Chapter 5 – Magic Aptitude
Ephthal’s Perspective
“Master, I want you to leave the Fire God Emperor to me.”
“…Can you do it? You?”
“When it comes down to it, this is—one grand family blowup between relations. Sorry, but let me be the one to run things here.”
To Sasha, turning something over with a sour look on his face, I gave a small bow of the head.
“…I’m asking you. Let me be the one to settle it.”
“Well, once you’ve said a thing you never do listen… Do as you please.”
I took a step toward the Fire God Emperor. At which the Ice God Emperor, waiting at his side, cut in between us as if to shield him. To go so far as to drag out even the Ice God Emperor’s corpse… it seemed the Fire God Emperor really was past caring how it looked.
There was plenty I wanted to say to the Fire God Emperor, but all of it could wait until after I’d landed one good punch. There, Sasha started striding brazenly toward the Ice God Emperor.
“Your opponent is me. One on one, the likes of you are no match at all. I’ll play with you a while—come, boy.”
In that same instant, Sasha and the Ice God Emperor sprang apart in a sideways leap, and the next moment two attack spells roared off to the left.
Next, Merlin and Svetlana stepped out in front of me and called out to the four undead mages waiting behind the Fire God Emperor. Who they might be I didn’t know, but these too had likely been mages of great renown once.
“Three against me, and Merlin-chan takes one, that’s the split, I suppose?”
“Ah. Two or so, and even I ought to manage… but as a division of strength, that’s about where it lands, Svetlana.”
And with that Svetlana turned dragon, and went on in a voice pitched a notch lower.
“Now that I’ve taken this shape, I can’t go easy. Don’t come complaining if you’re ground into mincemeat.”
“To take on Svetlana and me, you’d have done well to dig up the graves of the third-generation Four Emperors too.”
Come on now, Fire God Emperor… you’d pulled the second-generation four into your camp as well, had you. This fellow really does do outrageous things.
So, with Merlin riding on Svetlana’s back, the four who used flight magic vanished up into the sky. Over there, it seemed, the matter was to be settled in the air.
Then, one upon another, the phantom demons went hurtling at the several dozen mages scattered about us. Some among them surely carried skills, but our side, too, were the elite of the elite that Sasha had spent long years gathering up.
Which meant what parted victory from defeat was the duel of the champions… which was to say, the single combat between me and the Fire God Emperor.
So, when I fixed him with a glare, the Fire God Emperor gave a ‘here we go again’ sort of shrug.
⁂
“What’s the matter, Ephthal? All you do is run about.”
From the very opening, fire magic of Level 8, or of Level 9, came flying one after another. Against it, the methods open to me were two.
One was to accelerate with low-tier wind magic and slip the Fire God Emperor’s attacks. The other was to parry his attacks with high-tier defensive magic, that was all.
“Come now, let’s have a flashy exchange of fire. You’ve got a Level 10 too, haven’t you?”
But I wouldn’t play along. Trade magic head-on in the high tiers and I had no chance of winning.
Owing to the matter of magic aptitude, my formula-processing speed in the high tiers ran to about half the Fire God Emperor’s. There was a hopeless gap there, and that was exactly why I’d been the weakest of the Four Emperors. What I could do amounted to running, running, running away, and taking the slightest opening he let slip along the way, an opening you could barely even call one—
“Level 8: Thunder God Strike!”
“Level 7: Four-Spirit Grand Defensive Array.”
Right. Take the opening, and still it’s blocked. A Level 8 I’d sweated blood to build, the Fire God Emperor blocked with a Level 7 he threw up in an instant.
Not speed alone, the gap in aptitude became a gap in a spell’s very performance, and stood in my way. If he was a heavyweight truck barreling along at a hundred and twenty an hour, I was, at best, a beat-up little pickup with a top speed of sixty.
“Still, all this scurrying about… you mean to cling to me and not let go, out of sheer spite, don’t you.”
“Peel me off and all that’s left is your specialty—I get seared through by that long-range Level 10 of yours.”
“Then how about this?! Area bombardment!”
What was loosed was a storm of Level 9 flame that raged out with the Fire God Emperor at its heart. I threw a Level 8 barrier over my whole body, but take a direct hit and there was no doubt I’d be charred black in an instant.
