Reincarnated in the Same World for the Nth Time

The agility engraved in his soul through many playthroughs awakened Aquila’s mind.

‘The flow of mana…?’

Like a consistently flickering candle suddenly showing a different movement, the air surrounding them had a very subtle sensation of trembling.

Since this tremor was a flow that could never occur naturally, Aquila turned his gaze, which had been directed at the bishop, and scanned the surroundings.

“Do you even know what position I hold in the Great Temple of Port Plum! Get out of my way!”

“Who’s going to say ‘Yes, I understand!’ and get out of the way when you say something like that?”

Kahena shrugged her shoulders, uttering a line like a third-rate villain.

She momentarily raised her head, but didn’t seem to have noticed anything significant.

Even if Vice Commander Kahena was aiming for the mid-tier level of Sword Expert, she was a swordsman who used aura, not a mage.

Mana is one of the important elements that constitutes the world, circulating in the air.

Strictly speaking, Aura can be seen as a form of Mana, but its nature is fundamentally different from the Mana used by mages.

A swordsman who has reached a certain level of mastery after training himself can then imbue or shape the energy of power into his weapon, and this shape of power is usually called aura.

If magic controls the force that extends outward, Aura refines the power that has permeated inward.

That was the reason why there were so few sword mages in the vast Delbion Continent.

Because the ways in which magic and aura manifest were completely opposite.

The current subtle flow of mana was not connected to mana formulas either, so it was ambiguous for others to notice.

But it couldn’t even deceive Aquila, who had once risen to the position of Great Archmage and engraved the eyes to penetrate mana formulas into his soul.

Aquila’s black eyes searched around, tracing the source of the swirl.

Thus, the origin was not Martio or other hidden figures, but below him.

It was starting from the dark guild member who had been cut off his wrist and lying on the floor.

“Ah ah! Yes, you deliberately touched the sacred object of the Sun God to gather the priests in one place!”

Even while Aquila was paying attention to the flow of mana, many stories flowed out from the bishop.

Martio had been angry since a while ago, but he seemed to have accepted that it’s already been done, and as if he thought that the words he was saying were plausible even when he thought about it himself.

The bishop shook the knife he was holding tightly with both hands, unable to control his emotions.

“Gather the priests in one place, you say?”

“Hmph! What’s with the pretending you don’t know! I mean how to deal with the spring water gushing out of the sacred object, and the meeting about other sacred objects and curses in the basement…”

Martio continued to explain by himself, then stopped speaking in surprise.

“To think you were trying to get me to reveal the secrets of the temple with such clever questions!”

“You’re the one who blurted it out…”

“Eeit! That kind of thing doesn’t work on me! You dared to sneak in here while the priests are away?!”

Martio’s face, which had turned white as a sheet after seeing the severed wrist, flared up again as if it was about to explode with anger.

Even so, the bishop couldn’t get close, all thanks to Kahena’s aura.

Even in Martio’s eyes, her skill seemed formidable, and the rumors of how skilled the Reschenhardt’s private soldiers were impressive.

Shen and Kahena, who had been looking at Martio, who was raging from afar, exchanged glances.

They made expressions as if they were dumbfounded with each other as if they had planned it, and Kahena shook her head first.

“Do you think you can only be a priest if you have a rich imagination, Shen?”

“Don’t say things like that out loud, just think it to yourself. They’ll find fault with you.”

“You bastards!”

Aquila glanced at them for a moment.

But since he didn’t have much of a desire to intervene, he looked down at the Dark Guild member again.

The man was wriggling as if trying to resist, but he seemed unable to do anything since he was being crushed by Kahena’s foot.

“Aquila Reshenhardt…”

As Aquila approached, the man, as if out of habit, said Aquila’s name again.

Because the robe’s sleeves covered his wrist, the pure white robe, which signified a priest of the Sun God, was soaked in blood.

Judging by how tightly his wrist was constricted, he had temporarily stopped the bleeding.

The man’s face was very pale, unlike the still violent murderous intent he held inside.

It was probably because he had lost a lot of blood.

Even so, the man’s gray eyes were piercing, as if they would pierce through Aquila at any moment.

“Why do you want to kill me so much?”

But since there was no need to keep his curiosity to himself, Aquila asked in a quiet voice.

“You’re asking me why I want to kill you?”

The man chuckled.

But the next moment, the man sharply widened his eyes and slammed the floor with his unsevered left hand.

“Because! It’s the obvious thing to do!”

“What?”

“I can’t allow a lowly creation like you to break your fated destiny. No way!”

And the man started hitting the floor again, hitting it madly.

It seemed like he was unable to control his anger because his body couldn’t move properly.

Because of that, the blood that seemed to have stopped for a moment started to soak the robe again, spreading in spots.

“Why don’t you know that death is the only path left for you!”

That figure seemed like he had lost his mind because he had lost too much blood, and he just seemed like he had gone crazy.

“This crazy guy! How dare you keep saying ridiculous things to Young Master!”

Shen, who had been focused on this side without even paying attention to Martio from the moment Aquila had asked the man a question, shouted.

This servant was once again angry at the fact that the young master he served had been insulted.

But Aquila, without changing his expression, just asked, brushing the fallen red hair behind his ear.

“I wanted to ask about Velma-Bourne, which you mentioned about in there.”

“Indeed, you must not be left alive. You must not be left alive. You must die!”

“Including this temple and other places, how many children have you sent to Velma-Bourne?”

“Destiny is sacred. Only following it is the sole thing permitted to creatures. Yes, that’s right. That is the blessing bestowed upon us…”

Even with Aquila’s continued questioning, the man didn’t answer.

