Volume 8Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – The Final Blow

Ephthal’s Perspective

We stood a short distance apart and glared at each other for a few seconds.

The look of ease and scorn that had been pasted on Balthazar’s face all along was gone. Greasy sweat and a grimace had taken its place, and I was sure that even he was badly cornered now. As for us, we’d spent every trick we had.

That left a straight fight, both sides going all out. So the opening shot had to be the biggest one I had.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

Balthazar saw my blast coming and shouted the name of a defensive spell.

“Level 11: Anti-All-Magic!”

I’d never seen a Level 11 defense before, and I let out an admiring sigh. Magic could do that? It belonged to none of the four elements. It looked like a technique that wiped magic itself away, anything charged with magic power, whatever the attack. And the formula was frighteningly simple. He was running Level 11, but it probably felt as light as a Level 9. That lightness was what stood out, because it made the thing fast.

Head-on, with that shield up, I saw no way to win. But that was true only if the one using it was a first-rate mage, better than Merlin.

The formula was abnormally light for its effect, and the effect was huge, sure. But it felt to me like watching an amateur drive a Formula One car.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

“Level 11: Anti-All-Magic.”

Level 11 collided with Level 11 again.

Mine was several times heavier to build. But we fired at nearly the same speed. Partly that was my style, which puts speed first. Mostly, though, it was that Balthazar built formulas so badly that if he’d been a student of mine back then, I’d have yelled at him on the spot.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

“Level 11: Anti-All-Magic.”

Another exchange. Panic crept further into Balthazar’s face. He was patching his formulas together on the fly, so every round the cracks showed a little more.

“Why!? This spell is built on the fastest theory of its day, devised by the Ten Sages! How can a nobody like you keep up!?”

“It’s not the formula.”

I raised my palm and fired again.

“You’re just slow. Level 11: Four Emperors.”

“Level 11: Anti-All-Magic.”

Now despair mixed in with the panic. It was like Level 10 trading blows with Level 7 and finding the Level 7 keeping pace. Even I’d be scared in his place.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

“Level 11: Anti-All-Magic.”

No, that wasn’t right. We weren’t even anymore… I was a shade faster.

Balthazar must have realized it, because he groaned. “Ugh…”

That was when I knew for certain that Balthazar had almost no combat experience. What he had was just a gift from the Ten Sages. He’d never come close to dying, and the mere thought of what would happen if he lost the exchange was enough to make him whimper.

Level 8: Teleport.

“What!? Where did he go!?”

That was also why he fell for something this basic. All he’d ever known was one-sided slaughter backed by overwhelming power, and the idea of using magic tactically had never crossed his mind.

A whistle sounded through the air.

I’d popped up behind Balthazar and slashed his back open.

“Eek! B-behind me!? Why behind me!? Why are you behind meeeee!?”

All I’d done was teleport behind him and cut. Even a fool could follow that. I hadn’t expected him to scream and make such a spectacle of himself over it.

“L-Level 10: Perfect Heal.”

He healed in an instant, then leapt backward to put distance between us.

“Spell for spell… we’re not in the same class.”

To use Balthazar’s own phrase, we were on different stages. Formula-building speed, tactical use of magic, basic control of the body, fighting technique: by every measure, he looked to me like a first-year at the Academy.

He knew it, too. At my words, he gave a strangled growl from deep in his chest.

Then something seemed to occur to him, and he spoke in a hurry.

“…I am releasing Melchior.”

I thought about what that meant. It wasn’t meant for me. He was talking to the facility’s dragon-vein boost system.

“So Cliff and the others reached Svetlana in time.”

Of course. If Svetlana’s side had won, he had to release it or a Level 20 summoned beast would turn on him.

That settled it. The fight was over.

“Give it up, Balthazar. You’re only embarrassing yourself.”

His face contorted with rage.

“Give up…? I, who received knowledge and power from the Ten Sages, I, a higher and nobler form of life, second only to the absolute gods…”

He sucked in a breath and screamed at the top of his voice.

