Chapter 1 – The Sea Voyage and the Leviathan

So that, more or less, is how we came to be entered in the magic academies’ world tournament.

The tournament is held somewhere different every year by long-standing rule, and this year it falls on an island out on the frontier. The reason is that the whole thing is the entertainment laid on for the Magic Society’s general assembly, which means the Society’s senior figures, scattered across every country there is, have to be gathered into one venue once a year. The assembly itself is mostly given over to awarding decorations for papers and achievements, and to debating the Society’s more consequential policies. With people coming in regularly from all over the world, moving the venue each year is simply the most convenient arrangement. This is the Magic Society, after all: a collection of eccentrics and oddities, homebodies very much included. Hold it in the same place two years running and some of them will kick up an almighty fuss about it.

For a student, placing well at the tournament proper carries its own advantages. Win the thing outright and you get words of praise and encouragement from the President of the Society himself, which is the sort of distinction that sets up the rest of your life. So: a healthy stimulus for talented students with futures ahead of them. That’s the stated reason the world tournament is run as the assembly’s entertainment, and the tradition goes back to my own day. There’s also a rumor that the Society finds it convenient for its various internal factions to stake early claims on young talent, but never mind that.

Four hundred years ago I was a late bloomer with a great many other things on my plate, so I never did get to compete as a student. Never mind that either.

“A sea voyage… Of all the luck.”

I was up on the deck of one of the luxury liners laid on for people connected to the Magic Society assembly, slumped in a chair and staring at three hundred and sixty degrees of horizon while the world swayed.

“I never would have guessed you were weak to boats, Master…”

Anastasia had been watching me with obvious concern. She handed me water, and I managed a small nod. “Thanks.”

“Honestly, Ephthal. Master and disciple both laid out by a boat… you have to admit that’s a little funny.”

Maria wasn’t wrong. Merlin was down in her cabin at that moment, groggy and flat on her back, while I sat up here putting a great deal of effort into not being sick. A fine showing from the pair of us.

“…The two strongest people alive, undone by seasickness. This is a rare sight.”

Sheryl nodded to herself, chuckling, as though the moment deserved to be savored. The same sleepy eyes as ever; and though she was laughing, her face barely moved. You still can’t tell the first thing about what this girl is thinking from looking at her.

“You’ve always been so…” Sasha said, thoroughly fed up. “Whether your inner ear is weak or merely oversensitive, I couldn’t say.”

I’ve been bad at this since I was a child. There’s nothing to be done about it.

“This one thing I can’t… urgh.”

I fought down whatever had come up from my stomach, and once it had passed I poured the water into me.

“So, obviously Ephthal’s competing in the world tournament too, right?”

“I’m here as a representative of the academy, so yes.”

“About that… This time I want the three of us to be the ones carrying it.”

“Go on.”

“You throwing your weight around at student level feels like cheating, honestly. And besides—”

“Besides?”

Maria, Anastasia and Sheryl glanced at one another and gave a small collective nod.

“We don’t want to be carried by you forever, is what it comes to. We’d like to start by doing the things we can actually do ourselves.”

“…And what’s behind that?”

“We want real combat experience without a guardian standing over us. We’re… mages too. We’ve got the same ambition, to climb to the summit of the art. Or—no. What I mean is we want to be like you.”

Something moved through my chest at the strength in Maria’s eyes.

Calling it my disciples growing up might be laying it on a bit thick. Still, hearing “the ambition to climb to the summit” out of her mouth surprised me and, more than that, made me glad. It’s the emotion that shook Sasha and me once… and shakes us both still, and it’s the wellspring of every kind of strength there is. Once upon a time I longed for Sasha’s power and went chasing after him, and he was never once within reach; the gap between us was hopeless. What the three of them are feeling now must be the same thing I felt then. Only they aren’t treating out-of-reach as a reason to give up. They are stretching their hands out and running after it anyway, and to raise themselves higher they mean to clear the world tournament under their own power, using me as little as they can manage.

That they had arrived at that frame of mind made me happy. Maria especially. If all she cared about was her goal of making the elven village eat their words… then having me win it for her would obviously be the easiest road there is.

“Well. As you three are now… at student level, you might genuinely be the strongest in the world. Only—”

It’s simply true that they can deploy up to about Level 5 under combat conditions. The training they did in that time-warped place before the showdown with the Fire God Emperor counts for a great deal, and beyond all that… I know what they put in day after day.

“Only… what? If you think we can hold our own at the tournament, then that’s all the more reason I don’t want your help this time.”

“No, it’s that there’s a reason I have to win it this time.”

“Um… that’s the… magic aptitude stamina thing?”

“Tracing Bridget’s trail means the Unexplored Territories and the ruins of the ancient civilization, and there’s no way around either.”

“…”

“And there’s another possibility… Maybe the reason the Fire God Emperor never got hold of a way to save Bridget was purely that his power couldn’t physically reach it.”

“…”

“Above all that, though… I’m just an idiot who wants to get stronger. If there’s a way to do it sitting right there, I have to reach for it.”

“…The last part’s fine. But is Bridget-san really that important to you, Ephthal?”

“Sorry?”

I looked over. Maria had tears standing in her eyes, and she looked thoroughly put out about it. Anastasia was exactly the same. Sheryl’s face hadn’t moved at all, but her cheeks were puffed out.

“Er…”

The atmosphere around the three of them was souring by the second. If you drew it in a manga you’d put black auras behind all three, and something in the region of rage was climbing steadily higher… so I changed the subject at speed.

“Besides that—the Sword God Emperor is supposed to be at the tournament’s awards ceremony.”

“The Sword God Emperor?”

“Which is where I intend to beg him to teach me something.”

“Beg him… for what?”

“Swordwork… No—physical enhancement, strictly speaking. The inner mystery of close combat.”

“Physical enhancement?”

“In that field the swordsmen have a head start on us magic people. They’re the close-range specialists, after all.”

“You’re getting him to teach you physical enhancement, not swordsmanship?”

“I’d learn swordsmanship if it were on offer, and I don’t intend to be shy about asking for that either—but,” I said, and shrugged, “footwork, body handling, the sword arts themselves: none of that gets into you overnight. Right?”

“No, that’s fair.”

“Physical enhancement is different, though… That’s magic-power handling.”

Maria clapped her hands.

“True. Swordsmen do have their own particular kind of physical enhancement, and it’s called the foundation of everything and never taught outside the school.”

“Exactly. And when it comes to magic handling I like to think I’m an expert… so once I have the theory I should be able to fold it into how I fight almost immediately.”

“‘Like to think’…? There isn’t a person anywhere in the world above you at it.”

Maria laughed at me, exasperated, but I shook my head firmly.

“You can’t say that for certain. The Fire God Emperor exists, and so does my master.”

That was when a woman’s voice came from behind us.

“The little birds are chirping away, aren’t they.”

I turned. Five people stood there, dressed in what looked like noble clothing under white robes.

“And you are?”

One woman in her early thirties; the other four our own age, mid-teens. A closer look put the four teenagers in the uniform of some magic academy or other.

“I am the headmaster of the Ryushira Magic Academy, an institution of tradition and standing. And you appear to be students of Merlin-san’s Altena Magic Academy.”

Ryushira is a distinguished school. It was old long before my own era four hundred years ago, and you’d hardly need to be me to know the name.

“We are… Which means you’re here for the tournament as well?”

“Just so. And where is Merlin-san?”

“Shut up in her cabin at the moment. Seasick.”

At that, the woman in her thirties, the Ryushira headmaster, went briefly blank. Then her mouth twisted and she doubled over.

“Ha, hahah! Ahahaha! Merlin-san… the demon of the battlefield, Merlin of the Flashing Chains, is seasick?”

I couldn’t see what was funny. The headmaster, however, laughed and went on laughing, clutching her stomach, until there were tears in her eyes. She looked about ready to roll around the deck with it, and all of us just stared.

“Fufu. Well… still, you have my sympathy.”

“Sympathy?”

“An academy led by a battle maniac like Merlin-san… There is a limit to what such a place can amount to.”

She threw her ample chest out and turned a sneer on us.

“I realize this sounds like slander against your headmaster. Do take no offense… it is simply true.”

“Hmm. And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“A combat-obsessed fool who cares for nothing but her own training and cannot be troubled to show her face at the Society, put her in a headmaster’s chair as a sideline and there is no possibility of proper education taking place… That is what I mean.”

Come to think of it, Merlin has never been happy about the post. An honorary position somebody pushed onto her, she calls it… good for nothing but generating pointless errands; she grumbles about it constantly.

“What the Society was thinking, I cannot imagine. An excellent combat mage, certainly. I said until I was blue in the face that this did not make her fit to guide the next generation, that it did not make her an educator.”

There may be something in that… I have to admit. Merlin is hot-blooded and short-tempered, and a natural who does everything on instinct, which makes her hopelessly unsuited to teaching anyone anything. Not that the woman herself has ever spent a moment worrying about whether she’s suited to it.

“And when the very school of her own master, one of the original Four Emperors, has died out, the pedigree tells you everything about her capacity to educate broadly.”

Then, with a “Which means—”, she delivered her verdict.

“—Merlin-san was never suited to it in the first place.”

That part… I can own, honestly enough. Even in my day my school was a strange, narrow thing built around rapid-fire performance, and in the present age simply using the high-level range is difficult; the trick of firing off Levels 6 through 9 in sequence has become impossible. My style of fighting never assumed anything as pedestrian as rapid-firing the low-level range, either. Given the state of magic now… it dying out is no surprise at all.

“So… Before you reach us at the world tournament, do try not to make the same disgraceful spectacle of yourselves you did last time. My own students, in person, will be the ones to finish Merlin-san the educator.”

In short… she had come over here purely to pick a fight, and the wiser course wasn’t to give her one.

Only—what did she mean, the same as last time? Ah. Come to think of it… last time we went out somewhere around the quarterfinals.

I was thinking about that when a scream went up from the bow.

“Kyaaaaaa!”

We ran forward along with the Ryushira party to see what had happened, and there, sure enough—

“Fishmen! A whole pack of them!”

I couldn’t tell whose voice it was. But there were unmistakably several fishmen up on the deck, hauled up out of the sea. About the size of a human being, and looking exactly as the name suggests: slick, glistening hides and bulging eyes that turned the stomach on sight. Out in the water there were dozens more, climbing steadily up the hull as we watched. It wouldn’t take long for them to have the deck.

“Wh-what is this, Master?! What is that?! What are they?!”

“Demi-humans… Or near enough monsters, maybe. Fishmen are called the gangs of the sea: they raid ships for gold and silver and treasure.”

“I understand that we’re being raided! What do we do?!”

Good question. The ship did appear to have some provision for repelling attackers, but the equipment amounted to a launcher-type harpoon of the sort used for whaling, which would be meant for the large sea-beasts. Come to that, I couldn’t see any anti-pirate guards about… or their gear either.

Just then two people came running along the deck toward us, a man and a woman.

“What’s happened, Anastasia?”

“Merlin-sama! Er… who’s the man?”

“The captain of this ship. We fell in together on my way out of the cabin… Now, what’s going on?”

“We’re being attacked by fishmen!”

“I see… Then, captain, how does this ship intend to repel them?”

The captain smiled pleasantly at the question.

“This voyage’s passengers are a gathering of mages, are they not? Students aside, I’m told the chaperones are all first-rate.”

“Meaning?”

“There have been Kraken sightings lately, so we do carry armament for the large sea-beasts. But against pirates or fishmen, the tournament committee’s instruction was that you handle it yourselves. I confess I never expected it to actually happen.”

Merlin nodded, satisfied.

“Meaning I may do as I please?”

“Just as you say.”

“Anastasia! Maria! Sheryl! These are exactly the sparring partners you need. We will not lift a finger. Begin the intercept!”

Maria made a complicated face at the order.

“Weren’t you flat on your back with seasickness a minute ago, Merlin-sama?”

“Where there’s a battlefield, poor condition isn’t an excuse available to me. At any hour, in any place… if it’s a battlefield, I’m in the best condition of my life.”

“And how’s Ephthal’s condition?”

“Where there’s a battlefield, that excuse isn’t available to me either. My seasickness is long gone, obviously.”

Maria shrugged at me, thoroughly unimpressed.

“…Honestly… You two are alike right down to this, aren’t you.”

And so, with a wry smile from me, the fishman sweep began.

⁂

“Level 4: Fire Bomb!”

“Level 4: Ice Edge!”

The Ryushira students had moved first, and their magic swept the fishmen off the deck in swathes. No casualties on our side so far, and the headmaster over there wore an expression of complete ease. She evidently had no more intention of intervening than we did.

“Oh, they’re decent enough.”

“Indeed, Ephthal-sama. This is the world tournament, after all. Prodigies and geniuses gather here from every quarter, as one would expect.”

So far it had looked like easy going, except that the enemy kept swarming up over the rail, and it didn’t take long before the Ryushira students could no longer handle all of them. To be fair, part of that was being unable to use area-effect magic without damaging the ship.

“But there—they don’t have the volume of attacks for it.”

The moment I said it, several fishmen slipped through the net of magic and threw themselves at the students.

“Damn it! One after another!”

“That’s far enough, students. I’ll deal with the rest.”

The other headmaster stepped forward to relieve them and swept the fishmen away with magic of her own, and she kept sweeping until the deck was empty. Then—

“Did you get a proper look at my student’s magic just now, Merlin-san? Level 4 at that age.”

Merlin made a complicated face of her own. Then she called out to the Ryushira students.

“It seems that where you come from, they teach you how to do magic but not how to fight.”

“Excuse me, Merlin-san? Am I being ignored? Or have you forgotten me?”

“I remember the face. All theory and a swollen head, and never once been on a battlefield, if memory serves.”

“A swollen head?!”

“Also… my apologies. The name escapes me.”

“Forgetting my… what an insufferable woman! And what do you mean, how to fight?!”

“You lot! These fishmen are too poor to serve as practice! Disable them with close combat alone!”

Anastasia and the others gave a small nod at the order, and the three of them advanced on the second wave hauling itself over the rail. Anastasia, the magic swordswoman, with her sword; Maria the elf with the knife that sits so well in her hand; and Sheryl, a pure mage, in support, laying Material Guard over the two of them and herself. They went into the pack together and cut their way through it, one fishman after another, moving fast.

“How are they… that skilled…”

“This is what I mean. At my academy we teach, at minimum, what to do when it comes down to a melee.”

“But mages, in close quarters… to this degree—”

The other headmaster was gaping openly.

Well. Anastasia and Maria had the aptitude for it to begin with, so it’s not quite the whole story… though it’s perfectly true that I’m the one teaching them close-combat technique, so it isn’t a lie either. And our academy does put real effort into close-quarters work.

Then, visibly, the fishmen began to slow. Not because anyone had cut them with a sword or a knife, either. The reason being—

“I scattered paralytic on the wind!♪ They’re all slimy, so I thought they’d soak it up nice and fast!”

Anastasia’s smile couldn’t have been brighter, and around us the fishmen began to shriek.

“My trap’s live too. Elf-made rose-thorn leghold, you could call it.”

Exactly as Maria said, the fishmen were bound fast about the legs by her magical implement, Rose Bind. Between the pair of them and their underhanded little arts, every fishman on deck was out of action, and after that it was simply a matter of beating them senseless.

Watching the two of them, Merlin smiled wryly.

“Mind you, Altena does not teach fighting to quite this standard.”

“That… that’s cheating! There’s nothing honorable about this!”

“And what sort of fool makes a scene about being shot in the back on a battlefield?”

“That may be so… but this isn’t the honest way!”

“Unfortunately, I teach the children to survive by whatever means the battlefield requires, and I was taught the same. Which makes this… the honest way to fight.”

The other headmaster was stamping her foot, making a noise like a kettle coming to the boil. Then my breath caught.

Cold sweat down my back. Something felt badly wrong, and I started scanning our surroundings.

“What is it, Ephthal-sama?”

“You haven’t noticed, Merlin?”

“…Noticed what? I see nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. All right, let me ask it differently. You can’t hear this singing?”

“…Singing?”

It had started a little while ago… a song riding on an amount of magic power that had no business existing. That a mage of Merlin’s caliber could fail to notice it filled my head with question marks; I half expected her to tell me she was joking.

“Ah—there’s a siren flying nearby, certainly. Which would mean we’re close to the destination port, I imagine.”

No. That’s not a siren’s voice.

It’s not a voice within any sane range of that word at all. And there was something familiar in it…

Setting that aside… Merlin still showed no trace of wariness. So she genuinely couldn’t hear it. I glanced at Sasha and was, in a sense, relieved: he had gone to a combat footing, and he gave me a small nod.

Nobody else showed any sign of alarm at all. So the two of us were the only ones who could hear it.

That’s strange, though. Grant me that sensing the magic power is a separate matter; the volume of the song alone is considerable… and for nobody else to be hearing it is stranger still.

And then—

“Kraken! A Kraken’s surfaced!”

Fishmen and now a Kraken. What is happening out here?

I looked, and there in the water a few hundred meters off our bow was the shape of an enormous squid. Tens of meters, at a guess. A large specimen even for a Kraken, half the length of this ship, near enough, which meant that if it got hold of us, that was the end. It would take the whole ship down into the deep with it.

Merlin turned her head unhurriedly toward the bow.

“That’s rather beyond the students.”

The Ryushira headmaster worked out what she meant to do and went white.

“Merlin-san, wait! A Kraken takes several companies of a magic corps… no, a whole battalion running ritual magic, to deal with!”

“What are you talking about, woman?”

“What am I…”

“Are you unaware of my record? I annihilated a nation’s magic corps single-handed.”

“What? That’s the sort of battlefield legend that grows in the telling—”

Merlin shrugged, wearily.

“It is fact. And you have been picking a fight with me because I displease you, have you not? Analyzing your opponent’s strength is the first principle of fighting.”

She left it there, as though the woman weren’t worth another word, and made to walk past her.

“Wait, we are not finished—”

“That attitude is precisely why I cannot be bothered to remember your name.”

Then Merlin leaned in and spoke by my ear, very quietly.

“A question, Ephthal-sama.”

“What is it, Merlin?”

“Would you mind if I handled it? Ephthal-sama no longer has any reason to avoid standing out… and if you wished to make a name for yourself, this is an ideal opportunity.”

Fair enough, as far as it goes…

I’ve kept my identity hidden all this time, and underneath it was wanting a quiet life at the academy: wanting, specifically, to do my research on magic aptitude in peace. That particular problem is admittedly cleared now.

“No, I’m fine. You go ahead and take care of it, Merlin. Standing out for no reason is still a bad idea. If I ever need the fame there are any number of ways to get it, and now isn’t the time.”

Frankly, rank and honors don’t interest me. Becoming a duke, becoming the Thunder God Emperor four hundred years ago. Those were byproducts of grinding away at magic. The honest version is that I rampaged around and found I’d become those things along the way. It’s also true that there’s no more need to hide, so if it becomes necessary I intend to go all out. Only… when the situation is one Merlin can handle, there’s nothing to be gained by me making it bigger and more complicated than it is.

“Then… without delay.”

And there she looked out across the water, and the words died in her throat.

“The situation has changed for the worse. What shall we do, Ephthal-sama?”

Out beyond the bow… throwing up a wall of spray, an enormous sea-beast had come up out of the deep and into the air.

Comfortably over a hundred meters. As it rose it swallowed the Kraken whole, then fell back into the sea in another burst of spray, and when it surfaced again it flew, by flight magic or something like it. I don’t follow the mechanism, but it came at us skimming the surface of the water.

The moment it started toward us, screaming broke out all over the deck, and the Ryushira headmaster went straight down on the boards, her legs gone from under her.

“After a Kraken… that can’t be… the legend… it’s over… it’s all over…”

No wonder Merlin was troubled. The Ryushira headmaster’s collapse was about the only sane reaction available. Hardly anyone on this ship was looking at that thing without the word despair in their head.

“Looks like I’ve got no choice but to step out.”

Over a hundred meters of body. A hide as black as a whale’s, with human arms and legs… Human in shape, in fact, in the plainest sense, except for a head so grotesquely oversized it could swallow a Kraken.

That monster’s name—

They call it the Genocider.

They call it the Sea’s Titan.

They call it a slaughter-weapon of the ancient magical civilization.

Its name is Leviathan, and it’s defined, factually, as the strongest living thing in the sea. Even four hundred years ago it was rated a calamity-class monster. In the present age… a single nation might just about manage it by throwing in everything it had.

I’ve never faced one myself. This wasn’t going to be easy.

So: to the giant skimming the waterline—

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”

No holding back. Straight out of the gate, my signature move, at full power.

“Good!”

Monsters are monsters in the end. At the root of it they’re not much different from animals. There was no sign of a defensive formula going up, and it was dead center in the path of a clean hit. Take a Level 10 of mine square on and even a calamity doesn’t walk away from it.

“Th-that… Merlin-san’s companion… what he just used… L-L-Le… Level 10? Don’t tell me your school teaches Level 10?!”

“That we do not teach. Rather… I could not teach it.”

The Ryushira headmaster was talking gibberish. She had gone past astonishment into open-mouthed panic.

Never mind her. The Leviathan.

Maybe this settles it here—

—Oh, you have got to be joking.

It dove. The bastard dove, half a breath before the lightning hit.

So the lightning came down on open ocean with a hell of a noise and, predictably enough, didn’t finish the Leviathan. Seawater is loaded with electrolytes… sodium in short, so it conducts. But there’s a great deal of seawater, and the wider the area, the higher the resistance climbs. The upshot is that the range over which the current stays strong enough to do real damage is limited, and as things stood almost nothing had reached the thing.

“Hmm. Struggling, for once? Shall I lend a hand, Ephthal?”

“Sorry, master, this isn’t a situation that needs you sticking your neck out.”

“Then you’ll blow it away with your Level 11?”

“Sorry again. Magic aptitude wide open with a five-minute limit isn’t what this situation needs either. You keep a trump card back until there’s a place to spend it.”

“Then what will you do? There’s not much time. And I have no wish to get wet when the ship is broken…”

He had a point about the time. Distance between us, by eye: two hundred meters. A body that size hits us at speed and a ship like this one is finished.

“Captain! That harpoon… the whaling gun. Can you fire it?”

“Ah—yes! We can… but I can’t imagine it doing anything against that!”

“Just fire it! I’ve got a way to win!”

“A way to…”

“The aim can be garbage! Get it pointed roughly the right way and I’ll steer it in with wind magic and it’ll hit!”

The captain thought about it for a fraction of a second, said “A Level 10 caster…” to nobody in particular, and ran for the whaling gun.

“I’m certain it won’t work, but I’ll fire on faith!”

He worked the mechanism and the gun went off, and the harpoon, trailing its steel wire, buried itself in the Leviathan. It showed no sign of having been hurt. It came on at us without so much as noticing.

—A hundred meters left.

“Right. Now you can’t run and you can’t hide.”

I thrust my right palm out toward it and put up a second Level 10.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”

The Leviathan sank below the surface again to dodge the strike. Which was useless, because I hadn’t aimed at the Leviathan. I had aimed at the harpoon buried in it, or to be exact… at the steel wire running from that harpoon back to the ship.

The lightning came down with the same shattering noise, tore along the wire and into the Leviathan, and the feedback through it was solid. And then—

“…Huh?”

What floated up to the surface wasn’t the Leviathan’s corpse. It was the Kraken’s.

The impact had been real. And a lightning strike delivered from a harpoon inside its own body… Anything that lived through that would be well past being called a monster. On top of which… that Kraken carcass had to be the one the Leviathan swallowed a minute ago.

“What in the hell, master?”

“Don’t ask me. I’ve no idea.”

Sasha and I looked at each other.

And in my head, the singing I’d been hearing went on and on.

⁂

“Bringing down a Kraken alone… It seems the legends about you were true after all, Merlin-san.”

Things had gone slightly strange, and the main reason was that the Leviathan’s corpse was nowhere to be found.

The conclusion everyone landed on was that a siren had been flying nearby and its song had put us all into a hallucination, meaning we’d collectively panicked over nothing. That became the mood of the place, somehow. Except that nobody had actually heard a siren singing, which makes that conclusion a considerable stretch. Then again, a Leviathan appearing when there hasn’t been a confirmed sighting in a century, to say nothing of a Level 10 being cast, is a far bigger stretch… So that’s where it landed.

For my part I’ve no intention of hiding what I can do any more, and equally no intention of standing out for nothing. So if that was where everyone was… I went along with the version they were all reciting, the one where Merlin killed the Kraken.

“Also, Merlin-san.”

“What?”

“In close combat… the children at your academy really are the better of the two, it seems. I’ll grant you that.”

“Hmm…?”

“Mind you, with a Kraken I might have managed something by concentrating fire with my students. Not as neatly as you did, though.”

“…What is it you want to say?”

The Ryushira headmaster put out her right hand toward Merlin.

“Rivals of a high standard are no bad thing for the children either. I don’t intend to give ground at the tournament, but I see no need for us to be at each other’s throats. I acknowledge you.”

I still felt the whole thing had been one-sided from the start… and there were still barbs in the corners of what she said. But Merlin, wry smile and all, met the offered handshake with a handshake, so I decided to keep out of it.

“You… Your name?”

“Rieju. Rieju Macamin. Don’t forget it again.”

“I shall make an effort.”

And there, out past the horizon, land came into view. That felt like the end of the affair, more or less…

Except that when I glanced at Sasha, he had evidently been thinking the same thing I was, and gave a small shake of his head.

That singing.

I really do feel like I’ve heard it somewhere.

And that ruinous song, the one that called the Leviathan up out of the sea—

—it would be a little while yet before it overlaid itself, out of the far distance of memory, on the sound of Bridget singing.

Prologue

A burned field, stretching to the horizon.

The two of us were charred black and wrecked from head to foot. I lay sprawled face-down in the dirt, and Sasha gave me a smile like a sunflower.

“Kah-kah-kah! Still a long way to go, greenhorn.”

We’d both taken enormous damage. We’d just finished throwing our best-kept techniques at each other, and even so there wasn’t one shadow on that smile.

The man really is a monster…

Beaten, I managed a wry smile of my own.

“So this is what it comes to, and without the Otogi Fantasia at that.”

There were only the two of us out here, with Merlin standing a little way off. She was thoroughly put out that I’d lost. She looked like she’d been sucking on a lemon.

“…You really are a monster.”

At that, as though I’d genuinely wounded him, Sasha shrugged.

“Hmph. Had your magic not gone out of true partway through… you were much the greater monster of the two of us.”

“You’re the last person in the world I want to hear that from.”

“It’s simple fact. I was overwhelmed at the outset. All I did in the end was seize the moment you came apart.”

“…And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it.”

So that was where things stood: my master and I had just finished a contest of magic… A duel, rather. I’d wanted to take the measure of my own strength now that my magic aptitude had been treated, and I think Sasha had wanted to see what I looked like at my real full power. Two people both climbing toward the summit of their art—and there’s no time like the present.

The upshot was that I’d been beaten flat into the ground, like I said. Sasha was grinning about it.

“Mm. With the shackle of magic aptitude gone, there’s no word for you but Thunder God. To wield Level 11: Four Emperors alone was splendidly done.”

“What surprised me is that you can use a Level 11 that isn’t a summoning spell. I had no idea that was even possible.”

“One keeps one’s trump cards hidden.”

He wasn’t wrong. I’d opened the fight by putting up Level 11: Four Emperors straight away, and he’d answered it with something called Level 11: True Undead Emperor Sasha, a technique that looked for all the world like he’d made it up on the spot. The sight was a bolt from the blue, frankly. Watching that world-overturning piece of sorcery unfold in front of me, I very nearly cried.

Where I had the advantage was speed of construction in the high-level range, so the opening went the way he said it did—my way. Only, also as he said, my way was strictly the opening.

“Even so. That speed of yours at Level 9 and above, the one that looked like the Fierce God himself, lasted… what. Five minutes, near enough.”

“So, master. Straight out: why do you think my magic aptitude dropped back to zero partway through?”

“Hmm…”

Sasha thought it over for a moment, then nodded to himself.

“A magical Hayflick limit.”

“That’s an extremely classical piece of theory to reach for.”

“Well. I’m more or less the incarnation of classical magic.”

“…Er… that’s from the Book of the Wheel of Law, isn’t it? The fragments of a treatise that came out of the ruins of the ancient magical civilization?”

“Indeed. You know the reasoning behind why human beings age?”

“There’s a ceiling on how many times a cell can divide, and the telomeres in the genes get shorter each time. That was it, wasn’t it.”

“Correct. The shortening of the telomeres on the chromosome. Each time the DNA is copied in cell division, the repeating sequence at the chromosome’s end loses fifty to a hundred bases from the tip.”

“A telomere is a candle, and aging is it burning down. It’s the first piece of theory anyone who wants to stop aging or stop dying runs into—you did, and I imagine the Fire God Emperor did too.”

“The little brat and I both worked through necromancy, so our case differs somewhat, but the groundwork of the reasoning is near enough what you describe.”

“So what does that mean?”

“The magic circuits in the brain are reversible, granted. But drive them hard enough inside a narrow enough span of time and they reach their limit in the same manner. Like a candle.”

“…Mm.”

“The magic circuits of the brain multiply and refine magic the way cells divide, with magic aptitude for their medium. Ordinarily a man’s own reserves run dry long before he approaches that limit, so the problem never shows itself. You aren’t ordinary. Your aptitude, your reserves, your technique… frankly, your brain can’t keep pace with them.”

“The firepower’s too high, so the candle burns out early?”

“Just so. Put it as plainly as it can be put… and it’s simply running out of stamina. Your brain was optimized for a body with zero magic aptitude in the first place, so in a sense nothing else could be expected of it.”

“Meaning—” he said, and shrugged.

“Your circuits reach their ceiling, your magic stops multiplying, and your aptitude falls back to zero… That’s the shape of it. As you stand, you’re the strongest man alive for a strictly limited time.”

“…A superman for a single instant, then.”

“The road to the summit isn’t walked in a day. And it would do my reputation no good to be overtaken by my own disciple quite so easily.”

“Kah-kah,” he laughed, and he was genuinely delighted about it.

This man truly can’t stand to lose… It made me laugh too, though mine was still the wry kind.

“So, master. What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Take your time, and let what’s inside your head grow accustomed to being a head that has aptitude… That’s the surest road.”

“There’s Bridget to think about, though… I’m not really in a position to be that leisurely about it.”

“No. I imagine not… There may well be more creatures out there of the Fire God Emperor’s sort, and it inconveniences me too if you don’t make yourself stronger. This is no moment to be standing on my dignity as your master.”

Then, unusually for him, Sasha turned serious and sank into thought.

The truth is that his last fight had been a hard one by his standards—desperately hard. Or rather, by any ordinary measure he couldn’t have won it at all. He’d forced a result out of it by sheer improvisation, which is nearer the mark. In a life as long as his, an experience like that can hardly come around often. Put that way, the serious expression made sense.

“Let me see… There are a number of artifacts called the Souls of the Demon God.”

“The Souls of the Demon God?”

“The Book of the Wheel of Law has any number of fragments in it that aren’t generally known. A good many people keep them hoarded away, since they can be turned to the pursuit of eternal life.”

“…I see.”

“Myself among them, naturally. And in those fragments there’s a discussion of the magical Hayflick limit, and of what may be done about it.”

“And what may be done about it is a Soul of the Demon God…?”

“That is the way of it. The Ten Sages built the ancient magical civilization, and in that age they made the ultimate spiritual lifeform. The Demon God. You’ll have heard of it in fairy tales.”

“The one that splits the earth open and swallows the sea?”

“A forbidden power that ran wild and came near to bringing the ancient magical civilization down with it. Its limbs and torso and head were each sealed away separately, and where they lie nobody knows. Its soul was divided without number into crystals of pure magical energy and scattered across the world… So it was written.”

“And what does that give us?”

“Take one of those souls into your head and let it serve as your magical medium, and you pass beyond the magical Hayflick limit… Your stamina simply stops running out. I’ll give you a copy of the fragments; the finer reasoning and the method you may work out for yourself.”

“…Except, master—I’ve never so much as heard of a Soul of the Demon God, and I know a few things. How would anyone go about finding one?”

“They pass through markets now and again as crystals of magical energy, with nobody the wiser. Otherwise they sleep in ancient ruins.”

“So I search the ruins of the ancient civilization, or buy one at some magical-implement auction?”

“Hardly any reach the market. And as for the ruins… that sort of site has been dug over and over. If you mean to find one, you’ll have to take on the ruins scattered through the Unexplored Territories.”

The Unexplored Territories… I swallowed hard.

“By the Unexplored Territories you mean the world outside where people actually live?”

“Quite so—exactly as it sounds. Continents across seas that mankind has yet to reach. Or else the astral worlds. The underworld. The heavens…”

“Going by ship, that’s a year there and back. And reaching an astral world with your body intact… would take a vast amount of time to prepare for.”

“Before you concern yourself with that: whether across the sea or into an astral world… I know of nobody who came back from either in any decent condition. Either they died where they stood, or they came back with their minds badly contaminated, and injuries fit to cost a man his limbs. No sensible account could be had from them.”

“They’d be respectable mages, though, if they were acquaintances of yours.”

“Most were less accomplished than you. Though a few were about the equal of you with your aptitude at zero.”

Then, with a grave look, he went on.

“So I’ll say it again. Whatever it was they met out there, every one I know of came home with his brain rearranged by magic and his body broken, a living corpse past all recovery.”

“…So realistically it’s beyond me as I am.”

“While you carry the handicap of your aptitude, at least.”

A dead end in every direction… I sighed. Besides which, I had Bridget to find in the first place, which meant this was hardly the moment to go touring the ruins of the ancient civilization like the host of my own explorer show.

Which brought me to Merlin, who’d been listening in silence all this while.

“Merlin?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“About Bridget. The thing I asked you to look into—where does that stand?”

“I’ve been following the Fire God Emperor’s movements and making what inquiries I can, but… it’s heavy going.”

“Heavy going?”

“His trail runs into the Unexplored Territories you were speaking of just now, and there it stops…”

“…Ah. Of course it does.”

“There’s a great deal about how he came by that much power that the Gate of Solomon alone doesn’t account for. Something happened to him out there… most likely.”

A dead end on that side too… I was on the point of hanging my head when Sasha clapped his hands together, and when he spoke there was a nasty little smile on his face.

“Ah. Yes. About the Souls of the Demon God. There’s one easy way to lay hands on one.”

“How so?”

“The thing is, in the end, a crystal of peculiar and enormous magical energy.”

“…?”

“You’re all bound for the magic academies’ world tournament, are you not? That’s the prize. Billed as some manner of ultra-grade alchemical material.”

“…I’m sorry?”

“The tournament committee will know nothing of its provenance, naturally, nor of what it can be made to do.”

“How do you know about it in the first place?”

“I’m a very senior figure of the Magic Society. The students’ tournament doubles as the entertainment at the Society’s annual assembly, and the invitation came by carrier pigeon just now, details and all. The catalog of prizes was set out in full.”

Now that he said it, of course it was. He’s so thoroughly a fixture of my life, and has such specific kinks, that I tend to look at him a certain way—but then and now, the man is a mage of the very highest class.

“In that case, though… I’m a little uneasy.”

Merlin tilted her head at me.

“Uneasy, Ephthal-sama? What troubles you?”

“That it’s all arranged a bit too neatly…”

“Too neatly?”

“The thing is sitting exactly where I happen to be going. And immediately after all that business with the Fire God Emperor… at that.”

“…True. When you put it so.”

As Merlin nodded, Sasha turned a challenging look on me.

“Oh… I don’t take it for coincidence either. Well then, brat? Will you take fright and run?”

Merlin laughed that off, and met my eyes with a composed, level look.

“Whatever has been arranged, obstacles get beaten flat. That’s what Ephthal-sama does. Is that not so, Ephthal-sama…?”

And when she puts it like that, there’s only one answer to give.

“Yeah. That’s right, Merlin. That’s how I do things.”

Prologue – Stirrings

A single room, deep underground, where no light reaches.

Toward a girl sleeping in a canopied bed, a man in the prime of life, wrapped in a black robe, drew near.

The girl was, by the look of her years, ten and a little more.

Setting a hand to her brow, the man made certain she would not wake from her sleep, and then snapped his fingers.

“Nnh… good morning.”

Waking, the girl looked at the man’s face and murmured, puzzled.

“Huh? Where’s the red-haired big brother?”

“…He’s gone off to somewhere a little far away.”

“Oh. When’s he coming back?”

“It’s all right. The flame is smoldering still.”

“…Flame?”

“But to be kept sleeping all this while in a place like this… poor Bridget. Come outside, with me.”

“Eh? I’m allowed to go outside?”

“You may play as much as you like. To your heart’s content, and merrily.”

“Thank you, Mister Earth. The red-haired big brother always used to say it’s dangerous, that I mustn’t go outside…”

“There is nothing outside for you to fear, Bridget. Yes, the time has come to the full. The ice is chipped away, but in its place, the Undead Emperor. The thunder that follows after, the earth that is myself, and the flame that he left behind. It goes on smoldering within you, Bridget.”

Epilogue

When I woke, I was in my own room at the ducal mansion.

The moment I raised my upper body, pain shot through me from head to foot, and my drowsy, half-asleep mind snapped wide awake all at once.

“…Why… am I here?”

Looking about, I found Merlin seated at the side of the bed, and over on the sofa in the corner, Sasha sprawled reading a book.

“Awake, are you, Ephthal-sama?”

“…How long was I out?”

“Three days and three nights.”

