Volume 7Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – The Vampire Emperor and the Five Magic Emperors

The Rabbit-Eared Demi-Human Girl’s Perspective

A single road through the wasteland.

I ran, out of breath, pulling my little brother along by the hand.

The highway ran across the barren land toward the great forest, with Barnoke, the town where our house stood, behind us. On both sides of the road, bodies had been stuck on stakes at regular intervals, a horrifying sight. Half had rotted down to bone. The rest swarmed with maggots and flies, or were being picked apart by vultures. And every one of them, more than two hundred impaled corpses, was one of us. The rabbit-eared tribe.

“Big sister… why did this happen?”

The answer was simple. The Vampire Emperor Vlad had taken our town.

My brother knew that. But with nowhere to put what he felt, he couldn’t help asking someone why.

Seven hundred years ago, they say, Vlad was a monster of cruelty. That earned him the Undead Emperor’s anger, and the two of them clashed. The battle between the vampires lasted three days and three nights, and in the end the Undead Emperor won.

But a Progenitor’s life force is strong. So when he’d put Vlad down, the Undead Emperor left these words. In a thousand years, this man will surely come back and bring calamity to this land. And he said that when it happened, he would return here.

Three hundred years ahead of that prophecy, three Progenitors were sighted in this land: the Vampire Emperor Vlad, who had fought the Undead Emperor, and his daughter Carmilla and his son Alucard. All three were vampires who had been destroyed five hundred years ago or more.

Humanity had been getting weaker for four hundred years. To creatures who had been called Great Calamities even in their own day, the town guard was nothing. They took the lord’s mansion in no time, with hardly any resistance. The Liberia Empire, which our land belongs to, sent knights more than once, but each time they were cut down. In the end the empire all but abandoned us… Completely abandoned us, really. These days it has given up, and the most it does is send a scouting party now and then to look at the town from a distance, through binoculars.

And the day after Vlad took the lord’s mansion, hell began.

What Vlad and his people did after that was too horrible to look at. Worst of all, he demanded a hundred lives every month, to drink their blood. If we handed over the sacrifices, he promised to take no one else. That meant the humans would have to decide among themselves who would be spared.

And what the townspeople did was…

Hunt demi-humans.

Crews of slavers began prowling the streets, hunting my people, and many were caught. Grandfather. Then Father and Mother.

My brother and I had lost our whole family, and we made up our minds to run, whatever it cost. That is how things came to this. There was no place left for us in that town.

“Big sister, how far are we going?”

“Across the wasteland and into the forest. We should have distant relatives there.”

Our people had always lived in the great forest ahead. Some of us had moved into the towns, but our people in the forest had all heard what was happening. Surely they wouldn’t treat their own kin roughly, not when we’d fled all this way to them.

“B-big sister… look up.”

Then I saw something awful. An undead dragon, one of Vlad’s servants, had come down out of the sky and was crunching the bodies on the roadside one after another, stakes and all.

It hurts to watch your own people be eaten. But I had already seen far too much of that. All I feared now was for my brother’s safety, and in that sense the dragons were no threat. Their only job was to exterminate anything that attacked the town. I’d heard how an imperial force sent to destroy Vlad had been wiped out by them, and how the expert fighters the Adventurers’ Guild sent had fallen too. That news was fresh. But anyone they didn’t judge a real threat, they ignored. They just fed on the dead.

“It’s all right. They shouldn’t attack us.”

I ran on toward the forest, pulling my brother along, both of us gasping.

⁂

We ran for an hour.

At last we got through the wasteland and into the forest, and we stopped to catch our breath.

“Big sister, are we safe now?”

“I think so. We’ll stay with our own people until the town goes back to normal.”

“Good… I was so scared somebody would catch us.”

“Shh… don’t talk!”

Far off, I caught a glimpse of about ten men. I pulled my brother off the forest path and into a thicket.

“…Demi-human hunters,” he whispered.

I nodded and signaled him again to be quiet.

Please, please don’t come this way.

I prayed to God, but it did no good. The men came closer, laughing and talking loudly.

“Never thought we’d be coming all the way out here to catch rabbit-ears.”

“We’ve about hunted out everybody in town. If we don’t catch some wild ones, it’s us precious humans who get our blood sucked.”

“Doesn’t sit right, though. They may be demi-humans, but they’re people too.”

“Listen to you. You’re the first one to lay hands on any woman we catch.”

“Oh, come on, ever hear of saying one thing and meaning another? Truth is, it’s heaven. Slavers’ muscle used to get looked down on, but now the whole town thanks us, and the reward money just keeps pouring in. And all the women we want.”

“Can’t argue with that. Gahahaha!”

They passed in front of us with their filthy jokes, and my stomach turned. But thankfully… they didn’t seem to have noticed us in the thicket.

We were going to get through this…

I had just let out a breath of relief when…

Rustle.

A fox slipped past the men’s feet and ran into our thicket.

“Ah…”

The men’s eyes turned our way, and one of them gave a nasty grin.

“A rabbit! There’s a girl rabbit!”

“All right! I’m first!”

He shoved through the brush and grabbed my arm roughly.

“Stop! Please, stop!”

“There’s a boy rabbit too, a little one!”

“Cute face on him. I’m not into girls, so this one’s mine!”

“Haha, you and your tastes!”

Hands reached in from every side and dragged my brother and me out onto the path. A few blows, and then they pinned me to the ground and tore the clothes from my upper body.

“Remember, I’m first.”

A fat man, snorting, climbed on top of me.

“Oh, God…”

The men burst out laughing at that whisper, though I couldn’t see what was funny.

“Demi-human gods are cruel, huh. Giving a pious girl a fate like this.”

“Nah, the human ones are no better. Worthless, every last one.”

“Haha, true enough!”

The men’s laughter.

My brother’s screaming and sobbing.

Before I knew it, I was screaming too.

“I don’t care what happens to me! Please, spare my brother, at least!”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re both ours.”

They would never listen. I knew that. But begging was all I could do.

“Please, please stop!”

Several burly men held me down. My arms and legs, clamped in place like a vise, would not obey me. I could only wait for them to do what they liked.

Oh, God.

God, please save us.

Please, at least… my brother… and just then, I heard something.

A blade sang through the air.

Then came the thud of a man’s head hitting the ground.

“…What?”

“What a rotten bunch. Are you hurt?”

The one standing there was a black-haired boy with a katana.

