Chapter 69: Night of Annihilation (7)
Chapter 69: Night of Annihilation (7)
TL/Editor: Rungir
Schedule: 5/Week Wed-Sun
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At the city's less crowded outskirts...
"What...!"
Diral, a menacing demon, found himself caught in a fierce fight and filled with shock.
Sounds of clashing filled the air!
He was locked in combat with a red-eyed woman whose strength far exceeded his wildest thoughts.
Roar!
Countless beast-like mouths appeared in the air around her, all targeting him.
Each mouth was so forceful that even Diral, regarded as one of the mightiest demons in the human realm, couldn't disregard their power.
"Ugh!"
Groaning, Diral continually found himself retreating.
Where did this person suddenly come from?
'Who is she?'
To him, the woman's strength was as if it came from the heavens.
If such a powerful person existed, her name should be known.
However, he couldn't match the woman in front of him with any strong figures in the human world that he knew of.
'Does the Empire, or rather, the city, have someone who can use blood magic to this degree?'
Confusion clouded Diral's eyes.
But Diral shook off his doubts, focusing on escape.
If he stayed here too long, the city's knights could arrive in masses.
Whoosh!
With this thought in mind, the air around Diral ripped open. Large beast-like claws shot out, heading straight for the woman.
Could she not react in time?
Her body was torn into hundreds of pieces by the claws.
'So easy...?'
Confusion filled Diral's eyes.
He hadn't expected her to fall this easily.
But a human body, neither monster nor demon, couldn't survive being cut into hundreds of pieces.
So, suppressing his unease, Diral quickly turned to leave.
Then,
"Where do you think you're going?"
That chilling voice, which he'd heard earlier, echoed once again.
"…!"
Diral turned back in surprise, his eyes met with a sight beyond belief.
It was as if time was reversing.
Pieces of the woman's body began to reform from the feet up, suspended in mid-air.
Starting from the legs, to the curved body and arms, then the neck, and lastly, the head.
"We're not done yet."
With that, the woman, fully reassembled as Liushina, gave a sly grin and suddenly tightened her outstretched hand.
Under her unique magic, Sangria Requiem, all the scattered blood morphed into thousands of serpents, racing towards Diral.
"This...!"
Surprised, Diral tried to block the serpents with his claws.
But it was a mere illusion.
Before he could fully fend off the serpents, Liushina's consecutive attacks came.
Hundreds of blood strands, now surrounding Diral, started to tighten.
Whoosh!
Facing the incoming strands that split anything they touched, Diral didn't dare fight back and teleported away instead.
But then,
As if predicting his move, the blood strands curved and rushed towards where Diral had reappeared.
"!!!!!"
With widened eyes, Diral created a defensive shield from magic power.
The wave of blood strands hit it, causing a massive explosion that distorted the surrounding atmosphere and mana.
Even as the explosion continued, Liushina relentlessly pushed forward while Diral found himself increasingly cornered.
'If this goes on...'
A sense of urgency, which he hadn't felt even while escaping from Jeokseong Palace, appeared on Diral's face.
He never thought he'd be in danger here.
Worry was clear in his eyes.
To break free from this, he had no choice but to give up his human form and revert to his original self.
'Without that, I can't hold up against this red-eyed woman.'
However, the problem was the magic power that would explode once he reverted to his original form.
His magic power, as the high-ranking demon Diral, was on another level compared to ordinary demons and incredibly vast.
So, reverting to his original form was like declaring his presence to the entire city.
Just then,
"You'll die if you hesitate."
The thousand-year-old witch, now close to him as if she knew Diral's predicament, gave a sly smile and spoke.
“What...!”
The moment Diral, who was unsettled by Liushina's presence, tried to teleport again.
Just a bit quicker, the beast's fangs tore through all defenses and took one of the demon's arms.
---
Raei Translations
---
Long ago, Chronos, one of the ancient gods, posed five questions to humans.
The first question was about the flow of time.
How does time move?
No answer has been passed down for this question.
However, the answer can be found in the divine power that arises from this question.
Time Freeze.
The first divine power in the 'Five Questions of Chronos'.
The God denied the idea that time flows.
Time is a concept composed of countless discrete moments, and 'Time Freeze' allows the user to dwell indefinitely in one such moment.
The power of creating illusionary soldiers also stems from this 'Time Freeze'.
As if the ticking hands of a clock, the world's laws around Zion begin to shift.
"What are you doing?"
Outwardly, nothing seemed altered, yet Enoch sensed the shift in Zion's atmosphere and furrowed his brows.
"Are you trying to make a final stand?"
With that, Enoch's stopped hand ascended flawlessly, and the stars around them began to blaze with greater intensity.
The gap between them was too wide to close, and no matter what trick was employed, overturning the current state was impossible.
Yet, for some reason, a sliver of unease crept into his heart.
Consequently, Enoch decided to conclude quickly and unleashed a volley of spears, formed from reversing the celestial stars, towards Zion.
A spear of starlight, launched at light-speed.
Finally, just as the star spears were about to impale Zion.
The sound of a rusted gate, ready to crumble any moment, creaking open.
Simultaneously,
All of Enoch's star spears vanished.
"What...!"
The instant a cry of astonishment was about to burst from Enoch's lips at the unbelievable spectacle,
Zion, appearing swiftly before Enoch, seized his head and smashed it into the nearby wall of the Red Fortress.
