CHAPTER 50: LIFE MAGIC

Ivor clutched his severed arm and roared, his words provocative and containing a litany of curses. Blood dripped steadily from the stump of his arm, and his face was turning pale gradually.

No one responded.

Isabella remained in hiding, waiting for Ivor to die from blood loss.

The entire underground courtyard, including the maze-like network of tunnels, was covered in the plants she had secretly sown. The magical plants carefully nurtured by mages of the Church of Nature grew rapidly even in the harsh environment lacking water and light.

The plants unleashed pollens invisible to the naked eye, spreading to every corner of the cavern via the wind. While the pollens weren’t lethal, they targeted the nervous system, causing those who inhaled them to experience delusions and hallucinations, impairing their judgment and clouding their minds while heightening emotional volatility.

The guards from earlier and Archbishop Ivor had all inhaled varying amounts of the pollens. In other words, Isabella had long ago played a card that reduced everyone’s intelligence, turning the Geocentrism Sect’s stronghold into her home ground. She herself remained unaffected and maintained the upper hand. She didn’t need to do anything but wait.

But she wasn’t content with simply waiting. Battles between mages were best fought quickly. The longer a fight dragged on, the more likely something would go wrong.

The floor bulged as vine after vine reared up like venomous snakes, hissing at Ivor. While they weren’t sentient, each of them seemed to act independently under her control. Instead of advancing in a uniform formation, they lunged in unpredictable patterns, some high, some low, some from tricky angles, some forward, some back, and some moving in groups.

The unpredictability left Ivor exhausted. He could not grasp any pattern or trace the vines to Isabella’s hiding place. Wind blades continuously severed the vines, only for more to surge up from underground. Cut off one head, and two would grow back.

He had suffered so much blood loss that his reactions became sluggish. A vine managed to grab his ankle, and the next moment, he was spun like a windmill and slammed hard against a wall.

Other vines swarmed forward—hundreds of them converging like a towering wall, rumbling as they crashed forward and crushed everything in their path.

Suddenly, there was a flash of red light.

The blood that had dripped to the ground transformed into fire serpents at once, the spreading flames greedily devouring oxygen. An orange-red sphere exploded and unleashed shockwaves, burning all the vines entrenched in the courtyard to ash.

The flames burrowed underground, and like a persistent poison that was difficult to eradicate, it destroyed all the root systems. Not only that, the fire also burned away the hallucinogenic pollens in the air.

Ivor slowly rose to his feet, tearing off his white robe to reveal his somewhat withered, aged body. From his severed arm, white flesh squirmed and grew into a viscous, boneless tentacle. Whatever he had done, his pallid complexion also gradually improved, showing no effects from the excessive blood loss.

“I thought I could lure you out, but you turned out to be a coward. Disciples of Nature claim to be champions of justice, yet you only know to ambush from behind with underhanded tricks...”

He trash-talked Isabella and sneered. “I know you’re stalling for time, but so am I. The Underground King has awakened. It will summon its children. Soon, the entire town will be calling out Master Void’s name like it’s the most natural thing to do. Your waiting will end in nothing but death.”

It still didn’t work. It seemed that Isabella didn’t care about the townspeople’s safety. Even when Ivor described the hell on earth the town would turn into, she remained steady as a rock and didn’t move an inch.

In response, he began chanting under his breath. It started out barely audible but gradually evolved into deafening roars. His mana surged out, sketching a complex magic formation under his feet. Tentacles protruded, transforming from incorporeal projections to concrete beings upon contact with the four elements.

The earth rumbled. From the direction of the abyss outside the courtyard, several massive tentacles over a hundred meters in diameter writhed and crawled toward the top of the cliff. If left unchecked, the Underground King would bring utter catastrophe upon all of Enrod.

On one side of the courtyard, the ground burst as an enormous flower bud twice the height of an average person shot out. Two intersecting wind blades pierced through Ivor’s body like arrows and continued with undiminished momentum to penetrate the courtyard’s thick rock walls, severing one of the tentacles crawling upward.

Ivor’s body fell to the ground in pieces, but he wasn’t dead, nor did blood or organs spill from the cut surfaces. Writhing masses of white frothy flesh proliferated and spread, fusing his fragmented body with the surrounding tentacles and transforming him into a grotesque abomination. Looking closely, he now bore a resemblance to the divine statue.

The flower bud bloomed petal by petal, and Isabella leaped out. She frowned at Ivor’s twisted form and said with uncertainty, “Life magic?!”

Life magic came in many varieties and could typically only be mastered by legendary mages with a clear mind.

Ivor barely qualified, but his choice of form deviated so far from the mainstream aesthetic that it was vomit-inducing. Rather than life magic, it seemed more like his mind had absorbed too much knowledge, causing his life essence to lose its balance and his very being to become thoroughly corrupted.

“You know about life magic...” Ivor examined the obese woman. He didn’t mock her figure, but said in an eerie tone, “That’s right. You’ve obviously mastered some life magic. I can see the thirst for knowledge in your heart. Perhaps one day, you’ll obtain the same perfect body as mine.”

His idea of a perfect body involved limbs and head being separated and connected to different tentacles. Like white plants bearing fruit, the writhing cluster of tentacles unfurled with his head on the left, his bottom on the right, and his hands and legs scattered.

BOOM!!!

A tremendous force shook the underground courtyard violently.

“Hahaha, because of your cowardly hesitation and self-preservation, you gave the Underground King time to reach the surface!” Ivor’s laughter rang through the cavern. “But don’t blame yourself. Master Void will forgive you. After tonight, everyone will become one, and the townspeople will no longer condemn you!”

Merged with the tentacles, Ivor’s hands and feet began their transformation into tentacles, his facial features gradually melting into the appendage they were attached to until he looked like a tentacle with eyes, mouth, and ears growing on it. Most bizarrely, his brain had been extracted and fully exposed.

Isabella watched him coldly. His laughing halted when he realized that something was wrong.

Boom!

There was another explosive noise. The air grew increasingly heated. He turned to the tunnel entrance to see surging fireballs and scorching flames.

The loud noises hadn’t come from the Underground King reaching the town above ground, but from its tentacles hitting traps and triggering continuous explosions. The resulting flames consumed the tentacles, turning them to ashes at incredible speed.

Whoosh!

A wind blade cut horizontally into the blooming cluster of tentacles like vegetables, leaving only stumps. The brain she had aimed for exploded into a spray of fragments.

Fresh from the skull, served warm.

Rooooaaaar—

Ivor’s eyes lost focus as he let out meaningless roars. The writhing tentacles fused into a two-meter-diameter mass of flesh with four sprouting tentacles, shuffling toward Isabella fast.