Genius Wizard Takes Medicine [EN]: Chapter 539

The area, once isolated by gates and security, was now wide open, revealing the launchpad and the barrier’s form. It was something that couldn’t have been attempted if the control panel and the dam’s system hadn’t been linked to open all the doors. However, even Lenox hadn’t anticipated things would unfold this way from the start of the operation. [The barrier’s open time is about 20 seconds…!!] Davi, peeking out from inside his coat, spoke quickly. [It’s a forced opening due to a conflict between the Kurvas Dam and the evacuation route’s security systems, so it’ll close as soon as the system starts to recover!] It felt like Davi’s abilities were getting stronger. To be precise, it wasn’t so much the magnitude of his power, but rather the growth in his skill and technique in handling the cybernetic space. This scene, too, wasn’t due to Davi’s own power, but rather the result of forcing a variable by colliding both sides of the megacity’s network. The method of controlling the butterfly effects derived from small variables with his own will. With a different direction and potential from Lenox, the cybernetic spirit was also constantly learning and growing. In moments like these, it was so fast and intense that Lenox briefly considered whether he should reduce his reliance on Davi’s abilities. There wasn’t much time to ponder. The other team members, noticing the anomaly, moved immediately. Whoosh…!! The bird-headed giant that had been flung out of the west gate slid to a stop in front of Lenox. The moment he gripped the hammer on his back and swung it sideways, a strong wind rose. The impact changed the trajectory of the countless bullets pouring down from the sky, causing them to miss Lenox. Rat-tat-tat-tat!! Felix’s hollow eyes scanned the passage behind Lenox, from which he had emerged. After glancing at the passage dripping with blood, he raised his hammer and quickly stood in front of Lenox, as if blocking his path. “Ban, what’s going on?” “Things are going better than expected.” Lenox replied, glancing down at the inside of his coat. “Let’s move before the relief ship is completely destroyed. If we don’t get on that before the barrier closes, everything we’ve done so far will be for nothing.” “Magat-nim, over here!!” Ilya, who had already rushed into the island, pulled out two ultra-vibration spears and swung them. Ilya swept away the soldiers guarding the relief ship and connected the power to the launchpad. Felix also immediately used his strength to lift and fix the angle of the launchpad, then smashed all the locks on the relief ship with his bare hands. Without anyone telling them, they knew exactly what they had to do. “I’m too late.” Clang!! With a dazzling pillar of light, Innocence, Claude Azlan, walked out, and finally, everyone boarded the relief ship. Beep beep beep!!! Warning lights flashed incessantly inside the canopy. Felix, checking the control panel, was horrified and clicked his tongue. “…It’s unbelievably old. It’s a modified version of an old transport plane that’s been used for decades.” “It couldn’t be helped if they wanted to make it flyable in Zone 25.” Ilya, who had quickly fastened his seatbelt, tapped on the communicator. “Manager Grimes. How do we operate the relief ship…!!” [Once the relief ship’s engine is started, it’s equipped with an automatic flight system to the target point…] Beep beep beep!! The warning message turned bright red at the same time the lights on the control panel came on. [Automatic flight sensor malfunction. Manual flight required.] “….” “….” Lenox and Felix looked at each other. The manager, who was watching the screen through the transmitter, was also speechless. It was a situation that was completely unexpected at the start of the operation. “No, no…!! Wait a minute, if things go like this…!!” “Well, it’s my turn here. You know, I have experience participating as a pilot in my younger days… Ahem.” Claude, who sat in the cockpit with a swagger, tilted his head as he looked at the control panel. “I’m sure this was the control stick for takeoff…” Whoosh!! As Innocence fiddled with the control panel, flames shot out from the back of the launchpad, pushing the relief ship into the sky. The relief ship soared tens of meters into the air in an instant. “Ugh…!!” “It’s been too long since I’ve flown…!!” Felix and Ilya gritted their teeth, and Lenox, who was taking motion sickness medicine, also turned pale. “To reach beyond the barrier, we have to cross the boundary of the restricted area with low-altitude flight. If we don’t operate it properly, we’ll definitely crash…!!” Automatic flight was almost impossible due to the magic particle exposure phenomenon in the restricted area. The food relief ship was a modified aircraft designed to transport food through such harsh conditions. The reason for modifying an old transport plane was that a simple and straightforward structure was environmentally advantageous. However, that was also the