31: My Army (2)

Several layers of magical protection were broken.

Jamie clenched his teeth as he withstood the storm of tentacles.

He never thought that the doctor would be able to create a chimera’s ability with magic.

Aside from Jamie’s worsening mood, the idea was brilliant.

‘But has a clear downside.’

Tentacle Hurricane was so powerful that it ranked around 6th class.

If Dark Dimension hadn’t been laid out in advance, Jamie wouldn’t have handled it.

However, each powerful magic had a decisive drawback.

‘Black.’

Kik!

Black who was concentrating on defense, stuck its head out at the call.

‘Can you keep holding on?’

Kik-!

Black said it was no problem.

Jamie knew that it was difficult and also that Black was trying to reassure him.

He knew it, but he didn’t say anything. To turn the situation around, Black would have to take some damage.

‘Doppelganger.’

Kik!

The wings spread out behind its back disappeared, and a black liquid covered its body as it turned into a black mass.

The black mass floated over Jamie’s head and kept slowly expanding while taking the form of a human.

Kik!

Eventually, when it reached the full form, it looked exactly like Jamie.

[4th class Black Magic: Doppelganger]

Transformation magic. It could be used under the condition that the target could be grasped.

The downside was that if the target and the doppelganger of magic met, one of them had to die unconditionally.

However, if they didn’t meet face to face, no event would occur.

‘This isn’t effective magic, so I hardly ever use it, but I ended up using it somehow.’

Jamie saw that Black transformed into him.

A doppelganger can use about 60% of the target’s abilities.

Tentacle Hurricane could be ended, and if it is Black, it would surely be able to block it. Injuries were unavoidable, but things had to go that far to solve the problem.

Jamie went into the shadows.

---

‘He is blocking it quite well.’

The doctor looked at Jamie, who was holding his ground.

He wasn’t sure where the dark magician came from, but he was good.

‘Though the taste is terrible’

He knew that there are many dark magicians who are as crazy as him, or even crazier.

Among them, there were some psychopaths who walked around in the form of children.

And the one in front of him was one of those kinds.

The doctor had no idea that Jamie was really a kid.

He would never believe that such a monstrous talent existed in the world.

“Shall I turn up the destruction a little more? Hehehehe!”

The tentacles magic circle grew larger.

Dozens of tentacles came out and joined the storm.

“Uh.”

It was then.

The doctor’s five senses caught something.

“Wait.”

The doctor yelled.

But it didn’t stop.

“H-How?!”

He was flustered.

Impossible things were happening. Things that he could never understand were happening in front of his eyes.

How, how?

“Why are you over there?! You should be over here!”

The doctor’s gaze turned.

There, Jamie was still surviving the Tentacle Hurricane with a grim face.

But, why there?

“You are here?”

“Your weakness.”

A cruel smile appeared on Jamie’s face.

A ‘curse’ was running through his hands.

“You didn’t measure your opponent’s level.”

[Rot Cell]

Black mana swirled around the doctor’s body.

He felt a slight tingling sensation all over his body.

“W-what!”

“From now on, you will rot slowly and crumble.”

“This is!”

“The weakness of your magic.”

Jamie raised his right hand.

“In exchange for having a great destructive power, the caster will turn immobile for a while.”

“How can you…”

“Looking at you, you are unable to move, right?”

[Black Ball]

A black sphere slowly flew towards the doctor.

His expression contorted.

As Jamie said, he was unable to avoid it.

Even when his skin was rotting.

“Kuaak!”

The moment the black sphere touched the doctor, he felt terrible pain.

Black Ball was a 3rd class black magic. It was a simple magic that raised the target’s pain sensation to three times the normal level.

The problem was that the magic was applied just before the rotting happened.

And now he could feel the decay of each cell in his body. But was the pain and scream really because of the effect of black ball?

“S-stop!!!!”

He felt a chain of pain going through all over his body to the extent that his mind wandered.

The power of the Tentacle Hurricane that didn’t die down began to gradually dissipate.

“Good work.”

Kik…

Black, who endured the storm so far, fell to the floor in exhaustion.

Black returned to the usual bat form and then went to sleep.

Jamie reverse summoned Black and stretched out his palms while facing them down.

[Gravity]

The doctor’s body fell to the ground.

