TUS Vol. 5 Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – The Cage of Phantom Demons

“Off to prison… you said?”

“Ephthal, let’s try thinking about what that countdown means.”

“Yes, do please consider what that countdown means.”

I sent my gaze to the back of my hand; the numbers were still ticking down, unchanged. Or rather, I’d more or less guessed already.

“This countdown is a formula only Sasha’s school can see, isn’t it.”

“Just so, Ephthal. Including the phantom demons Sasha commands, it’s a thing only we can see, yes?”

“Yes, Ephthal. It is a signal-fire only we can see.”

This countdown is what Sasha’s school uses when they fight as an organized body. Most often it’s when they storm the stronghold of a rival power. The gist of it is a signal to attack all at once, in concert, at the same moment, from many directions. It’s a formula that saw a lot of use back when Sasha was rowdier than he is now. Which means, in this case, it means: we’re going to beat the Fire God Emperor to a pulp, so everyone get ready.

“So, what does Sasha mean to do?”

“That’s the thing, Ephthal. It’s a long story to tell.”

“Yes, Ephthal. To tell it… it becomes a very, very long story indeed.”

“It’s fine if it runs a bit long. Won’t you let me hear the details?”

Oberon snapped his fingers. And out of the depths of the forest came faint streaks of light, flitting about, Pixies, each with their hands full of flower nectar and wild raspberries. Next, from who-knows-where, out came a golem that seemed to be a familiar. Then, again from who-knows-where they’d fetched it, they set to preparing something with a table and cloth. As I wondered what on earth this was, a Pixie boiled water, and the fragrance of leaves unfurling soon drifted through the air.

“It’s a tea party, Ephthal.”

“Yes, let’s have a tea party, Ephthal.”

⁂

Sipping tea, if I sum up what I was told, it came to this.

– The phantom demons that were here originally: one hundred twenty-one.

– Phantom demons felled in the fight with the Fire God Emperor: eighty-eight in all.

– The remaining thirty-three stayed in this land.

– Of those, the ones who can still move about normally: twenty-two.

– The last eleven phantom demons had been sealed into weakness by the Fire God Emperor, and are held in the floating prison island.

By the way, they hadn’t known the particulars of how I’d been pulled in here. When I told them of my direct clash with the Fire God Emperor the other day, they looked fairly shocked… well, that aside.

“…In the end, then, your fighting strength is about a sixth of its peak.”

“Just so, Ephthal. That’s the largest number free to move at present.”

“That is so, Ephthal. A third of our surviving brethren are held on the prison island.”

“So my read is that you want me to go to the prison and free your comrades, is that right?”

“That’s the shape of it, Ephthal. Free them all, and in raw numbers it’s only a quarter of the old strength, but every one of the survivors is a champion among champions.”

“Yes, that’s precisely it, Ephthal. The actual fighting strength hasn’t fallen as far as the drop in numbers suggests. Half of the peak, I should say.”

I took a sip of herbal tea. To drink tea this good on the shore of a lake where flowers ran riot, that’s a fairly elegant thing. If the situation weren’t what it was, it would truly have been a peaceful moment…

“Then let’s hurry, Ephthal. There’s a saying, too, time is money.”

“Yes, let’s hurry, Ephthal. No trial is needed to send one to the prison. Keeping the peace, punishment is the sovereign’s sole prerogative, so we can set out this very moment.”

“Hm? The ruler here is the Fire God Emperor, isn’t he? I follow the part about being made to cooperate with harvests and such, to feed the humans, no, to maintain this world, but is even that much left entirely to you?”

“It is, Ephthal. As I said before, the Fire God Emperor is trying to leave self-rule to us as far as he can.”

“It is so, Ephthal. The Fire God Emperor’s inner sorcery-circuits are given over to other things. So he can’t spare much attention here. Though for confining the phantom demons he does seem to be using his own familiars directly.”

Well, that stands to reason. Even by what I alone know, the Fire God Emperor looks to have spread himself too thin. For instance, he keeps the transcendents who hold the goddess’s reincarnator skills brainwashed, watched, and managed. Just to think of it is a staggering exercise of sorcery. Naturally, any number of spells are running at all times. His inner circuits must be a hair from overheating, his mind never resting for an instant.

“But even so, wouldn’t it turn into a great mess if I went to the prison? The Fire God Emperor must be watching for me fairly closely.”

“That’s all right, Ephthal. You aren’t marked yet.”

“Yes, Ephthal. The fact of your coming hasn’t so much as been noticed.”

Hm? I cocked my head.

“…And what exactly does that mean?”

“It’s this, Ephthal. At present we’re cut off from the outside world by a barrier the Fire God Emperor made.”

“It is so, Ephthal. We are sealed away. The state of things inside can’t be known from without, and there’s no means to learn the state of things without, either.”

“In short, this world is closed off.”

“A sealed world, then, complete. Because the barrier bars us from going outside, Sasha has fallen into a state where he can’t use the Otogi Fantasia.”

“The dimensional barrier the Fire God Emperor built is one-way, Ephthal. You can get in from outside, but you can’t get out from within.”

“And every time the new moon comes, the barrier loosens and contact with the outside takes place. That is when the Fire God Emperor visits this land, information is exchanged, and if there’s need, he sends in new familiars.”

Well, this is getting tangled. These two have a distinctive way of speaking, which doesn’t help, but, let me sort it out a little. First, the Fire God Emperor wants the formula called the Otogi Fantasia. He wants to make it directly his own, or else obtain it indirectly, through Sasha. But right now the Fire God Emperor has his hands full with other matters. Given that, placing Sasha under his command and wielding that power at one remove is, for the Fire God Emperor, the better play. Even if he later steers toward taking the formula, this world, for himself directly, he’ll want to spend as little of his own effort on it as he can. So as a rule he’s leaving it to the self-sustaining system of the formula Sasha built. In a word, the policy is: don’t spend resources you don’t have to. But he’s blocked the passage for summoning phantom demons out, with the barrier. That’s why they can’t make contact with the outside, and here’s the part that’s a little off.

Well, when something’s unclear, the best thing is to just ask.

“Er… why is it that Sasha’s been put in a state where he can’t use the Otogi Fantasia? The Fire God Emperor wants to make use of the summoning magic, and yet he sets things up so it can’t be used.”

“Think it through and you’ll see, Ephthal.”

“Yes, you’ll see at once, Ephthal. Sasha is not yet trusted.”

I see. The number of phantom demons he holds may have dropped, but a Level 11 is nothing to scoff at even so. True enough, letting Sasha, barely days into surrendering, freely wield so dangerous a thing would be a problem. And the business of the information exchange, and the Fire God Emperor’s familiars and the barrier, is a touch tangled too. The quick way to grasp it is to think of it like the update-maintenance of a website. Since he has to spend his resources elsewhere, at the regular update the Fire God Emperor bundles the problems into a single round of feedback and pushes the patch.

“For the record, if I pull something off on the prison island, would the man himself step in?”

“That’s the thing, Ephthal. If it blows up into a grand affair, word will reach the Fire God Emperor, I think. We’ve no means, but the other side has something, I’d say.”

“That’s so, Ephthal. As a rule, to save resources, the back-and-forth between them is trimmed away. But if resources have to be spent, he’ll put his focus in.”

A bug turns up, and emergency maintenance kicks in, so that’s the shape of it. Which means the order is to keep it a covert operation, right up until the moment the phantom demons are freed and the breakout goes ahead. Good. At last I’m starting to see what Sasha wants me to do. The setup is most likely this.

– First, I free the phantom demons.

– At the same time, I destroy the Fire God Emperor’s barrier that’s blocking phantom demons from being summoned to the outer world.

– The instant the count hits zero, outside, Sasha triggers his summoning formula for the all-out assault.

– There, I too go out, leading the phantom demons, and that becomes the opening blow against the Fire God Emperor.

– Everyone charges in an avalanche, and we settle it on that momentum.

Well, as Sasha’s plan that’s about the size of it.

“You’d best hurry, Ephthal. Right now… the floating prison island is in a bad way.”

“Yes, that’s so, Ephthal. By the report from the primordial phantom demon, from Bastet, the former warden, the guard within the prison grows stricter by the day.”

At those words I leaned forward toward Titania in spite of myself.

“Just now… what did you say? The former warden is who?”

When I pressed her, Titania cocked her head and said:

“The former warden: the divine cat. The cat-tribe excel at sensing and detecting danger all around, so she was well suited to it.”

Bastet. She’s a phantom demon who once lived in my house in my past life, as a familiar-cum-maid, all but family. When the incurable sickness took me, I ended up entrusting her to Sasha, but… so that’s how things stood now.

“Still, what do you mean, the former warden?”

“About that, Ephthal. The chief reason the other phantom demons are confined is that Bastet led them in an attempt at rebellion.”

“…Come again?”

“Yes, Ephthal. The ringleader, Bastet, failed in the rebellion, and the date of her public execution draws near. That date is one week from now.”

One week. I stood, and gave the katana at my hip a light pat.

“Right, let’s hurry, as you say. Missing my chance to see an old face again… doesn’t sit well with me.”

“My thanks for your ready assent, Ephthal. Go inside, and a collaborator should make contact with you.”

“Yes. My thanks for your ready assent, Ephthal. I ask you, free the phantom demons.”

There, Oberon clapped his hands, and three Pixies working together carried over a small pouch. It was handed to me as it was, so I checked inside.

“And this is…?”

A cylinder of metal. It seemed to be a magic tool, so I analyzed the formula woven into it… and the moment I grasped what it was for, my skin crawled and prickled.

“When the moment comes, do consider using it, Ephthal.”

“Use it, Ephthal. As Sasha’s disciple you should be able to. No, as one who, for a time, truly did look up to Sasha, you will certainly be able to use it.”

Well, it isn’t that I couldn’t use it, in fact. This time the opponent is the Fire God Emperor. I’d been thinking I couldn’t take it as easy as I always had, so honestly, this is a great help.

“Then, Ephthal, we set out three hours from now.”

“Yes, Ephthal. Since it’s a prison, you’ll be treated as a criminal, but do try not to take it to heart.”

“Three hours? That’s how long the preparations take?”

When I asked, Oberon pointed to the sky. Up there I could see a flock of undead pawn-wyverns, gone to bare bone.

“Ephthal. The Fire God Emperor’s meddling has thrown this world’s balance out.”

“Yes, Ephthal. The air of the underworld has grown strong, and monsters of the undying line are multiplying explosively.”

“…I’m not following the story.”

“Those monsters make this island’s sky their hunting ground at this hour, always. And we are forbidden to exercise power past a certain point, Ephthal.”

“Wield power past that point and it’s flagged at once as an emergency, and some measure is taken by the Fire God Emperor, Ephthal.”

“The gist being that those pawn-wyverns are in the way, so you can’t travel?”

“Just so, Ephthal. Though arranging the pegasus pumpkin-carriage itself can be done right away.”

“Yes, Ephthal. And the paperwork to send you to prison can be readied in a few minutes.”

A pegasus pumpkin-carriage, huh. Probably Sasha’s taste. That loli-geezer really is fanciful, or whatever you’d call it.

“No need to worry, Ephthal. Leave that flock be and it’ll move on.”

“Yes, Ephthal. Until then, let’s enjoy our tea together.”

Just then, I stood, and shook my head.

“No, I’d like it readied right away.”

“Hmm?” the two of them went, cocking their heads at me.

“Something like that I can clear up in two minutes. If you’d see to the various preparations in the meantime, I’d be grateful.”

That Sasha is running a countdown carries, in the plainest sense, the meaning of hurry. The limit is seven days, a hundred sixty-eight hours. In which case, idling three hours away doing nothing is far too graceless. There’s a time limit on Bastet as well, so there’s no time to dawdle. There, to the two who for some reason had gone blank and given no answer, I asked:

“Hm? What’s the matter?”

“So that’s how it is, Ephthal. No, since we’re asking Ephthal for aid to begin with, of course it comes to this. Ha… it’s always been us lending our strength to someone, so we’re not used to this.”

“Yes, Ephthal. We would always cut in first in a fight, and the humans were the ones in the rear, in support. It was ever that sort of thing, so it never happened that someone stood at the front and lent us their strength. We are phantom demons, after all, legends of one kind or another, the two of us.”

And the two of them looked at each other and let a gentle smile rise to their lips.

“It’s a reassuring thing, Titania.”

“Yes, Oberon. And he too—Ephthal—is a being of legend, one of the original Four Emperors, is he not.”

Then, having finished readying the formula I’d worked up for the opening, I fixed the sky with a hard glare.

“Level 5: Flight.”

A ferocious burst of speed, a rapid climb. I flew the sky by flight magic and took position dead in the middle of the onrushing flock of pawn-wyverns. I raised my right palm overhead, and then, I spoke words that, to them, meant the same as a death-god’s sentence.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

One strike swept the pawn-wyverns away. Charred through, they dropped, beating the air as they fell. And when I looked down, as if to say that’s that, Oberon and Titania gave me a great, firm nod.

⁂

Riding the pegasus carriage, some twenty minutes of coursing the wide sky. We arrived at an island that looked for all the world like a fortress. I’d checked its whole shape from above a moment ago, the impression was something like Gunkanjima, the Battleship Island off Nagasaki. The entire island was sheathed in a huge, brutish structure that called to mind a military installation, or, plainly, a prison.

When we landed on the island, men in jailer’s uniforms stood at the building’s entrance. I was taken to a sort of waiting room and fitted with handcuffs and a waist-rope. Led on as I was, we went deeper into the building. Set into the passage, for preventing escape I suppose, were several barred iron doors with locks, that stuck in my mind. And passing through them, I was shown into a room like an interrogation cell and made to sit in a chair, and—

“Good work on the handover.”

A bearded man who’d been running his eyes over documents inside lifted his face toward us and said it. By the way, every jailer I’d met to this point was human. So far I hadn’t seen so much as the shape of one of the Fire God Emperor’s familiars.

“Thank you, sir! Head Jailer!”

The two who’d escorted me answered in loud, brisk voices. As if their business was done, they went to stand by the doorway and fell into line there.

“You… attempted assassination of King Oberon, is it? So there was still a fool alive who’d pull a stunt this stupid.”

I’d been told the charge would be cooked up to suit. But Titania had built me a fairly intense one, it seemed.

“…Well, there were various circumstances.”

“Still, even if you kill a phantom demon, the lot of them come back after a few decades, you know? Their power’s mighty to begin with. There’s not a chance in ten thousand of one being killed by an ordinary human.”

A phantom demon is a being where an imaginary creature has taken form. It’s some kind of mental lifeform, a notion I can’t quite parse, so nearly anything goes. That said, kill one once and re-embodiment takes a frightful length of time. Which is why, in the case of a calamity-spreading evil god or the like, the slaying itself does carry meaning. There the head jailer fixed my face with a hard stare and heaved a sigh.

“You knew there was no way you could actually kill him, didn’t you? The reason, a grudge?”

“…”

“Miracle or whatever, you wanted to get your hands on King Oberon’s core… something like that.”

“…”

“Get the core, sure, and you can do all sorts of things. Kill him again… or bind him and torture him? Endless harassment of the lot of them, that’s possible too.”

“…”

“Clammed up, have you… At any rate, this is a prison. You laid hands on a phantom demon that keeps this world’s system running. Best you steel yourself now.”

Well, ‘clammed up,’ he says—but Titania cooked the thing up on her own, so ask me my motive and I couldn’t tell you either.

“And by steel myself, you mean?”

There, the doorway opened. Following that, along with the clatter of a pushcart, freight was wheeled in. Looking, I saw that the iron vessel set on the cart was packed with red, seething-hot stones. And stuck into those hot stones were iron rods, well, it isn’t hard to picture what’s about to happen.

“It’s the custom here that anyone coming in first receives the baptism of the brand.”

The head jailer’s mouth curled, and he laughed, sadistic.

“You mean pressing a mark on the criminal that’ll never fade for life?”

“Giving fear in the form of pain, that’s the chief aim. Well, same as training a dog. We make you understand with your body, first thing, that you must never defy us.”

“…I see.”

“Still, you don’t so much as change color looking at this, no stiffness in the face. Hah, quite the show of nerve, I’ll grant you that.”

“No, of course I’m not enjoying it.”

