Free Web NovelThere was a good reason Aisha had not ordered a large-scale assault before learning about Saint Milis.
The main reason was simple: information.
As much as they knew about Hitogami's main apostles, such as Gall Farion, Vita, and Malta, they still knew very little about the Ever-White Labyrinth itself.
And that was exactly why a more planned, more methodical, more gradual offensive had always been the best option.
But the premature resurrection of the powerful Saint Milis forced Aisha's hand.
She had to act.
She could accept the incomplete resurrection and prepare to face it later, or she could order a large-scale offensive immediately, betting everything on speed.
It could work. It could fail.
And now they were paying the first real price of ignorance.
The old Troll who had been controlling the Steel Trolls since the beginning of the battle had finally made his move.
The final boss of the Ever-White Labyrinth.
The White Wizard Kärtanak.
Three thousand years ago, when natural disasters still ravaged the ages due to Laplace's death, he became the first monster ever born inside a Labyrinth to reach the rank of Divine Mage.
A rare monster, the kind that only appeared once every several thousand years. A being who had not merely mastered magic, but created an entirely new school of sorcery. A school opposed to Healing Magic and Detoxification.
Curse Magic.
Jaly understood immediately the absurd danger that had just stepped onto that floor.
His accelerated mind reasoned through it almost at once. That had to be the Labyrinth's boss. It made no sense for him to be there, and yet he was.
How and why had he left the final floor? Was he intelligent? How powerful was he? What was his objective? How far did his interference on that battlefield reach?
But Jaly had no time to dwell on any of those questions.
He pushed them all aside and shot forward faster than ever before.
Using Wild Light as fast as he possibly could, he surged ahead in an almost invisible flash. He had been taught to trust his Sixth Sense, and everything inside him was screaming that this monster was different.
That was why, beyond killing it, his first instinct was to order an immediate retreat.
But he did not expect even that to be interrupted.
At the exact instant he moved, Jaly heard another voice.
Unlike the Curse of Muteness, which had smothered the entire battlefield, this voice was aimed specifically at him.
He felt it because he had been the first to react. He felt it because that magic seemed to have been prepared precisely to strike whoever approached the fastest.
The old Troll raised his decrepit face.
His expression was one of pure disgust, as though merely looking at Jaly filled him with revulsion. The white, blind eye seemed to fix itself exactly on him.
And then Jaly heard inside his mind, all at once, in a grotesque overlap:
"Curse of Wrath. Curse of Necrosis. Curse of Sepsis."
Everything happened in an instant, while the battlefield remained in silence.
Taes continued his charge toward Malta like a flaming comet.
Jaly attacked the White Wizard.
And then, roughly fifty meters away from him, Jaly stumbled.
It was not a technical mistake, his body simply failed in the middle of the movement. Since he had been advancing at absurd speed, he kept rolling across the ground purely from inertia, bouncing between broken stones until he came to a stop only a few meters from Kärtanak.
But he was no longer normal.
Taes unleashed his flaming strike at Malta as the ogre emerged from the crater, and the incendiary slash collided head-on with him in a burst of light.
Blue fire spread in every direction, but Taes had no interest in the result.
He turned immediately toward Jaly, alarmed.
Everything had changed too fast.
Jaly had collapsed, his body suddenly drained of strength, as if all vigor had been ripped out of him.
His skin turned pale and purple at the same time.
Dark veins began standing out all across his body in thick, irregular lines, some swollen, others empty and sunken.
His muscles began to suffer violent spasms. Uncontrollable tremors ran through his arms, his legs, and his neck.
Taes opened his mouth to shout, but there was still no sound.
All he could see was the growing horror in Jaly's eyes.
He ran immediately to save him, but Malta came straight at him, blocking the way like an avalanche.
The Ogre God was roaring, but there was no sound at all.
Jaly was collapsing on the ground in the middle of a terrifying silence.
The White Wizard was walking casually toward him.
There was no hurry or hesitation in his steps.
Jaly's torso began convulsing more and more violently as disease ate through his body from the inside. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were no longer obeying properly.
Blood and fluids streamed uncontrollably from his eyes, his mouth, and his ears. Beneath his fingers, his skin began splitting open in small dark fissures.
He tried with all his strength to reinforce his own body with Battle Aura. But the countless torturous sensations assaulting his mind were too much.
Pain, burning, pressure, numbness, fever, cramps, nausea, irrational wrath together with rising panic.
Kärtanak passed by him.
Though small for a Troll, he still stood three meters tall. He looked down at the beast warrior with the same disgust a person might show when stepping on a worm.