“…a nobody like you tells me to give up!?”

“There’s no way left for you to win. You’re finished.”

He went blank for a moment. Then he started chuckling, though I couldn’t see what was funny.

“True… Quite true. You have bound me hand and foot, dragged me down to your stage, and done with me as you please. But—”

He pointed overhead.

“The Nine-Headed Dragon is alive. What will you do about that? If I die, it loses control and starts destroying the world at random… Yes, it is you who have no way to win!”

He smiled in triumph.

He had a point, but we had the Goddess of Reincarnation. Frankly, if I hadn’t heard her out, that would have finished us.

“I just have to rein in the dragon, right?”

Balthazar’s smile held, but his ears pricked up.

“Rein it in…?”

“I take Maria’s place as the core. The core’s the dragon’s spinal cord or nerve, something like that, isn’t it? If it’s me, I can control it from the inside.”

“What are you talking about? Only a chosen one can be the core, a reincarnator…”

He broke off. “Ah…”

“As you guessed, I’m a reincarnator.”

“I-impossible… no, why do you even know the details of the dragon?”

“Balthazar, did you know there was once a researcher whose child you people toyed with?”

“…?”

“You don’t even remember…”

I was done with mercy, and done with talking. I leveled my sword at him.

“Then burn in hellfire… and repent every last thing you’ve done.”

“Wait, wait… wait! Wait! Wait, wait, wait!”

I spat in disgust.

“A plea for your life, now? Do you think that works on me?”

“No! It is not that!”

His face emptied out. His eyes lost their focus, and his mouth hung open.

“If this goes on… the collapse of civilization… the Ten Sages… what becomes of them?”

“If civilization collapsing under the dragon is what triggers the Ten Sages’ descent, they’ll probably never visit this planet again.”

He sank to his knees. Then, with that empty face, he started to laugh. “Ahaha.”

“Aha… ha… ha, ha, ha, hahaha!”

His eyes half rolled back, spit flying. In the end he clutched his belly and rolled on the ground.

His mind’s broken, then?

Either way, it came to the same thing. At this point there was no ending but taking his head.

I raised my sword and stepped forward, and color came back into Balthazar’s eyes. He rose to his feet, steady on his legs.

“I do not need it anymore.”

“…What are you talking about?”

His mouth twisted into something ugly.

“A planet like this. I do not need it anymore. If it is going to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. And if, by some chance, the dragon obeys me once civilization has collapsed, then I win.”

He spoke calmly, and what he said was vile. I was speechless. This idiot, at this point, meant to destroy everything with the dragon!

I’d rarely seen a scumbag so unwilling to go quietly. But as a last bit of spite aimed at us, I had to give it a passing grade.

I ran at him at full speed and sent a lightning-fast cut at his neck.

Just as it was about to reach him—

Clang!

Sparks flew in midair. Something like a tentacle had shot out and slipped between the blade and Balthazar. My killing stroke never reached him.

“Damn! That’s what linked Maria to the dragon, isn’t it!?”

I looked at Maria. The line was no longer attached to her. Cut off from the dragon, she lay on the ground, unconscious.

Balthazar leapt back again, away from me.

I looked up, and again I had no words.

The sheer size threw off all sense of perspective, and from the ground I couldn’t tell what was happening in the sky. But scouting magic showed exactly how bad it was.

The Nine-Headed Dragon was falling, at a hundred and seventy kilometers an hour and accelerating, just as the equations for a free fall say.

“Gravity magic, master! Reverse the force vector!”

“Already doing it!” Sasha snapped.

I scrambled to throw gravity magic skyward too, but never had the phrase a drop in the bucket fit so well.

Three hundred kilometers wide. Ten thousand kilometers long. How in the world do you handle a mass that size?

This was bad.

Bad, bad, bad, bad!

Really, really bad!

Counting my past life, I’d lived close to seventy years, and I’d never once thought there’s nothing to be done this hard. I raced through every idea I had, and nothing came, no clever trick at all!

Then I noticed that the dragon’s fall was slowing, fast.

