Episode 602 Artificial Gift (2)
Returning to the New Magic Tower, Loteron examined the situation inside.
Perhaps due to a sudden external surprise attack, the New Magic Tower was in a chaotic atmosphere.
This means that a huge hole has been opened in the defense system that the New Magic Tower was proud of.
No matter where the siege weapon was brought from, it was impervious, but a hole was made in the center of the magic tower as if it had been cut out with something.
The good news was that there was no major damage to the core structure supporting the interior.
If he hadn’t done that, the God Demon Tower would have broken his back from the middle.
‘The Magic Tower wouldn’t have collapsed just because of something like that, but it could still have made it dangerous. But the man didn’t do it on purpose.’
The original purpose was to take away important items stored in the New Magic Tower, and it was not even assumed that the New Magic Tower itself would be destroyed.
In other words, he could have destroyed the New Magic Tower if he wanted to.
However, since he did not do so, Loteron decided to trust Ludger.
‘The New Magic Tower is currently divided into two factions. It is safe to say that the bourgeois faction joined hands with that man named Nikolai.’
They were the first to step forward as if they had been waiting for the attack that took place outside, and they were the ones who used unauthorized automatons and artifacts.
And in fact, they tried to kill him and Kravat, thinking that he had no eyes to see.
‘The problem is that I don’t know if the entire faction has joined hands with them, or if some of them are deviant.’
But Loteron had no intention of missing this opportunity.
These factional political battles were not his cup of tea, but he was not single-minded enough to give up an advantage he could take advantage of.
When I entered the private studio, an attendant in charge of research under him came out to welcome me.
“Loteron! “Are you here?”
“You’re going through a lot of trouble amid the chaos.”
“ha ha ha. no.”
“Could you please call some people?”
It was a hint, but the attendant was not unaware of its meaning.
The person Roteron was referring to was the proletarian faction.
Among them, these are people with considerable speaking power and hierarchy.
This is something Loteron wouldn’t normally say because, like a noble wolf, he doesn’t get involved in these things.
Knowing that the matter was that serious, the attendant bowed his head and immediately left the workshop.
Loteron spent the remaining time looking down at the magic tower outside the window.
Although it wasn’t visible at a glance, I could roughly see the island of Isla Machina.
All the buildings are made of metal, and white steam is spewing out from chimneys here and there.
For the beast people who had to live their entire lives in the vast grasslands, Isla Machina had an extremely high density.
It was a breathtaking sight to see, but Loteron thought he would have to get used to it.
‘I thought I had sufficiently adapted, but it seems I was mistaken.’
The scenery seen like this was the same as usual, but there was much more unseen happening inside.
Loteron felt strange about that.
The world he knew was actually completely different.
The smiling face of someone I thought was a friend was nothing more than a mask.
I knew that everyone wears a mask, but knowing it in my head and accepting it as reality are completely different.
Loteron fiddled with his iron mask with his hands.
Loteron smiled bitterly at the hard and cold touch.
‘It’s not my place to say anything to anyone.’
At that time, the door to the workshop suddenly opened.
Loteron looked back to see if the people who had called had come, and narrowed his eyes when he saw a completely unexpected face.
“6th rank wizard Loteron.”
The inspection team, which separately handled matters inside the New Magic Tower, was glaring at them with cold gaze.
“You will have to go away from us separately on charges of conspiring with an external enemy that attacked the Magic Tower.”
* * *
[What were you trying to do by sending that 6th rank wizard to the New Magic Tower? I’m sorry, but I already tried.]
Nikolai blocked all means that Ludger could use.
[This means it’s over for you.]
Ludger thought of Line.
Ever since she was young, she had been pulling her hand and begging her to go play with her.
I met him at Seorn and he always worked hard in class.
He looked shocked and frustrated by the sense of betrayal.
And even the sight of him falling into a sleep from which he didn’t know if he would ever wake up.
Nevertheless, what passed by at the end was a bright smile basking in the sunlight.
“You…”
Ludger’s voice became colder than usual.
Cravat, who was watching the situation from the side, trembled involuntarily.
‘What…’
Ludger’s momentum changed from before.
Perhaps because he usually did not show emotional agitation, the current change was even more noticeable.
Even Nikolai, who was watching from afar beyond the test subject, felt a shiver run down his spine the moment he came face to face with Ludger’s appearance.
[ha ha ha. [I never thought you would have such a human side too.]
Nikolai was scared for a moment, but he laughed and provoked Ludger.
Ludger is far away from him anyway.
Even if he tried to chase him right away, the test subjects wouldn’t allow it, so all Nikolai could do was run away through the dozens of escape routes he had dug.
It was as if the entire island was in the palm of his hand.
‘And can you really afford to come look for me? I guess I have to go rescue that girl right now.’
Knowing that, Nikolai was able to wash away his fear and gain courage.
Of course, there was still some slight anxiety remaining.
A strange, unknown feeling of anxiety remained near him, like mites or dust that would never come off even if he brushed it off.
There was a slight possibility that all the traps he had set would come to naught and Ludger could win.
Nikolai did not necessarily deny it.
Therefore, I planned to do my best to eliminate even that possibility.
Did you say that a lion does his best to catch even a rabbit?
It was just an idiomatic statement that couldn’t actually be true, but Nikolai didn’t think it was particularly wrong.
Moreover, the opponent is not just a rabbit, but rather a scary beast that cannot let one’s guard down even for a moment.
In order to hunt such a guy, there was no need to set several traps.
“Nikolai. I said it. “I will come visit you when this is over.”
Ludger’s tone was the same as usual.
It was solid and confident, and there was no wavering in its voice.
However, the subtle anger contained within it implicitly showed that he was angry in an uncharacteristic way.
