Chapter 416 Variable Removed



"The Mage first, I guess."

The man spoke to himself before vanishing and reappearing beside the mage who was trying to help the unconscious Tisha keep her life, surprising all the A rankers around but he ignored them and placed a hand on her torso before infusing tremendous amounts of life energy into her wound.

The death energy that she was infected with was instantly expelled, and then right before her party members' very eyes, they saw her flesh rapidly regenerating, closing up the hole in her torso within seconds.

"Next, the undead."

The man then turned in the direction of the new set of undead that Zacular summoned, ignoring the shocked Eighth Finger and dashing forwards with an outstretched hand.

"Perish, disgusting creatures."

A frown adorned his face as he coated his palm in life energy before flicking his fingers, causing streams of life energy to shoot out from the ground, breaking multiple holes in Dominik's domain.

The streams of life energy wrapped around the bodies of each individual undead, regardless of level, type or form, serving as restraints that prevented them from moving and kept them in place.

He then clenched his fist and punched down on the ground, infusing concentrated lie energy into the ground and calling out the name and activation words of his life + fire combination magic.

The ground cracked open and a wave of green flames burst out from within, sweeping towards the undead and burning them to ashes, a few hundred at a time.

Within seconds, the undead troop numbering over five thousand strong were swallowed by the sea of green flames, with their screams ringing out as they all met 'death'.

Just when half of them had perished and become ashes, the whole world suddenly turned monochrome, and the movements of everyone on the battlefield, the man included, ceased.

But in this frozen world, one existence was still capable of movement, the one responsible for the current frozen state in the first place.

The red and blue-eyed man placed a hand on the shoulder of the man Eliza called uncle, before sighing and saying.

"That's as far as I'd let you go, Laneford.

Any more and your actions would defeat the point of this being 'Evan's story'."

He turned his gaze in the direction of the 'burning' undead for a moment, before vanishing from that spot, taking along with him, Eliza's 'uncle'.

Colour returned to the world and Dominik bore witness to this undead army that was in the process of becoming ashes…instantly become ashes.

"…the heck?!"

The absurdity of what just happened was enough to momentarily drown out the anger that came with the fact that his army was destroyed by someone.

Meanwhile, Evan who just heard about what happened from Kuro, had a deep frown on his face as he looked towards the direction where the green flames were slowly dying out and spoke.

"Just now…time was stopped. Wasn't it, Artemisia?"

[…]

Artemisia's refusal to answer was basically an affirmation of Evan's suspicion. For a short fraction of a second, he had the exact same feeling as the last time when a certain friend of Artemisia's stopped time while leaving him conscious, leading him to instantly assume that the same had happened, just that he was not conscious of it.

"What did he just do, why did he stop time now?"

Evan did not want any unexpected occurrences this late into the game, so he questioned the goddess who he was sure saw everything that just happened on what the being who paused time did.

[The goddess 'Artemisia' says that an artificially induced variable had been taken out of the situation.

She remarks that the reason the variable was introduced was because his presence was the only way to prevent the death of the entity 'Eliza Lane' at the hands of the unnamed Shadow Knight.]

Evan's eyes widened in shock as he saw the notification that was displayed in front of him, zoning out completely as even the shouts of Milena beside him could not reach his ears.

[The goddess 'Artemisia' says that the variable has been removed, however, the flow of events has been sped up considerably.]

The voice of the goddess that rang out in Evan's head a moment later snapped him out of his daze in an instant.

|Brace yourself. |

**BOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!

Evan recovered his wits and turned his head in the direction of the explosion, catching the sight of a large cloud of dust that arose from the ground where Yetu's unconscious body had been knocked towards.

The next moment, a scene that Evan had seen multiple times in the game; 'Aidos Online' played out right in front of him.

He saw the Eighth Finger spread out his arms and rouse his energy, followed by the emergence of five gigantic magic circles above and beside him, with each one having a diameter of nearly five hundred metres.

◇ ◇ ◇

Dominik Velak was a man that was capable of maintaining his cool even when faced with very absurd situations.

When his right-hand man who had worked with him for over five decades was killed, he felt anger, but he did not flip out and only vented his rage on the random city he came across next.

