Chapter 79: Is This a Person?
He stepped slowly onto the path leading into the Magic Power Gorge.
His gaze fixed on the distant solitary bridge. Within the gorge, magical energies of every elent churned together in a tangled mass, and the gorge's depths were blanketed by strange and twisted vegetation.
Viktor knew perfectly well—the depths of this gorge were absolutely nothing like the deceptive stillness they projected.
Violent elental forces ca rushing in from far away, which spoke volus of just how terrifying the Magic Power within the gorge's depths would be.
The mont Auréliane stepped inside, she felt her breathing instantly grow heavy as stone.
But she followed stubbornly behind Viktor all the sa.
Viktor walked across the solitary bridge without so much as a change in expression. However savage and oppressive the chaotic magical aura around him, it could not move him in the slightest.
Soon, a deep, rumbling roar echoed from the gorge's depths. Viktor stopped in his tracks, eyes locked hard on what lay ahead.
In the blink of an eye, a grey silhouette ca charging at him from deep within.
The Magical Creature resembled a fox, yet its body was encased in a hard shell of stone plating, and between those plates burned roaring black flas.
At the sight, Auréliane's body gave a faint tremble.
The experience at Mirute Plains had left its mark on her—the instant she saw a Magical Creature, instinct scread at her to call up her magic and strike.
But no matter how she tried to channel her Magic Power, nothing responded.
The chaotic Magic Power of the Magic Power Gorge rendered her unable to cast.
A Mage's power was under extre restriction here!
Yet almost the very instant the Magical Creature appeared, sothing whipped from Viktor's waist—a silver card.
The speed was blinding. A flash of silver was all anyone could see before the iron card sliced clean across the creature's throat and a gush of blood sprayed outward.
But that was only the beginning. The silver iron card flickered with a red glow of fla, spreading like combustion through a flammable dium—the creature's body was swallowed by fire in an instant.
Monts later, it was nothing but a blackened mass, plunging into the abyss below.
One Magical Creature, disposed of with such ease—Auréliane stood rooted to the spot.
Inside the Magic Power Gorge, she couldn't even draw on her Magic Power.
Yet Viktor seed utterly unaffected, eliminating that creature with effortless calm.
And those iron cards—what were they?
Was this, then, the correct way for a Mage to fight?
Cocotte, for her part, showed little reaction. She sat on her cloud and let out a yawn.
Magical Creatures appearing at the entrance of the gorge was perfectly normal.
Viktor's performance hadn't surprised her either—though his thods didn't look much like a Mage's.
But the further they walked, the more puzzled and unsettled Cocotte beca.
Why—why did she get the feeling that this human was more familiar with the Magic Power Gorge's path than she was?
He didn't need her guidance or her warnings at all.
But that wasn't even the main thing.
By all logic, the deeper one ventured into the Magic Power Gorge, the fewer Magical Creatures there should be—though the ones that did appear would be proportionally stronger.
Yet the Magical Creatures actively seeking Viktor out were only increasing in number.
At first it had been 1 or 2. Now, at this point……
Cocotte forced her drowsy eyes wider open. The scene before her made her struggle to believe what she was seeing.
Magical Creatures surged toward Viktor like a flood, relentless and unending.
One after another they clambered over fallen comrades, driven by a frenzy to close in on Viktor, utterly indifferent to the bodies crumpling ahead of them.
Countless Magical Creatures sward across the solitary bridge. The space was too narrow—frenzied beasts were stumbling off the edges and tumbling into the gorge below in a constant stream.
Yet still they ca, drawn forward like moths to a fla.
Before long, airborne Magical Creatures burst out from the darkness above as well.
Saber-Fang Mantises with jutting fangs, Sulfur Flies trailing green viscous sli from their mouths, even swarms of green bats whose skulls were smothered by 4 pairs of compound eyes—they blotted out the already low-hanging sky in a dense, writhing mass, bearing down toward them all.
And their target—naturally, was Viktor.
"This……this could already be considered a small-scale Beast Tide, couldn't it……"
Cocotte said it in her unhurried drawl, but there was a thread of genuine shock beneath the words.
At this scale, this had already beco an incident for the Magic Power Gorge.
By rights, as a Council mber, she should be stepping in to help Viktor.
But……
Cocotte looked toward Viktor.
At so point she hadn't noticed, dozens of iron cards had begun rotating around him, forming what seed like an impenetrable iron wall.
The mont any suicidal beast made contact with that iron wall, it was as though it had been caught in a vortex of blade winds—reduced instantly to a mist of blood, not even a body left behind.
Whether running beast or flying insect, their frail bodies before Viktor were no more than sheets of paper.