“Good work, Svetlana!”

Balthazar had canceled Melchior’s boost, but apparently she still had power left in her. She’d thrown it at the sky, and it dwarfed my gravity magic and Sasha’s. Level 15 or higher, by my reckoning. The scale of that power made no sense.

“But what now?”

The dragon hadn’t stopped. We might have bought some time, but its speed at impact would still be monstrous. If something that size hit the ground at that speed, it wouldn’t just be a disaster… it would wipe out the planet. A tsunami scouring the surface was a given, and probably something on the scale of the meteor strike that’s supposed to have killed the dinosaurs back on Earth.

So there was only one thing to do.

Beat Balthazar, become the core, and take hold of the dragon!

“This ends now, Balthazar! Level 11: Four Emperors!”

Full power, all out. No questions, no pause: I fired at him with no wind-up at all. The shield would stop the first shot. But I’d keep hitting him with attack magic as fast as I could, over and over, until his formulas couldn’t keep up. That was all.

I’d just finished the formula for the second shot when I spat, “Damn!”

The dragon’s tentacles had cut in again.

What are those tentacles, anyway!? There were more of them now, and none of it made sense! Hundreds hung down from the sky, each with a radius of about five centimeters. They writhed around Balthazar, and the moment I fired, they threw themselves between us as a wall. And on top of that—

“No damage?”

I was sure the Level 11 had hit squarely. But Balthazar behind the tentacles was unhurt, and so were the tentacles.

“Fuhaha! These tentacles are part of the dragon’s body… A nobody like you cannot pierce them!”

Was that it, then? Nothing left to try?

I shook my head.

No… There was something. I didn’t know how, but there was at least a way in. Blood was seeping faintly from the tentacles. If it bleeds, it can be killed. My firepower was simply short. But the shot I’d just fired was my maximum. That was pure fact.

So what now?

I didn’t have much time left to think.

Then Merlin spoke behind me.

“It seems you are cutting it close, Ephthal-sama.”

I turned and saw her landing from a flight spell. Cliff, Isaac, Itam, and finally Svetlana touched down from the sky one after another.

“Yeah, you can see for yourself… Closer than close.”

“But you will manage something, will you not, Ephthal-sama?”

That made me laugh.

“In every tight spot, Ephthal-sama has managed it,” Merlin went on, “with that easy smile of his.”

Last night Merlin had told me I said harsh things. Please. The ones who say harsh things and make impossible demands are always these people, never me. You’ll manage something, won’t you? You’ll make it work, won’t you? Spoken or not, that expectation had always been on me, and every time I’d forced something to work. Merlin called it an easy smile. I was always right at the edge… and the smile was nothing but a wry grin.

But something had to be done. That was also a fact.

So, what now?

Being the master is hard at times like this. All I could do was grit my teeth, grin wryly, and squeeze my brain for an answer.

I held my palm out toward Balthazar and gathered my magic. Maybe all that was left was to hammer him with rapid fire and push through.

Just then, Merlin threw her arms around me.

“…But being asked that must be hard for you, Ephthal-sama.”

“…Merlin?”

“The real you is not that strong. I already know that.”

“What are you saying, Merlin?”

“I know. I imagine there were times you shut yourself in your room and endured stomach pain when you were cornered. And long ago, I imagine, you cried in frustration when you learned you had no aptitude for magic.”

“…”

“But…” Merlin said, smiling gently, “my Ephthal-sama, the Thunder God Emperor, is still the strongest in the world.”

Her face turned wistful, almost fragile, and she gave a small, resolved nod.

“Throughout history, a mage’s trump card has been burning her life.”

“…Magic overload? That might get a Level 11 through to Balthazar. But if I do it, nobody’s left to control the dragon.”

Then it hit me what she meant, and I caught my breath.

“It is as I said last night, the very last resort. The best use of my life is a ritual spell: I burn my life to overload my magic, build a formula for pure power from it, and you, Ephthal-sama, control it.”

