Ch.180White Light

Ortes felt blood flowing from his eyes the moment he opened the door and entered.

It was an overwhelming amount of information. A battle between two archmages connected to the Ten Realms. Hundreds, thousands, and beyond countless amounts of magical power were being loaded, preparing to intercept, and consuming each other.

He accelerated his thoughts. Excluded the unnecessary. Ignored the trajectories of all lethal attacks that wouldn’t hit him.

He witnessed and analyzed the solemn flow created by the White Light.

Ortes let out a hollow laugh. Condensation and light focusing using the ring resembling a solar eclipse. That was the esoteric art of magical path toward ascension.

It was identical in principle to connecting with the divine realm of the artificial Ten Realms. Power drawn from providence of a rank greater and more noble than this world itself, an authority impossible to approach from the lower realm.

The White Light had constructed this not through vague groping via the Ten Realms, but through her own magic.

Infinite power. Absolute truth existing above any rules and laws of this world.

No magical defense or material preparation would be of any use. Even a saint utilizing divine authority couldn’t stand against it.

Because divinity and divine power were different concepts. Divine power was divinity itself limited to human understanding. Thus, compared to divinity itself, divine power was an infinitely imperfect concept.

That magic was magical arts that had reached the rank of divinity.

Perhaps a holy spirit above sainthood might have been able to resist. The problem was that both candidates who could use holy spirit—the Holy Maiden and the Pope—were absent.

But Ortes had his “eyes.”

From conversations with ancient priests and his experiences thus far, Ortes suspected his eyes might be directly connected to divinity.

He couldn’t be certain. No one had been able to give a satisfying answer to his questions.

However.

‘If I don’t succeed here, we all die.’

He opened his eyes wide and raised his sword. This vast celestial sphere and the starlit water landscape beneath it were all magical constructs. The formula to graft onto it—

Ortes realized that the sharpness of his high-frequency blade had instantly amplified several times. Carisia.

The formula inherent in the high-frequency blade or expressed through magical inscription devices couldn’t handle that magnificent magic.

Only Carisia’s magic, no, her magic that was closest to the realm of the White Light, could twist the delicate operation of that magic.

Ortes plunged his blade into the water landscape. An incomprehensible movement. The White Light recognized someone who had shown such movements before.

The Ender of the Mythic Age, whose every step was a variable and every action was unprecedented. The Demon King.

The White Light felt both déjà vu and unfamiliarity from the suddenly appearing swordsman. She did not ignore her intuition. She shifted the aim of her Endless Starlight.

***

I could see the galaxy.

The killing magic that the White Light had prepared to certainly slay Carisia overwhelmed me with its very structure.

So many formulas filled with so much magical power materialized into a form I could only describe as a cluster of stars. A purely white, blinding radiance.

I look at the blade in my hand, forged to confront the galaxy.

Carisia’s magic was also shaped like stars. A single streak of starlight, seemingly too humble to face all the lights of the galaxy.

But this was enough.

I classify the magic.

Beneath the magic of the solar eclipse symbolized as a galaxy, there is magic constituting the White Light’s domain.

The erosion of the artificial Ten Realms competing with the White Light’s domain and power. And between those spaces, countless attack spells aimed at each other.

The solar eclipse magic was the canvas, and all other magic was my paint.

The single streak of starlight Carisia had given me eventually became a comet racing through the galaxy. An irregular movement disrupting the silent order that controlled all the stars in the galaxy. A crack, insignificant in scale but definitely formed.

Following the trajectory drawn by the comet, other clusters of light began to pour in. It was the magical power of the artificial Ten Realms, the rays Carisia had prepared, and the White Light’s counterfire.

Colors pouring in chaotically dyed the galaxy. The starlight that had flowed nobly under the name of the White Light began to emit discordant sounds. Darkly stained domains cast shadows of dark nebulae around them, and stardust scattered starlight, arbitrarily bending the direction where the galaxy’s light converged.

Thus, colorful rainbows bloomed throughout the white Milky Way.

***

The White Light gathered the most refined and condensed, purest concept of “light” at her fingertips through the Endless Starlight. It was a clear light that could bleach all creation with just a single drop.

