Ch.228Outside. The Faceless Fixer’s Closing Ceremony (6)

Ortes hadn’t headed toward the source of the light beam without a plan. He had his own strategy.

The recent storm of light was caused by the same entity responsible for the “irregular attacks” that had reached the entrance of the laboratory. This wasn’t speculation but fact, as the magical wavelength patterns of both attacks were identical to Ortes’s eyes.

‘The difference is…’

Power.

The attacks at the lab entrance were much weaker. A hypothesis flashed through Ortes’s mind.

‘Could it be that the attack meant to shatter this space just happened to reach that far?’

So that’s what remains after tearing apart the death space and piercing through the laboratory with reduced power?

Ortes suddenly began to feel doubtful. Would it have been a better survival choice to somehow find a way to break through the death space?

‘No. That death ray was also magic. Considering the mana consumption required for magic of that level, it certainly can’t be used consecutively.’

The very fact that no precursors to another light beam had been detected while Ortes was advancing inward was proof of this.

‘The intent to attack the death space was clear. If consecutive attacks like the previous one were possible, they would have been used from the beginning.’

Just as Ortes whispered hope to himself, his vision turned red—a warning that deadly magic was approaching.

He inserted a magic engraving drive into his high-frequency blade. The simplest water attribute magic: Flowing Water Bullet.

It was nothing more than compressed water shot forward. If used for killing, it would be faster to drown someone than to rely on the impact of being hit by water.

Ortes activated another Flowing Water Bullet magic engraving drive. The formulas from the two drives intertwined and wove together along the high-frequency blade.

What Ortes intended was light refraction. The water flow, which should have been compressed into a sphere, split into dozens of thin layers.

As soon as he confirmed the water defense panels were complete, Ortes threw himself into a recess in the corridor. He covered himself with the defense panels like a barrier to prevent the beam magic from vaporizing him.

A massive beam filling the entire corridor brushed past Ortes’s eyes.

However, there was one thing he had misjudged.

Ortes believed that the water defense panels would be sufficient to distort the trajectory of any beam that came toward him.

But this judgment severely underestimated the power of the beam. Water created by magic doesn’t evaporate normally until the mana is depleted due to magical influence.

However, the energy contained in the beam was far from “normal,” and Ortes witnessed his water refraction barrier evaporate instantly.

“Wow…”

Good heavens. Who could possibly use such insanely powerful magic? It seemed difficult to generate enough output to handle that magic even if you directly implanted a decent machine’s core into a person.

‘Judging by how recklessly those beams are being fired, it must be a powerful magician.’

Usually, powerful magicians tended to be quite eccentric. Ortes wondered if the beam magician would be willing to negotiate, or if they were even in a mental state capable of understanding the concept of dialogue.

Ortes finally ended his deliberation. Even if the beam-shooting magician wasn’t in their right mind, it was still better than that accursed death space that had been materializing death until just now.

At least he could provoke some reaction through his actions and create variables from that. Even if the possibility of survival was extremely slim, it was better than none at all.

He quickened his pace.

***

The space appeared to be the center of the laboratory. Even for Ortes, this was an uncertain guess.

Before him stretched a scene that would certainly have been mistaken for an extra-dimensional incursion zone if not for his “eyes.”

Like a glitched world in a game, a space filled with untextured polygon masses. In the center of this strange void of an all-white world with a few black streaks, it was there.

At first, he mistook it for part of the blank background like the rest of the space. A shape like white thread or a cocoon.

But the moment Ortes’s eyes saw it, a terrifying amount of information began flooding his brain, threatening to burn it. Information about all the magic it was calculating, activating, and loading. This wasn’t something to be counted in mere dozens or hundreds.

A light muzzle targeting countless deaths prepared by the death space simultaneously. It was a complex magic of a scale Ortes had never even imagined.

Though he swallowed his scream, he couldn’t help losing his balance momentarily. The noise of his legs moving to regain balance. The white something turned toward Ortes.

Ortes realized that what he had thought were white threads wrapping around it were actually hair. The flowing, cascading hair was so purely white that it was indistinguishable from the landscape to the naked eye.