I deployed wind magic ahead of me and accelerated hard to the rear. Dodging the direct blast, and where the flame’s force had thinned, this time I deployed wind magic behind me. Layering in body-strengthening besides, I closed the distance in one rush.
So, the flame gone out entirely, and seeing me still clinging in close even after he’d used an area spell, the Fire God Emperor’s face twitched a touch.
“You’re getting to be a proper nuisance, you know?”
That said, my attacks weren’t landing either. Against which, take one direct hit from him and a game-over-grade attack came slamming in. Keep on like this and a slow bleed to death was a certainty. Let my concentration snap and make one mistake, and that would be the end.
Fight him straight and I had no chance of winning. So, what to do?
That Level 9 great technique he’d just used, and I’d dealt with that stroke of his in perfect form. Yes, my movement just now had gone clean past what the Fire God Emperor foresaw. A small opening before his next shot fired, but the largest opening yet.
The one chance was here and nowhere else.
“How’s this?!”
A single flash of the blade.
The Fire God Emperor raised a physical barrier to guard, and at the same time loosed a fire-strike at me in counter. Slipping the fire-strike, I made to swing the blade again. The Fire God Emperor, reading it, made to throw up a second physical barrier, and in that instant I flung the blade aside and drove myself in.
—A flying cross-armbar.
“I’ve seen that move. A first-sight killer only means something because it’s a first sight.”
I seized the Fire God Emperor’s right hand in both of mine, and just as I made to spring—the Fire God Emperor’s whole body wrapped itself in flame.
“Level 9: Self Burning.”
“Gaaah!”
“Ha. Looks like both your palms got scorched, doesn’t it?”
Taking distance with a back-step for the moment, I checked my palms. Damn, just as the Fire God Emperor said, they’d be no use to me for a while.
So I put a hand to my breast and drew out a metal cylinder.
“Then how about this, Fire God Emperor.”
“A summoning tube?”
“Small-World Otogi Fantasia.”
What came out of the tube were three phantom demons.
—Oberon.
—Titania.
—And Bastet.
“The primordial three who run that world. Even you’ll have a bit of trouble with these.”
The three sprang at him all at once, and the Fire God Emperor made to sweep them off like clustering flies with a Level 9 area spell. But the three were wary of the very area magic that would overturn their numbers, and so of course took no direct hit. Titania’s defensive magic cut off the flame, while Oberon and Bastet, working in concert, sent countless blades of ice at the Fire God Emperor from every direction.
Oberon the spear. Titania the shield. And Bastet took up the roles of spear and shield as the moment demanded.
For all of some ten seconds, a dizzying exchange of blows unfolded before my eyes. A struggle at a level you could fairly call the ultimate—and in the end it settled with the Fire God Emperor mastering them by a two-blow Level 9. That is, Titania’s defensive wall couldn’t fully hold off the magic he loosed, and, seared by the infernal flame, the three fell fighting-incapable.
It wasn’t a direct hit, so their lives weren’t in danger. But leave them long, and there was no doubt they were in a bad way.
“Your trump card, too, was a bucket on a bonfire, it seems. It won’t even buy you time.”
“No, this much time is plenty. Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”
If this didn’t get through, then no means of attack I possessed would touch this man.
But the Fire God Emperor, even faced with my supreme magic, wore a cool expression—
“Level 10: Flame of Aegis.”
Lightning-strike and barrier ground against each other, and in a matter of some seconds my Level 10 vanished.
I’d expected it to be blocked… but that it wouldn’t hold even a few seconds was, I’ll own, more than I’d foreseen. Nothing came out of me now but a laugh of disbelief. And yet, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat here, that was a rough spot to be in.
“Your trump card, blocked as well. This is the end of it now.”
“That’s right. You do block it, don’t you—my Level 10, you block clean through it easily, don’t you? All that, I knew. Having Bastet and the others buy me time wasn’t to buy the time to build a Level 10.”
“Hn? Ephthal… what are you talking about?”
“What I’m saying is, it’s my win.”
Taking the declaration of victory, the Fire God Emperor checked the situation around him… and then, as if giving it up, shook his head. He’d grasped his defeat, no doubt.
At the Fire God Emperor, standing stock-still where he was, I threw one more word.
