Chapter 144: Turbulence (6)
Nastion darted between shadows in a desperate flight. The fierce chase led through alleys, the ruins of buildings, and deep underground. Even with his ability to move almost teleportationally between shadows, he couldn’t shake Orthes’s relentless pursuit.
That thing was a terrifying monster. Orthes might lack the divine powers typical of a demigod, yet he wielded a sovereign’s authority over the world around him.
Perhaps, the Divine Cult had succeeded in creating the newest form of god—a god of power, not of natural forces like lightning, oceans, or the depths of the earth, but a god of domination befitting this age of humanity. A god who ruled over Blasphemia and the Divine Cult with an iron grip.
Nastion couldn’t afford to die here. He had to survive to inform his allies in Argyrion of the truth behind this aberration.
But he’d reached a dead end. Orthes’s blade aimed at the air, striking the dim shadows cast by the mana pipes in the tunnel.
From that shadow, Nastion bubbled up and emerged.
“You really are a monster.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I look much more human than you, don’t I?”
Nastion’s shadowy form rippled, his shape expanding and contracting in sync with his chaotic mental state. The surging shadows pulsated like a heart beating.
“The line between human and monster is drawn by one’s inner nature, not appearance…”
Orthes shrugged once, making it impossible to tell if he was speaking earnestly or just stalling for time.
Now, forced into revealing his true form in the tunnels, Nastion’s identity remained elusive to Orthes, layered like dozens of overlapping texts. Too many details were layered on top of each other, making it almost impossible to decipher. He could barely pick out a name—Nastion.
‘The only way is to provoke a reaction from him.’
“You’re with Argyrion, right? Are you folks so short-staffed you had to team up with a Mental Parasite?”
It was a simple deduction; only Argyrion would resort to collaborating with a Mental Parasite.
Nastion, anticipating the tactic, reacted calmly, without heightened emotion.
“And you, you’re a great enemy. What on earth did you do in the Golden Desert?”
“Nothing much. Just struggled to survive.”
Both were aware that the other was merely stalling for time, yet neither could discern the other’s intent. Orthes sought to unravel Nastion’s shadow-based magic to block his escape, while Nastion was calibrating the mana flow in the pipes, awaiting the completion of his spatial spell.
“Survival? You call this survival?”
Even as he spoke, Nastion found the idea absurd. That this bizarre demigod, who was pushing him to the brink of death, was driven by survival?
Then again, the will to survive was the most primal and powerful of desires. Nastion himself was also preparing to play a desperate hand, one he would never consider under ordinary circumstances.
The spell was ready.
Nastion enveloped the mana pipes with his shadowy form just as Orthes’s blade sliced into the edge of his shadow.
***
As the Blasphemia agents severed the connections between the mana pipes and the Magic Core, gradually dismantling whatever had taken over the Amimone Tower, a sense of foreboding gripped them.
This feeling was similar to animals’ instincts for sensing natural disasters like typhoons; just as animals detected danger through their sharpened senses, the mages perceived an extra-dimensional disaster through their sensitivity to mana.
Only Niobe, among the Blasphemia agents, fully understood what was happening.
After all, she had experienced an extra-dimensional event in Algoth City with Orthes just days before.
‘This can’t be happening.’
While it was true that a location tainted by an extra-dimension was more likely to destabilize again, the Magic Core of the Amimone Tower was fortified by a proper Tower’s magic. Unless they were profoundly unlucky—
Niobe realized then that the Amimone Tower was mutating into some monstrous entity, targeting people.
The dimensional wall-stabilizing function provided by the Magic Core had likely ceased to work. As this realization struck her, the Mental Parasite’s body—the very space of the Amimone Tower—began to distort.
The fragmented space of the Amimone Tower, while still distinguishable as the “interior and exterior of the tower,” began to shimmer and twist, staining into a kaleidoscope of colors.
It was becoming tainted by the extra-dimension.
She looked around urgently for the only person she could rely on in this situation—her mentor.
But her mentor was not there.
