Chapter 967 - Master Eudokia
Just before Master Eudokia could even ask himself if he had truly been deceived.
"You are going to die."
"You will absolutely die."
"You will be trapped within this agonizing 'today' forever."
"It is a pain that will never end."
"Even if you learn to forget the physical agony, the despair will gouge out your mind, tear it apart, and mince your sanity into pieces."
Several Ferrymen materialized like lingering wraiths, all speaking at once, while fragments of his past memories flashed rapidly between them.
But it was only the illusions of the Ferrymen that spoke.
And that was the end of it.
Eudokia had certainly cast his illusion spell, but Enkrid grasped the true nature of reality in the time it takes to blink.
It was a level of mind control that would have forced someone else to bite their own tongue, violently break their own fingers, or rely on desperate prayers to break free from, but for Enkrid, a single exhale was more than enough to completely shatter it.
It was entirely thanks to the countless times he had wrestled with the Ferryman within his own mental landscape, and because the sheer density of his Will was higher than anyone else's.
Having completely regained his senses, Enkrid did not loudly declare that such pathetic illusions were useless against him.
Although he certainly could have, his primal instincts compelled him to reserve judgment and hold his tongue.
He essentially had to use his own Will to violently suppress the reflexive urge to mock his opponent.
Instead, he violently accelerated his thought processes to analyze the situation.
He observed his surroundings and scrutinized the opponent's reaction.
'Carelessness is an excellent tool to exploit.'
That was one of Luagarne's teachings.
And he followed it perfectly.
He deliberately induced the Mage to let his guard down.
He let his pupils dilate, unfocused his eyes, and let his jaw hang slack as if he were about to drool.
He let his arms hang limply, holding his exceptionally rare Engraved Weapon with an intentionally sloppy grip, allowing the tip of the blade to hit the ground with a dull thud.
His Engraved Weapon read his intentions and flawlessly played along.
It went completely slack, entirely masking its lethal momentum.
'We're syncing up pretty well today.'
With that thought, he stared blankly ahead with a vacant expression.
To an ordinary person, the speed at which the steel golems were charging would seem incredibly fast, but to the eyes of a Knight, they were moving in slow motion.
Beneath his feigned lethargy, his five physical senses and his sixth sense sharpened to an absolute razor's edge.
And piercing straight through them all, pure intuition struck his mind like a bolt of lightning.
As his senses violently intertwined, his synesthetic perception drastically expanded, and he clearly saw a single, unbroken thread connecting him to the Mage.
Moving in the exact sliver of space between one moment and the next, he acted entirely on instinct.
His insight rapidly analyzed, organized, and established the reality of the current situation.
In doing so, Enkrid caught a fleeting glimpse of the future.
He moved while looking one step ahead.
Adhering strictly to the absolute fundamentals of swordsmanship, he shifted his center of gravity and unleashed a diagonal slash.
His right foot violently kicked off the ground, while his left foot planted itself far ahead.
The explosive kinetic energy generated from that single, unified motion was flawlessly transferred directly into the blade.
BOOOM—
The deafening sound of the air rupturing followed a split second later.
'I missed.'
He had been absolutely certain it was a perfect, lethal strike, yet...
'A spell.'
The bastard's body abruptly materialized amidst the charging steel golems.
He could feel an invisible, radiating wavelength emanating from the Mage, actively attempting to distort his senses, but he completely ignored it.
His highly tuned perception for detecting spells instantly locked onto the enemy's exact coordinates.
"Ah, what a shame."
Enkrid finally let the taunt he had been holding back slip from his tongue.
Tossing out that provocation, he spun around.
Hearing those words, a thick vein bulged on the Mage's forehead.
"What?"
While the shock wasn't enough to violently shake the entire mental landscape residing within him, Eudokia's emotions definitely boiled over.
He wasn't angry because of the smartass comment Andrew had yelled from the back.
"I was decieved..?"
He was a Master of Astrael.
And someone had actually deceived him?
It was utterly absurd.
