Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 355

A sharp flash of light flickers on the dark scales.

A staff, drawing a faint trajectory in the air, twists and turns, creating a fluid path.

The trajectory left behind each time the staff is swung glows with unknown ancient characters.

More than that, the magical light doesn’t end there, but flickers again, creating a series of small explosions that relentlessly press in on Lenok.

Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!

‘I roughly understand.’

Only after confirming the abilities of the staff in the man’s hand did Lenok understand the man’s strategy and nod.

A narrow battlefield of less than 5 meters. A powerful voodoo that inflicts curses with even a little bit of magic.

For Lenok, who has to counter the opponent’s attacks with minimal magic, the staff’s ability to create consecutive explosions in the same spot is incredibly tricky.

The man also seemed very accustomed to this, as if he had defeated countless opponents in this way.

A physique that seems far from combat. But like a high-level magic user, his movements are swift, and his martial arts are precise.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Lenok tries to counter the man’s attacks using the ice stakes he pulled out, but as if waiting for it, the man surrounds the stakes and causes explosions with his staff, shattering them.

Thump!

And, the scales rise little by little each time magic is used.

At the same time, the vortex of curses rotating above his head drew closer.

“Not much time left, is there?”

The man, gripping his staff tightly, said with a smile.

“You’ll have to choose soon. Either use magic and get cursed, or don’t use magic and get beaten to death.”

“…”

Is that confident statement a tactical bluff, or is it confidence born from the certainty of victory?

Either way, it was clear that the curse itself was not something to be taken lightly.

‘It’s detecting the act of drawing up magic itself. It wouldn’t be impossible to shatter the domain from the inside.’

The moment he draws up magic to break the domain, he will be cursed. The power of voodoo, was it?

The ominous, condensed energy of the curse was clear at a glance. Not only would he lose a significant amount of combat ability, but it was also uncertain whether he could maintain consciousness.

The more he draws up magic to prevent it, the more the curses would overlap.

Fundamentally, he couldn’t leave this domain unless he defeated the opponent in front of him.

The fact that the grave robber had survived until now and was skillfully using this domain was proof of its power.

However, even while inferring all these facts, Lenok brought up something else to the man.

“Military-grade ability user. Right?”

“…What?”

“There’s one last thing I want to say.”

As Lenok said that and slowly began to loosen his shoulders, the man let out a hollow laugh.

“Alright, I’ll listen to your last words.”

“To be honest, the triggers and strategies you’ve created are quite impressive. The fact that you’ve devised a way to kill a Saint-level ability user without completing a hierarchy [a system of power levels] is proof that your ideas are outstanding.”

The man flinched at Lenok’s words as he stepped forward.

“But borrowing the mental image of another person is the same as giving up on self-modification. That voodoo practitioner must know that, which is why they allowed you to borrow the domain.”

“…”

“Because they know that in your current state, you will never become stronger than them.”

“You seem to be mistaken, I’m not interested in getting stronger.”

The man said sarcastically.

“I just want to find treasure, make money, and live well. Did you think I would be engrossed in boring spiritual training like those seekers?”

“No, what I want to say is…”

Lenok, letting out a hollow laugh, approached the man unguarded and answered.

“If you had even considered that possibility, you wouldn’t have chosen death in this way.”

“…Listen here, you arrogant bastard!!!”

Lenok’s words were mixed with blatant provocation. The man, who was certain of his victory, could no longer hold back.

If he killed this magician here, then teamed up with the Baracheda warrior and dealt with Hyungung, the spoils and fame that would pour in would be unimaginable.

Using that, he would borrow a more powerful domain and obtain more rare and valuable artifacts.

If he could obtain the Ascender’s relic in this labyrinth, then the talk about the possibility that the guy was talking about would be something he wouldn’t even need to think about.

The moment he made his decision, the man moved immediately.

Whoosh!

At the same time as rotating his magic power with all his might, he twisted the shoulder holding the staff to the fullest.

Lowering his stance and bending his waist, he draws trajectories that curve in all directions.

The staff in the air scatters as if splitting into several pieces, creating countless light trails, and the explosions that burst out resonate, tearing apart and battering the human body.

Kwaaaang!

And at the center of all those explosions, Lenok once again pulled out a thin ice stake.

The purple magic eye rotates madly, observing the realm of possibilities that it can display in this place, and visualizes it as red and blue boundary lines.

A limited battlefield of 5 meters. There is no error in the realm of possibilities observed while aware of the opponent’s equipment and tactics.

Within the view painted with only two colors, Lenok reached out his hand without even hesitating.

At the same time as the stake he swung casually rotated slowly, it blocked all of the man’s consecutive attacks with the staff.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

“…!!!”

A counterattack so precise that it was hard to believe he was the weak magician he had been dealing with just a moment ago.

The man gritted his teeth and readjusted his grip on the staff, but it was useless.

As the staff and the stake became entangled and untangled in the air, the initiative of the attack and defense began to shift towards Lenok in an instant.

“Uwaaaaaa!!!”

A military-grade ability user. A superhuman who can face a military unit alone is launching an all-out attack.

The speed at which the staff is swung is impossible to observe with the naked eye. The amount of impact contained within is fatal enough to shatter bones into dust.

At the same time as Lenok thrust the stake in his hand, he cut off and bound the man’s attack before it even began.

“Ah, no… wait a minute…”

The man, sweating profusely, asked in a trembling voice.

“What is this… this… Are you kidding me?”

He’s not using magic.

Lenok’s movements as he swings the stake are clearly those of an ordinary human.