“The mask’ll come off soon enough,” the head jailer said, and drew from the hot stones an iron rod gone red at the tip. Next, the jailer waiting at the door came over and prompted me to strip off my upper garments. It didn’t sit well with me at all, but I did as told and took off my shirt. Then the jailer seized my shoulder and shoved my upper body down onto the desk by main force. In the next instant, the tip of the rod the head jailer held drew near the nape of my neck. First came a hiss. A beat later, the smell of searing flesh filled the whole room.

“Now, weep! Scream! This is the first step toward you reflecting and being corrected! Understand your crime through pain, first! That commit a crime and this is what befalls you!”

“…”

“Hm? This one… still doesn’t change color one bit… does he?”

Well, it doesn’t hurt, and it isn’t hot. Pain is, at bottom, an electrical signal. And for me, who commands the lightning, tinkering with that much is child’s play.

“You there.”

“What is it?”

The head jailer set the iron rod back in its place and seized my head roughly. With that, he began slamming the head he’d grabbed against the desk with all his strength.

“Get this, here, we are the rules!”

Slam, slam. Over and over my head was struck against the desk. It doesn’t hurt, but this, at least, isn’t pleasant.

“Why is that? Because Sasha-sama built this facility to keep the peace of this world, to correct the wicked!”

There he stopped the slamming and let go of my head.

“You there, look this way.”

I looked up as told, and the head jailer stood there holding a truncheon, smiling fearlessly.

“It’s a truncheon with magic laid on it.”

The head jailer laid the truncheon across my back. And what tore through my whole body along with the impact was, a current.

“Well? An electric shock hits home, doesn’t it? Learn your lesson and from here on you’ll be obedient to—”

“…”

“Even this… not one sound… out of him… huh.”

There the head jailer began to laugh, going hehehe.

“Still, what a genuine fool. If you’d shown a cute little reaction here, you’d have had it better.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“This is hell, but there are degrees even within hell. This very moment, your destination’s been settled as the worst place there is. Regret this attitude of yours later, and it’ll be too late.”

Well, it’s exactly what I was after, though. The block where the phantom demons are held and the block where the humans are held are separate places. But the human block nearest the phantom-demon block is, it seems, where the especially vicious ones get put.

“You don’t change color now, but you’ll change soon enough. Help me, forgive me, you’ll come to weep and scream and beg.”

So, with the head jailer’s word, ‘take him away’, my life in prison began.

⁂

Where they took me was a communal cell. Barring the iron grate, it was a musty room walled on every side in stone. Rough, knobbly stonework, a single toilet in the corner, and no bed. The stones were laid down any old way, so the floor was badly uneven. By the look of it, at night you slept rough under a single blanket, so this promised to be a real trial come dark, with the stone digging into you.

By the way, in the prison there’s apparently a duty to labor. Seven in the morning to seven at night are working hours, and from seven at night you live in this communal cell. Today was the once-a-week day off, so there were five men in prison garb in the room, each absorbed in his own thing, reading, or a game of cards. Not knowing the lay of things, I was watching from the corner of the room when I met eyes with one of them.

“New fellow, mind if I have a word with you?”

The one who spoke, smiling, was a man in his fifties with hair going white, the friendly-seeming sort.

“Yes, that’s fine, but…”

“Let me teach you first the thing you need to live safely here. It’s to keep your head down, from start to finish and through and through… you follow?”

“Well, I’d imagine so.”

“This facility is basically a place of correction. Bullying us isn’t the point of it. So after five years, or ten, or maybe twenty, once your correction’s done, you get shipped to a labor farm. Behave yourself there and you’re even allowed to live in a town, and you can enjoy a drink again.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

“Ah, sorry, I’ve been doing all the talking. What is it?”

And just as the white-haired man said it, the others, who’d surrounded us at some point, spoke up.

“You need something?”

When I said it, a big man who seemed to be the leader grinned.

“No greeting, no manners, figured we’d give you a little discipline.”

Cracking their knuckles, the men sent me leering, coarse looks.

“W-wait, please, sir, this boy just doesn’t know how things work inside yet… let him off this once.”

At those words from the white-haired man, the men swallowed their laughter and backed down with a ‘Well, all right.’ Surprisingly meek. So I thought, but if it kept things from turning into trouble, that was for the best.

“Thank you. You helped me out, didn’t you.”

“Ah, you’d hate to catch a beating without even knowing why, wouldn’t you? They gave me a rough time of it too.”

And the man rolled up the jacket of his prison garb and showed me the bruises here and there.

“That’s terrible.”

“Hot-blooded lot, they are, best not to anger them. So, what was it you wanted to ask?”

“Um… why are you being so kind to me?”

At that, the white-haired man broke into a wide-open, cloudless, bottomless smile.

“Well, I feel bad, is all. Seeing as you’ll be taking my place from here on.”

“Er…?”

“Once a new fellow comes in, you’re at the bottom. Which means, naturally, the target for bullying stops being me. Like I said, you’d hate to catch it without knowing why, wouldn’t you?”

And the man stood, said ‘Well, that’s how it is,’ and walked over to rejoin the others. And at the same moment, a roar of laughter went up on their side.

“Ha, so you finally get promoted from victim to perpetrator, eh?”

“That’s the shape of it, sir.”

I see. From the white-haired man’s side, this was the long-awaited welcome party for the new arrival.

“Ah, no need to be scared. We’ll just wrap you in a blanket so you can’t move and beat you black and blue, that’s all.”

Of the five, two took blankets from the corner of the room and stood there smirking. There, the big man who seemed to be the leader walked over to me.

“Still, why is it I have to take a beating?”

“Errand-running, foisting off work, skimming your meals… you’ve all sorts of roles to play. So it’s necessary to make you understand, first thing.”

But now this has turned into a bother out of nowhere. For my part I’d rather not stir up a fuss. Still, I can’t very well leave sparks to fall on me without brushing them off.

“Er… if I shout in this spot, won’t the guards come running?”

When I said it, the men clutched their bellies and started laughing all over again.

“Ah, right, the new fellow doesn’t know the rules here. This block’s got the especially vicious ones gathered in it. Order kept by force among the inmates, that’s the method in use.”

“Order by force?”

“Makes for good moral instruction too, never want to end up in a place like this again. And for the guards, sticking their noses too far into our affairs is just a management headache. So as long as it doesn’t run against the prison’s own policy, letting us self-govern to a degree suits everyone.”

Just then, I could see a guard on his rounds walking past outside the grate. The guard stopped once, took in the state of things within, and made to walk on—

“Guard, sir, why walk right on by?”

“This is purely me talking to myself, but… I’ve seen nothing, and it isn’t as though the sounds of your squabble carried out to the corridor.”

Saying only that, the guard walked off, and the leader-figure gave a great nod.

“So there you have it. Short of overdoing it, they turn a blind eye. Ratting to a guard gets you nowhere, so, nowhere to run.”

“Let me get this straight: short of overdoing it, the guards turn a blind eye… is that right?”

“Aye, that’s right. Once it’s killing, they can’t very well look away, mind. There’s only one inmate that’s allowed.”

“Only one…?”

“You’ll find that out soon enough whether you like it or not. So, talk’s over. Do your best, new blood. This is a baptism too.”

With that, the leader-figure hauled a great fist back at me. It was a punch a fly could’ve landed on, so I could dodge it. But I chose, deliberately, not to.

Thunk.

The sound rang out, and the man’s fist buried itself in my cheek.

“Ow, owwwww!”

The one who screamed wasn’t me; it was the man. Even without defensive magic, my body’s reinforced by physical enhancement. For a human who can’t even strengthen himself properly, punching me with brute force isn’t much different from punching a boulder bare-handed.

“You bastard! What’d you do?!”

No, I didn’t do anything, though. The other four, flying into a rage, sprang at me all at once. There are any number of ways to sweep the lot of them aside in one go, but I wouldn’t do that. For the moment, I drove a fist into the leader-figure’s nose to knock the fight out of him. That said, even this I kept from sinking in deep, not shattering the bone, holding it to a light nosebleed. Then I let the oncoming four pass, slipped through the wave of them, and out the other side. As we crossed, I threw a backfist into another one’s nose.

“Gyaaaah!”

This the same as before. Light and gentle, a nosebleed, just enough to knock the fight out of him with the pain.

“You… for that skinny build, seems you’ve some confidence in your arms.”

Putting in a touch of effort, I closed the distance to the man at the front all at once. With that, a flashy shoulder-throw, and he went flying. This one too I didn’t drop on his head, but on his back. I slammed him to the ground just hard enough to leave him writhing but unhurt.

“Guhah…!”

“O-oi… wh-what was that, that technique?”

“The guy flew… it was like magic…”

Still, in this world, grappling really hasn’t developed at all. Well, it’s a world of swords and sorcery, so the notion just never occurred to anyone, I suppose.

“So… still want to keep this up?”

Two left. Watching the three writhe, their faces dyed with fear at once. And the two of them exchanged a look and put on stiff, twitching smiles.

“H-hehe… you’re a rough one for jokes.”

“We weren’t seriously gonna beat you up either. Just meant to… give you a bit of a scare, is all.”

Transparent lies, but I’ll play along here.

“Is that so. I thought it was some kind of joke myself, so I was going easy. Ah, and one more thing, next time, if something that isn’t a joke happens, I’ll go all out without holding back.”

“This was going easy…” Just as the eyes of all of them went wide, I plopped myself down in the corner of the room with a there we go.

⁂

A night passed, and the next day. With a cry of ‘Rise!’ that rang through the prison, each cell was thrown open. All at once the inmates burst out and lined up in the passage. And then—

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

The inmates read off, right to left, the numbers assigned to them.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, that’s Block D, no absentees again today!”

And the moment roll call ended, the guard nodded and gave the word: ‘Each of you, back inside.’ At the leave, the inmates filed back in, one after another, their pace not a hair out of order.

Meals, by the way, apparently come properly, three times a day. A while after roll call, the plan is for the group to move on to the mess hall as they are. After that comes labor time, and my prison life starts in earnest. At any rate, there was time before the move. At loose ends, I happened to send my gaze down the passage through the grate, and there I was struck dumb.

Because there was one inmate walking at the head, all but leading the guards along.

“What’s that…?”

When I asked one of my cellmates, the answer came back around a yawn.

“Off to the mess hall, isn’t he? The guards eat first. Not slop like what we get, a proper special menu.”

“No, not that… why is the man who just said no absentees at the end walking with them… no, more like leading the guards?”

“That one’s a being you don’t touch. His meals are finer than the guards’, same menu as the warden, they say.”

“…What do you mean?”

“That’s the one they call Ghost. Rumor has it he’s been in this prison doing time for three hundred years.”

“Three hundred years… Ghost…?”

“Don’t know why, but the guards look the other way for him too. He walks out of his cell as he pleases, and no one calls him on it. When he’s breaking a rule, the guards treat him as though he doesn’t exist. That’s why he’s called Ghost.”

By the look of him, maybe forty. He seemed the dull, nowhere sort of man you’d find anywhere, and the reason he got special treatment truly escaped me. Still, look closely and I’d seen him somewhere before…

At that, my cellmate gave a little chuckle.

“You’ve got a pretty face, so watch yourself.”

“Hm? Watch myself?”

“Hard to believe, I know, but his room’s a private one. He knocked three solitary cells into one and remodeled it into his own quarters. Not a grate but a door, and privacy taken into account.”

“How to put it… that’s an absurd amount of clout.”

“And it’s the custom that pretty young men get summoned to his room. Since it’s Ghost’s doing, the guards look the other way there too, of course.”

“Er… and the reason for that?”

“Isn’t it obvious,” the man said, and slapped his own backside.

“There’s no women here. But men, as you know, we’ve got in droves.”

A nasty sweat prickled down my spine. Well, in a place like this, that sort of romance ends up blossoming… That’s a common enough story, I think. I don’t deny that in itself, but…

“So, best watch yourself. You’re his type, no question about it.”

A crawling feeling came over my backside, and I let a wry smile slip out despite myself.

“…Thanks for the warning.”

Those were words of honest gratitude. Well, that aside, the present state of things wasn’t great. Oberon and the others had said a collaborator would appear once I was inside, but there was no sign of it. And even if I tried to make contact with the phantom demons individually, this is, quite literally, a prison. Naturally there are my cellmates’ eyes too, so I can’t move as I please. As things stood, I couldn’t see myself clearing the very first hurdle, moving through the prison in secret.

Right, what to do? There’s no time to sit back and take it easy, either. And as I was thinking that, I let out an ‘Ah’ and was struck dumb. And no wonder, the iron door of our communal cell had opened, and an inmate walked in.

“Ghost…”

The man tucked a bundle of keys into his breast and walked straight over to me. An inmate carrying a ring of keys, that’s beyond absurd, truly.

“You, the new one? You’ve got a cute face.”

“Er…?”

And with that he patted my shoulder and smiled brightly.

“After breakfast, come to my room. Ah, yes, I’ll send word to the bathhouse too. Best you wash up before you come.”

Saying only that, the man opened the door and went out. My cellmates pressed their palms together as if to say our condolences, smirking. Right, this is a problem. No, truly a problem. At this stage I can’t very well stand out, which is exactly why I kept yesterday’s fuss to a minimum. So far it should have been going well. But it seems I’ve drawn the eye of the man who’s likely the most famous in the whole prison.

⁂

The man’s quarters had two bedrooms and a toilet. The furnishings, too, were nothing but the lavish sort you’d expect of some noble’s house. The floor, unlike our bare stonework, was boarded and even laid with a fine carpet.

“Welcome. I’ve been waiting.”

Ushered in as I was, I entered the room and stepped into the bedroom. Leading me on, the man sat down on the edge of the bed. Then, turning to face me, he smiled and said:

“Come here. Now, it may hurt a little, but I don’t mean to take your life.”

Right, this is bad. Thinking this is bad, I stepped one foot toward the bed for now. And at the same instant, what came flying from above was an arrow of light.

“What?!”

Is this a magic trap to repel intruders? To keep me from catching on, it even had silencing and presence-erasing formulas laid over it. What’s more, it had power enough that taking one dead-on would be bad. I twisted my body and slipped the first shot. But the arrows of light came flying one after another, from every corner of the room. When dodging by footwork alone became impossible, I threw up a defensive wall all around me.

“Level 7: Perfect Wall.”

Three hundred sixty degrees. I spread it in all directions, the floor included, and with that the arrows of light could no longer touch me.

“So what exactly is going on here?”

This man is a mage, no question. And a formidable one, at that, good enough to make me use a Level 7 with pre-planted traps alone.

“I see, so it really is Ephthal-kun.”

The man rose from the bed, took a bottle of liquor from a shelf, and sat down on the sofa in the room. Then he pointed to the seat across the table. It seemed he meant sit, but did he mean to hold a drinking bout? I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Just now, did you call me Ephthal-kun? No… ah, I’ve got it now. No wonder I thought I’d seen you before. You’re Clark, the half-vampire?”

The very same, Clark-san said, and gave a big nod. And at the sight of a face from old days, the corners of my own mouth softened on their own.

“You and I studied together at Sasha-sama’s for a while, didn’t we. Well, you ran off after a few years.”

“Ha, please don’t bring up that time too much. Still, to meet a senior disciple in a place like this… I’m genuinely astonished.”

“Still, Ephthal-kun. Seems you had a thoroughly rough time of it out there.”

“…”

“Hm? Something the matter?”

“Ah, no, I was just taken aback by the sudden reunion. But how is it you’re in a place like this, Clark?”

When I sat on the sofa, liquor was poured for me, so I took a single sip. Fine liquor, the sweetness and the astringency struck in just the right balance.

“This prison is a crucial place, one that governs the peace of this world. So I watch over this facility from the position of an inmate, to control various things from within. Keeping the guards from going too far, that’s the main aim, I’d say.”

“And that… for three hundred years?”

“They tell me I could take turns at it, mind. But with regular hours for rising and sleeping, my magic research comes along nicely too… I’ve grown fond of this life. By the way, your being here means it’s finally come to freeing the phantom demons, has it?”

“Yes, of course. Still, you really are a wicked one, Clark-san.”

“Oh? How so?”

“That, well… all that about backsides and such. Rumors are flying that you’re on the prowl for pretty boys.”

When I laughed ha-ha, Clark-san went straight-faced at once and answered:

“No, I do like backsides, you know?”

“………You don’t mean women’s?”

“Mm, I took after my master, you see. Before I knew it, that had become my taste.”