“Y-you bastard, where did you come from!?”

Even as the big man shouted, the boy was already standing behind him.

He had vanished and reappeared, just as he had when he first showed up on that spot, with no warning at all.

“Level 8: Teleport.”

A katana sprouted from the big man’s chest.

“Wha!?”

Blood fountained. The man crumpled.

“Level 8 magic!?”

“Nobody told us anyone out here could cast that high!”

“He’s only claiming it. It’s a bluff! No high-level mage would be stuck in a backwater like this!”

The men were visibly shaken, babbling over one another with fear on their faces.

And the boy vanished again, and appeared behind the man farthest away.

Another whistle of steel.

One diagonal slash.

“Agyuh!”

The man’s body slid apart along the cut and dropped to the ground, insides and all.

“Gwuh!”

“Agh-blugh!”

The boy vanished, and appeared. With every swing, another man went down screaming.

One, then another.

They died with ugly cries.

The boy’s face stayed cool, almost serene. He wasn’t even winded.

“Guaaaaaah!”

A last scream, and the thump of the last body hitting the ground.

The boy looked around and took a breath. Then he pulled a sheet of oiled paper from inside his coat and began to wipe the blood off his sword. When he’d sheathed it at his hip, he held out a hand to me.

“Are you all right? Not hurt?”

He seemed to notice then that I was bare to the waist, and not knowing where to look, he turned his head away. He took off his own jacket and handed it to me.

“Th-thank you.”

When I had pulled it on, the boy turned back to me.

“That must have been terrible.”

His face was gentle.

It was rude of me, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him with suspicion.

A magic swordsman who could use Level 8? And at his age?

I don’t know anything about swords or magic. But even I could tell how unheard of that was.

“Who are you…?”

I was asking when a smell of rot reached me. I looked up toward where it came from, and my voice failed me. “Ah…”

At that same instant, the boy pulled me tight against him.

“Level 8: Teleport.”

Held in his arms, I flew about ten meters.

The undead dragon came crashing down where we had been standing.

Why was an undead dragon… here?

Had it been drawn by the presence of someone strong…?

“As a summon it would rate an 8… no, a 9.”

He muttered that, turned to face it, and raised his sword.

“Don’t! That’s one of Vlad’s servants!”

“Yeah, I know.”

The boy smiled and held out his left hand toward the undead dragon.

“Level 9: Seraphim Call.”

His whole body was wrapped in a divine silver light.

It spread out around him until the whole area was silver.

“Guaaaaah!”

The dragon howled in agony inside the light.

And facing it stood the boy, in a haze of silver particles. How beautiful, I thought, which made no sense on a battlefield.

It was as though my prayer to God had been answered, and He had sent an angel down to this place.

A boy who could use Level 9, magic that was supposed to have been lost four hundred years ago.

The sight was so unreal that all I could do was stand there.

“Grrr…!”

When the light faded, the dragon growled at him through bloodshot eyes.

An undead dragon is a corpse to begin with. Its body was already rotten and half collapsed, so it was hard to tell how much the purification had hurt. But there was fear in its eyes along with the rage, so it had to have taken serious damage.

“Hm. One hit won’t purify it, then.”

The boy held out his palm to it again and gathered his strength.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

A bolt of lightning-charged magic power blasted out.

The dragon took it full on, helpless.

“Guaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It bellowed like the trumpets of the apocalypse.

“If purification won’t do it, plain lightning will burn it.”

And then…

With a bass thud I felt in my lungs, the undead dragon toppled sideways to the ground.

Ephthal’s Perspective

A week after what had happened on the island.

The Earth God Emperor had asked us to take out the Vampire Emperor Vlad. We’d been killing undead dragons along the way, and now we were headed for Barnoke, where Vlad was.

Since the island, our group had grown by two: Svetlana and Bridget had joined the usual lineup.

Svetlana’s dragon relatives, for the record, had already been sent home.

The plan was to storm in on Vlad, but first we were supposed to meet someone. That was hours off, so for now we were resting by a lake in the forest.

“It’s insane, though, master. Humans hunting demi-humans and handing them over.”

“The slavers took the contract, apparently. Man-hunting is their specialty.”

On top of that, the townspeople were paying the slavers a bounty. Buying lives with money.

That alone would have been bad enough, but the town had built a whole economy on sacrifice, and it made my skin crawl. It made me sick, to be blunt about it.

“So Vlad’s the guy you tangled with back then, right, master?”

“Yes. We had a brawl once, I remember. His regeneration was nasty.”

“Why did you fight him?”

“Well, letting a fellow like that run wild would be bad for the vampires’ image.”

Sasha is technically a vampire himself, but he made himself ageless and undying for the sake of his magic research. Vlad was born one, so the two are quite different.

“What do you mean, bad for the image?”

“He’s the old-school kind of cruel.”

“Are there old-school vampires and new-school ones?”

“Modern vampires don’t impale people alive and collect the blood in buckets. Ever since I beat Vlad bloody, they’ve all stopped short of killing.”

Wasn’t that because he’d strong-armed them into it? I thought, but saying so would only complicate things, so I let it go.

“There’s something I’ve always wondered, master… Can I ask?”

“Hm? What?”

“You’re a vampire. Don’t you drink blood?”

I really had wondered for years. He drinks wine happily enough, but I’d never once seen Sasha drink blood.

“Hmm… I can, but I’ve no wish to. I don’t feel any worse for going without, either.”

“Is that how it works?”

“Natural vampires refill their magic power from blood, so they need it. But I was human to begin with, you see.”

He cocked his head, inviting agreement, and I nodded.

“You’re quite right.”

“It turns out pig or cow blood will do for a vampire, too.”

“…”

That was a shock. Then again… as food, the makeup of blood probably doesn’t differ much between a cow, a pig, a monkey, and a person.

“So I’ve been spreading that method among the vampires for ages… Vlad hated me for it.”

He’s a Progenitor, called the Vampire Emperor. Of course he wasn’t thrilled when a grandpa in a girl’s body showed up from nowhere and started running the vampire world. I could see where he was coming from.

“So seven hundred years ago I beat him bloody.”

“All right, that aside… About the other thing…”

“Hm?”

“What do you think of the Earth God Emperor’s request?”

As we’d been told, the Earth God Emperor’s premise was that he was acting to stop the Nine-Headed Dragon from appearing. And the means was the secret art of Balthazar, the ancient mage said to have lived since the age of the Ten Sages.

