Chapter 47 : Chapter 47
Chapter 47. I Will Set Her Soul Free (2)
The monster that had been hiding itself between the Mental World and reality, wrapped in black mist, finally revealed its form.
It was an amorphous monster with a dark gray body.
It was a sticky monster that looked like a slime, but there were several characteristics different from that.
First, it did not have a core that slimes usually possess.
Second, hundreds of eyes were attached to the body made of dark gray.
'Terrible.'
Its appearance was enough to make the viewer feel disgust, but the biggest problem was.
"Sir Blanc!"
That dozens of tentacles stretched out from that disgusting body and were undulating toward Blanc.
Hundreds of eyes possessed by the monster stared at Blanc simultaneously.
'Damn it!'
Feeling an unusual energy, Blanc quickly carried Ciella on his back and ran toward the Neudorf knights.
"Back!"
The knights took out their equipment and rushed toward Blanc, no, to protect Ciella.
Blanc and the knights' judgment was correct.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Blanc, who barely returned behind the knights, could soon hear the sound of iron bursting with his own ears.
"Here!"
Tarania beckoned toward Blanc.
There, Berger was holding reagents and chanting a spell, deploying a kind of defensive formula.
"Go!"
The armor of Hopkins and the knights was heating up white.
The defensive engravings of Neudorf engraved on their armor were reacting roughly against the tentacles the monster spewed out.
Using the knights' escort as an opportunity, Blanc held Ciella and moved toward the safety zone Berger was making once again.
"Uwaaa!"
"Hold on! Hold on!"
It was a formidable power.
They were bundles of tentacles that looked like they were flailing powerlessly, but when actually encountered, each one emitted a strong energy that could not be ignored.
However, the Neudorf knights here were those who had matched their breathing for decades and crossed the line of death together.
And what they had to protect even at the cost of their lives was behind them.
While maintaining the formation that was perilous and seemed like it would be torn apart at any moment, the knights were drawing all attacks spewed by the monster.
"Baron Blanc!"
Tarania greeted Blanc with a pale face.
She asked about Blanc’s condition with her mouth, but she was continuously examining the monster with her blue eye.
Tarania was a knight specially raised in the Torch Knights to deal with Evil.
There were things visible only through her blue eye.
Tarania was trying her best until the end to find it.
There was no time.
Her blue eye was rapidly losing light.
However, her soul was burning even more even at the moment the utility of the blue eye was running out.
"I found it!"
Tarania finally found it even within the blinking blue eye as her strength ran out. She proved the reason why she had to be here.
"There!"
Tarania pointed to a part of the monster with her finger.
"That eye is the place that becomes the core of that monster. It bound Lady Ciella’s soul through that eye."
It was visible to Tarania’s eye.
The ‘true’ eye of the monster injured by Blanc roughly cutting the black rope.
"Where do you mean?"
However, with Blanc’s vision, he could not find the specific eye Tarania pointed to among the hundreds of eyes the monster had.
'They all look the same?'
Blanc was also a knight who entered the realm of an expert, but this was a realm that had to be seen with the eyes of the soul, irrelevant to the knight’s level.
Tarania became urgent as Blanc, who had to finish this situation, could not capture the proper target.
Because she also didn't have much time left.
"Follow my finger!"
Blanc opened his eyes wide to find the center among the hundreds of eyes the monster had, following her finger.
'I can't see it!'
However, even if he looked following Tarania’s finger, it was impossible to find the monster’s true eye.
"Can’t I just burst everything at once?!"
Since it seemed he couldn't find it properly anyway, Blanc intended to crush the monster itself entirely, but.
"You must not judge monsters by the common sense of this world! If you do not accurately pierce the ‘reason’ that makes those cursed things exist in reality, they will manifest again even if you tear them to shreds!"
'Damn it!'
It would be wise to listen to Tarania regarding Evil.
Blanc tried to find the monster’s core once again with Tarania’s guidance, but even so, he couldn't specify what he couldn't find in the first place just because it was now.
"Ah…… Ah……"
Eventually, Tarania’s eye ran out of utility.
Her eye had lost its blue light and was now dark.
"I am sorry…… I am sorry. Baron."
She apologized for not guiding Blanc properly, but Blanc knew well that Tarania had done her very best.
'It can't be helped. I just have to inflict severe damage on that monster first!'
Although he wouldn't be able to completely eliminate that monster, Blanc intended to inflict damage on the monster by launching an attack outside the standard.
"Ugh!"
Blanc tried to pull up his Mental World to put the White Thunderbolt into the sword.
