The memories after that weren't complete.
I only remember frantically raging and charging at Rudger, only to be subdued in an instant.
Gabriel wanted to pour out many resentments and anger, but couldn't.
The moment he saw Rudger's expression as he subdued him, Gabriel was left speechless.
The image of that young man grieving more than anyone else under the moonlight remained vivid in his memory despite the confusion.
Perhaps that's why.
Despite disliking that guy so much, he maintained a connection with him for 10 years until now, moving together like this.
"...So I must save Rene, who is the daughter of the woman I loved. Because this is all I have left now."
"Not living for yourself. You were also born with a complicated fate in many ways."
Cravat said that and then suddenly raised his head.A crow was sitting outside the window, staring in this direction.
"Oh my. It seems we've been discovered."
"What? What do you mean by discovered?"
While Gabriel was bewildered, the inner door opened and Whiron strode out.
"Did you notice it too?"
"Yes. With such ominous intent approaching, how could I not notice?"
Whiron said that while showing off his biceps.
"My muscles are trembling. Evidence that enemies are approaching."
Gabriel couldn't tell if Whiron's words were just a superstition or if he really detected enemy movements with his muscles.
What does it matter?
What's important now was that enemies had found their way to the vicinity of this hideout.
-Caw!
The crow flapped its wings and flew away.
Rudger, who had been researching inside, also came out fully prepared.
"Gabriel."
"......"
"Please take Rene to a safe place."
"...Alright. Got it."
Cravat felt that the relationship between the two men conversing was somewhat strange and precarious.
With those words, Gabriel disappeared from his seat.
The same happened to Rene, who was inside the room.
In stopped time, directly touching people isn't allowed, but there are quite various ways to move one person without touching them.
The people remaining were Rudger, Whiron, and Cravat.
"Well now. They don't give us any time to rest at all."
Cravat clicked his tongue at Nikolai's persistence.
He thought there would be at least one more day of grace, but he never imagined that pursuers would be sent so quickly.
It must be because, as Verom had said, they had obtained most of the authority over the surveillance system covering the entire island.
No matter where they flee or hide, hiding is impossible as long as surveillance devices exist.
But finding a place without surveillance devices on Isla Machina would also be ridiculous.
Where on this island made of machines would there be a place without machines?
Even in the sewers below, there would be one or two of them.
'But I can't treat the injured in a place like a sewer either.'
At minimum, a basic environment was needed, but most such places have surveillance devices.
The fight itself was inevitably one where the opponent had to be given a few moves in advance.
"Hmm. My muscles are trembling more and more."
Whiron uttered strange words with a solemn face but as if those words weren't lies, his muscles were really trembling.
Cravat couldn't help but ask.
"What is that? Is that magic too?"
"Heh. This is what I call the crisis detection muscle, a magic I newly developed."
So it really was magic.
Rudger and Cravat stared at Whiron with incredulous looks.
Even during this, Whiron excitedly explained the principles of his magic.
"Human intuition. That unknown unprecedented sense is intentionally applied to muscles. My mental waves stimulate the muscles, and accordingly, the muscles resonate in a way that looks simple but is actually very difficult, a collection of various complex magics..."
"That's enough talk."
Rudger cut off Whiron's words as the explanation seemed likely to get longer.
"The enemy is coming."
No sooner had those words ended than red shadows crashed through the glass window and rushed inside.
They were those pale-skinned test subjects that Nikolai controlled.
Monsters created by combining cells from humans, chimeras, and the World Tree.
These ones were different from before. They wore steel masks on their jaws, and red blood energy swirled in their eyes.
-Kwaaak!
Unable to speak like the special specimens, they screamed from inside their masks and charged at Rudger's group.
"Hmph. What are these guys?"
Whiron snorted and lightly threw a jab.
It was called a jab, but his fist blurred and disappeared, and the air in the void exploded with several shock waves.
The heads of the five test subjects who had been charging were cleanly blown away.
