Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 354

Despite the sigh, Ivelin immediately stepped in front of Lenok, blocking the approaching woman.

The woman, raising her scythe and hammer, lowered her body deeply, and Ivelin also reached for her waist.

The two superhumans, twisting their knees towards each other, clashed simultaneously.

Koo-ung!!

The impact was so great that the nearby gate shook violently for a moment.

Ivelin was the first to frown.

“Her power… !”

“Die? Kill? Is it you, or me?”

Muttering as if possessed by a ghost, she pushed Ivelin away with the hammer in her left hand.

At the same time, she threw the scythe in her other hand over her head, firmly fixing it in the gap of the gate. She then grabbed Ivelin by the collar and jumped upwards.

Kugugung!!

The two figures slammed into the towering gate pillar, using the wall as a foothold to begin their battle.

Vertical maneuvers, exchanging blows while their bodies were tilted at a right angle.

The man smiled as he watched Lenok look up at the scene.

“She’s holding out much longer than I thought. I thought it would be over quickly when she grabbed her collar.”

“…”

“Even though she looks like that, she’s one of the top warriors in Baracheda. I don’t really trust it, but her combat abilities are reliable.”

Upon hearing that, Lenok turned his gaze towards the man.

“So you didn’t come this far on your own. You received support from an organization called Baracheda?”

“Hmm, do you not know what the Baracheda Liberation Front is?”

The man chuckled and brandished the jungle knife in his hand.

“Well, I don’t think there’s much more to say. Let’s get started on our side too. Actually, I said that, but you look much weaker, so I’ve been holding back a bit.”

“…”

“Soon, there will be guys who officially pass through the gate and come out with the key. It’ll be a hassle if they realize we’re here… We need to deal with this quickly.”

Lenok stared silently at the man fiddling with his jungle knife, then reached into his sleeve.

Click.

“Hmm?”

At the same moment Lenok pulled a revolver from his sleeve and cocked it, the man’s expression slightly soured. Ignoring that, Lenok raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

Not at the man standing in front of him, but at the two people fighting near the gate wall.

Ta-ta-ta-ta-tang!!

Five shots of designated fire, each enhanced with auxiliary magic.

“Annoying…!!”

The woman, who had been focused on pushing Ivelin, tried to deflect the five bullets Lenok fired, but her face changed drastically.

Her back arched sharply in the opposite direction, and the bullets that barely missed her exploded, scattering a chilling cold in all directions.

If any of them had hit, the freezing magic imbued in the bullets would have disrupted the battle.

Only then did the woman, who hadn’t even glanced down, look at the grave robber with an annoyed expression.

“…What are you doing?”

“Damn it, it’s going to be difficult if you come at me like this!!”

The man grumbled and immediately charged at Lenok, gripping his jungle knife.

Veins bulged between his hairy arms, and the blade accelerated to a speed that was barely visible.

Kiri-ri-rik!!

Swordsmanship that was completely different from his seemingly non-combat physique, incredibly skilled.

In an instant, the man suppressed all of Lenok’s surroundings, thrusting the blade towards his chest and shouting.

“Die!!”

“I refuse.”

Kaa-aang!!

Lenok deflected the man’s jungle knife with a shield and raised his revolver.

He placed the last bullet remaining in the cylinder against the tip of the blade and fired.

Tang!!

The bullet, lodged in the side of the man’s jungle knife, hit directly, covering the blade with cold ice crystals.

“…!!”

A look of surprise flashed across his face for a moment, but the man’s judgment was quick.

He threw the jungle knife he was holding into the air without hesitation, then pulled out a dagger shaped like an awl from his waist and charged.

“The sixth shot. It was the last one…!!”

Pook!!

The man’s figure froze in mid-air as if time had stopped.

Lenok stared at his face and shook his head.

“I guess being a treasure hunter doesn’t make you good at fighting people.”

“Keu, heuk… !”

The man’s chest was convulsing, and the jungle knife he had thrown behind him was now lodged backwards, piercing through his back.

Using the material transfer inherent in the Archangel’s Compassion, he had transferred the jungle knife, then pulled the handle with magic, driving the blade through his back.

Perhaps it was because he thought he was a shooter vulnerable in close combat. Or perhaps he didn’t expect the weapon he had discarded to return like a boomerang.

Either way, shattering the opponent’s expectations was something Lenok was more than familiar with.

Lenok grabbed the shoulder of the man, who was staggering and bleeding from his mouth, and said,

“I won’t kill you right away. The information you’ve gathered while wandering through the labyrinth, if you’ve discovered this secret passage, it must be quite substantial.”