What he was doing with that art came down to four things.

One: pour mana into the ancient civilization’s biological weapons, like the colossus on the island, and revive them.

Two: pour mana into monsters that revive repeatedly, like Vlad, and revive them.

Those two burn the mana in the atmosphere and thin out the high concentration the Nine-Headed Dragon needs to appear.

Three: kill those monsters.

And last: have Bridget’s soul vessel absorb the mana from the dead monsters and fix it in place so it can’t leak out.

The part I’d been hired for was the third. Monster killing. The targets were all exceptionally powerful monsters from ancient times, so the Earth God Emperor had judged me the right man for it.

“…What do I think? I don’t see a contradiction.”

“A powerful monster is a big container for mana. So if you pour a huge amount into it, the concentration in the atmosphere drops. That’s the idea, right?”

“Just so.”

“And then they kill the very monsters they revived and have Bridget absorb them…”

“Then no more mana escapes into the atmosphere. In theory, there’s still no contradiction.”

“Talk about setting a fire just so you can put it out, though.”

Still… I thought.

The brother and sister we’d just met, and the demi-humans who had lived in the town ahead. If the Earth God Emperor hadn’t hurried Vlad’s revival along, none of them would have gone through that hell. He’d said he was only ‘advancing the clock on a revival that was bound to happen someday,’ and in theory he might be right. And there was the cause of preventing the Nine-Headed Dragon from ruining the world. But still…

“But isn’t this method just too rough?”

Sasha thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“For the people living on this land now, it’s nothing but a nuisance, no doubt. But still…”

“But still?”

“You could say it’s better that someone who can actually put the thing down is being sent. If they revived on their own, they might be beyond anyone’s power to stop.”

“So this time the timing was just bad, and the damage came out worse?”

“If you want to put the best face on it. Any ordinary way you look at it, it’s absurd.”

That was when I brought up something I’d been meaning to ask for a while.

“You have contacts in the Magic Society, right, master?”

“An honorary post, but in practice I’m the top man. Strongest, oldest, and longest-serving member, all three.”

“Something’s bothering me about the Earth God Emperor, and I’d like to use your contacts…”

“What is it?”

“At the party the other day… something impossible happened. I’d like you to have people look into him and the people around him.”

“I don’t mind… It all smells fishy, I’ll grant you.”

It did smell fishy. For one thing, the Earth God Emperor’s plan had already cost a town its freedom; the harm was done.

Still, we had no other lead on a way to save Bridget from turning into a Demon Lord. And my own reading was that the Nine-Headed Dragon wasn’t a hoax. Sasha was certain of it, too.

With a ten-year time limit, the sooner we moved, the better. That was also a fact.

Whatever we did, we needed to check his story from other angles first. Until then, my plan was to watch how things developed while I kept killing monsters. I had no objection to hunting monsters to help people… In fact, I couldn’t leave it alone, which was why I’d said yes without a second thought.

Someone was calling me from the lake.

“Big brother♪”

Bridget, who’d been playing in the shallows, came running toward me.

She dove straight into my chest, so I caught her gently.

“It’s fine with me, but don’t jump on anyone else, okay? It’s dangerous.”

When I patted her head, she gave a delighted “Heh-heh!”

Her cowlick was still sticking up, and she looked adorable. Not that I have a thing for cowlicks.

“Bridget really has taken to you,” Sasha said.

Well, she’s my ex-wife, minus the memories. If she hadn’t taken to me, or if she’d disliked me, that would hurt, no question.

“Yep, Grandpa! Bridget loves big brother!”

“G-Grand… pa…?”

A vein stood out on Sasha’s temple right away.

I’d never once seen anyone call Sasha ‘Grandpa’ to his face, because everyone knew he’d explode.

Sasha was trembling with rage. This looked like the kind of moment when Level 11: Otogi Fantasia might come flying out.

“Grrr…!”

But even Sasha seemed to feel it would be childish to take it out on a kid, and he didn’t know what to do. And Bridget, who had no idea any of this was going on, just beamed.

Calling Merlin ‘Auntie’ and Sasha ‘Grandpa’…

She was a free spirit, all right.

I laughed.

Then Anastasia and the others, who’d been splashing in the water with Bridget, came back.

“I’ve been wondering, Ephthal,” Maria said. “Do you like kids? You always seem to get along with her.”

“More or less, yeah.”

“Hmm…”

“What’s up, Maria? Why are you staring at Bridget all of a sudden?”

“It’s just… she really does look scarily like me when I was little.”

Sheryl cut in from the side. “…That aside, Ephthal. I’ve noticed something.”

“Oh? What?”

Sheryl raised her right hand high and puffed out her flat chest in triumph.

“…Ephthal said he likes children. And I’m a child too… therefore, I’m one step ahead of my rivals.”

I had no idea who she thought she was ahead of. But picking apart this odd girl’s logic at this point… would be a little tactless.

Out of the corner of my eye, Maria was gazing blankly at Bridget’s face.

Scarily like me when I was little.

That was what Maria had said. But to me it looked like she was feeling something more than that about Bridget. Lately… she’d been staring at Bridget’s face with that faraway look, just like now.

That moment when their magic had seemed to sync up had not happened again. But I still didn’t think distant kinship could explain it.

“By the way, Ephthal-sama?”

“Hm? What is it, Merlin?”

“The reason we went to that island was your magic aptitude, was it not?”

“Yes. To get around the time limit on my superhuman state. In other words, so I wouldn’t run out of stamina.”

“You said that if you took the Souls of the Demon God, the time limit would disappear… How did that turn out?”

Merlin looked worried. I gave her a big nod, to tell her it was fine.

“It went perfectly.”

“Perfectly, you say?”

“I took the Souls of the Demon God into my brain’s magic circuits, so now I can spam Level 11 as long as my magic power lasts. And no time limit, of course.”

Merlin’s face lit up.

“Then… congratulations!”

“I even tried it in a mock battle with master the other day, and it held up.”

“Oh…” Merlin stared at me. “And how did the match turn out?”

Sasha’s shoulders sagged. A gloomy aura began to rise off him.

“…”

“What is wrong, Sasha-sama?”

“…”

“…Sasha-sama?”

After a few dozen seconds of silence, he looked up at the sky, as if he’d given up on everything.

“…I was beaten flat.”

“Beaten flat?”

“I won’t tell you the details… It would cost a master his dignity.”

