Ishura - Volume 7 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11- The Ninth Match

Late at night on the day before the ninth match, lights speckled the darkness-shrouded ice field at the Mali Wastes.

It was artificial light, forming a line along the road or placed to encircle specific areas. And with them were people, tens of times greater in number than the lights, wriggling within the darkness.

It was a combat engineer squad under Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam’s direct command.

When it came to sneaking into the arena and sabotaging things ahead of time, the rules for the Sixways Exhibition had initially established a certain number of loopholes that allowed said rules to be applied arbitrarily.

However, the act of sneaking into the arena with a full military company to set up a trap meant to eliminate a hero candidate as part of a large-scale operation was outrageous, completely unprecedented in the Kingdom’s imperial games.

The members of Rosclay’s camp likely had an inkling of the ambitious undertaking by their enemy in Haade’s camp. Yet the more one was privy to the internal circumstances within the Sixways Exhibition, the less they would try to stop this reckless act.

Now, with her original sponsor leaving the stage and with the menace of Alus the Star Runner known across all of Aureatia, there wasn’t anyone who desired to see Lucnoca the Winter continue to advance through the tournament.

Tuturi’s squad was beginning to make the finishing touches on their operation to kill Lucnoca.

“…Dammit,” Tuturi cursed, looking up at the clear, frozen night sky. “It’s way too cold.”

The decision Haade the Flashpoint had reached was, for Tuturi, inscrutable. Someone at some point needed to defeat Lucnoca the Winter, which was all the more reason why the best course of action would have been to make Rosclay’s camp deal with her before the match. If they had simply waited patiently, wouldn’t it have been possible to coerce Rosclay, left to fight against her in the following semifinal, into disposing of her?

“Well? Think we can finish this up tonight?” she asked the secretary standing next to her. She understood the operation’s state of progress already, so there wasn’t much meaning behind her question.

“Hm, I believe the possibility is certainly there. The delay in the drilling operation itself was unexpected; however, the men on site are accustomed to the task. We were fortunate to have four days to work with.”

“I see.”

Ultimately, Haade’s inscrutable snap judgment had been correct.

Aureatia’s soldiers, not just Tuturi’s unit, lacked experience working in such extremely cold climates, and far more time than Tuturi had calculated was exhausted on drilling through the frozen earth and on breaks to warm up the engineer’s bodies. Beginning to move right as Tuturi judged it best to wait had been the correct call.

Hell, all the records involving establishing mines in cold regions are from long before the era of the Demon King, too. General Haade’s predictions of the soldiers’ proficiency and technological development are far more precise than mine…

Tuturi liked war. She liked working out a strategy, making predictions, and overpowering her enemies. However, whenever she compared this fondness she held with Haade the Flashpoint, she couldn’t help wondering if what she did amounted to nothing more than the pretend war games she played as a child. The fact that he understood everything down to the atmosphere of an unknown battlefield he had never visited before, and could make judgments without wavering at all, had to be because his love for war was deeper than any other.

If anything, the troops’ morale is only getting higher. Defending Aureatia themselves in place of the reformation faction has galvanized them—but isn’t the end result here that we’re just exhausting our fighting force before we fight our true war? Maybe General Haade has some reason to purposely take on a clear disadvantage?

Her squad would be the ones paying the costs for it. Tuturi tried to consider what they would stand to gain in exchange. Something more valuable than themselves.

…Whoa, c’mon now. Way too late to think about this stuff.

She quietly chuckled to herself.

Something was odd, ever since that day she had laid eyes on Lucnoca the Winter.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what she lacked, or things she couldn’t reach. Tuturi’s strength had always been her ability to focus on her duty as a soldier, and not think about meaningless nonsense, wasn’t it?

When she looked up, she saw a human figure walking unsteadily through the path lined with work lamps at even intervals. A young man in a white robe, with a messy mop of hair. He was one of the self-proclaimed demon kings from the National Defense Research Institute.

“Mr. Yukis. Is the work on the east side finished?”

“Ah! Miss Tuturi!”

Yukis the Ground Colony needlessly bounded into the air.

“It’s so cold! Brrrr! I can’t stop regulating my body temperature with involuntary muscle movement! Why is everyone else so nonchalant about it?! It’s way too cold!”

“We’re all cold. You’re just the only one who’s going out of his way to make a fuss about it. I’m guessing with that attitude that you finished the work I left you? You want to rest up near the fire, is that it?”

“Ah, Miss Tuturi, you’re so quick on the uptake!”

“Obviously, you can’t do that. Go head over to the north side.”

“Whaaat?!”

Yukis, practically bending backward, screamed so outrageously, one might wonder if it was all an act, but the man was genuinely this eccentric.

Adequately appeasing and making use of nuisances outside Haade’s military control, like him, were among the many roles entrusted to Tuturi.

“…Eh, a little break should be fine, I guess. Can you answer some questions about the weapon we’re using for this operation? That’ll give you some time to warm up by the fire.”

“How excellent! You have quite the technical curiosity, don’t you?”

“Oh, but if someone else comes to report something, I’m going to listen to them first. Go ahead.”

“Hee-hee! Well then, if you’ll pardon me a moment.”

Delightedly coming up beside Tuturi, Yukis was illuminated in the light of the bonfire. Some viscous pale-yellow substance was dripping from inside the sleeve of his white robe.

“Blergh, gross. What is that?”

“Oh, my apologies! Well, you see, I used the heat from the fermentation of bird droppings to warm up the inside of my clothes! Now, I developed this new fungus with its absolutely superb rate of decomposition, but…for some reason, it’s quite unpopular! Would you like one of your own, Miss Tuturi? I really do recommend it!”

“I wager it’s unpopular because of how utterly filthy it is. Can you tell me about the weapon now?”

“It’s such a wonderful invention, totally resource sustainable, too… Oh well, I say there’s certainly no room to claim that this latest weapon against Lucnoca isn’t a wonderful invention of its own! Now then, Miss Tuturi. When killing a dragon, what characteristic of theirs do you think poses the biggest obstacle?”

“Their ability to fly,” Tuturi answered without hesitation. “All of their characteristics are pretty much unmatched and impossible to deal with, but ask a soldier like me the worst one, it’s flight. They can get a grasp of the battlefield while remaining constantly out of range, as well as freely descend to lay waste to anywhere along the battle line… Even a theoretical plane would find the feat impossible, and for them it’s an innate characteristic of their species.”

“Yes, yes, very good points! Certainly, an understandable opinion from a strategic point of view. Now, I don’t mean to raise an objection here…however! In that case, you could say the same thing about wyverns, yes?!”

Yukis exaggeratedly waved both hands as if he were flapping his wings.

“I guess. You’re right; when up against wyverns, even minia can manage to take them on. A normal wyvern, at the end of the day, needs to drop its high speed if it wants to attack, so it’s possible to shoot them down with bows and guns…”

Wyverns’ fundamental means of attack were their claws. The reason Alus the Star Runner—equipped with a multitude of long-range methods of attack—and Lithia’s air force—able to gather information and make coordinated air attacks—were such fearsome foes was because they had been wyverns who outdid common wyvern tactics.

“But a dragon could swoop low, and it’d still be impossible to shoot them down. In that case, the most threatening characteristic of theirs would be their dragon scales—is that what you’re getting at?”

“Ohhh no, you got there before me! You’re absolutely right! In short, my bacteriological weapon is meant to break through those dragon scales of theirs! The areas not protected by dragon scales—their lungs, eyeballs, or the mucosa of their digestive organs! My idea is to deliver fatal toxins through these areas directly!”

“So, the theory is that you’re simply using these invisible organisms to transmit what’s virtually akin to a vapor gas attack. But is that gonna work? Aren’t living organisms weak against drastic environmental changes?”

“Hee-hee-hee! These latest bacteriological weapons are a new species made by my oh-so-adorable Nectegio, you see! They can function in low-temperature environments without any problem. Isn’t it incredible? Of course, no matter how well they can take low temperatures, a direct breath attack from Lucnoca the Winter will completely annihilate them, but…did you know the one place that’s perfectly safe when a dragon launches their breath?”

The opposite side from their Word Arts focal point—those unfamiliar with Lucnoca the Winter would likely come to this answer. This was completely mistaken. The second match proved as much.

Yukis hit his own throat with his finger, still in his hunched-over posture.

“Inside the dragon’s own body.”

With the dragon scales covering her body, sparkling like ice crystals, and their abiotic beauty, Lucnoca the Winter seemed to be ultra-cold ice incarnate.

However, in actuality, the dragon was still nothing but a living creature, filled with flesh and blood.

“Lucnoca the Winter’s breath freezes all the gaseous molecules in the air and creates a momentary vacuum, but even then, the inside of Lucnoca’s respiratory organs at the very least…should still have enough air inside of them to maintain biological activity. As long as there’s that small remaining air, heat, and moisture, then Nectegio’s bacteriological weapons will be able to continue on without a problem. Even if she only takes in a trace amount of them, they will continue to multiply within Lucnoca’s internal environment. Their variety of toxic materials will first paralyze her nerve cells. Gradually, proteins, starting with her muscles, will dissolve…guaranteed to then lead to her death.”

“…”

Yukis the Ground Colony was not a self-proclaimed demon king like Kiyazuna the Axle or Viga the Clamor, who was recorded to have opposed Aureatia with clear intent. Tuturi hadn’t been provided detailed knowledge about how this man, previously performing reckless bacteriological experiments out on the frontier, had caught Iriolde’s eye and joined the National Defense Research Institute, or the course of events that led there. Without knowing his past, it was easy to look at him merely as an eccentric and weird man.

However, the malice hidden behind his abnormal words and actions was extremely brutal, and real.

“There are two hundred and eleven mines that will deploy this biotoxin. The question I have is whether or not this poison will also work on an ooze, too. What do you think?”

“Oooh, an ooze… I’m so sorry! None of the specifications I was given contained any request in that vein! It’s safe to say that it’ll have practically zero efficacy on an ooze! While it is sure to get taken up inside its body, depending on the species of creature, they’ll have a different level of acidity in their body fluids! The weapons can’t produce toxins without being under the proper conditions, you see! Oh, but of course, in the case of bacteriological weapons, if anything, they prove even more effective if they’re nontoxic to everyone except the target! You understand this, yes?!”

“Well, yeah, my squad wouldn’t be able to put the plan into action if the poison also affected the minian races. Better if they don’t work. If possible, I’d like to have Psianop draw Lucnoca’s attention. Even if it’s only long enough to blink, the more factors that’ll buy us time while fighting against her, the better.”

Lucnoca the Winter was the strongest specimen among the strongest races of all.

Normally, Tuturi could have bunched together all the powerful fighters she knew, and they would even last longer than a blink of an eye. However, if it was one of the Sixways Exhibition hero candidates doing it, it may have been possible.

Alus the Star Runner would have been able to finish off Lucnoca the Winter if he had held out just a bit longer. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, who laid one of the First Party low, would likely be enough to stall for a fair amount of time. Just as Shalk the Sound Slicer had continued to draw self-proclaimed demon king Alus’s attention, if Psianop challenged her himself and focused on running away to serve as the bait for as long as possible, Tuturi’s chances of success would drastically increase. This was what she was hoping for.

“Huuuuuh?! But Nectegio’s bacteriological weapons are an absolute, surefire solution! I developed an extremely rational means of eliminating Lucnoca the Winter, but you don’t even trust it?!”

“Hah-hah, nope, not a lot of faith,” Tuturi answered with a half smile. “Oh, but I totally get that your technology is the real deal, Mr. Yukis, okay? But I just know that Lucnoca the Winter’s strength is just…not on that level at all. See, if you’re going to kill someone like her, seems like you’d need to have three to four guaranteed, surefire ways to be safe. Your bacteria weapons might help out the methods that the other guys have come up with, or it could end up being the last little push to kill her. It’s my job to do absolutely anything to make sure she ends up dead in the end.”

“Meeeeh, I understand what you’re saying, but it’s still sad…to hear your level of confidence in me…”

“Yukis, your clothes are on fire.”

“Eyyaaugh?! I was too close to the flame! Radiant heat-induced combustion!”

Yukis rolled around on the ground and began to get covered in frost. He was supposed to be taking a break to warm up by the fire, and now he was right back where he had started. Tuturi dryly smiled.

“Aaaaaugh! It’s so cold!”

“…Once you’ve settled down, go out and look at the next spot. You’re going to go around to see all of them before the night’s over anyway. May as well get it out of the way early.”

Leaving Yukis behind, Tuturi departed from the bonfire. She had left the soldier with a report waiting a bit, but considering they waited without interrupting her conversation, it likely wasn’t that important of a report.

“So, what’s up?”

“Um… Someone has come requesting a meeting with you, Miss Tuturi.”

“Like hell I’d meet with them. Who are they, some messenger from General Haade or old man Iriolde? Even then, no sane person would be coming out to the Mali Wastes at this time of night. C’mon, you can’t even detain and interrogate them without me having to order you to do it?”

“Well… It’s Tenth General Qwell. I believe she might have something to discuss with you regarding the arrangements for the ninth match tomorrow…”

“Ahh…”

True enough, one of the Twenty-Nine Officials couldn’t be restrained at the discretion of a mere foot soldier.

Tuturi scratched her head.

I thought she might get an inkling of what was going on with the whole Acromdo attack, but…still, to come all the way to the Mali Wastes just to complain about it…

Tuturi knew about the operation to use Acromdo the Variety to bring Qwell under the control of Iriolde’s camp. It was in part an experiment by the National Defense Research Institute ahead of his practical combat utilization in the ninth match, but it was still a very aggressive card to play. Perhaps it was because this grand undertaking was imminent, but everyone was beginning to do whatever they felt like—though that might have also been the case for Tuturi herself.

“Should I have her leave, then?”

“Nah, I’ll go. If she’s who I’m dealing with, I’ll at least try talking to her, I guess…”

Dealing with these kinds of nuisances was one of the roles entrusted to Tuturi.

In either case, it wasn’t going to change what she would do.

Qwell the Wax Flower was sitting with both hands clenched tightly in her lap on a plain chair inside the temporary tent.

The eyes visible through the gaps in her long bangs were big, like a child’s, and shone fiery silver in the dark night.

“Heya, Qwell.”

Entering the tent, Tuturi called to her with the friendliest smile she could muster. Qwell mumbled something in response and appeared to give a very small bow.

“What’s brought you out all this way? It’s freezing here, right? Want me to grab you some of the soup we’re giving the engineers?”

“…Tuturi.”

Qwell still hung her head, but looked with upturned eyes at Tuturi, and then she turned toward the countless lights that still illuminated the darkness.

As if scared of her follow-up, she took in a small breath before continuing.

“What…did you plan to do?”

“Uhh, by that you mean…?”

Then, she said something unbelievable.

“Isn’t this foul play…?”

Whoa, whoa, hold on.

Tuturi never thought she would be hearing this at this stage in the game.

When she thought about why Qwell would have come here, the incident with Acromdo the Variety had to be the only answer. She had even considered the possibility that, depending on the situation, Qwell might have come with Psianop to pursue the matter.

“Uh, so listen. Qwell? You’re saying that now? Is this really the time? Calm down a minute and listen here, girl. It was just the same with Alus the Star Runner. We gotta defeat Lucnoca the Winter. Together, with everyone in Aureatia. This goes way beyond foul play or anything.”

