Chapter 42

Chapter 42. Welcome to a Mage's Battlefield

The strategy for defeating Cryos.

I already knew it.

He had to die a total of three times for complete annihilation.

Phase 1's weakness was the heart.

Phase 2's weakness was a concealed core that moved in a specific rhythm.

Patterns learned through countless sacrifices in the past.

Seria's arrows had perfectly pierced both of those opportunities.

But I didn't let my guard down.

'Mana is sufficient.'

From the moment the war began, I'd been pouring out Authorities without pause.

Normally, I'd have run dry and collapsed long ago.

But I had the Berl Rune.

[Berl Rune effect activates.]
[7% of damage dealt to enemies recovered as mana.]

Every time my Disasters swept away his legion.

Every time thousands of Frost Giants and Glacial Knights melted.

Mana flooded in like a waterfall.

A perpetual engine in the truest sense.

The driving force behind my dominance of this battlefield.

CRASH—!

Blue light erupted from the heap of shattered ice.

The temperature plummeted.

Breath froze solid and the earth went pale.

"I'll kill you......! You insects!"

Cryos's voice tore through the air.

Fragments spiraled and began to reconstitute.

Phase 3.

The final form—the most savage transformation.

This was where the real challenge began.

Cryos grew stronger with each phase.

Above all, there was one filthy rule.

'He's invincible during the transformation.'

No attack could reach him.

The System shielded him until his new body was fully formed.

That window of invincibility lasted a full ten minutes.

"Death's Knights! Tear the sniper apart!"

Cryos's command rang out.

The four knights who had been pounding my Aegis wheeled around in unison.

Skeletal horses kicked off the air, charging at Seria.

WHOOOOSH!

Simultaneously, the harbingers of Phase 3 began.

A blizzard of 'absolute zero' that froze everything it touched.

The golden city's hot springs cracked and froze solid.

"Gkh!"

Seria grunted.

Icicles formed at the tips of her silver hair.

In the flesh-flaying cold, the four undying knights encircled her.

CLANG! CLANG!

Seria swung her bow to deflect a spear.

With the Bow Demon's soul inside her, her movements were ghostly.

But the conditions were hellish.

With every breath, her lungs froze.

Her joints were seizing up.

Ten minutes.

Seria had to survive ten minutes against four knights in this blizzard from hell.

'And what comes after is the real problem.'

From inside the Aegis, I analyzed the scene with cold detachment.

Phase 3 Cryos.

His weakness was no longer singular.

Twelve cores.

Twelve scattered across his body—all twelve had to be destroyed simultaneously.

If even 0.1 seconds separated the strikes?

Any destroyed core would instantly regenerate.

A battlefield scoured by blizzard.

Twelve targets in frenzied motion.

Hit them all at once?

Even Seria, empowered by the Bow Demon, couldn't do it physically.

A bow could only loose one arrow at a time.

"Seria."

I projected my voice to her ear through mana.

"Can you hold?"

CLANG! SLICE!

Seria dodged a knight's spear and planted an arrow.

The knight's shoulder burst, but the thing felt no pain and lunged again.

Red blood ran down her cheek.

It froze into crimson ice before it could reach her chin.

"......Of course."

Her voice held not a tremor.

Venom.

Cryos had tried to turn her kinspeople into 'Offerings.'

If killing him was what it took, Seria was prepared to burn herself to ash.

And the other elves felt the same.

"Move out!"

Shadows that had been lying in ambush burst from the forest in unison.

The Frost Tribe elves.

The weaklings Cryos had dismissed as firewood.

But now, they were different.

A pale blue light smoldered in their eyes.

Dense mana rippled across the weapons in their hands.

FWP!

THUNK!

Seria loosed arrows while falling back.

Death's Four Knights pursued her relentlessly.

The distance widened.

Cryos's main force and the Four Knights were perfectly separated.

The board was set.

I gripped the necklace at my throat.

Deactivated the Aegis of the Ancient God.

POP.

The transparent barrier dissolved.

I stepped back onto the battlefield's center.

I drew a deep breath.

The objective was clear.

Cryos, inside that frozen cocoon.

Time remaining until his Phase 3 transformation completed: ten minutes.

He was invincible while transforming.

No attack could pierce the shell.

But the inverse meant he, too, was a punching bag who could do nothing.

In those ten minutes, I'd sever every last one of his limbs.

"Wipe them out!"

At my shout, the all-out offensive began.

The elves fell into formation and unleashed a torrent of magic and arrows.

CRASH—!

Glacial Knight shields shattered.

Frost Giant legs were hewn off.

Overwhelming firepower.

A one-sided slaughter.

'Almost there.'

I closed my eyes.

The Aegis of the Ancient God.

Inside it, I could neither move nor attack directly.

Thoroughly confined.

But I was not a warrior.

I was a mage.

A mage didn't charge with a blade in hand.

A mage set the board.

Built the formula, controlled the variables, and derived the perfect outcome.

Everything up to this point had played out within the board I'd designed.

Cryos had been drawn in without a single deviation.

I deactivated the Aegis and took one step forward.

RUMBLE!

CRASH—!

The Gale of Annihilation.

And Calamity from All Sides.

Two Authorities erupted once more.

