The Silver Sanctuary

“You’re carrying the same thing as them.”

The orbs were unmistakably Origin seeds.

This bizarre form—revealing itself externally instead of taking root within the body—didn’t exist even in Lord of Despair’s memories.

“That son of a bitch covers the kids in silver and embeds Origin to control them!”

Pernok activated his Observation Eye and frowned.

‘There are no souls.’

They were mere shells.

“They’re all dead kids!”

A method that used corpses as Origin’s nourishment.

The swaying silver soldiers narrowed the distance, and Marco ground his teeth harder.

“It seems like complex principles, but ultimately they’ll stop if we destroy the Origin powering them.”

“You go ahead. We’ll handle this.”

“Can you do it?”

“Burying them peacefully is also the responsibility of the survivors. I can’t let them wander around like dolls according to that bastard’s will!”

When Marco raised the shadows draped across the passage like blades, the silver soldiers burst forth with colorful Origins in response.

“Hurry and go!”

The moment Marco opened a small path to the left, Pernok slipped through the narrow gap.

He broke through the passage at a speed the silver soldiers couldn’t react to and reached a space where water pooled like a lake.

‘The Origin of the sea.’

Before bubbles could finish rising beneath the water’s surface, a silver serpent tall enough to reach the ceiling surged upward.

The Origin that serpent possessed closely resembled the evil serpent he’d killed at the Scale Tribe’s sacred site.

‘Could it be… the human who planted eggs in the Scale Tribe…?’

Pernok threw himself sideways.

Bang!

A pillar of water surged where he’d been standing, trying to cling like mucus.

The Origin of the sea governed water.

And it could amplify a handful of water into gigantic waves.

Swoosh—!

The water pooled on the floor scattered in all directions, forming spheres.

When the blue orb embedded in the serpent’s brow flashed, the spheres divided into countless thin thorns.

The moment its tail struck the water, Origin poured down like a downpour from the air.

Pernok used level 4 water magic to create a thin membrane that caught the thorns, then scraped them together into a giant spear and sent it back.

Bang!

The spear pierced through the serpent and pinned it to the wall.

He climbed the writhing body and destroyed the orb on its brow, and bluish smoke scattered in all directions.

Pernok fell while covering his nose.

‘I’m sensing death energy from Origin?’

The more he looked, the more bizarre the form became.

He wanted to grab someone by the collar and demand to know exactly what method had been used to cultivate Origin and how it had been forcibly planted.

Whoooong!

Pernok raised his gaze to the ceiling.

The obsidian was flowing Origin through a small hole in the ceiling.

‘That’s the place?’

He still couldn’t sense a Magus’s presence.

No special Origin was detected from inside the hole either.

Nevertheless, Pernok stepped on the wall, crossed the ceiling, and rushed into the hole.

After quickly breaking through the winding path, he found silver soldiers with Origin embedded in the center of their chests guarding a small door.

“Tsk.”

They were all corpses.

Seeing them devoured by Origin to the point that only their forms barely remained, fury welled up inside him.

Though the souls of the deceased were in the Netherworld, why couldn’t their bodies rest peacefully?

The loyal knights who had guarded the Knight King’s tomb came to mind, and Pernok firmly brushed his hand.

Bang bang bang!

The silver was swept away in one mass.

Though they possessed Origin, this was underground with nothing but humidity.

Origins of elemental types excluding water and earth couldn’t find their pulse and collapsed.

‘They have no self-awareness either.’

When they activated Origin simultaneously, they interfered with each other’s dominance, so their power dropped as well.

To tactically utilize corpses in this form would require a commander.

‘Where is it?’

He wouldn’t have used this place merely as storage.

Pernok looked around while granting rest to the corpses.

In his Observation Eye, there were only silver soldiers, and there were no special signs.

‘Inside?’

Pernok, who had destroyed all the Origins, stood before the door.

It matched the appearance of the special prison Marco had described.

When he inserted the holy relic into the groove that looked like a keyhole and turned it, the space vibrated and the door opened.

That place was a world entirely covered in silver.

Within it, heterogeneous black bars were draped, and a gaunt man was bound.

As Pernok stepped into the silver world, he swung his fist backward.

Clang!

From the empty air where nothing existed, the roar of colliding metal burst forth.

“Are you the moron who’s been doing this nonsensical shit?”