Explosions of black stars erupted from Zion's hand, grasping Enoch's head!
"Aaaargh!"
Enoch, his layers of protective magic rapidly shattering under the assault, felt his life threatened, screamed, and commanded the stars around him.
From that, torrents of light rained down on Zion, triggering another massive explosion.
'I need to get away...!'
The moment Enoch, who had narrowly slipped from Zion's grasp, tried to retreat with all his strength,
Again, an odd noise echoed.
Accompanying that, Zion, shrouded in darkness and eyes gleaming with pure white light, burst forth from the spreading cloud of dust.
This time, Zion wielded a sword in his right hand, no longer unarmed.
His speed was extraordinarily fast, invisible to ordinary eyes, but Enoch reacted in time.
Dozens of stars surged in front of Enoch, forming a celestial cascade.
Zion's sword, stopped by the cascading stars, couldn't advance any further.
In that instant, a faint glimmer of relief appeared in Enoch's eyes.
Once more, that sound echoed.
Simultaneously,
Booom!
The darkness radiating from Zion's sword exploded with increased intensity, utterly dismantling the cascade of stars.
Struck by the full force of that blow, Enoch's body was hurled away at an almost imperceptible speed.
He tore through the Red Fortress and several nearby structures before finally coming to a stop.
A sonic boom exploded between the belatedly launched Enoch and Zion.
"Cough!"
Enoch, smashed into the Emperor's statue, narrowly escaped being bisected, but clearly couldn't evade internal injuries, as a bright line of blood trickled from his mouth.
Before Enoch could fully regain his senses,
Zion, previously distant, appeared right in front of him as though the space between them had been erased.
Zion's sword immediately lashed out at Enoch's neck, allowing him no respite.
From previous experiences, knowing full well he shouldn't engage directly, Enoch hastily ducked to put distance between them.
But Zion's actions were far quicker.
The dark sword's radiance exploded wildly, driving Enoch to the edge.
In the calm eyes of Zion, generating such sword light, massive explosions of black stars, like the sun's surface, were constantly erupting.
While it would have been a suicide attempt with Zion's original body, it was now achievable using 'Time Freeze', one of the 'Five Questions of Chronos'.
By stabilizing physical time, the burden of the Eclipse was alleviated.
Four times.
The number of instances Zion overlapped the Eclipse.
The peculiar noises Enoch had been hearing were all emitted each time Zion unleashed an Eclipse.
The Eclipse only dramatically enhanced his physical prowess and substantially increased the output of the Black Star…
'But that's enough.'
From the beginning, those were the only attributes Zion lacked.
"Uaaaah!"
With Enoch's desperate scream that sounded like a last-ditch effort, an arbitrary explosion of starlight erupted around Zion.
An explosion detonating without warning should have caught anyone off guard.
But Zion, standing before Enoch, was no ordinary adversary.
Zion, evading all the explosions as if he had foreknowledge of their occurrence.
He even utilized the recoil of those explosions to close the gap with Enoch even faster.
In an instant, Zion, now directly in front of Enoch, bathed in pure white light amidst the darkness, and swung his sword in a vertical arc.
A black flash erupting from the sword's tip, was horrendously intensified by the four-layered Eclipse, starting to sever all the magic Enoch had established.
'If this continues, I'm going to die.'
Desperation and fear etched on Enoch's face as he observed this spectacle.
The scorn and exhilaration that had been in his gaze a moment prior were long vanished.
He couldn't understand what had transpired.
He was unquestionably dominant until a moment ago.
However, the moment the gem on the bracelet adorning Zion's wrist shattered, the tide shifted dramatically.
Had he been concealing his true strength all along?
If not...
'I must turn this situation around!'
Prioritizing survival, Enoch cast aside his questions, unleashing his divine magic in every direction with all his strength.
For a brief moment, Zion fell back, creating a minuscule window of opportunity.
Enoch, instinctively aware that this was his last chance, recited the spell and incantation at a frantic pace.
'I need to release all my power at once.'
With that thought, the dozens of stars orbiting Enoch congregated before him, coalescing into one colossal sun.
The radiance erupting from this sun was so dazzling it felt capable of blinding any observer.
The surroundings illuminated as if daylight had broken.
The warping, even melting space, the wailing atmosphere.
Finally,
"Perish."
Accompanied by his scathing words, Enoch's completed sun was hurled at Zion.
Galaxis Helios.
The most potent technique of Enoch's unique magic, Galaxis Lactea, embodying the celestial magic that dominates all other powers in the world.
Facing such a sun, any power would inevitably be eclipsed.
This power was more like a divine ability than magic.
The celestial sun of space, mana, atmosphere.
All nearby elements disintegrated as they approached Zion.
"...."
Zion studied the looming sun with calm eyes.
Although it was a magic of unparalleled magnitude compared to anything he'd witnessed So far.
Zion's gaze remained undisturbed.
Gradually,
As if adopting a stance, Zion drew his Eclaxia to his hip.
With the perfectly poised extinction sword, the surrounding night's darkness began to be drawn in.
The blade of the Eclaxia vibrated, as if rejoicing in the endlessly accumulating darkness.
Finally, when such darkness had reached its peak and formed another blade,
In the silence of a moment,
Zion's sword swept through the air.
And in that moment,
A single black line was drawn across the world.
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