Chapter 159

It was a pity.

To think that the ultimate ambition of magic, realized by a man who called himself a Tower Master, was merely adding one extra finger to form more hand seals.

I had been putting the truth he’d only just realized into practice for a very long time.

Right here, with these tentacles.

“Tentacles… you say?”

“Yes.”

The Archduke of Darkness, draped in the corpse of an Elder Lich, regenerated his vocal cords in shock and began to speak.

He looked as if his entire life had just been denied.

To be fair, this wasn’t actually an easier technique than it looked.

Forming hand seals was supposed to be a formal act—a peripheral action derived from the magic practitioner’s brain to manifest the complex calculations of a spell.

If a mere tentacle without intelligence could replace that, why would mages around the world be agonizing over their inability to raise their level?

There are times when expressing thoughts into words is difficult.

Manifesting magic through the movement of one’s hands was a task dozens, sometimes a hundred times more difficult than that.

I, however, had lived with these guys for so long that I was practically one with them; I had reached the realm where the tentacle is me, and I am the tentacle.

I called it the state of the unity of tentacles and self. That was why this was possible.

“It’s not that hard. If you train them well, they can even perform plays. Compared to that, this is the easy part.”

I pulled out a tentacle in front of him and demonstrated forming the hand seals myself.

“Scatter.”

“You bastard, what are you trying to do now…!”

“4,090th strand, Tentacle Graphic Card.”

“…?”

Not the magic, but the play.

It was a play performed by the Special Unit during the festival recently; the title was clearly ‘Righteous Division 1 Agents Defending the Yellow Magic Tower from the Demon Leader.’

I don’t know who planned it, but considering it was propaganda made to stimulate the pride of Seoul citizens and increase support for the Special Unit, I couldn’t think of anyone other than Ha Yeri.

Of course, the existence of the Archduke of Flames, who was the real top contributor to disposing of the Chair by burning her last finger under thorough information censorship and media control, was completely omitted.

They had also cleanly erased the traces that the Yellow Magic Tower they were supposed to protect had already been destroyed, with its debris flying all the way to the park surroundings.

Although the tentacles kept attacking the tentacle playing me talking to Norkel, the performance ended successfully.

All that remained was the audience’s evaluation.

“…Have you lost your mind while death was looming over you?”

“Pardon?”

I had waited for the reaction of the Archduke of Darkness, the founder of Black Magic, with high expectations, but it seemed I wasn’t going to get a good rating.

“If you intended to save your life with such petty tricks, it is pathetic.”

“What do you mean?”

He ground his teeth and prepared to cast magic once again.

Six fingers intertwined and danced strangely.

Judging by the formula, it seemed to be a second-rank Black Magic spell, ‘Suffocation.’

It was a relatively low-rank magic, but to one who had seen the end of the magical path, rank and power functioned separately.

The mana enveloping my body in an instant blocked my windpipe and obstructed the inflow of air.

“Did you think I would let trashy mages like you live after I descended to the surface again?”

“…”

“You, too, will follow your comrades. And quite painfully at that.”

What should I do?

Hold my breath like this, or dispel the magic.

Or, I could shove Digestion, who had just returned inside my sleeve, into my throat to let fresh air in, but she would absolutely hate that, so I decided to go with the easier option.

I extended tentacles from inside my robe and lightly formed a hand seal.

Then, a small sound of air ’pop!’ing reached me from somewhere.

“Huh?”

“I told you they can sufficiently replace fingers. You still don’t believe me?”

“That thing just now…!”

It was ‘Singularity’.

The tiny point that returned everything to nothing had touched his spell and caused the magic itself to collapse.

“And you’ve been speaking a bit informally since earlier. It’s our first time meeting today, so how do you know who I am to speak down to me? For all we know, I might have lived longer than you.”

“Y-you…!”

The Archduke of Darkness realized that the person who had forcibly summoned him was right in front of his eyes.

I don’t know if he had a brain inside his cracked skull, but as a mage with quick mental turnover, his next move happened in an instant.

With a wave of his hand, he made all the monsters in the tower attack me, then created over a hundred clones while forming hand seals with six fingers in the blink of an eye.

At the same time, he set coordinates in all directions and activated spatial transfer to run away as far as possible.

It happened in just about 0.3 seconds, so in the moment I blinked, the tower began to vibrate.

Even without looking, I knew a tremendous amount of magic was falling from the sky.

As expected of a black mage, even if he were to rot, he seemed to have grasped the danger of Singularity after seeing it just once, as he unleashed his attacks while hiding the formulas somewhere.

Does he intend to wipe out even the monsters that followed him into the tower?

You’re heartless.

『Fear not!』

After reassuring Mala-nim, who was worried that I might be overusing the Star Scar even in times like this, I used ‘Causal Severance.’

As all the trajectories of his magic skewed, a long tentacle I had shot into the empty air found the Archduke of Darkness’s main body amidst the countless clones and grabbed him.

Pulled back into the tower in an instant, he was no longer the magnificent figure from before, but was sprawled on the floor, trembling.

“This is absurd.”

“What is?”

