Why Did You Mess With Him? He’s the Evil God’s Lackey! Chapter 23

Chapter 23: The Boss is Open! What? We Have It Too!

"Phew~finally managed to get out of there."

Erika was overjoyed.

She knew that under normal circumstances, she could never shake Gwen off.

To prevent herself from getting caught, she had begun preparing the Teleportation Magic well in advance.

She had waited for the precise mont when Gwen's guard was down, then activated it in an instant!

It was quite fortunate—when Professor Viktor had first co to the Academy, he had taught her how to properly use Teleportation Magic.

While she couldn't teleport dozens of kiloters away like a 3rd-Tier Mage, a range of a few kiloters was still within her ability.

"Gwen probably assus I teleported far away."

Rather than teleporting directly to the Summit, Erika had crossed a few kiloters along the Mid-slope—effectively landing on the other side of the mountain.

The landscape around her was still barren and largely unchanged.

Erika began making her way up toward the Summit. With every step upward, she could feel the surrounding temperature rising considerably.

She had not gone far before the heat beca nearly unbearable.

The rocks around her were giving off wisps of steam—the moisture in the air was being evaporated by the extre heat.

Climbing further, she could even see various chunks of stone that had burst apart under the intense temperature.

The sight of everything around her made Erika's heart clench with unease—but she pressed on through the heat and kept climbing.

At the sa ti, she had not forgotten to apply several Heat Resistance statuses to herself.

She was a Mage. She knew this was a phenonon caused by the overwhelming saturation of Fire Elents on the volcano.

"Just as I thought—this is no ordinary volcanic eruption."

"A normal eruption could never draw out this density of magical elents."

Erika confird her suspicion: only by going up would she be able to see more.

Her father and the others only knew how to use magic to seal everything off. The thought of addressing the problem at its source had never even crossed their minds.

"Stubborn old Mages."

She muttered a few words under her breath, then shifted her thoughts to Viktor—also a 3rd-Tier Mage.

The youngest 3rd-Tier Mage in history. To this day, no one had broken his record.

Is the volcano's disturbance...really sothing Viktor caused?

Crack—

As she was lost in thought, the sound of a stone being crushed underfoot ca from behind her.

"What is that!?"

She spun around sharply. A red hedgehog burrowed up from the ground, its body wrapped in a faint flickering fla, charging straight toward Erika.

"A Tier-2 magical creature! A Fla Hedgehog."

Erika casually traced a Magic Formation and aid it at the creature.

【2nd-Tier Magic: Water Cannon】

With that, an enormous spinning sphere of water swelled in Erika's hands and erupted forth in an instant.

The Fla Hedgehog was blasted back dozens of ters and crashed to the ground, all 4 limbs pointing skyward.

The flas on its body were completely extinguished, leaving it looking like a lump of charcoal.

Clearly, it was dead.

The strength of a Tier-2 magical creature was naturally no match for an elite Mage who had trained for years.

An instant kill was entirely within reason.

"That was easy."

Erika could hardly believe it. This was her first ti defeating a magical creature out in the wild.

So she wasn't weak at all.

She felt a surge of pride at her own courage.

Mount Vesuvius was a relatively dangerous place to begin with.

Fire-type magical creatures ranged across a fairly wide area.

The higher one climbed, the greater the number of creatures—and in proportion to their numbers, the stronger they beca as well.

At first she was able to handle them with ease, but as she climbed higher, the going grew harder.

The closer she got to the Summit, the more powerful the monsters beca.

Erika was still just barely managing, but sothing felt off.

"I've studied all of these magical creatures at the Academy—so why is there such a huge gap between their actual strength and what was taught in class?"

Another Fla Hedgehog burst up from the earth. This ti, Erika needed several spells to put it down completely.

Compared to the earlier ones, its claws were noticeably sharper and the flas on its back burned far more fiercely.

Naturally, its aggression had grown stronger as well.

"These magical creatures have been enhanced?"

The thought flashed through Erika's mind.

"The dense Fla Elents in the surrounding area are making them stronger."

The surge in Fla Elents was no coincidence.

