Chapter 324: Seventy-Eighth Floor, Tribal War (3)

[Navigate the conflict between both factions and survive. Time remaining: 227 hours 42 minutes.]

The sky roared as dozens of lightning bolts tore savagely through the air and ripped the sky apart. The world lit up from flash after blinding flash.

However, the ancient war machines remained unshaken. They avoided the strikes fluidly and effortlessly, without exerting any real power. In this golden-hued world, forty pairs of glowing red eyes burned vividly and unblinkingly, seemingly unaffected by the radiance.

Those crimson dots blinked in unison. A chill ran down my spine.

I need to dodge.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just dodge randomly. With every move I made, I had to ensure that the aftershocks or glancing blows didn’t strike the climbers behind me. The thought barely formed before I moved.

I didn’t need to prepare; I was already one with lightning.

I plunged downward sharply, a streak of blue light carving through the darkness, and the ground surged closer. The mechs continued to pursue me, encircling me as if this were a coordinated hunt.

Ziiing—

An unfamiliar sound resonated through the air, cleanly entering my ears. The attack came without warning.

From their massive eyes, beams of light erupted.

I twisted and rode the current of lightning, trusting my instincts to carry me.

Left, right, up, down.

Dodging forty beams fired nearly at once was no different from performing aerial acrobatics. Red lasers grazed past the surging arcs of lightning I moved through.

Heat.

The scorching heat was the first thing I noticed. Even a brief pass-by burned hotter than Ha Hee-Jeong’s flames. It felt like the very air was evaporating.

Crash!

The beams struck the ground explosively, causing chunks of earth to erupt into the air. Crimson flames burst upward and soared tens of meters into the air. Dozens of miniature mushroom clouds bloomed across the battlefield.

“Insane.”

Their firepower was beyond belief.

Somehow, when they fired their beams, the ambient mana didn’t stir violently, nor did they chant an incantation. One of their eyes had simply flashed, and the beam of light launched toward me.

Still, the force behind it was devastating.

If I took a direct hit from that, even I wouldn’t come away intact. I could survive, but I wouldn’t be in one piece.

I began to understand why the tribespeople called them “Avatars of Flame.”

Concealing myself within the haze of smoke and fire, I accelerated my thoughts.

Their divinity really is formidable.

While I possessed far more divine energy than a single one of them, combining all forty of them would be comparable to my reserves.

However, their usage of that power was nearly flawless. It wasn’t something they wielded consciously, of course, but it had been configured that way. Judging by the lack of a direct connection to a god, these machines had clearly been constructed by a high-ranking deity.

This fight would have been far easier if I had learned to channel my power that precisely.

To clear my head, I deliberately dove deeper into the mushroom cloud.

Ugh.

An unexpected constraint had arisen.

From the moment I felt the dreadful heat of those beams, I became certain that I couldn’t allow the climbers to be positioned behind me—I wouldn’t be able to shield them from every attack.

Of course, Ha Hee-Jeong’s there along with other mages and priests, but still...

Who knew if they could block every beam? From now on, I had to keep my back to the north or south, where fewer people were.

If forced into a corner, I would have no choice but to head toward the enemy faction.

I want to avoid casualties, but it is my life, and the lives of the climbers, versus theirs.

No matter what, my comrades mattered more to me than those we faced as enemies.

Even now, I couldn’t guarantee the safety of the people inside the mech suits. With how many there were, I couldn’t afford to hold back against them.

For a moment, I wondered if they would hesitate to attack or not if I positioned myself in front of the anti-forest faction. I doubted it, though. Perhaps the twenty piloted machines would waver, but those powered by divinity would be emotionless.

This is an unexpected variable.

I had considered capturing their leader if the tide turned against us, but with these machines in the mix, I would have to scrap that. No battle was worth gambling lives on.

As I remained hidden in the rising cloud of smoke, the haze began to thin. Even through that smog, they were tracking my movements, but not perfectly.

They managed to occasionally fire beams around where I just passed.

Even though the mist obscured my vision, I could sense that the unmanned mechs were firing the beams.

As the smoke thinned further, the others began to pick up my presence and adjusted their trajectories. Even as I moved with the lightning, they kept up the pace.

With half of the suits lacking a driver, it didn’t make sense for them to be communicating, at least not in any conventional way.

The suits have to have some built-in function, driver or not.

Maybe they could communicate telepathically, or perhaps they had some kind of tracking system installed.

Finding out the distinction would be vital.

Ironically, the unmanned ones were faster. The piloted machines were just a step behind—subtle, but enough for it to make a difference.

The same thing had been noticeable when they had first fired their beams. They had struck almost simultaneously, but not quite. It had surely been unintentional.

Still, that slight delay opened up a gap just wide enough for me to slip through.

Most likely, the pilots’ capabilities aren’t that impressive.

I designated the unmanned machines as my top priority, but briefly hesitated

Should I keep observing or launch a counterattack?

The smoke was almost gone now, so I didn’t have much time to deliberate. I pushed my thoughts into overdrive.

The second option was riskier.

Proking and prodding while I hang back isn’t my style, though.

We would have to clash eventually.

Even if I had only spent a brief time thinking, I had reflected deeply. I could still sense movement all around me.

Then, I surged straight upward.

I decided to hold off on using Flash Strike. Of course, I could likely take down a few of them instantly, maybe even half. However, I didn’t know what the future held.

The future shown by The Meticulous Architect..

It hadn’t felt especially fated or ominous, but this could lead to it.

The dark crimson soil of the scorched wasteland matched the vision perfectly. I couldn’t be sure, but caution felt warranted.

Maybe that was why I had been so uncharacteristically thoughtful lately.

Sigh.

