Counter-proposal (2)

Counter-proposal (2)

The moment I saw the spreading magical energy, I immediately used spatial expansion magic to forcibly expand the surroundings.

‘In any case, I can’t go around destroying my fiancée’s family home.’

Moreover, Sien and Sien’s father would also be nearby.

If I got caught up in a battle, I could be seriously injured or even killed, so I expanded the space as much as possible to ensure others wouldn’t get hurt.

While looking at the considerably expanded space, thinking this should be enough,

Luna, who was in my arms, muttered to me in a terrified voice.

[She seems much stronger than the bishop we met last time!]

Stronger than the bishop we met before, huh.

As I looked ahead while hearing those words, I could see a woman emitting a much more powerful magical energy than the bishop I had seen before, just as Luna said.

‘I wonder if she’s particularly strong among the bishops, or if the bishop I saw before was weak. Or maybe…’

I wasn’t sure if it was a bishop-level figure or someone even higher who had come.

One thing was certain, though: I was confident that capturing her would deal quite a significant blow to the Heaven God Cult.

‘In any case, creating individuals at the bishop level must be extremely difficult.’

Recalling how few bishops there were, I smiled slightly and slowly extended my hand while saying.

“Why are you so angry?”

Provoked by my words, she gritted her teeth and once again spread her magical energy all around.

She created countless black thorns and began shooting them at me.

‘Certainly… the power seems strong, but.’

The basic structure itself was not difficult, making it easy to imitate and even easier to steal ownership of.

As I stole it and shot it back at her, she smiled as if caught and shouted.

“How foolish!”

As soon as those words ended, the black thorns I had stolen exploded on their own, forcibly reversing the mana flow and causing damage to me.

It seems she had deliberately destabilized the structure to make the caster take damage.

I sneered at such a structure and returned the ownership back to her.

Because the ownership returned just before the explosion, the person in front of me was engulfed in all sorts of explosions and began to cough up blood.

“Kuheouk!”

Seemingly in great pain, they cough up blood intermittently while shaking violently and letting out agonizing groans.

As I watch this, I’m pleased to have discovered quite an interesting method of combat.

The person in front of me seems to have regained consciousness, wiping away blood and gritting their teeth.

“You… just who the hell are you?”

“Me? I’m Deren of the Lercier Family.”

At this obvious answer, she lets out a scream and then asks a rather pointed question.

“Don’t lie to me, your original talent couldn’t have possibly been this good. How on earth…!”

If this question had been asked by the head of the Lercier Family, Rumi, or Sien, I might have been a bit flustered…

But since the one asking this question was an enemy, not an ally.

I blatantly ignored it and said.

“Point Explosion.”

“You crazy bas…!”

In the middle of speaking, a massive explosion occurs, starting to tear the opponent’s body apart.

Watching those flesh pieces burst out, I decided it was about time to enter into the main battle.

* * *

Infinite regeneration, there’s probably no better phrase to accurately describe the opponent.

I fell into contemplation as I watched the enemy displaying regeneration abilities almost as fast as the bishop I had faced before.

‘I tried to deal with this one the same way I dealt with the bishop before, but…’

Whether the related information had already spread or simply because this one’s abilities were superior, I’m not sure.

Every time I tried to catch them, they would quickly move away by releasing magical energy, making it impossible to capture them.

‘As a result, at first, I tried to catch it using space compression and expansion magic.’

It was impossible to catch because, in addition to using teleportation magic consecutively, it summoned all kinds of illusions to deceive my ‘mana detection’ itself.

‘Interesting.’

I’m not sure what kind of position they hold.

One thing for sure is that I think it’s undoubtedly someone above the rank of bishop, and I slowly opened my mouth.

“Isn’t it tiring to just keep running away like that?”

“… I’ll tear apart your mouth, face, nails, and every single organ and feed them to maggots!”

Whether they were thoroughly angered or not, they easily fell for my provocation and emitted a massive amount of magical energy.