Far too convincing. This is why… I hated being at Sasha’s. Stay there long and there were so, so many people who turned out this way… and my own chastity was in danger to begin with.

“Only, I’d not have you misunderstand: I’ve never once done it by force, you know? Always with consent.”

“No, I wasn’t asking.”

“For the sake of my honor I can’t have you getting the wrong idea. This I’ll have said properly.”

“At any rate… I take it you’ll cooperate, is that right?”

“Aye, for now let’s go with the outward setup that you’ve become my lover. Set it up so you’re in my room with me around the clock, and you’ll draw no suspicion and can carve out time to move freely.”

“It’s a setup with a great deal to think about, but beggars can’t be choosers. Of course, I’ve no objection.”

At any rate, this makes moving about easier. It looks like I can finally set out on freeing the phantom demons in earnest, I thought, and clenched my fist tight.

⁂

Deep in the night. I woke in a room apart from Clark-san’s. He’d asked, ‘Shall we sleep in the same room?’, but I brushed it off as a joke and let it pass. Well, that aside. I began layering stealth-line magic over myself.

Optical camouflage. Presence-erasure. Air-cutoff, to kill scent and sound both.

Right. Stacked this thick, at a glance an ordinary human shouldn’t notice me. By the way, my collaborator Clark-san, being far too famous, can’t move about, the reverse of my problem. The reason being that the block where the phantom demons are held is run by the Fire God Emperor’s people. And they know Clark is Sasha’s disciple. So, inevitably, come anywhere near that block and they’d be on the highest guard. Which is precisely why, in that block alone, he can’t move. Same reason Oberon and the others can’t, and so in the end it comes down to leaning on me, the nearly-unmarked one.

But for me to roam the prison, even with my form hidden, is fairly difficult. First, there are anti-escape barred doors all through the passages. And the phantom-demon block has countermeasures against spatial-transfer magic too. A way to slip the net… isn’t out of the question. But it takes far too much time and effort.

“It’d be nice if there were a hidden passage or something, one I could move through freely all the way to the phantom-demon block…”

“A hidden passage, is it? There’s one right there in the corner, Ephthal. Mind the flow of magic, and look close.”

“So there is, master. Sure enough, there’s a way through here. But this is advanced. A passage concealed by warping the dimension and working sorcery on it?”

“Sharp as ever, Ephthal. Few could see through it that far on first sight. Well, it’s that my teaching was good, I’d say. Ha, that’s your master for you!”

At that, I shouted despite myself.

“Wait, why are you here, master?!”

Sasha cocked his head, puzzled.

“Didn’t Oberon tell you there was a collaborator?”

“No, wasn’t that supposed to be Clark?”

“Ho, Clark too… True enough, I’d left the running of this facility to him from the shadows. Bastet, who held the post in name only, was a touch too soft, too unreliable…”

She really was unreliable, that girl. As a familiar and as a maid she was excellent. In looks she was crisp and sharp, like a cat-beastkin, but against all that, there truly was a streak of too-much-kindness in her even back then. Well, that aside.

“No, so, why are you here, master?”

“Strictly speaking, I am not Sasha proper. I am a divided-body that manifests when danger nears the system.”

“Hmm… something like an autonomous entity cut off from the main body?”

“Just so. Naturally, I know nothing whatever of what’s happened since the Fire God Emperor last opened the barrier and joined with the outside, nor of what the outside Sasha is doing.”

“So it’s the same for you, master, the way the Fire God Emperor’s side can’t know the mutual situation unless they exchange at the new-moon maintenance? Well, either way, having two collaborators is a real comfort.”

“Mm. I too am glad Ephthal came. This makes me a hundred strong.”

“That’s a meek sort of line for you, master. Ordinarily you’d be running your mouth with brat and chick and the like…”

“That’s because ordinarily I am invincible, no? Right now the Otogi Fantasia can’t be used, and without the phantom demons, I’m but a frail, peerless beautiful girl. Naturally there are times I feel a bit forlorn.”

“A… girl…?”

“Mm, a beautiful girl!”

Declared with a full-faced grin.

“Ah… yeah… that might… be so… I suppose.”

In fact, going by looks alone, he’s dreadfully cute, which is somehow infuriating. There, all at once Sasha’s body gave off light and shrank to a size that would sit in your palm. Also, there are wings on his back now.

“I won’t even bother pointing out that you can change your body’s size, but… why that form?”

“Pixie spec. I thought I’d make the most of a mental body while I have one. My body in the flesh can’t very well grow big and small, after all.”

“…Let me change the question. Why the Pixie spec?”

“I’ll have you know, even so, I was once called the fairy of the northern country…”

“Come to think of it, you were from the north, weren’t you, master.”

“Just so. Set me to skiing and it’s a marvel, I tell you.”

“Well, you can do anything, master. You’ve mastered hand-to-hand close combat to a high level too.”

“No, and yet, wouldn’t you know it, I can’t ski at all.”

“…What do you mean?”

“It’s, the gap matters, no? A creature like me, with reflexes beyond compare, looks like she’d glide right along, no?”

“Well, that’s so, I suppose.”

“And there’s the thing. Me, who by rights would go gliding cool and unruffled over the snow like a fairy? And then I take a tumble and go ow, it hurts, it hurts! and well up teary-eyed like a child and land on my rump, and that produces, how to say it, a gap-moe sort of cuteness, no?”

What a pain… This person is really such a pain… And that scenario isn’t even cute. More to the point, why did he bring this topic up at all.

“So, back to the subject. This hidden passage, or bypass, what’s it for?”

“To begin with, who was it built this place?”

“Well, that’d be you, master.”

“So of course the blueprints are in my head. It’s been remade into a prison now, but in truth it was originally my villa. In the old days I invited all sorts here.”

“Hm? Wait… I’m not following the story?”

“Well, that’s why I built them, hidden passages without number. For creeping in on the pretty boys I’d invited at night, you understand.”

Somehow, this fellow is truly awful. And I turned a flat stare on Sasha.

“Wh-what’s that look?! I have never once done such a thing by force!”

The excuse is identical to Clark-san’s, too. It just may be that had I studied under Sasha long enough, I’d have awakened to something. In that sense, running off early really was the right call.

“Master, that sort of thing… that’s enough already…”

“Well, be at ease. About two parts in ten of the night-crawling business I say in jest. Don’t take it to heart.”

“Which means eight parts are true, then…”

“At any rate, peerless beauty though I am, as you know I’ve a great many enemies, one way and another.”

“The peerless-beauty part is rather beside the point, but yes, you did do outrageous things, master.”

“Mm. In the end I even planned the desperate trick of holing up in this world should I hit a great pinch in the real one. And accounting for the case of being pushed this far, doubling as an escape route, this place has hidden holes without number.”

“For the record, do these holes connect to the phantom-demon block as well?”

“Connect, you say—”

And Sasha grinned and went on:

“—they connect to every room.”

“Every… room?”

“Mm. To the rooms where the phantom demons are held too, of course. Since they’re passages formed by warping the dimension, the entrances and exits can’t so much as be noticed by any but one at your level or mine.”

“No, even I couldn’t have caught the dimensional warp without being told it’s there.”

“Just so. If even you are so, then that’s why it went unnoticed by anyone all this while.”

“Still, even for you, master, to make and maintain a dimensional hole like this… it really is too much nonsense.”

“I can’t manage such a stunt in the real world, naturally. And the same holds for the Fire God Emperor.”

“The Fire God Emperor too? What do you mean?”

“Mm, because right now this world is being meddled with by him. You likely know it already, but the original system here is being diverted to his use, while his own execution force is the familiars he prepared himself. And the troublesome ones are those familiars… no, one should call them crystals of curse—”

“Crystals of curse?”

“The flame-curse insects. It’s the same nonsense that lets me go full Pixie-spec here—the kind that only works in a mental world. Turned against you, its threat will be plain soon enough, however much you’ll come to hate it.”

Then Sasha snapped his fingers. And a black hole opened in the corner of the room, and a bypass appeared.

“Now, let’s begin, Ephthal. A stroll by night.”

⁂

It was a passage built like a rough-rock cave. This, they said, was a passage made by applying transfer magic to interfere with the dimension. So the passage’s size and scale were free as you liked, ignoring even the actual size of the building, that sort of outrageous business. In fact, the interior was vast enough you could call it all but a labyrinth. Forks everywhere, branching and branching, passages laced through like an ant’s nest, quite literally. By Sasha’s word, to explore the whole passage single-handed from nothing would take about half a year just to map.

Since it was made as an escape route to begin with, it was built that way on purpose. And there’s one point worth special note. This passage connects to every room on the prison island. That alone is astonishing, but each end of the passage, the exit, is in a magic-mirror state. So the inside of a room can be seen, one-way, from this side. Given how the bypass came to be built, it’s no wonder, but here I’ll gratefully make use of the function.

“Still, this is something. To see straight into the state of a room…”

“Well, I did have peeping at pretty boys in view too, ow, that hurts!”

I put in a silent backfist by way of retort. It’s been so since the old days: when it’s a light-mood remark about his kinks, this person doesn’t get angry even if you retort. Far from it, he looks a touch pleased. There’s actually a suspicion he’s a hardcore masochist, a loli-geezer, and a lover of pretty boys, and on top of that a hardcore masochist. Yeah, it gets tangled, so let’s not think too deeply about it.

“By the way, are the bypass holes set in different places from room to room?”

“Hn? Why ask such a thing?”

“Depending on where the entrance is, I’d best think about how to make contact with the phantom demons. If it’s the ceiling, for instance, coming down makes noise. There’s a limit to how much sound-cutting magic can do.”

“I see, there, be at ease. Most of the rooms… there’s a thin partition wall between one cell and the next, no? They’re all set into those.”

“Why go to the trouble of putting them there? The wall across from the barred entrance would have done, wouldn’t it?”

“Coming out of a thin wall no human could possibly fit through gives them a start, no? Well, I did have night-crawling on pretty boys in view, so being startled is the whole savor of it, ow, that hurts!”

“At any rate, the bypass is a great help. With this I should be able to make contact with all the confined phantom demons.”

“Well, the passages are vast, so without my navigation you’d be lost in no time.”

And led along, we walked some twenty minutes. Sasha stopped before an exit leading to a certain room.

“Now then, Ephthal, what do you make of that?”

“…Eggs?”

Just as I said, the floor of that room was packed with eggs, lined at even intervals. About the size of rugby balls, I’d say? Their number easily reached the hundreds, or a thousand, a grand sight. And here and there were left ghastly remnants like the petals of a carnivorous plant. That, I suppose, shows those eggs have already hatched.

“Yes, those are the eggs of the insects. And next, ”

Prompted by Sasha, we walked on down the passage. And in the room beyond the next exit we were led to, a hideous scene spread out. The first thing to catch my eye was a single giant centipede, big enough to swallow up a wild boar. And, facing off against it, eight red spiders, these too about human size, huge in any case. Watching the standoff of centipede and spiders a while, the spiders sprang at the centipede. Coiling, clinging, the spiders sank their fangs into the centipede one after another. But the centipede wasn’t taking it one-sidedly either. Refusing to lose, it thrashed its body to tear the spiders off, slammed them to wall and floor, or fought back with its fangs. The body fluids of both flew, and the room was dyed purple in moments. And then—

Both were venomous insects, most likely. The centipede didn’t look all that badly hurt, but its movements gradually slowed, and now it was at its last gasp. The spiders bitten by the centipede had likewise slackened. There the room’s ceiling opened, and this time dozens of ants about the size of basketballs were thrown in. At the sudden introduction of the ants, centipede and spiders both panicked. And of course the ants too fell into a great panic at their sudden situation. The inside of the room became, quite exactly, like scattered spider hatchlings. Three kinds of insect ran about everywhere, rampaged, and warred with one another.

For a while the state went on, three camps moving without order, striking as each saw fit. But before long… something interesting happened. The spiders and ants stopped fighting each other partway and began, in cooperation, to attack the weakened centipede. This is a phenomenon that often happens even in a human battle-royale-format match. Concentrate your attacks on the weakened one and drive him out, to raise your own odds of survival, that method. So, once the giant centipede fell wholly silent under the all-out assault from both, this time the contest of spiders and ants began.

“And this is…?”

“The kodoku. What’s inside are the underworld ant, the false-dragon centipede, and the vermilion-curse spider.”

“By kodoku, you mean… the kodoku of sorcery?”

“Mm. Shut venomous insects together in a cramped space and make them fight. At the end of the mutual slaughter, one insect is left. Then, using that surviving insect’s venom, one makes a killing poison. It’s called divine poison, magically strengthened so its effect is several times over.”

While we spoke, ants and spiders both dwindled steadily in number. There I noticed something amiss.

“The spiders… their numbers are down and they’re hurt, but their movements are better than at the start.”

“The others are mere venomous-insect monsters. The vermilion-curse spider is the Fire God Emperor’s familiar, and governs curses. Hence the logic that it reaps the greatest magical benefit from the kodoku formula.”

“So as the kodoku rite advances, they’re strengthened by the power of the curse mid-battle?”

“Mm, exactly so.”

Several minutes passed, and by the hand of the spiders, dominant throughout, the ants were at last wiped out. And seeing the scene that came next, I felt I wanted to cover my eyes in disbelief.

“The spiders are… eating each other…?”

“Mm,” Sasha nodded, and went on. “And in the end, the victor of the intra-kind strife becomes the flame-curse insect.”

The strife among the spiders ended, and the last one left standing there was a single red spider. Then something jet-black clung to its surface, and the wavering aura looked for all the world like a red-black flame. A vile and violent scent that drifted even into this passage. I felt a shudder and a chill of dread.

“What exactly is the flame-curse insect?”

“The Fire God Emperor’s specialty is brainwashing. He falsifies and usurps the memories of those he marks, or brainwashes them into pawns. And one of the means to that is the curse, and the magical medium used for it is that insect.”

“But for a curse-insect and its kind to hold such power… by common sense that’s impossible.”

“In the real world it has no body, and is no more than a lump of high-purity magical curse-energy. But, it’s a thing that originally does mischief within the human heart. In a world with the aspect of a mental world, the logic is that it exhibits explosive power. And so… er, who was it now, there was one, that brat… the foster brother of the descendant of the first Ice God Emperor.”

“You mean Brad, Sheryl’s brother?”

“Mm. Roughly, that one could handle about five of them. So, how far could you deal with them, Ephthal?”

Looking at the flame-curse insect visible on the far side, I sank into careful thought.

“…Well, if I’m to take them all at once, twenty is about my limit.”

“About that, I’d say. Then… what if it were a hundred?”

“You can’t mean…?”

There the countless eggs from before flashed across my mind. Recalling their number, feeling a cold sweat on my back, I swallowed hard.

“That thing’s survivable lifespan is about seven days, and the ones kept in constant use to guard the phantom-demon block number only a few.”

“But those eggs from before… there were several hundred or more, weren’t there?”

“Five red spiders make one flame-curse insect. Made in earnest, at maximum strength with no regard for anything, a hundred or so at once is possible. Or rather, after the kodoku, about a hundred are always kept preserved by a freezing technique.”

“I see… so this really won’t be settled by any simple means.”

“So it can’t be managed by your solitary strength alone, as it always has been. Best carve that into your heart.”

Saying so, Sasha turned on his heel and started deeper down the passage.

“Where to now?”

“There’s one more place I’d have you see. There I’ll tell you the concrete plan for this operation’s aim, the one that stands paired with freeing the phantom demons.”

“And that would be?”

“Securing the means to return outside. Even if we free the phantom demons whose power is sealed, without a technique to call them out to the real world alongside you, it’s a treasure left to rot.”

⁂

Led on by Sasha, we went further through the phantom-demon block. And on the way, a voice I knew well reached my ears.

“Wait a moment, please.”

As I made to head that way, Sasha started to say ‘Leave it,’ but broke off partway and shrugged, as if giving up. He knows well enough that nothing he says will stop me. After all, that was the voice of Bastet, who was once my familiar, who lived with me all but as family.

“Where is this…?”

“The deepest part of the block where the phantom demons are confined.”

“And the one shut in is, sure enough…?”

“Mm. The one who gathered the hot-blooded phantom demons and tried to rise against the Fire God Emperor—Bastet.”