Its gaze turned toward the source of the sound. Golden fires flickered within the flowing hair.

It raised its hand. An arm emerged through the curtain-like hair.

The tip of the right index finger pointed at Ortes. At that moment, Ortes felt the whole world turn red.

It was a death sentence.

As Ortes threw himself aside, a golden beam struck directly where he had been standing. The trajectory extending from the fingertip stretched far behind Ortes, and the places touched by the light were bleached white like the space where that being now stood.

The momentarily bleached scenery regained its color as it expelled mana. However, Ortes’s eyes told him that the range of this bleached world had expanded ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

When Ortes dodged the golden beam, its head shook very slightly. It seemed to be tilting its head curiously.

Five fingers pointed at Ortes.

Ortes raised his high-frequency blade. The five beams of light didn’t travel in straight lines. While light normally travels straight in a vacuum without external interference, mana, the versatile medium, could interfere with light’s trajectory.

The five branches of light followed Ortes like snakes. Ortes moved while reading their trajectories with his eyes. He tried to induce collisions between them, but the white-haired being nimbly twisted their orbits just before they could annihilate each other.

While maintaining the pursuit of Ortes, the white-haired being began incanting bombardment magic aimed at the death space. Ortes couldn’t believe the information his eyes were telling him.

‘Damn. I can’t interfere with magic of that level using basic magic.’

No. It might even reverse-dismantle any interference attempts. Then…

‘Since it’s directing its gaze at me, it must have vision.’

He sought to achieve maximum results with his minimal resources. The golden gaze of the white hair continued to follow him.

The white hair analyzing his every movement and adjusting the tracking path of the beams in real-time.

It was reading his next actions through the contraction and relaxation of muscles and blood vessels. Without the effect of his “eyes,” which was almost like precognition, the beams would have long since caught up with and killed Ortes.

Enhanced vision capable of reading muscle movements beneath the skin. It was clearly using light attribute magic applications like “Magnification” or “Far Sight” that refract visible light.

Ortes activated a magic engraving drive.

Basic light attribute magic, “Radiance.”

It had no direct killing power. But it was bright.

A choice aimed not at killing but at neutralization. For vision enhanced enough to detect even the pulsation of muscles, the light of “Radiance” was a critical hit.

Temporary blindness from excessively strong light. The white-haired being didn’t respond with a scream or any other normal reaction.

A net of mana deployed immediately upon losing sight. A decision to detect the opponent’s mana interfering with its magic. Flawless combat logic.

‘Was it raised as some kind of war machine, an artificial human?’

While marveling at the white hair’s cold rationality, Ortes felt relieved. After all, his body had no mana.

A perfect blind spot. Ortes reached the white hair’s rear. He deliberated.

‘I mustn’t kill it.’

Without the white hair, escape from the death space surrounding the laboratory would be impossible. Moreover, this “white hair” was certainly the most important research achievement of the laboratory that his clients wanted.

‘How can I just knock it out temporarily—’

It was at that moment of thought. The white hair suddenly turned around.

‘Its vision surely hasn’t recovered yet!’

The high-frequency blade moved reflexively. But the white hair moved too. Ortes realized why the white hair had detected his movement.

Hearing and touch. Despite approaching with minimized footsteps, it had calculated his position from the subtle vibrations and sounds resonating in the space.

The moment Ortes’s brain deduced this information, the trajectory of the high-frequency blade grazed the corner of the white hair’s mouth.

With a rustle, the hair covering its eyes fell away, cut off. The golden eyes that had been faintly gleaming beneath the white hair.

Beneath those eyes, Ortes could finally see something beyond magic.

He saw it.

The deaths he could have experienced in the death space. Far more diverse, an uncountable number of pains and hatreds beyond what a single human could bear, swirling beneath the girl’s eyes.

Without a word or expression, Ortes could see it all.

The most powerful mental image binding countless deaths—burning to death, starving to death, suffocating to death.

The image of a fetus that had to die silently when its mother stabbed her own belly to kill herself.

Ortes blankly uttered one sentence.

“…Are you alright?”

It was the first approach to the girl as one human to another, with kindness.