Volume 8Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – All-Out War

Not quite twenty minutes to noon. All that remained was to go in as planned.

We were waiting within sight of Magic Academy City when Sasha started humming to himself.

“Fufufu. I always knew I was a great genius, but all four Emperors as my disciples? I’ve reached the summit of humankind, I tell you!”

He was all smiles, in a fantastic mood, his face melting with bliss.

With a sidelong glance at Sasha, Cliff scowled at the back of his own hand.

“We’re not actually part of the Undead Emperor’s school, you know.”

“Kah-kah-kah! What’s on your hand is the secret art of my school, the countdown! The moment it was carved there, all four Emperors became my disciples!”

To spell it out: we’d put a countdown on the back of every Emperor’s hand so that the four strikes would land together. Cliff had said a few times that he’d rather drop it, since the Undead Emperor was insufferable about it, but we couldn’t do without it. Even police and military units back in Japan and America, I hear, find coordinating the entry the hardest part of a raid. This world has no clock accurate to the second, so this was by far our best option.

“I keep telling you, I haven’t surrendered to your school.”

“So there you have it, red-haired whelp. You’re one of mine now.”

That’s Sasha for you. He never listens to a word anyone says. It just slides off him.

“Red-haired whelp, about tonight, once it’s all over… Keep me company, will you?”

“Tonight? Is there something you need from me?”

“Yes. After a fight with a strong enemy, my spirits run high. So come to my room tonight.”

“I understand being keyed up after a life-or-death fight. But why must I go to the Undead Emperor’s room?”

Cliff clearly had no idea what Sasha was getting at. Sasha’s appetite for pretty boys had been famous even back then, but with so few friends, Cliff may never have been told.

“In my school, the best-looking one keeps me company. That’s you.”

“I won’t deny that I’m good-looking. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“My hobby is doting on pretty boys!”

Sasha never fails to amaze me. Even now, at the last minute… he was running business as usual.

While everyone else recoiled, Cliff clicked his tongue, loudly.

“…Ephthal?”

“What, Cliff?”

“He’s your master, so I thought I’d ask first.”

“Ask what?”

“It’s a formality, but I can kill him, can’t I?”

“Not right now. He’s still one of the strongest we’ve got. After we’ve knocked Balthazar flat, go ahead.”

“Damn. I hate not being able to do it now, but… understood.”

We shook hands, hard.

With the gentlemen’s agreement made, Sasha pouted. “You humorless pair…”

“All right, Cliff. Not to steal Sasha’s line, but let’s really call an end to the jokes.”

The back of my hand said fifteen minutes on the dot. It was nearly time for us four Emperors, the vanguard, to get into position.

“Let’s begin. Itam, I’m counting on you.”

Itam layered his concealment magic over each of us, and we ran for our targets.

⁂

Seventy seconds left.

The four of us were in position, one for each point of the compass.

Overhead was the darkened world under the Nine-Headed Dragon’s lid. Looking up, I could make out a tiny spherical machine. That was our first target: a watcher, the linchpin of the Gaspar system. If it sensed an attack, the alarm would sound and the dragon vein’s power would pour into the dragon machine soldiers.

Fifty seconds left.

I layered my own concealment on top of Itam’s. We’d prepared an answer for every one of Balthazar’s iron-clad systems. But a single mistake would still finish us. It was a tightrope with no slack… so we had to do everything we could.

Twenty seconds left.

By now all four of us should have teleported into the sky at the same instant. We could afford exactly one result: a clean shutout. If we couldn’t win head-on, we wouldn’t let him do anything. Bind him hand and foot, then beat him senseless without taking a single hit. Easy to say, and honestly pretty reckless, but without it there was no chance.

Ten seconds left.

I located the watcher sphere three hundred meters below me and held out my palm.

Lock-on complete.

The countdown on the back of my hand dropped to a single digit, and I gathered my magic for the moment of release.

Win or lose… nobody could stop it now.

Three.

Two.

One.

Quietly, I lit the signal fire of the war against Balthazar.

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal.”

At the same instant, in the skies to the north, south, east and west, the roar of Level 10 attack magic rolled across the battlefield.

Balthazar’s Perspective

It was nearly noon, and the Thunder God Emperor had not appeared on the roof.

Surely he would not refuse my offer of surrender. And yet…

Irritation made me spit the word out.

“Late.”