“No, that’s—”

Before I could finish, Merlin shook her head.

“Magic power drawn out by burning a life raises firepower enormously. Use my life, and prove that the Thunder God Emperor is…”

She drew back from me and looked at me with eyes that would take no refusal.

“…the strongest.”

She held out her right hand.

Joining hands to cast together as a ritual spell. I understood what she meant, but that was—

“Ephthal-sama. Please… You have dragged me around so much all this time. Just once, indulge me.”

“But I can’t take this hand…”

“There is no other way. Even if all four Emperors build a ritual together, you cannot use Level 12 or above, and a Level 11 boosted by everyone’s combined effort would still not break through Balthazar’s wall, would it?”

“That’s… true, you’re right, but…”

Then Isaac put a hand on Merlin’s shoulder.

“The one who burns everything here isn’t you, Merlin.”

Merlin’s eyes flew wide.

“What are you saying…?”

Itam gave a resigned shrug.

“If a life is to be spent, it should not be yours. We were dead already… we old soldiers. It should be us.”

Then Cliff glanced at Maria. A little sadness crossed his face, and then at once he gave a satisfied nod.

“I got to see Bridget at the very end. I’d have liked to talk with her a little, but as extra time goes, this is more than enough.”

“Extra time? What are you saying, Fire God Emperor-sama…?”

“You know we lost our lives long ago. By some twist of fate we’re here, but it’s about time to blow the final whistle. Right, Ephthal?”

I had no objection at all.

All of us, myself, Cliff, Isaac and Itam, had died once, and somehow had wandered back into this world as ghosts. Rather than spend Merlin’s life here, the natural thing was for us to be the ones to bow out.

I nodded, hard.

“Right. Once it’s all over, I’ll be taken into the dragon anyway. Itam’s right: the old soldiers go together. That’s the neatest ending.”

Cliff laughed softly.

“That’s rare. All four of us agreeing… When was the last time?”

“…The Demon Lord’s castle, wasn’t it?” I said.

Cliff nodded, deeply moved, and clapped his hands.

“Ah, right, that was ritual magic too.”

“We weren’t burning our lives that time,” I added. “But all right… let’s treat ourselves to a ritual for the first time in four hundred years.”

That settled it, for real. The plan was set, and all that remained was to carry it out.

When the four of us joined hands, Merlin spoke to me, her shoulders trembling.

“Ephthal-sama… I will not stop you anymore. But please let me say this one thing.”

“What is it, Merlin?”

“Will you leave me behind twice?”

Behind the tears there was a faint flicker of anger. Merlin had never shown me that before, so I knew she was really angry.

“…I do feel bad about it.”

“I would rather you told me here to die with you… How much easier that would be. And you entrust even that role to the three honored Emperors, and not to me?”

“You have your own role.”

“My role? What role could there be for me, who could not be of use even at the last moment!?”

“There’s something only you can do.”

“…?”

“When it’s all over, I won’t be here, and who knows what happens to Sasha… And Sasha’s hopeless at this kind of thing anyway.”

“What are you saying?”

I put both hands on Merlin’s shoulders.

“Maria, Anastasia and Sheryl are yours to look after. Sasha’s and my school of magic, the baton we leave behind, you’re the one who carries it on.”

Merlin’s face crumpled into something between tears and a smile. And then she looked at me with the deepest reproach.

“…Ephthal-sama, you have always said nothing but harsh things.”

“Quit whining. It’s what I’ve decided.”

I grinned, and Merlin gave a helpless laugh.

“Honestly… I can never win against you, Ephthal-sama.”

And so we began to build the ritual, the four of us hand in hand.

⁂

The ritual came together without a hitch, our coordination perfect.

This time, unlike an ordinary ritual, we didn’t need to raise the magic level. Not that we could have anyway: even the four of us couldn’t use Level 12. We would take the Level 11 formula I could already use alone and just raise the power. That made the formula fast, finished in a fraction of a second.

“W-wait! What is this surge of magic? What are you going to do!?”

I ignored Balthazar and raised my palm.