“I’m thinking. Everyone makes fun of me, but… I—I… I-I’m always thinking. That Acromdo person’s attack…y-you all sent him to do that, didn’t you?”

Qwell weakly objected. She not only looked weak, but she also was a truly timid girl. A dhampir whose martial abilities—and her martial abilities alone—were abnormally strong, and she had used them to work her way up to the Twenty-Nine Officials. It was safe to say that not much was expected from any other of her abilities on the battlefield.

“No clue what you’re talking about. Didn’t you come here to talk about the ninth match?”

“I…I know that Lucnoca the Winter needs to be d-defeated at some point. But! This is…this is a match! Lucnoca is coming here tomorrow, believing this is a serious duel to the death!”

“It’s a match, sure. The Sixways Exhibition isn’t some athletic event or test of strength. Minia have to use our noggins if we’re going to battle against monsters like Lucnoca the Winter. If we end up losing despite that, then we’ll gracefully accept defeat, just like anyone else. Why do the weak have to go along with how the strong do things before the fight even begins?”

“Right…right. Everyone says that. Not just you, Tuturi… Rosclay, the other Twenty-Nine Officials, they all say…tricking the enemy, trapping them with words and rules, claiming this is minian cleverness, true strength… That this is the only way weak minia can fight…”

Qwell’s large eyes looked at Tuturi through her bangs.

They seemed sorrowful and tinged with melancholy, even more than usual.

“Why doesn’t everyone try to grow stronger?”

“What did you say?”

“…I—I wonder. Maybe minia…are innately weaker than dwarves, ogres, and dragons. But everyone’s given up entirely on overcoming their weakness…y-yet even then, they want to win, so then they win in ways a lot more vulgar, far crueler, than their opponent…sw-switching around the meaning of strength to do so…! I-it’s not just their enemy either… Th-they just…just keep deceiving themselves the whole time, don’t they?!”

It was the first time Tuturi had seen the horribly cowardly and inarticulate Qwell be so talkative about anything.

Clearly, she must have held this dissatisfaction in her the whole time. Ever since they decided on the regulations behind the Sixways Exhibition. Since Rosclay was made to be an artificial champion. All of it aimed toward the way that strength existed among this race of people, the minia.

“That’s not what real strength is! Why can’t any of you…pay any respect to the champions, to Psianop, to Lucnoca the Winter…who are putting their lives on the line?! Being powerful, growing strong, it’s all something much… much nobler than any of you think it is!”

“If we don’t engineer Lucnoca’s defeat, Psianop’s going to die!”

Tuturi slammed the desk. It wasn’t done in a fit of intense emotion, but it was a feigned threat to make Qwell shrink back—rationally, Tuturi felt that was how it was supposed to be.

“Qwell, everything you’re going on about? It’s animal logic! If some monster shows up that you can’t best in a test of strength, then the weak are supposed to just shut up and lose, is that it?! Is the monster gonna wait while we gather hundreds of thousands of people who can’t fight and make them all get stronger?! We gotta win now, no matter how low we have to go to do it! Why don’t you get it…?! I’m talking about making sure we all survive, here! We don’t want Psianop to die a meaningless death either, you know!”

“Psianop isn’t going to die!” Qwell shouted. “Psianop…will win! He’s not going to lose to someone like Lucnoca the Winter! S-so, I…I’m not going to let you do any tampering! Whether it’s a trap to make Psianop lose, or to make him win…! Tuturi! Dismantle all of this and leave this place! Immediately!”

“Hah-hah. Am I supposed to be responsible for this? For things falling apart over total nonsense like this?”

Tuturi stood up. Qwell similarly took her long-handled war ax from the floor.

They hadn’t seized her weapon when they let her through—Tuturi wanted to click her tongue in annoyance, but assuming that was the case, it was difficult to imagine Qwell faced much strong resistance. Save for a few bodyguards, the lower ranks didn’t know anything about the schemes regarding the assault on Qwell in the first place.

Qwell brandished her ax above her head. She was in the stance before Tuturi even noticed.

A silver cyclone ran lengthways through the desk. The hardwood desk was split in two.

Dodging to the left right before it hit, Tuturi got wrapped up in the chair next to it and collapsed magnificently to the ground. She hit her back hard. She didn’t even have the time for the throbbing pain to reach her brain.

She slashed at me without a second damn thought…!

No—if Qwell really intended to kill Tuturi, then that attack would have done her in. Qwell had slashed down with enough speed to allow Tuturi to dodge at the last moment.

Her goal had been to force Tuturi into an unnatural dodge and make her lose her balance. With the desk broken apart in a single attack, there wasn’t any sort of cover for Tuturi to run and hide behind. She planned to take Tuturi hostage and use her to negotiate.

Almost simultaneously with Tuturi’s thoughts, several gunshots rang from outside the tent.

One shot hit the war ax and bounced off. The rest missed.

“From outside. You were making them aim for my shadow.”

Qwell’s line of sight matched the height of Tuturi’s even as she was collapsed on the ground. With Qwell’s legs opened wide, she was in a low pose, almost touching the floor.

Tuturi had set guards outside the tent just to be safe, but Qwell had seen through the tactic. From her very first attack, she had taken the firefight into account with her movements.

At the same time, three bodyguards rushed into the tent. Readying their short spears, they charged.

“…!”

Qwell instead stepped toward the spears.

As she stepped forward, she slightly dropped her center of gravity two levels. The spear blade had definitely hit Qwell’s shoulder, but the roundness of her shoulder bone reflected it away. An extremely precise manipulation of her body, without even a scratch left behind.

When the soldiers attempted to cope with the shift in the fighting range, Qwell took her hand off her war ax.

Instantly, she wrapped both of her arms around the soldier’s torso, rushed forward with him in her grip, and used him to mow down the other two.

“Hi-yah!”

The move resembled what was known in the wrestling of the Beyond as a body takedown. The points that differed were that the goal of the move wasn’t to pull her opponent down to the ground, but to crush their backbone with the strength of her fingers the instant she wrapped both arms around her opponent’s body. Then she took the body of the soldier she had dragged down and threw it at the feet of the soldiers next to her. From there, right after she had knocked them off balance, she used simple blows to knock the two soldiers unconscious.

Her innate physical abilities, and the techniques of the Beyond that Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had passed down to her.

Even her initial step forward might have been the same footless way that Psianop had utilized in the first match. In any case, Tuturi didn’t get the sense her eyes would be able to accurately track such speed.

“…Hah-hah, Qwell.”

A dry laugh slipped out. Tuturi barely managed to grab the short spear that came rolling over to her.

Would she be able to win with a weapon of her own? With a strategy of her own?

“You really are a monster, huh?”

Publicly, Aureatia upheld true equal rights for all races. However, there were only minia among the ranks of the Twenty-Nine Officials…except for Qwell the Wax Flower.

Qwell picked up her war ax and pointed it at Tuturi, who was lying on the ground.

Her eyes, gleaming silver and unlike any minia, stared down over Tuturi.

“Tuturi. Please stop attempting this foul play.”

“I-I’ll…give you a final warning, too. If you plan on going any further than this, you’re going to leave me no choice but to do something truly awful…”

Although Tuturi was buying herself time, there were no gunshots from outside the tent. It was extremely likely that a stray bullet would hit Tuturi in this situation if the guards relied on silhouettes to aim, and if they came into the tent they’d just end up like the soldiers from before… In other words, it was time for them to call in more reliable support.

“T-Tuturi…!”

Qwell grabbed Tuturi by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up.

Qwell was a younger woman than herself, with slender arms. Nevertheless, Tuturi’s strength was no match.

“Tuturi… You know what you’re doing is wrong, too, don’t you?!”

Her silver eyes were looking at Tuturi at point-blank range.

…I don’t know.

Winning in a fair fight—

Obviously, anyone would prefer that if it was possible.

However, that was a luxury only given to those who were monstrously strong from birth.

Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam, Aureatia’s Twenty-First General. She was a military officer, but she had only been personally involved in a handful of fights to the death. Her body with its lack of muscle was exactly as it appeared to be. She wasn’t proficient with weapons, either.

“Qwell. See me? I’m the type that, if I say I’m gonna do something, I seriously go through with it…”

“I’m sorry, Tuturi. I’m taking you hostage.”

“…All right then… I’ll put away any of the cheap tricks. Just like you want, Qwell… We’ll have a one-on-one fight…fair and square…”

“…?”

Tuturi could understand why Qwell looked so suspicious as she held Tuturi firmly in her grip.

It must have seemed like she was proposing a contest she had no hopes of winning.

However, Tuturi never said she would be the one to fight.

Before anyone could notice him, an elderly man, bending his tall, thin body, ducked inside the tent.

“Is it time for me to step in, Tuturi? I thought I’d be able to take the day off today, too…”

“…!”

“Hah-hah. You’re fine with this, right? Just like you wanted, Qwell: a fair, one-on-one fight…”

Hidow the Clamp. Viga the Clamor.

These weren’t the only talented individuals who had been extracted from Rosclay’s camp.

The man was a broken failure to begin with, having lost any hints of loyalty or conviction.

His round, scholarly glasses looked at Qwell.

“Hmm. Very easy.”

Member of the First Party. Romzo the Star Map.

The story came from sometime during his travels with the First Party.

He had been asked if oozes even experienced sleep.

At the time, Psianop had said that they did. At least, Psianop had experienced what he perceived as “sleep” several times before, and naturally thought this was the same sensation that the minian races experienced.

However, according to what Alena and Romzo would tell him, it seemed that their sleep was different.

Their sleep was believed to occur in order to rest their nerve cell organ, called a “brain,” and sleep for Psianop, lacking any defined nerve cells, didn’t cause him to completely lose consciousness.

“For example, Psianop, when you’re asleep, what if something moving crossed close beside you? You could immediately wake up and react to it, yes?”

Romzo pointed this out to him. The conversation happened on a roadway on the border of the Central Kingdom and the True Northern Kingdom.

“Well yes, of course I could…”

“Most of the minian races can’t do that. They go completely unconscious.”

“Huh?! Honestly, is that really even possible? Suddenly losing all your senses despite having no issues with your body functions? That’s so unnatural! Even if you’re trying to rest your body, if an enemy came to attack you, then it’d be all over, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm. It’s a good question. When I was studying in the Kingdom, I also heard that we don’t fully know why sleep is necessary in the first place.”

“Completely defenseless, night in and night out, without even knowing why? More irrational than an ooze.”

Unlike tarantulas and mandrakes, beastfolk with forms largely divergent from normal creatures—such as oozes and chimeras—were, in fact, extremely unnatural life-forms.

Some even advanced a theory that the constructs created by a self-proclaimed demon king far in the past had developed the ability to leave behind offspring, eventually becoming established creatures in the wild.

Many oozes would die without ever knowing that. Since they were separated from the lineage of common organisms, some couldn’t even comprehend bestial instincts. Psianop wouldn’t have had any reason to know, himself, if he hadn’t traveled with Romzo and the others.

“What are you thinking about…when you sleep, Romzo? If you lose all your senses…do you just sit there in total darkness and only decide when you can wake up?”

“Hmm. I don’t think about anything when I’m sleeping.”

“You’re lying.”

Even Romzo, who came off as extremely intellectual and trustworthy, would still tease the other party members. Psianop thought this was another one of those moments.

“You caught a bug that flew near your face while you were still sleeping, right? I’ve seen it happen before.”

“Quite a close observer, hmm? But that’s actually because I wasn’t fully asleep. In my case, I keep just one section of my brain awake when I sleep. It’s not an easy technique to manage, so even a talented man like Alena would still need a year or so of practice to do it, I’d say. Could take a bit longer than that, even.”

“No way. Even a skilled master like you can’t win out against sleep, Romzo?”

“Hmm. Suppose so,” Romzo answered with his usual, artless way of speaking.

Psianop felt something inscrutable about the way he answered, as if it was all such a natural fact of life.

The concept of something that even powerful people like Romzo or Alena couldn’t hope to defeat, that stole their ability to think, from Psianop’s perspective, sounded unbelievably powerful. Considering that it would assail all of the minian races without exception, he felt it was something that needed to be conquered just as much as the True Demon King, and yet, they all seemed to readily accept the fact they couldn’t win against sleep, and if anything, found it pleasing.

Why was that?

“This is what I’m trying to get at, Psianop. You may think that an ooze’s strengths are inferior, but something you’ve achieved from birth is a feat that only someone who’s completely mastered a certain technique can accomplish. Not only you, but a certain part of soulless beasts can do the same. Plants and animals all have their own outstanding abilities and possess possibilities that common minian understanding can’t even imagine.”

“Heh-heh-heh, you really think so?” Psianop candidly grew bashful.

It was only natural, but his journey with Romzo and the others always brought them to minian towns. Just by being an ooze, a weak and unintelligent race, he would quite often be looked down on, but his companions never once overlooked any unfair treatment against him, and he was glad they always treated him like an equal.

“Romzo. What do you think I need to do to sleep like the minian races? I feel like if I can experience that strange sensation for myself, I might be able to better understand their thoughts and feelings.”

“Good question. That’s almost like us thinking up a way to sleep like an ooze, but… there is one easy method to do so.”

Putting up his index finger, Romzo jokingly smiled.

“Dying. Death and sleep are really very similar. If you even get to meet Neft the Nirvana again, you might want to ask him about it.”

“Don’t say scary stuff like that.”

However, perhaps it was a good idea to try asking him someday.

A slightly cheerful mood came over Psianop.

“…”

Psianop, “awakening” from his memories of the past, looked up at the starry expanse outside the window.

Oozes would also have dreams while they rested that seemed to blend sensations of past memories together, but as for whether he was simply recalling memories of the past, or if this was some sort of effect caused by possessing a heart with Word Arts, the matter was even more of a mystery to him than the minian races were.

…Romzo. I’ve slept several times since then.

The break in consciousness he experienced when he first read one of the cursed tomes in the Sand Labyrinth, as if time had been torn out of him, had been a horribly frightening sensation.

Over the twenty years of intense training and combat he struggled through, he had been wounded heavily enough to lose consciousness. The average ooze would have simply died from it, so Psianop was likely the only one to continue living after experiencing that sensation of loss.

During his fight with Neft the Nirvana and Toroa the Awful, he had also caught a glimpse of death.

Both of those experiences were far from the peaceful and tranquil sleep that Romzo had talked about. Even now, I can’t understand how Neft had been able to befriend death like he did.

Perhaps, the next day, he would come to understand.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was going to fight Lucnoca the Winter.

Every time he saw the border of life and death right before his eyes—one far more terrifying than anything he saw during his journey with the First Party, or his time spent inside the Sand Labyrinth—Psianop would also recall the silly conversations about sleep from long ago.

In the past, Psianop had considered minian sleep to be absolutely terrifying, but at this point, he thought maybe that wasn’t the case after all.

They were practicing death from birth.

That was why they didn’t fear danger like oozes did. They were able to beautifully meet their final moment.

Just as Psianop had been learning the masters’ techniques from birth, perhaps it was because they slept that the minian races were able to grow truly strong.

In that case, does Lucnoca the Winter sleep, too?