reason why Davi’s hacking couldn’t intervene, which was a problem. The situation required them to operate the relief ship purely based on Innocence’s memory. Lenox, realizing that they would crash to the ground from where they had launched, sat in the cockpit. After quickly checking all the units and control sticks on the control panel, Lenox immediately turned his head. “Felix, Ilya. There are thick levers on both sides of the wall under the relief ship’s seats. Get ready to grab and turn them.” “Th-this thing?” “Why are there levers like this under the seats…” “It seems to be a backup feature for manual flight of the relief ship. It seems we can directly control the wings of the transport plane with that.” Felix muttered in disbelief after hearing Lenox’s explanation. “They didn’t even consider the boarding of ordinary humans…” The method of forcibly maintaining lift by grabbing the levers and rotating them like oars. Of course, it wouldn’t budge with the strength of an ordinary human. It was just a crude function that had been temporarily modified and attached to somehow maintain altitude in an area where flight was impossible. But right now, that was the only way for all four of them to safely cross over the restricted area. “I’ll calculate the airflow from here and then specify the vibration frequency of the wings and give instructions.” As he said that, Lenox’s left eye shone with a clear violet light. The magic eye of the left eye, visualizing the realm of possibility through Lenox’s mind. Lenox, quickly checking the launch trajectory above the relief ship, said, “If we don’t start within 7 seconds, there will be no way. Choose.” “…Alright.” Ilya, who had firmly grasped the levers protruding from under the seat with both hands, nodded. The wings of the relief ship trembled faintly, and the aircraft began to rock violently up and down. “I’m ready, Ban. Give the instructions.” “Rotate the left wing for 1.7 seconds after 3 seconds.” “…Huh?” “Rotate the right wing for 1.3 seconds after 15 seconds. Then, stop both wings simultaneously for 5 seconds. Starting from the left, repeat the vibration of both wings one at a time at 3-second intervals while gliding.” “….” “Was it hard to understand?” “No, I can do it…!!” Felix’s mouth slightly opened at the sudden flood of instructions, and Ilya gritted his teeth. Although it required unbelievably delicate adjustments, surprisingly, it didn’t state impossible conditions. What Lenox wanted from the two was not to directly maintain manual flight, but the time difference manipulation of the lever rotation required in the process. It was a very difficult and precise requirement for a sudden instruction, but rather, if he gave instructions down to the second like this, they could somehow carry it out. Whooooooosh!!!! The direction of the relief ship twisted and turned as if dancing in place, rising and falling roughly. Screech!! “Ugh…!!” Even Felix, with a pale face, grabbed his beak at the violent movement. The moment Lenox, with his magic eye activated, relayed the instructions to Ilya in succession. Innocence, who had been staring intently out the window, spoke. “We’ve arrived.” Swoosh! The wind that had been incessantly pounding against the glass wall of the relief ship parted like a lie, and a magnificent steel barrier appeared in front of it. A scale that was so high and grand that it far exceeded the height of the Kurvas Dam’s water wall. On top of the barrier, which was covered in dark metal, the number [25] was plastered like a pattern in black and red letters. The moment Felix and Ilya’s gazes were unconsciously drawn to the imposing barrier, Lenox spoke once more. “Rotate both wings simultaneously after 4 seconds. As much as you can.” “Understood…!!” The moment the two, who had been turning the levers like crazy, vibrated the wings with all their might. The relief ship, riding the flow of the air, soared as if being pushed into the sky. The relief ship, which had perfectly ridden the rebound of the two colliding air currents, soared more than tens of meters in place. The aircraft, which had soared into the air, barely brushed over the top of the dark steel barrier and jumped over it. Kee-ing!! “…!!” With a sense of déjà vu, as if a sensation had been reversed, they fell straight into the restricted area. “W-we’re in…!!” Felix muttered in disbelief, and Ilya, exhausted, closed his eyes with his hands hanging limply. Lenox and Innocence, on the other hand, stood up from their seats as if they had been waiting for this moment. Without paying attention to the rapidly approaching ground, they immediately unfastened their seatbelts and began to gather their equipment. At the same time Innocence snapped his fingers, the canopy opened wide, and the dry air of the restricted area seeped into the aircraft. At the sudden movement, Felix and Ilya also got up from their seats and began to gather their equipment. The fact that they could get up and pack their luggage even while falling almost