BEEP BEEP BEEP
Alarms blared through the church headquarters.
The old man who'd annoyed Akeru rushed toward the disturbance.
He blocked the exit, grimoire pages flipping.
"Brat, I thought you were one of our own! To think you were a despicable heretic all along. Let me clear my sins by—"
BAM
A punch hit him right in his right cheek.
His eyes rolled back, and blood spilt from his mouth.
"Shut it." Akeru briefly glanced at him before exiting the headquarters.
A stream of Reddish-Purple could be seen moving through the streets of Ashspire.
"Who is t—"
"Senpai, it's me. Do you have a portal near Ashspire?" Akeru spoke to the communicator.
"Ye—"
"Send me the coordinates and make a portal there in 10 seconds."
Hearing the urgency, Finral obeyed instantly.
"What happened?" Finral asked as Akeru entered through the portal.
"It's quite urgent. We need to move now. Are you done with your spell?" Akeru sent an emergency message in the communicator.
They'd set up a secret protocol for this— all the Grand Magic Knights and the Wizard King, to move to Finral with the help of other spatial mages. Finral will teleport all of them to where Noel is.
"No. I am still n—"
"Show me your incomplete spell then."
Akeru urged him, and Finral complied.
'I have a bad feeling about this. My instincts have been flaring since I looked at Leon's records. Just what is going to happen?' Akeru didn't let the uncertainty cloud his decisions.
Rather, it urged him to move faster.
A purple portal manifested in front of the duo.
'The location is still not connected. At this moment, it is just a construct of mana.'
Finral focused on tracking. Akeru watched closely.
'Need to find a way to help him complete the tracking. Luckily, I've spent the last week researching tracking. It's time to implement all that knowledge.' Akeru activated 'Still Spectator' as he analysed Finral's incomplete magic.
The mana in the air started moving and going towards the purple portal.
While this was happening, multiple people started filling the room.
Nobody asked the question, the code Akeru had used described the severity of the situation.
"I can't find him."
"Limit the search to Ashveil."
Finral did just that and searched for the next 2 minutes.
"I still can't find him. He's probably suppressing his mana or using some kind of rune array to achieve that." Finral shook his head.
"Let's try—" Just as Akeru was going to tell him to try again, Finral's eyes widened. He interrupted Akeru.
"I FOUND him. The mana around him surged for some reason. It is unmistakably his mana."
"Quick!" 'Fuck, something bad is going to happen.' Akeru didn't bother hiding the grimace creeping onto his face.
If his instincts were beeping before, then they were now blaring.
Finral nodded and linked the portal a few seconds later.
Before he could utter, Akeru blitzed through the portal, followed by others in the room, leaving Finral wryly smiling at their speed.
'I didn't even see them move, it was like teleporting, and they say I am a spatial mage.' Finral shook his head as he entered the portal.
The first thing he noticed was that a large amount of mana had accumulated in the area. Now moving.
"It's quite surprising to see you all here. I expected you to show up a minute later," Noel said with his usual calm face.
He stood with a rune array, itched with various symbols, and started moving.
It rotated at such a speed that it blurred to the naked eye.
Before anybody processed, the array started expanding at an alarming rate. Finral couldn't process it visually.
"LANGRIS!" Akeru shouted, and the man wasn't disappointed.
"Archangel's Haven" A wave of mana emerged from Langris, encompassing everyone present.
It isolated the space around them, preventing the array from working on them.
"Nice Response. Unfortunately, my target wasn't you." Noel smiled before leaving his position and standing hundreds of meters away from the rune array.
"What—"
To everyone's shock, a huge aura pressed upon them.
"Are you curious about how a god that is worshipped by one-fifth of the population looks? It's a one-time thing. So, brace yourselves and watch."
Everyone's eyes widened in horror as they sensed a malevolent aura erupt from the area where the array had originated.
'God? W-what is happening? Why did I even go through the portal? I want to go back.' Finral nearly cried.
He was terrified by the presence alone.
As an Intermediate magic Knight, he found himself in a battle in which even other captains don't have the confidence to win.
"Malgeth... the god is a devil?" Charlotte couldn't hide her shock.
The others were also shocked by that revelation.
Does that mean the other 4 gods are also devils? Has the entire Clover Kingdom been worshipping devils?
"A high-ranking devil." Julius grimaced as the form of a humanoid with red-blue eyes came out of a rift.
His power was nowhere near the middle-level ranking devil Julius had faced before.
"How troublesome." Yami dropped his cigarette and held his katana with both hands.
The others also prepared for a fight.
Akeru had his '3D Witness' activated on instinct to observe the connection with the Underworld.
The devil looked around the people in wonder.
The captains felt unbearable pressure on themselves as they met his gaze.
Finral closed his eyes way before he could make contact.
"Pathetic." Langris resisted the urge to pinch his nose at his brother.
"Humans are foolish. With this ritual... I might be able to remain in this world for a few days, with that five-leaf grimoire, I can stay indefinitely."
Akeru, the only one standing a few metres away from the group, was the first to gather his wits at the scene.
"We need t—"
The world slowed down for Akeru as he found the devil's hand a few inches from his neck.
'When? How?'
Akeru, who had initially activated 'Bystander's Indifference', found only half of his emotions nullified.
Before the spell could completely take effect, 'Still Spectator' imposed itself and took precedence before Bystander's Indifference.
Akeru found his internal mana reserves quickly drained as Still Spectator worked overtime to slow down time before his impending death.
'Wizard King? Oh.' Akeru, from his peripheral vision, saw the Wizard King stopping multiple lances made of blue fire.
Akeru, in his slowed-down world, saw the hand inching closer to him. He watched it nearby, caught between dread and morbid curiosity.
Click.
Something clicked in Akeru's mind as he observed the effects of his Overtime working 'Still Spectator', partially activated 'Bystander's Indifference' and fully activated '3D Witness' synchronising.
Before Akeru knew it, the world slowed down even more than he thought was possible, before everything in his vision stilled.
The world turned black and white.
Akeru found himself staring at threads.
Everything— air, rocks, Langris's mana zone, and the devil in front of him—all made of threads.
Threads that Akeru could understand.
He could see it.
See how the threads making up Noel interacted with the threads of reality where he stood.
He could see how the threads of the devil interacted with the threads of 'Archangel's Haven' and how the former was suppressing the latter by just releasing their mana.
However, Akeru didn't bother to focus on others.
He started seeing the threads that make up him.
His body, his mana, his grimoire and his techniques.
However, he didn't stop there. He dug deeper and found more threads of his existence.
His memories, his consciousness, his entire mental schema—he revealed everything that makes up his existence.
'Can I influence them?' Akeru thought as he attempted to do that.
However, he instinctively knew that changing some things would have grave consequences, so he focused on his techniques.
'Lightning, water and space.' An idea took place in Akeru's mind as he saw how the threads of these three elements interacted with each other.
'So, I could do things like this, too.' All three elements started intertwining together and created a new thread.
Time resumed.
As Malgeth's hand neared Akeru's throat, he spoke.
"Ultimate Magic: Odin's Inevitability"
***
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