Viktor walked on with both hands in his pockets, advancing at his own unhurried pace.
Wherever he passed, nothing was left standing.
"This……is he really a Mage?"
For the 1st ti in her hundred years as a Mage, Cocotte found herself questioning her own understanding of what a Mage was.
Viktor's way of fighting—she had never seen or heard anything like it.
Many powerful Mages had passed through the Magic Power Gorge before.
But without exception, every single one of them had chosen to move through with extre caution. Even when Magical Creatures appeared, the restrictions on their Magic Power would drive them to avoid confrontation.
Or they would exploit the terrain, using magic to send Magical Creatures tumbling off the cliffs of their own accord.
Mages' thods were endlessly varied—yet she had never once seen a Mage like Viktor.
He seed as though he had been born for battle alone.
He was not limited to the use of magic. Even this single, monotonous attack thod—Cocotte could see through it at a glance.
Nothing more than iron cards crafted from a special material, driven by the barest release of Magic Power for control.
And yet it was elegant to the point of resembling……
A machine running a perfectly pre-calculated program.
The group pressed on through the gorge. Throughout it all, everyone remained utterly silent, the quiet between them absolute.
Auréliane didn't dare approach to disturb Viktor either—she was afraid of distracting her teacher and breaking his concentration.
After all, in a situation like this, a single mistake would have consequences too terrible to contemplate.
She had Viktor's help and could keep respawning—but Viktor himself could not.
She had never forgotten: she was here because Viktor had brought her to broaden her horizons, not to drag him down.
The deeper they walked into the gorge, the more the surrounding vegetation thinned and disappeared, replaced by ever more ferocious lightning and thunder and black flas burning without restraint.
The lightning was like a writhing nest of vipers—whipped to frenzy by the pounding of war drums—thrashing and coiling as they flicked their tongues toward the group in wordless threat.
Bolts of lightning in every direction swallowed the black clouds pressing low overhead in an instant, until it felt as though nothing existed ahead but that boundless, infinite lightning.
"This is the Storm Grounds."
"Lightning never stops here year-round. It's one of the more dangerous areas of the Magic Power Gorge."
Cocotte stroked her floating cloud, as though soothing it through its unease, and explained to Viktor:
"Walk further ahead, and the Magical Creatures there are no longer ordinary ones."
"They're closer to elental constructs."
Viktor didn't respond. He had known all of this from the very beginning.
A Magical Creature flickering with lightning erged nearby—but before it could act in the slightest.
The flaming iron cards tore through the surrounding air, transforming into streaking fla-arrows that shot at high speed toward the elental creature.
Within the span of a single second, the iron cards had sliced through it over a hundred tis.
The elental creature, subjected to a devastating force of laceration, vanished in a single pass—dissolving into wisps of smoke and dust without a trace.
The languid Elf watched Viktor's extraordinary thods with straightening posture, a quiet awe stirring within her:
Indeed even the creatures here are eliminated in an instant—how terrifyingly strong.
In truth, she still didn't understand how Viktor could possess such frightening power.
Inside the Magic Power Gorge, even she herself felt her Magic Power under restriction, making it difficult to execute complex, demanding high-powered spells.
If she were placed in Viktor's position right now—if she were being honest with herself—she couldn't do it.
Weija stood on Viktor's shoulder, still maintaining the act of being a perfectly ordinary—if slightly extraordinary—Crow.
After all, a normal crow had no business being inside the Magic Power Gorge.
Feeling the turbulent Magic Power of the gorge churning around her, Weija felt a quiet sense of reflection stir within her.
What a monster.
Though she had thought this many tis before, Weija was still struck every ti by Viktor's monstrous combat ability.
As they walked, Viktor abruptly stopped.
Cocotte looked at him, puzzled:
"Viktor, why have you stopped?"
The storm raged around them, lightning pouring across the sky in a torrential, thundering deluge.
Viktor watched a bolt of blue lightning cleave through the sky above, narrowed his eyes, and said with calm indifference:
"Any spoils dropped by Magical Creatures killed inside the Magic Power Gorge—they go to . That's the rule, isn't it?"
Neither of the 2 quite followed where Viktor was going, but Cocotte turned it over in her mind and said:
"Mm……yes, there's no issue with that."
She hadn't been able to make out what Viktor ant by those words—but the very next second, her drowsy eyes went wide.
At so point she hadn't noticed, the red patterns on Viktor's Coat began to flicker—then blazed to life all at once, as though molten rock had begun to flow through them.
A suppressed, scorching aura she could feel radiating from Viktor started to erupt outward.
Cocotte hurriedly rubbed her eyes.
Am I seeing things?
But the next second, Viktor's presence made that feeling only stronger and more certain.
