Chapter 63. Forger of Greed
People often said that an ambush was supposed to be sudden.
However, Adrian’s ambush had not merely been sudden—it had come completely out of nowhere.
Did that mean his abilities were ordinary?
Not at all.
Before Avarus could even comprehend the situation, Adrian had slaughtered every guard in the manor—in other words, every Combat-Type Homunculus.
That could never be considered ordinary.
At first, Avarus had assumed that the golden-haired knight was responsible.
However, his opinion changed when he witnessed Adrian smashing through Shield Magic.
‘They said he was the delinquent of a count’s family....’
It appeared that rumors could not be trusted after all.
Besides, they were unsubstantiated rumors he had merely acquired from Viscount Venenon’s memories.
Adrian was by no means the delinquent of a count’s family.
Separate from that, however, Avarus still had a question.
‘How did he uncover my identity?’
Transmog was not a spell that could be detected.
One would have to be capable of identifying unique Mana patterns merely to notice that something was unusual.
Mages capable of identifying unique Mana patterns were exceedingly rare across the continent.
More importantly, Adrian had torn apart multiple layers of Shield Magic with his “claws”.
In other words, Adrian could be considered a knight who wielded Aura rather than magical power.
More precisely, he appeared to be a martial artist who used Aura.
Yet a knight who was not even a mage had detected Transmog?
Avarus could not understand it at all.
He could not even begin to guess how Adrian had discovered the Transmog.
‘I’ll have to capture him as a test subject and study him.’
Adrian was certainly worthy of research.
However, his abilities were anything but ordinary.
Had Avarus encountered him out in the field, he would probably have been an extremely difficult opponent.
This place, however, was different.
This was a mage’s dungeon—
Avarus’s territory.
“To think you crawled into my territory of your own free will. Hehehe...!”
Inside the Infinity Silence Barrier, Adrian was no different from a rat trapped in a jar.
The flow of Mana had completely stopped inside this Barrier.
Without the powers known as Aura and magical power, humans were exceedingly fragile creatures.
Humans did not possess the strength of ogres.
Nor did they have the sharp claws or sturdy skeletons of wild beasts.
Biologically speaking, intelligence and endurance were humanity’s only advantages.
A human abandoned alone in the natural world was undeniably weak.
However—
Avarus was different.
That was because he had abandoned his humanity.
Gurgle, gurgle—!
A smile of assured victory appeared on Avarus’s lips.
“I’ll kill you!”
His swollen tentacles surged toward Adrian. Dozens of tentacles twisted violently as they reached for Adrian’s neck.
Then, at that very moment—
Adrian bent his knees and evaded the incoming tentacles.
“What...?”
Avarus’s body transformed grotesquely, and his flesh swelled enormously.
Alchemical Drugs mixed with his blood, triggering genetic mutations.
The swollen tentacles of flesh shot forward.
Adrian had remained rooted to the spot.
He had to be terrified.
Avarus’s eyes opened wide.
He dodged that?
That couldn’t be possible….could it?
His speed and reflexes made no sense. They were beyond anything a mere human could possess.
....Was it a coincidence?
But if that were the case—
Swish—! Swish, swish—!
Adrian continued evading every incoming tentacle.
Whenever the tentacles of flesh attempted to seize him, Adrian avoided them with movements too fast for the eye to follow.
His dynamic vision, reflexes, and everything else—not one of them could be described as human.
“H-How...?”
Avarus could not understand it.
Before he knew it, Adrian had closed the distance between them.
Adrian’s sharpened claws tore through the air.
Avarus hastily gathered his flesh into a barrier, but—
Riiip—!
It was torn apart without the slightest resistance.
“What is this...?!”
A shock more intense than pain filled Avarus’s eyes.
After all, that had not been ordinary flesh.
It was Metallic Flesh, reinforced until it was as hard as steel using Alchemical Drugs after he had abandoned his humanity.
Yet Adrian had torn it apart with nothing but his fingernails?
With human fingernails that should have been useful for nothing more than scratching an itch?
Avarus’s mind became confused and dizzy.
However, Adrian’s attack was not yet over.
At this rate, Avarus would unquestionably die.
“Aaaaaaaaaagh!”
Avarus roared.
Shrrrrrk—!
The torn flesh divided and multiplied into even more branches as all the tentacles and chunks of flesh extended explosively at once.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Tentacles filled every direction.
There was nowhere left to evade.
And yet—
Adrian continued dodging.
He reacted to and evaded every tentacle filling the entire space. He even reacted to attacks thrusting toward him from behind.
“H-How are you doing this?!”
His reflexes were not merely astonishing.
They inspired awe.
Even so, Adrian could not react to every attack.
A few strikes occasionally slipped through, leaving unmistakable wounds across his body.
