Chapter 171

Mikhail lay sprawled on the floor with his neck still pinned.

The orange-haired youth looked down at his catch with a muttering of disbelief.

"Hah, what idiots…. Who in the world forgot to reset the locking formula on the way out?"

Mikhail looked up at the youth and bit his lip.

I can't move… at all.

The arm pressing down on his neck looked unremarkable—only a thin layer of lean muscle.

But the weight coming through it was something else. Heavy as if iron weights had been hung from it.

While Mikhail twisted and writhed, the youth gave him a once-over and sneered.

"Thought you were just dim, but sticky fingers on top of it? Wow, you really were a hopeless case, weren't you."

The orange-haired youth clicked his tongue, fixed his deep green eyes on Mikhail's face, and said.

"But don't worry. Those people outside, you—you'll all end up in the same state in the end."

Mikhail was about to talk back to the menacing voice when he sensed something odd in the air and shifted his eyes toward the oil-cloth at the side.

The large hole the youth had punched through when he broke in.

Through the round gap, a bluish smoke and pained voices were seeping inside.

"Ugh… my head… my head… hurts… ah… aah."

"Everybody pull yourselves… together. Damn it, what is this smoke… why are my arms… getting so heavy…."

Mikhail bit his lip as he felt his own condition shifting too.

Every time the unidentified haze rode in on his breath, his body sagged as though waterlogged.

But the small mercy was this—none of the headache the others were crying about had hit him.

"Oh dear. That's why you don't go drinking what strangers offer you. No sense of caution. Right?"

Mikhail moved his eyes again and saw the orange-haired youth miming a casual sip with his fingers.

The faction the youth belonged to: the Black Ark.

For the Black Ark, power was the bedrock of every move they made.

If the strength they wielded had changed, then a change in how they moved was hardly surprising.

They weren't going to leave quietly. Because the Black Ark, once it had power on this scale—

The instant a scene from the main storyline flashed through his mind.

Mikhail felt his arms wrenched behind his back.

Click.

A locking sound, and shackles of pure mana clasped around both wrists.

Damn.

Mikhail let out a small sound of resignation. Then, fighting to twitch his arms—heavy as stones now—he tracked the youth with his eyes.

The youth finished securing the binding and stood up. He turned his back on Mikhail lying on the floor and started moving forward.

"You always lived knowing less than everyone else, didn't you? But not this time. I'll let you in on your fate a step ahead of the others."

There was a thread of pure delight in his voice.

The youth took three or four steps forward, then came to a sudden stop.

After that, he whipped around, stretched both arms wide like a stage actor, and raised his voice.

"What has wetted lips is ignorance, what covers eyes is oblivion! Foolish ones, become offerings bearing baptism!"

The youth standing on the wooden floor brought to mind a soloist performing on stage.

His eyes lit with a strange luster, like a man who'd glimpsed paradise. Then he turned his head toward Mikhail and smiled.

"Not that you'd understand any of it."

Mikhail clenched his back teeth as he faced the youth. Then he glanced sidelong at his own arm and thought.

The force of the blue mist pressing down on my body. I have to find a way to shake this off first.

Mikhail furrowed his brow. The way to weaken the mist's hold on his whole body—whatever that was, the youth standing right there would surely have it.

"……"

Mikhail closed his eyelids and thought.

A way to get the youth to lift the effect from him. A motive or need strong enough to drive the opposite of what he was doing now.

Scenes that could serve as a turning point….

[Although, I'm hearing something I don't much care for.]

The moment this perpetually unruffled youth had shown a sharp reaction.

[What has wetted lips is ignorance, what covers eyes is oblivion! Foolish ones, become offerings bearing baptism!]

And what the youth had just shouted in front of him, with light flashing across his pupils.

[Please… please… don't. Don't shout.]

And finally, the persona he'd kept up the entire trip.

There is… a way.

─Flash!

In a heartbeat. A flare burst outside. As Mikhail turned his pupils to look at the sudden light, the orange-haired youth slowly lowered the arm he'd thrown out to the side and murmured.

"Ah, looks like it's time to leave."

The youth let the excitement drain from his face and walked over to Mikhail lying on the floor.

He grabbed a hard fistful of Mikhail's long dark-blue hair and yanked his head up.

The corners of the youth's eyes curved as he looked at the boy he'd captured.

"I'll be off, then. Rest up, all right? Your name was… ah, right. Maxwell."

Crash!

The youth slammed the dark-blue head against the floor and gave a light huff.

Then he rose and started walking.

Tap.

Two paces to the way out.

The youth reached out a hand to push aside the oil-cloth blocking his view.

That was when it happened.

"Most… holy… Creator. Merciful… Lord God."

A tearful murmur drove into the youth's ears.

A voice that grated on the nerves like a buzzing insect. But the more grating thing was the content of the words.