“I see. Sorry to have worried you. And… you and Svetlana… you’re both all right?”

“No lasting harm to speak of. Though Sasha-sama says there’s a chance our lifespans have been shortened by a few years.”

“…And Cliff?”

Sasha closed his book and raised himself upright. Then, crossing his legs, he gave a shrug, a look of helplessness on his face.

“Returned to the earth. When one who has made himself undying has his formula unravel… the whole of the time he’d forced onto his body, held there against nature, comes bearing down on him all at once. In his case, four hundred years, more than enough, that, to turn a man back into clods of earth.”

Hearing it, I was seized by a feeling I couldn’t put a name to. Even now, what sort of feeling it was that I held toward Cliff, I didn’t rightly know myself. And that, most likely—

Cliff’s own heart, too, had probably been much the same as mine was now.

“…Still, with this, it’s all come to an end, Ephthal-sama.”

“Yeah. The old reckoning too… for the moment, the worst of it’s cleared away.”

“So, what do you mean to do from here?”

“I’ve no idea where Bridget is now. Look into the places Cliff was holed up in over these four hundred years.”

“Somewhere a mage could safely keep himself hidden over a long span while carrying on his research… I’d say. Well, if we trace his trail, it’s not a thing beyond doing.”

“And there’s something else besides that I’ve got to do.”

“Something else, you say?”

“While I’m looking for Bridget’s answer—”

Just then, I grinned wide and said it.

“—I thought I’d go and make myself the strongest in the world for a while.”

“…And the meaning of that?”

“Nothing gets solved without at least that much, does it? Even Cliff couldn’t do a thing to save Bridget, after all.”

“With respect, Ephthal-sama, it seems to me the chances are already extremely high that you truly have become… the one and only strongest in the world.”

“Nah, the world’s a wide place. There are bound to be strong ones out there I don’t know yet… probably. In any case, first up is the magic academy’s world tournament. I’d like to hone this new power of mine, swordcraft.”

“But, really…” Merlin laughed, as if at her wits’ end.

“You never do change, Ephthal-sama. Asleep or awake, it’s strongest, strongest… you truly are like a child.”

“Can’t be helped, seeing as my head’s stuck a kid and never managed to grow up. Ah, and Merlin. Same as it ever is, I’m sorry for all the trouble I put you to—and always, I’m grateful for it.”

“No, it is no trouble at all. Wherever it may be, however long it may take—I will attend you.”

“Yeah. I’m counting on you.”

Chapter 5 – Magic Aptitude

Ephthal’s Perspective

“Master, I want you to leave the Fire God Emperor to me.”

“…Can you do it? You?”

“When it comes down to it, this is—one grand family blowup between relations. Sorry, but let me be the one to run things here.”

To Sasha, turning something over with a sour look on his face, I gave a small bow of the head.

“…I’m asking you. Let me be the one to settle it.”

“Well, once you’ve said a thing you never do listen… Do as you please.”

I took a step toward the Fire God Emperor. At which the Ice God Emperor, waiting at his side, cut in between us as if to shield him. To go so far as to drag out even the Ice God Emperor’s corpse… it seemed the Fire God Emperor really was past caring how it looked.

There was plenty I wanted to say to the Fire God Emperor, but all of it could wait until after I’d landed one good punch. There, Sasha started striding brazenly toward the Ice God Emperor.

“Your opponent is me. One on one, the likes of you are no match at all. I’ll play with you a while—come, boy.”

In that same instant, Sasha and the Ice God Emperor sprang apart in a sideways leap, and the next moment two attack spells roared off to the left.

Next, Merlin and Svetlana stepped out in front of me and called out to the four undead mages waiting behind the Fire God Emperor. Who they might be I didn’t know, but these too had likely been mages of great renown once.

“Three against me, and Merlin-chan takes one, that’s the split, I suppose?”

“Ah. Two or so, and even I ought to manage… but as a division of strength, that’s about where it lands, Svetlana.”

And with that Svetlana turned dragon, and went on in a voice pitched a notch lower.

“Now that I’ve taken this shape, I can’t go easy. Don’t come complaining if you’re ground into mincemeat.”

“To take on Svetlana and me, you’d have done well to dig up the graves of the third-generation Four Emperors too.”

Come on now, Fire God Emperor… you’d pulled the second-generation four into your camp as well, had you. This fellow really does do outrageous things.

So, with Merlin riding on Svetlana’s back, the four who used flight magic vanished up into the sky. Over there, it seemed, the matter was to be settled in the air.

Then, one upon another, the phantom demons went hurtling at the several dozen mages scattered about us. Some among them surely carried skills, but our side, too, were the elite of the elite that Sasha had spent long years gathering up.

Which meant what parted victory from defeat was the duel of the champions… which was to say, the single combat between me and the Fire God Emperor.

So, when I fixed him with a glare, the Fire God Emperor gave a ‘here we go again’ sort of shrug.

⁂

“What’s the matter, Ephthal? All you do is run about.”

From the very opening, fire magic of Level 8, or of Level 9, came flying one after another. Against it, the methods open to me were two.

One was to accelerate with low-tier wind magic and slip the Fire God Emperor’s attacks. The other was to parry his attacks with high-tier defensive magic, that was all.

“Come now, let’s have a flashy exchange of fire. You’ve got a Level 10 too, haven’t you?”

But I wouldn’t play along. Trade magic head-on in the high tiers and I had no chance of winning.

Owing to the matter of magic aptitude, my formula-processing speed in the high tiers ran to about half the Fire God Emperor’s. There was a hopeless gap there, and that was exactly why I’d been the weakest of the Four Emperors. What I could do amounted to running, running, running away, and taking the slightest opening he let slip along the way, an opening you could barely even call one—

“Level 8: Thunder God Strike!”

“Level 7: Four-Spirit Grand Defensive Array.”

Right. Take the opening, and still it’s blocked. A Level 8 I’d sweated blood to build, the Fire God Emperor blocked with a Level 7 he threw up in an instant.

Not speed alone, the gap in aptitude became a gap in a spell’s very performance, and stood in my way. If he was a heavyweight truck barreling along at a hundred and twenty an hour, I was, at best, a beat-up little pickup with a top speed of sixty.

“Still, all this scurrying about… you mean to cling to me and not let go, out of sheer spite, don’t you.”

“Peel me off and all that’s left is your specialty—I get seared through by that long-range Level 10 of yours.”

“Then how about this?! Area bombardment!”

What was loosed was a storm of Level 9 flame that raged out with the Fire God Emperor at its heart. I threw a Level 8 barrier over my whole body, but take a direct hit and there was no doubt I’d be charred black in an instant.

I deployed wind magic ahead of me and accelerated hard to the rear. Dodging the direct blast, and where the flame’s force had thinned, this time I deployed wind magic behind me. Layering in body-strengthening besides, I closed the distance in one rush.

So, the flame gone out entirely, and seeing me still clinging in close even after he’d used an area spell, the Fire God Emperor’s face twitched a touch.

“You’re getting to be a proper nuisance, you know?”

That said, my attacks weren’t landing either. Against which, take one direct hit from him and a game-over-grade attack came slamming in. Keep on like this and a slow bleed to death was a certainty. Let my concentration snap and make one mistake, and that would be the end.

Fight him straight and I had no chance of winning. So, what to do?

That Level 9 great technique he’d just used, and I’d dealt with that stroke of his in perfect form. Yes, my movement just now had gone clean past what the Fire God Emperor foresaw. A small opening before his next shot fired, but the largest opening yet.

The one chance was here and nowhere else.

“How’s this?!”

A single flash of the blade.

The Fire God Emperor raised a physical barrier to guard, and at the same time loosed a fire-strike at me in counter. Slipping the fire-strike, I made to swing the blade again. The Fire God Emperor, reading it, made to throw up a second physical barrier, and in that instant I flung the blade aside and drove myself in.

—A flying cross-armbar.

“I’ve seen that move. A first-sight killer only means something because it’s a first sight.”

I seized the Fire God Emperor’s right hand in both of mine, and just as I made to spring—the Fire God Emperor’s whole body wrapped itself in flame.

“Level 9: Self Burning.”

“Gaaah!”

“Ha. Looks like both your palms got scorched, doesn’t it?”

Taking distance with a back-step for the moment, I checked my palms. Damn, just as the Fire God Emperor said, they’d be no use to me for a while.

So I put a hand to my breast and drew out a metal cylinder.

“Then how about this, Fire God Emperor.”

“A summoning tube?”

“Small-World Otogi Fantasia.”

What came out of the tube were three phantom demons.

—Oberon.

—Titania.

—And Bastet.

“The primordial three who run that world. Even you’ll have a bit of trouble with these.”

The three sprang at him all at once, and the Fire God Emperor made to sweep them off like clustering flies with a Level 9 area spell. But the three were wary of the very area magic that would overturn their numbers, and so of course took no direct hit. Titania’s defensive magic cut off the flame, while Oberon and Bastet, working in concert, sent countless blades of ice at the Fire God Emperor from every direction.

Oberon the spear. Titania the shield. And Bastet took up the roles of spear and shield as the moment demanded.

For all of some ten seconds, a dizzying exchange of blows unfolded before my eyes. A struggle at a level you could fairly call the ultimate—and in the end it settled with the Fire God Emperor mastering them by a two-blow Level 9. That is, Titania’s defensive wall couldn’t fully hold off the magic he loosed, and, seared by the infernal flame, the three fell fighting-incapable.

It wasn’t a direct hit, so their lives weren’t in danger. But leave them long, and there was no doubt they were in a bad way.

“Your trump card, too, was a bucket on a bonfire, it seems. It won’t even buy you time.”

“No, this much time is plenty. Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”

If this didn’t get through, then no means of attack I possessed would touch this man.

But the Fire God Emperor, even faced with my supreme magic, wore a cool expression—

“Level 10: Flame of Aegis.”

Lightning-strike and barrier ground against each other, and in a matter of some seconds my Level 10 vanished.

I’d expected it to be blocked… but that it wouldn’t hold even a few seconds was, I’ll own, more than I’d foreseen. Nothing came out of me now but a laugh of disbelief. And yet, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat here, that was a rough spot to be in.

“Your trump card, blocked as well. This is the end of it now.”

“That’s right. You do block it, don’t you—my Level 10, you block clean through it easily, don’t you? All that, I knew. Having Bastet and the others buy me time wasn’t to buy the time to build a Level 10.”

“Hn? Ephthal… what are you talking about?”

“What I’m saying is, it’s my win.”

Taking the declaration of victory, the Fire God Emperor checked the situation around him… and then, as if giving it up, shook his head. He’d grasped his defeat, no doubt.

At the Fire God Emperor, standing stock-still where he was, I threw one more word.

“That I ran about from the opening, that I summoned the phantom demons, all of it was to buy the time until Sasha and the rest settled their fights. You understood it too, surely… that dragged out, you had no chance of winning.”

“No, I knew there was a possibility it would come to that as a result. But that you’d throw yourself on others from the very start, of all things…”

“The circumstances are what they are. I had to beat you, whatever it took, and get you to talk. Now then, what’ll you do, Fire God Emperor?”

Sasha, who had come through his own death-match; and Svetlana; and Merlin. And the phantom demons, one after another, closed in and ringed the Fire God Emperor round.

“Ah, this is numbers against too few, right enough. If I’m to name the cause of my loss, it’s that I couldn’t put you down in short order. Well, from the moment the Otogi Fantasia revived, I suppose the loss was already mine.”

“But…” The Fire God Emperor lowered his lashes, sorrowful. “My loss as the Fire God Emperor… is the condition that comes attached, mind you.”

And so the Fire God Emperor lifted his palm to the heavens and set to building a formula.

At the absurd pressure of magic coming off the Fire God Emperor, I, no, every last one of us there set to building defensive formulae at top speed. Most likely everyone, not just me, was posting the fastest formula-construction of their lives. Build it or die. So we drove past our limits, building for dear life. Something anyone could feel in the skin, this-is-bad, that was the kind of ridiculous magic the Fire God Emperor was raising.

“The realm called Level 11. From here on, not as one of the Four Emperors, but as a demon who has thrown open the Gate of Solomon—the door that leads on to the Goddess of Reincarnation—I’ll be your opponent.”

At that, cries close to screams from Sasha and Svetlana rang out around me.

“Merlin-chan, get behind me!”

Next, Sasha’s angry roar as he rushed toward Anastasia and the others.

“You girls! Don’t leave my side!”

There shouldn’t have been any room in the rest of you to cover someone else. And of course I hadn’t the confidence to weather the magic about to be loosed, either. But even so I, too… rushed to the fallen Bastet and the others, and threw up a barrier to wrap the three of them and myself within.

“Flower of flame—bloom in wild profusion. Level 11: Homura.”

And so the fire of the end swallowed us up.

⁂

The whole expanse had been leveled to bare ground. Half the palace was blown away, and off in the distance I could see a collapsed building going up in flames.

Sasha and the rest… what had become of them?

Looking, I saw that Sasha, though his clothes were scorched, could still keep fighting. Merlin and Anastasia and the girls, whom he’d shielded, were unhurt, though where these girls were concerned, against the Fire God Emperor they’d been out of the reckoning as fighting strength from the start. Svetlana lay stretched out, half her body charred black in the act of shielding Merlin. But somehow she was alive. On her side, fighting on was out of the question. Merlin was close to unharmed, but ask whether she’d count as fighting strength in this arena, and I couldn’t help my doubts. And the phantom demons, half of them gone, the rest very nearly at their last breath.

“What… was that?”

Just one shot. Yes, with a single shot, this fellow had flipped the whole tide of battle on its head.

“Now then, the tables are turned, Ephthal.”

And I, too, was far from unhurt. My body, smoking in fits, was burned over its whole surface, and in places had gone to char besides. Judging by the damage, for me as well… fighting on was out of the question. My knees folded with a jolt, and I toppled to the ground where I stood.

“Oh, done already, Ephthal?”

With a light step, the Fire God Emperor came near. When I somehow managed to look up, he thrust his palm toward me… it seemed he meant to finish me off.

“Farewell then. A rotten tie it was, but poignant to think of it as the last.”

I meant to fling something back at him, but only breath leaked from my lungs, and it wouldn’t come to words.

There, the Fire God Emperor broke his gaze from me and turned his face to the right.

“Fire God Emperor. Did you truly think that, were my Otogi Fantasia not to revive, I would come before this place empty-handed?”

Tongue lolling out, Sasha grinned wickedly. There at his side stood a war-maiden with wings of silver-white, clad in golden armor.

“Seraph: Gabriel. This, now, this is my true trump card.”

Then Sasha threw his voice my way.

“That said, even I can’t hold long against the likes of this. Ephthal, now is the time. Cast off the shackle that’s bound you all these long years—the curse of your magic aptitude.”

My mind had gone hazy, and the last of it I couldn’t hear well. And in that blurring field of view, Sasha snapped his fingers, and my consciousness cut to black.

⁂

Where was this?

An expanse of unbroken white, a space I didn’t know, and before my eyes a golden-haired goddess.

—Was this… the Reincarnation Chamber?

How had I come to a place like this… and there it struck me. It seemed I’d gone and died back there. But I’d used re-reincarnation once before, so there should have been no coming here again for me. Why, then…? As I was turning that over, a voice calling me came from behind.

“Merlin?”

“Forgive me. Just this once, I break your order. You may strike me with your fist this time, and I’ll not mind.”

While I was wondering what she was on about, Svetlana’s form appeared behind Merlin. As though by some dimensional-transfer magic… all at once.

“Junior? Our resolve is already made up.”

My head couldn’t begin to keep pace with the situation. What in the world are these two saying… and, leaving me behind in the dust, the pair of them nodded together.

“Hold on, what are you two going on about…?”

Just then, the Goddess of Reincarnation spoke to me, a smile on her lips.

“Welcome, Ephthal. It’s been a while. I hadn’t thought you would open the gate and come back here, but…”

The gate…? No, wait, this is…

“That’s right, Ephthal-sama. Taking the Scarlet of Hades for the Key of Solomon, you opened the gate.”

I glared at Merlin and threw the words at her as though bawling her out.

“Merlin, I told you before, I said I’d never treat my magic aptitude by this method!”

“And I told you, did I not. That I would break your order.”

“The Goddess demands a price. In exchange for power, you have to offer up the soul of someone precious. There’s no way in hell I could do that!”

“Which is precisely why we are here.”

“…I really will hit you, you know?”

As I clenched my fist, Svetlana let a gentle smile rise to her face.

“Junior? Why is it that there are two of us… think it through, hm?”

“What are you getting at?”

“The one offered up is a single soul, isn’t it? So, when I heard this from Sasha-chan, it came to me. I somehow felt it might just work out…”

“So what are you saying?”

“You see. If the two of us split it between us… a half apiece, maybe we don’t die then and there.”

For a while I stood frozen on the spot. Then, working through what Svetlana’s words meant… a laugh slipped out of me despite myself.

“…What did Sasha say?”

“That there was a possibility. So he said.”

I held my tongue a while, then threw my words toward the Goddess.

“…So, Goddess. You heard it. Does that method go through?”

The Goddess thought on something, then gave a small nod.

“To give you the conclusion: the granting of a magic attribute is possible. However, as to the price, there is no precedent. There is a possibility that the two die instantly, and a possibility that they do not. Also, as this is an event outside the expectations of the Ten Sages, the system’s designers, the likelihood is extremely high that countermeasures will be taken from the next time on. Or else, unless you decide at once, intervention will occur, and this will become a method never to be used again.”

“So it’s a play-it-by-ear gamble.”

“That is how it comes out, yes.”

Taking the Goddess’s words, I turned back to the two.

“So it’s denied. I can’t have you cross so dangerous a bridge.”

At which, for once, the two showed me a defiant streak. That is, they shook their heads.

“With respect, Ephthal-sama?”

“What is it, Merlin?”

“There’s no fool who broods on losing before he’s even started. That’s your own byword, Ephthal-sama, is it not?”

Then, Merlin gave a little chuckle, and Svetlana started laughing after her.

“You know, Junior? I do think you’re better off giving the losing some thought before you start. But just this once, your way’s the right of it.”

There, for some reason, I ended up laughing too.

No, turn it over, and she has the right of it. There’s no fool alive who doesn’t give a thought to losing before he starts. As a matter of knowledge, I know that back on modern Earth there was someone who said that very thing, and it’s a phrase I’m fond of. But ‘nobody’s fool enough to brood on losing before he’s even begun’… I wonder who it was that first came out with it. A bold, bright sort, most likely, the kind who put the heart back into people… a splendid person, I’d wager.

And, well, once even I’d gone and laughed, there was no help for it.

“It’s my loss. You lot… you’re sure, then, that this is what you want?”

At my question the two nodded, smoothly and without a flicker of hesitation.

“We survive, without fail. Merlin, Svetlana, Anastasia, Maria, Sheryl, Sasha… and me too, of course.”

“And then…” I went on. “Everyone goes home, eats a meal, has a bath, and sleeps. That, and nothing more, is the whole of it.”

“Be sure to win, Ephthal-sama.”

To Merlin’s words, I answered with a solid thump of my fist against my chest.

“Rest easy. Your master is the strongest in the world. I’ll not lose to a soul.”

At the least, that was what I wanted to be. And it was a feeling I meant to go on holding, from here on out, always.

—For these people, who’d thrown down their lives for my sake.

—For these people, who’d believed in me.

—A man who could hold his chest out and be proud… that was what I wanted to be.

Left to myself the tears would well up, but there was no time to steep in sentiment.

“Quickly, speak your wish, Ephthal.”

Pressed by the Goddess, I let out a deep sigh.

“Well, it’s the last word in shame to come crawling back a returnee, but… magic aptitude. I’d meant to see to it under my own power.”

And, having said that far, I shook my head.

“No, there’s no shame in it. This is the wish these people entrusted to me. So, with my head high… I’ll receive it, and gladly. I want to gain an aptitude for magic.”

“Then, without further ado—“

A faint light wrapped my whole body, and my head went clear inside. Ah, I see, so this is… so this is what an aptitude for magic is.

“Goddess… send me back to where I was.”

“Then, fortune go with you.”

Particles of light rose dancing up off the surface of my body. My third time through it, but… the transfer had begun. And bit by bit the density of my body thinned. And then my consciousness cut to black.

—When I came to, I’d been carried back to the battlefield, where the Fire God Emperor waited.

⁂

Stepping out, I found Sasha fallen in tatters, and Gabriel already gone. Returned though I was, the damage to me was enormous. To say I was no different from a man at death’s door would be no overstatement.

“You’ve opened the Gate of Solomon… is how it looks.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“I think this really will be the last of it. So… let me be a little more honest, too, and talk with my heart open. The truth is, I’m grateful to you. Bridget, at the least, was able to spend a human lifetime happily, and that’s thanks to you.”

“You only ever leave me feeling irritated, though.”

“Now that’s harsh. But as a practical matter… I am grateful. Tell me, why do you get in my way? You know the circumstances now, don’t you? You must want to save Bridget too.”

“Because it’s the better answer, but not the best one. Too many are sacrificed.”

“You talk as though you know.”

“I do know. That Bridget wouldn’t wish for it.”

“I’m her brother. What is it you think you know of Bridget?”

“I know the Bridget as a wife that you don’t.”

“If it comes to that, so do I. I know the Bridget as a sister that you don’t.”

“…”

“Can you believe it, Ephthal, I have tried to raise my hand against Bridget. You’ve never harbored a feeling like that, I’d guess? Over and over I tried to kill her. But I couldn’t do it.”

“…”

“And yet, even were the whole world to turn against me, I… even so, I wanted to protect Bridget.”

“True enough, I’ve never once tried to kill Bridget. But even if the world turns against me… there, we’re the same.”

“The same?”

“Where in any world is there a man who doesn’t hold his wife dearer than all else? Set the whole world against me, and I, at least, will be on Bridget’s side.”

A silence fell. Both of us understood that, down at the root, the two of us were one and the same. And so there were no words to be found to say.

“…”

“…”

“Then what am I to do, Ephthal? There’s no art that will stop the destructive urge; all that’s left is to let her destroy as she will, or else to kill her.”

“Why does it have to come down to two choices? If there’s a time limit, then all you’ve got to do is find the answer before it runs out.”

“Truly, your half-measures never cease to exasperate me. Fundamentally a theorist, and then at the vital moment you leave it to your feelings. In the end you go tearing off with no thought for the consequences. Unchanged from the old days. Most of it just came out right in the end, wasn’t it?”

“If it comes out right, then that’s all to the good, surely.”

At that the Fire God Emperor laughed, exasperated… no, as if he’d given it up.

“You really are… I envy you, that part of you.”

“I envy you, too… you can’t bring yourself to go through with being heartless. No, the truth is I’m a man who’s never once grown up since he was a kid.”

“Let’s have done with this, Ephthal.”

“Yeah. From here on it runs parallel.”

“Both of us right, and both of us wrong. And neither one with any mind to yield.”

“Yeah. Let’s begin, Cliff.”

At the word, Cliff narrowed his eyes, as if taken by surprise.

“You’ll call me… not Fire God Emperor, but properly, by my name?”

“…Because I’ve worked out that you really haven’t changed one bit from the old days… that you’re my no-good, rotten best friend.”

Cliff laughed, glad of it, and then, quietly, said ‘thank you.’

“For true and certain, this is the final round.”

“Yeah. Let’s bring it all to an end.”

⁂

Every cell in my body was giving thanks. The brain-cells that until now had been unjustly ground down, never able to show their potential, and the magic-circuits they formed, they were giving thanks. For the day they’d longed for, the day they’d all but given up as one that would never come—for this very instant, they gave thanks. For being able to bring out the whole of the strength I’d forged, exactly as it was, with nothing to hinder it, at full power.

“Level 10: Ice God Emperor.”

Ice pillars thrust up from the earth, and from the sky a downburst that carried magic in it and froze all it touched came howling down.

“Ha. You’d put the genuine article to shame.”

With a cool look, Cliff handled my Level 10 with defensive magic and made to loose a counterstroke. But I was the faster.

“Level 10: Fire God Emperor.”

With me at its heart, an infernal blaze that this time burned all to nothing came roaring out.

“Ha… truly, you’d shame the genuine article. Be proud of it, it’s me, of all people, saying so.”

With that same cool look, Cliff handled my Level 10 with defensive magic, and this time succeeded in loosing a counterstroke.

“But mine’s the real thing—Level 10: Fire God Emperor!”

“Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”

What grew up out of the ground were the roots of a giant tree. Before me I summoned a part of the World Tree’s roots, charged with the power of the ley-lines, and made a wall of them. Cliff’s flame was drawn into the tree-roots, converted into primordial mana, and dissolved off into the air. This was, so far as I know, the most preposterous magic barrier there is. And even faced with Cliff’s Level 10, that was no exception.

“Three Level 10s… no, is a fourth already built as well? Every one of the Four Emperors’ techniques… in a span of time like this…?”

“Well, speed’s about the one thing I’ve got going for me.”

The fastest rapid-fire of Level 10s. My magic, which had fought its lonely battle all this while without the aid called aptitude and never found the means to show its true worth—that magic of mine, for the first time, was having its potential drawn out to the very limit. As though the mana itself had taken on a will, formula after formula spilled forth, one on another, overflowing.

“Then here’s the real thing on my side too—Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

It was a lightning-strike so mighty it seemed a wholly different magic from any I’d used before. Even the one who’d cast it was startled, so for Cliff it must have been past all bearing.

That said, I too was already battered to the bone. It was a simple thing, really, right now I was forcing the brain’s own opiates to secrete by magic, and only just managing to keep from blacking out. As I was now, even a blow to the back from Sheryl’s thin arm would likely have knocked me out of the fight.

“Well, when all’s said and done, this is the one I’m best at. Which stands to reason.”

“I see. So this is the real Ephthal… is it.”

It wasn’t that every stroke of the lightning got through. To put it the other way round, neither had Cliff blocked all of it clean. At all events, it seemed the damage had told on him enough that his knees were shaking.

“In that case, I’ll face you as a demon after all, Ephthal.”

So Cliff thrust his palm up toward the heavens. The instant I knew that was coming, I too began building a formula, meaning to answer with the finest magic I was capable of now. We each built our formulae and refined our mana. And it was very nearly at the same moment that our strongest formulae came complete.

“Level 11: Homura.”

What Cliff loosed was no all-directions bombardment, but a colossal fireball with the whole force of the blast concentrated on a single spot. Marking it, I thrust out my right palm to loose a counter.

—This was a magic I’d used just once, four hundred years ago. Cliff, and Isaac, and Itam… and me. A one-and-only technique, one I’d not so much as tried a single time since. But on that day, in the Demon Lord’s castle where the final battle was fought, just once, it had surely fired, an ultimate technique. Yes, this technique, fired by four joining their strength as ritual magic, once in a lifetime, would come to be given a name. That is to say—

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

This was a crystal of pure magical energy, all four of the great elements mingled together and every one of their traits cancelled clean out. To fire it at a target, that, and nothing more, was the technique. An artless one, but simple, and for that, strong.

Seeing the magic I’d loosed, Cliff let out a ‘Heh.’

“Astonishing. To go and do that with just yourself.”

My magic and Cliff’s ground against each other, and a brief deadlock set in.

“No, it’s not just me. There’s Sasha, who taught me magic. There’s Merlin and Svetlana, who made me feel I couldn’t show a sorry face as their master, who made me want to climb higher still.”

“I see. But in the end you too fell onto the road of carnage. In exchange for magic aptitude, you offered up something irreplaceable, didn’t you?”

“My disciples are… shrewd.”

“Shrewd?”

“Do it alone and you die, they said, but split it between two and it’s fine.”

“‘A horse and a deer are both four-legged, so they’re the same’… there’s a kinship to that kind of logic. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahah! What is that? It’s utter nonsense!”

“Yeah, it’s a fool’s logic, just like you say. But it’s only fools who can punch clean through a wall there’s no crossing. The clever sort never even mean to cross an uncrossable wall in the first place.”

In that moment, the deadlock of the clashing Level 11s broke. Little by little the mana was forced to one side, and soon that took on acceleration and drove hard, all at once, to the one side.

—It was the slightest of margins.

Truly it was the slightest margin, but having lost, of necessity the two supreme magics came bearing down toward me.

“Even this… doesn’t reach?”

Wringing out the last of the strength that remained, I threw up a barrier and flung myself aside. I knew well it was a bucket on a bonfire. I knew well the death was a settled thing. But I couldn’t help struggling all the same.

So, just as I was on the point of being swallowed by the torrent of mana—

“Level 10: Cauldron of the Dead.”

What reached my ears was Sasha’s voice. And in that same instant, countless higher undead appeared before me and became a shield. That I’d somehow scraped clear of the crisis by the barest hair was, it seemed, thanks to the last dregs Sasha had wrung from himself.

“Ephthal. That’s enough now… even having overcome your aptitude, you can’t reach the brat… you, at least, run.”

“Sorry, but this is the nature I’ve got. If I could carry myself cleverly, I’d never have had such a hard time of it.”

Leaving only that behind, I drove myself in at Cliff.

“Ephthal, the match should already be settled.”

“That’s the kind of line you spit out after you’ve killed me.”

“For one who isn’t a demon, even a Level 11 can be managed once and no more. Which means you have no opening for victory—Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”

An absolute barrier appeared before Cliff, and then, mercilessly, he went on.

“Level 10: Earth God Emperor. Level 10: Earth God Emperor. Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”

“Impossible… four Level 10s fired in parallel?”

“This is the power of a demon, Ephthal. Now, with Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal, breaking this barrier is out of the question, isn’t it?”

Still, come this far, it was a preposterousness that dragged a laugh out of you. But I happened to be built so that my body rejected, on the level of pure instinct, the very word ‘give up.’ So much so that, at the brink of death four hundred years back, I’d wept from sheer bitterness, unbecoming to my years.

And so I drew the blade from the sheath at my hip and, with everything I had, slashed a level sweep at the World Tree barrier.

“Ephthal… you… you’ve come and overshot even what I foresaw?!”

No wonder Sasha was astonished. What I’d just done was—

—Level 10 Magic Sword: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.

In all the ages, east and west, I know of no instance of a Level 10 magic sword being brought off. Genuine and true, this was the last card I could still play, and my highest trump.

I cut the Level 10 barrier away and closed the distance to Cliff in one rush. After this… land a diagonal cut with the blade and that would be game-set.

“…But, Ephthal… that will most likely…”

“I’m surprised. No, truly, I’m surprised, Ephthal. If that’s your trump, then this is my trump as a demon.”

Sensing the formula Cliff had built in an instant, I was struck dumb.

—Ah. This is done for.

Into Cliff’s guard… into the inside of the absolute barrier, yes, I’d been able to fling myself. All that was left was to land a sword-stroke on Cliff and it would be over, of that there was no doubt. But before my blade could reach, Cliff already had his fingertip on the trigger. Yes, this formula was—

—Level 11: Homura.

“…Why? Why can you rapid-fire a Level 11?”

Four Level 10s fired in parallel was already madness, and now a Level 11, right on the heels of the one he’d used a moment ago? A thing like this couldn’t be, no, it wasn’t a thing that had any business being possible in theory. If the daily whetting of formula-construction speed was what a contest of skill between mages came down to, then this was clean off the rails of sanity. To put it in terms of shogi, it was the madness of Cliff alone playing two moves, or three, in the space of my one. The very rules, no, the very ground it stood on, was different.

“The reason for it is this.”

Behind Cliff I could see seven spheres. The mana drifting off them was vast, and from each single one I felt a presence on Sasha’s order.

“Think of these, if you like, as cannons I loaded with magic ahead of time. The truth is I myself am all tapped out, I can’t so much as knead up a Level 6 now. Well, there is, of course, a limit on the rounds… but I’ve something like three shots’ worth of reserve still in hand, I’d say.”

“I see. So this is what came of you opening the road that leads to the Reincarnation Chamber.”

“Just so. Now, here’s where we part, Ephthal. Level 11: Homura.”

Setting my resolve, I closed my eyelids.

One second. Two. Three—

Ah, so the moment of dying comes this easily, does it. It seemed Cliff had turned me to cinders without even the time to feel pain.

At that, a sense of wrongness. When I opened my eyes—Sasha, and Cliff, were both struck dumb.

“Impossible…”

When I looked, the black sphere that had floated behind Cliff was… alight. No, to put it exactly, it had already been shot clean through by an arrow of fire magic. And in a spot a little away from us, the three who had loosed the magic were watching how things stood over here, their gazes clear and steady. Yes—

—there stood Anastasia, and Maria, and Sheryl.

To us, frozen where we were, Sheryl opened her mouth.

“…We are the weak, in this place.”

“That’s right, the small-fry of small-fry, that’s us. But—it’s for that very reason that not a soul spares us any mind.”

“Out of the reckoning, so not watched in the least. And because we’re not watched… a surprise attack lands for certain. Well, it’s Anastasia’s win, tactically speaking.”

“Ha… you lot…” A dry laugh spilled out of me despite myself.

True enough, there’d been luck in it too. Had Cliff’s trump card been strong in resistance to magic… at that point the whole scheme would have fallen apart. And yet, on this battlefield you could fairly call the ultimate, under conditions where a life was a thing that might blow away at a breath, these three had watched for their moment all the while, stayed weak, and by the very logic of that weakness reached their fangs even to Cliff.

—The logic of the weak.

It is the reasoning of the primordial mage. To guard themselves from beasts, from monsters, from danger, humans took to themselves the magics that begin with body-strengthening. That too was the choice of the weak, and it too is the logic of the weak. In that sense… genuinely and truly, these three had fought a battle as mages, and had won.

“…And so it seems that’s how it is. Looks like the match is decided, Cliff.”

“…It appears I’ve lost. But I’m surprised… with a gap in forces like this, there shouldn’t have been anywhere a reason for me to lose.”

“No, I lost to you. It was down to the wire, seeing as our side threw everything in and you were just the one man.”

“…”

“It’s been so from the old days. On my own, I can’t do a thing worth mentioning.”

“No, even so… I lost to you as a mage. That’s a fact past shifting. And as a demon, too… I may have beaten you, but I lost to all of you—a complete defeat, Ephthal.”

“Hey, Cliff? Won’t you walk the road together with me? The goal we’re making for ought to be the same.”

“No, that I can’t do. Say you let me go here; once the wounds of the fight have healed, I’ll walk this same road again… it is, after all, the conclusion I drew over four hundred years.”

“…Stubborn son of a bitch.”

“That, of all things, I’d rather not hear from you.”

I know Cliff well. And it’s exactly because I know him well that I understand: once this man has decided a thing is so, he’ll not be choosy about his means, and never, ever will he bend his own will… his own pride.

“But it’s true I’m a little… tired. So I’ll bow out here… the rest, I leave to you.”

“…See you, then, Cliff.”

“Yeah. Farewell, Ephthal.”

And then I swung the demon-blade wreathed in violet lightning.

“Level 10 Magic Sword: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

In the space of an instant, all of it came to an end.

And with the tension that had held me taut cut clean through, I crumpled where I stood, and lost consciousness at once.

Chapter 4 – Otogi Fantasia

Merlin’s Perspective

“Yes. My little sister, and Ephthal’s wife—Bridget.”

Those words were the cue, and what began was a long telling. For all the harrowing matter of it, the Fire God Emperor’s tone as he spoke stayed flat and even, as though I stood before some high priest come into enlightenment. And when he had told the whole of it, the throne room settled into a heavy, heavy silence.

“So, to protect Bridget, I need to raise destruction at set intervals. By whatever method does the least harm, naturally.”

“And now… where is Ephthal-sama’s lady wife…?”

“The truth is I’d like to let her live an ordinary life… but for now I’ve had her sleeping, in a certain place. Until I’ve put my house in order I have my hands full, you see. In any case, are you satisfied now, with my reasons?”

“And yet, to guard a single person, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands… over the long run the toll comes to a number past all reckoning. I cannot for the life of me see how the accounts are meant to balance.”

“Then, care to stop me by force?”

“No… that is not it. I am asking whether there truly is no other road. Laying the matter before Ephthal-sama, say, and seeking some other manner of solution together with him.”

“Ephthal would say to look for another road, no question. But because nothing can be done, I have given up and set to my preparations.”

There was reason in that, right enough. The Fire God Emperor had known Ephthal-sama long ago as well, and was surely speaking only after long thought. That laying it before Ephthal-sama would end in nothing but a clash, I could not claim the feeling was lost on me.

“…I’ll not deny it. No, beyond a doubt, that is exactly what he would say.”

“Which is precisely why I never sat down to talk it over with Ephthal. Because it is Bridget we speak of, there is no chance that fellow would ever hear me out.”

The Fire God Emperor and Ephthal-sama both, it seemed, threw all appearances to the wind the moment the matter turned to Bridget-sama. That they held her dearer than anything, one need only look at their faces to know it, and that too was the same in them. And that I felt the smallest touch of envy for Bridget-sama, was that because the discipline of my heart was yet wanting? This dark feeling, however much time went by, was never a pleasant thing to carry.

“Tell me, Fire God Emperor. Supposing I bend the knee to you, what, precisely, would you have me do?”

The Fire God Emperor raised two fingers.

“What I ask is two things. The first: when Bridget’s destructive urge reaches its critical point, to secure a place for that power to vent itself.”

He said it without a flicker crossing his face, but it meant a great many lives would be lost. Did this man understand as much? No, it was because he understood that he kept his face so deliberately still. That he had no choice but to be studiedly calm, and coldly so, he himself understood better than anyone.