Ultimately, he was furious at his own self for falling for it.
Furthermore, he hadn't even realized the bastard had broken free from his spell.
If the other Masters ever found out about this, they would mock him relentlessly.
"How exactly did you break free?"
Off to one side, his five disciples were engaged in a fierce battle, while nearby, the two demonic minions he had borrowed were fighting for their lives, and torches were slowly being lit one by one atop the city walls.
Yet, he couldn't care less about any of that.
He simply found himself overwhelmed with questions for the man who had completely shattered his illusion.
The opponent casually pulled back the blade that had just cleaved through empty air and raised it high above his head.
Taking a high stance with the tip of the sword pointing straight at the sky—a stance brimming with the sheer intent to cleave him in two with a single, devastating downward strike—the man asked him a question in return.
"Break free from what?"
Such arrogant audacity.
With that thought, Eudokia prepared his next spell.
In truth, this was hardly the time or the opponent for idle conversation.
As if completely agreeing with that sentiment, the bastard launched himself forward once more.
The exact moment his foot left the ground, the Knight's body blurred into an afterimage.
Eudokia instantly erected a massive wall of razor-sharp wind directly in the bastard's path.
Immediately following that, he deployed twenty more steel golems.
Leaving four golems to tightly encircle and protect him, he continuously began preparing an entirely different spell.
"The Dream Calls for You."
With those words, he completed a spell he had personally created.
It was yet another illusion spell.
This specific spell was called the 'Limitless Dream'.
Once caught in it, the victim is trapped in an endless, looping dream.
The scenarios change every time, but the conclusion is always the same: it's just a dream.
They wake up drenched in sweat from a horrific nightmare, only to realize they are still dreaming.
They desperately fight their way out, finally believing they've awoken to reality, only to discover it's just another layer of the dream.
Trapped in an eternal cycle, their minds eventually shatter and they lose consciousness completely.
They will never wake up for the rest of their lives.
Unless, of course, he personally dispels it.
Because every human being fundamentally harbors a subconscious desire to escape and turn a blind eye to harsh reality, this spell violently exploited and maximized that specific psychological vulnerability.
"I'm not sleeping."
The answer came instantly.
This time, he didn't even attempt to feign ignorance.
If Eudokia had been an ordinary person—no, even an ordinary Mage—he would have clicked his tongue in sheer disbelief.
It wasn't just because the bastard had effortlessly overpowered the spell.
It was because the feat the bastard had accomplished in the exact time it took to give that short answer was truly horrifying.
Right before answering, the bastard named Enkrid had completely annihilated five steel golems that had charged him.
'His physical prowess is truly extraordinary.'
Unless the core is completely destroyed, a golem will regenerate infinitely.
The golems that had been cleaved perfectly in half vertically simply froze in place.
His eyes literally couldn't track every single movement the Knight had just executed.
Because he couldn't see it, he couldn't comprehend it.
Enkrid had flawlessly executed five perfectly precise vertical slashes, seamlessly weaving five lethal thrusts between them.
With every single swing of his blade, the deafening BOOM of rupturing air echoed sequentially.
He sliced them vertically to expose the cores, and then violently thrust to shatter them.
That was what Enkrid's swordsmanship had just accomplished.
'It looks exactly as if he is fighting with literal lightning gripped in his hand.'
Eudokia was a Mage possessing terrifying insight.
He was a man who had dedicated his entire life to pursuing the ultimate truth.
Even while marveling at the sheer lethality of the swordsmanship, he simultaneously deduced, analyzed, and uncovered the exact mechanism Enkrid used to overcome his illusions.
'He outright rejects the illusion.'
And there was one more thing.
'He dodged the wall of razor wind.'
It was a spell cast purely to bind the bastard's feet for a brief moment, yet he had perfectly perceived its exact area of effect and casually slipped past it as if flowing around a rock.
And then he instantly shattered the golems' cores.
'He swung his sword at a speed invisible to the naked eye to crush those cores.'