Pernok glared not at the bars but at the right corner.

Then the space rippled, and various furniture appeared in this place that had only contained bars.

The position of the bars also reversed, and the man who had been leaning leisurely in the corner revealed himself as well.

The one-armed man—the Silver priest—floated a square piece of silver above his head and smiled.

“I thought so. There’s no way Marco could have stolen the holy relic alone. I thought there’d be a collaborator, but to think he’d possess the darkness Origin.”

A scar crossed his cheek, giving him a sharp impression.

If he hadn’t been wearing the robes of a Dawn Priest, one would never think him a high priest—he exuded such sinister mana.

“You have mana, yet you also contain Origin? The future I’ve been seeking was right here!”

Pernok glanced at the presence rustling behind him.

Lord of Despair’s memories were fluctuating.

The Origin sleeping in the obsidian was also drawn toward that man.

“Do you know Lyle?”

At the words released while keeping his back to the prison, the bound man—Klein—sharply raised his head.

“How do you know Origin’s successor…?”

That was reason enough to save Klein.

“Were you acquaintances?”

The Silver priest smiled with his eyes while looking at both of them.

“If you knew, you should’ve told me earlier! I thought the darkness Origin only existed in you, Klein!”

“Don’t touch him!”

Even without Klein shouting, the flow of mana devouring this space was captured in his Observation Eye.

The Silver priest’s publicly known Magus Arts involved covering all existing things in silver to put them to sleep.

But judging by the soldiers’ appearance, the Silver priest’s true Magus Arts was—

‘Domination.’

The power to infect all things that touched silver, bind them, and manipulate them like puppets.

It was very simple, but for that very reason, it demanded delicate combat where one couldn’t even graze the color.

Pernok read the situation 0.5 seconds ahead and tilted his head sideways.

Something silver brushed past his hair.

The fallen hair, covered in silver, was absorbed into the floor and tried to cling to Pernok’s body.

Whoosh!

Pernok spewed fire over his entire body.

[Inferno Lv.6] [Original Flame Lv.5]

When he mixed the two fire magics and sent them forth, not only Klein but even the Silver priest widened his eyes.

“You even wield nature-type magic! Amazing! Where did such a monster emerge from!”

The fire couldn’t burn the silver.

Rather, when the silver stuck to it, it froze in its burning form.

‘Even magic?’

As the silver crumbled, Pernok simultaneously raised wind and water and shot them forth.

“A Double?”

They all turned to silver before the high priest, but suddenly the high priest’s expression distorted like a demon’s.

“Just like that bitch!”

Silver stuck to his body.

Everything except the high priest’s nose, eyes, and ears was sharply refined into silver.

“And yet so lovely!”

When silver contacted silver, they slid like water.

The priest, who had instantly closed the distance to Pernok’s chest, swung his single arm like a blade.

Pernok couldn’t rashly counterattack.

Even clearly visible attacks would infect him with silver the moment they touched.

‘Only things with form become dominated by silver.’

He’d confirmed this while watching the magic crumble.

‘Pure energy like mana or formless things can’t be dyed silver.’

The fire, wind, and water magic had been dyed silver and hardened, but because the mana had escaped, they’d simply extinguished.

The method to drive back the Silver priest was to push forward with pure energy.

‘He’d be a natural enemy for enhancement-type users.’

The priest’s movements were fairly flexible, but they had many crude aspects compared to master-level martial arts.

The reason he could ignore even those gaps and devote himself entirely to attacks was because of the silver curtain wrapping his body.

If he could peel off that curtain one layer and then land an instant barrage, he could suppress the Silver priest.

‘I can’t even graze it. Dodging becomes harder as time passes, and I can’t clash directly either. Then…’

Pernok used the magic called Ground Leveling to make the ground uneven and floated several fragments before his eyes. Then, simultaneously shooting the fragments, he extended his glove.

Thwack!

Before the stone could touch and be covered in silver—

In that brief interval of less than one second, he pushed the stone with his fist to strike the chest, and the high priest was pushed back.

‘The momentary gap.’

When Pernok tried to use the same method consecutively, the Silver priest withdrew, keeping his distance.

‘To completely peel off that curtain, I’ll have to destroy all the silver in this place.’

Distance had been secured, and the power to erase the silver gathered in his glove.