“…”

“Ivelin should be finishing up around now…”

It wasn’t for nothing that she had allowed the woman with the hammer to grab her collar during the first attack.

It was helpful if she could create distance between Lenok and the man without Ivelin having to do it herself.

Ivelin was fighting the Baracheda Liberation Front warrior to leave Lenok and the man alone.

She knew that the fewer variables that occurred during the battle, the easier it would be to subdue the opponent.

They needed to find out how they discovered the existence of the secret passage and the source of that information.

While Lenok was thinking that and looking up at the two people running along the labyrinth wall,

“…I’ve got you.”

The man, who was clutching his stomach and trembling, muttered quietly.

The moment Lenok turned his gaze, the man pulled something from his chest.

A pendant the size of a fist. It was surrounded by a silver chain, and an ominous mana swirled within it.

Lenok had no intention of letting his opponent use his trump card now.

Just as Lenok was about to pull up his mana to suppress the man’s limbs, he stopped his hand at the colorless wave emanating from the crystal ball.

The man, not missing that brief opening, opened the pendant and plunged it into his wound.

Eujik!

The pendant, soaked in the man’s blood, glowed in various colors, and at the same time, a colorless wave that seeped from the floor formed a huge circular sphere and swallowed the two of them.

Faaaaaaah!!!

Ivelin, who had been fending off the Baracheda warrior’s attacks, looked down with a surprised expression.

“Evan!!”

“He used it already. He’s much stronger than I thought.”

The woman muttered in a stiff tone and shook her head.

Upon hearing that, Ivelin turned her head sharply towards the woman in front of her.

“You said you were from the Baracheda Liberation Front. Your continental common language is awkward, so that’s why.”

An unauthorized military organization that maintains a heterogeneous position among the countless military groups on the continent.

It is said that they do not use the continental common language established by the Ascendant ‘Jinwa (陳蝸)’, and that the organization’s system and logic are different from the existing ones.

The most famous rumor about them is that they came from ‘outside the continent’.

If they were immigrants who crossed the ‘Sea of Understanding,’ which is impossible for humans to navigate, it would make sense that they are outside the influence of language.

“When I heard that Ban was wearing Gearsides equipment, I didn’t think it was possible… It seems they’re reaching out to all sorts of organizations. Is that why that treasure hunter is here too?”

“That, guy. Talks too, much. Annoying. Die soon.”

“Die soon…? He’s dead, and he’s deploying a domain?”

Ivelin, who didn’t ignore the woman’s words, frowned.

“Is it a special domain that only activates when certain conditions are met? No, it’s too high a level compared to his realm…”

She quickly recalled what had just happened below and realized the answer.

“That pendant. It borrowed the power of an artifact. It was a relic-level formula device that helped with domain deployment.”

“Quick, to notice.”

Click!!

The woman pulled out the scythe she had stuck in the gap of the gate, readjusted her weapons in both hands, and muttered.

“A quick-witted kid, dies early.”

“I’m not a kid. Can’t you tell?”

Ivelin retorted and lightly brushed her left forearm.

Immediately after, a short bow popped out from the top of her suit, forming the shape of a short bow.

“I was planning to stall for time and capture you two-on-one, but… the situation has changed.”

Her green eyes began to shine brightly in the dark labyrinth.

Faced with that ominous aura, the woman also immediately pulled up her mana.

She was one of the top warriors of the Baracheda Liberation Front, and she had a relatively accurate assessment of Ivelin’s skills.

Apart from the fact that she had to deal with her here, she was a warrior whose chances of victory in a one-on-one battle were not easy to predict.

Her skills were so exceptional that it was hard to believe that she was an archer by nature.

“Let’s finish this quickly.”

* * *

Woo-oong!!!

A hard, black room with no distinction between the floor and ceiling.

In that space where only faint vibrations echoed periodically, Lenok silently looked around.

“A domain…”

He had suspected it when he saw the pendant’s wave at the end, but he didn’t expect him to actually deploy a magnetic domain.

His combat style and behavior were far from that of a sorcerer. Moreover, the treasure hunter’s own realm seemed far from completing a mental image [a mental construct used to create a domain].

However, this pitch-black space that was now enclosing Lenok was undoubtedly that of a magnetic domain.

“Will you die?”

The man, who had emerged from the darkness, grinned.

By now, the wound on his back had completely disappeared.

Lenok roughly grasped the situation and nodded.

“I see. So you were aiming for this from the beginning?”

“You could say that.”

