Ch.848Sorcery and Assassination

“Kyahaaaa….”

A presence like boiling magma.

Hersella’s murderous intent, honed like fangs for the past decade while waiting for this moment, was so thick and vicious that even Meiharin, who had accumulated all manner of grudges and karma throughout her life, visibly flinched.

“Kuh…!”

Startled by the suffocatingly dense killing intent, Meiharin hastily summoned her power and extended her right arm toward Hersella.

“Indeed, your aura surpasses even your father’s!”

– Keeeeeing!

The fang-decorated bracelet spun like a top, infused with mana.

As Meiharin muttered a low incantation and spread her fingers to point at Hersella, something invisible shot forth from her right hand with a shrill sound that tore through the air.

– Kwaddddduk!

The stone slabs beneath her feet screamed, spitting out white fragments like torn flesh.

Deep, thick claw marks carved deep into the ground, as if a massive beast was tearing through the earth while charging toward its prey.

It was the sorcery known as “Claws of Qiongqi,” which fired invisible blade vortices.

“My aura surpasses his? Ha, you’re completely blind.”

Hersella raised the corner of her mouth in a sinister smile, concentrating the power of Karma of Murder in her raised leg before stomping down on the ground.

With a thunderous boom, bedrock erupted upward. The earth flipped by the impact rose like a shield, blocking the blades of the sorcery while shattering into pieces.

Each scattered fragment was bound with crimson chains.

“As if my aura is the only thing that surpasses him!”

Karma Art:

Binding Chains

Hersella fixed each of the countless fragments in mid-air by weaving them together with dozens of iron chains, then gripped the chains with her left arm and swung them like a whip toward Meiharin.

– Hwooong!

The fragments of rock, gathered and swung together with the chains, struck down with a terrifying sound that split the air. It was literally a flail made by splitting the earth.

“What a trivial trick.”

Meiharin clicked her tongue dismissively as she glanced at the mass of rocks plummeting down like a giant’s fist. She drew her sharp nails across her forearm, creating a long wound, and swung her arm.

The blood splattered in an arc, staining the approaching rocks red, and exploded the moment Meiharin snapped her fingers.

– Kwaaaang!

The mass of rocks that had been bound together by the chains of Karma shattered into pieces, and rock dust showered down like snow.

“With such childish pranks—”

“Thorn Shadow.”

The muttered words cut off Meiharin’s sneering smile. For an instant, Meiharin felt a chilling sensation as if a beast’s maw had descended over her head, and she hurriedly looked up.

“This…!”

Her eyes widened. The rock dust that should have been scattered to the winds had transformed into hundreds of crimson thorns infused with murderous intent, raining down upon her.

Thorns of Karma, Thorn Shadow.

They were blood-red stakes that erupted from the rock fragments instead of the ground.

“How does it feel? Still think it’s childish?”

As the red rain painted the sky, Hersella drew her Crimson Blade and charged toward Meiharin like a bullet.

Red and blue blades in both hands, and two more Crimson Blades hanging behind her back. The four blades, drenched in murderous intent, extended to preemptively block any escape route Meiharin might take.

As if to say there was nowhere to flee.

“Such tricks…!”

Meiharin’s eye corners twitched as she raised her right arm above her head and pointed at Hersella with her left, spreading both fists wide.

– Pararararak!

From the sleeves of her ornate palace robe, dozens of talismans shot out like strands of an empress’s hair, swirling around her.

Talismans with magical inscriptions drawn in blood and vitreous humor on human skin.

They were magical tools designed to drastically shorten spell casting time, weapons that the great sorceress Meiharin had prepared to face opponents faster than herself.

“Kyaaaaat!”

Just as the four red and blue arcs and the rain of crimson thorns closed in on Meiharin like a spider’s legs grasping its prey—

– Hwrrrrk!

One of the talismans floating around her burst into ominous black flames.

And then.

– Hwooong!

Meiharin’s form scattered like a mirage just before the slashes could connect.

‘She disappeared?’

The swung blades cut through empty air, and the falling thorns of Karma, having lost their target, only pierced the innocent earth.

