BXBX NOVEL Chapter 82 - Assassin.
The mountain range was filled with mana as the atmosphere of war was at its peak. The two oldest epics of humanity were battling on that land with other intruders here and there.
The power of EA and Enkidu gave the magi around another heart attack, but at least the damage and even the show was less flashy than Leo and Solomon.
That was only because EA and The chains of Heaven are meant to cancel each other completely as a symbol of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. EA with its power, rip apart the world around with its winds that dislocate time and space while Enkidu stitch it together with the power of the Counter Force and recover the world to its normal state.
This is only possible because, in Type-Moon, the world is made of textures, a layer after a layer. However, the world in this condition cannot afford all those layers so even EA can affect it badly if Enkidu didn\'t interfere.
Leo didn\'t choose to interfere because he knew about Enkidu and currently, he was preparing something more important than messing with his fellow edgy guys in this world. Despite that, he never said that he\'ll not mess with them.
"Hmmm, I take it back, this doesn\'t look good at all" Leo looked at his completely blocked Clairvoyance as he decided that an alternative plan is necessary.
The magic circle was already finished as it was glowing slightly, however, Leo wasn\'t completely satisfied as his clothes started to shoot some runes on the magic circle.
"A summoning circle? Do you plan to summon more servants?" Merlin walked next to Leo as he observed the magic-circle.
It was the regular servants\' summoning ritual, but for Merlin, it was slightly different because of the runes and Leo\'s unusual mana.
"No, I don\'t need more headache with servants" Leo said as he was discussing with Venom which part they should focus on.
{Let\'s use Ansuz(ᚨ) directly to make the ritual stable.} Leo put the most dangerous proposal directly, which made Venom flinch before he said { The runes we have are using ToAru rules as a base, which means If we use that rune, then Odin from this world will be informed immediately by our actions}
Ansuz(ᚨ) is one of the runes that means the As, arsenal god, and Odin. This is the rune of wisdom, harmony, and truth. This will help Leo in his surprise ritual for all those guys on the battlefield.
{Don\'t care about him. If he dares to show up then I\'ll slap him across dimensions} Leo looked at the magic circle glowing as he was ready to kick a god in the face.
{Use Gebo(ᚷ) for the ritual core and Hagalaz (ᚺ) for extra assurance} More runes were flying around and merging with the magic circle as Venom wrote them before Leo calculated the best position with his calculations power.
Gebo(ᚷ) means all the matter in exchanges, including contracts, which will be the core of the ritual.
Hagalaz (ᚺ) means the uncontrollable forces and the wrath of nature, which also include trials and tests. This is a booster for power in this ritual.
Merlin stared at the runes flying around as he wanted to go to the library to see if Satan or Lucifer had a vacation in Norse and stole Odin\'s runes.
Leo didn\'t care a lot about Merlin\'s expression before Nero walked towards them and said " Did something happen?"
"King Gilgamesh and Enkidu were fighting, but the battle got interrupted" Merlin said while his vision was still on the magic circle.
"Oh~ It seems that I missed something very important" Nero said while looking at the magic circle rotating. She didn\'t know a lot about magecraft or magic, but her skill can make her a Caster in an instant.
"It wasn\'t that important, they\'ll just throw some attacks then evacuate in the end" Leo said with some annoyance in his tone as his eyes were glowing because of his emotions.
{Can I make some sort of emotion measurement based on this} Merlin looked at Leo that glow even in the night as he left that the light-bringer is a fitting title for him.
"You mean like that Assassin? This needs to be stopped" Nero remembered the time that took her to create the skill that defeated Assassin and now… She forgot it!.
"And that\'s exactly what I\'m doing" Leo looked at his side to see Nero, but the strange thing was her clothes.
Her clothes were different from the usual red dress as they became a formal attire. She even had a small crown fixed with mana on her head.
"Hm? Oh~ What do you think about my new clothes?" Nero crossed her arms and raised her head as she looked very proud and confident.
"Well, it\'s good, I guess." Leo said with a lack of interest as he felt something from the magic-circle.
"Hmmm… Apparently, no shocked expression, huh" Nero put her hand on her chin while thinking that she needed something more amazing.
"It\'s different from what you think. You\'re the type of person who\'ll be beautiful in any type of clothes" Leo said calmly as he looked at Nero that had a half surprised and happy expression on her face.
"Of course, I\'m the flower of Olympia, after all" Nero said with pride which made Leo stare at her blankly.
"However, you should stop if your goal is to shock me or impress me. Nothing can make me completely shocked or make my heart skip a beat, I\'m an angel, after all" Leo waved his hand as he said his true ideas directly.
{Moreover, I\'m a scientific angel before a Devil or Lucifer} Leo closed his eyes slightly as it was something he did to relax his mind from the world around him.
