Chapter 182: 『White Light』
White Light's heart sank, heavy and subdued.
"Perhaps not the Mage King himself, but it seems you are one of his vanguards."
Her voice was low and calm, yet sharp enough to cut through the air. Orthes couldn’t comprehend White Light’s sudden change in demeanor. His intention had only been to throw her off for a second or two, just enough to buy a little time. But this? This was far beyond what he had expected.
“So even the Expeditionary Force’s departure was part of the plan.”
What is she talking about? Is this some sort of bluff to gauge the truth in my words?
“The blockade of White Light’s main tower also makes sense now. It wasn’t just to prevent the Elders’ support. It was to delay Nokmok’s communications as much as possible, wasn’t it?”
Nokmok? A message from Nokmok?
Orthes’s instincts flared. In this instant, one of the Commandment Frontlines had slipped from his control.
Carisia, now poised and fully regrouped, exchanged a glance with Orthes. A wordless understanding passed between them.
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“Not a clue. This is the first I’m hearing of any of it.”
From the looks of things, the Tower Lord of Nokmok had managed to send a direct communication through the Commandment network. And its contents were shocking enough to lend credibility to Orthes’s bluff—even to White Light herself.
“If it’s connected to the Expeditionary Force’s departure…”
Only one answer remained: Argyrion. A sense of foreboding crawled up Orthes’s spine, but he opened his mouth to speak.
“Betrayal by the Eidolons. The Expeditionary Force’s drift. Everything has gone according to plan. By binding the greatest card of the Ten Towers—you—we’ve secured victory across the entire battlefield.”
“Very well, servant of the Mage King. I admit that the Ten Towers were negligent in their vigilance.”
Carisia remained on standby, her magic charged and ready. Until they could extract more information about the rapidly changing circumstances outside, it was necessary to hold back on the attack for now.
“To think that Hydra Corporation was backing Argyrion all along…”
White Light’s words were barely audible, but they were enough for Orthes to piece together the situation.
Argyrion… abandoned their stronghold?
The thought was absurd. It was an outrageous gamble, one that would almost certainly leave them vulnerable to being crushed between the succession warfare of the Ten Towers and the returning Expeditionary Force, creating a two-front disaster.
Unless Argyrion was certain they could delay the Expeditionary Force—or had some third party to ensure they drifted—it was an insane risk to take.
Why would Argyrion join forces with the Commandment Revolution in the first place?
Orthes steadied his swirling thoughts and resorted to his habitual method: calculated provocation.
“Hah. Are you so surprised that your creation would join forces with the Mage King’s creation?”
“It’s not entirely incomprehensible, given that it hates me,” White Light replied in a resolute tone. Yet beneath her calm exterior, the embers of an uncharacteristic anger began to smolder.
“But how foolish. Because it is nothing more than discarded dummy data. You, better than anyone, should know how things ended between the Mage King and me.”
Carisia quietly delved into the fragmentary data of White Light stored within herself, revisiting that pivotal moment. The moment White Light had realized the true nature of the Mage King: that his ten disciples were nothing more than tools designed to devour the world.
“No matter how much trust you place in it, no matter how deep your bond with it may seem… as long as it remains the Mage King’s confidant, its fate is already sealed.”
Carisia smiled.
Orthes was not the Mage King’s confidant.
He was hers.
White Light’s eyes narrowed as she caught sight of Carisia’s grin. A faint ripple stirred in her heart. The stars of the celestial sphere quivered. Fragments of the radiant wings floating behind White Light broke away, flying toward her severed left arm.
The fragments melted into her arm, neither entirely wing nor entirely flesh. They fused and transformed, reshaping into a blindingly radiant arm that seemed capable of bleaching the world itself.
The arm, suffused with light, settled back into place on her shoulder. Fundamentally identical to the plasma constructs Carisia conjured, yet superior in every way. Without the need for external tools like gauntlets, White Light could manifest and control this devastating power directly, shaping it into a perfect weapon.
“If you had come here alone, with the resolve to kill me yourself, and if I had been defeated, I would have praised your magic as I accepted my demise. But to align yourself with the Mage King?”
The hatred directed at the Mage King burned intensely in her voice. And that hatred now turned toward Orthes.
Orthes and Carisia exchanged another glance. That radiant arm was pure magic. It was Orthes’s role to deal with it.
“How foolish, you nameless fragment of my dream!”
Orthes braced himself for the attack. White Light surged forward.
But her target wasn’t him.
It was Carisia.
Even as her composure cracked, White Light had turned her emotional turbulence into an opportunity, launching a sudden assault. Orthes was stunned as he realized that even in the split second before striking Carisia, the murderous intent reflected in his "eyes" remained locked onto him.