Well, I had flattened him. Even so, Sasha has a lot of cards up his sleeve, so I wasn’t taking that one-sided result entirely at face value.

“Once things settle down, master, let’s try again.”

“Hmm… I don’t feel like it. At least wait until I’ve come up with a new technique. With Level 11: Four Emperors raining down on me, even I can’t do a thing.”

I decided to discount about half of what he said. Even if he casually announced that he could use Level 12, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s Sasha, after all.

“Anyway, Merlin, that’s where I stand. I finally have my full magic aptitude.”

“You climb higher and higher, Ephthal-sama. And at last… you have surpassed Sasha-sama.”

“I can’t say whether I really have. I doubt master would show me everything in a mock battle.”

“But it is also a fact that you made Sasha-sama say ‘beaten flat,’ is it not?”

“I suppose that might be true.”

“…”

“What’s wrong, Merlin?”

“No, it is only…”

Merlin teared up and looked down.

“Back then, I saw you sinking in despair over your magic aptitude, Ephthal-sama, and… I truly do not know what to say.”

A single tear dropped.

When it hit the ground, I gently put my arm around Merlin’s shoulders.

“…I’m sorry about back then. I worried you.”

In the end I collapsed from illness and died. Merlin was small then, and it must have hit her young heart hard.

“Ephthal-sama. I… I…”

As I held her trembling shoulders, I could see the little girl she used to be. She’s grown into a fine adult now. She’s strict with Anastasia and the others, and people rely on her. But in front of me she shows the girl she was, now and then, however many years go by, and for some reason that makes me happy.

“I’m all right now.”

“Yes. The Thunder God Emperor is the strongest on earth.”

The strongest on earth… huh.

Back then I’d looked up to the other Emperors and been jealous of them, and I’d hit bottom. And now I had finally drawn level with Cliff, Isaac, and Itam, whose backs I’d been chasing all that time.

Four hundred years ago, at the showdown in the Demon Lord’s castle, I was dead weight.

I knew the other three were looking out for me. Back then, just hanging on without becoming a burden was all I could manage.

But now it’s different.

Just before I died four hundred years ago, I’d longed for those backs so much it tore at me. I’d looked up to them… Now, at last, I had caught up.

And yet…

Now that it had happened, it felt a little lonely.

Me, Cliff, Isaac, and Itam.

I think now that being the strongest was never all I wanted. Of course I wanted to be stronger than anyone. But what I wanted back then, when I envied the other Emperors, was for the four of us to truly stand shoulder to shoulder. To be a man who could trust them with my back without feeling inferior, and have them trust me with theirs. To be able to say, with my head up, that I was their equal, and then just laugh together with everyone.

That’s what I wanted, I think. Now that Cliff and Isaac are gone, I feel it deeply.

⁂

“The Society people are slow,” Sasha muttered.

He was right. The person we were waiting for hadn’t shown up.

According to the Earth God Emperor, the goal of this job was to retrieve Vlad’s mana. And the other goal had to do with the person we were waiting for.

He’d said that after seeing us fight on the island he understood our abilities and wanted us to handle the monster hunting from here on. But that created a problem.

The Earth God Emperor’s faction is a sizable one in the Magic Society. And since Bridget is the only vessel available to fix mana in place, some people were questioning whether the fate of the world should be left to outsiders like us… That was the story.

To quiet that talk, someone from his faction would tag along with me this time. In other words, the Vlad hunt was a chance for them to confirm whether we were fit for the hunts to come.

Do it the way you always do and they’ll be convinced, the Earth God Emperor had told me.

But if this was a factional power struggle, I had my doubts it would go that easily.

“By the way, what does a barrage of Level 11: Four Emperors actually look like?” Maria asked.

“Where did that come from?”

“I mean, Level 11 is Level 11, but I can’t tell how strong that really is. I thought I’d ask, for reference. I’m going to use it someday myself, you know.”

Hmm.

I had a feeling Maria was off about something.

Sasha looked exasperated. Merlin had actually clenched a fist and was getting set to knock it on Maria’s head. But Anastasia and Sheryl looked perfectly normal, which settled it.

Everyone around them is world-class, and they take that for granted.

Well, that raises their goals, so it isn’t a bad thing. If they ever get cocky I’ll have to be strict, but for now there was no need to make a fuss.

“Level 11, huh. How do I put it… plainly…”

“Plainly?”

“With Level 11: Four Emperors, you could level a small mountain.”

Maria’s face went blank with shock.

Sasha gave an exasperated shrug.

“Hold on, Ephthal. I can do that much too.”

“Huh? You can, master?”

“Of course. So you, who beat me, should be able to flatten the Ryushira Mountains without breaking a sweat!”

“Uh, the Ryushira Mountains might be a bit much…”

He made a sour face.

“You’re the man who beat me. What good are you if you can’t manage that?”

What an absurd demand, I thought, with a wry smile. That range runs from one end of a peninsula to the other.

“Oh my, what are you all talking about?”

Svetlana, who’d turned into a dragon and gone flying for fun, had come back.

“Oh, Svetlana-san. We were talking about how Master can blow mountains away.”

“Blow mountains away?”

She frowned. There was no point lying, so I nodded.

“Yeah, small mountains.”

“Hmm… Big Sis could do that much too, you know.”

Another outrageous claim right on the heels of Sasha’s, and every eye turned to Svetlana. She swayed her hips seductively and stuck out her ample chest.

“Well, if relatives count.”

Dragon royalty… breathing fire all at once, huh. Yes, they could manage it.

“I don’t know what to say… You’re all impossible,” Anastasia said.

Merlin sighed.

“You’re saying that now? Nobody here is anything but impossible to begin with.”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

“In fact… I do not want to puff you up, so I dislike saying this, but even next to people your own age… your abilities are absurd.”

Merlin sounded proud, if anything.

Well… she’s their elder sister-disciple. For all her complaints, I’m sure she thinks the girls are cute.

Maria laughed and turned to Anastasia.

“Anastasia, I can blow a mountain away too, you know.”

“What!? Maria-san, really!? But how!?”

Maria winked and stuck out her tongue.

“If I’m allowed to use Ephthal, I can. Svetlana-san gets her relatives, so I get him, right?”

That got a quiet laugh from everyone.

And as we were laughing, two men came out of the forest.

One was a thin, blond man in glasses who looked to be in his early thirties. The other was a hulking man built like an orc.

The people from the Magic Society had finally arrived.

