36. Magic Survival (8)
After healing the patients by consuming a massive amount of mana all at once, Flame was safely taken to the emergency room.
Of course, since it was only simple mana exhaustion, she was given a recovery tonic and moved almost immediately to a nearby hospital room without any special treatment.
“Ugh…… feels like my head’s gonna split open…….”
It took less than an hour for her to wake up after losing consciousness.
That was thanks to both her ocean-like mana capacity and her exceptional recovery power.
“……Are you okay?”
The first face she saw when she got up was Anella’s.
Though Anella was pretending to be hiding her true identity, Flame saw through that fact perfectly clearly.
“Huh, why are you here?”
“……I came with you too.”
“Did you?”
“But more importantly……”
Anella glanced nervously over her shoulder again and again.
As if silently urging Flame to hurry up and look that way.
“Eh?”
There was someone there—a rather unexpected figure—watching the broadcast through the wall-mounted screen.
It was Princess Hong Biyeon.
“So you’re awake.”
“Uh…… why are you here?”
It was such an unexpected appearance that Flame asked with a somewhat dazed expression, but Hong Biyeon ignored the question and immediately got to the point.
“What exactly is happening in Magic Survival right now?”
“Ah, that.”
A completely new turn of events that had never existed in the original romance fantasy.
In the original work, no dark mage infiltrated Magic Survival, Anella never stepped in to help, and Hong Biyeon likewise never became involved there…… none of this had been part of the story.
But this was no longer a ‘story’ created by characters.
This was a real reality, built by the real me and the real people around me.
At this point, I had gotten used to accepting sudden situations like this.
“What do you think is happening? It’s obvious.”
Flame spoke casually, almost tossing the words out, as she climbed out of bed.
Then, stretching lazily, she said:
“It’s dark mages. Those cockroach-like bastards snuck in again. Don’t they ever get tired of it? Maybe there’s one in here too.”
Flinch.
The moment she deliberately said that, Anella averted her gaze, fidgeting with her fingers and checking the room nervously.
By the setting, I’d heard she was far older than an ordinary student……
was she in her thirties, or her forties?
It was funny, since she didn’t look it at all.
“Well, you probably already knew something like that too. Hm, judging by the look on your face, I’d say you’re worried about that ahjussi, aren’t you?”
She threw the question like a sharp jab, but Hong Biyeon’s red eyes remained still and calm.
In the end, Flame shook her head and said:
“The truth is, I don’t know all the details either. I don’t know exactly what’s happening inside. But what I do know is…… that the dark mage who infiltrated the virtual world can actually attack mages for real. And that he’s probably pretty high-level too. At least around 5-Risk.”
“Why aren’t they stopping the tournament?”
“They say they can’t. Since it’s a completely separate space they created, they need casting time to bring everyone back. And if they do that, there could be casualties. So the principal said he’s leaving the dark mage to that ahjussi.”
A twitch.
Hong Biyeon’s eyebrow moved.
It was obvious she found that deeply displeasing.
“A man who’s the principal can’t handle this himself, so he has to ask a student to do it?”
“Uh…… yeah, I guess that’s what it comes down to?”
That was the end of the conversation.
Hong Biyeon turned back to the screen on the wall, and Flame also ended up watching it as well.
Since this was a hospital room inside the Stella Dome, it was possible to watch Magic Survival through live monitoring in real time.
You could even operate it with the remote and select the participant you wanted.
How convenient.
Of course, only participants standing in places illuminated by the stage’s sunlight or moonlight could be monitored, but luckily, Baek Yuseol seemed to be moving around out in the open, so he was visible on the screen.
He was running somewhere in a hurry, ignoring the terrain around him, the artifacts, and even the enemies trying to pick fights with him.
Most of the spectators probably had no idea why Baek Yuseol was acting like that, but the girls in this room understood at once.
He had probably found the dark mage and was rushing toward him.
The opponent was a 5-Risk dark mage.
Thinking about it rationally, it was normal that a student would have no chance.
But if that student was none other than Baek Yuseol……
then maybe, just maybe, he might win.
That expectation arose—and with it, worry.
After all, this time he would have to fight while enduring a dark mage’s one-sided assault that could actually injure him.
Without speaking another word, the girls simply stared at the screen.
Today, more than ever, the reality that all they could do was watch felt unbearably cruel.
Krrrroooom!! Flash!
A single white bolt of lightning struck down toward the earth, as though trying to split the world in half.
