Infinite Range: The Sniper Mage - Chapter 734: Does His Main Trait Just… Get Longer?

Chapter 734: 734: Does His Main Trait Just… Get Longer?

A razor note sang.

Sword light leapt from a kilometer away and stopped at Orson’s nose. Killing intent crawled over his skin like a million ants.

He didn’t flinch. One brow lifted, calm as ever, eyes on the edge a hair’s breadth from his face.

“Say that again. Who’s the elder here, and who would I ever look twice at?”

Bellara’s brows knit tight. The cold fury rolling off her was real.

“Why so worked up then?”

Orson smiled, easy and infuriating, studying the woman before him. She was suffocatingly strong, but he was no easy fruit to squeeze. If he dropped the seal, her fate would be anyone’s guess.

“I admit you’re… unusual,” Bellara said, voice low. “But I’ve seen plenty of ’unusual.’ Even with your six-shift talent, under my ten thousand blades you’re dust.”

Light rippled. Behind her, the air was suddenly full of suspended weapons, a silent storm. Bellara stood at the center like an undying warlord, all killing edge and rule.

“You are not a hair of the Great King,” she snapped. “Get out.”

“I’ll give you that point,” Orson said. “But a handmaiden lecturing me from a high horse? That’s rich.”

Her eyes cooled toward violence.

“I’m the present master of Radiant Shuttle,” he said.

“What did you say…”

Bellara actually rocked half a step. The phantasmal armory dissolved behind her.

“What are you to the God of Slaughter?” she asked, voice suddenly dark.

“A friend.”

He nodded, still smiling.

Her face soured. Maid she might have been, but she’d watched the fall up close. For immortality, the Great King had cut every thread that bound him to the ordinary world and sided with the gods—and found them no kinder for it. He grew too fast, wanted too much, and drew their hate. In the end he was encircled and spent, and in that last sprint he dragged Bellara to the Sunforge World.

They lasted mere breaths. The gods turned the Abyss like a spigot and ringed this world in demons. With lives burning under it, the Fire God raised this mountain, poured his divinity into a world-spanning seal, turned Sunforge into an Exile Domain so his people could live. Bellara took her order and planted herself on the Ninety-ninth. Anyone who climbed would break on her, until the very thought of leaving died.

“Relax,” Orson said when she stayed silent. “I’m not here to tidy house. You chose a different road. That’s all.”

“You?” She laughed once. “A god-ranked adventurer?”

He let the goad slide. “I’m not your match in my current state. But you won’t find me easy to kill.”

“True,” she said after a beat. “You’d cost me time.”

She was weighing him. He could feel it. He was far beyond Cain or the Immortal Lord. He’d taken the Fire God’s baptism; the rules themselves had admitted him.

She’d stayed too long in this mountain, Orson thought. Too many years of mechanical slaughter. Not a schemer. Not really.

“You’ve held the line for centuries,” he said, smiling. “Rest. I’ll sit the post.”

“I…”

Bellara stared at him like a college kid told to turn in her badge on day one. Her clear eyes were suddenly unsure.

“You said it yourself. Adventurers need a forge to grow.”

He tilted his head, frowning like he didn’t quite get it. “I can break whatever demons you call. Or will you go back on your word? People talk. Say enough lies and the rules of Infinite Dimensions start to punish you. Not great for a lady’s skin.”

She touched her flawless cheek on reflex. “Nonsense. I’m a lesser god… I age with the sky.”

She caught herself, anger flaring—and froze again as Orson’s left hand bloomed fire.

“Thanks, senior.”

He bowed, polite as a prince, then strolled to the little shrine of Tiamat and eyed the items laid out.

Summoning Incense

Quality: single-use sacred item

Effect: refined from demonic flesh and blood. Light and drop into the Unmoving King’s Cup to enrage nearby demons, severing them briefly from the Demon Emperor’s command, and draw them in a tide to the incense’s spread.

His eyes lit. “Now that’s a treat.”

He lifted one stick. The altar flickered and another grew in its place.

“Bottomless. My kind of buffet,” he murmured.

“Are you insane?!”

Bellara had been primed to watch him fail. Instead she watched him grab a double handful—over a dozen sticks at once. She moved to stop him. Orson glanced back, cool.

“Going to break your word twice? Street lore. When girls lie too much, the rules frown. Terrible for complexion.”

She actually paused and touched her face again.

“Lies? Me? I’m a god—”

He cut her off by touching flame to the lot. Smoke roared up. He jammed the fistful down toward the little clay pot.

“This cup isn’t mundane either. Pity it’s so small…”

He had to work to wedge the bundle in.

“Idiot,” Bellara muttered. “What rule ever chose a big fool like this?”

She didn’t know he hadn’t been “chosen” at all. He’d bullied the mountain into baptizing him.

“Cough… cough…”

Tears stung his eyes. He staggered out of the shrine, waving smoke away as a pillar of black rolled up. Bellara stared, genuinely wondering if he’d just set the Tiamat temple on fire.

“See you in a bit!”

He grinned and bolted.

“You said you could kill! Why the sprint, boy!”

She stamped hard enough to crack stone. He ran too fast for her to catch—so fast even the Weapon Goddess felt slow.

“Smooth-mouthed little brat!”

She ground her teeth. Overhead the sky turned, black clouds spiraling down until they seemed to press the ground itself. She wasn’t afraid. She was tired. This kind of workload stained dresses.

In minutes the horde blotted the world—three or four times worse than before. If this crowd ever spilled out, with demon reproduction as it was, Sunforge would be empty of life in a year.

The more she thought, the more she wanted to wring his neck.

“Fine. Kill, then rest a few days,” she sighed. Centuries of the same work had hollowed her out. She wanted a bath. Clean clothes. A real sleep.

Her sword sang.

She stepped into the black whirl and cut a road.

Thunder rolled.

She gathered to strike—and then stopped, staring up as the sky lit with falling fire.

Fifty kilometers out, the mage stopped pretending to be a person.

Orson set the Supreme Arcane Blade humming, flickering between six SSS careers without a seam. He had many toys. He loved one.

Pure violence. Pure range. Pure crush.

Chaos orbs stitched the sky into a streamer of meteors. Chaos fog boiled. Every hit reeked of annihilation. Even a god would have to blink.

“So far… is that his domain?” Bellara whispered, eyes wide.

She’d never traded blows with another god, but even she knew: this reach was beyond a lesser god’s field.

Divinity matched the bearer. The same soul brand in different hands bloomed differently. She was Weapon. She’d been swinging steel since she could walk. Any weapon in her grip came up at mastery. S-rank arts and SS Forbidden techniques had no ceiling of ten for her; she pushed to twenty. The same “Heavenly Dao” in her hands hit harder than the Immortal Lord’s ever could.

If this man ever formed his own divinity… she stared at the horizon, stunned.

“Will his main trait just… get longer?” she muttered, frowning, knowing something about that felt very, very wrong.