Maybe he would actually try asking her.

At the end of battle, would a peaceful sleep someday visit him?

The sound of controlled breathing. The sound of footsteps trying to open up space or to step forward to close it.

Tuturi stared out at the noisy battle, reverberating across the frozen night in the Mali Wastes, as if it didn’t concern her at all.

In fact, it was now becoming entirely someone else’s concern.

“Aaah… Ah!”

Qwell the Wax Flower swung her colossal war ax down. A beautiful path through the air. Even a grazing wound would have been enough to sever an arm or two, Tuturi thought.

“Hmm. Not bad.”

However, this slash failed to strike the unarmed master, Romzo the Star Map.

This wasn’t only true of this slash. It had been the same way from the very start.

More than that, the calm elderly man—his features almost scholarly with his round glasses—seemed not to move whatsoever among the silver tempest of devastating ax slashes.

In actuality, he was moving. Just by separating himself ever so slightly, less than half a step, closing in or shifting his center, he was evading Qwell’s lethal slashes. Though it appeared he was gently bringing his palm up against the side of the downward swinging blade, she’d trip over her footing, lose her balance, gradually exhausting her physical stamina.

“…!”

“Now, this goes back quite a number of years, but…I’ve never trained a disciple to use a heavy weapon.”

While chatting in an unsophisticated manner, he casually began to close the distance.

As if pushed back by an unseen barrier between them, Qwell shifted back and wasn’t able to deliver a counterattack.

The master’s technique was unfathomable to the ordinary eye. Without even sending out a punch, he made his opponent conscious of his attack. When his enemy would think up a response to this attack, he would shift his center of gravity to meet their counterattack. By suppressing any and all choices, he could ensure his foe could do nothing but back away.

“Because it’s hard. The heavier and more powerful a weapon, the more the recoil will harm you if it’s not wielded correctly. It becomes hard to teach once you know a little interference is all it needs. In other words, with my steps just now, I attacked your right shoulder and right thigh, but…it must have given you a nasty sprain, right?”

Even his matter-of-fact comments continued pressuring Qwell into a corner.

Despite the extreme cold, pained sweat dribbled down from Qwell’s long bangs.

Tuturi grandiosely clapped her hands.

“C’mon now! Give it all you got, Qwell!” she heartlessly shouted. Tuturi was displeased.

The moment Qwell endured the first barrage of gunshots and brought down the guards who rushed in, she should have had plenty of opportunities. After securing Tuturi as a hostage, Qwell could’ve simply killed her on the spot.

However, when Romzo appeared, he had attacked Qwell as well as her hostage, Tuturi, without any sign of hesitation.

Qwell instantly cast Tuturi aside and fought back. In that second, Qwell had assigned her this level of priority.

…Way too naive. What about that is supposed to be strength?

Hypothetically, even if Qwell had known Romzo the Star Map was a broken man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill his own ally—the man was, at the same time, a master of hand-to-hand combat. He could devise a trick to make it look like he was threatening to kill Qwell and her hostage, and instead allow the hostage to get free. Qwell should have presumed as much.

Tuturi was annoyed because she knew all of that.

If Qwell hadn’t taken her hand off Tuturi, she definitely would have been killed.

“Hey now, don’t try to rest! You were the one who wanted an honest fight, weren’t you?!”

“Haah, haah… gahak, ngh…”

“Hm. I bet you’d like to take a breather, yes?”

“No…”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“—!”

The blade of her ax was stuck in the ground.

At that exact moment, Qwell had stepped forward. Like earlier, when she had jumped into the midst of the soldiers’ short spears, she abandoned her weapon, hurling her body at lightning-fast speed, searching for a way out of a desperate situation. Psianop’s footless way.

“Whoops.”

There was a snap.

Romzo’s body, which had been standing on the ground moments prior, made a half-rotation, whirling in the air. It almost seemed like he had been sent flying by Qwell’s violent charge forward, but that wasn’t the case.

Qwell, who made the attack, was the one to collapse on the spot and let out a moan.

Appearing as if he would fall upside down, Romzo opened his legs and landed on his feet with unbelievable flexibility.

Only Romzo the Star Map himself was able to explain what happened in the instantaneous clash.

He had intercepted the body slam, aimed at his thighs, with the back of his foot. Using Qwell’s collarbone as a jumping-off point, he leapt into the air—a move that was nigh impossible unless he had both an abnormal amount of flexibility and a firm knee joint to reciprocate, working together.

Without question, Romzo of the First Party knew a more effective way of dealing with the attack, such as thrusting his arm into her side, throwing a foot behind her, and crushing her. He was testing out acrobatic moves against the Qwell the Wax Flower, the strongest woman among Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials.

This guy’s toying with the damn girl.

“Now then, how was that? Your collarbone’s completely broken. You may still have some chance left, though.”

“Ungh, ngh… sniff, sniff…”

Qwell was crying. As she cried, she began tottering backward like a baby.

Tuturi understood that the tears weren’t from the pain, but from frustration and shame.

“I have taught how one should fight with both arms obstructed before. Of course, kicks become the core of your technique, though. You’ve got a long-hilted weapon, so that’ll be perfect. You can use it just by sticking it between your neck and shoulder.”

Once again, he began to casually close the distance.

Fighting techniques so far removed from any other could upend the racial disparities between minia and dhampir. Though he was growing old, this man was still the same as Neft, the same as Izick, the same as Psianop—a member of the First Party.

“Hmm. For a normal minia, it wouldn’t be out of the question for that first light sprain at the beginning to leave you dead on the spot. Is it because you’re a dhampir, or because of your well-honed body? I’d like to see a bit more.”

“Okay, listen, Mr. Romzo…” Tuturi went to call out to him but stopped.

She could see it from her vantage point. The war ax that Qwell had previously stuck in the ground was in her shadow as Romzo continued stepping in toward her.

Qwell can’t use her arms anymore.

Romzo was remaining aware of kicks. His comments just now had actually announced clearly what he was staying on guard against. A kicking counterattack. Weapon martial arts using her neck and shoulder…

But if she uses her feet.

The instant that Romzo arrived in front of Qwell—

She took a single step backward.

The pommel of the war ax stuck in the ground.

In the Beyond, it was called a “stomp.”

The blade, flying up into the air without warning, aimed right at Romzo’s chin—

“Hmm.”

Yet he wasn’t cleaved in two. Laying his wrists across each other, Romzo guarded against the blazingly fast blade.

By some unknown function of his block, the only thing severed where the blade hit him was a single layer of glove.

“Thought up an interesting strategy there, but let me tell you something.”

The hopeless gap in abilities brought both schemes and even weapons themselves into submission.

“It’s not an effective strategy. That’s called false intellect.”

A finger attack with Romzo’s thumb dug into the back of Qwell’s left hand.

A shout of intense pain.

“Eeaugh! Nrgh!”

“Hmm.”

Romzo the Star Map’s techniques drove into the pressure points on the body.

Just getting hit with a single one of these attacks would render someone unable to continue fighting.

“Well then. How much of this will you endure?”

“Augh…”

“It’s my first time actually trying this on a dhampir’s body.”

“Angh, gahak, auugh, grnngh—!”

Each time one of his fingers poked into her, Qwell’s slender silhouette would jump, as if she was dancing.

Her breathing grew shallow and ragged, like a dying patient. The sound of her ligaments tearing from her own writhing.

Eventually, she grew unable to stay sitting at all. Nor could she lie down.

The equilibrium of her body was slowly destroyed, like a child’s building blocks crumbling away.

Another attack, then another—

“…Ngh…! …!”

“There we go. All done.”

At the end of his act of destruction, seeking to test the limits of the dhampir’s body, Romzo’s hands finally stopped.

Aureatia’s Tenth General Qwell—prided as being the strongest in hand-to-hand combat among all the Twenty-Nine—had her muscles, organs, and bones all mercilessly trampled over, and was left lying on the frozen soil.

Tuturi simply watched as it all happened, up until the end.

“True, you’re similar to a vampire, but you feel a bit different to the touch. Tuturi. What do I do from here?”

“Hmm…good question.”

Like hell there’s anything more to do, Tuturi inwardly thought.

“What about you, Qwell? Fine with that?”

Tuturi crouched down right in front of Qwell and asked as shallowly as she could.

Tuturi was a weakling. She didn’t have any strength to fight on her own, and she hadn’t even lifted a finger.

“Angh…augh…”

“See, Qwell, fighting fair and square, with pure strength alone? Well, in the end, this is how it ends up. Nooobody comes to help you when someone stronger runs roughshod over you. You can’t upset anything. Is this what the ‘true strength’ of yours is supposed to be, Qwell? Minia aren’t animals. We gotta fight like minia.”

“…”

Teary, sorrowful eyes were the only thing gazing back at Tuturi.

Tuturi let out an irritated sigh. She couldn’t deal with it any longer.

“Okey dokey then, I’d say that settles that discussion, wouldn’t you?”

Tuturi vigorously clapped her hands. The ninth match was tomorrow. She had plenty of other things that she needed to take care of. Given that the weak were going to slay the strong, she could prepare all sorts of different cowardly traps and it still wouldn’t be enough.

“Go ahead and kill her, Romzo.”

“Fine, I suppose. Truly simple.”

“…Unh, nghh.”

Qwell the Wax Flower was grabbed by the back of her neck and lifted up as if she was a cloth-made stuffed toy.

Among Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials, she may have been the only one who tried to preserve the just and correct true duel. She might have wanted the purity of ultimate strength.

“N-no…”

However, there wasn’t a single person who believed in such a thing other than her.

Qwell the Wax Flower shouted like a child.

“…Nooo! I—I don’t…I don’t want a wretched death like this! Hick, augh… I—I don’t want this to be the last thing I see! Th-the ideal I’ve b-believed in until now, it wasn’t anything l-like this brute force and violence! I don’t, I don’t want to die…!”

“Hah-hah, that’s a great plea for your life.”

Tuturi laughed dryly. The worst possible plea for mercy.

“But I told you at the start, didn’t I…? With me…” She told Qwell with a smile.

From the start, what she had to do never changed.

“If I say I’m going to do something, I’m gonna seriously go through with it, see. Kill her.”

“No…!”

Crack, snap. With these sounds, Qwell’s head was snapped back to below her shoulder.

Both thighs violently kicked and struggled, but this was nothing but a postmortem nerve reflex.

Tuturi looked at her face, thrown down to the ground like a wooden figure. Behind the bangs, it was sloppy and wet, as if it had been soaked in water. All of it was from her tears.

“…Well then.”

Tuturi nodded at Qwell’s dead face.

Now this wouldn’t be any problem.

“Send Qwell’s body over to the National Defense Research Institute. Be careful with it now, got it? The bone marrow of a single dhampir can be used to make around two thousand doses of the corpse treatment serum.”

She immediately gave orders to her bodyguards, a cheerful tone in her voice.

Once that was finished and the corpse was taken out of her sight, the unpleasant thoughts would disappear with it.

She would be able to remain her usual flippant and irresponsible self, without thinking about anything.

“Well then. Should we have really killed her? She was still one of the Twenty-Nine Officials.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. At the end of the day, the regime’s going to change from here, anyway. Hell, we gotta straighten out the current Twenty-Nine Officials as it is. There’s too many, don’t you think?”

“Hmm. What I’m worried about is Psianop. By killing Qwell, won’t it be hard to secure his cooperation?”

“It’s the day before the match. Unless someone finds the body, she’ll just be labeled missing, that’s all. If Psianop’s going to depart Aureatia in time for the start of the match, he won’t have any time to try visiting her in the hospital before he leaves. We won’t let him find out.”

They only needed to use Psianop for his fight with Lucnoca the Winter. After that, even if he managed to find out the truth by some means, the entire situation would have changed by then.

“We were going to need Qwell to die in secret at some point either way. If this vampire infection is spreading this much, then the corpse treatment serum is definitely going to be necessary as a political ace up our sleeve. Besides, even if this pushes back the plans to overthrow Aureatia…this means that Psianop’s lost his sponsor. Right?”

“Which would mean that Haade’s hero candidate, Soujirou the Willow Sword, would win by default.”

“Exaaactly. All that’s left is to take care of Rosclay, and Soujirou’s clinched a spot in the finals.”

Whether things continued, or they all turned tail, there was no harm in killing her.

Ultimately, that was the sole reason that Qwell the Wax Flower died.

Tuturi had no ill will against her, nor was she angry at her at all. She always carried out her work matter-of-factly.

“So, my time will come during that match with Rosclay, then? You plan on doing this to me after you beat Rosclay?”

“Oh, please, nooo! You’re not a hero candidate or a sponsor, right? Killing you would be pointless. You worry too much, seriously! Besides, you’re not in any position to worry about that this late in the game, are you?”

This man had attempted to openly kill Tuturi. He understood his position perfectly.

Tuturi smiled genially and smacked Romzo on the back.

“We should go forward like the villains we are, right?”

The ninth match would kick off the second round of the Sixways Exhibition.

Yet, at the arena for the match—the Mali Wastes—there were no signs of spectators.

The situation was unacceptable for true duel royal games, where the eyes of the citizens stood as proof of victory. However, given the results of the second match nearly annihilating all the spectators with it, and Alus’s assault on the city right before, Aureatia decided to cancel any spectating of the ninth match.

There were many opposing voices, mainly from the merchants who handled the audience ticket sales, but with the interests of two major factions of the Aureatia Assembly—Rosclay’s camp and Haade’s camp—aligned to slay Lucnoca during the ninth match, the voices raising their objections would be smothered before long.

There was another small change as well.

The start of the match wasn’t set for noon, but for sunset instead.

This was completely unknown to the people. First, the Aureatia Assembly informed Psianop of this beforehand, and then it was conveyed to Lucnoca during the negotiations at Igania Ice Lake.

In order for the citizenry or Aureatia’s hero candidates to make it to the Mali Wastes by noon, they would need to set out the day before, as had been the case for the second and seventh matches. It wouldn’t be entirely abnormal if anyone noticed the change, given the circumstances.

However, this start time was also part of the plan to subjugate Lucnoca the Winter.

The first reason was so that if there were any people independently looking to watch the match heading out to the Mali Wastes on their own, or if they were unable to wholly deal with the anti-Aureatia forces looking into the circumstances behind the duel, this change would ensure that such people wouldn’t witness the operation to take Lucnoca down. All they would lay eyes on would be the barren, empty Mali Wastes at noontime, and until the match actually started, the plan was to have Tuturi’s squad either send them packing with some on-the-spot explanation or dispose of them in some manner.

The second reason was for tactical benefit. While a dragon’s night vision was still far more powerful than any of the minian races, even then, when compared to midday, it still became harder for them to get their sights on their target, just like minia. It was to conceal, as much as possible, the elaborate squad that had been deployed across all areas of the Mali Wastes while they set about their grand attack against Lucnoca the Winter.

Lights illuminated various places around the vast Mali Wastes and encircled the battlefield where the two combatants would face off. However, this, too, was simply a measure to conceal the gambit amidst the darkness.

Lucnoca the Winter descended into this twilight land.

“So Harghent really isn’t here, is he?”

Looking over the area, her eyes stopped on a small minia.

He must have looked quite a bit different from Harghent.

“Ahh, yes, um… I’m sorry. What was your name again?”