It looked like naturally occurring lightning, but in truth it was the effect of the top-tier one-time artifact [Lv.5 Thunderbolt Invocation].
You could craft it by going to a special location and gathering all five talisman-type artifacts, and since the conditions were so difficult, it appeared only once in maybe a hundred matches, if even that.
No one intentionally went around searching for all five items, and even if they tried, they were scattered so far apart that gathering them all before the match ended was no easy task.
And even if you did gather them all, the real problem was how difficult the activation condition was.
‘When activated at a designated location, lightning falls five minutes later.’
Its destructive power was strong enough to blow away the opponent in a single strike, but the range was extremely narrow, and on top of that, the casting time was a full five minutes.
How were you supposed to know where your opponent would be five minutes later and drop lightning there?
The accepted theory was that it was an artifact created for amusement in the first place—overpowered in performance, but saddled with several utterly absurd risks.
Of course, thanks to the ‘Bulbul Glasses,’ I had already identified the locations of all five items, so I had collected them all and crafted Thunderbolt Invocation just in case.
I figured maybe there would be a use for it someday.
And then, right on cue, support came in.
Principal Eltman Eltwin marked the dark mage Berunkal’s position on the map for me.
The moment I saw Zeliel and Berunkal encounter each other, I roughly designated that spot for the lightning.
With the thought: please, just let luck be on my side and hit either one of them.
If Zeliel got hit, she’d be safely eliminated and sent outside.
And if Berunkal got eliminated, the warriors waiting outside would subdue him.
“Huff, huff……!”
After running for quite a while and reaching the hill, I found the situation almost over.
Zeliel lay collapsed on the ground, unable to move.
Her whole body was covered in terrible burns, and I wasn’t even sure proper rehabilitation would be possible.
‘Berunkal……’
The debris from the lightning strike was everywhere, making it hard to make out anything clearly.
For now, I hurried over to Zeliel and lightly supported her neck.
“Hey, you okay? You’re not dead, right?”
At that, Zeliel slowly opened her eyes.
Like her father, who could perceive the Golden Rule, she too had vivid golden eyes.
Even though her whole body was marked with red burns, for a brief instant I thought those eyes alone were beautiful like jewels, but I quickly shook the thought away.
“You…… are……”
“Forget that. Just go back. If you go now, you can still be treated.”
Thunk!
I drove my auxiliary dagger into her heart, and her body dissolved into light and vanished.
She had been eliminated and sent outside.
That settled the situation, more or less.
‘If only there were some kind of system that let you self-eliminate, this never would’ve happened in the first place……’
The only ways to kill yourself inside this place were to throw yourself into a natural disaster, expose yourself to the boundary outside the match area, or turn off all your shields and jump from a great height.
But this place was an open hill, and with no natural disaster occurring, it didn’t look easy even to throw yourself away.
It was incredibly fortunate that Zeliel had held on this long.
After sending her back, I closed my eyes and focused, spreading my [Sixth Sense] out in all directions.
My senses, which could be called superior even to a mage’s mana scan, clearly picked up every hidden sign of mana.
Honestly, I had only spread it on the off chance—because I’d assumed that after being struck by lightning, he’d be dead on the spot.
Crunch!
The rock beneath my feet suddenly shattered, and a hand wrapped in dark crimson flames shot out, grabbing for my throat.
Luckily, because I had activated Sixth Sense, I reacted quickly and barely avoided it by hopping backward.
Crack, crack…….
Something slowly raised its upper body, shaking burnt wood fragments, dirt, and bits of stone off itself.
“Haa…… for fuck’s sake, why is it that people keep going out of their way to be such a pain?”
Berunkal glared at me as he spoke.
Half his body had been burned by the lightning, but he still looked perfectly fine.
There was no way he had any means of defending against lightning, so it looked like he had simply been lucky enough to be only grazed.
Then again, that would explain why the nearby Zeliel hadn’t been affected much by the lightning either.
I hurriedly drew my weapon.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a sword but a club.
Still, that wasn’t a problem.
The only reason I had used a sword to begin with was because I had no choice but to shape mana into a blade.
If I could pierce the enemy’s shield and land a direct hit, the form didn’t matter.
“Ha, right. Baek Yuseol! I’ve been looking for you this whole time. I kept getting interrupted on the way and it was pissing me off, but this works out perfectly.”
Fwoosh!
He lit dark crimson flames in both hands and pulled the corners of his mouth upward in a savage grin.
It was such a grotesque smile that no human face should have been able to make it, and a chill from pure instinct ran down my spine.
