Chapter 4 – The Sealed Demon God
The whole ground of the seal was burning, and the earth had gone red-hot and begun to melt.
Sieg gave his orders at once.
“Wrap yourself in cold! Breathe that heat in and it will burn your lungs out!”
“Yes!”
Princess Cordelia clothed herself in cold at absolute zero and froze the melting ground back into footing under her. Sieg used [Air Jump] to hold himself off the ground and layered [Mana Barrier] to keep the heat off.
Without Blessings and magic, a person could not so much as stand on the same field as Surtr.
He put [Appraisal] on the giant of flame immediately. It resisted, and he could not read all of it. The demon god was as advertised. But he did learn that it carried one very troublesome ability.
“Careful! This thing is—!”
Before Sieg could finish, the giant intoned something.
‘Surt, nar! FLAGRUM!’
A pillar of fire rose out of the ground instantly, and a mass of warriors came out of it: foot soldiers clad head to foot in burning armor.
“Eh! There is more than one of them!?”
The princess called out in alarm, and Sieg clicked his tongue before he could stop himself.
Summoning. Of course.
This was Surtr’s authority—[Legion Summoning]. What had come out was the lowest rank of them, the [Flagrum], the flame rabble. The demon god Surtr commanded a great many legions of fire and could call them up at will.
Sieg drew, giving the princess her orders as he did.
“That was a summoning! He can call up legions, but it seems he cannot summon the higher ranks yet. That will be because he has only just woken. This is our chance. I will push him. The legions are yours!”
It might be too much weight for her, but he could hardly set her against a demon god.
The princess was shaking, and she answered “Understood!” and brought her sword up.
Sieg nodded, sprang through the air, and closed on Surtr.
The temperature climbed savagely the closer he got to the giant. A Hero has [Heat Resistance], but resistance has a limit, so he reshaped [Mana Barrier] into feathered vanes and spread them in layers across his front, an arrangement that scattered the heat wave efficiently by convection and radiation.
He built a barrier under his feet, used it as footing for [Flash Step], and was inside the giant’s guard in one motion.
“Hah!”
The breath went out of him sharp as he drove in a full-strength cut.
How the demon god answered it would tell him something about what he was dealing with.
The giant of flame did not defend at all. It simply took the opening blow into its body. A deep wound opened across it, and closed while he watched, until nothing was left, not a mark.
…What!? Then how about this!
Sieg righted himself on a barrier and loosed a sword art at point-blank range: [Gale’s Flurry], for its speed of execution.
Tracks of light ran crosswise and lengthwise and Surtr’s vast body was cut to pieces. And still the giant took no injury. What took injury was the Sacred Silver blade.
This is—!
Surtr rolled its eyes down at him and swung the enormous sword with fury in its face.
‘ZRAUHHKAAAL!’
Surtr’s greatsword came at him trailing crimson. Sieg meant to turn it aside with the Sacred Silver blade, and thought better of it at the last instant; he threw down footing, flipped backward off it, and got clear of the sword by the width of a hair.
He had cleared it by a wide margin, and the heat wave set his cloak alight anyway. He tore the cloak off, jumped several times, and put distance between himself and Surtr.
Careless. I should have prepared heat gear.
Sieg set his back teeth and faced the demon god again.
That one exchange had told him several things.
Surtr, in all likelihood, could not be wounded by an ordinary weapon; only elemental attacks by magic would land. Which meant that without a water- or ice-attribute magic blade, there was no fight here at all.
…Even so, this is far too strong an opponent to leave to Cordy.
A Holy Sword or a demon sword would have made a difference. He regretted not having gone for the demon sword first, but there was no use thinking about that now.
The other thing he had learned concerned Surtr’s sword. He had meant to parry with his blade and stopped short, because the Blessing that warns him of danger by instinct, [Danger Sense], had answered.
Test it, then.
Sieg closed on Surtr again, and as the giant swung, he flung an assortment of things out of [Spatial Storage] over a wide arc, mostly Sacred Silver armor and gauntlets he had taken out of the Labyrinth of Obsidian.
‘GRATHRAZZ!’
He cleared the sword by a long way. The stroke found nothing at all. And yet the armor and the gauntlets caught fire immediately, though the blade never touched them. They burned out in seconds and went to ash.
Watching it, Sieg was certain.
Sacred Silver does not burn. Melt, perhaps; catch fire, never.
So it was not heat doing it. It was combustion by Surtr’s authority.
That sword burned whatever came near it, without contact, and it burned things that had no business burning.
Sieg bit his lip.
Which meant he could not cross blades with Surtr at all. Everything had to be evaded, and evaded at a considerable distance, or he would be set alight.
The Sacred Silver blade could not even scratch him. Come close and be burned to nothing.
What a nightmare of an opponent.
But he had to attack before the stronger legions were called up, and for that he looked back at the princess. She was fighting hard against the legion, but her usual clean edge was missing. She had learned her enemy was a demon god and it had made her shrink, her old bad habit.
“I am coming to you! Hold a little longer!”
“…N-No! I can manage here—!”
“I have an idea! Wait a moment!”
“…Understood!”
At his words her movements sharpened. Hearing that he was coming had settled her and given her back her nerve.
Sieg spread barriers around Surtr for footing, then used [Air Jump] and [Flash Step] to circle the giant at speed. The giant’s eyes rolled after him.
‘KHRRVAASH!’
The giant lost patience and swung the greatsword around. A barrier near it caught fire.
Wh—[Mana Barrier] burns? It burns magic itself!
The king of scorching heat, indeed. Anything not carrying a water or ice attribute was burned away without exception.
But—how about this.
Sieg leaped high and called a warning to her.
“Brace for an explosion!”
“Eh! An explosion!? Understood!”
The princess hurried back from the legion, covered her ears and opened her mouth. She remembered everything he had taught her: when an explosion goes off in a confined space, you do that or the pressure ruptures your eardrums.
Sieg flew to a point above the giant’s head and opened [Spatial Storage].
Take this.
What came pouring out of it was water—a great deal of water. Water is indispensable on the road, and Sieg kept about a year’s worth of it in storage at all times.
‘GURROOHHHH!?’
It came down on Surtr like a waterfall. The heat and Surtr’s authority flashed it off instantly, and some of the water even caught fire, astonishingly, but far more of it was falling than could be burned.
An enormous volume of water vaporized around Surtr and expanded in an instant. The explosion went off with a shattering roar, blowing the ground apart, throwing broken stone in all directions, shaking the whole ground of the seal. Steam and dust filled the air until nothing could be seen.
A steam explosion. The violent expansion of water in volume had done it.
‘ZHHROAAARRHH!’
Surtr screamed and swung its arms, apparently trying to sweep the smoke out of its sight.
Now.
Sieg broke away from Surtr and made for Princess Cordelia, landing beside her and speaking at once.
“Show me your magic blade!”
“Y-Yes!”
She did not understand what he wanted, and obediently held out the frost blade.
Sieg invoked [Sight Expansion] and read the mana circuit of the magic blade through, copying what he read into the Sacred Silver sword as he went. This was the technique he had applied to cutting the [Contract]: the extraordinary feat only Sieg could perform, ‘Circuit Duplication.’
There. Done.
He poured mana in, and the Sacred Silver blade gave off cold at absolute zero. He swung it once or twice and the water in the air froze, crystals of ice scattering off it.
Princess Cordelia’s face was astonished.
“Eh! Did you just reproduce my magic blade!? That is incredible!”
Sieg looked at her and spelled it out.
“Once you have scattered the legion, freeze the whole field. Do not let him summon the next one. This fight rests on your frost magic. Show me what the training was for.”
She set her teeth and nodded with her mind made up.
“Understood… I will do it!”
“Good answer.”