I had heard he was a free spirit, but I had not expected him to be bold enough to keep me waiting.

If he appears even one second late, perhaps I should make him pay with his life.

I reconsidered at once. For the core of the Nine-Headed Dragon, it caused the least trouble if Maria cooperated of her own will. I could not afford to act rashly.

Perhaps he knew that, and was raising his price by making me wait… or testing the limit of my patience. If so, it was a foolish judgment. Those creatures live only because I, the absolute one, allow it. I rank just below the Ten Sages, the absolute gods. Disrespect toward me was unthinkable.

Then noon was seconds away.

“Short of killing him, I will need to give him a taste of hell to teach him his place.”

Cut off even a single limb, flay some skin, and he would become obedient.

I had just thought so when explosions went off from four directions at once.

From the aftershocks of the magic, I could tell that all of them were Level 10 blasts… and the name of one of them was…

“Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal?”

The words were barely out when a dark magic wrapped the whole of Magic Academy City. Out of it rose the murky magic peculiar to the undead, and with it the smell of rot.

With a kind of certainty, I looked down at the city below.

“…What is this?”

Mass teleportation magic? Or… necromancy? No. Both.

Undead had spilled out all over the city.

“High-rank mages, by the look of them… monsters one might call liches, but…”

What was I to do? I could guess at the cause. But it was conduct beyond all reason, with no rational consistency… and I could not understand it.

“What is happening?”

Maria, standing beside me, spoke.

“One of those explosions was Level 10: Thunder God Emperor Ephthal. And it’s the hour he promised. Do you really need to ask what’s happening?”

I did not need to be told. That was precisely what puzzled me.

They must know the overwhelming gap in strength. The simultaneous attack from four points had apparently sealed the Gaspar dragon-vein boost system. But we still had Melchior, equivalent to a Level 20 summoning formula, and I myself was a Level 14 caster. Against either Melchior or me, they had no way to leave a scratch.

“They must know better than anyone that they cannot win.”

“Balthazar. You might not understand, but… humans run on emotion.”

“Emotion?”

“It’s not about whether you can win, or what you stand to gain. Sometimes people make an irrational choice, knowing full well it’s reckless.”

“…I do not understand. What does an ant achieve by biting an elephant? The elephant does not even notice the bite…!”

“But apparently you’re not an elephant. You noticed the bite. And besides… I’d bet he plans to win.”

“Win. Against me?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to do. But the Gaspar system’s already been broken through, hasn’t it?”

The dragon machine soldiers scattered through the city were being attacked by a sudden horde of liches and destroyed one after another. No alarm had sounded. Watching it, I had to admit Maria was right.

“What of it? Gaspar was defective to begin with. That is why Melchior’s dragon vein system was developed. And their strongest attack magic, Level 11, cannot wound me in any case.”

Just then, a flash ran across the whole field of vision.

A dazzling flood of light. A normal person could not have kept their eyes open, let alone seen. But I knew what was happening. I knew what this magic-laden light pouring from the ground was.

“A magic circle…!”

From here it looked like the whole landscape wrapped in sudden light. Seen from near the stratosphere, it would be a single line of light piercing Magic Academy City.

It was a fragment of a magic circle drawn at continental scale, one line of its geometric pattern, perhaps several kilometers wide: a curse circle of absurd size, built to weaken whoever stood inside it.

At the same moment, a ferocious curse bore down on the whole of Magic Academy City.

“…A spell built this big… and even I cannot avoid being weakened.”

I could feel the magic draining and the strength of my soul failing. And I knew precisely that the magic I could use had dropped by roughly two levels.

Yet to draw a circle of this scale in so short a time?

No. Two weeks was far too short for that. Someone had been preparing it for a very long time. But why? It could not have been made for me from the start. Then it had been drawn with no set date and no set target, at a cost in years and labor beyond imagining… and that was—

“Beyond reason… that is all one can say. Who!? Who could have spent such an incomprehensible span of time… preparing this!?”

“I know someone who’s been alive terribly long. If it’s them, I agree they’re beyond reason, everything about them, looks included. Balthazar, can I say one thing?”

“…What?”

“I’ve thought it for a while. You always have that condescending, unruffled look… and I really hated it. But do you know what, Balthazar? Right now, on your face…”

Maria gave me a small smile.

“…your composure’s gone for the first time.”

