Chapter 516: Contradiction (4)
The figure, covered as if ink had spilled all over it, appeared completely black.
This figure had exceptionally long hair and nails.
Although it was clearly present right before them, it radiated an ominous and alien atmosphere, as though it didn't belong in this world. Oliver realized he had seen that form before.
It was the same appearance Mari had shown him once when they met again after she left the Joseph Family.
Wham━━Boom!!
Mari, breaking through the power of the World Tree and appearing from thin air, raised her hand immediately upon seeing Lilith and Oliver, swinging it like a flash of light.
Her nails, straight and extended like a sword, moved so swiftly they left deep gouges in the stone floor, though Lilith dodged even faster, evading gracefully.
A highly advanced technique, mixing magic and black magic in a systematic manner.
Thanks to this, Oliver managed to avoid Lilith's fist.
“Mari... how?”
Oliver murmured in shock at Mari's sudden appearance.
He thought she had left to address an issue at one of the branch offices in the south. That was why he hadn’t met her even after his return from the New World.
Then, Oliver suddenly remembered that the branch Mari managed in Hemchess wasn’t far from Nopton, and the route from Hemchess to Landa would pass through here.
Though it was an interesting coincidence, this fact soon lost importance for Oliver.
Because Mari and Lilith had begun a deadly exchange, each aiming for the other's life.
Seeing Oliver’s injured face, Mari, covered in a blackness as dark as the night sea, emitted a rage so intense that it clouded her rationality. She moved toward Lilith with a terrifying speed, one that even the eye could barely follow, charging forward like a grim reaper.
In an instant, Mari, previously blurred as a dark figure, sharpened into focus in front of Lilith and swung her hand.
Whoosh!!!
The air was split in two, and shockwaves blasted in all directions.
The speed and power were astounding. Though simple, each attack was deadly.
Yet, Lilith was just as swift, ducking her upper body to evade Mari’s assault, before instantly launching a spinning punch.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!!
Within less than a second, dozens of punches struck like a machine gun.
Even with her resilient body, fortified by raw emotions and magic, the speed and force were astonishing beyond belief.
Each punch caused Mari's body to shatter, creating holes all over her.
However, Oliver didn’t feel shock, sadness, or anger as he watched. In fact, it was Lilith whose expression stiffened.
Mari’s body, which should have been reduced to ground meat with a smashed face and shattered flesh, didn’t collapse; instead, it began to regenerate.
The unknown black substance covering her body seemed to knit itself back together like threads.
‘What on earth is that?’
Oliver wondered as he observed Mari’s ability to recover from even impossible wounds.
It seemed similar to black magic but was somehow different.
In the past, Oliver had seen that form when fighting Mari, but even with his drastically improved skills and knowledge since then, he couldn’t discern its true nature.
‘Though, it reminds me of something similar… The Burnt One.’
Oliver recalled a demon he encountered in the New World, a thought that grew stronger when a mysterious hand appeared above Mari’s head.
Rip!!
With lightning speed, Mari’s crushed body healed, and she swung her hand down again, launching another attack.
Her nails, seemingly two or three times longer than her original arm length, left deep gashes from the ceiling, through the wall, and down to the floor.
Though the attack itself was straightforward, Lilith dodged it with her agile evasion technique, immediately moving to counter.
However, Mari too dodged with a speed and flexibility that bordered on monstrous, retaliating with an equally ferocious strike.
Now, except for the space where Oliver stood, everything around him was being sliced apart. Lilith countered by dodging in all directions, following up with her own strikes.
Within a single breath, they exchanged dozens of attacks, parries, and counters. It seemed as though time moved faster in that space alone, distorting, tearing, and consuming the surrounding air.
The accumulating impacts soon caused the space itself, created by the World Tree's magic, to tremble as it absorbed the shock. At that moment, Lilith’s breathing briefly wavered, just for an instant.
It was such a fleeting moment that an ordinary person would never have noticed, yet it was there, and Mari didn’t miss that chance.
Rip!
Mari’s hand sliced through Lilith’s arm, severing it into six parts.
Though Lilith was like a puppet immune to pain, with her nerves removed, the shock of seeing her arm severed momentarily froze her in place, preventing her from dodging or counterattacking.
