Episode 50

The canal city of Wartel, built atop waterways, had turned into a world of silver and white as every last one of its proud, city-spanning canals froze solid.

“To dam the canals with nothing but the aftershock of a spell… At this point I am not sure which side is supposed to be the ‘god’ anymore…”

Riedel, the national representative, spoke in a tone full of emotion—and with a barb aimed at Zepha and his ilk buried in his words.

“Unison Link… I saw it for the first time.”

“Someone as clueless as you would normally never see it in your entire life. Cry for joy.”

“That is way too big-shot a thing to say…”

Before anyone understood what was happening, they had been dragged into the collapse of their nation, and by the time they came to their senses, it was all over.

The citizens did not know whether to tremble in fear or feel relief. They were completely at the mercy of the wild swing in circumstances.

“Impossible… That was a god.”

“Still mouthing off, you third-rate flunky? No matter how strong it is, it is just a monster.”

It was not only the citizens who had been thrown into confusion; the noble faction was in the same boat.

They had spent years—across generations—trying to summon the Water God. But when they finally opened the lid, what came out was an uncontrollable rampaging dragon that tried to obliterate Wartel.

If not for those two foreign boys who happened to be present, every last one of them—noble faction included—would have sunk to the bottom of the canals.

“I cannot accept this. That was the Water God. Do you have any idea how much we have sacrificed, how much humiliation we have endured…!?”

“Hah. Why would I care? You lost. That is all on you. Do not take it out on other people.”

Zeke’s eyes looked down on them with contempt, a mocking smile on his lips. He was openly ridiculing Zepha and the others.

“!? And that is how you behave while calling yourself a noble as we do!? Have you no shame, you fiend!”

“What a strange thing to say. You might have noble blood, but this country’s peerage system was abolished long ago. Take your little make-believe games somewhere else.”

Zepha’s face flushed red under the provocation. His body shook. He looked on the verge of lunging at Zeke at any moment.

“…You said you paid a price, did you not? Take a look around you at this devastation. Is this that ‘proper original form’ you wanted to return the country to?”

Because of the summoning, the canals had gone wild and many islands had sunk. Leviathan’s attacks had killed scores of evacuees. In this situation, the very survival of the country itself was in question.

“What you did was nothing but mass murder and national destruction.”

“No, that is not what we intended. I only wished for the glory of the Principality…”

“Save the excuses for your interrogators.”

Zepha twitched at the word interrogator, immediately realizing Zeke was jabbing at the role he had been hiding behind.

“Do not think you will get off easy with a quick death. You lot will spend the rest of your lives in a dark cell. Beg for mercy all you like, in as pathetic a state as you please.”

“…Playing the executioner of justice now, are we, you fiend!?”

Leviathan had been erased. The power left to Zepha and the noble faction was now only a faint glimmer of blue light, weak and unreliable.

“I will tell you one last thing, so listen carefully. …Lagias moves only for Lagias. And you got in my way. That is why I erase you. That is all.”

Zepha tried to leap at him, but his legs would not move. Looking down, he saw his feet were frozen in place, and the ice was climbing up his body. The same thing was happening to the other noble faction members, including Jirk.

“Impossible. When did you… conjure such a spell…?”

“During our ‘pleasant little interrogation’ session. …You should not have revealed who you really were to me. Think of it as a fitting stage for the leader of the trash pile to meet his end.”

“Grace Silent.”

Encased in solid ice, Zepha and his followers never spoke another word.

Half an hour had passed since the battle with Leviathan ended. The water’s surface, frozen solid by the clash, remained covered by unyielding ice.

“It is freezing… I have never seen the canals ice over before.”

“You are awfully frail.”

Wartel was still in the middle of dizzying upheaval, but they could not sit around doing nothing forever. People were starting to move, checking the damage and trying to grasp the current situation.

“Do not be ridiculous. Even with freak weather, it never got like this. …Ah—look, someone else just slipped.”

Kratz watched the canals from the roof of the Fourth Evacuation Shelter. Down below, he could see townsfolk inching along awkwardly over the unfamiliar ice, backs hunched, struggling to move forward. The one who had just fallen appeared to be Riedel, the president.

“You took down Leviathan and captured the noble faction. Someone like you is what people call a hero.”

“How boring. I have no interest in convenient fame that changes with the wind.”

Wartel, capital of the Republic of Ignote, had suffered massive damage from the noble faction’s rampage under Zepha.

