Chapter 135

Chapter 135
Chapter: 135

Chapter Title: Burning Perspective

—

Parhel surveyed the area, her features twisted in sheer bafflement.

“This is impossible. If you had such power, why didn’t you unleash it on the surface? There is absolutely no logic in holding back!”

She was talking nonsense. Perspective isn’t a renewable resource like audio or aroma—elements that can simply reform after being scorched. Once you incinerate the very concept of perspective in a region, it is erased for good.

If you burn away the perspective of a specific territory, it essentially becomes a permanent site for fatal accidents.

I have no intention of ruining my precious Earth—the world I actually have to inhabit—in such a manner.

The crucial detail? This realm isn’t a place I plan on living in for the rest of my days.

“What’s with the long face? This entertainer has finally performed his most ambitious stunt. Don’t ruin the moment—let’s see a smile.”

I went through all this trouble. Is this really the only response I get?

“Silence!”

The corpses stationed along the stone battlements fired a massive spray of bolts at me. Yet, not a single projectile found its mark.

In a reality where perspective has been stripped away, hitting a target becomes an insurmountable challenge. You simply lose the ability to calculate depth or distance.

“Unless, of course, you’ve spent a lifetime practicing.”

And who fits that description? That would be me.

I snatched a fallen arrow from the dirt and launched it like a javelin. With a piercing wail through the air, it punched directly through the cranium of a corpse standing on the high wall.

I offered a sharp smirk to Parhel, whose previous expression of superiority had long since vanished.

“You brought an entire legion? Well, for your sake, I’ve redesigned the theater of war.”

I kicked off the ground and sprinted forward, slamming my spear into the structure like a massive battering ram. The sound of stone splintering filled the air as the formidable rampart gave way and collapsed inward.

“Haha! Step up, all of you! I don’t care how much spoiled meat you’ve gathered, but I hope there’s enough to keep me busy!”

Gazing at those squirming heaps of scarlet flesh, it felt exactly like walking into an unlimited barbecue joint.

If that lich was the owner of the establishment, then I was the rowdy group of hungry influencers arriving for a massive feast. Only one side was walking away from this table.

“Hey—send out another serving, please!”

I chose not to scale the walls. They possessed the numbers of a grand army; I was a party of one.

There was no objective to “seize.” No reason to walk into a narrow trap designed for my execution.

The masses of flesh frantically fired arrows and unleashed magical salvos, but almost every strike veered off into some random direction.

A handful of attacks managed to drift toward my position, but the hundreds of azure streaks I carved into the air with my spear movements intercepted them automatically.

“Take this.”

Following a flurry of connected strikes, I inhaled a massive draught of the surrounding mana and executed a wide, sweeping blow with my spear.

A low thundering sound vibrated through the air as an entire section of the ivory-bone fortification crumbled, sending the flesh creatures perched on top tumbling toward the earth.

Mana surged within the falling bodies. Parhel triggered them all to explode. The detonating flesh sprayed a mist of gore, completely obscuring my field of vision.

I raised an arm to shield my eyes, blocking the flying bits of bone and liquid.

I spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the dirt, jammed my spear into the ground, and took my stand atop the broken debris.

The war zone was consumed by fire. But these were no ordinary embers—they consumed things that normal heat could never graze.

Point of view. Pigment. The sense of orientation.

In the domain where I held sway, the fundamental components of a standard universe were falling apart one by one. Eventually, some things might grow back.

But the things I was setting ablaze right now? They were gone for eternity.

“You are unmaking the world.”

Parhel fixed her gaze on me from a distance, her eyes radiating a lethal animosity.

Her sight—along with the vision of every single undead soldier guarding her makeshift fortress—was now entirely redundant. It had been stripped of its purpose.

She wasn’t even truly looking at me anymore. She was merely directing her focus toward the place where my life essence hummed.

“Sure, I’m breaking it. Who cares? It’s not the actual world, after all.”

The moment that bastard breathed his last, this entire erosion zone would dissipate anyway.

“No creature—no form of life—should be permitted to hold such authority. Most certainly not a common mortal wielding it on a whim.”

“My, my, if someone heard you, they’d think a divine messenger had arrived, not a rotting lich.”

Hardly the sentiment one expects from a reanimated skeleton. Parhel made a sharp, frustrated motion with her hand, and a tide of corpses rushed toward me like a breaking wave.

Couldn’t determine the distance? Fine—she would just blanket the entire zone.

At that very moment, a jarring discord of chaotic noise roared from the colossal organ. The approaching wave of dead bodies seemed to boil as it resonated with the vibrations.

“Lich or not—your very existence is a hazard to all of creation. I will wipe you out right here, regardless of the cost.”

“Hah, so I’m the antagonist now?”

Fine, I’d embrace the reputation. I threw myself headlong into the heart of the oncoming wall of corpses.

The massive surge that was supposed to bury me exploded instead, geysering into the sky.

Skin, bone, and ichor drizzled down like a sickening storm. I bolted through the foul rain, draped in shadows of black fire, heading straight for Parhel.

“The things you are capable of—the things you will eventually do—they are forbidden. No one can be allowed to endure them!”

Runes ignited in the air, manifesting bone claymores—each at least thirty meters in length—that came crashing down from the heavens.

“No—those aren’t swords. That’s like having skyscrapers dropped on your head.”