Svetlana’s Perspective

“It is remarkable.”

Merlin-chan sounded awed, and I thought it was unbelievable too.

A line of light ran along the ground from one end of the horizon to the other. That was one line of the magic circle’s geometric pattern… and only a small part of it. Even after being told, I still couldn’t believe it.

“So, can we go into the city now? Junior and Sasha-sama charged right in.”

“Yes. This is a curse that weakens everyone in the area at the moment it takes effect. If we go in now, we will not be caught by it.”

“Merlin-chan, we’re stuck with each other, aren’t we?”

“We have known each other since we were scarcely old enough to remember… I never imagined I would be with you even at what may be the end of my life.”

Merlin-chan nodded with feeling, and I felt the fight go out of me.

“Hmm…”

“What is it?”

“I was going to trade barbs like usual, but I think I’ll skip it this time.”

“What are you saying? Surely you did not mean to quarrel with me even now?”

“No, I mean… we’re not exactly friends right now.”

“…?”

“But for a while there… we really did live like sisters. We fought back then too, but mostly we laughed and played together like real sisters. When you brought up when we were little, that’s what I thought of.”

Merlin-chan sighed, not following.

“So what are you trying to say?”

“Since it might be the last time, a truce. I’m counting on you.”

And so we set foot in Magic Academy City.

⁂

The mechanical dragon Melchior.

It was the strongest, most terrible magic weapon of all: hundreds of dragon machine soldiers assembled into one, with all the power of the dragon vein under the Magic Society headquarters poured into it. Its power, don’t be shocked, was Level 20 as a summoning formula. For people who could produce a Nine-Headed Dragon, that wasn’t so outrageous.

Anyway, there was a reason the machines were made in the shape of dragons. The dragon race, me included, runs on the dragon veins. I’d always known our sense organs and internal organs were a little different from humans’. I’d also known that dragons were originally made as biological weapons in the ancient magical civilization. Our ancestors escaped the research facility long ago, went outside, and settled on this planet as ordinary native creatures. That was just the history of my bloodline. It meant we’d been poor weapons, close to failures. However strong we were, we had minds of our own.

According to Junior, the dragon machine soldiers had been designed as a substitute for the dragon race, to make up for that failure. And here’s the key: they used the dragon veins’ power like us, with the same organ for it inside them.

So the order came: steal the dragon vein’s power, Svetlana. That’s why the job fell to me.

“But don’t you think Junior’s ideas are outrageous?”

“And yet it somehow seems to work, which is just like Ephthal-sama.”

Merlin-chan laughed, and well, that was true.

Between all the formulas and magic tools Junior and the others had built in the past two weeks, an enormous force, unlike anything I’d known, was pouring into me. My heart was pounding harder than a girl in love, so I was probably near my limit. If I took all that power in as it was, my body couldn’t hold it. It would literally explode, as Junior and the others had warned.

So I was letting the power flow straight down beneath me.

“Still, this isn’t elegant. What is that smell?”

Under my feet and Merlin-chan’s lay the rotting back of a giant creature, about ten times my size when I turn into a dragon. We were standing on a dragon zombie, in a stench that could make your nose curl.

“Do not complain. Be honored, Svetlana.”

“Honored, you say…”

“You are commanding the strongest summoned beast, I assure you. You might say you have reached the summit of summoners.”

I’m not a summoner. And it wasn’t my own power. Junior had done all of it. Me, commanding the strongest summoned beast? I didn’t feel it one damn bit.

But the dragon zombie’s power was certainly extraordinary. The lich legion, summoned with a Level 11 formula, had served as the catalyst, and from it the dragon zombie’s body had been shaped. With the dragon vein power I’d stolen poured in, it was about Level 17 now. I’d never seen or heard of a Level 17 spell, but working back from the total magic involved, that’s what it came to, which is astonishing.

“Still, as Ephthal-sama predicted, you could not steal all of the power.”

Merlin-chan muttered, bitter, and glared ahead.

There, dragon machine soldiers were jostling and piling up into a mountain. A single mechanical dragon in the middle of assembling itself, joining piece by piece into a huge body.

“We should think it a miracle just to have brought things to even odds against a Level 20 force.”

Now, then. I analyzed the magic flowing from the mechanical dragon in front of me. It wasn’t finished, but judging by the magic, the finished form would be about Level 16. We were at 17, so on paper, we win. But things aren’t that simple.