Just as Sasha said, in a stone-flagged cell Bastet was held captive. In human looks she’d be early twenties, with cat ears and a cat’s tail. She wasn’t in a maid’s dress like back then, but the shoulder-length brown hair was unchanged. Bound in prison garb, chained with cuffs, her keen gaze was the same as of old.

“This is a place for correcting those who’ve strayed from the path. A prison, not an execution ground. Aren’t you laboring under some misunderstanding, warden?”

The one she was glaring at was a man in his prime. Planted there four-square, he wore the odd getup of a mage’s robe thrown over a guard’s uniform. There were others in the room too, four men in prison garb. They’d been set in restraint chairs, heads blindfolded and gagged, a fairly lurid sight.

“That’s right, true enough, Sasha positions this place as a facility of correction. But now the one who decides everything here is the Fire God Emperor’s disciple, entrusted with this place: me.”

The warden grinned. Then, without pause, he struck a hand-blade at the prisoner sitting beside him. The thud of a falling head. The cut was charred black and smoking, fire magic wreathed about his hand, I’d say.

“Yes, there is life imprisonment, but no death penalty. Correct yourself and you’re set free without charge, that is the law the Creator laid down.”

“To feed the phantom demons, humans were once brought here. It began with death-row convicts from the outside, was it?”

“That’s right. But disorder by ruffians was not the shape of this world that Sasha-sama sought. At first, I hear, the correction facility here worked to the fullest and best effect.”

“And so the ones whose fangs were drawn raised crops, built towns, made children and grew the population. Come to think of it, Sasha brought orphans on the brink of starving to death in the real world here too, didn’t he?”

“Sasha-sama is… gentle with children. That one meant to make this a paradise for those who’d lost any place to go.”

“Fairies flitting about a little island in the sky, where those driven from the living world pass their days in peace… ha. A fairyland to the letter, is it.”

Surprised, I sent Sasha a glance, and he hurriedly lowered his lashes. Embarrassed, perhaps, to have an unexpected side of him found out, he’d gone red to the ears and puffed out his cheeks.

“What, Ephthal? Have you some complaint with me?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Mgh…”

And muttering to himself, ‘Saying needless things…,’ Sasha began to gnaw at his thumbnail.

“But the nature of man is evil. Make a human town and, in the end, some run to atrocity. For instance, this.”

The man whose head had just been struck off. Besides him, the men bound to chairs came to three. Moving his gaze over each of them one by one, the warden went on.

“One killed his parents to steal their money; another killed a string of rich men, likewise for money. And the last confined children to sate his own desires.”

“But… after more than ten years of a corrective life, they repented. They came to know the pain of others.”

“And who decides they’ve repented? Mouth and manner can be dressed up any which way, and there’s no confirming what’s behind it, is there?”

“Which is why—” and the warden turned each of his hands into a blade and drove them at the prisoners. “These are unneeded. Disposal.”

The smell of searing reached even us. And at the same time, with a heavy sound, two heads flew and dropped. There Bastet bit her lip and pressed it into a tight line.

“Enough, stop such things. What is there to gain by showing me this?”

“Honestly, your way is too soft. Set loose outside the scum who did things that merit killing, and if the order of this world is thrown into disarray as a result, what then? In the end it could even lead to a decline in the quality of the phantom demons.”

“This has been the way since old times. Press down men’s hearts with fear past all measure and there’s no sound mental activity, and thus no feed for the phantom demons either.”

“The Fire God Emperor will see to verifying all that hereafter. At any rate, right now I am the order and the law of this world.”

There a guard came in. I’d heard the phantom-demon block was run by the Fire God Emperor, but this block seemed different even in its guards. Because the one who entered at the warden’s signal was a monstrous shape clad in a guard’s uniform. An Ifrit, a high-ranking fire familiar. By the way, an Ifrit wreathes itself in flame during battle, but ordinarily it takes an ogre-like form with reddish-black skin.

“I’m well used to handling fire and insects, you see…”

Taking a jar from the Ifrit that had entered, the warden smiled a nasty smile. And drawing a centipede from within the jar, he looked from Bastet to the last remaining prisoner and back.

“This is no monster or anything of the sort, just a poison-bearing centipede. A feeble, frail thing, crushed underfoot if a human so much as steps on it.”

“But—” the warden laughed, delighted, at the prisoner. “Now, put it into a nostril, an ear-hole, or the anus, and what happens? From a feeble thing it turns, in an instant, into a hair-raising demon.”

“Hiii!”

Blindfolded, but he must have heard the words. To the prisoner, all the blood gone from him at once, the warden dealt another hand-blade.

“A joke. I’ve no taste for hurting people to no purpose. Don’t take it to heart, please.”

A head dropped, and the warden turned his gaze to Bastet.

“But if there’s a purpose, I’ve no choice but to do it. Since, alas, this sort of method is the most effective for tormenting a phantom demon.”

Bastet didn’t stir a single brow. But even so, that some slight negative feeling had lodged in her eyes was plain even from here.

“Still, a body that can’t die is a hard lot too. Die and die again, and after a few decades you revive; you never fade away. But keep hold of the core and it’s endless regeneration… and every time, the misery of torture along with it.”

“…Do as you please.”

“After the public execution, your core goes into a pool where insects writhe. For all eternity, so long as the world lasts, you’ll keep reviving with your power sealed, and keep dying, eaten by the insects.”

And with a ‘Sorry about this,’ the warden dipped his head to Bastet in a little bow.

“There’s no way to make you suffer but this one, so—there’s no help for it. Ah, truly, I am sorry.”

And with that the warden advanced a few steps toward Bastet and drove a kick into her face. Bastet, as before, didn’t stir a brow. But as for me… I was nearing the limit of my patience.

“Why a public execution for me? What meaning could there be in it?”

“I’ve got to make a show of it to every last one in this prison. What’s above and what’s below. I’ve got to make them see despair, what becomes of those who defy us.”

“The Otogi Fantasia is not so simple a spell as you imagine. What it means to make phantom demons obey, you don’t understand it. The Fire God Emperor could never master it fully. No, I, at least, will not yield.”

“Fufu, the spirit only lasts at the start. Happily, the Fire God Emperor has ages of time. Time enough for talk and mutual understanding… well, I doubt you’ll last a hundred years before you come over to us. Weep and apologize and I might even forgive you. Change your heart and say the word anytime.”

“…”

“Whether he kills Sasha and takes it, or puts him in suspended death, or Sasha bends wholly to the Fire God Emperor, I don’t know. At any rate, this world will be kept in a meaningful form. That is the Fire God Emperor’s decision.”

“And will it truly go so neatly as you think?”

“Even if Sasha should cease to be a usable pawn, the Fire God Emperor need only take it and wield it. So, for the time being, it’s the disciplining of you, ringleader of the recent rebellion. Repetition is what matters in learning… until every last one submits, I’ll have fear stamped into you again, and again, however many times it takes.”

“And you believe doing such things will make me swear loyalty to you?”

“You won’t swear loyalty, no. But you’ll obey. You’ll come to follow orders.”

“…Do as you like, then. But this one thing I’ll say, I will never, ever yield.”

Sasha, looking puzzled, asked me:

“You needn’t… save her?”

“Of course I’ll save her. But it’s not now, is it?”

I snapped my fingers.

“What did you do, Ephthal?”

“Shared the countdown. That thing can only be seen by your school, master.”

Bastet was once my familiar. She, like me, would understand what this meant. In effect, it was a message that I would come, without fail, to save her.

“Now, let’s get to the heart of it. What do I need to do, no, how do I go about beating these people down?”

At the words, Sasha broke into a sharp little smile.

“So your fighting spirit’s finally caught, has it.”

⁂

“No one to see us here. You can come out.”

Adjusting the dimensional warp, the place we emerged from the bypass was a garbage dump. Inside, boxes were stacked any which way, each heaped with refuse. In its build the room was no different from a communal cell, a moldy flagstone floor and walls, the sour reek of kitchen scraps catching at the nose.

“This place is the lowest level of the prison island. Come this way.”

Led along, I headed to the corner of the dump. There a horizontal hole gaped open. Wind was blowing in this way, so, thinking surely not, I peered in and could see the scenery outside.

“Meaning they throw the garbage out through this hole?”

“Well, that’s the shape of it. Ephthal, try tossing some garbage out.”

Prompted, I took refuse from a box and flung it into the hole.

“And, well, as you can see, it goes like this.”

Where Sasha pointed. Far, far below, where the garbage had fallen, a red light arose. Look closely and a wall of flame had appeared over the whole of that region.

“At any rate, this gives you the general situation, no?”

“Yes, the garbage was annihilated. Still, what a thick barrier. Breaking through that, wouldn’t it be impossible?”

“It’s the barrier the Fire God Emperor made. Because that thing wraps this world in a sphere, the passage between the mental world and the real world has been cut off.”

That wall of flame from a moment ago had no small power. How thick it is I couldn’t say. But if you tried to force your way through it, the odds are high you’d burn up before ever getting outside.

“And… well, this is this island’s present state.”

“I have a question, though, just what is down below there?”

Because the instant the wall of flame vanished I checked with far-sight magic, and what I saw was quite something.

“That’d be what’s called the underworld.”

“Hm? Even you don’t know, master?”

“I’ve never been, and I’ve acquaintances who went, but they all… never came back. I’m curious, but you get set upon by all sorts of nasty things on the way.”

“But that’s the underworld? Really?”

“It is. Strange, no? Why there’d be a cluster of high-civilization buildings down there. It resembles the style of the ancient magic civilization, but…”

“It looks like the architectural style of the world I originally came from, too.”

Glimpsed dimly from on high, it was scenery you’d not find odd if told it was some city of Earth turned near-future. Just what in the world is that…? So I thought, but if Sasha doesn’t know, there’s no way I would.

“Originally, part of why I built the sky-island cluster was to observe the underworld from this region, the way the Ten Sages of the ancient magic civilization did.”

“That’s a fairy-tale story. The Ten Sages who came from somewhere, built the ancient magic civilization, and then vanished off somewhere. By one account they didn’t age for thousands of years and reigned atop the ruling structure all the while.”

It’s only a fairy tale, but a famous one. Back then, humans living something like a Stone Age life had a high scientific civilization and magical civilization raised up in the blink of an eye by the Ten Sages who appeared out of nowhere. After that the civilization reached the heights of a long prosperity. But one day, all at once, the Ten Sages departed to some other dimension, that’s the tale.

“Not aging for a few thousand years isn’t especially a problem. I’m much the same on that point myself.”

“And after that, a war broke out, was it?”

“Mm. Technology not made by their own hands, only handed to them. Humans holding power beyond their measure warred with one another, and unable to master the power of destruction, they self-destructed, civilization and all, in war. Only some of the magic techniques remained, down to the present.”

And having said that far, Sasha bit his lip, melancholy.

“So, the Fire God Emperor… that brat cannot be handed this spell. He’s the same as a child with no sense of discretion. For the sake of his goal he’d destroy the world without so much as a change of color… at the end of it all, the ultimate crap-brat.”

“So, concretely, what do you mean to do, and how?”

Sasha put a hand to empty space, and the hand vanished. Then, with a difficult face, going ‘Where was it now?’, he made a groping sort of gesture. And when he drew the hand back, a hand holding a little pouch appeared. No, I get that it’s a fourth-dimensional-pocket sort of magic. But having this kind of outrageous thing done as a matter of course isn’t good for the heart.

“Inside this there’s a ring. I’ve named it the god-releasing tool, and we’ll use it. What the Fire God Emperor set in the phantom demons’ weakening is a technique to seal a spiritual existence. Which is why they can’t even break their cages now. But I’m an expert in that line myself, in fact, undoing it alone is easy enough.”

“And the way to get the god-releasing tool to the phantom demons? They’re strictly confined, from what I hear… no, ah, right, that’s easy.”

“Yes, that’s what the bypass is for. By the day of reckoning, secretly make contact with every last phantom demon, and in parallel, pry open the dimensional road out.”

“Pry it open, you say… how do you mean to? So far the Fire God Emperor’s done nothing about my being here. Which means he has absolute confidence in that barrier, doesn’t it? Can it really be managed?”

“Mm. It can’t be managed at all, you know. Frankly, I throw up my hands.”

“I’d think so. If it could be managed, there’s no way I’d have been left alone.”

“And so,” Sasha declared. “We collapse not the barrier, but this world itself.”

“…?”

“Say there’s a fist-sized ball of ice here… that’s this world. And you cup it tight in both palms. That’s the Fire God Emperor’s barrier.”

“Yes, and?”

“The palms are in the way, so the ice can’t be moved outside, no? But, melt the ice, and what then?”

Arriving at what the words meant, I was struck dumb despite myself.

“Are you… sane?”

“I am. It becomes droplets, slips through the palms, and drips down. What we break isn’t the palms covering the ball, but the ice ball itself.”

“Destroy this world itself, and inevitably the foreign matter inside gets out… that’s the scenario? But that would cause problems, wouldn’t it?”

“The collapse is done gently. The ones inside we let out at the proper times. It’s only a matter of tuning it so. Send you and the phantom demons out at the very start, and let the rest out slowly, taking our time.”

“No, that’s not what I mean, do that and…”

“Mm. The spell called the Otogi Fantasia itself is lost forever. But be at ease, some have sworn loyalty, some haven’t. There are all sorts of phantom demons, but a last order, at least, they should all heed. It won’t hinder us in the decisive moment.”

“But, master… you followed the Fire God Emperor because you didn’t want to lose the phantom demons, didn’t you?”

At my question Sasha threw out his chest and laughed, ‘Kah-kah.’

“Well, the point is I’m a sore loser. Rather than follow that man… I’ll go so far as to choose scrapping my jewel-box.”

Seeing that proud gaze, I laughed despite myself. ‘That’s you all over…’ Yeah, this is Sasha through and through. A lone hawk soaring the sky, where none can reach. The figure of the man whose back I once resolved to chase is here, unchanged, even now. And that, for some reason, made me oddly glad.

“Besides, short of doing that much… I can’t outmaneuver that brat. So, there are two things I want you to do.”

“One is freeing the phantom demons. And the other is…”

“Mm. I want you to build, together with me, the formula to collapse this world. The master blueprint is here, so it won’t be difficult.”

Sasha touched his fingertips to his own head twice, tap-tap. There the worry I’d been holding flashed across my mind. So, shaking my head, I put this to Sasha.

“Sasha, I hate to say it, but there’s a high chance your plan is broken.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s—”

And hearing the doubt I laid out, Sasha’s face twisted in astonishment.

⁂

So, with one thing and another, I ended up back in Clark-san’s room, the guest room, to be precise. After that, I sat cross-legged on the bed and sank into meditation. What I’d proposed to Sasha earlier was two things. One was the plan to break out of the Otogi Fantasia leading the phantom demons. And the other was this.

The Astral Breach.

Well, in short it’s a kind of special training. Since I call it special, naturally it differs from ordinary training. First, you return the mind to magic and separate it from the body. It’s tangled to explain, so, put simply, you make it leave the body, astral projection. And next, you send the soul flying to Sasha’s dwelling, the World Tree.

The place I was making for now is Sasha’s abode, strongly linked from within the world of the Otogi Fantasia. The World Tree, that is. Further still, past the point where you trace down the World Tree’s roots. The World Tree where Sasha lives is, true to its name, a special existence in the spiritual sense. Through the ley of land that connects to its roots, it holds a road to the spirit-vein that reaches the spiritual world, the star’s core. By the way, the World Tree and the Otogi Fantasia are closely linked in the spiritual sense; as a mental world, they’re one and the same place. Which is precisely why it lies outside the range of the Fire God Emperor’s barrier, so travel is possible. Well, boundary-crossing with the flesh in tow can’t be done, and I can’t step so much as a pace outside the World Tree.

Now, the ancient Ten Sages that Sasha spoke of a while ago filled the world with magic for their own research, they say. When I heard that, honestly, I found it entirely reasonable. Because inside our brains, magic circuits for handling magic are formed. Take muscle enhancement: under training load, the muscle fibers break down. And they regenerate as stronger muscle than before, the phenomenon called super-recovery. The brain’s magic circuits wear and break under repeated magic use. After that, the same as muscle, they super-recover, that is, they receive a supply of mana, the magic dissolved into the atmosphere, and grow stronger and thicker. Well, strengthening the magic circuits makes it easier to learn or develop new magic too.

