Ch.952This Is Boring.

Black Repose. Lilith’s power that sinks the target into past regrets and destroys their mind.

After repeatedly analyzing and studying Isabella’s soul piece by piece like an anatomist, Ophelia was finally able to recreate that power.

Though the potency was somewhat degraded in the recreation process.

It was inevitable.

Witch Isabella could perfectly wield “Black Repose” having received the power and dark mana directly from Lilith, but Ophelia had merely imitated it with mana.

This was the best Ophelia could do. She couldn’t accept dark mana into her body just to increase the power of her imitated ability.

Using dark mana was evidence of surrendering to evil and falling into witchcraft.

Even Haschal, who had been relatively lenient about Ophelia’s activities, would swing his sword without hearing a single excuse the moment she reached for dark mana.

Therefore, Ophelia was satisfied with her half-baked recreation that was merely a degraded imitation. She didn’t want to end up being torn apart by the wolf because of excessive greed.

‘…Well, this is enough.’

In truth, even the degraded power was more than sufficient to subdue this situation.

Unlike Isabella’s original power which could completely kill the target’s mind, Ophelia’s version could only completely incapacitate the opponent while the effect lasted.

The degraded power could only bind the guardian protectors for about ten seconds, but that was enough time to slaughter them all and then some.

“Devour them. Leave only the heads and torsos.”

Though she had dedicated most of her mana to maintaining the power and had no capacity to cast other spells, Ophelia had an army of artificial creatures that obeyed and served her like a queen.

“Keeeeek!”

“Zzzzzz…!”

“Shaaaak!”

The army of monsters spread their wings with distinctive screeches.

The swarm of insects covering the walls, ceiling, and entire floor swept over the three guardians with blank faces like a wave.

Following the command of their creator and queen, their sovereign and mother, they tore into and devoured the flesh and bones of the fairies, leaving only their heads and torsos.

Blood rained down like a downpour.

The three guardians trapped in nightmares offered their bodies willingly, without any resistance, not even painful screams.

The homunculus insects had neither taste buds nor digestive organs, so they showed no gratitude despite feasting on this fairy sashimi banquet.

‘…I’ve obtained good test subjects.’

Ophelia savored the smoke of her mana herb while appreciating the fairy guardians being rapidly dismembered, with a smile soaked in satisfaction.

Test subjects. That was the future awaiting the guardians who had fearlessly set foot in the great mage’s dwelling.

To elevate one’s mastery of soul manipulation, one must repeatedly explore by dismantling human bodies and souls.

However, since her friend and employer Haschal strictly prohibited human experimentation, Ophelia, despite being a soul manipulator, was in a position where she couldn’t use human souls for experiments.

She could only carefully handle and study the souls of Isabella and Meiharin, which Haschal had specially permitted.

But now, circumstances would be a little different.

What Haschal prohibited was using and consuming human bodies and souls as magical research subjects.

He would allow soul manipulation research but wanted her to at least pretend to observe minimal ethical standards.

But fairies weren’t human, were they?

‘So, it doesn’t matter how I use them.’

That was Ophelia’s judgment.

The fairies of Alvheim had proven themselves to be no different from werebeasts as threats to humanity by invading the Holy State and this city.

So even Haschal, who had previously considered fairies as potential threats but hadn’t wanted to provoke them first, would now view them as vermin to be exterminated like werebeasts.

Given that, if she wanted to conduct experiments on fairy prisoners to strengthen their allies, he would likely encourage rather than oppose or prohibit it.

Therefore.

‘What should I try first? With three of them, it’s fine if one gets broken, right?’

For Ophelia, the guardian protectors’ attack wasn’t assassins breaking in, but more like a surprise gift of three guinea pigs crawling in on their own.

‘By the way… I wonder if the palace is alright? If five guardian protectors were assigned to me, the palace must have at least twice that force deployed.’

Ophelia turned away from the guardians who, as ordered, had only their heads and torsos remaining, and glanced in the direction of the palace while exhaling mana herb smoke.

With the feeling that there must be quite a commotion there by now.

‘…Look at me, worrying about them. They’ll manage just fine.’

Of course, the moment she recalled the monstrous powerhouse lurking in the palace, the concerns and worries that had appeared in her mind vanished without a trace.

That place was on a completely different level from here, literally the jaws of a monster itself.

======[ Haschal ]======

It had been a good five minutes since I killed the guardian wielding that annoying weapon at the cost of a wound through my collarbone.

“You… monster!”

Jeirfalos, the commander of the attacking guardians, glared at me with a face as if seeing a demon, sweating cold.

No, perhaps he was looking at the entrails of his comrades dangling behind me?

I had pierced one guardian’s face with Frosting to extract its contents, and was now flaunting its body chopped into pieces by the tentacles of murder karma, as if showing off.

It seems my appearance was quite shocking to him.

Given that he was the only guardian showing shock, the effect was rather poor for something I had deliberately staged.

The foundation of my tactics is provocation and mockery, drawing out the enemy’s agitation with cruel methods, then striking their openings with killing blows.

However, this method wasn’t working properly on these fairy fellows before me.

Except for Jeirfalos, who seemed deeply agitated, and Tiberius, who was already dead.

The reason… I could roughly guess.

As the two guardians explained when revealing their names, the remaining eight guardians were experimental subjects without even names.

A procedure to artificially create guardians? Such a procedure couldn’t possibly be as stable and ethical as dental surgery.