But with just that, he binds the man’s attacks from the start, making it impossible for him to even use his strength.

It was proof that all of the man’s martial arts and ways of using power had been completely analyzed and dismantled in Lenok’s mind.

Isn’t it impossible unless you know the man’s fighting style better than he does himself?

“To be honest, that talent is a waste.”

Lenok said that and thrust the stake into the man’s thigh.

Stab!

“…!!”

The military-grade ability user’s solid body. The stake, thrust in by Lenok’s weak strength, couldn’t penetrate far and broke, turning into ice dust.

But even with that light impact, the man couldn’t easily stand up and twisted his body.

“If you had incorporated that way of thinking into your hierarchy, your mental image would have been much more threatening than this.”

“Eek…!!”

“I took the time to confirm that. It seems that the possibility of someone in this labyrinth has a much greater meaning than I thought.”

Lenok’s eyes, looking at the fallen man, sank deeply.

Even if he hadn’t done it this way, there would have been many ways to deal with the man’s tricks.

Considering the capacity that Lenok’s mental image projects, he could have disrupted all of the man’s plans just by deploying his self-domain within this space.

But even knowing that, the reason he observed and cornered the man until the end was because of the illusion of the boy he had seen through the monocular [a small telescope].

If that illusion was truly a split possibility of the existence called Jintun, and if it was something that applied to everyone who entered the labyrinth.

He needed to confirm that possibility at least once, even in this way.

“But it seems that the branching of possibilities doesn’t happen in this way. If it was like the point of view changing as I thought, it wouldn’t be strange if I had seen another illusion that had awakened a small universe…”

“Wh-what crazy things are you saying…”

The man looks up at Lenok, who has taken out his monocular and is looking around, with a terrified face.

His gaze towards Lenok was no longer that of looking at a fellow human.

“You don’t need to know.”

Lenok, putting away the monocular, answered.

Instead, Lenok lowered his stance and met the eyes of the man who had collapsed.

“Now, release the domain and tell me all the information you know.”

“G-get lost… Why would I…”

“No.”

Lenok cut off the man’s words and spoke again.

The purple magic eye rotates rapidly, continuously meeting the man’s gaze.

The man somehow felt that he couldn’t take his eyes off that eye.

“You will have to follow my words.”

“D-don’t be… ridiculous…”

“Release the domain. And answer my questions.”

“Eeeek… Ughghgh…”

The man’s eyes, which had been staring at Lenok’s constantly rotating magic eye, flipped over, and he began to foam at the mouth.

The same reaction as when Lenok protected Lapis and faced the Elderbane assassin. But the results were completely different.

“…The alliance with the Liberation Front was three months ago. They noticed the anomaly in the labyrinth and started preparing a month and two weeks ago. The time and place of contact with the Liberation Front’s executive was the garden of the ancient Valeron ruins in the north…”

The man, who had turned into a blank expression, began to spew out his memories on his own, even though Lenok hadn’t asked him.

A result of appropriately combining the information injection using the magic eye’s gaze sharing and the hallucination ability that the Elderbane assassin had.

After confusing the senses in the same way the assassin used the magic eye, if the amount of information injection is adjusted, it becomes possible to force a hallucination close to reality onto the target that has made eye contact.

As a result, the person is made to spew out the information Lenok wants without even realizing that they are spewing out information.

The fact that each magic eye has different abilities, and that even a magic eye holder cannot imitate it, was not important.

What was important to Lenok was whether he could observe and remember the flow of power at the time the ability was activated.

From Lenok’s perspective, who had the ability to manipulate particles, if he could analyze and grasp the principle, he could imitate it in a similar way.

‘I can’t use it on one person multiple times, but this is enough.’

He was only adjusting the speed of information injection by combining the hallucination ability of the magic eye, but the massive overload on the brain was the same.

Even if it was used to obtain information, it was only a means to be considered as a last resort.

But Lenok didn’t have many ways to immediately open the mouth of a grave robber who had been through thick and thin.

Killing a person and making them spew out information were completely different matters.

Lenok listened carefully to the man’s rapidly spewing words and rummaged through his belongings.

Old items that seemed to have been found in the labyrinth, and a few tools that seemed to be used for grave robbing.

And three artifacts that looked rare at first glance, including a pendant.

Lenok, taking out the pendant soaked in blood, opened it and checked the inside.

A faded photograph inside the pendant. A bizarre scene of a set of scales floating in a dark space comes into view.

The scenery in the photo is exactly the same as the scales where Lenok and the man are standing now.

It wasn’t difficult to understand what that meant.

Lenok, roughly wiping off the blood on the pendant, stopped the man’s mouth and asked.

“This artifact. Where did you get it?”

It was unexpected that he was stuck at the gate, but it was worth the time he invested.

An artifact that allows you to borrow another person’s domain. If it weren’t for the existence of this artifact, he would have blown the man’s head off the moment he tried to trick him.

He had seen all sorts of treasures while living in a megacity, but this was the first time he had seen an artifact that directly touched a human’s mental image to this extent.

Even if he couldn’t understand the principle or how it worked right away, he had to find out the origin of the item.

But the words that flowed from the man’s mouth completely exceeded Lenok’s expectations.

“…The labyrinth.”

“What?”

“A long time ago, it’s the relic of an explorer who met Jintun in this labyrinth and returned alive.”

The grave robber, not waiting for a reaction, continued to speak as Lenok was speechless at the unexpected answer.

“The innermost cradle of the labyrinth. It is said that those who awakened Jintun were given something in response to the questions he asked. I came to this labyrinth because I wanted that.”