Chapter 168

• Published: 8 months ago •

-Hmph. So they saved you.

The bow spoke with scorn-filled sarcasm.

Thanks to the brilliant flashes and white branches that had pierced and were holding onto the tentacles several times over, the speed at which the tentacles could crawl out had slowed.

Without that help, I wouldn’t have been able to find the time to draw the bow.

-I’m not asking for much. Just pull it back 20 centimeters. If you time it right, I can banish that creature. Surely… you’re not going to say you can’t even do that much?

The bowstring that had demanded I draw it all the way back was now reduced to just 20 centimeters.

Not because the bow had grown merciful, but because it had lowered its expectations of me that much.

-This worthless brat actually summoned me…

It grumbled openly.

…Being criticized by a bow.

Limits.

For mortals, there exists a wall that can never be crossed, no matter how desperate their hearts may be. That’s the symbolic meaning death shows us. No matter how great a genius, hero, or villain one might be, they cannot escape the boundaries fate has drawn. Even with the effort that Earth people emphasized so strongly—no matter how much effort you put in, what’s impossible is impossible. Those who didn’t understand this and remained reckless to the very end paid the price for challenging their limits, whether they died from overwork, illness, or otherwise.

That’s why we are mortals.

My arms trembled violently.

The drawn bowstring couldn’t even reach 19 centimeters. The more I pulled, the heavier it became. When pulling even 1 more centimeter was difficult, asking me to pull 2 more? My head felt dizzy.

‘I’d need at least 6-star Ki-blood…’

My current level was 6th Circle 5-star. With this state, it was impossible. Really, truly impossible.

But,

Even so.

“Don’t… fucking mess with me. You’re just a weapon.”

A mage must never accept limits.

————————

A mage is one who challenges immortality.

————————

The first passage from the magic book I wrote myself.

What is magic? It’s mortals deceiving themselves and the world. Gaining recognition as an immortal, even if only temporarily. That was magic. If you stop challenging, you lose your magic. If you fail in your challenge, you lose your magic too.

A mage is only a mage while challenging limits and continuing to surpass those limits.

For Earth people, limits are truly limits, but the Star Continent is different. Here exists a source that makes the impossible possible—magical power, the remains of immortals.

Grind, grind.

I grit my teeth.

‘I’ll do it. I’ll succeed somehow.’

If I can surpass it even once, I can truly transcend.

‘Pain that doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’ This proposition is false for Earth people. There’s plenty of pain that won’t kill you but will leave you crippled with lifelong aftereffects. But… at least for mages, it was true.

As long as you survive, you can become stronger.

[Simulation]

Time stopped, and the world went dark.

I didn’t stop there.

[Simulation]

[…]

[Simu… lation!!]

My breath caught in my throat.

Movement slowed, and blood gushed from my nose, mouth, and cracked skin, flowing in streams.

By repeating [Simulation] within [Simulation], my consciousness sank to the very bottom of existence.

The dimensional rift.

I had returned to the place where I once met the god’s fragment. The overload was incomparably more powerful than when I simply deployed [Simulation].

‘As expected… no one’s here.’

The god’s fragment I met here before had succeeded in interfering with the Akashic Record to postpone the water-caused destruction by one year.

So I thought. The dimensional rift is where the deepest roots of existence are embedded. Wouldn’t this place be the gateway toward ‘transcendence’?

I recalled the Prophet’s method of manipulating magical power. Like magic that makes you doubt your eyes even when you see it, the movement of magical power was illogical. But like how a magician’s trick looks completely different when viewed from the side, back, below, or above instead of from the front… wouldn’t that movement look a bit different from here in the dimensional rift?

‘The problem is that directly simulating the Outer God’s servant is impossible…’

Still, there was a method. It would be an absurd amount of work though.

“Changing conditions. I’ll simulate the moment I was attacked by the Prophet.”

Rather than simulating the Prophet, I would simulate ‘me’ being attacked by it. What kind of impact swept through me. Specifically, when the Prophet grabbed me by the collar, I would analyze how my body and magical power were suppressed. Based on that, I planned to reverse-engineer the Prophet’s method of manipulating magical power.