Like the on of so world-shaking demonic beast reawakening—about to cross into the world.
The Elf stood frozen in place, and suddenly understood.
From the very mont they entered the gorge, every ti Viktor released an attack, the Coat on his body had been flickering with streaks of red light.
She hadn't thought much of it at first—she'd always sensed that the Coat Viktor wore was no ordinary garnt.
Likely so kind of special Mage's robe.
Now, she suddenly realized sothing.
Why the Magical Creatures of the gorge had been swarming toward Viktor like moths to a fla.
Magical Creatures were territorial by nature.
The stronger the creature, the less it would tolerate another creature encroaching on its domain.
She didn't understand how Viktor had managed to replicate this terrifying aura—but as things stood now, in the eyes of those creatures:
Viktor's presence was that of a mighty, world-ending Fire Beast.
Cocotte snapped upright at once.
"Wait—is he actually human?"
What kind of human went around giving off the scent of a Magical Beast?
As an Elf, Cocotte could perceive things far beyond what others could.
This aura, compared to a magical beast, was actually closer to—
Pure, raw, violent Fire-attribute energy.
No wonder Heim's letter had been reduced to ash. This cleared everything up entirely.
Then sothing else struck her:
Why had Viktor chosen this mont—here in the Storm Grounds—to suddenly reveal this ferocious aura of his?
And what had he ant by what he said just now?
"ROAARRR—!!"
A thunderous, furious roar split the heavens and earth asunder. The lightning all around was like ten thousand serpents shedding their skins in an instant, transforming into countless writhing lesser dragons, thrashing wildly.
The shattered stones of the Storm Grounds began to rain down endlessly. Powerful gales rose again from the gorge floor in surging columns.
An enormous pale hand slowly erged from the depths of the abyss, gripping the surrounding mountain face. Clouds of dust and ash billowed up, swallowing the entire sky.
Through that vast curtain of dust, blue lightning crackled restlessly in the shadows, and the silhouette of a colossal head slowly took form.
A world-splitting bolt of lightning flashed—and everyone saw clearly the creature before them, its presence enough to swallow the sky whole.
Cocotte's eyes went wide. Every trace of her earlier drowsiness was swept away, and what filled her face now was pure solemnity and dread:
"The Storm Dragon King!? Why in the world did you provoke it?!"
The Crow on Viktor's shoulder suddenly spoke, its words carried only to Viktor on the howling wind:
"Viktor."
Hearing Weija speak up, Viktor understood imdiately what she ant.
Magic Link.
But Viktor shook his head and said:
"No need."
Viktor would face this terrifying Boss with his own power at its absolute peak.
Lord of the Magic Power Gorge's Storm Grounds—the Storm Dragon King.
An ultimate Magic Power construct synthesized from Magic Power itself, it was not a true mber of the dragon race.
Facing the terrifying creature before him, Viktor said suddenly:
"Auréliane."
Auréliane, standing behind him with her robes nearly torn away by the gale, snapped back to attention.
The turbulent Magic Power of the Rhea Gorge made it impossible for her to even speak.
She could only prick up her ears and listen carefully to Viktor's words through the raging storm and flashing lightning.
"This—is the lesson you will be studying today."
"Make sure to write a report when you get back."
Viktor flung 2 cards skyward. In an instant, 108 iron cards burst into flight, dancing through the air around him.
Spinning in a frenzy around Viktor, they ford a towering storm of cards that surged into the sky.
Red and green against each other—the colors blazed jarringly bright beneath the oppressive black clouds.
But this was only the beginning.
Gradually, his entire body began to be wrapped in a surge of scorching red energy.
Beneath that Coat, a solid, lava-streaked shell of armor slowly took form, spreading across his fra.
Upon the Coat itself, it was as though the eyes of a great beast had slowly opened.
2 beams of light blazing like the sun erupted from within them—and in this Storm Grounds, they shone like a sun piercing through the gloom.
He radiated light from his entire being, like a god of destruction descending upon the earth.
The lightning and hurricanes of the Storm Grounds gradually stilled. In their place ca a sky burning red, and a temperature so scorching it lted everything it touched.
Searing heat enveloped Viktor all at once—and molten rock began to seep up through the ground at his feet.
Auréliane's face flushed a deep shade of red as she covered her mouth and stared at Viktor.
Teacher……
He's……he's so cool!
At the sight of it, Cocotte short-circuited for a few seconds.
"The Magic Power Gorge's constant abnormal turbulence—Viktor actually changed it!?"
Magic that could alter the very environnt……was a power no human should ever possess.
Then all at once, as if sothing had clicked, she stared blankly ahead and blurted the words aloud:
"A Calamity!?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers