Prologue – Battle at the Summit
“Level 10: Undead Emperor Sasha.”
A blast of dark-colored magic came tearing toward me.
I threw up two Level 7 barriers side by side, thrown together on the spur of the moment, though I knew from the start it was like a bucket on a bonfire.
“Level 7: Perfect Wall!”
I shoved both palms out. A ward unfolded from each hand, left and right, straining against the press of Sasha’s magic. And just as I’d figured, in a few seconds my barriers gave, and the black wave came bearing down on a straight line for me.
With the seconds I’d bought, I unfolded one more. Still a bucket on a bonfire, of course. In the blink of an eye the last of my wards was breached, and just as I braced myself, thinking this is the end—
“It… missed?”
Sasha’s Level 10 bent off its course, tore through my right arm just past the wrist, and shot away behind me. A beat later came the blast, deep in the ruins. The whole structure took the hit—the ceiling too, by the look of it, and boulders large and small started raining down.
“Finishing it with a cheap shot would be… well, dull.”
So he’s holding back? No, he’s toying with me. Well and truly looked down on, aren’t I. That’s what I’d like to think, except it’s also a plain fact that my right arm got carried off on the opening move. I tried to heal it, but they’d countered full-recovery magic too. Well, of course they had. Locking me out of healing would be step one of any plan built to stop me.
So what now. The more I read the situation, the more it looks like I’m already checkmated.
While I stood there grinding my teeth, the Fire God Emperor called across to Sasha.
“As we planned, go for total destruction of the limbs. We mustn’t kill him.”
“Mm. Then I shall take the left hand.”
“And I’ll help myself to the left foot.”
The Fire God Emperor and Sasha loosed Level 9 spells at the same instant, Cliff a lance of flame, Sasha a blade of wind, each aimed exactly where he’d called it, left foot and left hand. I was building a formula of my own, but one Level 9 was as much as I could manage. One on one, I’d never lose on construction speed. But there were two of them, twice the hands, twice the pace. I wouldn’t make it. No, there was no way I could make it. These weren’t amateurs; they were experts working at the same level I did.
“This is bad.”
By throwing up a wind blade of my own I just barely canceled Sasha’s. At the same moment I twisted clear of Cliff’s flame, didn’t quite manage it, and the fire grazed my left foot.
“Guh…”
The wound was shallow, nothing lost. My leg would still move, barely. But that sealed any hope of quick footwork.
“You two… why aren’t you going for the kill?”
Sasha’s opening shot was the same. Aim for the torso or the head and, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve killed me on the spot. I could tell they were pulling their punches; I just couldn’t work out why.
“It’s not that I’d mind taking your life. It’s that internal organs don’t come with replacements, Ephthal.”
At that, Sasha and the Fire God Emperor traded a glance.
“Still, brat, going easy on Ephthal of all people… you’ve saddled me with a rather difficult job, haven’t you?”
“That’s exactly why it’s the two of us,” Cliff said.
“Hold on there, Fire God Emperor. Just now it sounded to me like you said this is no longer needed to my face. So why not take my life?”
“Ah—that.”
“To put it plainly, I need your brain and your organs. In as undamaged a state as possible.”
“My brain and organs, you said?”
“I’ll turn you undead and make you my private soldier. The combat power drops by a fair margin, but… you were you to begin with. In a world leveled down as far as this one, that alone makes you a tactical weapon.”
This guy… he’s completely off the rails. To even think of doing that to an old comrade.
“You’ve really and truly written me off, haven’t you?”
“I have, in fact. Even four hundred years ago the gap between us was plain, wasn’t it?”
As if to say why state the obvious, the Fire God Emperor went on, flat and unhurried.
“I climbed all the way to the Level 11 tier, and you’ve grown weaker than you were. On top of which, we’ve got Sasha here, one of the handful counted the strongest in the world even back then.”
And the Fire God Emperor started to laugh, low and delighted.
“By the way, what’s the matter, Ephthal? Your mouth’s lively enough, but your color’s been off for a while now.”
“Ah, I’m just savoring the boundless good fortune of a kind-hearted master.”
The barb seemed to land; Sasha’s face went through something there wasn’t a word for.