“Eighteenth Minister Quewai the Moon Fragment,” Quewai gloomily replied.

The outcome of their negotiations at Igania Ice Lake had named him Lucnoca’s sponsor in Sixth General Harghent’s stead, but regardless of who it was, for this match, they needed one of the Twenty-Nine Officials belonging to Haade’s camp to control the information given to Lucnoca.

“I see. Right, that’s what it was. I’m counting on you, too, Quewai.”

Lucnoca’s marble eyes looked down on Quewai’s diminutive figure.

As a singular living creature, she was all too grand, all too beautiful.

Her silvery-white scales, reflecting and sparkling in the evening sun, had been largely chipped off just around the base of her throat. Thanks to the wound she had received, Quewai could see the dragon’s skin, with a massive, dark red burn scar left behind.

Her tail was cut off halfway down—another wound delivered by Alus the Star Runner.

Quewai recalled the dragon-slaying operation Harghent had attempted.

She’s completely different from Vikeon the Smoldering.

The more ancient and powerful a dragon was, the more they loathed any disgrace or injury.

Their swollen pride as the strongest of all races didn’t allow for any cracks in their integrity.

This wasn’t true of Lucnoca the Winter.

Is she not embarrassed at all to be so heavily wounded?

The scar from her battle to the death, hideously carved into her exquisite body, seemed like something that should not be, as though taboo or immoral. Even when he tried to look at it directly, he couldn’t help averting his eyes.

Despite it all, Lucnoca the Winter was still beautiful.

“Now, what was my next opponent’s name again? I would like to remember it, if possible.”

“Psianop the Inexhaustive Stagnation. An ooze martial artist. He uses fighting techniques from the Beyond.”

“Is he really an ooze? I wonder how he will fight, then. Ah, I’m so excited… I’m sure he must be stronger than Alus the Star Runner, right?”

Quewai’s perception was that the ooze couldn’t possibly hold a candle.

When compared to Alus the Star Runner—having pressed the most powerful existence in the land, Lucnoca the Winter, into a true life-or-death struggle, and becoming a calamity that threatened Aureatia itself on top of that—most of the other hero candidates were insignificant and ephemeral.

“I believe I’ve encountered numerous experts on the techniques of the Beyond before. Why, some among them might have been very strong, too… Uhoo, hoo-hoo-hoo!”

She laughed in high spirits, appearing to have remembered something.

The “experts” of techniques from the Beyond she mentioned could only refer to one thing. Visitors.

To the champion-slaying legend, even visitors—feared as destroyers of order, who deviated from their world’s natural law—were simply people that she vaguely remembered challenging her at some point, and nothing more.

“…Forgive me for putting a damper on your expectations, however…”

As he spoke, Quewai operated the calcurite in his hands.

Quewai had done the same thing when they had talked to Lucnoca at Igania Ice Lake.

He could only manage to shut out everything else when he was focusing on numbers. He was able to remain unafraid. Remain undaunted. In the field of negotiations, Quewai was worse than more or less every other minia in the world, but if he possessed one strength that Tuturi lacked, it would have been this.

“As we previously informed you, Aureatia is currently facing a massive disaster, and we are unable to arrange a proper arena for the match.”

“Oh, is that so? Here I was convinced that the other one you had with you…Uhoo-hoo-hoo, that she was merely pulling my leg.”

Lucnoca laughed. She had interpreted it as a jest, after all.

However, that was a good thing. If Lucnoca the Winter looked at him with true suspicion in her eyes, regardless of his great talent to still his thoughts, Quewai would have been rendered unable to say another word.

“The disaster we mentioned could potentially show itself here in the Mali Wastes as well. With that in mind, some matches have been suspended.”

“Is that so?” Lucnoca quietly replied.

However, the temperature included in her suppressed laugh cooled slightly.

Lucnoca could get some sense of the true meaning behind Quewai’s words by looking out to see the Mali Wastes’ current state. There were marks completely unrelated to Lucnoca’s breath, previously turning the land into tundra—destruction boring deep into the soil, like craters from a meteorite impact, here and there, with some of them even fragmenting the topography itself.

This destruction was caused by Mele the Horizon’s Roar during the seventh match, but without hearing anything about the circumstances of the first round, Lucnoca had no way of knowing the truth.

“That’s…” Lucnoca laughed, bringing up one of her wings to her mouth to hide it. “…quite a problem, isn’t it? Isn’t there something you could do to let Psianop fight?”

“All we can do is start the match according to regulations.”

He turned the calcurite. It was downright astounding that he was able to converse with Lucnoca the Winter this much. The fact seemed like it didn’t concern him, his consciousness detached from the real world.

“The arena will be that level ground surrounded by lights over there. Fireworks will launch right as the sun sets. Please begin the match once you see that signal.”

Quewai pointed west from the hill he was currently standing on.

Carved up by Lucnoca and Mele’s destruction in addition to the countless fissures that split open the earth, this section within the Mali Wastes had formed a type of basin set one level lower than its surroundings with a relatively flat stretch of land left behind inside it.

The region was picked to dress up as the arena in order to encircle Lucnoca the Winter.

The fighting conditions for the Sixways Exhibition were determined with both parties’ consent.

However, everything involving the ninth match was advancing forward as a purely military operation, without Lucnoca or Psianop’s intentions being involved at all.

Lucnoca looked up at the sky like a daydreaming young girl.

“Look. Night’s coming, Quewai. Exciting, isn’t it?”

“…Exciting?”

The golden color, like a flame burning the heavens, slowly tinged with blue as it headed up to the sky’s zenith.

A thin belt of yellowish green. Darkening blue. Then, the deep navy of the night sky.

“I have a feeling…that yet another splendid thing is going to happen tonight.”

Lucnoca the Winter landed in the arena and waited for Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

The edge of the setting sun was about to reach the horizon, but there was still some time until it had set completely.

For Lucnoca, having yearned for so long to battle against strong foes, this period of waiting for her opponent to arrive was nothing.

The sound of the wind. The sound of sand.

Even the breathing of the minia that were supposed to be watching the start of the match faded away within the vast space.

The Mali Wastes, the land of nothingness, was simply quiet.

“Hoo-hoo…! Uhoo-hoo-hoo…!”

Lucnoca laughed low amid the stillness.

A laugh signaling that she couldn’t contain how amusing something was to her.

Leisurely shifting her gaze, she looked diagonally to her rear.

“…Oh no. And here I came all this way to fight Psianop.”

“Krng, grahk!”

All of a sudden, something appeared, letting out a terrible growl.

It had an enormous black body as large as Lucnoca the Winter’s own.

Its appearance equaled hers as well.

It was a dragon-like something.

“Harghent told me…that you had died.”

“Grlg grlg grrrgl, hiiiiiiss…”

“Ohoo-hoo-hoo… Tell me just what happened for you to end up looking like that then?”

The ghost-like silhouette backlit by the setting sun and writhing had, at the very least, certainly been a dragon at some point.

However, its movements were bizarrely quiet.

It had black dragon scales. Clouded eyes.

Pieced together wings and a tail.

It had a disquieting scar running in a straight line through the middle of its body.

Faced with the terrible fate of her old dragon acquaintance, Lucnoca sweetly smiled.

“Vikeon the Smoldering.”

A dragon, and a revenant.

“The way I see it, it was downright strange that Alus would just leave Vikeon’s body lying there, you know? A dragon corpse, now that’s much rarer material than any enchanted sword or magic tool,” a tall woman said, smiling as she sat next to Tuturi observing the battle—Viga the Clamor.

“I mean, there are still several legends we have today about dragon revenants threatening the Kingdoms of old, don’t we? I think that all those probably happened.”

“…You’re out of your mind,” Tuturi said with a sigh.

The thought had been with her since talk had started about deploying this weapon, but now that she was actually seeing it for herself, she felt once more that it was the most surreal—and most profane—creature she had ever seen.

The legendary black dragon Alus the Star Runner had cleaved down the middle, had been patched up and brought back to life.

As a complete and utter monster, furnished with combat functionality as a weapon and nothing more, without even a heart able to control Word Arts.

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

Viga the Clamor always had a smile on her face, and even when she squinted her eyes, there was almost no change in her expression.

“Even if that boy defeats Lucnoca, he only has a half-day life span. He’s using all of a dragon’s excess life-support functionalities entirely for combat, after all. I made sure he could carry out both of his jobs properly, killing Lucnoca, and dying himself.”

“You know, Viga… I’ve never seen anyone else think to put a time limit on a construct’s life span before.”

“Oh, wow, reaaally? Don’t you think it’s useful, though?”

Romzo the Star Map had been a terrifying villain in his own right, but when it came to Viga the Clamor, Tuturi hadn’t the slightest idea how she had been able to remain in Rosclay’s camp so calmly all this time.

The only thing she was sure of was that this woman possessed a grotesque mind, even among other self-proclaimed demon kings—a desecrator and blasphemer of life.

Her reason for changing her loyalty to the National Defense Research Institute was research. However, unlike Yukis the Ground Colony, she wasn’t motivated by financial aid. It was because she sought research that was even more unrestricted.

In the far-off distance, the enormous black body brandished its dragon claws.

Even this initial movement was impossible to see with minia eyes, but once the streaking flash of light came, Tuturi understood what happened.

Lucnoca the Winter counterattacked similarly with her forelegs, but perhaps due to the revenant’s unimaginable strength, she was the one who was repelled back. Her claws had been completely broken off during her intense bout with Alus the Star Runner in the second match.

“Between a minia and a revenant made from a minia’s body, the revenant’s the one that comes out on top.”

Viga seemed to look upon Vikeon’s sad and ruinous fate with affectionate eyes.

It was creepy.

“What about for dragons, though?”

“…Whatever the case, there’s stuff that needs to get done while Lucnoca’s having her fun.”

Lucnoca exchanged claw blows with Vikeon on purpose.

It could only be interpreted as a sign that Lucnoca was entirely underestimating the sudden intruder.

“I’m giving this everything I’ve got. Even a monster like that still isn’t enough to fully kill off Lucnoca the Winter.”

When Vikeon’s claws blurred, they were already slashing right toward the back of Lucnoca’s neck. Instantly reacting and repelling with her right forelimb, she felt the tremendous power—abnormal by dragon standards—in her bones.

“Well now, I thought you hated to move your body and always relied on your breath.”

His clouded eyes keenly sensed Lucnoca’s blind spot.

He would slash at her while crawling along the ground, sometimes burrowing into it first.

Spreading out her wings, she absorbed some of the speed and deflected the attack with her right forelimb, same as before.

The force of impact was enough to bend Lucnoca’s entire colossal body backward.

“Ohoo-hoo-hoo-hoo… You were quite strong, weren’t you, Vikeon?”

“Graaagh, grlg grlg.”

A construct without thoughts of its own which simply rampaged about wasn’t exactly a pleasing opponent, but at the very least, he reacted well to give her a good combat exchange.

She still had some time before Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation arrived—she had to admit she was the perfect tool to kill time with.

“Uhoo-hoo-hoo.”

“Hiss.”

Vikeon’s massive frame drastically undulated.

The dirt and sand kicked up by the aftershocks of the dragon’s claws had gouged the sheer bluffs encircling the two dragons.

Even though she defended against him once, he continued to attack incessantly with his dreadful and fiendish vitality, his stamina knowing no limit.

Left claw. Right claw. Left. Right.

Fangs that came up from below, just barely skimming over the ground.

Lucnoca blocked with her right forelimb. It was repelled back, and she lost her balance.

At almost the exact same moment she regained it, the next attack arrived.

Lucnoca attempted to smother the threat with a continuous flurry of light smacks to Vikeon’s joints.

The surprise attack from Vikeon’s fangs nearly tore off her neck, unguarded by her scales, but she interrupted it with a punch from her right forelimb that made him close his mouth.

“Oh, how troubling.”

She had only used her right forelimb.

That she was able to use the same hand repelled back by Vikeon’s tremendous physical strength to defend against the next attack signaled that she continued to draw her right forelimb back at more terrifying speeds than it had been repelled with.

“Last time, Alus the Star Runner didn’t even let me hold back at all.”

The soulless revenant was a complete puppet of his creator.

Without recognizing the gap in their strength, and without any fear, he sent out the attack using his bizarre body movements once more.

The claw attacks from the strongest race in the world, a body lacking both organs and a brain, forced together like a machine with a sole purpose.

It let out no voice. Instead, there was the shockwave of the sound barrier being broken.

…Lucnoca the Winter casually brushed off Vikeon’s full power attack.

The concussive sound quaked across the Mali Wastes.

The tremor was simply the shockwave from Vikeon traveling through the surrounding air with a delay. However…

“Gwack, Grreeaaauuuugh?!”

Vikeon’s leg was bent backward in the wrong direction.

His head wasn’t facing Lucnoca, either.

Broken black fragments were scattered over the frozen ground. The dragon scales from Vikeon’s leg.

Lucnoca the Winter’s claws, lightly brushing off the attack, still managed to overpower Vikeon’s strengthened revenant might with the impact from the blow to his forearm being enough to twist and break the bones in his arm, his spine, and even his neck.

“…Oh heavens.”

Lucnoca laughed.

The silver body, framed in the shimmering light of the evening sun, was dark as a shadow.

“And here I made sure only to pat you a little.”

“Glrngh, gwack.”

Vikeon’s body, rendered unable to fight with a single attack, shivered with a creak.

His completely crushed arm writhed bizarrely and began to regain its shape.

A drool-like mucus began to overflow from his split-open jaw.

Normally, a revenant lacking normal biological activity would never have possessed regenerative abilities, but—

“Oh!”

Lucnoca turned right to look—up toward the sky.

It was a lightning strike.

In a straight line from directly above her, its path pierced right through the wound on her neck.

It couldn’t possibly be natural lightning. Not with its dark bloodred flash, its almost artificially precise aim, nor its devasting power.

A straight burn was gouged into the skin on her nape, unprotected by her dragon scales.

While she had evaded a direct hit at the last moment, the ground where the unknown missile had landed was greatly cracked, sunken in, and destroyed. The footing she needed to fight was thrown into disarray.

Finished with his mysterious regeneration, Vikeon began to writhe once more.

An invisible gas filled with bacteria was misting up from the ground.

“So, that’s the Lightning Flute.”

Even from where she stood, Tuturi could confirm the effect of the long-ranged attack from up in the sky.

“You weren’t all talk, Sindikar… A direct shot can definitely bring down a dragon. A real nightmare weapon…”

An artificially made magic tool of instant death had been developed by Sindikar the Ark after he had devoted many years solely to Force Arts research.

Far surpassing the Cold Star when it came to midrange destructive force and possibly on par with the sniper fire of Mele the Horizon’s Roar.

“…How could that possibly miss its mark, though?”

Although the shots were coming from the unstable Craft Golem, given the properties of the trick they were using, it was impossible to believe the shot missed. In other words, Lucnoca had dodged the Lightning Flute after it fired.

“Well, well… Lucnoca the Winter is quite strong after all, now, isn’t she?”

Viga the Clamor’s calm tone remained unchanged.

“Will that have an effect on Vikeon’s operational time limit at all?”

