Volume 7Chapter 1

Chapter 1 – Reunion with My Ex-Wife

“Nice to meet you… is it? …No matter. Nice to meet you—big brother.”

My ex-wife was giving me a puzzled look, and I swallowed hard.

Then the Earth God Emperor Itam, who was standing next to Bridget, spoke up.

“Now then, Ephthal. As you can see, Bridget is in our hands.”

I’d known for a while that he was shadowing us, letting himself be glimpsed now and then. What I couldn’t figure out was why he’d picked this moment to step out into the open.

I glanced sideways at Sasha. From his baffled look, he was in the same boat. He had attack and defense formulas both running, too, ready to fight the second it came to that. Same as me.

“What do you want, Earth God Emperor?”

After what he’d just said, he might be planning to use Bridget as a hostage, but…

Either way, nothing was going to start until I heard what he was really after.

“Well, it’s simple, Ephthal.”

He gave me a pleasant smile.

“Let’s have a drink. First time in ages.”

⁂

We were shown into a banquet hall big enough for a hundred people.

It was the great hall of the nicest inn on the island, and nobody had held back. The buffet was loaded with lavish dishes, and there was even a bar counter at the edge of the hall, stocked with wine, ale, and spirits, carefully chosen labels from countries all over the world. As far as I could tell, it was all noble-grade stock, priced to make a commoner faint. A bartender stood by, so you could order any cocktail you liked. You couldn’t ask for more.

The tableware was no joke either. The plates were decorated like works of art, and the glasses were so thin they looked ready to shatter if you touched them. The room itself had cost a fortune, with a deep-pile carpet underfoot and, to top it all off, a chandelier dripping with gemstones overhead.

I was still frowning over what all this was supposed to mean when Merlin spoke to me.

“This is truly lavish, Ephthal-sama.”

“Yeah. I never thought he’d throw us an actual banquet.”

So here we were, sitting around a square table in the middle of the Earth God Emperor’s party.

It was a buffet, so there was plenty to pick from. I hadn’t touched any of it. Poison, obviously. Sasha and I had double-checked every dish and drink in advance, and there wasn’t a trace of poison in them. Besides, if it came to that, a detox spell would clear the alcohol out of us in no time. Actually, come to think of it, it would clear out poison just as easily. Still, nobody wants to eat a meal provided by someone who might be an enemy. That’s just human nature.

Then Anastasia, diagonally across from me, let out an admiring cry.

“Master, this food looks amazing!”

“Funny, you haven’t touched any of it.”

“Um… well… I just… don’t feel like eating any of it.”

Fair enough.

“If I was Master’s enemy, and we were in a spot like this…”

“Yeah, you’d poison the food and drinks a hundred percent of the time.”

“No, even I wouldn’t put poison in the food or the drinks.”

She beamed.

That caught me off guard. “Really? I thought poison and traps were your bread and butter.”

“But Master and the others would definitely check the food, right?”

Right. She’d already factored that in. Typical Anastasia.

“Yep, we did check.”

Her smile got even wider. “So I’d put the poison on the knives and forks. Or on the plates!”

“…I see.”

The tableware had been checked too, with Level 9 danger detection, so I could say with total confidence we were fine there.

But why was she so happy to be talking about poison? Right then I was a lot more worried about this girl’s future than about anything on the table.

“So it’s all about where you plant it, huh.”

“Huh? Did I say something weird?”

“No, it’s just that you’re treating poison as a given. Your ideas keep escalating, getting more sophisticated… that’s all.”

For some reason she blushed a little, though I couldn’t see what she had to be shy about.

“I’m always thinking about the easiest way to beat people!”

Well, that’s… not exactly something to say with a bashful maiden’s blush.

Once again, I couldn’t shake a small worry about where Anastasia was headed.

“Hmm. Whether that counts as growth is a real question, but…”

“But?”

“Still, if you’re asking whether it’s a legitimate way to fight, I’d say yes. ‘I got stabbed in the back’ doesn’t count as an excuse on a battlefield.”

Her whole face blossomed into a smile.

“Yay! Master said I did well!”

“I’m a little conflicted about it, to be honest.”