Before they could even think about reconstruction, they urgently needed a full picture of the destruction.

“…So why did you leave Falder and the others alive? With your power, you could have finished them off.”

“If you are dissatisfied, then go deliver the coup de grâce yourself. There are no witnesses.”

Zepha and the others, frozen like ice sculptures, had been left where they stood.

Part of the reason was that the spell’s effect would last for a while, but more importantly, the detention facility meant to hold them now lay on the canal floor.

Between keeping the country functioning and the lives of its citizens on one side, and criminals on the other, it was obvious which had to come first.

“Maybe I can stay this calm because there is still a chance my family is alive.”

Leviathan’s strikes had destroyed multiple shelters, but there were also places that had escaped harm. Not everyone had been killed.

“But if I had known for certain, I might have given myself over to rage. I would have been cut down for it, I am sure.”

He wanted to sprint off this instant to check on his family, to call their names at the top of his lungs.

Yet Kratz stayed put. He wanted to know Zeke’s true intentions. He could not just leave Zepha and the others roaming free. And above all else, it felt wrong to treat his savior so casually.

“Dying is easy. Once you are dead, it is all over. …But that is far too gentle. Those pieces of trash should live and taste hell on earth.”

Zeke spoke in a flat tone, as if he were completely uninterested. Neither his face nor his voice showed much emotion.

Even so, Kratz was grateful to him. Zeke’s words were clearly for Wartel’s sake, despite him being an outsider.

“You really are a hero…”

As an aside, it was true that Hiroto was angry—furious, in fact. Specifically, furious that they had made a complete mess of his future bolt-hole country.

“And Blood as well. Without you, the Unison Link would not have worked. …Blood?”

Blood stood behind the two of them, clad in his usual armor. His silence was nothing unusual either.

“…Step back, Kratz.”

An ice wall sprang up in an instant, only to be pierced by a black spear. By the time Kratz realized what was happening, Zeke had already deployed his magic, and Blood had driven his spear into it.

“Blood!? What are you doing!?”

“…Run. As far away… as you can.”

Black haze gushed from Blood. The same miasma he had shown during the fight with Leviathan now spewed out in an abnormal torrent, swallowing his body completely.

“You are in the way. Go look for your family or something.”

“But if I do that, Zeke, you will…! And Blood too. Why do the two of you have to fight!?”

Even to a regular soldier like Kratz, Blood clearly was not in his right state.

Despite how he looked, Kratz knew him as a simple, straightforward warrior—someone who never harmed others without cause.

“How should I know? …But he is nothing like that water serpent.”

“…G… Gaaahhh…!”

The miasma seethed with powerful grudges. Kratz could feel it: it wanted strength, wanted battle.

“Spear-wielder. You have steeled yourself for this, have you not?”

“P… please… kill me. If you do not…”

Power against power. Mana against malice. The two forces slammed into each other and blasted the two combatants away. Their battlefield shifted to the frozen canals.

Two shadows clashed violently on the ice. A boy wreathed in cold and a warrior engulfed in the grudge called the Yaksha.

Sensing something was wrong, the people of Wartel retreated once more to the shelters and watched from afar.

“…G… Gwooo…!”

“Lost your words too? You are practically an animal now.”

Blade and spear traded attacks. Any normal foe would have frozen solid under the chill pouring from Zeke’s sword, but Blood was far from normal.

(Cursed gear… It can twist someone this far? Seriously!?)

No matter how many spears Zeke snapped, Blood generated new ones. Each spear he created grew stronger, sharper, and more durable than the last. It felt as if there were no ceiling to how far it could go.

“B… lood… flesh… dancing…”

“So you do not need words anymore.”

Zeke twisted his body to slip past a sharp thrust. He ducked, backstepped, and used conjured shields of ice to knock spear strikes off-course. He did everything he could to evade, yet Blood’s spear only grew faster with every passing moment.

(He is leveling up at an absurd rate. This is cheating!)

Even when Zeke dodged a spear strike, the lingering shock of the grudges packed into it was still dangerous. He had to spill out mana to block it; if he took it head-on, it would burn his body. Strong grudges could sometimes scorch flesh.

“Do not get carried away.”

He slipped past Blood’s attacks and stepped fully into range.

Then he slammed a compacted mass of refined mana into Blood at point-blank range, blasting him away. Against most opponents, that would have been the end of it.

“A… AaaaaAAAAHHH!”