“Is it really this brat, though?”

The hulking man spoke first, without giving his name, frowning at me. He didn’t even hide the sneer in his eyes. Rude, I thought. But the Earth God Emperor had probably kept my identity as the Thunder God Emperor quiet out of consideration.

“Pleased to meet you, Ephthal-kun. I am Marshall, of the Five Magic Emperors.”

The Five Magic Emperors…?

I’d never heard of any such title.

The hulking man snorted.

“This gentleman stands at the top of the Earth God Emperor’s faction.”

“The top?”

“That’s right. As one of the foremost mages of our age, he has been named one of the Five Magic Emperors by Balthazar-sama, in imitation of the original Four Emperors.”

The Four Emperors and the Five Emperors… A little obvious, I thought, but there was no point complaining.

Never mind the hulk. Marshall had real strength.

Just barely, he’d reached Level 10.

He didn’t match the original Four Emperors, but if two men of his caliber had gone after someone like Cliff four hundred years ago, it would have been an even fight, or Cliff might even have slipped up and lost. That was my impression at first glance, anyway.

But how had he reached Level 10, which was supposed to have been lost four hundred years ago?

Sasha crossed his arms and jerked up his chin.

“If you’re going to greet people, you greet me first, don’t you think?”

“Forgive me, Undead Emperor.”

Marshall bowed, and Sasha smiled, satisfied.

“Now then. There’s something inside you, isn’t there?”

“Ah, that is the Undead Emperor for you. You are the first person ever to see through it at a glance.”

Marshall smiled, his voice full of admiration.

“Hardly anyone in this age can use Level 10. What dark art are you using?”

“It is called human-monster fusion.”

“…What’s that?”

As Sasha tilted his head, Marshall went on, calmly.

“It is Balthazar-sama’s secret art.”

“He’s the one who’s lived since the age of the Ten Sages, if I remember right… That insanely long-lived character?”

“Yes, quite so. But that is the Undead Emperor for you. To hear Balthazar-sama called a ‘character’… I admit that startled me.”

“So what is it?”

“A special core made from an ancient biological weapon. We call it the seed. When it is fused with a human body, put simply, we become transcendent beings.”

“…I see. So you’re modified humans, using the power of monsters.”

“In essence, yes.”

Marshall had tossed that off lightly, and Sasha had taken it just as lightly, but the outrageousness of it hit me hard.

Balthazar had lived since the Ten Sages’ time, and his art made cores from ancient biological weapons to remodel humans, sped up monster revivals… A list of anything-goes secret arts that long gave me a chill.

Then the hulking man grinned and gave me a challenging look.

“Fine for the Undead Emperor, but I don’t see this brat as suitable.”

That sneer, not even hidden, was aimed at me again, and I asked, a little sharply, “…You don’t?”

“True, they say you put on a good show against the Sword God Emperor on the island. But in front of a ‘Level 10’ miracle technique, you’d be wiped out in a moment.”

The way he leaned on Level 10 told me the Earth God Emperor hadn’t told him a thing. I was grateful for that.

But I was sick to death of difficult people picking on me because I look like a kid.

“…”

How should I handle this?

I stayed silent, and the man seemed to misread that. He grinned with delight and clapped his hands.

“Fufu, he’s only a brat. One mention of ‘Level 10’ and he’s frightened. Well, this monster hunt is the Five Magic Emperors’ business. It’s no place for a child, so his fear is only natural.”

“…”

“And frankly, the Earth God Emperor’s just as bad. A kid like this could never take down Vlad. Instead of watching how the hunt goes, he should’ve just had this brat fight Marshall-sama from the start. We’d know right away whether he’s got what it takes.”

“…”

“How about it, brat? I’ll ask Marshall-sama myself, so why not let him test you? You don’t want to charge in recklessly, either, and end up drained by Vlad and dead on a stake, do you?”

He snorted, ranting at me.

“…He says so himself. Do you want to try?”

I turned away from him and spoke to Marshall.

The hulking man looked startled.

“Wh-what are you saying, brat? You can’t possibly beat a Level 10 user!”

I did want to see what Balthazar’s secret art could do. That is, the strength of a man built by this human-monster fusion. I could roughly guess at his ability, but I couldn’t really know without trying.

“No, let us not, Ephthal-kun.”

“Why not?”

Marshall shrugged and raised both hands.

“I do not need to try to know. I would lose.”

He smiled.

That unexpected answer deflated me a little.

“Let me see, Ephthal-kun. My strength can barely hold a candle to yours… something like that, I would say.”

The hulking man stared wide-eyed.

He seemed to think for a moment. Then he pulled himself together and began to laugh, “Hah, hah, hah.”

“You’re joking, Marshall-sama. As a joke, it is amusing.”

“No, it is plain fact, Marison-san.”

Marshall didn’t waver.

Marison’s eyes opened as wide as they would go, and he looked panicked.

“Wh-what…? What did you just say?”

“I said Ephthal-kun’s ability is far above mine.”

“No, that can’t be! He’s a child who hasn’t even been given a seed!”

“You are too caught up in appearances. The essential thing in the way of magic is to see everything exactly as it is. At this rate you will never get a seed from Balthazar-sama.”

“B-but… if even you, one of the Five Magic Emperors, say that, is this boy really that…?”

Marshall gave me a mild look and patted my shoulder.

“Well, this time I will only be ‘observing.’ We five Magic Emperors against your side. We will see which is better suited to the hunt…”

⁂

Barnoke at dusk.

We’d slipped into the town square among the crowd, and the whole place was in a frenzy.

A guillotine stood on the execution ground, and an eerie air hung over it. People with bloodshot eyes were shouting all around.

“Kill them!”

“Kill the demi-humans!”

“Kill the rabbit-ears!”

The square was packed with a bloodthirsty crowd. And lined up before the guillotine were rabbit-eared demi-humans in rags, their hands bound with rope.

From the look of it, they were about to kill demi-humans in public and drain their blood.

And in the middle of the square, one spot stood out. A red carpet had been laid there, and a middle-aged black-haired man sat in a throne-like chair.

The man in all-black clothes, seated so elegantly, had to be the Vampire Emperor Vlad.

On our side there were four of us: me, Sasha, Marshall, and Marison.

Anastasia, Bridget, and the others weren’t part of the fighting force this time and had been left outside town. The mana absorption worked at a distance, so that arrangement was fine.