Though different in that one was sorcery and the other magic, it was similar to the teleportation magic that the Cardinal of the Church of Grimnir had once demonstrated when they fought.

“How dare you try to escape…!”

Hersella roared, quickly scanning her surroundings. Her superhuman senses, far exceeding human limits, tracked Meiharin’s trail like a hunting hound.

Meiharin’s scent, breathing, heartbeat, and even the flow of her mana. The unique presence she had memorized the moment she reunited with her enemy.

“So that’s where you fled?”

In the next moment, Hersella bared her teeth as she whipped her head toward Meiharin’s presence detected by her senses.

She couldn’t have moved very far, as the detected presence was closer than Hersella had expected.

At the edge of the garden that Haschal had burned with his rune markings. About fifteen meters north from where the mirage had disappeared.

In the center of dozens of talismans rotating in a circle, Meiharin placed her hand on the ground to draw out a bone staff, glaring at Hersella with snake-like eyes.

And then.

“ᡤᠣᠯᠣᠴᡠᠨ ᠶᠠᠰᠠ. ᠯᠠᡳᡶᠠᡵᠠᠮᠪᡳ. ᠪᡠᡨ ᡠᠪᠠ ᡳ ᡥᡝᡧᡝᠨ ᠠᠮᠪᡠᠯᠠ ᠪᡝᡳᡴᡠᠸᡝᠨ.”

With an incomprehensible incantation, five talismans simultaneously burst into flames, releasing a tidal wave of mana.

– Kieeeeee!

Specters erupted from Hersella’s shadow, wailing as they grabbed her legs, clawing and climbing up her body.

The force with which they gripped her legs was so strong that an ordinary person’s legs would have burst apart instantly.

Beneath Meiharin’s feet, a fog carrying bitter cold from the netherworld began to spread thickly, while above her head, a massive vertically split eye appeared, staring at Hersella and casting curses of fear and weakness.

Call of the Dead. Chill of the Netherworld. Dragon-Breaking Evil Eye.

Following the “Spatial Contraction” she had shown earlier, this was the beginning of a display of high-level sorcery.

“This is nothing!”

Hersella roared “Kyahak!” as she kicked away the specters clawing at her greaves.

The specters burst like smoke with screams. Hersella’s legs, now exposed, showed not even a scratch.

Though the specters’ claws were sharp enough to easily slice through steel and possessed great strength, they weren’t enough to tear through the scales made from dragon remains and dwarven black iron.

Moreover, Hersella’s physical strength was overwhelmingly superior. The specters, which should have dragged their victims into the shadow realm, couldn’t overcome her leg strength and instead had to climb up rather than pull her down.

– Kieee…!

The specters that burst from Hersella’s kicks were incorporeal spirits without physical bodies, so they soon reformed to their original shapes, but…

“Kyaaaaat!”

By the time they regained their form, Hersella had already reached Meiharin’s vicinity.

“What power…!”

Meiharin exhaled in amazed shock and activated “Spatial Contraction” once more to distance herself from Hersella.

A high-level sorcery that folded space to advance dozens of meters in a single step. The moment Meiharin took a step to the side, her form vanished.

“You won’t escape!”

Hersella shouted as she flung her left arm to the side. She shot the Crimson Short Blade in her left hand and the other two held by her Karma tentacles like javelins.

– Shwaeaek!

Having already witnessed the range of the spatial contraction once, Hersella predicted where Meiharin would appear based on the momentary glance of her eyes and the slight tension in one leg.

One blade went wide, but the other two Crimson Short Blades were aimed precisely at Meiharin’s head and abdomen as she reappeared after creating distance through spatial contraction.

“Kuk…!”

Meiharin, reappearing, burned another talisman to unleash the “Claws of Qiongqi,” deflecting the red curved blades flying toward her with an invisible vortex of blades.

It was a desperately close defense.

If Hersella had immediately rushed toward her, Meiharin would have been sliced apart or forced to use spatial contraction again, which placed a heavy burden when used consecutively.

Fortunately for Meiharin, Hersella, having thrown her Crimson Short Blades, couldn’t continue her attack and had to stop.