“Time wise, I think there won’t be a problem. The regeneration of his body tissue’s done completely via parasitic fungus and all. But the muscles and bones that get destroyed will always end up weaker after they’ve regenerated. Looking at him, I don’t think we can expect much from him in a direct fight.”

“…We’re not using him to actually win this for us.”

The revenant, created from the body of the legendary black dragon, possessed the strength to lay waste to a nation, and it yet still did not seem enough to keep Lucnoca at bay.

In actuality, though, it was fulfilling one of the most important roles of all.

“The most important point of all is to make sure we don’t let her fly. Even though, to Lucnoca, this is like an adult fighting a child, it should still be hard for her to kick off from the crumbling grounding into the air while she’s dealing with non-stop attacks from Vikeon. Lucnoca thinks absolutely nothing of him, too, so there’s little chance of her actually taking this all seriously and flying up in the air or using her breath attack…”

“Is there any definitive proof of that?”

“…Nope. Any weird flight of fancy from Lucnoca, and she’ll completely demolish this outlook of ours. But we have to kill her; we absolutely have to…even if it means relying on this uncertain prospect.”

Losing the ninth match meant death.

Not for Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation. For Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam, and everyone in her squad.

Fortunately, Tuturi had been given every means that she could think of. She had received unrestricted permission to use what she needed, going beyond Haade’s jurisdiction to include what was essentially Iriolde’s private army, the National Defense Research Institute.

She recalled the pretend wars she would play out in her youth.

Tuturi’s family tried to distance her from such amusements, and they never bought a single one of the toys she wanted. She continued to make her own armies fight her enemies’ armies within her imagination.

Now, just this once, Tuturi was awash with toys at her disposal.

Every single one, without exception, was the most luxurious toy of all, and on top of that, all totally real.

However, the price she had to pay was that if she lost this single bit of playtime, she would die.

I’m begging you, please work.

A red light once again raced down through the gap in the clouds. Lightning Flute.

She expected it to finish Lucnoca off for sure this time, but the dragon still continued to move.

She didn’t even lift off into the air.

Absolutely everything was progressing within Tuturi’s expectations for the operation, and yet Lucnoca still appeared absurdly calm and composed.

“We’re still dispersing the other weapon, but send in the attack force. Have them wear their gasproof helms, and send three in at once…”

“What’re you doing, Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam?”

The voice behind her made her blood run cold.

She stood up.

Before anything else, she needed to talk to Viga.

“Viga. Go to the secondary command quarters immediately.”

“What…? But…”

“Now.”

If Tuturi made a mistake in handling the situation, there was a chance that just being there with her would mean death.

Why, all of a sudden…did this guy show up here without any prior warning?

“I want an immediate answer. Are you the one directing all this?”

“Whoa, whoa, just wait a second here. This isn’t what we arranged, Psianop…”

Similar to the traffic congestion that obstructed Ozonezma in the third match, all of the carriages to the Mali Wastes were under Haade’s control. She should have already gotten a report of his arrival.

At the very least, he had caught on to the scheme at some point along the way, either before he got into the carriage, or when leaving it midway and walking the rest of the way on his own, down to pinning the location of this main command center.

…Why the hell does a damn ooze also got a sharp mind, too? Now I won’t be able to control his movements by telling him this attack was an operation by Rosclay’s camp anymore. What should I do…?!

This was Tuturi’s error. She was being so painstakingly diligent with their operation to surround Lucnoca that she hadn’t given enough attention to curb the movements of her opponent, Psianop.

“I had expected…that this was probably the case. From the beginning, you made contact with me in order to use me in your effort to eliminate Lucnoca. Am I correct in my estimation?”

Tuturi put both hands out in front of her and backed away.

“…You might be right. Look, just keep your cool here, Psianop… At the end of the day, it doesn’t change what we want you to do, now, does it?”

“Put an end to this farce.”

“Hah?”

The gasp hadn’t slipped out due to fear.

No one else had likely realized it, but it was a laugh.

…He’s saying the same thing. Looks like you really understood your mentor after all, didn’t you, Qwell?

The only difference was that Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was capable of killing Tuturi.

The distance between them was the same as it had been when they spoke in the alleyway.

A distance that made it easy for him to end her life if she misspoke.

“Okay, Psianop… Go ahead and fill me in. Is there anything at all we have to gain in the slightest from obediently listening to the sorta stuff guys like you talk about?”

Nevertheless, Tuturi managed to fearlessly smile.

She had enough of the lies she made serving under and humoring those who only had the capability for violence.

“Don’t justify your stupid cowardice. You were the ones who set the rules. Both Lucnoca and I are following those to fulfill our obligations. You’re the ones who broke the agreement.”

“…Hah, hah-hah-hah. And what of it, then? Are you going to kill me to get revenge, is that it? Not like the two of you can even do anything else, can you?”

Psianop moved.

He didn’t take a step in Tuturi’s direction, but with the slightest single motion, jumped an amazing distance backward.

An enormous thing smashed the frozen soil from underneath and blew away everything in the vicinity. Tuturi’s body flew through the air, together with the shattered bedrock, harshly smacking her back on the ground as she landed.

“Ow, ow, ow…ow!”

Tuturi screamed, as if spitting out her anger together with her pain.

Appearing as if to cut in between Tuturi and Psianop, was a wurm.

Or at least, it appeared to be a wurm.

“That was a close call, General Tuturi.”

It emitted a very gentle, and highly unwurmlike voice.

“‘Close’?! Like hell it was, dammit! Why’d you get me caught in all that, Acromdo?!”

“If I didn’t, you would’ve been kill—”

A concussive sound resembling an explosion cut the wurm’s words off.

Its flesh and organs dispersed in a spray. Its scales, harder than all except dragon scales, had been cut off.

Tuturi understood that Psianop had done it.

Psianop muttered, without relaxing the thin, sharp form of his punch, “Knifehand strike.”

“…Acromdo!”

The wurm’s tail still moved, and whipped Psianop.

His awfully tiny body, compared to the wurm’s massive frame, was sent flying, but Psianop possessed the grotesque technique to stifle and brush aside all might. It definitely didn’t seem that the tail swipe dealt an effective blow.

Tuturi desperately got herself back up. She needed to flee.

The entirety of her body was soaked in a dreadfully chilly liquid, but she wasn’t sure if this was her own sweat, or blood.

“Pull back the army, Tuturi!”

There was a voice. Right behind her. Or perhaps from far away in the distance.

Wherever it was, her answer was the same.

“I don’t think…I will!”

Twice, thrice, the ground burst open and split apart.

The massive forms piercing the sky numbered five, then six. Their numbers increased even more.

A wurm colony, unheard of in the natural world.

““““Nice to meet you, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.””””

All of them, circled around Psianop, spoke with their own voices in succession.

Someone who parasitized other living creatures could take the strongest bodies in the land for their own.

And in multiples, at the same time.

“My name is Acromdo the Variety. Let me help you out with your match.”

“Really, now. I can give you all a single bit of assistance of my own.”

The First Party ooze, weakest of all races, merely stood ready.

Oozes didn’t have any expressions of their own. However, if Psianop could have worn an expression at that moment…

“I’ll knock you all back into the bowels of the earth.”

Sindikar the Ark was directly above the domain of death.

Kiyazuna’s Craft Golem, driven by Sindikar, was realizing long-duration flight through its rotating wing function.

As a result of his aerodynamic improvements and weight reduction, he had also acquired a level of agility that even surpassed a wyvern’s.

There was just shy of a thousand meters to Lucnoca below him. Still, death was right before his eyes.

The mere blast wave from Vikeon’s attacks against Lucnoca launched dirt and sand-like bullets high up to where he was. Possessing even more muscular strength than that, if Lucnoca the Winter tried to shoot down the Craft Golem, there was no way he would survive unscathed.

Lucnoca still continued to treat Vikeon like a plaything.

It didn’t seem like she would move from where she was, her starting place for the match.

“Does she not fear…my Lightning Flute?”

It was the only answer he could consider.

Lucnoca the Winter didn’t flinch at all. She dodged the long-ranged fire from the Lightning Flute with the smallest movements possible, and she didn’t show any signs of trying to escape nor any hint that she would try to kill Sindikar to stop it.

“Lucnoca the Winter. You have nothing to do with those who stood in the way of my dreams. Not one of those infuriating wyverns, nor the Kingdom brandishing their worthless authority at me. However.”

Such a transcendental being, unrelated to anyone else in the land, was exactly who he wanted to force into acknowledging his existence.

By being the strongest individual across the land, it meant she was the strongest in the world of the sky, as well.

Feeling the blustering gusts, Sindikar twisted his crocodilian face.

“…I want to try beating you.”

The cooler attached to the Lightning Flute—the huge and long machine gun, installed as if to pierce through the Craft Golem’s middle, top to bottom—spit up vapors of intense heat.

In the cockpit, Sindikar immediately tore off the cooler and disposed of it through an opening. He could feel his skin burn even through his gloves, but it didn’t bother him whatsoever. Right now, he was going to fire. As many times as it took.

He spoke to his own weapon.

“I flew. The sky’s winds, the temperature, and the view are together with me. Even an insignificant old geezer can fly through the air.”

He pressed the lever down. Connected the cooler. Loaded the deep celestial charsteel bullet into the powder chamber.

“‘Lightning Flute.’ What do you think?”

Adjusted the firing angle. Corrected the optics. Even during the extremely delicate work, he simultaneously operated the Craft Golem with perfect command over the air current, gravity, and flow of inertia, and he maintained a near-stopped flight position.

They were aberrant flying skills.

Those who excelled at Force Arts would, as a type of game, fly in the air.

Most among them would go no farther than a jump of a few paces, while a handful of preeminent masters could jump up two stories of a building all at once. Still a far cry from a wyvern’s free, uninhibited flight.

Zmeu with reptilian features were thought to share a closer relation to dragonfolk than the minian races.

Sindikar’s opinion differed. Zmeu and the dragonfolk were completely different.

Zmeu didn’t have wings.

When he first learned that there existed flight techniques done via Force Arts, young Sindikar was, first and foremost, puzzled.

If such techniques existed, then why didn’t all of the adults learn it for themselves?

He was sure that anyone who saw insects or birds must have longed to fly in the sky like them. Was every other adult besides him either abnormal or lazy?

Sindikar, as if in obvious pursuit, devoted himself wholly to Force Arts, forgetting to sleep and eat.

He was also warned that zmeu had less than half the Force Arts aptitude that the other minian races did. However, ever since the day he heard this, he then spent twice as much time on the pursuit.

There were some who would look at his obsession and laugh, sometimes others who would get angry with him, but when it came to the mind of these people, Sindikar accepted that a single answer applied to all of them, without exception.

They were all frustrated that they couldn’t fly high.

Even when, before long, he learned that it was impossible to fly through the air with his own body, Sindikar’s attempts at flight didn’t end. He would shoot down wyverns from the sky, dissect them, and try to ascertain the differences in their Word Arts–based construction.

Going through various man-made wings via trial and error, he tried to maintain longer flights using the wind. An exhausting and draining number of flight tests. Flight. Gliding. Crashing.

The self-proclaimed demon king Sindikar hovered between life and death the most during his adolescence, before he opposed the Kingdoms.

In the Kingdom, there had been comrades of his who tried to foray into the skies like himself. That was when he learned that the study he had researched was known as the field of “aerodynamics.”

Numerous flying machines were prototyped, and several among them actually flew in the air. Each time they did, an ardent delight would scorch Sindikar’s chest—a sensation that, no matter how many years passed, he showed no signs of forgetting.

For them, they needed not just the knowledge to launch into the air but the power to fight midair as well. The masters of the sky were still the wyverns, and against their brutal fighting strength, light and fragile minian flying machines were far too powerless.

Many of his comrades with their sights on the sky were shot down. At the end of their trial and error, they had developed the piloting skills to avoid the flocking threat with their flying machine’s maneuverability. But by that time, the number of pilots had heavily dwindled.

In the midst of it all, the True Demon King appeared.

Aviation development was discontinued. The state of the world grew tenser and tenser by the day, and the people in Sindikar’s school would move on to different occupations one by one or volunteer for the military. The once-precious research results were gradually scattered and lost.

It was as if all of them were saying they didn’t have the time to entertain such games.

Sindikar didn’t give up.

No matter what the situation he was in, he demanded to forge ahead into the skies, and demanded budget for said research and the fuselages to do so.

However, by that time, Sindikar was the only one directing his zeal to the skies. The only thing sought from his aviation development had always been an explanation of what exactly it would be good for, and nothing more.

If plans for weapons of destruction, capable of attacking an enemy stronghold from the air, were what was sought after, he didn’t hesitate to do just that. Even if, after that, his research still didn’t receive authorization.

An age where everyone trembled from an invisible terror, and none looked up at the skies above their heads.

In due time, Sindikar had turned into a self-proclaimed demon king.

He didn’t remember ever turning off his path. Ever since he was a child, he had simply wanted to fly in the sky.

There were times when would be asked, why did he go so far in his attempt to fly?

Nonsense. Absurd. An asinine question.

It was the sky.

Flying through the sky. Why did he need a reason to do that?

“…Continue fire.”

The frozen soil of the Mali Wastes.

From the very edge of the sky above, Sindikar tried to fix his aim through the sights at Lucnoca the Winter’s neck.

Even with his control, combining his astounding piloting techniques and his Force Arts, the sights shook nonstop, were affected by the slightest breeze, and were even influenced by the rotation of the planet. Normally, it would be impossible to get a hit on the single point where her dragon scales were scraped away. Sindikar the Ark was a superb airman, but he wasn’t a sniper.

Conversely, if Lucnoca the Winter, even at that very moment, were to suddenly turn up and blast her breath into the sky, no matter which direction she aimed, Sindikar would doubtlessly perish.

Nevertheless, Sindikar had always done whatever was necessary, if it allowed him to continue flying through the sky.

If he was ordered to kill the strongest living creature in the world, he would do just that.

Lucnoca makes light of the skies… In which case, I’ll win.

While Tuturi’s operation was enticing her to do so, at the very least, right now, Lucnoca the Winter wasn’t attempting to fly. She was scorning altitude superiority.

It was impossible to escape shots from the sky.

The Lightning Flute was an artificial magic tool developed based on this thought in order to prove the effectiveness of an air force.

While it had been nothing but a shunned child, created against his will in order to continue his own research, this weapon had stayed with him longer than any of the flying machines he had made.

He had a bizarre fondness for it. He even wondered if a will of its own dwelled inside. This weapon, with innumerable improvements and repairs layered on top of it, was nearly like an extension of Sindikar’s arms and legs.

“Sindikar io kara. Ars faludo. Daemanuvas tao, Ein harders…” (From Sindikar to Kara hammer. Bone ravine. Horizon cavity. Sunlight tree…)

He utilized Word Arts on the Lightning Flute.

Coolant charged. First to fifth powder chambers readied to combust. Additional voltage was added inside the gun barrel.

Maintained fixed air position. Accelerate. Accelerate. Accelerate.

“Desk tel hafm. Nokas mit. Desure kanp—” (Dark jaws of abyss. Sound of adamantine crystal. Rupturing hot embers of stars and sky—)

As he used extremely complex Force Arts, a single misstep could bring about a lethal explosion. Sindikar’s present powers of concentration weren’t solely focused on Lightning Flute moments before it fired.