I gave her a wry smile, but it went right past her. All she knew was that she’d been praised, and she was glowing.

Sheryl, sitting next to her, put in a word between mouthfuls of roast beef.

“…Delicious. They’re using good beef.”

“You…”

I gave her an exasperated look and went on. “You’re still just doing your own thing, aren’t you? We’re talking about poison right next to you… and you still feel like eating?”

“…Ephthal and Sasha-sama already checked. No poison.”

“True, but you should still be careful.”

“…I trust Ephthal absolutely.”

“I appreciate the trust, but…”

She gave a small nod. “…If Ephthal doesn’t stop me, I’ll just follow my appetite and eat the meat. Like that person over there.”

Sheryl pointed across the room. Over at the buffet, someone was piling a plate sky-high.

“Ho! Black dragon steak, my favorite! Well, I’ll be! Who’d have thought I’d find crackers with salmon roe and cheese on a backwater island like this…! And caviar and cheese too, you say!? What luck, what luck! Kaaah! The wine won’t stop flowing at this rate!”

Right.

I got up, walked over to Sasha in silence, and crept up slowly behind him. “Hey.” Then I rapped him on the head.

“Ow! What was that for, Ephthal?”

“You’re basically the leader of this group, master. The one in charge.”

“I do hold that sort of position, true.”

“Please act like it, then. Sheryl’s copying you, you know.”

That was the lecture, anyway. It didn’t take. Sasha sat down at the table and roared with laughter.

“Kah-kah-kah! Whatever poison they use, my detox magic handles it in a snap!”

“Well, sure, but…”

Was this guy really all right, in every possible sense? Then again, it was Sasha through and through.

As I slumped, he stuck out his flat chest.

“Think about it. Strength-wise, we’re at our peak right now. So just sit tight.”

He had a point. Everyone in the hall was part of the group that had wiped out the giants who attacked the island. On our side the fighters were me, Sasha, and Merlin, plus Svetlana with a whole crowd of her dragon relatives.

“If we can’t handle an enemy with this lineup, poison hardly matters. Nothing we do would work either way.”

“I see what you mean, but…”

I gave a vague nod and looked over at the table set aside for the dragons. Svetlana and her relatives had started their own party and were having a great time. Dragons are born immune to poison and alcohol, so they were eating and drinking without a care. They’re also kin to the dragon royal family, which makes them all VIPs, so nobody was about to snark at them the way I could at Sasha. Go figure.

Still, I thought I should at least put Sasha on notice.

“Seriously, though, don’t let your guard down.”

“Every day is a battlefield. You ought to know that about me.”

“You’re too casual in everyday life, master.”

He’s reliable when it counts, but how a weirdo like this became the strongest mage alive is beyond me.

I went back to my seat and was drinking from the canteen I carry in my coat when Maria broke in.

“Hey… Ephthal, can I ask you something?”

“What’s up, Maria?”

“I’ve been wondering about this the whole time. What’s the deal with that?”

Her eyes went to the girl sitting next to me.

“Honestly, I’d like to know that myself.”

Where Maria was looking, a little girl had wrapped herself around my right arm. Bridget had been clinging to me like that for a while now, and I was baffled.

Bridget is my ex-wife, but she now looks about ten years old.

“Heh-heh… Big brother! Your arms are so muscly!”

I’m the lean, toned type. I won’t deny it.

Still, I had no idea how to deal with this. Bridget had once been my wife, but she seemed to have no memory of it. The Earth God Emperor had said we’d talk at the party, then slipped away… He hadn’t shown his face since. At least he wasn’t using Bridget as a hostage: he’d seated her right with us. So Sasha and I both dropped out of combat readiness and joined the party.

“Um, Master…?”

“Something wrong, Anastasia?”

“Bridget-chan has a really cute face!”

“Of course she does, brat.”

That was Merlin, cutting in from the side. For some reason she was puffing out her ample chest with pride.

“After all, this lady was once Ephthal-sama’s—”

I clapped a hand over her mouth. Was now really the time to start telling Bridget things?

I was panicking, but Bridget just tilted her head, cute as anything, and turned to Merlin.