“If I burn you…… this frustration will go away too, right? Hm?”
A frontal battle.
He was exhausted, and I was exhausted too…… but a dark mage’s recovery speed easily surpassed that of a human.
If we fought properly, I couldn’t win.
He’d definitely figure out my Blink pattern, and with that monstrous kinetic vision of his, he’d chase me down and burn everything.
So the truth was…… I had no intention of fighting him properly in the first place.
This was the arena of Magic Survival.
Didn’t I just need to eliminate him by ‘whatever means’?
By now, warriors waiting outside were probably ready to deal with Berunkal.
In an ordinary fight, my chances of killing Berunkal would be drastically low, but once the discussion became about all the different ways to eliminate an opponent in survival, that was a different story.
As I quietly stepped backward, Berunkal lowered his stance and said:
“You were a knight-type, weren’t you? In that case……”
“I’ll face you the same way!”
Boom!
Kicking off the ground with nothing but pure jumping power—not even Power Jump—Berunkal closed in on me in an instant.
Realizing I couldn’t avoid him with an ordinary roll, I used a short Blink of about two meters diagonally to the side, then swung my club toward Berunkal’s back.
“Not a chance!”
But he reacted like a demon, whirled around, and batted my club away with a flame-wrapped hand.
In pure strength, I was overwhelmingly outmatched, so I grabbed my throbbing wrist and hopped backward.
Berunkal then slammed his hand into the ground.
“Blow apart!”
Kaboom!!
The ground cracked wide open, and a volcanic burst of black flames erupted up toward me!
But I knew that attack could move in only a straight line at best, so I lightly dodged aside and then used Blink twice in succession.
First, behind Berunkal.
[Blink]
“The same trick again!”
And then again, to the other side.
[Blink]
Fwoosh!
Taking advantage of the moment Berunkal swung his flames hard at the place where I had been standing, I moved to his flank and brought the club down, striking him squarely on the crown of the head.
Booong!!
“Khk……!”
Maybe it was because I was covered head to toe in artifacts that boosted my [Agility], but I was moving much faster here than outside.
This was exactly what made Magic Survival great.
If your artifact farming went well, you could wield power far superior to what you had in reality.
And on top of that, artifacts that raised agility or physical strength were considered trash-tier—so-called junk artifacts—meaning nobody bothered collecting them, and they were strewn everywhere, making them easy to farm.
……Was this the upside of being a crap-tier character?
To think the relevant artifacts were easy to farm just because nobody used them.
A tearjerking advantage.
“You bastard…… I heard people call you a damn fly before……”
“I’m more like a summer mosquito type, actually.”
“Die!”
I had meant to trade a few jokes back and forth just to buy time for Blink’s cooldown, but Berunkal apparently had no interest in that and came charging in like an idiot.
At the moment, I could only use Blink one more time.
But there was a reason I’d been spamming Blink so stupidly until now.
[Jumping Square]
I threw a box onto the ground and stomped on it, and my body shot forward.
Originally, it was an artifact meant to be laid as a trap to screw the other person over, but I had practiced quite a bit so I could control it three-dimensionally.
Apparently Berunkal hadn’t expected me to rush straight toward him, because his eyes widened, but then he reached out with the dark crimson flaming claws, trying to seize my collar.
But I twisted my body, turning my chest up toward the sky, and then Blinked upward by exactly one meter.
“What……?”
Berunkal’s hand sliced through empty air, and as I passed above his head, I used my momentum to spin and smash the side of his skull.
Thwack!
“Hup……!”
Even after taking that hit, Berunkal ignored it and reached for me.
His obsession was downright ghostlike, but I stomped on that hand, flipped away, and threw several marbles at him.
Boom-boom-boom!!
They were a kind of smoke bomb that caused minor damage—at most they blocked vision, though being hit by them felt pretty unpleasant.
Of course…… artifacts like that couldn’t inflict meaningful damage on him.
Fwooooosh!!
As proof, dark crimson flames burned up even more fiercely than before.
“This bastard……”
Berunkal clenched both hands, now blazing like campfires, into fists and slowly walked toward me.
At a glance, it looked like he was being leisurely, but in truth he was preparing to react the instant I moved.
If I used Blink recklessly here, I’d only waste the cooldown.
So instead…… I pulled out the artifact [Frog Tongue] and threw it at Berunkal.
“Khk?!”
A pink tongue shot out and stuck directly to Berunkal’s chest, instantly yanking him toward me.