I observed myself being exposed to its attacks from multiple angles. Sometimes from a first-person perspective, sometimes from a third-person perspective.

And I was amazed.

‘I was right. Coming down to the dimensional rift to look again… I can see and feel much more clearly how complex and high-dimensional those movements were.’

It felt like my senses had increased tremendously, beyond the five senses to six senses, no—twelve senses, thirty senses, sixty senses! I couldn’t explain it in words or understand it with my head. I intuited it. The sensations I was handling here in the dimensional rift would evaporate the moment I woke from [Simulation]. Just like how I forgot most of those endless streams of information I saw with the god’s fragment in the Akashic Record.

Because I could glimpse it only by coming down to the dimensional rift, but it was still a world not permitted to me.

But the fact that I could observe it like this was ecstatic.

That’s why it was cursed.

‘I have to… imitate this?’

I had always secretly prided myself on being world-class when it came to remembering things and visualizing something in my head… but the amount of information pouring in now was overwhelming. It was so beautiful and wondrous… but I couldn’t bring myself to interfere with it. ‘Can’t I just admire it? Do I have to analyze and imitate this beautiful work of art? Do I have to torment myself like this?’ Such selfish thoughts ate away at my will.

No, no, get yourself together.

This isn’t just any challenge. This is a fight to gain recognition from that ancient god’s bow, that divine artifact.

I gritted my teeth.

‘If it’s impossible to understand with my head, then let me at least engrave this sensation into my soul. Even just once would be good—if my magical power could move even somewhat like this, just once.’

“Again. Repeat.”

“Again.”

I kept rewinding the simulation’s time… moving magical power over and over.

I forgot theory. I forgot myself.

I just rolled my magical power to recreate the flow of magical power that had poured into me when the Prophet grabbed my collar.

‘I don’t expect it twice. Just once would be enough…’

Sticky sweat mixed with blood oozed from my entire body.

I don’t know how much time passed.

When I had forgotten whether I was dead or alive, I grasped one thin thread of certainty, and I ended [Simulation].

My vision brightened again.

I was still trembling as I held <Saíl>’s bowstring pulled back about 18 centimeters.

-Can’t even pull back 20 centimeters? Pathetic. Even your grip on the bow is wrong from the start. It’s exactly like looking at a mortal.

The bow mocked me.

<What? Can’t pull it?>

<Meh. Not interested.>

When I was eager, claiming I was real, the magical powers had rushed to me, but now they were cold and indifferent again.

But… I felt no emotional disturbance whatsoever. A strange feeling… a really strange feeling enveloped me.

I looked at the people.

‘They’re hollow inside.’

I don’t know why I felt that way. But somehow, I felt like I was looking at empty 2D circles.

I looked at the transparent tentacles crawling out by tearing open dimensions before my eyes.

‘It’s full. Complete.’

I just had that feeling.

This time I looked at <Saíl> held in my hands. Not complete. Sharply distorted. But because of that, it would hurt a lot if it hit you. And I also felt it. That my hands were gripping only its shell.

Crack.

Before this feeling could fade, I re-gripped the bow and bowstring. Visually, nothing had changed. My arms and hands hadn’t moved even a hair’s width. But it was completely different. I could feel it.

-You…?

The bow was startled.

Whooooosh—

The bowstring was drawn easily. 20 centimeters. 25 centimeters. And… 29 centimeters.

I couldn’t pull it to 30 centimeters, but now it looked like I was properly drawing a bow.

-Good…

The bow’s satisfied voice broke my concentration.

Reflexively releasing the bowstring, I shot back curtly.

“If you’re a weapon, act like one and keep your mouth shut. Where do you get off giving archery advice?”

-Gladly. As you command.

THWAAAANG—!

The bow exploded in brilliant light and scattered as a silver arrow pierced the deep sea. SWOOOOSH! The tentacles that had been trying to burst out by twisting space were hit by the arrow and exploded. Rather than pushing them back, it annihilated the tentacles themselves.

[Grrk—! How dare! How dare you!!!]