Then he bent slightly.
And slowly grabbed the back of Jaly's neck.
Taes was screaming frantically, though no sound came out. Baron was also leaping toward them in a fury, but he was still too far away.
With a single squeeze, one sharp sound rang out.
CRACK
Even with everything else still drowned in complete silence, the sound of the Savage Emperor's spine breaking echoed clearly.
Jal Igaly, the strongest beastman of the Leopard Tribe, was dead.
The color drained from Taes's eyes.
And then he was filled with fury.
Even if he screamed with all the strength in his lungs, there was still no sound. And worst of all, although he wanted to tear that monster to pieces right then and there, Malta was still on his heels.
At the exact moment of his distraction, the Ogre God finally landed a direct hit to his flank.
And then sound finally returned.
BOOOOM!
The thunder of the impact came together with the sound of Taes's arm twisting at an impossible angle.
The North Emperor was hurled away by the blow, crashing through three stone pillars in succession before hitting the ground amid the wreckage.
One of the Legion soldiers immediately rushed toward him to help.
Meanwhile, Malta, instead of chasing after him, simply turned and started heading toward Baron.
Baron was already consumed by fury, charging like a maddened beast toward the White Wizard.
"OOOOOOAAAAGHHH! YOU DAMN TROLL!"
He had been prepared to suffer some impossible curse like Jaly. Prepared to pay any price as long as he could crush that enemy with his own hands.
But to his surprise, he reached Kärtanak without anything happening.
The White Wizard was looking at him in an incomprehensible way.
But Baron could not have cared less. His fist came in with everything he had.
And when it finally smashed squarely into the Troll's face, the impact was thunderous.
Kärtanak's sinister expression warped, his already deformed face caved in even further, and his entire body went flying down the corridor, spinning with his head twisted and his skull partially crushed, without Baron even knowing whether the monster was still alive or dead.
Baron was about to continue the attack, run after him, and tear that Troll to pieces, when he felt a strange tingling in the hand he had used to land the blow.
A creeping numbness.
And then, inside his mind, he heard Kärtanak's repulsive voice:
"Curse of Hatred. Curse of Paralysis."
Baron felt as though an electric shock had shot through his entire body.
It was as if every violent emotion he had ever felt in his life had been magnified a hundredfold. His hatred, already immense, surged all at once to an inconceivable level.
All the rage he had accumulated against Malta, all the hatred toward this Troll, who had killed his comrade right in front of him, all of it exploded inside him without any control.
His vision turned red, and veins bulged all over his body.
His muscles swelled as though they were about to burst, and at the same time a monstrous sense of power was born in his limbs. Baron felt, with absolute clarity, that he was stronger than he had ever been in his entire life.
But he could not use that strength, his body refused to move.
The Curse of Paralysis held him in place, turning that power into torture.
Baron trembled violently, teeth grinding, blood pouring from his wounds while his eyes followed the old Troll as he got back to his feet farther ahead.
The punch had sent him flying and mangled his sinister face even further, but Kärtanak was still alive. Barely conscious and full of resentment... but alive.
Baron tried to move forward, tried to tear his own body apart by force if necessary.
But he could not break free of the strange magic.
And then he saw another shadow descending in front of him.
His greatest enemy, Malta.
At the exact moment the Ogre God landed on the ground before him, the paralysis vanished.
Baron regained control of his body all at once.
"UAAAAAAHHHHHG!"
The roar that came from his throat was so savage it sounded more like an explosion. Without thinking, he lunged forward with bloodshot eyes and a punch loaded with more force than he had ever put into a blow in his life.
The fist smashed into Malta's face with enough violence to make even the Ogre God falter.
The impact was so fierce that the ground around both of them collapsed on the spot, cracks spreading in every direction as the nearby pillars trembled.
Malta's eyes widened for an instant, genuinely surprised.
But in the next moment, he roared just as loudly as Baron and answered with a punch to the torso.
Baron spat blood, but did not retreat.
He struck back immediately.
Then Malta.
Then Baron.
Then Malta again.
The two ogres began trading punches like two monsters colliding head-on. It was pure violence, each clash of fists creating a shockwave, sinking the already ruined section of the floor even further.
Baron was different.
To Malta's surprise, he was hitting harder than ever before. His arms were breaking in real time, his shoulders were tearing apart from the inside, his knuckles had already turned into shredded meat.
And yet he kept going.
As if that formless rage were forcing every fiber of his body beyond its limit.
Malta felt it clearly.
For the first time in his life, he felt genuinely threatened in a direct exchange of punches against someone of his own race.
It did not frighten him, it only made him more excited.
