Chapter 234: Because You Are Weak
"Waaaaah!"
"Waaah!"
The force of the explosion was like a physical hammer. Mest Gryder and Wendy Marvell were blown backward, tumbling through the underbrush like ragdolls. The shockwave tore up the earth, scattering rocks and debris in a wide radius.
Mest slammed into a tree trunk, gasping for air as pain radiated through his ribs. He shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears and looked frantically toward the center of the blast.
"Brother Ren!"
Wendy scrambled to her feet, her small face pale with terror. She watched the thick, billowing column of black smoke rising from where Ren had been standing. The heat was palpable even from this distance, singing the tips of the surrounding foliage.
"It's over!"
Mest saw the epicenter of the destruction and felt a cold knot of dread tighten in his stomach. He knew Ren was finished. Ren had been far too careless; standing there with his hands in his pockets, provoking a member of the Seven Kin of Purgatory. With such terrifying explosive power—concentrated magical energy derived from the earth itself—Ren must certainly have been killed. Even an S-Class Mage's defensive barriers would shatter under that direct impact.
"Hmph! Not using his strongest transformation and lacking a sense of danger—no matter how strong he is, he will always pay the price of his life for his carelessness."
Azuma adjusted his ascot, looking at the burning crater with cold indifference. He valued strength above all, but he despised arrogance that led to a warrior's premature death. To him, Ren was just a disappointment.
Azuma turned his sharp gaze towards Mest and Wendy, his eyes devoid of mercy. "Now, it is your turn. You two also disappear..."
"Hey, hey! I haven't been killed yet, don't unilaterally declare victory! It's rude to ignore people while they're still talking."
A relaxed, teasing voice cut through the tension, drifting lazily from within the inferno.
"What?!"
Mest and Azuma were both greatly astonished. Their eyes snapped back to the smoke.
The dark clouds swirled and parted as if pushed by an invisible hand. Ren stepped out, appearing completely unharmed. Not a hair was out of place, not a speck of soot stained his white shirt. He looked as if he had just stepped out of a high-end boutique, not the epicenter of a magical bomb.
"That's great! Brother Ren, you're fine!" Wendy cheered, tears of relief welling up in her eyes.
Ren smiled at her, waving casually. "How could anything happen to me? An attack of this level can't hurt me at all. Did you forget my ability?"
Only then did Wendy remember the battle against the Oración Seis. Back then, whether it was Midnight's reflector or Cobra's poison, nothing seemed to touch him.
"What is going on?"
Azuma looked at Ren with a serious expression, his brow furrowed. He was a veteran of countless battles, and he knew when an attack connected. He had felt the explosion hit.
"Hmm... simply put, you missed."
"That's impossible!" Azuma barked, losing his composure for a fraction of a second. "I personally saw the explosion erupt right on you, and you were within the blast radius! There's no way you could avoid it instantly without leaving a trace!"
Azuma immediately denied it, certain that his Great Tree Arc magic had hit Ren.
"Hmm... Although there's no need to disclose the Magic Circle to you, I'll explain it since Wendy looks a little confused," Ren said, lifting a finger in a lecture-like manner. "What you hit wasn't me. It was the 'Infinity' that exists between you and me."
Ren said this while gesturing to the space around him.
"?"
Azuma was confused; he didn't understand the meaning of Ren's words. Infinity? Was he speaking philosophically? But since the other party was explaining it to his own people, he probably wasn't lying.
"I'll show you. Put your hand out."
Saying this, Ren raised his right hand, palm facing forward, completely defenseless.
Although Azuma didn't know what trick Ren was playing, his warrior's pride—and his burning curiosity—compelled him. He needed to understand the nature of this anomaly.
Azuma raised his left hand and moved it toward Ren's palm. He moved cautiously at first, then pushed harder. But when his fingertips were just four or five centimeters away from Ren's skin, his hand stopped.
It didn't hit a wall. It didn't hit a barrier. It just... stopped advancing.
It was as if an invisible wall separated their hands, and no matter how hard he pushed, he couldn't get closer.
"What's going on?! I can't touch him!!" Azuma gasped, staring at the small gap. "It's right there, yet I can't reach it. Is this Infinity?"
Ren explained, his tone like a physics professor lecturing a slow student. "This isn't a stop or a barrier. It is the convergence of an infinite series. It's just that the closer you get to me, the slower you become, with your speed gradually approaching zero. The closer the explosive impact gets to me, the slower it moves, so naturally, it can't hurt me."
"Such a Magic actually exists!"
Mest was very surprised, horrified even. If that was the case, wouldn't the enemy's offensive Magic be completely unable to hit him? Physical attacks, magical blasts—nothing could cross the infinity. Wouldn't this guy be invincible?
Swish!
Azuma immediately retreated cautiously, putting distance between them. His instincts screamed danger.
"You claim it's powerful, but I don't believe your Magic is unbreakable!!"
Azuma was one of Grimoire Heart's Seven Kin of Purgatory, after all, and had witnessed many powerful forms of Magic, from Lost Magic to ancient curses. Although he hadn't seen anything like Ren's, he knew that there was no such thing as invincible Magic in this world.
