Chapter 68 : Waiting

Chapter 68: Waiting

Each step I took left a deep imprint.

Jjiik—

Jjiiiik—

I forced my foot, buried in the ground, free, and moved forward.

My whole body felt like a sloshing water jar.

Stiflingly heavy, horrifically vast.

If it tilted even by a single drop, all the water inside would spill out.

I caught my breath every so often.

I did not rush.

Lift my foot, drive it in front. Lift it again, jam it in ahead. Again, and again.

One step.

I thought only of that one step.

I forgot the situation around me.

The storm of aura rising within me, I forced it down into my body.

[Dieee! Still there! Still! Die! Pleeeeeease!!!]

I pressed down hard on the dragon’s thoughts echoing inside my head.

And walked.

That was why,

The ‘Apostle’ still had not sensed my presence.

Instead—

Crunch.

The leg I stretched forward lost its strength and bent.

It was because the foreign aura kept clawing at my insides.

My muscles tore, my flesh ripped away.

Thud!

Even so, the only reason I managed to set that one foot down was thanks to dragging in the ferocious aura in place of my muscles.

I forged muscles and tendons out of the dragon’s aura.

Offering up my bones, flesh, and sinew as sacrifice.

Crunch! Thud! Snap! Boom!

My gait must have looked utterly ridiculous to anyone watching now.

Like a lousy puppeteer forcing a marionette to dance.

Still—

I was moving forward, wasn’t I?

Then that was enough.

That was all that mattered.

*         *         *

Humans lost their way more easily than one might think.

The same road felt different when going and when returning, different in day and in night.

So much so that those poor at directions might wander aimlessly.

But Lorraine’s laboratory was far worse than that now.

All around was choked with dust, collapsed building wreckage, bloodied and screaming people, and abyss leeches raining from the sky—

a living hell.

The researchers, trapped in that chaos, wailed without even knowing where they stood.

[Everyone, attention!!]

The voice that rang out then must have been salvation to them.

[Marking complete! Follow the light and gather at the Central Seminar Hall!]

It was Lorraine.

At last, she burst outside, and in the skies and through the dust-filled passages, she drew shining arrows of light.

Only then did the staggering researchers finally find their path.

Just one person.

The woman who had always swished spotless white hems without a speck of dust—when she appeared now with her body covered in grime, a ray of light descended into that hell.

Crackkk!

With a sweep of her right hand, the rubble of collapsed buildings rose weightlessly into the air.

Fwaaash!

When she swept her left hand, a pure-white radiance healed the survivors trapped beneath the wreckage.

“Go! Quickly! Hurry!”

Each time magic scattered from her hand, a new chance at life fell upon those who had been dying in despair.

“Thank you!”

“Thank you, Director!”

“If you have strength to thank me, then use that strength to run instead!”

Faint.

Lorraine bit down on her lip.

The sharp pain roused her dulled body, if only slightly.

Of course, there was no way it was normal to be casting spells as naturally as breathing.

Lorraine was burning herself at 120% right now, mobilizing everything she had.

A desperate sprint, heedless of what came after, staking all that she was.

But such a sprint, when meeting even a single variable, would collapse in spectacular wreck and come to an end.

『Grrr—』

It was a researcher.

Lorraine knew that one’s face and knew their name.

Every single person in this laboratory—she had personally selected them herself.

Her name was Jenny. She had said she was engaged, hadn’t she?

And yet… the figure Lorraine pulled from the rubble was grotesque.

Her eyes glowed with the shine of a nocturnal beast, and her joints were twisted all over.

“Jenny?”

That was…

Less a human, and more the form of some demonic creature.

『Kraaah!』

When it spewed ashen smoke and lunged, Lorraine could do nothing.

She was already burning at 120%.

If she canceled the [Kinesis] spell to block that thing, the rubble floating weightlessly would have crashed down and killed those she had just saved.

Lorraine froze for a moment.

Her cold reason insisted that she should preserve her own life first, even if it meant crushing the survivors anew—

yet for some reason, she could not move even a fingertip.

『Kyakh!』

And just as it closed in, about to bite into Lorraine’s neck—

Bzzzt!