They were on the orders from the radzio.

<Fire.>

He pulled the trigger.

“Shakbistes.” (Roar.)

The airspace split open. Red light burned absolutely everything.

An intense tremor made Sindikar wonder if it would cause cracks in his old bones.

Frothy blood spilled from the edges of his clenched teeth. He endured the impact that threatened to knock him unconscious mostly by forcing his zmeu physique to hold out. He had no other means to stay awake.

The ear-splitting roar must have continued to resound, but Sindikar didn’t perceive it at all.

Despite exerting the mechanical recoil reduction technology and the Word Arts–based asymmetrical acceleration to their limits, the recoil from the Lightning Flute was still enough to put the wielder one step in the grave.

—!

Before anything else, he needed to make the Craft Golem, now out of his control, recover its balance.

Adjust the wing rotation. Return to high altitude. Reduce resistance.

Sindikar was able to carry it all out even when mostly unconscious.

He was the only one who had built up enough experience to do so.

“Did it hit?”

<The aim was on the mark,> a hoarse voice replied on the other end of the radzio.

Sindikar wasn’t a sniper. During the series of attacks, what he did wasn’t aiming, but controlling the flight positioning and the bombing machinery.

The supernaturally accurate air fire relied entirely on the orders from this spotter.

Was it possible that the spotter was even farther away than the sniper?

<It only grazed her skin… The only explanation I can come up with is that Lucnoca the Winter is dodging after you fire.>

“…I see.”

Lucnoca the Winter was alive.

Sindikar was able to confirm the massive white frame, reflecting the sun, through the smoke from the impact.

With no sign that her dodge from the Lightning Flute’s attack shook her off balance, she handled Vikeon’s ferocious attacks as if she was indulging a child.

“Predict where this dragon’s going to dodge, and then tell me where to fire. I can hit her that way…”

<That’s exactly what I’m doing right now… As long as you’re using a long-range weapon, the circumstances decided in the brief moment between launch and impact are something even my eyes can’t interfere with…>

Perhaps she was unlike anything even the man behind the voice had ever seen before.

To overturn the future solely with one’s physical strength, despite a fixed prediction…

<Next time I’ll predict her future thoughts, too.>

“Hmph. You can see that far?”

<I can.>

It was conceivable to have a spotter sitting farther away than the sniper.

This spotter was far away from both the battlefield and the main operational headquarters, deployed almost as far away as the line of the horizon.

This leprechaun, with the bandages wrapped around his face, hands, and legs in disarray, didn’t possess any decisively lethal abilities…however, he was the greatest trump card that Iriolde’s camp possessed, together with the four self-proclaimed demon kings.

That’s how powerful my Clairvoyance is.

His name was Kuuro the Cautious.

Amid the frozen wasteland, the soil in Lucnoca’s vicinity was boiling.

The ground surface, repeatedly fired on by the Lightning Flute, was red-hot and losing its shape like magma. It crumpled and sank just with Lucnoca standing on it.

The extreme temperature difference distorted the scene; however, Lucnoca the Winter’s tranquil appearance amid it all looked like a white origin point where there were no air temperature changes at all.

“I would like to commend you for lasting until the sun went down, but…”

She used her back leg to smack down the black dragon’s claws as he launched up from the earth.

Vikeon the revenant stubbornly continued to attack Lucnoca, even diving into the flowing ground to do so.

While he couldn’t use his breath and had lost his ability to think, he was still a legendary ancient dragon.

He should have been a monster beyond the realm of minian comprehension.

Indeed, when Vikeon slammed with his claws, even after Lucnoca guarded against them, they caused cracks in the rock walls behind her from the impact, and each blow from his fangs was accompanied by the deafening roar of the sound barrier breaking, like thunder.

His dragon scales blocked out all current weaponry. Even if he suffered some internal damage, Yukis’s mycelia would regenerate the tissue. Even when attacked by lethal biological weapons, he could continue to fight.

Vikeon, capable of bringing ruin to a nation’s entire army with his physical strength alone, hadn’t been mistaken.

Lucnoca the Winter was simply nothing more than an utter monster.

“…About time, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucnoca narrowed her eyes.

Vikeon the revenant had some sort of trump card. She wanted to see it.

Perhaps…it was the poison that was making Lucnoca’s body ever so slightly numb.

“I certainly hope that’s not it… Uhoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.”

Poison. She found the endeavor cute. Charming, even.

In her many long years, too many to still remember, sword-wielding champions, bow-wielding champions, fist-fighting champions, Word Arts caster champions, had used all the means they could think up in order to kill Lucnoca the Winter.

Why, then, had they thought no one had ever tried to use poison or disease before now?

Among her countless experiences of battle, Lucnoca had acquired a bit of resistance against such attacks. Even methods that would have killed her a few hundred years prior no longer had any effect on her.

Was it a special attribute of dragons themselves? She couldn’t even be sure of that. There wasn’t any other dragon who had lived as long as Lucnoca the Winter, fighting constantly, emerging victorious, and growing stronger time after time.

For dragons, their very origins not known for certain, it was almost like an evolution had occurred within a single generation.

“Come now, hurry. The sun’s almost down.”

She casually knocked away Vikeon’s tail, which was sent toward her through a blind spot.

The revenant screamed.

“Grrraaaaaaaugh, grlg grlg grlg grangh!”

“Oh!”

She had only intended to drive him away, but she had accidentally cut it in two.

In the moment this caught her attention, the red lightning from the Lightning Flute rained down from above, but Lucnoca used her sharp wings to block the swordlike attack. Slashing away the acute cut threw off the attack’s trajectory, but she could feel the heat and impact through her dragon scales and down to the bones in her wings.

“My, my…”

There was a chance she wouldn’t immediately be able to fly.

However, what made Lucnoca even more worried was that the shockwave occupying her wing parry would accidentally shoot down the unknown thing flying far up in the sky.

Though it had been the fire aimed at her from this thing that had made Vikeon’s revenant a properly entertaining opponent.

Perhaps this poison is much stronger than the ones I dealt with in the past, too…

She had used too much power by mistake and accidentally destroyed two of her enemies.

At the very least, as far as Lucnoca could perceive for herself, the poison seemed to be successfully throwing her out of form.

Though, on the battlefield, it was proper for a warrior to have a small degree of injuries and restraints. The small degree was simply much vaster for Lucnoca.

In fact, it was now—with poison invading her body, her wings shot by the Lightning Flute, and scars from her fight with Alus the Star Runner—that Lucnoca the Winter could claim she was in perfect form, on par with other warriors.

“This worked out perfect, though. This way, no one will interrupt us, now will they?”

Now that she was perfectly prepared, she was ready to engage Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

“How exciting. Oh, I just can’t wait…”

The strongest of all dragons crushed the black dragon, still writhing at her feet, like a rat.

Amid the hell all around her, she smiled like an innocent young girl.

Like dragons, wurms didn’t group up with other wurms.

Their enormous bodies, far surpassing those of wyverns, required an enormous amount of food. Thus, it was impossible for two or more wurms to share the same territory.

However, in this very narrow area of the Mali Wastes, there were seven wurms altogether.

All of them were targeting Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

“Why do you reject our power?” a wurm asked curiously. “If you cooperated with us of your own will, then I wouldn’t have to take control of you.”

This colony of creatures who were exhibiting what was, for wurms, extremely weird behavior, were not, in fact, wurms at all.

They were monsters being manipulated by a living weapon belonging to the National Defense Research Institute, Acromdo the Variety.

The uprising of Old Kingdoms’ loyalists in Toghie City that occurred suddenly with the attack of the Particle Storm—Iriolde the Atypical Tome’s influence lay behind their seizure of the government assembly there. The National Defense Research Institute understood the natural resources that Toghie City had and how to effectively utilize them.

Of course, it was far from what would normally be called a natural resource when looking at it with common sense. In the realm of common sense, there didn’t exist any being with enough power to bring down the wurms that inhabited the marshlands surrounding Toghie City and revive them as weapons.

“The flesh of dragonfolk is actually a lot softer than you’d imagine. Once I get a grip somewhere inside their body, it isn’t too difficult to spread roots through them. For an ooze like you…it might be even easier.”

“You… So, you’re that Acromdo Qwell mentioned. That plant monster.”

“I’m a dryad—a new species that still hasn’t been discovered in your world.”

Dryad.

Acromdo the Variety was a creature who had only recently been born in this world.

Grown from a seed brought over from the Beyond and then cultivated in the National Defense Research Institute until he grew a sense of self, Acromdo acted under an extremely simple behavioral principle—doing what his friends asked of him.

The concept of organisms of the same race having different bodies didn’t exist for dryads, as all of their individual specimens multiplied by separating from the same mother root and shared their thoughts. In order to build a bond with someone, the only option was to become friends with other races.

Fortunately, Acromdo possessed the power to do so. If it became necessary to kill or disable someone, the minian races at the National Defense Research Institute would entrust those jobs to Acromdo.

Even if one part of his body was destroyed, he wouldn’t die. Conversely, if he was able to bury a small fragment of himself in an enemy, he could control said enemy. He understood as a given that his race was absolutely invincible. He even wondered if maybe there existed no logic or reasoning in this world that could destroy him.

Whether it was an ooze with extremely honed hand-to-hand fighting skills.

Whether it was a legendary, champion-slaying dragon.

To Acromdo, it was all the same as his usual work.

He worked for the sake of his friends, and through it, we would be recognized by this world.

“Must be your first time fighting someone like me, right?”

On the Mali Wastes’ frozen soil, Acromdo’s colony began to constrict the circle around Psianop.

Without giving any opening for him to break through, they closed into a distance that would make evasion impossible.

“I can’t wait to see how exactly you fight, Psianop…”

Normally, Acromdo would have had an attack range advantage that could crush the ooze without needing to be so careful. However, even he, taking pride in his invincibility, wasn’t careless enough to underestimate an opponent like Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

“Hmph. A new race?”

Psianop laughed, as if looking down on Acromdo with contempt.

Acromdo tried to think about what sort of intention was behind this laugh of his.

A crunching thud rang out.

“One.”

Psianop’s figure, which was supposed to be in the middle of the encirclement, had disappeared.

That wasn’t it. He had sprung into the air.

Before Acromdo could completely surround him, Psianop had delivered a blow to one of the seven wurms.

Using all seven’s consciousnesses, Acromdo made them all focus on a spot in midair. Kicking off the skull of the wurm he had just struck on the crown of the head, Psianop drew closer.

“Two,” Psianop murmured while he extracted a pseudopod from a wurm’s eye socket.

Acromdo manipulated the third wurm and smashed Psianop, wurm and all.

It didn’t catch Psianop’s nimble escape in time. However, he had gained time to think.

I have to get a grasp…

The first wurm had been knocked unconscious by the surprise blow. It could still move.

The second wurm had lost its eyesight, but it was still healthy.

The third wurm was just now coming under an attack.

On how to defend.

“Three.”

It was as if the wurm’s head had been sliced off by a large invisible ax.

In some sense, it was a trick of the eye. Psianop’s hand chop, formed from his pseudopod, heavily struck the third wurm’s neck. That was all—he hadn’t even cut through the wurm’s scales.

What wasn’t a trick of the eyes was that this single attack, through the wurm’s scales, simultaneously severed all its arteries and major nerves, essentially leaving it in a state as if its neck had been severed.

“You’re not getting—”

“Four.”

Right as the wurm’s flesh burst open on its own and weblike roots expanded out radially, Psianop delivered a heavy blow to the fourth wurm.

My senses—

Dryads were a new race composed of innumerable roots and branches that continued to expand by parasitizing other animals. If he could make the slightest bit of contact, he could parasitize that area and start digging deeper into the host.

Can’t keep—

“Five.”

There were two still unharmed. The first two he attacked could also move.

Acromdo would make all of them self-destruct at the same time and rush Psianop from all angles. No matter how backed into a corner he may have been, Acromdo knew even the slightest bit of contact with his roots would earn victory.

However, the charge from the first wurm was remarkedly off balance, and it fell down, bringing another three with it.

The roots and branches that exploded late completely covered the stretch of ground and formed a colossally entangled, bizarre mass of flesh, before being smashed.

“…It can’t be.”

On the initial attack that hit the first wurm, Acromdo realized at that moment that a section of the wurm’s brain function had been destroyed.

“You said that if you work your way inside, you spread your roots, even through dragonfolk, yes?”

A tiny space, right in the middle of the roots spreading out like a lattice—it seemed like Psianop had suddenly appeared there.

No. This ooze had constantly moved through the blind spots of the enormous wurm bodies Acromdo controlled.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had turned this extreme difference in scale into an advantage.

“You’re not telling me you really thought this level of trickery would actually have any effect on Lucnoca the Winter, are you?”

There was no factor to cause defeat.

There was no organism in the land that could survive being surrounded by seven wurms working together. He proudly believed that they could even stop a dragon.

However, this puny ooze hadn’t only survived uninjured, he didn’t even appear to be out of stamina at all.

With movements that were as small as possible, and with speed faster than Acromdo could even think, he had induced Acromdo to self-destruct all the wurms in his panic. In a flash of light, he successfully wiped out all seven of the wurms.

“Impossible.” Acromdo groaned once more. “You couldn’t possibly…be that strong. Y-you’re just-just an ooze…”

Acromdo had never felt any hostility toward anyone.

He understood that even if he was defeated somewhere and repelled back, he would be the one to be victorious in the end.

However, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was the only one who was different.

He was so strong that it seemed like no matter how perfectly Acromdo laid out his preparations, no matter how much further he honed his innate strength, he still wouldn’t be able to defeat Psianop.

“I don’t… I don’t want to lose…”

“Then practice and train. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“……!”

There were some in this world who couldn’t become his friends.

Strong, mighty individuals who existed on an entirely different level, beyond what Acromdo could imagine.

Acromdo, still young and taking in all the different parts of minian society with curiosity and wonder, learned it for the first time.

The humiliation of defeat.

The ninth match was soon beginning.

Not under Lucnoca’s will, nor Psianop’s.

This battle had been orchestrated by Iriolde’s camp for the sole purpose of eliminating Lucnoca the Winter.

Despite all of this, there was still an accord at the start of the match. It would begin with the setting of the sun.

What do I need to do to make it in time?

Psianop considered the situation as he continued across the Mali Wastes, springing himself along.

Since the moment he had abandoned his carriage, it was a gamble whether or not he made it in time for the match to start.

On top of that, taking down Acromdo had required some amount of time as well.

So, I’m expending all my strength to head toward a fight I’m going to lose?

It may have seemed like a fool’s errand.

Nevertheless, he still wanted to battle against Lucnoca the Winter.

Was it for his vow? For his pride?

Still, I’m not fighting with the intent to lose.

Something fell from above his line of sight, up ahead to where Psianop was heading.

It was some machine, its shape unlike anything he had ever seen, but he had rotating wings—something that flew.

It wasn’t a balloon.

“…A golem?”

His gut told him he could catch it.

More than half of the Mali Wastes was hostile territory with battle lines set up by Tuturi. While approaching an unidentified flying machine brought with it unknown danger, Psianop headed toward where it was falling.

Observing the target’s construction and its descending trajectory, disturbed and irregular, he understood.

“Hwoo.”

It weighed as much as a cannonball.