The place I reached, then, having become a mental body, is where you follow a branch of the spirit-vein laced deep underground from the World Tree. So, the star’s core, in the spiritual sense. Inside, it’s a dim-gray world all around, a space so vast you can’t even perceive the boundary of ground and sky. It’s about like being inside a mass of mana, and the training efficiency becomes an outrageous twenty times normal. That said, since it’s premised on astral projection, stay too long and there’s the demerit that the link to your main body severs and you can’t return. Concretely, twelve hours a day, and continuous use up to a week is the time limit. The gist being that during sleeping hours you become a mental body and pile up training. And if you exceed this limit, you must set an interval of fifty to a hundred years before the next use. Well, for the human race, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance at dramatic improvement of magic skill. It’s a secret training method of the Sasha faction, so naturally I experienced it too, some four hundred fifty years ago. But since I’ve been reborn, the limit’s cleared, as it stands.

As for why I’ve come here now, the answer is simple. To stand against the Fire God Emperor, the me of now is far too short on power. After all, even the me of four hundred years ago was no match for him. And that the Fire God Emperor has raised his power beyond before, I understood well when we faced off the other day. How far I can get in this one week I don’t know, but at the least, to outmaneuver the Fire God Emperor for even an instant… I have to sharpen my fangs.

Right. I clenched my fist. And to bring the thing I’d been working at for some time into a certain shape, I slapped both palms to my cheeks with a burst of spirit. Still, why is it that, spirit body though I am, I have a body that mimics the physical one just as it is? More than that, why do I have the five senses as normal? I cocked my head at the same old question. And just then—

“Huh… Ephthal?”

“Eh… Maria?”

Before I’d noticed, Maria was there. Eh? Just what is going on…? I froze, too bewildered.

“Ah, a dream, is it… Ephthal’s in some baffling world called the Otogi Fantasia or whatever right now, isn’t he.”

So Maria said, with a look of having somehow talked herself into it, but, just what is this situation.

“Why is Maria here?”

“Eh? Ah, that. Leave us alone and the Fire God Emperor might take us hostage, they said. Ephthal’s people are all cooped up in the manor too. So we got taken from the ducal manor to Sasha-sama’s house… the World Tree, and…”

“Yeah, and?”

“Learn to at least protect yourself, they said. A drop in the bucket, most likely, they added, but, do it like so and it’ll get a bit better, they gave me a memo. And when I came to, this is the state of things.”

I see, I more or less grasp the situation. And I took the memo Maria drew from her breast. Thinking it probably had a training menu written on it, I looked—

“Sasha… this is impossible for her…”

The content written there was, as it turned out, a terrible thing.

Train like your life depends on it and get to where you can use around Level 7.

That was all that was written on the memo. Yes… truly, that was all that was written on it. Well, how to put it, Sasha as a teacher is outrageous. Watch and steal the technique is the basic principle, and being a genius type, he’s flatly bad at plainly teaching people, too. You crank up the magic go-go-go and form the formula bam-bam-bam and let fly a Level 10 boom, the whole way through, it’s that kind of vibe. I graduated a magic university and dabbled in the adventurer trade before becoming his disciple, and I can flatly declare it’s a hundred percent incomprehensible unless you’re already grounded in the basics.

Still, I thought. In practice, you can use this place only once in a lifetime. Making her throw into the gutter a precious week with dramatic effect, rivaling roughly half a year of training, is no good either.

“Er, Maria… by the way, where’s Merlin?”

“Holed up at the ducal manor with Svetlana-sama. Guarding Fraser-sama—Duke Alcott, that is—and Cecilia-sama, and, besides them, Ephthal’s mother, I think.”

Ah… Svetlana as well, huh. This is no good. With that, the option of having them draw up a training menu from tomorrow on has vanished too.

“No help for it… all right. I’ll look after you myself.”

At that, Maria’s face lit up, and she nodded as if it all fell into place.

“Ah, I see, so that’s it. Ha, actually, I did think it was strange.”

“Hm? Strange?”

“No, this memo… frankly it makes no sense, right? Barely any explanation either. But Sasha-sama did prepare things properly, didn’t she.”

“Prepare, meaning?”

“You, you. I don’t know if you’re a phantom of Ephthal or a copy or what, but you were laid on as my trainer here, that’s the deal, right?”

No, that’s not it, just as I started to say it, Maria checked the words with her right hand, as if to say don’t spell it all out.

“But really, I’m so glad. After all, the one I want teaching me is Ephthal. No, frankly, anyone but Ephthal is out of the question.”

“Hm? Anyone but me is out of the question?”

“When a magic-academy teacher or the like says something to me, I’m the type that gets irritated. Even with a genuine expert like Merlin-sama, being corrected makes me irritated.”

“Well, you aren’t an honest sort.”

“But… told it by you, I feel like I’ll follow honestly. And you’re the only one I feel that way about, you know?”

“…”

No, told that, how am I supposed to react. Still, this girl really is a handful in all sorts of ways… I sighed.

“So, in that sense, the one who listens to you most and practices magic in earnest really is me. Anastasia and the others are earnest too, but they mostly put their effort into laundry and cleaning and that sort of thing.”

“For the record, where’s Sheryl?”

“Sheryl’s… well, a genius. I’ve never seen her train herself to death, and she’s the strongest… well, she’s a kid and a space-case, so it’s fine that she doesn’t overdo it. But me, I do many times what you tell me to, not skipping a single day.”

“I don’t deny you work hard.”

“So…” Maria colored her cheeks a faint crimson and went on. “I want a reward.”

“A reward…?”

“So I’m saying I want to be praised. I’m saying I want you to say Maria’s working hard, you’re amazing, you’re a good girl. Then I can throw myself into the road of magic even more single-mindedly. And someday… I can be of use to you. It may be a surprise, but I’m that simple a girl, you know.”

“…Your aim isn’t to be praised by me, but to show up the ones back in the elf village, isn’t it?”

“Sure, at first I wanted to show up the elf village. That I admit. But before I knew it, I wanted to be of use to you. I don’t want to stay dead weight… I want to be praised by you, to have you think well of me—”

And Maria laughed, bashful, and went on.

“—showing someone up, that can be a side thing. That’s what I think now.”

“Well, it’s fine to have all sorts of reasons, isn’t it.”

“Still, just because you aren’t the real thing… I can be honest, huh. It’s strange. Saying this sort of thing is far harder to bear than telling you I like you. But even so, a bit… saying this to your face, it might be a little embarrassing after all.”

“I think honest is cuter, and better.”

At that Maria laughed a bashful ‘Ehehe.’ And just then—

“That’s right. I think Maria-san is cute when she’s honest.”

“…I don’t dislike it either. She should push that side of herself out more and more.”

Well, Anastasia and Sheryl had appeared. No need to even think about it, of course they had, but in that instant Maria went shifty-eyed and looked thoroughly flustered.

“Y-y-you two… wh-wh-wh-where were you listening from?”

At the question, Anastasia clapped her palms together and, beaming, said:

“…From around the one I want teaching me is Ephthal.”

Hearing it, Maria, like an instant water-boiler, went red in the face and screamed on the spot.

“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it!”

Just then, I decided to go ahead and say the thing I’d kept putting off.

“Er, Maria, you seem to be under a misunderstanding, but I’m… not a phantom or a copy or anything… I’m the real me.”

“Huh?”

“So, I’m the real me.”

“No, but aren’t you inside the Otogi Fantasia? And doing all sorts of things to break out? There’s no way you could come to a place like this.”

“The Otogi Fantasia is connected to Sasha’s World Tree dwelling, so… the soul alone can cross over as far as the World Tree.”

“…Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

At that, Maria’s face went past bright red into the aspect of scorching magma. And, half in tears, she shook her head.

“No! No! That whole thing just now, no! Forget it! Forget it!”

“No, told to forget it…”

“You could do a forgetting spell easy!”

“I can put it on you, but on myself it’s a bit… no good.”

“Ah… no… if there were a hole I’d crawl into it, this is exactly that…”

And, well. With one thing and another, our week of nights had begun.

⁂

“First, the basics of the basics. Above all, spam magic and strengthen the brain’s magic circuits. Mana repairs the worn circuits at once, you see. A chance like this won’t come twice.”

In these girls’ case, their magic circuits are feeble past discussion, whatever else. Well, by rights it’s a thing you train from childhood, and it takes about twenty years before it’s finally usable, so there’s no help for it. And once their heads are worn ragged from too much super-recovery, I have them challenge new magic at a raised level, that’s the teaching policy this time. Also, there’s the fact that I have to train myself too. Frankly, this situation where these girls spend nearly all their time on repeating basic drills is a real help.

“Now, then…”

I flew by flight magic through the endlessly wide gray space. Arriving far from Anastasia and the others at their basic drills, I sat in zazen and began to concentrate my mind.

The new technique in a range that could reach even the Fire God Emperor, Magic Sword, Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.

It’s the goal I’ve been thinking of all this life as my magic sword, but it’s still far from complete. The theory of the formula itself is finished. If, for instance, the opponent is a stationary target and I can take enough time to charge, activation is possible. But somehow there’s unease on the operational side. Most likely, magic aptitude is the bottleneck. Because the magic doesn’t run swiftly into the formula laid on the sword. It’s nowhere near a level usable in a real fight yet. But at least so I can use it when I catch a good opening… I have to get it into some kind of shape this time.

Thinking such things, I drew the katana from its sheath with my right hand, thrust it forward, and layered magic onto it. And I gazed hard at the blade with the formula laid on it. Why does it take time. How can the time be shortened. I looked it over again. Just then, I felt a presence at my back and swung the katana behind me.

“…No one there?”

Did I misread killing intent? Me? And a voice came from off to the side.

“Four hundred years, is it… nostalgic, wielder of lightning.”

At that voice, and seeing that figure, I was struck dumb. Because—

“The Demon Lord…?”

The reason we four sages came to be called the Four Emperors. The being who once threw the world into vast chaos by violence… was floating there, in the form of a head alone.

“I see. Now I understand. The reincarnator the flame-wielder spoke of is you.”

“The flame-wielder… you mean the Fire God Emperor? No, before that, we cut you down at the Demon Lord’s castle, for certain.”

“The oddity who took only my head home… by the flame-wielder I was given a borrowing of life. Now I am a thing that only wanders the spirit-veins as a ghost.”

I stood and set the katana toward the head.

“I’ve no wish to fight. I’ve already been freed of the curse. I only, came to warn you.”

“A warning?”

“You, who chose death-return in the Goddess’s chamber, are a singularity even to the Ten Sages. Because you’ve escaped the curse, the ruin that drags in self and others, you’re lured toward a deeper, denser underworld sorcery.”

“What… are you saying?”

“Your thirst for power. No, perhaps even that is in their palm. Wielder of lightning, a riddle, last of all.”

And the Demon Lord’s head smiled thinly and said:

“In what era, and how, did you die on Earth, and come to this world?”

A cold sweat ran down my back with a shiver. Such a thing, I’d never once thought about it until now. I remember picking up judo techniques in high school, but, and there a sharp headache struck me. True, I have knowledge of Japan. I know the education system, the names of long-tenured prime ministers, that curry is delicious. But I can’t recall my family’s names or faces.

“Wielder of lightning, I ask further. Your name on Earth?”

“…I don’t know.”

What, what is this? Try as I might to recall, I can’t make out at all what sort of person I was on Earth. Truly… I don’t even know my name. Middle school? High school? As knowledge I remember I attended, but not concretely what kind of places they were. Who my friends were, that sort of thing, nothing at all… I don’t know. And… as for after graduating university, I can’t recall it even as knowledge. Truly, what is this…?

“Just so. As predicted… is it.”

“Demon Lord… what do you know? Why have I… all this time… felt no doubt about this?”

“It means you’re a special existence. To begin with, a skill like death-return isn’t built into the system the Ten Sages devised. One thing I’ll say: directly below the floating islands, the place you call the underworld, is Shinjuku in the year 2085.”

“Shinjuku…? No sign of life came from that ruined city… and the underworld should have existed from the distant past. And near-future, 2085? No, or else… does it mean Japan was destroyed once? Are you telling me this is a super-future relative to the timeline of the Earth I was on?”

“That was misleading of me—more precisely, it’s a place modeled on Shinjuku. The flame-wielder, and his little sister Bridget, all of it was arranged from the very start.”

“Bridget, you said?”

Why does that name come up now? A crawling prickle ran over the skin of my back, and just as I made to ask the Demon Lord why, I clicked my tongue hard.

“Gone… is it.”

I don’t know what’s what. But somehow… behind the Fire God Emperor’s change, there seems to be something beyond anything I could imagine. And I heaved a deep sigh.

⁂

The next day. I’d been put in a dark stone solitary cell and set on a restraint chair.

“I know you’re Clark’s favorite.”

Standing before me was the head jailer I’d met on the first day. The man who’d pressed the brand on me. Well, the burn mark’s not still there, but since various things would be awkward otherwise, I’ve made a convincing-looking scar with illusion magic, so no worry on that score.

“And knowing it, you’re treating me like this?”

At my question the head jailer gave a weary good grief of a shrug.

“True, by the standing orders passed down he’s an existence not to be touched on this prison island… but his position, too, is delicate now.”

“Delicate?”

“Things have changed under the Fire God Emperor’s new regime. Clark’s surely off talking with the new warden about the way forward even now.”

“…What are you getting at?”

“To make him understand his place under the new regime, I’ve brought you here.”

Just as the head jailer said, this morning, while I was building the formula for the Otogi Fantasia’s collapse in my room, the head jailer appeared out of nowhere and I was hauled off. I could have resisted easily enough had I wanted to, but I can’t very well stand out inside the prison right now. So, going along meekly, I was put in a solitary cell and seated on a restraint chair, that’s the upshot of the present situation. Clark, by the way, had gone out at dawn, summoned by the warden, so the head jailer’s story is probably true.

“…Is this your own doing?”

“Aye, my own. I’ve long found Clark hard to stomach.”

“…I see.”

“That restraint chair’s set to react the instant you use any magic. Even if you got a self-defense magic tool from Clark, best not use it.”

“React?”

“Aye. A Level 5-class blast goes off, and in that instant you’re done for. Best not try resistance or escape.”

“So, what do you mean to do with me?”

“You’ll be cooped up here three days or so. Even you, take three days and nights of a beating and it’ll tell on you a little.”

This is a problem. For now, building formulas is a thing done only inside my head, so I can build them without trouble, but, and the Level 5 blast is no problem at all, but this situation, with magic use, that is, formula-building, sealed off, is bad. Coming through a blast unhurt would be conspicuous past all measure.

“Then in exactly thirty minutes I’ll bring the other guards. The fun starts after that. Spend the time regretting that cocky attitude of yours from the first day.”

Still, Sasha permits rough handling for the sake of correction as a basic policy, but this is just plain abuse. Well, this is the head jailer being no good as an individual, I suppose. As I thought that, the head jailer left with a booming laugh.

And thirty minutes later. As declared, the head jailer came back to the solitary cell with five guards. And the moment he saw the state of the room—

“Wh-what’s happened here?!”

Quite the shock, but that stands to reason. After all, the room was blast-scorched black, and standing at its center was me—no, Clark.

“C-Clark?!”

“I sent that boy back. Still, you seem to have had your way with the place, haven’t you.”

What I did was simple. Cast illusion magic on myself and take Clark’s form. This way, however much I overdo it, I can make it look like Clark raged, not me. And I stepped a few paces toward the head jailer.

“That conduct of yours is rather poor. It isn’t the warden’s order, is it?”

“Th-that’s…”

“Never lay a hand on Ephthal-kun again.”

“Clark… don’t think it’s your day forever. The situation’s chang— agh!”

Seizing his hair, I hurled him at the wall to the right. Hair came out in clumps, and blood sprayed from the roots. He seemed to hit the wall nose-first, and the nasal bone was wrecked, by the look of it.

“Y-you… against me…!”

Still full of spirit, apparently. So I stepped slowly toward the head jailer again. And reaching out to his head, I gripped his ear and swung my arm with all my strength.

“Gyah!”

I let go a hair before the ear tore off, but the head jailer collapsed to the floor all the same.

“Never lay a hand on him again… understood?”

“…”

His expression was sullen, so I pressed it home with a glare.

“Understood?”

“…Yes.”

