Chapter 4 – The Thunder God Emperor Festival Finals: The Thunder God Emperor vs. the Ice God Emperor
Ephthal’s Perspective
The next day, deep within an isolated mountain range well away from the magic academy.
Back at the stadium, the team finals were currently underway. It was technically supposed to be a four-on-four match—or rather, counting Headmaster Merlin’s presence, a four-on-three individual tournament bracket. By the strict letter of the law, a team is automatically disqualified if they cannot field a full roster of five players. Fortunately, since both sides were neatly short by exactly one person, the organizers let it slide without issue.
“Well then… shall we begin, Thunder God Emperor? I must admit, I did not expect a direct, personal summons from you.”
“Funny. I didn’t exactly expect you to accept a private duel this obligingly either, Brad.”
“I have already heard a great deal about your true character from the god himself.”
Right. Brad had already memorized my face. Which meant the Fire God Emperor, Cliff, was fully aware of my reincarnation.
Still, if that red-headed bastard truly intended to kill me right here and now—or even if he just wanted to declare me an outright enemy—he wouldn’t have approached me in such a roundabout, heavily masked fashion. For the time being, we were both merely feeling each other out, testing the waters.
With the Fire God Emperor’s massive shadow looming in the background, making a reckless, impulsive move would only cause him to write me off as a thoughtless amateur. If you make an enemy out of Cliff, he is the type of monster who moves excruciatingly slow and careful if he deems you dangerous—but tramples you instantly like wildfire the moment he realizes you’re weak.
Right now, what I needed most was time.
If I can just decipher the permanent cure for modern magic aptitude depletion, there is a very real chance that even the current, unrefined version of me can stand on equal footing against the Fire God Emperor.
That was the primary reason I hadn’t forced a familiar contract on Sheryl the exact moment I found her. More than anything, I wanted to avoid the absolute worst-case scenario: rushing ahead with a sloppy, unverified solution without fully grasping the magic anatomy of her condition, and inadvertently costing her her life. When dealing with anything tied to the Fire God Emperor, acting with extreme deliberation wasn’t just smart—it was mandatory.
“By the way… why did you designate a battlefield this deep within the mountains?” Brad asked, glancing around the desolate peaks.
“Think about it for five seconds and you’ll arrive at the answer. You and me letting loose and going at it seriously… tends to result in something utterly catastrophic for the surrounding geography.”
Brad let out a dry laugh.
“Certainly… that is a fair point.”
“Since we’re on the topic of asking ‘why,’ I’ve got a burning question of my own. Why did you kill Claire—Sheryl’s twin sister?”
“To reach the Root of Roots, a biological key is required.”
“…A key?”
“Claire possessed the inherited, pure power of a high-tier spirit. I forcibly consumed her soul… and utilized it to violently tear open the gateway to the path. For what it’s worth, Claire offered her life up of her own free will. She fully understood that her remaining time in this world was incredibly short… and she explicitly stated she would gladly do it if it meant saving Sheryl.”
“And immediately after that, you met the goddess in the reincarnation room?”
“That is exactly how it went.”
I fell silent for a long moment, glaring directly into Brad’s eyes before throwing out my next deduction.
“The skills she granted you… they’re Cap Free and Devil Resource, right?”
“Yes,” Brad replied, a smirk playing on his lips.
It was exactly as I figured. The moment the word “goddess” enters the conversation and a mediocre mage suddenly manifests reality-bending power, there is only one logical answer. The entity residing in the reincarnation room possesses the unique authority to arbitrarily grant cheat-tier passive skills.
Cap Free—a passive trait that allows a mage to freely cast up to Level 10 magic in any of the four primary elemental attributes. Devil Resource—a trait that supplies the massive, normally fatal mana reserves required to withstand a Level 10 spell, or rather, completely erases the natural mana consumption of the spell itself.
They were textbook cheat skills.
Given that the goddess of reincarnation is the primordial deity who governs human souls, there is absolutely no way she isn’t directly intertwined with the catastrophic Magia Burst that triggered the modern transformation and degradation of human souls. Considering that both my first life and my second life were born with absolutely zero magic aptitude… there was no mistake: that goddess holds the ultimate key to my condition as well.