An unforgivable lapse in a life-or-death struggle.
Seizing the opportunity, Mari prepared to launch another attack.
“Mari.”
Oliver called out to her. He didn’t have a concrete reason, but he sensed that if Mari landed another hit, it would cause permanent damage to Lilith.
Focused solely on the fight like a grim reaper, Mari halted her movements at Oliver’s call. Regaining her senses just in time, Lilith quickly distanced herself, leaping away to gain space from Mari.
Though Mari had missed her chance to strike down her prey, she showed no anger. Instead, her blackened face, like a mask, called out to Oliver.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
A look of relief passed over Mari’s darkened face as the deadly clash came to a halt. Just as it seemed they might be able to resolve things through dialogue, the floor tilted sharply.
Lilith, taking advantage of the World Tree's magic, manipulated the space, tilting the floor by 90 degrees.
Though Oliver knew the spell could be controlled like this, seeing the entire space shift was still fascinating.
The floor became the wall, causing Oliver and Mari to stumble. They managed to hang on by embedding the quarterstaff and Mari’s nails into the ground.
Suspended against what was now the wall, Oliver glanced down and considered climbing lower, but below, where there should have been a wall, was only an abyss.
So deep that there was no visible bottom, only endless darkness.
Instinctively sensing Lilith’s next move, Oliver looked up.
As expected.
Lilith began dismantling parts of the World Tree's magic that composed the space, using them as raw materials to reconstruct her severed arm.
Magic energy, in the form of bricks, rebar, and concrete fragments, gathered like a flowing current, disregarding the laws of physics, and converged into the form of Lilith’s arm.
Though it appeared as an ordinary woman’s arm, Oliver could sense the mass of compressed magic within it as clearly as if he could feel it through his skin.
How could he describe it? It felt like compressing a massive building into the shape of a human arm.
In any case, it was far beyond the norm.
The excessive compression of magic seemed volatile, as if it could explode at any moment. However, the intricate magical formula layered over the arm both restrained the energy and maximized the arm’s power and efficiency.
Holding her reconstructed arm back like the barrel of a cannon, Lilith took aim.
Her target was Mari.
What amazed Oliver was that Mari didn’t appear afraid—instead, she seemed ready to face it head-on.
The mysterious hand above Mari’s head grew more distinct, as if solidifying. Mari wrapped her body in her long, dark hair, strengthening her form, and returned her nails to their original length.
She had narrowed her attack range to increase its potency.
The fight had reached a stage that Oliver hadn’t anticipated, but one thing was absolutely clear.
If they collided now, neither would emerge unscathed.
‘I don’t want that.’
With the situation turning critical, Oliver made a swift decision and moved to prevent it.
Originally, he intended to use only magic for this mission, but given the circumstances, he pulled out a vial filled with raw emotions and the power of nature from his coat pocket.
At the same time, he appealed to his shadow.
“Shadow, would you mind helping me out?”
The dark shadow at Oliver’s feet opened wide, revealing eerily round, white eyes, and meanwhile, Lilith plunged downward, combining the strength of her compressed arm with gravity and leg force.
With a force that defied common sense, the air seemed to scream as Lilith transformed into a meteor, drawing a blazing line through the air as she plummeted toward Mari.
Mari, her form like a dark beast, extended her hand to counter.
[Bless]
In that moment, where seconds seemed to split into hundreds or thousands, Oliver channeled the natural energy and emotions from the vial into the wall to which he clung.
The emotions seeped through the gaps in Lilith's magical formula controlling the space, while the natural energy crept into the World Tree core that powered the spell.
Under normal conditions, Lilith’s control over the space would have been too strong for this to work. Ironically, however, her focus on offense had left openings in her formula, allowing Oliver’s influence to take hold.
Meanwhile, Mari and Lilith were almost upon each other.
Then, having fully understood and infiltrated the magical formula, Oliver activated it, forming a magic circle between Mari and Lilith, and appeared above them.
━━━━━━━━!!!
An indescribable roar reverberated as the air compressed to a single point, unleashing a spherical shockwave that rippled outward.