An enraged voice echoed from somewhere beyond the tentacles… and that was the end. The twisted space crumpled with crinkling sounds and smoothed back to its original state. The Prophet, and the tentacles that had emerged from the Prophet—everything was annihilated. The mysterious sensation that had been enveloping me also evaporated like alcohol.

I looked around again.

Mages, knights—they were still fighting the jellyfish. The steel giants flying around in between were fighting quite well.

‘Those are… Guardians? It’s a type I’ve never seen before. Could they be 4th class weapons or higher?’

Come to think of it, Nadia had mentioned she could summon more powerful weapons than before.

Blink.

Feeling dizzy for some reason, I blinked. Looking at the fierce battlefield, I wondered to myself.

‘Why did I think they were hollow inside earlier…?’

I couldn’t tell.

Silence descended. My vision blurred.

[Time Reversal]

I used my last Memorize spell, but… it was useless. As if something invisible had been completely neutralized. My consciousness faded.

Black blood clotted and dripped from my side.

* * *

Whoooooosh—

Zeros couldn’t say a word.

After Baek Jun-woo shot out the brilliantly silver arrow and drove away the ominous otherworldly being, magical power rushed toward Baek Jun-woo.

It was such powerful magical power that it created direct whirlpools in the deep sea.

“Cough! Cough!”

Lower-level mages coughed up blood from magical power exposure.

The transparent jellyfish, weak to magical power, couldn’t maintain their balance and fluttered about helplessly.

-Deus alert! Use equipment overload to prepare for Deus strike.

The knights’ combat suits detected the abnormally concentrated magical power as a precursor to demonic descent and sounded warning messages.

Zeros couldn’t say a word.

He looked down at the unconscious Baek Jun-woo.

‘I have to kill him now. If I don’t kill him now… I’ll never be able to kill him.’

But somehow his hand holding the beam hilt wouldn’t tense up.

‘But if I kill him… if that monster appears again, can the Knight Order handle it?’

A chill ran down his spine.

That ominous monster that seemed to embody all the ‘destruction’ the Knight Order had spoken of.

Before that creature, any calamity would be like a lovely spring breeze.

Unable to decide either way, he agonized when Evan Petrov approached him and smirked.

Mimicking Zeros’s voice, he needled him.

“Then I guess I’ll have to throw away the coin.”

Zeros’s eyebrow twitched up. But Evan didn’t stop his smirking.

“Wow, Master. I learned something big again today. This foolish disciple could never have imagined such amazing skill as attaching a retrieval device at that moment.”

Zeros snorted. He was confident.

“Hmph. We are humanity’s last bastion. We always leave other options in any situation. Retreat, reversal, lies—none of these are shameful to us. Didn’t I teach you that?”

“Yes. Yes, you taught me. That’s why I’m saying this.”

The smirk disappeared from Evan’s face.

He looked at Zeros once with blazing copper eyes, looked once at the unconscious Baek Jun-woo, and finally glanced at Pathfinder still fighting desperately.

“I’m not asking you to make a decision now. I’m asking you to ‘leave other options’ just like you said.”

Zeros looked at his disciple Evan with a stunned expression. Unwavering eyes. The conviction standing firmly within them. Exactly as he had taught—the very model of a knight.

Forming an alliance with mages… it was absurd, but…

When spoken with such knight-like attitude, it was hard to simply reject.

‘Is it so… was I already lacking conviction from the start…?’

Just as he had left a retrieval device when throwing away the coin, perhaps this was the moment to leave options regarding Baek Jun-woo and Pathfinder.

Zeros sighed. He turned his back on Evan.

The beam hilt drew out a navy beam.

“Knights, listen! From now on, we eliminate only those ominous jellyfish! I repeat! Don’t touch Pathfinder—eliminate only the jellyfish and immediately withdraw from the battlefield!”

Still with his back to Evan, Zeros said.

“Don’t misunderstand. This isn’t an alliance. I’m just leaving other options.”

“That’s enough.”

Evan’s voice was annoyingly full of laughter.

Even so…

-Synchronization rate 98 percent.

‘Damn it.’

Looking at the navy beam blade extending smoothly without wasting a single bit of power, Zeros smiled bitterly.

He felt relieved.