Of course he was worried about her. He did not want to leave the legion to her alone, and if he could have, he would have shielded her, but that way Surtr could not be beaten.
Surtr was the Demon King’s right arm, a demon god, and dangerous past measuring. It had to die here.
If we lose, the Demon King’s armies have won and the Humans lose for certain. Nobody but us can kill Surtr.
So Sieg set his back teeth and touched her cheek. She was startled for an instant, then laid her own hand over his, and a smile came up that was close to tears.
He said it.
“I will tell you once more. You are far stronger than you believe you are. Do not forget it.”
“Yes… yes! Master Sieg!”
Sieg nodded to her, turned, and closed on Surtr with [Flash Step].
The steam thinned and the giant of flame came back into view.
‘FYYAAAARRRRHH!’
Surtr raised the greatsword in a rage and glared at him.
Sieg set out a great many barriers in the air and moved across them at speed. They burned away as fast as he crossed them, and he laid down new footing as he went, closing hard on the giant.
The moment he came into its blind side—
Now.
Sieg cut at one of Surtr’s fingers, a finger as thick as his own thigh, with the magic blade. A pale blue track ran through the air and fine crystals of ice scattered—and then.
‘GRROOOOH!?’
Surtr groaned, and for the first time since the fight began, its face buckled.
The giant’s finger came apart, froze, and dropped away. The heat vaporized it at once and it was gone.
Sieg found himself nodding hard.
There it is. The frost blade gets through.
Right. Press it home.
Barriers appeared around Surtr without number, and Sieg went at the giant off them from every direction at once, a continuous assault with the frost blade.
‘GROH! ZHRA!? GRAAAHHHH!!’
The giant groaned as its body of fire took wounds and froze over.
If Surtr had not been newly woken this would not have worked. It had to be finished while that lasted.
But.
…Nn.
Sieg’s face twisted with pain and cold sweat ran off him. Mana depletion.
He was replacing barriers as fast as they burned out while holding the frost circuit in the Sacred Silver blade, and [Air Jump] took mana too. His consumption was frightening. However deep his reserves ran, they could not recover at that rate.
…I have to get my mana back.
He put water out of [Spatial Storage] again and threw up an improvised smokescreen, broke off from Surtr under it, and got out a mana potion. He had just drunk it down when the giant’s voice came through the steam.
And that voice said:
‘Surrhazh—nakar! Drevolgur——GALDRAG! SPILGR! VALNAK!’
It was a summoning chant, and Surtr had called three legions at once.
Sieg’s face twisted.
Damn it—it took my attacks without resisting because it was preparing to summon!
Blinding pillars of fire rose, and the legions came out of them.
The [Galdrag], the heavy flame-shields, bearing burning shields.
The [Spilgr], the charging flame-lances, carrying long spears of fire. And the [Valnak], the crimson-winged, running the sky on wings of scarlet.
The legions came in squad formation, thirty-six of them in all. Sooner or later it would summon a greater host still.
The shields and the lances advanced on Princess Cordelia; the winged took station as Surtr’s own guard. Sieg glanced at her and set his back teeth.
Bad. Cordy cannot hold that many.
‘KRAAA!’ ‘CHREEGH!’
The winged came at him while the worry for her was still on him. Sieg kicked off a barrier, accelerated hard out of the attack, came around and cut them from behind.
The winged were no enemy to him. There were simply a great many of them, and between their attacks Surtr came in with the greatsword as well.
He glanced at the giant and clicked his tongue. The finger he had taken off was back.
The demon god had a regeneration ability. The longer the fight ran, the more worn down they became, and the worse their position got.
Tch.
Sieg barely cleared the giant’s greatsword. But he had been too close: the barriers wrapping his body ignited and burned away. He threw them up again at once and got clear of the giant.
And the winged came swarming straight in.
Sieg switched [Air Jump] for [Air Dash] and got out of it.
But [Air Dash] eats mana. That was exactly why he had been fighting with [Air Jump] and the cheap [Mana Barrier] combined until now.
Cordy?
He looked across at her. She had been driven back by twenty-four of them and was doing nothing but defending.
Numbers against no numbers. She would not get through that many.
Sieg set his back teeth.
Cordy—I am coming.
Princess Cordelia had driven off the first legion, the [Flagrum], and tried to freeze the field. But Surtr’s fire was overwhelmingly the stronger; with her mana poured in to the last drop she could freeze nothing beyond her own immediate surroundings.
She bit down on her lip.
Weak. Why am I so weak!?
Overhead, Sieg was cutting the giant to pieces with the frost blade, and Surtr’s body was freezing and shattering away a little at a time. She caught her breath at the sight of it.
Incredible…! To reproduce my magic blade exactly!
But that meant that she, too, ought to be able to fight a demon god if she used the magic blade.
And here I am… unable even to support Sieg-san…!
She ground her teeth over it, and then, watching him fight, the worry began to build in her.
The barriers. The Blessing that let him run the sky. The frost blade reproduced on top of both. However she counted it, the mana that took was not a normal quantity. Surely even a mana potion could not keep pace. She was thinking exactly that when Sieg scattered water from above a second time. He would be breaking off from Surtr to recover, most likely.
That let her breathe out, relieved, and pull herself together.
Right. I will close on the demon god as well, and spread the ice as I go.
She had just started running when the giant’s voice came through the steam, and it sounded very like the one she had heard at the very start of the fight. Which meant.
The blood went out of her face.
That is a summoning. More of them are coming.
She stopped, put mana into the sword again, and drove the cold higher. Then she shut her eyes and breathed out, talking herself down.
Calm. Be calm, Cordelia.
I am a frost magic swordsman trained by my Hero himself. My rank has already come up level with Grandpa Roderick’s.
So… probably… I am one of the finest swordsmen in the kingdom. I should be!
Through her closed eyelids she felt a blinding light burst, the light of the summoning, presumably.
It is all right. I can do this. At the very least I will not be a weight around Sieg-san’s neck.
Right. Begin!
She opened her eyes on that resolve—and.
…Eh…
What she saw stopped the breath in her throat. Shield-bearers and a lance company were charging straight at her, and however she counted them there were something like two squads.
No… you cannot be serious!?
She looked up. Winged demons were circling the giant overhead, with Sieg already moving to intercept. The giant had summoned three legions at once.
Simultaneous summoning…!
She bit her lip. Her hands and feet were shaking and her teeth chattered together where she could not stop them.
But.
She shut her eyes hard, once, and settled it.
I will not fail what Sieg-san—what my Hero—expects of me!
Princess Cordelia stood the sword upright before her chest and gathered herself. Mana surged through her, cold beyond winter burst out all at once, the blade lit pale blue, and the temperature around her fell and continued falling.
Do not be afraid. Have at them!
She went straight into the legion in a movement close to the [Flash Step] Sieg had taught her. The enemy had put the shield-bearers across the front to harden the defense and were attacking through the gaps with long spears.
Sieg had taught her how to fight a close formation like this one.
The book says attack from the flank, but this formation has troops down the sides too. So what I do is—
She braked hard in front of the shield line and drove her sword into the ground.
Straight up the middle!
The cold came off her blade and drove forward through the earth, freezing the moisture in it as it went. An instant later, blades of ice erupted out of the ground.
‘VOORH!?’ ‘ZRAA!’ ‘GRUH!!’
The shield-bearers were run through from below by ice that had come out of nowhere, and died on it. The lancers could not answer an attack shaped like that.
Yes! I can fight!
The shield line came apart and the confusion spread through it. With that, the lancers behind could not attack.
Right—again!
She drove the sword into the ground a second time, meaning to repeat it.
“Eh!?”
Spears came at her all together, and she flipped backward in an instant to put distance behind her. The sword planted in the ground had to be left where it was.
