Chapter 4 – The Thunder God Emperor Festival Finals: The Thunder God Emperor vs. the Ice God Emperor
Ephthal’s Perspective
The next day, up in the mountains well away from the magic academy.
Back at the academy the individual matches were under way, four against four. Four against three, if you count Merlin out. Strictly speaking you’re disqualified if you can’t field five, but both sides were down exactly one, so nobody was going to make trouble about it.
“Now then… shall we begin, Thunder God Emperor? I confess I never expected to be summoned directly.”
“And I never expected you’d actually turn up for a duel.”
“The god has told me about your character, you see.”
So Brad had me made already. Which meant the Fire God Emperor Cliff knew about my second reincarnation.
If that thing meant to kill me, or even just to make an enemy of me, he wouldn’t have come at it this indirectly. Both sides are taking each other’s measure for now, and I’m fairly sure that reading is right. Move rashly with his shadow in view and he’d write me off as a man who doesn’t think. Judge an enemy dangerous and he moves slowly and carefully. Judge him otherwise and he burns him down on the spot. That’s his character.
What I want right now is time.
—Find a cure for magic aptitude and even the current me stands a real chance against the Fire God Emperor.
That’s one reason I didn’t simply make Sheryl my familiar the moment this started. The bigger reason was to avoid the worst case: rushing a diagnosis, reaching for the wrong solution, and killing her with it. Either way, with the Fire God Emperor involved, judging carefully is only common sense.
“By the way. Why did you specify somewhere this deep in the mountains?”
“Think about it and you’ll work it out. You and me going at it seriously turns into something enormous.”
Brad laughed and nodded. “Indeed…”
“Speaking of why, I’ve got a question of my own. Why did you kill Sheryl’s twin sister? Why Claire?”
“To reach the Root of Roots, one needs a key.”
“…A key?”
“Claire, who carried a spirit’s power. I ate her soul, and by it I opened the gate to the road. Claire offered herself willingly, you know. She had already understood how little time she had… and if it was for Sheryl’s sake, she said.”
“And then you met the goddess in the room of reincarnation.”
“That is how it went, yes.”
I stayed quiet for a while, glaring at him, and then asked it.
“…Skill: Cap Free, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And Devil Resource.”
Exactly as I’d figured. The word ‘goddess’ comes up and a man suddenly acquires power, and there’s only one answer.
—The goddess in the room of reincarnation can grant skills.
The ability to wield magic up to Level 10 in one of the four attributes: Cap Free. And the supply of the magic-power resource needed to withstand a Level 10—no, the removal of consumption itself: Devil Resource. Cheat skills, as the phrase goes.
And the goddess of reincarnation governs souls, so there’s no way she isn’t connected to the Magia Burst, which drove the transformation of the soul. Given that the first me and the second me both came up with no magic aptitude, the key is in her hands beyond any doubt. The Root of Roots is the road that leads to the goddess and grants skills. Magic aptitude looks tangled up in it too, so there are probably other faces to the thing, but the broad shape of it can’t be far wrong.
“One more thing I want to ask.”
“And what is that?”
“Why did you dirty your hands with underworld work?”
“Because I needed money?”
“Let me rephrase. I’m asking why you needed it.”
If Brad met the goddess three years ago and got absolute power out of it, he had any number of routes open that weren’t that one. It doesn’t square with his academy marks being near the bottom, either.
“…I opened the gate three years ago. But the road itself opened only last month.”
“Meaning?”
“The god did not appear before me again for three years afterward. I was on the point of doubting the whole thing when he finally granted me a new revelation, quite recently.”
I shrugged, and pressed him further.
“Brad. Haven’t you worked out yet that you’re being played?”
“Played? Me? What makes you think so?”
“You’re walking a road through hell to save Sheryl. Right?”
“Yes. Exactly so.”
“Then start here: the Fire God Emperor could have saved both twins on the spot.”
“…I am afraid I do not follow.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve already secured Sheryl’s life. With a familiar contract.”
“…Eh?”
“Don’t you know how the first Ice God Emperor kept his child alive? Why did the Fire God Emperor point you at a method that roundabout? Has it never once occurred to you to ask what that means?”
“Ah,” Brad said, and drew a sharp breath, as though something had landed.
“That is… that is certainly… no, but… it is strange. Why did I forget the very first thing I ever looked up…”
Memory manipulation. Has it been done to him?
He himself probably hasn’t taken any dark-arts enhancement, though there are signs his violence has risen. Which points back the same way: all of it in the Fire God Emperor’s palm.
“B-B-But! At that time the god certainly gave me a revelation that this was the only way!”
“Brad. Has the possibility never crossed your mind that the Fire God Emperor is a devil calling himself a god?”
Sweat ran off him and his face went white, and I kept going.
“Why didn’t the Fire God Emperor open this Root of Roots of yours immediately?”
The Fire God Emperor is most likely doing the same thing elsewhere—hunting down people with no magic aptitude and building himself pieces. There are others of that kind in this world, so there’s no reason in thinking Brad is special. And there’s a reason he didn’t hand Brad power straight away. Maybe to keep a man with power from running wild, or maybe opening the road isn’t something you can do without limit in the first place. It comes to the same thing: he uses you when you become useful, and until then the road stays shut.