Only the results remained visible to the eye.
What was the exact cause missing from that chain of cause and effect?
'The reason he isn't shaken by illusions is because the core of his mind is fundamentally different.'
It was a terrifying density of Will he had never encountered in his entire life, but Eudokia accepted the raw facts without any denial or exaggeration.
'He also possesses a hyper-tuned perception capable of perfectly grasping the exact boundaries of a spell.'
And with that, he established the second reason.
Knowledge is absolute power.
The fact that he was this obsessively fixated on unraveling the truth even in the midst of a life-or-death battle was exactly why he was a Master of Astrael.
If massacring hundreds of people could lead them to a singular epiphany of truth, they would do it without a second thought; that was the absolute pinnacle of existence known as a Master of Astrael.
Maintaining a Cognitive Acceleration spell places a massive burden on the mind.
Rather than desperately trying to track the opponent's blinding movements with his eyes, Eudokia focused entirely on preparing a spell designed to completely bind him.
From the very beginning, his spell was aimed directly at Andrew.
If asked why, it was because he had already realized this bastard was not the type to just stand back and watch the people around him die.
Hadn't he already seen him violently intervene to block the 'Greeting of Agraba' spell earlier?
Eudokia was not like other Mages. He possessed eyes capable of perfectly analyzing a situation, and he was a man who cast spells from a deeply tactical perspective, utilizing a wealth of accumulated combat experience.
"Come forth, Walking Fire."
Sacrificing one hundred living hearts stored within his Spell World and a fragment of an artificial body he had crafted to artificially extend his own lifespan, he unleashed a Forbidden Spell.
It was a spell completed using only a single hand sign from his left hand and a short activation word.
The very second Eudokia's words ended, sparks began violently crackling directly behind him, and in the blink of an eye, a roaring monster forged entirely of flames materialized.
It essentially burst into existence out of thin air, taking the rough shape of a human with two arms and two legs.
The Walking Fire did not charge at Enkrid.
A creature made of living flame simply could not match the blinding speed of a Knight.
Fundamentally, this specific spell was designed to completely incinerate the inhabitants living beyond a city's walls.
The true, intended use of the Walking Fire was to burn an entire city to the ground and then use the resulting massive pillar of smoke to forge a dragon.
Of course, its sheer destructive power alone was enough to classify it as a Forbidden Spell.
This was the proper way to utilize a Forbidden Spell, a method only someone of Eudokia's caliber would know.
And right now, he was hardly in a position to use it for its intended purpose anyway.
Thanks to his teleportation spell earlier, Eudokia was currently positioned much closer to Enkrid's allies than to Enkrid himself.
The Walking Fire immediately spun around and bolted.
It charged straight toward where Andrew and his three soldiers were standing.
Meanwhile, Enkrid was still slaughtering the steel golems at a terrifying pace.
Only six golems remained.
"Every single one of you will burn to ash."
Eudokia declared.
Those words reached Enkrid's ears perfectly.
They also clearly reached the ears of those desperately trying to fall back.
Aishia immediately stepped forward, blocking the exact path the Walking Fire was charging down.
"You deranged magical freak," she cursed Eudokia through violently gritted teeth, while Andrew stepped up beside her, muttering in a deeply self-deprecating tone.
"Did I mock him too much earlier?"
Why the hell is he suddenly dropping a Forbidden Spell right here?!
Andrew felt incredibly wronged by the extreme overreaction.
Enkrid locked eyes on the Walking Fire, and the exact moment he tried to disengage, he watched the six remaining golems suddenly violently bloat, their forms grotesquely twisting and contorting.
Then, their forearms, which had been roughly shaped like human arms, abruptly elongated, transforming into razor-sharp steel tentacles that lashed out at him.
Enkrid's sword moved even faster.
The Will residing within him became significantly lighter than before, packing an edge into his blade far sharper than even Night Stroll.
His Engraved Weapon practically melted into his grip.
Feeling a profound sense of absolute unity with his blade, he swung his sword.