“The second: a show of force, to guard Bridget, who carries within her the seed of becoming the world’s enemy.”

“Hm… let me hear it in full.”

“As with the Demon Lord of old, should a subjugation force be raised the world over to stand against her heedless violence, that becomes a nuisance. Which is why I am bowing my head and asking your cooperation.”

“You do not look, to my eye, like a man bowing his head.”

“Now that’s harsh. I am, in my own fashion, doing my level and sincere best here… Well. In all things the opening move is what counts. I want the demonstration to come off without fail.”

“A demonstration… you say?”

“Just so,” the Fire God Emperor nodded. “Every preparation is nearly in place. A few days hence, one region of this country is set to be destroyed. With that as the opening move, we show the world our might, in many places at once. And that is why I need pieces, and numbers of them. To speak plainly: once I have dealt a heavy blow to the capitals of the continent’s principal nations, I will declare this country sealed off from the world.”

What is this man saying… A faint ache started up behind my brow.

“A heavy blow? Sealing off the country? And razing a region of this land besides? Have you taken leave of your senses, Fire God Emperor?”

“First, with the Scarlet of Hades I have already secured, I raise a great outbreak of undead near this country’s borders. The outbreak swallows the neighboring lands too, and the world at large takes it for the onset of a great calamity. And at that same moment, with my elite mages for pieces—I bombard the world’s cities, one and all, with area magic.”

“You…! Have you truly gone mad?”

“Considered in cold, practical terms, it is the best answer there is. My own magic is not limitless; set against the whole world, my strength would run dry sooner or later. So I settle everything in the first stroke. In short, I want the world to take us for ‘lunatics you must never, ever lay a finger on.’”

“As a matter of plain fact, you look every inch the lunatic to me.”

“Your name has weight, and Svetlana’s, and Sasha’s, that matters. Add to it the appearance of the first-generation Fire God Emperor and Ice God Emperor. The lost Level 10 bombardment… and the unveiling of the second-generation Four Emperors, and a catastrophe striking the world over all at once. Do the whole of it together, in one connected sweep, and the world falls into a vast panic, a vast confusion. And if, without missing a beat, I proclaim a closed country of mutual non-interference, what do you suppose comes of it?”

“A blade in a madman’s hand, near enough, as the saying goes. No one would wish to have any dealings with such people.”

“Just so, the closed country, complete. Then, free at last of interference from any other nation, I can make this land the outlet for Bridget’s destructive urge. Well, that is the whole of my plan.”

This man, did he truly mean to carry it that far? To guard a single woman? At the sheer derangement of the notion, dread shook me so that my knees began to tremble.

“But, Cliff-chan? Do you… do you really think us big sisters would lend a hand to a thing like that?”

At the glaring Svetlana, the Fire God Emperor shook his head, as if to say, ‘a pity.’

“It seems I have spent my time to no purpose… am I to understand it so?”

Smoothly, the Fire God Emperor turned his palm on us. At the same instant the first-generation Ice God Emperor and the second-generation Four Emperors brought their attack stances to bear on us as well. Neither side, it goes without saying, had let its spell-formulae unravel this whole while. The hair-trigger standoff between us had not shifted an inch.

“Wait, Svetlana.”

“Eh…? H-hold on, what’s got into you, Merlin-chan? Don’t tell me you mean to go along with him?”

Paying Svetlana no mind, I addressed the Fire God Emperor thus.

“I will do the work of two. That will serve, will it not, Fire God Emperor?”

“…Are you in earnest, Merlin-chan?”

“Enough, now, leave this to me, Svetlana. Fire God Emperor… strictly speaking, Svetlana is no disciple of Ephthal-sama’s; if anything, her allegiance lies with the Dragon Emperor’s bloodline. Should she wish it she could call upon the dragon-kin, no, those creatures… were Svetlana to take part in some folly, they would move of their own accord to guard the pride of the clan.”

The Fire God Emperor turned something over a while, then gave a small nod.

“Well, that is true enough.”

“To fasten dishonor upon Svetlana is one and the same as fouling the Dragon Emperor’s name. For you, on the point of making enemies on every side, to let your troubles multiply beyond this can hardly be sound policy, can it?”

“…Understood. Svetlana I will set aside, for the time being.”

And so I drew a slow breath and declared, in a voice pitched to reach every ear in the place without fail:

“Lay not a hand on anyone bound to Ephthal-sama. That is the absolute condition.”

“Good, we have our bargain. I am glad Ephthal’s stubbornness and his temper didn’t come down to you, Merlin.”

The moment the Fire God Emperor shaped a smile, I spat at him, ptooh.

“You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. I too, of course, am stubborn and ill-tempered… see that you keep it in mind.”

He arched back and slipped the spittle, so I clicked my tongue at him, loud enough to be heard, tch.

“Ha. Then I shall take pains not to cross your line, either.”

⁂

“Such being the case, Ephthal-sama is inside Sasha-sama’s Otogi Fantasia spell.”

In a room of the ducal mansion, I laid it out so for Anastasia and the others. At which Maria, a vein standing at her temple, bawled:

“Sasha-sama… no, that old geezer… he betrayed us?! I held my tongue on account of him being Ephthal’s master, but he’s got that creepy, pervy air about him and I never took to the man from the start!”

She stamped about in a fury, a girl foul of mouth as ever. Still, that was Maria’s nature, able to put her anger out plainly where all could see it. In honesty, I could not swear I felt no envy of it.

Just then Anastasia tilted her head, as though puzzled, and asked:

“Whatever do you mean, Merlin-sama? There’s no way Master could lose.”

Anastasia was beaming away as if it were all some joke, and for that very reason, to speak the truth of it made my chest ache.

“I’m sorry to say it, but it is the truth.”

“…Eh? Truly? Could it be he’s, he’s gone and died?”

And as Anastasia’s face paled before my eyes—overcome by the shock of it, Sheryl toppled woozily where she stood.

“Why is it Sheryl who keels over, the way this talk is going?!”

Maria was shouting, but… this was ill. Sheryl’s color had passed clean through deep blue and turned the shade of clay. She seemed dead away, not stirring in the least.

“…”

“Rest easy, Sheryl. He is alive.”

At that instant, Sheryl’s eyes snapped open and she shot upright.

“…Of course. There is no way Ephthal would die.”

“Well, but, going by the circumstantial evidence alone… by any ordinary reckoning, he may in fact be dead.”

At that instant, Sheryl’s eyes rolled white and she fell over again.

“In any event, this is Ephthal-sama we speak of. Dying is not in it.”

“…Naturally. There is no way Ephthal would die.”

At that instant, Sheryl’s eyes snapped open and she shot upright.

“That said, by any ordinary reckoning there is, after all, the chance his life stands in danger…”

At that instant, sure enough, Sheryl’s eyes rolled white and she fell over once more.

It was diverting enough that I half thought to keep on a while longer, but this was truly no time for such play.

“At all events, as a practical matter Ephthal-sama’s life or death is unknown. But he is in no mortal peril, of that I hold my own quiet conviction.”

“Um, well… er… but even supposing Master came back, could he really do anything about the Fire God Emperor?”

“Sasha-sama himself has been beaten, so on the plain question of winning or losing, by ordinary reckoning it looks grim. But before a battle at the razor’s edge, Ephthal-sama always used to say this.”

The words that came next, Svetlana and I spoke as one.

“‘Who’s fool enough to brood on losing before he’s even started?’”

Word for word it fell together, and I could not help laughing. Truly, in the oddest corners, Svetlana and I are of a mind.

“It was Ephthal-sama’s byword. Words, so I hear, of a master he revered in his heart… So, it will be all right.”

“Mm. That’s how it’s come out right this far, and if it’s Junior, he’ll actually pull it off.”

Taking in our words, the three girls looked at one another.

“Still, we are no match for you… What you’re saying is outrageous, and yet the two of you talk as though things going well were a thing already decided… You couldn’t manage that without believing it from the very bottom of your hearts.”

“…This is what the long years make.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe in him either, only not without a single cloud, the way you two do… So, what’s our move, Merlin-sama?”

“Rest easy. The house of Duke Alcott included, while our master is away I shall stand at the front. You children need not trouble yourselves over a thing.”

Then I turned my words on the spiteful old man who, all this while, had kept himself unseen and only chuckled away.

“So, what is it you intend to do, Sasha-sama?”

“Ho. So you had noticed.”

Optical camouflage, presence-erasure, and a sound-sealing formula, unraveling all of them, Sasha-sama, who had sat in a chair the whole time and watched the entire affair, showed himself.

“Eh? Why is Sasha, no, why is the old geezer in a place like this?”

Instantaneous movement. By high-order teleportation magic, Sasha-sama planted himself, feet astride, directly before the seated Maria, and with no pause whatever drove a kick into her face.

“Who are you calling gramps, you little brat.”

“Gyoheb—!”

A clean high kick, and a filthy shriek. High-order magic for so trifling a reason, though… I nearly went limp.

“One’s elders are to be honored, girl.”

Maria had gone over backward, chair and all, under Sasha-sama’s high kick. He mounted her and threw a punch at her face, one, two. Yes, no mercy in it at all.

“Why, you…! I’m not so much the finished human being as to go honoring a traitor!”

“Ho. You have the look of a girl who dearly wants a hard time of it.”

Witnessing the scene, Anastasia was all of a fluster, ‘Uwawa…’ And yet she was, sure enough, taking up in both arms a huge vase that had stood as ornament in the corner of the room, and stealing up on Sasha-sama from behind. It seemed she meant, as chastisement for the traitor, to clout him from the rear with the vase. This girl truly does do the unforeseen… but let that pass.

“We are getting nowhere, Sasha-sama! Maria, quit egging him on! And Anastasia, if you have no wish to die, put that down!”

⁂

“To give you the conclusion first, by the end of the time I’ve relayed to Ephthal and Merlin—by the countdown’s close, we need every preparation on our side finished.”

“And by that you mean?”

As I heard him out, it proved just as I had read it: Sasha-sama had only been feigning to follow the Fire God Emperor. With Duke Alcott and the former knight-commander Moria, who had joined the talk partway through, the discussion seemed at last to be reaching its heart.

“Just as the brat said in the royal palace, his opening move is to wipe out a part of the country, this Alcott ducal domain, to be precise, root and branch.”

“Wipe out the ducal domain?”

“Mm. One piece of the demonstration to the other nations. The domain lies near the southern border, so by its geography the upheaval is easily marked from other lands… And there’s a further aim: it’s a loyalty test set for Merlin and me.”

“Whether we can serve as his pieces, a trial of that, you mean?”

“Say what you will, he’s spread himself too wide and is truly at his very limit. He’s laid his hands on the power of a skill that runs counter to magic aptitude, a thing he ought never to have come by, and the drawbacks of that are, naturally, without end. Were he hemmed round by an army of even a few thousand, his brain’s processing would be over its head in no time, and even sustaining the fight would come hard… A superman for a single instant, built for the ultra-short decisive battle, so I read him.”

“And that is why he seeks pieces to move.”

“Mm. And necromancy is one answer to it. His reckoning is to use the Scarlet of Hades, call up the undead by a large-scale formula, dye this land in blood, and so put his forces in order.”

At those words, Svetlana and I caught Sasha-sama’s drift and bit our lips.

“That would be bad indeed.”

“Mm,” Svetlana nodded too.

“Eh, bad? Bad how?”

At Maria’s question Sasha-sama let out a deep sigh.

“It isn’t merely to show off to other lands, nor merely to spite Merlin and me, that the Fire God Emperor means to do this.”

Then Sasha-sama took up a teacup from the table. It was Maria’s cup, so he was catching a look of protest for it, but such things Sasha-sama never minded. Free and easy as ever, he drained the tea in one draught and said:

“By wiping this land out, his forces swell enormously. Shall I lay out the steps… First, the undead hunt the living in great number. Then the field overflows with the souls that slip loose of the corpses. Using those corpses and those souls, the Fire God Emperor mass-produces more undead still. Then, lo and behold, the dead calling the dead, the undead breed like rats.”

He set the cup down, the saucer clicking. Then, gloomily, Sasha-sama went on.

“The name of that summoning rite is… Level 11: Carnival of Death. The birth of a great deathless host.”

At the words a leaden air settled over the room.

“As a byproduct… no, perhaps this is the true prize. With the overflowing death he means to produce yet more Scarlet of Hades. In fact, what he used to revive and bind the Ice God Emperor and the second-generation Four Emperors into his service was the Scarlet of Hades as well. And once he holds the orbs in quantity, where he makes for next is, beyond doubt—the Forbidden Labyrinth.”

“The Forbidden Labyrinth, you say?”

“Mm. Frozen Hell. By another name, the Mages’ Graveyard. A frozen labyrinth of fiendish difficulty that has stood these thousand years, where corpses lie abandoned and never once decay.”

A shudder ran through me, and sweat traced down my back.

“Surely not…?”

“Just so. The high mages of that age who braved the fiendish labyrinth and lost their lives… rise again in swarms. Picture a host that appears wielding Level 9 and, though few in number—even Level 10.”

“Should it come to that… no one could lay a hand on them any longer. Even with the whole of the world against them…”

The mere thought set my head to aching. Even four hundred years ago there had been no one able to do such a thing, and that the word ‘Level 11’ could be tossed out so easily, at the meaning of it, gooseflesh rose along my arms.

“But, Sasha-sama, you don’t mean to let him have it all his own way, surely?”

Nodding slowly, Sasha-sama laid down an orb he’d drawn from his breast.

“If they come at us with a great outbreak of undead, then we counter with a great outbreak of our own.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The crux of it is simply that people mustn’t die. To guard a wide reach, you want a wide-ranging host. And so—we, too, will blanket this land with the undead.”

“One moment, Sasha-sama. Set aside the Level 11: Carnival of Death that breeds the undead like rats; the very first summoning of undead is itself a grand formula. It is precisely because the Fire God Emperor is versed in necromancy that he can do it, is it not?”

“Don’t take me lightly, girl. Who do you take me for—the Undead Emperor, no?”

Ah, now that she said it, so he was. The image of the man as combat-specialized had loomed so large, but he too was a necromancer without peer, one who had, far and far back, pulled off the sheer absurdity of rendering his own self undying.

“Well, I never let off a shred of that air in the ordinary run of things, so it’s no wonder you’d forget.”

“But even supposing the carnage here is prevented, that won’t reach the root of the matter, will it…?”

“In this case, what matters is that fighting be underway here. The Fire God Emperor is running his various reinforcements all in parallel, you see. His inner magic-circuits are packed to the brim, with next to no resources left over… and that is the point we strike.”

I thought a moment, then clapped my hands. ‘I see.’

“Just so. To keep his large-scale undead in hand, the Fire God Emperor must fix his whole focus there… is that it?”

“Mm. And many of his pieces, too, will be drawn off to shore up the formula. By the nature of the working the man himself won’t trouble to go in person, but he’ll need hands to run things on the ground.”

“So his stronghold is left all but stripped bare?”

“He’ll have his close aides packed about him, right enough, but the small-fry of his retinue will thin out for certain. And in the thick of the clash of outbreak against outbreak here, together with the returned Ephthal we storm the stronghold… Well, such is the shape of the plan.”

Sasha-sama turned his gaze on Anastasia and the others.

“Anastasia. Maria. Sheryl.”

Rounded on so abruptly, the three widened their eyes in surprise.

“You lot are small-fry. Small-fry through and through, the very picture of it.”

Then Sasha-sama drew a great, great breath and, sure enough, boomed in a great, great voice:

“That’s right—the mooost utterly hopeless small-fry there is.”

“Well, we’re aware of it, but isn’t that a rather harsh way to put it?”

Paying Anastasia’s protest not the slightest heed, Sasha-sama pressed on.

“In any case, to cut down the dead weight, from here on you lot will be shut up at my place. And, Merlin, Svetlana?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Have you the resolve to throw your lives down for Ephthal? That we cannot win by fair means is plain. I have… a small notion.”

“On the contrary, not staking our lives isn’t an option that so much as exists.”

“Mm. I’m Junior’s wife, after all.”

Hearing our words, Sasha-sama gave a great, satisfied nod.

“Fraser… later I’ll be borrowing a room of the mansion. One that can weather magical drilling would do best… I’ll be laying an impromptu formula on Merlin and Svetlana.”

“A formula? Well, I’ve no objection, but…”

“And I’ve a word for Fraser and Moria besides, later on. There is a thing for the two of you to do as well.”

The Fire God Emperor’s Perspective

The throne room of the royal palace.

Sprawled beside the throne, propped on an elbow and running my eyes over a grimoire, I was joined by my aide Harold. Harold, like Joseph, whom I’ve set over the prison as warden, has been my disciple these four hundred years.

“Harold. How do things stand with Frozen Hell?”

“The moment the Carnival of Death concludes, all is arranged to begin the search. But, is it well to leave Sasha on a long leash? His disloyalty is surely past the need of confirming by now.”

“That he made off with an orb means he too intends a great outbreak, I should think. Well, it’s likely his only move, and I call it a fine plan… provided he can truly bring it off.”

“And by that you mean?”

“Against the off chance, I’ve worked the orb so that no one but me can handle it.”

“…I see. Cautious indeed.”

To Harold, nodding as though impressed, I answered him lightly.

“Ha. Having settled on keeping Sasha and Merlin close, to go careless at my own feet… that would be no sane man’s doing. Well, those two are a genuine loss, truly. I don’t think I’ve ever, in all my life, so resented my own want of a following.”

“Pay your popularity no mind. Genius, at times, is taken for nothing more than eccentricity.”

“As irony it wants for wit; as a joke it fails to raise a laugh. In any event, whichever way it falls, thanks to the last trap I’ve laid, Ephthal, that hope of theirs, won’t be able to come back either.”

At that, Harold knit his brows, dubious.

“The last trap? I’ve heard of no such thing myself.”

“Because I never told you. Ephthal and the rest, thinking to outfox me, will aim to escape not by breaking the barrier but by collapsing the world itself. And Joseph, whom I’ve set as warden, has that temperament of his… Against an Ephthal who shows no mercy to the vile, ninety-nine times in a hundred he’ll be killed. And the formula that fires from that… Ephthal and his people will get a surprise, I think.”

“A formula…?”

“Just so. A second dimensional barrier, formed and set off with the warden’s death-cry serving in place of an incantation.”

“Premised on a disciple’s death… you’ve used Joseph as a sacrificial pawn?”

With a nod, I declared it flatly.

“I do not choose my means.”

“…Am I, too, to be discarded one day?”

“I won’t discard you. It’s merely a matter of putting you to meaningful use.”

“…Quite so. You are that sort of man.”

“And yet…” I looked up at the ceiling. “For a thing to be called victory, it is far too hollow. To raise my hand against a friend of old, to kill the guiltless, to guard a single woman… even I can’t find anything productive in it.”

“Do you regret having chosen this road?”

“The road I chose is the road of carnage. There is no turning back from it. These blood-wet hands of mine… are not permitted so much as the luxury of regret.”

Merlin’s Perspective

“Now then, hereabouts should do.”

Riding the back of a dragon-turned Svetlana, we set down upon a grassland of the ducal domain. To the south of the grassland stretched a great forest running off toward the distant elf village, a fine enough spot for a picnic, I daresay.

“Sasha-sama, what is this place?”

“An old battlefield of five years back. For mass-producing undead there’s no want of material. There are several conditions to the making of undead, you see… and by the lay of the land it’s a certainty the other side will use this place too.”

Then Sasha-sama drew an orb from his breast and set to building up the formula for large-scale undead-making. He had the practiced air of one who’s earned the name Undead Emperor, right enough, but a shadow crossed his face at once.

“Nn…? The orb, I cannot… draw the power out of it.”

“What can this mean?”

Sasha-sama shrugged, as if to say his hands were tied.

“No mystery to it, the orb’s been tampered with, by the look of things.”

“You were read, then?”

“Mm. This is as far as it goes. Before long this land overflows with the undead the Fire God Emperor has made; the great outbreak of death, spreading far and wide, is past stopping—and the Carnival of Death that comes after, there’s no means to halt it.”

Having said so much, Sasha-sama let a merry smile rise to his lips.

“Or so, I should think, is how the Fire God Emperor has it reckoned.”

Turning over what he meant by that, I quickly produced the parcel Svetlana had entrusted into my keeping.

“You mean to use the orb we took before from the foreign tribe? Since Svetlana kept it in hand, there’d have been no tampering with this one… is that your thought?”

“No, no need of it. That one’s set aside for use when it comes to that business of yours and Svetlana’s.”

“…Then how will you proceed?”

At that Sasha-sama laid a forefinger to his lips and smiled mischievously.

“The policy doesn’t change. Outbreak we meet with outbreak.”

“…Eh?”

“Slow, aren’t you… There’s one more connection to hand, no? Or rather, once before, an outbreak very nearly broke loose in the elf forest, did it not? It’s merely that the scale of that gets a whole lot bigger.”

From his breast Sasha-sama drew out a metal tube. It had the look of a magic-tool for summoning, but… what in the world could this be about?

“Such being the case, it’s over to you, Cerberus.”

A thread of light loosed from the tube. It struck the ground, and what appeared there was a monster-beast of the very highest order—no, a monster crowned with the name of divine beast.

“Is this… the divine beast that Sasha-sama is said to have laid to rest, back when Ephthal-sama subjugated Fenrir?”

“No, laid it to rest I never did. This too is of the kind of gods and phantom demons. It’s a bow-wow to look at, all fluff and cuddle and cute, so, well, I thought I’d, ah… add it to the collection.”

“…Cute?”

Granting the fluff for argument’s sake, but cute…? It has three heads, and looks, for all the world to see, ferocious and vicious, yet…

“In any case, it’s a touch too full of spirit, so before I put it into that world of ours I was in the very midst of taking my time to teach it its manners and break it in.”

“So on our side we raise a great outbreak not with the undead but with monster-beasts… is that it?”

“Just so. Already a pack of monster-beasts makes its way from the southern forest. Even so… at this rate it comes out near enough an even match. We may lose, and even winning there’ll be some that slip the net. So, I’ve contrived this little touch as well,” and Sasha-sama pointed away to the north.

“An army, from over there… not the kingdom’s banner, but Duke Alcott’s…?”

“The national army’s been gutted, so those are the forces that were quartered in the domains of the noble lords. Under the Thunder God’s protection… and with that lesson you lot dealt out a while back taking its effect too, every decent noble has come over to our side.”

“So this was what you’d been directing Duke Alcott to do.”

Truly, this man is a canny brawler, or say rather thorough to a fault. I, who have walked the single road of magic, could never hope to ape such sidelong stratagems.

Then, as if to say the talk was done, Sasha-sama rose up on flight magic and settled onto Svetlana’s back.

“…Before long the undead will start being raised from the very clods of this plain. But I’ve laid the table this thoroughly… so there’ll be no harm coming to civilians, not on any account.”

“And after the undead are scattered, is it arranged for Duke Alcott to join up with us?”

“No, I’ve told him to remain here.”

“Why is that?”

“Because from here on lies a realm no one ought to set foot in while still clothed in human flesh.”

And so we mounted Svetlana’s back and took wing for the royal capital.

⁂

“To be blunt, it’s a play-it-by-ear gamble. Even should Ephthal come back, the strength of the Otogi Fantasia will come to something like half its prime.”

On the back of the jade-silver dragon, wheeling through the upper air, I gazed down at the palace below us. Hair streaming in the wind, Sasha-sama went on with a grave look.

“It’s a poor bet we’re making. If you would back out, you may. From here on there’s no turning back any longer, you see.”

At that I said, ‘With respect…,’ and declared to Sasha-sama:

“If there is so much as a single percent of a chance, that is one and the same as a hundred percent.”

“Hn? What do you mean by that?”

“If Ephthal-sama is there, he pries the one-percent gap wide open and makes it a hundred. Always, at every turn, in every hour, that is how he has ever been.”

Sasha-sama cast an exasperated look my way, thought a little, and let slip a chuckle.

“…That blind faith of yours in your master… it’s very near a sickness. And yet… it’s strangely bracing.”

Slapping Svetlana’s back with a light pat, Sasha-sama said to all of us in a great voice:

“The hour I fixed with Ephthal is nearly upon us—the instant the Otogi Fantasia fires, we launch our assault straight down from the sky, just as we are.”

Looking to the back of my hand, the countdown had closed to its last few dozen seconds. As one we fell silent, and only waited for the moment.

—Twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten.

But—

Even granting Ephthal-sama were there, the Fire God Emperor’s power was too vast by far. There was the first-generation Ice God Emperor, and the second-generation Four Emperors besides. And more, the preternatural ones who wield these so-called reincarnator skills; against them, on our side, even Sasha-sama could hardly be called at full strength.

It would be a hard battle.

And yet, even so, I was certain of our victory. For in whatever straits, Ephthal-sama had always, with that fearless smile, blown the whole of it sky-high. And the countdown ran on, until five seconds remained.

—Four.

—Three.

—Two.

—One.

The number risen on the back of my hand showed zero.

“…”

“…”

“…”

Sasha-sama’s brow drew taut, and a single line of sweat ran down it.

“Wha…?”

“What is the matter?”

“Try as I might to call him out… I can catch neither Ephthal’s presence nor the phantom demons’. That fool disciple… he’s gone and botched it.”

As if to say his hands were tied, Sasha-sama threw up both arms.

“Ha… this, I’ll grant, is more than I foresaw. To think he’d bungle it in the opening skirmish…”

Slowly, and broadly, Sasha-sama shook his head. ‘We can’t win,’ he muttered, low. In that moment, the body of Svetlana, in flight through the sky, lurched hard.

“Kyaaaah!”

Clinging on for dear life, all but thrown clear, Maria screamed. I caught Sheryl up in my arms, and Sasha-sama reached out to Anastasia and Maria and had them cling to either side of him.

“Gravity magic, from the palace, those wretches… they mean to drag us down. Svetlana, how do things stand?!”

I can’t… fight it…!

A voice lower than her usual. The dragon-form voice was one I wasn’t used to hearing, but ours was a long acquaintance; from the tone alone I knew at once she was badly rattled.

“Don’t lean on your wings! Use flight magic, Svetlana!”

Already doing it!

Our altitude was dropping fast. In the next instant—a blast of sound. It was attack magic flying up all at once from below, colliding with the defensive wall Sasha-sama had thrown up. Bolstered by Sasha-sama’s defense, gliding as she went, Svetlana slipped the magic aside. But she could not slip the whole of the barrage that came flying, wave upon wave—and took a hit.

“At this rate you’re a sitting mark, Svetlana! Don’t fight the gravity, use the speed of the fall, and make for the ground instead! We regroup once we’re down!”

There, feeling an overwhelming weight of magic from directly below, in that same instant Sasha-sama shouted, a click of the tongue behind it:

“No good! Out of the blind spot… the Ice God Emperor!”

Sasha-sama had thrown up a barrier on the instant. But it was torn through like paper-craft, and right after came the ringing crack of an ice-pillar striking home in Svetlana’s belly. A blizzard raged across the whole of our surroundings. Merely to bare ourselves a moment to the backwash of cold left frost settling over our skin, or near enough. Just how great, then, was the damage to Svetlana, who had taken the blow head-on?

At that, every face among us froze, in the literal sense.

Svetlana’s wings were sheathed in ice, and their beating had stopped. The free fall that must inevitably come, no, with the gravity magic on us, we began to plunge downward at an acceleration far beyond it. And so we fell at a furious speed, and were dashed against the ground.

⁂

“No great harm. She’s only frozen at the surface and lost her senses.”

Her dragon-form undone, half her body frozen as she slept, Svetlana was bathed by Sasha-sama in fire magic. A rough remedy indeed, but his control, for all that, was flawless; without so much as a burn, the ice seemed to melt clean away in an instant. Then he looked round about, and his face clouded further and further. He seemed to be taking the measure of the number and quality of those who ringed us in, and in the end he shrugged, as though at a loss.

“Well, this is about where the tide turns, I’d say.”

The place we’d fallen was a plaza of the sort where the knights hold their parade ceremonies. In it stood the Ice God Emperor, the second-generation Four Emperors, and upward of a hundred high mages, watching us from a wide circle. Every one of them, needless to say, a champion you could tell at a glance was formidable, and nearly all of them undead.

“Every last stratagem is spent. To flee, all of us together, is past possibility now. I cannot drag you into this any further… I’ll take it on myself, so you lot withdraw.”

“Sasha-sama, what is this you say at this late hour? My resolve was settled long, long ago.”

“Know when to bow out. One heeds what one’s elders say, no?”

And then Sasha-sama began to speak, in a gentle, admonishing tone.

“To begin with, I was not strong at all. Cast off by my parents in my childhood, I came near to dying for want of anything to eat.”

“At a time like this… an old story?”

“Just listen. I grew up in the slums; I was set upon by mobs, and once, for a theft, I was beaten half to death.”

“…”

“It was wretched. It was galling. I bewailed my own helplessness, and then I thought, I want to be strong. So, having sought strength beyond any other soul, I came by the self I am now, and here I stand.”

Then Sasha-sama laid his palm on my shoulder with a pat.

“Do you know why it is I always carry myself so high and mighty?”

“…I cannot say I do.”

“Because, in fact, I am high and mighty. Because, in fact, I am strong. Overbearing? That I am, for it was because I wished to bear myself so that I grew strong in the first place. So, before that very self of mine—‘a stronger fellow has turned up,’ oh, is that so, terribly sorry…”

Laughing his ha-ha-ha, Sasha-sama threw out his chest.

“As if I could ever do such a thing, eh? Well, let me at least strike a fine pose, girls.”

“Sasha-sama…”

“Besides, I’ve not the least intention of losing. This is the power I forged to force my will through. To mow the enemy down, and press on and on, shouldering my way clear—that is my way of things.”

Then Sasha-sama glared off at the distant Ice God Emperor. Gathering his hair in both hands, he tied it back with a scrunchie drawn from his breast.

“Don’t imagine I’ll be stopped so easily, Ice God Emperor. The whole of this place—I’ll bull my way through, reckless and knowing it, and go straight on to tear out the Fire God Emperor’s throat.”

In that moment, Svetlana, who had been out cold, spoke up to me.

“Even when he tells us that, well… eh, Merlin-chan?”

“Ah, quite so, Svetlana. Tell me, Sasha-sama, no intention of losing; meaning, if you’ve reckoned on some chance to win, then we do not withdraw. There’s no fool who wouldn’t back the winning horse.”

In this pass there could be no chance of winning. Both Svetlana and I knew it full well. And precisely for that, Svetlana and I looked at each other and laughed. There was nothing left to do but laugh, and so laugh we did.

“…Fools, the pair of you.”

“Your back… leave it to us.”

“If you’ll not listen for all my telling, then do as you please.”

Then Sasha-sama threw his voice to Anastasia and the others.

“You lot, do nothing. Just stay put here. The Fire God Emperor is no ogre… so long as you don’t stand against him, he shouldn’t take issue with a handful of children.”

And so we three, leaving Anastasia and the rest behind, advanced toward the center of the plaza.

“You lot… there’s no line of retreat left now, you know?”

“Indeed. And the Fire God Emperor has come out, besides.”

True to the words, walking toward us from the far side were six, the Fire God Emperor at their head. The Fire God Emperor, the Ice God Emperor, and behind them the second-generation Four Emperors. And once we’d come near enough to read one another’s faces, Sasha-sama opened his mouth toward the Fire God Emperor.

“About the girls at my back, surely one who calls himself the Fire God Emperor would never lay a hand on unresisting children?”

“My apologies. It sits very ill with me, but I make it my rule to crush the worm within. There’s the saying about a single ant-hole, after all, and so as to leave behind no grudge of any kind, hereafter.”

Now this was a fix. This, it seemed, was more than even Sasha-sama had bargained for, and he put a hand to his chin, wondering what to do.

“This really does have me stumped.”

The Fire God Emperor turned his right palm on us and began to build an attack formula. We too readied our attack and our defense, but the fight would hold its shape for perhaps the first few minutes… no, a few dozen seconds, more likely. In quality we were not outmatched, but the numbers told another tale. To be driven back one-sidedly and simply trampled, that much was plain to see. Yes, all of that I knew perfectly well.

—Well, then. It seemed my life, too, was to end here.

A fine job of it… it had been, perhaps, I thought.

Four hundred years ago, Ephthal-sama died. My senior disciple-brothers came to the ends of their lives, too, and at some point there was no one left who had known Ephthal-sama in the flesh. As those who had lived in that age vanished, the colors were lost from my sight, little by little, little by little. How strongly Ephthal-sama, and the people who had passed that time at my side, had filled my heart, it took no great while to realize it. On I lived, in a world drained of color. It came to where I no longer even rightly knew to what end I was living, and just then… a miracle came to pass. I met Ephthal-sama again; I gained new little sisters who shared the same master; and, brief though it was, we could laugh together. To the scene before my eyes, color returned.

So perhaps this was well enough. For me, who as a babe had been fated to die at the Demon Lord’s castle, this life was a fine thing… and there I shook my head.

—No. What was there in it that was well?

Bitter… a bitter thing, past all question. Unable to protect my juniors, unable to protect the irreplaceable place I had at last won back, this powerlessness of mine… was bitter beyond all measure.

“Now then, shall we begin?”

The Fire God Emperor’s preparations, it seemed, were done. The magic was that byword of his, the Level 10 fire-strike. A supreme magic that raises a limited, small-scale nuclear blast and burns all to ash, and just as it was about to be loosed—

“Caught… yoooou!”

Svetlana’s arm and mine were seized. A furious backward acceleration, worked by wind magic. That is to say, even as he cried out, Sasha-sama had shot away backward at full speed. Startled at the sudden scream, I saw on his face a joy fit to overflow. In the next instant, Sasha-sama was building up a summoning formula at a furious speed. The moment I saw the flow of that magic’s structure, a smile spilled to Svetlana’s lips and to mine as well.

“It can’t be…”

The rest of my words, Svetlana carried on.

“Could it possibly…”

The rest of those words, Anastasia carried on further.

“Could it possibly be…?”

The formula Sasha-sama was making to wield was one I knew well. No, a summoning formula that puts forth magic on so absurd a scale by one man alone, without so much as an orb or any other aid, without even being ritual magic, no other do I know of. A thing like that, save in that one man’s hands… had no business existing at all.

“Fire God Emperor, and you half-dead wretches, crawled back from the land of the dead… you’ve well and truly had me swallowing bitter dregs on and on, haven’t you?”

Then, at Sasha-sama’s back, there appeared a lattice of light that called a beehive to mind.

“Sally forth, phantom demons and fool disciple!”

It was the fairy-tale of the gods, the fairy realm that brims over this world; the concerto of the underlings, played by a sorcerer-king absolute and undying of body. Its name—

“—Level 11! Otogi Fantasia!”

A flare of light. Light gushing forth. Amid an all-enveloping white, like shooting stars, lights came bursting out from within the lattice.

—Cú Chulainn.

—Hanuman.

—Unicorn.

—Kresnik.

Phantom demon after phantom demon manifested, and for the first time a shade of surprise crept into the Fire God Emperor’s face. Then, the instant every last phantom demon had appeared, at the very last a single boy, black hair streaming, emerged from within the lattice.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, everyone.”

“You’re truly late… turning up tardy, of all the, it’s unthinkable, isn’t it?!”

“Don’t be unreasonable. There was all manner of trouble at the very, very last. Even so, I came tearing over here at full tilt.”

“Now then,” and Ephthal-sama took stock of the situation about him and turned to face the Fire God Emperor.

“Our reinforcements, the phantom demons number thirty-three in all.”

“With that last trap I’d laid, I thought there’d be no getting you out of there—but splendidly done, Ephthal.”

So saying, the Fire God Emperor grinned.

Chapter 3 – The Fire God Emperor’s Reminiscence

Cursed child.

Among the elf settlements, it is said that a child born without magic aptitude brings misfortune. Or, to put it exactly: without aptitude, and with a distinctive birthmark on its back besides… that is the condition. The old telling was no mere fairy-story; whatever the truth of it, real force came with it. In plain terms, when a child like that was born, the law held that it be cast away deep in the forest. And cast away, in fact, it was.

Fortunately for us, my little sister Bridget only lacked aptitude; the birthmark she did not have. On account of the aptitude our parents worried at first, but she grew up hale and hearty, and before anyone noticed, the old telling had slipped from every mind.

Born, then, with that slightly unusual trait, Bridget was—more than that—a strange child from the time she could first think for herself. Clever, you might call her. Or unnervingly grown-up for her years…

From about the age when she could move about freely on her own, she took, more and more, to doing curious things. She would whip up a mysterious condiment called mayonnaise, or propose that we soak in hot water rather than merely rinse ourselves. Or she would cook dishes no one had ever seen or heard of, each one delicious…

In the end, all that knowledge brought profit to the elf village and made its people happy. Yet though everyone had delighted at first in her novel notions, before long they took to finding her eerie. What settled it was the sugar she drew out of a radish-like root vegetable, a thing called a beet. The trade in it sent enormous profit rolling in, and the village’s fortunes turned sharply for the better. But… there is no doubt the words cursed child flitted through a corner of every mind.

Then came her twelfth birthday.

Just when we had all forgotten, there surfaced on her back, in the shape of an inverted cross that spelled ill omen—a red birthmark. From that day on she took to winding bandages over her bare skin to hide her back, and at the same time she ceased displaying her curious knowledge.

—Ephthal and Bridget: each a reincarnator out of another world, each hiding it from the other, and to the very end neither ever guessing the truth about the other. That the two of them were drawn together was surely no accident… or so it seems to me now.

