I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 123 - Half Magus (2)
Chapter 123 – Half Magus (2)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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As the earth shook,
the soldiers on the wall all turned their eyes toward one place.
Their gaze welcomed the god that had descended upon the ash-gray world.
Not something fashioned by human hands,
but a true god,
one born from the dust as something wholly genuine.
“■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-!!!”
At the same time,
Basiliora’s roar rang out.
A thunderous cry that brought awe to the soldiers
and fear to the artificial Outer Gods.
Dust scattered in every direction,
and the moment all of them realized the shape of that god,
so vast that even while standing atop the wall they had to lift their heads again to take it in,
Basiliora’s gigantic body moved.
He moved toward the turtle-shaped artificial Outer God that had only just been charging the wall.
In the next moment,
Basiliora began coiling around its body.
The instant its body was bound,
the artificial Outer God screamed with everything it had.
The soldiers all lost themselves.
Because before their eyes,
there was unfolding a fight between monstrous beings that seemed to come straight out of legend.
At least,
that was what they thought for a moment.
Soon, however,
the soldiers came to realize one thing.
The scene before them
was not a great clash of mythical monsters.
It was,
simply,
a hunt.
The soldiers stared blankly ahead.
There,
the monster wrapped in the coils of a great god
was being shattered to pieces.
The shell that Filian could not break no matter how many times he attacked
crumbled like dry dust.
The hands and feet that had pierced knights and soldiers and driven them to despair
were all torn away,
scattering a rain of blood.
And then,
without even managing to scream properly,
the artificial Outer God,
which had so clearly been a cruel slaughterer,
met a miserably pathetic death.
Its bones and outer shell were thoroughly ravaged.
In that stillness,
Basiliora’s roar spread in every direction.
The entire atmosphere trembled,
and awe spread among the soldiers.
Awe that could not be hidden.
And then,
“…Marquis Palladio.”
The previously emotionless Duke Komalon frowned and clicked his tongue briefly.
That became the signal.
The battle of the Outer Gods-
no,
the struggle between the real and the fake,
began.
####
Basiliora’s massive body rampaged through the artificial Outer Gods and crushed them.
“Hup-!”
Under Alon’s command,
Seollang rushed in to support Basiliora,
throwing off flashes of golden light as she moved among the artificial Outer Gods.
Everyone stood there blankly,
watching a battle that seemed as though it belonged only in myth.
Everyone,
except one man.
Only Filian Merkillan was looking somewhere else.
At the man wearing a coat of black mana,
its every thread seeming to move as though alive.
At the man who had called a god his ally
and made that god descend upon the earth.
At the man who had once boasted his ignorance and spoken wild nonsense.
And at that same time,
…Fifteen minutes remain. No, fourteen now.
Letting out a light sigh,
Alon checked Basiliora,
who was moving wildly among the Outer Gods,
then looked down at the bracelet on his right wrist.
The Hand of the Wanderer,
which he had obtained from the fairy Tobet.
And the White Hand of the Wanderer,
which had been in the Hermit’s Hideaway.
The symbol of the artifact made by combining those two,
Salvation of the Wanderer,
was glowing red.
It really is unfortunate that it has a time limit. Well, without this, I would never even have dared to attempt the summoning.
The Covenant Ring of Kalgunias allowed him to force into submission and summon any target he had already subdued.
But the drawback was equally obvious.
The stronger the target that had been subdued,
the more mana it took to summon them.
In other words,
with Alon’s normal mana,
summoning Basiliora in full form should have been impossible.
A spirit body would be one thing,
but not Basiliora himself.
No-
the only people who should possess enough mana to summon Basiliora at all would be tower masters.
And even they,
if they summoned Basiliora,
would naturally suffer mana exhaustion because of the absurd amount of mana consumed.
In effect,
a ring containing Basiliora inside it
should have been unusable.
That was,
unless one had Salvation of the Wanderer,
which allowed any artifact to be used for exactly fifteen minutes without regard to mana limitations.
Of course, neither the Covenant Ring nor Salvation of the Wanderer was originally an artifact meant to be used at this point in the story. They both had later uses.
But this was not a game.
Ending that short train of thought,
Alon turned his gaze away from Basiliora,
who was dealing with the Outer Gods,
and looked toward Duke Komalon.
He had heard that the duke was fairly advanced in age,
and yet Duke Komalon looked quite young.
If he had not been standing among the Outer Gods,
Alon might not have recognized him at a glance.