The Root of Roots is, in short, a conceptual highway that connects a mortal soul directly to the goddess to receive artificial skills. Of course, since magic aptitude is heavily involved, there are undoubtedly countless other hidden facets to this system, but in broad strokes, my hypothesis wasn’t wrong.
“I have one more thing I want to ask you.”
“What might that be?”
“Why did you dirty your hands by working for the criminal underworld?”
“Because I desperately needed money. Obviously.”
“Let me rephrase the question,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I’m asking why you could possibly need that much money.”
If Brad had successfully breached the gateway three years ago and obtained absolute, godlike power, he should have had thousands of highly lucrative options available to him that didn’t involve groveling in the dirt with black-market syndicates. Furthermore, it completely contradicted the school records stating that his academic marks at the academy were faster counted from the absolute bottom of the roster.
“…I opened the conceptual gate three years ago,” Brad murmured, his expression darkening. “But the physical path forward… only opened for me last month.”
“Meaning?”
“The god never appeared before me again for three consecutive years after our initial meeting. Just as I was beginning to half-doubt the entire experience… he finally granted me a brand-new divine revelation.”
I shrugged casually, throwing another blunt truth directly at him.
“Hey, Brad. Have you seriously… still not realized that you’re being systematically conned?”
“Conned? Me? Why on earth would you think that?”
“You are actively walking a horrific road of carnage and mass murder solely to save Sheryl’s life, correct?”
“Yes, exactly so!”
“For a start, the Fire God Emperor could have effortlessly saved both of your twin sisters on the spot the exact day he met you.”
“…I am afraid I do not follow your meaning?”
“The proof is right in front of you. I have already completely secured Sheryl’s life and stabilized her soul using a standard familiar contract.”
“…Eh?” Brad froze, his eyes blinking in confusion.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know the history of your own bloodline? That is the exact methodology the very first Ice God Emperor utilized to keep his failing child alive four hundred years ago. Why would the Fire God Emperor intentionally show you such a horrific, roundabout method to achieve the same result? Did you never once sit down and think about what that implies?”
Brad suddenly sucked in a sharp, ragged breath. “Ah…”
A look of sheer, existential panic flashed across his features.
“Certainly… that is certainly… no, but… it’s strange. Why did I… how could I possibly forget the very first historical solution my sister and I looked into…”
Memory manipulation. They had surgically altered his recollections.
Looking closely at his soul structure, Brad himself hadn’t actually undergone direct dark-arts surgical enhancement. However, there were clear, unnatural signs that his innate psychological violence had been artificially dialed up to an extreme degree. It meant that every single step he took was resting safely in the palm of the Fire God Emperor’s hand.
“B-but! At that exact moment, the god most certainly gave me a direct revelation… he told me this was the one and only way!”
“Hey, Brad. Did the distinct possibility that this ‘Fire God Emperor’ is actually just a high-ranking devil masquerading as a benevolent deity… never once cross your mind?”
As cold sweat began pouring down Brad’s pale, silent face, I relentlessly drove the point home.
“Why didn’t the Fire God Emperor open this Root of Roots for you immediately three years ago?”
In all likelihood, the Fire God Emperor was utilizing a highly specific, repeatable methodology—hunting down modern humans born with zero magic aptitude and systematically breaking them down to turn them into loyal, disposable chess pieces. Given that there are likely others of his tragic breed scattered across this world, believing that Brad alone was uniquely special simply didn’t hold up under logical scrutiny.
The reason Cliff didn’t bestow immediate, active power upon Brad was incredibly simple: to ensure a human armed with catastrophic power doesn’t accidentally run wild before the grand plan is ready. Or perhaps, the grueling act of tearing open the conceptual path isn’t something that can be performed without strict metaphysical limits. What it ultimately comes down to is a brutal reality: Cliff uses them the exact moment they become useful… and if they don’t fulfill the criteria, the road remains firmly shut.
“And here is the biggest, most damning flaw in his lie. Why—does the ancient magic circle you were taught to save Sheryl contain absolutely no programming sequences for crystallizing human souls?”
“Wha…? Is that… is that an actual fact?!”