Its speed may have very well been just as similar.

With a lithe movement, Psianop caught the slash from the spinning wings run amok, and despite twisting himself around to wrap them up, he let the tremendous impact spread through the ground through his pseudopod, briefly touching down on the ground.

The impact sounds, as if the surface was exploding, continued.

As though Psianop was the one being dragged along, the Craft Golem slowly scraped the ground and came to a halt.

The mist of fine ice particles scraped off from the ground suspended like a belt before scattering into the atmosphere.

The driving sounds of the golem stopped.

“…! You…”

The man crawling out from inside was a zmeu, resembling a black crocodile.

From a gap in his safety helmet poured a tremendous amount of blood, and it wasn’t stopping.

His bones were likely broken in three places. Psianop could tell by the movements he made to crawl out of the golem.

“…You… Right. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation…”

“Looks like you know who I am. One of Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam’s men, then?”

“That’s right. Sindikar the Ark…”

The evening sun was moments away from sinking below the Mali Wastes’ horizon.

The green afterglow was twinkling for a moment. Once it disappeared, the ninth match would begin.

“Koff, why save me…?”

“Because I was promised.” Psianop heartlessly addressed the old self-proclaimed demon king in the grips of death after challenging Lucnoca the Winter from the unforgiving skies and being shot down. “Tuturi said she would bring me to the arena. Use that machine of yours to take me there right now.”

“Heh, heh… I get it. So that’s why…you caught this thing without breaking it!”

Subtly manipulating his strength to hold not only destruction but non-destruction in his grasp—

When it came to accomplishing such a feat, Psianop’s techniques were on a level that none of the other hero candidates could hope to reach.

<Stop.>

A voice from the radzio cut in.

<Fly again and you’ll die.>

“No. I’ll…fly. I haven’t settled my score with Lucnoca. You just have to use those eyes of yours to predict the moment she attacks.”

<You ended up like this even with me predicting the moment of her attack. The magnitude of it can’t be physically evaded in time. You damn well know that…!>

The voice on the other end must have been the spotter.

Psianop found it awfully bizarre that the spotter wouldn’t be there with Sindikar, but…this had to be another supernatural being that the camp backing Tuturi had deployed, just like Acromdo.

<Sindikar. You don’t have any duty to them to expose yourself to danger.>

“Spotter.” Psianop quietly addressed him. “This man already knows about the danger you’re talking about.”

He had only just come across this Sindikar the Ark.

Psianop didn’t necessarily understand anything about his background, or his personality.

However.

“Given that, do you have any words that will stop him?”

<……>

Psianop and this man were close.

People who were able to put everything on the line for something far grander than survival or logic.

Sindikar, wounded all over, pulled his body up. He wiped the thick blood off his forehead.

“…Kuuro the Cautious. We were only acquainted for a short while, but I’m still quite grateful for your help.”

He was looking up at the sky.

“But I want to give it a try.”

<…I see. Got it.>

The voice from the radzio ended with this before going silent.

Sindikar finished making adjustments to the Craft Golem with monstrous dexterity, clear even to Psianop’s eyes, and once again got inside the cockpit, dirtied with blood.

“You get in, too.”

“Is this machine really safe?”

“Don’t underestimate it. The crash just now was because my body couldn’t handle the sudden Force Arts acceleration.”

Sindikar broke into a ferocious smile as he looked hard at Lucnoca the Winter in the distance.

“I could’ve dodged that attack.”

Right as Psianop boarded, the Craft Golem’s engine let out a roar once more.

It almost seemed like the sound of Sindikar’s heartbeats.

The ooze flew through the sky, going to challenge the strongest of all dragons.

Had there ever been someone in this world who could have imagined such an impossibly epic undertaking?

The sun continued to set. The stars rose.

In order to fight. All merely in order to fight.

Fight me, Lucnoca the Winter.

Higher than even the extremes of the martial arts, he soared up into an unknown realm.

Ninth match. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation versus Lucnoca the Winter.

Lucnoca the Winter looked to the horizon.

She hoped that she would see a carriage somewhere, but there were still no signs of Psianop.

…In the end, is that all this is?

The dullest images of all flittered through her mind.

The champions with the courage to challenge Lucnoca the Winter ended with Alus the Star Runner. The ooze, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, feared fighting her and had withdrawn from the tournament—or hadn’t even existed to begin with.

The worst future of all was that the Sixways Exhibition that Harghent had spoken of with such enthusiasm was nothing more than an utterly futile plot to eliminate Lucnoca the Winter.

It wasn’t the first time.

Much like how, from the perspective of her vast ocean of combat experience fostered during her long life, it wasn’t her first time fighting against champions’ techniques or lethal infections and poisons. Nor was it even the first time her hopes had been used, only to be betrayed.

Nevertheless, when it happened, Lucnoca would truly and genuinely hope.

She never destroyed the minian nations as retaliation for betraying her.

Her disappointments simply began to pile up, little by little, like falling snow.

No matter how long I wait, nothing ever changes…

At her feet, Vikeon’s crushed and stamped-out carcass was pulled apart with a crunch.

Both in life and in death, Vikeon the Smoldering had been unable to best Lucnoca the Winter. She had already known.

Ester the Blooming White. Diagin the Scale Piercer. Shinae the Fleeting. Exeno the Infinite Skies. The strongest dragons she had ever known all battled Lucnoca long ago, and had all died.

Then, wasn’t it meaningless to even expect anything from the other races?

Even if someone like Alus the Star Runner, a miraculous individual who overcame the boundaries of his own race. If innate and overpowering might still killed them, wasn’t it all the same in the end?

Or perhaps, if had destroyed them all in retaliation once, something might have changed.

This wasn’t the first time. Not the first betrayal, nor the first disappointment.

Like a pure white permafrost, Lucnoca’s world remained completely unchanged.

Still, she always wanted to believe…

…that there was someone, somewhere, with the courage to challenge winter.

She wanted to believe it was still possible for the strongest to taste defeat.

Ahh… Once again, the sun falls.

The final thin line of the evening sun disappeared…

“Directly above her,” Psianop told Sindikar, who was piloting the Craft Golem. “You’re going to drop me down right above her right as the match starts.”

“…That’s it?”

“It’s not even going to catch her off guard. But any uncalled-for meddling is useless.”

No matter how honed his strength may be, no matter how skilled his technique, Psianop was still nothing more than a mere ooze.

His threat level to Lucnoca must have been close to nonexistent. Even then, he would be able to grab enough of her attention to allow Sindikar to escape after carrying him all this way.

“You just need to carry me to the arena.”

“Hmph.”

Sindikar laughed with his nose.

Sitting in the pilot seat, Sindikar was concentrating all his attention on the sky, barely even checking the instruments and meters installed in the Craft Golem at all. At this point, he might have had a complete grasp on the power at work in the machine as though it were an extension of his own body.

“The sky is the stuff of dreams. This held enormous military potential. To think then…it would be used to carry an ooze just because it was a convenient ride…”

“…That’s right; it is convenient.”

Psianop looked at the clouds flowing outside of the windshield, down below at the earth passing below him at high speed.

Perhaps he couldn’t understand the true meaning of this splendor that Sindikar spoke of.

“But everyone will think it’s convenient. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“You might be right.”

Through the thin cloud cover, Psianop could see something glittering silvery-white and standing on the surface of the wastes. Lucnoca the Winter.

She was clearly there waiting for Psianop. Would he make it in time?

He would make himself get there in time, he thought.

“If we keep flying, it’ll be impossible to get perfectly over her head. I can’t drop you down easily.”

“No need. I’ll adjust.”

Psianop took off the windshield brace. Wind and gravity. Along with it, he felt his own inertia.

Taking it all into consideration, he would assault Lucnoca from far above.

It would require a nigh godly display of skill, like throwing a fine cotton thread into the distance and passing it through the eye of a needle.

<You gotta pull back, Sindikar,> the previously silent spotter shrilly declared. <This is the end.>

“Let me…teach you something, lad,” Sindikar answered with the exact same sullen look of displeasure he always wore. “There’s no one who can bring me down from the sky.”

At that moment, Psianop jumped out.

He couldn’t possibly get a full grasp of the air currents below him just through his midair observations. Both the wind strength and its direction dizzyingly changed as his altitude dropped. To match up with this, he transformed his body quickly and in great detail to keep on target.

He was aiming at a single point. If he missed the mark, his chance of victory would vanish.

Sindikar’s…

He turned his attention toward the Craft Golem that was getting father and father away with the speed of his descent.

Sindikar hadn’t escaped.

Not only that—

“Sindiker io kara.” (From Sindikar to Kara hammer.)

“……!”

The long cannon barrel that protruded from the bottom of the golem began taking on an ominous red hue.

Sindikar the Ark. He too was another self-proclaimed demon king.

Using Psianop’s descent as bait, he was trying to get a direct hit with the Lightning Flute by his own aim.

“How…reckless!”

It was reckless. However, which one of them was actually the foolhardy one?

The ground, and Lucnoca the Winter, were closing in as fast as an arrow.

In the sky above him, the Lightning Flute. On the ground below, Lucnoca the Winter.

“Ars faludo. Daemanuvas tao—” (Bone ravine. Horizon cavity. Sunlight tree—)

Without waiting for him to reach the ground, the calamitous cannon fire was going to blast away Psianop and the whole airspace with it.

Yet at that moment, Psianop was looking at an ever-so-subtle movement down on the ground.

Lucnoca the Winter was…

With her claws…

Into the earth…

“Neutralizing Power!”

Preceding all the phenomena was a shock.

The destruction came without any warning, as if he was being thrown into the center of a volcanic eruption.

It was a tempest of sand and dirt, like buckshot, rushing up from the ground into the air.

Nothing but dirt and sand.

The surface gravel was flung up into the sky just from motion of Lucnoca far down below as she lifted one of her forelimbs.

It was impossibly precise.

Unimaginably powerful.

A hopeless amount of material.

A cracking, crumbling sound—a thunderous roar, as if airspace itself was being condensed and groaning—followed.

“……!”

Even in midair, without anywhere to escape, Psianop still managed to fend off the nightmarishly powerful turbulence just from the motion of his rotation and transformation, fully coping with the attack. It used the utmost limits of his concentration.

As he repeatedly turned over with dizzying speed, he could see far off into the sky at his back.

High up above Psianop, Sindikar’s machine turned into particles in the sky and scattered.

He thought about the spotter’s warning. That was the last chance for him to return alive.

Knowing that, even if it meant betraying Psianop, he had tried to battle against Lucnoca the Winter.

…Sindikar the Ark.

A shade of an emotion, like respect or empathy, crossed Psianop’s heart.

But there was no more time left.

He fell. He fell to the ground.

The sun sank and fell.

“Lucnoca the Winter!”

He simply hadn’t accepted the attack. Using everything, even the force from the destructive storm winds, Psianop now was perfectly plunging right at his target.

Psianop shouted, “The match starts now!”

If, assuming, Lucnoca the Winter had anything that could be called a weakness…it was her standards of cognition, stemming from her continued existence of absolute, unassailable might.

Far removed from all others due to her excessive power, Lucnoca could no longer see through the strengths and weaknesses of her adversary. The ones she had previously seen as weak had been so, and even those she believed were strong, without exception, had all been weak, too.

Had Lucnoca been cognizant of the diminutive ooze’s presence, descending simultaneously with the tremendous Lightning Flute attack? Did she know that right at the start of the match, her anticipated opponent had attacked her?

That was why he announced himself.

Right as Psianop declared the start of the match, he landed right at that point—

The precise spot he had been aiming for.

The left neck area of the ultimate dragon, where in the first round, Alus the Star Runner’s Hillensingen the Luminous Blade, had cut away her dragon scale.

“Oh my.” He heard Lucnoca mumble.

One attack.

The sun had set. The match had already started. Quickly.

Nimbly, before Psianop’s diminutive body could be blown away.

Everything with a precision to match this agility, as if reproducing his training.

Colliding at the base of Lucnoca’s neck, Psianop’s pseudopod was spread out wide.

He even turned the reaction to the impact of his fall into the starting point of his strike.

That was the purpose behind the widened contact area.

As such, it wasn’t a sideways blow. Using all of his body weight, he struck diagonally upward.

It wasn’t a punch. It was a palm strike, expanding his whole protoplast body into a width impossible for any minian body to replicate.

This didn’t destroy his body’s outer surface. He transmitted all the momentum used for destruction inside of himself.

Thus, it was an attack that smeared his whole body in a single second.

One attack is enough!

It wasn’t a technique of this world.

It wasn’t a technique he learned out of books from the Beyond.

Nor was it even a technique someone else had taught him.

It was the technique that killed Neft the Nirvana.

A technique that Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had created.

A move that was peerless, and only possible for a formless ooze grappler.

A brilliant unarmed martial art move that ignored the dragon scale defenses, and destroyed the brain stem, a spot in her vital internal core.

“Spit out your brains.”

A singular, knockout blow.

“Howling Fluid Heavy Power.”

“Hmm, did something…”

Lucnoca’s claws, unconsciously patting the back of her neck, felt a weird viscous sensation of something stuck to her.

That was the end of it.

“Touch me?”

Lucnoca looked curiously at the filth on her claws.

The curtain of night had long descended, and it seemed like Lucnoca had been left all alone in the winter wasteland.

Vikeon’s disgraceful remains were scattered at her feet, mixing in and churning with the rock.

Fragments of jet-black dragon scales were mostly buried and glittering in the melted earth.

She had been fiddling with them out of boredom until they ended up like this before she knew it.

“……”

The soil, boiled by the heat of the Lightning Flute, had already frozen solid.

Having grown tired of fighting Vikeon, she had tried entertaining the flying machine that fearlessly came toward her, but perhaps as an effect of the poison, she may have mistakenly used too much of her strength.

No matter how long she waited, those red lightning bolts didn’t rain down on her anymore.

“…Well. I guess I had plenty of fun.”

Led by Harghent the Still to the Mali Wastes, she had the opportunity to fight against Alus the Star Runner, an enemy unlike any other she had seen. That memory alone was plenty.

Lucnoca the Winter might have been asking too much to hope for anything beyond that.

“All I have to do…is wait, after all.”

She would continue waiting for champions back in the cold and lonely Igania Ice Lake.

She wouldn’t get involved in minian nations anymore.

The thought ran through Lucnoca’s head as she spread out her wings.

“………ight me.”

“……?”

Something bizarre happened.

The piece of grime she had just tossed on the ground spoke to her.

“The match…has started. Lucnoca the Winter…!”

Of course. The match had begun.

Obviously Lucnoca must have known that as well.

She had heard a voice say so when she knocked the flying enemy out of the sky.

Why had she forgotten something that happened moments ago?

“Ahh. I’ve been waiting for you! You must…koff, gahak, hrnk, blerg!”

The almighty dragon’s vocal cords let out a murky, awful sound.

A sticky, almost solid, viscous liquid drained endlessly out of her mouth.

The white ground and the black sky melted together and dissolved away.

Sounds were far away. Her sense of smell was clogged.

The forgetfulness had been a symptom.

Severely impaired functions from her brain being destroyed.

“Blugh, gaherk, augh, glrg.”