‘The moment the shock from this place rises to the surface, the Grand Temple will detect this situation.’

It was power capable of erasing a Magus.

Though they were far from the Grand Temple, the Magi would definitely notice.

But he couldn’t kill the Silver priest without taking risks.

“There’s no helping it.”

The moment he thought he’d have to endure some recklessness, light gathered in Pernok’s glove.

Circulation Link.

Even the space covered in silver began trembling in fear of the unidentified power.

“You still have more hidden!”

The priest couldn’t understand it.

It was purer and more destructive than all the powers he’d experienced.

A Magus’s choice when facing the unknown was spatial compression.

Clumping the silver before his eyes to construct an absolute protection domain.

BANG!

Over Impact containing Circulation Link burst forth, and the high-density silver clumped into one to block the light.

“…!”

The smile vanished from the high priest’s face.

‘I can’t disrupt it with mana domination?’

When activating strong power, he’d tried to shake the core with a mana field to collapse its balance.

But the high priest’s countermeasure had instead become a bad move where the silver was gnawed away.

Krrk!

The Magus’s thinking pursued the best survival method even in the midst of this.

It was absurd, but he was losing in a power struggle. Then there was no need to meet it with insufficient power.

He’d flow this power upward instead.

‘The Grand Temple will notice.’

Until now, he’d used silver to catch any Origin trying to escape from here.

He’d draped silver over the sanctuary’s secrecy to prevent even a single trivial mana from leaking out.

If a hole was drilled in one place, that monster he hated unbearably would grasp the location of this place.

But this was the only method.

‘Before they arrive, I’ll suppress that strange one first.’

Revealing his greed for Pernok, who was perfect as research material, the high priest’s mana seeped into the silver and ultimately redirected the Over Impact toward the ceiling.

KABOOM!

Light filling all directions drilled a hole in the ceiling.

“Hup!”

The prison confining Klein was destroyed. But there was no leisure to care about that side.

The priest, who had thinly spread the remaining silver, searched the surroundings looking for Pernok.

Then, light more intense than moonlight burst forth from the air.

Creepy goosebumps rose on the priest’s skin.

Because before he knew it, the sky had filled with countless spells.

‘What a tenacious one.’

Originally, he’d planned to burn all the silver with Over Impact, then use Divine Punishment.

But the silver, which he’d thought would only be hard, had softly changed like water and flowed the Over Impact away.

The judgment and execution that had responded instantly to the Over Impact—which was difficult to understand with common sense—was befitting of a Magus who had guarded the Holy Kingdom for a long time.

‘I mustn’t give him time to recover.’

Silver was dangerous Magus Arts that could infect an entire space with just a handful.

He judged that the time for the silver to regenerate was faster than the time needed to create Divine Punishment.

He boldly abandoned the large techniques and tore apart the high priest’s last remaining silver with an impossible-to-handle barrage of magic.

‘Though it dyes things it touches in silver, when the area is that small, it can’t cover all parts.’

It didn’t matter if his mana ran out. Afterward, he still had spiritual power.

He poured out all the magic he possessed, and drove down certain Divine Punishment on the body that couldn’t resist.

Bang bang bang bang!

Countless spells that the thin silver couldn’t handle poured down on the high priest.

The roar of heaven and earth exploding shattered Armosa’s tranquility.

* * *

The priests gathered at the Grand Temple were proceeding with their meeting late into the night.

Two incidents had occurred at Dawn Temple.

The theft of the holy relic and the existence of the laboratory.

“We must thoroughly investigate Dawn Temple!”

“Even so, to transfer an individual’s wrongdoing to the whole…”

“The Priest of Benevolence is too generous. No, in this sacred Holy Kingdom, experiments cultivating darkness!”

“Come to think of it, wasn’t there an incident thirty years ago that struck the previous Pope? Even then, didn’t the word ‘darkness’ circulate?”

“Then are you saying Dawn Temple staged it themselves?”

It was the moment when everyone’s nerves were sharpening at this major incident that might require overturning the temple.

“Then, toward dismissing the Silver priest…”

The noisy venue simultaneously fell silent.

Not a single vibration rang through the ground.

Nevertheless, the priests all turned their heads in the same direction.

Because they had sensed something intensely indescribable along with silver.

“The outskirts area.”

The High Priest smiled.

“So you were hiding in such a place.”