The battlefield became a sea of fire.

The earth collapsed and the storm raged.

Every time my mana bottomed out, the Berl Rune flared red.

I was a tireless Calamity.

"GRAAAGH!"

"P-please......!!"

Cryos's legion dissolved.

***

Inside the ice cocoon.

Cryos was watching the spectacle with his own eyes.

His pupils shook as though an earthquake had struck them.

'......This can't be.'

He couldn't believe it.

Were those truly the Frost Tribe he'd known?

It had been a mere thirty days.

They'd been vermin screaming for mercy on the altar.

And now they were butchering his elite legion.

Movement, physical strength, mana purity.

Every aspect had been transformed to a superhuman level.

'Nectar......!'

Cryos realized in an instant.

The source of that insane vitality and mana.

The gods' elixir.

The absolute panacea that fortified Divinity.

'He fed Nectar to those mortals?'

And not a drop or two.

To output that kind of force, he'd have had to pour it like water.

It was madness.

Even gods rationed Nectar because of its preciousness.

And he'd fed it to expendable elves?

'What the hell are you......'

Cryos's gaze found Rag.

'What the hell are you?!'

He'd been certain of victory.

No—he'd believed it was a fight that couldn't be lost.

Stomping a greenhorn fresh off the Tower was supposed to be as natural as breathing.

And yet.

......He'd been played.

From beginning to end, perfectly manipulated.

The flower garden.

The hot springs.

The peaceful walking paths.

He'd deliberately designed the floor to look like a resort.

Made himself look like a fool with no interest in war.

A flawless disguise to induce complacency.

And in the meantime, he'd fed Nectar to the elves.

He'd completed every preparation to counter Cryos.

The traps meticulously engineered across the battlefield were irrefutable proof.

'He even mapped my weaknesses.'

Phase 1's heart.

Phase 2's irregularly moving core.

Not coincidence.

The man had known the weaknesses and driven straight for them.

And his tactics were just as vicious.

He'd lured the personal guard—Death's Four Knights—toward the sniper.

Completely separated the main force from the knights.

Then swept up the rest of the legion.

Directing the elves, eliminating every variable.

This was an organizational cohesion you'd never see from low-intelligence monsters purchased through the Crystal.

A catastrophe born of overwhelming capital and meticulous command.

"GRAAAGH!"

"S-save......!"

"We need orders, Lord Cryos!"

The death cries were endless.

Cryos's elite legion was being squandered to nothing.

The reason was simple.

Cryos had entered his transformation.

Sealed inside the ice cocoon, he couldn't even speak.

The commanding officer had vanished.

Soldiers without orders were nothing more than an oversized rabble.

'But it's fine.'

Inside the ice cocoon.

Cryos suppressed his boiling fury.

It wasn't over yet.

The final Phase 3.

He just had to finish this transformation.

The instant it completed, he'd repay this humiliating disgrace a thousandfold.

He'd flay the skin from that impudent wretch who'd melted his legion and freeze his soul to eternity.

Time remaining: a mere three minutes.

Three minutes and victory was his.

That was when.

Tap. Tap.

Footsteps.

A stride that cut clearly through the battlefield's din, striking his eardrums.

A dense shadow wavering beyond the cocoon.

Rag.

The man was approaching.

'Fool.'

Cryos sneered inwardly.

Planning to attack?

Pointless.

A transforming Cryos was invincible.

But.

The man's actions were strange.

He didn't swing a weapon.

He didn't discharge an Authority.

Slosh. Glug, glug, glug.

The sound of liquid being poured.

The man was circling the cocoon.

And he was scattering something on the ground.

Hsssssh.

A golden energy seeped through the ice cocoon.

Staggeringly dense and pure sacred energy.

Cryos's pupils shook violently.

'N-Nectar?'

He was aghast.

The man was pouring Nectar onto the ground.

Not a drop or two.

Literally pouring it like water, bottle after bottle.

Lines were drawn.

Circles were traced.

Geometric patterns tangled and interlocked around the ice cocoon, taking on a massive form.

What was that?

A moment later, he understood.

'A magic circle......!'

Nectar.

That sacred elixir—virtually the blood and flesh of gods.

The man was using it as nothing more than 'ink' to draw a magic circle.

A madness that shattered all common sense.

Rag grinned.

"Cryos. Do you know why I decorated this floor with forests and hot springs?"

A resort. For leisure.

Or had it not even been camouflage?

"To draw out the power of the land."

......Even that had served a purpose?

But it wasn't wrong.

A magic circle existed to gather the surrounding energy and fix it in place.

An indispensable schematic for collecting small points and triggering a massive phenomenon.

Naturally, the richer the ambient energy, the greater the circle's effect.

But for the great gods, such things were unnecessary.

The phenomena born from gathering those tiny points couldn't compare to the Authorities gods wielded.

The problem was that Rag was a god.

An immortal using the methods of mortals.

Constructing a formation with Nectar, drawing on the energy embedded in the land of gods.

What on earth was he trying to do?

HUMMMMMM!

The magic circle blazed with light.

Only then did Cryos understand.

That magic circle.

The schematics inscribed within it.

'Divine Punishment......! It's Divine Punishment!'

......Something that existed solely to kill a god.