Copy Skills with Affinity! - Chapter 60

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

◈ Copy Skills with Affinity! ◈

Chapter 60: Detoxification (2)

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If asked to name the word most famously associated with Rendal Dreyfus Aslan, many people would think of “Ironblood.”

It was likely a nickname that naturally followed from the way he always handled every matter bluntly, professionally, and in the public interest.

So anyone who knew his reputation would have been shocked to see him now.

“Drive faster!”

At the frost-cold bark, the driver flinched and sped up.

As the car screamed along the unpaved road, Grand Duke Aslan rubbed his trembling hands together.

It would have been a series of reactions that puzzled anyone familiar with his reputation.

But as Aiden had seen through long ago, Grand Duke Aslan cared deeply for his family.

And he was now in a situation where he had no choice but to be anxious.

“...”

Suppressing the urge to hurry the driver again, the Grand Duke closed his eyes.

‘...Liza.’

Just before this, Grand Duke Aslan had seen several photographs sent to him.

They were mysterious items delivered by an unknown person, but what they depicted was horribly clear.

They showed someone injecting an unknown drug into Liza Aslan.

He had asked Aiden to bring her to her senses, but the Aiden he knew was not the kind of person who would do such a thing. Besides, Aiden had not had enough time to take and send those photographs.

Before Aiden’s group arrived, a “third party” had undoubtedly done something to Liza.

He did not know their purpose or what had happened afterward, but one thing was certain.

Something terrible had happened to his family.

That was why, upon hearing a thunderous noise as soon as he neared his territory, Grand Duke Aslan had practically smashed open the car door and leaped out.

“...!”

Something serious was happening. That thought filled the Grand Duke’s mind as he rushed forward.

He had retired from the front lines, but his senses from his days as an ability user remained. It did not take him long to reach the source of the sound.

And the sight before him was enough to make his entire body go rigid.

Aiden’s group faced something amid an area so thick with Ki and divinity that they seemed to blanket the surroundings.

At the center of that battlefield stood a magical beast that faintly retained Liza’s form.

“...”

Fighting down the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him, Grand Duke Aslan looked at the magical beast. As though sensing his gaze, it looked back.

Its face was Liza’s.

But that thing was not the daughter he knew. Its eyes held such unmistakable killing intent that the realization flooded him at once.

‘Magical beastification.’

A chill raced down the Grand Duke’s spine as years of experience hunting magical beasts told him exactly what he was witnessing.

It was a phenomenon that occurred only among a tiny number of veteran soldiers who had endured the Night of the Hunt for decades. Their bodies changed as though their species itself had shifted from human to magical beast.

Those who reached that state lost all reason and rampaged until they died.

Which meant...

“...”

His daughter had to die.

Her death was already certain.

Just as dizziness threatened to overtake Grand Duke Aslan while he dwelled on that fact, Lionheart moved.

“I agree that we can’t kill it, but who in the world tells someone to charge at something like that barehanded?!”

With tears nearly in her eyes, Noel voiced that complaint before rushing at the Lady.

‘...Can’t kill it?’

Grand Duke Aslan stared blankly at Lionheart.

Then his head turned toward the young man who had apparently given that order.

“What choice do we have?”

Aiden Kellermain gave Lionheart a wry smile as she complained.

“If we kill her, we can’t treat her.”

Treat magical beastification?

As the Grand Duke stood stunned by those impossible words, Noel let out a cry that was almost a scream and closed in on the Lady.

“I really am going to die before my time!”

The Lady’s gaze immediately locked onto Noel. Then all eight legs swung at her without leaving the slightest opening. The sweeping attack covered too much space for evasion to even be an option.

It was force powerful enough to tear through even sturdy armor like cardboard.

But Aiden’s ability immediately came into play against it.

A brilliant glow enveloped the area, followed by Pure White Ki flowing out like mist.

As Ki blended into the Core of condensed Spiritual Power, the orb of light began to shine an even purer white. A radiance brilliant enough to hurt the eyes soon formed a barrier before Noel.

Giving an ability shape required considerable effort in itself. Since Aiden had not yet learned a skill to control this ability, its form was quite crude.

Which made the result even more absurd.

Crash!

Sparks flew as every blade leg of the magical beast was knocked away, and Grand Duke Aslan’s mouth fell open.

‘It blocked them?’

Aiden had handled the ability so crudely, yet all eight legs that had attacked were repelled.

Everyone in the Aslan family, which hunted magical beasts, knew one fundamental rule.

The most basic principle when fighting magical beasts was mobile, evasive combat.

The reason was very simple. A magical beast’s basic physical capabilities surpassed those of humans who could use abilities.

For an ability user to engage a magical beast in close combat was like a puppy trying to wrestle a tiger.

Even the weakest magical beast was a monster capable of easily slaughtering several knight apprentices. A magical beast wearing Liza’s form was something that even a monster like Lionheart should avoid facing directly.

And yet.

The magical beast’s full-force attack had been deflected by an ability barrier constructed that crudely.

And it did not end there.

Grand Duke Aslan saw that some of the blade legs that had struck the ability were broken. He began to laugh hollowly, nearly forgetting the situation entirely.

He was confident those blade legs could cut even diamonds.

Yet they looked like that now, as though they had collided with something overwhelmingly harder than themselves.