“That I ran about from the opening, that I summoned the phantom demons, all of it was to buy the time until Sasha and the rest settled their fights. You understood it too, surely… that dragged out, you had no chance of winning.”
“No, I knew there was a possibility it would come to that as a result. But that you’d throw yourself on others from the very start, of all things…”
“The circumstances are what they are. I had to beat you, whatever it took, and get you to talk. Now then, what’ll you do, Fire God Emperor?”
Sasha, who had come through his own death-match; and Svetlana; and Merlin. And the phantom demons, one after another, closed in and ringed the Fire God Emperor round.
“Ah, this is numbers against too few, right enough. If I’m to name the cause of my loss, it’s that I couldn’t put you down in short order. Well, from the moment the Otogi Fantasia revived, I suppose the loss was already mine.”
“But…” The Fire God Emperor lowered his lashes, sorrowful. “My loss as the Fire God Emperor… is the condition that comes attached, mind you.”
And so the Fire God Emperor lifted his palm to the heavens and set to building a formula.
At the absurd pressure of magic coming off the Fire God Emperor, I, no, every last one of us there set to building defensive formulae at top speed. Most likely everyone, not just me, was posting the fastest formula-construction of their lives. Build it or die. So we drove past our limits, building for dear life. Something anyone could feel in the skin, this-is-bad, that was the kind of ridiculous magic the Fire God Emperor was raising.
“The realm called Level 11. From here on, not as one of the Four Emperors, but as a demon who has thrown open the Gate of Solomon—the door that leads on to the Goddess of Reincarnation—I’ll be your opponent.”
At that, cries close to screams from Sasha and Svetlana rang out around me.
“Merlin-chan, get behind me!”
Next, Sasha’s angry roar as he rushed toward Anastasia and the others.
“You girls! Don’t leave my side!”
There shouldn’t have been any room in the rest of you to cover someone else. And of course I hadn’t the confidence to weather the magic about to be loosed, either. But even so I, too… rushed to the fallen Bastet and the others, and threw up a barrier to wrap the three of them and myself within.
“Flower of flame—bloom in wild profusion. Level 11: Homura.”
And so the fire of the end swallowed us up.
⁂
The whole expanse had been leveled to bare ground. Half the palace was blown away, and off in the distance I could see a collapsed building going up in flames.
Sasha and the rest… what had become of them?
Looking, I saw that Sasha, though his clothes were scorched, could still keep fighting. Merlin and Anastasia and the girls, whom he’d shielded, were unhurt, though where these girls were concerned, against the Fire God Emperor they’d been out of the reckoning as fighting strength from the start. Svetlana lay stretched out, half her body charred black in the act of shielding Merlin. But somehow she was alive. On her side, fighting on was out of the question. Merlin was close to unharmed, but ask whether she’d count as fighting strength in this arena, and I couldn’t help my doubts. And the phantom demons, half of them gone, the rest very nearly at their last breath.
“What… was that?”
Just one shot. Yes, with a single shot, this fellow had flipped the whole tide of battle on its head.
“Now then, the tables are turned, Ephthal.”
And I, too, was far from unhurt. My body, smoking in fits, was burned over its whole surface, and in places had gone to char besides. Judging by the damage, for me as well… fighting on was out of the question. My knees folded with a jolt, and I toppled to the ground where I stood.
“Oh, done already, Ephthal?”
With a light step, the Fire God Emperor came near. When I somehow managed to look up, he thrust his palm toward me… it seemed he meant to finish me off.
“Farewell then. A rotten tie it was, but poignant to think of it as the last.”
I meant to fling something back at him, but only breath leaked from my lungs, and it wouldn’t come to words.
There, the Fire God Emperor broke his gaze from me and turned his face to the right.
“Fire God Emperor. Did you truly think that, were my Otogi Fantasia not to revive, I would come before this place empty-handed?”
Tongue lolling out, Sasha grinned wickedly. There at his side stood a war-maiden with wings of silver-white, clad in golden armor.
“Seraph: Gabriel. This, now, this is my true trump card.”
Then Sasha threw his voice my way.
“That said, even I can’t hold long against the likes of this. Ephthal, now is the time. Cast off the shackle that’s bound you all these long years—the curse of your magic aptitude.”
