Eps 199
Eps 199 Divine Mercy (4)
The spot hit by Laser heated up, and the statue began to shake as if it would explode at any moment.
"This can't be. How is this happening…!"
The executor ground his teeth. He couldn't attack Shirone or prevent the destruction of the statue.
At that moment, the sound of thunder echoed from the sky.
Blue lightning bolts fell in bundles, heating the area around Shirone.
The ground exploded, raising a cloud of dust.
The executor checked where the lightning came from. A group of fairies were flying from the entrance of the square.
Even from a distance, Shirone immediately spotted the fairy at the center of the group.
Only she was shining golden, and her face with makeup was also beautiful.
It was Ikirin, the chief of the Department of Divine Subject Management.
Shirone's friends gathered around him. The tension he felt now was different from when they were fighting the divine subjects, making his blood circulate faster.
The curious thing is that the preemptive strike was electric.
Because electricity is an attribute close to that of a spirit, something a fairy wouldn’t typically use.
- Who struck the lightning?
- I can't say yet. But there might be a fairy in the group who controls friction.
If they manipulated the charges in the atmosphere, they could generate lightning. Given how electricity flows according to the distribution of charges, it was no wonder the accuracy was off.
Rian drew his greatsword and stepped forward.
“Is the entire fairy battalion here? It looks like what we were expecting has finally come.”
Shirone had already anticipated this as well. Since they had broken Heaven's laws, it was only natural for the internal officials to be deployed.
The divine subjects stepped aside, making way for Ikirin.
The fairies, flying with imposing dignity, stopped ten meters from Shirone’s group.
Shirone spotted Peope standing at the end of the fairy group.
Unlike the other fairies, she was staring ahead with a dazed look, as if she didn’t understand why she was there.
Ikirin pointed at Shirone’s group.
“So, it is you, the ones who impersonated Nephilim to enter Heaven. That alone is a grave sin, and now you’re trying to disrupt the sacred Ilhwa Elixir?”
The executor's expression turned confused. Is she saying that they are not Nephilim, but someone that impersonated Nephilim?
However, the magic that boy cast a moment ago was clearly that of an angel. If he wasn’t a Nephilim, how could he wield the power of light?
“Lady Ikirin, are you saying these people are heretics? That person clearly used the power of light.”
“Do not be deceived. The land below has techniques for using light magic. Besides, the others are unmistakably heretics without the need for further verification. They even tried to fool the fairies that way.”
Canis’s eyes sharpened.
After listening to what she said, it seems that they have investigated Shirone’s group in detail. Moreover, the fact that Peope, who was not skilled in combat, was present indicated that she had revealed everything.
“Damn, I told you we should leave. That fairy betrayed us. She was never to be trusted from the start.”
Peope furrowed her brows.
Betrayal? She had just blindly followed Ikirin’s orders in a hurry. She hadn’t known they were here until they arrived.
“Hmph! Yeah, I told them everything! You’re as good as dead now! You should have known when to stop!”
She had no intention of claiming innocence against the human being anyway. Peope, instead, accused herself of a crime she didn’t commit and escalated the situation even further.
“She didn’t betray us.”
Shirone said.
“Peope made the right judgment. There’s no reason for a fairy who made the right decision to now compromise her conviction.”
Peope huffed and turned her head away. Even if he says something like that now, she had already been hurt.
But her mind was racing.
Correct judgment. Conviction.
These were values that had never been recognized by her seniors until now.
Ikirin didn’t care. Living for over 3,000 years allowed her to dissect concepts more finely than humans.
If a human could list about a hundred types of love, she could probably distinguish around 10,000 types.
When one reach that point, all events become independent.
Peeping into someone else’s house doesn’t make one a thief.
Even if you break the lock of the house, you are not a thief.
Even if you break the lock and enter, you might not be a thief. Even picking up something inside doesn’t make you a thief.
Only when you leave the house with the item does the concept of being a thief become fully established.
This level of perception was impossible for humans who predict the whole from a part of an event.
In that sense, the conversation between Shirone and Peope was just an incident independent of the current situation.
“I am Ikirin, the Fairy of Authority and Chief of the Divine Subject Management Department. You are guilty of impersonating Nephilim to enter Heaven. You are guilty of disrupting the sacred Ilhwa Elixir. For these crimes, your lifespans will be fully reduced.”
Shirone's forehead wrinkled.
“Is that always how it is? You kill people’s lives just because you don’t like them? The Ilhwa Elixir is the same. Why are you pushing the divine subjects towards death?”
“You were born from giants. Is it so unfair to return?”
“Nonsense. No parent asks their child to return their flesh.”
“The reason we sow seeds in the ground is to harvest and eat. The reason living beings die is to give food to other living things. You are also bound by this law.”
“Seeds are sown to produce new seeds. Living beings die to give other beings a chance. That’s how humans thrive. A life without meaning might as well be dead.”
Ikirin let out a sorrowful sigh. Why was this intuition never wrong? It was no coincidence that Miro’s face flashed before her eyes when looking at Shirone.
“You truly are heretical. You are a human whom one should not interact. What are you waiting for! Start the Ilhwa Elixir immediately!”
The executorv moved as if he had been waiting for Ikirin 's command.
When the switch was pulled, black water began to fill the ten glass orbs.
“Damn it! We’re out of time! We have to stop that now!”