Time flowed on—

It was some years after Bridget had married into Ephthal’s household. That day, in the Demon Lord’s castle where the last battle was joined, the four of us drove the killing blow into the Demon Lord with ritual magic. But when I chanced to catch sight of that birthmark on the Demon Lord’s corpse, I could not help being struck dumb.

“Cliff, why did you strike the Demon Lord with fire? Is it still alive?”

Having made certain I had seared the birthmark on its back to nothing, I answered as coolly as I could manage, mustering a smile.

“No, it’s good and dead… Isaac.”

“Well, with the head gone there’s no way it could be alive… now is there. Still, you blew that head clean off. That’s the four of us in concert for you.”

Isaac laughed his ha-ha-ha, but it wasn’t as though we had blown the head off at all. The instant I confirmed the Demon Lord’s birthmark, before any other soul could inspect the corpse, I had hurriedly cut it away and hidden it, nothing more. In other words, at that moment I had spirited the Demon Lord’s head off close by, where no one would notice.

Why would I do such a thing, you ask?

Because I had once heard that at the far end of mastered necromancy lay an art for drawing memories out of the dead. So, having preserved the Demon Lord’s head, I gave myself over to necromancy.

Then several years went by.

A study in a mountain villa so remote I had not told even my disciples where it stood. In its cellar, facing the Demon Lord’s head as it swam back to consciousness, I found myself laughing before I knew it.

“Ha. This is practically a bargain with a devil, isn’t it.”

Those were the first words I spoke, after years had passed, to the half-mummified head of the Demon Lord.

“A bargain with a devil exacts a mortal price; the comparison ill suits this case. Though the pain of knowing… that, perhaps, one might call the price you are to pay. I ask you, wielder of fire. What is it you wish to know so badly that you would break a taboo for it?”

“Among elves, a cursed child. Among dwarves, a calamity. Among humans, a Demon Lord. All of them naming the selfsame thing, I take it… The truth is, my own sister seems to be as you are. What are you, all of you?”

“—Do you know the term the Ten Sages?”

“When I mastered necromancy, I looked into all that might bear on it and arrived at the reincarnators and the Goddess. Of course I know them.”

“Sharp enough. Your eye has fallen in the right place.”

“Those who appeared from nowhere, raised up a magical civilization, and vanished off somewhere. But even I cannot fathom the reason behind what they did.”

“They developed magical civilization so swiftly for the sake of their own research.”

“Research?”

“Magic power, in the end, is a formula that gives fancy its shape in the waking world. The strength of a mind that wills let it be thus, brought to bear upon the outer world. Put another way: by wearing down the strength of the spirit—the soul—one bends the phenomena of nature to one’s hand.”

“Yes, and?”

“In an advanced magical civilization, the people wield advanced magic. Each time magic is cast, the soul-strength that seeps from a person, a little at a time, melts into the air and returns to the star. From the soul-strength brimming in the atmosphere the Ten Sages fashioned themselves an environment ideal for research. But what do you suppose becomes of it, if people go on spending soul-strength without end?”

“Supposing it to be finite… in time it runs dry.”

“Just so. The sum of soul circling this star, its strength ebbing across a great reach of time, sank at last beneath the level they required. So they gave this star up for lost and stole away to some new place.”

At that, my exasperation ran past its limit and a laugh escaped me.

“It’s slash-and-burn farming. Very nearly.”

“Bodies of heaven that bear intelligent life are few. After the burning, green will sprout anew… and so, by way of aftercare, they built a certain system into this star.”

“At a guess, that would be the reincarnators?”

“Precisely so. They established a system to call in innocent souls, born in a world where magic does not exist—souls that by rights would never cycle into this dimension at all.”

“But what makes that aftercare?”

“A soul of high purity, one that has never known the working of magic… he, or she, wields skills and magic here in this land. By that alone, the gathering-ground of cycling souls—the Chamber of Guf—sets to recovering apace. On the order of centuries, of millennia, mind you.”

“…Something has always puzzled me. What of the tie to magic aptitude? Why is it that reincarnators, near enough without exception, have none?”

The moment the words left me, I caught my own slip. It is precisely because a soul has no experience of working magic across its round of rebirths that it is a reincarnator to begin with. Magic aptitude, when you come down to it, is the proof of a proficiency graven into a soul over long, long ages, and a reincarnator can hold no such thing. There are natives to this land, too, who through some flaw were left without aptitude—but such people are wildly exceptional; for a reincarnator, aptitudelessness is foreordained, a different case altogether.

“Then let us come to the heart of it. Turning Demon Lord… the reason a reincarnator loses its reason after death, becomes a living corpse, and is driven by the urge to destroy?”

“First, as a premise, it is not after death. To die the once and be brought back to life, that is the fitter phrase. When the urge to destroy takes hold, the body moves of its own accord, and yet the original mind is present through it all. And the reason for it is simple. Do you know the tale of the big basket and the small basket?”

“No. First I’ve heard of it.”

“In that tale, the one who greedily grasps for the larger basket is made to pay for the greed—and here it runs just the same. The power of the skills granted in the Reincarnation Chamber. It is a thing like magic and yet not magic… and because it and magic aptitude repel one another, only those without aptitude may lay hold of it. And since it bestows every manner of uncanny power, told to choose two, why, it is only human nature to choose the two, is it not?”

“Two skills… In the writings concerning the Goddess’s Chamber there was, indeed, mention of just such a choice.”

“To put it plainly, power beyond one’s station—an overloading with two skills that outstrip the very capacity of the soul. Because they lived as they pleased on that power while alive, in death they are left for the world to do with as it pleases. That is the reasoning of it.”

“…You mean a reincarnator comes into the world already shouldering its sins?”

“Indeed.”

“Ah, that reminds me. There is one among my acquaintance who seems to fit. The man has no magic aptitude, and yet no birthmark has shown on him. What would that mean?”

“A crank who declined to choose the two skills, or else… perhaps it may simply be that this one’s true hour has yet to come.”

Then, as I checked the time on my pocket watch, a click of the tongue escaped me. The Rite of Soul-Return can be worked but once in several centuries, and even then the span it grants is a narrow one. In all honesty there was a great deal still beyond me, but it seemed my time was already spent.

“I’ll ask you straight. What must my sister do to slip free of that fate?”

“Of a means to save her there is none. She will rise again after death, and the fifty-year cycle of the destroying urge will come to her without fail. The most that can be done is to tell her the truth this instant and have her steel herself… Like me, she will not stop until she has met her second death.”

“…Is it truly past all hope?”

“It is a matter set fast by the workings of the system. Through destruction the strength of an innocent soul is spent, and the sum of soul-strength coursing through the cycle is swelled. A sacrifice, wrung after death for all that can be wrung from it—that is the true face of what men name the Demon Lord, the calamity, and the cursed child.”

“Thank you for telling me. But this, I will not be passing to my sister. It is enough that I alone should know a thing like this.”

“…Hm? What do you mean by that?”

“Bridget… so long as she can stay happy knowing nothing, thinking nothing, living out her present at Ephthal’s side… that is all I ask.”

And time flowed on further still—.

Just as the Demon Lord had foretold, Bridget, having died the once, rose again. What startled me was that her form had grown young, into that of a girl in her early teens, and from then on she ceased to age. Concluding it must be some measure to let her carry on her destroying for a long span of years, I too turned necromancy upon my own body and made it deathless.

So, fifty years on.

The sight that met me for the first time then, of scarlet flowers of slaughter blooming in wild profusion, is with me vividly in my heart even now. And then Bridget, having come to know it all and fallen into despair, made her wish. I worked upon her brain by sorcery, wiped away her every memory, and brought her mental age to rest, fixed, at a stage terribly young, around five years old. If her sense of right and wrong were left a blur, it would lend her heart even a little steadiness… such was my reckoning.

After that—

I traveled the world together with a Bridget who no longer knew me even for her brother. Her heart and body never growing, however the years wore on, she carried on her killing at intervals, innocent as ever. More than once I set myself to lay a hand on Bridget… on my own sister.

But I could not do it.

Before I knew it, I gave up on all of it, and let my heart freeze over. And yet, however deep in ice I wrapped that heart, at its very core there burned, always, a red flame.

It was, come what may—

—my fierce resolve to protect Bridget.

In truth, her very being is an evil to the world; she stands as the world’s enemy. But if the whole of the world would wound Bridget, then a world like that, I will smash to pieces with my own hands. That conclusion, from the moment I heard the Demon Lord out, I have held unshaken in my heart all this while.

And yet, four hundred years have gone by since then. And now, in this moment… here, without a doubt, stands a self grown just a little tired.

Chapter 2 – The Cage of Phantom Demons

“Off to prison… you said?”

“Ephthal, let’s try thinking about what that countdown means.”

“Yes, do please consider what that countdown means.”

I sent my gaze to the back of my hand; the numbers were still ticking down, unchanged. Or rather, I’d more or less guessed already.

“This countdown is a formula only Sasha’s school can see, isn’t it.”

“Just so, Ephthal. Including the phantom demons Sasha commands, it’s a thing only we can see, yes?”

“Yes, Ephthal. It is a signal-fire only we can see.”

This countdown is what Sasha’s school uses when they fight as an organized body. Most often it’s when they storm the stronghold of a rival power. The gist of it is a signal to attack all at once, in concert, at the same moment, from many directions. It’s a formula that saw a lot of use back when Sasha was rowdier than he is now. Which means, in this case, it means: we’re going to beat the Fire God Emperor to a pulp, so everyone get ready.

“So, what does Sasha mean to do?”

“That’s the thing, Ephthal. It’s a long story to tell.”

“Yes, Ephthal. To tell it… it becomes a very, very long story indeed.”

“It’s fine if it runs a bit long. Won’t you let me hear the details?”

Oberon snapped his fingers. And out of the depths of the forest came faint streaks of light, flitting about, Pixies, each with their hands full of flower nectar and wild raspberries. Next, from who-knows-where, out came a golem that seemed to be a familiar. Then, again from who-knows-where they’d fetched it, they set to preparing something with a table and cloth. As I wondered what on earth this was, a Pixie boiled water, and the fragrance of leaves unfurling soon drifted through the air.

“It’s a tea party, Ephthal.”

“Yes, let’s have a tea party, Ephthal.”

⁂

Sipping tea, if I sum up what I was told, it came to this.

– The phantom demons that were here originally: one hundred twenty-one.

– Phantom demons felled in the fight with the Fire God Emperor: eighty-eight in all.

– The remaining thirty-three stayed in this land.

– Of those, the ones who can still move about normally: twenty-two.

– The last eleven phantom demons had been sealed into weakness by the Fire God Emperor, and are held in the floating prison island.

By the way, they hadn’t known the particulars of how I’d been pulled in here. When I told them of my direct clash with the Fire God Emperor the other day, they looked fairly shocked… well, that aside.

“…In the end, then, your fighting strength is about a sixth of its peak.”

“Just so, Ephthal. That’s the largest number free to move at present.”

“That is so, Ephthal. A third of our surviving brethren are held on the prison island.”

“So my read is that you want me to go to the prison and free your comrades, is that right?”

“That’s the shape of it, Ephthal. Free them all, and in raw numbers it’s only a quarter of the old strength, but every one of the survivors is a champion among champions.”

“Yes, that’s precisely it, Ephthal. The actual fighting strength hasn’t fallen as far as the drop in numbers suggests. Half of the peak, I should say.”

I took a sip of herbal tea. To drink tea this good on the shore of a lake where flowers ran riot, that’s a fairly elegant thing. If the situation weren’t what it was, it would truly have been a peaceful moment…

“Then let’s hurry, Ephthal. There’s a saying, too, time is money.”

“Yes, let’s hurry, Ephthal. No trial is needed to send one to the prison. Keeping the peace, punishment is the sovereign’s sole prerogative, so we can set out this very moment.”

“Hm? The ruler here is the Fire God Emperor, isn’t he? I follow the part about being made to cooperate with harvests and such, to feed the humans, no, to maintain this world, but is even that much left entirely to you?”

“It is, Ephthal. As I said before, the Fire God Emperor is trying to leave self-rule to us as far as he can.”

“It is so, Ephthal. The Fire God Emperor’s inner sorcery-circuits are given over to other things. So he can’t spare much attention here. Though for confining the phantom demons he does seem to be using his own familiars directly.”

Well, that stands to reason. Even by what I alone know, the Fire God Emperor looks to have spread himself too thin. For instance, he keeps the transcendents who hold the goddess’s reincarnator skills brainwashed, watched, and managed. Just to think of it is a staggering exercise of sorcery. Naturally, any number of spells are running at all times. His inner circuits must be a hair from overheating, his mind never resting for an instant.

“But even so, wouldn’t it turn into a great mess if I went to the prison? The Fire God Emperor must be watching for me fairly closely.”

“That’s all right, Ephthal. You aren’t marked yet.”

“Yes, Ephthal. The fact of your coming hasn’t so much as been noticed.”

Hm? I cocked my head.

“…And what exactly does that mean?”

“It’s this, Ephthal. At present we’re cut off from the outside world by a barrier the Fire God Emperor made.”

“It is so, Ephthal. We are sealed away. The state of things inside can’t be known from without, and there’s no means to learn the state of things without, either.”

“In short, this world is closed off.”

“A sealed world, then, complete. Because the barrier bars us from going outside, Sasha has fallen into a state where he can’t use the Otogi Fantasia.”

“The dimensional barrier the Fire God Emperor built is one-way, Ephthal. You can get in from outside, but you can’t get out from within.”

“And every time the new moon comes, the barrier loosens and contact with the outside takes place. That is when the Fire God Emperor visits this land, information is exchanged, and if there’s need, he sends in new familiars.”

Well, this is getting tangled. These two have a distinctive way of speaking, which doesn’t help, but, let me sort it out a little. First, the Fire God Emperor wants the formula called the Otogi Fantasia. He wants to make it directly his own, or else obtain it indirectly, through Sasha. But right now the Fire God Emperor has his hands full with other matters. Given that, placing Sasha under his command and wielding that power at one remove is, for the Fire God Emperor, the better play. Even if he later steers toward taking the formula, this world, for himself directly, he’ll want to spend as little of his own effort on it as he can. So as a rule he’s leaving it to the self-sustaining system of the formula Sasha built. In a word, the policy is: don’t spend resources you don’t have to. But he’s blocked the passage for summoning phantom demons out, with the barrier. That’s why they can’t make contact with the outside, and here’s the part that’s a little off.

Well, when something’s unclear, the best thing is to just ask.

“Er… why is it that Sasha’s been put in a state where he can’t use the Otogi Fantasia? The Fire God Emperor wants to make use of the summoning magic, and yet he sets things up so it can’t be used.”

“Think it through and you’ll see, Ephthal.”

“Yes, you’ll see at once, Ephthal. Sasha is not yet trusted.”

I see. The number of phantom demons he holds may have dropped, but a Level 11 is nothing to scoff at even so. True enough, letting Sasha, barely days into surrendering, freely wield so dangerous a thing would be a problem. And the business of the information exchange, and the Fire God Emperor’s familiars and the barrier, is a touch tangled too. The quick way to grasp it is to think of it like the update-maintenance of a website. Since he has to spend his resources elsewhere, at the regular update the Fire God Emperor bundles the problems into a single round of feedback and pushes the patch.

“For the record, if I pull something off on the prison island, would the man himself step in?”

“That’s the thing, Ephthal. If it blows up into a grand affair, word will reach the Fire God Emperor, I think. We’ve no means, but the other side has something, I’d say.”

“That’s so, Ephthal. As a rule, to save resources, the back-and-forth between them is trimmed away. But if resources have to be spent, he’ll put his focus in.”

A bug turns up, and emergency maintenance kicks in, so that’s the shape of it. Which means the order is to keep it a covert operation, right up until the moment the phantom demons are freed and the breakout goes ahead. Good. At last I’m starting to see what Sasha wants me to do. The setup is most likely this.

– First, I free the phantom demons.

– At the same time, I destroy the Fire God Emperor’s barrier that’s blocking phantom demons from being summoned to the outer world.

– The instant the count hits zero, outside, Sasha triggers his summoning formula for the all-out assault.

– There, I too go out, leading the phantom demons, and that becomes the opening blow against the Fire God Emperor.

– Everyone charges in an avalanche, and we settle it on that momentum.

Well, as Sasha’s plan that’s about the size of it.

“You’d best hurry, Ephthal. Right now… the floating prison island is in a bad way.”

“Yes, that’s so, Ephthal. By the report from the primordial phantom demon, from Bastet, the former warden, the guard within the prison grows stricter by the day.”

At those words I leaned forward toward Titania in spite of myself.

“Just now… what did you say? The former warden is who?”

When I pressed her, Titania cocked her head and said:

“The former warden: the divine cat. The cat-tribe excel at sensing and detecting danger all around, so she was well suited to it.”

Bastet. She’s a phantom demon who once lived in my house in my past life, as a familiar-cum-maid, all but family. When the incurable sickness took me, I ended up entrusting her to Sasha, but… so that’s how things stood now.

“Still, what do you mean, the former warden?”

“About that, Ephthal. The chief reason the other phantom demons are confined is that Bastet led them in an attempt at rebellion.”

“…Come again?”

“Yes, Ephthal. The ringleader, Bastet, failed in the rebellion, and the date of her public execution draws near. That date is one week from now.”

One week. I stood, and gave the katana at my hip a light pat.

“Right, let’s hurry, as you say. Missing my chance to see an old face again… doesn’t sit well with me.”

“My thanks for your ready assent, Ephthal. Go inside, and a collaborator should make contact with you.”

“Yes. My thanks for your ready assent, Ephthal. I ask you, free the phantom demons.”

There, Oberon clapped his hands, and three Pixies working together carried over a small pouch. It was handed to me as it was, so I checked inside.

“And this is…?”

A cylinder of metal. It seemed to be a magic tool, so I analyzed the formula woven into it… and the moment I grasped what it was for, my skin crawled and prickled.

“When the moment comes, do consider using it, Ephthal.”

“Use it, Ephthal. As Sasha’s disciple you should be able to. No, as one who, for a time, truly did look up to Sasha, you will certainly be able to use it.”

Well, it isn’t that I couldn’t use it, in fact. This time the opponent is the Fire God Emperor. I’d been thinking I couldn’t take it as easy as I always had, so honestly, this is a great help.

“Then, Ephthal, we set out three hours from now.”

“Yes, Ephthal. Since it’s a prison, you’ll be treated as a criminal, but do try not to take it to heart.”

“Three hours? That’s how long the preparations take?”

When I asked, Oberon pointed to the sky. Up there I could see a flock of undead pawn-wyverns, gone to bare bone.

“Ephthal. The Fire God Emperor’s meddling has thrown this world’s balance out.”

“Yes, Ephthal. The air of the underworld has grown strong, and monsters of the undying line are multiplying explosively.”

“…I’m not following the story.”

“Those monsters make this island’s sky their hunting ground at this hour, always. And we are forbidden to exercise power past a certain point, Ephthal.”

“Wield power past that point and it’s flagged at once as an emergency, and some measure is taken by the Fire God Emperor, Ephthal.”

“The gist being that those pawn-wyverns are in the way, so you can’t travel?”

“Just so, Ephthal. Though arranging the pegasus pumpkin-carriage itself can be done right away.”

“Yes, Ephthal. And the paperwork to send you to prison can be readied in a few minutes.”

A pegasus pumpkin-carriage, huh. Probably Sasha’s taste. That loli-geezer really is fanciful, or whatever you’d call it.

“No need to worry, Ephthal. Leave that flock be and it’ll move on.”

“Yes, Ephthal. Until then, let’s enjoy our tea together.”

Just then, I stood, and shook my head.

“No, I’d like it readied right away.”

“Hmm?” the two of them went, cocking their heads at me.

“Something like that I can clear up in two minutes. If you’d see to the various preparations in the meantime, I’d be grateful.”

That Sasha is running a countdown carries, in the plainest sense, the meaning of hurry. The limit is seven days, a hundred sixty-eight hours. In which case, idling three hours away doing nothing is far too graceless. There’s a time limit on Bastet as well, so there’s no time to dawdle. There, to the two who for some reason had gone blank and given no answer, I asked:

“Hm? What’s the matter?”

“So that’s how it is, Ephthal. No, since we’re asking Ephthal for aid to begin with, of course it comes to this. Ha… it’s always been us lending our strength to someone, so we’re not used to this.”

“Yes, Ephthal. We would always cut in first in a fight, and the humans were the ones in the rear, in support. It was ever that sort of thing, so it never happened that someone stood at the front and lent us their strength. We are phantom demons, after all, legends of one kind or another, the two of us.”

And the two of them looked at each other and let a gentle smile rise to their lips.

“It’s a reassuring thing, Titania.”

“Yes, Oberon. And he too—Ephthal—is a being of legend, one of the original Four Emperors, is he not.”

Then, having finished readying the formula I’d worked up for the opening, I fixed the sky with a hard glare.

“Level 5: Flight.”

A ferocious burst of speed, a rapid climb. I flew the sky by flight magic and took position dead in the middle of the onrushing flock of pawn-wyverns. I raised my right palm overhead, and then, I spoke words that, to them, meant the same as a death-god’s sentence.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

One strike swept the pawn-wyverns away. Charred through, they dropped, beating the air as they fell. And when I looked down, as if to say that’s that, Oberon and Titania gave me a great, firm nod.

⁂

Riding the pegasus carriage, some twenty minutes of coursing the wide sky. We arrived at an island that looked for all the world like a fortress. I’d checked its whole shape from above a moment ago, the impression was something like Gunkanjima, the Battleship Island off Nagasaki. The entire island was sheathed in a huge, brutish structure that called to mind a military installation, or, plainly, a prison.

When we landed on the island, men in jailer’s uniforms stood at the building’s entrance. I was taken to a sort of waiting room and fitted with handcuffs and a waist-rope. Led on as I was, we went deeper into the building. Set into the passage, for preventing escape I suppose, were several barred iron doors with locks, that stuck in my mind. And passing through them, I was shown into a room like an interrogation cell and made to sit in a chair, and—

“Good work on the handover.”

A bearded man who’d been running his eyes over documents inside lifted his face toward us and said it. By the way, every jailer I’d met to this point was human. So far I hadn’t seen so much as the shape of one of the Fire God Emperor’s familiars.

“Thank you, sir! Head Jailer!”

The two who’d escorted me answered in loud, brisk voices. As if their business was done, they went to stand by the doorway and fell into line there.

“You… attempted assassination of King Oberon, is it? So there was still a fool alive who’d pull a stunt this stupid.”

I’d been told the charge would be cooked up to suit. But Titania had built me a fairly intense one, it seemed.

“…Well, there were various circumstances.”

“Still, even if you kill a phantom demon, the lot of them come back after a few decades, you know? Their power’s mighty to begin with. There’s not a chance in ten thousand of one being killed by an ordinary human.”

A phantom demon is a being where an imaginary creature has taken form. It’s some kind of mental lifeform, a notion I can’t quite parse, so nearly anything goes. That said, kill one once and re-embodiment takes a frightful length of time. Which is why, in the case of a calamity-spreading evil god or the like, the slaying itself does carry meaning. There the head jailer fixed my face with a hard stare and heaved a sigh.

“You knew there was no way you could actually kill him, didn’t you? The reason, a grudge?”

“…”

“Miracle or whatever, you wanted to get your hands on King Oberon’s core… something like that.”

“…”

“Get the core, sure, and you can do all sorts of things. Kill him again… or bind him and torture him? Endless harassment of the lot of them, that’s possible too.”

“…”

“Clammed up, have you… At any rate, this is a prison. You laid hands on a phantom demon that keeps this world’s system running. Best you steel yourself now.”

Well, ‘clammed up,’ he says—but Titania cooked the thing up on her own, so ask me my motive and I couldn’t tell you either.

“And by steel myself, you mean?”

There, the doorway opened. Following that, along with the clatter of a pushcart, freight was wheeled in. Looking, I saw that the iron vessel set on the cart was packed with red, seething-hot stones. And stuck into those hot stones were iron rods, well, it isn’t hard to picture what’s about to happen.

“It’s the custom here that anyone coming in first receives the baptism of the brand.”

The head jailer’s mouth curled, and he laughed, sadistic.

“You mean pressing a mark on the criminal that’ll never fade for life?”

“Giving fear in the form of pain, that’s the chief aim. Well, same as training a dog. We make you understand with your body, first thing, that you must never defy us.”

“…I see.”

“Still, you don’t so much as change color looking at this, no stiffness in the face. Hah, quite the show of nerve, I’ll grant you that.”

“No, of course I’m not enjoying it.”

“The mask’ll come off soon enough,” the head jailer said, and drew from the hot stones an iron rod gone red at the tip. Next, the jailer waiting at the door came over and prompted me to strip off my upper garments. It didn’t sit well with me at all, but I did as told and took off my shirt. Then the jailer seized my shoulder and shoved my upper body down onto the desk by main force. In the next instant, the tip of the rod the head jailer held drew near the nape of my neck. First came a hiss. A beat later, the smell of searing flesh filled the whole room.

“Now, weep! Scream! This is the first step toward you reflecting and being corrected! Understand your crime through pain, first! That commit a crime and this is what befalls you!”

“…”

“Hm? This one… still doesn’t change color one bit… does he?”

Well, it doesn’t hurt, and it isn’t hot. Pain is, at bottom, an electrical signal. And for me, who commands the lightning, tinkering with that much is child’s play.

“You there.”

“What is it?”

The head jailer set the iron rod back in its place and seized my head roughly. With that, he began slamming the head he’d grabbed against the desk with all his strength.

“Get this, here, we are the rules!”

Slam, slam. Over and over my head was struck against the desk. It doesn’t hurt, but this, at least, isn’t pleasant.

“Why is that? Because Sasha-sama built this facility to keep the peace of this world, to correct the wicked!”

There he stopped the slamming and let go of my head.

“You there, look this way.”

I looked up as told, and the head jailer stood there holding a truncheon, smiling fearlessly.

“It’s a truncheon with magic laid on it.”

The head jailer laid the truncheon across my back. And what tore through my whole body along with the impact was, a current.

“Well? An electric shock hits home, doesn’t it? Learn your lesson and from here on you’ll be obedient to—”

“…”

“Even this… not one sound… out of him… huh.”

There the head jailer began to laugh, going hehehe.

“Still, what a genuine fool. If you’d shown a cute little reaction here, you’d have had it better.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“This is hell, but there are degrees even within hell. This very moment, your destination’s been settled as the worst place there is. Regret this attitude of yours later, and it’ll be too late.”

Well, it’s exactly what I was after, though. The block where the phantom demons are held and the block where the humans are held are separate places. But the human block nearest the phantom-demon block is, it seems, where the especially vicious ones get put.

“You don’t change color now, but you’ll change soon enough. Help me, forgive me, you’ll come to weep and scream and beg.”

So, with the head jailer’s word, ‘take him away’, my life in prison began.

⁂

Where they took me was a communal cell. Barring the iron grate, it was a musty room walled on every side in stone. Rough, knobbly stonework, a single toilet in the corner, and no bed. The stones were laid down any old way, so the floor was badly uneven. By the look of it, at night you slept rough under a single blanket, so this promised to be a real trial come dark, with the stone digging into you.

By the way, in the prison there’s apparently a duty to labor. Seven in the morning to seven at night are working hours, and from seven at night you live in this communal cell. Today was the once-a-week day off, so there were five men in prison garb in the room, each absorbed in his own thing, reading, or a game of cards. Not knowing the lay of things, I was watching from the corner of the room when I met eyes with one of them.

“New fellow, mind if I have a word with you?”

The one who spoke, smiling, was a man in his fifties with hair going white, the friendly-seeming sort.

“Yes, that’s fine, but…”

“Let me teach you first the thing you need to live safely here. It’s to keep your head down, from start to finish and through and through… you follow?”

“Well, I’d imagine so.”

“This facility is basically a place of correction. Bullying us isn’t the point of it. So after five years, or ten, or maybe twenty, once your correction’s done, you get shipped to a labor farm. Behave yourself there and you’re even allowed to live in a town, and you can enjoy a drink again.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

“Ah, sorry, I’ve been doing all the talking. What is it?”

And just as the white-haired man said it, the others, who’d surrounded us at some point, spoke up.

“You need something?”

When I said it, a big man who seemed to be the leader grinned.

“No greeting, no manners, figured we’d give you a little discipline.”

Cracking their knuckles, the men sent me leering, coarse looks.

“W-wait, please, sir, this boy just doesn’t know how things work inside yet… let him off this once.”

At those words from the white-haired man, the men swallowed their laughter and backed down with a ‘Well, all right.’ Surprisingly meek. So I thought, but if it kept things from turning into trouble, that was for the best.

“Thank you. You helped me out, didn’t you.”

“Ah, you’d hate to catch a beating without even knowing why, wouldn’t you? They gave me a rough time of it too.”

And the man rolled up the jacket of his prison garb and showed me the bruises here and there.

“That’s terrible.”

“Hot-blooded lot, they are, best not to anger them. So, what was it you wanted to ask?”

“Um… why are you being so kind to me?”

At that, the white-haired man broke into a wide-open, cloudless, bottomless smile.

“Well, I feel bad, is all. Seeing as you’ll be taking my place from here on.”

“Er…?”

“Once a new fellow comes in, you’re at the bottom. Which means, naturally, the target for bullying stops being me. Like I said, you’d hate to catch it without knowing why, wouldn’t you?”

And the man stood, said ‘Well, that’s how it is,’ and walked over to rejoin the others. And at the same moment, a roar of laughter went up on their side.

“Ha, so you finally get promoted from victim to perpetrator, eh?”

“That’s the shape of it, sir.”

I see. From the white-haired man’s side, this was the long-awaited welcome party for the new arrival.

“Ah, no need to be scared. We’ll just wrap you in a blanket so you can’t move and beat you black and blue, that’s all.”

Of the five, two took blankets from the corner of the room and stood there smirking. There, the big man who seemed to be the leader walked over to me.

“Still, why is it I have to take a beating?”

“Errand-running, foisting off work, skimming your meals… you’ve all sorts of roles to play. So it’s necessary to make you understand, first thing.”

But now this has turned into a bother out of nowhere. For my part I’d rather not stir up a fuss. Still, I can’t very well leave sparks to fall on me without brushing them off.

“Er… if I shout in this spot, won’t the guards come running?”

When I said it, the men clutched their bellies and started laughing all over again.

“Ah, right, the new fellow doesn’t know the rules here. This block’s got the especially vicious ones gathered in it. Order kept by force among the inmates, that’s the method in use.”

“Order by force?”

“Makes for good moral instruction too, never want to end up in a place like this again. And for the guards, sticking their noses too far into our affairs is just a management headache. So as long as it doesn’t run against the prison’s own policy, letting us self-govern to a degree suits everyone.”

Just then, I could see a guard on his rounds walking past outside the grate. The guard stopped once, took in the state of things within, and made to walk on—

“Guard, sir, why walk right on by?”

“This is purely me talking to myself, but… I’ve seen nothing, and it isn’t as though the sounds of your squabble carried out to the corridor.”

Saying only that, the guard walked off, and the leader-figure gave a great nod.

“So there you have it. Short of overdoing it, they turn a blind eye. Ratting to a guard gets you nowhere, so, nowhere to run.”

“Let me get this straight: short of overdoing it, the guards turn a blind eye… is that right?”

“Aye, that’s right. Once it’s killing, they can’t very well look away, mind. There’s only one inmate that’s allowed.”

“Only one…?”

“You’ll find that out soon enough whether you like it or not. So, talk’s over. Do your best, new blood. This is a baptism too.”

With that, the leader-figure hauled a great fist back at me. It was a punch a fly could’ve landed on, so I could dodge it. But I chose, deliberately, not to.

Thunk.

The sound rang out, and the man’s fist buried itself in my cheek.

“Ow, owwwww!”

The one who screamed wasn’t me; it was the man. Even without defensive magic, my body’s reinforced by physical enhancement. For a human who can’t even strengthen himself properly, punching me with brute force isn’t much different from punching a boulder bare-handed.

“You bastard! What’d you do?!”

No, I didn’t do anything, though. The other four, flying into a rage, sprang at me all at once. There are any number of ways to sweep the lot of them aside in one go, but I wouldn’t do that. For the moment, I drove a fist into the leader-figure’s nose to knock the fight out of him. That said, even this I kept from sinking in deep, not shattering the bone, holding it to a light nosebleed. Then I let the oncoming four pass, slipped through the wave of them, and out the other side. As we crossed, I threw a backfist into another one’s nose.

“Gyaaaah!”

This the same as before. Light and gentle, a nosebleed, just enough to knock the fight out of him with the pain.

“You… for that skinny build, seems you’ve some confidence in your arms.”

Putting in a touch of effort, I closed the distance to the man at the front all at once. With that, a flashy shoulder-throw, and he went flying. This one too I didn’t drop on his head, but on his back. I slammed him to the ground just hard enough to leave him writhing but unhurt.

“Guhah…!”

“O-oi… wh-what was that, that technique?”

“The guy flew… it was like magic…”

Still, in this world, grappling really hasn’t developed at all. Well, it’s a world of swords and sorcery, so the notion just never occurred to anyone, I suppose.

“So… still want to keep this up?”

Two left. Watching the three writhe, their faces dyed with fear at once. And the two of them exchanged a look and put on stiff, twitching smiles.

“H-hehe… you’re a rough one for jokes.”

“We weren’t seriously gonna beat you up either. Just meant to… give you a bit of a scare, is all.”

Transparent lies, but I’ll play along here.

“Is that so. I thought it was some kind of joke myself, so I was going easy. Ah, and one more thing, next time, if something that isn’t a joke happens, I’ll go all out without holding back.”

“This was going easy…” Just as the eyes of all of them went wide, I plopped myself down in the corner of the room with a there we go.

⁂

A night passed, and the next day. With a cry of ‘Rise!’ that rang through the prison, each cell was thrown open. All at once the inmates burst out and lined up in the passage. And then—

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

The inmates read off, right to left, the numbers assigned to them.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, that’s Block D, no absentees again today!”

And the moment roll call ended, the guard nodded and gave the word: ‘Each of you, back inside.’ At the leave, the inmates filed back in, one after another, their pace not a hair out of order.

Meals, by the way, apparently come properly, three times a day. A while after roll call, the plan is for the group to move on to the mess hall as they are. After that comes labor time, and my prison life starts in earnest. At any rate, there was time before the move. At loose ends, I happened to send my gaze down the passage through the grate, and there I was struck dumb.

Because there was one inmate walking at the head, all but leading the guards along.

“What’s that…?”

When I asked one of my cellmates, the answer came back around a yawn.

“Off to the mess hall, isn’t he? The guards eat first. Not slop like what we get, a proper special menu.”

“No, not that… why is the man who just said no absentees at the end walking with them… no, more like leading the guards?”

“That one’s a being you don’t touch. His meals are finer than the guards’, same menu as the warden, they say.”

“…What do you mean?”

“That’s the one they call Ghost. Rumor has it he’s been in this prison doing time for three hundred years.”

“Three hundred years… Ghost…?”

“Don’t know why, but the guards look the other way for him too. He walks out of his cell as he pleases, and no one calls him on it. When he’s breaking a rule, the guards treat him as though he doesn’t exist. That’s why he’s called Ghost.”

By the look of him, maybe forty. He seemed the dull, nowhere sort of man you’d find anywhere, and the reason he got special treatment truly escaped me. Still, look closely and I’d seen him somewhere before…

At that, my cellmate gave a little chuckle.

“You’ve got a pretty face, so watch yourself.”

“Hm? Watch myself?”

“Hard to believe, I know, but his room’s a private one. He knocked three solitary cells into one and remodeled it into his own quarters. Not a grate but a door, and privacy taken into account.”

“How to put it… that’s an absurd amount of clout.”

“And it’s the custom that pretty young men get summoned to his room. Since it’s Ghost’s doing, the guards look the other way there too, of course.”

“Er… and the reason for that?”

“Isn’t it obvious,” the man said, and slapped his own backside.

“There’s no women here. But men, as you know, we’ve got in droves.”

A nasty sweat prickled down my spine. Well, in a place like this, that sort of romance ends up blossoming… That’s a common enough story, I think. I don’t deny that in itself, but…

“So, best watch yourself. You’re his type, no question about it.”

A crawling feeling came over my backside, and I let a wry smile slip out despite myself.

“…Thanks for the warning.”

Those were words of honest gratitude. Well, that aside, the present state of things wasn’t great. Oberon and the others had said a collaborator would appear once I was inside, but there was no sign of it. And even if I tried to make contact with the phantom demons individually, this is, quite literally, a prison. Naturally there are my cellmates’ eyes too, so I can’t move as I please. As things stood, I couldn’t see myself clearing the very first hurdle, moving through the prison in secret.

Right, what to do? There’s no time to sit back and take it easy, either. And as I was thinking that, I let out an ‘Ah’ and was struck dumb. And no wonder, the iron door of our communal cell had opened, and an inmate walked in.

“Ghost…”

The man tucked a bundle of keys into his breast and walked straight over to me. An inmate carrying a ring of keys, that’s beyond absurd, truly.

“You, the new one? You’ve got a cute face.”

“Er…?”

And with that he patted my shoulder and smiled brightly.

“After breakfast, come to my room. Ah, yes, I’ll send word to the bathhouse too. Best you wash up before you come.”

