Why Did You Mess With Him? He’s the Evil God’s Lackey! Chapter 124

Chapter 124: I Didn't Say You Could Leave

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Across the vast snowfield, a group of Mages and Mage-soldiers glided at high speed through the heavy snow. Soft white light flickered and trembled beneath their feet.

Snow sprayed into the air, montum cleaving through the void, the howling wind pouring into the ears of every mber.

Under the power of Magic, the great blizzard seed to lend them even greater speed.

The Mages kept close behind the silver-armored Knight at the head of the formation.

That noble and proud Knight pressed straight into the blizzard, utterly indifferent.

Her silver hair danced ceaselessly amid the snow, like a heartless princess of ice and frost.

At every devastated tribe they ca upon, they would bring their swift advance to a halt.

Angry flas still burned across those great encampnts, crackling and snapping.

They had been set ablaze for several days already, swaying on the verge of collapse in the blizzard.

Scattered across the snowfield lay the broad corpses of several Savage Beasts, toppled at all angles.

Their flesh had long since been burned to nothing, reduced to ash drifting lazily through the air—yet strangely, their bones had been left behind.

The bones still burned with fla, yet no matter what, the fire would not die out.

As though it were burning away their sins.

Even in the midst of this violently raging blizzard, the fire kept burning without pause.

Not for a single mont.

This was already the 5th devastated tribe the Pallid Mage Society had co across.

At every one they passed, the previous tribe had looked exactly like this—flas burning on and on, refusing to stop.

From the bones of the Savage Beasts drifted a constant sll of charcoal.

There seed to still be fragnts of their remains scattered about.

Erika stood among the crowd, watching the scene from a distance.

She had pulled her heavy hood up and covered her mouth.

Even from so far away, the sight filled her with a thorough sense of revulsion and discomfort.

Not that Erika thought this was too cruel.

It was simply that the fragnts scattered all around made her feel as though she might, without thinking, draw a breath and pull the filthy, wretched remnants of those Savage Beasts into her lungs.

Alia at her side glanced over at Erika, seeming to sense sothing. She reached out and rummaged around inside her coat.

She produced a lollipop still wrapped in its candy paper, and held it out.

"Want one?"

Erika blinked, looked up, and found Alia tilting her chin toward her.

"Th—thank you."

Erika murmured her thanks and accepted the candy.

She unwrapped it and put it in her mouth.

Mm. Strawberry.

Alia looked out at the firelight ahead, her voice cool and flat.

"The Savage Beasts have killed too many of our own. They have no one to bla for their deaths."

"You don't need to feel uncomfortable. Just treat them as beasts you can't reason with."

Erika turned the lollipop over in her mouth, tasting its thread of sweetness, and felt her heart settle considerably.

Only now did she notice that what this older sister had been holding in her own mouth all along was a lollipop as well.

At this mont, the Mages of the Pallid Mage Society had gathered around the towering blaze, chanting incantations in a halting rhythm—like a prayer, like an act of worship.

White light flickered faintly amid the snow and wind, and the flas that had yet to die surged higher once more.

They poured a asure of their own Magic Power into that fire, making the blaze burn ever fiercer.

They had taken no part in killing these Savage Beasts.

But they wanted these flas to burn hotter, and wilder.

To remain forever in this snowswept land of the extre north, so that the Savage Beasts would never forget this scorching Natural Disaster.

Through round after round of chanting, the flas grew even more vigorous beneath the blizzard.

Not even the snow and wind could smother their conviction.

Without anyone quite noticing, Gwen had returned to the formation.

As a Knight, she naturally had no need to chant spells alongside the Mages.

As though she had just finished seeing to sothing, she flicked the lingering blood from her Silver Blade and slid it back into its scabbard.

Vladimir looked at the returning Gwen and raised an eyebrow.

"Savage Beasts gathering nearby?"

"A unit from the Blazing Sword—roughly 20-odd of them. By the looks of it, they were heading toward the extre north."