“What is it, Auntie? Why would I have anything to do with big brother’s past?”

“Wha… Aun…!?”

A little background: Merlin had recently found her first fine wrinkles and had been moping about it. So Bridget had stepped on a landmine, no question.

She meant nothing by it, of course. She had the most innocent face imaginable.

Even so, veins were standing out at Merlin’s temple. If it had been Anastasia or Maria, a fist would have flown already.

“Ngh…!”

Merlin’s fists were clenched, but she plainly had no idea where to aim them. I suppose even she balked at hitting my ex-wife.

And Bridget, with a child’s talent for ignoring the mood, brushed past the fuming Merlin and threw her arms around me.

“Hey, hey, big brother?”

“Yeah, Bridget?”

“Is it true, what that big sister said? Am I cute?”

She pointed at Anastasia, smiling like an angel. After that, all I could do was answer honestly.

“Yeah, well… I think you’re cute.”

And I do. Before anyone asks, this isn’t some lolicon thing. It’s purely a question of how a face is put together, and hers is cute. If she hadn’t been my type, I’d never have gone after her back then. And even setting taste aside, anybody would call that face cute.

She’s my own ex-wife, and her features are startlingly fine. Long lashes, pale skin…

Her brother Cliff was a beauty too, now that I thought of it. Elves tend to be good-looking as a race, but these two siblings were on another level. Maybe it ran in the family.

While I was thinking that, Bridget had started happily wolfing down chocolate cake.

She had chocolate smeared around her mouth… which was cute too. Actually, no. What really got me was the cowlick sticking straight up.

Her hair had always been so straight that her bedhead was a disaster. Even at official ceremonies, a cowlick could pop up if the humidity caught her off guard, and every time she’d go red and get flustered.

Before I knew it, I’d picked up a napkin from the table and wiped her mouth.

“Huh? What are you doing, big brother?”

“You’ve got chocolate on your face. Be careful.”

Ah, that took me back. Yeah, this was how it used to be. Bridget was meticulous in everyday life, but one drink and she fell apart. When she was drunk, a smear of sauce would end up at the corner of her mouth, just like now. At parties with friends, I was always the one who looked after her at the end of the night, when she couldn’t stand.

“Mm… Big brother?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for wiping my mouth. But I feel like somebody did the same thing for me once… no, that’s weird. I only just met you, big brother.”

Which, strictly speaking, was correct.

I was starting to feel strange, though. Her body was a child’s, so I can say for sure it had nothing to do with desire. Still, my heart was pounding, or swelling, or… I don’t know what to call this feeling.

“But thank you. I love my nice big brother.”

She threw her arms around me and squeezed again.

“What’s wrong, Sheryl?”

When I looked over, Sheryl, normally so expressionless, was glaring at us with real ferocity.

“…She’s been clinging to Ephthal all this time like it’s nothing, just because nobody stopped her.”

Anastasia gave a small nod and sided with Sheryl.

“Yes! She’s a kid, so I was letting it go, but that’s too much! None of us can do that, even though we all want to!”

These girls had stopped even pretending to hide how they felt about me. I didn’t mind the feelings themselves, but I did wonder what they planned to do with them. Where were they hoping this would land? However I added it up, the only finish line I could see was somewhere wildly out of control…

Anyway, never mind that for now.

“By the way, Master, doesn’t Bridget-chan look a lot like Maria-san?”

“They’re supposed to be distant relatives.”

Bridget and Maria come from the same elf tribe. I’d thought Maria looked like Bridget from the day I met her, but side by side they were eerily alike, practically twins. Maria was much older, so I could tell them apart. Give them the same age, hairstyle, and clothes, though, and I’d have no hope.

“Even for distant relatives… it’s weird,” Anastasia said.

“How so, Anastasia?”

“They look way too much alike, don’t you think? What do you think, Maria-san?”

Maria nodded.

“Ephthal told me before that we looked alike… But yeah, she looks like me as a kid… It’s scary, honestly.”

Right, I’d mentioned the resemblance to Maria a while back. She stared hard at Bridget’s face, as if checking, and Bridget turned to look at Maria too.