Saying only that, the man opened the door and went out. My cellmates pressed their palms together as if to say our condolences, smirking. Right, this is a problem. No, truly a problem. At this stage I can’t very well stand out, which is exactly why I kept yesterday’s fuss to a minimum. So far it should have been going well. But it seems I’ve drawn the eye of the man who’s likely the most famous in the whole prison.

⁂

The man’s quarters had two bedrooms and a toilet. The furnishings, too, were nothing but the lavish sort you’d expect of some noble’s house. The floor, unlike our bare stonework, was boarded and even laid with a fine carpet.

“Welcome. I’ve been waiting.”

Ushered in as I was, I entered the room and stepped into the bedroom. Leading me on, the man sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, turning to face me, he smiled and said:

“Come here. Now, it may hurt a little, but I don’t mean to take your life.”

Right, this is bad. Thinking this is bad, I stepped one foot toward the bed for now. And at the same instant, what came flying from above was an arrow of light.

“What?!”

Is this a magic trap to repel intruders? To keep me from catching on, it even had silencing and presence-erasing formulas laid over it. What’s more, it had power enough that taking one dead-on would be bad. I twisted my body and slipped the first shot. But the arrows of light came flying one after another, from every corner of the room. When dodging by footwork alone became impossible, I threw up a defensive wall all around me.

“Level 7: Perfect Wall.”

Three hundred sixty degrees. I spread it in all directions, the floor included, and with that the arrows of light could no longer touch me.

“So what exactly is going on here?”

This man is a mage, no question. And a formidable one, at that, good enough to make me use a Level 7 with pre-planted traps alone.

“I see, so it really is Ephthal-kun.”

The man rose from the bed, took a bottle of liquor from a shelf, and sat down on the sofa in the room. Then he pointed to the seat across the table. It seemed he meant sit, but did he mean to hold a drinking bout? I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Just now, did you call me Ephthal-kun? No… ah, I’ve got it now. No wonder I thought I’d seen you before. You’re Clark, the half-vampire?”

The very same, Clark-san said, and gave a big nod. And at the sight of a face from old days, the corners of my own mouth softened on their own.

“You and I studied together at Sasha-sama’s for a while, didn’t we. Well, you ran off after a few years.”

“Ha, please don’t bring up that time too much. Still, to meet a senior disciple in a place like this… I’m genuinely astonished.”

“Still, Ephthal-kun. Seems you had a thoroughly rough time of it out there.”

“…”

“Hm? Something the matter?”

“Ah, no, I was just taken aback by the sudden reunion. But how is it you’re in a place like this, Clark?”

When I sat on the sofa, liquor was poured for me, so I took a single sip. Fine liquor, the sweetness and the astringency struck in just the right balance.

“This prison is a crucial place, one that governs the peace of this world. So I watch over this facility from the position of an inmate, to control various things from within. Keeping the guards from going too far, that’s the main aim, I’d say.”

“And that… for three hundred years?”

“They tell me I could take turns at it, mind. But with regular hours for rising and sleeping, my magic research comes along nicely too… I’ve grown fond of this life. By the way, your being here means it’s finally come to freeing the phantom demons, has it?”

“Yes, of course. Still, you really are a wicked one, Clark-san.”

“Oh? How so?”

“That, well… all that about backsides and such. Rumors are flying that you’re on the prowl for pretty boys.”

When I laughed ha-ha, Clark-san went straight-faced at once and answered:

“No, I do like backsides, you know?”

“………You don’t mean women’s?”

“Mm, I took after my master, you see. Before I knew it, that had become my taste.”

Far too convincing. This is why… I hated being at Sasha’s. Stay there long and there were so, so many people who turned out this way… and my own chastity was in danger to begin with.

“Only, I’d not have you misunderstand: I’ve never once done it by force, you know? Always with consent.”

“No, I wasn’t asking.”

“For the sake of my honor I can’t have you getting the wrong idea. This I’ll have said properly.”

“At any rate… I take it you’ll cooperate, is that right?”

“Aye, for now let’s go with the outward setup that you’ve become my lover. Set it up so you’re in my room with me around the clock, and you’ll draw no suspicion and can carve out time to move freely.”

“It’s a setup with a great deal to think about, but beggars can’t be choosers. Of course, I’ve no objection.”

At any rate, this makes moving about easier. It looks like I can finally set out on freeing the phantom demons in earnest, I thought, and clenched my fist tight.

⁂

Deep in the night. I woke in a room apart from Clark-san’s. He’d asked, ‘Shall we sleep in the same room?’, but I brushed it off as a joke and let it pass. Well, that aside. I began layering stealth-line magic over myself.

Optical camouflage. Presence-erasure. Air-cutoff, to kill scent and sound both.

Right. Stacked this thick, at a glance an ordinary human shouldn’t notice me. By the way, my collaborator Clark-san, being far too famous, can’t move about, the reverse of my problem. The reason being that the block where the phantom demons are held is run by the Fire God Emperor’s people. And they know Clark is Sasha’s disciple. So, inevitably, come anywhere near that block and they’d be on the highest guard. Which is precisely why, in that block alone, he can’t move. Same reason Oberon and the others can’t, and so in the end it comes down to leaning on me, the nearly-unmarked one.

But for me to roam the prison, even with my form hidden, is fairly difficult. First, there are anti-escape barred doors all through the passages. And the phantom-demon block has countermeasures against spatial-transfer magic too. A way to slip the net… isn’t out of the question. But it takes far too much time and effort.

“It’d be nice if there were a hidden passage or something, one I could move through freely all the way to the phantom-demon block…”

“A hidden passage, is it? There’s one right there in the corner, Ephthal. Mind the flow of magic, and look close.”

“So there is, master. Sure enough, there’s a way through here. But this is advanced. A passage concealed by warping the dimension and working sorcery on it?”

“Sharp as ever, Ephthal. Few could see through it that far on first sight. Well, it’s that my teaching was good, I’d say. Ha, that’s your master for you!”

At that, I shouted despite myself.

“Wait, why are you here, master?!”

Sasha cocked his head, puzzled.

“Didn’t Oberon tell you there was a collaborator?”

“No, wasn’t that supposed to be Clark?”

“Ho, Clark too… True enough, I’d left the running of this facility to him from the shadows. Bastet, who held the post in name only, was a touch too soft, too unreliable…”

She really was unreliable, that girl. As a familiar and as a maid she was excellent. In looks she was crisp and sharp, like a cat-beastkin, but against all that, there truly was a streak of too-much-kindness in her even back then. Well, that aside.

“No, so, why are you here, master?”

“Strictly speaking, I am not Sasha proper. I am a divided-body that manifests when danger nears the system.”

“Hmm… something like an autonomous entity cut off from the main body?”

“Just so. Naturally, I know nothing whatever of what’s happened since the Fire God Emperor last opened the barrier and joined with the outside, nor of what the outside Sasha is doing.”

“So it’s the same for you, master, the way the Fire God Emperor’s side can’t know the mutual situation unless they exchange at the new-moon maintenance? Well, either way, having two collaborators is a real comfort.”

“Mm. I too am glad Ephthal came. This makes me a hundred strong.”

“That’s a meek sort of line for you, master. Ordinarily you’d be running your mouth with brat and chick and the like…”

“That’s because ordinarily I am invincible, no? Right now the Otogi Fantasia can’t be used, and without the phantom demons, I’m but a frail, peerless beautiful girl. Naturally there are times I feel a bit forlorn.”

“A… girl…?”

“Mm, a beautiful girl!”

Declared with a full-faced grin.

“Ah… yeah… that might… be so… I suppose.”

In fact, going by looks alone, he’s dreadfully cute, which is somehow infuriating. There, all at once Sasha’s body gave off light and shrank to a size that would sit in your palm. Also, there are wings on his back now.

“I won’t even bother pointing out that you can change your body’s size, but… why that form?”

“Pixie spec. I thought I’d make the most of a mental body while I have one. My body in the flesh can’t very well grow big and small, after all.”

“…Let me change the question. Why the Pixie spec?”

“I’ll have you know, even so, I was once called the fairy of the northern country…”

“Come to think of it, you were from the north, weren’t you, master.”

“Just so. Set me to skiing and it’s a marvel, I tell you.”

“Well, you can do anything, master. You’ve mastered hand-to-hand close combat to a high level too.”

“No, and yet, wouldn’t you know it, I can’t ski at all.”

“…What do you mean?”

“It’s, the gap matters, no? A creature like me, with reflexes beyond compare, looks like she’d glide right along, no?”

“Well, that’s so, I suppose.”

“And there’s the thing. Me, who by rights would go gliding cool and unruffled over the snow like a fairy? And then I take a tumble and go ow, it hurts, it hurts! and well up teary-eyed like a child and land on my rump, and that produces, how to say it, a gap-moe sort of cuteness, no?”

What a pain… This person is really such a pain… And that scenario isn’t even cute. More to the point, why did he bring this topic up at all.

“So, back to the subject. This hidden passage, or bypass, what’s it for?”

“To begin with, who was it built this place?”

“Well, that’d be you, master.”

“So of course the blueprints are in my head. It’s been remade into a prison now, but in truth it was originally my villa. In the old days I invited all sorts here.”

“Hm? Wait… I’m not following the story?”

“Well, that’s why I built them, hidden passages without number. For creeping in on the pretty boys I’d invited at night, you understand.”

Somehow, this fellow is truly awful. And I turned a flat stare on Sasha.

“Wh-what’s that look?! I have never once done such a thing by force!”

The excuse is identical to Clark-san’s, too. It just may be that had I studied under Sasha long enough, I’d have awakened to something. In that sense, running off early really was the right call.

“Master, that sort of thing… that’s enough already…”

“Well, be at ease. About two parts in ten of the night-crawling business I say in jest. Don’t take it to heart.”

“Which means eight parts are true, then…”

“At any rate, peerless beauty though I am, as you know I’ve a great many enemies, one way and another.”

“The peerless-beauty part is rather beside the point, but yes, you did do outrageous things, master.”

“Mm. In the end I even planned the desperate trick of holing up in this world should I hit a great pinch in the real one. And accounting for the case of being pushed this far, doubling as an escape route, this place has hidden holes without number.”

“For the record, do these holes connect to the phantom-demon block as well?”

“Connect, you say—”

And Sasha grinned and went on:

“—they connect to every room.”

“Every… room?”

“Mm. To the rooms where the phantom demons are held too, of course. Since they’re passages formed by warping the dimension, the entrances and exits can’t so much as be noticed by any but one at your level or mine.”

“No, even I couldn’t have caught the dimensional warp without being told it’s there.”

“Just so. If even you are so, then that’s why it went unnoticed by anyone all this while.”

“Still, even for you, master, to make and maintain a dimensional hole like this… it really is too much nonsense.”

“I can’t manage such a stunt in the real world, naturally. And the same holds for the Fire God Emperor.”

“The Fire God Emperor too? What do you mean?”

“Mm, because right now this world is being meddled with by him. You likely know it already, but the original system here is being diverted to his use, while his own execution force is the familiars he prepared himself. And the troublesome ones are those familiars… no, one should call them crystals of curse—”

“Crystals of curse?”

“The flame-curse insects. It’s the same nonsense that lets me go full Pixie-spec here—the kind that only works in a mental world. Turned against you, its threat will be plain soon enough, however much you’ll come to hate it.”

Then Sasha snapped his fingers. And a black hole opened in the corner of the room, and a bypass appeared.

“Now, let’s begin, Ephthal. A stroll by night.”

⁂

It was a passage built like a rough-rock cave. This, they said, was a passage made by applying transfer magic to interfere with the dimension. So the passage’s size and scale were free as you liked, ignoring even the actual size of the building, that sort of outrageous business. In fact, the interior was vast enough you could call it all but a labyrinth. Forks everywhere, branching and branching, passages laced through like an ant’s nest, quite literally. By Sasha’s word, to explore the whole passage single-handed from nothing would take about half a year just to map.

Since it was made as an escape route to begin with, it was built that way on purpose. And there’s one point worth special note. This passage connects to every room on the prison island. That alone is astonishing, but each end of the passage, the exit, is in a magic-mirror state. So the inside of a room can be seen, one-way, from this side. Given how the bypass came to be built, it’s no wonder, but here I’ll gratefully make use of the function.

“Still, this is something. To see straight into the state of a room…”

“Well, I did have peeping at pretty boys in view too, ow, that hurts!”

I put in a silent backfist by way of retort. It’s been so since the old days: when it’s a light-mood remark about his kinks, this person doesn’t get angry even if you retort. Far from it, he looks a touch pleased. There’s actually a suspicion he’s a hardcore masochist, a loli-geezer, and a lover of pretty boys, and on top of that a hardcore masochist. Yeah, it gets tangled, so let’s not think too deeply about it.

“By the way, are the bypass holes set in different places from room to room?”

“Hn? Why ask such a thing?”

“Depending on where the entrance is, I’d best think about how to make contact with the phantom demons. If it’s the ceiling, for instance, coming down makes noise. There’s a limit to how much sound-cutting magic can do.”

“I see, there, be at ease. Most of the rooms… there’s a thin partition wall between one cell and the next, no? They’re all set into those.”

“Why go to the trouble of putting them there? The wall across from the barred entrance would have done, wouldn’t it?”

“Coming out of a thin wall no human could possibly fit through gives them a start, no? Well, I did have night-crawling on pretty boys in view, so being startled is the whole savor of it, ow, that hurts!”

“At any rate, the bypass is a great help. With this I should be able to make contact with all the confined phantom demons.”

“Well, the passages are vast, so without my navigation you’d be lost in no time.”

And led along, we walked some twenty minutes. Sasha stopped before an exit leading to a certain room.

“Now then, Ephthal, what do you make of that?”

“…Eggs?”

Just as I said, the floor of that room was packed with eggs, lined at even intervals. About the size of rugby balls, I’d say? Their number easily reached the hundreds, or a thousand, a grand sight. And here and there were left ghastly remnants like the petals of a carnivorous plant. That, I suppose, shows those eggs have already hatched.

“Yes, those are the eggs of the insects. And next, ”

Prompted by Sasha, we walked on down the passage. And in the room beyond the next exit we were led to, a hideous scene spread out. The first thing to catch my eye was a single giant centipede, big enough to swallow up a wild boar. And, facing off against it, eight red spiders, these too about human size, huge in any case. Watching the standoff of centipede and spiders a while, the spiders sprang at the centipede. Coiling, clinging, the spiders sank their fangs into the centipede one after another. But the centipede wasn’t taking it one-sidedly either. Refusing to lose, it thrashed its body to tear the spiders off, slammed them to wall and floor, or fought back with its fangs. The body fluids of both flew, and the room was dyed purple in moments. And then—

Both were venomous insects, most likely. The centipede didn’t look all that badly hurt, but its movements gradually slowed, and now it was at its last gasp. The spiders bitten by the centipede had likewise slackened. There the room’s ceiling opened, and this time dozens of ants about the size of basketballs were thrown in. At the sudden introduction of the ants, centipede and spiders both panicked. And of course the ants too fell into a great panic at their sudden situation. The inside of the room became, quite exactly, like scattered spider hatchlings. Three kinds of insect ran about everywhere, rampaged, and warred with one another.

For a while the state went on, three camps moving without order, striking as each saw fit. But before long… something interesting happened. The spiders and ants stopped fighting each other partway and began, in cooperation, to attack the weakened centipede. This is a phenomenon that often happens even in a human battle-royale-format match. Concentrate your attacks on the weakened one and drive him out, to raise your own odds of survival, that method. So, once the giant centipede fell wholly silent under the all-out assault from both, this time the contest of spiders and ants began.

“And this is…?”

“The kodoku. What’s inside are the underworld ant, the false-dragon centipede, and the vermilion-curse spider.”

“By kodoku, you mean… the kodoku of sorcery?”

“Mm. Shut venomous insects together in a cramped space and make them fight. At the end of the mutual slaughter, one insect is left. Then, using that surviving insect’s venom, one makes a killing poison. It’s called divine poison, magically strengthened so its effect is several times over.”

While we spoke, ants and spiders both dwindled steadily in number. There I noticed something amiss.

“The spiders… their numbers are down and they’re hurt, but their movements are better than at the start.”

“The others are mere venomous-insect monsters. The vermilion-curse spider is the Fire God Emperor’s familiar, and governs curses. Hence the logic that it reaps the greatest magical benefit from the kodoku formula.”

“So as the kodoku rite advances, they’re strengthened by the power of the curse mid-battle?”

“Mm, exactly so.”

Several minutes passed, and by the hand of the spiders, dominant throughout, the ants were at last wiped out. And seeing the scene that came next, I felt I wanted to cover my eyes in disbelief.

“The spiders are… eating each other…?”

“Mm,” Sasha nodded, and went on. “And in the end, the victor of the intra-kind strife becomes the flame-curse insect.”

The strife among the spiders ended, and the last one left standing there was a single red spider. Then something jet-black clung to its surface, and the wavering aura looked for all the world like a red-black flame. A vile and violent scent that drifted even into this passage. I felt a shudder and a chill of dread.

“What exactly is the flame-curse insect?”

“The Fire God Emperor’s specialty is brainwashing. He falsifies and usurps the memories of those he marks, or brainwashes them into pawns. And one of the means to that is the curse, and the magical medium used for it is that insect.”

“But for a curse-insect and its kind to hold such power… by common sense that’s impossible.”

“In the real world it has no body, and is no more than a lump of high-purity magical curse-energy. But, it’s a thing that originally does mischief within the human heart. In a world with the aspect of a mental world, the logic is that it exhibits explosive power. And so… er, who was it now, there was one, that brat… the foster brother of the descendant of the first Ice God Emperor.”

“You mean Brad, Sheryl’s brother?”

“Mm. Roughly, that one could handle about five of them. So, how far could you deal with them, Ephthal?”

Looking at the flame-curse insect visible on the far side, I sank into careful thought.

“…Well, if I’m to take them all at once, twenty is about my limit.”

“About that, I’d say. Then… what if it were a hundred?”

“You can’t mean…?”

There the countless eggs from before flashed across my mind. Recalling their number, feeling a cold sweat on my back, I swallowed hard.

“That thing’s survivable lifespan is about seven days, and the ones kept in constant use to guard the phantom-demon block number only a few.”

“But those eggs from before… there were several hundred or more, weren’t there?”

“Five red spiders make one flame-curse insect. Made in earnest, at maximum strength with no regard for anything, a hundred or so at once is possible. Or rather, after the kodoku, about a hundred are always kept preserved by a freezing technique.”

“I see… so this really won’t be settled by any simple means.”

“So it can’t be managed by your solitary strength alone, as it always has been. Best carve that into your heart.”

Saying so, Sasha turned on his heel and started deeper down the passage.

“Where to now?”

“There’s one more place I’d have you see. There I’ll tell you the concrete plan for this operation’s aim, the one that stands paired with freeing the phantom demons.”

“And that would be?”

“Securing the means to return outside. Even if we free the phantom demons whose power is sealed, without a technique to call them out to the real world alongside you, it’s a treasure left to rot.”

⁂

Led on by Sasha, we went further through the phantom-demon block. And on the way, a voice I knew well reached my ears.

“Wait a moment, please.”

As I made to head that way, Sasha started to say ‘Leave it,’ but broke off partway and shrugged, as if giving up. He knows well enough that nothing he says will stop me. After all, that was the voice of Bastet, who was once my familiar, who lived with me all but as family.

“Where is this…?”

“The deepest part of the block where the phantom demons are confined.”

“And the one shut in is, sure enough…?”

“Mm. The one who gathered the hot-blooded phantom demons and tried to rise against the Fire God Emperor—Bastet.”

Just as Sasha said, in a stone-flagged cell Bastet was held captive. In human looks she’d be early twenties, with cat ears and a cat’s tail. She wasn’t in a maid’s dress like back then, but the shoulder-length brown hair was unchanged. Bound in prison garb, chained with cuffs, her keen gaze was the same as of old.

“This is a place for correcting those who’ve strayed from the path. A prison, not an execution ground. Aren’t you laboring under some misunderstanding, warden?”

The one she was glaring at was a man in his prime. Planted there four-square, he wore the odd getup of a mage’s robe thrown over a guard’s uniform. There were others in the room too, four men in prison garb. They’d been set in restraint chairs, heads blindfolded and gagged, a fairly lurid sight.

“That’s right, true enough, Sasha positions this place as a facility of correction. But now the one who decides everything here is the Fire God Emperor’s disciple, entrusted with this place: me.”

The warden grinned. Then, without pause, he struck a hand-blade at the prisoner sitting beside him. The thud of a falling head. The cut was charred black and smoking, fire magic wreathed about his hand, I’d say.

“Yes, there is life imprisonment, but no death penalty. Correct yourself and you’re set free without charge, that is the law the Creator laid down.”

“To feed the phantom demons, humans were once brought here. It began with death-row convicts from the outside, was it?”

“That’s right. But disorder by ruffians was not the shape of this world that Sasha-sama sought. At first, I hear, the correction facility here worked to the fullest and best effect.”

“And so the ones whose fangs were drawn raised crops, built towns, made children and grew the population. Come to think of it, Sasha brought orphans on the brink of starving to death in the real world here too, didn’t he?”

“Sasha-sama is… gentle with children. That one meant to make this a paradise for those who’d lost any place to go.”

“Fairies flitting about a little island in the sky, where those driven from the living world pass their days in peace… ha. A fairyland to the letter, is it.”

Surprised, I sent Sasha a glance, and he hurriedly lowered his lashes. Embarrassed, perhaps, to have an unexpected side of him found out, he’d gone red to the ears and puffed out his cheeks.

“What, Ephthal? Have you some complaint with me?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Mgh…”

And muttering to himself, ‘Saying needless things…,’ Sasha began to gnaw at his thumbnail.

“But the nature of man is evil. Make a human town and, in the end, some run to atrocity. For instance, this.”

The man whose head had just been struck off. Besides him, the men bound to chairs came to three. Moving his gaze over each of them one by one, the warden went on.

“One killed his parents to steal their money; another killed a string of rich men, likewise for money. And the last confined children to sate his own desires.”

“But… after more than ten years of a corrective life, they repented. They came to know the pain of others.”

“And who decides they’ve repented? Mouth and manner can be dressed up any which way, and there’s no confirming what’s behind it, is there?”

“Which is why—” and the warden turned each of his hands into a blade and drove them at the prisoners. “These are unneeded. Disposal.”

The smell of searing reached even us. And at the same time, with a heavy sound, two heads flew and dropped. There Bastet bit her lip and pressed it into a tight line.

“Enough, stop such things. What is there to gain by showing me this?”

“Honestly, your way is too soft. Set loose outside the scum who did things that merit killing, and if the order of this world is thrown into disarray as a result, what then? In the end it could even lead to a decline in the quality of the phantom demons.”

“This has been the way since old times. Press down men’s hearts with fear past all measure and there’s no sound mental activity, and thus no feed for the phantom demons either.”

“The Fire God Emperor will see to verifying all that hereafter. At any rate, right now I am the order and the law of this world.”

There a guard came in. I’d heard the phantom-demon block was run by the Fire God Emperor, but this block seemed different even in its guards. Because the one who entered at the warden’s signal was a monstrous shape clad in a guard’s uniform. An Ifrit, a high-ranking fire familiar. By the way, an Ifrit wreathes itself in flame during battle, but ordinarily it takes an ogre-like form with reddish-black skin.

“I’m well used to handling fire and insects, you see…”

Taking a jar from the Ifrit that had entered, the warden smiled a nasty smile. And drawing a centipede from within the jar, he looked from Bastet to the last remaining prisoner and back.

“This is no monster or anything of the sort, just a poison-bearing centipede. A feeble, frail thing, crushed underfoot if a human so much as steps on it.”

“But—” the warden laughed, delighted, at the prisoner. “Now, put it into a nostril, an ear-hole, or the anus, and what happens? From a feeble thing it turns, in an instant, into a hair-raising demon.”

“Hiii!”

Blindfolded, but he must have heard the words. To the prisoner, all the blood gone from him at once, the warden dealt another hand-blade.

“A joke. I’ve no taste for hurting people to no purpose. Don’t take it to heart, please.”

A head dropped, and the warden turned his gaze to Bastet.

“But if there’s a purpose, I’ve no choice but to do it. Since, alas, this sort of method is the most effective for tormenting a phantom demon.”

Bastet didn’t stir a single brow. But even so, that some slight negative feeling had lodged in her eyes was plain even from here.

“Still, a body that can’t die is a hard lot too. Die and die again, and after a few decades you revive; you never fade away. But keep hold of the core and it’s endless regeneration… and every time, the misery of torture along with it.”

“…Do as you please.”

“After the public execution, your core goes into a pool where insects writhe. For all eternity, so long as the world lasts, you’ll keep reviving with your power sealed, and keep dying, eaten by the insects.”

And with a ‘Sorry about this,’ the warden dipped his head to Bastet in a little bow.

“There’s no way to make you suffer but this one, so—there’s no help for it. Ah, truly, I am sorry.”

And with that the warden advanced a few steps toward Bastet and drove a kick into her face. Bastet, as before, didn’t stir a brow. But as for me… I was nearing the limit of my patience.

“Why a public execution for me? What meaning could there be in it?”

“I’ve got to make a show of it to every last one in this prison. What’s above and what’s below. I’ve got to make them see despair, what becomes of those who defy us.”

“The Otogi Fantasia is not so simple a spell as you imagine. What it means to make phantom demons obey, you don’t understand it. The Fire God Emperor could never master it fully. No, I, at least, will not yield.”

“Fufu, the spirit only lasts at the start. Happily, the Fire God Emperor has ages of time. Time enough for talk and mutual understanding… well, I doubt you’ll last a hundred years before you come over to us. Weep and apologize and I might even forgive you. Change your heart and say the word anytime.”

“…”

“Whether he kills Sasha and takes it, or puts him in suspended death, or Sasha bends wholly to the Fire God Emperor, I don’t know. At any rate, this world will be kept in a meaningful form. That is the Fire God Emperor’s decision.”

“And will it truly go so neatly as you think?”

“Even if Sasha should cease to be a usable pawn, the Fire God Emperor need only take it and wield it. So, for the time being, it’s the disciplining of you, ringleader of the recent rebellion. Repetition is what matters in learning… until every last one submits, I’ll have fear stamped into you again, and again, however many times it takes.”

“And you believe doing such things will make me swear loyalty to you?”

“You won’t swear loyalty, no. But you’ll obey. You’ll come to follow orders.”

“…Do as you like, then. But this one thing I’ll say, I will never, ever yield.”

Sasha, looking puzzled, asked me:

“You needn’t… save her?”

“Of course I’ll save her. But it’s not now, is it?”

I snapped my fingers.

“What did you do, Ephthal?”

“Shared the countdown. That thing can only be seen by your school, master.”

Bastet was once my familiar. She, like me, would understand what this meant. In effect, it was a message that I would come, without fail, to save her.

“Now, let’s get to the heart of it. What do I need to do, no, how do I go about beating these people down?”

At the words, Sasha broke into a sharp little smile.

“So your fighting spirit’s finally caught, has it.”

⁂

“No one to see us here. You can come out.”

Adjusting the dimensional warp, the place we emerged from the bypass was a garbage dump. Inside, boxes were stacked any which way, each heaped with refuse. In its build the room was no different from a communal cell, a moldy flagstone floor and walls, the sour reek of kitchen scraps catching at the nose.

“This place is the lowest level of the prison island. Come this way.”

Led along, I headed to the corner of the dump. There a horizontal hole gaped open. Wind was blowing in this way, so, thinking surely not, I peered in and could see the scenery outside.

“Meaning they throw the garbage out through this hole?”

“Well, that’s the shape of it. Ephthal, try tossing some garbage out.”

Prompted, I took refuse from a box and flung it into the hole.

“And, well, as you can see, it goes like this.”

Where Sasha pointed. Far, far below, where the garbage had fallen, a red light arose. Look closely and a wall of flame had appeared over the whole of that region.

“At any rate, this gives you the general situation, no?”

“Yes, the garbage was annihilated. Still, what a thick barrier. Breaking through that, wouldn’t it be impossible?”

“It’s the barrier the Fire God Emperor made. Because that thing wraps this world in a sphere, the passage between the mental world and the real world has been cut off.”

That wall of flame from a moment ago had no small power. How thick it is I couldn’t say. But if you tried to force your way through it, the odds are high you’d burn up before ever getting outside.

“And… well, this is this island’s present state.”

“I have a question, though, just what is down below there?”

Because the instant the wall of flame vanished I checked with far-sight magic, and what I saw was quite something.

“That’d be what’s called the underworld.”

“Hm? Even you don’t know, master?”

“I’ve never been, and I’ve acquaintances who went, but they all… never came back. I’m curious, but you get set upon by all sorts of nasty things on the way.”

“But that’s the underworld? Really?”

“It is. Strange, no? Why there’d be a cluster of high-civilization buildings down there. It resembles the style of the ancient magic civilization, but…”

“It looks like the architectural style of the world I originally came from, too.”

Glimpsed dimly from on high, it was scenery you’d not find odd if told it was some city of Earth turned near-future. Just what in the world is that…? So I thought, but if Sasha doesn’t know, there’s no way I would.

“Originally, part of why I built the sky-island cluster was to observe the underworld from this region, the way the Ten Sages of the ancient magic civilization did.”

“That’s a fairy-tale story. The Ten Sages who came from somewhere, built the ancient magic civilization, and then vanished off somewhere. By one account they didn’t age for thousands of years and reigned atop the ruling structure all the while.”

It’s only a fairy tale, but a famous one. Back then, humans living something like a Stone Age life had a high scientific civilization and magical civilization raised up in the blink of an eye by the Ten Sages who appeared out of nowhere. After that the civilization reached the heights of a long prosperity. But one day, all at once, the Ten Sages departed to some other dimension, that’s the tale.

“Not aging for a few thousand years isn’t especially a problem. I’m much the same on that point myself.”

“And after that, a war broke out, was it?”

“Mm. Technology not made by their own hands, only handed to them. Humans holding power beyond their measure warred with one another, and unable to master the power of destruction, they self-destructed, civilization and all, in war. Only some of the magic techniques remained, down to the present.”

And having said that far, Sasha bit his lip, melancholy.

“So, the Fire God Emperor… that brat cannot be handed this spell. He’s the same as a child with no sense of discretion. For the sake of his goal he’d destroy the world without so much as a change of color… at the end of it all, the ultimate crap-brat.”

“So, concretely, what do you mean to do, and how?”

Sasha put a hand to empty space, and the hand vanished. Then, with a difficult face, going ‘Where was it now?’, he made a groping sort of gesture. And when he drew the hand back, a hand holding a little pouch appeared. No, I get that it’s a fourth-dimensional-pocket sort of magic. But having this kind of outrageous thing done as a matter of course isn’t good for the heart.

“Inside this there’s a ring. I’ve named it the god-releasing tool, and we’ll use it. What the Fire God Emperor set in the phantom demons’ weakening is a technique to seal a spiritual existence. Which is why they can’t even break their cages now. But I’m an expert in that line myself, in fact, undoing it alone is easy enough.”

“And the way to get the god-releasing tool to the phantom demons? They’re strictly confined, from what I hear… no, ah, right, that’s easy.”

“Yes, that’s what the bypass is for. By the day of reckoning, secretly make contact with every last phantom demon, and in parallel, pry open the dimensional road out.”

“Pry it open, you say… how do you mean to? So far the Fire God Emperor’s done nothing about my being here. Which means he has absolute confidence in that barrier, doesn’t it? Can it really be managed?”

“Mm. It can’t be managed at all, you know. Frankly, I throw up my hands.”

“I’d think so. If it could be managed, there’s no way I’d have been left alone.”

“And so,” Sasha declared. “We collapse not the barrier, but this world itself.”

“…?”

“Say there’s a fist-sized ball of ice here… that’s this world. And you cup it tight in both palms. That’s the Fire God Emperor’s barrier.”

“Yes, and?”

“The palms are in the way, so the ice can’t be moved outside, no? But, melt the ice, and what then?”

Arriving at what the words meant, I was struck dumb despite myself.

“Are you… sane?”

“I am. It becomes droplets, slips through the palms, and drips down. What we break isn’t the palms covering the ball, but the ice ball itself.”

“Destroy this world itself, and inevitably the foreign matter inside gets out… that’s the scenario? But that would cause problems, wouldn’t it?”

“The collapse is done gently. The ones inside we let out at the proper times. It’s only a matter of tuning it so. Send you and the phantom demons out at the very start, and let the rest out slowly, taking our time.”

“No, that’s not what I mean, do that and…”

“Mm. The spell called the Otogi Fantasia itself is lost forever. But be at ease, some have sworn loyalty, some haven’t. There are all sorts of phantom demons, but a last order, at least, they should all heed. It won’t hinder us in the decisive moment.”

“But, master… you followed the Fire God Emperor because you didn’t want to lose the phantom demons, didn’t you?”

At my question Sasha threw out his chest and laughed, ‘Kah-kah.’

“Well, the point is I’m a sore loser. Rather than follow that man… I’ll go so far as to choose scrapping my jewel-box.”

Seeing that proud gaze, I laughed despite myself. ‘That’s you all over…’ Yeah, this is Sasha through and through. A lone hawk soaring the sky, where none can reach. The figure of the man whose back I once resolved to chase is here, unchanged, even now. And that, for some reason, made me oddly glad.

“Besides, short of doing that much… I can’t outmaneuver that brat. So, there are two things I want you to do.”

“One is freeing the phantom demons. And the other is…”

“Mm. I want you to build, together with me, the formula to collapse this world. The master blueprint is here, so it won’t be difficult.”

Sasha touched his fingertips to his own head twice, tap-tap. There the worry I’d been holding flashed across my mind. So, shaking my head, I put this to Sasha.

“Sasha, I hate to say it, but there’s a high chance your plan is broken.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s—”

And hearing the doubt I laid out, Sasha’s face twisted in astonishment.

⁂

So, with one thing and another, I ended up back in Clark-san’s room, the guest room, to be precise. After that, I sat cross-legged on the bed and sank into meditation. What I’d proposed to Sasha earlier was two things. One was the plan to break out of the Otogi Fantasia leading the phantom demons. And the other was this.

The Astral Breach.

Well, in short it’s a kind of special training. Since I call it special, naturally it differs from ordinary training. First, you return the mind to magic and separate it from the body. It’s tangled to explain, so, put simply, you make it leave the body, astral projection. And next, you send the soul flying to Sasha’s dwelling, the World Tree.

The place I was making for now is Sasha’s abode, strongly linked from within the world of the Otogi Fantasia. The World Tree, that is. Further still, past the point where you trace down the World Tree’s roots. The World Tree where Sasha lives is, true to its name, a special existence in the spiritual sense. Through the ley of land that connects to its roots, it holds a road to the spirit-vein that reaches the spiritual world, the star’s core. By the way, the World Tree and the Otogi Fantasia are closely linked in the spiritual sense; as a mental world, they’re one and the same place. Which is precisely why it lies outside the range of the Fire God Emperor’s barrier, so travel is possible. Well, boundary-crossing with the flesh in tow can’t be done, and I can’t step so much as a pace outside the World Tree.

Now, the ancient Ten Sages that Sasha spoke of a while ago filled the world with magic for their own research, they say. When I heard that, honestly, I found it entirely reasonable. Because inside our brains, magic circuits for handling magic are formed. Take muscle enhancement: under training load, the muscle fibers break down. And they regenerate as stronger muscle than before, the phenomenon called super-recovery. The brain’s magic circuits wear and break under repeated magic use. After that, the same as muscle, they super-recover, that is, they receive a supply of mana, the magic dissolved into the atmosphere, and grow stronger and thicker. Well, strengthening the magic circuits makes it easier to learn or develop new magic too.

The place I reached, then, having become a mental body, is where you follow a branch of the spirit-vein laced deep underground from the World Tree. So, the star’s core, in the spiritual sense. Inside, it’s a dim-gray world all around, a space so vast you can’t even perceive the boundary of ground and sky. It’s about like being inside a mass of mana, and the training efficiency becomes an outrageous twenty times normal. That said, since it’s premised on astral projection, stay too long and there’s the demerit that the link to your main body severs and you can’t return. Concretely, twelve hours a day, and continuous use up to a week is the time limit. The gist being that during sleeping hours you become a mental body and pile up training. And if you exceed this limit, you must set an interval of fifty to a hundred years before the next use. Well, for the human race, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance at dramatic improvement of magic skill. It’s a secret training method of the Sasha faction, so naturally I experienced it too, some four hundred fifty years ago. But since I’ve been reborn, the limit’s cleared, as it stands.

As for why I’ve come here now, the answer is simple. To stand against the Fire God Emperor, the me of now is far too short on power. After all, even the me of four hundred years ago was no match for him. And that the Fire God Emperor has raised his power beyond before, I understood well when we faced off the other day. How far I can get in this one week I don’t know, but at the least, to outmaneuver the Fire God Emperor for even an instant… I have to sharpen my fangs.

Right. I clenched my fist. And to bring the thing I’d been working at for some time into a certain shape, I slapped both palms to my cheeks with a burst of spirit. Still, why is it that, spirit body though I am, I have a body that mimics the physical one just as it is? More than that, why do I have the five senses as normal? I cocked my head at the same old question. And just then—

“Huh… Ephthal?”

“Eh… Maria?”

Before I’d noticed, Maria was there. Eh? Just what is going on…? I froze, too bewildered.

“Ah, a dream, is it… Ephthal’s in some baffling world called the Otogi Fantasia or whatever right now, isn’t he.”

So Maria said, with a look of having somehow talked herself into it, but, just what is this situation.

“Why is Maria here?”