“Wait! I guarantee your survival! We will set aside a special zone for you, and we will never interfere with you again!”

What was this idiot saying? But there was no point answering. When I didn’t answer, Balthazar flinched. Then his eyes fell on Maria, lying nearby, and in an instant his face broke into an ugly smile.

“If I use this girl as a shield, you cannot fire your destructive magic!”

He ran straight for Maria. Just then…

White mist appeared between Maria and Balthazar.

“A smokescreen!? But Thunder God Emperor, at the level of this battle… do you think a child’s trick like this will work!?”

He was steering by magic-power detection. His sight was blocked, but he never veered. I couldn’t help laughing. That Anastasia would use this here, of all places, was so like her.

What Anastasia and Sheryl were doing was very simple. First, they used wind magic to seal off a space. Then they filled it with wheat flour. That was the white mist.

And Balthazar was running straight through it. A moth to the flame.

It’s the classic coal-mine accident, and a kind of explosion that comes up all the time in manga. In short, a dust explosion.

With a whump, Balthazar’s scream rang out.

“G, g, GAAAAAAH!”

Just as I’d told Anastasia yesterday, Balthazar had probably never dreamed that in the middle of the most advanced magic duel there could be, he’d be burned in such an old-fashioned way.

“One trick after another… how insolent! But an explosion of this size means nothing to me!”

Healing himself as he went, he still headed for Maria, his hostage. He reached her and was about to snatch up the small body lying on the ground when—

“If that little pop didn’t do it for you, how about this one?”

A figure dropped from above with a whistle through the air.

A long-haired, handsome man plunged down onto Balthazar, and the flame sword Hinokagutsuchi ran through his torso.

That was Breit, my old friend, who’d been hiding on this roof with his shinobi tricks since before we got here. Thanks to our long friendship, I seemed to be the only one who’d spotted him.

“Guhaa!?”

The moment he ran Balthazar through, Breit tucked Maria under one arm and got clear in an instant.

“Nice work, girls! Thanks to you he lost track of me, and the ambush landed clean!”

Anastasia whooped, “Yes!”

“We got Maria-san back!”

Anastasia and Sheryl had been hiding near me with concealment magic from the start. Balthazar had probably noticed they were there. But they were so far beneath him that he’d simply never paid them any mind. In the end, Balthazar lost through carelessness, from start to finish.

Sheryl patted my back and murmured.

“…Smash him, Ephthal!”

I looked at Balthazar. A lot had happened, but this was really the end.

The other three Emperors looked at me, and we nodded to each other. Nobody said a word. But we didn’t need words to know how each of us felt.

It was a silent farewell for this life.

The torrent of magic poured into my heart, ran to my brain, and was amplified through my magic circuits. Balthazar threw up a wall of dragon tentacles. It didn’t matter. What I was about to fire was the strongest blow of my life, built from the last fire the three of them were burning their lives to give me. No one would stop this one, and no one could.

I raised my palm and aimed at Balthazar. Everything was ready. All that was left was to pull the trigger.

I drew a small breath and brought down the curtain.

“Level 11: Four Emperors.”

Swallowed by the magic blast that burned everything, Balthazar vanished into the light.

⁂

Balthazar was gone, but the Nine-Headed Dragon was still there. How were we going to stop it? The worry didn’t last. While we milled around in front of the dragon’s tentacles, the Goddess of Reincarnation appeared.

She’d come in Merlin’s body again, and she said she wanted at least to explain the basics of controlling the dragon. Of course she would. And with no time to spare, I was glad she offered.

Until now, the Nine-Headed Dragon had been under Balthazar’s control. With that gone, the core could take control of it. It wasn’t free control, though. All the core could do on its own was block the flow of magic. The core was like the dragon’s medulla or spinal cord, and to stop the dragon you completely shut off the flow through the magic circuits in your own brain that linked you to it. Stopping the flow in your brain’s circuits is a technique used in concealment magic of Level 5 and above, so for me it was no problem.