Even test subjects with superhuman reaction speeds had no chance to respond to close-range attacks unleashed by strengthening the body to the extreme.
Headless corpses slumped to the floor but the amazing thing happened next.
-Flop!
Despite losing their heads, the test subjects twitched and then stood up again.
"What in the...?"
Whiron couldn't help but be shocked at the sight.
Taking advantage of his surprise, the headless test subjects charged straight at him.
On their fingers, long nails had grown, emanating a red energy.
What deflected the charging test subjects' bodies was Rudger's magic.
A barrier of electric current protected Whiron from the test subjects.
"Don't let your guard down. The ones that came this time are probably much stronger than before."
Rudger had faced headless enemies more than once, so he could respond quickly.
'It feels similar to the Bug Brothers. The body itself has already been bizarrely modified, allowing it to move even without a head.'
In other words, for these creatures, the head wasn't the core that gave commands and made the body move, but merely one part of the body.
Just to be sure, Rudger quickly shot light magic through the chest of one test subject.
-Pshing!
With a fist-sized hole drilled through its heart, the test subject's cross-section blackened and charred. It staggered momentarily but didn't fall.
"Moving without a brain or heart. What on earth did they create?"
Cravat clicked his tongue as if disgusted.
"It means that for those things, the brain and heart are meaningless organs."
They could be considered living single-cell organisms.
Then how should they be eliminated?
The clear answer was provided by Whiron.
"How about this!"
This time, Whiron threw his fist with even more force.
Not a jab, but a straight punch.
His writhing muscles generated enormous power, shooting a storm straight ahead.
The wind blast mixed with magical power pulverized the test subjects' bodies without leaving a trace.
It was an attack that could break through the defenses of the New Magic Tower's war mages and even destroy artifacts.
The test subjects, completely shattered like scattered puzzle pieces, never rose again.
It was fortunate that they realized how to deal with these creatures, but the group's expressions didn't ease.
Beyond the broken glass window, red gleaming eyes appeared from various places among the steel structures.
The few they had just defeated seemed trivial compared to this number.
"Oh dear. It seems there are too many to handle."
No sooner had Whiron's words ended than the test subjects charged with their red eyes gleaming.
-Crack.
Their jaw masks opened, revealing long, dense saw-like teeth reminiscent of deep-sea fish.
It was a bizarre sight, hard to believe that such teeth could grow in the mouth of a humanoid test subject.
Whiron swatted away such creatures as if shooing flies, and Cravat also blocked them by raising black smoke-like curses.
Seeing the test subjects fall more easily than expected, Rudger felt doubt before relief.
'There's no way newly dispatched test subjects could be this weak.'
It was certainly unexpected and quite threatening that they could move even with their heads or hearts gone.
If they hadn't fought similar opponents before, it would have taken considerable time to regain control of the situation.
But there seemed to be something missing for this to be the end.
There was no way Nikolai, who was so persistently closing in, would have sent only such test subjects.
Rudger's anxiety soon became reality.
-Swoosh swoosh swoosh.
Something white sliced through the air, flying toward Whiron.
It was an attack that came so suddenly, before a warning could even be given but Whiron raised one arm to block the white object.
-Ting ting ting. Bang!
Whiron's iron-like muscles deflect all but the most severe attacks.
Not only is his skin tough and his muscles solid, but he also maintains constant body reinforcement by surrounding himself with a large amount of magical power.
"Hmm?"
But part of the attack that had just flown in was embedded in Whiron's skin.
Surprised that he was injured, Whiron quietly looked down at his forearm.
"Is this... bone?"
What had flown was a sharply honed bone.
Whiron pulled out the bone fragment stuck in his forearm.
It was only about the size of a pinky finger segment, but the problem was that it had penetrated his defense.
"This, isn't this black magic?"
He looked around, but no black magic user was visible.
Only red-eyed test subjects surrounded them.