"That's right! My Magic isn't actually difficult to break," Ren nodded cheerfully, surprising everyone. "A sufficiently powerful Magic can quickly achieve Breakthrough through my defense net—essentially overloading the calculation. Or perhaps I might be unable to use this Magic Circle for some reason, like exhaustion, or my Magic Power might be insufficient to maintain the automatic sorting."
Azuma narrowed his eyes slightly, suspecting a trap. "Are you just telling your weaknesses to the enemy like that?"
Ren spread his hands, smiled a radiant, mocking smile, and said:
"It doesn't matter! Because you... are weak!"
"What did you say?!?"
Azuma's expression changed when he heard this. The air around him exploded with killing intent. He was one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, a figure who had traveled across Ishgar, rarely meeting an opponent who could stand against him, yet Ren called him weak.
"Don't get cocky, brat!! I will show you the true power of the Great Tree Arc!!"
Rumble!
The ground beneath their feet groaned.
Immediately afterward, a large number of trees burst from the ground like jagged spears, wrapping around Ren's body.
In the blink of an eye, Ren's body was tightly bound, layer upon layer of magically reinforced wood squeezing him with crushing force.
"Burst Claw: Roar of the Earth!!"
Boom—————!!
The trees wrapped around Ren exploded violently like bombs, unleashing a terrifying blast. A mushroom cloud of fire and splinters rose into the sky, dwarfing the previous explosion.
"Brother Ren!!"
Seeing the terrifying power of the explosion, Wendy couldn't help but worry, even though she knew Ren's Magic was powerful. The sheer visual destruction was overwhelming.
"This guy... why is he so arrogant!"
Mest's face was also very grim, shielding his eyes from the debris. Ren was too arrogant. Grimoire Heart, Seven Kin of Purgatory—if this was just one of them, their strength was truly terrifying.
"Did it kill him?"
Azuma, Wendy, and Mest all stared intently at the center of the explosion.
Azuma and Mest wanted to confirm if Ren had been killed, while Wendy was worried about whether Ren was injured.
Soon, the smoke from the explosion dispersed.
Ren was still standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking completely nonchalant. The crater around him was massive, the earth scorched black, but he stood on a small patch of pristine grass, untouched.
"Brother Ren!"
Wendy was overjoyed that Brother Ren was unharmed.
"No! How is this possible! Roar of the Earth didn't even hurt you?!"
Azuma stared, unable to believe it. This was his strongest Magic, a technique that concentrated the earth's ley lines into a bomb. Yet it hadn't harmed this guy. Was this person a monster?
Mest was also terrified at this moment. He knew Ren was a monster, having even defeated the Ten Wizard Saint Jose Porla, but he never expected his strength to be this frightening. To completely ignore an attack of that magnitude... it defied the laws of magic.
The power of Azuma's attack this time was clearly many times greater than the move he used against the Magic Council warship, yet it hadn't harmed Ren in the slightest.
"Is this your strongest Magic?" Ren yawned, covering his mouth. "The power is decent. If you put in a little more effort, maybe you could break through my defense. You've been attacking for a while; now it's my turn to act."
Azuma immediately became vigilant upon hearing this, dropping into a defensive stance.
Ren raised his palm, pointing it toward Azuma. The air in front of his hand began to twist and scream. He calmly chanted:
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!"
A sphere of darkness—no, a sphere of negative space that shone with a terrifying azure light—formed in Ren's palm. It was a vacuum of reality, a singularity of attraction.
"Sword of Leaves!!"
Azuma immediately used his Magic.
Countless leaves, sharpened to be harder than steel, flew towards Ren like a storm of green blades.
In the blink of an eye, all the leaves were drawn in by the Blue Sphere. They didn't even reach Ren; they were sucked into the center of the anomaly and crushed into nothingness.
"What?!"
Ren controlled the Blue Sphere and sent it flying towards Azuma.
"Go."
It tore through the air with a high-pitched whine.
Azuma immediately controlled the surrounding trees to meet the Blue Sphere, creating a wall of wood.
Crackle, crackle!!
Large numbers of trees were attracted and crushed by the Blue Sphere. The wood splintered and vanished into the void. Azuma poured more and more magic into the defense, finally managing to exhaust the Blue Sphere's gravitational pull with great difficulty, causing it to dissipate just meters before it hit him.
He panted, sweat dripping down his face. He had stopped it, but barely.
"Not bad! You still have some skill to cancel out one," Ren commended. "How about this, then!"
Ren waved his palm. The air shimmered violently.
One. Two. Four. Eight.
Eight glowing Blue Spheres formed in front of him, arranging themselves in a menacing halo. Each one hummed with the same destructive potential as the first.
"Damn it!"
Azuma's expression changed drastically when he saw eight Blue Spheres. He struggled to handle just one Blue Sphere earlier; dealing with eight would be far more troublesome. It was a death sentence.
Ren pointed his finger at Azuma like a gun, and the eight Blue Spheres rapidly flew toward him, weaving through the air like guided missiles.
Azuma immediately controlled the surrounding trees to intercept them, summoning an entire forest to block the path.
Crackle, crackle!!
The trees were immediately devoured by the Blue Sphere's gravitational pull the moment they touched it.
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