However, Tiday’s Brand on his left shoulder heated up red once again.
'To the eye!'
Then, the energies of Evil sleeping inside the Brand left the left hand, climbed up Blanc’s blood vessels, and this time headed to his left eye.
Blanc’s eye, having accepted the energy of Evil, gradually had its white and iris reversed.
A white pupil in the center of the eye, and a jet-black iris surrounding it.
It was a grotesque eye.
It was a moment where even the cold-headed Blanc had to let out a short scream.
Because something like a sharp scream dug into Blanc’s eye along with the Brand’s energy.
It was a flustering moment, but Blanc quickly regained his composure and stared straight ahead.
"Black and white?"
The world seen with the eye transformed by the Brand’s energy was entirely black and white.
A world that lost color as if drawn only with a pencil.
Blanc was flustered but calmly glared at the monster.
"……"
There was something visible.
It seemed he could see what Tarania tried to guide him to somehow.
Blanc closed his right eye.
Then he looked only with his left eye where Evil dwelt.
A world where only black and white existed. He focused his gaze there.
He looked at the monster.
'It is there!'
And he found it.
The ‘true’ eye of the monster that was injured and continuously scattering something black into the air.
***
While Blanc and Tarania found the monster’s weakness, Berger scattered reagent bottles into the air and completed the formula once again.
Berger was operating his mana circuit harshly for a short time.
However, he was the head of the Alchemy School and at the same time a father protecting his poor daughter.
He couldn't collapse easily.
He reached out his hand toward his swords receiving the monster’s attacks in front of his eyes.
Then light shone again from the knights' armor and weapons.
"Uaaah……"
However, the knights' armor was already cracking and breaking. They were continuously exposed to the ruthless attacks of the tentacles.
And they were reaching their limit.
"Damn it!"
Berger judged that dragging the situation any longer was dangerous.
Originally, the magic called alchemy was a lineage difficult to exert great utility in combat situations.
Unlike other magic lineages, it was a discipline to find the truth of the world itself rather than pursuing direct utility.
Among alchemists, there were even those who introduced themselves as scholars instead of calling themselves wizards.
'Not many reagent bottles left either!'
Furthermore, there were not many reagent materials left to use directly in combat.
Berger realized that the only method left now was large-scale magic pouring out all his essence.
If he used terrible and violent magic, not only the people here but all buildings nearby beyond the Neudorf mansion would be swept away in a huge magical explosion.
To control that, a reagent made through precise calculation and formulas was needed.
Berger bit his lip.
Berger took out all the reagent bottles in his bosom and quickly headed to his workbench.
"Hold on just a little more!"
It was a stroke of luck that the place where the battle occurred was Berger’s laboratory.
Berger precisely poured out the solutions of the reagent bottles through the apparatus and began to mix them using magical formulas.
It was a process done with urgent hand movements, but Berger was not an ordinary alchemist.
With an unshakable heart of steel, he succeeded in mixing the solutions while struggling to ignore his knights collapsing while fighting tentacles in front of his eyes.
It was a long time like an eternity for the knights barely holding out, but for Berger, it was a time like a fleeting moment where it was hard to even breathe once.
"Hopkins!"
Berger threw the reagent he just made to Hopkins, the sword he trusted the most.
"I caught it!"
Hopkins caught the reagent bottle Berger threw and looked at the phrase attached to the label.
Hopkins, having figured out the utility of the magic contained in Berger’s reagent, ordered the knights.
"Make a path!"
Following Hopkins' instruction, the knights poured out the Aura remaining in them for the last time.
"Go!"
Hopkins held the reagent bottle and rushed toward the monster along the path the knights made.
"Damn it!"
"Cover Sir Hopkins!"
Knights were falling around Hopkins. Some were pierced by tentacles and screamed in pain.
However, Hopkins did not turn his eyes. At the end of his gaze, only the monster sticking to the ceiling and toying with them was visible.
"Too close!"
Berger noticed that Hopkins was sticking too close to the monster than he thought and warned him, but it was an unavoidable choice for Hopkins as well.
It was not an easy situation to throw the reagent bottle accurately through numerous tentacles. To handle the matter certainly, he had to endure some sacrifice.
"Haap!"
With a short shout, Hopkins threw the reagent bottle Berger made.
CRUNCH.
With a sound like stepping on sand, the reagent bottle hit the monster’s body and broke.
The thick gray solution contained in the reagent bottle splashed mercilessly and spread on the monster’s body.
"……?"
The monster seemed to be trying to gauge what it was seeing the solution on its body.
However, there was no need to rack its brain to figure it out.
