Chapter 228: This Gospel Has Real Power
The shadow of the blade rapidly filled her vision. The cold of death nearly brushed against her skin.
Ilyss’s violet eyes tightened. The scattered lightning at her fingertips jumped uselessly.
Her body was still struggling against the lingering effects of the mental shock, sluggish as though trapped in a swamp.
Is this the end?
Here?
Cecilia’s mission, the future of the Elf Race, and that blue bird on Ryan’s shoulder...
Countless thoughts exploded through her mind in that instant between life and death, only to be replaced at once by a cold, numb calm.
And yet, the agony she expected never came.
A silver-gray figure appeared between her and that descending scythe blade as if it had torn through the air itself.
It was Ryan!
At some unknown moment, he had already cut off the compound spell he had been preparing. He gave up the perfect chance to counterattack, poured all his strength into his legs, and lunged over at the last possible instant.
With his back to Ilyss and his face to the falling giant blade, his right-hand dagger had no time to rise in defense. He spread the fingers of his left hand and pressed them forward through empty air—
“Stone Barrier!”
It was not a complete defensive spell. In that rushed instant, the earth element only barely condensed into a curved gray-brown wall of stone, roughly a foot thick, in front of him.
Almost the moment the stone wall formed, the scythe blade struck.
Crack—BOOM!
The stone wall was shattered as though it were made of paper. Broken rock flew everywhere.
But that brief obstruction, so short it was almost negligible, gave Ryan the precious instant he needed to adjust.
Using the recoil from the shattered wall, he leaned his body slightly back. His right-hand dagger finally rose across above his head at the very brink of disaster. On the blade, silver-white lightning, crimson fire, and azure wind blades twisted together and compressed madly at a speed they had never reached before.
Clang—!!!
The dagger and the scythe-like foreleg slammed into each other. The explosive metallic crash stabbed at the eardrums, and the violent impact traveled straight down the blade. Ryan let out a muffled grunt. The hard ground beneath his feet split apart inch by inch. His boots sank into it, and his entire body was forced backward, carving two shallow furrows through the floor. Only when his back struck Ilyss did he barely stop.
He had blocked it!
With a human body, he had met the Illusion Spider’s furious full-force slash head-on!
“Cough...”
A mouthful of reversed blood surged up into Ryan’s throat, and he forcibly swallowed it back down.
His right arm was numb with agony. The web of his hand had split open, and blood instantly stained the hilt red.
The Mana in his body was being consumed violently, both from the eruption a moment ago and from this direct clash.
But his gray-blue eyes remained calm. They were fixed on the tip of the scythe blade inches away, with its sweetly rank odor, and on his own blurred reflection along its edge.
Ilyss crashed into his back and only then jolted awake from her rigid stupor.
Her violet eyes stared in shock at the figure before her. His back was not broad, and yet it seemed capable of stopping any danger in the world.
The despair of that instant just now and the overwhelming relief of surviving it made her heart pound wildly.
He... had saved her? In a situation where he could barely protect himself, he had abandoned his attack and chosen to rescue her instead?
“What are you spacing out for?!” Ryan shouted, snapping her out of it. “This is a battle. Do you want to die?!”
Before his words had even finished, the dagger braced against the scythe blade suddenly slid to the side, shedding part of the force. At the same time, he drove the fingers of his left hand forward like a knife. At his fingertips, an intensely compressed point of blazing white light gathered, brilliant enough to hurt the eyes, and stabbed viciously into the gap at the scythe joint—where the shell had already cracked slightly under the impact of his compound elements.
“Light Scorch!”
Ssshhh—! The blazing white point sank into the crack and detonated instantly.
Unlike lightning’s violence, fire’s burning heat, or wind’s sharpness, the light element brought with it a dissolving force that seemed capable of purifying everything.
A harsh sizzling sound rose from the relatively fragile tissue inside the Illusion Spider’s shell. Thick purple-black smoke poured out along with the stench of scorched flesh.
“Hisss—!!!”
The Illusion Spider let out a shriek more shrill and agonized than any it had made before.
The scythe-like foreleg Ryan had just blocked recoiled as if shocked by electricity. The creature’s entire front half reared upward under the pain, exposing the softer, paler area of its chest and abdomen.
An opening!