That aligned almost exactly with their own destination.

That is to say, Viktor's location.

"The Extre Northern Ice Plains, is it."

Vladimir gave a low, satisfied chuckle.

The Savage Beasts were rallying on their own.

Perhaps Viktor's actions had stirred their collective wrath.

Once all the Mages had finished their fla prayer, Vladimir called out to them:

"Alright, lads."

"We'd best get moving."

"Oh!!!"

With the Society leader's order to depart, the Mage-soldiers broke into a resounding cheer, burning with a fervency to match the intensifying blaze.

The formation regrouped and shot off again across the snowfield, throwing up walls of snow several ters high that swallowed the ruins behind them.

They cut through the blizzard, the pure snowflakes cold and pitiless, scattering disdainfully over the earth, blanketing the severed limbs and shattered remains.

Burying all the filth of this world, until at last not even the faintest trace of crimson could be seen.

***

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Fla-wreathed wooden vines transford into spike after spike and hurled themselves toward the great bird high in the clouds.

One spell was followed imdiately by the next.

The sweeping green leaves and fire serpents seed to entwine together, pressing forward in a relentless, unbroken assault.

The great bird covered in white feathers appeared thoroughly cornered—under such a fierce offensive, it couldn't find even a sliver of an opening to strike back.

It was deeply taken aback.

The Wind Temple's blessing granted immunity to fla damage, yet faced with the challenger before it, it was actually being burned to the point of pain.

Viktor's magical attacks gave it a feeling of uncanny familiarity.

Across such a vast stretch of ti—thousands of years—not a single challenger who had successfully made it this far had ever pressed it with pressure like this.

The great bird wheeled through the air, dodging Viktor's dense barrage of attacks.

It spiraled its body in the sky, then beat its wings with a sudden, mighty stroke.

A hurricane burst forth from the motion, shaping itself into sothing like a blade, and in an instant sliced through the air, lunging toward Viktor.

The speed was extre—enough to leave no ti to react.

Yet Viktor was unhurried, continuing to release his unceasing torrent of spells.

The mont the air blade ca surging in, the iron cards at his waist erupted on their own, forming a storm around his entire body.

The powerful vortex stopped every last air blade cold.

That impenetrable defense filled the bird with despair.

From beginning to end, Viktor had done nothing but stand atop a single pillar.

He simply stood there, without even the thought of dodging, motionless as stone.

The great bird shrieked without stop, its powerful shockwaves rocking the boundless clouds, sending white ripples pulsing outward over and over again.

Yet Viktor seed entirely unaffected, continuing to unleash his formidable Magic.

Countless Formations took shape in his hands as swiftly as rough sketches being drawn, and released just as fast.

Under the savage onslaught, the great bird finally lost the last of its patience.

It understood: if this continued, there would be no further possibility of defeating its opponent.

The great bird beat its wings and plunged through the cloud layer, shooting toward a point far in the distance.

Riding the tailwind, it quickly opened the distance from the range of Viktor's Magic.

Though Viktor had countless ans to reach it still—and could easily knock it from the sky—he simply watched its movents.

The great bird opened its beak, and a storm began swirling and gathering within its maw.

【Aerial Detonation】

A white tempest sweeping across the heavens materialized out of thin air high above the sky.

In the next instant—

The enormous surge of air instantly tore through the cloud layer, piercing the pristine white clouds—a column of spiraling force that seed to shoot straight toward the heavens.

It was as though even sound had stilled for a mont, the surging air currents like crashing, raging waves, tearing the very air into one crack after another.

The pillars beneath the cloud layer began to sway and shudder from the impact.

The astounding projectile ca crashing toward Viktor.

The attack had not yet arrived, but its pressure had already sent his coat snapping and billowing.

The massive projectile surged straight at Viktor.

He simply stood his ground, hands tucked in his pockets, keeping his coat settled calmly around him.

Across the coat, a breathtaking streak of green light blazed to life.