Good, and that settles that. Just then, the outside of the solitary cell suddenly grew noisy. The sound of any number of guards rushing somewhere in a fluster reached me, and as I wondered what was up, a voice came:

“Emergency! At this rate this floating island is going to fall!”

At the far end of the direction the guards were running was a door. Opening it and going in, it turned out to be a rooftop. On a wide expanse several tennis courts over, atop a smooth stone outer wall, some twenty personnel all told were shouting things at one another in a flustered clamor. Human guards, Ifrit guards, every one of them looking up overhead in dismay. And among them, one man with a composed air, this is the warden I’d seen before.

“Hm…?”

The warden frowned for just an instant. I thought my disguise had been noticed, but he shrugged at once, as if to say what a business.

“Clark, you know the Fire God Emperor’s meddling has this world unstable, yes? It’s turned bad.”

“…”

I answered the words with silence. Well, I’m not Clark. Out of concern that talking clumsily might give me away.

“Look at that. Most likely the cause is the weakening of the barrier against the underworld that Sasha held firm.”

Looking where he pointed, there… I could see a floating island bearing down on us at furious speed. From a distance, about two hundred meters in radius, I’d say. A speed and size where it isn’t hard to imagine this floating island would crumble in an instant on a direct hit.

“Warden, is that island uninhabited?”

“Aye, like most of the floating islands within the Otogi Fantasia, that one’s uninhabited too.”

“I see… I grasp the situation, but what do you intend to do about it?”

“Our fighting force, the flame-curse insects are close-range monsters. And I’m the support-specialist sort myself, throwing up walls and the like.”

The warden raised both hands from his shrugging pose, as if to say I give up.

“That’s why I say it’s turned bad. So the Fire God Emperor has stationed only a force for base management here. There’s no pawn among us with the heavy firepower to bring down that floating island.”

And the warden thought something over a while, then heaved a deep sigh.

“Happily, there’s a little time before that hits us. Worst case… contacting the real world and asking for the Fire God Emperor to appear is within my calculations.”

That is… bad. Should it come to that, the Fire God Emperor won’t keep leaving me alone.

“Still, warden, worst case, you say, meaning… you have some other plan?”

“Aye. I, too, don’t choose my means, the same as the Fire God Emperor. So, I’ve released a part of the phantom demons.”

There, from the rooftop door, led by five Ifrit guards and manacled, appeared a great ape all but topping two meters.

Sun Wukong. By another name, the Monkey King.

It seemed they meant to leave dealing with the floating island to that phantom demon. True, among the phantom demons he ranks one or two for sheer martial power. If he’s a root of the Chinese immortal legends, then he excels at destruction along with Nezha, so he’s well suited to it. But, and I called out to the great ape.

“Shall I help?”

At that, Sun Wukong went utterly blank, dumbstruck, and froze on the spot a while. Then he knit his brow, and with furious force several veins stood out at his temple.

“Aah? The hell’re you saying?”

Seizing me by the collar, Sun Wukong brought his face close enough for our brows to touch.

“Sounds to me like you’re saying I can’t do it on my own?”

And with a ‘Stay out of it,’ he shoved me off with a thump.

“You’re Sasha’s disciple, when it comes down to it. As if there’s a monster that outdoes a top-rank phantom demon like me lying around every corner.”

Well… the willful sort just as the legend has it. He ought to have danced in Buddha’s palm and mellowed with his meeting the monk Sanzang, and yet this. And Sun Wukong looked up overhead and thrust his palm forward.

“Come forth—Ruyi staff!”

What appeared in empty space was a giant red staff. More a pillar than a staff, no, by now in the realm of giant architecture. Diameter about five meters, length some thirty. And in moments the Ruyi staff was wrapped in reddish-black hellfire. By the look of it, he’d laid Level-9-class flame and burst magic onto the Ruyi staff. And as Sun Wukong poured in his will, along with a dry crack the Ruyi staff shot off toward the far-distant floating island. The dry crack was the sign of breaking the speed of sound, the sound of a shockwave, that is. A super-massive mass past sound speed, plus Level-9-class burst magic. In power alone, it’s likely reached a Level 10 annihilation spell. A legendary hellraiser, sure enough, no falsehood in the title. A two-hundred-meter-radius floating island, taking that dead-on, would burst and scatter to fragments, if not quite to dust. Yes, provided it hit.

And the Ruyi staff was sucked into the distant floating island, and a great blast went up far off.

“Ha, for my Ruyi staff this is child’s play… what?!”

As it turned out, when the smoke of the blast cleared, what stood there was a floating island with only about twenty percent of its volume gone.

“What… the…?”

Sun Wukong’s failure was in not noticing that a magical barrier was set into the surface of that floating island. The underworld is, in truth, something I don’t understand well either. But that floating island also has the aspect of a mass-bombardment weapon, controlled under some kind of will. Observe carefully from that vantage and it isn’t hard to notice, yes, including the thin part of the barrier near the center point.

“Looks like it’s a substitution.”

Search magic. Spreading my perception to the limit, I drew up all the information on the floating island at once. Distance to target, roughly eight kilometers. Relative speed, two hundred twenty-three kilometers per hour. On the data the search brought up, I computed the target’s predicted trajectory. And the thin part of the barrier is roughly at the center of the floating island, a ten-meter-square hole.

Here!

“Level 9: Meteor Smash.”

The mass of great flame I loosed drew an arc toward the floating island. The error between the predicted trajectory and the actual one was a few millimeters, well within tolerance. And at the instant of impact, a beat behind the light, an ear-splitting sound and blast wind raged all around.

“Absurd… this distance… precisely… you hit it?”

Breaking small and losing the power to float, the boulders fell, tugged down piece by piece by gravity. Cruelly, without a trace, shattered to fragments and gone. And I clapped my hands together as if to say case closed.

“Well, in power alone your technique’s the better, I’d say. Analyze precisely and strike the enemy’s vital point, that matters too.”

At that, Sun Wukong grinned and said:

“Not bad for a human. I’m the sort who respects the strong.”

“Yeah, your technique was splendid too.”

With that, we shook hands firmly.

⁂

Back in the room, Clark-san was there, so Sasha and I explained yesterday’s events and the plan going forward. Set a thief to catch a thief, the idea being to gather information from the human who knows this prison island best. By the way, the moment he saw Sasha’s form, Clark-san was startled and nearly keeled over on the spot.

“Ephthal-kun. The biggest problem in freeing the phantom demons is, after all… the guards.”

Clark-san sat across the table. Prison though it is, he lives the same as ever, serving refined tea made from high-grade leaves.

“Well, I’d think so.”

“I spoke with the warden a while ago, and it seems the phantom-demon block’s guard has tightened since your arrival.”

“Eh?! Does that mean the other side has already seen through our movements?”

“No, that’s not it. New inmates hardly ever turn up, so it’s simply a response to an irregular having occurred. Concretely, an Ifrit guard has been assigned to each phantom demon’s cage, it seems.”

Hmm… I mulled it over.

“That might mean…”

“Aye, I think using the bypass to make contact will be difficult.”

“But with optical camouflage and presence-erasure, I can move without being noticed to a degree, you know?”

“Those are, when it comes down to it, tricks of deception in a surprise attack. This is an opponent watching close, on the premise that something might happen.”

“True… an Ifrit is an upper-rank familiar too.”

“It’s about ten days until the next new moon, until the Fire God Emperor links to this world for maintenance. For a span like that, the guards’ tension will hold.”

“Then what should we do?”

“That’s where—” Clark-san cleared his throat with a little cough. “I’d have you leave it to me, I’ve a few acquaintances among the phantom-demon block’s guards too.”

“Hm? Isn’t the phantom-demon block run entirely by the Fire God Emperor’s people?”

“The Fire God Emperor’s policy is to divert the system as it is. In the allocation at the last maintenance… some of the original human guards ended up over there too.”

A block where Ifrits and flame-curse insects swagger about, and there are ordinary humans in it, huh. Imagining it, for them it’d be nothing but a calamity.

“And those guards are, naturally, under my influence.”

At that, Clark-san showed his white teeth in a smile.

“The phantom-demon watch is on rotation… so let’s pick our shots.”

“Am I right that when an acquaintance-guard is on, that side will turn a blind eye for us?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

We nodded to each other, and I drained my black tea in one go.

“Then, right away, I’d like to start this very moment. Once it’s settled, tell me the cell where a guard under our influence is watching.”

“Then I’ll go do the groundwork now… let’s see, by evening it should be in time.”

⁂

Advancing through the bypass, the moment we reached the first destination, Sasha nodded, deeply moved.

“Hm. This presence… the phantom demon shut in the cage ahead is Nezha, it seems.”

“That’s a martial sort again.”

Speaking of Nezha, he’s an immortal who appears in the Investiture of the Gods. From his renown he appears in Journey to the West too, and led heaven’s army in a grand set-to against Sun Wukong the Monkey King, dreadfully strong, they say. Naturally, among Sasha’s phantom demons too he ranks at the head of the martial sort. As a familiar he’s top-grade, no, at a level you can’t even rank.

“Still, this is odd…”

Walking down the passage, I felt a faint wrongness. Somehow, something seemed different from last time…? And the reason for that wrongness soon became clear. Because even reaching the target place, nothing like an entrance was visible, nor could I see the far side. The dimensional warp that forms the entrance I could draw in, but the hole wouldn’t open. And on closely checking the state of the entrance, I doubted my own eyes. In fact, the far side was visible, and the entrance was open. The gist being that what I was looking at was a steel plate blocking the entrance on the far side and this side both.

“The hole’s been sealed?”

Breaking the plate that blocks it and getting inside is easy in itself. But do that and the situation comes to light on the other side at once. Or rather, at that point the whole chain of the phantom-demon liberation plan collapses. No, the problem isn’t there. The problem is that, beyond doubt, the enemy has caught wind of our movements.

⁂

Back in the room, when I passed on what had happened, Clark-san raised his voice in a fluster.

“What? That’s bad, Ephthal-kun!”

“Yes, it’s bad. But how was it found out?”

Then Clark-san caught his breath with a ‘Hah.’

“Some information may have passed to the other side… from one of the guards I squared things with.”

“Whether they noticed the duty-roster was borrowed and grew wary, or in the plainest sense someone informed on us… there are all sorts of possibilities, aren’t there.”

“I’d rather not think it was an informer, but…”

“Yes. It isn’t settled yet that there’s a traitor.”

“…That’s so. I’m sure I picked people I could trust. From the business with the roster and the like, some unlooked-for trail must have led back to us. And, Ephthal-kun. This is hard to say, but…”

“You mean give up freeing the phantom demons and focus solely on the way out to the world beyond, right?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but the liberation plan looks broken to me now. The other side is on the highest alert, and if we fixate on freeing them, some slip will come of it… and countermeasures might be laid even against the escape plan.”

“And the chance the other side has noticed the world-collapse formula?”

Clark-san shook his head.

“That, they haven’t caught wind of at all… the Fire God Emperor still hasn’t moved, you see. I can say it for certain.”

“And why is that?”

“When the Fire God Emperor directly interferes with us, a great hole opens in the sky, on account of temporarily undoing the barrier. It’d be an uproar here too, and we’d know at once. If it were something like this world self-destructing, he’d come flying to stop it right away.”

“I see… At any rate, the escape formula, at least, absolutely has to be finished, is that it?”

“Yes, pour yourself into that alone. Do that first, and we’ll watch for another chance at freeing the demons.”

There the room’s door was pounded, bang-bang.

“Something you need? You can come in.”

At Clark-san’s answer, guards entered. And seeing the makeup of the personnel who’d come in, we gave a start. Five in all, one human and four Ifrits.

This is bad.

Clark-san and I traded a glance at the same moment. By the way, Sasha seemed to have hidden himself before they stepped in.

“Hardly peaceable, is it, why are there Ifrits in the human block?”

“Clark, your day at the top is finally over.”

“Mm, whatever do you mean?”

“Orders from the warden. Until now, on the policy of not changing the system, you were let do as you pleased. But from now you’re off to a special punishment cell.”

“…The reason?”

“Need it be said? Contact with a phantom demon is a grave crime.”

Clark-san glanced my way and shrugged, as if to say hands up. And, It’s all right, I won’t talk about the escape, he told me with the movement of his lips. And so Clark-san was hauled off. As I stood there frozen, wondering what to do, ‘You too,’ an Ifrit said, and patted me on the shoulder.

⁂

Well, then, a stone prison. The room of Clark-san’s I’d been in until a moment ago was lavish enough you’d take it for some noble’s. So the moldy feel of this makes all the more of an impression. An Ifrit guard, an ogre with reddish-black skin, spoke to me.

“Now, convict Ephthal… seems you were up to quite the thing.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I don’t know what you meant to do, contacting the phantom demons. But whatever else, making contact with them is a grave breach of discipline.”

“As I say, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A whooshing cut of air, and a shock struck my cheek. A slap with force enough to knock out an ordinary human.

“Playing dumb’s no use. You clung to the phantom demons, thinking to have them help your own escape, didn’t you? Though that Sasha had laid so many bypasses, that, I’ll grant, surprised me.”

“Come now… without even proof?”

“Complete isolation of the phantom demons is a command the Fire God Emperor bade us obey absolutely. For this violation, suspicion alone is enough to punish.”

“You’re talking nonsense. What if it’s a false charge?”

“Hurt you, and the rest won’t think of trying such things either, will they? That’s the crux of it.”

Just then, I put a question I’d been wondering about since coming to this room.

“By the way… why is that one wall alone covered in an iron plate?”

“Ah? Odd thing to ask. Because you lot tried to use some baffling thing called a dimensional bypass, that’s why.”

“By any chance, are all the rooms like this?”

“Aye, quite the large-scale work it was, and even we got dragged into it. Every partition wall between one cell and the next, that’s why. If it’d been the story of holes in the ceilings and floors too, it’d have been a nightmare itself… yes, all of it, all of it your fault!”

By this guard’s way of talking, at least the heart of what we’re after hasn’t reached them at all. Still, he babbles far too much useless information. Whether it’s from working so many familiars I don’t know, but at least where the Ifrit’s concerned, the quality seems fairly poor.

“This block sits in the central part of the prison. While you lot are held here, every passage door but the iron grates is under orders to be left open on purpose.”

“And what does that mean?”

“So that a great many prisoners can hear the screams of you lot being worked over, obviously!”

Fufufu, the Ifrit put on a coarse smile. And when he snapped his fingers, another Ifrit guard came in carrying freight with two of them at it. What they’d brought was a long, narrow wooden box, just about the size a single human would fit in. Following that, hemp sacks were carried into the room, one after another after another.

“So, for you… I’ve worked up this little scheme.”

The Ifrit opened a hemp sack and thrust the white powder inside it at me.

“…Salt? What do you mean to do?”

“Do you know the principle of making preserved food with salt?”

“What are you… suddenly on about?”

“No, no, this is important, best you listen properly. For instance, when you preserve vegetables, first you salt them to draw out the water. After all, the number-one cause of things rotting is moisture.”

“…And?”

“Not just vegetables, you salt meat too. What matters in this case is that salting draws out the water.”

There the Ifrit, with a delight past all bounds, put the question to me, playing the clown.

“Now then, a quiz. First we put you in the box, close the lid with only your face out. In that state, if we salt you alive… what happens?”

I take back what I said. I’d thought his quality as a familiar was poor, but on the single point of ideas for tormenting people… this one’s a passing grade.

At any rate, I can’t very well cause trouble here. Even packed in salt, I can build the escape formula, and the link to the World Tree remains. And so—

I ended up salted for five days.

⁂

“Ha, this is grim.”

At a voice like that, I woke. In my hazy vision, an Ifrit guard was wearing a coarse smile.

“Ah, eyes rolled white, tongue lolling out.”

Ah, I see. So that’s the state I’m in now.

“Here, a blessing of rain. Can’t have you dying on us.”

Water from a bucket was flung against the side of my face.

“…”

“Barely a reaction, but he’s not dead. Well, we’ll nurse you just enough to keep you alive, so rest easy.”

“Ha, still, salt a human and in five days he ends up like this, does he.”

As a bonus, the Ifrit gave me one slap. And, cackling, they left the solitary cell. Waiting a while, when their presence had wholly vanished, I opened my eyes wide and cracked my neck. Still, this really is cramped. That alone genuinely tells on me, but everything else is no trouble at all. There, before me a light shone and a fairy-sized Sasha appeared.