“It’s an archaic, highly obscured array, so a modern student like you wouldn’t possess the literacy to read it. But make no mistake: a hidden formula designed to harvest and transport collected souls to a remote, distant location is heavily woven into the bedrock of that circle.”
“Transporting them somewhere else…? But… I was told they would crystallize right here on the spot…?” Unable to accept the reality breaking around him, Brad’s eyes went wide, his entire frame trembling violently.
“Wake up already, you idiot. No matter how you slice it, you are just a tool being beautifully used by the Fire God Emperor.”
“Impossible… it’s impossible…”
“For a start, Sheryl has already been saved. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by continuing down this path and making your sister cry any more than she already has… you utter fool!”
The moment those harsh, exasperated words left my mouth, Brad dropped straight to his knees on the hard stone, every ounce of structural strength completely draining from his body.
“Th-then… what did I harvest my own sister’s soul for?! What did I do any of it for?!”
“Go ask the Fire God Emperor himself. Only that bastard knows his true, rotten intentions.”
Whatever the case, the one absolute certainty was that Cliff was plotting something profoundly putrid. Considering he was attempting to mass-harvest human souls using a methodology where the means, the manner, and the ultimate result were all entirely vile… yeah, he was up to no good.
“Then what have I been doing all this time… I even consumed Claire’s soul…”
“Hey, Brad. The road you walked may have been entirely wrong, but your fundamental will itself wasn’t a lie. You put your entire life on the line solely for the sake of your sister, didn’t you? And taking Claire’s life was ultimately born from her own sovereign will to save her twin, right?”
I lightly thumped my own chest.
“Then stand up and go see Sheryl with your head held high! Tell her that her big brother did absolutely everything in his power to keep her alive, and hold your damn head up!”
Hearing my words, Brad completely broke down, burying his face in his hands as heavy, agonizing tears spilled through his fingers.
“That… that might… be true… mightn’t it…”
“Don’t cry like a helpless child when you’re a grown man, you fool.”
I reached into my coat, pulling out a clean handkerchief as I stepped forward to approach him, when—
“But I… I… I am… AAAAAAAAAGH!”
Brad abruptly snapped to his feet. Thick, dark veins violently bulged across his entire face, pulsing with an unnatural, terrifying pressure. In an instant, the sudden internal pressure caused the capillaries in his skin to violently burst, spraying crimson blood across his features until his entire face was dyed a horrific red.
“Hey, what’s wrong with you…?”
“You are… a liar,” Brad gurgled, his voice suddenly dropping an octave into a hollow, robotic drone. “Liar… liar… liar… LIAR, LIAR, LIAAAAAAAAR!”
His face had twisted into a literal demon’s mask—drool and snot flying wildly as blood and tears streamed down his cheeks.
This… is bad. He had completely lost his sanity.
But more importantly… what on earth was this vile, deeply unsettling magic pressure suddenly erupting from his body? No, I recognized this precise, suffocating wavelength. This absolute malice…
The Demon King?
Ah, that’s right. This horrifying mana signature closely resembled the primordial entity that all four of the original Four Emperors had to pool their maximum, combined strength together just to violently blast out of existence. Which meant the ancient Demon King, too… had successfully passed through the Root of Roots?
I immediately raised my internal guard, executing a swift back-step to open up a safe tactical distance between us.
Right then, Brad’s bloody face split open into a wide, unnatural grin.
“Haa… truly, what a troublesome human specimen. To think he managed to endure the psychological contamination of the skill acquisition without flinching, maintaining his baseline sanity the entire way through.”
What is this creature blabbering about? I thought, though the underlying magic mechanics clicked in my mind almost immediately.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, narrowing my eyes. “No… more accurately, how long have you been nesting inside that boy’s head?”
“Three years ago,” the entity replied smoothly, using Brad’s vocal cords like a puppet. “The exact day this mortal vessel consumed a high-tier spirit—the Fire God Emperor-sama personally planted my consciousness deep within Brad’s psyche.”
“…A high-level brainwashing trigger?”
“Astutely observed, ancient scholar. A localized Level 11: Brainwashing spell. You can think of me as a literal, autonomous divided spirit of the Fire God Emperor-sama.”