Once enough of that damage accumulated, Adrian would collapse.
That was the limitation inherent to the fragile creature known as a human.
However—
‘He’s regenerating...?’
His wounds were regenerating in real time.
They healed at a speed that could never be explained by human recovery.
“W-What...?!”
The emotion Avarus felt finally surpassed mere shock.
“What are you?!”
“I already told you. I’m the delinquent.”
That made no sense.
It could not possibly be true.
It was impossible.
What part of that creature could possibly be called a delinquent?!
The flow of Mana had completely stopped within this territory.
Neither magical power nor Aura could be used.
Only biological and physical capabilities could be used here.
That meant every ability Adrian was displaying was purely physical. They were abilities he possessed on a biological level.
But….how could that possibly make sense?
Could something like that truly be called human?
Avarus had also abandoned his humanity.
Even so, they were different.
There was an unfathomable difference between them on a biological level.
Adrian was on “another level”.
He was human yet not human—a predator that devoured monsters.
But how could that—
“There’s no need to feel so inferior.”
Adrian spoke as though he had read Avarus’s thoughts.
“Even the Archmage couldn’t explain me.”
Avarus’s complexion turned deathly pale.
Between a predator and a monster, the monster was almost invariably the one that ended up being devoured.
Merely becoming a monster was not enough to defeat a predator.
In that case….there was no other choice.
He had to deactivate Infinity Silence.
* * *
Crash—!
The sudden sound of shattering glass rang out.
At the same time, my instincts screamed a warning, and I hurriedly threw myself backward.
Kra-booom—!
Pitch-black lightning struck the spot where I had been standing only moments before.
It was Lightning Magic.
Had my reaction been even slightly slower, the lightning would have struck me directly.
It would not have killed me, but it undoubtedly would have consumed a considerable number of calories.
‘Did he deactivate Infinity Silence?’
When I raised my gaze, electrical currents were crackling around Avarus’s fingertips.
It certainly appeared so.
That made things slightly troublesome.
If Avarus could use magic, responding to him would become considerably more difficult for me.
That was why I was somewhat surprised.
In my previous life, he had not deactivated the Infinity Silence Barrier.
However, the Archmage and the Spirit Wielder—two Heroes of the Coalition Forces—had been present at that time.
What would have happened if he deactivated Infinity Silence?
The Archmage and Spirit Wielder would have beaten him half to death.
Avarus had possessed a better chance of victory by sealing their Mana and fighting me instead.
However, the current situation was different.
Only Kai stood beside me.
Avarus apparently believed that Kai was an opponent he could handle.
That was a grave mistake.
As though he had been waiting for this moment, Kai kicked off the ground and leaped forward.
With Infinity Silence deactivated, Kai’s Aura had returned.
However, the same applied to Avarus’s magical power.
Fwoosh—!
This time, flames bloomed from Avarus’s fingertips.
When Avarus swept his hand through the air—the entire room was momentarily engulfed in flames. Then the fire abruptly vanished without resistance.
Instead of flames, clusters of light flashed in every direction.
‘Was that a fake?’
Fake Magic.
It was the magical equivalent of what knights commonly called a false attack—a feint.
However, to distinguish it from the feints used by martial artists, the technique was separately called a “fake”.
The Archmage, one of the Heroes of the Coalition Forces, had been a master of Fake Magic.
By adjusting and sometimes withdrawing the amount of magical power supplied to a spell, the user could disperse a spell immediately before its manifestation and replace it with a different one.
Because the magic changed unpredictably, the opponent became confused. They could no longer determine which spell genuinely threatened their life.
Of course, it was not an easy technique to use. It required extremely delicate control over magical power.
Avarus, however, was using Fake Magic with practiced skill.
His ability was nothing compared to that of the Archmage, but that was merely because the Archmage existed on a level beyond all expectations.
Avarus’s Fake Magic was by no means something that could be dismissed.
Even so, Kai reacted to every single instance of Fake Magic.
“What in the world are you supposed to be?!”
Kra-booom! Crunch—!
Not once was Kai deceived by Avarus’s Fake Magic.
He accurately distinguished the genuine spells and countered them perfectly.
In truth, the method of countering Fake Magic was both simple and difficult.
One merely had to read the magical power.
Mages distinguished one another’s fakes by reading the flow of magical power.
However, Kai was a knight who wielded Aura. He should not have been able to read magical power.
‘Is he reading the flow of Mana?’
That appeared to be the case.
Magical power was a subordinate concept derived from Mana.
It was merely a form of energy created by converting Mana into a usable state.
No matter how delicately one adjusted the amount of magical power, if the underlying Mana could be read, the authenticity of a fake could be determined instantly.
The reason Kai could accomplish that was because the Aura he used was also a subordinate concept derived from Mana.