All players in Magic Survival were system-adjusted, so no matter how much of a dark mage he was, he still couldn’t completely ignore the influence of artifacts.
However, it seemed resistance was still possible, because Berunkal grabbed the frog tongue with both hands and burned it away—but by then he had already shown an opening.
Beep-beep-beep—
……Kaboom!!
I had attached the ‘Gift Box That Explodes After 5 Seconds’ on top of the frog tongue, so I threw myself backward, and Berunkal took the blast head-on.
“Grrr…… can’t you fight properly?! Can this kind of thing even be called magic warrior combat?!”
He shouted at me as I opened the distance and ran in a wide circle.
“Cowardly! Petty! Filthy! Have you thrown your honor into the dirt?! Stella’s magic warrior!”
Hearing that, the corners of my mouth twitched before I knew it.
“Thanks for the compliment. That’s exactly how fighting is supposed to be done.”
Dirty and petty?
Wasn’t that about the highest praise I could receive!
[Blink]
I dashed over the hill toward a tree on the other side, and Berunkal chased after me with a terrifying expression.
A horn protruded from his forehead, and his palms had grown grotesquely huge—large enough to cover an entire face.
Unlike before, when he had still maintained a human form, he had now taken on the full appearance of a dark mage, driven to the limit by rage.
‘Ugh, this might get a little dangerous……!’
Whoosh!
KABOOOM!!
A lump of dark crimson flame shot out and shattered the rock I had stepped on to pieces—
no, it practically vaporized it outright.
Far greater destructive power than before.
The thought that if I took even one direct hit from that, I might really die beyond treatment flashed through my mind.
‘This won’t do……’
There was still a little time left before ‘that’ arrived.
And if I wanted to hold out until then, I had no choice.
I’d have to use this skill I really hadn’t wanted to use.
[Taeryeong Divine Technique: Spirit’s Breath, Second Form]
[Agility enhanced by 150%]
“Hoo……”
The breath I inhale and exhale fills with Iphanel’s own breath.
That clear, vivid divine beast aura gradually dyed my body in pure energy and drove one of my stats to the limit.
It even felt as though everything in the world had slowed.
The falling shower looked almost motionless.
As if, with a single tap of my finger, each droplet would tremble and burst.
The lightning flashing in the distance bloomed like flowers.
Beautiful.
Today, for the first time, I realized that a slowed world could be this beautiful, this dazzling.
……Fwoosh!
Even the dark crimson flames tearing through the air at me were no longer a threat.
For just fifteen seconds.
In a world where everything had slowed, I could avoid all of it without even using Blink.
One step—one flame merely grazed my waist and crumbled apart.
Two steps—it struck emptily where I had just planted my foot.
Three steps—it couldn’t even track me anymore and slammed into the wrong place instead.
KRAK!!
But he only kept throwing fire for a little while.
In the end, Berunkal lost patience and kicked off the ground hard with his superior physical ability, leaping forward and catching up to me in no time.
Shaaahhh—!
Rumble…….
The shower still poured down fiercely.
A dead end.
Having reached the edge of a cliff, I slowly turned around.
Berunkal, who had now come within arm’s reach, stared at me silently.
“It’s over.”
Two steps behind me was a cliff that dropped straight down for miles.
There was nowhere left to run.
The battle had to be decided here, yet the terrain was narrow, which meant I couldn’t make use of my one real advantage—mobility.
Knowing that perfectly well, Berunkal came closer at a leisurely pace.
Like a cat hunting a cornered rat.
But……
all that leisure Berunkal was showing only made me feel grateful.
“Yeah. It’s over.”
“……Ha, have you finally accepted reality?”
“No. What the hell are you talking about?”
The shower intensified more and more.
Odd sparks flashed inside the dark clouds, and the thunder rumbling across the sky came at shorter and shorter intervals.
This was a stage.
There was no such thing as naturally occurring weather here.
And I knew exactly when, where, and how every ‘natural disaster’ would occur…… all of it.
Rrrrumble…… KABOOOM!!
“W-What the……?”
In the distance, a ‘shower of lightning’ suddenly began pouring down.
It hadn’t reached here yet, but it was slowly approaching.
‘O you cursed by Hailges, God of Thunder—everything touched by his gaze shall burn.’
At the edge of the cliff.
With the shower of lightning at my back.
I spoke to Berunkal.
“You’re the one who’s finished. Got it now?”
……And then.
The pure white rain swept across the entire area.
— Read only on MugenCodex —
