Ch.225225 – Dark Princess

<225 – Dark Princess>

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<Raid with Rain>

Did you know that the Ceviche Duchy has accepted a skilled magician who brings rain as their retainer?

Did you know that this amazing magician is the captain of the surveillance team?

If you didn’t know, I pray for your soul in advance.

Cloud the Fog Magician is truly powerful!

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The “Raid with Rain” strong enemy event, which appears with a low probability when interfering with the Ceviche Duchy’s events, is notorious among players.

First of all, the subordinates who casually throw bombs are no ordinary opponents.

Bang! Bang!

All the windows shatter and the entire building shakes.

The power of the bombs easily surpasses the grenades of FPS games.

That’s because they’re bombs enhanced with magical enchantments.

Ziiing

The mana vibrations remaining in the space are also malicious.

The mana pattern embedded inside the bomb is released when it explodes, causing natural mana patterns to vibrate and making it difficult to cast new spells.

It’s an interference factor that makes it hard for enemies to use follow-up magic even if they survive through magical countermeasures.

‘No one has survived the bomb magic combo sequence unscathed so far.’

The surveillance team members were brimming with confidence.

They caught up in time.

The escape route was blocked by Captain Cloud, who altered the weather conditions.

While the teleportation circle in the transfer station might be directly protected by protective magic circles, the people in the waiting room are not.

From the moment they threw the bombs, they were already certain of victory.

“Kuk!”

“Aaack!”

But their proud bombs were ineffective against a veteran player who knew the countermeasures.

“Outside!”

“A kid with an umbrella?”

“Wait, that’s…”

Oknodie, the top scholarship student.

A big shot who appeared like a comet at the foundation.

A key figure rumored to be especially cherished by the chairman.

“Oh really. This is why I hate rainy events. Getting all dusty, and my clothes almost ruined.”

A child spinning an umbrella.

Beyond the playful behavior, bloodlust flashed.

“It’s an event that doesn’t end unless you kill everyone.”

Small fragments flying from behind the umbrella.

The surveillance team members realized.

What the throwing weapons that took down their comrades were.

‘Stones?’

When they recognized it, they first sneered.

Launching small projectiles with great force.

A common combat method among the strong.

The surveillance team had not only proper training but also sufficient defensive equipment.

As soon as they detected projectiles flying above a certain speed, defensive barriers were deployed.

‘But why did those who were hit first fall down screaming?’

If they had been hit by the same attack, the defensive barrier should have blocked it, so they shouldn’t have fallen.

Right after the barrier was deployed and the stone collided with it, the answer unfolded before their eyes.

“!?”

Instead of bouncing off the barrier, the fragment seeped into the barrier too naturally.

Three more surveillance members perished that way.

“Avoid it. I’ll handle this one.”

A voice echoing as if from deep in the mountains.

A distorted voice with untraceable location was heard through the thick fog.

Fog swallows sound.

Thick fog even more so.

Like being in the vast ocean, it steals all sight and sound, making one wander in fear.

But the foundation’s top scholarship student threw stones as if unafraid.

The trajectory accurately tracked Cloud’s position hidden in the fog.

“!!”

Cloud saw it.

The defensive barrier spreading from the protective ring on his finger.

At the same time, he witnessed.

The stone seeping through the defensive barrier.

His subordinates died immediately upon seeing that sight, but Cloud learned from the deaths of his previous subordinates.

That barriers don’t work.

That the enemy has a way to neutralize them.

<Water Shield>

A water barrier created by concentrating the water in the fog in one direction caught the stone.

Blocking it directly with his own magic rather than a tool, Cloud sensed the secret.

The stone penetrated the protective barrier because it harmonized with the barrier’s magical pattern.

‘It’s magic. And a disruption spell performed through highly advanced mana control.’

The stone carried magic.

At the moment of collision with the barrier, a barrier also forms from the stone itself, momentarily confusing the defensive barrier.

That this is not an external threat but part of the barrier itself.

Forces of the same attribute don’t repel each other.

After infiltrating the barrier that way, the magic loaded on the stone is released inside the barrier.

The barrier now deflects the projectile.

Not outward, but inward.

“The genius of the Academy’s top student is indeed remarkable.”

This is magic in a realm that ordinary magicians couldn’t even imagine possible.

Mediocre talents might imagine it but can’t grasp the theory.

Gifted individuals understand the theory but despair as they realize the even greater wall.

Only born prodigies challenging the realm of genius can realize it by employing their brilliant five-star intuition, relying on luck and probability.

Crackle!

As soon as the next stone hits the Water Shield, it emits a powerful electric shock.

Cloud avoided electrocution by distorting the water’s path.

He felt it.

This is the crystallization of genius intellect and talent.

A combat method permitted only to those who can make optimal judgments at every moment.

In one more year.

Perhaps half a year.

If they had just continued studying at the Academy a little longer, a monster incomparable to now might have been born.

But not yet.

The gifted have their own pride.

An incomplete genius cannot surpass the intellect of a completed talent.

Even if that superiority lasts only a moment.

Victory and defeat can diverge in an instant.

‘From the moment you made a sound, you would have located me through this fog.’

Oknodie is not the only one who discovered the enemy’s position.