I let out a hollow laugh at their reaction and wiggled my finger.

“Go ahead and try.”

I was avoiding the enemy’s attacks with space compression magic against the magical energy pouring down again.

Perhaps judging that further attrition was meaningless.

She withdraws the magical energy she was pouring on me and says to me.

“… I acknowledge you.”

Contextually, it seems like she’s acknowledging me as a proper opponent.

Since nothing much would change even if she said that, I nodded halfheartedly as if annoyed.

She took a deep breath and slowly looked at me, then grabbed one of her arms and tore it off.

– Crunch.

Along with the horrific sound echoing, the demon race’s characteristic blue blood bursts out in all directions.

I silently watched, wondering what she was doing with this sudden self-harm.

She cast her magic by throwing her arm into the air.

“Illusion Maze.”

With those brief words, the entire surroundings turned purple and transformed into a monotonous background.

As this was my first time witnessing such a scene, I silently observed.

She, who had already regenerated one of her arms, smiled and said to me.

“I look forward to it.”

With those words, she disappeared from my sight, and the purple scenery began to turn red, generating weapons and magic-like things and firing them at me.

‘Does she have no learning ability?’

I thought she might have forgotten about my counterattack when she fired magic earlier, so I tried to steal ownership of the magic.

I’m not sure what trick she pulled.

The ownership itself… or more precisely, the magic itself didn’t exist, making it impossible to steal.

‘An illusion?’

Considering she called it an “Illusion Maze” earlier, I thought it might be an illusion.

But when I cast a magic barrier just in case and saw that it was ‘taking real damage,’ I realized it wasn’t an illusion, which confused me.

‘What did she do?’

As I was staring intently at the magic, trying to analyze what it was.

I started to hear mocking laughter from somewhere.

“Even if you look, you won’t be able to understand. You’re trying to dig into it meaninglessly. Rather than that, just try to survive without dying.”

Then once again, countless spells and weapons began to pour towards me, starting to attack.

‘Is this a war of attrition?’

The burden of mana has almost disappeared.

However, since mana wasn’t infinite yet, if I kept using mana to block attacks like this.

Eventually, I would run out of mana and find myself in a quite troublesome situation.

‘So I need to minimize mana consumption as much as possible… Is there another way? Ah.’

A rather interesting idea came to mind.

The moment that thought occurred to me, I took out the mace I had put in my pocket using spatial expansion magic.

Then I summoned the ‘Bishop’ guy stored inside the mace like a shield to block the magic and weapons instead.

“Keueeeeeeek!”

A scream echoed.

Judging by how painfully he was wailing, it seemed each of those attacks was effective.

As I was blocking the enemy’s attacks, thinking that I quite liked this newly created meat shield, I heard a sound close to a scream nearby.

“How, how dare you!”

I’m not sure if they have a concept of comrades.

Or if there was some special personal relationship.

She let out a scream of shock at my actions, then immediately shouted at me in a voice full of anger.

‘Of course, there’s no need to listen.’

Ignoring it moderately while blocking the attacks, I slowly took a deep breath and looked around, lost in thought.

‘It’s an illusion, but an illusion with substance.’

I let out a hollow laugh at those contradictory words and slowly began to unravel the magical structure of that spell.

‘There certainly was a reason for the boasting.’

A structure so intricately intertwined that it diverges from ordinary magic.

I fell into contemplation as I gazed at a structure that seemed to connect everything after twisting it to the point where tens of thousands of structural formulas were difficult to recognize.

‘It doesn’t seem too difficult to break this.’

But if that happens, it would become harder to ‘acquire’ the magic.

It seems right to move in the direction of acquiring it without destroying it as much as possible.

‘Anyway, killing that guy doesn’t seem too difficult.’

If I use space manipulation magic, I could probably handle it without much difficulty.

However, if I do that, I won’t be able to steal the illusion maze magic I’m looking at now.

Until I roughly acquire that magic, I decided not to kill him and continued to analyze it.