“Eyes rolled white, and something about a tongue… are you all right, Ephthal?”

“Ah, that’s illusion. I’ve made myself look in a wretched state, for now. A human under torture looking hale and hearty would be a problem, after all.”

“But you, aren’t you having your water drawn off by the salt?”

“There’s water aplenty in the atmosphere. I’ve been condensing it with magic and replenishing it constantly, just short of getting caught.”

And I laughed a wry, rueful laugh.

“That said, in practice it’s fairly rough. Can’t move a muscle in this posture, so… well, it’s nothing to compare with those screams.”

A heavy, oppressive shriek, reaching from far off. Since I was brought here, Clark-san’s screams have come at intervals. What’s being done I don’t know, but since I’m in this state, there’s no doubt he’s being put through something extreme.

“So, what do we do?”

“The escape formula’s finished, just now. Playing quiet… that ends here.”

“Still, what do you think, Ephthal?”

“Hm? About what?”

“Hypothetically, if we got out to the world beyond without the Otogi Fantasia, do you think we could beat the Fire God Emperor?”

“Well, it’s impossible. But we only do what we can do.”

With that, I activated physical enhancement. Spreading both arms with a hff, I broke the wooden box that had shut me in. As the wood chips scattered with a crack, the salt streamed to the ground with a rush. And, out of it, I swung my arms in great circles and did some deep knee-bends in turn.

“My body’s a touch stiff, but… within tolerance. Bastet’s public execution starts in another six hours, too. Let’s finish everything by then.”

I cut the iron grate away with wind magic and made my exit. A clattering fall-sound rang out, but there’s no need to mind such things now. Walking, I twisted my upper body around to work out the stiffness. My hips and spine popped and cracked.

“So, what do we do, Ephthal?”

“First, Clark-san.”

I headed toward where the screams had been coming from. And seeing the state inside the cell where Clark-san was shut up, I nearly covered my eyes despite myself.

“Ah… so this was the state of it.”

What I could see in the room was a man strung up. Look closely, and a torture device called a heretic’s fork was fitted to him. The heretic’s fork, a device that gives pain with a sharp fork honed to a level you’d call bladed. Put plainly, it’s an iron bar with both ends sharpened into forks. The way it’s used: one fork under the chin, the other set at the center of the collarbone, fixed to the target. And what happens is, for instance, the moment you grow drowsy and your head drops with a nod, it stabs into the flesh. In fact, Clark-san’s upper body was dyed with blood. It’s a wonder he isn’t dead from blood loss. A spiked collar was fitted to him too, and around the clock, most likely, he’d been under a torture that pierced his skin every time he stirred.

“I’ll help you now.”

I can’t very well leave him in this state forever. I cut the cell’s grate with wind magic and went in.

“With this you’re all right now.”

I removed the devices fixed to his body and cut, last of all, the rope he’d been hung from.

“…Thank you, Ephthal-kun. I somehow rode it out to this hour without talking.”

Silent a while, I then put this to Clark-san.

“So, Clark-san, why did you sell me and Sasha out?”

At my question, with a blank look, Clark-san… no, Clark, answered.

“No, I said I hadn’t talked, didn’t I?”

“What I mean is the very first business, before I was brought here. Why did you leak the information about the hidden passages to the Fire God Emperor’s side?”

“Hm…? What are you suddenly on about, Ephthal-kun?”

“There are a few reasons I came to think this… you know too much, is the thing.”

“Too much? No, truly, what are you talking about?”

“The first wrongness I felt… was the very first time I entered your room. That offhand line, seems you had a thoroughly rough time out there. At that, I felt a fierce wrongness.”

“Now, Ephthal-kun… I’ll get angry, you know? This is hardly the time for jokes.”

Thrusting out my right palm to check Clark’s words, I went on.

“Even Oberon and the others didn’t know how I’d fallen down here. Why do you know about the outside?”

“…Eh? Because I took in outside information at the Fire God Emperor’s last periodic management, that’s all?”

“Yes, the last maintenance the Fire God Emperor did on this world was the new moon before. As of that point, you held information from which you could sense that my merely being here means a dire situation has come about, say, the possibility that I’d oppose the Fire God Emperor.”

“As I say, that’s the story from the last new moon, isn’t it? As of then, you and the Fire God Emperor were in a state where you could turn hostile at any time, weren’t you?”

“That even Oberon doesn’t know it means Sasha didn’t pass the information to his pawns in this world.”

“As I say, that’s where it’s different. It means Sasha-sama told me, and me alone, doesn’t it?”

“What’s certain is that Sasha meant to turn to this side from the start. In that case, if he were to pass on the situation, he’d tell it equally to any phantom demon who might make contact with me, so that they’d cooperate with me later. But Sasha didn’t do that. So he either didn’t tell it uniformly, or Sasha’s in a state where the Fire God Emperor doesn’t permit him to convey the situation inside.”

“But that’s inference, not proof, is it? There may have been reasons only I was told.”

“Yes, that alone certainly isn’t proof. So I was observing you all the while.”

“…Observing?”

“The day after you and I met, the guard on the phantom demons tightened, didn’t it?”

“That’s a mere baseless charge too. That was chance, and—”

“True, it may be chance. Granting that a hundredfold and setting it aside, the decisive thing is the position of the iron plates sealing the hidden passages. The guards’ response is just too perfect.”

Then, for the first time, a shadow of gloom rose in Clark’s color. Heedless, I went on.

“Those are walls thin enough that a human could never possibly slip through. By rights they’re not places anyone would address on merely hearing there’s a bypass. And yet, pinpoint, in every room, that spot alone was sealed… what that means is only one thing. It means the Fire God Emperor’s side grasped the exact positions of the bypasses.”

“…”

“The guard who was supposed to help when we contacted the phantom demons… if the leak came from anyone but you, it could only be there. And say you let slip about the bypasses to that guard, and the plan came out from there. But would you go to the trouble of telling him the bypass is in the partition wall between cells? Thinking of the case where the information leaks, ordinarily you’d keep that hidden, wouldn’t you?”

“…”

“It’s all inference, true. But stack three, and in my book it’s proof enough.”

When I flung it out sharply, Clark shrugged, as if to say good grief.

“Well, entirely as you say. It’s just as you say.”

“Why did you betray? Not me… but Sasha.”

“I admired strength, you see. My becoming Sasha’s disciple in the first place was because he’s strong, and there’s no other reason. There, a Fire God Emperor stronger than Sasha, whom I’d thought the strongest, appeared. Very simple and easy to grasp, isn’t it? Ephthal-kun?”

“I see… so that’s it.”

“By the way, I’ve a question of my own. Granting you noticed from the start, why bring it up only now? Surely not, did you come to make a victory declaration, I actually knew all along, before escaping?”

There, as if it were comical, Clark began to laugh, ‘Heh-heh-heh.’

“Let me tell you something good. Why I hindered the phantom-demon liberation you all were attempting, but didn’t hinder the escape to the world outside. It’s this, Ephthal-kun, the formula you all built so desperately these past days is utterly meaningless.”

“Meaningless… you say?”

At the question, Clark answered with a vile, twisted grin.

“You wove a program to self-destruct the formula, along Sasha’s blueprint, no? The Fire God Emperor foresaw such a thing, naturally. At the last new moon, the first maintenance, the Fire God Emperor rewrote part of the blueprint itself.”

“If that’s true… then, certainly, the odds are extremely high the formula I prepared ends in nothing.”

“Yes, which is exactly why the Fire God Emperor took it lightly even when you came to this world. That one is cautious, you see… without absolute confidence he’d never leave an existence like you alone. Fufu, ha, hahahaha!”

Clutching his belly, Clark began to laugh, and went on in a voice heartily amused.

“Now, how about it? After all that careful preparation, thinking at last you could get outside… how does it feel to have every bit of it come to nothing?”

“…”

“Well, without noticing it was rewritten, you fools built your do-or-die escape method with everything you had. Ah me, this was comical to the letter.”

“…”

“You can’t free the phantom demons, you can’t even escape. All that’s left is to wait for the new moon, for the Fire God Emperor to come round on his rounds, and it all ends.”

“So that’s how it was…”

“Ha, some ‘Thunder God Emperor’ you are. No, to begin with, weren’t you the inferior of the Four Emperors? Now bowed to the Fire God Emperor, in a cage, from here on you’ll never get outside your whole life, just awaiting death while put through misery in this world… fufu, hahaha! Truly a joke!”

At that, as if something had struck him, Clark clapped his hands together.

“Well, if you’ll repent and grovel an apology to me now, I might find it endearing enough to go easy on you. Even in hell, a little leniency isn’t beyond me.”

Right, letting him talk freely is about enough here. Letting Clark run on further, nothing new’s likely to come out.

“Ah me, truly a fascinating escape plan it was.”

“I knew that, all of it. No, thanks to you, I was able to notice… I’ll thank you. Truly, that’s the Fire God Emperor for you. At a glance he seemed to have laid no hand on it at all, and yet only the crucial part he rewrote cleanly. Sasha didn’t notice, and I likely wouldn’t have either.”

Drawing in a breath, I glared at Clark.

“Had a certain someone not done unnecessary meddling.”

“What… are you saying?”

“I said from the start I’d felt a wrongness, didn’t I? And you all, convinced everything proceeds on Buddha’s palm, in fact let your guard down. So you couldn’t notice this.”

“Wha…? This is…? Sur… ely… not…?”

Magic flowing from every part of the prison. Grasping the intent of the formula laid on it, Clark gaped, mouth wide. What was, at this very moment, activating with me, no, Sasha, as its origin point, was—

“The formula of collapse…? But why is it flowing from every part of the prison…?”

At this moment, plainly, a shade of bewilderment and fear ran across Clark’s face. The good color of his skin was already gone, going pale and bloodless before my eyes.

“I made contact with the confined phantom demons, split the work among them, and asked them to build a destruction formula that corrects even the parts the Fire God Emperor rewrote… on the very first day.”

“…Huh?”

“The formula I finished was a fake to blind you all. This is the real thing. The phantom demons are each champions, and magic experts besides.”

“The first day?! How could you do such a thing? There should have been no such time!”

“That, at that point, we could move freely about inside, you know that too.”

“It wasn’t a one-to-one watch, granted, but even so there were the guards’ eyes!”

“Optical camouflage, presence-erasure, and silencing… noticed if they’re on guard, but if they aren’t, that doesn’t apply.”

“Guh… b-b-but! Time…! At that time I was observing you all, and there shouldn’t have been time enough! No way could you go round ten rooms…”

“You underestimate my master a little too much.”

Sasha gave a nod. And at the same time as the nod, he made his palm-sized body smaller and finer still, and formed any number of copies of himself.

“Splitting… you say?”

“Grow big and shrink small, appear suddenly and vanish suddenly, rather, isn’t it stranger not to manage this much?”

“Surely not, with that, in that scant time…?”

“Yes, we finished everything needful on the first day. After that we had only to hold our breath and wait for time to pass.”

And as if to say the talk’s over, I clapped my hands and closed it off.

“Thanks to you, everything went off without a hitch.”

The moment I told him so, Clark’s knees buckled and he plopped onto his rump on the spot. And then—

“Kh, kh, khoooooo!”

He raised a wordless wail.

“B-but, Ephthal-kun. Why did you go to the trouble of telling me this? This world’s collapsing, barrier and all, isn’t it?”

“Ah, that’s so.”

“Then wouldn’t it be enough to just slip out with the phantom demons, as is?”

“Because I need your guidance. Bastet’s execution starts in six hours, doesn’t it? I don’t know the layout of the phantom-demon block.”

At that, Clark’s color worsened further, and with an ‘Uh-oh…’ his manner turned suddenly shifty.

“Ephthal-kun… that’s… hard to say, but…”

“Hm?”

“Bastet’s execution time… on a sudden change of plan, it’s been moved up.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Er… well……… letting you lot swim, and telling you Bastet was already executed when the escape plan broke… that way the despair doubles and it’s more amusing, the warden said……… since you lot would definitely come at the last moment… that’s how it went…. Ow, ow! What are you doing all of a sudden, Ephthal-kun!”

“Guide me, quickly!”

“Are you sane? The phantom-demon block is crawling with flame-curse insects.”

“It’s no recklessness at all. The phantom demons got their power back on the first day. Joining up as I go, I smash the ones who resist and rescue Bastet, that’s all. How much time is left?”

“Er, well… it’s under an hour.”

“You scum.”

With no pause, I drove a backfist into Clark’s nose.

“Ahee!”

“Hurry up and lead the way—at this point I’ll bust myself out by force!”

Bastet’s Perspective

—Ephthal-sama, the cleaning you set me is finished without a hitch. As a reward, won’t you pat my head?

—If Merlin or Svetlana see, it’s a nuisance; they’ll want it done for them too. Just this once.

Is this my whole life flashing before my eyes? Fond exchanges from long ago, from the far side of memory… I remember such exchanges, repeated tens, hundreds of times.

It was when my true work as a familiar bore fruit, a battle won. It was when my sideline as a familiar, a maid’s task, came out well done. At times like those, I’d unfailingly beg a reward, and that person would answer, looking troubled.

Before I was taken in by Ephthal-sama—

I was a guardian deity of a land, protecting the people from monsters. Day after day I gave myself over to battle, and the trust of the people I was to protect ran deep, I… think.

—Save us, O goddess.

—Help us, O goddess.

—Our lives, to the last of our line, be here in this land with the goddess.

To answer such hopes of the people, I became a shield to guard them from the wicked that would harm the land, and I felt pride in the work. Yes, until that day.

The Demon Lord, later struck down by the first-generation Four Emperors. When he led his army and worked outrage past all bounds, the land I guarded was, no exception, swallowed under the wave of his invasion. The Demon Lord’s power was vast, and mine did not reach. To let at least the people of the land flee, I slipped from the battlefield by the skin of my teeth. And just as I meant to go round the settlements where the people lived, I… learned the truth of that faith.

—It was nothing at all. Before they knew of my defeat, the inhabitants had already fled. I’ve no mind to blame them. Only, given the role of a guardian war-goddess… I came to know the worth of my existence, its measure, and it made me sad.

In the settlement gone empty, as I stood there in a daze, I met Ephthal-sama.

—If you’ve lost your place to live, will you come with me? A maid of the house just happened to leave.

And so I became Ephthal-sama’s familiar. Or rather, as a maid I passed the same time with him, and helped raise Merlin and Svetlana alongside Ephthal-sama. And before I knew it I’d joined in too… laughing and weeping, all but as family, spending warm hours, I… think.

—I’d like to have my head patted once more.

To think such a thing is, after all, an extravagance, I suppose.

When I heard on the wind that he’d reincarnated, reborn into the present world, I thought, when the time comes, without fail… But somehow, things go otherwise than one wishes more often than not. I am that person’s familiar. That he’s come here, I know full well. That he’ll never stay quiet here, I understand painfully well. And that he’ll get out without a hitch… I see as if by hand. But that is if I don’t drag him down. This world is already under the Fire God Emperor’s rule, and even Ephthal-sama, if I drag him down, on the off chance… such things happen too.

I don’t want to be that person’s burden. That my execution be carried out before his preparations are ready is, rather, convenient. In any case, I bear the karmic lot of reviving however many times I meet death. Only, what I do think, after all, is—

—I’d like to have my head patted once more… is it.

⁂

The deepest part of the prison island. Originally, no such thing as an execution ground exists in this facility. But for me, who led the phantom demons and plotted rebellion, a special venue seems to have been built this time. Since all the prisoners of the facility were to be called, as a warning, it had become quite the large-scale affair. In the middle of a room some thirty meters square, there stands an execution platform. Around it, in tiers, viewing spaces are set. And on the platform were a restraint chair, and right beside it a great hole from which came the sound of something writhing.

There, to me, seated in the restraint chair, the warden put a question with a coarse face.

“Now, it’s time for the execution, Bastet. Still, you really are an amusing creature, aren’t you?”

“…Amusing, how?”

“I’ve a laughable tale readied for the very end, so look forward to it.”

At this late stage, is he still preparing something? A joyless entertainment is quite enough with the insects in the hole… As I stood aghast at that, the warden went on, seeming delighted.

“Does this hole trouble you?”

“Well, I’ve a guess as to it.”

“Yes, just as you surmise, the kodoku dish for making flame-curse insects.”