The shockwave was a catastrophe in itself, tearing through the surrounding magic formation and destroying the space.
With the sound of crumbling buildings and tearing mountains, the magic-powered space shattered, leaving only a void. In that moment, Oliver, clad in shadows, intercepted both Mari and Lilith’s attacks, halting them in midair as he reconstructed the space.
Fragments floating in the void-like space reversed their course, as if time flowed backward, restoring their original shapes. The distorted space also reverted, bringing Oliver, Mari, and Lilith back to their feet.
“This really hurts… especially my right arm,” Oliver said, looking at Mari and Lilith positioned on either side.
“Did you really understand this formula in one go…?” Lilith asked incredulously. She knew of Oliver’s abilities, but experiencing it firsthand was disorienting.
After all, the combined research of the Magic Tower and the puppet experiments had created what was theoretically a perfected technique, one that only Lilith could execute due to her bond with the World Tree.
Oliver calmly responded, “I was lucky. I was able to take control because you had already completed the formula. Just a moment.”
Speaking without a trace of malice to Lilith, who had struck him countless times, Oliver turned and faced Mari, trusting that Lilith wouldn’t attack him.
“Mmm…”
Oliver observed Mari, who was still completely blackened, letting out a murmur.
Though unintentional, she had attacked him, and now she stood frozen in shock. This gave Oliver the chance to examine her state closely.
As expected, this wasn’t ordinary black magic. Although it strengthened the body, it was distinct from the disease-based black magic.
Particularly, the hand hovering above Mari’s head bore similarities to The Burnt One, though beyond that, Oliver couldn’t discern much.
“Lilith, do you happen to know what the hand above Mari is?”
With genuine curiosity, Oliver asked Lilith, who had kidnapped Eve and mercilessly attacked him.
“Hand…?”
“Oh…”
Upon hearing Lilith’s answer, Oliver let out a sigh. It seemed that she couldn’t see the hand.
In that case, it was likely one of two things.
Either Lilith, as an essence of the World Tree, was unable to see it, or Oliver alone was able to perceive it.
It wasn’t a particularly difficult question, and perhaps that’s why Oliver remembered the perplexing question he’d had when he first encountered Lilith.
Whoosh!
Just before he could delve deeply into that question, Oliver swung his quarterstaff and struck the unknown hand hovering above Mari’s head.
The mysterious hand dissipated like smoke, disappearing thanks to the quarterstaff’s strike, and Mari returned to her original form.
Momentarily disoriented, Mari staggered, likely due to the backlash from her enhanced state, and Oliver supported her.
“Ah…”
“Are you alright, Mari?”
“Yes… Yes! I’m fine,” Mari replied, somewhat startled.
Oliver steadied Mari and then turned back to Lilith.
The extraordinary skill that concentrated the World Tree’s vast power into a single point was remarkable, but the drawbacks were not insignificant—Lilith’s body was clearly damaged.
Her body, cracked like a doll battered by a club, bore visible signs of strain.
Once more, Oliver addressed Lilith with a request.
“Lilith, if you wouldn’t mind, could you release Eve and simply leave? It looks like you’re quite hurt.”
“Is that a threat… or a request?”
“Both, I suppose, though it leans more toward a request.”
“Hmph, how reassuring… though it seems someone over there might disagree,” Lilith replied, adjusting her cracked form while glancing to the side.
There, pushing through the weakened magic formula, was a group of mages.
Among them were Derek, Yareli, Ünner, and even a mage whom Oliver hadn’t seen before.
Judging by the atmosphere, they seemed to be from the Magic Tower, and the fact that they managed to break into this space, weakened though it was, indicated they were both well-versed and highly skilled.
Representing the group, a mage at the front looked at Zenon with a gleaming eye and said, “Well done, Mr. Zenon. Now, from this point…”
-Flash!
Before the unnamed mage could finish, Oliver seized control of the World Tree and the space itself, wresting it from Lilith and casting the intruding mages far out of the area.
Constructing this spell had been difficult, but hijacking an existing spell through black magic was relatively easy.
It happened in an instant, with no hesitation, and Lilith stared at Oliver, who calmly said:
“You were referring to them?”