What a thoroughly vile piece of work…
Though, I had to admit, it was far more reliable than a standard psychological brainwashing spell. Metaphorically speaking, it was equivalent to surgically installing a remote controller directly inside the target’s cerebrum.
“It is the absolute minimum insurance policy required when bestowing the catastrophic power of Level 10 upon a lesser mortal—planting the seed deep within their ego. If the chess piece suddenly stops functioning or defects, my lord could hardly bear to look at the waste. However… maintaining direct control via a divided spirit actively consumes a portion of the real Fire God Emperor-sama’s processing brainpower, meaning the fuel economy is incredibly poor. Because of that… the seed does not actively sprout until the piece is pushed to its absolute, structural limit.”
“Still—an extra-level tier of magic that even I don’t recognize, huh,” I muttered, a cold sweat breaking on the back of my neck. “Honestly… just how much power has that red-headed bastard accumulated over the last four hundred years?”
It appeared the Fire God Emperor had successfully breached Sasha’s conceptual domain during my long absence—elevating himself to an entirely different dimension of magic mastery.
The sheer absurdity of it caused me to burst into a genuine, loud laugh.
“Hahaha!”
“What is the meaning of this laughter, Thunder God Emperor? Have you finally succumbed to awe at my lord’s divine artistry? Is that a smile of utter, broken resignation?”
“No, quite the opposite, you puppet. The higher and steeper the mountain—the more exhilarating it is to climb. Ever since I reincarnated into this modern era, I haven’t encountered a single decent, high-tier mage outside of Sasha and Merlin. To think there is actually a guy out there capable of giving my skin gooseflesh… I’m absolutely thrilled about it.”
“You are far more of a feral, battle-hungry species than my lord’s records indicated.”
“Unfortunately, it is my innate nature. Now then, regarding the active constraints of that spell—from what I can analyze, your presence only takes over the subject’s conscious ego. The physical body, the magic performance output, and the active tactical knowledge are still entirely tethered to Brad’s biological baseline. Am I right?”
“Yes, your analysis is entirely flawless. Even for my majestic lord, building a functional persona entirely from scratch when creating a divided spirit—and manually granting it centuries of artificial experience and knowledge—is a monumental labor. The mana fuel economy is far too poor. That being said, specific information necessary for the completion of our mission has been directly uploaded to this personality… the personality that is not Brad.”
“I see… perfectly clear.”
“Then… I shall simply slaughter you right here, and bring this tedious detour to a definitive end.”
With those words, Brad turned both of his bloody palms directly toward me. He didn’t bother constructing a visible magic circle; he didn’t even trigger a preliminary flare of magic power. He was purely, cleanly declaring the localized generation of a cataclysmic Level 10 spell.
“Slaughter me, huh… Well, feel free to give it your absolute best shot.”
“The catastrophic Level 10 Ultimate Magic: Ice God Emperor Isaac, contrasted against your signature Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal. Are you fully aware of the sheer performance gap between our elements?”
“Sure. Back in the day, between Isaac and me… in a pure contest of meticulous magecraft, he was undoubtedly the superior scholar.”
“And the performance gap between our respective strongest techniques remains exactly the same. The absolute weakest member of the historical Four Emperors… you of all people should understand your place, surely?”
“I don’t need a lecture from a parasite. Hurry up and throw it.”
Brad’s puppet mouth uttered a single, chilling phrase—the conceptual name of the man who was feared as the absolute Emperor of Ice four hundred years ago, the monster who single-handedly dropped the Demon King’s vanguard into a pit of perpetual terror. The name of the strongest freezing magic in human history:
“Level 10: Ice God Emperor Isaac!”
A colossal, mountain-sized spike of solid ice was violently loosed directly toward my chest.
But I completely ignored it for a second. Because the most thoroughly troublesome, lethal aspect of this specific ultimate magic was actively manifest—directly above my head!
As expected, I could feel an astronomical, dense mass of magic power descending furiously from the sky.
The stratosphere sits roughly ten kilometers above the earth’s surface… where the baseline temperature sits at a freezing minus seventy degrees Celsius. This spell utilizes high-tier wind magic to forcefully drag that massive, frozen localized air mass down to ground level in a single, instantaneous downburst. In the meantime, advanced ice-system formula controls are layered over the descending air, violently cooling the minus-seventy atmosphere even further.