How did the spears—? …No—!
Why had the lancers behind been able to attack? Because they had run their spears through the shield-bearers in front of them. The lancers had sacrificed their own without a flicker in order to reach her.
Several shield-bearers collapsed and fell as burned cinders, and the lancers came on over the ash of them.
Princess Cordelia stood rooted where she was.
She had been thinking of summoned demons as if they were people.
Those are not people. They are demons. They have nothing like a heart in them. Of course they would not balk at losing their own.
…Oh no… I had it completely wrong…!
She cursed her own softness, and it was already too late: the Sacred Silver alloy blade had been trampled flat under the lancers. She pulled the spare sword out of her ‘magic bag’ at once, and with that unreassuring weapon in her hand she set her teeth.
I will not lose. I refuse to lose!
The lancers closed to surround her, and the massed attack with spears of fire began in earnest.
Nn—!
She evaded and gave ground to the rear, and was attacked from behind without warning.
—Eh!?
She turned to find several demons driving thrusts at her. Part of the lance company had worked around her without her noticing.
Careless! I let the enemy in front take all my attention!
They will have me surrounded. Evasive movement—but how—c-calm down!
The more she panicked the less her body would move, and the higher the fear climbed the slower she answered. Her feet tangled and she nearly went down, and barely recovered.
Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes. It was not her own weakness she minded. It was that she could not be of use to Sieg, and that went all the way down.
…I… I am…!
And there—a voice came down from above.
“Get clear!”
“—!?”
She sprang back as if the voice had struck her, and in the next instant ice shot rained down on the demons without number. Each round burst from the inside where it landed, blowing the lancers apart.
Princess Cordelia’s eyes went wide at the sheer skill of it.
[Ice Shot], fired from the magic blade Sieg had reproduced. Even she could not control it that finely.
Incredible… how strong is he!
She did not waste the opening. She threw herself sideways, rolled along the ground, and came out of the lancers’ encirclement. Looking up at Sieg, she thought he seemed, very slightly, relieved.
And then, behind him—
“Sieg-san! Behind you!”
He turned, and something like a black chain came flying and wound itself around his arms and legs. He was pinned in the air as if nailed to the space itself.
A demon in a black formal coat smiled broadly. The [Contractor]. Moloch had attacked him.
Anger came off the princess and she raised her voice.
“You said you would watch! You coward!”
Moloch shrugged.
“Dear, dear. Did you suppose I would not lie? I am a demon, you know.”
Her face twisted. She had done it again: she had thought of a demon as if it were a person.
“Don’t worry about it! Raise your guard!”
Sieg shouted it, already working free of the binding. Holding a Hero any length of time was impossible. But buying a little time was all that had been needed.
And this was why.
“Now, Lord Surtr!”
‘Surrhazh—groth! Rann, valgur——BARGROS!’
A pillar of summoning rose, and a beast of fire came out of it, close beside Princess Cordelia. Moloch had worked out that the princess was Sieg’s weak point, and had advised attacking her first.
She bit her lip.
Another summoning!?
What had come was the [Bargros], the hellfire beast. Only one of them, and the strength of it carried across the moment she laid eyes on it.
“…Nn…!”
She made a low sound and gave ground before she could stop herself.
An enormous body sheathed in flame, spines jutting from its back, the face of a bull with thick horns. It lifted a burning battleaxe and roared.
‘VRRRAAAAHHHHHH!’
The earth shook at the volume of it.
The beast fixed its eyes on her, threw up scorching sand, and charged. What was left of the lance company advanced on her all together.
Shaking, Princess Cordelia brought her sword up and set herself to receive them. The blood had gone out of her face, and the cold sweat running off her flashed away in the heat.
She noticed she had been holding her breath in fear, and let it out long, deliberately, scolding herself inside.
Pull yourself together!
How long do you intend to go on being a burden to Sieg-san!?
At this rate I will never stand beside my Hero!
Watch the enemy properly… and deal with them calmly!
I can do this. I know I can!
She fired several measured [Ice Shot] into the ground in front of the beast. The rounds flashed off at once and steam went up, until the sight of both sides was covered over in white, the improvised smokescreen Sieg had been using.
With her preparation done she waited on sound alone for them to close. The footsteps grew louder, and the fear grew with them; her own heartbeat was loud in the back of her ears.
…Close now… a little more…
The shadow beyond the smoke darkened. A roar went up, and the beast came out of it.
—Now!
The beast brought the burning axe down on the figure with appalling strength, and the lancers drove their spears in all together behind it.
‘DUROOGHHHH!! …GARRA?’
The beast had begun a shout of triumph and broke off, its eyes widening at something wrong. What the summoned demons had attacked was not the princess. It was a statue made of ice.
—Taken—
Princess Cordelia kicked off the ground and ran.
She had used the smokescreen to work around to their flank, building the ice figure at the front so they would take it for her. Their flank stood wide open.
The chance is now. Have at them!
Sword up, low to the ground, she went in at a sprint, trailing a track of pale blue ice.
The enemy still had not found her. Hit them from the side and the damage would be enormous.
But.
“Eh!?”
She pitched forward hard and went down as if slammed into the ground.
“…Wh…!”
She looked at her own ankle and her eyes went wide. A demon that had burned out and should have been dead had hold of her ankle, and the sight of that charred black arm ran horror through her.
—Careless.
The demons noticed her and turned. The beast swung its eyes around with hatred in them.
Up! Get up, quickly!
She cut off the arm holding her ankle at once, and as she got to her feet a great shadow fell across her from above.
…Nng…
An odd sound came out of her throat. Shaking, she raised her eyes.
The beast was standing over her, looking down with fury in its face, close enough that its hot breath was on her.
…Ah…
She shut her eyes tight and fought down the tears that wanted to come.
There was no escaping now. There was nothing she could do.
She felt pathetic. She felt useless. She was ashamed all the way through.
But—there was nothing left to her but this.
What came out of her mouth was the name of the person she revered above anyone in the world.
“—Sieg-saaaaaan! Help meeeeeeee!”
The answer to that came back immediately.
“Cordyyyyyyy!—”
In front of her, the demon was blown away at appalling speed. It rolled along the ground so fast that its limbs tore off in the rolling, and each of them burned out in turn.
Sieg braked hard, turned, and asked:
“Are you hurt!?”
“Sieg-san!”
He had deployed [Mana Barrier] and rammed the demons bodily, most likely.
…Ah… what an extraordinary person he is…!
She was holding the tears back, about to run to him, when—
‘KHAZZ—RAHHH!’
Surtr’s greatsword came down with a roar behind it, and this time it caught him.
“Gkuuuugh—!”
Sieg threw up barrier after barrier at once, and could not absorb the momentum of that enormous blade. He was blown away, struck the ground several times, bounced and rolled, and only stopped when he hit the rock wall.
And then his body went up in flame. Surtr’s authority.
“—————!”
Princess Cordelia made a scream that never became sound.
…No… no! Nooooooo!
“Sieeeeeeeg——!”
She screamed until her throat was near tearing, covered her face with both hands, and the tears came past holding. Her face contorted, her body shook past what a body should do, and she made meaningless sounds low in her throat, shaking her head.
—Nnnnnnnnnnnnngh—!
And while she did, the demons still living were getting to their feet one after another, the [Bargros] among them, of course. The beast shook its head once and turned eyes full of anger on a princess who had gone blank.
Moloch, meanwhile, loosed the binding spell [Shadow Bind] and pinned the fallen Sieg where he lay. And the giant of flame, Surtr, came walking without hurry, shaking the ground as it came, and raised its sword to finish him.
The legion closing in. The giant with its greatsword up. Sieg bound, and still burning.
Princess Cordelia wept until it streamed off her, and her knees finally went.