With a bang.

“Kuak!”

The doctor screamed.

He was alive.

The fall itself was dangerous, but now the pain has tripled. And it was still strange how his body didn’t die from shock or pain.

The man must have remodeled his own body in an unbelievable way.

Jamie put black magic on both hands and slowly landed on the ground.

He saw the wriggling doctor.

“Kuak…Kuak!”

His body was twisted and convulsing.

Eyes looked upwards, and blood stained foam in his mouth.

Jamie withdrew the black magic and approached the man.

He heard everything from Lincoln, but he was expecting more information.

It wasn’t necessarily related to Zenith, but he heard that the doctor was doing experiments for a while.

‘I am so interested in body transformation.’

The doctor would know how.

If he was a Chimera Expert, he might not know how to remodel and yet maintain the human state, but he might be someone who can.

All he needed was that information.

So he placed his hand on the doctor’s head.

No, he tried to.

Whoops!

Jamie frowned as he moved away from the tentacle which brushed past his cheek.

For a brief moment, if he hadn’t noticed it, his face would have had a big hole in it.

He widened the distance at once.

“Kuak… damn it, damn it!”

The doctor who was supposed to have fainted, screamed as he raised his bizarrely broken body.

“It hurts. So so so so so so so so much!!

Crack!

The body was twisted back to its original state.

The sound of bones beginning to fit resounded around them. That itself should have hurt like hell, but the doctor endured it by biting down so hard that a tooth shattered.

“Hehehehe.”

A cloud of smoke came out of the doctor’s body.

Without delay, Jamie summoned a Black Spear.

[Dark Spear of Curse.]

Holding the Dark Spear made of mana, he threw it as hard as he could at the doctor.

Swoosh! With the sound of wind breaking-

Puck!

“Kuak!”

It hit the doctor in his heart.

The skin around the pierced part loosened like a tread and then began to wrap around the spear. Eventually, when the skin completely covered the dark spear, the magic disappeared with the sound of wind blowing.

“hehehe. Hehe. Hehehe.”

The doctor staggered as he shook his head.

His hair wildly moving and his eyes out of focus.

He smiled for a while like a madman and then stopped laughing.

“I didn’t want to do that.”

And then began to mumble to himself.

“For a bastard like you to make me like this. You. Garbage. Need to be killed. Dog. Annoying. I am angry. You will be used for experiments. Ah. I will kill you and turn you. I will kill you.”

His eyes were moving out of focus.

His white eyes began to have something red move in them.

“They are done, ahhhh!”

The doctor was angry.

How precious they were!

Everything seemed to be wasted.

The blood vessels sprouting from the doctor’s body began to wriggle.

“Come, my servants!”

A magic circle unfolded around him.

Jamie knew at once that it was a summoning magic circle.

He wanted to respond, but he was too late.

“Kuhahaha. My treasures!”

Three Chimeras appeared.

And they were no ordinary chimeras.

“… you’ve been hiding something like this.”

A chimera with bird wings, head of lion, body of troll and limbs of ogre.

A chimera with the head of a lizardman, the body of an ant, six legs of a grasshopper, and a sting of wasp.

He didn’t know what the last creature was made of, but the last chimera had a barrel-like snout.

Although all of them looked bizarre, the energy of the three animals was unusual.

“Tear off his limbs and bring him here, right in front of me!”

At the doctor’s command, the chimeras simultaneously moved towards Jamie.

---

Ricky continued to walk, wrapping his arms around his body. Even though he knew that he shouldn’t be there, he kept walking.

‘This is bad.’

What was it that was making him feel so disgusted?

He gulped and moved.

A little further away and he would be there.

Bang!!

At that moment, a roar was heard from the place where the ominous energy was felt.

Ricky fell to the floor startled at the sound.

His limbs trembled. Should he go there?

Bang! Bang!

Again.

Ricky’s mouth went dry. If he went back, maybe Lars would be done with his battle and wait for him.

What could Ricky even do by himself? What if it was a dangerous place where he’d just die? There was so much he wanted to do, but he didn’t want to die.

Making his decision, he turned. But then his body wasn’t going where he wanted.

‘What the hell.’

His chest felt hot.

An unknown sense telling him to go there.

What was making him do it?