The man dusted himself off and stood up, his expression much colder than before.

“Treasure hunters need to be quick with information. A fool who doesn’t know the skills or name of the current palace is unlikely to survive.”

“…”

Was all that strange nonsense he was spouting a strategy of sorts?

He had met many skilled people, but this was the first time he had encountered an opponent who tried to gain a strategic advantage by talking so much.

The man, noticing Lenok’s interested gaze, grinned.

“I knew from the start that you weren’t someone I could deal with half-heartedly.”

“So you took a gamble with your life.”

“If I showed that I knew a lot about the labyrinth, I figured you’d try to get information out of me rather than kill me right away.”

The man said that and pulled out a long object from his waist.

A staff covered in unknown characters. As he poured mana into it, it slowly rotated, scattering a faint wave.

“Then, instead of cutting my throat without you noticing, you’d focus on inflicting a fatal wound, and the trigger I wanted would be completed.”

“A magnetic domain that activates by receiving a fatal wound close to death… I admit it. I didn’t expect that far.”

Lenok smiled wryly and nodded.

“I also didn’t expect that there would be an artifact that borrows the mental image of another person.”

“…”

The man’s eyes sank deeply.

Lenok’s words, which he had mentioned casually, were accurately piercing the secret of the domain the man had deployed.

The pendant, which belonged to a relic-level artifact.

However, the truth was that it was not an object that forcibly created a non-existent mental image into a domain.

The object the man used was an artifact that temporarily borrowed the magnetic domain of another Saint-level ability user.

He had obtained it after nearly dying several times, and it was the object that had contributed the most to the man’s survival as a grave robber.

As it had the ability to transcend common sense by borrowing another person’s domain, its activation conditions were also extremely difficult.

Not only did there have to be mutual consent between the person lending the domain and the person receiving it, but it could only be activated by designating a single target.

Moreover, it could only be used against the person who had inflicted a fatal wound on him, and there could be no interference with the domain deployment.

Furthermore, after the artifact’s effect ended and the domain was released, the injuries sustained at the time of deployment would remain and accumulate in the body.

In other words, if he failed to kill his opponent immediately after deploying the domain, it was inevitable that the man would die.

However, there was a reason why the man had overcome all those adverse conditions and deployed this domain.

“The owner of this domain is a fairly famous voodoo shaman in the Western Continent. I pay a huge price every year to borrow this person’s domain. But I’ve never regretted it even once. Why do you think that is?”

“I wonder…”

Lenok crossed his arms and looked around the black room once more before replying.

“It’s because there’s a heterogeneous ability that can make you win in this situation.”

“That’s right.”

The man smiled and nodded.

“If you use more mana than you used to attack me just now in this domain, you’ll be hit with a superimposed curse of voodoo magic accumulated in the domain.”

“…”

“The law of revenge that exists in voodoo magic. It’s a domain of scales that won’t stop until the same price is returned.”

Jjeo-jeo-jeok!!

At the same time, the scenery of the black room cracked, and the true form of the domain revealed itself.

A huge scale where two people could barely stand.

Below, sticky mana surged, and above, a sharp vortex of curses rotated.

The narrow scale, where there was no place to escape, was the entirety of the battlefield given to the two of them.

“Magnetic Domain Snow-Covered Balance (雪復衡度量). I guess all the conditions are met. Let’s get started.”

The man raised the long staff and smiled.

“The moment I used the artifact, you left me alone because you wanted to get your hands on it, right? All the guys who made me use the domain thought the same thing. You’re going to die here because of that greed.”

“Have you said everything you wanted to say?”

“…What?”

Lenok raised one hand to his eyes and replied.

“I was listening to see what you were saying, but it’s endless. Weren’t you just bragging about yourself from the middle on?”

“…”

“You seem to think you’re using your geas [a magical compulsion or oath] and trigger cleverly… but it’s meaningless if you’re confused about your purpose and means.”

His left eye rotated and turned into a purple magic eye.

In that eye, which had been shining with a clear purple light, a flow of heterogeneous cracks began to mix.

At the same time as the man stopped walking at that heterogeneous light, Lenok took a step forward.

Without realizing that the appearance of his magic eye was gradually changing and blooming with different possibilities, Lenok said,

“I can see different things in this labyrinth. I want to see how far I can reach with my magic eye… I want to confirm it here.”

“You bastard…!!”

“Let’s begin.”

Swallowing his rising anger, the man charged, and Lenok immediately pulled out a cold ice stake from his hand.

At the same time as the two figures crossed paths, a gruesome magical light flashed on the scale.