“I do feel for you, truly. But the phantom demons of the Otogi Fantasia were taken from me. Those were the jewels I gave my whole life to gathering, you understand? So there’s no help for it, is there. Ephthal, stay quiet and I’ll see the thing done without pain… what will you do?”
“As if that needs asking…”
Then I fired off the Level 10 I’d been quietly building behind the scenes since the fight opened, careful not to let either of them catch on.
“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal!”
White lightning washed across everything, a bolt running dead straight for the Fire God Emperor.
“Given the time elapsed, this is well within expectations. Level 11: Zero. A formula that nullifies any magic of Level 10 or below. Convenient, no?”
He’d casually pulled off something monstrous. Never mind. I hammered three quick Level 7s at him anyway, and in the same breath I sprang toward Sasha on my one good leg.
“That inhuman burst speed of yours, same as ever, Ephthal. Though it’s only the flailing of a man too slow in the high tiers, a talentless weakling’s sleight of hand.”
As things stood, going one against two, I could say with flat certainty my odds were zero. So what I wanted was a little time to focus on Sasha, the easier of the two to handle. That was the whole reason for the second helping of Level 7s, the kind of thing the Fire God Emperor would swat aside in an instant. I knew that going in; the barrage itself meant nothing. It was cover, and in the instant after that blinding spray, I’d lobbed an artifact at the Fire God Emperor.
“…And what’s this?”
Snap, snap, snap—ice crawled up from under the Fire God Emperor’s feet and raced across his whole body.
“An ice-binding artifact. A keepsake of the Ice God Emperor.”
Sheryl’s foster brother had passed it to me; it ran on nearly the same formula as the spell that had almost sealed us in a room once before. Cliff would shake it off soon enough, but a masterwork of the Ice God Emperor, however far gone, is still a masterwork. It would buy a sliver of time.
“…I see. Here I’ll grant you, well done.”
In moments the Fire God Emperor was sheathed head to foot in ice, sealed inside the block.
“Level 8: Invisible. Level 6: Assassin’s Pride. Level 5: Air Wall.”
Three formulas fired in parallel: optical camouflage, a scrubbing of my presence, and three-dimensional maneuvering off walls of compressed air. Kicking off them with one leg, I closed the gap to Sasha fast.
“Ha, this is a marvel. Truly, that torrential construction speed is the one thing even I can’t match.”
I thrust a palm at him and called up fire.
—Level 6: Flare Burst!
“Level 7: Extra Magic Guard.”
Level 6 canceled clean by Level 7. A total shutout; I doubt so much as the heat reached him. This damn old man. He shouldn’t even know where I’m firing from, and he’d caught the exact instant my spell went off. I kicked off a few more air walls and swung around behind him. And—
—One more on the house. Take it, thief! Level 6: Flare Burst!
“Behind me now. But you only ever do what I’ve already accounted for… where’s your fire, Ephthal? Level 7: Extra Magic Guard.”
Cool as anything, not even turning, Sasha raised a ward at his back.
And in that same instant I drew my katana one-handed.
“Guard it or don’t, it makes no difference! The magic was all a decoy!”
Fwoosh—the blade, a single flash of Raikiri. It bit into Sasha’s back, and I felt the solid answer of it run up my arm.
“Even Sasha can’t block thi— …tch, monster!”
“Level 9: Self Material Guard. A sword-stroke on muscle alone won’t cut me.”
Sasha sprang forward, opening the distance.
“Fufu, Ephthal. This new power you’ve picked up—swordsmanship, was it? What you can do and what you can’t… I’ve done my research.”
At Sasha, snorting a laugh down his nose, I drove off the air walls and charged again.
“No use however many times you try. You’ve judged you can’t beat me with magic and gone for close range, but half-learned tricks don’t reach me.”
I paid the words no mind, leveled the katana, and rushed him at full speed, cutting down at him in the same motion. It was like taking a blade to steel. One-handed, I couldn’t ride the shock, and the katana slipped from my grip to the ground. It rang out, clattering away, and Sasha gave an exasperated shrug.
