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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Mod7
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“Human, we brought weapons.”
“Human taking our weapons… Bad…”
“I’ll give them back. Just wait.”
Aslan cut off the Giants’ grumbling, knelt down, and examined the weapons they had brought him.
He picked up a stone axe, its weight substantial even for him, accustomed to wielding all manner of weapons. He set it back down.
“…As I thought.”
He looked at the assortment of crude stone axes and hammers laid out before him, his suspicions confirmed.
Despite the Giants’ rough craftsmanship, the weapons were well-maintained.
The Giants fidgeted nervously under Aslan’s gaze, their eyes filled with a mixture of fear and concern, worried he might confiscate their precious weapons or somehow damage them.
Aslan had no intention of taking their weapons. They were far too crude to be of any use to him. He continued his examination.
A thick, blue residue clung to the axe blades and hammerheads.
It had a similar color and texture to the ectoplasm often seen in occult horror games, and it evoked a strange sense of familiarity.
A familiarity unique to Aslan, or rather, to wild mages.
While this familiarity reinforced his suspicions, it wasn’t enough. He needed proof.
He scraped a bit of the bluish, semi-solid substance from a stone axe with his finger.
It was sticky, and a faint trace of mana emanated from it.
Aslan’s eyes narrowed. He sighed.
“As I suspected. They’re not wraiths.”
They were closer to magically created constructs.
Familiars, perhaps, or summoned creatures. Even something akin to slimes.
But they weren’t entirely unrelated to wraiths.
While primarily composed of mana, their base component seemed to be souls. Spirits shaped and molded into monstrous forms. Artificial wraiths.
‘I can’t sense souls directly, but… Purity reacts to them. They definitely contain souls.’
He touched the blue residue with the single-edged sword in his right hand, and the substance, engulfed in the blade’s white light, dissolved, burning away.
Undeniably proof of a soul component. If it reacted to Purity, a weapon that could cleave divine energy and spirits, there was no doubt.
And their resistance to physical attacks further confirmed that they were soul-based constructs.
While he didn’t know who had created them, he knew how.
The structure of the blue, mana-infused slime was strangely familiar.
The tattoos that covered his right arm, capable of storing and activating spells, of maximizing the effectiveness of spells written on scrolls, regardless of the catalyst’s quality –
The so-called Mana Tattoos, an ancient, almost lost, art. The ink used in these tattoos was remarkably similar to the slime he had just examined.
They had used this mana slime to bind and shape the souls, creating these pseudo-wraiths. Aslan was certain, but also puzzled.
There wasn’t a spell for creating such creatures, not in any of the known magical schools.
There were only two ways to use a spell that didn’t exist.
Either it was created by an Archmage, a mage of immense power, rivaling even the Great Ones,
Or it was wild magic.
Aslan believed the latter was far more likely.
While there were many mages who lacked morals or a sense of ethics, the study of souls and death was a largely forgotten field.
Considering that modern magic research focused on replicating the efficiency of priests and gods, this was far too archaic.
‘A wild mage, then.’
Aslan stood up, sheathing his sword.
“Take your weapons. I’m done.”
As the Giants eagerly retrieved their weapons, their eyes still fixed on him with a mixture of awe and suspicion, Aslan frowned.
He didn’t know how or why, but the culprit behind this wraith incident was undoubtedly a wild mage.
A wild mage who understood souls.
And that was the problem.
Wild magic, barely a recognized school of magic, was different from conventional magic.
While conventional magic was built on knowledge and intellect, wild magic required a complete understanding of the element being manipulated, and often, physical modification of the user’s body.
To use fire magic conventionally, all you needed was a simple incantation or hand sign.
But to wield fire with wild magic, you had to understand fire.
Its taste, its texture, its form, its nature.
How it was born, how it spread, how it died.
You had to understand its very essence.
And then came the body modification.
Wild mages used their magic to alter their bodies, transforming themselves into conduits for the elements they had mastered.
It was an inefficient, almost irrational, form of magic.
And as such, wild mages were often unstable.
Driven mad by their understanding of things beyond human comprehension, or their minds twisted by the process of transformation.
That’s why Aslan limited his use of wild magic to simple enhancements, augmenting his strength or the power of his weapons.
Aslan looked towards the path the wraiths had taken, his mind working.
He considered the method the wild mage must have used to create these creatures.
First, they would have modified their arm, somehow granting themselves the ability to manipulate souls.
Then, they would have either created a new organ capable of infusing souls with mana, or modified their existing arm to serve that purpose.
And then, using that modified limb, that new organ, they would have shaped the souls, infused them with mana, and created these wraiths.
While he didn’t know why they had sent these wraiths to attack the Giants, the implications of this kind of wild magic were disturbing.
It was soul manipulation, and there was no telling how it might evolve.
They might even develop a way to forcibly extract souls from living beings.
Aslan stared at the horizon, following the faint trail left by the retreating wraiths.
Despite the passage of time, tracking them wasn’t difficult with his Hunting skill, his enhanced Luck, and his increased Mana.
It wouldn’t be a short journey.