Which is to say, it forces the thermal energy down to its absolute, mathematical limit—dropping the air mass to absolute zero.
What finally comes howling down onto the battlefield is a localized, absolute-zero large-scale atmospheric downburst. It instantaneously flash-freezes every single molecule of matter in the surrounding territory along with a supersonic gale, converting the entire landscape into a graveyard of pristine ice sculptures. It was an incredibly flashy, structurally excessive technique.
Incidentally, even within my vast repertoire of ancient magic, I didn’t currently possess a wide-area annihilation spell that structurally beat it in pure coverage.
To break it down: it is a flawless, two-stage trap. A direct, high-tier frontal assault via a colossal icicle to draw the target’s defensive attention, followed immediately by the true grim reaper descending silently from overhead. That is the true, terrifying identity of Level 10: Ice God Emperor Isaac.
The initial icicle boast a raw destructive output equivalent to a high-tier Level 9 spell, making it an absolute nightmare to deal with on its own. But the moment a mage commits their defensive resources to block it, the absolute-zero downburst from the heavens catches them completely off guard, permanently sealing them in a tomb of ice. It was a textbook, flawless first-time killer.
Isaac was the type of hyper-rational scholar who would meticulously tap a stone bridge to check its structural integrity before crossing it—while simultaneously tapping a hidden fracture into the stone bridge his enemy was currently walking across. Yeah… it was a spell that beautifully highlighted Isaac’s deeply obnoxious, cautious character.
“Haha! Hahaha! On the ground, a cataclysmic Level 9 projectile! And overhead, the true, inescapable execution—absolute zero freezing! This… this is the supreme majesty of Level 10 magic! It exists on an entirely different evolutionary order compared to the garbage an inferior, magic-aptitudeless Four Emperor managed to construct!”
“Well,” I muttered calmly, “let’s deal with the icicle first.”
I casually began refining a localized formula within my palm.
“I don’t know what pathetic trick you intend to pull, but feel free to resist as best your modern body can manage! Even if you possess the historical literacy to recognize the relationship between the decoy and the true aim, an absolute-zero atmospheric downburst is not something a mortal can possibly resist!”
To be completely fair to the puppet, he was right. Even if an opponent completely ignored the giant icicle, the sheer area-of-effect of the downburst alone was typically more than enough to end a battle. It was a wide-area, inescapable apocalypse of literal absolute zero. On top of that, advanced anti-magic piercing formulas designed to systematically thin the effectiveness of defensive barriers were heavily layered into the matrix, making standard magic defense practically impossible.
But the move I executed on the very first beat of the clash was—
“Level 7: Extra Magic Guard!”
The oncoming, mountain-sized spike of ice violently slammed directly into my compressed Level 7 barrier—and with a brittle, massive shatter, it completely scattered into harmless mist against the air.
“Wha…?! A high-tier Level 9 projectile… effortlessly neutralized by a mere Level 7 construct?!”
I completely ignored his shock, shifting my gaze calmly back up toward the rapidly darkening sky.
“Bad luck, kid. I happen to know that spell incredibly well… the real Level 10 version, that is. The true… Ultimate Magic: Ice God Emperor Isaac.”
I smoothly stretched my open palm directly up toward the heavens.
“The very first time I watched Isaac deploy this technique during the ancient war… I was profoundly envious. Bitterly jealous, even. But more than that, if I’m being completely honest with myself… I thought it was absolute, breathtaking magnificence.”
Right now, the compressed stratospheric air mass had dropped to an altitude of roughly two thousand meters… and its localized temperature had plummeted to around minus one hundred and ninety degrees Celsius.
And then—I actively intervened.
I didn’t try to block it. Instead, I directly interfered with the rapidly plunging mass of freezing air—or rather, the core magic power driving it. Right into the heart of Isaac’s complex wind-formula sequence that was generating the immense downward kinetic force, I seamlessly spliced my own wind-formula control, generating a precise, matching updraft—effectively canceling out the kinetic momentum entirely.
Next, over the dense ice-system formula matrix that was actively extracting thermal energy from the air, I violently overwrote the code with my own high-tier flame-formula control, systematically nullifying the freezing effect. The natural temperature of the upper atmosphere was minus seventy, so… let’s manually inject about eighty degrees of heat on top of it.