To Aru Angel\'s way of thinking and acting is completely different from humans or anything else in this world. Something like looks or emotions is nothing important to them, even humans are like a rock thrown at the side of the road. A scientific angel is kinda the same as humans and creatures are just carbon-based lifeforms and nothing more.
{Keeping myself and thinking unchanged was a hard challenge at that time, but even so, it seems some of my way of thinking has changed} Leo remembered the accident in Asgard when his Angel form went beyond everything he predicted.
"I see, then is this you or someone else?" Nero tilted her head while looking up and down at Leo.
"Hah? Do you want to start some stupid plot about doubting my identity now? I\'m me and I\'ll always be myself, nothing more" Leo\'s eyebrow was twitching just from the idea that he\'ll start a stupid doubting story now.
"Umu! Then it\'s okay! No matter what happened, you can never be someone else except yourself, even if you tried to lie to yourself" Nero nodded with her head before he smiled and looked at Leo in the eyes.
"Good to know" Leo looked at her for a second before he walked towards the magic circle and started his great plan of chaos.
"Emperor Nero, maybe you should take a step back from there" at the farther spot in the room, Merlin was sitting there while pulling Ritsuka away. He didn\'t want to be caught in an explosion from that magic-circle.
"....." Archer didn\'t say anything as he went to spiritual form and rushed to his master. In the case of explosions, he should evacuate immediately.
"...." Leo stared at this action with the corner of his eye before he sighed and extended his hand.
Lights spots started to fly around his hand before the sound of chains echoed in the room as a small chain started to emerge from nothing.
The chain was around Leo\'s right hand, glowing with a white color before a book appeared from the void. The book looked normal and not fancy in any form, but just its existence made the room atmosphere heavy.
The book cover was also shocking to any magi in this world with runes revolving around a Kabbalah tree of life, which all its ten spots were glowing.
Merlin put his hand on Ritsuka\'s eyes before he averted his gaze from the book. That\'s something he clearly shouldn\'t see.
"What are you doing, Merlin?" Ritsuka felt Merlin hand on her face as she was puzzled by his actions.
"Just bear with it for a moment, Ritsuka-chan" Merlin said with his usual calming voice as Ritsuka didn\'t question it any further.
Nero also averted her gaze from the book, but she didn\'t take a step back, which made Leo wonder if she really wanted to take an explosion to the face because this ritual has a high probability to explode.
{*Sigh* Why is this world rules all this complicated? As a scientific angel, I should be throwing neutron stars at people. Anyway, let\'s do this} Leo activated his mana as he sends it to Venom before he said " Activate the ritual, Venom"
With Leo\'s words, the magic circle started rotating and glowing brightly. Sparks and electricity were flashing around as the magic-circle now was working at its maximum power.
This is a servant\'s summoning ritual, but Leo chooses to use it in a very different way. He\'s using it to hack the Holy Grail System and track a particular servant. All the Servants are connected to the Holy Grail mana reserve to exist in this world, which means, finding a way to enter that place can allow anyone to track or sneak into the spirit core of any servant here, as long as Leo has enough power to do so.
However, before Leo started his plan, he took a glance at the magic circle before his book opened up and started to release some light spots.
The light spots fell in the magic-circle at the position of the runes before something was getting ignited. A golden light appeared from the room as the breath of divinity filled all its corners, however, it didn\'t last for a second because Leo grabbed the Book of the Law and slapped the golden light with it.
*BAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!!*
A very loud slap echoed in the room as the golden light was shattered and the magic-circle went to work normally. All this happens with Leo having a blank look while holding his glowing book.
"That was… Odin… He was Odin… Slapped... Oh dear" Merlin closed his eyes as he witnessed Odin getting slapped back to the age of gods.
After slapping Odin so hard between dimensions, Leo didn\'t show any change in his expression before he took back the book of the law and extended his hand above the magic-circle.
{ I see this world\'s flaws now because I was shocked by the end, so I\'ll go back to the beginning to understand it all. My powers are very ironic and stupid} Leo\'s mana was raising again before his eyes, horns, and necklace were glowing. the golden, dark blue, and green light was illuminating the room.
After a moment, the green light moved towards Leo\'s right hand and stopped there.
"In this spiral of time… Let the concealed link show itself" Leo said as the green light materialized on his hand and started transforming into lines and threads.
The threads and lines were green as they were moving around Leo and passing everything. The ceiling, the floor, Palkia\'s hidden space, even Nero. The lines and threads didn\'t seem to exist in this world.
{Magic circuits?} Ritsuka was able to see again after Merlin took back his hand as she saw the lines and threads in the room.
She widened her eyes at their number before noticing that Leo\'s horn had the same lines, but they were only one in each horn, unlike this huge number of green ones.