She had every intention of pressing further up the mountain—Erika was certain the Summit held the answers she was looking for.

But the terrifying heat was already beginning to make her head swim, and the increasingly powerful magical creatures gave her pause.

Even her magic was gradually losing ground against the scorching temperature.

Erika stopped where she was, deciding to take a mont to recover and think of a way to reach the Summit.

Then suddenly, she thought of the single potion bottle left in her bag.

She stared at it, then lifted her gaze toward the Summit.

An idea struck.

"I've got it!"

anwhile, on the other side of the mountain—

Gwen sprinted ceaselessly toward the Summit, even as the heat was intense enough to drench her in sweat.

The Silver Blade in her hand sliced through the magical creatures blocking her path, one after another, as though they were nothing.

"First Viktor, and now the Duke's daughter."

"Why does everyone around have to go looking for trouble?"

Did she not want to go find Viktor herself?

No—of course she did. In fact, she wanted to so badly it was nearly driving her mad.

She wanted to find Viktor and demand face-to-face whether or not he was responsible for the volcano's disturbance.

If he said yes—then the very next second, her fist would et his face.

And yet Gwen had to follow orders. She was duty-bound to protect every Mage on that mountainside, and to protect the civilians.

"Viktor......you'd better wait for ."

Gwen swiftly severed the head of the creature in her path and charged toward the Summit, cutting through everything as though it wasn't there.

Before long, she too was stopped in her tracks.

Directly ahead of her, scorching lava surged up through the fissures in the volcano's surface.

As though the volcano had been wounded and was bleeding.

With this, there was simply no way for her to advance.

The searing heat radiating through her armor was beyond endurance. She had no choice but to fall back a few steps and stare up at the Summit, searching for a solution.

***

"Gravely wounded......it is absolutely gravely wounded."

Weija kept murmuring in astonishnt.

Before it, the outer shell of the Calamity of Fire had cracked and shed, and an enormous volu of lava poured from the wounds on its body.

This was the Calamity of Fire—vast quantities of lava flowed out from within it.

That was its "blood."

"What a terrifying creature."

Weija couldn't stop marveling.

It was talking about Viktor.

【3rd-Tier Magic: Torrential Rain Shredder】

【3rd-Tier Magic: Sandstorm Mudslide】

Formation patterns of every color spiraled through the sky, 5 of them hovering in the air and continuously pouring out magical output.

Below, the volcano churned with relentless lava, and molten rock began to burst from the surrounding stone walls in scattered flickers.

Viktor kept casting, stacking Debuff after Debuff onto Gulton's body.

By the ti the accumulated damage had pushed it to a critically wounded state, Gulton's movents had slowed to an extraordinary degree—so much so that even grazing Viktor was now beyond its ability.

This battle was enough to overturn everything Weija thought it knew.

It didn't even care about the feathers on its own body catching fire. It didn't blink once.

"He's not actually going to win, is he?"

If Viktor won, then Weija was prepared to call him the strongest human it had ever seen.

No—wait. That wasn't quite right.

Even if Viktor didn't win, the strength he had already displayed was beyond anything imaginable.

To be precise, what he possessed was not the power to simply overwhelm.

The gap between Gulton and Viktor was like a chasm between heaven and earth.

Gulton was colossal in size, powerful enough that a single successful strike would kill Viktor outright.

And yet......

It couldn't land one.

Viktor needed to beat it an innurable number of tis, while Gulton only needed to win once.

And yet in this absurdly lopsided battle, Viktor had taken what was impossible and made it possible with his own hands.

Nearly 3 full days and 2 nights of grinding combat—and Gulton had only managed to graze Viktor once.

And Viktor?

Throughout the entire fight, he moved with the ease of soone taking a leisurely stroll.

Gulton's attacks appeared to him as though slowed by more than 10 tis. For so of the less threatening ones, he didn't even need to teleport to evade.

A few steps to the side was all it took to slip past them cleanly.

The injuries he had sustained earlier seed to have done nothing to hinder his condition—if anything, they had ignited his fighting spirit.

In the ti since taking that hit, he had been wielding his magic with even greater fluency!

At last! One of the 2 combatants had been driven into a weakened state.