Svetlana and Merlin weren’t with us, because we had another job for them.

“It looks like the execution is about to start,” I said to Marshall, who was standing next to me. “Sasha and I can do as we like, right?”

“Yes. I did say I would only be ‘observing’ this time.”

“Understood.”

A particularly loud roar went up from the crowd.

“Kill them!”

“Kill them!”

“Kill them!”

Most of the people shouting looked frightened. They were the ones Vlad had demanded blood sacrifices from, so they were handing over demi-humans. To save their own lives, under half-duress, so maybe there was some excuse.

Still…

Some of them looked like they were enjoying it.

Make humans hunt demi-humans and hand them to the vampire. The slavers at the center of it all were probably the vampire’s most eager collaborators.

And they, of course, turned my stomach.

“Let’s finish this as fast as we can, master.”

When Sasha nodded, I held my hand out toward the guillotine.

“Level 7: Evil Flare.”

The explosion burst around the guillotine.

“Kyaaaah!”

A woman’s shrill scream.

That set it off, and the people scattered from the square like ants from a kicked nest.

I used wind magic to cut the ropes of a few of the rabbit-eared demi-humans. As planned, they began to untie their companions.

Good. They’d be out of the square soon.

“What happened!”

Burning splinters of wood fluttered down around us.

And in the middle of the square, in a rage, stood the Vampire Emperor Vlad.

Sasha and I pushed through the crowd streaming out of the square and walked toward the center. When we came out of the crowd, a group of about twenty men who’d been standing near Vlad stepped in front of us.

They looked human. Judging by the rough air of men who live by violence, they were a band of slavers.

“W-who are you!?”

I didn’t owe them an answer. I fired Level 5 wind magic at the front of the group with no windup.

“Aaaagh!”

“Gah!”

“Hel… p!”

One after another, five men went down, cut to pieces.

Even if they were slavers, I have no taste for killing people for no reason. I hoped they’d see the gap in strength and run…

The best-dressed man in the group, who looked like the slave trader himself, called out.

“We can’t trouble Vlad-sama over a mere pack of bandits! Please, Sensei!”

One man stepped out of the group and, looking us over, put on a bold grin.

“A rescue mission, hired by demi-humans? How much did they pay you, a hundred gold pieces? Two hundred?”

“…”

“Heh, fools. A man can’t buy his own life with money, you know. I am Burkhardt, the Shadow Magic Swordsman, a name that rang across the land! Go to the land of the dead and boast that I was the one who killed you!”

Burkhardt, the Shadow Magic Swordsman?

I’d never heard the name, so I glanced at Sasha.

“Do you know him, master?”

“Hmm… Come to think of it, there was someone like that in the Society about twenty years ago. Or maybe there wasn’t.”

“Meaning?”

“I believe he was a character who got caught raking in money in underworld business and was thrown out of the Society.”

As we talked, Burkhardt drew his sword and closed in on me.

“By the way, master, how good is Burkhardt at magic?”

“If I recall, he can barely use Level 8, if that.”

“Understood.”

Burkhardt’s sword came down from overhead. I stepped out of its way.

Then I drew and cut off his right arm at the elbow.

“Nuoooooh!”

Three more flashes took off his left hand, his right leg, and his left leg in turn.

“N-n-nooooooooh!”

Limbs thumped to the ground, and last of all Burkhardt himself, with all four cut off, rolled in the dirt.

Then I fixed the slavers with a hard stare.

“So? Are you still going to fight, all of you?”

The slavers shrieked, one after another.

“D-don’t kill us!”

“It was a moment’s weakness, just a moment’s weakness!”

“P-please, help us! Let us go!”

The band backed away, put a little distance between us, and ran for it, as fast as they could go.

That left only Vlad…

Black flame shot from the center of the square toward the slavers.

“Gyaaaah!”

The flames engulfed them all. They fell to the ground, rolling and screaming. In a few seconds they went silent, and in ten they had burned to cinders, bones and all.

And then…

There was no one left in the square.

Vlad stood across from us, ten meters away.

“It’s been a long time, Vlad.”

“Oh? The Undead Emperor.”

With that, Vlad smiled.

⁂

A few steps in front of me, Sasha faced Vlad.

“Vlad. The former No-Life King is in a sorry state.”

His voice was a little sad.

“Undead Emperor. Are you going to ask me the same question as seven hundred years ago?”

Sasha gave a small nod and spoke again.

“When I was newly a vampire, you drank blood, but you had no taste for impaling people.”

Vlad laughed.

“That is the fate of a vampire who lives long. Nothing strange about it.”

“I suppose so. The old you… is gone, I’ll grant you that.”

It would hurt the vampires’ image.

That was how lightly Sasha had put his reason for killing Vlad. But apparently the story wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t hard to guess that the old battle had been fought with a lot of feeling behind it.

Then Sasha turned to me, a little sorrow in his face.

“Ephthal. As this man says, the undead who live long rot from the brain while they’re still alive.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that before.”

He was right. Long life has a price. You live so long you lose your emotions and your reason. Vlad, too, had been swallowed by the undead’s inevitable fate.

“If I misjudge my moment and miss my chance to end my own life, I’ll leave dealing with me to you.”

“…Understood.”

This was a moment for a long talk. But we’d known each other a long time. Sasha said do it, and I took the job. That was all we needed. It was a brief exchange, but the promise would stay with us, heavy, until one of us was dead.

And as I gave a small nod, Vlad began to laugh at Sasha.

“But Undead Emperor, are you in your right mind?”

“In my right mind?”

“Seven hundred years ago, when you stood before me, you came with schemes of your own… or so it seemed to me.”

Vlad’s eyes flared a strange crimson.

It was a special ability vampires use all the time, and if I remembered right, it was charm.

Under Vlad’s gaze, Sasha swayed. Then he slowly dropped to his knees, and Vlad’s laughter rang out across the square again.

“Fuhaha! Seven hundred years ago you armed yourself with every artifact against charm and still barely destroyed me… How careless of you now!”

Sasha stood right up and cracked his neck.

“There, resisted. But Vlad… that was me seven hundred years ago, wasn’t it?”

“…What?”

“I finished my research on charm countermeasures four hundred years ago!”

“Then your servant boy, there…!”

Next Vlad tried to charm me.

It was an immensely powerful spell, one that might well have taken me over if I hadn’t known how to counter it. When I resisted it completely, Vlad’s face filled with shock.

“What!?”