Blood stabbed his spear into the frozen earth to kill his momentum. The hard ice gouged deeply and split with cracks, but he finally slid to a halt. He had weathered Zeke’s strike.

(He is strong. Stronger than anyone I have fought so far.)

The faces of a certain knight and his son rose in Hiroto’s mind.

The father’s perfected swordsmanship and the son’s still-growing, limitless potential.

If he had comrades of his own, he wondered, would he still be struggling like this now?

“How ridiculous. …Frozen Geyser.”

The ice underfoot surged upward and launched Blood into the air. Zeke followed with a volley of ice shards, but Blood knocked every one of them down with his spear. Hiroto could not help but be impressed: even while thrown into the air, Blood never lost his sense of orientation.

Blood landed without losing his stance atop the raised ice.

The spear in his hand left his grasp the next moment, hurled without any visible wind-up.

“Freeze Lance.”

The spears they created crashed into each other head-on and shattered into mist. The shockwave whipped up a violent wind.

(This really is pathetic. In the game, Zeke always fought alone. That has not changed in this world either.)

Spear after spear flew with perfect timing and aim. Each throw carried the clashing wills, desires, and egos of the fighters.

(I fight only for myself. So do not blame me. Just become my stepping stone.)

He was perfectly willing to play the villain, if that was what it took to get what he wanted.

Ice rained down from above. It was colder, sharper, and more threatening than any natural hail. A single hit would freeze a person solid in an instant.

“…Too soft. Far too soft.”

Blood spun his spear in both hands in a tight circle at blinding speed and warded off every last shard.

His own will no longer mattered. Overwhelmed by the grudge, his body would not stop. Either his opponent died, or his life burned out: those were the only options left.

“More…! Give me more…!”

He had surely once been a first-rate spearman known for his martial skill. Now he read his opponent’s attacks flawlessly and countered with pinpoint precision. His movements had long since left the realm of human possibility.

“Entertain me!”

If not for this cursed gear, he would likely have died long ago—unable to protect what he wanted, cut down and left to wallow in regret.

It was bitterly ironic, but the only reason he was able to fight this boy now was because of this power. Without it, he would not even have been a match. Of course, he would have had no reason to fight him in the first place.

He saw an opening in Zeke’s offense and closed in at once, his movements inhumanly fast as he forced the battle into close quarters.

“Give me… your life!”

“The only thing I can give you is death…”

His life had been nothing he could boast about to others.

He had fought to protect his precious family. He had not wanted to lose anything. That was why he had reached for a power they called taboo.

But the result had been cruel beyond anything else.

Those he was meant to protect rejected him, denied him, and turned their blades on him. It had all been for nothing.

He did not remember much of what happened afterward.

He had wandered the land, drifting from place to place. He had only started dealing with people properly again after coming to Wartel.

Even if there had been a lot going on behind the scenes, they had given him a role.

And here, he had met the foreign boy. A boy who claimed to be a fellow noble, with a vile tongue and attitude that bewildered everyone around him. Blood knew the feeling well; the same held true for people who saw his unsettling armor.

Yet the boy treated him as an equal, without caring about appearance, birth, or status. It had been a long time since Blood had felt that, and it both confused and pleased him.

“A… GAAHHHH!”

He hurled a lightning-fast thrust that made full use of his speed. The black-haired boy caught it on his sword, but the force still drove him backward. Zeke dug grooves into the ice as he skidded and managed to stop the blow, yet Blood’s charge did not halt.

“Shut up already.”

The boy was arrogant in deed and word alike, a wicked noble who looked down on everyone around him.

With overwhelming power, he had crushed all foes who dared oppose him.

But having watched from up close, if only for a short while, Blood had noticed the inconsistency. For all his talk, the boy had worried about others and helped the soldier named Kratz.

He had risked his life to protect a country that had nothing to do with him.

He had fought the so-called god-dragon without flinching.

So Blood could not help but wonder.

What was hidden behind those words?

What had driven him to gain so much strength?

Spear and sword ground together in a pseudo-lock, like a clash of blades. Overwhelmed by the grudge, Blood’s face must have looked monstrous. Just as he saw the boy through those eyes, he could feel the boy’s gaze fixed on him as well.

Their eyes met.

And the armor’s wearer—Blood as a person—thought:

Why does this boy have such a sad look in his eyes?

Why do his eyes hold such pain?

Even without words, the scream in his heart seemed to travel through the sword and into Blood.

If he could, he wanted to be Zeke’s strength. He himself had already lost everything, but that did not mean the boy had to.

