Chapter. 16. Saint and Perfecter (29)
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The first to feel that the tense battlefield was tilting was Otman, who was blocking the enemy’s advance by creating a wave from the rear that encompassed the entire battlefield.
“Why on earth is that…”
Crack!
“Otman! Have you seen it! “The thing that disappeared with the professor…!”
“I hoped I had seen it wrong…”
Idrasil and Notum, who were assisting the heroes in their battle by sniping from the rear, also noticed the change in the battlefield and approached.
A huge explosion occurred in the center of the battlefield.
A white sphere formed and a collapsed castle wall.
And a large army of enemies pours down with him.
and.
– [2 Fael/Drad parties, 3 people! It’s a white guy! The white guy came this way! Our entire rear ranks are already dead! If you don’t have support to at least catch him- Wow!]
– [You’re out of luck. Everyone died and I was left alone, but the white guy stuck here. You picked up a big axe. Hehehe, at least I should be glad that I got killed by a guy who uses the same axe.]
– [This is Shroud, the commander of the Ten Thousand! Ha, white death is digging in helplessly! Contrary to the record that says he uses a spear, the guy with a scythe – oops!]
– [What are you talking about! That hound was just above my head – Damn it, avoid it, Heinrich! This guy is targeting the wizard!]
Bad news coming through the communications one after another. A white mute breaks through to the point where each wire is barely balanced and destroys the wires one by one.
No, I could tell without having to listen to the communication separately.
Steps forcefully cutting through the water he had laid down.
“Kaaaaak!”
“Get back! “He kills people with his shield!”
“Avoid the ground touched by that bastard’s spear! “The only way to do this is to cut off the part that was hit by the thorn – ah!”
Chaos and screams approaching quickly. Dozens of javelins flew faster than the speed at which the knights bounced, causing thorns to bloom as if exploding where they landed, and the white sprouts quickly turned red, clearing the way.
“…If things continue like this, everything will collapse.”
Both Otman and Hydrasil Notum were located quite in the rear as they had a role to support the battle. The fact that the enemy had arrived right before their noses meant that if they could overcome them, they could reach those who had missions other than combat.
A mountain of wounded soldiers accumulated through successive battles.
A healing priest who takes care of them.
The Saint of Mercy and Abundance, who has already used Sanctuary and cannot move, and the Saint of Wisdom, who inspects the entire battlefield and instructs the remaining troops to move in order to somehow resolve the worst of the chaos.
It was obvious that if this area was breached, our troops would suffer a blow from which they could not recover, and since all combatants were already giving their all, it was a situation where no support could be expected.
So, instead of looking at the retreat route, Ottman focused on beyond the countless hail of javelins.
….Snap.
Snap…. Snap.
Fast, irregular movements that cannot be traced with either eyes or magic power. However, with his magic, the location at the moment he stepped on the wet ground was clearly communicated to Otman.
“….here!”
Wudduk, thud, thud!
Sigh!
“Water shell, pooled together and circling forever!”
The direction in which the water droplets that bounce at the moment of leaping break into pieces. Otman’s magic, which had increased his strength from when he was still a baby, captured the slender white figure.
Tuung-
“Keuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
…No, I had the illusion that I had caught it. It stopped for a moment in the prison of water, and as the spear was lightly swung, mana was sucked out like an ebbing tide, and the prison of water trembled as if it would break at any moment.
‘Even if it’s only for a few seconds. If only we could buy time for our troops, who were destroyed by surprise, to recover at least part of their formation…!’
I could feel it thanks to the water wizards spreading water all over the battlefield. Twelve paths that Mutt’s claws rush through, helplessly breaking through. And the sound of the knights who had left their ranks to fight the walls and white spheres pounding the damp ground to return to the inside of the ranks.
In the shock of the magic being forcibly broken, the seals were made one after another. Reflux and clear water. The quiet pond and all the forms of water in his imagination fell on top of the enemy, stopping their high-speed movement and exposing the water along with the water. Idrasil fired a spirit arrow and Notum took out a soul jar.
Gurgling –
The head of the guy who was trapped in several layers of flow turned towards exactly where Otman was.
The Otman beast that made eye contact with it pushed Idrasil and Notum away from him.
-Paang.
The lightly swung javelin cut the charging infantry into pieces with a single strike of water.
Tung –
The javelin was fired before the severed upper bodies even reached the ground.
Wow.
It pierced the chest of the wizard who bothered it.
“C’mon…”
It felt like someone was screaming his name.
‘I wish I had a little more mana left…’
I wish I could have used large-scale binding magic like Sinkhole. Maybe I could have held on for a few more seconds. If only I had saved a little more magic. If only a large-scale magic like a tsunami had not been used at the start of the battle…
The wizard’s body, with a hole the size of a fist in his chest, fell with infinite lightness.
Patter.
Blood poured like a river from my punctured chest.
Clang clink!
His belongings fell from his badly torn robe.
Small coin pouch.
Portrait of an old wizard drawn with charcoal.