Pale-yellow currents of electricity roared forth.

———!!

Without even a scream, the thing—no, was it Researcher Jenny? That something—shuddered violently and collapsed stiff.

Her chest rose and fell, so she didn’t seem to be dead.

“Lorraine! Are you alright?!”

Cask suddenly rushed over, discharging yellow electricity as he shielded her.

Lorraine replied blankly.

“Ah, yeah.”

“What the hell was that? Wasn’t she a researcher?”

Lorraine furrowed her brows.

“The largest head. Looks like its doing.”

“The one in the center? The thing that darkened the sky at the start?”

“Yes. That thing… I’d wondered what kind of ability it had. This was it. A curse that corrupts the very source of life itself. No—<Contamination>.”

It was the moment when the largest of the Apostle’s seven heads was finally given its name.

<Contamination>

A power that corrupted the very source.

The researchers who inhaled its curse were transformed, twisted into demonic beasts.

Lorraine, her heart sinking, massaged her brow and turned to Cask.

“But when did you start following me?”

“Me? I’ve been here from the start. You didn’t notice?”

She hadn’t. Lorraine had not noticed at all.

Perhaps it was because she had been too focused.

No wonder the leeches falling from the sky had seemed oddly reluctant to cling to her…

Cask must have been covering her from behind.

Boom—!

At last, Lorraine had rescued all the survivors trapped under the rubble. She lowered the debris she had suspended in midair back down to the ground.

‘Did I save about fifty percent by now…?’

But something was strange.

‘Why… is it only getting tighter?’

In theory, the more researchers she saved and sent to the Central Seminar Hall (Command and Control Room), the easier it should have been to face the Apostle.

With more mages, of course reloading would be faster, aiming would be smoother, the mana heart’s heat dissipation quicker, and the shield’s recovery swifter.

But in reality, the opposite was happening.

No, things were getting faster, yes… but—

‘That thing is getting faster still.’

The Apostle.

It was moving more often, more deftly, spewing annihilation beams, leeches, spheres of protection, one after another.

And then, at some moment—

Kwaa-krk!

It struck first.

“Damn it!”

Rolling across the quaking laboratory floor, Lorraine slammed her fist against the ground.

It was <Distortion> at work.

The creature had once more folded space and rammed the laboratory, shattering the nearly restored shield.

Like taking a blow square on the jaw while staggering upright, the incomplete shield shattered easily. The impact was immense.

‘With that kind of shock, the mana heart must have been shaken again, right?’

If that happened, they could not regenerate the shield. Even if forced to, its durability could no longer be trusted.

The mana heart was not just a power source but also the buffer that absorbed recoil.

But then, clear before her eyes, she saw another head—<Annihilation>—opening its maw toward them.

If that hit directly… everything would be over.

“No!”

She had sworn to protect them. She had promised Ransen!

That she would endure until the end.

“I can’t let this happen…!”

The people of this laboratory.

Those who had followed her here, looking only to her…

“I said no!!!”

She ran.

Her emotions, faster than reason, told her what she could do now.

“Lorraine!”

Cask, rushing after her in panic, was horrified.

“What are you doing right now?!”

Because Lorraine had placed her hand upon the obelisk that controlled the main shield.

Cask tried to tear her away by force.

But—shiver—!

The moment her pale green eyes began to shine, he could not move an inch.

Cask felt as if the back of his skull had gone numb from the shock.

“Lorraine…! Did you just use a Demon Eye on me?”

Blood tears trickled down the corners of Lorraine’s eyes.

‘She really used a Demon Eye on me? Even though she wasn’t born of a bloodline that carries the Demon Eye… forcing it out like that… just to stop me?’

Cask was dumbstruck.

No—he was furious.

“You’re trying to sacrifice yourself and die… going this far?!!!”

He heard Lorraine murmuring calculations under her breath.

Cask wanted to rip his own ears off.

Because he knew all too well what those calculations meant.

“You’re insane?! You’re going to take the recoil into your own body? In place of the mana heart?!”

The idea was madness: the shield would draw power from the mana heart, but the recoil it had to withstand—she would replace with her own circle and her life.

And the absurd computing ability to actually make it work.