That youthful appearance made him look little different from an ordinary noble,
but Alon did not let his guard down.
He quietly formed a seal.
Then,
from Duke Komalon,
who had remained silent until just now,
came a voice.
“As expected, you too are another half one, like me.”
“…What?”
Alon let out a questioning reply.
But Duke Komalon only exhaled lightly,
then posed a question.
“From the time I heard you had taken the dragon egg, and then when I saw you wearing that bracelet, I was already anticipating it to a degree. What I do not understand is why you are trying to stop me. Why?”
“…”
Alon closed his mouth.
Partly because he did not understand in the least what Duke Komalon was talking about,
but also because he was uncertain how he ought to interpret those words.
He spent a brief instant considering how to answer,
but,
“No matter. You need not answer.”
Duke Komalon did not even grant him that brief instant.
“I do not know for what reason you stand in my way despite knowing of that tragedy, but-”
Then he continued.
“If you block me, I will simply break you.”
He formed a seal.
“Refraction-!”
“Commencement.”
Alon also formed a seal in return and uttered an incantation.
The battle between mages began.
####
To speak honestly,
Alon stood at a clear disadvantage in a battle between mages.
Many things were important in a fight between mages,
but above all,
the most important thing was the speed of spell manifestation.
From Alon’s perspective,
where he needed to form seals and recite incantations,
a battle between mages was unconditionally disadvantageous.
Still,
for this fight alone,
he had thought things might be different.
Because for some reason,
Duke Komalon also used seals and incantations.
In other words,
both of them were fighting under the same restriction,
so Alon had inwardly thought the risks on both sides were equal.
That was a miscalculation.
“Acceleration.”
The moment Duke Komalon’s voice sounded,
Alon realized the duke had already reached the space directly before him,
and Alon immediately opened his mouth.
“Extreme Cold.”
In an instant,
the surrounding earth froze into a field of permafrost,
and cold began climbing Duke Komalon’s legs.
But,
with a violent cracking sound,
the duke broke it apart without concern,
then formed a seal with his left hand and recited.
“Expansion, Dispersion, Full Bloom, Spiral.”
Alon was shocked.
That fast-!
By nature,
incantations were used to twist the laws of magic,
and each incantation required sufficient time for that law to be bent.
If one recited another incantation while the law was still being twisted by the previous one,
the spell’s manifestation could collapse entirely.
In fact,
the reason Alon always left a slight gap between incantations
was precisely so the manifestation would not tangle due to that twisting process.
And yet the duke before him
recited his incantations and completed his magic with unbelievable speed,
as though he were ignoring that required time entirely.
As though he were completely denying the weakness of using incantations.
While Alon was thinking that,
the five spheres forming at the fingers of the duke’s outstretched right hand
shot toward Alon at point-blank range in a spiral.
However,
“Freeze.”
The moment the magic was fired,
Alon linked it to his Extreme Cold,
froze the spells flying toward him,
and then,
“Acceleration.”
hurled the frozen magic back toward the duke instead.
But by then,
Duke Komalon had already moved away from the spell’s range.
The instant Alon realized the duke had shifted to the right,
he formed another seal.
“Compression, One Point, Eruption.”
“Fixation, Expansion, Dispersion.”
As the spells took shape,
incantations burst from both their mouths,
twisting the laws.
And then,
with a heavy crash,
the one sent flying backward
was Alon.
“Fixation.”
Even as he rolled madly across the ground,
Alon managed to manifest a shield in that split second.
His body,
which had been tumbling wildly,
was forcibly brought to a stop.
But-
with the sound of shattering glass,
a spiral ice spike that had already been launched toward him,
as if the duke had expected this,
pierced through his shield without slowing.
Watching it,
Alon clenched his teeth.
####
With a thunderous crash,
Alon rolled across the ground,
then quickly got back to his feet and looked toward Duke Komalon.
In contrast to himself,
whose coat had already become a complete mess,
Duke Komalon still looked maddeningly indifferent.
A total of fifteen spells had been manifested.
Of those fifteen,
Alon had won only one exchange.
And even that one had merely brushed the duke’s clothing.
In practice,
Alon’s magic was not getting through to Duke Komalon.
No,
strictly speaking,
it was not that it could not get through.
…His manifestation speed is absurdly fast.
Duke Komalon was simply too fast.
So fast that there was no way Alon could win merely by looking one or two moves ahead.
And that was not the only disadvantage Alon faced.
The speed at which the duke formed seals.
The power of his magic,
which was too strong for that sort of speed.