“Eh? Ah, that. Leave us alone and the Fire God Emperor might take us hostage, they said. Ephthal’s people are all cooped up in the manor too. So we got taken from the ducal manor to Sasha-sama’s house… the World Tree, and…”

“Yeah, and?”

“Learn to at least protect yourself, they said. A drop in the bucket, most likely, they added, but, do it like so and it’ll get a bit better, they gave me a memo. And when I came to, this is the state of things.”

I see, I more or less grasp the situation. And I took the memo Maria drew from her breast. Thinking it probably had a training menu written on it, I looked—

“Sasha… this is impossible for her…”

The content written there was, as it turned out, a terrible thing.

Train like your life depends on it and get to where you can use around Level 7.

That was all that was written on the memo. Yes… truly, that was all that was written on it. Well, how to put it, Sasha as a teacher is outrageous. Watch and steal the technique is the basic principle, and being a genius type, he’s flatly bad at plainly teaching people, too. You crank up the magic go-go-go and form the formula bam-bam-bam and let fly a Level 10 boom, the whole way through, it’s that kind of vibe. I graduated a magic university and dabbled in the adventurer trade before becoming his disciple, and I can flatly declare it’s a hundred percent incomprehensible unless you’re already grounded in the basics.

Still, I thought. In practice, you can use this place only once in a lifetime. Making her throw into the gutter a precious week with dramatic effect, rivaling roughly half a year of training, is no good either.

“Er, Maria… by the way, where’s Merlin?”

“Holed up at the ducal manor with Svetlana-sama. Guarding Fraser-sama—Duke Alcott, that is—and Cecilia-sama, and, besides them, Ephthal’s mother, I think.”

Ah… Svetlana as well, huh. This is no good. With that, the option of having them draw up a training menu from tomorrow on has vanished too.

“No help for it… all right. I’ll look after you myself.”

At that, Maria’s face lit up, and she nodded as if it all fell into place.

“Ah, I see, so that’s it. Ha, actually, I did think it was strange.”

“Hm? Strange?”

“No, this memo… frankly it makes no sense, right? Barely any explanation either. But Sasha-sama did prepare things properly, didn’t she.”

“Prepare, meaning?”

“You, you. I don’t know if you’re a phantom of Ephthal or a copy or what, but you were laid on as my trainer here, that’s the deal, right?”

No, that’s not it, just as I started to say it, Maria checked the words with her right hand, as if to say don’t spell it all out.

“But really, I’m so glad. After all, the one I want teaching me is Ephthal. No, frankly, anyone but Ephthal is out of the question.”

“Hm? Anyone but me is out of the question?”

“When a magic-academy teacher or the like says something to me, I’m the type that gets irritated. Even with a genuine expert like Merlin-sama, being corrected makes me irritated.”

“Well, you aren’t an honest sort.”

“But… told it by you, I feel like I’ll follow honestly. And you’re the only one I feel that way about, you know?”

“…”

No, told that, how am I supposed to react. Still, this girl really is a handful in all sorts of ways… I sighed.

“So, in that sense, the one who listens to you most and practices magic in earnest really is me. Anastasia and the others are earnest too, but they mostly put their effort into laundry and cleaning and that sort of thing.”

“For the record, where’s Sheryl?”

“Sheryl’s… well, a genius. I’ve never seen her train herself to death, and she’s the strongest… well, she’s a kid and a space-case, so it’s fine that she doesn’t overdo it. But me, I do many times what you tell me to, not skipping a single day.”

“I don’t deny you work hard.”

“So…” Maria colored her cheeks a faint crimson and went on. “I want a reward.”

“A reward…?”

“So I’m saying I want to be praised. I’m saying I want you to say Maria’s working hard, you’re amazing, you’re a good girl. Then I can throw myself into the road of magic even more single-mindedly. And someday… I can be of use to you. It may be a surprise, but I’m that simple a girl, you know.”

“…Your aim isn’t to be praised by me, but to show up the ones back in the elf village, isn’t it?”

“Sure, at first I wanted to show up the elf village. That I admit. But before I knew it, I wanted to be of use to you. I don’t want to stay dead weight… I want to be praised by you, to have you think well of me—”

And Maria laughed, bashful, and went on.

“—showing someone up, that can be a side thing. That’s what I think now.”

“Well, it’s fine to have all sorts of reasons, isn’t it.”

“Still, just because you aren’t the real thing… I can be honest, huh. It’s strange. Saying this sort of thing is far harder to bear than telling you I like you. But even so, a bit… saying this to your face, it might be a little embarrassing after all.”

“I think honest is cuter, and better.”

At that Maria laughed a bashful ‘Ehehe.’ And just then—

“That’s right. I think Maria-san is cute when she’s honest.”

“…I don’t dislike it either. She should push that side of herself out more and more.”

Well, Anastasia and Sheryl had appeared. No need to even think about it, of course they had, but in that instant Maria went shifty-eyed and looked thoroughly flustered.

“Y-y-you two… wh-wh-wh-where were you listening from?”

At the question, Anastasia clapped her palms together and, beaming, said:

“…From around the one I want teaching me is Ephthal.”

Hearing it, Maria, like an instant water-boiler, went red in the face and screamed on the spot.

“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it!”

Just then, I decided to go ahead and say the thing I’d kept putting off.

“Er, Maria, you seem to be under a misunderstanding, but I’m… not a phantom or a copy or anything… I’m the real me.”

“Huh?”

“So, I’m the real me.”

“No, but aren’t you inside the Otogi Fantasia? And doing all sorts of things to break out? There’s no way you could come to a place like this.”

“The Otogi Fantasia is connected to Sasha’s World Tree dwelling, so… the soul alone can cross over as far as the World Tree.”

“…Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

At that, Maria’s face went past bright red into the aspect of scorching magma. And, half in tears, she shook her head.

“No! No! That whole thing just now, no! Forget it! Forget it!”

“No, told to forget it…”

“You could do a forgetting spell easy!”

“I can put it on you, but on myself it’s a bit… no good.”

“Ah… no… if there were a hole I’d crawl into it, this is exactly that…”

And, well. With one thing and another, our week of nights had begun.

⁂

“First, the basics of the basics. Above all, spam magic and strengthen the brain’s magic circuits. Mana repairs the worn circuits at once, you see. A chance like this won’t come twice.”

In these girls’ case, their magic circuits are feeble past discussion, whatever else. Well, by rights it’s a thing you train from childhood, and it takes about twenty years before it’s finally usable, so there’s no help for it. And once their heads are worn ragged from too much super-recovery, I have them challenge new magic at a raised level, that’s the teaching policy this time. Also, there’s the fact that I have to train myself too. Frankly, this situation where these girls spend nearly all their time on repeating basic drills is a real help.

“Now, then…”

I flew by flight magic through the endlessly wide gray space. Arriving far from Anastasia and the others at their basic drills, I sat in zazen and began to concentrate my mind.

The new technique in a range that could reach even the Fire God Emperor, Magic Sword, Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.

It’s the goal I’ve been thinking of all this life as my magic sword, but it’s still far from complete. The theory of the formula itself is finished. If, for instance, the opponent is a stationary target and I can take enough time to charge, activation is possible. But somehow there’s unease on the operational side. Most likely, magic aptitude is the bottleneck. Because the magic doesn’t run swiftly into the formula laid on the sword. It’s nowhere near a level usable in a real fight yet. But at least so I can use it when I catch a good opening… I have to get it into some kind of shape this time.

Thinking such things, I drew the katana from its sheath with my right hand, thrust it forward, and layered magic onto it. And I gazed hard at the blade with the formula laid on it. Why does it take time. How can the time be shortened. I looked it over again. Just then, I felt a presence at my back and swung the katana behind me.

“…No one there?”

Did I misread killing intent? Me? And a voice came from off to the side.

“Four hundred years, is it… nostalgic, wielder of lightning.”

At that voice, and seeing that figure, I was struck dumb. Because—

“The Demon Lord…?”

The reason we four sages came to be called the Four Emperors. The being who once threw the world into vast chaos by violence… was floating there, in the form of a head alone.

“I see. Now I understand. The reincarnator the flame-wielder spoke of is you.”

“The flame-wielder… you mean the Fire God Emperor? No, before that, we cut you down at the Demon Lord’s castle, for certain.”

“The oddity who took only my head home… by the flame-wielder I was given a borrowing of life. Now I am a thing that only wanders the spirit-veins as a ghost.”

I stood and set the katana toward the head.

“I’ve no wish to fight. I’ve already been freed of the curse. I only, came to warn you.”

“A warning?”

“You, who chose death-return in the Goddess’s chamber, are a singularity even to the Ten Sages. Because you’ve escaped the curse, the ruin that drags in self and others, you’re lured toward a deeper, denser underworld sorcery.”

“What… are you saying?”

“Your thirst for power. No, perhaps even that is in their palm. Wielder of lightning, a riddle, last of all.”

And the Demon Lord’s head smiled thinly and said:

“In what era, and how, did you die on Earth, and come to this world?”

A cold sweat ran down my back with a shiver. Such a thing, I’d never once thought about it until now. I remember picking up judo techniques in high school, but, and there a sharp headache struck me. True, I have knowledge of Japan. I know the education system, the names of long-tenured prime ministers, that curry is delicious. But I can’t recall my family’s names or faces.

“Wielder of lightning, I ask further. Your name on Earth?”

“…I don’t know.”

What, what is this? Try as I might to recall, I can’t make out at all what sort of person I was on Earth. Truly… I don’t even know my name. Middle school? High school? As knowledge I remember I attended, but not concretely what kind of places they were. Who my friends were, that sort of thing, nothing at all… I don’t know. And… as for after graduating university, I can’t recall it even as knowledge. Truly, what is this…?

“Just so. As predicted… is it.”

“Demon Lord… what do you know? Why have I… all this time… felt no doubt about this?”

“It means you’re a special existence. To begin with, a skill like death-return isn’t built into the system the Ten Sages devised. One thing I’ll say: directly below the floating islands, the place you call the underworld, is Shinjuku in the year 2085.”

“Shinjuku…? No sign of life came from that ruined city… and the underworld should have existed from the distant past. And near-future, 2085? No, or else… does it mean Japan was destroyed once? Are you telling me this is a super-future relative to the timeline of the Earth I was on?”

“That was misleading of me—more precisely, it’s a place modeled on Shinjuku. The flame-wielder, and his little sister Bridget, all of it was arranged from the very start.”

“Bridget, you said?”

Why does that name come up now? A crawling prickle ran over the skin of my back, and just as I made to ask the Demon Lord why, I clicked my tongue hard.

“Gone… is it.”

I don’t know what’s what. But somehow… behind the Fire God Emperor’s change, there seems to be something beyond anything I could imagine. And I heaved a deep sigh.

⁂

The next day. I’d been put in a dark stone solitary cell and set on a restraint chair.

“I know you’re Clark’s favorite.”

Standing before me was the head jailer I’d met on the first day. The man who’d pressed the brand on me. Well, the burn mark’s not still there, but since various things would be awkward otherwise, I’ve made a convincing-looking scar with illusion magic, so no worry on that score.

“And knowing it, you’re treating me like this?”

At my question the head jailer gave a weary good grief of a shrug.

“True, by the standing orders passed down he’s an existence not to be touched on this prison island… but his position, too, is delicate now.”

“Delicate?”

“Things have changed under the Fire God Emperor’s new regime. Clark’s surely off talking with the new warden about the way forward even now.”

“…What are you getting at?”

“To make him understand his place under the new regime, I’ve brought you here.”

Just as the head jailer said, this morning, while I was building the formula for the Otogi Fantasia’s collapse in my room, the head jailer appeared out of nowhere and I was hauled off. I could have resisted easily enough had I wanted to, but I can’t very well stand out inside the prison right now. So, going along meekly, I was put in a solitary cell and seated on a restraint chair, that’s the upshot of the present situation. Clark, by the way, had gone out at dawn, summoned by the warden, so the head jailer’s story is probably true.

“…Is this your own doing?”

“Aye, my own. I’ve long found Clark hard to stomach.”

“…I see.”

“That restraint chair’s set to react the instant you use any magic. Even if you got a self-defense magic tool from Clark, best not use it.”

“React?”

“Aye. A Level 5-class blast goes off, and in that instant you’re done for. Best not try resistance or escape.”

“So, what do you mean to do with me?”

“You’ll be cooped up here three days or so. Even you, take three days and nights of a beating and it’ll tell on you a little.”

This is a problem. For now, building formulas is a thing done only inside my head, so I can build them without trouble, but, and the Level 5 blast is no problem at all, but this situation, with magic use, that is, formula-building, sealed off, is bad. Coming through a blast unhurt would be conspicuous past all measure.

“Then in exactly thirty minutes I’ll bring the other guards. The fun starts after that. Spend the time regretting that cocky attitude of yours from the first day.”

Still, Sasha permits rough handling for the sake of correction as a basic policy, but this is just plain abuse. Well, this is the head jailer being no good as an individual, I suppose. As I thought that, the head jailer left with a booming laugh.

And thirty minutes later. As declared, the head jailer came back to the solitary cell with five guards. And the moment he saw the state of the room—

“Wh-what’s happened here?!”

Quite the shock, but that stands to reason. After all, the room was blast-scorched black, and standing at its center was me—no, Clark.

“C-Clark?!”

“I sent that boy back. Still, you seem to have had your way with the place, haven’t you.”

What I did was simple. Cast illusion magic on myself and take Clark’s form. This way, however much I overdo it, I can make it look like Clark raged, not me. And I stepped a few paces toward the head jailer.

“That conduct of yours is rather poor. It isn’t the warden’s order, is it?”

“Th-that’s…”

“Never lay a hand on Ephthal-kun again.”

“Clark… don’t think it’s your day forever. The situation’s chang— agh!”

Seizing his hair, I hurled him at the wall to the right. Hair came out in clumps, and blood sprayed from the roots. He seemed to hit the wall nose-first, and the nasal bone was wrecked, by the look of it.

“Y-you… against me…!”

Still full of spirit, apparently. So I stepped slowly toward the head jailer again. And reaching out to his head, I gripped his ear and swung my arm with all my strength.

“Gyah!”

I let go a hair before the ear tore off, but the head jailer collapsed to the floor all the same.

“Never lay a hand on him again… understood?”

“…”

His expression was sullen, so I pressed it home with a glare.

“Understood?”

“…Yes.”

Good, and that settles that. Just then, the outside of the solitary cell suddenly grew noisy. The sound of any number of guards rushing somewhere in a fluster reached me, and as I wondered what was up, a voice came:

“Emergency! At this rate this floating island is going to fall!”

At the far end of the direction the guards were running was a door. Opening it and going in, it turned out to be a rooftop. On a wide expanse several tennis courts over, atop a smooth stone outer wall, some twenty personnel all told were shouting things at one another in a flustered clamor. Human guards, Ifrit guards, every one of them looking up overhead in dismay. And among them, one man with a composed air, this is the warden I’d seen before.

“Hm…?”

The warden frowned for just an instant. I thought my disguise had been noticed, but he shrugged at once, as if to say what a business.

“Clark, you know the Fire God Emperor’s meddling has this world unstable, yes? It’s turned bad.”

“…”

I answered the words with silence. Well, I’m not Clark. Out of concern that talking clumsily might give me away.

“Look at that. Most likely the cause is the weakening of the barrier against the underworld that Sasha held firm.”

Looking where he pointed, there… I could see a floating island bearing down on us at furious speed. From a distance, about two hundred meters in radius, I’d say. A speed and size where it isn’t hard to imagine this floating island would crumble in an instant on a direct hit.

“Warden, is that island uninhabited?”

“Aye, like most of the floating islands within the Otogi Fantasia, that one’s uninhabited too.”

“I see… I grasp the situation, but what do you intend to do about it?”

“Our fighting force, the flame-curse insects are close-range monsters. And I’m the support-specialist sort myself, throwing up walls and the like.”

The warden raised both hands from his shrugging pose, as if to say I give up.

“That’s why I say it’s turned bad. So the Fire God Emperor has stationed only a force for base management here. There’s no pawn among us with the heavy firepower to bring down that floating island.”

And the warden thought something over a while, then heaved a deep sigh.

“Happily, there’s a little time before that hits us. Worst case… contacting the real world and asking for the Fire God Emperor to appear is within my calculations.”

That is… bad. Should it come to that, the Fire God Emperor won’t keep leaving me alone.

“Still, warden, worst case, you say, meaning… you have some other plan?”

“Aye. I, too, don’t choose my means, the same as the Fire God Emperor. So, I’ve released a part of the phantom demons.”

There, from the rooftop door, led by five Ifrit guards and manacled, appeared a great ape all but topping two meters.

Sun Wukong. By another name, the Monkey King.

It seemed they meant to leave dealing with the floating island to that phantom demon. True, among the phantom demons he ranks one or two for sheer martial power. If he’s a root of the Chinese immortal legends, then he excels at destruction along with Nezha, so he’s well suited to it. But, and I called out to the great ape.

“Shall I help?”

At that, Sun Wukong went utterly blank, dumbstruck, and froze on the spot a while. Then he knit his brow, and with furious force several veins stood out at his temple.

“Aah? The hell’re you saying?”

Seizing me by the collar, Sun Wukong brought his face close enough for our brows to touch.

“Sounds to me like you’re saying I can’t do it on my own?”

And with a ‘Stay out of it,’ he shoved me off with a thump.

“You’re Sasha’s disciple, when it comes down to it. As if there’s a monster that outdoes a top-rank phantom demon like me lying around every corner.”

Well… the willful sort just as the legend has it. He ought to have danced in Buddha’s palm and mellowed with his meeting the monk Sanzang, and yet this. And Sun Wukong looked up overhead and thrust his palm forward.

“Come forth—Ruyi staff!”

What appeared in empty space was a giant red staff. More a pillar than a staff, no, by now in the realm of giant architecture. Diameter about five meters, length some thirty. And in moments the Ruyi staff was wrapped in reddish-black hellfire. By the look of it, he’d laid Level-9-class flame and burst magic onto the Ruyi staff. And as Sun Wukong poured in his will, along with a dry crack the Ruyi staff shot off toward the far-distant floating island. The dry crack was the sign of breaking the speed of sound, the sound of a shockwave, that is. A super-massive mass past sound speed, plus Level-9-class burst magic. In power alone, it’s likely reached a Level 10 annihilation spell. A legendary hellraiser, sure enough, no falsehood in the title. A two-hundred-meter-radius floating island, taking that dead-on, would burst and scatter to fragments, if not quite to dust. Yes, provided it hit.

And the Ruyi staff was sucked into the distant floating island, and a great blast went up far off.

“Ha, for my Ruyi staff this is child’s play… what?!”

As it turned out, when the smoke of the blast cleared, what stood there was a floating island with only about twenty percent of its volume gone.

“What… the…?”

Sun Wukong’s failure was in not noticing that a magical barrier was set into the surface of that floating island. The underworld is, in truth, something I don’t understand well either. But that floating island also has the aspect of a mass-bombardment weapon, controlled under some kind of will. Observe carefully from that vantage and it isn’t hard to notice, yes, including the thin part of the barrier near the center point.

“Looks like it’s a substitution.”

Search magic. Spreading my perception to the limit, I drew up all the information on the floating island at once. Distance to target, roughly eight kilometers. Relative speed, two hundred twenty-three kilometers per hour. On the data the search brought up, I computed the target’s predicted trajectory. And the thin part of the barrier is roughly at the center of the floating island, a ten-meter-square hole.

Here!

“Level 9: Meteor Smash.”

The mass of great flame I loosed drew an arc toward the floating island. The error between the predicted trajectory and the actual one was a few millimeters, well within tolerance. And at the instant of impact, a beat behind the light, an ear-splitting sound and blast wind raged all around.

“Absurd… this distance… precisely… you hit it?”

Breaking small and losing the power to float, the boulders fell, tugged down piece by piece by gravity. Cruelly, without a trace, shattered to fragments and gone. And I clapped my hands together as if to say case closed.

“Well, in power alone your technique’s the better, I’d say. Analyze precisely and strike the enemy’s vital point, that matters too.”

At that, Sun Wukong grinned and said:

“Not bad for a human. I’m the sort who respects the strong.”

“Yeah, your technique was splendid too.”

With that, we shook hands firmly.

⁂

Back in the room, Clark-san was there, so Sasha and I explained yesterday’s events and the plan going forward. Set a thief to catch a thief, the idea being to gather information from the human who knows this prison island best. By the way, the moment he saw Sasha’s form, Clark-san was startled and nearly keeled over on the spot.

“Ephthal-kun. The biggest problem in freeing the phantom demons is, after all… the guards.”

Clark-san sat across the table. Prison though it is, he lives the same as ever, serving refined tea made from high-grade leaves.

“Well, I’d think so.”

“I spoke with the warden a while ago, and it seems the phantom-demon block’s guard has tightened since your arrival.”

“Eh?! Does that mean the other side has already seen through our movements?”

“No, that’s not it. New inmates hardly ever turn up, so it’s simply a response to an irregular having occurred. Concretely, an Ifrit guard has been assigned to each phantom demon’s cage, it seems.”

Hmm… I mulled it over.

“That might mean…”

“Aye, I think using the bypass to make contact will be difficult.”

“But with optical camouflage and presence-erasure, I can move without being noticed to a degree, you know?”

“Those are, when it comes down to it, tricks of deception in a surprise attack. This is an opponent watching close, on the premise that something might happen.”

“True… an Ifrit is an upper-rank familiar too.”

“It’s about ten days until the next new moon, until the Fire God Emperor links to this world for maintenance. For a span like that, the guards’ tension will hold.”

“Then what should we do?”

“That’s where—” Clark-san cleared his throat with a little cough. “I’d have you leave it to me, I’ve a few acquaintances among the phantom-demon block’s guards too.”

“Hm? Isn’t the phantom-demon block run entirely by the Fire God Emperor’s people?”

“The Fire God Emperor’s policy is to divert the system as it is. In the allocation at the last maintenance… some of the original human guards ended up over there too.”

A block where Ifrits and flame-curse insects swagger about, and there are ordinary humans in it, huh. Imagining it, for them it’d be nothing but a calamity.

“And those guards are, naturally, under my influence.”

At that, Clark-san showed his white teeth in a smile.

“The phantom-demon watch is on rotation… so let’s pick our shots.”

“Am I right that when an acquaintance-guard is on, that side will turn a blind eye for us?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

We nodded to each other, and I drained my black tea in one go.

“Then, right away, I’d like to start this very moment. Once it’s settled, tell me the cell where a guard under our influence is watching.”

“Then I’ll go do the groundwork now… let’s see, by evening it should be in time.”

⁂

Advancing through the bypass, the moment we reached the first destination, Sasha nodded, deeply moved.

“Hm. This presence… the phantom demon shut in the cage ahead is Nezha, it seems.”

“That’s a martial sort again.”

Speaking of Nezha, he’s an immortal who appears in the Investiture of the Gods. From his renown he appears in Journey to the West too, and led heaven’s army in a grand set-to against Sun Wukong the Monkey King, dreadfully strong, they say. Naturally, among Sasha’s phantom demons too he ranks at the head of the martial sort. As a familiar he’s top-grade, no, at a level you can’t even rank.

“Still, this is odd…”

Walking down the passage, I felt a faint wrongness. Somehow, something seemed different from last time…? And the reason for that wrongness soon became clear. Because even reaching the target place, nothing like an entrance was visible, nor could I see the far side. The dimensional warp that forms the entrance I could draw in, but the hole wouldn’t open. And on closely checking the state of the entrance, I doubted my own eyes. In fact, the far side was visible, and the entrance was open. The gist being that what I was looking at was a steel plate blocking the entrance on the far side and this side both.

“The hole’s been sealed?”

Breaking the plate that blocks it and getting inside is easy in itself. But do that and the situation comes to light on the other side at once. Or rather, at that point the whole chain of the phantom-demon liberation plan collapses. No, the problem isn’t there. The problem is that, beyond doubt, the enemy has caught wind of our movements.

⁂

Back in the room, when I passed on what had happened, Clark-san raised his voice in a fluster.

“What? That’s bad, Ephthal-kun!”

“Yes, it’s bad. But how was it found out?”

Then Clark-san caught his breath with a ‘Hah.’

“Some information may have passed to the other side… from one of the guards I squared things with.”

“Whether they noticed the duty-roster was borrowed and grew wary, or in the plainest sense someone informed on us… there are all sorts of possibilities, aren’t there.”

“I’d rather not think it was an informer, but…”

“Yes. It isn’t settled yet that there’s a traitor.”

“…That’s so. I’m sure I picked people I could trust. From the business with the roster and the like, some unlooked-for trail must have led back to us. And, Ephthal-kun. This is hard to say, but…”

“You mean give up freeing the phantom demons and focus solely on the way out to the world beyond, right?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but the liberation plan looks broken to me now. The other side is on the highest alert, and if we fixate on freeing them, some slip will come of it… and countermeasures might be laid even against the escape plan.”

“And the chance the other side has noticed the world-collapse formula?”

Clark-san shook his head.

“That, they haven’t caught wind of at all… the Fire God Emperor still hasn’t moved, you see. I can say it for certain.”

“And why is that?”

“When the Fire God Emperor directly interferes with us, a great hole opens in the sky, on account of temporarily undoing the barrier. It’d be an uproar here too, and we’d know at once. If it were something like this world self-destructing, he’d come flying to stop it right away.”

“I see… At any rate, the escape formula, at least, absolutely has to be finished, is that it?”

“Yes, pour yourself into that alone. Do that first, and we’ll watch for another chance at freeing the demons.”

There the room’s door was pounded, bang-bang.

“Something you need? You can come in.”

At Clark-san’s answer, guards entered. And seeing the makeup of the personnel who’d come in, we gave a start. Five in all, one human and four Ifrits.

This is bad.

Clark-san and I traded a glance at the same moment. By the way, Sasha seemed to have hidden himself before they stepped in.

“Hardly peaceable, is it, why are there Ifrits in the human block?”

“Clark, your day at the top is finally over.”

“Mm, whatever do you mean?”

“Orders from the warden. Until now, on the policy of not changing the system, you were let do as you pleased. But from now you’re off to a special punishment cell.”

“…The reason?”

“Need it be said? Contact with a phantom demon is a grave crime.”

Clark-san glanced my way and shrugged, as if to say hands up. And, It’s all right, I won’t talk about the escape, he told me with the movement of his lips. And so Clark-san was hauled off. As I stood there frozen, wondering what to do, ‘You too,’ an Ifrit said, and patted me on the shoulder.

⁂

Well, then, a stone prison. The room of Clark-san’s I’d been in until a moment ago was lavish enough you’d take it for some noble’s. So the moldy feel of this makes all the more of an impression. An Ifrit guard, an ogre with reddish-black skin, spoke to me.

“Now, convict Ephthal… seems you were up to quite the thing.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I don’t know what you meant to do, contacting the phantom demons. But whatever else, making contact with them is a grave breach of discipline.”

“As I say, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A whooshing cut of air, and a shock struck my cheek. A slap with force enough to knock out an ordinary human.

“Playing dumb’s no use. You clung to the phantom demons, thinking to have them help your own escape, didn’t you? Though that Sasha had laid so many bypasses, that, I’ll grant, surprised me.”

“Come now… without even proof?”

“Complete isolation of the phantom demons is a command the Fire God Emperor bade us obey absolutely. For this violation, suspicion alone is enough to punish.”

“You’re talking nonsense. What if it’s a false charge?”

“Hurt you, and the rest won’t think of trying such things either, will they? That’s the crux of it.”

Just then, I put a question I’d been wondering about since coming to this room.

“By the way… why is that one wall alone covered in an iron plate?”

“Ah? Odd thing to ask. Because you lot tried to use some baffling thing called a dimensional bypass, that’s why.”

“By any chance, are all the rooms like this?”

“Aye, quite the large-scale work it was, and even we got dragged into it. Every partition wall between one cell and the next, that’s why. If it’d been the story of holes in the ceilings and floors too, it’d have been a nightmare itself… yes, all of it, all of it your fault!”

By this guard’s way of talking, at least the heart of what we’re after hasn’t reached them at all. Still, he babbles far too much useless information. Whether it’s from working so many familiars I don’t know, but at least where the Ifrit’s concerned, the quality seems fairly poor.

“This block sits in the central part of the prison. While you lot are held here, every passage door but the iron grates is under orders to be left open on purpose.”

“And what does that mean?”

“So that a great many prisoners can hear the screams of you lot being worked over, obviously!”

Fufufu, the Ifrit put on a coarse smile. And when he snapped his fingers, another Ifrit guard came in carrying freight with two of them at it. What they’d brought was a long, narrow wooden box, just about the size a single human would fit in. Following that, hemp sacks were carried into the room, one after another after another.

“So, for you… I’ve worked up this little scheme.”

The Ifrit opened a hemp sack and thrust the white powder inside it at me.

“…Salt? What do you mean to do?”

“Do you know the principle of making preserved food with salt?”

“What are you… suddenly on about?”

“No, no, this is important, best you listen properly. For instance, when you preserve vegetables, first you salt them to draw out the water. After all, the number-one cause of things rotting is moisture.”

“…And?”

“Not just vegetables, you salt meat too. What matters in this case is that salting draws out the water.”

There the Ifrit, with a delight past all bounds, put the question to me, playing the clown.

“Now then, a quiz. First we put you in the box, close the lid with only your face out. In that state, if we salt you alive… what happens?”

I take back what I said. I’d thought his quality as a familiar was poor, but on the single point of ideas for tormenting people… this one’s a passing grade.

At any rate, I can’t very well cause trouble here. Even packed in salt, I can build the escape formula, and the link to the World Tree remains. And so—

I ended up salted for five days.

⁂

“Ha, this is grim.”

At a voice like that, I woke. In my hazy vision, an Ifrit guard was wearing a coarse smile.

“Ah, eyes rolled white, tongue lolling out.”

Ah, I see. So that’s the state I’m in now.

“Here, a blessing of rain. Can’t have you dying on us.”

Water from a bucket was flung against the side of my face.

“…”

“Barely a reaction, but he’s not dead. Well, we’ll nurse you just enough to keep you alive, so rest easy.”

“Ha, still, salt a human and in five days he ends up like this, does he.”

As a bonus, the Ifrit gave me one slap. And, cackling, they left the solitary cell. Waiting a while, when their presence had wholly vanished, I opened my eyes wide and cracked my neck. Still, this really is cramped. That alone genuinely tells on me, but everything else is no trouble at all. There, before me a light shone and a fairy-sized Sasha appeared.

“Eyes rolled white, and something about a tongue… are you all right, Ephthal?”

“Ah, that’s illusion. I’ve made myself look in a wretched state, for now. A human under torture looking hale and hearty would be a problem, after all.”

“But you, aren’t you having your water drawn off by the salt?”

“There’s water aplenty in the atmosphere. I’ve been condensing it with magic and replenishing it constantly, just short of getting caught.”

And I laughed a wry, rueful laugh.

“That said, in practice it’s fairly rough. Can’t move a muscle in this posture, so… well, it’s nothing to compare with those screams.”

A heavy, oppressive shriek, reaching from far off. Since I was brought here, Clark-san’s screams have come at intervals. What’s being done I don’t know, but since I’m in this state, there’s no doubt he’s being put through something extreme.

“So, what do we do?”

“The escape formula’s finished, just now. Playing quiet… that ends here.”

“Still, what do you think, Ephthal?”

“Hm? About what?”

“Hypothetically, if we got out to the world beyond without the Otogi Fantasia, do you think we could beat the Fire God Emperor?”

“Well, it’s impossible. But we only do what we can do.”

With that, I activated physical enhancement. Spreading both arms with a hff, I broke the wooden box that had shut me in. As the wood chips scattered with a crack, the salt streamed to the ground with a rush. And, out of it, I swung my arms in great circles and did some deep knee-bends in turn.

“My body’s a touch stiff, but… within tolerance. Bastet’s public execution starts in another six hours, too. Let’s finish everything by then.”

I cut the iron grate away with wind magic and made my exit. A clattering fall-sound rang out, but there’s no need to mind such things now. Walking, I twisted my upper body around to work out the stiffness. My hips and spine popped and cracked.

“So, what do we do, Ephthal?”

“First, Clark-san.”

I headed toward where the screams had been coming from. And seeing the state inside the cell where Clark-san was shut up, I nearly covered my eyes despite myself.

“Ah… so this was the state of it.”

What I could see in the room was a man strung up. Look closely, and a torture device called a heretic’s fork was fitted to him. The heretic’s fork, a device that gives pain with a sharp fork honed to a level you’d call bladed. Put plainly, it’s an iron bar with both ends sharpened into forks. The way it’s used: one fork under the chin, the other set at the center of the collarbone, fixed to the target. And what happens is, for instance, the moment you grow drowsy and your head drops with a nod, it stabs into the flesh. In fact, Clark-san’s upper body was dyed with blood. It’s a wonder he isn’t dead from blood loss. A spiked collar was fitted to him too, and around the clock, most likely, he’d been under a torture that pierced his skin every time he stirred.

“I’ll help you now.”

I can’t very well leave him in this state forever. I cut the cell’s grate with wind magic and went in.

“With this you’re all right now.”

I removed the devices fixed to his body and cut, last of all, the rope he’d been hung from.

“…Thank you, Ephthal-kun. I somehow rode it out to this hour without talking.”

Silent a while, I then put this to Clark-san.

“So, Clark-san, why did you sell me and Sasha out?”

At my question, with a blank look, Clark-san… no, Clark, answered.

“No, I said I hadn’t talked, didn’t I?”

“What I mean is the very first business, before I was brought here. Why did you leak the information about the hidden passages to the Fire God Emperor’s side?”

“Hm…? What are you suddenly on about, Ephthal-kun?”

“There are a few reasons I came to think this… you know too much, is the thing.”

“Too much? No, truly, what are you talking about?”

“The first wrongness I felt… was the very first time I entered your room. That offhand line, seems you had a thoroughly rough time out there. At that, I felt a fierce wrongness.”

“Now, Ephthal-kun… I’ll get angry, you know? This is hardly the time for jokes.”

Thrusting out my right palm to check Clark’s words, I went on.

“Even Oberon and the others didn’t know how I’d fallen down here. Why do you know about the outside?”

“…Eh? Because I took in outside information at the Fire God Emperor’s last periodic management, that’s all?”

“Yes, the last maintenance the Fire God Emperor did on this world was the new moon before. As of that point, you held information from which you could sense that my merely being here means a dire situation has come about, say, the possibility that I’d oppose the Fire God Emperor.”

“As I say, that’s the story from the last new moon, isn’t it? As of then, you and the Fire God Emperor were in a state where you could turn hostile at any time, weren’t you?”

“That even Oberon doesn’t know it means Sasha didn’t pass the information to his pawns in this world.”

“As I say, that’s where it’s different. It means Sasha-sama told me, and me alone, doesn’t it?”

“What’s certain is that Sasha meant to turn to this side from the start. In that case, if he were to pass on the situation, he’d tell it equally to any phantom demon who might make contact with me, so that they’d cooperate with me later. But Sasha didn’t do that. So he either didn’t tell it uniformly, or Sasha’s in a state where the Fire God Emperor doesn’t permit him to convey the situation inside.”

“But that’s inference, not proof, is it? There may have been reasons only I was told.”

“Yes, that alone certainly isn’t proof. So I was observing you all the while.”

“…Observing?”

“The day after you and I met, the guard on the phantom demons tightened, didn’t it?”

“That’s a mere baseless charge too. That was chance, and—”

“True, it may be chance. Granting that a hundredfold and setting it aside, the decisive thing is the position of the iron plates sealing the hidden passages. The guards’ response is just too perfect.”

Then, for the first time, a shadow of gloom rose in Clark’s color. Heedless, I went on.

“Those are walls thin enough that a human could never possibly slip through. By rights they’re not places anyone would address on merely hearing there’s a bypass. And yet, pinpoint, in every room, that spot alone was sealed… what that means is only one thing. It means the Fire God Emperor’s side grasped the exact positions of the bypasses.”

“…”

“The guard who was supposed to help when we contacted the phantom demons… if the leak came from anyone but you, it could only be there. And say you let slip about the bypasses to that guard, and the plan came out from there. But would you go to the trouble of telling him the bypass is in the partition wall between cells? Thinking of the case where the information leaks, ordinarily you’d keep that hidden, wouldn’t you?”

“…”

“It’s all inference, true. But stack three, and in my book it’s proof enough.”

When I flung it out sharply, Clark shrugged, as if to say good grief.

“Well, entirely as you say. It’s just as you say.”

“Why did you betray? Not me… but Sasha.”

“I admired strength, you see. My becoming Sasha’s disciple in the first place was because he’s strong, and there’s no other reason. There, a Fire God Emperor stronger than Sasha, whom I’d thought the strongest, appeared. Very simple and easy to grasp, isn’t it? Ephthal-kun?”

“I see… so that’s it.”

“By the way, I’ve a question of my own. Granting you noticed from the start, why bring it up only now? Surely not, did you come to make a victory declaration, I actually knew all along, before escaping?”

There, as if it were comical, Clark began to laugh, ‘Heh-heh-heh.’

“Let me tell you something good. Why I hindered the phantom-demon liberation you all were attempting, but didn’t hinder the escape to the world outside. It’s this, Ephthal-kun, the formula you all built so desperately these past days is utterly meaningless.”

“Meaningless… you say?”

At the question, Clark answered with a vile, twisted grin.