Though it was as I’d imagined, still… I caught my breath despite myself. Seeing that reaction, the warden nodded, satisfied.

“How, I wonder, does a venom-spider that’s devoured a phantom demon evolve through the kodoku? I’ve an interest in that. And how does the one thrown in there feel? What’s the mood?”

“I’ve no particular thoughts. If I must say, it’s the very extreme of vileness.”

“Fufu, that face unmoved by anything, I look forward to seeing it twist in agony from now.”

A mental life that can’t die by the death of the body… by the nature of a phantom demon, death itself is nothing especially to fear. And pain, too, can be lessened by fiddling with magic at the electrical signals that give the body its orders. Only, being toyed with at insects’ pleasure is, after all, not a pleasant thing.

“Now, kill me quickly. You have to deal with Ephthal-sama too… you can’t very well spend forever on a thing like this, can you?”

“Wait, now. From here I’ve to gather the facility’s prisoners and fill the seats. And besides…”

“And besides?”

“You seem to think that man can slip outside, but we’re several steps ahead. By an informer’s hand, Ephthal’s escape plan is already broken.”

“What…?”

“Ha, a first, to see your flustered face.”

Just as the warden wore a triumphant look, an Ifrit guard came rushing in through the room’s entrance in a fluster.

“A rebellion’s broken out in the phantom-demon holding zones, the ninth and tenth blocks!”

“A rebellion… you say?”

To the warden, asking with a dubious look, the guard nodded hard.

“Report is that Sun Wukong and Cú Chulainn have been set loose!”

Following, one guard came running our way, a communication crystal in hand.

“W-word from the management room! The eighth and seventh blocks… Hanuman and Kresnik are outside their cages!”

“Give it here! What’s happening?!”

To the warden, who snatched the crystal as if wrenching it away, guards came running from the entrance one after another.

“Phantom-demon escape from the sixth block!”

“Fourth block, a Unicorn’s on a rampage!”

There the warden went pale and shouted into the crystal in a great voice.

“From the fourth block to here is a straight shot! You in the management room! Post the Ifrits along the main passage!”

From the far side of the crystal came a voice like a shriek.

“Posted the moment we had reports from each block, already engaged, warden! No… just now, word came in that they’ve been wiped out!”

“What… the… What, what is happening?!”

“There’s a report confirming the use of Level 10 magic! The phantom demons are joining the rebel force still further, they don’t stop, they’re heading your way!”

“So Ephthal is the ringleader?! But why are the phantom demons freed…?! Argh, what are the flame-curse insects doing?!”

“The four in constant operation are already silenced. Outnumbered, crushed under by force!”

“Set loose the whole stock this instant! Every insect in freezing hibernation too!”

“But do that and… control won’t hold! Worst case, they run wild without order and the facility itself is devoured by the flame-curse insects!”

“At this rate we’re only devoured by the phantom demons! Hold them down with maximum force!”

Ephthal-sama is… heading here? Most likely, to save me? In a state where I understood nothing at all, I simply fell into panic. If it were only him, he could have completed his aim and given himself wholly to the showdown with the Fire God Emperor… This is a nest of venom-insects; if it comes to it, the warden can handle more than a hundred flame-curse insects. The phantom demons held captive number, myself included, eleven in all. What each can handle is about five flame-curse insects. Even granting Ephthal-sama routs some twenty, the count still doesn’t add up.

We are hopelessly short of fighting strength.

Then it’s better he not come. No, he mustn’t come. But then, that person surely knows even that… There, from the crystal the warden held, a voice came further.

“Awakened a hundred and seven flame-curse insects in all. Guiding them toward you, arrival expected within two minutes.”

“Good work. We’ll meet them here.”

Ah, this is no good. At this rate, because I dragged him down, Ephthal-sama will… Gone teary-eyed, I cried out in grief-stricken appeal to the boy who appeared at the entrance.

“Why… why do you come?! A familiar is a thing cast aside in its master’s hour of danger! To put yourself in danger for a familiar, why are you always this way?”

“Why do I come? That’s obvious—”

Leading the phantom demons who’d been imprisoned here, the dwellers of the fantastic, Ephthal-sama stands at their head. His figure was too divine, too dear, and too… warm, unchanged from long ago. And, just as in the far reaches of my memory, with an open, untroubled smile Ephthal-sama said:

“Because you’re a precious maid of our house!”

At those words—

Before I knew it, tears were streaming from my eyes.

Ephthal’s Perspective

“Now, this’ll cost you dear. Seeing as you tormented our beloved cat, that is.”

Cracking my knuckles, I stepped one foot forward.

“Ha, the wrathful thunder-god, is it. Welcome, Ephthal… you’re welcome here.”

“No need to play it cool, and no need to put up a front, you know?”

“A front… you say?”

“Yeah. Far as I know, the Fire God Emperor hates an ugly outcome. You know that much too, don’t you?”

“True, this situation won’t be settled with a mere scolding. But that’s that. To hold this uproar down here, and let no aftershock reach the Fire God Emperor, is my mission. I am a shield, so long as the spear doesn’t reach him, that’s enough.”

“For a villain, your loyalty runs high.”

“And you, the blade, I’ve already stopped you. It will never reach… the Fire God Emperor.”

“Ho. You think you can stop me from here?”

Then, from the room beyond, a scream came.

“H-hiiii!”

“Stop, stop— abyu!”

When I looked, over a hundred flame-curse insects were swarming this way in a teeming mass. The two Ifrits who’d been leading them seemed to have been devoured too, and half-exasperated, I asked the warden:

“Looks like you’ve got no control at all?”

“Aye, I’ll grant it’s a desperate measure. But turn it around and it’s the finest chance, too.”

“The finest chance?”

“A first-generation Four Emperor bowing to me… that becomes a profit down the line. Show them despair, and it leads to order. To Oberon, to Titania, and to Bastet… all of them.”

“Teach ’em defying you lot gets you hurt, is it? Like breaking in beasts.”

“Say what you will. When that one takes full hold of the Otogi Fantasia, this becomes a great advance investment, a contribution.”

Saying so, the warden spread both arms and sent his gaze from the flame-curse insects to me and back.

“Now, Thunder God Emperor, be devoured by the insects, wretchedly. The age the Undead Emperor rules is over, and you become the cornerstone of the order the Fire God Emperor builds anew.”

“Listening quietly, you’ve been talking this whole time on the premise that I lose… but will it really go so well?”

To my question the warden answered with a face of scorn. And laughing at me down his nose, he returned these words.

“The flame-curse insect, by another name, Night Spear. Out in the world beyond it holds no power to speak of, but the curse it carries, in this world it turns into a strength without peer.”

“Ah, that was the story, wasn’t it.”

“Reckoned at five apiece per phantom demon. Your total is ten or so at best… the count doesn’t add up. Against more than a hundred insects, what will you do with a handful of hands?”

“Ah, but wouldn’t you know it, it isn’t a handful of hands.”

When I declared it flatly, the warden cocked his head, puzzled.

“What are you saying, you?”

“Long ago, there was a time I admired Sasha. Seeing that outrageous summoning spell, the Otogi Fantasia, I thought I’d like to use it too. So I threw myself into research for the longest while, and one day… by some chance I picked up a phantom demon.”

Shifting my gaze to Bastet, I laughed a little.

“Hear her out and it was a story of having lost her place to go, and being lonely. So I took her home. At first I meant only to look after her a while, but my wife took a liking to her, and living together, I grew fond too.”

“Old tales in a place like this… are you playing games, Thunder God Emperor?”

“Just hear it through. And before I knew it, capturing phantom demons, caging them, I lost interest in that sort of thing. After all, she’d become family. But sure enough, before that I had done the research. Ten years and a bit… in earnest.”

What I drew from my breast was a single tube. This is a media magic-tool to aid a formula. A signpost that guides phantom demons, quite literally, my trump card in this place.

“That tube… what is it?”

“It means I’ll show you a fairy tale.”

In Japan too there’s a yōkai called the kudagitsune, the tube-fox, in the old lore. From ancient times there was a notion that tubes and spirits go well together, in a video game, say, there was one where you put monsters in something like a test tube to command them, wasn’t there. And what I’m about to do now is exactly that. So I release the phantom demons I’d packed into the tube beforehand with a summoning spell I’d built.

I pour magic into the tube and pull the formula’s trigger. And at the same instant, streaks of light burst from the tube. One after another, like shooting stars, light comes spilling out.

“Oberon, Titania, Kurama Tengu, Tam Lin, Heimdall… one after another… what, what is this number…?! Thunder God Emperor?! What did you do?! Just what are you doing?!”

“It’s off the cuff, but let’s name it this. The Small-World Otogi Fantasia. Including the eleven phantom demons held on the prison island, there are in total about thirty phantom demons in this world, right? I’ve gathered every one of them to this spot, that’s all.”

“Wha…?!”

“To stop us, you were one digit short on your insect count. Now, you phantom demons! I won’t tell you to dance beautifully the way Sasha would; what I command is one thing only.”

To the thirty-odd champions that had appeared in this place, I declared:

“Trample them, one-sidedly!”

⁂

“Kishaaaa—”

“Gubi!”

“Agyu!”

Squelch, squelch, squelch, one after another the insects were crushed. Sun Wukong swings down his Ruyi staff, Kresnik drives in his sword, Oberon sweeps them away on the wind. Scattering purple body fluid, the spiders, the flame-curse insects, were trampled in the blink of an eye. And in the end, an insect is an insect. The moment they knew they were outmatched, they gave up resistance, scattered each their own way, and went into flight. Facing them, our side, the fruit of Sasha’s long years of training, perhaps, had teamwork among many hands down pat. It turned into a pursuit, no, a mop-up, and switched over wholly to a one-sided rout past all mistaking. This way, there’ll be next to no dead or wounded on our side. That we can get out to the world beyond in nearly the finest form is beyond doubt.

I slowly began to step toward the warden. After this, finish him and it’s settled.

“Fufu, true, this place is my loss. But, Thunder God Emperor? What’ll you do… about this?”

When I looked, the warden had set a knife-point at the base of Bastet’s throat. Bastet was seated in a restraint chair with a god-sealing effect, so escape by her own power looked impossible.

“A hostage, huh. Honestly… down to the last thing, everything you do is small-time.”

“I’ll take it as praise.”

With one hand the warden drew a second knife, cut the rope binding Bastet, and undid her bonds.

“I’ll take this one along as a hostage… clear the way, if you please. Try anything funny and I stab, deep.”

“…Well, nothing to be done.”

“I thought you’d assent readily. You would.”

The warden grinned a nasty grin, but that expression was soon wrapped in astonishment. No… at this, not just the warden, I too was startled.

“I won’t be your burden, Ephthal-sama.”

Toward the thrust knife, Bastet offered up her own throat. Without a sound the knife slid into flesh, and fresh blood gushed at once.

“You… you’re not a faithful dog, are you? A free-roaming… cat, aren’t you? Why do you always hold your master dearer than yourself… you idiot!”

The instant I shouted it, Bastet, bleeding like a fountain, crumpled to the floor. Blood spread over the ground in a blink; that it was a mortal wound was plain.

“At bottom… I’m a pitiful war-goddess who sacrifices herself. That’s my nature… you see.”

“…”

“One thing only I ask. If I come back again… and we can meet again… will you pat my head, like in the old days?”

“Yeah, when that time comes… I’ll pat you till your skin wears through.”

We gazed at each other a few moments, and Bastet quietly closed her lids. I gripped her hand, no response; I checked her heart, no beat. Put plainly… this is nothing but the empty husk of one who’s lost their life, a thing I’ve seen any number of times on battlefields.

“…”

When I glared, the warden’s voice cracked in agitation.

“Wh-wh-wh-what… absurd, absurd… this… such a thing…”

Silence. In sheer silence I seized the warden’s hair and dragged him down. Still gripping the hair, I began to walk.

“Ow, that hurts! S-s-stop! I’ve no will to resist!”

“The Fire God Emperor isn’t blessed with disciples, it seems. My disciple Merlin would, before saying stop the way you do… fire off two or three spells even knowing she can’t win.”

“Damn it, Level 6: Flare Burst!”

I snapped my fingers and nipped the spell’s activation in the bud. And the magic, robbed of its formula partway, turned to glittering particles and dissolved into the air.

“A thing like that couldn’t work on me.”

“Wh-wh-wh-whaaaa! Absurd, absurd! Absuuuurd!!”

The warden, seeming to fall into a panic, began, for some reason, suddenly to laugh.

“Fufu, ha, hahaha! I’ll die, surely, I’ve made my peace. But here I’ve cut down Bastet! With having been of even a little use to the Fire God Emperor as my parting gift… I’ll be waiting for you in the underworld, a step ahead!”

“Small-time to the very end. But too bad for you. You there, take a look at Bastet.”

“…Eh?”

Eyes gone wide, the warden let his mouth fall open. And no wonder, for at the end of his gaze, Bastet stood there, a smile on her face.

“H-h-h-how, what is this?”

“It’s a bother, but… go on, explain it, Bastet.”

Still, it should have been a fairly deep wound, and the injury’s closed in an instant. That’s her for you. The reasoning escapes even me, but at any rate I think it’s an ability handier than full-recovery magic. And Bastet’s version isn’t something a no-healing curse can counter either. And Bastet, with a look of scorn at the warden, began to laugh under her breath.

“Did you not know, warden? A cat has nine souls, you know?”

“Ah…” At that, grasping it all, the warden froze. Following, working his mouth open and shut, he said just one thing, like a man raving: “No, surely, that can’t…”

“A clean punchline, and here you and I part ways.”

Dragging the warden along, I made for the great hole bored into the execution ground. It seemed quite deep, and from within came the unpleasant sound of insects writhing.

“Hi, hi, hiii, s-s-stop, stop it! Don’t drop me! Don’t drop me!”

“Now, it’s not decided yet you’ll die, you know? Inside the hole is a kodoku dish teeming with venom-insects. Want to survive, climb out under your own power.”

Well, impossible, though. I’ve researched the state inside. That this guy could do a thing about a hell where a fearful number of insects writhe, I can’t see. And so I put strength into my right hand, and lifting the warden as I was, hurled him with a rush toward the hole, and told his departing back this:

“So long.”

And—

The warden was sucked into the hole with a filthy scream: ‘Ugyaaaaah!’

Right, and with that it’s settled. As I heaved a sigh, Bastet walked over to me. A cheeks-flushed, upturned gaze, she’s a striking beauty, not a thing about it changed from before.

“It’s been a long time. Master.”

“Yeah, truly a long time.”

Bastet, a touch bashful, lowered her lashes.

“As promised, till it wears through… you’ll pat me, won’t you?”

“If Merlin or Svetlana see, it’s a nuisance; they’ll want it done for them too. Just this once.”

With a little laugh, Bastet flung herself into my chest.

⁂

“Still, you really don’t let a man rest.”

Storing every phantom demon, Bastet included, into the tube, I at once set to running as Sasha urged me. Cutting the iron-grate partitions in the way with my katana, where I was headed was the heart of the island.

“It’s the magical central control room of this world’s magic system. For anything at all, that place is most convenient.”

“There are human towns here with a fair-sized population too, I hear. Even letting them out later, you can’t very well send them out all at once, is that it?”

“Just so. By the way, Ephthal…? Step outside here, and most likely it’s straight to the final clash with the Fire God Emperor.”

“…Master starting a countdown means a raid. Which means, at count zero, we’re smack in the middle of the enemy’s ground.”

“Mm. And you, throwing your life on the line without knowing the circumstances, would sit ill with you. About the Fire God Emperor… don’t you want to know why it’s come to this? The choice, to know or not, I leave to you.”

“That’s an awfully roundabout way of putting it. What do you mean?”

“You may come to waver.”

“Waver? About beating the Fire God Emperor senseless? No, that’s out of the question.”

“Bridget is deeply involved. The clash itself is already inevitable… Not knowing means less wavering at the crux. So I leave it to you. Now, what do you do?”

To that question, with almost no pause, I answered.

“I’d figured the cause was something serious, so it makes sense, if anything. Quit dithering and let me hear it.”

“Your reason?”

“If it’s about Bridget, I’ve a duty to know too, don’t I.”

Before long we reached the central control room, as Sasha called it. It was locked, so I kicked the iron door open by force.

“Mm. I thought you’d say that. It’s a long story, but—”