He could not help but wish it so.

The thick ice covering the canals was cracked and broken in places, as if to prove how fierce the battle had been.

The two fighters stood facing each other on the ice. Their upright postures showed no fatigue, but red flowers bloomed at their feet.

“It was… fun, boy…”

“I am glad to hear it. That should be a good enough souvenir for the afterlife.”

Sword and spear were clenched in their hands. Will and mad delight were packed into the weapons. This was their final clash, with their continued existence on the line. They kicked off the ice at the same moment.

Taking on a spear, which excelled at mid-range, with a sword was hardly ideal. A spear’s reach put a swordsman at a disadvantage—under normal circumstances.

Zeke used his natural physical ability and combat skill to slip inside that reach in a single burst. Due to the nature of a long-shafted weapon, the closer the opponent got, the more awkward it became to use. Even experts had to contend with this.

“Too naive. Did you really think that was enough?”

Blood’s thrust never landed. But the spear he wielded was no ordinary spear. It was the true weapon of pure, concentrated grudge, created in response to his will. Conjuring a shorter spear into his off-hand instead of the usual length was child’s play for him.

“Got you…!”

“So that was your trump card? What a pathetic way to end.”

It looked as though the spear had pierced Zeke—only for his figure to vanish into thin air.

“What… was that?”

The black-haired boy appeared out of nowhere. Zeke had disappeared and then suddenly manifested behind Blood, right hand already charged with power.

It was transfer magic—the kind used by sages—magic that crossed space itself. It consumed the majority of the caster’s mana to jump to a chosen location and belonged firmly in the realm of high-tier spells.

Zeke had gained a glimpse of that power during the Unison Link three years ago. He had spent the time since refining it into a spell suited to combat.

“You are not the only one with secrets.”

Cold surged into his right hand. The technique, reminiscent of a focused internal strike, was one of Zeke’s favored close-combat skills.

“G… GAAAAHHH!”

Blood tried to twist his body to keep his back from being taken, but he could only just manage to turn and face forward. And right there before him stood the villain.

“You are the first I have used this on in a real fight. Be honored.”

Silver light mingled with the freezing wave pouring from his hand.

The silver radiance that purged corruption was devastating even against the grudges of the dead.

“Do not you ever show yourself in front of me again. The underworld is where a beaten cur like you belongs. …Shock Pulse: Argent.”

The impact blasted Blood away, shattering the ice at his feet as he flew. He smashed through even the ice walls formed over the course of the fight.

At the end, the runaway silver brilliance swallowed him whole.

The Yaksha’s grudge, which had never truly faded, and the war-demon soul that had lingered in this world for so long were completely erased—by the villain’s hand.

Wartel had been wrapped in chaos and noise by the ferocity of the fighting. Now that the battles were over, an eerie stillness had fallen over the city.

Zeke walked slowly across the ice. He was not doing it out of curiosity about walking on a frozen canal; he was checking the results of the fight.

He finally arrived at the edge of the frozen canal. The distance Blood had been blasted away had honestly worried him a little, but it seemed the person inside the armor was safe enough.

Despite the heavy damage he should have taken in the battle, there was no more bleeding—no visible wounds at all. The outcome was better than expected.

(So I smash him halfway across the city and still get complete healing out of it. This is one meathead of a technique.)

There were plenty of points to improve, but having proof that it worked in practice was a huge gain. As far as results went, this alone was worth enough.

The person inside the cursed gear. Zeke had thought that if he was alive, he could just leave him be—but powdered ice fragments covered his face and body.

(If he suffocates and dies like this… and then curses me for it, that would suck.)

His situation was cursed enough already; he could not afford any more handicaps.

For that entirely self-centered reason, Hiroto decided to help one last time.

He used wind magic to blow the snow away, taking great care not to hurt the person underneath.

—And what appeared was someone Hiroto knew all too well.

(…What? What the hell is this? Why is she here? I never heard of this. This was never in the setting.)

The person inside was nothing like the burly man he had imagined. Instead, it was a slender girl.

She had long blue hair, a mature face, and a slightly strong-willed air about her.

In the original game, she had been one of the protagonist party’s core members—a main character. With a wealth of knowledge born of her background and exceptional combat ability, she served as Ciel’s close aide and bodyguard.

“Selen Bloom… huh. This world really does go out of its way to deny me, does it not.”

Thus Zeke (Hiroto) encountered the fifth main cast member.