Ch.87The Great Chaos (4)

Arguilion divided into four directions—north, south, east, and west—and entered the nameless ruins.

The infiltration team that entered from the east left only terrible screams on the communicator before contact was lost.

A clear anomaly. The commanders of the other three infiltration teams were busy exchanging opinions.

Splash.

A sound like water seemed to come through the communicator.

Through the static-filled communication device, an ominously foreboding voice was heard.

“Haha, everyone. Where are you all rushing off to?”

***

The commander of the western infiltration team activated his magic the moment he spotted the suspicious figure. It was the instinct of a Blasphemia agent.

Lightning bullets, equally balanced in power and speed for subduing targets. Five lightning spears, each aimed at different vital points.

But the lightning flashes never reached the man. From the moment the magic was prepared, “water” rose up to block the spell and then rushed toward the commander.

As the defensive barrier embedded in the artifact activated, the water attacked the commander even more ferociously.

‘The defensive barrier is accumulating continuous impacts. Judging by its weight and density, this isn’t ordinary water. This is…!’

Splash. The man stepped in water again.

“It’s unfortunate we meet like this. You could have remained good friends of the Ten Towers.”

The words were clearly mocking. The Arguilion agents could easily identify who he was.

“Ten Towers…!”

So the distress signal was indeed forged by the Ten Towers? Or was it extracted from a tortured prisoner?

“I’m grateful you’ve all gathered here. I regret having to come greet you personally because you were late in coming down.”

The characteristic arrogance of those belonging to the Ten Towers was evident. That self-aggrandizement could only come from someone who believed they held absolute superiority. Arguilion could gather considerable clues from the man’s tone.

These ruins were a well-constructed trap. An ant lion pit where the deeper you went, the greater the price to escape.

“Run away now! It was a trap after all!”

“Oh my. I still have so much prepared for you.”

“What’s happening? Report the situation!”

“The distress signal and everything else was a Ten Towers trap! Get out somehow!”

As he gathered magical power again to counter that transparent “water,” the liquid rushed at him faster. Having worked as a Blasphemia agent, his intuition for such things was naturally superior.

“It’s a liquid-type familiar that responds to and tracks magical power! Suppress all magic and retreat to the surface! I’ll buy time here!”

The team members he led didn’t make the mistake of being swept up in unnecessary sentiment and dying alongside their commander. They suppressed their magical fluctuations as much as possible and evacuated quickly.

The Arguilion commander glared at the Ten Towers mage standing before him across the barrier. That “water” endlessly flowed down to erode the barrier, obscuring his vision.

But he could clearly see the annoying smirk on the man’s lips, somehow piercing through the haze.

It was always like this. Those “chosen ones” of the Ten Towers, always.

The expression of a cruel absolute being intoxicated with power, like a child playing with ants, able to crush lives like toys.

The artifact’s durability was at its limit. He needed to manually redeploy the barrier. To hinder the Ten Towers mage for even one more minute, one more second…!

“Damn the Ten Towers. You traitors really…!”

The commander gritted his teeth and projected his magic. The fire spell, activated before the barrier completely broke, momentarily dried up the water stream.

His vision finally cleared. Now if he could deploy defensive magic again—

The commander stared directly into Ortes’s blue magical glow.

The ominous blue color entering through his retina brought back faded old memories, blessed by an extra-dimensional power. A blue light nightmare.

“You…! You are!”

“Oh my.”

Ortes activated his high-frequency blade. The next moment, the commander’s entire field of vision was dyed with that eerie blue light.

***

A warning alarm appeared in Talo’s mind. A message transmitted directly to his computational artificial brain from the observation drones scattered around the temple.

“Fluid object observed near entrance.”

Talo smiled with pleasure.

“Everyone’s quite perceptive, I see. Well, they are dogs raised by our Ten Towers, so it’s to be expected.”

Did they abandon their infiltration to directly eliminate the liquid metal sorcerer, realizing he was on the surface rather than inside the temple?

It was a quick and accurate judgment. Generally, the stronger the familiar one operates, the weaker the mage’s personal defensive capabilities become.

A strong familiar is, in most cases, synonymous with massive magical consumption. Therefore, combat methods using familiars typically involve either staying very close to the familiar for protection or fighting from a distance, using only the familiar without the mage engaging directly.

