Magic imbued with void was dangerous.
If you don’t push it back with equal force the moment it touches you, it will inflict irreparable damage in an instant.
And right now, that power was clearly targeting Jun.
Aiden and Maya were busy dealing with the void remnants swarming from the front.
Eleanor too was sweating as she struggled to support the two of them.
Which meant Jun had to face the Void Moth’s strike entirely on his own.
Its ultimate skill in the game [Void] was absolutely brutal.
It ignored most defensive skills and could only be met with raw power. No tricks or techniques worked against that void magic.
And Jun had been preparing for a confrontation with such a formidable enemy for quite some time.
***
“Why are you throwing yourself at it like your life depends on it?”
It was late at night.
Right before the journey to the fifth level.
Jun, who had been deep in theory work at Shylock’s workshop, responded to the old man’s voice.
“Because doing my best is the only way I’ll survive.”
“That’s not wrong. But a person can’t give their all every single moment of the day. If they do, they’ll collapse. Yet you go at it like a madman with no tomorrow.”
“……”
At Shylock’s words, Jun paused to rest his eyes and looked at him.
“It’s something from my past. There was a time when I struggled desperately just to survive.”
Not a story from this world. But from the days of Lee Jeong-jun.
Though he spoke seriously, what he was referring to was actually the time he spent playing the game Blackout.
“Back then, death didn’t seem like a big deal. So I just made do with whatever I had at the moment to get by.”
Even though Lee Jeong-jun had taken the game seriously in his own way, he never clung to it like his life depended on it.
But Blackout wasn’t such a forgiving game.
Clearing it was possible, one way or another….but the path was paved with the deaths of countless NPCs.
“Then at one point, I thought…I should try living properly for once. So I gave it my all.”
At one time, Lee Jeong-jun had set himself a personal goal in the game.
A self-imposed challenge: to clear it without killing a single NPC.
The result was countless failures and endless reloads of saved data.
Sometimes, he’d even realize he’d made the wrong decision from the very beginning and end up deleting a character he had carefully raised all the way to the mid-to-late stages, just to start over.
“As I kept going, I came to understand something. That surviving meant using 100% of what you have, right now.”
And the more you had at your disposal, the more chances there were to save NPCs.
“That’s when I first felt it. This world does not tolerate even the slightest mistake from those who live idly.”
But humans are bound to make mistakes eventually.
Especially in Blackout, where a single misstep often led to catastrophic consequences.
At those words, Shylock responded as if reminiscing about something.
“Countless heroes are born in this place called Blackout. And in the same year, countless heroes also meet their end. Listening to you, I can begin to understand their deaths a little better.”
It sounded like he was talking about others. But in truth, it was something he was also saying to himself.
Once, he had lived so diligently that the emperor had bestowed upon him the title of “Enchantment King”. But now, he had become a man unable to wield magic.
“So, what is it you want to do after surviving all this?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“…..…”
“Why are you looking at me like that? Have you ever seen someone trying to live because they want to die? I want to live. That’s why I’m doing all this.”
“…You’re one tough bastard…”
With that, Shylock pulled something from his dimensional ring and tossed it to Jun.
“Here. Read it once and throw it away.”
“What is it?”
“Just a few realizations I had in my younger days. I wrote them down so I wouldn’t forget. But at some point, I stopped writing altogether.”
“Is it really okay to show me something like this? I imagine Marshar would need it more than I do.”
“Hardly. That fool is walking his own path. With that stubbornness of his, I doubt he’d learn anything even if he read it.”
Jun, on the other hand, was like a ball of cotton, soaking up everything.
That’s why Shylock believed that this mage could take the lessons of his youth and make them his own.
“I’ll gratefully accept it.”
And in fact, Jun did gain inspiration from that book.
***
This spell normally requires a lot of preparation time.
But there was no time for that now. Life in the Blackout was always like this.
No matter how much preparation you made, when the problem actually struck, there was never enough time to put those preparations into practice.
And yet, that was fine.
Here, survival depended on making use of whatever fragments of preparation you could.
That was the nature of Blackout.
Chwararararak!!
A new spellbook was pulled from the dimensional bracelet.
As it opened, its pages ripped apart violently, and sheets inscribed with magic circles fluttered to the ground.
[Enchantment: Enchantment Supporter]
This time, Jun even drew upon the power of “Illusia”, focusing everything on a single spell.
But though it was called magic, in truth, it was not magic.
If another mage were to witness this sight, they might have called it a blasphemy against the art itself.
But there was no helping it.
Jun’s circle was not the product of years of scholarly pursuit.
His magic was born solely from combat, and from the beginning, he had clung to practicality above all else.
That was why Jun cared little for complex, advanced formulas; he focused only on efficiency itself.
He could be called the very model of a battle mage.
So then, what kind of magic was Jun preparing?
It was simple: numbers.