“And here’s the biggest reason of all. Why is there no formula for crystallizing souls built into that magic circle you were taught would save Sheryl?”
“Wh—? That… is that true?”
“It’s an ancient circle, so you wouldn’t know yourself. There’s a formula in there for gathering the souls somewhere, though. No question about that.”
“Gathering them somewhere…? I was told they crystallize on the spot…?”
Brad’s eyes went wide, and he stood there shaking, refusing to believe it.
“Wake up already. However you look at it, you’re just being used by the Fire God Emperor.”
“Impossible… impossible…”
“Sheryl has already been saved. What are you making your little sister cry for now… you damned fool!”
I threw it at him half in despair, and Brad’s knees went out from under him.
“Then… then what did I take my sister for? What did I eat her soul for?”
“Ask the Fire God Emperor. Only he knows what he actually intends.”
Whatever it is, it’s nothing good. Not with the means, the method, and the outcome all being that vile—collecting souls.
“Then what was any of it for… all this time… even eating Claire’s soul…”
“Brad. The road you walked may have been wrong, but there was nothing wrong with the will behind it. You put your body on the line for your sister, didn’t you? And taking her life was Sheryl’s sister’s own choice, wasn’t it?”
I struck my chest.
“Then go and see Sheryl with your head up! Tell her your big brother worked himself to the bone for her—head up, damn it!”
Brad broke down where he knelt and wept.
“That… may… be so… perhaps…”
“Don’t cry, you’re a grown man. Idiot.”
I took a handkerchief out of my coat and started toward him, and—
“But I, I, I aaaaaaaah!”
Brad rose to his feet, veins standing out all over his face as though something had lit him up. Then blood burst out through them and his face went red with it.
“Hey. What’s wrong with you…?”
“You are… a liar. Liar, liar liar liar LIAR LIAAAAAAAR!”
A face out of a demon mask, drooling, streaming from the nose, tears running too.
This was… not good.
“Liars… anything obstructing Sheryl’s survival is to be eliminated… eliminated eliminated eliminated eliminated eliminated—!”
He was completely gone. Off his head.
But what is that… this… this unpleasant feel to the magic power? No—I know this. This is… this is…
—the Demon King?
That’s it. It’s very like the thing all four of the Four Emperors put everything into putting down. Which would mean the Demon King came through the Root of Roots too?
I sharpened my guard and took a backstep to open the distance.
And Brad smiled thinly.
“Well. A genuinely troublesome human, that one. He kept his sanity all the way through, mental contamination and all.”
What the hell is this thing on about? Then I understood, and asked.
“Who the hell are you? No. Since when have you been in there?”
“Three years ago. The day this body ate the spirit, the Fire God Emperor-sama planted me in Brad.”
“…Some kind of brainwashing?”
“Well perceived. Level 11 brainwashing magic. Think of me as something like the Fire God Emperor-sama’s divided spirit.”
Vicious piece of work…
More reliable than brainwashing, certainly. It amounts to installing a controller inside a man’s head.
“The seed alone was planted as a minimum insurance for granting him the power of a Level 10. It would hardly do for a piece to stop functioning. Direct operation through the divided spirit consumes part of the Fire God Emperor-sama’s own brain, however, and the fuel cost is poor, so the seed does not germinate until the last possible moment.”
“Extra Level magic I’ve never heard of… huh. Honestly… how far has that red-haired bastard gone?”
Over these four hundred years the Fire God Emperor has apparently climbed into Sasha’s territory. Another dimension entirely.
“Hahaha,” I laughed, before I could stop myself.
“What amuses you, Thunder God Emperor? Awe at my lord’s divine art, and a smile of resignation?”
“No. The opposite. The higher the mountain, the better the climb. Since I got to this era the only mages worth the name I’ve seen are Sasha and Merlin. There’s somebody out there who gives me goosebumps… and I’m glad of it.”
“Even more of a born fighter than I was told, are you not.”
“It’s my nature, unfortunately. Now then. About that spell of yours—from what I can see it only takes the seat of consciousness, and the body, the magical performance, and the magical knowledge are all Brad’s own. That right?”
“Just as you analyzed. Building a personality from nothing when creating a divided spirit, and furnishing it with experience and knowledge, would tax even my lord, and the fuel cost would be appalling. Though certain information necessary to the task was given directly to this personality rather than to Brad.”
“I see… right.”
“Then… I kill you, and this ends here.”
Brad turned both palms toward me. No formula built, no magic power set in motion—only to declare a Level 10 into existence.
“Kill me, is it. Try it, if you think you can.”
“The Level 10 Ultimate Magic: Ice God Emperor Isaac, against your Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal. You are aware of the difference in performance, I assume?”
“Sure. Between Isaac and me, in a straight contest of magecraft, he had the edge.”
“And the same holds for the gap between your strongest techniques. The weakest of the Four Emperors—surely you of all people know it.”
“Skip the speeches. Come on.”
