Chapter 902 – #196_The Great Cataclysm (5)
#896
1.
The difference in hierarchy.
A witch who has devoted her life to the demonic path knows how much of a gap a single number can create.
Generally, an apprentice witch with outstanding perception and talent, chosen by a prophecy organization, inherits a mark.
It takes an entire century invested in magic to ascend one rank.
The higher the rank, the longer and wider the gap becomes.
The difference between the 20th and 21st ranks is less than the difference between the 21st and 22nd ranks.
The difference between the 21st and 22nd ranks is less than the difference between the 22nd and 23rd ranks.
Arithmetically, this means that when a 22nd rank and a 23rd rank clash, the underdog has virtually no chance of winning.
Nevertheless, there are cases where an underdog match can lead to an upset.
First, if the underdog possesses a nature magic more suited for combat than the top dog.
Second, if the underdog has more combat experience than the top dog.
Third, if the underdog’s magic has a superior compatibility advantage over the top dog’s magic.
“……!”
Golden and white mana clashed fiercely, sending sparks flying.
Dorothy felt her vision turn white and wrapped her wings around herself.
A sense of crisis, as if her very existence would be annihilated, surged to the tip of her chin.
“For all the fuss you made, hmm, this is boring.”
After five clashes already.
Unlike Dorothy, whose face had turned pale, Lydia was utterly calm.
This alone made it even clearer which side had the upper hand.
Dorothy calmly took a breath and assessed the current situation.
She examined every possibility one by one to devise a strategy to overturn the disadvantage.
First, is Dorothy’s magic a nature magic more suited for combat than Lydia’s?
No.
Lydia is not some sheltered scholar who has spent her life researching magic within the safety of walls.
She is a witch who has honed her position by killing rivals as a public figure for longer than Dorothy.
Second, does Dorothy have more combat experience than Lydia?
No.
Unlike Dorothy, who has lived a leisurely life avoiding possible conflicts, Lydia was a belligerent witch who willingly stepped onto the battlefield.
There are more than five prominent grand witches known to have died at Lydia’s hands.
Third, does Dorothy’s magic have a compatibility advantage over Lydia’s magic?
Most unfortunately of all conditions,
No.
The compatibility between Lydia and Dorothy was the worst of the worst.
The fatigue felt from consuming extreme mana.
She felt the searing pain in her mana circuits, constantly overloaded by the Angel’s Ring, and turned her gaze forward.
“…….”
First, Lydia showcased the ‘Worthless Moth’.
Its speed itself is nothing special, and it’s not a direct threat just by floating around.
However, its effect is more absolute than Dorothy’s absolute power.
It’s an unrealistic ability that corrodes the value of everything it touches, rendering any defense or attack powerless.
If even one of them directly touched her, it would widen the gap between the two, who were barely maintaining a balance, to an immeasurable degree.
Therefore, Dorothy had to respond by firing feathers to intercept them or sweeping them away with wind.
But the truly terrifying aspect of the moths lies elsewhere.
“Are you going to end it by just catching bugs like that?”
As Lydia flicked a gold coin again, the swarm of moths, as if they had never disappeared, began to flutter their wings and float again.
Like this, the moths are endlessly generated even if killed.
Whether it’s because of how well optimized they are or because they use gold coins as totems, there is virtually no mana consumption.
For Lydia, it’s nothing more than a low-cost harassment technique,
But for Dorothy, it’s a truly tilted battlefield where even one opening could lead to her defeat.
Even this was just one of the factors that made Lydia a difficult opponent.
“If you’re not coming, I’ll go?”
Lydia’s hand waved through the air as if conducting.
Golden flames surged like waves, burning the floor of the cathedral.
The magic that Lydia herself called ‘Flames of Annihilation’ was also the magic that had blocked Dorothy’s initial strike imbued with absolute power.
-Flap!
Dorothy flapped her wings and flew into the air.
She broke the conditions for ‘Descent’ to use absolute power with her own hands and took evasive action.
Dorothy, who uses her extreme defense to beat her opponents to death with her shield or counter them.
There was a reason for turning her back on a straightforward frontal attack that was not a trick.
Strictly speaking, the effect of the ‘Flames of Annihilation,’ which was more like a ripple of fine golden particles than flames, was simple and clear.
It denies and annihilates the symbolic system of magic drawn from a long history and shared imagery.
For Dorothy, who uses the power of angels by borrowing symbolic systems, including the reverse barrier and the vestments, it was truly a nemesis-like magic.
With all the scorecards pointing to despair…
Dorothy had not yet given up the fight.
She had felt even greater despair than this.
Every moment of her meaningless life, prolonging it without purpose, was more painful than this battle.
Now that she had a place she wanted to return to, no matter what hardships and adversities she had to overcome, Dorothy’s fighting spirit would not be broken.
“Haaap!”
Like a hawk hunting its prey, Dorothy, who had been circling around Lydia, found a sliver of an opening.
Flames that rippled from all directions, covering even Lydia’s main body, were a combination of offense and defense.