“So you’ve dropped even your last hope, that katana. Well. This ends it. First let me strip away that optical camouflage of yours—Level 7: Mirroring Wash.”
Then, laying eyes on me directly at last, Sasha’s face filled with sheer astonishment.
“Wha—?!”
By the time he noticed, it was already too late. The instant I let the katana fall, I’d already come at him a different way, hand to hand.
—a flying cross armbar.
One leg hooked under his arm, the other swung up as though to reap his neck; then, riding the weight of the drop, I hauled him down and rolled him to the floor. As he hit, I wrenched the joint straight into a lock.
—Crack!
The moment it locked I broke it, no hesitation. I fixed a no-healing curse on the break and shifted into groundwork, mounting him and grabbing him by the collar.
“You can armor your skin all you like, you can’t armor the joints or the blood vessels. There. Dragged you down into the antlion’s pit.”
“I was wary of a throw… but what… is… this…?”
I’d shown Sasha a throw before. But the flying armbar, the joint locks, the ground game, those I’d never let him see. Working the collar, I bore down on his carotid. My right hand blown off past the wrist made it a miserable job, but it more or less held its shape.
“Ka… ha…!”
Sasha’s color went blue before my eyes, then to the gray of clay. That’s oxygen starvation, the blood cut off in an instant, no oxygen reaching the brain. And a brain that can’t take in oxygen, that can’t be worked, means no spell-formula of any kind can be built.
“As a decision between mages it’s a shabby thing, I’ll admit… but you’re the one who let his guard down, so that’s on you.”
Right, choke Sasha out fast, then I’ve got the Fire God Emperor to deal with. I cinched the collar tighter, and just as Sasha’s eyes rolled white and his head lolled, consciousness slipping—
“That’s far enough, Ephthal. Let go of the choke.”
What I felt at my back was, past all mistaking, the premonition of death.
—Level 10: Fire God Emperor.
The name of a spell for a small-scale nuclear blast in a bounded space. Put plainly, right now I’ve got a gun barrel pressed to my back. Pull the trigger and that’s the end of me. With no choice, I eased off the choke, and the Fire God Emperor’s voice came, sing-song.
“Ha, no helping you, Undead Emperor. That pretty little face, all blue and ruined.”
“…Be quiet… brat…”
Well. The blitz failed, plainly enough. My damage came to two places, left foot and right wrist. I could keep fighting. But the situation was far worse than where I’d started. I couldn’t get anywhere without at least forcing it back to one on one, and even that looked hopeless.
“Right. Nothing for it now.”
I let go of Sasha’s collar, took the crown of his head in my left hand, and set the stump of my right wrist against his jaw.
“Sorry, Master… make your peace.”
I poured everything both arms had into turning his head clean around. The gist of it being: spin the head a full turn and wring the neck apart at the vertebrae. Whether the Fire God Emperor’s spell went off first, or I killed Sasha on the spot and got myself set… that was the race. A rotten bet, a downright impossible one by the look of it, but there was nothing to do but try.
Sasha grinned.
“Don’t underestimate me, Ephthal… look up.”
An overwhelming weight of magic, sprung from nowhere, bore down from overhead. Dreading it, I raised my face.
“You have got to be kidding me… oh, come on.”
A jet-black coffin hung in the air. This is the coffin Sasha favors when he handles the power of darkness, the one that opens, he says, onto the underworld.
“Now—take this!”
The coffin’s door swung wide and came falling toward me. He means to drag me inside? From past that door rolled the thick reek of death and darkness.
Looking up, all I could see inside the coffin was blackness: a jet dark that simply went on and on.
Then a pull started up in there, as though the coffin had grown a gravity of its own—and my feet came off the ground. It was drawing me in.
“Whoaaaaaa?!”
Either way, evading it… not a chance.
The next instant it had me: the coffin took me in and flung me out into a space of pure darkness. Right after, the door of the coffin fell shut with a small flat clap, and the sound went ringing away through the black.
And then, at the very last, faint and from nowhere I could place, I caught Sasha’s voice, and the Fire God Emperor’s.
“Sasha? What was it you just did?”
“The order was that I not kill him, after all… Well. Call it taking him into my own belly.”