‘...Just how hard is it...?!’

He had already known that Aiden Kellermain possessed a special talent involving abilities.

Among people with a discerning eye, word had spread that he had mixed Ki and divinity. Above all, it had been recorded that he used techniques left by the Dawn Knight.

But he had not known Aiden was hiding something beyond even that.

Just how many talents was this man hiding?

Roar!

As the magical beast, having lost its means of attack, roared, Ki burst from Noel’s body after she entered effective range. Bolstered by explosively enhanced physical abilities, she grabbed Liza’s body and held her fast.

“Keep holding her!”

Then divinity burst from Katia’s body, followed in Noel’s wake, and poured over the Lady. With its heat reduced to a minimum, the divinity bound the magical beast’s legs tightly like a lasso.

Finally, Aiden rushed toward the Lady. Another ability formed in his hand.

“Wait, you...!”

Startled back to his senses, the Grand Duke opened his mouth to stop Aiden.

The way they had subdued the magical beast so quickly and cleanly deserved praise. But Aiden looked as though he meant to kill her, and the Grand Duke spoke before he could stop himself.

“Grand Duke.”

But only that answer returned, accompanied by a hollow laugh.

“I’m not so mad that I’d make a father watch his daughter die before his eyes.”

The scene that followed fully lived up to the ability’s name.

An ability made by mixing divinity and Spiritual Power.

Its name was “Purifier.”

▣

Many impossible things happened in the world. But naturally, it was quite rare to witness one firsthand.

In that regard, Rad wondered whether it might be time to buy a lottery ticket.

Rad was witnessing something they had never expected to see in their life.

Liza, who had been pinned to the ground and struggling to resist, was gradually calming down after being exposed to the ability Aiden released from his fingertips.

And it was not merely that her resistance was weakening.

The obvious traces of magical beastification covering her body were being completely treated.

The blade legs protruding from her back shrank.

They grew small and limp, then disappeared as though being stored back inside the Lady’s body, which they had used as a host to draw nutrients from.

A human already in the late stages of magical beastification, someone for whom there had been no solution except death, was being returned to “normal” merely because Aiden had drawn out an ability and touched her.

Noel, who held the Lady’s body, Katia, who had tightly bound her legs, and Grand Duke Aslan, who could only watch in silence, all wore similar expressions.

Shock.

“...I don’t think even a High Priest specializing in healing in the Holy Empire could pull off something like this.”

Rad agreed wholeheartedly with Katia’s groaned words.

Rad also found it pathetic that Katia’s comparison went no further than that.

‘Treatment?’

No, that was not a phenomenon that could be explained with such a lowly word.

Abilities were authorities of gods bestowed upon humans. Demonic energy, though it came from the ability of the sealed god Wornil, belonged to the same category.

From that perspective, magical beastification in humans exposed to demonic energy was a phenomenon governed by Wornil’s authority. The fact that it would not stop until death was as well.

Like an object falling from above to below, it was one of the laws that made up the world. Something so natural that questioning it was strange.

Which meant that man had not only done the insane thing of mixing abilities together at will.

A human had just reversed the authority of a god.

“...”

It was an aberration that fully deserved to be called a miracle.

It was impossible.

But what Rad was seeing was unquestionably real.

‘...No.’

Rad let out a hollow laugh and wiped their face.

‘What kind of monster is that?’

When the Prince had ordered Rad to investigate Aiden again from the beginning, Rad had not taken it all that seriously.

Rad had considered Aiden a fairly threatening variable, but not one worth that much concern.

But the moment Rad saw that scene, they changed their mind.

‘That thing was an ordinary person until recently, wasn’t it?’

Rad trusted their own judgment quite a bit, and that was why they could be certain.

That man had definitely been an ordinary person with nothing. Looking through the records, examining his past, even seeing him face-to-face, Rad had been convinced of it.

Rad thought Aiden was just an ordinary human who had lucked into a windfall and would soon burn through everything he had gained.

But what was this?

Not even a few months had passed. Compared with when he had been an ordinary person, an empty shell with nothing, how many absurd abilities did he have now?

His growth rate made no sense.

‘...I really need to tear him apart and investigate.’

What was this man hiding? What was he connected to that let him grow at such a monstrous speed?

Rad would have to investigate Aiden thoroughly.

With that thought, Rad hid inside the curtain of darkness they had spread with demonic energy.

‘His background, how he handles abilities, and...’

Once Rad decided to begin something, Rad always saw it through to the end.

Planning to pry out information even that man himself did not know about, Rad quietly closed their eyes.

Fortunately, the black magic Rad could wield with demonic energy included several spells that could easily transport them far away, even amid this chaos.

‘...I did not achieve my intended result.’

Rad would have to discard all the plans they had prepared beforehand, but at least they now knew what they needed to do.

At the very least, Rad could resolve to cut off such a horrifying threat before it grew any further.

That was what Rad had been thinking.

“Excuse me, Minister of Administration. Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“...?”

Until a voice suddenly sounded right beside Rad.

With those words, a hand pierced through the curtain of darkness, grabbed Rad by the collar, and dragged them outside.

“...!”

When Rad looked up with a twisted expression, they saw...

“Or should I call you the Puppeteer?”

Aiden Kellermain stood there, gripping Rad’s collar with an icy smile.