Good. Done.
By the time the calculations finished, the massive air mass had dropped to a mere five hundred meters above the mountain peak. As for the catastrophic, apocalyptic result of the strongest freezing magic in human history—
“It is a bit chilly, I’ll give you that.”
The dense canopy of trees surrounding the mountain peaks lightly rustled and swayed in a gentle breeze, sending soft, relaxing leaf-whispers echoing across the quiet valleys. Which is to say… a slightly cool, pleasant autumn breeze came pouring down from the heavens, gently brushing past my hair.
“I-I… impossible…?! Direct, real-time code intervention… inside an active Level 10 formula?!”
“You don’t understand so much as the fundamental linguistic meaning of a magic formula,” I said, looking down at the trembling puppet with pity. “You merely stroked the superficial surface of the script you were handed. And because you possess absolutely zero literacy regarding the inner mechanical workings of the spell, you are entirely powerless to resist a targeted intervention. There is no way a pathetic, papier-mâché Level 10 replica like that was ever going to work on me, is there?”
“Impossible… no such thing… it’s impossible…”
“The glorious road of true magecraft isn’t something built in a single day, kid. You were arbitrarily handed an oversized monster of a legendary greatsword that doesn’t fit your biological frame, and you were just running around the sandbox delighted like a naive little brat. That is the pathetic reality of what you are.”
Well, to be fair to him, I am a formula-maniac, hyper-analytical scholar type at my core, so his tactical match-up luck was just astronomically bad.
I calmly turned my palm directly toward Brad’s physical body.
“Hey, puppet? Can you use the Level 9: Perfect Ice Guard?”
“…I-I… I can use it…!” he stammered, his primitive controller failing to process the reality shift.
“Excellent. I’ll give you a generous handicap. I promise I won’t actively intervene or rewrite your formula this time around. Show me you can successfully resist what’s coming.”
A massive physical shock has always been the long-established, definitive methodology for breaking high-tier psychological brainwashing. And if that shock happens to be composed of high-voltage electricity, all the more so…
Come to think of it, I vividly recalled a hilarious situation identical to this from four hundred years ago. A small smile voluntarily tugged at the corners of my lips. Once, in an almost identical tactical scenario, I had teamed up with the real Isaac to completely crush some rogue religious organization. We had an exchange that went exactly like this:
“A massive voltage shock is the long-established, definitive methodology for breaking brainwashing. If it’s a lightning shock, all the more so.”
“Ephthal?! That is far too reckless, even for a lunatic like you! Do you even comprehend that you are spouting absolute, unscientific nonsense right now?! There is no physical way that absolute nonsense works out mathematically!”
And then it worked out flawlessly, which made the aftermath incredibly awkward for his massive scholar’s ego. Well, I had only executed the plan because I possessed a highly accurate, calculated hunch backed by sound magic reasoning. Afterward, a deeply unconvinced Isaac spent weeks conducting exhaustive research on the subject, ultimately publishing a perfect academic paper concluding that localized lightning strikes genuinely are biologically effective at disrupting external brainwashing matrices… he really was an adorable logic idiot at the end of the day.
Right—and while those nostalgic thoughts flickered through my mind, my real-time formula construction reached absolute completion.
Blinding, high-purity crimson lightning violently coalesced within the center of my open palm. Across from me, Brad’s puppet consciousness instinctively slumped, his knees buckling slightly as the sheer pressure forced him toward the dirt.
“This high-purity… this mana output is so perfectly condensed it could only be described as a literal work of art…” the entity whispered through Brad’s trembling lips. “The kinetic force this generates… isn’t remotely comparable to my lord’s… This is… this is—”
“Yeah. Allow me to show you what the real thing actually looks like. I’ve tuned the frequency to target and fry absolutely nothing but the external brainwashing formula buried in his brain, so I don’t intend to kill this boy—but if you drop your defensive guard for even a millisecond, you will absolutely vaporize.”
“A-a… ah…!”
The exact millisecond Brad frantically raised his Perfect Ice Guard, the primordial, terrifying power of the true thunder god manifested upon the earth.
“—Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”