Chapter 98.
I rushed at the skeleton and swung my sword.
It quickly flew higher to avoid my sword then shouted, "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! So you weren’t an ordinary priest! To be able to use a sword too, you must be a bishop-level great priest with paladin roots!"
Oh right, priests could only use flying magic starting from bishop-level. I forgot.
"Hahaha, if you know, just obediently receive this iron mace of justice, Baldy!"
The skeleton sneered. "Puhahaha! If you were a paladin, your divine magic would not be at the level of a bishop! You can"t hurt me with such divine magic!"
Yeah, I can"t use divine magic anyway.
Totally different from just before when it was dodging in panic, the skeleton was now looking down at me with a haughty air. I didn"t know what it was being so arrogant about when it couldn"t even tell if my magic contained divinity or not. But let"s be thankful to it for letting its guard down and hit it in the head.
I raised my sword and shouted, "But I will make this heretic who has disrespected the great G.o.ddess kneel down before my sword!"
Uuack, that was cringy! But somehow, paladins and priests often said things like this. Well, I knew that these words inspired one"s own faith and strengthened one"s divine power, but to me, it was just saying nonsense because it didn"t have that effect on me.
"Hahaha! Why don’t you try it!"
Um, Mr. Skeleton. Are you sure you didn’t get brain damage from having your head turned into a skull?
How could you just receive such cheesy lines? Did you get so shocked from suddenly becoming bald that you lost your sense of shame?
I raised my alt.i.tude rapidly and flew at the skeleton. I wrapped my sword with sword aura and tried to cut off its ribs.
But it went further up perhaps feeling threatened by me and shot magic from a distance.
"Rain of h.e.l.lfire!"
"Barrier! Thermal Insulation!"
The high-heat flames that looked like black lights rained down from above. I surrounded myself with a barrier and broke through it.
The temperature of the flames that the skeleton fired must have been quite high. Even though I used magic to block out the heat, the temperature that was transmitted to me still felt quite warm.
When I broke through the rain of flames with brute force, the skeleton’s eyes of fire shook.
Was it panicking? A skeleton’s expression couldn’t be read, so it was hard for me to gauge its mental state.
For someone like me who lived off of scamming and bluffing, the skeleton was a difficult opponent.
Wary of the sword in my hand, the skeleton created several layers of s.h.i.+elds at once.
"Haha! How is it!?"
The skeleton’s s.h.i.+elds seemed too thick to break them all with a single swing. So, all I had to do was attack several times. I swung my wand instead of the sword.
"Magic bullet, mid-level machine gun version! Fire!"
I casually fired a thousand rounds of magic bullets at the skeleton. Its hastily made s.h.i.+eld was easily broken by the randomly fired magic bullets, forcing it to do random maneuvers as it shot down the magic bullets with its own magic bullets.
"You, d.a.m.n you! Aak! Aahaak!"
However, after being hit by one or two bullets, it was driven into a corner by a stray bullet.
"s.p.a.ce movement!"
The skeleton avoided the crisis by urgently using s.p.a.ce-movement magic. The urgently performed s.p.a.ce-movement magic was something that could make the caster lost in the s.p.a.ce-time dimension if something were to go wrong. But with good reflexes, it managed to teleport the magic bullets I shot, instead of itself.
Now, when and where those magic bullets would appear was unknown, but the skeleton had managed to overcome the crisis.
Normally, s.p.a.ce magic itself was very difficult to cast in one go, but I guess since its life depended on it, it managed to succeed.
Still, it was not perfect. It seemed to have been hit by dozens of shots as there were plenty of holes in his robe.
Kuok! Huk, huk!
The skeleton let out painful breath from having rapidly consumed its mana. Considering it used such high-level magic without prior preparation, of course, a large chunk of mana would get taken out.
But how was it breathing hard when it only had bones left? Perhaps its body still had memories from when it was a human.
I dispersed the careless thoughts and spread invisible mines made from magic into the surrounding area without letting the skeleton notice.
"Be prepared! It"s time to receive G.o.d’s punishment!"
Then I infused mana into the sword to create a huge sword aura and charged at the skeleton.
Keuk!
The skeleton s.h.i.+rked backwards to avoid my sword. But the surrounding s.p.a.ce, except for the direction I was flying in, was already full of mines.
In the natural order, it ran away from me and hit a mine in the air, causing it to immediately explode.
Kw.a.n.g! Kwagwagwagwagwagw.a.n.g!
Ah, I was too close to the skeleton and got caught in the radius of the chain explosions.
"Barrier! Barrier! Barrier!"
The first of the quickly raised three-layered barriers was caught in the explosion and was immediately destroyed. The second layer barely hung on and managed to retain its shape. Ever since I managed to lose the old man wearing a golden mask, I increased the power of minefield magic, but as I used it with my magic wand, it was much more powerful than I expected.