vertically was proof of their superhuman abilities. Felix, adjusting his goggles, asked. “We’ve entered the area, there’s no reason to rush. Isn’t it enough to just land safely?” “You didn’t listen to the manager’s explanation earlier. This isn’t an amphibious aircraft, it’s just a moving warehouse made by modifying a transport plane.” Lenox replied with a smile. “This relief ship isn’t for recovery. It seems the supplies are also designed to be dropped before impact. We have to escape too.” “Wait a minute, that means…!” Felix and Ilya frowned as they finally understood what Lenox was saying. Innocence smiled and patted Ilya on the shoulder. “It’s better to escape before getting caught in the explosion.” “…There’s really no time to rest.” As Ilya sighed and lowered his posture, the four figures jumped out of the falling relief ship and moved away. Immediately after, the entire front of the relief ship, which had crashed vertically into the ground, exploded. It created a magnificent pillar of fire on the spot, emitting a dazzling light in all directions. KABOOM!!! “Ugh…!!” Ilya, who had crashed into a building that looked like an old stable, weakly raised his body, and Felix walked out of a dilapidated mansion. Even Innocence, who had been perched on a white window frame, and Lenox, who walked out with his coat dusted off while leaning on his cane, were unharmed. Even though they had attempted to escape just before hitting the ground, none of the four were injured. Everyone gathered here were superhumans of the Saint-level or higher who had completed their hierarchies. “Indeed, my decision to bring you here was not wrong.” Innocence, who had walked down from the window frame, said with an embarrassed look. “I’ve heard that you’re an excellent magician, but I never dreamed that you would succeed in manual flight in that situation. It’s my lack of virtue.” “Indeed, the intelligence and judgment of a magician stand out in a place like this.” Ilya also muttered as if he was inwardly impressed. “I still can’t grasp how you sensed the vibration frequency and gave arbitrary instructions.” “It was luck. If we hadn’t ridden the point where the air currents collided at the end, we would have had to find another way.” Lenox replied, turning to look at the giant steel barrier they had jumped over. “However, I don’t like that the method of entering the restricted area is so difficult… Do we have to repeat a similar method when we leave?” “Of course, it’s not that there’s no way to break through with force. But you also know the reason why we didn’t do that.” Innocence said with a chuckle. Since it was a team assembled to handle the affairs of the restricted area, methods that would attract outside attention or spread to the media were out of the question from the start. Wasn’t the operation of seizing the relief ship just now also something that had happened within the realm that the city government, including the manager, could clean up? “I don’t know if that entry, which jumped over a tens-of-meter barrier with low-altitude flight, was discreet.” Felix retorted with a sullen look. “Moreover, the explosion of the relief ship just now is very likely to have leaked beyond the barrier…” Felix’s words stopped abruptly as he turned his gaze to the place where the relief ship had exploded. The others, who had turned their gazes at the unusual reaction, were also silent for a moment. It was because the red flames that had erupted from the explosion of the relief ship, instead of spreading into the sky through the air. It had stopped in place. * * * The scene of the explosion, which had bloomed like a dark red flower and seemed to have stopped in time, was frozen in place. Even the fragments of the relief ship, which were broken and melting, were clearly visible within the explosion. It was only natural that the others were at a loss for words at the absurd phenomenon. “This is…” “It’s stopped. How can this be…” “I knew that something unusual was happening inside the restricted area, but…” Ilya gave a hollow laugh. “Is it to this extent?” “It’s not completely stopped.” Lenox’s eyes turned cold. “It’s moving little by little. It’s very slow, but the explosion itself is still happening.” “….” “It’s not about completely stopping time, but rather a method of stretching it out to the limit to make it slow…” It was one of the methods of manipulating time that Lenox was quite familiar with. The act of monsters who had begun to touch the power of time, by endlessly stretching the gap of consciousness to create new gaps in between. At the same time, something similar to the phenomenon of endlessly slowing down, which had been manifested around the rifts in the world that existed in the Eight Great Fortresses. Something similar to those two phenomena was happening inside this restricted area right now. Felix summarized the conclusion next to Lenox. “If the relief ship we came on has become like this, it means that even objects that were not originally inside the