White Light accelerated with photonization. Though Carisia had faced this magic once before, it was now her turn to counter with the same spell. Her plasma-wreathed gauntlet collided with White Light’s radiant blade.
Every movement of White Light left behind afterimages of luminous trails. Each trail transformed into a blade aimed at Carisia.
A greatsword skimmed the surface of the starlit sea, throwing up sprays of water. Every droplet reflected starlight, each beam twisting into an attack. As the drops exploded outward, they scattered destructive waves of light across the entire ocean of stars.
Carisia stood her ground, countering with sheer force. Her tightly clenched fist continued to gather and discharge plasma, creating explosion after explosion.
A kaleidoscope of shattered light danced around them. In the heart of this beautiful destruction, Orthes intervened.
It was the moment White Light accelerated again, aiming her radiant arm at Carisia’s left eye. The arm collided with Orthes’s High-Frequency Blade and began to disintegrate.
But its restoration was even faster. White Light gathered the scattered particles of light, reforging them into wings, and reabsorbed an intact wing fragment to recreate the arm. Orthes’s interference could only buy time—it couldn’t deal a decisive blow.
The fleeting seconds Orthes bought allowed Carisia to retreat beyond White Light’s reach. Orthes seamlessly took over the offensive.
Carisia had met White Light strength for strength, skill for skill. Orthes, however, relied solely on skill. He didn’t disrupt White Light’s magic by breaking it apart but instead grafted incompatible formulas onto it, twisting them into malformed structures.
Light clashed against light, canceling out and scattering. With every swing of Orthes’s blade through White Light’s domain, another star of the celestial sphere dimmed and disappeared.
But such attacks couldn’t end the fight.
Orthes’s every strike steadily chipped away at White Light’s combat capabilities. Yet her reservoir of power seemed endless. It was like trying to drain an ocean with his hands.
“I can’t settle this within an hour… no…”
Perhaps he wouldn’t even last that long before he was completely exhausted.
A new variable was needed.
Orthes activated the magic engraving drive: Flowing Water Projectile. A low-grade spell that produced nothing more than a few splashes of water. It was an attack so weak that it didn’t even warrant a response from White Light.
But for Carisia, it was a crucial assist. The water droplets shortened the process for her spell.
Just as White Light had used water droplets to scatter and refract destructive beams of light earlier, Carisia now used Orthes’s water as lenses to contain her own light. But she didn’t fire it immediately.
Instead, she condensed the light further. Using the water droplets as lenses, she focused her light, not for sheer destructive power, but to imbue it with symbolic and magical meaning. With careful telekinesis, she split the light-laden droplets into finer spheres.
The droplets arranged themselves in a circle, surrounding White Light in all directions.
Fire.
A barrage of light erupted, pouring out every ounce of accumulated radiance. White Light’s physical and magical senses were overwhelmed, both blinded by the onslaught.
In that brief instant, her ability to detect anything was drastically reduced. Orthes stopped fighting. He neither attacked nor defended.
A crucial piece of the puzzle had been missing from this battle from the very beginning.
He had to find it.
Orthes opened his eyes wide.
***
When I think about it, the prerequisite for our success in the Commandment Revolution wasn’t defeating White Light.
It was ending the succession war within an hour.
The victory condition for the succession war wasn’t to kill White Light.
It was to usurp the connection rights to the Commandments.
When I first reached White Light’s pinnacle, I was too overwhelmed by the sight to ask the fundamental question:
Where is the Commandment ‘White Light’?
The boundless mana White Light wielded was proof of the Commandment’s existence. Even if her soul was contained within it, as long as we could sever the connection projecting its influence outward, we would claim victory in that instant.
I followed the lines connecting White Light to her magic. Searching for the true weak point that this ancient monster was hiding.
It’s not there?!
Her mana was undeniably linked to the entire realm. But that was because this battleground existed within the dimension she had created.
Tracing the flow of mana that controlled her body should have led me to the location of the Commandment housing her soul. Yet the mana flowing from her body extended only into this vast sea of stars.
There was no connection point to the Commandment itself.
Instinctively, I turned to Carisia. The mana flowing around her body shimmered like a heat haze. It was connected to the Artificial Commandment buried beneath Mount Etna.
The connection to her Commandment was so clear. A connection should exist for White Light as well—it had to.
…It had to?
If I could see connections to a source as powerful as a Commandment, then that meant…
I was already seeing the connection to White Light’s Commandment.
I looked back at her. The flow of her mana extended endlessly, linking her to this entire dimension.
Infinite. Boundless.
The Commandment of limitless mana.
We were fighting inside White Light’s soul.