In an instant—

Behind him, countless erald-green Formations erupted into being—at a rough glance, nearly a thousand of them.

Intricate green patterns covered his entire body, flickering with streak after streak of light.

Then, countless green arrows ford from pure energy burst ceaselessly forth from within the Formations.

【Thousand Lances Barrage】!

A boundless surge of natural energy gathered as one, and poured out in a single overwhelming torrent!

The 2 forces of Magic crashed headlong into each other.

Yet the massive projectile held out against it for only 1 second before being swallowed by the overwhelming tide of Magic Power, which then surged forward straight at the great bird.

The air had no ti to draw a single breath before the great bird was instantly engulfed in a vast erald ocean.

As the smoke and dust gradually cleared, wave upon wave of green closed around it completely, releasing a dense, rich scent of fresh grass.

The Magic Power that had been raging across Viktor's body slowly settled and stilled.

An ordinary Temple guardian beast was simply not enough to warrant any truly devastating spell from him.

The Calamity's own skills were more than sufficient to deal with it easily.

The War Magic, for its part, was not sothing to be used carelessly—without Weija's Magic Link, he had no way to prepare War Magic at anywhere near that speed.

As the erald Magic Power gradually faded, the great bird lay sprawled in the far distance on top of a pillar, utterly spent.

Weija looked at Viktor and slowly asked:

"That's it?"

It hadn't even ward up yet.

It had thought this guardian beast would be formidable—and it turned out to be not even a match for a Calamity.

The wild wind gradually died down. Viktor tucked his hands into his pockets and strolled unhurriedly toward the great bird.

"I never ca for its divine power to begin with."

The divine power of the Inheritance Temple was a fragnt split off from the power of the Calamities.

Obtaining the final Inheritance in an Inheritance Temple granted a player a 150% boost to damage of the corresponding attribute.

That's right—clearing stages 1 through 9 only yielded 10% each, but successfully clearing the final stage granted a direct leap to 150%, along with a portion of the corresponding elent's power.

This was perhaps the ga's way of recognizing players who succeeded in the challenge.

Viktor had no need for that. The divine power of the Inheritance Temple was little more than a bonus to him.

What he wanted was the divine power's capacity to sense the Calamity.

The Calamity of Wind was unlike the other Calamities—it had no fixed location where it would appear.

Like the wind itself, it was elusive and unpredictable.

It might appear above the Imperial continent today, and the next day turn up in so entirely different corner of the world.

It dwelled upon the clouds, a truly free Calamity.

As it happened, the divine power of wind could help Viktor sense where it was.

At last, Viktor arrived before the great bird, now on the brink of collapse.

The great bird fanned its wings and drew itself upright, seemingly determined to preserve the dignity of a Temple guardian beast.

It succeeded. Even in defeat, it held its chest high and its head proud, utterly unyielding.

A white radiance detached itself from its body and slowly flowed into Viktor's.

As a flash of pale blue-white passed across him, Viktor felt his body grow markedly lighter.

The divine power of wind.

Once it had done all this, the great bird gave Viktor one last satisfied look.

Then it beat its wings and climbed toward the sky tens of thousands of ters above.

Yet suddenly—up in the clouds, a mass of red chains appeared out of nowhere.

Like venomous snakes, they closed in on the great bird at speed.

The chains wrapped around it in an instant, binding its wings, binding its great body.

With the great bird bound, the Temple itself seed to tremble in kind, the sky tens of thousands of ters up looking as though it might co crashing down.

In that sa mont, the crow on Viktor's shoulder seed to flicker with a bewitching gleam.

An enormous black Formation slowly materialized across the pristine white clouds.

Like a single brushstroke of black ink upon a scroll, it spread toward the great bird and clung to it without cease.

In the great bird's eyes—wide with alarm—Viktor's gaze ignited with a faint blue light, and he said, unhurried:

"My apologies."

"I didn't say you could leave."