My mind had gone hazy, and the last of it I couldn’t hear well. And in that blurring field of view, Sasha snapped his fingers, and my consciousness cut to black.
⁂
Where was this?
An expanse of unbroken white, a space I didn’t know, and before my eyes a golden-haired goddess.
—Was this… the Reincarnation Chamber?
How had I come to a place like this… and there it struck me. It seemed I’d gone and died back there. But I’d used re-reincarnation once before, so there should have been no coming here again for me. Why, then…? As I was turning that over, a voice calling me came from behind.
“Merlin?”
“Forgive me. Just this once, I break your order. You may strike me with your fist this time, and I’ll not mind.”
While I was wondering what she was on about, Svetlana’s form appeared behind Merlin. As though by some dimensional-transfer magic… all at once.
“Junior? Our resolve is already made up.”
My head couldn’t begin to keep pace with the situation. What in the world are these two saying… and, leaving me behind in the dust, the pair of them nodded together.
“Hold on, what are you two going on about…?”
Just then, the Goddess of Reincarnation spoke to me, a smile on her lips.
“Welcome, Ephthal. It’s been a while. I hadn’t thought you would open the gate and come back here, but…”
The gate…? No, wait, this is…
“That’s right, Ephthal-sama. Taking the Scarlet of Hades for the Key of Solomon, you opened the gate.”
I glared at Merlin and threw the words at her as though bawling her out.
“Merlin, I told you before, I said I’d never treat my magic aptitude by this method!”
“And I told you, did I not. That I would break your order.”
“The Goddess demands a price. In exchange for power, you have to offer up the soul of someone precious. There’s no way in hell I could do that!”
“Which is precisely why we are here.”
“…I really will hit you, you know?”
As I clenched my fist, Svetlana let a gentle smile rise to her face.
“Junior? Why is it that there are two of us… think it through, hm?”
“What are you getting at?”
“The one offered up is a single soul, isn’t it? So, when I heard this from Sasha-chan, it came to me. I somehow felt it might just work out…”
“So what are you saying?”
“You see. If the two of us split it between us… a half apiece, maybe we don’t die then and there.”
For a while I stood frozen on the spot. Then, working through what Svetlana’s words meant… a laugh slipped out of me despite myself.
“…What did Sasha say?”
“That there was a possibility. So he said.”
I held my tongue a while, then threw my words toward the Goddess.
“…So, Goddess. You heard it. Does that method go through?”
The Goddess thought on something, then gave a small nod.
“To give you the conclusion: the granting of a magic attribute is possible. However, as to the price, there is no precedent. There is a possibility that the two die instantly, and a possibility that they do not. Also, as this is an event outside the expectations of the Ten Sages, the system’s designers, the likelihood is extremely high that countermeasures will be taken from the next time on. Or else, unless you decide at once, intervention will occur, and this will become a method never to be used again.”
“So it’s a play-it-by-ear gamble.”
“That is how it comes out, yes.”
Taking the Goddess’s words, I turned back to the two.
“So it’s denied. I can’t have you cross so dangerous a bridge.”
At which, for once, the two showed me a defiant streak. That is, they shook their heads.
“With respect, Ephthal-sama?”
“What is it, Merlin?”
“There’s no fool who broods on losing before he’s even started. That’s your own byword, Ephthal-sama, is it not?”
Then, Merlin gave a little chuckle, and Svetlana started laughing after her.
“You know, Junior? I do think you’re better off giving the losing some thought before you start. But just this once, your way’s the right of it.”
There, for some reason, I ended up laughing too.
No, turn it over, and she has the right of it. There’s no fool alive who doesn’t give a thought to losing before he starts. As a matter of knowledge, I know that back on modern Earth there was someone who said that very thing, and it’s a phrase I’m fond of. But ‘nobody’s fool enough to brood on losing before he’s even begun’… I wonder who it was that first came out with it. A bold, bright sort, most likely, the kind who put the heart back into people… a splendid person, I’d wager.
And, well, once even I’d gone and laughed, there was no help for it.
“It’s my loss. You lot… you’re sure, then, that this is what you want?”
At my question the two nodded, smoothly and without a flicker of hesitation.
“We survive, without fail. Merlin, Svetlana, Anastasia, Maria, Sheryl, Sasha… and me too, of course.”
