NOVEL NEXT Chapter 524
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EP.524 Genius (Disaster), Yormun (5)
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The sword that had accompanied him for half his life broke.
The blade of the shattered holy sword whizzed past his eyes.
At the moment the blade shattered, the perfect line it had drawn began to twist. The tip wobbled, the sword path shook, and the axis trembled.
The Sword of Yeocheon was ultimately a strike that realigned the world using itself as an axis. It was a strike that twisted logic along the perfect line it drew.
However, now that the line, the sword path, and the axis were shaking, the Sword of Yeocheon was trying to break free from Kyle’s control. The uncontained torrent of power was attempting to swallow Kyle whole. Clenching the broken sword tightly, Kyle looked ahead.
Heaven’s Principle, there lay the logic of the sky.
A vast flow that looked like a massive constellation, or maybe thunder, or a flood overflowing, or perhaps all of those combined… Kyle felt as if he were adrift in the vast ocean now confronting it.
The boundless sea stretched to the horizon.
In that place, he was just a mere human.
At that moment, waves began to crash upon the sea.
The incoming waves were a natural flow. The principle of nature that circulates the world. A mere human cannot obstruct the overwhelming waves.
SSSSSHHHH…
Kyle heard the echo of waves crashing.
Along with the echoes, Kyle began to be swept away by the immense flow. The out-of-control Sword of Yeocheon was being pushed away by the waves. The sword path Kyle had drawn shattered and disappeared into the waves.
SSSSSHHHH, AAA…
Pushed away. Broken. Swept away and gone.
How could a mere human resist the waves encountered in the middle of the vast ocean? It was the moment when the waves were about to engulf the human. Unknowingly, the human glanced at what was in his hands.
The broken sword.
Yet, it still retained the form of a sword.
Though the sword was broken, his life was not yet shattered. Kyle gritted his teeth. With his eyes wide open, he read the sword path that was disappearing into the waves. If the sword was broken, then simply replace it with something else.
But with what?
The answer was close at hand.
The blood-red lightning wrapping around the blade, he swung the sword using the backlash created by it. Instead of the flow, dragging the blood-red lightning with him, the blade advanced a mere inch.
He cleaved through the raging waves with a single sword.
Following the blade, the waves parted, and his vision cleared.
Before long, the echoes of crashing waves disappeared. What lay before him was not the waves but merely a massive constellation. Kyle swung his sword towards the starry sky, just as he always did.
Heaven’s Principle clashed with the Sword of Yeocheon.
The logic of the heavens collided with the sword that defied the heavens.
The ground shook. The sky quaked.
The scenery was diagonally sliced and shattered, and the shattered world was swept away by the flow. Waves crashed. Winds blew. The earth trembled. The sky screamed.
In a moment that split time, the Sword of Yeocheon and Heaven’s Principle tore at and consumed each other. Neither yielded an inch, pushing against one another. Yet ultimately, there was no victor. There was also no loser.
KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
With a long screech, everything vanished.
Mutual destruction; after tearing at each other, nothing remained. The quaking world stilled for a moment. Immediately, a blinding flash almost made him blind, striking the city of ancient dragons.
FLASH!
With the flash came a storm.
The aftershock created by the clash of Yeocheon and Heaven’s Principle shook the temple. The completely ruined temple plummeted into the ground. Debris from the temple was thrown throughout the city of ancient dragons, KUNG, KUUUUUNG… causing the city to tremble.
SHHHHAAAK!
Yormun, swept away by the aftershock, was pushed back.
For the first time, blood flowed from Yormun’s body as he was pushed back. Deep wounds carved into the body of the transcendent who sat upon the throne of the gods. Through the chaotic constellations, blood flowed from the god.
And, the human.
Kyle Toven.
“Guh, hack…”
He spat out a mouthful of blood.
Blood erupted from Kyle’s body. Crippled, he was swept outside the temple by the aftershock. His left arm, which had swung the Sword of Yeocheon, was grotesquely twisted, and his body, pushed to its limits, could move no longer.