The bastard was overextending. The music from the organ reached a frantic, screeching climax, the tempo hitting a speed that felt like a hyper-aggressive dance track.

“Damn, this is getting tedious.”

The descending blades possessed immense mass. You had to brace for the kinetic shockwaves of the impact, or you’d take internal damage. And there were countless numbers of them.

I leaped backward to avoid a massive blade, my boots throwing off sparks and a metallic screech as they grated against the stone.

Mana saturated the swords that had embedded themselves in the ground.

“They’re rigged to blow, too?”

I spun my spear in a blur of motion, sensing the imminent detonation. The blasts tore the blades into millions of jagged needles that filled the sky.

My blazing spear batted away the shards that screamed toward my body.

“You deflected every single one? That’s not possible. Just what are you?”

“A magnificent fool. Ready for the main event?”

I whispered that under my breath, watching the undead knights galloping forward with their blades drawn.

“Fine—watch me make these corpses vanish.”

I swung my weapon with full force, striking the shards of the greatswords stuck in the earth. The flying shrapnel tore through the knights, the black paradox flames igniting on every sharp edge.

The inferno consumed their forms in heartbeats, turning the lingering spite that fueled them into nothing but ash.

“You think I’ll let you?!”

The bodies shattered. But the paradox flames attached to the flying remnants didn’t go out—they grew.

“If anything, the fire is just going to spread further.”

“It doesn’t signify anything.”

Parhel backed away until she hit the far wall, then took a long, shivering breath.

“You are deleting the significance of things while leaving the shell behind.”

The muscles are there, but the power is gone. The atmosphere vibrates, but the sound is missing. The physical brain is intact, but the memories have been erased.

“You meet the requirements, but the result never follows. Actually—no, it’s worse than that.”

“A long-lived lich sorcerer, huh? You’ve managed to grasp the concept, at least.”

Imagine a vehicle traveling the highway from Seoul to Busan. If Busan exists, the car arrives.

But if a nuclear blast erases Busan? You can drive down that road all you want—you’re never going to reach your destination.

Busan is already gone. How can you travel to a city that has ceased to exist?

That is the essence of the paradox flame.

“No wonder that withered ghost had her spirit torn apart trying to consume mine—she never had a prayer against a monster like this!”

Parhel shot into the sky like a rocket, sketching magic circles in the air as she rose. I sprang up after her, staying right on her heels.

“We will consume your reality, tear it apart. Your pathetic humans might worship you as some savior of the end-times! But you are no merchant of hope.”

Parhel rotated in mid-air and thrust her palm toward me. Hundreds of bone splinters hissed through the air to shred me.

“You are worse than we are. We bring the end to build a future. You? You leave nothing but a void in the wake of your fire.”

I touched down on the earth amidst the hail of projectiles. Evading the strikes, I crushed any corpses that tried to grab me and kept my sights on Parhel.

“You look terrified.”

“I am horrified. You are a nightmare. Disgusting. The sight of you makes me want to retch!”

Fractures began to web across Parhel’s skin—the penalty for pushing her mana to its absolute limit. The lich was performing incantations in a state of borderline insanity now.

A gargantuan magic array manifested high in the clouds.

A titanic meteor burst through it, glowing with a sickly green radiance as it fell. The pungent scent of sulfur stung my nostrils.

“This is going to destroy you as well, you realize that?”

That stone wasn’t calibrated just to end me.

“Let’s both rot right here. It’s the best outcome for us—and for your miserable world!”

That’s a bit much. Telling someone that dying is a “favor” isn’t exactly a compliment.

Her dedication was admirable, though. And completely futile. I kicked the remaining greatsword fragments into the air, launching them at the falling celestial rock.

The paradox flames bit deep into the mass. In terms of size? It was like a splinter in the foot of a giant.

But the fire that radiated from that tiny wound? That was the only thing that mattered.

“Just like the situation with Sung-hun.”

The velocity of the fire meant I couldn’t entirely erase the physical momentum, however.

“Perish.”

Parhel crossed her arms, acknowledging the presence of the black flames. She layered additional magic arrays onto the falling meteor.

The runes on its surface triggered a series of internal blasts, providing even more downward thrust.

It wasn’t just a rock anymore; it was a guided missile.

“Aigoo.”

It was already going to be difficult to stop—now she’d added acceleration?

Even if I incinerated the impact with the paradox flame, I should probably prepare for a massive explosion.

Fine—let it fall. New cracks splintered across Parhel’s face, fragments of her mask falling away to show the desiccated husk underneath.

“Hey, you should really fix your makeup.”

People would have nightmares if they saw that face.

“I am going to end you here for certain. Don’t think for a second you can escape.”

She hissed the words through a broken voice, sounding like grinding glass. The meteor’s runes burned with a terrifying intensity.

“Urgh.”

The giant organ emitted a blast of sonic energy that flattened everything within its radius. My knees buckled under the sheer weight of the sound.

She had even sacrificed the enchantments on her undead minions. Every corpse nearby, except for me, was pulverized into a wet slurry.

She was committed to making sure there was no way out. The facade of the young girl finally crumbled completely, revealing the shriveled, shrieking mummy within.

—I will die, and this fortress will fall with me. It is of no consequence. If I can drag you into the abyss with me, it is enough…

A sharp, snapping sound echoed, and an object whistled through the air, burying itself deep in Parhel’s brow.