“And then…” I went on. “Everyone goes home, eats a meal, has a bath, and sleeps. That, and nothing more, is the whole of it.”
“Be sure to win, Ephthal-sama.”
To Merlin’s words, I answered with a solid thump of my fist against my chest.
“Rest easy. Your master is the strongest in the world. I’ll not lose to a soul.”
At the least, that was what I wanted to be. And it was a feeling I meant to go on holding, from here on out, always.
—For these people, who’d thrown down their lives for my sake.
—For these people, who’d believed in me.
—A man who could hold his chest out and be proud… that was what I wanted to be.
Left to myself the tears would well up, but there was no time to steep in sentiment.
“Quickly, speak your wish, Ephthal.”
Pressed by the Goddess, I let out a deep sigh.
“Well, it’s the last word in shame to come crawling back a returnee, but… magic aptitude. I’d meant to see to it under my own power.”
And, having said that far, I shook my head.
“No, there’s no shame in it. This is the wish these people entrusted to me. So, with my head high… I’ll receive it, and gladly. I want to gain an aptitude for magic.”
“Then, without further ado—“
A faint light wrapped my whole body, and my head went clear inside. Ah, I see, so this is… so this is what an aptitude for magic is.
“Goddess… send me back to where I was.”
“Then, fortune go with you.”
Particles of light rose dancing up off the surface of my body. My third time through it, but… the transfer had begun. And bit by bit the density of my body thinned. And then my consciousness cut to black.
—When I came to, I’d been carried back to the battlefield, where the Fire God Emperor waited.
⁂
Stepping out, I found Sasha fallen in tatters, and Gabriel already gone. Returned though I was, the damage to me was enormous. To say I was no different from a man at death’s door would be no overstatement.
“You’ve opened the Gate of Solomon… is how it looks.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I think this really will be the last of it. So… let me be a little more honest, too, and talk with my heart open. The truth is, I’m grateful to you. Bridget, at the least, was able to spend a human lifetime happily, and that’s thanks to you.”
“You only ever leave me feeling irritated, though.”
“Now that’s harsh. But as a practical matter… I am grateful. Tell me, why do you get in my way? You know the circumstances now, don’t you? You must want to save Bridget too.”
“Because it’s the better answer, but not the best one. Too many are sacrificed.”
“You talk as though you know.”
“I do know. That Bridget wouldn’t wish for it.”
“I’m her brother. What is it you think you know of Bridget?”
“I know the Bridget as a wife that you don’t.”
“If it comes to that, so do I. I know the Bridget as a sister that you don’t.”
“…”
“Can you believe it, Ephthal, I have tried to raise my hand against Bridget. You’ve never harbored a feeling like that, I’d guess? Over and over I tried to kill her. But I couldn’t do it.”
“…”
“And yet, even were the whole world to turn against me, I… even so, I wanted to protect Bridget.”
“True enough, I’ve never once tried to kill Bridget. But even if the world turns against me… there, we’re the same.”
“The same?”
“Where in any world is there a man who doesn’t hold his wife dearer than all else? Set the whole world against me, and I, at least, will be on Bridget’s side.”
A silence fell. Both of us understood that, down at the root, the two of us were one and the same. And so there were no words to be found to say.
“…”
“…”
“Then what am I to do, Ephthal? There’s no art that will stop the destructive urge; all that’s left is to let her destroy as she will, or else to kill her.”
“Why does it have to come down to two choices? If there’s a time limit, then all you’ve got to do is find the answer before it runs out.”
“Truly, your half-measures never cease to exasperate me. Fundamentally a theorist, and then at the vital moment you leave it to your feelings. In the end you go tearing off with no thought for the consequences. Unchanged from the old days. Most of it just came out right in the end, wasn’t it?”
“If it comes out right, then that’s all to the good, surely.”
At that the Fire God Emperor laughed, exasperated… no, as if he’d given it up.
“You really are… I envy you, that part of you.”
“I envy you, too… you can’t bring yourself to go through with being heartless. No, the truth is I’m a man who’s never once grown up since he was a kid.”
“Let’s have done with this, Ephthal.”
“Yeah. From here on it runs parallel.”
“Both of us right, and both of us wrong. And neither one with any mind to yield.”