Spitting blood, Kyle lifted his head.
Unable to rise, he merely lifted his gaze and looked at his left arm.
Both left and right arms were twisted. He had dropped the sword. The lost sword was lodged some steps away. But Kyle knew this was a small price to pay.
‘In the final moment…’
The glimmering ash partially blocked the aftermath.
Had it not been for the ash, his arm would have been entirely torn off. Kyle let out a bitter smile and exhaled deeply.
‘What a state to be in.’
Although he had negated Heaven’s Principle, in the current situation, it was his defeat. Yet Kyle smiled. His defeat did not necessarily mean the loss of the battle. Thus, Kyle shouted while laughing.
“This should suffice.”
From the beginning, his goal was not victory.
What he had always played the role of, he was simply taking on this time. Laying the cornerstone toward victory. Preparing the path for the protagonist to sprint forward.
“Go.”
Kyle had drawn out Yormun’s full power, forcing him to reveal all the tricks he had been hiding, inflicting wounds on his body. In other words, this had created the one and only path toward victory.
Who would run down that path was not Kyle.
Kyle looked skyward and called out. The name of the protagonist on this battlefield. The name of a reliable companion he could entrust the next steps to.
“Raniel.”
And then.
The Ashen Mage answered the call.
The collapsed platinum temple.
From above the temple that had fallen to the ground, Yormun gazed at his left arm. The arm that had unfolded Heaven’s Principle was mangled. However, what Yormun focused on was not his twisted left arm.
The body of the one draped in the principle itself.
The largest constellation. Kyle Toven had indeed pried open the principle and carved a wound into his left arm. Yormun took note of that. Yormun’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“He actually managed to…”
He had come this far.
The principle was shaking. The Sword of Yeocheon that Kyle had unfolded was disturbing the stars wrapped around Yormun’s body. Though his left arm quickly healed, the arrangement of the shaken stars did not return. That meant one thing.
Come down from the seat of the gods.
You, too, will bleed and be wounded now.
Watching the blood falling to the ground, Yormun let out a hollow laugh. He had come this far, indeed. Yormun lifted his head. As he looked up at the collapsed ceiling of the temple, the blue rain was falling.
PITTER-PATTER!
The countless eyes of the deities floating in the sky were nowhere to be found. Instead, only the sky stained blue with their spilled blood remained. Blue rain fell from the blue sky. The falling rain was the blood spilled by the deities.
Thousands of years ago, Yormun had also witnessed this scene.
Amidst the pouring blue blood, someone landed with a thud in the temple. A human drenched in the blood of the gods stood there. Just as Yormun had done in the past, the human who had torn apart the deities exhaled deeply.
RUSTLE.
The Ashen-Haired Man shook.
His bluish eyes glimmered malevolently. Those eyes were like an unquenchable flame. They spoke of having more to burn.
“…Ha.”
And that flame was directed at Yormun.
Yormun matched the gaze of the Guide and wiped his face. It was indeed turning out this way. Indeed.
Raniel van Trias and Yormun van Dragonik looked at each other.
The Guide of this era and the oldest Guide met each other’s gaze. The revolutionary and the power holder struggling to protect what they had built faced each other. Thus, the human, who had become both human and god, overlapped their gazes.
Yormun took a step forward.
Raniel took a step forward.
If the limit of the sword lies in cutting, then the limit of magic lies in engraving. Magic is inscribing one’s gestures upon the world. Distorting reality to create miracles. That is the essence and limit of magic.
Yormun swung his hand.
Raniel swung her hand.
Stars and circuits filled the temple.
Yormun embedded all his circuits into the sky as constellations. Raniel etched all her circuits into her body. Similar paths, yet the destinations reached by the two mages were entirely different.
Two magical paths clashed.
Perhaps two lives collided.
The battle among mages is typically a struggle that delves into compatibility. But even at this moment, that could not hold true.
