NOVEL NEXT Chapter 61
EP.61 Ancient Lich, Skebal(1)
CRACK, SPLAT!
The dream that confined Resti begins to fracture.
Platinum mana devours the disassembled circuit. Thus, the dream starts to crumble.
CRUNCH!
And finally, the dream is completely shattered.
Waking up from her dream, Resti instantly takes back control of her body. It wasn’t too difficult, as she had already prepared to dismantle the spell in advance.
“Ugh…”
A light dizziness hits her.
Resti staggers and lifts her head. She slowly opens her eyes to witness reality, not a dream.
‘…Where the hell am I?’
She has no idea.
Everything is tinted gray. There are trees. There’s grass. But, none of them have the colors they should have.
The endlessly stretched monochrome landscape is desolate to the point of bleakness. What this landscape is, Resti rummages through her memories to find the answer.
‘Monochrome.’
She’s never seen such a landscape.
However, she’s encountered it in records.
‘A world of only gray, so it’s the Intermediary Realm.’
Resti is a Summoner.
And there’s a dimension she has to go through to summon her familiars. She murmured it.
“Otherworld.”
It was the moment she uttered that word.
“…Being trapped in a dream was a courtesy at the least.”
A voice rings out.
Resti turns her head.
“If you had stayed as you were, I would have offered you the easy path.”
Her gaze meets the place where the voice came from.
“Why did you awaken, child?”
In the gray world, there’s one thing that is black.
It is a shadow. The edge of the shadow is connected to the tips of Resti’s feet.
“Was the dream unsatisfactory?”
The shadow approaches Resti.
In the Otherworld, this solitary colored entity feels ominous. A primal aversion kicks in.
“Speak your desires. I shall pave the way from the beginning again. As I said before, I…”
“Summon.”
Resti didn’t bother to let the rest of the words finish.
There was no reason to listen, nor was it worth it. She muttered briefly and swung her arm.
WHOOSH!
A wolf that jumped out from somewhere sank its teeth into the shadow’s neck. The shadow’s voice cuts off.
“Summon.”
She continues to chant the spell.
Every time she snaps her fingers, familiars appear from somewhere. They gnaw at the shadow.
CRUNCH!
There’s no hesitation in summoning.
Not even a moment’s respite is given as the familiars begin to bite at the shadow.
Multi-Casting.
“Nesting-Summon.”
The wave of summoned creatures does not stop.
Resti chants the spell a bit faster. With one hand, she draws circuits, with her mouth she utters the spell, and with the other hand, she infuses mana into the circuit.
Resti strings them all together simultaneously.
The familiars pour out.
Despite exceeding her original limit of ten, the familiars continue to be summoned. Their speed is incomparable to before.
There’s only one reason this crazy feat is possible.
It’s because this place is the Otherworld.
The summoning spell is a process of calling forth familiars from the Otherworld into reality. Due to the nature of the spell requiring to go through the Otherworld, there’s a clear waste of mana and delay.
‘But, not here.’
This place where Resti stands is the Otherworld.
As long as she’s in the Otherworld, that process is entirely omitted. Mana consumption decreases, and delay vanishes.
In other words, something beyond her skills is possible.
Resti’s eyes aid her.
Almost a hundred familiars she has summoned fill the Otherworld.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH!
WHOOSH!
Sounds of scratching, biting, and breaking resonate. The shadow buried beneath the familiars is no longer visible.
“…”
At that moment, Resti stopped the accumulating spell.
It wasn’t out of certainty of victory.
“…What on earth is this?”
Rather, it was the opposite.
While nearly a hundred summoned creatures gnaw at the shadow, the shadow rises as if nothing were the matter.
HISS, GRRRR.
Following the shadow’s movements, the summoned creatures are dragged along the ground. The shadow lightly brushes its hands as if it finds it annoying.
Raising one hand.
Simply swinging down with a SWISH,
that’s all it took.POOF!
That was the end.
The familiars burst apart. Crushed. Some had their necks torn off. Each of them is different in shape, but all are cut off from Resti.
“Compared to the Apostate… Still lacking, but it’s not bad. If this is the level before your talent has sprouted, it’s not too shabby.”
The shadow approaches Resti, stepping over the corpses of the familiars. With each step he takes, the shadows surrounding him disintegrate.
“Child.”
The shadow stands in front of Resti.
The last remnants of its disguise peel away completely. Resti gazes at what was hidden by the shadows.
The first thing that catches her eye is the emaciated skeletal joints. There’s no flesh. No blood. Just a gaunt form made entirely of bones staring back at Resti.
“When my consciousness finishes, I will broker a contract with you. I shall do it myself. Perhaps, He may choose you himself.”
It’s a bizarre skull for a human.
From inside that skull, a black gaze shines. The dark gaze meets Resti’s eyes.
In that moment of confrontation.
An instinctive fear wraps around Resti.
Her gaze trembles.
‘Ah…’
Resti realizes what this revenant is.
It wasn’t difficult to recall.
The tales have dealt with this revenant extensively in numerous historical accounts.
‘An ancient mage.’
The nightmare of mages.
One who despises the living.
The one who touched the truth through death.
And.
In the past, one of the four calamities that burnt the kingdom.
“…Ancient Lich, Skebal.”
“That’s how I’m known.”
Skebal raises his hand.
The emaciated skeletal joint approaches Resti’s forehead.
“Until everything is over, sleep a little longer.”
WHACK!
The skeletal joint touches Resti’s forehead.
