54. Joint Operation (2)

As I sent Valerian off alone against Lucius, I threw a few orders his way.

— Please focus everything on evasion, as much as you possibly can.

If Valerian dealt him even a sliver of direct damage, Lucius would obviously just bolt all the more desperately. The moment that tedious game of tag kicked in, the boss fight would drag on with no end in sight. Rather than let it turn into a headache to clear, pinning him down for certain had to come first.

— Above all, the most important thing: keep provoking Big Brother Lucius. Work that mouth of yours without pause.

Honestly, when I’d first floated this plan, the displeasure had been plain on Valerian’s face.

What sort of unknightly conduct is that.

To him, the eldest son of an Imperial knight house no less, being told to spit out cheap, vicious taunts that needled at an opponent’s feelings must have felt like a betrayal of his knightly code. I’d figured his stubbornness wouldn’t bend easily.

“But isn’t that the very thing Master Valerian does best? It’s written all over your face anyway, so you don’t even need to say anything out loud. Just do as the Young Master tells you.”

At those few words from Elli, Valerian fell silent for a moment, then let out a low sigh. And then he carried out my plan with astonishing, flawless precision. We watched the whole spectacle from hiding, screened by Lillian’s plant magic.

“Sister!”

I flung aside the vines that had been concealing us and shouted toward Seraphina.

“I know.”

Seraphina was already sprinting forward. The instant her blade touched the lion’s foreleg:

— Krrkt!

Cold frost spread outward, freezing the leg solid. Catching Lucius in the ice along with it would have been ideal, but it wasn’t to be.

— Crunch, crrunch!

Catching her intent, Lucius bit down into his own fingers.

“Arden!!”

At the sight, Lillian’s cry burst out like a signal flare.

“Please, save Big Bro!”

The instant her cry rang out, I broke into a run across the path of ice Seraphina had laid.

I synchronized with Eve. Even in the worst case, failure couldn’t be allowed, so I marshaled every last card I could draw, too.

As I slid and sprinted across the ice, Lucius came into view. The corners of his mouth were already smeared red with his own blood.

“Knock it off already, you damn excuse for a brother!”

— Krak—!

A dull, heavy impact rang against the cavern ceiling.

“…Khuk?!”

Lucius’s eyes rolled white and flipped back in an instant. At the same moment, every thread that had filled the air lost its life and came raining down.

I snatched the falling Lucius by the collar and shouted.

“Sister!”

— Fwump.

Just before we could crash into the floor, Seraphina spread a bed of snow across the ground. Thanks to her, we landed safely.

“Are you all right!?”

Faster than anyone, Lillian came running.

The dark-red aura of DV still crept and curled off Lucius’s unconscious body. Gasping for breath, I laid him down on the floor, then lifted my head toward Lillian, who watched us with trembling eyes.

“All right, Sis.”

I stepped back, away from the unconscious Lucius, and spoke.

“The stage is set. Now it’s your turn to prove it.”

DV stat: 100 percent.

Could a human who had become a demon ever be turned back again? Maybe this very moment was the starting point from which she would change the fate of the world.

The dark-red veins spread across the unconscious Lucius’s neck were pulsing violently.

“…Big Bro.”

Lillian knelt and folded both hands over Lucius’s chest. As her lips trembled out an incantation, her fingertips flickered with pale-green mana, and dozens of slender jade-colored roots sprouted forth. They began to burrow into his skin.

— Chk, chhhk—!

The black contamination that sheathed his whole body like veins began to flow backward, riding up the jade roots Lillian had planted. Like black ink streaming into a clear tube, the burning poison surged ferociously toward her arm.

“…Ugh.”

Lillian’s complexion darkened in an instant. As the once-pristine jade roots stained an ugly black-red, black blood vessels bulged grotesquely along her slender arm like earthworms.

“…Aa, aagh!”

A scream she couldn’t hold back echoed off the cavern ceiling. Scorched-looking dark-red blotches rose across the back of her hand, and her eyes rolled white with pain. Everywhere her mana touched, Lucius’s skin warped and black smoke billowed up.

But she didn’t pull her hands away from him. No, she couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to; the poison held her that fast.

So turning an NPC whose demonification had already completed back into a human really was impossible after all. Even across the in-game future I’d poured tens of thousands of hours into, there had never once been a precedent for purifying DV at 100 percent. Had this been the wrong gamble? At this rate, I might lose not just Lucius but Lillian too.

“…A…rden.”

I heard Lillian’s voice, steeped in agony. Her tear-streaked eyes trembled and turned toward me.

Pull yourself together.

To gain something, you always had to give something up. That was the law of this damned game. No, of this reality itself. If she failed, I’d lose Lillian; if she pulled it off, we’d come overwhelmingly closer to clearing this world. It didn’t need spelling out: this was a problem that simply had to succeed.

I gripped Lillian’s trembling shoulders hard as they stiffened with pain.

“Sis, listen to me carefully.”

I pressed my mouth to her ear and snapped out the words, firm and unwavering.

“Right now you’re trying to suck out all the poison at once. The dam’s burst, and you’re trying to block the entire flood barehanded — that’s why the strain’s crushing you.”
“B-but… if I don’t pull all this poison out… in one go….”
“That’s the trap. Pull back every one of those scattered roots! One at a time — pick just one and break through!”

Lillian’s eyes wavered wide.

“Don’t try to clear the whole thing. Pick only the single thickest vein. Pour all your mana into that one spot and pull it out for certain. Ignore the rest of the poison — look at one path and one path only, and push forward!”

Focus-fire, the single most important principle in any raid clear: a tactic that narrows the target down to one and disables them, one at a time, for certain.