“You wove a program to self-destruct the formula, along Sasha’s blueprint, no? The Fire God Emperor foresaw such a thing, naturally. At the last new moon, the first maintenance, the Fire God Emperor rewrote part of the blueprint itself.”

“If that’s true… then, certainly, the odds are extremely high the formula I prepared ends in nothing.”

“Yes, which is exactly why the Fire God Emperor took it lightly even when you came to this world. That one is cautious, you see… without absolute confidence he’d never leave an existence like you alone. Fufu, ha, hahahaha!”

Clutching his belly, Clark began to laugh, and went on in a voice heartily amused.

“Now, how about it? After all that careful preparation, thinking at last you could get outside… how does it feel to have every bit of it come to nothing?”

“…”

“Well, without noticing it was rewritten, you fools built your do-or-die escape method with everything you had. Ah me, this was comical to the letter.”

“…”

“You can’t free the phantom demons, you can’t even escape. All that’s left is to wait for the new moon, for the Fire God Emperor to come round on his rounds, and it all ends.”

“So that’s how it was…”

“Ha, some ‘Thunder God Emperor’ you are. No, to begin with, weren’t you the inferior of the Four Emperors? Now bowed to the Fire God Emperor, in a cage, from here on you’ll never get outside your whole life, just awaiting death while put through misery in this world… fufu, hahaha! Truly a joke!”

At that, as if something had struck him, Clark clapped his hands together.

“Well, if you’ll repent and grovel an apology to me now, I might find it endearing enough to go easy on you. Even in hell, a little leniency isn’t beyond me.”

Right, letting him talk freely is about enough here. Letting Clark run on further, nothing new’s likely to come out.

“Ah me, truly a fascinating escape plan it was.”

“I knew that, all of it. No, thanks to you, I was able to notice… I’ll thank you. Truly, that’s the Fire God Emperor for you. At a glance he seemed to have laid no hand on it at all, and yet only the crucial part he rewrote cleanly. Sasha didn’t notice, and I likely wouldn’t have either.”

Drawing in a breath, I glared at Clark.

“Had a certain someone not done unnecessary meddling.”

“What… are you saying?”

“I said from the start I’d felt a wrongness, didn’t I? And you all, convinced everything proceeds on Buddha’s palm, in fact let your guard down. So you couldn’t notice this.”

“Wha…? This is…? Sur… ely… not…?”

Magic flowing from every part of the prison. Grasping the intent of the formula laid on it, Clark gaped, mouth wide. What was, at this very moment, activating with me, no, Sasha, as its origin point, was—

“The formula of collapse…? But why is it flowing from every part of the prison…?”

At this moment, plainly, a shade of bewilderment and fear ran across Clark’s face. The good color of his skin was already gone, going pale and bloodless before my eyes.

“I made contact with the confined phantom demons, split the work among them, and asked them to build a destruction formula that corrects even the parts the Fire God Emperor rewrote… on the very first day.”

“…Huh?”

“The formula I finished was a fake to blind you all. This is the real thing. The phantom demons are each champions, and magic experts besides.”

“The first day?! How could you do such a thing? There should have been no such time!”

“That, at that point, we could move freely about inside, you know that too.”

“It wasn’t a one-to-one watch, granted, but even so there were the guards’ eyes!”

“Optical camouflage, presence-erasure, and silencing… noticed if they’re on guard, but if they aren’t, that doesn’t apply.”

“Guh… b-b-but! Time…! At that time I was observing you all, and there shouldn’t have been time enough! No way could you go round ten rooms…”

“You underestimate my master a little too much.”

Sasha gave a nod. And at the same time as the nod, he made his palm-sized body smaller and finer still, and formed any number of copies of himself.

“Splitting… you say?”

“Grow big and shrink small, appear suddenly and vanish suddenly, rather, isn’t it stranger not to manage this much?”

“Surely not, with that, in that scant time…?”

“Yes, we finished everything needful on the first day. After that we had only to hold our breath and wait for time to pass.”

And as if to say the talk’s over, I clapped my hands and closed it off.

“Thanks to you, everything went off without a hitch.”

The moment I told him so, Clark’s knees buckled and he plopped onto his rump on the spot. And then—

“Kh, kh, khoooooo!”

He raised a wordless wail.

“B-but, Ephthal-kun. Why did you go to the trouble of telling me this? This world’s collapsing, barrier and all, isn’t it?”

“Ah, that’s so.”

“Then wouldn’t it be enough to just slip out with the phantom demons, as is?”

“Because I need your guidance. Bastet’s execution starts in six hours, doesn’t it? I don’t know the layout of the phantom-demon block.”

At that, Clark’s color worsened further, and with an ‘Uh-oh…’ his manner turned suddenly shifty.

“Ephthal-kun… that’s… hard to say, but…”

“Hm?”

“Bastet’s execution time… on a sudden change of plan, it’s been moved up.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Er… well……… letting you lot swim, and telling you Bastet was already executed when the escape plan broke… that way the despair doubles and it’s more amusing, the warden said……… since you lot would definitely come at the last moment… that’s how it went…. Ow, ow! What are you doing all of a sudden, Ephthal-kun!”

“Guide me, quickly!”

“Are you sane? The phantom-demon block is crawling with flame-curse insects.”

“It’s no recklessness at all. The phantom demons got their power back on the first day. Joining up as I go, I smash the ones who resist and rescue Bastet, that’s all. How much time is left?”

“Er, well… it’s under an hour.”

“You scum.”

With no pause, I drove a backfist into Clark’s nose.

“Ahee!”

“Hurry up and lead the way—at this point I’ll bust myself out by force!”

Bastet’s Perspective

—Ephthal-sama, the cleaning you set me is finished without a hitch. As a reward, won’t you pat my head?

—If Merlin or Svetlana see, it’s a nuisance; they’ll want it done for them too. Just this once.

Is this my whole life flashing before my eyes? Fond exchanges from long ago, from the far side of memory… I remember such exchanges, repeated tens, hundreds of times.

It was when my true work as a familiar bore fruit, a battle won. It was when my sideline as a familiar, a maid’s task, came out well done. At times like those, I’d unfailingly beg a reward, and that person would answer, looking troubled.

Before I was taken in by Ephthal-sama—

I was a guardian deity of a land, protecting the people from monsters. Day after day I gave myself over to battle, and the trust of the people I was to protect ran deep, I… think.

—Save us, O goddess.

—Help us, O goddess.

—Our lives, to the last of our line, be here in this land with the goddess.

To answer such hopes of the people, I became a shield to guard them from the wicked that would harm the land, and I felt pride in the work. Yes, until that day.

The Demon Lord, later struck down by the first-generation Four Emperors. When he led his army and worked outrage past all bounds, the land I guarded was, no exception, swallowed under the wave of his invasion. The Demon Lord’s power was vast, and mine did not reach. To let at least the people of the land flee, I slipped from the battlefield by the skin of my teeth. And just as I meant to go round the settlements where the people lived, I… learned the truth of that faith.

—It was nothing at all. Before they knew of my defeat, the inhabitants had already fled. I’ve no mind to blame them. Only, given the role of a guardian war-goddess… I came to know the worth of my existence, its measure, and it made me sad.

In the settlement gone empty, as I stood there in a daze, I met Ephthal-sama.

—If you’ve lost your place to live, will you come with me? A maid of the house just happened to leave.

And so I became Ephthal-sama’s familiar. Or rather, as a maid I passed the same time with him, and helped raise Merlin and Svetlana alongside Ephthal-sama. And before I knew it I’d joined in too… laughing and weeping, all but as family, spending warm hours, I… think.

—I’d like to have my head patted once more.

To think such a thing is, after all, an extravagance, I suppose.

When I heard on the wind that he’d reincarnated, reborn into the present world, I thought, when the time comes, without fail… But somehow, things go otherwise than one wishes more often than not. I am that person’s familiar. That he’s come here, I know full well. That he’ll never stay quiet here, I understand painfully well. And that he’ll get out without a hitch… I see as if by hand. But that is if I don’t drag him down. This world is already under the Fire God Emperor’s rule, and even Ephthal-sama, if I drag him down, on the off chance… such things happen too.

I don’t want to be that person’s burden. That my execution be carried out before his preparations are ready is, rather, convenient. In any case, I bear the karmic lot of reviving however many times I meet death. Only, what I do think, after all, is—

—I’d like to have my head patted once more… is it.

⁂

The deepest part of the prison island. Originally, no such thing as an execution ground exists in this facility. But for me, who led the phantom demons and plotted rebellion, a special venue seems to have been built this time. Since all the prisoners of the facility were to be called, as a warning, it had become quite the large-scale affair. In the middle of a room some thirty meters square, there stands an execution platform. Around it, in tiers, viewing spaces are set. And on the platform were a restraint chair, and right beside it a great hole from which came the sound of something writhing.

There, to me, seated in the restraint chair, the warden put a question with a coarse face.

“Now, it’s time for the execution, Bastet. Still, you really are an amusing creature, aren’t you?”

“…Amusing, how?”

“I’ve a laughable tale readied for the very end, so look forward to it.”

At this late stage, is he still preparing something? A joyless entertainment is quite enough with the insects in the hole… As I stood aghast at that, the warden went on, seeming delighted.

“Does this hole trouble you?”

“Well, I’ve a guess as to it.”

“Yes, just as you surmise, the kodoku dish for making flame-curse insects.”

Though it was as I’d imagined, still… I caught my breath despite myself. Seeing that reaction, the warden nodded, satisfied.

“How, I wonder, does a venom-spider that’s devoured a phantom demon evolve through the kodoku? I’ve an interest in that. And how does the one thrown in there feel? What’s the mood?”

“I’ve no particular thoughts. If I must say, it’s the very extreme of vileness.”

“Fufu, that face unmoved by anything, I look forward to seeing it twist in agony from now.”

A mental life that can’t die by the death of the body… by the nature of a phantom demon, death itself is nothing especially to fear. And pain, too, can be lessened by fiddling with magic at the electrical signals that give the body its orders. Only, being toyed with at insects’ pleasure is, after all, not a pleasant thing.

“Now, kill me quickly. You have to deal with Ephthal-sama too… you can’t very well spend forever on a thing like this, can you?”

“Wait, now. From here I’ve to gather the facility’s prisoners and fill the seats. And besides…”

“And besides?”

“You seem to think that man can slip outside, but we’re several steps ahead. By an informer’s hand, Ephthal’s escape plan is already broken.”

“What…?”

“Ha, a first, to see your flustered face.”

Just as the warden wore a triumphant look, an Ifrit guard came rushing in through the room’s entrance in a fluster.

“A rebellion’s broken out in the phantom-demon holding zones, the ninth and tenth blocks!”

“A rebellion… you say?”

To the warden, asking with a dubious look, the guard nodded hard.

“Report is that Sun Wukong and Cú Chulainn have been set loose!”

Following, one guard came running our way, a communication crystal in hand.

“W-word from the management room! The eighth and seventh blocks… Hanuman and Kresnik are outside their cages!”

“Give it here! What’s happening?!”

To the warden, who snatched the crystal as if wrenching it away, guards came running from the entrance one after another.

“Phantom-demon escape from the sixth block!”

“Fourth block, a Unicorn’s on a rampage!”

There the warden went pale and shouted into the crystal in a great voice.

“From the fourth block to here is a straight shot! You in the management room! Post the Ifrits along the main passage!”

From the far side of the crystal came a voice like a shriek.

“Posted the moment we had reports from each block, already engaged, warden! No… just now, word came in that they’ve been wiped out!”

“What… the… What, what is happening?!”

“There’s a report confirming the use of Level 10 magic! The phantom demons are joining the rebel force still further, they don’t stop, they’re heading your way!”

“So Ephthal is the ringleader?! But why are the phantom demons freed…?! Argh, what are the flame-curse insects doing?!”

“The four in constant operation are already silenced. Outnumbered, crushed under by force!”

“Set loose the whole stock this instant! Every insect in freezing hibernation too!”

“But do that and… control won’t hold! Worst case, they run wild without order and the facility itself is devoured by the flame-curse insects!”

“At this rate we’re only devoured by the phantom demons! Hold them down with maximum force!”

Ephthal-sama is… heading here? Most likely, to save me? In a state where I understood nothing at all, I simply fell into panic. If it were only him, he could have completed his aim and given himself wholly to the showdown with the Fire God Emperor… This is a nest of venom-insects; if it comes to it, the warden can handle more than a hundred flame-curse insects. The phantom demons held captive number, myself included, eleven in all. What each can handle is about five flame-curse insects. Even granting Ephthal-sama routs some twenty, the count still doesn’t add up.

We are hopelessly short of fighting strength.

Then it’s better he not come. No, he mustn’t come. But then, that person surely knows even that… There, from the crystal the warden held, a voice came further.

“Awakened a hundred and seven flame-curse insects in all. Guiding them toward you, arrival expected within two minutes.”

“Good work. We’ll meet them here.”

Ah, this is no good. At this rate, because I dragged him down, Ephthal-sama will… Gone teary-eyed, I cried out in grief-stricken appeal to the boy who appeared at the entrance.

“Why… why do you come?! A familiar is a thing cast aside in its master’s hour of danger! To put yourself in danger for a familiar, why are you always this way?”

“Why do I come? That’s obvious—”

Leading the phantom demons who’d been imprisoned here, the dwellers of the fantastic, Ephthal-sama stands at their head. His figure was too divine, too dear, and too… warm, unchanged from long ago. And, just as in the far reaches of my memory, with an open, untroubled smile Ephthal-sama said:

“Because you’re a precious maid of our house!”

At those words—

Before I knew it, tears were streaming from my eyes.

Ephthal’s Perspective

“Now, this’ll cost you dear. Seeing as you tormented our beloved cat, that is.”

Cracking my knuckles, I stepped one foot forward.

“Ha, the wrathful thunder-god, is it. Welcome, Ephthal… you’re welcome here.”

“No need to play it cool, and no need to put up a front, you know?”

“A front… you say?”

“Yeah. Far as I know, the Fire God Emperor hates an ugly outcome. You know that much too, don’t you?”

“True, this situation won’t be settled with a mere scolding. But that’s that. To hold this uproar down here, and let no aftershock reach the Fire God Emperor, is my mission. I am a shield, so long as the spear doesn’t reach him, that’s enough.”

“For a villain, your loyalty runs high.”

“And you, the blade, I’ve already stopped you. It will never reach… the Fire God Emperor.”

“Ho. You think you can stop me from here?”

Then, from the room beyond, a scream came.

“H-hiiii!”

“Stop, stop— abyu!”

When I looked, over a hundred flame-curse insects were swarming this way in a teeming mass. The two Ifrits who’d been leading them seemed to have been devoured too, and half-exasperated, I asked the warden:

“Looks like you’ve got no control at all?”

“Aye, I’ll grant it’s a desperate measure. But turn it around and it’s the finest chance, too.”

“The finest chance?”

“A first-generation Four Emperor bowing to me… that becomes a profit down the line. Show them despair, and it leads to order. To Oberon, to Titania, and to Bastet… all of them.”

“Teach ’em defying you lot gets you hurt, is it? Like breaking in beasts.”

“Say what you will. When that one takes full hold of the Otogi Fantasia, this becomes a great advance investment, a contribution.”

Saying so, the warden spread both arms and sent his gaze from the flame-curse insects to me and back.

“Now, Thunder God Emperor, be devoured by the insects, wretchedly. The age the Undead Emperor rules is over, and you become the cornerstone of the order the Fire God Emperor builds anew.”

“Listening quietly, you’ve been talking this whole time on the premise that I lose… but will it really go so well?”

To my question the warden answered with a face of scorn. And laughing at me down his nose, he returned these words.

“The flame-curse insect, by another name, Night Spear. Out in the world beyond it holds no power to speak of, but the curse it carries, in this world it turns into a strength without peer.”

“Ah, that was the story, wasn’t it.”

“Reckoned at five apiece per phantom demon. Your total is ten or so at best… the count doesn’t add up. Against more than a hundred insects, what will you do with a handful of hands?”

“Ah, but wouldn’t you know it, it isn’t a handful of hands.”

When I declared it flatly, the warden cocked his head, puzzled.

“What are you saying, you?”

“Long ago, there was a time I admired Sasha. Seeing that outrageous summoning spell, the Otogi Fantasia, I thought I’d like to use it too. So I threw myself into research for the longest while, and one day… by some chance I picked up a phantom demon.”

Shifting my gaze to Bastet, I laughed a little.

“Hear her out and it was a story of having lost her place to go, and being lonely. So I took her home. At first I meant only to look after her a while, but my wife took a liking to her, and living together, I grew fond too.”

“Old tales in a place like this… are you playing games, Thunder God Emperor?”

“Just hear it through. And before I knew it, capturing phantom demons, caging them, I lost interest in that sort of thing. After all, she’d become family. But sure enough, before that I had done the research. Ten years and a bit… in earnest.”

What I drew from my breast was a single tube. This is a media magic-tool to aid a formula. A signpost that guides phantom demons, quite literally, my trump card in this place.

“That tube… what is it?”

“It means I’ll show you a fairy tale.”

In Japan too there’s a yōkai called the kudagitsune, the tube-fox, in the old lore. From ancient times there was a notion that tubes and spirits go well together, in a video game, say, there was one where you put monsters in something like a test tube to command them, wasn’t there. And what I’m about to do now is exactly that. So I release the phantom demons I’d packed into the tube beforehand with a summoning spell I’d built.

I pour magic into the tube and pull the formula’s trigger. And at the same instant, streaks of light burst from the tube. One after another, like shooting stars, light comes spilling out.

“Oberon, Titania, Kurama Tengu, Tam Lin, Heimdall… one after another… what, what is this number…?! Thunder God Emperor?! What did you do?! Just what are you doing?!”

“It’s off the cuff, but let’s name it this. The Small-World Otogi Fantasia. Including the eleven phantom demons held on the prison island, there are in total about thirty phantom demons in this world, right? I’ve gathered every one of them to this spot, that’s all.”

“Wha…?!”

“To stop us, you were one digit short on your insect count. Now, you phantom demons! I won’t tell you to dance beautifully the way Sasha would; what I command is one thing only.”

To the thirty-odd champions that had appeared in this place, I declared:

“Trample them, one-sidedly!”

⁂

“Kishaaaa—”

“Gubi!”

“Agyu!”

Squelch, squelch, squelch, one after another the insects were crushed. Sun Wukong swings down his Ruyi staff, Kresnik drives in his sword, Oberon sweeps them away on the wind. Scattering purple body fluid, the spiders, the flame-curse insects, were trampled in the blink of an eye. And in the end, an insect is an insect. The moment they knew they were outmatched, they gave up resistance, scattered each their own way, and went into flight. Facing them, our side, the fruit of Sasha’s long years of training, perhaps, had teamwork among many hands down pat. It turned into a pursuit, no, a mop-up, and switched over wholly to a one-sided rout past all mistaking. This way, there’ll be next to no dead or wounded on our side. That we can get out to the world beyond in nearly the finest form is beyond doubt.

I slowly began to step toward the warden. After this, finish him and it’s settled.

“Fufu, true, this place is my loss. But, Thunder God Emperor? What’ll you do… about this?”

When I looked, the warden had set a knife-point at the base of Bastet’s throat. Bastet was seated in a restraint chair with a god-sealing effect, so escape by her own power looked impossible.

“A hostage, huh. Honestly… down to the last thing, everything you do is small-time.”

“I’ll take it as praise.”

With one hand the warden drew a second knife, cut the rope binding Bastet, and undid her bonds.

“I’ll take this one along as a hostage… clear the way, if you please. Try anything funny and I stab, deep.”

“…Well, nothing to be done.”

“I thought you’d assent readily. You would.”

The warden grinned a nasty grin, but that expression was soon wrapped in astonishment. No… at this, not just the warden, I too was startled.

“I won’t be your burden, Ephthal-sama.”

Toward the thrust knife, Bastet offered up her own throat. Without a sound the knife slid into flesh, and fresh blood gushed at once.

“You… you’re not a faithful dog, are you? A free-roaming… cat, aren’t you? Why do you always hold your master dearer than yourself… you idiot!”

The instant I shouted it, Bastet, bleeding like a fountain, crumpled to the floor. Blood spread over the ground in a blink; that it was a mortal wound was plain.

“At bottom… I’m a pitiful war-goddess who sacrifices herself. That’s my nature… you see.”

“…”

“One thing only I ask. If I come back again… and we can meet again… will you pat my head, like in the old days?”

“Yeah, when that time comes… I’ll pat you till your skin wears through.”

We gazed at each other a few moments, and Bastet quietly closed her lids. I gripped her hand, no response; I checked her heart, no beat. Put plainly… this is nothing but the empty husk of one who’s lost their life, a thing I’ve seen any number of times on battlefields.

“…”

When I glared, the warden’s voice cracked in agitation.

“Wh-wh-wh-what… absurd, absurd… this… such a thing…”

Silence. In sheer silence I seized the warden’s hair and dragged him down. Still gripping the hair, I began to walk.

“Ow, that hurts! S-s-stop! I’ve no will to resist!”

“The Fire God Emperor isn’t blessed with disciples, it seems. My disciple Merlin would, before saying stop the way you do… fire off two or three spells even knowing she can’t win.”

“Damn it, Level 6: Flare Burst!”

I snapped my fingers and nipped the spell’s activation in the bud. And the magic, robbed of its formula partway, turned to glittering particles and dissolved into the air.

“A thing like that couldn’t work on me.”

“Wh-wh-wh-whaaaa! Absurd, absurd! Absuuuurd!!”

The warden, seeming to fall into a panic, began, for some reason, suddenly to laugh.

“Fufu, ha, hahaha! I’ll die, surely, I’ve made my peace. But here I’ve cut down Bastet! With having been of even a little use to the Fire God Emperor as my parting gift… I’ll be waiting for you in the underworld, a step ahead!”

“Small-time to the very end. But too bad for you. You there, take a look at Bastet.”

“…Eh?”

Eyes gone wide, the warden let his mouth fall open. And no wonder, for at the end of his gaze, Bastet stood there, a smile on her face.

“H-h-h-how, what is this?”

“It’s a bother, but… go on, explain it, Bastet.”

Still, it should have been a fairly deep wound, and the injury’s closed in an instant. That’s her for you. The reasoning escapes even me, but at any rate I think it’s an ability handier than full-recovery magic. And Bastet’s version isn’t something a no-healing curse can counter either. And Bastet, with a look of scorn at the warden, began to laugh under her breath.

“Did you not know, warden? A cat has nine souls, you know?”

“Ah…” At that, grasping it all, the warden froze. Following, working his mouth open and shut, he said just one thing, like a man raving: “No, surely, that can’t…”

“A clean punchline, and here you and I part ways.”

Dragging the warden along, I made for the great hole bored into the execution ground. It seemed quite deep, and from within came the unpleasant sound of insects writhing.

“Hi, hi, hiii, s-s-stop, stop it! Don’t drop me! Don’t drop me!”

“Now, it’s not decided yet you’ll die, you know? Inside the hole is a kodoku dish teeming with venom-insects. Want to survive, climb out under your own power.”

Well, impossible, though. I’ve researched the state inside. That this guy could do a thing about a hell where a fearful number of insects writhe, I can’t see. And so I put strength into my right hand, and lifting the warden as I was, hurled him with a rush toward the hole, and told his departing back this:

“So long.”

And—

The warden was sucked into the hole with a filthy scream: ‘Ugyaaaaah!’

Right, and with that it’s settled. As I heaved a sigh, Bastet walked over to me. A cheeks-flushed, upturned gaze, she’s a striking beauty, not a thing about it changed from before.

“It’s been a long time. Master.”

“Yeah, truly a long time.”

Bastet, a touch bashful, lowered her lashes.

“As promised, till it wears through… you’ll pat me, won’t you?”

“If Merlin or Svetlana see, it’s a nuisance; they’ll want it done for them too. Just this once.”

With a little laugh, Bastet flung herself into my chest.

⁂

“Still, you really don’t let a man rest.”

Storing every phantom demon, Bastet included, into the tube, I at once set to running as Sasha urged me. Cutting the iron-grate partitions in the way with my katana, where I was headed was the heart of the island.

“It’s the magical central control room of this world’s magic system. For anything at all, that place is most convenient.”

“There are human towns here with a fair-sized population too, I hear. Even letting them out later, you can’t very well send them out all at once, is that it?”

“Just so. By the way, Ephthal…? Step outside here, and most likely it’s straight to the final clash with the Fire God Emperor.”

“…Master starting a countdown means a raid. Which means, at count zero, we’re smack in the middle of the enemy’s ground.”

“Mm. And you, throwing your life on the line without knowing the circumstances, would sit ill with you. About the Fire God Emperor… don’t you want to know why it’s come to this? The choice, to know or not, I leave to you.”

“That’s an awfully roundabout way of putting it. What do you mean?”

“You may come to waver.”

“Waver? About beating the Fire God Emperor senseless? No, that’s out of the question.”

“Bridget is deeply involved. The clash itself is already inevitable… Not knowing means less wavering at the crux. So I leave it to you. Now, what do you do?”

To that question, with almost no pause, I answered.

“I’d figured the cause was something serious, so it makes sense, if anything. Quit dithering and let me hear it.”

“Your reason?”

“If it’s about Bridget, I’ve a duty to know too, don’t I.”

Before long we reached the central control room, as Sasha called it. It was locked, so I kicked the iron door open by force.

“Mm. I thought you’d say that. It’s a long story, but—”

Chapter 1 – The Fairy Realm of the Land of Otogi

Ephthal’s Perspective

In the middle of a forest. On the shore of a lake, sunlight glittering off it. Birdsong came down from the trees, and the early-afternoon breeze felt good.

I’d caught a snake a little while back, lopped off its head, seared the meat with fire magic, and was tearing straight into it. Maybe from losing too much blood, my head felt light and floaty… I’m not in great shape. The wound itself had healed clean once the curse lifted with time and I ran recovery magic over it. But at bottom I was just short on blood, plain and simple. Getting back to full looked like it would take a few days.

“Still, where in the world is this?”

Forest at my back, lake in front. And past the lake, maybe two hundred meters off, a sea of clouds spread across the space straight ahead. Islands hung floating in it, here and there… and around that point my head started to ache. For one thing, I’ve never once heard of islands that float. And what’s more, from what I’d checked earlier, it seemed the ground I was standing on was itself one of the floating islands.

I finished eating and started to get up, meaning to go on surveying the place. Just then, a shrill, blithe little voice came out of the forest.

“Yep-yep, yep-yep~♪”

There, sure enough, was a winged fairy girl small enough to sit in your palm. This is the species called a Pixie. So feeble they’re feared to be going extinct, a rare fairy, and few in number. Their strength is such a woeful thing that they’ve been known to come off worse against a common praying mantis. By the way, she didn’t seem to have noticed me.

“Gonna lick some honey~♪”

The Pixie shoved her face into a flower in bloom and cried out in delight, ‘So yummy~♪’ Just then, a rank, rotten-fishy smell drifted from deep in the woods.

“There’s a weird smell?”

She glanced around, on fairly high alert, it looked like. But she hadn’t noticed that the owner of that smell was a fishman, blended into the scenery over there like a chameleon. From the look of it, the fishman was mid-hunt, and the Pixie was the prey. Nothing for it, so I started toward her, and just then.

“W-w-whoaaaa! Wh-wh-what the heck is thaaat!”

It was a low, gravelly, menacing shriek, about as un-fairy-like as they come. The scream was so awful I laughed in spite of myself, but this was bad. Now that the Pixie had spotted it, the panicked fishman closed the distance in a rush, out to bag its prey.

I leapt sideways, level with the ground, and drew my katana. Then, one stroke. The blade flashed with a glint of light, and the fishman crumpled with a heavy thud. Riding the momentum, I kicked off the ground a few times and closed right up in front of the Pixie.

“You ought to watch your surroundings a little better… otherwise you end up like that.”

“Like that?”

Where I pointed, the fishman, cut clean in two, was being devoured by a giant frog that had lifted its head out of the lake. A long tongue lashed out, wound around the fishman’s body, and reeled it into the frog’s mouth. Then, from the sky… another giant appeared, this time a monstrous bird.

“Gr, graaawwk!”

The bird seized the frog’s head and beat up into the air with a heavy flap of its wings. And just as it made to fly off into the distance, a boulder about the size of a person came flying out of the forest.

“Grgyok!”

Taking the rock dead-on, the bird let out a weird cry and dropped into the lake with a splash.

“One after another after another… what is this place!”

I looked toward where the rock had come from, and out of the forest stepped a golem some five meters tall. It held a boulder in its left hand, so there was no mistaking that this was what had killed the bird.

“Please don’t worry! That one’s okay! That’s a Spriggan~♪”

The fairy said to guard the treasures of Lodoss, huh. On the fairy connection, I suppose it’s a friend of the Pixie’s?

“Meaning it came to protect you?”

“That’s right~♪ That one’s a guardian of good fairies like us~♪ The natural enemy of harm-spirits, an unbeatable, dependable copper on the beat~♪”

Seemed safe enough to relax for the moment, so I sheathed the katana. Just then, I hurriedly ducked. In the next instant the boulder the Spriggan had thrown whistled past a hair’s breadth over my head. Then, behind me, a pillar of water went up in the lake with a great crash. Well, if I hadn’t dodged, that was a direct hit. I turned a flat stare on the Pixie.

“Doesn’t feel remotely safe to me, though?”

“Huh? Huh? That’s wrong, that’s so wrong~! Oh, I know! You’ve gotta show him you mean no harm to fairies!”

Put that way, there was no help for it. To show I meant no ill, I raised both hands toward the Spriggan.

“I’m not your enemy, I’d like you to stop attacking.”

“That’s the way~♪ Mister Spriggan, no more mix-ups~♪ This big brother’s a good person~”

The Spriggan stopped moving; only the light in its eyes stirred. It was observing me, it seemed, taking my measure.

“Now it’s really, truly okay~♪”

The moment the Pixie said so, beaming, the Spriggan hauled back a great fist. And, just as you’d expect, brought it swinging straight down at me.

“Ahh, no good, no good! Looks like you’re marked as an enemy! Run for it, right now! If you can get away, it’ll all work out somehow~!”

Pressing her hands together in apology, the Pixie bowed her head over and over.

“This isn’t a pure fairy, is it, it’s the lifeless sort of familiar? The kind it’s fine to break?”

“Eh, break? This is a high-ranking guardian Sasha-sama made, you know? It catches bad humans, drives off monsters that wander in… an ordinary human could never break it, no way, no, eh?!”

My opponent was a lump of stone. Against it, a katana with no magic riding it does little. I judged as much, and thrust my right palm out at the Spriggan. That said, golem types generally have strong magic resistance, so, now, what to do.

“No! You can’t fight it! No way, no way, no way, no way, no way, José~!”

José? It caught my ear, but we were mid-fight, so I set it aside for now.

“Level 9: Levia Cutting.”

What shot from my palm was superhigh-pressure water. On present-day Earth it’s a famous fact that water pressure can slice through even diamond. But the Spriggan was a good ten meters off, so of course the cutting edge falls away over the distance. Still, stone, at least, ought to be manageable.

“…No. No good, huh.”

Its surface had been reinforced with a magic enchantment, it seemed. Up close might be one thing, but as a long-range water-pressure strike the water had lost too much of its force. Now, the options open to me here were two: close in and loose a water blade, or—

“How about this, then!”

The instant I let the water fly, the Pixie’s cheer rang out.

“I-i-it’s a dismemberment case~!! Amaaazing!”

Just as she said, the golem had its limbs severed and had gone to pieces on the spot. What I did was simple enough, I aimed for the seams of its body, at the joints.

“Wowie, that was amazing. A-maize-ing~♪”

A-maize-ing…? I know Pixies are a cheerful, happy-go-lucky species. But this might be worse than the rumors. Her face is pretty and she looks like a tiny child, so it’s just barely bearable, but honestly, dad jokes…

“Right, let me hear the story. Where is this… no, what is this place?”

At my question the Pixie cocked her little head cutely and went, ‘Hmm?’

“Here? Here’s the Otogi Fantasia~♪”

The strong aura of Sasha’s magic hanging over this whole world. And the presence of phantom demons I felt from every direction, I’d been sure those were tied to that outrageous summoning spell. But to go a step further, and have this world itself be the Otogi Fantasia? That, I’ll admit, I hadn’t seen coming, and I caught my breath despite myself.

⁂

“I didn’t know you were Sasha-sama’s number-one disciple, Ephthal-sama~♪ Sorry for the rude way I talked~♪”

No, your way of talking hasn’t changed one bit. Still, pointing that out would only fluster her, so I let it go.

“There’s one thing I’d like to ask. Were you born here? Or did you come from the outside world?”

“I was singing and dancing and spinning around in a flower field out in the world outside, and then Sasha-sama caught me in a bug net~♪”

“I see. I’ve got the gist of it.”

Still, what nagged at me was why the Pixie kept tacking a -sama onto my name. Or, hadn’t word reached them that Sasha and I had parted ways? Setting that aside, let me put together what I’d heard from her so far.

First, this world sits midway between the underworld and the world of the living. So it’s a place that’s neither the next world nor this one, an in-between, a world in the seam. In fact, drop down off a floating island and you connect through to the underworld, apparently. And this space seemed to be Sasha’s inner world, given substance through sorcery. That’s because a boundary world is a place where the laws of the living world often don’t reach. Magic itself is, after all, the art of making the power of the mind bear on real natural phenomena. So the logic runs that here, the power of the spirit acts more readily upon matter. Meaning: into this place Sasha gathered the very best of the sorcery he had, and projected something like his own inner world.

That’s how I decided to make sense of it, though naturally there was no end of things it left me thinking. First, projecting an inner world and giving it substance: the sheer difficulty of that. Even Sasha had judged it impossible in the living world, they said, and this is the kind of thing that ordinarily can’t be done under any conditions. On top of that, he’s keeping creatures of the living world inside it, and given it an ecosystem that cycles, food chain and all.

“Still, to raise a boxed little world like this, all just to make a spell hold together…”

But this was, in a sense, convenient for cracking the riddle of the Otogi Fantasia’s formula, which had puzzled me for the longest time. What I’d always wondered was how the phantom demons, mental lifeforms utterly off the standard scale, were being preserved. And how energy was being supplied to them.

Phantom demons are supernatural existences of the order of high spirits, heroic souls, gods and the like. Most likely they’re beings formed by collective cognition, the collective unconscious of a span of worlds that includes present-day Earth. Hanuman, Sun Wukong, sages like Nezha or Jiang Ziya, the Four Sacred Beasts, those too. In short, they’re the power of thought made manifest as mental life, out of what humans imagined ‘ought to be.’ Which is why you could call them beings that are everywhere and nowhere. But there’s certainly something you could call a core, and Sasha stores those here. And the ones he keeps and manages, he can call out into the living world at any time to wield their power. That is the peerless summoning spell called the Otogi Fantasia.

“This is guesswork, but phantom demons feed on the power of human belief. Which means quite a number of humans must live in this world, right?”

The number of phantom demons the Otogi Fantasia handles is vast. If, say, I were the one feeding them magic to keep them in existence, I’d be wrung dry in a few hours. And Sasha, of course, couldn’t possibly sustain them all either. So on any sensible reckoning, the power that keeps them in existence is being supplied from somewhere else. That much is certain. Since phantom demons arose from the power of human imagination, the very business of human living becomes their feed. And that’s what’s being supplied here, in this world… probably.

“There’s human towns on lots of the floating islands~♪ Everybody farms, and drinks every day, and lives happy~♪ We help the humans in their daily lives~♪”

“Help humans live?”

“We bless the land to make the harvests fat, and the wine fairies make the wine tastier, and the food fairies keep food from spoiling~♪”

It’s nothing but food with her. Well, food is important to living happily, I suppose.

“That’s the kind of thing us lowly little fairies do, helping out with Sasha-sama’s recommended ’Be Fruitful and Multiply Plan’~♪”

“If everyone’s living happily, then that’s a good thing.”

“But-but! Bad people get punished in the prison!”

“Prison?”

“There’s a place called the floating prison island~♪ Ones like that Mister Spriggan from before really earn their keep there~♪”

From what I could gather… this place seemed, somehow, to have a pastoral air to it. The scenery was easygoing, and the Pixie was as vacant as they come. In which case, my guess was that even ‘punishment’ here would be a pretty gentle affair.

“Just out of curiosity, punishment meaning?”

“Whipping, salting, branding, the water wheel, all sorts~♪”

Surprisingly hard-core. Well, it’s a world Sasha made, so, no wonder, I suppose. That man is thorough to the bone when he decides to be strict.

“And-and, the one that works best is the water-drop torture, they say~♪ They fix you so you can’t move, and for days and weeks, at the same interval, they drip water onto your forehead over and over~♪”

“A drop of water becomes torture?”

“When you drip nothing but water, slow, slow, and endless~♪ before long the human loses their mind, they say~♪”

Picturing it a little, I saw at once that yes, that would be terrifying enough, mentally. In fact, didn’t the intelligence services of Earth’s early modern age have exactly that as a torture, right down to the letter? At any rate, that’s Sasha for you. No mercy.

“The goal’s always correction~♪ So long as they don’t die, a little harshness can’t be helped~♪ Anyway, the story is it started as a place to catch death-row convicts from the real world and set them straight~♪”

“In any case, I understand your fairies are performing all sorts of services for the humans.”

From what I heard, Sasha had built the governing system in fairly earnest good faith. The power of the mind. Energy generated from the doings of human life, supplied to the phantom demons. That’s the aim this world serves. It isn’t hard to imagine that trouble arises unless the humans are, to some degree, mentally settled. And well, since they start as death-row convicts, you could even see it as a perfectly win-win arrangement.