Instead, he stopped his self-abusive actions all at once and began muttering words that couldn’t be understood.

He looked like he had lost his mind from losing too much blood.

“To think you eavesdropped on everything we said like a rat…”

The reaction to Aquila’s question came from the bishop.

Aquila didn’t even give such Martio a glance and felt some kind of déjà vu.

‘He’s making an expression that only fanatics would make.’

Groups who blindly and violently worshipped Corrupted Gods.

You couldn’t immediately distinguish them from ordinary people just by looking at them.

It was like the breath exhaled by a God, so you became addicted without realizing it, before you knew it.

Moreover, some of them acted like normal humans.

They were usually obedient, but the moment they heard specific objects or keywords related to the God, or when they recalled their mission, they became violent.

Just like Ark Batchel, who only realized he was infected with the Corrupted God at the very end.

As far as Aquila knew, fanatics hadn’t properly started showing themselves until later.

But was the influence of the Corrupted God spreading from this point on?

‘……A reward obtained by piercing through a Corrupted God. Did that only have to equip the spear?’

The passive he obtained as a reward at the very end.

Beware of Fanatics was a skill that could identify creatures touched by the breath of God while holding a spear.

But he had left that in the previous, twenty-ninth playthrough.

The spear that pierced through the corrupted God pierced Aquila’s chest, and the playthrough ended as soon as he realized that Ark Batchel was a fanatic of the Corrupted God.

Aquila felt a deep fatigue as soon as he recalled that time.

“…This guy is annoying! He’s going to die anyway if we leave him like this, shouldn’t we just cut him down now?”

Even though Kahena stepped on his back with force again, the man thrashed and clawed at the floor, trying to get out.

But it wasn’t a very threatening action to her.

However, it was clear that if she put more force on the man like this, all of his bones would be crushed.

Aquila had told her to keep him alive, so she was just letting him be for now, but it was closer to being difficult to control her strength so as not to kill him.

“I can’t let you live. You have to kill him. Kill, kill, kill…”

The man was now just repeating those words out of obligation, rather than shouting at Aquila.

Even so, the murderous intent contained within it didn’t disappear, and rather, it became more intense each time he spat out the words.

Whooong!

And from that time, the surrounding mana began to tremble again.

The air seethed and surged all at once, gathering around the man as if being sucked in.

“…Magic?”

Kahena also seemed to have noticed the surrounding situation, as the calm air of dawn suddenly began to rage.

The Mana that had begun to condense around the man was hot, and it swelled rapidly like dough trapped in an oven.

A somewhat familiar flow of mana.

Even without unraveling the tangle of numerous memories, Aquila immediately realized what this mana formula was.

A Mana formula that he had seen at least once whenever he encountered the Dark Guild, not just in the last playthrough.

“Self-destruct magic…”

It was also a magic that he could never forget, as he had died because of it before.

“Pointless actions!”

Kahena, who hadn’t missed the one word Aquila had muttered, immediately drew her sword.

She didn’t have eyes to see mana, but she could tell that the gloomy and dark air was rapidly gathering around the man.

So, Kahena moved her hand without hesitation and plunged the sword into the man’s heart.

Thwack!

The place where a mage stores mana is usually located in the heart.

Therefore, the simplest way to neutralize a magic that is being cast is to pierce the mage’s heart.

If you break the vessel, the mana will also scatter.

The man, who had his heart pierced in an instant, collapsed to the floor without even screaming.

“Phew. With this….”

Kahena twisted the sword out and thought that she had quelled the commotion with this.

But even though she had stabbed the Dark Guild member’s heart, the Mana that had begun to gather around him didn’t stop.

“Killing him is useless. It’s black magic!”

The self-destruct magic used by the Dark Guild uses the body as a medium.

Since the body had already been offered as a price, the magic wouldn’t stop even if you broke the mana vessel.

Only the perfect success of the Dark Guild is a qualification to belong to the Dark Guild, and failure only means death.

Therefore, as a last resort, if they were unable to succeed in the request until the very end, the dark guild’s method was to draw in everything around them and self-destruct.

There was no way to stop the explosion unless the body was completely destroyed.

Besides, the range of the self-destruction was quite wide, so if it exploded here, the entire corridor they were in would be caught up.

Then they had to move far away or the man…

Then Aquila suddenly lifted his head and pulled up the skill window.

【Grace that flows in the earth’s ground New!

Instantly amplifies mana and can shoot the gathered mana forward.

??? (Cannot be used yet due to the user’s insufficient ability.)

― Limited to this round. Disappears upon death.】

A random skill obtained from the Right Hand of the Halo.

Could he use this skill to blow him away far away?

Of course, he didn’t know what kind of skill it was yet, but he would know if he tried it now.

That’s how he had come through the playthroughs.

So, Aquila reached out his arms towards the man’s corpse, which was seething with mana as if it would explode right away, without hesitating further.

Whooong!

The surrounding mana began to fluctuate again, but it was definitely a different tremor from before.

“Young Master, what on earth are you…!”

Shen was shocked to see a thin stream of light gathering and intertwining at Aquila’s fingertips.

It had already become a wave, circling around his hands.

Aquila, who took a breath, opened his eyes wide.

“Get out of the way, Kahena!”

Aquila shouted like that because it was a skill he was using for the first time.

And that judgment was correct.

What had been a simple wave had turned into a wave that would sweep away everything when it was shot towards the man.

Kwaaaang!

A tremendous roar shook the Great Temple of Port Plum.