If the sorcerer controlling the familiar was far from the battlefield, it was a reasonable inference that they would be a type focused solely on supplying magic, with low combat power for their main body.

But their thinking was short-sighted.

If it had been an apprentice among the Ten Towers members, perhaps even a formal disciple or a novice, such “general” judgment might have worked.

But Talo was already an elder of the Ten Towers.

For him, common magical sense was meaningless.

Although he was still in the process of completing his magic, it was no problem dealing with inferior mages who didn’t belong to the Ten Towers.

Allocating two of his three computational auxiliary brains to magic incantation, Talo thrust his palm into the ground. Metal components buried hundreds of meters below in the soil gathered. The designs of lethal weapons stored in his computational brain were output through his fingertips.

A munitions factory operating with soil as its material. This was why the mages of the Silver Iron Tower were called one-man armies.

He could see the Arguilion seeds rushing toward him. He hoped all personnel deployed here would come.

“So I don’t have to do the job twice.”

In a comfortable environment, he wanted to excavate relics at his leisure. Talo flicked his finger.

The autonomous artillery units took aim at their targets.

***

“When did they—!”

The Arguilions who escaped to the surface were shocked.

They had maintained communication inside the ruins to prevent being picked off one by one, gathering together to flee from the Ten Towers’ evil familiar, the “water.”

Just as they were regrouping and discussing whether to retreat, they saw magical war machines gradually approaching from the horizon.

Should they return to the ruins and scatter through different exits?

But a cold metallic gleam flashing in the sky stopped them. All exits were being monitored. If they dispersed, they would only be picked off individually.

Surely, they hadn’t sensed any other mage’s magical power when they entered the ruins. But how could such a tightly constructed encirclement of magical war machines be possible?

It would be nearly impossible even with spatial teleportation magic. Not because the Ten Towers lacked transportation capabilities, but because Arguilion would certainly have detected such large-scale spatial magic.

Unless it was the method of superstition followers operating with divine power rather than magical power…

The Arguilion commanders quickly assessed the situation.

There was only one tower that could create such a large-scale unmanned army after being deployed through small-scale spatial teleportation. The Silver Iron mage. And among them, an elder-level one.

“They’ve rigged the entire ruins as a trap, and deployed an elder-level mage outside!”

“This is dangerous. Perhaps they didn’t forge our distress signal, but it might have been leaked from a captured comrade.”

The elders of the Ten Towers don’t move carelessly. For those dedicated to ascension, worldly battles are nothing but trivial squabbles.

The fact that an elder would personally intervene suggested that some kind of plan known only to Arguilion’s leadership might have been exposed.

“If we return, we’ll need to thoroughly review the list of missing comrades. Was there a betrayal?”

“They might have developed magic that can read memories even from brains blessed by the Cause. The power of the Ten Commandments is boundless.”

They coldly analyzed the situation. It was questionable whether all Arguilion agents deployed here could defeat even one elder.

“I’ll do it.”

So they made their choice.

One of the Arguilion commanders drove a silver stake into his heart. The silver stake gradually melted, circulating through his blood vessels. As the commander’s skin turned silver, his body began to twist grotesquely.

The human flesh crumpled in a circular pattern around the hole in his heart. With a grinding sound, the silver circle expanded.

The hole in his heart grew larger as well. And through that hole, silver waves began to flow in.

It was power descending from the ‘Cause.’

As the silver waves soaked the Arguilion’s bodies, their flesh also began to transform. Like the commander who first drove the stake into his heart, their skin turned silver, but it didn’t stop there.

Their bodies themselves transformed as if wearing shining armor, and blade-like feathers grew from their shoulder blades, forming wings.

Grateful for the abundant power and grace, they raised their silver wings and flapped them. The mana carried in their wingbeats freed the Arguilions from the earth’s gravity.

At that moment, the magical war machines opened fire. The glow of special bullets carrying various elemental properties flickered amidst the gun smoke. The angels of the Cause who had taken flight charged forward to eliminate the enemy while the gate of grace remained open.

Watching from a distance, Ortes lamented.

“Good heavens. Now they’re flying?”

***

Kore, observing Ortes through the power of the Great Temple, muttered.

“What a crazy con artist…”

Driving Arguilion to the surface with just a few words and then pitting them against a Ten Towers mage. Does that man cast spells with his tongue?