Chapter 139: Esoteric Magic (II)
Chapter 139: Esoteric Magic (II)
As he stared at Uhtred, whose eyes had glazed over and whose face was stretched into a mad, unthinking grin, he watched the young man’s right hand tremble as power thrummed through it at a terrifying rate, and he couldn’t help but remember something.
His eyes flickered slightly as his mind went to the female ancient variant, the third general.
What exactly he thought about her remained a mystery, but the moment the thought crossed his mind, a frown colored his face, filled with a trace of fear.
But the moment the general realized he had felt fear, his face turned livid. He couldn’t believe he had shown fear because of a mere modern human.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed his spear and hurled it straight at Uhtred with terrifying force.
However, in a display that sent another wave of shock coursing through the general, Uhtred’s head suddenly whipped to the side.
The spear, which should have pierced straight through his skull, missed him by the barest fraction of an inch.
In the same movement, Uhtred’s right arm — the one that had been rendered dead by the blood corrosion earlier, and was now boiling with his strange energy — snapped up and grabbed the flying spear mid-air.
The terrifying friction and force of the spear burned across Uhtred’s palm, but the Homo erectus general was certain he couldn’t even feel it. The boiling energy thrumming under Uhtred’s skin was more than enough to numb any external pain.
The moment the momentum of the spear was killed in Uhtred’s palm, he launched himself to his feet, his eyes still glazed over in that strange state.
He whipped the spear around with his right arm, and in an instant, the metal spear boiled to a hot red, turning into molten liquid from its solid state in an instant.
Uhtred hurled the molten metal right back at the general.
The general immediately moved to dodge, but before the molten mass could reach him, Uhtred’s throwing hand suddenly waved. An extension of magic spread between him and the molten metal.
In an instant, the spear splattered into thousands of tiny, boiling hot metal orbs, following the general’s dodging path like a swarm of homing missiles.
The boiling orbs pierced into the general’s body in several areas, eliciting a sharp, agonized cry from his throat.
At this point, the general’s eyes were wild with fear. He realized he was experiencing something entirely uncanny and non-standard.
Being at the brunt of Uhtred in his current state felt like everything he knew about cosmic essence did not apply here. His objective immediately changed. Instead of attacking, he now began to move to escape.
However, Uhtred was only just beginning...
With that wild grin still on his face, Uhtred waved his right hand again, and the air right in front of the Homo erectus general solidified into a hard, invisible wall just as he turned to dash away.
The general slammed into it, stunned, but before he could understand what was happening, he felt a gush tear across his shoulder nearly to the bone.
Liquid water had materialized, seemingly out of the scarce moisture in the air, slicing across the general’s shoulder and making one of his arms go limp.
The young human had just manipulated air magic and water magic.
Combined with the heat, frost, earth, and metal magic the general had already witnessed, he couldn’t comprehend it. Just how many elements could this monster wield?
"W—What kind of thing are you?!" the general roared, abandoning his retreat and charging at Uhtred instead.
Now that he could no longer escape, blocked by walls of air any time he tried to move away from Uhtred, he changed his focus to a suicidal attack. He intended to beat Uhtred back to his senses.
It was obvious that the human ascender had lost himself to some sort of madness, and that was what was giving him this ability. If he could just beat him back to his senses or snap him awake, the magic would cease.
But the general didn’t hold that thought for long.
Right before his eyes, Uhtred’s right hand, which was burning red at this point, started to thrum with a hair-prickling energy at his fist.
This was something entirely unlike the elemental emanations coming from him before. This was a different kind of power. He was conjuring a magic that the Homo erectus general couldn’t even understand.
It wasn’t elemental, and neither did it give an esoteric type of feeling either, but it was terrifying enough that the general skidded in his tracks and immediately turned, desperately trying to run.
But it was too late.
Uhtred raised his hand, and a small, dense orb of pure, unadulterated energy converged at the tip of his fingers.
It brimmed with so much compacted power that anyone who looked at it would feel an immense certainty of death.
His glazed-over eyes locked onto the general’s fleeing figure. This time, the general could escape freely, there was no air barrier to stop him, as Uhtred’s entire magic was focused into orb congregating at his finger tips.
The distance the general had put between them had significantly widened, but as the tiny orb of bright white light shot forward, it crossed that distance in a blink, expanding to a larger size in a split microsecond.
The general felt the terrifying danger from behind and tried to shift his weight.
For a moment, as he dove, he thought he had actually dodged it. He felt the wind of the spell pass behind him, the roiling energy searing the skin on his back painfully.
He felt the sharp jolts of electricity humming within it. It was a spell without any particular form, yet containing several conflicting elements all at once — lightning, heat, cold...
But just as he turned his head to look behind him at the path of the spell, he realized he was in a free fall. He tried to catch himself, but he felt absolutely no strength in his legs.
His body crashed hard onto the sandy ground, and it was only then that he finally looked down.
His eyes widened in shock, before a wry, bitter smile colored his face.
Right from his lower half, a whole chunk of his body had been cleanly deleted from existence, as if a giant maw had simply devoured him.
His right arm, along with several parts of his chest and one of his legs, was entirely gone. What remained of him was bleeding so profusely onto the desert sand that he knew his end was already here.
He coughed, blood spilling down the edge of his lips as he tried to speak. He looked up at Uhtred, but found that the young man had already collapsed to the ground, completely unconscious.
Whatever spell Uhtred had cast last was something even his own body was not capable of handling.
His right arm had shriveled dangerously, looking starved and malnourished to the point of death, though the rest of his body looked alright.
His chest didn’t even seem to be moving, and for a second, the dying general thought the young man had died with him.
But looking closer, he could see a very slight, shallow movement of the chest. Uhtred was still alive, but deeply unconscious.
"No... wonder... she... hesitated..." the general choked out, gurgling on his own blood.
His blood magic was useless now. There was no saving him. His eyes were already beginning to dim.
As he felt the final remnants of his life seeping away, he looked up one last time and saw a platinum-haired human female approaching from the entrance of the camp.
She seemed to have been standing there the entire time, only moving now to help Uhtred.
Her eyes were locked onto the dying general as she walked forward. Her body was caked in dried blood, and several large gashes were littered across her arms.
A nasty scar crossed her face, making her look as though she had been dragged through a meat grinder, but her bright blue eyes still burned with a cold fierceness... one that was entirely different from the fiery fierceness of Uhtred.
As the general saw her approach, he couldn’t help but gurgle out one last chuckle.
"So there is... even more than one... monster..."
A wry, depreciative smile lingered on his face.
That was the final expression he held as his consciousness flickered out of existence, and his head slumped limply to the side.