An Orthodox… prayer?

The youth halted in his tracks and turned his head back toward the spot he'd just left.

The boy whose head he'd just smashed into the floor.

Maxwell was straining with everything he had to lift his head.

"You who dwell… in the loneliest place… look with kindness upon us… have… mercy on us."

Maxwell was crying. With tears and blood streaming from his nose, he kept moving his split lips.

"Turn not away from… our purity… our lament… and at the end of this long pilgrimage… may we, may we reach glory…."

Every time another trembling phrase spilled from Maxwell's mouth, droplets of mingled blood and tears dripped to the floor.

The youth's eyes flew wide and he swallowed a breath.

What is this. What's going on? By now he should've lost all coherent thought—he shouldn't be able to do anything but act on instinct.

The youth's face twisted and his hand clenched into a fist.

He strode over to Maxwell, who was still murmuring, grabbed him by the collar, and hauled him up.

"You little shit! How are you still in one piece? Did you not drink yesterday's drink? Or—"

"P-protect… protect us… p-please… keep us… keep us safe."

Maxwell, dangling from his grip, was murmuring in a flat, uninflected voice—like a broken music box.

Strung up high by the collar, his head fell back and his breath came in irregular gasps a few times over.

Then Maxwell lowered his head, locked unfocused eyes with the youth, and let a feeble little laugh escape.

"Please… s-save me… Lord God."

What settled over the air next was silence.

The orange-haired youth stared at Maxwell with empty eyes, then twisted his lips upward and burst out laughing.

"Khh. Khahahat. Hahahaha!"

A peal of laughter went on like he was choking on it. The youth's shoulders shook for a long while before he managed to settle his ragged breathing.

"Haah."

The youth let go of Maxwell's collar.

Then he grabbed the boy's face—sprawled on the floor—in one hand and brought his upturned eyes in close.

"Rotten to the bone."

"……"

"What a shame. Couldn't even be useful as an offering."

The corners of the youth's eyes narrowed to knife-edges, and a voice honed to a razor slipped from between his lips.

"You don't need any blessing, any role. Rot away and become dirt."

A flash of dark purple mana flared across Maxwell's face.

The youth waited until the afterglow had vanished, then flung what he was holding to the side.

He moved on, the sound of Maxwell's limp body rolling across the floor at his back.

"…Senior Deacon Allen Diart. In your name, I cast down what is twisted."

That low murmur was the last of it.

The youth's footsteps carried his tall frame away, and what remained inside the wagon was the sound of breathing that seemed ready to stop at any moment.

"Hhh… hh."

Mikhail pulled his trembling body inward, mixing a thin laugh into his broken breaths.

The weight that had been pressing down on him was gone. His arms and legs no longer felt heavy. But.

Tssss….

The alien mana that had flashed violet.

It was creeping through every vein where his blood flowed, gnawing at every fine bundle of nerves as it spread.

No… no. I can hold on… I can hold on.

Mikhail forced himself to ignore the noise sharpening by the second and twisted his curled-up body.

Inject dark purple mana into the victim, strip every trace of their internal mana, and deal a fatal blow.

He knew this was how the Black Ark dispatched those marked for purge and apostates.

Tssszzz.

But there was a reason he'd pushed through with that earlier method, knowing this disposition was coming.

The blind spot the orange-haired youth—Allen—possessed: he had drastically underestimated Mikhail's own power.

Since he'd written off the laborer boy Maxwell as a dimwit, the dark purple mana he'd injected wasn't much.

Mikhail dug his fingernails into his forearm. He fought to lift the corners of a mouth that kept wanting to twist.

So I just… need to hold out for a bit. I'll be all right soon. And then, with every piece of intel in hand, I'll be able to save the people outside too… that's how this goes.

Painful as it was for now, in the end the mana within his body would push the dark-violet mana out….

Endure.

Scratch.

I can endure.

Scratch, scratch.

Soon enough….

The sound of solid bark being chewed through. The sound of withered plants being mashed and crumbled.

The grating noise drove into his ears and pushed past them into the depths of his mind.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

The sound of a caterpillar eating its way through a leaf.

It tore down the boundaries of his senses and crept into the movement of his pupils.

Ah.

Mikhail felt his eyes slip out of his control. The view in front of him began to spin upside down.

Dizzy.

The whole scene flipped and scrambled together.

Then, just before the images caught on his corneas could sink down to a black horizon—

Flash!

Over a world about to turn upside down, a system message etched itself out clearly.

[Not■fica■ion: An ability has reached the t■rn■ng poi■t of growth….]

Gold…?

No. It wasn't.

The text he'd assumed would light up only in gold, same as ever, was shedding its surface and revealing its true color.

[Not■?]

What appeared was.

Dark blue.

[…The form of [Origin Mana: Abyss] changes from [Bonding] to [Restoration].]