Once stopped, the dragon would go into hibernation on its own and drift in the sky until it rotted away. As for me, I’d be taken into the dragon and kept safe inside it as one of its internal organs. In other words, I’d spend an eternity in a dream until the dragon rotted away.

And there was a bonus: if the dragon ever died, I’d be released in a body that hadn’t aged, and wake in the far future. A happy surprise, apparently.

“There is still a little time. Perhaps you should say your farewells.”

So it came to the very end.

I had a lot on my mind… But I should at least say a few last words. In my last life, I don’t remember ever saying ‘See you’ to Merlin.

I’d have the Goddess step aside for now and say a proper goodbye to Merlin, at least. Just as I was thinking that, Maria shook her head.

“No, Goddess. There’s no need for goodbyes.”

“…Huh? What are you talking about, Maria?”

Maria bowed her head.

“Thank you for saving me, Ephthal. In the end, you took care of everything the way you always do.”

“This time I wasn’t alone, though.”

“But you really are strong. I’ve started wondering how anyone could ever beat you.”

“No, honestly I’m close to the edge every time. There’s no such thing as an invincible Thunder God Emperor.”

“No, you’re the strongest. Because I… recognize it.”

Something about Maria was off. She’d just been saved, but she was pale, and she didn’t look like someone sad about a goodbye. She looked like a warrior walking into a fight she wouldn’t come back from.

“What’s wrong, Maria?”

“Right. You’re the strongest. That’s why you can’t be sacrificed here.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Hey, Ephthal. While I was a prisoner, I kept thinking. Always, every time, every single time, it was you who put yourself on the line to protect me. And I’ve never once been any real use to you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You always put yourself on the line for me. But I’ve never done anything for you.”

“So…” Maria nodded firmly.

“This time I’ll put myself on the line.”

Her look, full of resolve, bore down on me with an almost intimidating force. But I didn’t know what she meant.

“…Ephthal. I’ll be the human sacrifice in your place.”

“What are you saying, Maria? Only I can do that, and…”

“Bridget-chan is inside me. Like you, I’m half a reincarnator. I’d never say I’ve mastered it the way you have, but I’m a mage, however minor… and I’m good with magic power.”

“You…”

I looked at the Goddess. She thought for a moment, then gave a small nod. So it was possible. And it made sense: the control needed was Level 5 concealment technique, which Maria could do.

“But sacrificing you is wrong.”

Maria thrust out her flat chest as far as it would go.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not just taking your place, and I’m not being sacrificed. Only you can do the rest. That’s why I’m entrusting it to you.”

“…Entrusting?”

“Because this doesn’t fix anything at the root, does it? The Ten Sages might come back to this planet someday, and the dragon would only be stopped. If that thing hangs in the sky forever, how much land turns barren?”

She was right. The areas under the dragon got no sunlight, and no rain either.

“And once the dragon dies, I’m set free, right?”

“…That’s thousands, tens of thousands of years from now… or more.”

“No. What a pathetic thing for the strongest man to say.”

“…?”

My head was spinning with questions, and Maria nodded.

“You’ll beat it.”

What the hell is she talking about? But Maria meant it.

“You’re the strongest man in the world. Give you time to train and you can beat the dragon, or anything. I believe that.”

“Hey, hey, that’s asking too much.”

“And even if you can’t, even if your generation can’t, your child will, or your disciple, or whoever carries on your will. Somebody’s going to blast that obnoxious thing for sure.”

“…”

“Just like the title of strongest passed down properly from Sasha-sama to you, your will is going to pass to Anastasia and Sheryl. No, it already has, I bet.”

“No, Maria… that’s…”

I was going to say it was impossible. But I couldn’t say that to Maria, who’d made up her mind. After hearing that, there was only one thing left for me to do.

“But don’t be stingy and say ‘someday.’ Settle it in your own generation,” Maria went on. “I believe it. I believe you’ll definitely come for me… not anyone else. So instead of doing it all yourself—”

She smiled, bright as the sun.

“—let a girl look cool, just once.”