The Ogre God's eyes widened with an almost insane gleam, and his desire to crush Baron grew even stronger.
The massive ogre took a step forward, took a punch to the jaw, answered with a knee to the abdomen, took an elbow strike to the neck, and then drove his fist into Baron's flank with such force that the crack of ribs breaking echoed through the corridor.
Baron staggered.
Malta did not waste the opening.
He turned and delivered a monstrous punch straight to his former rival's face. freёwebnoѵel.com
CRAAAACK!
Baron's skull visibly caved in. Blood, teeth, and fragments of bone flew out with the impact. His body reeled, but he still tried to keep moving forward, still tried to raise his arms, still tried to attack.
Malta roared.
He grabbed Baron by the whole face with one hand, fingers digging into flesh.
He lifted his old rival into the air, and then hurled him into the ground with monstrous violence.
BOOOOOOM!
The impact blew apart the ground beneath them. Flesh, bone, and muscle from Baron's body spread across the floor in an incomprehensible mess.
Baron, Gaia's Red Ogre, was dead.
Malta stood still for a moment.
Terrible.
Baron's final outburst in that exchange of blows had left him at death's door. His chest was sunken on one side, and one of his arms hung partially useless.
Bones jutted through flesh in more than one place, and blood was pouring from his mouth and nose in absurd volume, while even the way he breathed had become irregular.
He had won through sheer willpower.
Even so, he remained standing.
He felt someone approaching.
He did not need to look twice to know who it was. The sinister Troll was walking toward him. Malta had not truly seen him fight, but he knew he was an ally.
So he assumed the old wizard was coming to heal him, or at least support him with some strange spell.
When Kärtanak touched his shoulder, Malta did not even try to resist.
And then he heard the White Wizard's rough, deep voice:
"Curse of Necrosis. Curse of Lupus."
Malta's eyes went wide.
For a second, he still did not understand.
Then his skin began to die.
Necrosis spread through the Ogre God's body. Flesh hardened, darkened, and caved in across multiple places at once.
The blood flowing from his mouth turned thick and dark.
He tried to turn and crush the Troll on the spot.
But his own body was no longer responding as it had before. The second spell was corroding his resilience even more deeply.
Malta took one step.
Then another.
Then froze.
He remained standing for a moment like a statue of rotting flesh, before life simply vanished from him entirely.
Taes, who had just been healed by one of his subordinates, raised his head in time to see the rest of the situation around him worsen all at once.
His soldiers, who had been fighting and winning against the Steel Trolls, began to fall one by one.
Sudden illnesses were appearing in all of them.
One man dropped his sword and began vomiting blood. Another fell to his knees and started clawing at himself in desperation as dark patches spread across his neck.
A mage tried to cast Healing and watched her own fingers harden.
Taes looked back toward the central conflict.
And then he saw a sight his mind took a moment to accept.
Jaly was dead.
Baron was dead.
And the Ogre God Malta as well. freewebnøvel.coɱ
He was still standing, but Taes did not need to look twice to know that it was only the remains of a body.
The skin had nearly fully necrosed, and no life remained there anymore. Beside the still-standing corpse, Kärtanak was staring at him.
And now, for the first time, the White Wizard was smiling.
Taes felt new curses trying to invade his body.
But then another voice cut across the battlefield.
"Disturb!"
The effect ceased immediately. On Taes, and on the Legion soldiers at the same time.
Taes barely had time to make out what was happening before he saw who had arrived. A young woman in silver armor and a blue cloak appeared on the field, one hand already raised toward the White Wizard.
In the next instant, lightning leapt forth.
It was a devastating chain of lightning, tearing through the air in zigzags and striking Kärtanak with enough force to devastate all the surrounding area along with him.
Bluish-white light flooded the entire floor for a second, Trolls were thrown into the air, and the ground cracked once more.
Taes rejoiced in his heart.
Aisha!
But the Divine Sorceress was not happy in the slightest.
She landed, looked at the dead bodies of Jaly, Baron, and Malta, and her expression darkened.
Beyond rage and shock, she looked worried.
In the next instant, she felt the Labyrinth tremble.
Aisha went slightly pale and said, in a low, grim, absolutely serious voice:
"We're fucked..."
----
Deep in the Labyrinth, a massive pulse of energy ran through the mana veins.
The deaths of three powerful beings from outside the Labyrinth had been absorbed all at once.
At the center of the enormous Purple Crystal, the body of a man with blond hair and white eyes received that power the way parched earth receives a flood.
And then, suddenly, Saint Milis opened his eyes, more alive than ever.
----
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