It was my first time using this magic wand in battle, the output was so high that it was rather difficult to use. If I accidentally slipped and a mana bullet that I shot landed in the capital’s downtown, it would be no different from the military firing cannon sh.e.l.ls at civilians. If I want to control the force, I would have to either get used to it or make an additional mana transformer to attach to it. Or another way was simply using it at full output.
At this rate, if I used this magic wand with all my might, the only person who could handle being an opponent was my father back in my hometown. Even if I went all out with this magic wand, the chance of winning was probably just under fifty-fifty.
When I think about my father"s power, it was a very subjective and hopeful interpretation for me. But that’s better than nothing. Just being able to contend against my father meant that there was a probability that I could run away even in the worst-case scenario of having to face him.
I shook my head and got rid of the useless thoughts and approached the skeleton, who made me wonder if its bones could be cremated. Surprisingly, though only its upper body remained it still managed to retain its shape.
The skeleton looked at me with its weak flames where the eyes were supposed to be.
"So it seems... you are not...a priest—"
If I had been a priest who could use divine power, even if only a tenth of the mines had exploded, he would be walking along to Hades right now. But right now, although I couldn’t say it was fine, the skeleton was still alive even after that ma.s.sive explosion.
I smirked and laughed. "You just figured that out now?”
"d.a.m.n... It! You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, huk! If only I had known that you are not a priest!"
It definitely would have attacked me more aggressively. Perhaps it might have made the right strategic judgment and tried to draw me back into its workshop in the magic tower, then attacked me with the support of the workshop. Then it might have been a struggle.
"But you thought I was a priest and didn"t even try to drag me into the workshop within the magic tower."
The skeleton spoke in a tearful voice, exasperated with anger, "Yes... But it would not have been very effective to drag a bishop-level priest into the workshop full of black magic."
It could have worked well enough against an average priest if the workshop was not full of black magic. However, a black magician’s natural enemy was a priest, and against the priest of the highest rank, the bishop, black magic would not have worked.
That is, if I were an actual bishop-level priest.
"In addition, you probably couldn’t drag in a bishop who used to be a paladin into the narrow pa.s.sageway of the magic tower where the withdrawal path was not optimal.”
"That"s right…!"
I asked the affirming skeleton, "Any last wishes?"
"Could you spare me?”
I shook my head at the desperate skeleton, who used to be the Tower Master.
"If you were still the living Tower Master, then I would have considered it."
The skeleton in front of me was just a monster who had already given up on being a human. I couldn"t spare such a monster. It was a ‘responsibility’ I had as a magician. One of the few responsibilities that I had.
"I am! I am... The Tower Master."
Suddenly, the skeleton stopped talking as if it just had lots of thoughts going through its head, then groaned.
"Is that so... Am I no longer the Tower Master?"
I could tell that the tower master that the skeleton was referring to was not the position but as a living person.
"So that was it. That was why you said you would erect a tombstone in the courtyard."
Suddenly, the skeleton muttered something I couldn"t understand and gave a sigh as if he had given up.
"I just wanted more knowledge. Just, to be healthier, more energetic, and to be able to live more pa.s.sionately. I wanted life. Not this dying body—”
It repeatedly clenched and relaxed its hands that had already become emaciated bones. It seemed to be looking at the wrinkled hands it had just before, instead of the skinny bones.
Perhaps what it was seeing was a type of life flas.h.i.+ng before its eyes.
"But it seems I am already dead. Haha." The skeleton burst into a dejected laugh.
"Are you going to leave a name for the tombstone?"
It was already accepting his death. It shook its head with difficulty.
"My tombstone, no, the tombstone of my former self. A friend of my former self said he would set up my tombstone. Could you just write down on the tombstone that there was an unnamed skeleton here?"
"Is that enough?"
The skeleton simply nodded. "What more can I hope for? Please don"t become a monster like me."
I didn"t reply. There was no need to answer because no matter what happened, I would never become as hopeless.
The skeleton chuckled at my silence. I don"t know exactly why it laughed, but I reckoned I might have a vague idea.
I put my hand between the skeleton’s ribs and grabbed the black mana stone serving as its heart.
"Thank you."
With its last words, I strongly pulled on the black mana stone and cut off the connection between the mana stone and the skeleton. It completely crumbled into ash.
After watching the scene to the end, I looked around for something to use as a tombstone. When I discovered a camellia tree about 10 meters away, I used magic to move it to the place where the skeleton had crumbled away.
-A nameless skeleton fell asleep here while pursuing his dream.
I carved it into the camellia tree and turned around.
The aftertaste was somehow bitter. It"d still be a while before sunrise, but I felt like I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
As I looked up into the sky, there were so many stars. As I tried to lower my head again, s.p.a.ce opened up in the sky and large lumps of mana began to pour down.
Ara?! Aren’t those the magic bullets I had shot?!
Hundreds of magic bullets quickly rained down from the opened s.p.a.ce and crashed directly into the magic tower.
Kwagwagw.a.n.g-!
The Red Magic Tower began to crumble due to my magic bullets as if it was following the master"s footsteps.
While looking at the falling magic tower, I had a thought...
Is this all my fault?