Ricky cried.

In the end, his body moved against his will. And the roars continued, Ricky didn’t know what was happening, but then wind blew from the inside of the forest.

And he walked.

The sound was getting closer.

Several sounds. A fierce battle was definitely taking place, fiercer than the battle that was happening in the basement.

…!

….!!

Several voices overlapped. But he couldn’t understand even a single thing.

As he got closer, he could faintly hear it.

“kill! Kill!”

“Tch. Annoying!”

Both voices were familiar.

The first voice, yes.

‘The bald man whose hair was like horns.’

He remembered the face staring down at him in the basement.

The other one belonged to a child.

He couldn’t understand why a child would be in the forest, but even more confused that the voice was familiar.

“You must have run out of mana!”

“I have a lot left!”

He heard it again.

Ricky’s eyes widened. In his head he thought, ‘It couldn’t be?’.

‘That voice just now…’

A picture came into his mind.

But, that person couldn’t be here.

No way that the young lord of the Haiss estate would be here.

Ricky tried to erase Jamie’s face. It was ridiculous to think that Jamie…

But then he thought ‘maybe’.

“No way.”

The mouth said so, but his legs kept going ahead

“Kuak!”

A short scream.

Without another thought, he ran forward.

And a familiar face appeared in his eyes.

The distorted face of a boy impaled by a huge rock.

“J-Jamie!”

“Ricky?”

Jamie’s eyes widened looking at where the voice came from. Did he come here knowing where he was?

And looked at the doctor. He was far away and didn’t seem to hear Ricky.

The bones in Ricky’s mind were telling him to run, but he couldn’t.

And the doctor was faster.

“Die!”

A chimera with a barrel-like snout pinned its four legs to the ground and extended its neck.

Woong!

Mana particles flocked to the round snout.

And-

Swoosh!

Shot it out.

Jamie tried to spread the shield, but his body had already reached its limit.

‘Damn it!’

He couldn’t avoid it.

… it was the moment when he was feeling lost.

“Jamieeee!”

Ricky threw himself at Jamie.

A dazzling light began to flow out from his body.

Jamie knew what that light was.

But he didn’t think ‘how’.

“NO!”

He reached out to Ricky.

The light would definitely protect him, but the beam released from the chimera couldn’t be stopped.

As he thought.

—!!!

It was an explosion.

And Jamie was swept away by the aftermath.

He kept losing consciousness.

In the meantime, Jamie only focused on Ricky.

Despite being hurt, he got up and ran towards Ricky. Jamie’s whole body was covered in blood and it looked like there were terrible gashes in a few places but with the whole-body breathing, he was able to move.

And when he got to Ricky.

“…”

Ricky was taking slow breaths.

Limbs twisted.

And it meant one thing.

“What? Why is that child here!?”

The doctor who discovered Ricky belatedly grimaced.

But then he quickly shrugged it off indifferently.

“It is fine. You are lucky to have survived.”

The doctor raised his hand.

The chimera once again prepared to shoot the beam.

“…”

Jamie’s heart was beating so fast that it felt like it would explode.

Someone threw himself to cover him. And now, that person was going to die.

No. to keep an eye on the saint, this one had to be alive. And if he let Ricky die in such a place, he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

Before that, he hated the thought of someone dying because of him.

[Diablo. You should live.]

Whose voice was it.

No.

He didn’t need to know. In the past, all the people who followed him to the end left behind such words and disappeared.

The most heartbreaking times weren’t when he was betrayed or when he split with people because of disagreement.

It was when he witnessed the death of someone important right before his eyes.

Just like his lover, Jamie died, and the other companions he had died as well.

His eyes stopped listening and his brain turned dazed.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

All he could hear was his heart beating.

And

Tsssss!

The chain breaking.

Which chain was it? Jamie didn’t want to know.

Because it didn’t matter.

Chang!

The chain was completely broken.

“Ah.”

The moment it broke.

Jamie naturally spread his arms wide.

And then declared to the doctor.

“This is a field.”

Countless corpses sleep on the earth.

Souls which couldn’t leave the earth.

Resentment tied to the very land unable to move on.

“And here”

[Level 1 Liberation: Against the heavens]

“Is your hell.”

[Necromancy]

The army rose.