“Huh? You and me look alike, big sister? Hmm, maybe we do…”

And the moment their eyes met…

The two of them froze, blank-faced, for just an instant.

“W-what’s wrong, Maria-san?”

“No, just now I sort of… spaced out. Or got light-headed… It was like I blacked out for a second…”

It had lasted only a moment, but in that moment the magic power covering Maria’s and Bridget’s bodies had seemed to resonate, to fall into sync.

I looked at Sasha. He wore the same frown.

But magic power resonating like that only happens in a lab, between homunculi made from the same base body. Distant relatives shouldn’t be able to do it. So what was this?

That was when the Earth God Emperor came over to our table.

“Sorry to keep you. Getting dressed took longer than I thought.”

He was in a tuxedo, which flattered his tall, slim frame.

But what was he up to? Invite us to a banquet, then leave Bridget alone and go off to change?

“Earth God Emperor, you and I don’t need to dress up for each other, do we?”

He chuckled and shrugged.

“Well, it has been four hundred years. A man wants to look his best.”

He took an empty seat at our table and clapped his hands. A server brought drinks, and he picked a Saryona red off the tray.

“Ephthal, you haven’t touched anything.”

“…Can’t say I feel like drinking.”

“Haha, no poison, I assure you… How about it, one drink with me? Personally, I’d like us to be friends.”

I thought it over for a moment.

“…I’ll do ale. I believe you about the poison.”

“All right. To renew an old friendship, then, ale it is.”

He clapped again and called the server over, and two ales were set down in front of us.

“Cheers!”

“…Cheers.”

I took a sip, then got right to it.

“You want us to be friends… All right. I can believe the party itself has no ulterior motive.”

“You checked, I assume. Not a drop of poison.”

I nodded. “So what’s this about, Earth God Emperor?”

He took a sip of ale, then slowly set the glass back on the table.

“You want to stop it too.”

“Stop what?”

“Bridget turning into a Demon Lord.”

Not even Cliff, in four hundred years, had found a way.

I raised both hands, conceding the point.

“You don’t waste time, do you? Now I have to listen.”

“Yes. Our interests line up. I’d like you to keep that in mind for everything I’m about to tell you.”

And the Earth God Emperor smiled at me.

⁂

What the Earth God Emperor laid out was myth, in the literal sense.

The Ten Sages. Otherwise known as the Star Eaters.

Long ago they gave knowledge to humans who had no civilization, and in no time at all they’d built up the ancient magic civilization. Their goal was blunt: to make themselves stronger through magic research. By drawing on the mana that fills a planet’s atmosphere, they made that research far more efficient. The amount of mana it takes is huge, enough to drain a planet dry. And when a planet’s mana runs out, they move on to another one.

They hop from star to star, eating each one’s mana in turn. Hence the name.

The universe is vast, but planets with intelligent life are rare, and so are planets with mana. If they burned through every one like slash-and-burn farmers, their research would grind to a halt. So the planets they’d drained had to be recycled, and that was where the reincarnation system came in.

Apparently, pure souls that have never used magic are hard to come by, so souls get summoned from Earth. And when a reincarnator from Earth uses magic or skills, they scatter mana through the atmosphere with extraordinary efficiency. That’s why the system is set up so that reincarnators eventually go berserk and, driven by the urge to destroy, cast annihilation magic.

That was the Demon Lord transformation. It all existed to refill the mana this planet had lost. And right now the planet was in the preparation phase for being recycled.

Well… that was mostly what I’d heard before.

“It matches what Sasha told me earlier.”

The Earth God Emperor looked at Sasha and let out an admiring “Oh?”

“The Undead Emperor really is well informed.”

“That much I know without trying.”

“Still, in the world at large that story should survive only in scraps, as myths and fairy tales.”

“I haven’t lived this long for nothing. I’m a seeker of the summit of magic myself, so naturally I’ve followed the Ten Sages’ tracks.”

With a shrug, Sasha went on. “I looked into them as far as I could, once. I’ve given up… You can’t learn a thing from something that absurd.”

Sasha, who’s absurd by his very existence, calling something absurd? That rattled me.

“Absurd how, master?”

“Ephthal, you know summoning is one of my specialties, don’t you?”