Merlin-chan looked anxious.

“Can you ride this rotten wild horse, Svetlana?”

I threw up both hands.

“I haven’t studied any summoning magic or necromancy at all. Doing it cold is asking too much, isn’t it?”

I pouted, and Merlin-chan shrugged. Of course.

“Then it comes down to two amateurs operating this dragon zombie.”

“I’ll control the wings and body. Merlin-chan, you take the limbs.”

“Yes, as planned… Above all, give no thought to offense. Stick to defense.”

“All-out offense is my creed, but I guess I have to here.”

“So you do. The moment the other three Emperors arrive, the Fire God Emperor-sama, who specializes in necromancy, and the two who support him, our victory is assured.”

That finished our preparations. The flow of power from the dragon vein into me stopped, and the last of it had passed into the dragon zombie.

But…

We were ready, and they were still building their body.

“Shall we attack before they’re ready?”

“I told you, stick to defense. If they do not attack, that is fortunate.”

“Oh my, what a pity.”

Merlin-chan was right: waiting and buying time was the smart move. But I really hate waiting and defending. The mechanical dragon was nearly done, and since this might be the end, I decided to ask her.

“Hey, Merlin-chan?”

“What, Svetlana?”

“What do you think of Junior?”

I’d gone straight for the throat. What would she say? Frankly, I’d always wondered about Merlin-chan’s feelings for Junior.

“What I think? He is my respected master. How else would I answer?”

“You’re hopelessly dense.”

“…Hm? Dense? What are you talking about?”

A flash of irritation hit me, and it surprised me. And I realized a long-standing question had just been settled. Maybe I’d only ever disliked this exact attitude of Merlin-chan’s. As the years passed, I’d grown as a woman, and my love for Junior had grown with me. But Merlin-chan had stayed exactly as she was as a child. She talked about Junior with those innocent, unclouded eyes, and that had irritated me, and I’d picked fights.

“Hey, Merlin-chan? I love Junior. As a man, of course.”

“I have told you that the promise of marriage between you and Ephthal-sama was a joke told to a child. How long will you go on taking it seriously?”

“Never mind me. I’m asking how you feel about Junior.”

“Is this a conversation to have here and now?”

“Silly. Nobody could have this talk with a clear head, could they?”

I was unusually serious, and Merlin-chan put a hand on her chin and thought.

“He is the master I respect. Nothing else.”

“Hmm… stubborn. But I think you’d be a real contender.”

“A contender?”

“Well, you’d make a good mother, Merlin-chan.”

Merlin-chan sighed. Then she gave a small nod, resigned.

“…Bearing his child, that I would not refuse.”

“Oh, that’s unexpected. You admit it so easily?”

“Yes. To live with him and raise children together… if I were asked, I would not refuse. Suppose Ephthal-sama and I were both nobles, and there was a political marriage that could not be helped… I would accept immediately.”

“Hm? Then why… do you say he’s just a master?”

“Not just a master. A respected master. As for me, Svetlana…”

“Yes, what, Merlin-chan?”

“I know that with him I could be a good wife, but never his sweetheart. So it will never happen naturally, and I have never thought of it. Nor will I, from now on.”

She looked somehow lighter. Seeing her like that, I gave a small nod.

“That… I agree.”

“Meaning?”

“In my case, I could be Junior’s mistress… but I’m sure I could never be his sweetheart.”

“…Mistress.”

Merlin-chan looked a little taken aback. But we’d known each other long enough, and she seemed to understand what I meant.

“After all, in a situation like this we let Junior go off alone, didn’t we?”

“Yes, that is so. We can never stand beside Ephthal-sama as equals, as a sweetheart would. A master stays a master and a disciple a disciple. A father stays a father and a daughter a daughter.”

“I know… Mostly he’s the father we grew up looking up to, isn’t he?”

Of course I was worried about him. But we could never throw it all away and say I’m worried, forget the world, just live! And that’s probably normal. Wanting someone alive even if others must be sacrificed is a normal feeling.

But we hadn’t questioned it, and just let Junior go. He’ll be fine. That’s what we thought. That was our limit, and in the end, that’s probably all it was.

“All right, I see, Merlin-chan.”

“That is all, Svetlana. Perhaps being stuck with each other ends here too. But if we hold out a little while, we win.”