Because the solution showed an immediate reaction as soon as it touched the monster’s body.
"……!"
BOOM-!
The monster hit by the solution instantly made a heavy sound and plummeted to the floor.
"Uugh!"
At the same time, Hopkins also groaned in pain, pierced his sword into the ground, and barely kept his balance.
"Hopkins!"
Berger looked at Hopkins, who was swept up in his magic, with a regretful heart.
On the label of the reagent bottle Berger handed to Hopkins, the phrase Gravity Field was written.
Under the pressure of instantly intensified gravity, the monster flailed its tentacles trying to somehow regain its posture, but it didn't look easy.
At least the monster was in a better situation. Hopkins, who was trapped together in the influence of the Gravity Field, couldn't move even a bit.
As if he couldn't even breathe, there was not even a twitch.
"Oh no!"
Berger’s intention to buy time worked out, but that was a result possible because he sacrificed the knight named Hopkins.
Berger was flustered and his body froze for a moment.
However, at that moment.
He made eye contact with Hopkins, who barely turned his head inside the Gravity Field.
'Do it!'
His resolute eyes stared at Berger containing strong will.
'……I am sorry!'
Hopkins was struggling to fulfill his duty as a knight. If he hesitated here sparing his life and ruined the job, it would result in dirtying Hopkins' honor.
Receiving Hopkins' gaze, Berger started working again to make a reagent that could precisely guide his large-scale magic as originally intended.
"Count."
Blanc quickly approached the side of Berger who was making the reagent with bloodshot red eyes and trembling hands.
"You…… Your eye?"
Berger was momentarily horrified seeing Blanc’s grotesque eye, but realizing that Blanc’s reason existed within that eye, he calmed his mind.
"I think I can do it. No, I can do it."
"……Are you confident?"
Blanc was a warrior among warriors who broke through numerous trials even at a young age. What such Blanc said was enough to give trust to Berger.
Instead of answering, Blanc raised Aselheit’s sword he was holding to Berger.
"Please increase the possibility. Count."
Berger realized what Blanc’s words meant.
"……Understood!"
Berger decided to bet the possibility on Blanc’s sword rather than his magic.
Because if his magic failed, not only the people here but a huge crater might be created in Baltimere.
"Lift the sword!"
Berger chanted a spell and began to engrave a magic circle in the air.
"As a scholar of the Golden Balance exploring the order of the world, I open my path today……"
Berger’s fingers moved busily.
Finally completing the formula, Berger grasped the reagent bottles fitted between his fingers with all his might and crushed them.
"Follow the path!"
The colorful reagents escaped from the bottles and painted the air following the formula Berger had engraved in advance.
The formula that was merely shining was dyed with the colors of the reagents as if being dyed in the air.
A magic circle drawn in the empty air using reagents as paint.
"Huuup!"
Berger grabbed the brightly shining magic circle with both hands and detached it from the air. Then he carefully brought it to Blanc’s sword and wrapped the magic circle around Blanc’s sword as if wrapping a bandage.
'Enchant!'
One of the magics representing the Alchemy School.
It was a magic that momentarily increased the efficacy of a person or weapon by endowing a specific attribute.
"This is the finish."
Berger took out a reagent bottle emitting a silver light that he always carried deep in his bosom.
"It is an object familiar to you too, right?"
It was the solution of Moonlit Grass.
Berger tilted the reagent bottle and poured it into the center of Aselheit’s sword.
Then Blanc’s sword began to shine with silver light, resonating with the magic circle Berger endowed.
Berger nodded toward Blanc as if it was done now.
Blanc also made eye contact with Berger and nodded.
Blanc’s sword is Aselheit’s sword.
The one performing the Enchant is Berger, the head of the Alchemy School.
What blesses the sword is the solution of Moonlit Grass containing the essence of the pure moon.
CRACKLE.
And what gathers them into one place is.
FIZZLE.
The White Thunderbolt made by the Demon-breaking clan Assinsao.
Blanc newly realized the order to overlay on reality from the Mental World deep in his soul.
And he manifested the world created like that onto Aselheit’s sword through the white passage.
Then Aselheit’s sword emitted light as if exploding and began to tremble.
"Whew……"
Blanc closed his right eye.
"There you are……"
The black and white world.
There, the ‘true’ eye of the monster emitting black smoke was visible.
Blanc set the sword forward and concentrated everything into a single point.
Blanc’s left eye burst with pitch-black Ghost Fire.
At the same time, Blanc put the world on the tip of his sword.
"The world I made shall burn white!"
Burning brightly like a meteor shower falling from the night sky, he shot into the monster.