“Naturally, I’ve prepared countermeasures for him as well.”

I see.

So that was why I’d had charm and the other status effects drilled into me so thoroughly in my training years.

“Not just the Undead Emperor but the servant too…?”

Vlad’s face twisted, but he soon recovered his calm.

“So you did not bring anyone half-baked, Undead Emperor.”

“But…” he said, with an ugly smile, “this time, unlike last time, I have the other Progenitors, Carmilla and Alucard. My advantage will not be shaken!”

Sasha had given me an analysis of the enemy’s strength beforehand. Vlad was seven-tenths of their strength, and Carmilla and Alucard together the other three. On top of that, Carmilla and Alucard are good at dark support magic.

If they joined him, it would be a bit of a problem. Boosted by the two of them, Vlad, their greatest force, would jump in strength, Sasha had said.

“They are staying in this town. If I call… they will be here within minutes.”

Sasha answered with certainty.

“No, they won’t come.”

“…What? What do you mean?”

Vlad frowned.

At that moment an explosion sounded from across the town. A magic strike crackling with lightning, and then the huge body of a dragon rose into the sky.

That was Svetlana in dragon form, and Merlin’s Thor Hammer.

“Too bad for you: I’ve sent the Dragon Princess Svetlana and my grand-disciple that way.”

Vlad looked at the sky beyond and went blank.

“The Dragon Princess…? Undead Emperor… when did you become friends with the dragons…!?”

“It’s been seven hundred years, you know? Now it’s two against one. You have no chance left.”

Sasha’s voice was cool.

“Gh…”

Vlad’s shoulders shook, stunned.

That seemed to settle the match.

“A word from an old friend. Show some No-Life King pride and kill yourself cleanly.”

Vlad raised both hands like a man who knew he was finished.

“Undead Emperor. Indeed, I cannot see a path to beating you like this.”

Bat wings sprouted from Vlad’s back.

He floated a few meters up into the air.

“But why do you think you are the only one who has evolved?”

Vlad laughed and spread his arms.

“Offer your blood.”

I could feel magic power flowing out into every corner of the town.

And from every corner of the town, red lines, rivers of blood, stretched toward Vlad.

The blood gathered around him and was absorbed, stream after stream, into his heart.

“There was a chance the Undead Emperor would come, so I had barrels of blood set out all over town.”

The magic power coming off Vlad as he drank in the blood shot upward. And the more it grew, the more joy crept into his face.

He was boosting himself considerably.

But from what I could tell, it was a last-ditch effort.

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Vlad. Even you don’t believe that’s enough to handle the two of us.”

Vlad nodded readily at Sasha’s words.

“That is true. But do you not think I can escape? It is dusk. Soon darkness will fill the surroundings.”

Shadow-walking, one of the vampires’ special abilities. Once it was dark, even Sasha and I would have a hard time chasing Vlad as he vanished into the dark.

“As you know, I am the king of the vampires. The name No-Life King is not for show.”

“So you’re sure you won’t be killed before nightfall, eh?”

Vlad nodded, then tilted his head, puzzled.

“But seven hundred years ago… you stopped me from escaping with a barrier. Why? Why not this time…”

Sasha looked up at Vlad, his shoulders shaking slightly.

“Because there’s no need. I never thought I’d see you this disgraced…”

“About twenty minutes until sunset. Are you saying you can destroy me before then?”

“No, I couldn’t do it in that time.”

“…?”

Vlad frowned.

And then Sasha, still without turning to look at me, raised his right hand. Go ahead. Finish him.

“Unfortunately, the man standing behind me is stronger than I am.”

“What are you talking about…?”

“And by a wide margin.”

Well, the talk seemed to be over. I’d kept quiet all this time because the two of them had a lot of history.

“All right, master?”

“Yes, go ahead. This isn’t the Vlad I knew… It’s just a scoundrel.”

I took aim at Vlad and held out my hand.

I raised my magic power, built the formula, and ran it through my brain’s magic circuits into my palm.

It was a pure magic cannon in which the traits of all four elements canceled out. But having no attribute also meant it dealt everyone the same damage, scaled only to the blast’s strength.

Even to an undead vampire.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

A flash you could only call violent split the air.

Vlad took the cannon head-on and was swallowed by the laser-like light. And then…

“Gah… hah…”

When the light faded, Vlad hung in the sky, gasping, his face twisted in agony.

The skin of his whole body was burned and peeling, and in places the flesh was stripped to the bone. He seemed past the limit of his regeneration, because it wasn’t even starting.

“Ho. He survived that.”

“Gh… Level… 11…?”

“That’s remarkable durability, I’d like to say, but unbelievably, this boy…”

Sasha shook his head and shrugged, exasperated.

“…can fire off Level 11 again and again.”

On Sasha’s signal, I held my hand out toward Vlad in the sky once more.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

And then…

By the time the fourth blast had landed, Vlad’s body had vanished completely.

⁂

The next day.

A company of knights on a scouting mission arrived in Barnoke.

Under Vlad’s reign of terror, order in the town had all but collapsed, but now it would probably return to normal soon. We heard the empire was sending an official to act as temporary lord in place of the murdered one.

With everything finished, we left Barnoke and made camp in the forest.

“To think he would use Level 11… unbelievable.”

Marison, sitting around the fire with the rest of us, spoke with awe to Marshall.

“Marshall-sama. I have to admit it.”

Marshall had been staring into the fire as if thinking about something.

“…Yes.”

“Indeed,” Marison went on, “even the Five Magic Emperors have not reached the realm of Level 11.”

“Then, as the Earth God Emperor wished, from next time the monster hunts will be led by Ephthal-kun. As for Bridget, we will look after her until then.”

When Marshall finished, Merlin quietly handed me a cup of tea.

“Ephthal-sama, I have not yet heard your plans. What will you do?”

“Since there’s time before the next hunt, I’m thinking of going back to my family home for a bit.”

“Your family home? Did something happen?”

I shrugged and smiled.

“Fraser nii-san called me. Cecilia nee-san’s getting married.”

“A wedding? Congratulations.”

“A ducal marriage is almost a state affair. I can’t very well skip it… And my sister and I get along.”

“And what about the rest of us?” Merlin asked.

“Let’s see. Svetlana, you’re going straight back to the Dragon’s Treasure Vault, right?”

“Yes. I can’t stay out here long, after all.”

“Then go with Sasha back to Merlin’s academy. We’ll meet there in two weeks.”