It was not Viktor—it was Gulton.

The Calamity that no human should ever have been able to defeat had, for the first ti, been cornered by a single human being.

Its HP had fallen to 30%—a state of absolute weakness.

Its outer shell no longer glowed, and its strength and speed had both dropped considerably.

Weija was dumbfounded. Even in that earlier terrifying peak state, it hadn't been able to touch Viktor once.

And now it had been driven into a weakened state.

Didn't that an Viktor had this in the bag?

Weija looked over at Viktor—and found that he did not see it that way at all.

Far from relaxing, his expression had turned grave, and every fiber of him was on high alert.

His lips were moving, murmuring:

"That attack......is coming."

That attack? Which attack?

Weija froze—and then, a staggering shockwave detonated through the air, nearly sending it tumbling out of control.

The volcano shook violently, and the ground trembled beneath it.

The earth began to fracture and split apart. The lava gradually stilled. And then, from beneath the volcano's countless layers of molten rock, sothing enormous erupted upward with sudden and explosive force.

The entire volcano swayed on the verge of collapse. Gulton's 2 eyes blazed like twin suns, radiating scorching light.

A pillar of fire tore through layer after layer of lava, lting the surrounding rock, flooding across the sky in all directions.

Countless blazing boulders wrapped in molten rock rained down everywhere, each one like a falling teorite.

"【Blazing Severance—Wrath of Extinction】."

Viktor knew exactly what this was. He spoke the na of Gulton's ultimate technique with quiet calm.

Up in the air, Weija was dodging the blazing boulders raining down at blinding speed while watching the pillar of fire that was about to burst through and shatter the Crater's confines—and it let loose a string of curses:

"Calamity of Fire! What a sore loser you are!"

How was anyone supposed to dodge this?

"Dodge?"

Viktor let out a cold laugh.

He had never even considered dodging!

At what was almost the very last mont, Viktor's eyes lit up with a breathtaking Azure-Blue radiance.

A terrifying surge of magical elents enveloped the entire base of the volcano!

In an instant, a phantom castle of staggering scale materialized in the sky above, as though it intended to completely suppress the entire Crater.

The castle lit up with layer upon layer of enormous Magic Formations.

Hmmm—hmmm—hmmm—

1 barrier......2 barriers......3 barriers!

A full 3-layered barrier of Formation patterns began taking shape at breakneck speed. The Formations linked to one another, their three tiers of inscriptions gradually intertwining, and at the center of the great Formation, an ark that seed to prop up the heavens itself took form—like the bud of a sacred tree bursting suddenly into full bloom.

The boundless force radiating from it was powerful enough that even Weija, hovering above the Mid-slope, could feel the danger.

The sky-blotting Formation descended slowly, piercing through layer after layer of dark overcast clouds, and for a fleeting mont, it was as though a vast stretch of deep blue sky had been laid bare.

An imnse, crushing pressure bore down upon every living creature except Viktor.

The towering Gulton sank a full inch into the ground beneath its own feet, its head barely able to lift.

Weija too was struck down by the pressure, and by sheer coincidence, landed squarely on Viktor's shoulder.

"War Magic!? What the hell—when did he set this up!?"

Weija stared up at the enormous Formation descending from the sky above.

The blazing boulders carrying molten rock, before the War Magic, vanished in an instant as though they were nothing more than pebbles.

Once again perched on that shoulder, it was rendered completely speechless.

All it could do was silently fu: Doesn't War Magic require an entire group of Mages to cast?

This freak can cast it alone—isn't that just too much!?

The next instant, the pillar of fire rising from the ground below and the ark in the sky above collided.

2 forces of world-ending magnitude crashed into each other, and Weija could no longer hear any sound around it.

There was only blinding waves of light, and a pressure that seed to split the heavens.

The clash of those imnse forces tore even sound apart entirely; the shockwave ruptured the mountain, sending it crumbling in all directions.

In a daze, it seed to hear Viktor's incantation carried into its ear:

"【Magic Imperial City—The Descent of the Apocalypse Ark】"

Shing—!!!

A white radiance surged into the sky, swallowing all of creation—