…Ah… ah! Sieg-san is burning…! There is nothing I can do… I cannot even move… I am… I am so weak…!
She had broken down in despair—and.
…………Eh…………?
And then she saw it.
Sieg setting his teeth and standing up out of the fire.
Breaking the binding spell, glaring at the giant bearing down on him, bringing his sword up—
Princess Cordelia’s eyes opened wide, and continued opening.
That figure was, past any mistaking, the thing she had longed for so fiercely as a child: the shape of a true Hero.
…My… Hero…
And seeing it, she remembered what Sieg—what this generation’s Hero—had said to her. (You are far stronger than you believe you are.)
The shock of it went through her whole body.
That is right… that is right… Sieg-san, who is so far stronger than I am… told me that I was strong.
The light began to come back into her eyes.
And those words… my Hero’s words…
She lifted her face.
—Am I going to be the one who doubts them!?
Courage came up in her chest past holding it, hot and strong and boiling over.
A true Hero is not a name for a person who is valiant. It is the name for a person who gives courage—to the world, to people, to every living thing there is.
Princess Cordelia stood up, and there was no question in it. The tears on her cheeks froze and went off her as particles of ice.
She put an arm out to the side and, still facing front, fired [Ice Shot] in a stream. Where the rounds struck the ground, pillars of ice came up out of the earth and lifted something long: the sword she had let go of in the middle of the fight. One more round burst against the pillar and sent the sword into the air, and it turned over as it flew, along exactly the arc she had calculated, and dropped neatly into the hand she held out for it.
The precision of that magic was close to a miracle. The beast’s bull face flooded with rage and it charged her, its burning bulk closing at terrible speed.
She was not afraid of it at all.
She stroked the returned blade once and drew, without hurry.
…I am unfinished, and I cannot be with the sword the way Sieg-san is…
She brought it up and let her eyes close, softly, as if going to sleep. To close your eyes in front of an enemy is madness. But the common sense of combat had stopped applying to her.
…But…
The beast roared and brought the burning axe down.
‘DUROGHHH!’
Sieg-san’s—no.
The expression dropped clean off her face.
I can be my Hero’s sword!
She moved, lightly, and the axe stroke went past her. In the next instant the beast’s arm froze and shattered.
‘…MUR!? BRAAAHHHHHH!!’
The beast cried out with astonishment all over it. It had no idea what had happened. It swung the upper arm it still had, and it could not see its enemy at all.
An instant later its legs froze and it could not move. The beast was bewildered: how it was being attacked, where the enemy was, it could not tell even that much.
‘SKROOOHH!?’
The sound it made shook with fear.
Its legs shattered and it went down at last onto its knees, and only then did a small enemy, less than half its own size, appear in front of it.
She let a small smile come up as she spoke.
“You have knelt at last.”
‘…GROH, NAH…?’
The beast’s eyes widened and a bewildered noise came out of it.
What had Princess Cordelia done? Copying the way Sieg moved, she had put herself in the beast’s blind spot, not the blind spot of its vision, but the blind spot of its attention. She had been moving outside the beast’s awareness, and attacking it from there.
“Now I can take your head.”
‘—!’
She swung the sword quietly and the beast came down with a heavy sound. Head and body, parted, froze over in a moment and shattered away, and nothing was left behind but crystals of ice.
Cordelia Juliet Excelle Veltoria.
She was the finest magic swordsman in the kingdom, forged by the highest-ranked Hero in recorded history. She had been born with the gift, and she had a master capable of drawing every last part of that gift out of her.
For a woman who had beaten her own fear, killing summoned demons was nothing at all.
She put mana into the blade and cold beyond winter came off it. She took one step forward and the red-hot ground froze solid wherever it reached.
The whole field went to ice in a moment, and the fire that had been burning Sieg went out with it. She ran across the frozen field looking for the next quarry, and swung the sword as if she were dancing.
—I am a sword. My Hero’s sword!
Trailing pale blue ice, the blade ran everywhere at once. The demons still alive fought back and were no longer any enemy of hers; the legion froze and cracked and fell apart.
She was a Hero’s sword indeed, the strongest magic swordsman there was, and fit to stand at Sieg’s side.
Sieg looked at the frozen field and his eyes widened. The fire of Surtr that had been burning him everywhere was gone.
For a man with [Heat Resistance], enduring flame is not impossible. But Surtr’s fire was fire by authority, and putting that out was difficult even for Sieg, and Princess Cordelia had put out even Surtr’s fire.
Cordy has got hold of something. She will do. In that case—
Sieg lifted his head and glared at the giant of flame.
Straight at him, and no let-up.
He built [Mana Barrier] in a staircase running up to the giant’s face and went up it at a run, cutting down every one of the remaining winged as he passed through them.
He glanced at the princess. She nodded as if she had understood something, and started running.
Surtr’s face twisted with hatred and it roared.
‘GRAAAZHHH!’
The giant of flame raised its greatsword, and there was something rattled in the way it did. Sieg fired [Ice Shot] into the giant’s face over and over as he ran, and the rounds burst against it until the giant shook its head, irritated.
A few moments of opening, no more, and Sieg was never going to miss it.
—Now!
He set himself on a barrier and the muscles of his arms and legs stood up in cords. The ‘targeting array’ of barriers ringing Surtr’s head came into his eye.
Breath out, sharp, and Sieg loosed the sword art into the target.
That technique: [Storm Dance Flurry].
Flying across the barriers deployed around the head, Sieg put the whole assault into Surtr’s face: from above, from below, from the left and the right, from every angle there was. Cut down, cut up, a single flash, tear across, thrust in, sweep through.
Every angle there was, and every kind of stroke there was.
‘ZRH!? GRYA! KHRUUOORHHH!!’
Surtr cried out past bearing it, covering its face with a hand, twisting, thrashing.
But Sieg had never been aiming at the head. He had only wanted its attention on the upper body.
‘VROHH!?’
When the assault ended, Surtr made a bewildered noise. The demon god’s body was tilting, losing its balance. Surtr had begun to fall.
Because—
“Sieg-san! Was this right!?”
The princess was running circles around Surtr, firing [Ice Shot] in volume and freezing the giant’s legs. She had read his intention exactly and worked around to the giant’s feet.
The closer she got, the stronger the freezing ran. Even a demon god of fire, with Sieg for an opponent, had not been able to spare attention for its own feet.
“Well done. Get clear!”
“Yes!”
The demon god’s right leg froze from the knee down, turned to crystals of ice, and shattered. Unable to hold its own weight, it went over.
‘FRAH, NAAAGH!’
The giant fell at appalling speed, shouting as it went, and hit the ground. The shock gouged the earth out and shook everything around it; broken stone flew and a great deal of dust went up.
When the dust settled, the place had gone quiet. Nobody had ever seen a sight like it: a mighty demon god down on its knee in front of tiny Humans.
Princess Cordelia’s eyes went wide with feeling and she called out with disbelief all over her.
“We did it! We did it! That is exactly like you, Sieg-san!”
She was so pleased she was nearly jumping.
Moloch, who had been watching the fight, stared blankly at the fallen demon god. And well he might: a demon god brought to the ground was a thing without precedent.
In a few minutes, no more, the giant had been put on its knee.
The Hero Sieg and the magic swordsman Cordelia. When these two worked together, a feat on that scale came easily.
The two of them looked at one another.
She was smiling, and the exhaustion on her was heavy. Sieg was the same; his mana was nearly gone. He in particular had been burning through enormous quantities to hold the reproduced magic blade.
A long fight was already out of the question.
And the Sacred Silver blade was close to its limit. What with forming the mana circuit and the reckless sword art he had just used, a considerable amount of damage had built up in it.
Whether it would carry him through this one fight was very much in doubt. But Sieg had not yet come by a better sword. This one would have to do the job.