Did I ever. It had pulled me out of more than one tight spot, and I’d seen its power up close more times than I could count.

“You mean Level 11: Otogi Fantasia.”

“Just so.”

Otogi Fantasia was practically Sasha’s signature. Since the fight with Cliff his forces had been badly depleted, but it was still ferocious.

“For instance, Ephthal. Picture a giant snake. Ten thousand kilometers long, three hundred wide.”

“Ten thousand long, three hundred wide?”

Hmm…

Huge, obviously.

“I mean it. Picture it properly.”

I had no idea why I had to, but Sasha looked serious, so I gave it a real try. The Earth is forty thousand kilometers around, so…

An aerial photo couldn’t fit the whole snake in the frame. You’d have to shoot from space. And for scale you’d need maps and countries to compare it to.

On a map of Earth, how big would it be? Just the snake’s width would be about the distance from Nagoya to Tokyo, so it was beyond belief already. Add ten thousand kilometers of length, and coiled up it would be about the size of Hokkaido.

No, would even that be too small? It might cover the whole Japanese archipelago.

“It’s beyond anything I can picture, to be honest. What about it?”

“Think, Ephthal. If you summoned that snake, what level would the spell have to be?”

“…Where are you going with this?”

Ignoring my question, Sasha just let out a long sigh.

“Level 20? Level 30? At that point it means nothing, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t.”

He threw up his hands. “The more I looked into the Ten Sages, the clearer it became that I’d never get anywhere near them. It’s absurd.”

“So you’re saying the Ten Sages summoned some giant cosmic monster, ten thousand kilometers long and three hundred wide?”

That was too much even for a monster movie. I’d never heard of a monster that ridiculous. Ten thousand kilometers… For a moment I just froze, stunned by the scale.

“That’s it. It got so absurd I gave up chasing it. That’s the kind of beings they are, you see.”

The Earth God Emperor nodded vigorously.

“The Undead Emperor knows even the Nine-Headed Dragon… I’m genuinely impressed.”

“I keep telling you, I haven’t lived this long for nothing. Now, what was it, this Nine-Headed Dragon…”

“Yes. As you know, it’s the god of destruction that appears when the mana in the atmosphere reaches a certain concentration.”

“Its job being to prepare for the Ten Sages’ return to the planet… A thorough housecleaning, in other words?”

The Earth God Emperor nodded at Sasha’s question.

“Yes. The aim is to thin humanity out until civilization can’t sustain itself.”

“Destruction I understand. But what need have they of it?”

“They hand a magic civilization to a humanity knocked back to the Stone Age, and watch how it unfolds… Observing it like a terrarium is apparently part of their research.”

“Hmm… A foul hobby, that’s all I can call it.”

The longer I listened to the two of them, the paler I got.

The Ten Sages had been treating reincarnators as playthings, what with the Demon Lord business, so I’d already written them off as no good. But sweeping humanity away for the sake of their own research, just like that, was insane. And the reason was to watch how Stone Age people did after being handed civilization? I could only conclude they saw humans as lab animals.

Then again, maybe it was wrong to judge beings on that scale by our common sense and ethics.

“Hold on a second, master.”

“What is it, Ephthal?”

“You’re saying they’d use a ten-thousand-kilometer snake for mass destruction… Are you serious? The scale is so ridiculous… I can’t keep up.”

“That’s why they’re called the Star Eaters, isn’t it?”

“…”

“They built something as insane as the reincarnation system. Tell me they created this universe and I’d not be surprised.”

“So that’s what we’re dealing with…”

Immortal, hopping from planet to planet and devouring each in turn, researching magic at optimal efficiency. Those who have reached the end of the infernal road of magic. The phrase crossed my mind.

Without question, they’d achieved one form of the ‘strongest’ I’d been chasing all this time. But the method seemed fundamentally wrong to me.

While I was thinking that, the Earth God Emperor spoke to Sasha.

“Even the Undead Emperor won’t know this. The problem is that the Nine-Headed Dragon seems about to appear.”

“What… did you say?”

Sasha’s face froze.

Mine probably did too.