And Brad spoke a single phrase: the name of the man called the Emperor of Ice four hundred years ago, the man who dropped the Demon King’s army into the depths of terror. The name of the strongest freezing magic there is. And that name was—
“Level 10: Ice God Emperor Isaac!”
A colossal icicle came at me.
But leave that for the moment, because the worst part of this spell is overhead!
Just as expected, I could feel a mass of magic power dropping toward us at ferocious speed from above.
The stratosphere, ten kilometers up. Temperature there: minus seventy degrees Celsius. Carry that frozen mass of air down to ground level in one motion with wind magic, and on the way freeze the minus-seventy air further still with ice-type control. Take it, in short, to the limit of freezing. Absolute zero.
What finally hits the ground is an absolute-zero downburst on a massive scale, and everything around it freezes in the gale and becomes ice sculpture. A tasteless piece of work.
I don’t currently know a wide-area annihilation spell above it.
—A direct attack by icicle, and a reaper descending from the sky. Two stages.
That is what Level 10: Ice God Emperor Isaac actually is.
The first icicle carries about a Level 9’s force and is hard enough to deal with on its own. But get your attention fixed on it and the absolute zero comes down on your blind side and seals you in ice. A first-sight killer in the purest sense.
Tap every stone before crossing your own bridge, and tap cracks into the bridges your enemy has to cross. Isaac’s character all over.
“Haha! Hahahaa! A Level 9 icicle on the ground, and overhead the real prize—absolute freezing! This! This is the sublime Level 10! Nothing whatever like the thing built by someone like you, with no magic aptitude—the inferior of the Four Emperors!”
“Right. The icicle first.”
I started weaving a formula.
“I have no idea what you intend, but do struggle! Even knowing the decoy from the true attack, an absolute-zero downburst is not a thing anyone can resist!”
Even without the icicle pulling your attention, the downburst alone usually finishes it. Wide-area, no route out, absolute freezing in the literal sense. And there are layers of formula built in to thin out any defensive magic, so blocking is difficult too.
So my opening move was—
“Level 7: Extra Magic Guard!”
The icicle drove into my Level 7 and scattered into the air.
“What—!? A Level 9 icicle… with a Level 7?”
I turned my eyes back to the sky.
“Bad luck, boy. I know it very well… the real Level 10. The real… Ultimate Magic: Ice God Emperor Isaac.”
I put my palm up toward the sky.
“The first time I saw this… I was jealous. Envious. And more than that, plainly, I thought it was magnificent.”
At this moment the air mass was around two thousand meters up, at about minus one hundred ninety degrees.
And then.
I reached into the freezing air—no, the mass of magic power—as it dropped.
Against Isaac’s wind-formula control generating the downdraft, my own wind-formula control generating an updraft. Intervention—no. Cancellation. Then over the ice-type control cooling the air, my fire-type control, overwritten, canceled. That drops the air back to its natural minus seventy, so let’s add another eighty or so on top of that.
Right. Done.
And now the air mass was at five hundred meters. So what does that get you—
“Well… bit cold, admittedly.”
The trees around us stirred in the wind, and small leaf-sounds went up here and there.
A slightly chilly breeze falling out of the heavens. That’s the long and short of it.
“I-Impossible…? Intervention… in the formula?”
“You don’t understand what a magic formula even means. You’ve barely scratched the surface. You don’t know the inside, so you can’t resist an intervention, and you’re helpless. A papier-mâché Level 10 like that was never going to work on me.”
“Impossible… that is… impossible…”
“The road of magecraft isn’t walked in a day. Somebody handed you a monster of a greatsword bigger than you are and you ran around delighted with it, like a kid. That’s all you are.”
Though it’s also true that I’m the formula-obsessed academic type, and his luck was bad.
I turned my palm toward him.
“Hey, boy. Can you use a Level 9 Perfect Ice Guard?”
“…I-I can. I can use it.”
“I’ll give you a handicap. No intervention this time. Show me you can resist.”
Shock is the time-honored cure for brainwashing. Electric shock all the more so… and come to think of it, that happened once before.
I laughed a little.
Once, in a situation much like this one, I teamed up with Isaac and we broke a religious organization. And there was an exchange like this at the time.
“Shock is the time-honored cure for brainwashing. Electric shock all the more so.”
“Ephthal!? That’s far too reckless, even for you!? Do you understand you’re talking nonsense!? There is no possible way something that crude works!”
And then it did work, which is the awkward part. I had a hunch with reasoning behind it, mind.
Afterward Isaac, who couldn’t accept it, went and researched the thing and produced a flawless paper concluding that lightning genuinely is effective against brainwashing. A logic fanatic to the bone, that man.
Right. And while I was thinking, the formula was finished.
Lightning gathered in my palm, and Brad sagged and folded where he stood.
“This high-purity magic power… like a work of art… the force it produces is beyond comparison with mine. This… this is—”
“Yeah. I’ll show you the real thing. I’m aiming to burn out the brainwashing formula only, so I plan to stop just short of killing you, but slip and you’re gone.”
“A-A… ah…!”
Brad raised his Perfect Ice Guard, and the power of the Thunder God manifested on the ground.
“—Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”