But that was the moment. The sound of breaking glass, the ringing of a tower bell, the freezing of a winter sea, the boiling of the sun.

All those sounds mixed together, and a scattered note filled the space.

At the same time, as light advanced in a straight line from her fingertips, the White Light sensed that something had gone wrong.

The light’s trajectory was slightly refracted by the magical power condensed throughout the domain.

This was a result that shouldn’t have appeared if the Endless Starlight had been perfectly completed. The light that should have ignored the laws of the lower realm and whitened everything in its straight path shouldn’t have been bent by mere magical power.

She could see the dark swordsman opening his eyes wide. The unfathomable depth of the unknown swirling in those blue eyes, immeasurable by this world’s standards.

It was ominous beyond measure. Even if the magic hadn’t been fully completed and couldn’t fully project the providence of ascension, anyone hit by that light should have been annihilated along with the space itself.

But the light’s advance was blocked. It was due to the seven-colored defensive magic that Carisia had prepared in an instant.

The White Light’s magical sensing ability told her that the Endless Starlight had been broken. Unbelievable. Unable to rule out the possibility that she had fallen victim to an illusion that deceived even her sixth sense derived from magical power, she looked back.

The ring of light connecting heaven and earth was breaking apart and scattering.

***

Carisia arrived beside Ortes through light-body transformation. It was the result of her recovering during the brief time the White Light was firing the Endless Starlight.

“Damn. That person is better at brawling than I thought.”

“Is that what you have to say right now?”

It was a reproach filled with concern that he would have died helplessly if she hadn’t arrived in time. Carisia happily accepted Ortes’s concern and said:

“You’re not one to talk.”

She said this while looking at Ortes’s eyes, which were not just bloodshot but actually bleeding. Ortes shrugged.

“It’s more manageable than I expected.”

“Break the magic. I’ll adjust my attack angles on my own, and somehow block the fatal blows from the enemy’s magic, so keep attacking.”

“What a crude strategy. A chicken game where either the White Light dies first or we do.”

“There are two of us, so shouldn’t she die first?”

The conversation so far had been an exchange of information while waiting for each other to recover. Carisia for magical body restoration, Ortes for readjusting his vision by blinking.

It was a vigilant stance they often took when being chased in the desert, complementing each other’s blind spots.

Something felt off. The attack that should have followed wasn’t detected.

Ortes saw the White Light who had turned around. And beyond her, the ring of light scattering like a broken ring.

“Boss. I’m going first.”

He rushed forward.

***

A ripple appeared in the White Light’s expressionless face. If they had merely blocked the Endless Starlight, perhaps she could have understood. The magician now opposing the White Light was the most ideal body she herself had designed.

Though it might be just a speck of time compared to the thousands of years she had lived, perhaps thanks to the body’s talent, she might have developed magical arts on par with the White Light herself.

But what had just destroyed the Endless Starlight was not her creation but the swordsman. A technique that rendered the formula itself ineffective, unprecedented before or since.

No—

The White Light recalled someone, or something, that had once occupied the deepest part of her being.

The Demon King might have been able to accomplish such a feat. “Might” is insufficient. He definitely would have.

That this swordsman had reached the same rank as the Demon King.

Impossible. Someone like the Demon King was unique, before and after, and should remain so.

While the White Light was lost in past thoughts, Ortes’s blade penetrated. The White Light acknowledged her mistake and offered her left arm. Body regeneration would be simple if given just a few seconds.

“…!”

Her prediction was wrong. The body cut by Ortes’s blade—her body made of magical power and contained in the framework of formulas—collapsed in structure.

The White Light recalled those who trained in swordsmanship solely to destroy magic in her old memories. She had expected them to have stubbornly survived until this era, but to think they would side with House Hydra.

“The sword technique of magic destruction. The head of the knightly order?”

“I wonder. How about showing a bit more creativity?”

Carisia noticed the White Light’s agitation. Though hidden beneath her expressionless face, the fact that she spoke first was evidence that her composure had been broken.

“Who in the world could break your ‘magic’?”

She smiled like a mischievous child.

In fact, Kine was only the second person to receive Ortes’s way of speaking.

Because there was Carisia, who had spent more time with Ortes than anyone else.