Chapter 82: Self-Rescue

Chapter 82: Self-Rescue

Not good… he’s taken hold of… my Spirit Body Threads… As a veteran Beyonder, a half-god, half-human existence who had dealt with Faceless, Marionettists, and Bizarro Sorcerers—and even directly fought them—Qonas Kilgor was not unfamiliar with his current situation. On the contrary, he was quite familiar with it and had some understanding.

Therefore, he knew very clearly that he had fallen into a fatal trap, and that the time available for saving himself would not exceed fifteen seconds!

And within those fifteen seconds, the sluggishness of his thoughts would grow more and more severe. The operation of his ideas would become slower and slower. Toward the end, merely thinking of a method might take several seconds, and having his stiff, rigid body put that idea into practice would also require a considerable amount of time. In other words, Qonas Kilgor had, at most, a little over ten seconds he could use for self-rescue!

Of course, he had previously considered how to handle the final few seconds. That method was to directly relinquish control over himself and reveal his mythical creature form, using this to lengthen the time needed for him to be turned into a marionette and, through his very existence, interfere with the enemy and make him suffer a certain impact.

However, if he did that, even if he successfully broke free from marionettification—or even defeated the enemy—Qonas Kilgor had little confidence he could continue living.

He was not the kind of demigod who could freely switch between human form and mythical creature form. He had little confidence that he could maintain his reason while in mythical creature form.

In other words, the most probable outcome of using his mythical creature form to escape marionettification was that Qonas Kilgor the “man” would die on the spot, and a monster bearing the same name would occupy his body.

Precisely because of that, unless he truly had no other method, Qonas Kilgor would not make such an attempt.

While his thoughts were not yet too sluggish, and while Revere’s Desperate Scream rang in his ears, this military demigod rapidly formed his first self-rescue plan.

At a speed that was not too slow, he moved his right thumb slightly.

Fallen Count—Magnify!

What Qonas Kilgor wanted to Magnify was not a state of his own or an attack from a Sealed Artifact, but the negative effect of Revere’s Desperate Scream!

This peculiar revolver would make its holder occasionally hear despairing screams. For creatures without divinity, this was extremely serious. It could easily lead to loss of control, madness, a torn spirit, or a blank mind. However, upon reaching Sequence 4, because one already possessed a mythological aspect, the effect of those screams was greatly reduced.

For Qonas Kilgor, the screams could only make his mind grow a little dazed and his emotions somewhat manic. They had no major influence, and he had even initially adapted to them.

At this moment, he intended to Magnify that “desperate scream” until even a demigod found it somewhat unbearable, using it to make his spirit feel as though pierced by pain and thereby break free from the control over his Spirit Body Threads!

Because Magnify required no obvious movement and took effect extremely quickly, Gehrman Sparrow—wearing a half top hat, holding the Death Knell revolver, surrounded by a fierce wind, and floating in midair opposite him—could not stop it in time. The Fallen Count successfully used this Beyonder power.

But in the next second, what Qonas Kilgor waited for was not a scream that had become terrifying, but a patch of tranquility.

Even the normal “roar” that had existed before had vanished!

This was the random mutation brought by Concerto of Light and Shadow!

How… unlucky… Qonas Kilgor’s thought slowly flashed by, but he had no time to feel dispirited. He immediately began his second self-rescue attempt.

He lifted his right hand in a halting motion, using Revere’s Desperate…