He pulled himself together and spoke to her.
“Right. One more push.”
“Yes! Sieg-san!”
The two of them nodded to each other, kicked off the ground, and ran.
The giant, face down on the earth, spoke with hatred in its voice.
‘Gharzha volrukh! Vez, nakar Sur!’
The two of them exchanged a glance. A third summoning.
Pillars of fire went up across the field one after another, and legion after legion came out of them. Fire without number filled the field until there was hardly room for it, demons enormous and demons small, and every arm of service mustered: shield, sword, bow, spear, fist, magic, cavalry. It had thrown in the whole of what it could command, most likely. Even a demon god of fire had stopped being able to afford appearances.
Before Sieg could open his mouth, Princess Cordelia spoke.
“Sieg-san, take Surtr! I will clear out the small fry!”
For all that she called them small fry, her face had gone stiff. It was as much bravado as she had in her.
Sieg bit his lip for an instant, and answered shortly: “They’re yours.”
…Don’t die, Cordy.
He set [Mana Barrier] through the air and closed on Surtr along a line that took him around the legions on the ground. The flying legion came at him, and he moved cleverly across the barriers and cut them down as he passed.
There were still too many of them. The flying demons closed to ring him all at once.
He was about to clear them with a sword art when a sharp dread ran up his spine: the instinctive Blessing, [Danger Sense]. He kicked off a barrier without thinking and got away from the group, and the giant, down on all fours, roared.
‘ZRUUHHRAAAHH!!’
—What!?
A torrent of fire came out of the giant’s mouth instantly. It grazed just over Sieg, struck the rock wall, and blew the whole of that stretch apart into a sea of fire.
He looked back to see the flying demons going up in flame and falling as cinders.
Sieg set his back teeth.
A ranged attack. The giant had used its own legion as a decoy to kill him.
Troublesome.
He had barely finished the thought when Surtr opened its mouth again, and this time spat bullets of fire across a wide arc.
…Nn!
Sieg called across to her.
“Evade!”
“Y-Yes!”
She had been facing the legion, and she sprang back and took distance.
Sieg used barriers as footing and got clear of the fire, more or less. The barriers the flame grazed went up and vanished. Surtr’s authority was very much intact. Shot fell everywhere and turned the ground into a sea of fire.
The giant was choosing between them: a straight-line, high-output heat beam, and a wide-area burst of fire shot.
A demon god, certainly. Nothing about this is simple.
The ground of the seal had been frozen once, and Surtr’s fire shot was turning it back into scorching country. The princess had her hands full with the legion and no room left to be freezing anything.
Surtr, and Surtr’s legions, were all fire-attribute demons. The more the field filled with fire and heat, the stronger they became.
Surtr had to be killed as quickly as possible, before this place became a hell of flame. And for that—
Sieg nodded to himself inwardly.
The Demon Core. Even a demon god must carry a Demon Core somewhere in its body.
A Demon Core is the organ that answers to a heart in a person. Destroy the core and Surtr could be killed. The question was where the core sat.
He knew already that it was not in the head; part of the reason for the sword art earlier had been to find out whether it was. Regeneration had already brought the demon god’s head most of the way back to its original shape, and the leg was a matter of time as well.
I have to find the core, fast.
If not the head, then the chest was the next possibility. Surtr was on all fours at present, so it would have to be cut away from the back.
Sieg settled on that and dived for the ground, killing the legions there as he went and working around behind Surtr. He would have preferred to travel through the air, but there was the danger of being picked off the way he nearly had been.
It can’t use the sword right now. Find the core while that lasts.
A considerable number had been summoned to the rear; Surtr had noticed its back was thin. But summoned legions were no enemy of Sieg’s.
‘ZRUH!?’ ‘FAAZHH!’ ‘OORHH!!’
Cutting through service arms of every kind as he passed, Sieg ran at speed. Surtr seemed to notice him coming, and however it twisted its body, it could not turn far enough to face directly behind.
He spread barriers in the air and closed on Surtr’s back off them.
It can’t turn around. That means no heat beam either.
Right. Go!
He ran up a staircase of barriers in one burst and jumped from the end of it, bringing his sword up as he fell toward Surtr’s back. The back below him grew and continued growing. He scattered the heat coming up at him with [Mana Barrier] and poured mana into the blade, and at the best distance he went into the opening movement of the sword art.
—Now. Sword art—
But in the instant he moved to loose it, a violent dread went up his spine.
—[Danger Sense]!?
Without understanding it, Sieg trusted the instinct and pulled out with [Flash Step] off a barrier. An instant later, with a grotesque wet crack, the demon god Surtr turned to face directly behind it.
Every hair on Sieg’s body stood up. Surtr had simply disregarded the structure of its own skeleton.
The heat beam. It’s coming.
Get clear!
‘ZRURAAAHHHH!!’
A torrent of hellfire tore out of Surtr’s mouth with the roar. A maximum-output heat beam aimed at Sieg and nothing else, and on a line to hit him squarely.
A direct hit!? Barriers—
Make it!
Exposed to a heat wave past describing, Sieg threw up twelve [Mana Barrier] immediately, shaping each of them like an inverted funnel to shed heat better.
Even so, they could not take a heat beam head on, and burned away like dead leaves. He put up more, and they burned as fast as he made them, and the defense could not keep pace.
At this rate he was finished.
Then so be it.
In the instant the last barrier burned away—
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Sieg loosed a sword art into the heat beam itself.
That technique: [Gale’s Flurry].
He drove a colossal quantity of mana into the magic blade and cut the beam with an edge of frost. The flicker of blades running without number held against the boiling heat of it.
Fire burst enormously and sprayed out around them like a fountain; demons nearby were caught in it and burned down under heat past any limit. The glare of the beam and the flash of the blade laid over one another until the light was like a sun, and the ground of the seal filled up with heat and light.
Nnnnnnnngh—!
Hold. Hold it.
Beam and sword art held one another, barely—and.
…Nngh…!
His sight went dark all at once. His body shook and cold sweat came off him everywhere.
Mana depletion.
Between the volume of barriers and the enormous injection into the magic blade, there was very little left. There was no time to drink a potion; let his attention slip for a heartbeat and he would burn.
Sieg scraped together what mana was inside him and got it into the blade—forcing the last traces out of every corner of himself, out of the individual cells, holding the freezing power up and keeping the sword moving.
But even so.
There isn’t enough.
At this rate I go down from depletion, and then I burn, and Cordy is left on her own. She can’t handle Surtr.
What do I do!?
The freezing power began to fail and the beam began to push him back. His mana was almost gone and his body was reaching its limit; violent vertigo came over him and unbearable pain ran through him everywhere.
I can’t… hold the mana…!
He had set his back teeth and was wringing out the last of his strength when—
‘KRAAZZ!?’
The giant cried out abruptly and the beam cut off.
—What!?
Sieg looked down to see the demon god going over as if slammed into the ground, earth and rock blowing outward with the shock of it. Falling had apparently closed its mouth, and it could not put the beam out any more.
Dazed as he was, astonishment came onto his face.
What… what in the world just happened!?
Never mind. That saved me.
He tried to take stock, and there was no mana left even to hold a barrier. His footing vanished and he fell.
Bad. My body won’t move.
And then Princess Cordelia’s voice came up from below.
“Sieg-san! Spread your arms and legs and keep falling! I will catch you!”
She fired [Ice Shot] over and over as she ran, building a structure of ice where he would come down, a thing like a building made of nothing but framing, an enormous column of frost. Sieg struck it and the framework broke away piece by piece, absorbing the shock of the landing as it went. It was a crumple structure, and by the time he reached the ground he had been slowed to something survivable.
“Gh!”