***
Carisia, still concealed by her stealth magic, observed Niobe’s dismay and improvised efforts, ceasing her barrage of beams.
It was time to reconsider their strategy.
***
The moment he exposed his back, I instinctively stabbed him with the high-frequency blade. The physical attack seemed ineffective, as the blade passed through him without resistance, but that didn’t matter.
At the very moment the spell was cast, I grasped a clue to his true nature. Every shadowy fragment of Nastion’s body was composed of magical formulas.
Whether he had transformed his human self into a magical construct or was created from the start as an artificial being, I couldn’t say.
But as long as he was magic, I was his natural predator.
The spell etched into my mana-engraved drive infiltrated his body. His shadowy form suddenly twisted and contorted.
Discarding the shape of a human, Nastion’s body morphed into countless geometric shapes. It shifted from a cube to a dodecahedron, then into a flat triangular shadow, and finally into an infinitely expanding fractal structure.
As the shapes extended toward infinity, each smaller and smaller, they repeated endlessly. My brain began to overload under the strain of processing this boundless pattern.
My vision blurred momentarily. A sudden emergency signal from my brain warned me that the data flow was overwhelming. I quickly shut my eyes.
‘Could it be…?’
Was that endless transformation some sort of defense against my eyes? When I struck him, Nastion’s emotions were unmistakably those of panic and fear. There was no way he’d had the composure to launch a high-level counterattack like that.
Something other than Nastion’s own will had retaliated against my attack. Perhaps it was an automated defense mechanism set up by his creator, or maybe a second personality he himself didn’t know about.
As my vision cleared, I saw Nastion’s human form had returned. But it looked like something had gouged out his entire left arm and part of his left thigh.
“I cannot die here… No, I cannot die without delivering your secrets to Argyrion…!”
Behind him, space had already begun to ripple and distort, spreading rapidly outward.
Metallic, silver threads like spider silk extended into the surrounding space, radiating outward. The web of silvery mana pulled the area in, consuming it.
Nastion hurled himself into that space. My high-frequency blade pierced him through what should have been his heart—or at least the place where a heart would have been.
Then he vanished into the silver abyss.
“Hah, damn it.”
This was bad.
The abyss that had swallowed Nastion now began extending its web towards me. I etched the spatial information of the approaching silver threads into my mind.
The hunter had vanished, and now I was the one being hunted.
Wouldn’t it be nice if alligators or vampires were the worst monsters you’d meet in the sewers?
***
The twisted space now writhed, expelling extra-dimensional mana. Strange transformations emerged from the ground, saturated by the ominous power.
“Ahhhh!”
“Change in soil properties! Strong acid! We need an earth-element mage or someone who can alchemize corrosion-resistant metal!”
The Mental Parasite, observing the chaos below, recalled what felt like a dying message from Nastion.
‘We’ve failed. We completely, utterly misjudged this. We must survive to tell the truth for the greater cause.’
Though Nastion’s intent was clear enough—escaping alone—the parasite felt no betrayal. In reverse circumstances, it would have done the same, and Nastion would have understood. It was a duty only those who served their creators could understand.
The parasite had no hope of survival after its metamorphosis was exposed. It only hoped it had the strength to preserve its creator’s plans.
For some reason, after the spatial magic was cast, the devastating barrage of beams had stopped. Likely, her mana had run dry. The Blasphemia agents, too, had become preoccupied with resisting the extra-dimensional encroachment.
About two-thirds of the mana pipes had been severed, but enough mana remained to attempt the metamorphosis.
The parasite felt an intense joy welling up from within. Buying more time would be good.
But wouldn’t completely annihilating Orthes be even better?
The parasite’s mad laughter echoed like a whirlwind, shaking Algoth City. The fragmented spaces converged around the Magic Core. The metamorphosis advanced to its next stage, having endured repeated interference.
All the fragments coalesced. The parasite felt a rush of omnipotence, realizing it no longer needed to be called a parasite.
And then it saw them—two golden eyes fixed upon it.