Chapter 453: Wake Up, Queen (3) |
However, Stewart’s powers were sealed to the level of his current dimension. On top of that, his compatibility with this dimension wasn’t good, so no wonder he was struggling. And there was something else he could sense from their skills.
Shaa!
[Agh!]
Han-Yeol’s sword slashed across the chest of an undead high priest, but that was it.
[Absolute Shield!]
The moment one of the high priests was slashed by his sword, the other high priests quickly reacted and cast a defense skill of immense strength around them.
The shield was shaped like a dome, covering all sides, so it was impossible for Han-Yeol to attack through an open gap.
After buying a few minutes of time, the rest of them cast a healing spell on the high priest who had been slashed in the chest.
[Restore!]
It wasn’t a coincidence. They called out the same skill as Han-Yeol’s Lightforce Sword and Restore. The power to purify the wrongful and block the unclean was also a skill that Han-Yeol had used as his trump card to deal with the hyenas.
[You’re healed.]
[Thanks…]
[Everything is for God.]
[My life is for God…]
Once they recovered, the team of fifth ranked high priests canceled Absolute Shield and started fighting with all their might again. The battle continued on like this, and Han-Yeol was getting frustrated.
Stewart’s powers had thoroughly been sealed, and even if he somehow managed to land a strike, it would be protected by a strange shield, and they would use their healing skill to recover back to normal.
‘This is exactly the way I fight!’
Of course, Han-Yeol didn’t have this crazy defense skill. He did have a defense skill called Force Shield, but that only provided partial protection.
[Han-Yeol-nim, those are the same skills you use. Restore and Lightforce Sword.]
‘What?’
[I doubted myself for a moment, so I’m late in reporting this, but I’m sure of it. My analysis skill is telling me that this matches Han-Yeol-nim’s skill by 99.99 percent.]
‘Really?’
Han-Yeol didn’t doubt Karvis’ analysis skill because if he did, there would be nothing else in the world that he could trust.
‘So what does this mean?’
[The divine power used by those high priest corpses is probably the same thing as Han-Yeol-nim’s light attribute.]
‘Oh really?’
This was rather interesting.
‘For some reason, their auras were different from the guys I saw earlier and it felt familiar, but it’s because they possess light attributes like me. It also explains why they’re particularly strong.’
[That’s right.]
‘Nice!’
Han-Yeol was curious about his light power, and he wanted to further develop it because he didn’t think that this skill was enough to deal with the hyenas that had destroyed the Bastro people, a powerful race.
‘I also need to develop my light power to deal with the Dragon of Destruction.’
[That’s right.]
Han-Yeol did have a map to find the sword that could kill the dragon that he had obtained a while ago. However, there was no guarantee that the treasure would still be there, or when he would find it, so the more ways he had to defeat an opponent as strong as a powerful dragon, the better it was.
In that sense, Han-Yeol really wanted to strengthen his light power.
“Ye-Rim, captain, Seung-Hoon!”
“Yes, Han-Yeol-nim!”
“You guys will have to help me from now on!”
“Of course.”
Han-Yeol decided it was finally time to make use of the temporary subordinates he had trained to manipulate mana as Master-Rank Hunters, including Scarlett.
‘I didn’t receive any sort of payment to train them as Master-Rank Hunters, so I could use them for a time like this. Manipulating mana as a Master-Rank Hunter is an advanced skill, and I am not going to give that away for free. On top of that, the Master-Rank Hunters aren’t going to be of much help anyway.’
Mumble mumble.
Han-Yeol kept mumbling to himself.
Moreover, Scarlett wasn’t a Master-Rank Hunter like the captain or Ye-Rim, so some might even say that she was even less useful than them.
However, Han-Yeol thought of her as important.
Part of it was because of their personal relationship, but more than that, it was because of her intelligence (Han-Yeol really liked smart people) and her innate ability as an instructor.
In terms of combat power as a Hunter, she was only an A-Rank—her all-aroundness as an agent and her teaching abilities as an instructor were what Han-Yeol recognized as her real strengths.
Despite her status an A-Rank Hunter, Scarlett’s ability to survive in the inhospitable environment from the island’s surface to these underground ruins was remarkable.
She was also very good as a teacher. So, Ye-Rim, the captain, and Seung-Hoon, who awakened less than a month ago, were no longer novice Hunters.