He thrust, slashed, bashed, and struck.
When a tentacle violently lashed upward from below, he caught it on the flat of his blade, shoved it aside, used the resulting kinetic feedback to violently launch his body sideways, and extended his sword.
With that single, impossibly simple slash, the golem's nape split wide open with a sickening CRACK.
His hyper-tuned perception for detecting spells explicitly told him the core was hidden right inside that gaping fissure.
Since there was absolutely no reason to hesitate, he snapped his blade back and cleanly severed the core.
Watching that, Eudokia verified his hypothesis once more.
Since the bastard was perfectly capable of sensing the exact location of the core and severing it anyway, there was no point in even trying to hide it.
The golems' sole purpose was crystal clear.
It was to buy time.
Even buying the microscopic fraction of a second needed for the Walking Fire to achieve its objective was more than enough.
'No, he's aiming for something else as well.'
Enkrid intuitively realized this, but he absolutely lacked the luxury to choose a different option.
Even if another option existed, he wouldn't have taken it anyway.
Because he had absolutely no intention of just standing by and watching Aishia and Andrew die when he knew exactly what was coming.
After instantly cleaving through all five golems whose forms were violently mutating...
Just as he was about to sprint, the Mage unveiled yet another spell.
"Block him."
At that single command, the smoke billowing from the scorched bushes the Walking Fire had ignited violently surged forward, compressing into a massive, solid wall explicitly designed to block his path.
Enkrid realized what was happening even before the wall fully materialized.
The muscles in his thighs expanded and bulged monstrously.
With a terrifying riiiiip that sounded as if his pants were going to tear completely apart, his thickened quadriceps unleashed an explosive burst of kinetic energy, demonstrating a physical feat that rivaled a teleportation spell.
BOOOM!
BANG!
The ground shattered and the air ruptured simultaneously.
Even with the dynamic visual acuity of a Knight, everything in Enkrid's periphery blurred into long, thin streaks of light.
In a flash, his body completely overtook the Walking Fire.
'A spell.'
Enkrid thought to himself.
A spell is merely a tether connecting mana to reality.
Because he could perfectly perceive that tether, he could sever it.
His thoughts were brief, and his actions were blindingly fast.
Flawlessly adjusting his sprinting speed, Enkrid executed a perfect horizontal slash straight through the Walking Fire's torso.
The Will imbued within his Engraved Weapon violently spewed a brilliant azure light, cleanly cleaving the roaring monster of flame in two.
Fwoosh.
Because flames lack a physical body, they fundamentally cannot be 'cut'.
The core concept behind the spell known as Walking Fire is that even if the flames are temporarily scattered, they will instantly re-merge.
However, a flame whose mana supply has been completely severed is nothing more than ordinary fire; it simply disperses harmlessly into the air.
A wave of intense heat violently shoved against Enkrid's face.
Centered around the rapidly disintegrating Walking Fire, a massive thermal updraft erupted, surging high into the sky.
Enkrid's pitch-black hair caught in the updraft, fluttering violently upward with a fwoosh.
As the smoke scattered, the clouds already obscuring the moonlight grew even thicker.
In the exact split second Enkrid casually turned around, Eudokia achieved exactly what he desired.
He had meticulously prepared and layered multiple spells simultaneously.
Deploying the Walking Fire was merely a tool to buy time—nothing more, nothing less.
Yet, internally, he was undeniably shocked.
'He severed a Forbidden Spell with a single sword swing?'
Perceiving a spell and physically severing it are two entirely different realms of impossibility.
At least, within the bounds of his vast common knowledge, they were.
The sheer fact that he could even perceive the spell's structure was an absurdity that defied all logic, yet he had actually managed to physically sever it.
He was casually executing feats that sounded like they belonged to some mythical 'Spell Butcher' from ancient legends.
It was only natural to be shocked.
Of course, he didn't let even a fraction of that emotion show on his face.
Instead, he merely slightly altered the specific type of spell he had been preparing.
***
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