restricted area are affected.” “Does that mean that we could have fallen into a similar state if we were unlucky?” Ilya echoed Felix’s words. “The problem is that it’s difficult to guess the activation conditions of the phenomenon. What if one of us falls into a similar state?” “It’s a big problem that we didn’t check the moment the explosion stopped. If we had been aware of the magic flow at the time, we might have been able to find a clue…” Lenox, who had been listening to the two, spoke. “The conditions themselves might not be that complicated.” “What do you mean?” Instead of answering Ilya’s question, Lenox raised his cane and touched a piece of the relief ship that had stopped nearby. “As Felix said, the relief ship is not an object that existed inside the restricted area. If it’s such a powerful force that can even trap the explosion of such an object in time…” The moment the fragment of the relief ship moved slightly along the tip of the cane and completely escaped the explosion radius. Whoosh!! A fragment that had flown past Lenox’s face at an incredible speed embedded itself in the collapsed wall behind him. It was a sudden acceleration, as if the time that had been almost stopped until now was a lie. However, Lenox only gestured with his chin at the spot where the fragment had swept past with a blank face. “It’s more accurate to see that such a force is applied to a specific space itself.” “You think there’s an area in a specific space in the restricted area that causes this phenomenon…” “How about we explore the surroundings a bit more?” Felix turned his gaze as he looked at Ilya, who was deep in thought. “If Ban’s words are true, there’s a possibility that similar traces or phenomena exist all over the restricted area. And if there’s a direction or place where such phenomena occur with a particularly high frequency…” That’s probably where the particle power plant is located. After that, the group scattered and scanned the terrain near the barrier where the relief ship had fallen. Since each of them had excellent magic detection abilities, they could explore a radius of at least several thousand meters even if they spread out in all directions. The first to discover an anomaly was Lenox. “Come to the abandoned mart 400 meters ahead. I think I have a rough idea of what’s going on in the restricted area.” Lenox, who had summoned the other three through the pager, pointed to the dilapidated mart. A commercial building that had been left to decay for at least several decades without being used by people. Not only was all the paint peeled off, but all sorts of groceries and tools were rotting and crumbling on the shelves. But among them, there were unusually intact walls and fresh groceries that looked like they had just been made. A bizarre phenomenon where old and new walls were mixed up as if they were stained, and objects that looked unusually new were visible among the collapsed shelves. Felix picked up a chocolate bar that was still new on the shelf and crunched it down. “The taste is no different from an ordinary chocolate bar. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the contents themselves.” “…Is it okay to eat food that might have been exposed to radiation like that?” “The digestive systems of the Aein race are generally strong. This much is fine.” Felix flipped the wrapper over and checked the manufacturing date, then nodded. “In terms of time, it’s something that was made decades ago. For such food to still be preserved in good condition…” Having discovered traces similar to the stopping of the relief ship’s explosion, it was a problem that was difficult to dismiss as a coincidence. The entire restricted area had not been isolated for decades. Some areas or spaces, in part, remained as they were at the moment this area was isolated, still preserving that memory. “I was wondering what the cause of the magic particle exposure phenomenon in the restricted area was, but this makes perfect sense.” Lenox said, running his gloved hand over the wall that was still painted like new. “Magic particles that have been trapped in a specific space for decades are rapidly decomposing as they leave the area, unable to withstand the changed speed of time.” Magic particles that used to exist in the same space with the same properties, The moment they cross the barrier of different timelines, they decompose into particles through the impact. The magic particle exposure caused by that method was erupting on a massive scale, crossing the steel barrier, and was difficult to dilute even with the water of the Kurvas Dam. “The conclusion has been reached. The magic particle exposure is not caused by the power plant in the restricted area. It’s just a side effect of the phenomenon that occurred at the power plant.” Lenox got up from his seat, fiddling with the paint powder that was crumbling from the end of his glove. “The project that was being carried out at the power plant in Zone 25 seems to be related to space-time research.”