“Yeah. Let’s begin, Cliff.”
At the word, Cliff narrowed his eyes, as if taken by surprise.
“You’ll call me… not Fire God Emperor, but properly, by my name?”
“…Because I’ve worked out that you really haven’t changed one bit from the old days… that you’re my no-good, rotten best friend.”
Cliff laughed, glad of it, and then, quietly, said ‘thank you.’
“For true and certain, this is the final round.”
“Yeah. Let’s bring it all to an end.”
⁂
Every cell in my body was giving thanks. The brain-cells that until now had been unjustly ground down, never able to show their potential, and the magic-circuits they formed, they were giving thanks. For the day they’d longed for, the day they’d all but given up as one that would never come—for this very instant, they gave thanks. For being able to bring out the whole of the strength I’d forged, exactly as it was, with nothing to hinder it, at full power.
“Level 10: Ice God Emperor.”
Ice pillars thrust up from the earth, and from the sky a downburst that carried magic in it and froze all it touched came howling down.
“Ha. You’d put the genuine article to shame.”
With a cool look, Cliff handled my Level 10 with defensive magic and made to loose a counterstroke. But I was the faster.
“Level 10: Fire God Emperor.”
With me at its heart, an infernal blaze that this time burned all to nothing came roaring out.
“Ha… truly, you’d shame the genuine article. Be proud of it, it’s me, of all people, saying so.”
With that same cool look, Cliff handled my Level 10 with defensive magic, and this time succeeded in loosing a counterstroke.
“But mine’s the real thing—Level 10: Fire God Emperor!”
“Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”
What grew up out of the ground were the roots of a giant tree. Before me I summoned a part of the World Tree’s roots, charged with the power of the ley-lines, and made a wall of them. Cliff’s flame was drawn into the tree-roots, converted into primordial mana, and dissolved off into the air. This was, so far as I know, the most preposterous magic barrier there is. And even faced with Cliff’s Level 10, that was no exception.
“Three Level 10s… no, is a fourth already built as well? Every one of the Four Emperors’ techniques… in a span of time like this…?”
“Well, speed’s about the one thing I’ve got going for me.”
The fastest rapid-fire of Level 10s. My magic, which had fought its lonely battle all this while without the aid called aptitude and never found the means to show its true worth—that magic of mine, for the first time, was having its potential drawn out to the very limit. As though the mana itself had taken on a will, formula after formula spilled forth, one on another, overflowing.
“Then here’s the real thing on my side too—Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”
It was a lightning-strike so mighty it seemed a wholly different magic from any I’d used before. Even the one who’d cast it was startled, so for Cliff it must have been past all bearing.
That said, I too was already battered to the bone. It was a simple thing, really, right now I was forcing the brain’s own opiates to secrete by magic, and only just managing to keep from blacking out. As I was now, even a blow to the back from Sheryl’s thin arm would likely have knocked me out of the fight.
“Well, when all’s said and done, this is the one I’m best at. Which stands to reason.”
“I see. So this is the real Ephthal… is it.”
It wasn’t that every stroke of the lightning got through. To put it the other way round, neither had Cliff blocked all of it clean. At all events, it seemed the damage had told on him enough that his knees were shaking.
“In that case, I’ll face you as a demon after all, Ephthal.”
So Cliff thrust his palm up toward the heavens. The instant I knew that was coming, I too began building a formula, meaning to answer with the finest magic I was capable of now. We each built our formulae and refined our mana. And it was very nearly at the same moment that our strongest formulae came complete.
“Level 11: Homura.”
What Cliff loosed was no all-directions bombardment, but a colossal fireball with the whole force of the blast concentrated on a single spot. Marking it, I thrust out my right palm to loose a counter.
—This was a magic I’d used just once, four hundred years ago. Cliff, and Isaac, and Itam… and me. A one-and-only technique, one I’d not so much as tried a single time since. But on that day, in the Demon Lord’s castle where the final battle was fought, just once, it had surely fired, an ultimate technique. Yes, this technique, fired by four joining their strength as ritual magic, once in a lifetime, would come to be given a name. That is to say—
“Level 11: Four Emperors.”
This was a crystal of pure magical energy, all four of the great elements mingled together and every one of their traits cancelled clean out. To fire it at a target, that, and nothing more, was the technique. An artless one, but simple, and for that, strong.