However, no matter how much it was the Flames of Annihilation, it could not completely evaporate absolute power itself.
Just like a large sugar cube maintains its shape for a while even when put in coffee, Dorothy’s symbol would be maintained if it was only briefly touched.
If she could land a blow before her symbol was completely melted by the hot flames, using the Angel’s Ring…
-Kiiiiiiing!
The Angel’s Ring spun wildly, sucking in the surrounding mana.
With clearer wing movements, she accelerated twice.
She coated her sword to the extreme by imbuing it with the mana from her nun’s habit, which she usually allocated to defense.
At this level, she would be able to withstand the Flames of Annihilation for at least 2 seconds.
At the same time, she increased the weight of gravity itself to crush the jellyfish-like fluttering moths and swung her sword down towards Lydia’s exposed opening.
Her ability to improvise without panicking, even though the tactics she had adhered to until now were completely ineffective.
Her delicate magical ability to use two or three spells simultaneously.
Dorothy had not lived her life obediently either.
Lydia, who had been facing Dorothy in place until now, showed a surprised look for the first time.
But that was only for a moment.
“Prove it.”
As Lydia flicked another gold coin, the space around her distorted, and a long, single-edged spear was created.
A weapon that was more like a large stake than a spear due to its length of about 1 meter.
Dorothy hesitated for a moment at the indescribable distortion at the tip of the spear.
She couldn’t even guess what kind of effect it had.
However, as the tip of the single-edged spear, which emitted a sinisterly brilliant light, spun around and aimed at Dorothy, she felt a suffocating pressure.
She felt a hallucination as if death was gaping its jaws in front of her. Her breathing faltered.
It was an intuition born from experience.
“Tch…”
She stops her attack.
Dorothy, who only gave Lydia a threat as she passed by and escaped the spear’s aim, bit her lip tightly.
As is the case with all battles, a forced change of offense and defense in a magic battle inevitably involves an opening.
There was no way that the experienced Lydia would have missed the opening that Dorothy was aware of.
If a follow-up attack were to come in through this opening now, she would have to endure considerable damage.
“Good eye.”
However, Lydia only had her arms crossed and did not launch any additional attacks.
Even the single-edged spear that had given Dorothy a sense of crisis and forced her to switch between offense and defense was silent.
“You fight so frustratingly~.”
“Thanks for the flattery. But you know it’s too late to surrender, right?”
It’s not that Lydia didn’t find Dorothy’s opening.
She clearly recognized it, and if she wanted to, she could have pursued it relentlessly and made a decisive move.
But she didn’t.
The reason was simple.
Making a decisive move is the same as showing an opening.
Even though she was already overwhelming Dorothy, she was blocking any variables that could arise, even if they were very small.
Like an unpopular well-rounded champion, instead of aiming for a knockout, she was dragging her opponent into a battlefield where she would not lose.
Unlike her belligerent tone, Lydia approached even battles with a cold and thorough businessman’s mindset.
“Hoo…”
As a result, what Dorothy felt was impatience and psychological pressure.
The silent single-edged spear that did not reveal its true nature.
The steadfastness of maintaining her tactics without playing along, no matter how much she struggled to close the gap.
She realized what it meant to ‘die of thirst’.
The more time she was pressured like this, the narrower the options for victory would become.
Lydia had only shown two cards so far, while Dorothy had already opened quite a few cards.
In the end, under Lydia’s thorough planning, she would have no choice but to make a risky move as she intended.
-Kiiiiiiiiing!!!!
Dorothy scraped together all the remaining mana.
She was preparing her best attack, ‘Judgment’.
-Kugugugung
A vibration spread throughout the chapel as if an earthquake had occurred.
The air creaked and groaned, and magical formulas spread like leaf veins on the pillars supporting the chapel.
This chapel was also Dorothy’s magic itself.
Like a hymn accompanied by an organ, a beautiful melody echoed through the chapel like thunder.
Lydia looked up at the high ceiling.
The tremendous pressure made her legs feel like they would give way just by standing below.
The sacredness that stemmed from a force that was no different from violence.
“This is a bit scary.”
A huge crown made of white light and a single sword could be seen.
In the center of the huge crown, which had a diameter of about 50 meters, a huge sword stood vertically, aiming at Lydia.
“You’re going to trap me with the crown and kill me with the sword, is that it?”
The sword of fire, which often appears as a symbol of angels, is not actually burning.
It is just that the sacred power to act on behalf of God appears to human eyes as flickering flames.
-Hoo-o-o-o-ong!
The moths were blown away by the air that was crushed and burst by the force, and the Flames of Annihilation flickered precariously like a candle about to go out.
And then.
————!!!!!!!
A brilliant sword of light fell like a guillotine blade, and the entire huge chapel collapsed.
The sanctuary fulfills its duty as a sanctuary until just before judgment is made.
If heaven and earth are connected and God’s will resounds on the earth, the sanctuary also fulfills its duty.
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