He hit and the sound came out of him. She was there at once, getting him up in her arms.
“Sieg-san! Are you all right!?”
“…Yes… you saved me…”
Sieg pushed himself upright with pain across his face, shook his head, and asked at once:
“But… what in the world…?”
Princess Cordelia pointed slowly upward, and her eyes were not entirely dry. He looked up, and a small figure was hanging in the air.
—That is…
The figure floated there looking down at the pair of them with something smug about it.
Silver hair tied on both sides of the head swung; red eyes narrowed with amusement. The long ears that mark the race twitched. A robe several sizes too large turned over in the hot wind coming up off the ground.
‘GRAAH!’
The demon god shouted and began thrashing, trying to get its bulk up.
“You’re loud~.”
The figure moved a finger, and the demon god slammed face down into the earth again with a roar of sound and stopped there as if pinned. The ground around the giant split and sank, groaning as it went.
Gravity magic—[Gravity Fall].
It forms a gravity field in one place and crushes what is inside it, and it is powerful. Crushing a demon god outright was beyond even that; but holding a demon god down at all was a fearsome demonstration.
The person who could pin even a demon god, with that much mana and that much skill, was of course—
“…You…!” “Lady Liliandiris!”
The most exalted High Elf and Observer of the World, Liliandiris.
Lilis looked around the burning field and spoke with mischief in her face.
“Yo~. Looks like you’re in a spot of trouble, doesn’t it~? I told you not to lay a hand on it!”
Sieg looked away with his face gone sour. Princess Cordelia spoke up instead, and there was urgency in it.
“Please! Lady Liliandiris! Will you not help us!? If the legions can only be held, Sieg-san will certainly kill the demon god!”
Lilis watched the demon god of fire struggling and answered at her leisure.
“Well, I don’t mind~.”
And then she looked at Sieg, and tipped her head to one side with enormous deliberation.
“What about you? Hm? What do you say?”
Sieg clicked his tongue, quietly. With Lilis in it, the fight tipped a long way in their favor. Asking her galled him, and there was nothing else for it.
He forced it out.
“…I’m asking.”
“Huh~? What was that~? I can’t hear you~!?”
Sieg set his back teeth, and then he bowed his head to a smirking Lilis.
“I am asking you. Please.”
Lilis’s whole face came open with satisfaction, and her ears twitched as she spoke.
“Well, nothing for it. Since you put it that way—I’ll save you this once!”
“Lady Liliandiris!”
The princess called out with a smile close to tears.
The [Contractor], meanwhile, had his eyes wide at the sudden intruder and stood blank. He began to shake, and then raised his voice.
“A High Elf!? Your people are supposed to stay out of our war! To break the compact is contemptible—”
And there Moloch’s words stopped without warning.
He put a hand to his mouth with astonishment all over him. He tried to make a sound and could not, and beyond that his body would not move at all.
Lilis’s magic—[Silence] and [Bind], laid on at the same moment.
She narrowed her eyes at the demon.
“Contemptible? Coming from you lot~. Sit there and watch quietly.”
Moloch’s face said he could not believe it, and he thrashed where he hung in the air.
Lilis turned to the astonished princess, laughed low, and gave out the orders.
“Right, you take the legions on the ground. I’ll clear the ones in the air. The demon god… Sieg, you finish him.”
“Yes!”
Princess Cordelia answered with enormous energy.
Sieg tipped a mana potion back in one go, wiped his mouth, and got to his feet.
“…I know that without being told.”
The three of them met each other’s eyes briefly and scattered. The princess, with her nerve back, ran the field scattering the legions of fire.
Lilis watched her do it, let one corner of her mouth come up, and spun her staff around.
“Hoo~, you’ve come along, haven’t you. Ice attribute isn’t my strong suit, but I suppose I’ll show you how it’s done~.”
She swept the staff around her in a circle—and chanted.
Lilis chanting was a rare thing. Ordinarily she deployed formulae prepared in advance with a movement of her fingers.
She said it lightly, and the words were a compressed magical language, enormous meaning packed into short symbol-words.
“«Frel. Vashyr. Trinn.—Pierce.»”
In the next instant—
‘KASH!?’ ‘ZAH?’ ‘VRRAA!!’
The flying demons were run through by blades of ice one after another, froze, and fell. They shattered on the way down and went out as crystals of ice.
They would not have understood what happened to them, right up to the end.
The princess looked up and her eyes went wide.
“Incredible! What precision!”
Fixing the position of an enemy in flight and deploying magic exactly there is a formidable business. And Lilis had done it to enemies in every direction at once.
In the space of a heartbeat, the sky had been swept clean.
“Well, that’s about that~.”
Lilis laughed a small pleased laugh and brushed her swinging hair back.
Sieg let his mouth come loose at one corner as he ran.
Not bad, Lilis. My turn.
“Release the gravity magic!”
Lilis shrugged at that. Even her magic was beginning to burn away under the demon god’s authority.
“Demon god’s something else, isn’t he, burning even my magic. Fine—releasing it completely!”
She snapped her fingers and the spell holding the demon god down went out.
‘BLAZHGHH!’
The demon god came free, shouted in rage, and began to thrash. Its face burned with anger, and it fixed Sieg with a look that would have killed him where he stood.
Sieg built the staircase of barriers again and ran up it toward a point directly above the giant.
Its leg still hasn’t regenerated. Don’t waste this.
He was almost above the back when the giant howled.
‘GROAAAL!!’
Fire erupted out of the giant’s whole body with the shout and came at him. The barriers he was standing on burned away in an instant, and even the layers he wore against the heat went up.
This is—!
Sieg understood it at once. In place of the heat beam, the giant was throwing flame off its entire body to burn him out of the air, and the fire coming off that enormous back had become a scorching pillar reaching for him.
His body caught and the hellfire closed over him.
His face pulled tight for a moment, and he did not stop. Burning everywhere, he kept falling toward Surtr’s back, threw a barrier above himself, and kicked it hard before it burned, accelerating in one motion.
“Sieg-san, this is madness! You will burn!”
Princess Cordelia’s voice came up from the ground with real pain in it.
She was right. At this rate he would burn away before he reached the demon god’s back.
But Sieg was not afraid, and the reason was—
“«Fral. Nest. Quarn. Iser.—Freeze.»”
The chant rang out, and pale blue [Mana Barrier] deployed in front of Sieg as he fell: barriers with an ice attribute forced onto them, though a barrier by nature carries no attribute at all.
The fire was turned, the heat fell away, and the flame burning Sieg went out with it.
Lilis spun her staff around and made a face.
“Honestly, don’t spring difficult work on me like that! You work a High Elf too hard, you do~!”
Sieg glanced at her and narrowed his eyes.
He had been certain of it. Lilis would support him without fail.
The princess watched the exchange and let out a breath of relief.
And on top of that—
Sieg went through the layered ice-attribute barriers and, the instant he passed each one, used it as footing and kicked, accelerating harder and harder.
That was possible because they were one-way barriers—barriers that defend from one direction and let anything through from the other. Lilis had anticipated what he would do and tuned them for it.
Princess Cordelia was struck silent by the accuracy of that anticipation and the sophistication of the formula. Sieg’s mouth came up at one corner, and Lilis snorted through her nose.
The coordination between the two of them was perfect.
Right. Straight through, all the way.
Falling, Sieg put mana into the magic blade and cold beyond winter came off the edge. Surtr shouted and threw out more fire, and the ice-attribute barriers stopped it and it did not reach him.
The vast back came up at him. Surtr made a low noise.
Sieg set the sword in the air, and with all the momentum of the fall—
Take this!
—drove the blade into Surtr’s back. The impact of the fall and the cut together broke the demon god’s body down onto the earth, and in the next instant that enormous back froze over.