As I burst through the last of the smoke, I brutally swung my axe. Since I still wasn’t accustomed to using Divine Power, I had only channeled lightning into it. Using Divine Power forty times would more than exhaust me.

A nearby suit’s arm erupted in flames, and it simultaneously cracked its arm like a whip as it lashed it at me.

I dove, then cut diagonally upward from the ground, launching a burst of lightning. The whip brushed past the back of my neck.

Rising back to my feet, I brought my axe back over my shoulder before bringing it down powerfully with my full strength.

Clang!

My strike embedded the blade into the chest of an unmanned machine. Lightning flowed through the axe and into its frame.

Tch.

However, its torso didn’t split open, and I soon realized that it hadn’t left a deep gash.

My palm stung from the recoil.

During the moment of impact, something had stifled the lightning’s flow. I immediately knew that it was divinity because the divine energy embedded in the machine’s chest weakened slightly.

𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Unaffected by my strike, it seized my axe.

Ziiing!

A second round of resonant rings came.

The eyes of the machine whose chest I had split began to blaze with a deep, furious red.

I tried to wrench the axe free, but its grip was stronger than expected.

Wrestling for it would only get me killed. I let go, kicked the machine in the abdomen, and did a three-sixty degree turn mid-air.

Their attack happened nearly in sync with my spin. I surged forward like lightning, the beam barely grazing past me as I slipped through.

Crash!

Instead of counterattacking with the laser beam attack, the machine struck by my axe detonated. Several incoming beams exploded as they collided with the aftermath.

The blast was massive.

Soulbound!

Although I doubted it had broken since it was built to endure even my divine energy, I hoped nothing had happened to it.

The flames soared skyward, and just above them, my axe spun freely through the air. I rose quickly and chased after it.

Dark smoke veiled my form as I ascended, and even amidst the heat, a wry smile tugged at my lips.

At least now I have one solid solution.

Their divinity was gradually depleting. It dwindled every time they fired, blocked, or simply moved.

I had suspected as much early on, and now I was certain that time was on my side.

That was why I hadn’t rushed into the fray using Flash Strike. If I could hold out, I would win.

Taking them down one by one would be enough. Even if I hadn’t destroyed that last one myself, the result still counted.

That wasn’t the kind of victory I was after, though. My lips twisted bitterly.

If I want this to end on my terms, I need to win definitively.

I hadn’t gone all out from the beginning, partly because of the future shown by The Meticulous Architect and partly due to Ha Hee-Jeong’s concerns. At its core, however, I wanted to use this fight to find the right approach to using Divine Power. I never planned to drag it out for a slow, cautious win.

I set aside the solution I had uncovered.

A little time had passed, but that was fine. It had allowed the enemy to showcase their strength, and that was valuable in its own right.

Still, I hadn’t found a decisive answer.

Is it time to let go of what I really want?

I didn’t want to. I caught Soulbound as it descended through the air. There were a few shallow gashes, but it could repair itself. Nothing serious.

Close combat doesn’t look easy either. Can I manage it?

I had seen enough. If I poured divine energy into Flash Strike and went all in, I would succeed. The real problem was what could come after.

The lingering fear of foretold death...

In the vision The Meticulous Architect had shown me, I had worn a look of pure shock, as if something unexpected had appeared just as the fight ended.

I shook my head.

No, that is the wrong way to approach this.

Just like that, something clicked.

It wasn’t about whether I could. I had to.

I needed to move forward like I always had, just as I had done throughout the tower—boldly and without hesitation, determined to overcome whatever came next.

If the fear of potential dying held me back, I would never grow past this point.

I didn’t need fear. Caution and awareness were enough to prepare for the future. More importantly, one thought brought me comfort.

Ha Hee-Jeong is here.

That, strangely, gave me peace.

Even in this urgent moment, images of Aoshi and Ferel surfaced when I thought of her. It was almost funny, so a soft smile crept across my face.

I had grown close to many people during this climb, but those two lingered in my heart more than most, even though we hadn’t spent that much time together. Maybe it was because they reminded me of Ha Hee-Jeong and me.

I have always said I wouldn’t put limits on myself.

Enemies like these, who were imbued with divine power, would appear again. The trials ahead would be even more difficult.

When there is no clear path, the answer has to be found in growth itself.

I needed to keep evolving.

I shifted my thoughts. It didn’t matter whether I could only unleash five or six divine-powered attacks. The problem was thinking of each one as a single strike. That mindset had to be broken.

If I could destroy eight with one attack, then five attacks would be enough to bring down forty.

I drew out all my mana and divine energy, pouring everything I had into the present. I didn’t let myself think about what came after.

Even though I still didn’t know when the Architect’s vision would come to pass, this didn’t feel like the time. It was just a gut instinct.

A foretold future? Then I just need to grow stronger than I am now.

If I could surpass the version of me in that vision, then that future could be changed.

I decided not to regret my decision.

If Ha Hee-Jeong could read my thoughts now, she would probably be horrified. Regardless, there was nothing she or anyone else could do to change this. That was something I had learned clearly in this trial.

I will overcome my fate.

Pushing Flash Strike to its very limit, I released my lightning transformation. The world slowed nearly to a standstill, as if frozen in fear.

I hovered in the air, directly above the spot where the last machine had exploded. Mushroom clouds swelled beneath my feet. Flames flickered and hissed like snakes’ tongues, curling upward into the night.

All around them, thirty-nine ancient war machines turned their gaze upward. Their red eyes gleamed with chilling intensity.

I poured divine power into the axe.

Rumble.

Lightning coiled around me and roared to life in that motionless world. Then I became lightning itself and streaked across the sky in a single bolt.

A spear of light carved through the darkness. In that golden-lit world, the red eyes below no longer shone as sharply as before.