“What do you mean, Earth God Emperor?” Sasha asked.

The Earth God Emperor was silent for a moment before he went on.

“It all began four hundred years ago, when humanity grew weaker.”

Humanity grew weaker…?

Meaning people could no longer cast high-level magic, right?

Then it hit me.

If nobody can cast high-level magic, less mana gets burned. And the Nine-Headed Dragon appears when the mana concentration reaches a certain level. Which meant…

“Earth God Emperor. With high-level magic use dropping off… the mana concentration in the atmosphere has been climbing fast. Is that it?”

“That’s it, Ephthal. You’re as sharp as ever.”

“But… if the Nine-Headed Dragon appears, humanity on this planet…”

“Yes, it will be wiped out. No… that’s not quite right.”

“Not quite?”

“There would be destruction and slaughter on a scale civilization can’t survive. Strictly speaking, humanity doesn’t die out.”

Either way, it was as bad as it gets.

Nobody at the table said a word.

Merlin, Anastasia, and Maria, who’d said nothing the whole time, had gone the color of clay. Sheryl was as expressionless as ever, but her mouth had bent into a frown. It had hit her too.

Bridget just kept eating chocolate cake. I assumed she hadn’t understood a word.

“And there’s more,” the Earth God Emperor said heavily. “A source I trust has measured the mana, and I’m sorry to say there’s no doubt. The time limit is under ten years.”

“Ten years…?”

But wait.

The mana dissolved in the atmosphere is extremely thin. Unless you set up special conditions in a magic research lab, you can’t measure it at all.

“Hold on, Earth God Emperor. The lost ancient civilization might have been able to measure mana concentration, but today’s magic can’t. Can it?”

He put a hand to his chin and thought. Then he took a thick booklet out of his coat.

“What’s this?”

“For about the last eight hundred years, homunculi have been automatically observing the mana in the atmosphere. This records the result, with the time limit worked out by a special formula.”

The booklet was heavy when I took it. Sasha, Merlin, and I turned the pages together.

And there, sure enough, were eight hundred years of mana measurements, recorded in fine detail. Partway through I even spotted what looked like the formula that had produced the ten-year limit.

A good part of it was beyond me… and beyond Sasha too.

“Ephthal-sama…”

“Yes, Merlin?”

“Could this formula lead to a proof of Noah’s Riddle? It is one of the Seven Great Magic Theorems, and nobody has ever proven it.”

Her question startled a gasp out of me. Once she’d pointed me at it, I ran the numbers in my head for a moment and nodded weakly, stunned.

“…You’re right, Merlin. Building on this formula… I think I could prove it in three days.”

I threw up my hands in surrender.

There was no getting around it. Whoever had written this booklet had knowledge far beyond any magic theory we knew.

Sasha let out a sigh.

“It does look credible, I’ll give it that. And nobody’s idle enough to make a thing like this as a joke.”

I agreed with him. But if it was real, we were in serious trouble.

The Earth God Emperor clapped me on the shoulder. “Convinced, Ephthal?”

But even if the data was right, who had made it? Was there anyone in this age who could outdo Sasha and me in magic theory? Hold on, he’d said homunculi had been observing automatically for eight hundred years. So whoever commanded them had to be long-lived, or undead. Even so, a mage that famous would be someone we knew.

“Earth God Emperor… who made this?”

He nodded at my blunt question.

“The Great Mage Balthazar-sama compiled it, using automatic writing. He has lived since the age of the Ten Sages, the ancient magic civilization.”

“Balthazar? Never heard of the fellow,” said Sasha.

Hold on.

Alive since the age of the Ten Sages? How long ago was that, even?

In theory, a lifespan like that isn’t even possible. Sasha is undying, true. But long life has a brutal price. The body can’t hold together and you turn into a zombie, or the years wear away your emotions and your reason. Either way you end up a walking corpse or a husk with nothing left inside. That’s the unavoidable fate of the undead.

Sasha making it past a thousand years was already astonishing. I’d asked him about it once, and he’d told me you have to end it yourself, by your own hand, and go out with dignity.

And now someone had lived far longer than that? I couldn’t believe it.

As if he’d read my doubts, the Earth God Emperor smiled.

