CH 49

A magic circle appears above Rihalzam’s second scroll, and yet another mushroom comes out of it.

I can describe it in one word, hideous. Its whole body is deep red, and it has many bumps on its cap that look like pimples.

It’s also big. Easily over three meters tall.

Purple smoke starts bursting out of the pimples.

I can hear the smoke pouring out, and apparently it’s heavier than air, because it drops straight to the ground and starts spreading.

Is it supposed to be a smokescreen? No, because he wouldn’t use such a heavy gas if that was the case.

I can see Rihalzam through gaps in the smoke. He has his back turned to us and he’s running while dragging one leg.

“Ah, he’s running away.”

“Why did that thing even come here?”

“After him!”

Kalin and the others can see him running away too.

“No! That smoke might be poison!”

I stop Ahri, who was about to cut through the smoke to go after him.

Rihalzam showed up all of a sudden, said nothing that made sense, snapped and attacked me, and then ran away. It’s all very hard for me to understand, but nevertheless, Rihalzam is still a master rank alchemist.

The purple smoke is still spreading, and even if it isn’t poison, I’m sure it has some sort of nasty effect. We can’t let it keep spreading, or it will reach the camp.

“《Activate》.”

I take out a scroll and activate it.

“《Release Limit》 disengage seal, 《Target》 purify scroll.”

A feature of the 《Purify》 scroll is sealed due to being too dangerous. I decided before that just restricting it like I did with the 《Polish》 scroll wouldn’t be enough.

I undo this seal and release part of its true power.

“《Purify》.”

I target all the gas in the air front of me, including the purple smoke, and it all quickly becomes partitioned.

The air is pure nitrogen, and there are what look like bubbles composed of other gasses. Each bubble has a different gas and nothing more.

Each gas has slightly different refractive indexes, and I can just about tell the bubbles apart.

I send the bubble with pure oxygen towards the mushroom, and it becomes enveloped in super highly concentrated oxygen.

“《Activate》, 《Project》.”

I activate a third scroll.

The project scroll controls light and concentrates the sunlight shining on my back, focusing it right on the mushroom.

It should just burn a little, but it does something incredible under highly concentrated oxygen.

The giant mushroom suddenly goes up in flames.

It shakes its cap and writhes, but I soon start smelling burnt mushroom.

I carefully gather the purple smoke I believe is poisonous, and collect it in a purified container. It could be used as material for something.

And then, I finally stop the purify scroll.

“Ahh, what about Rihalzam…”

“Straight ahead.”

Says Roa as she uses her magic eye to see far away.

“Kalin! I’m going to go after that thing and catch it just to be safe…”

As I’m talking, something happens.

“Master Rust, something is coming!”

Yells Ahri.

I turn and see a lot of something flying in from high in the sky.

“Armored salmon… With wings! They’re stampeding because they evolved!”

Roa is looking in the same direction and tells me what she sees with her magic eye.

She points towards the winged armored salmon coming towards us that are almost covering the entire sky.