“As you wish.”

When Merlin bowed, I noticed Bridget with tears in her eyes and her cheeks puffed out.

“What’s wrong, Bridget?”

“…No!”

“What?”

“No, no! I want to be with big brother more!”

She was acting just like a child throwing a tantrum, and I couldn’t help a rueful smile.

“We’ll see each other again, so be good and go home this time.”

“Aww…”

When I patted her head, she sniffled, but she nodded.

Well, that settled the first monster hunt, for the time being.

⁂

The next night.

By moonlight, I was walking alone along a mountain road toward the Alcott ducal domain.

An owl hooted in the distance, and crickets chirped. It was a cool night.

“To walk a night road alone takes nerve, Thunder God Emperor.”

When I turned, Marshall of the Five Magic Emperors was standing there.

“Somebody’s been following me without even hiding his presence, so I wondered who it was… Shouldn’t you have gone back to Society headquarters, Marshall-san?”

“Yes. I did deliver Bridget.”

“…So what do you want with me?”

“The first Thunder God Emperor, Ephthal. You were more than the rumors suggested. A barrage of Level 11 really did leave me speechless.”

“Thank you. Should I say it’s an honor?”

“Haha, you are strong. Naturally I cannot possibly match you.”

I suppose you’d call it a cold smile. His expression was gentle, but nothing at the back of his eyes was smiling.

“The me from before I received the seed of human-monster fusion would not even be worth discussing. Even now I can barely hold a candle to you, I expect. We were named the Five Emperors to match the Four, but… we are only fakes, you see.”

“…”

“But fakes or not… how would it go with all of us against one?”

Four men suddenly appeared around Marshall.

“Level 8: Teleport, I see.”

That made five opponents.

Every one of them was formidable, naturally, and each gave off magic power to match. At any rate, it looked like the whole Five Magic Emperors were here.

“You’re the top men in the Earth God Emperor’s faction in the Magic Society, aren’t you? All of you against me alone… and at night, no less… What are you up to?”

“Haha. You are slow on the uptake, for the Thunder God Emperor.”

Each of the five began to weave an offensive formula.

“I can give you only one answer: we judged that it would take all five of us to kill you.”

I drew my katana.

The blade flashed in the moonlight.

“I’ll ask for the reason, just to be thorough.”

“Did I not tell you the other day that this time I would be ‘observing’?”

“…Meaning you were judging whether you could kill me?”

“Yes, correct. Records of the battle were sent to Society headquarters. The Earth God Emperor… no, Balthazar-sama… regarded you as a nuisance, but not a threat. That is the reason.”

“I see. So from the very beginning, I’ve been in the palm of your hand…?”

“Balthazar-sama is a careful man. He has been wary of you ever since you defeated the Fire God Emperor.”

“Then why suddenly now?”

Marshall held a hand out toward me.

The other four followed.

Each of them was weaving a Level 10 formula, and even I wasn’t confident I could deal with all of them.

“We analyze thoroughly, remove every worry, and then kill. That is all.”

“I understand the situation, more or less. Oh, there’s one thing I want to say from my side…”

“Something to take to the grave, I take it. Go ahead.”

“You were listening, weren’t you? Sasha, Merlin, Svetlana!”

Three people came crawling out of my shadow.

“It was cramped! And on top of that, you two have absurdly oversized breasts! Svetlana especially, what in the world are those shameless things!”

“Sasha-sama, this is no time for jokes!”

“Oh my, Merlin-chan. Getting so angry because you lost on size? Please don’t be bitter about it.”

The three of them stood behind me.

So now it was four against five, facing each other.

Marshall and the others were plainly shaken by our sudden reinforcements.

“…Why?”

“I am the Undead Emperor, you know. I’m no Vlad, but hiding in shadows is my signature move, obviously.”

“No… that is not it. Why are you here? Your destination was elsewhere, and you parted this morning…”

I held my katana at the middle guard.

“What fool goes off alone when he can’t tell whether you’re friends or enemies?”

“…So you put on an act from the start, to draw us out?”

“I figured if you were going to move, it would be about now. If I was wrong, I could rejoin them right away.”

Marshall began to sweat.

His resolved face said he knew full well that he’d lost.

“Thunder God Emperor… since when were you suspicious of us?”

“From the very beginning.”

“From the beginning…?”

“Since the party the Earth God Emperor held on the island. He looks like the Earth God Emperor, and I’m sure he is the Earth God Emperor. But he is definitely not the one I know.”

“…How could you tell?”

“Brainwashed, turned into a puppet, I’d say. At the very least, I can tell he isn’t himself.”

“…”

Marshall fell silent, but it was written all over his face that I’d hit it.

“A long time ago, there were four idiots.”

“…?”

“Whenever they played poker, they made the biggest loser perform a forfeit.”

“Poker? What are you talking about…?”

“Once, one of them got made to chug a ridiculous amount of ale in one go… It wasn’t a two-day hangover. It was four days, a nightmare. And after that he could never drink ale again.”

Yes.

What first made me suspect was the moment the Earth God Emperor drank the ale at the party.

“Well, that’s just a stupid old story.”

It really was. But thanks to it, I’d been saved, no question.

If those five had come at me all at once, it would have been a coin toss whether they got me.

In any case, we were near full strength now, so there was no way we could lose.

One of the Five Magic Emperors suddenly began to laugh.

“Fu, fufu, fuhaha! There are a hundred humans fused with monsters. Even if you get out of this, what could so few of you possibly do?”

That was true.

Even if they weren’t at the Five Magic Emperors’ level, having a huge number of people close to it was a problem.

But that was something to think about later.

Then Marshall held the laughing man back with a hand and bowed his head to me.

“Even knowing we will lose, we cannot withdraw. I have a last request.”

“What is it?”

“If we are to fall, let it be in an honorable contest of magic… one on one.”

“…And your reason?”

“To face one of the original Four Emperors at the end. For a mage of this age, that would be a dream.”

The look of a man who had accepted death reached me too.

Marshall had set out on the path of magic too, and I suppose the spirit itself, at least, was genuine.

To be defeated by a great mage at the end, and fall. I could understand the wish to test the power he’d polished his whole life before dying. But…

“The answer is no.”

“…What!?”

“I can’t respect power you got from someone else, by taking a monster’s core.”

And then a melee broke out. A few minutes later, the Five Magic Emperors were silent corpses.