Magical power and Aura were derivative energies branching from the same root—Mana.
In other words, Kai had grasped the fundamental nature of Aura and was using nothing but his senses to read Mana itself rather than magical power.
It was easy enough to describe, but—
‘Was something like that actually possible?’
Of course, my Mana Sensitivity was practically zero, so I could not say for certain.
That was also why dealing with Avarus became quite difficult for me whenever he used magic.
In any case, according to my memories, only two knights had ever countered magic in that manner.
Kai, Commander of the Frost Legion.
And Ian, Hero and commander-in-chief of the Coalition Forces.
“As expected.”
Kai was no hunting dog.
He was a warhound.
Avarus’s already-pale complexion turned completely white.
What kind of absurd knight was this?
A knight seeing through Fake Magic was nonsensical from the outset.
Just as Aura was the exclusive domain of knights, magical power was the exclusive domain of mages.
A knight should never have been capable of reading the flow of magical power.
At that moment—
Slash—!
The ball of flame—the Fireball—was cut apart effortlessly.
Severed by Aura, the Fireball scattered through the air and disappeared.
“Impossible...!”
A sword filled Avarus’s vision.
Beyond his wide-open eyes, blue Aura rotated violently around the blade.
Craaaaaack—!
Avarus’s flesh was caught in the rotation and ripped apart.
Even amid that, the knight’s eyes gleamed as he charged forward with murderous intent, burning with hatred as though facing his most irreconcilable enemy.
He was a mad dog in human form.
The fact that he did not bark changed nothing.
In other words, by trying to pressure Adrian with magic, Avarus had unleashed a mad dog.
What if he had maintained Infinity Silence instead?
Then he could at least have kept that mad dog restrained.
However, Infinity Silence had already been used once. Activating Infinity Silence again would require at least six months of preparation.
There was nothing he could do about it now. Every possible escape route had disappeared.
Adrian—the Predator—perfectly countered his biological abilities.
That knight—the mad dog—perfectly countered his Mana-based abilities.
It was checkmate.
In other words, only one method remained.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
Avarus released all his magical power.
Rooooooooar—!!
An enormous gale erupted as though the entire space had exploded.
Kai was driven far backward by the gale.
He barely regained his balance by driving his sword into the floor.
I also managed to steady myself by driving Dragon’s Claw into the floor.
The gale swept away everything around us.
Avarus stood at its center.
“Behold! The power of the Great One!”
Blood vessels rose across Avarus’s twisted eyes.
Crack!
His bones broke.
Riiip!
His muscles tore apart. His grotesquely swollen body reached its limit.
Blood poured from every opening in his face—his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
“Kahahahahahaha!”
Despite that, Avarus burst into delighted laughter.
“What’s wrong with him?”
I genuinely wondered why he was acting like that.
There was no understanding a madman consumed by greed, but his method differed somewhat from what I remembered from my previous life.
Deactivating Infinity Silence had already been different, but Avarus had not died like this in my previous life.
He had quietly allowed me to rip out his heart.
More importantly, there was the object Avarus was holding.
‘That is….’
It was an object I had never seen before. I had not seen it even in my previous life.
However, its appearance inside a fairly large glass bottle resembled an Elixir.
Apparently—
‘That must be the Elixir he claimed could cure Seraphia.’
He probably had not possessed it in my previous life because he had already given it to Seraphia.
In other words, there was a high possibility that this was the Elixir that had awakened Seraphia as the Monarch of Frost.
When I activated Predatory Instincts[S], information about the Elixir appeared before me.
◆Un?no?n E?ix?r [?] : Upon ★sing this E?ix?r, stamina and Mana are [??] ** resto?▽d. As a result, the u■er will completely escape all ※diseases, ◆wounds, and curses.
At the same time it is ?sed, the dormant ability will ** awaken★, and all abil◇ties will exceed their biological lim■ts.
However, the u]er will completely escape the flow of tiD[e] and become trapped within [※※※ ※※], suffering the ag▽ny of eternal life.
However, the letters in the information displayed before me were broken and distorted.
That meant the information could not be identified even by Predatory Instincts[S].
‘How does that make sense?’
It did not.
Predatory Instinct[S] was the survival instinct accumulated by innumerable living creatures that had struggled to survive across countless natural environments.
As a result, it allowed me to know information about every organism, environment, and target innately and a priori.
If there was information that even Predatory Instinct [S] could not identify, it had to concern something that the living creatures of this continent had never experienced.
In other words—
it did not belong to this world.
“I offer my soul to the Great One!”
Avarus shouted like a fanatic.
At the same moment, the Elixir shattered as though it had exploded.
Rooooooooooooar—!!
Pitch-black darkness erupted from within it and swallowed the entire space.
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