I followed her gaze and saw the finished mechanical dragon.

Maria’s Perspective

You cannot wound me.

Balthazar had been perfectly confident of that only a few minutes earlier. But now…

“I-impossible…!?”

His panic was plain. Where he was looking, two giant dragons had locked together.

With a thud, a deep rumble reached us. They rolled over the ground, entangled, each trying to get on top of the other, in a spectacular brawl.

“The dragon vein’s flow is wrong! What is that dragon!? What is happening!?”

He just stood there.

I didn’t know what was happening either. But I knew who had made it happen. Merlin-sama and Svetlana-san were clinging to the dragon zombie’s back. So Ephthal had done something. And judging by Balthazar’s reaction, the dragon zombie had a decisive effect on the battle. Ephthal was cornering this demon for sure.

Then a high voice came from behind us.

“Fufu, surprised, Balthazar, was it?”

“You are…?”

When we turned, there stood Sasha-sama. The strongest mage of the age, called the Undead Emperor, took a step toward us with a calm worthy of the title.

“The Undead Emperor, they call me. Does it help if I say I’m the one who made the World Magic Circle?”

“…Is that dragon zombie your doing too?”

“Just so. I’ve borrowed the dragon vein power you summoned.”

“Borrowed?”

“A real dragonkin makes a better vessel than a machine, naturally. And you remember the great many dragons that died here the other day? I’m using their grudge too, the power of their feelings.”

Sasha-sama clapped his palms, as if to close the subject.

“So your pet system has collapsed, and everything is in the palm of my hand! If you commit seppuku here, I’ll forgive you!”

Balthazar frowned for an instant. Then he laughed, “Ha,” and put on a composed face to cover it.

“To think that you, with your primitive civilization, would get the better of me like this.”

“You lost for one reason only.”

Sasha-sama raised one finger.

“You looked down on people too much. With your strength, had you not been careless, you’d never have lost.”

“…I admit the carelessness. But are you not mistaken about something?”

“Mistaken?”

“Melchior and Gaspar have been broken through. I myself have been weakened. But still, you cannot destroy me.”

“…Hm?”

Sasha-sama tilted his head, and Balthazar smiled in triumph.

“Because I do not accept attack magic below the highest level I use.”

“…What do you mean?”

“The most you can use is Level 11. And though weakened, I can still use Level 12.”

His smile grew more confident.

“Undead Emperor… with your attacks nullified, how do you intend to wound me?”

Sasha-sama burst out in a delighted ‘Kah-kah-kah!’

“We knew that long ago. That’s why we’ve laid plan on plan! So—”

With that, Sasha-sama snapped his fingers. And again a flash ran across the whole field of view.

That dazzling flood of light… the same as before? Then that meant—

“A weakening spell,” Sasha-sama said.

“A weakening… spell?”

“Just so. This time it isn’t the circle drawn on the world. It’s the one drawn on every nerve and cell of my own body. The effect is one level at most.”

“Absurd! What are you saying!? If you do that, you will weaken yourself—”

“As you say, I’m weakened too. And so is everything alive around here, everything in Magic Academy City, another level down.”

“Then why!? If everyone here is weakened, my superiority is relatively unshaken!”

Then Sasha-sama took a small tube out of his robe. At the sight, Balthazar’s face went white.

He probably had some idea what was about to happen. And I, who knew Ephthal well, didn’t just have an idea. I knew for certain.

I knew exactly why Ephthal wasn’t here, and how he alone, in the whole of Magic Academy City, had escaped Sasha-sama’s weakening spell.

What Sasha-sama held was a summoning tube. And that meant only one thing.

“Level 10: Mini Fantasia.”

Another flash.

From inside Sasha-sama’s summoning tube appeared a figure, just as I’d expected. Sasha-sama grinned, satisfied, as if he’d done his part without a hitch.

“Once more, Balthazar. You lost because you looked down on people. And above all, because you never wondered why Ephthal wasn’t here. Of course, Ephthal, who took refuge in the world inside the tube, is outside the weakening’s range.”

“Gh…”

“Let me ask, Balthazar. How does it feel to be dragged down to the same stage as the humans you looked down on and made light of?”

With that, Sasha-sama patted Ephthal on the shoulder. I leave the rest to you.

Ephthal turned to Balthazar and smiled.

“Long time no see, you bastard.”