It wouldn’t be strange if emotions were completely lost as a side effect.

Indeed, they showed no change in expression despite their colleague being separated like Lego hit with a hammer, clearly not beings with normal sensibilities.

It was disappointing.

Despite my efforts to tear apart opponents, only Jeirfalos reacted, making it feel like all the energy was draining away.

‘When a comrade becomes raw meat, there should be some reaction. With all these indifferent faces, there’s no fun, no fun at all.’

I sighed in dissatisfaction, muttering that fighting puppet-like fellows was no fun at all, even in such a tense situation.

[ Ha, seeking pleasure from death and screams. You’ve truly become Ka’har to the core. ]

Is this an insult or a compliment… or both?

‘I must be influenced. Having history’s most vicious Ka’har right beside me.’

[ I’m not particularly vicious by Ka’har standards though? ]

‘Your delusions are excessive, self-proclaimed Heavenly Devil.’

I let out a snicker, throwing the fragmented corpse in all directions to offset the elemental arrows flying toward me.

A boom shook the air. The elemental arrows of wind like transparent storms and lightning like thunderbolts collided with the corpse pieces and exploded.

Fragments of flesh and elemental pieces rained down everywhere.

Ice and rock elemental arrows with high penetration power continued flying through the corpse shield like tofu…

“Is this all you can do!”

That much I could just deflect with my sword and dodge.

– Kwadududuk!

The blue-silver blade swung in an arc, shattering the rock elemental arrows that were pouring down like piles of stones.

– Hwarururuk!

Frosting slashed out like a beast’s claw, and the flames of the rune erased the ice elemental arrows like snow fallen into a bonfire.

“Haschaaaaaal!”

Jeirfalos charged like lightning, swinging his crescent blade in that opening.

“Don’t call my name so casually.”

Defying Fate activated, limited to the blade to conserve strength. Durandal instantly returned to its place, deflecting his crescent blade.

“A mere fairy.”

“Kuk…!”

Jeirfalos, his brow contorted, somersaulted in the air with the deflected crescent blade, creating distance.

Charging at high speed to strike once, then immediately retreating to create distance whether successful or not. A cowardly tactic befitting a fairy.

“Running away again? But well… it’s a wise decision.”

He must be certain that engaging for more than two exchanges would result in one-sided devastation from my time compression.

“Stay in front of me too long and you’ll have to go meet that Tibe-whatever.”

And this was true.

The weakness of Defying Fate is its short duration and the very slight delay before activation.

If he hadn’t been so thorough with his hit-and-run tactics to exploit this, he would have been cut down long ago like his subordinate.

“But… can you win like this? You’re not a child playing ding-dong-ditch; you can’t inflict any meaningful wound on me with such methods.”

“We’re not done yet!”

Jeirfalos shouted, pressing his left hand against the shattered floor.

With a rumbling vibration, huge rock spikes suddenly protruded.

As I lightly jumped aside to avoid them, each rock spike stretched and writhed like a living creature, tracking me.

Not magic, but a high-level elemental?

From the look of it, he seemed to be summoning only the tentacle part of a high-level rock elemental with thorny tentacles, using it like magic.

If he summoned the entire high-level elemental, it might be destroyed by my counterattack and become impossible to resummon for a while, so he probably called forth only a part that could be destroyed without issue.

The concept itself was understandable, but…

“How shabby!”

The method itself was trivial and shabby. To the point where disappointment and dismay surpassed tension and anger.

“Hagalaz-!”

Frosting, wrapped in the mana of collapse, smashed the rock tentacles like a shell.

– Kwaaaang!

The sharp tip part shattered into pieces from the impact.

– Passsssk!

The collapse mana that followed penetrated into the interior of the rock tentacles, pulverizing them completely into powder.

Even the rock tentacles that luckily avoided the collapse mana were pierced and shattered by the dark red thorns that shot out as I stomped my foot.

Murder Karma Art: Shadow Thorns.

“Poke, poke, poke. Sniping, elementals, and your sword strikes. All just poking around.”

From within the thick dust rising with a rustling noise.

“Can you kill me like that? Or are you waiting for me to die of old age?”

I deflect and shatter the elemental arrows flying from somewhere, and cut down the ice lions and lightning giants pouncing like beasts.

Endless explosions and the ear-piercing screams of monsters.

An elemental arrow I failed to deflect lodged in my shoulder and exploded, and a wind wolf rammed into me and clawed at me… but this only provoked irritation rather than tension.

“You call this an attack!”

I raised a pillar of flame with rune fire to burn both the elemental arrow and the wolf simultaneously, and slowly rose from within the pillar of fire, shouting.

“Far from enough! With full power, head-on! Charge boldly and gloriously! Can’t you even do that? You so-called fairy guardians!”

Instead of insisting on keeping distance out of fear of Defying Fate and engaging in this boring war of attrition, they should just charge in openly and fight fiercely and spectacularly.

“…Seeing you angry confirms this approach is correct. The answer is indeed attrition warfare.”

Jeirfalos muttered with a hardened face as he once again created distance.

Saying that the fight I found boring was actually the most advantageous tactic for them.

“Ha, fine. I should just stop talking.”

It was an irritating response, so I shook my head with an irritable sigh.

With the mindset of seeing how long that attitude could last.

I dare predict it won’t last long.

The evacuation of the palace residents should be nearing completion.

In other words, the person who has been evacuating them will soon rush… no, fly here.

Their original target.

Demian.