Even when he was attacked by a Laneford right before he was about to set out earlier in the morning, he did not feel rage and instead, but calmly analysed the situation and took actions that deterred the Laneford man from interfering in his plan any further.

When he saw that Eliza was the wielder of Child of Life, he momentarily cursed out, but instantly calmed down a moment later and tried to find if there was any connection between Eliza and the Laneford.

Especially when has had previous conflicts with that clan over the previous 'Child of Life' user whom he took out as they were a threat to him.

But now…far too many things happened in quick succession for him to keep his cool.

First, Tisha wiped out his undead army.

Then Eliza pushed back his domain and caused him backlash.

He then got attacked by Yetu on his way to end Tisha's life.

Suddenly, his connection to his shadow knight was cut off abruptly, signifying its death.

Then Duke Cheverton suddenly re-entered the battlefield.

Then the cherry on top, he felt the Laneford's aura again, right before an army of thousands of undead turned to ashes.

All of these, happened in the span of a single minute.

Even for someone like Dominik, maintaining his calm was simply impossible.

He simply snapped.

And when a necromancer as powerful as Dominik Velak snaps, the result can never be pretty.

**BOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!

The sheer amount of death energy that was released from his body shocked all those nearby, and it spread out so fast that even Duke Cheverton had to go full speed to avoid getting caught.

Strangely enough, it did not spread further than a certain distance, stopping after going a bit over a kilometre away from him.

Next, gigantic three-ringed magic circles appeared all around Dominik's lone figure.

They were arranged in a grid format, one on either side, one above each of the two on his sides, and then one above his head.

The magic circles were brimming with death essence manipulated by the child of death skill, along with dark magic and a few non-attributed magic symbols within it.

All five of them were almost exactly identical to each other, and to all those looking, there was no difference.

In fact, there was no one present who had the peace of mind to even think about looking for differences.

No one, except a certain reincarnated hero.

◇ ◇ ◇

The Duke, Ralphie, Sir Luke, and others queried Evan about the Eighth Finger's trump card a few days ago when he was detailing the man's skills.

"You see, the trump card is the Eighth Finger's most powerful undead, so powerful that he has a hard time controlling it in his weakened state, so unless things are really bad, he would not use it.

The size of it necessitates a big summoning circle to summon it from his undead storage, not Zacular's.

"We can deal with this trump card in three ways;

First, we kill the Eighth Finger before he can pull it out…arguably the most difficult method.

Second, we can erase the necromancer mark he placed on the creature's soul, but even if we succeed, it will rampage and attack anything in sight.

Third, we hit it at its one moment of weakness. The moment it's most vulnerable.

The point of its summoning."

The youngster took a deep breath and drained a juice pack before continuing.

"The point between him summoning the circle and the creature coming out. Attacks to the summoning circle would permanently injure the summoned undead, making those few seconds its weakest.

"Why not destroy the circle?"

"It runs on a law essence's power; we need another law essence to destroy something like that. The most we can do is damage it greatly.

…

Anyway, the Eighth Finger is not an idiot who'd shout it out for the world to hear that he's pulling out his trump card.

He would conceal it amid other summoning circles, making you believe he was summoning undead hydras or something.

Part of the reason he summons it out with multiple others…is to confuse his opponents so they do not know which to attack.

In that short moment of time, no one would be able to think about spotting differences, except me.

And that's because I already know exactly what that particular magic circle looks like.

Ralphie, your non-magical unique skill is best suited for attacking it, so we're counting on you.

When I signal, you act."

Hearing his words, Ralphie looked at him with raised brows and asked.

"What signal?"

Evan merely grinned and replied.

"Don't worry—you'll know when I do it."

◇ ◇ ◇

Evan's mystic eyes shined brightly as he glanced across the magic circles rotating in the air, comparing and contrasting with the image he had in his head while counting down the time to the summon's appearance in his mind.

When his eyes locked onto a particular one, he noticed a slight difference in the characters around the third outer ring of the magic circle.

And when compared it to the one he knew from the game, they were 100% identical.

Immediately, he raised the voice-amplifying artifact (megaphone) he kept prepared in his inventory especially for this, infusing magic power into his voice to amplify it even further and screamed out with all his might.

[RALPHIE!!!!!!!!!!!! BOTTOM RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]