Tracking them would be arduous, and confronting a wild mage who could manipulate souls would be dangerous.
He could simply leave, let the Giants deal with the problem themselves, and continue his search for the Master of the Sword.
But he couldn’t.
Leaving a wild mage capable of such dangerous magic unchecked was too great a risk.
They might hurt someone, might have already hurt someone.
And if he waited until they had caused more harm, there was no telling how powerful their soul-manipulation magic might become.
The nature of their magic itself was a concern.
Wild magic that manipulated souls. If it fell into the wrong hands, the hands of a priest, the consequences could be devastating.
Perhaps there was already a priest involved.
This was something only he could do, something he had to do.
“Angie. Ereta.”
He called out to them. Angie, who had been staring into space, nodded absently. Ereta flinched at the sound of her name. Aslan looked at them.
“Come here. I need to explain something.”
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“…Are you sure you don’t need me to stay with the others…?”
Ereta, her head covered with a rough cloth, walked beside Aslan, following the faint trail left by the wraiths.
“That little girl… she seemed rather attached to you.”
Aslan didn’t reply.
He knew Angie was fond of him.
“If I were planning to betray you… wouldn’t now be the perfect opportunity?”
Ereta’s playful tone, her teasing words, were a stark contrast to her earlier silence. Aslan, still slightly uncomfortable with this change in her demeanor, glanced at her.
“You’re not going to betray me.”
He spoke with a certainty that surprised Ereta, who hadn’t expected him to take her words seriously. She blinked, her eyes widening slightly.
“And if those wraiths come back, Angie and I are the only ones who can fight them. You’re not very effective against wraiths. So I can’t leave you behind.”
Only Angie, with her high Vitality and rapid regeneration, could withstand the wraiths’ attacks and counterattack effectively.
Aslan added,
“Besides, I’m keeping you close so I can deal with you if you do try something.”
Ereta’s expression didn’t change at his cold words. She seemed almost… expectant.
“So I’m just baggage, then? A pawn you can use and discard as you please?”
Her tone was flat, devoid of emotion, her words a simple acknowledgement of her current position.
She wasn’t yet at her full potential. While still a Great One, she was no longer a High Priest, and she hadn’t yet fully adjusted to life without divine powers, her skills not yet honed to their former sharpness. She wasn’t yet capable of pulling her weight.
Aslan, hearing her words, shook his head.
“I’ll discard you when I have to. But that’s not how you reach a god. You won’t even survive long enough.”
Ereta, surprised by his words, let out a small, confused sound. Aslan started walking again.
“I’m going to kill the gods. And to do that, I will conserve my strength, and my resources. So don’t question my plans. Just follow me.”
His voice was firm, his words laced with a chilling undercurrent of hatred, a hint of killing intent at the mention of the gods. Ereta, feeling a strange warmth in her lower abdomen, simply nodded.
“…Yes.”
They walked in silence, following the wraiths’ trail, the footprints in the sand a dotted line leading away from the Giant’s Fortress Village.
The silence was awkward, broken only by the soft crunch of their footsteps against the sand. Ereta finally looked up.
Something bothered her.
She voiced her question.
“Why did you assume I wouldn’t betray you? You… you tore me apart, you left me to be abandoned by my god, you beat me… Don’t I have every reason to betray you?”
She was asking him why she couldn’t betray him, a strange question to ask, and yet, she spoke with a surprising confidence.
Aslan didn’t answer. He simply scanned their surroundings.
“We’re almost there. Even if we leave now, we should arrive by tomorrow morning.”
The setting sun cast long shadows across the desert. Ereta frowned, irritated by his silence, her gaze fixed on him.
She bit her lip, her fingers twisting the fabric of her cloak. Aslan, finally turning to look at her, his eyes half-closed, his expression a mixture of boredom and annoyance,
Contempt.
Ereta felt her heart quicken under his gaze, the intensity of his emotions, even the negative ones, strangely arousing.
Her cheeks flushed, her eyes darting between his face and the ground, her body trembling slightly. Aslan, seeing her reaction, smirked.
He slowly approached her, and with each step, Ereta felt her heart beating faster,
An inexplicable excitement, a strange warmth spreading through her.
He stopped inches from her, his gaze intense, his face close to hers. Ereta swallowed hard.
“You’re wondering why I don’t think you’ll betray me?”
His voice, sharp with irritation, made her freeze, her face burning.
“Why I don’t suspect you, even after I tore you apart, left you abandoned, beat you?”
“Uh…”
“Because I tore you apart. Because I beat you. That’s why you can’t betray me.”
“Your face… uh…”
Ereta’s mind flashed back to the feeling of the axe tearing through her flesh, the impact of his fists against her body.
And as those memories surfaced, her heart pounded in her chest, a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
Her face, her ears, even her neck, flushed crimson under his intense gaze. She looked away, her eyes stinging with unshed tears.
Aslan scoffed, seeing her reaction.
“Let’s go. We have a long way to go.”
“…Y-yes…”
Ereta, struggling to control her racing heart, the warmth spreading through her, followed him, her steps unsteady.
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Masochism at its highest