Seeing the magic I’d loosed, Cliff let out a ‘Heh.’
“Astonishing. To go and do that with just yourself.”
My magic and Cliff’s ground against each other, and a brief deadlock set in.
“No, it’s not just me. There’s Sasha, who taught me magic. There’s Merlin and Svetlana, who made me feel I couldn’t show a sorry face as their master, who made me want to climb higher still.”
“I see. But in the end you too fell onto the road of carnage. In exchange for magic aptitude, you offered up something irreplaceable, didn’t you?”
“My disciples are… shrewd.”
“Shrewd?”
“Do it alone and you die, they said, but split it between two and it’s fine.”
“‘A horse and a deer are both four-legged, so they’re the same’… there’s a kinship to that kind of logic. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahah! What is that? It’s utter nonsense!”
“Yeah, it’s a fool’s logic, just like you say. But it’s only fools who can punch clean through a wall there’s no crossing. The clever sort never even mean to cross an uncrossable wall in the first place.”
In that moment, the deadlock of the clashing Level 11s broke. Little by little the mana was forced to one side, and soon that took on acceleration and drove hard, all at once, to the one side.
—It was the slightest of margins.
Truly it was the slightest margin, but having lost, of necessity the two supreme magics came bearing down toward me.
“Even this… doesn’t reach?”
Wringing out the last of the strength that remained, I threw up a barrier and flung myself aside. I knew well it was a bucket on a bonfire. I knew well the death was a settled thing. But I couldn’t help struggling all the same.
So, just as I was on the point of being swallowed by the torrent of mana—
“Level 10: Cauldron of the Dead.”
What reached my ears was Sasha’s voice. And in that same instant, countless higher undead appeared before me and became a shield. That I’d somehow scraped clear of the crisis by the barest hair was, it seemed, thanks to the last dregs Sasha had wrung from himself.
“Ephthal. That’s enough now… even having overcome your aptitude, you can’t reach the brat… you, at least, run.”
“Sorry, but this is the nature I’ve got. If I could carry myself cleverly, I’d never have had such a hard time of it.”
Leaving only that behind, I drove myself in at Cliff.
“Ephthal, the match should already be settled.”
“That’s the kind of line you spit out after you’ve killed me.”
“For one who isn’t a demon, even a Level 11 can be managed once and no more. Which means you have no opening for victory—Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”
An absolute barrier appeared before Cliff, and then, mercilessly, he went on.
“Level 10: Earth God Emperor. Level 10: Earth God Emperor. Level 10: Earth God Emperor.”
“Impossible… four Level 10s fired in parallel?”
“This is the power of a demon, Ephthal. Now, with Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal, breaking this barrier is out of the question, isn’t it?”
Still, come this far, it was a preposterousness that dragged a laugh out of you. But I happened to be built so that my body rejected, on the level of pure instinct, the very word ‘give up.’ So much so that, at the brink of death four hundred years back, I’d wept from sheer bitterness, unbecoming to my years.
And so I drew the blade from the sheath at my hip and, with everything I had, slashed a level sweep at the World Tree barrier.
“Ephthal… you… you’ve come and overshot even what I foresaw?!”
No wonder Sasha was astonished. What I’d just done was—
—Level 10 Magic Sword: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.
In all the ages, east and west, I know of no instance of a Level 10 magic sword being brought off. Genuine and true, this was the last card I could still play, and my highest trump.
I cut the Level 10 barrier away and closed the distance to Cliff in one rush. After this… land a diagonal cut with the blade and that would be game-set.
“…But, Ephthal… that will most likely…”
“I’m surprised. No, truly, I’m surprised, Ephthal. If that’s your trump, then this is my trump as a demon.”
Sensing the formula Cliff had built in an instant, I was struck dumb.
—Ah. This is done for.
Into Cliff’s guard… into the inside of the absolute barrier, yes, I’d been able to fling myself. All that was left was to land a sword-stroke on Cliff and it would be over, of that there was no doubt. But before my blade could reach, Cliff already had his fingertip on the trigger. Yes, this formula was—
—Level 11: Homura.
“…Why? Why can you rapid-fire a Level 11?”