“I know it’s hard to believe, Ephthal, but it’s true.”

“But… how?”

“He stopped his own time, and he has survived to this age in a kind of half-hibernation.”

“Stopped his own time? You mean time magic?”

I swallowed hard.

“I understand how you feel, Ephthal. I can hardly believe it myself.”

Time magic.

In theory, it’s a field where only the bare possibility has ever been discussed. Thousands, tens of thousands… no, hundreds of thousands of gifted mages have thrown themselves at it, and every last one has failed. Whoever cracks it is guaranteed a place in the history of magic.

It’s so hard there’s even a maxim about it.

A researcher who hasn’t set out to unravel the laws of time by twenty lacks ambition.

One who hasn’t given up even after thirty lacks brains.

In other words, a field with plenty of dreams and no payoff.

But now someone had gone past theory and was already using it in practice? If that was true, this Balthazar was nothing short of a devil.

“Hmm…”

Sasha put a hand to his chin and sank into thought.

“Say, Ephthal.”

“Yes, master?”

“If we took on the Nine-Headed Dragon head-on, what do you think would happen?”

I did as he asked and pictured the Nine-Headed Dragon as an enemy. Nine heads, going by the name. A body big beyond reason. As a summon, its rank would easily top Level 20, like Sasha said. Even Level 11: Otogi Fantasia was a threat to us. And this thing was ten thousand kilometers long and three hundred wide.

A direct hit from Level 11: Four Emperors would probably do no more than scratch its surface.

Yeah. There was no way to win.

I shook my head at Sasha.

“It’s hard to say, but even if we attacked…”

“Go on. Say it.”

“I doubt it would even register as an attack.”

“Probably so. Kah-kah… Say, Ephthal, apparently that thing shows up as the god of destruction in ten years.”

“That’s… a problem, master.”

“Hm. A real problem.”

A part of me had hoped Sasha might still have some trick up his sleeve. From his face, not this time.

“…”

“…”

We fell silent, and the Earth God Emperor laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Ephthal.”

“…What?”

“Naturally I won’t let it come to that. It’s why I’m asking my old friend Ephthal for help in the first place.”

“How do you plan to turn this around?”

“Well…” He nodded and drained the rest of his ale in one go.

“Fighting it head-on is pointless. You see that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Given the size.”

“Then we come at it from a different angle.”

He clapped his hands. A server hurried over and, at his word, filled the clear glass in front of him with water. Then he had hot tea brought to the table.

What was he up to? The Earth God Emperor gave a big nod.

“Let’s get to the heart of it. Right now this glass holds only water, yes?”

“Yes. So?”

He poured tea into the glass. Naturally, the water clouded to a reddish brown before our eyes.

“Think of this cloudiness as the mana in the atmosphere. And now—”

He snapped his fingers.

The water and tea slowly separated, and the tea drew itself up out of the water until it gathered into a small sphere and floated up into the air.

“To put it visually, this is what we’re doing. We extract the mana, solidify it, and take it outside.”

“…Solidify it?”

“As you can see, the water in the glass is clear now.”

“So you gather only the mana and purify the air?”

“Mana is the planet’s own magic power, so I couldn’t say ‘purify’ is the right word.”

The Nine-Headed Dragon appears when the mana concentration in the atmosphere rises. So all you had to do was lower the concentration.

Well, what the Earth God Emperor was saying did hang together.

“So you’re already doing this work?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Now that I thought about it, a few things fit. Strange things had been happening ever since we came to this island. For one, monsters of an impossibly high rank had been turning up in large numbers.

“Earth God Emperor. Is that what you were doing, collecting mana from the atmosphere and hardening it to make high-level monsters?”

“It is.” He nodded, satisfied. “Or using mana to speed up the revival of sealed monsters.”

“…I have a lot of questions, but go on with the explanation for now.”

“Producing biological weapons from the ancient civilization consumes a huge amount of mana. That depletion is also why the Ten Sages left this planet. We’re exploiting that same effect from the other side.”

“But… isn’t something off about that?”

“How so?”

“If you collect mana from the atmosphere to make monsters, sure, you burn the mana. But… when a monster dies, its mana goes back into the atmosphere sooner or later.”