Lillian let out a trembling breath and nodded.

— Sssrk—.

The countless jade roots blanketing Lucius’s entire body retreated all at once. Like a vast tide drawing back, the withdrawn mana gathered into Lillian’s palm, and then a single root re-entered.

“Be greedy, but don’t be hasty.”

Haste would only cost her. A wall of DV at 100 percent wasn’t something to be cleared in a single leap.

“Slowly. Keep breathing deep. I’m right here beside you.”

In time with my count, Lillian drove the single condensed vine toward Lucius’s heart. Rather than wrestle thousands of tangled threads of poison at once, she’d begun her breakthrough toward the deepest, most fundamental core of the darkness.

She pressed the vine steadily onward.

“Sis, you’re doing great!”

I kept talking to her without pause, so the pain wouldn’t drag her under into unconsciousness.

Slowly, surely, she drew out the darkness that had eaten into Lucius’s depths, one piece at a time. Trying to unravel thousands of skeins of thread all at once had been reckless from the start.

Elli wiped the cold sweat from Lillian’s brow. Leo watched Elli, his face full of worry. Seraphina stayed expressionless even amid this desperate struggle.

“…Haah.”

At last, from atop Lucius’s chest, a small flower bud welling with dark-red liquid rose up. The moment the color returned to Lucius’s face, Lillian collapsed, drained, into my arms.

I carefully laid Lillian down, then went to pick up the dark-red flower.

“…Young Master, you mustn’t.”

Leo stepped in front of me, blocking my way. The flower Lillian had bloomed by carving away at her own flesh was no mere ornament, and I would never leave something that dangerous lying around. He seemed to have grasped as much on instinct.

In answer, I only looked quietly down at the flower. The black stems threading along its petals pulsed like a beating heart.

“You know why my Sis, genius mage that she is, could never get out of that forest all these years?”

At the question out of nowhere, both Leo and Elli, standing beside him, fixed their eyes on me.

“This flower holds a poison that never, ever fades. It won’t burn even in fire, and it won’t rot even buried deep underground.”

When she’d finally extracted that poison after ten years of research, the poison that had shown her such horrific nightmares, she must have been overjoyed. Overjoyed that she could leave that miserable, lonely forest. That she could see the family she loved so dearly again. She must have been so happy.

But the joy and the happiness didn’t last long. She couldn’t leave the forest. No matter what, she couldn’t leave.

The poison that bound her was no ordinary poison. No matter what means or methods she threw at it, it wouldn’t disappear. The hope she’d clung to, that this dreadful reality would finally end, was trampled flat.

And then she did something she never should have done. She injected the poison into the plants and insects living in the forest.

But through that very act, Lillian arrived at a realization: the one and only path by which she might be saved.

“There was just one way to put an end to my Sis’s nightmare.”

I plucked off a single petal.

“…Young Master?”

Elli’s eyes flooded with horror.

Before she could move to stop me, I pushed the dark-red petal into my mouth without a moment’s hesitation.

Gulp.

Elli flung herself at me. Her hands shook me by the shoulders.

“Calm down, Elli.”

Swallowing down the faintly bloody, sweet fragrance circling my mouth, I went on, composed.

“The only way to isolate this poison is to transplant it into another living thing. To have a different vessel share the burden of the pain. To spread out the weight its original owner was meant to bear alone — something like that.”
“B-but still…! This is that horrible thing of Young Master Lucius’s…!”

Elli’s voice broke into a tearful sob. She gripped my arm tight and cried out.

“Then let me do it instead! Young Master, you’re already in poor health, and now this on top of it…! If something were to happen to you…!”

For a moment, a startled laugh slipped out of me before I knew it. This was the girl who had stayed at Valerian’s side ever since I’d returned to the manor. I’d thought Elli had left me for good and gone over to his camp.

…So I was jealous.

A pang shot through one corner of my chest, and yet it left me strangely relieved. I’d pretended I was fine with it, but the truth was, I must have hated the thought of having her taken from me. That startled laugh was both relief and a rebuke at the childish possessiveness I’d kept hidden inside.

“Don’t worry. I won’t turn into a monster like Big Brother Lucius.”
“But…!”
“It’s fine. I already tested it on myself once.”

At my words, Elli’s eyes went round.

I gently pried her hands away and chewed and swallowed the rest of the flower whole. Then I raised my head and fixed my eyes on Valerian, who had watched the whole process with his arms crossed, dry and detached.

“Big Brother Valerian.”

His gaze locked onto me.

Gathering up the lingering power of the last petals, I opened my mouth.

“Deciding to save Big Brother Lucius was entirely my own choice. So don’t wait for me. That wouldn’t be fair.”

Valerian’s brow twitched faintly.

“I’ll probably fall into a deep sleep soon, or in the worst case, I might not be able to keep my sanity. But whatever happens, please carry on with the trial. Our competition isn’t over yet, is it?”

I forced a smile and added,

“I don’t want you held up or harmed because of my choice. I’d rather win fair and square — it sits easier with me that way.”

At my declaration, Valerian gave a scornful snort.

“No matter what you pull, the seat of head of the house is mine. The result won’t change.”
“Well, I’m not going into this assuming I’ll lose, either. Fact is, I’m certain I’ll win regardless.”

When I answered without hesitation, Valerian frowned, as if it were a response he hadn’t anticipated. He glared at me for a long moment, then strode off toward the final third gate.

And just before he vanished into the darkness, he stopped and, without turning back, muttered low.

“Don’t go losing to something as paltry as a demon’s power.”

Valerian’s voice reached my ears lower and heavier than usual.

“Your defeat is mine to author.”