“But those monsters from before? Given the nature of the formula, I can’t see Sasha permitting beings that harm humans or your kind.”

“That’s just it. Lately this world’s gone strange. Ever since that day, the day the red death-god danced across the sky, the phantom demons vanished, and instead the monsters that slip in from the underworld shot up all of a sudden~♪”

Come to think of it, Sasha had said something about the phantom demons being devoured by the Fire God Emperor, and taking them back. And just then… a faint numbness ran through my right hand.

“Ow!”

In the next instant, numbers surfaced on the back of my hand. Displayed as 168:00:00, and in the next instant they were—

—167:59:59.

—167:59:58.

“Is this… a countdown?”

Hmm… What on earth was this supposed to mean. No, I know what it is. I am that man’s disciple, after all. But why now, in this situation…? Nothing for it, so I put the question to the Pixie.

“Do you know where the Fairy King is? As far as I know, he’s the being closest to Sasha in this place…”

“I know, but, what are you suddenly on about~?”

“If none of this makes sense, then I’ve got to talk with someone it makes sense to.”

There, I felt the presence of the strong at my back. I drew, snatched up the Pixie, sprang forward, and looked back once I’d put distance between us.

“There’s no need to call.”

“Yes, there is no need to call.”

What appeared was a man and a woman in their twenties with faces like twins, dressed in gaudy noble finery. Beautiful as sculpture, and carrying a certain bewitching air besides… no, that stands to reason. A fairy, when you come down to it, is a bewitching spirit, and the one who rules over them is the Fairy King.

“My name is Oberon. Fairy King… primordial phantom demon.”

“My name is Titania. Fairy Queen… phantom demon of the beginning.”

It had been a while since I’d seen them. Sasha really does keep some outrageous things, I thought, with a wry smile. After all, these two had closed to within arm’s reach of me without my catching a whiff of their presence. Right up to where you could stretch out a hand and touch them… yes.

Could I take the two of them at once and win? There was no doubt they were spiritual beings a rank above Fenrir or the Azure Dragon. It’s not for nothing they call themselves the foremost of Sasha’s treasured phantom demons; their strength is beyond question, and I knew it. As I braced, the Fairy King and his consort smiled at me, beaming. No sign of a spell-formula being built for any attack, either. At the least, they didn’t seem inclined to strike right away.

“Thank you for saving our child, Ephthal. You’re welcome here.”

“Thank you for saving our child, Ephthal. You are welcome here.”

Thanks? In the plainest sense, these two, Sasha’s servants, are thanking me? The Pixie tacked a -sama onto my name too. All sorts of things are off, sure enough.

“So, why the welcome party for me? No… why is it the Fire God Emperor’s done nothing to you?”

“In the beginning, there was the Fairy King.”

“In the beginning, there was the Fairy Queen.”

“We are the root of this world; the Fairy King governs abundance—”

“We are the root of this world; the Fairy Queen governs the waters. The maintenance system of this world is us ourselves—”

“And we ourselves are the maintenance system. Should we vanish, this world collapses; it cannot stand. The Fire God Emperor understands that well.”

“The reason the Fire God Emperor took Sasha into himself is that he wants the system called the Otogi Fantasia.”

“Or rather, he wishes to make the system that is the Otogi Fantasia his own, independent of Sasha.”

Then, voices in unison, the two declared:

“So, we cannot be harmed.”

“Thus, we are inviolable.”

Hand to my chin, I thought a moment about what they were driving at. There, arriving at the fact of it, I clicked my tongue, damn.

I should have taken the one move of running the instant these two appeared out of nowhere. I already had an offensive formula built and ready to fire at any time. But… against this many, would it be enough? A little while ago, the phantom demons of this world had been dealt catastrophic damage by the Fire God Emperor. That much is certain. Yet the Fairy King and Queen had come through unscathed. To borrow Sasha’s words, where some were devoured by the Fire God Emperor, others were not. So the ten-odd phantom demons hemming me in completely right now had, at least, survived.

“I was told this was a welcome. Setting this many to surround me is hardly peaceable.”

Still, I don’t notice until I’m ringed by more than ten of them? There, spotting the shape of a Kurama Tengu in the woods, I clicked my tongue again. A tengu’s cloak of invisibility, well named. That one’s plainly skilled in the arts of concealment, just as the legends say.

“It’s an emergency, you see.”

“Yes, an emergency.”

Checking the exact number and placement of them, I asked the two:

“I’ll ask you straight. Why did Sasha pull me into this world? No… what is he trying to make me do here?”

I genuinely couldn’t read his intent. If the other side meant to, I’d be beaten down under a massed barrage. Yet so far there was no sign of it. There was that countdown that had shown up on the back of my hand. Because of it, I’d let my guard down more than a little, truth be told. But, would Sasha really flash a countdown just to make me drop my guard? No. That’s not it. Given his character, he wouldn’t go in for anything so roundabout.

Then, at my question, the smiles never leaving their faces, the Oberon couple said:

“Off to the prison, Ephthal.”

“Yes, the prison is what we have in mind.”

Having said it, the fairy husband and wife went right on smiling, beaming as ever.

Merlin’s Perspective

After the incident that blew the royal-capital council chamber to pieces, I returned to the ducal manor. The members of the ducal house had all come through without serious harm, and Anastasia and the others were untouched as well. The upheaval within the country was over, and had things simply gone on from there, that would have been the end of the matter.

But it did not go that way. Ephthal-sama, who had gone to the foreign tribe’s king, had not returned even now, three days on. It’s hard to imagine that man coming off worse against a mere foreign tribe, so the odds were extremely high the Fire God Emperor was involved. Judging as much, I threw myself into the work of compiling what records I had on him, leaning on my memory and the ducal house’s archive.

– Imperial Year 582: at twenty-eight, slays the Demon Lord, is granted the title of Four Emperor.

– Imperial Year 615: the Magia Burst breaks out. The Ice God Emperor dies.

– Imperial Year 672: the Nightmare of the Mireine Plateau. The highlands are swallowed in a great fire; a hundred thousand dead.

– Imperial Year 672: a saint appears who heals the gravely burned in the blink of an eye.

– Imperial Year 712: the city-state of Matarito falls in a single night. All slaughtered, so the details are unknown.

– Imperial Year 713: an anonymous magnate provides a vast sum toward Matarito’s reconstruction.

– Thereafter, on a fifty-year cycle, great destruction and reconstruction aid repeat.

The witness accounts common to both the destruction and the salvation point to a red-haired boy. It’s beyond doubt the Fire God Emperor’s doing, but why perform salvation for the very ones he set out to destroy? The reason he killed the first Ice God Emperor, the reason he loosed the Magia Burst that is the cause of magic’s present decline, his purpose in any of it, from beginning to end, I could not grasp. There’s no consistency to his actions; it verges, even, on the haphazard.

A fiend and a demon, or a saving child of the gods. What in the whole wide world… is the Fire God Emperor thinking?

And as I sat there with my head in my hands, a servant of the manor came to tell me that Svetlana had arrived. Svetlana had been due to head back from the royal capital to the Dragon’s Treasure Vault for a time. But with Ephthal-sama not returning to the ducal manor, I had summoned her in haste.

“So, what’s going on, Merlin-chan?”

“What do you think is going on. As the letter I sent by express rider said, Ephthal-sama has not returned.”

“Not returned… what’s that supposed to mean?! There is no way he of all people comes off worse against a mere foreign tribe!”

“Calm yourself a little, Svetlana. I want to shout every bit as much as you do.”

Table between us, we faced one another across the sofa. After a spell of silence, one or the other of us put our lips to the black tea a maid had laid out for guests.

“Good leaves, Merlin-chan.”

“Yes. The service isn’t showy, but… it has a certain grace. Duke Alcott would seem to have good taste.”

Gazing at the tea things, the phrase unadorned and sturdy came to mind. Come to think of it, the furnishings throughout the manor placed more weight on usefulness than on looks. I could get along with the current Duke Alcott, I thought, and the corners of my mouth loosened a touch. And perhaps steadied a little by the scent of the tea, Svetlana asked with a grave face:

“So, not returning. What’s the situation?”

“Moria, the former knight-commander, flew an express rider himself and scouted the state of the foreign tribe’s stronghold. But… all that was found was the corpse of the War-Maiden of Aegis and the foreign king’s hideout, wrecked and abandoned.”

“Mm. And?”

“The hideout was a cave in the mountains, sprawling and complex as an ant’s nest, apparently. Since remnants of the foreign tribe might still be lurking there, he came back without going in deep. Well, I’d worn my throat raw telling him not to go in deep, so there’s that too.”

“Meaning Ephthal-chan got caught up in something unforeseen somewhere around there, doesn’t it.”

“How many times must I tell you not to tack a -chan onto Ephthal-sama’s name.”

“Come to think of it, Ephthal-chan said the same thing. Fine, then, I’ll settle for Junior, as a favor.”

Talking with this one gives me a headache, as always. In my case, my feeling toward Ephthal-sama runs mainly in the direction of reverence, but Svetlana is another matter. She took a childhood promise at face value and is genuinely playing the wife, there’s a whiff of her regarding them as married, as full equals. Still, Maria’s the same, but isn’t Ephthal-sama a little too soft on his disciples? I can’t help thinking so. No, come to think of it, with the lady of the house, Bridget-sama, he was usually kept under her thumb. Which makes me think perhaps that man has always been weak to women.

“So, why are you lazing about in a place like this? There’s no mistaking Junior’s gotten himself into some kind of trouble, is there?”

“I was waiting to raise the odds. If I move carelessly, the odds are very high I merely become the mummy-hunter turned mummy.”

And Svetlana and I stood at the same moment, each of us cracking our knuckles.

“Unusual for you, Merlin-chan… waiting for Big Sis was the wise call. Since Junior can’t handle it, there’s no way you handle it alone. Big Sis’s power is a must, I should think.”

“Sasha-sama’s power, more like.”

We gave each other a firm nod. I tossed Svetlana the rucksack I’d stashed in the corner of the room, packed with travel rations and water.

“In any case, a survey on the ground.”

“Yes, there’s nothing else for it.”

With that we set off in a straight line for the manor’s front entrance.

“Do you know the exact distance?”

“Four hours one way by express rider. An hour or so by flight magic, I’d say.”

“No telling what happens. Better to avoid burning magic ahead of time.”

“In which case, the means is a horse after all…”

Out into the inner courtyard, and just as we’d started walking toward the stables, Svetlana laughed under her breath.

“Say, Merlin-chan? Were you really planning to go by horse?”

And with the words, Svetlana turned dragon. A vast body glittering jade-silver, so huge it made the ducal house’s sprawling garden look small. Even to me, who knew her, it drew a sigh of wonder, she’s beautiful. That grand, unhurried bearing is a magnificent thing. Emerald Dragon is well said; formed like a jewel, the sight of her forces awe, dread, and wonder on every soul who beholds her, no leave asked.

“On an ordinary day, I might have left it at that.”

“You really do hate asking me for anything, don’t you.”

“But time is pressing. Had you not done it of your own accord, I’d have been ready to bow my head.”

“Oh? Even though you’d started walking to the stables?”

“Because I knew you’d cave first soon enough… how many years do you think we’ve known each other?”

At that we both snorted a laugh and cracked up.

“Merlin-chan. But this once, I don’t think that snipe-at-each-other, drag-each-other-down mood is a good idea.”

“Yes. You and I… let’s set our usual grudges aside, just for this.”

“The enemy is the Fire God Emperor, and Sasha-sama’s gone missing too, yes?”

“Just so. Whatever else, there’s no chance of anything happening to Ephthal-sama of all people. But… this time the opponent is the Fire God Emperor.”

“I flatter myself I hold power enough to stand against the first-generation Four Emperors and Sasha-sama, but you’re another matter. Since the quality of our camp may be inferior, we’ve got to cooperate. If you understand that properly… shall we hurry?”

“Never have I envied the dragon race’s power that leans on no magic as much as I do now. Had I only not been caught up in the Magia Burst, perhaps I too could have somehow clawed my way up to the first-generation Four Emperors’ realm, the world of the heavens above.”

Just then, a voice came from the manor’s entrance. I looked, and there was Duke Alcott, running toward us with a pale face.

“P-please wait, both of you!”

“Oh? What’s the matter, Fraser-chan?”

“From the royal capital… an order of appearance has been issued against the two of you.”

At the words, Svetlana and I met each other’s eyes. ‘An order of appearance?’ And at once, the two of us snorted with laughter.

“An order of appearance, for Big Sis and company? Say, Fraser-chan? Even if whoever issued it is royalty, cart the whole lot off to the cells. If they still don’t understand after we thrashed them that thoroughly, there’s no treatment left but a truly rough time.”

My thoughts exactly. But even hearing Svetlana out, Duke Alcott’s face stayed stiff.

“The thing is… the situation is strange. And the reason for the appearance isn’t the matter of the earlier assault on the noble council, either.”

When I cocked my head with a ‘Hm?’ Duke Alcott showed us our order of appearance, more precisely, the signature at the foot of it. And seeing the names written there, we were struck dumb.

“You’ve got to be joking?!”

“Absurd… no, that’s impossible!”

It was no wonder Svetlana and I were shaken. Yes, the order of appearance bore two names, jointly. And those two names were—

—Fire God Emperor Cliff, and Undead Emperor Sasha.

⁂

We were floored from the very outset. The bridge spanning the moat around the palace. There, drawn up on either side to receive us, stood dozens of knights in formation. Now, that much is ordinary, nothing to be startled at. Whether toward me personally, or Svetlana personally, or the rank of Duke Alcott, each of us holds a weighty position, and grand receptions of that sort are nothing rare. But looking closely, the knights drawn up there were undead, corpse knights. There, the air finally turned to this is no ordinary business. To be precise: Svetlana and I went wide-eyed, and Duke Alcott’s face twitched.

After that, we were shown into the palace. There we came face to face with one horror after another, enough to make you cover your eyes. Passing through the entrance, we walked straight up the red carpet that led on toward the throne room, and the ones standing guard here and there were heavily armed undead infantry. Obliging as you please, even the maids working the castle were corpse-fiends, a sort of nightmare-breed, by the look of them.

“What… is this, Svetlana?”

“Don’t ask me.”

A grotesque state of affairs, the undead swaggering through the palace as if it were their own. And of course, the royals and their people had surely not gotten off lightly. So, all but retching at the sour reek of hell-knights and corpse-knights, we simply pressed on up the red carpet. After walking a while, we came out at last through a long, long corridor. And then the doors bound in gold and silver that led to the throne room reared up before us.

Whether an ogre comes out or a snake, then. Thinking as much, I pushed the doors open. The straight run of red carpet went on as before, and at its end I saw five tiered steps. Naturally, what stood atop them was the throne. Though the lord who ought to sit enthroned there was absent, of course. Beside the throne, seated cross-legged, a red-haired boy. And at the boy’s side, a silver-haired girl in gothic-lolita dress… no, an old man. There, confirming Sasha-sama’s presence, Svetlana and I bit our lips, guessing at a piece of the reason Ephthal-sama had vanished.

“The palace in this state… what manner of joke is this, Sasha-sama? And the first-generation Fire God Emperor from the order of appearance… borrowing a false name is poor taste.”

“Hn? Merlin. Had you no acquaintance with the first-generation Fire God Emperor?”

I’d meant to feign ignorance of the circumstances and lay on the irony. But the answer came back straight-faced, without a flicker of guilt, this is getting truly bad.

“I’m aware you’re fond of pranks, but this time it strikes me as going somewhat too far. Occupying the palace with armed undead…”

“Well, there’s no help for it.”

“No help for it?”

“I’ve no taste for people dying, you know… and even so, I’m holding it back, believe me. As far as I possibly can… yes.”

Sasha-sama gave a shrug, as if to say what a bother. And sent his gaze to the boy yawning boredly at his side.

“Er… you’d be Ephthal’s disciples, Merlin and Svetlana, is that right? Though whether the dragon princess counts as a disciple is a question that lingers.”

There, sensing danger, Svetlana and I caught up Duke Alcott and leapt back at the same instant.

“Yes, good instincts. Ephthal seems to have been an excellent teacher.”

“He teaches the ways of a brawl more than sorcery, that one. He’d be good at this sort of thing.”

The two of them laughed, well pleased, while Svetlana and I went teary-eyed, this is more than a person can take.

“What… is happening?”

Before I’d noticed, a man was standing just ahead of where we’d been standing a moment ago. His figure was one both Svetlana and I knew. A face familiar from childhood, when we’d both been in his care. The one who’d appeared there without a sound, all at once, was the one we revered—

—the first Ice God Emperor.

“Well, it’s like this. The whole tale about the Scarlet of Hades comes down, in the end, to right here.”

“Is this one the real thing? What… what is happening?”

“It’s a simple story. I kept the Ice God Emperor’s remains packed in ice, you see. Well, the Ice God Emperor, put on ice, quite literally.”

Finding whatever it was funny, the Fire God Emperor began to laugh under his breath.

“My apologies, Merlin. I did try to stop it, but the brat insisted it was absolutely necessary… he used the orb, and by necromancy brought the Ice God Emperor back as undead.”

“So, Ice God Emperor, if you would.”

Toward Svetlana and me, a Level-9-class water spell came flying from the Ice God Emperor. This is… a blade-spell by water pressure. Take it head-on and it would cleave your torso in two at a stroke, heavy armor or no.

“Level 7: Perfect Wall!”

My defensive magic was pierced by the Ice God Emperor’s water blade in the blink of an eye. But the water pressure felt to have weakened, if only slightly. And I set off the next defensive formula I’d built alongside it at the same time.

“One more, Level 7: Perfect Wall!”

The wall held a little better than before. But even so, it was on the verge of being slid through the way a heated knife goes through butter.

“Drag’s Field.”

The defensive wall Svetlana raised. My wall was reinforced by the dragon’s own battle-aura. There, at last, the water blade lost its cutting power and scattered to the four winds. There, I noticed my back had gone soaked through with a nasty sweat before I’d known it.

“The Ice God Emperor, beyond doubt. His magic is degraded by the undeath, but this perfection of formula… it’s not something anyone else could imitate.”

“Well, he’s the real thing.”

“But, Fire God Emperor, why launch an attack at us?”

“I’d no intention of hurting you. I was just a little curious how much the mages of the present age, you two, seated at the very peak, could manage.”

“Curious… you said?”

“Had you taken a wound, I’d have asked you to leave. At any rate… you pass. Though whether that’s fortune or misfortune for you, I couldn’t say.”

Pass…? I knit my brows in suspicion.

“The occupied palace, undead soldiers, and Ephthal-sama’s disappearance. Fire God Emperor… what is it you’re after?”

Nodding at the words, the Fire God Emperor pierced straight through to my eyes with a level gaze.

“Let me say it plainly, won’t you surrender to my command?”

“Surrender to your command… you say? And if I did, where lies the gain for me?”

“First, Ephthal is in our hands. Confined in the Otogi world Sasha built up, and in time he’ll turn corpse, Ephthal too is slated to become my puppet.”

“Wha… t?”

“Do as I say, and I’ll guarantee his person and his life until he dies a natural death. You’d be, in effect, the knight who guards him. Depending on the case, I might even do something so far as letting you meet Ephthal.”

Where Ephthal-sama was confined, I couldn’t know. But from this way of talking, the Fire God Emperor seemed to hold the power of life and death over him.

“Well, for my part, it’s a matter of adding a slightly useful pawn, no more. So, what will you do, mages without peer in the present age?”

“You’re a sorcerer who can even puppeteer the first Ice God Emperor. If it’s useful hands you want, why not dig up the graves of the world’s strong and make pawns of them? And surely you already hold, as pawns, a group that wields something called reincarnator skills.”

“Ah, that. The truth is I’m stretched to my limit.”

“Stretched to your limit?”

“As you’re aware, brainwashing is my specialty. But keeping several going at all times, watching and manipulating the insides of people’s heads in all sorts of places, even for me, that’s hard labor.”

Well, that’s true enough. That he’s achieving it at any real scale at all is itself a state of affairs beyond common sense.

“Besides, I don’t think I could brainwash mages of your level, and even if I could, it would eat too much of my resources. I really have my fingers in all kinds of things, you see… like so.”

The Fire God Emperor snapped his fingers. And, as before, four humans, no, undead, appeared all at once before our eyes. These, unlike the Ice God Emperor, were in the state of fleshless skeletons… but the presence of the strong was plain on them. Skeletons draped in black robes. The words high undead, a lich crossed my mind, but the air about them was nothing so mild.

“The second-generation Four Emperors. To put it bluntly, just controlling these four and the Ice God Emperor has me at my limit.”

A dry laugh spilled from my lungs despite myself. On the heels of the first Ice God Emperor, the second-generation Four Emperors…? Svetlana and I met each other’s eyes and shrugged at the same moment, as if to say hands up, we surrender. With Ephthal-sama gone… I couldn’t see us doing a thing about this.

“What your aim is, I don’t know, but do you seriously believe I’d lend some manner of aid to you, who harmed Ephthal-sama?”

“The odds are about fifty-fifty, I’d say.”

“Fifty-fifty? Such a thing is out of the question, categorically.”

“The Alcott ducal domain. Ephthal’s family in this life, and the disciples he’s picked up as things went along, and the household growing larger. You, who once had no direct acquaintance with me, may not know it, but—”

And with an expression that froze you to the spine, the Fire God Emperor went on:

“—I don’t choose my means.”

“For the first-generation Fire God Emperor to threaten by taking women and children hostage… how far you’ve fallen.”

“Say what you like. Only, I take responsibility for my words, for good or ill. If I say I’ll do it, I do it without fail, and if I say I won’t, I won’t.”

At that, Svetlana, silent until now, opened her mouth.

“Hold on a moment, you? First-generation Fire God Emperor or whatever you are, who gave you leave to talk down to Merlin-chan?”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Since you don’t seem to know, let me teach you. The only ones allowed to talk down to my family are… Ephthal-chan and me.”

A deep sigh escaped me. This is why… I find Svetlana hard to deal with. This woman means it, sincerely, without a trace of sarcasm, and then she comes out and says it.

“Svetlana, leave it.”

“Going down in flames suits me fine. So long as I can take one of their arms with me, no complaints.”

If the foster parent is that sort, so is the child, I thought. And my own foster parent is cut from the same cloth as this one. It’s been so from the old days, spend time with Svetlana, and in the end I’m always swept along. That I’m the more level-headed of us is beyond doubt. But at the root, in the shaping of character in childhood, we’re… in truth, exactly the same.

And, well, the other side was fully aware the situation was a hair from ignition. The Fire God Emperor, the Ice God Emperor, and the second-generation Four Emperors began refining magic and building formulas. Of course I too was readying for battle in kind, but the sense of winning simply wouldn’t come. Yet if I’m to fall alongside Svetlana… there was certainly a part of me here that found even that a clean enough end.

So, as the two camps glared at each other, Sasha-sama shouted in a great voice.

“Both sides, cease! You blithering fools!”

At the midpoint between them and us, a defensive barrier appeared, one that seemed to be Sasha-sama’s work. At that, the Fire God Emperor, a touch surprised, spoke to Sasha-sama.

“Why stop them? Isn’t this sort of dust-up your favorite dish?”

“What in the world do you take me for… I’ve no taste for pointless deaths. And Merlin, Svetlana… the two of you, cool your heads a little too. You’re grand-disciples of a sort; I’ll weigh your circumstances to the fullest.”

What are you on about, you traitor, I thought, glaring at Sasha-sama. But receiving that glare of mine, Sasha-sama shut one eye for the barest instant. Hm? That was… a wink? In a situation like this?

“In any case, hear the man out properly, at least. You’ve scarcely heard a thing yet, have you?”

As he spoke, Sasha-sama tapped the back of his own right hand once with the fingers of his left. This is… he’s trying to convey something? Careful not to let the Fire God Emperor catch it, I stole a glance at the back of my own hand… and hid a mouth that threatened to loosen behind it.

The countdown has begun. I see… so that’s it. This is a signal-fire passed down in Sasha’s school. And of course, to me, of Ephthal’s school, the meaning of the sign is well understood. In short, what it means is, at the count of zero, the whole school storms the enemy’s stronghold together. Back when Ephthal-sama spent his days as Sasha-sama’s disciple, the countdown was run nearly every month, or so I’ve heard.

“Understood, Fire God Emperor. If it’s only talk, I’ll hear you out properly.”

“I’m glad, Merlin. Were you Ephthal, the fight would be well underway by now, Sasha’s words be damned. It does seem there’s room to talk with you after all.”

“Don’t mistake me, I only listen, no more. Before that, there’s one thing I’d ask.”

“Ask whatever you like. To win you over, I’m prepared to spend a fair bit of time.”

“Just what do you mean to do, going to these lengths for fighting strength? What is it you want? Do you mean to conquer the world?”

“Conquer the world? I’ve no interest in anything so small. It’s only that, to protect that child, this much deterrence is the bare minimum.”

“That child?”

“By rights, Ephthal and I ought to share the same aspiration and walk the same road. But even with the same goal in sight… were I to lay out the circumstances, Ephthal would beyond doubt refuse to agree to my methods.”

“What are you saying, Fire God Emperor.”

“I protect my little sister; Ephthal protects… his wife. Our aspirations are beyond doubt the same, and yet, a fated thing, isn’t it.”

“Wife? Little sister? Don’t tell me…”

The Fire God Emperor looked up at the ceiling with a melancholy face, and said, sighing:

“Yes. My little sister, and Ephthal’s wife, Bridget.”

Prologue – Battle at the Summit

“Level 10: Undead Emperor Sasha.”

A blast of dark-colored magic came tearing toward me.

I threw up two Level 7 barriers side by side, thrown together on the spur of the moment, though I knew from the start it was like a bucket on a bonfire.

“Level 7: Perfect Wall!”

I shoved both palms out. A ward unfolded from each hand, left and right, straining against the press of Sasha’s magic. And just as I’d figured, in a few seconds my barriers gave, and the black wave came bearing down on a straight line for me.

With the seconds I’d bought, I unfolded one more. Still a bucket on a bonfire, of course. In the blink of an eye the last of my wards was breached, and just as I braced myself, thinking this is the end—

“It… missed?”

Sasha’s Level 10 bent off its course, tore through my right arm just past the wrist, and shot away behind me. A beat later came the blast, deep in the ruins. The whole structure took the hit—the ceiling too, by the look of it, and boulders large and small started raining down.

“Finishing it with a cheap shot would be… well, dull.”

So he’s holding back? No, he’s toying with me. Well and truly looked down on, aren’t I. That’s what I’d like to think, except it’s also a plain fact that my right arm got carried off on the opening move. I tried to heal it, but they’d countered full-recovery magic too. Well, of course they had. Locking me out of healing would be step one of any plan built to stop me.

So what now. The more I read the situation, the more it looks like I’m already checkmated.

While I stood there grinding my teeth, the Fire God Emperor called across to Sasha.

“As we planned, go for total destruction of the limbs. We mustn’t kill him.”

“Mm. Then I shall take the left hand.”

“And I’ll help myself to the left foot.”

The Fire God Emperor and Sasha loosed Level 9 spells at the same instant, Cliff a lance of flame, Sasha a blade of wind, each aimed exactly where he’d called it, left foot and left hand. I was building a formula of my own, but one Level 9 was as much as I could manage. One on one, I’d never lose on construction speed. But there were two of them, twice the hands, twice the pace. I wouldn’t make it. No, there was no way I could make it. These weren’t amateurs; they were experts working at the same level I did.

“This is bad.”

By throwing up a wind blade of my own I just barely canceled Sasha’s. At the same moment I twisted clear of Cliff’s flame, didn’t quite manage it, and the fire grazed my left foot.

“Guh…”

The wound was shallow, nothing lost. My leg would still move, barely. But that sealed any hope of quick footwork.

“You two… why aren’t you going for the kill?”

Sasha’s opening shot was the same. Aim for the torso or the head and, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve killed me on the spot. I could tell they were pulling their punches; I just couldn’t work out why.

“It’s not that I’d mind taking your life. It’s that internal organs don’t come with replacements, Ephthal.”

At that, Sasha and the Fire God Emperor traded a glance.

“Still, brat, going easy on Ephthal of all people… you’ve saddled me with a rather difficult job, haven’t you?”

“That’s exactly why it’s the two of us,” Cliff said.

“Hold on there, Fire God Emperor. Just now it sounded to me like you said this is no longer needed to my face. So why not take my life?”

“Ah—that.”

“To put it plainly, I need your brain and your organs. In as undamaged a state as possible.”

“My brain and organs, you said?”

“I’ll turn you undead and make you my private soldier. The combat power drops by a fair margin, but… you were you to begin with. In a world leveled down as far as this one, that alone makes you a tactical weapon.”

This guy… he’s completely off the rails. To even think of doing that to an old comrade.

“You’ve really and truly written me off, haven’t you?”

“I have, in fact. Even four hundred years ago the gap between us was plain, wasn’t it?”

As if to say why state the obvious, the Fire God Emperor went on, flat and unhurried.

“I climbed all the way to the Level 11 tier, and you’ve grown weaker than you were. On top of which, we’ve got Sasha here, one of the handful counted the strongest in the world even back then.”

And the Fire God Emperor started to laugh, low and delighted.

“By the way, what’s the matter, Ephthal? Your mouth’s lively enough, but your color’s been off for a while now.”

“Ah, I’m just savoring the boundless good fortune of a kind-hearted master.”

The barb seemed to land; Sasha’s face went through something there wasn’t a word for.

“I do feel for you, truly. But the phantom demons of the Otogi Fantasia were taken from me. Those were the jewels I gave my whole life to gathering, you understand? So there’s no help for it, is there. Ephthal, stay quiet and I’ll see the thing done without pain… what will you do?”

“As if that needs asking…”

Then I fired off the Level 10 I’d been quietly building behind the scenes since the fight opened, careful not to let either of them catch on.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”

White lightning washed across everything, a bolt running dead straight for the Fire God Emperor.

“Given the time elapsed, this is well within expectations. Level 11: Zero. A formula that nullifies any magic of Level 10 or below. Convenient, no?”

He’d casually pulled off something monstrous. Never mind. I hammered three quick Level 7s at him anyway, and in the same breath I sprang toward Sasha on my one good leg.

“That inhuman burst speed of yours, same as ever, Ephthal. Though it’s only the flailing of a man too slow in the high tiers, a talentless weakling’s sleight of hand.”

As things stood, going one against two, I could say with flat certainty my odds were zero. So what I wanted was a little time to focus on Sasha, the easier of the two to handle. That was the whole reason for the second helping of Level 7s, the kind of thing the Fire God Emperor would swat aside in an instant. I knew that going in; the barrage itself meant nothing. It was cover, and in the instant after that blinding spray, I’d lobbed an artifact at the Fire God Emperor.

“…And what’s this?”

Snap, snap, snap—ice crawled up from under the Fire God Emperor’s feet and raced across his whole body.

“An ice-binding artifact. A keepsake of the Ice God Emperor.”

Sheryl’s foster brother had passed it to me; it ran on nearly the same formula as the spell that had almost sealed us in a room once before. Cliff would shake it off soon enough, but a masterwork of the Ice God Emperor, however far gone, is still a masterwork. It would buy a sliver of time.

“…I see. Here I’ll grant you, well done.”

In moments the Fire God Emperor was sheathed head to foot in ice, sealed inside the block.

“Level 8: Invisible. Level 6: Assassin’s Pride. Level 5: Air Wall.”

Three formulas fired in parallel: optical camouflage, a scrubbing of my presence, and three-dimensional maneuvering off walls of compressed air. Kicking off them with one leg, I closed the gap to Sasha fast.

“Ha, this is a marvel. Truly, that torrential construction speed is the one thing even I can’t match.”

I thrust a palm at him and called up fire.

—Level 6: Flare Burst!

“Level 7: Extra Magic Guard.”

Level 6 canceled clean by Level 7. A total shutout; I doubt so much as the heat reached him. This damn old man. He shouldn’t even know where I’m firing from, and he’d caught the exact instant my spell went off. I kicked off a few more air walls and swung around behind him. And—

—One more on the house. Take it, thief! Level 6: Flare Burst!

“Behind me now. But you only ever do what I’ve already accounted for… where’s your fire, Ephthal? Level 7: Extra Magic Guard.”

Cool as anything, not even turning, Sasha raised a ward at his back.

And in that same instant I drew my katana one-handed.

“Guard it or don’t, it makes no difference! The magic was all a decoy!”

Fwoosh—the blade, a single flash of Raikiri. It bit into Sasha’s back, and I felt the solid answer of it run up my arm.

“Even Sasha can’t block thi— …tch, monster!”

“Level 9: Self Material Guard. A sword-stroke on muscle alone won’t cut me.”

Sasha sprang forward, opening the distance.

“Fufu, Ephthal. This new power you’ve picked up—swordsmanship, was it? What you can do and what you can’t… I’ve done my research.”

At Sasha, snorting a laugh down his nose, I drove off the air walls and charged again.

“No use however many times you try. You’ve judged you can’t beat me with magic and gone for close range, but half-learned tricks don’t reach me.”

I paid the words no mind, leveled the katana, and rushed him at full speed, cutting down at him in the same motion. It was like taking a blade to steel. One-handed, I couldn’t ride the shock, and the katana slipped from my grip to the ground. It rang out, clattering away, and Sasha gave an exasperated shrug.

“So you’ve dropped even your last hope, that katana. Well. This ends it. First let me strip away that optical camouflage of yours—Level 7: Mirroring Wash.”

Then, laying eyes on me directly at last, Sasha’s face filled with sheer astonishment.

“Wha—?!”

By the time he noticed, it was already too late. The instant I let the katana fall, I’d already come at him a different way, hand to hand.

—a flying cross armbar.

One leg hooked under his arm, the other swung up as though to reap his neck; then, riding the weight of the drop, I hauled him down and rolled him to the floor. As he hit, I wrenched the joint straight into a lock.

—Crack!

The moment it locked I broke it, no hesitation. I fixed a no-healing curse on the break and shifted into groundwork, mounting him and grabbing him by the collar.

“You can armor your skin all you like, you can’t armor the joints or the blood vessels. There. Dragged you down into the antlion’s pit.”

“I was wary of a throw… but what… is… this…?”

I’d shown Sasha a throw before. But the flying armbar, the joint locks, the ground game, those I’d never let him see. Working the collar, I bore down on his carotid. My right hand blown off past the wrist made it a miserable job, but it more or less held its shape.

“Ka… ha…!”

Sasha’s color went blue before my eyes, then to the gray of clay. That’s oxygen starvation, the blood cut off in an instant, no oxygen reaching the brain. And a brain that can’t take in oxygen, that can’t be worked, means no spell-formula of any kind can be built.

“As a decision between mages it’s a shabby thing, I’ll admit… but you’re the one who let his guard down, so that’s on you.”

Right, choke Sasha out fast, then I’ve got the Fire God Emperor to deal with. I cinched the collar tighter, and just as Sasha’s eyes rolled white and his head lolled, consciousness slipping—

“That’s far enough, Ephthal. Let go of the choke.”

What I felt at my back was, past all mistaking, the premonition of death.

—Level 10: Fire God Emperor.

The name of a spell for a small-scale nuclear blast in a bounded space. Put plainly, right now I’ve got a gun barrel pressed to my back. Pull the trigger and that’s the end of me. With no choice, I eased off the choke, and the Fire God Emperor’s voice came, sing-song.

“Ha, no helping you, Undead Emperor. That pretty little face, all blue and ruined.”

“…Be quiet… brat…”

Well. The blitz failed, plainly enough. My damage came to two places, left foot and right wrist. I could keep fighting. But the situation was far worse than where I’d started. I couldn’t get anywhere without at least forcing it back to one on one, and even that looked hopeless.

“Right. Nothing for it now.”

I let go of Sasha’s collar, took the crown of his head in my left hand, and set the stump of my right wrist against his jaw.

“Sorry, Master… make your peace.”

I poured everything both arms had into turning his head clean around. The gist of it being: spin the head a full turn and wring the neck apart at the vertebrae. Whether the Fire God Emperor’s spell went off first, or I killed Sasha on the spot and got myself set… that was the race. A rotten bet, a downright impossible one by the look of it, but there was nothing to do but try.

Sasha grinned.

“Don’t underestimate me, Ephthal… look up.”

An overwhelming weight of magic, sprung from nowhere, bore down from overhead. Dreading it, I raised my face.

“You have got to be kidding me… oh, come on.”

A jet-black coffin hung in the air. This is the coffin Sasha favors when he handles the power of darkness, the one that opens, he says, onto the underworld.

“Now—take this!”

The coffin’s door swung wide and came falling toward me. He means to drag me inside? From past that door rolled the thick reek of death and darkness.

Looking up, all I could see inside the coffin was blackness: a jet dark that simply went on and on.

Then a pull started up in there, as though the coffin had grown a gravity of its own—and my feet came off the ground. It was drawing me in.

“Whoaaaaaa?!”

Either way, evading it… not a chance.

The next instant it had me: the coffin took me in and flung me out into a space of pure darkness. Right after, the door of the coffin fell shut with a small flat clap, and the sound went ringing away through the black.

And then, at the very last, faint and from nowhere I could place, I caught Sasha’s voice, and the Fire God Emperor’s.

“Sasha? What was it you just did?”

“The order was that I not kill him, after all… Well. Call it taking him into my own belly.”