The name of that technique: [Frost Blossom].
The princess looked up at her master using her own technique, astonishment and admiration mixed in her face.
Immediately after, Sieg poured the maximum quantity of mana into the magic blade and said it with force.
“—Burst!”
Enormous blades of ice tore out through Surtr’s body without number—not only the back, but the whole of the upper body. [Frost Blossom] destroys an enemy from the inside out.
‘VRRAAAAAHHH!’
The giant of flame cried out in agony past bearing it. A great hole had opened in the upper body and the flesh of it lay open.
Destroy the Demon Core now and this ends.
Sieg looked down into the huge cavity opened in the upper body, and his face twisted with shock.
Nothing.
The Demon Core—was not there.
“What!?”
Unable to believe it, he searched the whole interior again, and there was still no core.
‘KHYOOORGH!’
Surtr shouted and began lifting its body. The leg had regenerated while he looked. Waste any more time and the heat beam would start again.
Sieg had no choice but to break away from the giant’s back with [Air Jump].
Princess Cordelia called up from the ground.
“Was the Demon Core not there!?”
She had seen exactly what he had been aiming for. Sieg answered at a shout.
“It isn’t! Not the head, not the chest! Then where—!?”
The giant of flame came up onto one knee, using its sword as a prop to stand.
Lilis tipped her head and made a low sound. Sieg and the princess both looked at that greatsword, and their breath stopped.
A demon god that burned anything at a touch, anything that came near. Burning was Surtr’s authority, and Sieg had assumed the authority took its shape as a sword.
But if that had it backward—
…I see… so that’s it…!
The two who had been fighting all along, and Lilis who had come in partway, arrived at the same conclusion at the same moment.
“The sword!” “It is the sword!” “It’s the sword, isn’t it~?”
The sword. Surtr’s greatsword. No—that sword was the demon god Surtr.
Which made it perfectly reasonable that there was no core inside the giant.
Sieg glared at the giant’s greatsword and raised his voice.
“The core is in that sword! We break the sword!”
“Yes, Sieg-san! Lady Liliandiris, your support as well!”
“Oh~kay~!”
The three of them scattered again, each to their own part.
The demon god of fire finally stood and took hold of its sword. The great hole was still open in its upper body, and it seemed able to move regardless.
‘GRAAAZHHH!’
It swung the enormous sword at Sieg in the air, and every one of the ice-attribute barriers Lilis had deployed went up in flame and burned away.
Lilis pulled a face and raised her voice.
“Ugh~, the sword I can’t block after all!”
Even Lilis’s barriers were helpless in front of the greatsword that was Surtr’s true body.
Sieg held himself in the air with [Air Jump] and fixed his eyes on the giant. The demon god Surtr made a low sound and glared back at him.
An ancient demon god and this generation’s Hero faced one another for a moment.
And in the next instant—
‘RRAAAAAHHH!’
It was the demon god that moved first, opening its mouth on a roar and firing bullets of flame—shot this time, not the beam. Sieg threw up barriers in an instant and evaded off them as footing.
But the shot changed course and came after him. He tried to shake it and it stayed with him. Sieg set his back teeth.
Homing rounds now.
Fire came at him in quantity from every direction and along every possible arc until his whole field of view was crimson. Saturation by homing flame.
—Nn!
The moment his face tightened—
Ice shot without number pierced the incoming fireballs and knocked them down one after another. The flame rounds twisted and dodged and the ice rounds followed them and intercepted them precisely.
It was counter-fire of an accuracy that made even Sieg doubt his eyes. Even the demon god was astonished by the skill of it, and its face twisted with rage.
The one demonstrating magical technique on that scale was, of course, Lilis.
He looked back to find ice rounds arranged in a ring around her, rotating and firing continuously—generating rounds constantly while loosing them at speed in the same motion. Each time the ring of ice turned it made a pleasant, brisk chiming sound.
At the center of the ring, Lilis raised one eyebrow with something fearless in her face.
“Kuku, as if numbers work on me!—Sieg, hurry up and crush that core!”
“I know!”
He answered the ally he could rely on and made a number of [Ice Shot] at once. He did not fire them; he held them hanging in the air in front of himself and burst them one after another.
Crystals of ice scattered and flashed off instantly under Surtr’s authority. Steam went up and Sieg’s figure was lost in it—a simple screen made of vapor.
But Surtr had seen this trick a number of times. It narrowed its eyes and saw a shadow through the smoke; a vicious smile came onto the giant’s face and it swung the greatsword at that shadow.
It connected. The shadow was cut in two and went up in flame at once, and the demon god shouted in triumph.
Watching it, Princess Cordelia on the ground and Lilis in the air let one corner of their mouths come up at the same moment.
When the smoke cleared—
‘VRUO?’
The demon god stared.
What had burned, for some reason, was a monster: the corpse of a basilisk. The demon god had no idea what had happened, and bewilderment came over its face.
Sieg had killed a basilisk some time ago and recovered the corpse into [Spatial Storage]. He had used that corpse to draw the eye.
Surtr looked around, hunting for where Sieg had gone.
By then Sieg had already worked around to Surtr’s sword-hand side.
“—Did you know?”
The demon god whipped around as if struck.
“A sword can’t be held—without a thumb!”
Sieg swung the frost blade with the smallest movement he could. The giant’s thumb was cut through, froze, and dropped away.
‘VROHH!?’
Having lost the thumb, the giant dropped its sword. It had presumably never once been in that situation, because Surtr reached carelessly after the falling blade—and Sieg took that outstretched arm off without mercy.
“That sword—!”
Before he could finish the order, the princess was already sprinting flat out for where it would come down.
“I will freeze it! Leave it to me!”
Surtr’s greatsword burned utterly whatever it touched, so they wanted it sealed in ice, even temporarily.
She fired [Ice Shot] in volume as she ran and shut the greatsword inside thick ice. It fell that way and landed with an enormous sound.
Sieg dropped hard to the ground and gave his orders to the princess and Lilis at once.
“Hold it off!” “Understood!” “Righto~!”
Surtr swung the one arm it had left around. While the princess and Lilis kept it busy, Sieg kicked the greatsword up off the ground, floated it in the air, and set himself low with the sword at his hip.
He fixed his eyes on the greatsword and put his hand to his own hilt.
Cut this and we win.
And in the next instant he loosed a sword art at the greatsword at godlike speed, tracks of light running crosswise and lengthwise.
But—
…What…!
A crack ran through the Sacred Silver blade, spread fast, and then—
Nn…!
—it shattered like glass, with a sharp report.
Sieg’s face twisted, and Princess Cordelia and Lilis both turned with their eyes wide.
The Sacred Silver blade had already been at its limit. After being driven past what it could take, over and over, it had finally come apart. That it had lasted this long was the miracle.
…Damn it…!
‘RAZKRUUUN!’
The demon god roared in anger—and the arm that had been cut off regenerated while they watched. And worse than that.
“What!?” “Eh!” “What in the world is that!”
Both of the giant’s shoulders swelled from within, and another arm tore out through the skin of each.
‘FAAL, ZHEGHHHHH!!’
The demon god worked all four arms, two to a side, with great skill, and took the princess and Lilis on, hand to hand, with them. And the arms extended and contracted at will, so that every attack came in at a different distance.
The suddenness of it drove the princess into pure defense, and her voice came out strained.
“S-Sieg-san! I cannot hold this! What do we do!?”
Even Lilis, rarely, had something close to panic in her face as she looked at him.
Sieg set his teeth and looked at the shattered sword.
What do I do!? Without Sacred Silver I can’t build a mana circuit. Cordy’s sword is a Sacred Silver alloy—the silver content isn’t high enough.
And Cordy can’t break that greatsword either.
He shut his eyes hard and bit his lip.