Rian and Tess rush to destroy the statue.
Ikirin raised her hand to direct the fairies.
“Attack! Do not let them approach!”
Shirone and his group entered a battle stance.
Arin canceled Telepathy, leaving only the channel connected to the group. There was no need for interpretation since Ikirin's mental resonance was spreading throughout the area.
The Spirit of Projectiles launched the first attack. When she held out her hand, air came rushing out as if a hole had been torn in the atmospheric layer.
Small, solid masses of air pounded Shirone’s group.
Although they weren't strong enough to penetrate their bodies, they were invisible and numerous, making it impossible to counter.
“Fall back!”
Canis erected Shadow Wall. The air bullets pounded the surface of Shadow Wall with a sound like hail falling.
At that moment, a sharp noise erupted from the sky.
The Spirit of Friction generated static electricity, causing lightning to strike, which Harvest intercepted.
Flashing lightning struck one after another, but it had no effect on magical creature.
“Kukuku! Feels good! Is this a new type of massage?”
Amy, with her back against Shadow Wall, floated Jack O'Lantern in the palm of her hand.
The number of fire spheres flying into the sky increased to dozens and bombarded the front lines indiscriminately.
Since it was a unique ability of Jack-O'-Lantern to create fake flames, only three of the flames were real. However, as long as the enemies don't know what's real, they can't help but feel fear.
As Amy’s bombardment dispersed the fairies, Canis finally took down Shadow Wall.
With the open view, Arin quickly spotted the fairies' positions and proposed a strategy through the mental channel.
- If fairies are mental beings, I have a way. I can use Mental Shock to capture them.
Shirone thought it was plausible.
In a battle of magic versus magic, there were always compabilities, but fairies would have no defense against a direct mental attack.
- Is it possible? Against these numbers?
- I’ll cast a wide-area Mental Shock. It consumes a lot of mental energy, but I can manage it once. But you need to lure the fairies. My range is 20 meters from me.
It was challenging to gather all the fairies in one place, but even capturing half of them could turn the tide of the battle.
"Good! Let’s scatter!”
The skirmish began.
The abilities of the fairies were also formidable. Most of them were combat-specific concepts, as if they were already expecting a fight.
However, if the enemies were strong, it was actually better for those luring them.
“Huh? Huh?”
In a battlefield filled with various magic, Peope was the only one flying around without any clue.
It was her first time in an actual battle, and the power of the magic used was on a different level from her own.
A flash of light approached Peope.
Startled, Peope raised both hands and prepared to use the ability of spiral.
Shirone also reflexively prepared his Photon Cannon.
As they recognized each other’s faces belatedly, their eyes wavered.
Poepe bit her lip, unable to make a decision. Then Shirone also canceled his Photon Cannon and turned around.
Peope looked at him with a puzzled look, but she just ran towards the other fairy without saying a word.
Peope’s head drooped in dejection.
- Arin! I can't keep this up! This is my limit!
Because fairies have the ability to fly, it was nearly impossible to herd them all in one place.
However, the mages in Shirone's group also had high-mobility, so they were able to lure more than half of them into designated area.
- That's enough!
Movement is a combination of time and space.
The less than one second it took for a fairy to enter the area was the only moment Arin had to cast her spell.
Arin crouched down and placed her hands on the ground. As her shadow expanded like a sinkhole, five fairies sensed the danger and rush out.
But it was already too late.
With a bang, the mental wave surged, and the earth simultaneously erupted.
The fairies, unable to regain their bearings, fluttered and then, like they had ingested insecticide, stopped their wings and fell in a flurry.
With half of their forces gone, the demoralized fairies screamed and began to flee.
While Harvest chased them away with his claws, Rian and Tess also succeeded in breaking through Kerugo's siege and turning the switch back to its original position.
As the liquid, which had filled about a third of the tank, was sucked back into the tank, the water level in the glass orbs dropped.
The participants sighed in relief.
But even that might be torture. A glimmer of hope is often just another form of almost absolute despair.
“Shirone! Now’s the time! Smash it with Laser!”
Shirone had already finished preparing.
If the statue was destroyed, the Ilhwa Elixir would be stopped. Now that the fairies were destroyed, no one would be able to interfere with him.
The moment Shirone's Laser glowed red, Ikirin's voice permeated the battlefield.
“By the authority of the servants of God, I command. You, who have no authority in the world, kneel before me.”
As the incantation ended, an astonishing thing happened.
All humans fell to their knees as if the world had collapsed. Shirone’s group was no exception.
Shirone, who had his knees on the ground, was perplexed. He tried to rise, but his body felt as heavy as if it had turned into an elephant.
Voices poured out from Mental Channel.
- What happened? I can't stand up.
- She definitely said she was the Fairy of Authority. What does that have to do with authority?
- This isn’t simple magic. It’s a Rule Eater.
In Shirone's opinion, the current results could not have been achieved if it were not Rule Eater.
So how was it activated?
It wasn’t just the incantation. This is because it is impossible to bring hundreds of people to their knees just by throwing words.
Unlike Shirone's group, the divine subjects did not resist at all. They merely looked up at Ikirin with reverent eyes.
Ikirin leisurely passed among the divine subjects and approached the statue. She then pulled the switch herself.
As the liquid began to fill the glass orbs again, the participants tightly closed their eyes.
Somewhere, the sound of their families' sobbing could be heard.
|Note
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