An overwhelming flood to crush the enemy. Sheer quantity itself.
Especially effective against the void-type attribute.
The magic circles drawn on the papers all activated at once, and Jun rapidly set them off in sequence.
Hundreds of spells interlinked like the roots of a tree, merging into one.
Eleanor who was watching from the side was shaken to her core.
Just what did he manage to learn in such a short time?
With the Growth Orb deepening her own understanding of magic by a step, she realized just how unfathomably distant Jun’s skill had become.
Individually, none of these spells are all that complicated, but…
A simple principle: calculate, support, and produce results.
When one spell completed a calculation, another spell beneath it would support it. The finished computation would then link to yet another spell, which would, in turn, be supported by a new one…
If someone asked me to make something like that, I could probably do it. But…
If they expected her to calculate all that in real-time, they’d better be ready to get smacked with a staff for asking.
The moment that meticulously crafted spell, free of a single misstep, was activated—
[Shield]
Hundreds of [Shields] unfolded and aligned in a straight line.
It was a brute-force tactic, nothing fancy, but no less effective for it.
One of the textbook countermeasures against the void attribute, which had to be met with raw force.
In response, the Void Moth fired off [Void].
A dark sphere, black as a black hole, gathered at the center of its antennae.
It moved slowly, colliding with the hundreds of [Shields] stacked together.
Zzzzzzzzt…
In an instant, a dozen [Shields] vanished like smoke upon contact with [Void].
But the [Void] had shrunk by that much as well.
Just as a bullet that can pierce flesh easily may not penetrate a stack of thick boards—
The creature’s [Void] was also weakened as it pierced through the layered [Shields].
If he had tried to cast those spells manually like before, it would’ve been utterly impossible.
And even if he had somehow pulled it off, his whole body would’ve gone into overheat, roasting him inside out.
My mana circuits were always one of my weaknesses.
Even though he had the [Mana Body], with its infinite mana, that didn’t mean he could use mana without limit.
After all, his body was still human, and no human body could possibly endure “infinity”.
So he began searching for various solutions, and the first one he settled on was enchantment magic.
Fwoooom!
But the Void Moth had no intention of giving up easily. It began absorbing the black poisonous mist that filled the area, channeling the void’s energy through both antennae to recharge its weakening [Void] attack.
Fsssss…!!
Even from over a hundred meters away, the eerie sound of [Shields] disintegrating could be heard.
Before long, only half of the [Shields] remained.
The collision of the two energies caused the surrounding ash to split and scatter like it was fleeing.
And yet, Jun’s face remained calm.
With a flick of his finger—
Shhrrrrrrrr!!
The scattered pages of the spellbook lying on the ground all flipped over at once, revealing new magic circles drawn on the back.
Then, new [Shields] appeared between the hundreds of existing [Shields] once more.
“I see two steps ahead.”
Void energy was powerful and left no room for trickery. In other words, it consumes an immense amount of energy.
As the two forces clashed again, and half of the [Shields] were destroyed once more—
[Enchantment: Enchantment Supporter]
[Strength Concentration]
The ancient magic further reinforced the defensive power of the [Shields].
Zzzzzzt!!
As a result, the rate at which the [Shields] were destroyed by [Void] slowed even more.
Then, Eleanor cast her divine magic.
[Pierce of Light]
Screeeech—!
A divine, golden spear flew toward the Void Moth.
Under normal circumstances, it would have dodged the spear with ease, but after the previous clash of power with Jun, its strength had been significantly drained.
In the end, it couldn’t avoid it and part of its wing was torn off.
―――――――!!!
Just as it let out a silent scream and began to fall, Aiden and Maya dashed across the ashen ground.
By now, all the monsters it had summoned had been dealt with.
The two leapt simultaneously, swinging their swords.
Slash!
The Acanthus Fang in Maya’s hand severed the creature’s antennae.
[Shield]
Using a [Shield] as a stepping stone, Aiden cast [Charge]. He became becoming a streak of wind as he slammed [Wind Storm] into its tail.
In an instant, the creature’s body was left shredded and tattered. And in its fading vision, the [Void] it had summoned was gone, replaced by storm clouds brimming with lightning blotting out the gray sky.
[Lightning Call: Transformation – Thundercloud]
A blinding white bolt of lightning struck down.
***
Formidable foe.
It was Aiden’s reflection as he sank to the ash-stained ground.
It seemed his companions felt the same. All of them were gazing at the corpse of the Void Moth, struck down by lightning, with weary eyes.
Gulp—
Someone swallowed dryly as they watched. Eventually, the creature’s body crumbled into dust and faded away.
“Haa…”
Jun’s deep sigh marked the end of this journey.
“If we don’t get a proper reward for this, I might actually cry.”
At Jun’s muttered words that were spoken like someone burned out, everyone silently nodded their heads.
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