky, and each lightning bolt was sucked into them. Seeing this, Olivia’s right eye glowed as she tore open the space around her.

Then she poured a torrent of black mana into it.

“Nice try. But it won’t work.”

Charlotte clicked her tongue, realizing that the lightning bolts sucked into the teleportation gates had been caught in the torrent of black mana and scattered before reaching their intended timeline.

She changed tactics. Dark blue spheres appeared where the teleportation gates had been, quickly transforming into ovals. Newly formed teleportation gates opened wide, and lightning bolts shot out from them again.

Dozens of lightning branches that had been stretching upward from below, traversing the sky in reverse, merged back into one.

A sphere mixing green and blue formed at the center of the black mana covering the sky. Electricity crackled on the sphere’s surface.

Meanwhile, all kinds of destructive magic poured out from magic circles drawn in every direction.

Although they couldn’t penetrate the defensive magic circle surrounding Olivia’s body, they weren’t harmless enough to leave her unscathed if she took them head-on. They were at least powerful enough to make recovery somewhat troublesome.

“Why do you judge my magic by your own standards?”

“Because I’m stronger than you?”

Olivia said this while extending her right hand toward the blue sphere. Black mana concentrated in her palm, transforming into another sphere.

“You spout such nonsense.”

The blue sphere created by Charlotte collided with the black sphere created by Olivia.

For an instant, the world fell silent.

More precisely, it created the illusion of silence. The tremendous shockwave from the collision of the two spheres momentarily drowned out all surrounding sounds.

The sphere formed from compressed lightning immediately exploded its mana as its shape distorted, scattering countless lightning bolts across the ground. A beat later, thunder followed.

Blue mana and black mana intertwined, releasing all their energy. The magical barriers surrounding Charlotte and Olivia shook.

For a moment, all air at the epicenter evaporated, creating a perfect vacuum, which was quickly filled by black mana and its residue, causing a tremendous storm.

Charlotte looked at the timeline with her dragon’s eye and overlaid the past onto the dust cloud obscuring her vision. The air at the epicenter returned to its clean state.

This happened because she had superimposed the past time onto the present.

‘If time gets delayed here, it only benefits that woman.’

Charlotte suppressed her rising irritation at the fact that the bitch before her was still standing unharmed. If the fight dragged on into a prolonged battle, that woman would have an overwhelming advantage.

Charlotte was the one pressed for time, as she needed to rescue her husband as soon as possible.

Since the magical barriers surrounding both of them were still holding firm, they could have ended this with close combat while cloaking their bodies in mana, rather than just launching spells from a distance.

The reason ordinary mages disliked close combat was partly because they found physical movement troublesome, but mainly because it was difficult to chant incantations or draw magic circles while running around.

This meant there were no such restrictions for Charlotte, who could use all kinds of magic without incantations and could draw magic circles with just the flick of a finger.

But Charlotte had no intention of doing so.

Such behavior was fitting for beast-women who swung swords or mentally ill women who couldn’t distinguish right from wrong. Charlotte, who prided herself as a cultured intellectual, could never stoop so low.

“Why are you struggling so hard? You can’t defeat me anyway. Just die quietly with me when I destroy the world. I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

“And why are you blocking my path? You’ll die by my hand anyway. Or should I tell you exactly how I’m going to kill you?”

“Die? Me? By your hand? You’re not serious, are you? If that’s supposed to be a joke, let me tell you in advance that it’s not funny. It’s too absurd.”

“If that’s how it sounds to you, then continue with your delusion.”

With a boom, pillars of fire erupted from the ground at Charlotte’s gesture. The acrid smell of sulfur spread from the orange flames.

The sky changed color. It was orange mixed with red. Like an inverted waterfall, fountains of flame burst from various points across the land.

Magic circles were drawn in the air. They glowed blue, and from within them, giant meteors were summoned and began falling to the ground. Each was the size of a small mountain.

Heaven and earth shook. Amidst the symphony of orange, yellow, and red covering everything, blue lightning once again began to flash and illuminate.

On the ground, pillars of fire and sulfur erupted while lava flowed out, turning into rivers; from the sky, meteors that were fire itself fell and exploded.

With blue lightning occasionally flashing through it all, it was a scene of chaos so believable that one might think hell itself had been copied and placed here.

Charlotte, who had transformed Olivia’s world into hell, snapped her fingers. Hell itself seemed to twist alive and pounded forcefully against the magical barrier surrounding Olivia’s body.

“—!!!!!!”

Charlotte, who was about to unleash her next spell, quickly changed her mind and hastily strengthened her defensive magic. Immediately after, spears the size of humans rained down.

The culprit was obvious. Charlotte expressed her irritation at Olivia, who had restored the surrounding world to its original state in that brief moment while Charlotte was blocking the attack.

“You have an unnecessarily tenacious lifeline.”

She had reason to be irritated. Even with Charlotte’s dragon eye, she couldn’t fully grasp Olivia’s nature.

Not only were all the timelines overlapping, but past, present, and future were all bundled together in that single body, making it impossible to read time from anywhere.

As if time had stopped flowing and become fixed.

‘…Is she in a time-fixed state just like my husband?’

Charlotte racked her brain. If she could find a way to release the stopped time and make fixed time flow again, it wouldn’t be impossible to inflict a fatal wound on that woman.

The dragon had clearly told Charlotte that if she could see the timeline, she could also release fixed time. It was just that finding the method was Charlotte’s responsibility.

“Tenacious lifeline? This is my love! Master and I will live for eternity. Even when everything else disappears, vanishes, and perishes, Master and I will survive. In this world with only the two of us, we’ll live happily forever! As long as my love doesn’t cool, neither I nor Master will ever scatter. But you’re not like that. Can you give eternal love? Can you create a world for Master? You can’t, right? Hm? Hm? Hm?”

With dead eyes and only the corners of her mouth turned up, Olivia staggered forward one step at a time.

“Whatever you’ve accomplished, Charlotte de Gargantua can surely achieve as well. If you don’t believe it, I’ll rip off your head and fix that narrow-minded thinking of yours.”

“No, you can’t. You absolutely cannot. Because Master is already completely infatuated with me. Master’s mind is filled with me. No matter what you do, no matter what situation arises, Master can never escape me. Forever. I made it that way, and it will continue to be so. You say you can do what I’ve done? No, you can’t. Master can never leave my shadow.”

“Such sophistry—”

“As much as he loves me, he fears all of you.”