Buuuuung—!

It happened.

The shield shot up rapidly.

But this shield was unlike the ones before. The shock striking it would be Lorraine’s alone to bear.

With her mana, perhaps she could somehow block an <Annihilation> strike. But Lorraine herself would certainly die.

“Lorraine!!!”

Cask, bound by the Demon Eye, could only watch helplessly.

Lorraine looked at him with trembling eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’

Of course she knew.

She knew the feelings Cask carried as he followed her.

Sometimes, she had even imagined it—

a slightly different future, together with him.

‘But in the end… I guess it ends like this.’

Ransen had sworn he would cut it down.

So he had asked her to endure.

Was this the limit…?

Could she not—

see any further future?

Tap—

As those thoughts filled her, a hand covered the back of her own.

A hand wrinkled, yet large and warm.

“As I thought. Director, you had already prepared the full framework. I only need to carry it forward.”

Lorraine flinched in shock.

“Eodran? What are you…?”

“Do not worry. I entrusted command to a capable senior researcher.”

“That’s not—what do you think you’re doing?!”

Eodran did not answer.

He only drew power from the seven circles he had built over a lifetime, and placed his very life upon them.

“This is the end for me. But you, Director, must go farther still.”

“Stop! Don’t do this! This is my responsibility—!”

“The responsibility you were meant to bear… you already paid it, the day the House of Scottbean fell.”

“Eodran!”

She could not…

finish her words.

Before anything else, the gray beam swept across the shield.

Ssshhhh—!

The beam split to either side of the barrier.

Eodran’s body trembled as if struck by lightning.

Because she had to maintain the shield’s manifestation, Lorraine could not even take her hand off the obelisk, forced to feel it all, vividly.

“No! No, please…!”

At last, the gray beam that had seemed endless finally vanished.

Lorraine tried to seize Eodran’s hand.

She wanted to pull him into her arms, hold him, and weep.

But—

Crumble—

The hand that had just now covered hers so warmly… she could not catch it.

It broke apart and disappeared.

“No. No! Eodran, don’t! Please!”

“Young Lady.”

Eodran called her that. As he once had long ago.

“My life was all glory, because the one I served… was you.”

“Please… Eodran!”

Lorraine reached out in desperation, to catch the vanishing man.

But what her hands grasped was only empty air. His scattering afterimage, already crumbling.

“Young Lady.”

Particles of mana brushed against Lorraine’s cheek. As if tenderly caressing her.

“Please, always—be at peace…”

Whoosh!

Like smoke from a snuffed candle, Eodran’s last remnant dispersed.

“Eodraaaaan!”

Lorraine collapsed.

With nothing left to hold, nowhere left to lean.

She sobbed, shoulders shaking.

“Lorraine…”

Cask looked down at her in anguish.

At last, the binding of the Demon Eye had faded.

He had meant to demand why she had done such a thing to him, but in this moment, Cask forgot it all.

Now, he could only have his heart torn apart alongside her grief.

“Lorraine…”

As he bent down to lay a hand on her shoulder—

Flinch!

Cask realized.

Mumble-mumble-mumble-mumble—

Lorraine wasn’t just crying.

She was crying as she calculated. The formulae spilling from her lips leapt by steps at a time, swiftly completing.

“Lorraine?”

“Calculation complete.”

Without wiping her flowing tears, Lorraine bit her lip and rose to her feet.

“I was stupid. Saving them one by one… that was the mistake.”

“Wha—what…?”

“I should have just ‘transported’ them all at once.”

Saying so, she once more placed her hand on the obelisk.

In an instant, she completed the link with the mana heart.

Deep in her pupils, flicker, a tiny flame blazed.

“Eodran died, and I lived. Then I have to make that worth something… don’t I!”

Seven circles opened, and mana combined with the air’s flow into a greater construct.

She declared—

“I promised you, Ransen! No matter what it takes, I’ll endure! I will endure! So you must…!”

Drawing immense power from the mana heart, she shouted with all her might:

“Kill it! Kill that thing!”

That…

that catastrophic calamity.

With her desperate wish, a brilliant blue radiance spread through the entire laboratory.

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