“To think a monster like this was born in less than a hundred years… what is your identity, anyway! How could someone with such power be on the surface…!”

“Me? If I had to define it, I’m a debtor.”

While squatting down, I gently placed my finger on top of his head.

Powerful mana, vibrating the atmosphere enough to rival Singularity, gathered at my fingertips and sentenced him to suffocation.

Since it was the body of an Elder Lich, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t breathe, but he wouldn’t be able to use the remaining two soul restorations.

To him, with the shadow of death cast before his eyes, I spoke quietly of the purpose for which I had come.

“Was it the Outer God of Judgment? The Star Scar you took from that guy already has an owner.”

“Ugh…!”

“I want to hear from your own lips where it is—or more precisely, ‘where it is destined to be’.”

At the time of the gathering, Digestion had asserted that it was ‘already too late’ to stop the Archduke of Darkness from killing Mala-nim.

Even though he was sprawled on the floor like a pizza right now, he was a being who had reached a realm that ignored the very laws of causality.

Considering Digestion’s greed and the fact that she possessed a considerable amount of Star Scars at the time, it was unlikely she had lied; therefore, even if I were to annihilate the Archduke of Darkness here, I couldn’t stop the attack.

In that case, I just needed to confirm where the Star Scar would fall and retrieve it.

“If you tell me, I’ll spare you.”

“Ghh…!”

“It’s no use resisting. You can’t beat me even if you die and come back to life.”

“Kghh!”

“If you surrender now, I’ll specially see to it that your physical body is left intact.”

“Ghk, ughh!”

“You’re quite stubborn. I told you I’d spare you if you talk, didn’t I?”

“Kgh-kgh!”

After a lengthy interrogation, I realized that he wanted to talk, but was so suppressed by my mana that he couldn’t say anything.

With no air and the inability to use the channel, he had only been using hand and foot gestures.

I thought he was holding out because of some kind of conviction.

When I suppressed my mana, he let out a sigh of relief.

“Looking at it again, there truly is no talent like Flauros among the Archdukes.”

『Fear!』

“No, I told you it’s not because I like her. If that were the case, would I have been avoiding her this whole time?”

In truth, even that wouldn’t last long.

I would inevitably have to face her in the next Council meeting.

“Let’s see. One is here in Busan, and the other is…”

“North, it’s to the north…!”

“And just how far north? There are at least three more countries above this one, you know? North Korea? Or Russia?”

“It’s not that far up! It’s a place where many of you humans live!”

After somehow succeeding in finding out the location where the Star Scar would appear.

The last remaining problem was whether I would really spare him.

Since I had no obligation to keep a promise to an Archduke, I could just process it as a ‘natural death,’ but that would certainly invite suspicion from the other mages outside.

The best-case scenario would be for the Archduke of Darkness to die naturally at someone else’s hands.

Just as I was pondering this, the ground under my feet suddenly wriggled.

When I lowered my head, the tentacle corpses were swarming over me in an instant.

“Kiiieeeek!!”

“No, these bastards!?”

They had been plotting in the basement, waiting for an opening.

What kind of grudge did they have to harass me so persistently?

After barely shaking them off and looking around, the Archduke of Darkness was already gone.

Obviously, he must have fled using spatial transfer again.

He was just a mage with one extra finger.

Since I held the advantage in terms of realm by several tiers, chasing him wasn’t that difficult.

I immediately tracked the trail of mana and grasped where he had vanished.

Contrary to my expectation that he would have gotten quite far away, the place where the Archduke of Darkness appeared was unexpectedly near the pier.

Is he trying to acquire the Star Scar?

If that happens, it becomes a variable.

Facing an Archduke who had absorbed the Star Scar, unlike before, would be no different from fighting an Outer God.

I would absolutely have to use my single-digit tentacles, and unless it were inside a Seed of Calamity like the Thirteen Palaces of Emptiness, the damage to the surroundings would be uncontrollable.

Having shaken off the tentacles and stepped outside, I was soon able to discover the Archduke of Darkness.

It was near a certain red lighthouse, getting hit by waves near the broken pier.

It definitely shouldn’t be night right now, yet a mysterious light was flowing from the top of the lighthouse.

That was the other half of the Star Scar that the Outer God of Judgment had possessed.

“That, if I only get my hands on that…!”

Perhaps it was because he had urgently cast spatial transfer before recovering from the shock of taking my mana head-on.

Having only barely managed to keep his upper body intact, he was desperately reaching out toward the lighthouse as he approached.

His intention was to discard the body he had now—having been dragged down and snatched by the Tentacle of the Abyss the moment he acquired the Star Scar—and transform into a perfect form.

A true monster would be born, regardless of whether he had ten fingers or a hundred.

However, I, who had reached the point where I could stop all that ambition, did not move a single step from that spot.

There were two main reasons.

One was that I couldn’t possibly move my feet because the tentacles kept sticking to me.

The other was that his plan didn’t seem to have any hope of succeeding anyway.

Because…

“Stop.”

A voice that was more icy than it was firm had sealed off both mine and his movements.

“It’s you, right? The one who killed my sister.”

No Yeon-hwa was standing in front of the lighthouse.