"I should call this move… The revenge of the fate" Leo grinned as he waved with his hand before all the lines stopped in their places. After a moment, all of them rushed towards the magic-circle.
Leo stared at the lines as he controlled them with his hand. Crossing miles and miles, the lines passed the magic power reserve of the holy grail without stopping as they took some sort of a pipe.
The lines seem to know their target clearly as they didn\'t stop at any obstacle and reached a certain place using the Holy Grail as a shortcut.
Meanwhile, on the battlefield, everyone was on their nerves as the mana was boiling in the air.
However, not everyone here was fighting. Slightly far away from the battle, Assassin was hidden in the shadows observing the fight and waiting for his master\'s orders.
"..." No sound or a breath, Assassin didn\'t even release a little bit of mana to the air. It was like he wasn\'t even here to begin with.
But nothing lasted forever as Assassin widened his eyes inside the mask. At that moment, Assassin didn\'t almost fall down from the tree he was on because of the thing that appeared on his spirit core.
Green lines and threads appeared without a warning on Assassin\'s spirits core as he lost his contact with his master before everything around him disappeared.
He looked around to see himself in a dark space with green lines all over the place.
"Greetings, Hassan-i-Sabbah" A voice that came from nowhere made Assassin glance at his surroundings, but he didn\'t find anything.
However, Assassin felt something very nasty and dangerous for himself in this space.
"I\'m what you call, the Devil, nice to meet you" With those words, Assassin jumped away as he was very vigilant now. He didn\'t sense any lie in those words and this nasty feeling can clearly be explained now.
"Not much of a talker, huh. Well, I didn\'t expect a lot from an Assassin like you" the voice said with some boredom as the Assassin felt some anger, even if he didn\'t show it.
{Dirty monster, dare to insult our works and believes} Assassin though in his head.
"No, no, no, I didn\'t insult anything, just it seems so ridiculous to me" The voice said again as Assassin was sweating slightly because this Devil can even read his mind.
"Well, after all, me carrying all your sins and flaws really made you think that you\'re the good guys here? Seriously?" the voice said as Assassin looked around him before he said " A Monster like you isn\'t allowed to talk about humanity sins or even dare to claim of carrying them"
"Oh? And why is that?" the voice seemed to be interested in this topic as Assassin was trying to buy some time to figure out where he\'s now and if he can escape.
"Our beliefs for the lord is the thing that will keep us going and carry our sins with ourselves, not a monster like you" Assassin tried to use his mana to release his core from the green lines, but he failed.
"Yourself, you say? Hmmm… Okay, then. Here you go" Without a single warning, a green line fell from the sky and moved towards Assassin. He tried to escape, but he couldn\'t move as the line touched him on the shoulder.
*CRACK!!*
Assassin heard a cracking sound as his mind was in complete chaos. He didn\'t know if that was his spirit, mind, soul, spirit core, or all of them together, but he felt heavy, so heavy that he almost fell down.
"Ugh…" Raising his head with difficulty, Assassin felt that he saw or even experienced the time when he killed a person in his mission when he was alive. However, he felt it was heavy and painful, like something was tormenting him or more crazy, he sensed that he was punishing himself.
"So, how did it feel? That\'s the sin of killing, you have a lot of them, but it seems you\'re brave and kind to carry them by yourself for me" the voice said again as more lines fell, even the lines and threads on his spirit core were tightening on him.
"I can\'t use my Noble Phantasm completely, but this is enough. So, from the dept of this concealed fate… Look at your sins closely" The lines fell on Assassin\'s body as everything cracked.
His mind and spirit core was crushed in an instant by a heavyweight that he never experienced before. He even saw all that he did in his life repeating in front of his eyes as the green lines ignited on fire and turned this place into a hellish landscape. This was his last vision before he lost all his feelings.
Back in the mountain range, explosions sound were on the horizon as the fight started, however, in a place far away from it, Assassin was lying on the ground before he stood up suddenly.
"My deep apologies, Master. I wasn\'t able to answer thee because of an attack" Assassin said with his cold voice as his master didn\'t feel anything weird.
Closing the call with his Master, Assassin looked around as his eyes shone green before entering to the shadows. If anyone looks at his spirit core, he\'ll see it fixed by some green lines and threads.
"Assassin is usually annoying as an enemy, but very fun as an ally. Well, dance on the palm of the fool and backstab someone, Assassin" a voice appeared in Assassin\'s head as he nodded before leaving this place.
In his mansion, Leo grinned as he was able to see from Assassin\'s eyes {Finalty, I can clear some of these players quickly}
On this day, Assassin was already defeated, but before exiting this war, he was used as a double agent and as a… Assassin.