But an opening like this comes once in a thousand years, and he could not let it go. They had driven Surtr this far. Fail to kill it here and the whole thing started again from the beginning.
A demon god getting its strength back. The princess and Lilis fighting desperately.
The greatsword was giving off heat and had begun to melt the thick ice around it.
There was no time left.
Something. There has to be something.
Sieg was thinking at a furious rate when—
“—There’s a sword, if you want one.”
Lilis’s voice came from above him.
He looked up. She was biting her lip and looking steadily at him, and her face was pained enough that Sieg, unusually, was shaken by it.
Princess Cordelia called out as she dodged the demon god’s attacks.
“Eh! You have a sword!? Lady Liliandiris! Please, give that sword to Sieg-san!”
Lilis nodded at the princess’s words and put her question to Sieg.
“Sieg. Do you want a sword?”
For some reason it felt to Sieg as if he were being asked how far he was prepared to go. He set his back teeth once, hardened his resolve, and answered her.
Whatever kind of sword it was, and whatever it did to him, he did not care. If the demon god Surtr was not killed here, the Humans would almost certainly lose.
“Yes. I want it.—I want a sword.”
Sieg’s eyes and Lilis’s met. She had asked him for his resolve and he had answered with it.
They looked at one another a while, and then Lilis let out a breath. She drew a black sword out of [Infinite Storage] and threw it to him.
Sieg caught it and his breath stopped. The foul air coming off that sword made him flinch back in spite of himself.
There was no mistaking it. This sword was—
Lilis spoke as she withdrew, and her face was hard in a way it rarely was.
“—A demon sword.”
A demon sword is a cursed weapon that gives out its power in exchange for something the user hands over.
Lilis continued, and it looked as if it hurt her.
“The name on it is Tyrfing. It takes—your life as its fuel. You understand that?”
Sieg bit his lip at that.
I see. That was why she asked what I was prepared for.
He had heard about the demon sword Tyrfing on his previous journey. The price of drawing its power was the user’s lifespan. A cursed sword in the exact sense: the more it was used, the more it was drawn, the shorter the user’s life became.
Sieg had no way of knowing it, but this sword was one the first Hero had kept hidden—and the first Hero had used it in precisely this fight, against the demon god Surtr.
The Elven archer Ireisia had received that demon sword afterward and kept it carefully, along with a message: hand it on to a person who has courage, who comes after me.
A person who has courage.
This generation’s Hero, Sieg, was exactly that—the latest in an unbroken line of people who had courage. What the first Hero had felt was being handed on to the Hero of this generation.
“Looks like you know the price…”
Lilis said it with an urgency in her face that was close to prayer.
“Listen, Sieg. One stroke. Finish him in one stroke!”
Sieg belted the demon sword on and answered quietly.
“Very well. Stand there and watch.”
He signaled the princess with his eyes and she stopped holding the demon god and sprang back to take distance. She fixed her eyes on Sieg, holding her breath, meaning to burn her master’s single stroke into her memory.
Lilis landed beside the princess as well, her face perhaps a shade paler, and set herself to see the end of it.
The demon god Surtr broke the ice and took hold of its greatsword, glaring at Sieg with fury in its face. The temperature climbed all at once and the earth went red and began to melt.
At the center of the ground of the seal, the demon god Surtr and the Hero Sieg faced one another again.
The hole in the upper body had closed. The demon god had regenerated completely.
Demon god and Hero held each other’s eyes for a moment.
Princess Cordelia and Liliandiris watched without blinking.
Even the [Contractor], Moloch, bound where he hung, held his breath to see how it would go.
And then, at last—
‘ZRUUHHRAAAHH!’
The demon god Surtr raised the greatsword in two of its arms and charged at appalling speed. Everything shook and fire came up out of the ground.
Sieg put his hand quietly to the hilt and leaned forward into an extreme stance.
The demon god was on him in a blink. The heat wave came ahead of it and Sieg’s body caught fire.
He was not wearing [Mana Barrier]. Every scrap of his mana was going into the one stroke.
The princess and Lilis had drawn close together, and neither could have said which of them took the other’s hand first. It was not only the princess: Lilis’s small hand was shaking too.
When Sieg gripped the demon sword’s hilt, sharp barbs sprang out of it and drove into his palm. Through those barbs the demon sword Tyrfing takes the user’s life.
Sieg drew a breath, thin and long.
Every sound went out. His sight came clear, and the demon god’s movement looked slow to him. A strange sensation, as if time had stopped, filled him up.
He already knew what to do.
Cut.
Surtr. Surtr’s greatsword. And—
Sieg’s eyes opened wide.
Everything his eye could see—
—cut!
Breath going out of him in a sharp hiss, he loosed the sword art at the demon god. A stroke at divine speed that split the air itself flashed, and blinding light ran across the ground of the seal.
That technique: [Divine Thunder Blade Flash]. The higher form of the divine-speed draw-cut, [Thunderclap Flash].
Time stopped. The demon god Surtr stood where it was, motionless as carved stone.
The scabbard clicked as Sieg seated the blade—and.
The demon god’s enormous body, and Surtr’s greatsword, came apart in halves and slid. And not only those: the rock wall behind them had been cut through as well, and it slid and came down with a long grinding sound.
‘—————!!’
The demon god collapsed without managing a death cry, and the Demon Core inside the greatsword split, and each of them went up in flame instantly. It did not take long for demon god and sword, burning in that hellfire, to burn out entirely.
What remained afterward was a great quantity of ash. Sieg let out a long breath and held his follow-through.
The princess and Lilis, and even Moloch, had watched that feat with their eyes wide and their breath held.
One stroke. Sieg had destroyed the demon god Surtr in a single stroke.
The demon sword Tyrfing had shown its blade for about as long as a blink. The barbs in the hilt drew back with a click, and the demon sword gave a small rattle, as if it were dissatisfied.
Princess Cordelia had been standing blank, and when she came back to herself her face broke into a grin and she shouted.
“Incredible… incredible incredible incredible! Sieg-san, you killed a demon god!”
Lilis let out a breath of relief too, then cleared her throat to cover it before she spoke.
“Hmph. Not bad, I suppose…”
And there the [Contractor], Moloch, finally free of the spell, twisted his face and pointed at Lilis.
“You meddling creature! To set yourself against our most exalted lord… you stupid High Elf!”
Lilis looked up at the [Contractor] and raised one eyebrow.
“Huh~? I side with whichever’s more interesting. And you lot are boring! Gyahahaha!”
The [Contractor] scrambled to escape by magic.
“Damn it! I must at least carry word of the Hero back!”
But however hard he tried to flee with [Crystal Shift], the spell would not fire at all. Panic came onto his face.
“W-Why! Why can I not transfer!”
Lilis said it as if the whole thing bored her.
“Look~, obviously I’ve got an interdiction barrier up. Who do you think I am? The Observer of the World, the great Lady Liliandiris~.”
“You moooonster!”
The [Contractor] spread his wings and flew for it. Lilis was not somebody who let a demon go.
She spun her staff around and loosed an enormous attack spell at Moloch.
“C—cuuuuuuuurse you—!”
Moloch vanished without a trace, and not so much as a speck of dust was left behind.
Princess Cordelia let out a long breath and sat down where she stood. She had gone past her limit some time ago.
Sieg had a mountain of things he wanted to say to Lilis, and he was in no state for any of them either.
He put a hand on Lilis’s head and patted it.
“We’re going back to the inn… you too.”
“…Don’t pat your elders on the head.”
Lilis complained about it with a face that did not object in the least, and followed him along quietly.
Sieg took the exhausted princess onto his back and left the ground of the seal, with Lilis beside him. And so the demon god Surtr was destroyed, and the crisis facing the world was turned back.