Vera was the first to recover from the effects of the mental attack. Though her face was pale, her gray-green eyes locked onto that fleeting weakness in an instant.
She thrust both hands forward and poured every last bit of the Mana remaining in her body out without reservation—
“Hurricane Spear!”
A spiraling spear of wind no thicker than an arm, yet compressed to the extreme until it looked like a deep blue-black shaft, condensed out of thin air. It tore through the air with a shrill scream and shot straight toward the Illusion Spider’s exposed chest and abdomen.
The spear rotated at terrifying speed. At its tip, the violent friction against the air had even raised a dark-red glow from the heat.
Thud!
This time, there was no ringing clash of metal, only the heavy sound of something sharp driving into flesh. The Hurricane Spear smashed straight into the Illusion Spider’s chest and abdomen, pierced through the relatively softer shell, burrowed deep into its body, and then—
Exploded.
Countless tiny yet vicious wind blades erupted inside the creature, slicing, shredding, and churning through its insides.
Purple-black fluid and fragments of ruptured organs burst out of that horrifying wound like a fountain.
The Illusion Spider’s massive body convulsed and spasmed violently. Its eight legs kicked wildly, tearing up the ground and the surrounding webs into total chaos.
It let out broken cries filled with pain and unwillingness. The black light in its compound eyes rapidly dimmed.
“Back!”
Enduring the agony in his right arm and the weakness spreading through his body, Ryan grabbed the still-stunned Ilyss by the wrist and retreated sharply. Vera also pulled back at once.
The Illusion Spider’s death throes lasted a little more than ten seconds.
Then, at last, that hill-like body collapsed with a tremendous crash onto the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
All eight compound eyes had completely lost their luster. Only the wound still went on spilling purple-black liquid in thick streams, while the air filled with a heavy reek of blood and rot.
It was dead.
That terrifying Illusion Spider had finally been slain by their combined strength.
The battlefield fell abruptly silent. Only the rough, uneven sound of breathing remained.
Ryan let go of Ilyss’s wrist. His body swayed once. He had to brace himself with his dagger against the ground before he could remain standing. Lowering his head, he coughed a few times and spat out saliva streaked with blood.
His right arm trembled in uncontrollable waves, and every slight movement was accompanied by the wail of overstrained muscle.
The dagger that had accompanied him for so long had already been covered in a dense web of cracks after directly colliding with the scythe blade and repeatedly enduring such intense infusions of Mana.
Now, as his arm shook, the last trace of silver gleam on the blade went out completely. A brittle sound like shattered glass rang out, and the entire dagger broke apart in his hand into a shower of dull metal fragments, rattling to the ground and leaving behind only a bare hilt.
Inside his body, there came the empty, burning sensation of Mana utterly exhausted, like a riverbed hollowed dry and then left to bake beneath the blazing sun.
And yet, at the very next instant, as that pain of desiccation spread through him, the two Seals of Enlightenment hidden beneath the flesh of his shoulders seemed to be violently awakened from sleep. They abruptly began to rotate on their own along some profound trajectory at a speed unlike anything before.
It was like a deep well whose dividing layers had suddenly been broken through.
Or like the gates of two ancient, precisely interlocked Mana furnaces being yanked open with a roar.
A vast, pure, warm current—one that seemed to rise from some deeper place beneath the world itself—poured out from the cores of the twin seals and rushed straight into his dried-up Mana circuits.
The channels that had been sluggish and aching were swiftly washed through and nourished by that newborn power. They became smooth and resilient again, and he could even faintly feel a subtle tingling, as though they were expanding.
His exhausted reserves of Mana were being refilled at a speed perceptible even to the naked senses. And in terms of quality, they seemed even purer than they had been at his peak before the battle.
Ryan’s breathing unconsciously softened.
Once again, he felt in a tangible way the great power contained within this Elven Gospel, a power far beyond the level of understanding he currently possessed.
This was only the most basic pair of arrays, meant to enlighten and lay the foundation. And yet once they were truly activated and driven at full strength, they possessed a restorative effect so miraculous that it seemed to turn decay itself into wonder.
Then if all twelve arrays were completed, fully inscribed, and brought into perfect circulation...
To what kind of realm would they elevate the bearer?
Mana that was nearly limitless?
A qualitative transformation that triggered an ascension in the very level of life itself?
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