The one exception was that they were incredibly nervous on the inside despite their generous response.
‘W-What can w-we do to help…’
Even in their eyes, the high priests were incredibly powerful.
They might be Master-Ranked Hunters, but what could they do against a bunch of strong priests incapacitated even the mighty Stewart?
“Stewart!”
“Ugh, you could’ve let me do it earlier.”
“??”
‘W-What?’
They could only cock their heads as they listened to the incomprehensible conversation between Han-Yeol and Stewart.
Stewart wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and smiled as soon as Han-Yeol gave him his permission.
‘W-Why is he smiling?’
Swoosh!
Stewart’s entire body was tattered from being beaten by so much divine power.
He raised both of his arms, and a purple magic circle formed around him. Soon after, identical circles also materialized beneath the three Crew Hunters.
“H-Huhhh?”
Stewart was enraged and he glared at the high priests.
“Haha, these aren't my powers as a demon, but these are purely my magical powers, so your divine powers won’t work as well as they do now. Activate, Metal Clone of Token!”
Ziing!
Stewart was also a wizard before he was a demon.
Known as the great wise man, he never once stopped studying magic after crossing over from the demon world to the human world.
In fact, he once completed a research project on magic just within three months that began as a mere curiosity to see what kind of magic humans used.
When it came to demons crazy about magic in the demon world, Arch Lich and Stewart were on the same level aside from skill.
Of course, Stewart was number one in terms of just skill.
That magic was Metal Clone of Token.
After casting the spell, Stewart directly expressed his emotions, which was something he didn’t usually do.
“Hahaha, when I trigger this spell, I can create a token with the same abilities as a human. Well, this spell isn’t quite finished yet, so I have to control that token myself, which means neither the human clone nor I can move, and it can only perform the abilities of the human it clones, regardless of my abilities. But it’ll be more efficient to have three humans controlled by my intelligence than this heavily nerfed demon body… Brace yourself, you idiot believers of god!”
Han-Yeol had never seen Stewart show this much emotion before. He must have been very angry.
Wiggle wiggle.
Stewart and the three Crew Hunters slipped into the magic circle, and a new magic circle formed. A sticky, gray, metallic liquid gushed out of the new magic circle and stayed as a dull gray color, forming into the shape of the Crew Hunters.
“Oh wow, this is the first time I’ve used it in real life, but it’s not bad.”
“It’s pretty good at separating consciousness too.”
“There’s nothing that’s bothering me either.”
Despite the fact that Stewart’s consciousness was split into three separate bodies, it didn’t feel awkward at all. This skill was new to him, but he had experience controlling his subordinate demons in the past, so controlling them wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling.
Han-Yeol had asked the three crew members to help him for this reason. He didn’t ask them to do anything special other than to lend him their bodies.
The downside to this skill was that if Stewart was fatally wounded or near death while using this spell, the skill would be canceled and the targeted humans would take the full damage.
This skill was sealed because of the risks, but given the circumstances, he had no choice.
‘But this doesn’t mean I can afford to have a bunch of novice Master-Rank Hunters help me.’
Even though they had been trained by Scarlett, a genius instructor, a novice was still a novice.
Also, their opponent was too strong.
If they were just monsters from the Bastro Dimension, he would’ve gotten help from them, but they were priests, presumably from another dimension.
They were extremely powerful—each of them was a Master-Rank or higher.
This was no place for newbies.
“So we’re good now, right Stewart?”
“Not just good, we’re great.”
“Haha, okay!”
Pakk!
Han-Yeol and Stewart had multiplied from two people to four, and they quickly charged at the party of high priests.
Now the priests only had one more member than Han-Yeol and Stewart.
[The number of enemies has increased.]
[It doesn’t matter. We have divine punishment…]
[Watch out for that red guy.]
Even with Stewart’s skill, Han-Yeol was still the most dangerous opponent for the high priests, which was to be expected. Stewart was compatible with divine power, his powers had been nerfed when he came to Earth and thus he was weaker than Han-Yeol. But the problem was that Stewart, now spread out among three people, was extremely intelligent.
‘Tsk, I didn’t think this would happen, but I guess it was worth researching.’
He never thought that he would ever use the Metal Clone of Token spell.
As a wizard by profession, Stewart was a man of inquiry, constantly researching and exploring.
So as Han-Yeol had said, he had studied the Crew Hunters who were awakening as Masters, without much thought.