A fingernail-sized badge of the Gwangmyeong Church.
Broken glass bottle and muddy brown liquid.
It reminded me of someone’s face among my memories going back quickly.
My last chat with a close friend whom I met at the end of the day, which already feels like a long time ago.
=========
‘Aldrich. I guess I won’t meet you one more time?’
‘hmm?’
‘Isn’t that so? In the church, wizards are officially heretics, so I don’t have a ticket to the afterlife they say. Then, when I die, won’t I follow your strange guidance?’
‘Won’t say anything nonsense… If you’re sad about breaking up, just say you’re sorry. ‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘No, honestly, at our age, we should lie down in the grave and then talk seriously! ‘Isn’t it?’
‘….I really am. That won’t happen, so think of it as your last time and say hello. There is a misconception among the living that death is just an exit from the stage of life and not the end of everything.’
‘…You mean undead?’
‘cycle! It’s a cycle, you man! In the first place, even if there is no shepherd for abandoned people like me, as well as God, the dead will go to their own place~ It’s that simple! Do you understand?
=========
“….The end. “Okay, it’s the end… Is this…”
Otman felt a cold energy like a cold swamp weighing heavily on his body.
It’s over. This is the end of Otman, the wizard of the river.
“Yes… we have finally reached the end…”
The life of a wizard. Otman’s memories illuminated the desert.
A land of martyrs that was once the sea. There was one question that bothered him during his hectic adventure.
Why am I not satisfied?
Even though he jumped directly into the sunken sea of the ancient sea, the purest sea, why did he not feel the satisfaction of the sea that had given him such deep emotions and enlightenment as a young man?
Wasn’t I looking for my sea?
“Huh…. Hehehe…. Cough! Even though he held the answer in his hand… he raised his head and was looking for the answer…”
The answer he had been struggling to find alone until the moment he left the desert had now come to him.
He vaguely heard someone calling his name. Two cross-species comrades who had been pushed away by his magic were running towards him. I was planning to push it all the way to where the saint was. As expected, there was a lack of mana.
As the elf’s arrow, which had been fired until blood formed on the tip of its finger, bounced off the javelin, the white monster’s head was seen turning towards them.
“flow. “It’s a flow…”
His body, which seemed to have lost all of its blood, seemed to be submerged in an icy mire.
“How could a water magician be afraid of sinking…”
His hands, which had lost their senses, were lifted with difficulty onto his open chest.
Suddenly, I thought of the disciple who was continuing the fight alone in the white sphere.
‘There will be no need for a will.’
As he is also a wizard who understands water. There is no need to leave a separate comment.
I will see everything about him with my own eyes.
Otman’s hand was lifted with difficulty. The hand, which was bent as if it were the last hand sign, was gently opened.
As if putting both hands together to catch water. Round and soft.
“Last… Spell….”
It’s the flow. If my life were like a river. The river that flows with life.
“It is the dream of all flowing things….”
It will reach the end and reach the sea.
Water was flowing from the wizard’s chest. The water that flowed out silently instantly turned into a small stream and burrowed into the scars of the battlefield.
****
Slap-
slap –
slap-
Notum couldn’t believe what was happening before her eyes.
Otman’s magic pushed them towards her and Idrasil.
The soul of the old wizard, who had barely escaped the wave but had already been pierced by the spear, left his body out of her reach.
The sight of the soul not disappearing, but joining some kind of huge flow and landing on the battlefield.
And the process of the dozens of javelins fired by the white mute jumping out of the water being blocked by small water droplets and losing their power in vain.
None of this could have happened within Notum’s common sense, so she froze with her hand outstretched to the spot where the missing wizard had been.
Shoot!
Deep salt waves were hitting the center of the inland on a battlefield filled with swords and blood. Gently embracing the survivors. A wave of purification that stops the bleeding and removes the infection.
On the contrary, the wave becomes a huge tsunami that sweeps away Mute and the enemy, overcomes the castle walls, and covers the entire city.
As befits a person who crossed countless lines of fire but ultimately failed to understand that water could harm someone, the essence of the wizard Otman Baudelaire only pushed and enveloped him, but did not have the killing power to kill anyone.
That was enough.
Shoot aaaaa –
It started with Edeorna’s surprise attack, and it was time to separate the tangled allies and enemies and fight a human fight, not a melee.
The tsunami that stopped all battles except for the heroes and the named ones was more than enough to create the few minutes of space that the humans needed.
….slam.
Notum, who was frozen in place where Otman was, picked up the hem of his torn robe that had been washed away with the tide.
In the empty robe, only a drop-shaped gem, as blue as the clearest sea, remained.
A minor miracle compared to the last spell of a certain archmage.
The archmage’s remains were left in the form of a building that could accommodate hundreds of people, and Otman’s remains were left in the form of a staff with seven holes, smaller than the traces of someone who was a teacher and father, and a jewel smaller than a fingernail.
“…It’s Ottoman-like.”
Notum thought as he held the jewel that glowed as blue as his life.