One was a being known as the god of mages, the one who laid the foundations of magic existing on this land. All magic began with him, and throughout both modernity and antiquity, there was no spell he could not wield.
The other mage was also one that reached the level of a god. A being who primarily dealt with spells devoid of compatibility while being versed in all other branches of spells.
Both were distant from common sense.
Both were omnipotent mages.
Thus, a battle between such two would surely shatter the confines of logic. If an ordinary mage or a master of a single branch had been present, they would have chuckled and murmured, asking whether that was truly magic.
FLASH!
The constellations and circuits shone simultaneously.
With a flash, surging was the wave of spells. Hellfire that could incinerate a city, divine retribution that wiped enemies without a trace, freezing blizzards… dozens of the highest spells, the realm one mage dedicates their life to, erupted in a second.
The red hue of the roaring flames, the blue of the descending lightning, the white of the swirling blizzards, green, and black… All colors intermixed to create a bizarre melange.
Ironically, all the spells that merged ended up resembling a platinum hue. As she took in the oncoming spells, Raniel unconsciously let out a chuckle. She felt like she was finally beginning to understand. Now, she felt she might be able to get closer.
SMITE!
The incoming spells pierced through hundreds of slender lines.
Slender lines divided, yielding shredding SMASH, and the ashes scattered turning to ASHES TO ASHES, the heat generated from the explosions became a massive flame that surged onward.
The swirling flame became the sun. The sun devoured the surging spells as it spewed heat.
Thus, drawing the flames with her, Raniel advanced. She unconsciously felt her spells becoming sharper. The connection between spells grew smoother, and the wasted portions were vanishing.
Even as Yormun fiercely pressed on, lacking any leisure as Kyle sent him into a bind, Raniel did not retreat. Instead, she stepped forward even more strongly.
‘I can see it.’
Because she could see.
Because Yormun had lost his composure, because he had momentarily revealed Heaven’s Principle, because he was drawing out his full power, there was finally something visible.
…She was Raniel, who had awakened her qualities as a Guide, possessing powers close to omnipotence.
Because so much was possible, there was a tendency for her to restrictively cast spells. She didn’t quite know how to wield the powers she possessed. No Guide had stood by her, no mentor had taught her how to handle that power.
She had always sought the answers alone.
Groping in the darkness, she had only advanced slowly.
But at this moment, Raniel felt as if her eyes had been opened. There was no need to slowly feel her way through the darkness any longer. The answer lay before her.
‘The oldest Guide, Yormun.’
The mage who had risen to greater heights than anyone else.
A senior who had already walked the path she wished to walk. A figure who had reached the end of the Guide’s path now stood before her. She observed how he handled his spells. She took in the flowing movements of his constellations.
PITTER-PATTER.
Blood streamed from her strained eyes.
Blood flowed from her nose, ears, and mouth. It was the cost of accepting knowledge beyond her cognition. Yet Raniel did not stop swallowing that knowledge.
‘Look. Don’t let a single thing slip.’
She saw. Because she had seen, she realized.
Having realized, she transformed it into her own.
If a genius is one who compresses a lifetime of another into a moment, then Raniel was a genius. Drinking in the blood Yormun spilled, she advanced forward. The steps that had once groped through an invisible path now kicked off the ground and sped on.
Spells flickered.
Circuits glowed brilliantly.
Raniel carved what Yormun had built to fit her own magical path. Making it hers, she advanced towards Yormun. Swiftly, precisely, and smoothly, the spells intertwined.
BOOM!
With an explosion, the visibility cleared.
Clearing the spells away, Raniel took a step forward. Before long, Raniel had reached right in front of Yormun.
CRACK!
The grasp of Yormun surrounded by constellations clashed with Raniel’s backlash. Naturally, Raniel was the one who was pushed back. However, this time she did not bounce away completely. She was pushed back only a step. That was the gap that lay between the two.
‘Just one more step forward.’
In the pure white space where spells swallowed each other, the hand gestures of the two mages crossed.