Alon’s own insufficient mana,
even though it had increased greatly compared to before.
And even the ability to move while reading one further move ahead.
In all of it,
the duke held overwhelming superiority.
In other words,
a proper battle was not even being established.
Alon turned his eyes toward Basiliora and Seollang.
Already,
more than three artificial Outer Gods had become gruesome corpses,
but the battle there was still in full swing.
“It seems you are thinking of receiving help, but that is useless.”
As Alon looked at Basiliora,
Duke Komalon spoke calmly.
“Before they can come to assist you, you will die first.”
Then he formed another seal.
“Fixation, Expansion, Dispersion.”
Five spheres formed at the tips of his outstretched hand.
But this time,
it did not end there.
As if to show that much,
the duke recited once more.
“Dispersion.”
At the same time,
the spheres at each of his fingers rose into the sky and began to divide.
From five,
to ten.
From ten,
to twenty.
From twenty,
to forty.
From forty,
to eighty.
Their number increased endlessly.
And what was formed in the end
was a Milky Way suspended in the ash-gray sky.
Hundreds,
perhaps thousands,
of spheres shone brilliantly across the gray heavens.
It was
such an overwhelming and majestic sight
that even the soldiers,
who until just moments ago had been staring blankly at a battle out of myth,
turned their eyes toward it.
And then,
“Launch.”
At the moment Duke Komalon uttered his final incantation,
announcing Alon’s end,
the Milky Way began to fall.
Thousands of brilliant lights descended toward the earth,
illumining Alon’s face as he looked up at the sky.
It was an overwhelming sight,
the kind that would make anyone drop their weapon and accept death without thinking.
That mass of light converged on Alon as its target.
“No-!”
Watching that,
Filian cried out without meaning to.
But Alon,
looking up at the sky from which the Milky Way was falling,
was calm.
Rather,
Alon had been waiting for this moment.
“Acceleration.”
A blast erupted,
and his body shot forward in an instant.
He had only tried to imitate the duke’s mana arrangement from a single glance,
so the spell itself failed and exploded,
but that did not matter.
So long as he could move forward.
Duke Komalon’s eyes rose.
Though his face held no obvious trace of emotion,
his widened gaze made it clear that he was at least slightly shaken.
“Refraction.”
Alon had begun waiting for this moment from the time the fifth spell had been manifested.
From that point onward,
he had already given up on defeating the duke through magical superiority.
Because the duke’s magic was clearly surpassing his own-
no,
surpassing magic itself.
“Repulsion.”
That was why,
from that point on,
Alon had deliberately constructed the board.
He had not dodged attacks he could have dodged.
He had not countered attacks he could have countered.
“Azure Sky.”
Reducing damage to the bare minimum,
he had simply waited for the optimal timing.
For the moment the duke relaxed.
For the moment he grew careless.
For the moment Alon could reveal the hidden move he had prepared.
Behind Alon,
the nauseating sound of the descending Milky Way gouging at the ground echoed out.
At the same time,
before the seal he had formed,
a brilliant azure light erupted.
And then,
“-Refraction Line.”
As the last words rang out,
Alon’s finger flicked toward Duke Komalon,
whose face had at last shifted into surprise.
With an explosive roar,
lightning shot forth at monstrous speed and instantly reached Duke Komalon.
But-
just as the lightning was about to touch the duke’s heart,
“Acceleration.”
Duke Komalon twisted his body aside,
barely evading the blue lightning.
The spell brushed past him
and disappeared in vain.
“Ah-”
Filian and the soldiers watching let out faint cries.
In Duke Komalon’s indifferent eyes,
a little relief and delight appeared.
A clear crossing of joy and despair.
But Alon,
who had been aiming for a final move from the start,
remained calm.
From the very beginning,
he had assumed Duke Komalon would evade the spell.
“Hoo.”
Because he had prepared what came next.
Crackling electricity burst out again.
Duke Komalon’s gaze snapped behind him.
There,
shining more brilliantly than anything else,
were two dazzling azure lights.
The duke’s face twisted in incomprehension,
but behind his expressionless face,
Alon smiled.
Because that
was the final move he had prepared.
The unique fourth-circle trait one could obtain in Psychedelia.
By preloading spiral mana arrangements into a spell,
it allowed the spell to manifest in any place where one’s own mana afterimage remained.
Multi-Manifestation.
The duke twisted his body again after spotting that light,
but the Azure Sky had already been released.
And with another immense crash,
the ash-gray world was dyed blue once more.