I would have believed that this would be enough.
Rather than a typhoon tearing apart the enemy, a small seed water to start a new waterway would be enough. Because he believed so, the wizard’s soul left the work to him in the form of a peaceful sea, not a violent sea, pushing away the stinging smell of blood with the soft salty sea breeze.
Shoot,
the short-lived miracle subsided, and the sea that flowed with the wizard’s life was gradually sinking and disappearing.
“Some souls. “It could be so wonderfully pure and good.”
Otman’s jewel was captured in Notum’s mesmerized eyes.
It is a tribute to a soul that has maintained the boundaries of any good despite suffering from evil forces for more than 60 years.
The realization that a piece of soul can have such miraculous potential.
A longing for a colleague who disappeared before my eyes, as if he had been waiting for this moment to meet his final moments.
and. now. An understanding of what the last piece of him that reached him meant came to him.
Again.
Notum opened the soul jar and placed the last piece of her departed companion next to her teacher and her pieces.
The waves subsided, and hostility was blooming in the two formations separated by the wizard’s miracle. The shaman holding the soul jar in his hand saw countless souls.
Souls wandering around the battlefield even though the blood was washed away with the waves.
Click!
The magic tree that grew in an instant wrapped around her soul jar, and three ancestral spirits whispered beside her.
[Witchcraft is made up of symbols and history. The magic you are about to perform has crossed the boundaries of magic.]
[Notum, daughter of Autarum. Your existence is the most precious thing that will accompany the history of the species, so you should not hastily go beyond the river.]
[Xua tAuk! Have you forgotten that it was the forest and the troll that taught and bestowed upon you magic? Why don’t you know that the magic of the forest runner does not deal with the human soul? If you do not quit, the power given to you will be taken away for the sake of future history!]
Concerns and advice. Advice from three ancestors mixed with sorrow.
Their words are probably correct, as they practiced forest magic until the moment of their death.
Sigh!
But instead of stopping drinking, Notum stuck her soul jar, which had become a staff by connecting it to the witch’s tree, into the ground with both hands.
“….The ancestors were wrong.”
Troll magic only deals with troll spirits, so the ancestral spirits that have been passed down from generation to generation all belong to the previous troll shaman.
But does her own soul truly belong to someone who runs through the same forest as them?
Although he was born with green skin and a strong body, he was born in a human land, not a forest.
Instead of their language, I learned human language by listening, and because of this, my speech is still short.
The past two years of her life have been much more dense and colorful than her dull and lonely life.
She traveled with humans.
She gave horse meat to the elf who drew her.
I shed tears over breaking up with the werewolf.
Now, all of them mixed together are called allies.
In her life, all distinctions between humans, trolls, elves, and beastmen were meaningless.
Just a person. Because I have met them all as people and have been treated that way by them.
“Notum does not consider them a different species from me.”
That’s why he reached out to the souls who still hover over the battlefield, worrying about the survivors and lamenting that they can’t do anything as they sit on their shields and swords.
Click!
A living spirit like the troll ancestral spirits standing behind her. It was believed that if the troll ancestral spirit could become a living spirit and influence the living, then both humans and elf beastmen had the same potential.
“learning. “That’s what the elf that walks with me likes.”
[If the shaman had made up his mind, it would be too late to stop him.]
[It will either become history or history will end.]
[I like the momentum. [Young female.]
Notum absorbed the power of all three ancestor spirits and extended it to all the souls on the battlefield.
『Green fields and wind. River water and sunlight. You can’t get anything you want.』
From the shaman’s mouth flowed a spell written not in troll shaman language but in human language.
『Still, if you wish to return, do so. In the name of Shaman Notum, I dare to grant you a second chance!』
….CLACK!
“wake up! Let’s do a farewell dance!』
With words filled with power, something whitish began to be sucked into the shaman’s jar from the sky of the battlefield.
One by one, spirits as faint as fog. Soon, countless souls flocked in like a cloud and entered her soul jar without a moment of hesitation.
And out again.
The souls that poured out each began to fly toward the place where their faint warmth remained.
Doo doo doo doo doo –
By the time the human army in formation and the oncoming Mute army were closing the distance.
….sweet.
The sword that lost its owner began to toss and turn little by little.
Click, click, click!
Chuck it! Slam!
Similar movements occurred everywhere on the battlefield. Their dead bodies turned into powder and disappeared, leaving only their armor and weapons to rise up with their returned spirits.
“La Latura!”
Whoa!
….just like that. Just like that.
Clap, clap, clap.
“Aren’t they undead?”
“Oh my God…”
One of the priests, overwhelmed by the dozens of empty armors lined up in front of them, inadvertently dropped holy magic on them, but the living armor simply stood up one after another and formed a line.
“…Geuuu. “Go and resolve any remaining regrets and go on your own.”
Notum, who had used up all her strength, collected the blue shining soul jar. Idrasil was about to support her as she stumbled.
Clap!
Kaaaang!
Living armor emitting blue eye light began to collide with Mute.
****