In the meantime, something white shot through the gaps between the test subjects toward Whiron like a bullet.
Whiron deflected the white object, larger and more elongated than before, with his fist.
"A test subject using black magic...?"
Cravat also recognized it as black magic.
"And bone magic? That's magic used by a black magic school that disappeared before."
As if that uneasy imagination became reality, the test subjects began to prepare their next attack.
Red flames writhed as if alive and surged forward like a tidal wave.
Rudger, Whiron, and Cravat quickly retreated, thinking they couldn't avoid this.
"That magic is..."
Spreading his shadow cloak like wings and soaring into the void, Rudger recognized those distinctive undulating flames and narrowed his eyes.
"Hell's magical power."
If ordinary flames are scarlet, this was as red as freshly spilled blood.
It differed from the green flames used by the Hell Magic Power school, but its form and attack method were surprisingly similar.
'Wait, that means...'
Before Rudger could warn them, the test subjects used black magic.
Red flames moved as if alive and rushed toward them.
Sulfurous rain fell from the sky, corroding the surrounding area, and sharp bone spears flew, explicitly targeting vital points.
"These bastards! Can they all use black magic?!"
Whiron was shocked as he deployed a magic barrier.
These inhuman test subjects could all use black magic.
"That Nikolai. I wondered what he did with the black magic school he swallowed up, but he even created things like this?"
Either he used black magic users as materials, or he utilized the knowledge handled by their school and applied it to the test subjects.
They had thought these were inferior to the special specimens seen before, but that wasn't the case.
The test subjects had evolved further and developed more.
Even with two 6th-tier magicians and a master of the black magic school on their side, this wasn't a situation they could take lightly.
"But even so."
As Rudger stretched out his arm, steel spears materialized and pierced through the test subjects.
It was useless even if the test subjects evaded at high speed.
-Dududududu.
Countless steel spears rained down around the test subjects, forming a huge fence-like enclosure.
Cravat stepped in to block the test subjects trying to escape through the gaps in the fence.
"Where do you think you're going?"
[Curse of Thread-Weaving]
Cravat wove long black curse energy from both hands like a loom.
The black lines spread long and wide in the void like a skein of thread, densely wrapping around the fence Rudger had created.
The test subjects trying to escape through the gaps in the steel pillars began to melt rapidly from the point of contact with the black energy.
The test subjects quickly assessed the situation and immediately tried to use black magic to break this barrier.
If dozens of black magic spells were used simultaneously, there was a good chance of breaking through.
Of course, Whiron wasn't going to wait for that.
"Uahahaha! I'll crush them all at once!"
Whiron burst into laughter and clenched his fist.
The air around that fist compressed and swirled in like a vortex.
Whiron's fist blazed hot with blue magical power.
The magical power became increasingly dense, shining brilliantly in an almost sky-blue color.
Whiron released all the magical power he had gathered at once by thrusting out his right fist.
A giant fist, incomparable to the size of the thrust fist, fell like a meteor with a long tail over the heads of the test subjects trapped inside the fence.
Even the test subjects trying to break the fence and escape seemed to realize they couldn't avoid this and panicked, but it was already too late.
-Kuwung!
The sky-blue meteor impacted the ground, causing a hemispherical explosion that swept the surrounding area.
It was an explosion made of enormous magical power. Even the sturdy test subjects had no way to withstand it.
"Haha! That feels good!"
Just as Whiron was feeling triumphant about clearing out the annoying creatures at once, Rudger's warning hit his ears.
"There's still more!"
Still more?
Whiron's gaze turned to where the test subjects had been.
There was a crater, and around it were only traces of creatures that had been reduced to chunks of flesh.
Before the thought of what such creatures could possibly do even crossed his mind, something strange happened.
The flames of hell's magical power, as red as blood, began to squirm and rise, eventually starting to take on human form.
Five black skeletons wrapped in blazing blood-red flames stared at Whiron.