Skebal’s dark magic invades Resti’s mind. It seeks to settle deep within her.
CRACK!
Sparks fly up.
Skebal’s finger is flicked away.
“…What?”
The Ancient Lich squints his eyes.
Resti follows Skebal’s gaze down. It leads to her uniform’s pocket. There’s something glowing inside.
“Why?”
The Ancient Lich questions back.
He stands there, unable to approach the light. Resti reaches into her pocket.
THUMP!
Something catches her fingertips.
Resti pulls it out. It’s a neatly folded note. The material is familiar. It’s the circuit record sheet she wrote on not long ago.
‘…Why is this?’
Questions arise.
However, as she sees the circuit etched into the sheet, her doubts dissipate. One side of the sheet is completely filled with the circuit.
An astoundingly intricate circuit.
The moment she sees it, she thinks it’s beautiful.
That endlessly intricate circuit belongs to one person, as far as Resti remembers.
‘…Professor Rania?’
There’s no mana contained within the circuit.
What flows along the circuit is Resti’s mana. Instantly, Resti comprehends what this circuit entails.
“Put that away immediately…!”
The Ancient Lich yells.
His howl is reminiscent of a beast. The bizarre voice shakes her eardrums. Amidst the roar that shatters her mind, Resti lifts the note.
“Indeed.”
And then, she bursts into laughter, incongruent with the situation.
“I see you’ve been watching.”
Resti immediately infused mana into the circuit.
Platinum mana fills the circuit. The circuit begins to emit light. That light engulfs Resti.
“Aaah! Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
Skebal’s eyes, upon witnessing this, shake with rage.
“Star! Fulfill the contract! Due to external interference, the distortion of the contract is about to result in the…!”
Skebal questions the star.
A response comes back to that inquiry.
– It is not external interference.
Resti did not etch the circuit.
However, infusing mana into the circuit and activating the spell is Resti.
– There isn’t anything strange with the phenomenon.
The star assures that there is nothing odd about it.
The gray world begins to shatter. A portal opens from the Otherworld to reality.
“ASHEN!”
While looking at that.
“Horrendous ASHEN!”
Skebal scratches his skull.
CRACK
, the sound of sharp bones scraping against the skull echoes alongside Skebal’s howls.“Is it you again! Once again!”
CRUNCH!
Both dreams and the Otherworld collapse.
What returns is complete reality.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Screaming, Skebal claps his palms together. Breaking his skeletal joints, he drives them into the ground. The magic that spreads from the joints forms a barrier.
Just before that barrier ensnares the forest.
A gaze from afar pierces through Skebal.
“Ah.”
She spoke.
“I found you.”
2.
“Whooo.”
Kalt takes a deep breath and lifts his head.
His eyes are bloodshot.
“I’ve pinpointed the location. Do you see it?”
“Uh, thanks. Good job.”
Kalt managed to specify the location in less than ten seconds as promised. I engraved the specified location into the circuit.
While doing so, I suddenly feel a gaze upon me.
“…”
Kalt is staring at me blankly.
“…What are you doing?”
“Isn’t there more for me to do?”
More to do, huh.
“You go downstairs and help the knights. The beasts will show up soon.”
“…Are you okay alone?”
“What would I take you for? You haven’t completely healed from that mana addiction yet. Just crossing that barrier will have you gasping for breath, right? I’m not looking to carry a burden into battle.”
I fought with two loads for the last few years.
‘Would you have me do that again?’
I shook my head.
Just imagining it was horrifying.
“Just go down, man.”
“…If you insist that much.”
Kalt shrugged his shoulders and crouched down. It seemed like he was preparing to jump off the roof.
Then suddenly, as if he thought of something to say.
“Rania.”
Just before he jumps off, Kalt turns to look at me.
“What? You called for me.”
“Just take care of yourself. When this is over, let’s grab a drink together for the first time in a while.”
A small chuckle escapes me.
I waved my hand dismissively.
“Sure, see you later.”
I watched Kalt jump off. I rolled up my sleeves. Kalt did his part well. Resti performed far better than I expected.
“What remains…”
Must be my role.
I twisted my wrist and glared at the barrier.
The barrier continues to grow. The barrier that had covered the forest is now extending beyond it.
CLINK, CLINK.
The barrier inches closer toward Apuria.
Calculating the distance from the barrier, I opened my mouth.
“Release.”
The circuits stored in my forearms ignited in succession.
I embed my raised foot into the railing of the roof. CRACK, SPLAT sounds as cracks emerge in the tiles.
Acceleration (Accel).
Muscle Enhancement (Muscular).
Enhanced Strength (Enhance-Strength).
I lift my arms.
Fingers fold one after the other.
Spell Acceleration (Spell-Boost).
Spell Enhancement (Spell-Enhance).
Triple Spell (Triple-Spell).
The circuits continue to blaze.
The burning circuits crackle, and sparks leap up. I stretch out my hand and clasp it around one of the sparks. I won’t waste a single mote of mana.
Finally, the barrier approaches within reach of my outstretched hand.
The approaching barrier resembles a black wave.
Facing the black wave, I clenched my fist. Drawn back behind my back, I bent my elbow.
SMASH!
The enhanced spell is encapsulated in my palm.
Gripping the roiling mana tightly, I fix my gaze on the barrier. More accurately, on the coward hiding within it.
“Hey.”
I say to the Ancient Lich, Skebal.
“Don’t hide, come out, you piece of sh*t.”
I swung my fist.
The compounded spell unleashed a burst of light.