He also detected the enemy’s position from the trajectory of the stone throw.

<Water Bomb>

Gathering water to explode like a bomb.

A small, insignificant technique.

A magic that could be used for small pranks if you want to gather water insufficient even for washing your face and burst it in front of someone to drop them to the ground.

A magic used for small pranks by 1st circle magicians.

When it has the property of <High-Speed Guidance> and burrows into the body through <Ultra-Small Division>, it follows the breath into the lungs and continuously bursts tiny water beads.

As a result, water fills the lungs, breathing becomes difficult, and combat power rapidly weakens.

In the fog.

In a rainy environment.

In such an environment where all conditions are met, it’s a terrifying <Pulmonary Edema Inducing> magic that can neutralize the enemy the moment their position is discovered.

Bang!

Though the sound was insignificantly small compared to the previous bombs, the explosion was large enough to take a life.

‘Foolish child. This is the difference in real combat experience.’

The water magic of the fog magician that cannot be blocked by a mere umbrella.

Oknodie falls to her knees at that difference in class.

Let’s cut off her breath while maintaining distance until the end.

There is no carelessness.

There will be no face-to-face encounter.

Slowly, and surely.

This time, without any mistakes, he fulfills his role as the Ceviche family’s dog.

‘Fall. Unblossomed gem of talent.’

Cloud, inwardly mourning the end of the young magician whose talent was regrettable to kill.

When his breath suddenly stopped and intense chest pain struck his heart, he realized something was wrong.

No way.

It can’t be.

Did that child copy his magic and return it in such a short time?

In the midst of rising fear, instead of struggling, Cloud forced more Water Bomb magic into Oknodie’s lungs.

As a veteran magician, he knows.

Oknodie was hit first, and he was hit later.

A child’s lungs are small, and an adult’s lungs are large.

No matter how outstanding her talent, she cannot close the gap in this engagement.

The intellect of the young genius might have caused frightening fear in the intellect of the young talent, but it was insufficient to extinguish the vigorously beating heart, the strong lungs of a magician in his prime.

‘You’ll fall first.’

The moment you challenged me with the same method, this match was already over.

Even your final struggle will soon end.

Give up.

Fall.

Just die already.

I’ve mourned enough.

Now just die!

As his breathing became more labored, his desperation intensified.

Yet she wouldn’t fall.

That detestable child’s form wouldn’t crumble.

It was resentful.

What trick is she using?

Why can’t I bring her down?

It was unbearably painful.

At the end of the pain, his consciousness became hazy.

As the boundary of reason blurred and refined intelligence scattered in disorder, an intuition flashed through his mind like order in chaos.

It was a fear that rose dampily like mold appearing on wallpaper during the rainy season.

A cruel hypothesis that should not exist, signaling defeat and despair from the moment it was conceived.

<Water Bomb>

Drawing out all his magical power, he burst the water accumulated in Oknodie’s lungs more violently from a distance.

What would be difficult even for ordinary people shouldn’t work on a magician.

What should have been a futile struggle surprisingly worked.

Splash!

Oknodie’s presence collapsed.

Along with her lungs, her chest, upper body, her entire body collapsed.

Like a bubble made of soap.

It wasn’t just his imagination.

It wasn’t a real body either.

It was a precisely constructed false body and lungs that deceived all his five senses and sixth sense.

‘I’ve been tricked.’

He had never fought Oknodie on equal terms for even a moment.

From the starting point where he thought he had discovered Oknodie and engaged in a battle of skills, Oknodie had already demonstrated that the genius of the foundation’s top scholarship student surpassed the young talent.

The false body created in the fog had completely deceived him and created the illusion that they were both choking each other.

The truth was cruel.

Only he was in danger of suffocation.

The illusion that he had cornered the enemy made him focus all his nerves on killing the false body.

Even the reaction of trying to forcibly endure the chest pain, the body’s reaction of struggling in unbearable agony, and the fading strength and consciousness beyond death.

All were just deceptions to mock him.

Even though he sensed it, he wanted to confirm.

No, he wanted to deny it.

That it was an illusion.

That it must be an illusion.

That it had to be an illusion.

Otherwise, isn’t it too cruel?

To be defeated and fall by one’s own specialty and main magic.

Disruption. Detection. Suffocation.

He didn’t want to accept the fact that all the techniques used by the Ceviche family’s surveillance team were used against him in reverse.

“Ah, I thought I was going to die from exhaustion.”

A voice was heard from beyond the fog.

Water Bomb.

Mana didn’t follow the will that hazily arose.

His raised finger waded through a puddle.

Ah.

I’ve fallen.

The water in my lungs has burst.

Even that was a method that exactly reproduced the finishing blow he had placed on Oknodie’s clone.

“The problem is that I forget all newbie magic when I can’t see it, so it’s hard to use it first.”

It was a murmur containing light satisfaction and a sense of achievement, as if having followed a slightly difficult exercise movement.

Feeling the cruelty that mocked even the last moment of the dying, tears flowed from Cloud’s eyes.

In the last moment of life.

Just before death.

He thought.

That this was not an ordinary genius but a demon who toyed with and thoroughly trampled human hearts.

A Dark Princess who hid an evil nature in a small, childlike appearance, possessing the most outstanding talent even among demons.