The netherworld chill spreading like fog was freezing her blood solid, the reformed specters were grabbing her legs again, and the weakness curse from the floating evil eye was penetrating her muscles, dispersing her strength.

She overcame the fear curse with hatred, greatly weakened the weakness curse with her mana resistance, and endured the call of the dead with her strength, but…

“Krut…!”

With the netherworld chill—identical to the curse in Frosting—added to the mix, even the mighty Hersella was momentarily immobilized.

“…Even with divine blood, this is absurd. Even with mana resistance, you shouldn’t be able to perfectly block the evil eye’s curse, yet you’re shaking off the ‘Call of the Dead’ with weakened strength?”

In that gap, Meiharin struck the ground with her bone staff and summoned two venomous serpents.

Monsters with half-rotted python bodies, but instead of snake heads, they had ghostly hands dripping with terrible poison.

From the holes in the center of their wide-open palms, forked tongues darted out, flicking through the air.

Then, behind her, wings resembling those of a peacock spread wide.

Instead of the peacock’s characteristic elaborate patterns, human eyeballs hung from the feathers. Each eye contained dozens of different curses.

“But it seems that’s your limit after all.”

Meiharin flashed a triumphant smile.

‘If this is all, I wouldn’t have needed to prepare ‘that’.’

Unlike her expectation of being overwhelmingly dominated and killed upon reuniting with Haschal, the actual fight was proving more manageable than she had anticipated.

“You said you’d tear me into a thousand pieces? How absurd. Behold the result of your arrogance. Even with divine blood and mana resistance, you can’t possibly withstand the sorceries of the ‘White Valley’ with your bare body—”

Meiharin pointed her bone staff at Hersella with contemptuous laughter, preparing to unleash the ghost-handed snakes carrying dozens of curses and deadly poisons from behind her.

‘…Wait. Something’s strange. She’s reached her limit trying to endure curses with mana resistance?’

If not for this sudden doubt, she would certainly have done so.

‘That can’t be right. It doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t I notice this oddity? This shouldn’t be happening.’

Thinking about it, it made no sense at all.

‘To begin with, the very idea that she can’t withstand curses because her mana resistance has reached its limit is nonsensical.’

What was the reason Meiharin herself was certain she would lose if she fought Haschal?

‘This woman possesses Stigmata of Astraea, a blessing incomparable to mere mana resistance!’

Wasn’t it because of the information from the West that she had received the stigmata of one of the western goddesses, the Goddess of Order?

Mana resistance was merely a minor blessing, but stigmata was literally a crystallization of divinity bestowed directly by a god. Someone bearing stigmata couldn’t possibly be affected by curses of this level.

‘It’s impossible. She definitely shouldn’t be affected…’

Yet she was. Why? It was something Meiharin couldn’t comprehend.

If the information about receiving the stigmata had been false from the beginning, that would be one thing, but the fact that she possessed the stigmata was confirmed information beyond dispute.

This discrepancy between her knowledge and the phenomenon unfolding before her eyes.

For a sorceress who, though in a somewhat different way from mages, lived by exploring and studying the principles of the world, such inconsistency caused incomparable bewilderment.

That’s why Meiharin momentarily hesitated in shock, forgetting to unleash the prepared sorcery.

It was only a matter of seconds, but—

“Krrrr…!”

It was more than enough time for Hersella to resist the sorcerous power suppressing her body.

—-

“Kyaeuuuk…! This much…!”

In the moment Meiharin hesitated in confusion, Hersella ground her molars and howled as if spewing thick hatred toward the curses layered upon her body.

“Kuh, kiyaaaak-!”

Rage burning like wildfire.

As if responding to the surge of emotion that was the essence of her divine blood, her body, beyond human limits, emitted intense heat and rose red steam.

– Hwrrrk!

Her body temperature rose rapidly. The blood in her veins boiled, pushing back the netherworld chill, and her weakened muscles glowed red, filling with power beyond what she had lost.

Limitless power coursed through her limbs and body.

From fingertips to toes, even to the tips of her hair. Something like magma filled her entire body.

– Gooooo!

Karma of Murder taking physical form.

The power granted only to her in this world flashed like a malevolent star in the sky, devouring all the curses covering her body.