Four Level 10s fired in parallel was already madness, and now a Level 11, right on the heels of the one he’d used a moment ago? A thing like this couldn’t be, no, it wasn’t a thing that had any business being possible in theory. If the daily whetting of formula-construction speed was what a contest of skill between mages came down to, then this was clean off the rails of sanity. To put it in terms of shogi, it was the madness of Cliff alone playing two moves, or three, in the space of my one. The very rules, no, the very ground it stood on, was different.
“The reason for it is this.”
Behind Cliff I could see seven spheres. The mana drifting off them was vast, and from each single one I felt a presence on Sasha’s order.
“Think of these, if you like, as cannons I loaded with magic ahead of time. The truth is I myself am all tapped out, I can’t so much as knead up a Level 6 now. Well, there is, of course, a limit on the rounds… but I’ve something like three shots’ worth of reserve still in hand, I’d say.”
“I see. So this is what came of you opening the road that leads to the Reincarnation Chamber.”
“Just so. Now, here’s where we part, Ephthal. Level 11: Homura.”
Setting my resolve, I closed my eyelids.
One second. Two. Three—
Ah, so the moment of dying comes this easily, does it. It seemed Cliff had turned me to cinders without even the time to feel pain.
At that, a sense of wrongness. When I opened my eyes—Sasha, and Cliff, were both struck dumb.
“Impossible…”
When I looked, the black sphere that had floated behind Cliff was… alight. No, to put it exactly, it had already been shot clean through by an arrow of fire magic. And in a spot a little away from us, the three who had loosed the magic were watching how things stood over here, their gazes clear and steady. Yes—
—there stood Anastasia, and Maria, and Sheryl.
To us, frozen where we were, Sheryl opened her mouth.
“…We are the weak, in this place.”
“That’s right, the small-fry of small-fry, that’s us. But—it’s for that very reason that not a soul spares us any mind.”
“Out of the reckoning, so not watched in the least. And because we’re not watched… a surprise attack lands for certain. Well, it’s Anastasia’s win, tactically speaking.”
“Ha… you lot…” A dry laugh spilled out of me despite myself.
True enough, there’d been luck in it too. Had Cliff’s trump card been strong in resistance to magic… at that point the whole scheme would have fallen apart. And yet, on this battlefield you could fairly call the ultimate, under conditions where a life was a thing that might blow away at a breath, these three had watched for their moment all the while, stayed weak, and by the very logic of that weakness reached their fangs even to Cliff.
—The logic of the weak.
It is the reasoning of the primordial mage. To guard themselves from beasts, from monsters, from danger, humans took to themselves the magics that begin with body-strengthening. That too was the choice of the weak, and it too is the logic of the weak. In that sense… genuinely and truly, these three had fought a battle as mages, and had won.
“…And so it seems that’s how it is. Looks like the match is decided, Cliff.”
“…It appears I’ve lost. But I’m surprised… with a gap in forces like this, there shouldn’t have been anywhere a reason for me to lose.”
“No, I lost to you. It was down to the wire, seeing as our side threw everything in and you were just the one man.”
“…”
“It’s been so from the old days. On my own, I can’t do a thing worth mentioning.”
“No, even so… I lost to you as a mage. That’s a fact past shifting. And as a demon, too… I may have beaten you, but I lost to all of you—a complete defeat, Ephthal.”
“Hey, Cliff? Won’t you walk the road together with me? The goal we’re making for ought to be the same.”
“No, that I can’t do. Say you let me go here; once the wounds of the fight have healed, I’ll walk this same road again… it is, after all, the conclusion I drew over four hundred years.”
“…Stubborn son of a bitch.”
“That, of all things, I’d rather not hear from you.”
I know Cliff well. And it’s exactly because I know him well that I understand: once this man has decided a thing is so, he’ll not be choosy about his means, and never, ever will he bend his own will… his own pride.
“But it’s true I’m a little… tired. So I’ll bow out here… the rest, I leave to you.”
“…See you, then, Cliff.”
“Yeah. Farewell, Ephthal.”
And then I swung the demon-blade wreathed in violet lightning.
“Level 10 Magic Sword: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”
In the space of an instant, all of it came to an end.
And with the tension that had held me taut cut clean through, I crumpled where I stood, and lost consciousness at once.