“I was planning on doing that, but I canceled it. “I didn’t know you would bite me so persistently.”
[Hoo. Did John Doe of the world break his will?]
“But you shouldn’t have done that.”
Ludger gazed intently at one of the test subjects who conveyed Nikolai’s will.
“If you wanted to kill me so badly, you shouldn’t have stood out like this in the first place.”
[What does that mean? Now that you are at a disadvantage, are you trying to achieve a mental victory?]
“Have you ever thought that the way you deliberately kept the enemy alive to inflict pain instead of immediately suffocating them would actually hold you back?”
This is a fight for each other’s lives.
And the most necessary thing in a fight was to cut off the opponent’s breath without mercy.
The moment you think you have sufficiently subdued your opponent and let down your guard, you will end up dying.
“Nikolai. “You don’t really know because you haven’t been in many fights like this.”
Nikolai does not know what a real fight is because he has spent his entire life defeating his opponents through scheming and manipulating puppets to get things done.
A real fight is not something that is so easy that it can be ended by someone else’s hands.
There are no rules, referees or spectators here.
There is only a ring to fight enemies who must kill each other and kill each other.
“You don’t seem to know, so let me tell you.”
Even if you twist the opponent’s limbs and leave them covered in blood, the fight is not over as long as they are still alive.
As long as I survive.
Even if your limbs are broken, as long as you have teeth left that can bite off the other person’s neck.
If you don’t have teeth, use your gums or something else.
The desperate struggle will only end like that.
“I will now show you what real fighting is.”
[…What on earth are you talking about? Is this just commonplace nonsense?]
Nikolai no longer laughed at Ludger.
Rather, without even trying to hide his feelings, he showed that he was displeased with his actions of trying to teach him as if he were admonishing him.
[What on earth can you do to me there other than making such trivial threats?]
“You.”
Ludger’s figure disappeared from his seat.
When the figure reappeared, it was right in front of the test subject who was relaying Nikolai’s words.
The test subject had no time to react to the appearance of Ludger, who appeared, jumping over all surrounding sieges at once.
Quack!
Ludger’s cruel hand, which was not holding a sword stick, grabbed the test subject’s chin.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Crack!
A grip full of magical power shattered the test subject’s chin into powder.
The squirming test subject tried to protest by swinging its arms, but Ludger’s sword stick swung away.
Both mechanical arms and legs fell off.
The test subject attempted to self-destruct in the end, but Ludger infused magical energy into the test subject’s body and easily neutralized the bomb installed near its heart.
Ludger threw the fallen test subject to the side like a doll whose strings had been cut, and stretched out his hand towards the Blue group of test subjects that belatedly rushed towards him.
Intense energy formed at the fingertips, light exploded, and countless solid lines sprouted like hedgehog horns, piercing through all the test subjects.
“This is crazy.”
Cravat, who was watching the scene from a distance, was involuntarily shocked.
Ludger’s inaction was unstoppable, as if what he had shown so far was just a taste.
Cravat suddenly had this thought.
That guy named Nikolai really did something stupid that couldn’t be undone.
Ludger was unstoppable.
Every time he moved, the test subjects fell down without any resistance.
Just then, Hwiron, who was dealing with an artificial magic beast, finished the fight and joined the group.
“what. Are we finished here too?”
Chii Iik.
Hwiron, who was emitting white steam around his body, was topless.
Rather than saying that he took off his clothes, it would be more correct to say that his clothes burned up and disappeared in the heat of the fight.
The good news is that the pants are still in good condition.
“okay. It’s all over. “That person organized everything.”
“hmm. It’s like that too. “The teacher doesn’t seem to be in a very good mood.”
Just by taking a quick look at Ludger’s appearance, Hwiron sensed that he was quite angry.
Cravat explained why.
“No what? “Then doesn’t that mean that the girl and that weakling are in danger now?”
Hwiron reacted as if something very serious had happened.
Gariel was a user of time magic, but in Huron’s opinion, Gariel was nothing more than a weakling.
All you can do in frozen time is run away.
Moreover, his body was so weak that he collapsed from the poison.
“We have to go help quickly now… Huh?”
While Whiron was speaking, he noticed that Ludger had disappeared.
“I was there a little while ago, but where has the teacher gone?”
“What are you blankly doing? “We should go too.”
Cravat took Whiron with him and moved to where Ludger was headed.
Ludger arrived at a location before anyone else.
Another secret hideout created in case of an unexpected situation.
The place that should have been untouched by anyone was truly a mess.
It was full of scratch marks and signs of destruction.
And the corpses of some wizards and experiment subjects were lying around.
Ludger passed through it and reached a place.
Ludger’s gaze turned to the man sitting ploddingly next to Linne.
“Gariel Cosmo.”
There, I saw Rine sleeping soundly.
There were no injuries on her body.
Looking at the traces around him, he would have been caught 100 times if he had been caught, but it was as if something was desperately protecting him.
Covered in dust and with small wounds all over his body, he looked up at Ludger out of breath.
“Are you here now? “I thought I would grow old and die if I waited.”
Ludger checked Gariel’s condition.
There are no serious injuries. However, traces of age that had never been seen before were visible on his face, even if only minutely.
“I wasted my time.”
“About six months. “Thanks to the automaton, I gained some time.”
When Gariel moved his gaze along the chin, he saw a half-destroyed automaton there.
“Looking at the condition, it seems like it can be fixed.”
“okay. “I guess so.”
Gariel laughed helplessly.
Although he protected Line, his expression had not been good for a while.
Ludger caught that reaction right away.
“Tell me, what’s wrong?”
“During that fight, Linne desperately defended herself, but all the materials she had packed were lost.”
Gariel raised her head and looked up at Ludger with empty eyes.
“The ingredients that can cure Linne have disappeared.”