Wouldn’t that put us right back where we started?

The Earth God Emperor shook his head.

“Which is why we have Bridget.”

“…What do you mean?”

Then I gasped.

Every monster we’d killed on this island had vanished without a trace once it died. Had Bridget been the one making them disappear?

If so, everything fit.

“Let me start from the beginning, Ephthal. Do you know why mana is spread through the atmosphere so efficiently when a reincarnator uses magic?”

“Because of pure souls, supposedly… I don’t really get what that means.”

“The story of the Garden of Eden is the easiest way to explain it. The fruit of life is the power of magic. The fruit of knowledge is the power of science. You follow so far?”

I looked around the table. Sasha was just barely keeping up, and even Merlin looked lost. Anastasia and the others had given up completely, their mouths hanging open.

The Earth God Emperor was building his analogy on the Bible from Earth. Obviously he’d never expected anyone but me to follow.

“Put simply, in this universe the only humans who’ve eaten nothing but the fruit of knowledge are you reincarnators. Does that make it clearer?”

“A civilization built on science, with no magic underneath it, is warped… Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not so much warped as rare. Does that help?”

“Hmm… All I’ve really got is that a pure-science civilization is rare.”

“Either fruit, life or knowledge, defiles the pure beings the creator god made. And you, from the planet Earth, are purer than we are, who’ve eaten both. As souls, you’re closer to being energy itself. So converted to mana, a soul yields an enormous quantity, and as a container for mana it holds an enormous amount.”

I still didn’t really get it. But the word ‘container’ finally showed me where this was heading.

“So the idea is that Bridget absorbs the mana leaking into the atmosphere from the monsters we kill, and stores it?”

No, wait, I thought, shaking my head.

“But when Bridget dies, doesn’t all that mana get scattered into the atmosphere anyway?”

“Pure souls don’t turn into mana on this planet. When a reincarnator’s body here is completely destroyed, the soul returns to your home planet. That’s how it’s built.”

So that was it. I caught my breath.

Say a dead reincarnator’s soul did go back into this planet’s atmosphere. Then there’d be no reason to turn reincarnators into Demon Lords in the first place. You could simply let them live out their natural lifespans, or design the system to kill them the moment they arrived. There’d be no need to provoke the urge to destroy and make them use magic and skills.

But the system did exactly that. Which meant…

“I get the outline, but how do we actually stop Bridget from turning into a Demon Lord?”

“When Bridget’s soul vessel draws in this planet’s mana, her pure soul blends with the fruit of life. The reincarnator side of her, the side that’s supposed to set off the urge to destroy, grows thinner.”

“…And?”

“It would be a stopgap, but if she takes in a set amount at regular intervals, we can assume she’s safe from turning into a Demon Lord.”

“But… if you knew a way, why did Cliff end up like that? If you’d told him, Earth God Emperor, Cliff wouldn’t have…”

I was about to rush him when Sasha caught my shoulder.

“There must be a reason.”

At Sasha’s words, the Earth God Emperor gave a small, apologetic nod.

“…What do you mean?”

“Balthazar-sama, who taught me all this, only woke recently. The condition he’d set for ending his hibernation was a fierce clash at Level 11.”

“Why Level 11…?”

He stopped me with his palm.

“He’s a seeker of the way of magic too. In a world without high-level mages, he believes there’s nothing to feed his own growth. So until now he had stopped his body’s time and lain dormant.”

“…”

“That’s the whole story of how this came about.”

At last I had the whole picture.

But I was worn out. I still couldn’t process the flood of information.

“Earth God Emperor, this sounds like a fairy tale. Like a myth.”

“We’re talking about the creation and destruction of a planet… Of course it does.”

Now what? I thought it over.

If this was true, I had no intention of opposing the Earth God Emperor or getting in his way. If anything, I’d be glad to help.

“So what do you want me to do, Earth God Emperor?”

He gave me a mischievous grin.

“Your specialty.”

Then he added, “In other words… monster hunting. You’ve always loved that sort of thing, haven’t you?”

The Earth God Emperor laughed, hamming it up.