“That is a vomiting reflex that comes from losing your sense of equilibrium. I destroyed the myelobrachium that, together with your brain stem, communicates your sense of balance through your semicircular canals—the inferior cerebellar peduncle. Forget flying—you can’t even tell up from down.”

Wonderful. Fantastic.

A creature of this world had been able to do such a thing?

In that moment, she hadn’t accidentally used too much force to blow away the flying machine because she was out of sorts from the poison.

Her instincts as a living creature had correctly sensed the direction of the true threat.

Not only that, but this ooze had informed Lucnoca that the match had started.

Right at the awaited time and right at the awaited place, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had actually appeared.

Without launching a surprise attack, he had erased the intent to kill that Lucnoca would instinctually react to, and when she reflexively brushed him off her neck, he was finished sending a knockout blow with marvelous dexterity.

For an ooze, that one attack should have blasted his whole body to pieces, and yet he still lived.

Was it Life Arts? Long, long ago in the past, she had fought a minia who could completely regenerate his body.

“Glrgh, hoo-hoo, bwoo, hoo, grrlgh…”

Marvelous. Wonderful.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation was, in both courage and skill, a powerful fighter on par with Alus the Star Runner.

“It’s futile!”

She knew he was calling her.

Unconsciously, Lucnoca brandished her claws. The ground’s surface was completely gouged out and had begun to vanish.

She spread her wings, tottered, and propped herself up on her forelimbs. Her jaw bit down on the empty air.

Far removed from her usual elegance, Lucnoca the Winter writhed around like a beast that couldn’t comprehend Word Arts.

“Lucnoca the Winter. You’re…going to die!”

Her tail, half cut off, swung across the ground like a crazed wurm.

Along its path, she kicked up dirt and gravel that seemed to sketch a black wall in the air.

Though each move carried enough overpowering physical strength to destroy everything, she couldn’t set her sights on her foe.

She could no longer control her high-speed flight capabilities that allowed her to outright reject melee combat.

On top of that, with her vomit blocking out her own lungs, she couldn’t incant the words for her breath attack.

How absolutely wonderful.

“Glblgh, gahurk, blerk, blrgh… Hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo…!”

Now she could fight to her heart’s content.

The beautiful dragon, a being rivaling the gods, fell to the earth.

The blasphemy of her terrible final moments spread out in front of Psianop’s eyes.

Howling Fluid Heavy Power got a full hit on her. It will be impossible for her to maintain her vital functions.

Lucnoca’s enormous wings slammed down violently from above him with terrifying speed.

Though the speed and area of attack made evasion impossible, Psianop observed the indications of each move she made with care.

“You’re still…moving…and floundering, are you…Lucnoca…?”

In the darkness of night, Psianop didn’t overlook any of his enemy’s movements. He continued to calculate out the end the fight was heading toward and the endless different divergences from there. Despite it all, there still remained an unassailable gap in power.

Would he be able to continue dodging a dragon opponent, everything about them on a hopelessly different scale from an ooze?

Even his first attack had been part of a do-or-die strategy, under the assumption that they would kill each other.

He meant to kill her with his fatal strike, Howling Fluid Heavy Power, in exchange for squandering one of his remaining three regenerations.

Lucnoca still wasn’t dead. Psianop needed to continue fighting.

Using a slight dip in the terrain, he dodged the tail attack that accompanied her twisting body. As her dragon claws rampaged about, he discerned only the attack heading toward him and dodged with his whole body.

Lucnoca the Winter’s faculties had already been killed. Her transcendent brute force wouldn’t continue for long.

If Psianop could just buy a little more time, she would use up all her strength.

Just a little more.

He would win. And he would survive.

The two things he couldn’t possibly hope for against an opponent like Lucnoca the Winter were just within reach.

After just a bit more.

Was ‘just a little more’ always this far away…?!

Immediately following his tireless evading, her dragon claws attacked him once again.

A storm more chaotic and fatal than any other in the world.

Despite it all, Psianop was watching closely for signs of her next move.

He read everything completely and responded.

Even if evasion was impossible, he had plenty of time to ready his guarding hand.

Neutralizing Power.

Just as he previously endured the dirt and sand, like raining artillery fire despite being in midair with nowhere to go—

It was a technique that deferred the impact by manipulating his center of gravity and direction of motion, blocking attacks regardless of the enemy’s strength.

The claws were coming.

Psianop used all his might to turn aside the force. Contact. Reaction.

A loud splat rang out.

Half his body was torn off and sent flying.

“…! Por pupeon. Perpipeor. (Full large moon. Circulate.)”

He should have been able to completely take the attack.

There hadn’t been any irregularity in Psianop’s technique.

Her attack was nothing but the mere struggling of a beast on its deathbed, an attack of brute power, its direction and moment of impact plain as day. And in truth, that was all it had been.

The techniques he had spent a long time mastering and perfecting, in a single attack—

“…Impossible!”

He screamed. The single attack he should have guarded against had greatly chipped away at the ooze’s life.

Lucnoca the Winter was fatally wounded. She might have exhausted herself from all her fighting beforehand.

Despite all of that, was she ultimately able to wrestle his technique into submission?

“I…!”

Impossible to defend.

Completely unrelated to whether she was fatally wounded or not, Lucnoca the Winter’s attacks were more than powerful enough to kill Psianop without leaving a trace.

He still watched the signs in the hazy consciousness following his full-body regeneration.

Steadily gazing. Observing close. He had to dodge everything.

Understanding her completely isolated and unequaled strength, an imminent terror rose inside him.

The movement of her brandishing her claws, drawing an arc. He could see the trajectory. The moment they would arrive, too.

With everything he had, he do—

“Ngh!”

He was cleaved once more. Only barely leaving behind his nucleus and nothing more.

A second time.

In the blink of an eye, Psianop died twice.

Impossible to evade.

“Perpipeor…! (Circulate!) I-it can’t be…”

There was nothing left.

Psianop’s life expectancy, after devoting twenty-one years to his training, at most would be another twenty-nine years.

He had used full body regeneration, each time consuming five years of his cellular life span, five times.

Once against Neft the Nirvana.

Once against Toroa the Awful.

Now, three times against Lucnoca the Winter.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation, in this match, had lost his entire future.

“Glrg, gahurk, blrgh, bwaugh…Hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-bhoo…!”

When Psianop finally grasped the truth behind the hideous sound that continued to escape from the dragon’s respiratory system, it terrified him.

Laughter.

Lucnoca the Winter was enjoying herself.

The secondary command post was situated on a plateau. Twenty-First General, Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam, observed Lucnoca the Winter from the plateau through binoculars.

“…What’s happening?”

She couldn’t understand any of it.

Vikeon, who was supposed to be fighting against Lucnoca up until that moment, had disappeared somewhere.

Scattered all over the ground was the carcass of something chopped up into small bits, but she definitely didn’t want to believe something out there was capable of rendering a dragon into such a state.

The biological weapon they infected her with should have exhibited its effects a long time ago.

Despite it all, Lucnoca was still running amok, looking to be fighting against something.

“…What the hell? This is bad. This is…really bad…”

Her gloved fingers, gripping the binoculars, were engorged with blood.

Even if killing her was impossible, they had needed to at least drive her to the edge until fighting was difficult for her.

Tuturi had deployed all the trump cards she could imagine. The fact that Lucnoca wasn’t even a bit exhausted meant that this battle, from the very beginning, was at an impasse, didn’t it?

<Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam. Sindikar the Ark is dead.>

She heard the spotter’s voice come through the radzio.

<He was pulverized, machine and all, by soil and dirt kicked up into the sky. Air superiority was meaningless against Lucnoca.>

“…Sindikar? That can’t be.”

<You believe my report. Go ahead and ask your heart rate right now.>

Tuturi had known that Lucnoca the Winter was all-powerful. Everyone in the world knew it.

Nevertheless, even seeing it for herself, how could she believe that the dragon was this mighty and powerful?

<Vikeon lost a long time ago. He was chopped up, dragon scales and all. Meaning that for Lucnoca, he wasn’t even worth taking seriously.>

“Then…”

Lucnoca the Winter continued to fight. Even with the surrounding stretch of land illuminated with lights, Tuturi’s vision through the binoculars wasn’t able to see what exactly she was fighting in the darkness of night.

“What is Lucnoca doing right now?”

<She’s battling Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.>

Lucnoca’s opponent for the ninth match had been a lure to make absolutely sure Tuturi’s operation succeeded.

Despite learning that this battle was all farcical setup, he still honestly headed out to meet her?

“Hah, hah-hah-hah-hah-hah… It can’t be. Psianop…he defeated Acromdo? Seriously…? Why is he fighting? At this point…why…?”

Defeating all the obstacles in front of him, he jumped into the mouth of hell all for his assured defeat.

Why were he and the others able to carry out such a fool’s errand?

There wasn’t a single thing to be gained from it, yet they were risking their lives.

They could face it head-on.

With a dream, they were able to fight.

<I know now that even without using her breath, Lucnoca’s area of attack has extremely wide range. That secondary command post isn’t safe either. Even at my distance I’m in danger. Your decision to make.>

“…Right. I guess I can’t drag my feet forever, can I…?”

Piecemeal deployment in war was inconceivable. Tuturi’s trump cards had all been laid right from the very start.

A large force was spread across the Mali Wastes, but their minian squad had been little more than a reserve fighting force, readied under the assumption that Vikeon could contain Lucnoca.

She needed to withdraw them immediately. If she asked Haade for reinforcements, the entire Aureatia army could be sent into action. Even if a decisive land battle was accompanied with heavy casualties, there was a chance that Lucnoca would leave without pursuing Tuturi and her forces.

A commanding officer who still tried to hold out in a situation like this was incompetent.

“…Tell me, Kuuro the Cautious.”

Therefore, her question was simply to confirm something that had already been decided.

If the man with Clairvoyance, able to predict the future, could simply tell her it was all in vain…

“Do you think Psianop can beat Lucnoca?”

<…………> Clairvoyance replied. <I don’t know.>

Tuturi began walking toward the temporary command tent.

She couldn’t help listening to the far-off sounds of Lucnoca’s battle, noises like the ground crumbling away, and thinking they signaled the end of the world.

“Notify all troops: Continue the operation,” she told the communications operators. “Vikeon the Smolder was defeated…but our series of attacks has definitely pushed Lucnoca up against a wall. In her current state, unable to fly or use her breath attack, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation is keeping her at bay.”

The one and only Kuuro the Cautious had said he didn’t know.

While the possibility may have been nearly zero, there might have been a chance of victory.

For the terribly diminutive and terminally foolish Psianop.

She wasn’t about to run away now.

“Right now, this is the only chance weak minian like us have to defeat that dragon.”

There were still options left.

“Mechbow teams three through four, prepare to volley! Maintenance teams nine to eleven, match the timing of the volley. Twenty-first, deploy the Cannon Golems! Stuff them with all the tracers and biological rounds you’ve got! Make sure to finish loading all units!”

Not a single person was thinking that they could engage Lucnoca the Winter and return home alive.

The commanding officer Tuturi was no exception.

She could fight with her life on the line.

“Sixth Word Arts team! Work your Thermal Arts with everything you’ve got, and send every damn unmanned balloon flying! Lucnoca shot down Sindikar the Ark—there’s a good chance she’ll turn her attention to any flying object! The first manned balloon team will wait for my orders and operate surface lights!”

There were still options left.

Traps.

Poison.

Flashes of light.

Explosives.

Weapons.

It wasn’t over. As long as they were still minian, they could continue their crude, disgraceful, and ugly fight.

Finished giving her orders to the entire force, Tuturi staggered out of the temporary command tent.

She looked up at the same night sky where Sindikar had fallen.

It was a downright loathsome starry night sky.

“Hah, hah-hah………hah-hah-hah-hah-hah.”

A self-deprecating laugh slipped out of the corner of her mouth.

With this, she was no longer able to run. Defeat meant death.

She felt great.

“Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah! How’s that Psianop?! I ain’t letting you be the only one to put their life on the line!”

Tuturi shouted.

Harghent. Qwell. Sindikar. Psianop.

There were those who were able to stand up against an all-powerful being of hopelessness taken form.

“Dreams or no dreams! Strong or not! It doesn’t matter…! Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah! Anyone can fight for one’s life!”

She would rather die than have those types believe she had lost and run.

She was going to prove to them all that even people like her could do the same thing.

Meanwhile, there was a carriage drifting farther and farther away from the Mali Wastes.

The carriage was for prioritizing the evacuation of key figures to the camp. Eighth Minister Quewai the Moon Fragment was one of these key individuals.

“I wonder if Tuturi will retreat. It seems like she’s a bit slow in making her decision,” Quewai mumbled, looking down and addressing no one in particular.

There was no carriage following behind them.

“Hmm. She is a tad late, isn’t she?”

Even under the current circumstances, Viga the Clamor’s mild tone and demeanor remained unchanged.

“It can’t be helped, if even Vikeon’s revenant couldn’t contain Lucnoca. It just means that from the very start, no weapon that we minians could wield will defeat her. Fleeing is a wiser choice, isn’t it?”

“Though I did want to observe it all for a bit longer myself!”

The two of them, sitting across from each other, heard a voice from below. Yukis the Ground Colony.

Appearing to be some sort of quirk of his, the man wasn’t sitting, but lying out on the floor.

“She’s already acquired resistance to the completely brand-new fungus species Nectegio created…! Or at least, resistance to the toxins the fungus generates! For a living creature, that is quite amazing! Wonderful! Beautiful! If only I could analyze her more closely, I could advance my research so much more! Eeeaugh, how tantalizing!”

“You two are assets never meant to be out on the front lines in the first place. We simply needed you to be present to prepare for any unforeseen circumstances around utilizing these brand-new weapons,” said Quewai.

Vikeon the Smoldering’s revenant was a compound Word Arts weapon that Viga had created, the first of its kind, with Yukis incorporating an automatic repairing mechanism via mycelium. If Vikeon had malfunctioned or gone out of control, there wasn’t anyone else but the two involved with his creation who could handle the situation.

Thus, now that Vikeon had been defeated, Quewai’s role was to evacuate Viga and Yukis swiftly. These two and their capability to create constructs held an extremely large strategic value to Iriolde’s camp—likely more so than the Twenty-Nine Officials, Tuturi, and Quewai.

“Well, we need you two to put in work toward our future plans.”

“Hmm, it’s a lot easier for me to go against a minian opponent, too, but… Are we even going to get the chance anyway?” Viga said, her smile never wavering. “If Lucnoca the Winter felt like it, she could erase Aureatia off the map before it can be overthrown.”

“I’m totally fine with that! Whether Aureatia’s overthrown or goes to ruin, it means the extinction of the Kingdoms! I’ll be able to freely conduct my research without worrying about any oppression! What do you say to that, Quewai?”

“I’m all set, thank you.”

“Ice cold! I really think you’re suited for research, Quewai!”

If Tuturi had some reason to still hold out where she stood, then perhaps it was to stop such a chaotic world from coming, but Quewai had a feeling that wasn’t why. At the very least, Tuturi wasn’t someone who fought for order or justice.

If Tuturi does have some reason, it’d have to be…

Quewai had no way of knowing, but on the day of self-proclaimed demon king Alus’s attack, it was the same reason that Psianop had given Toroa, on this very road, about why he was taking on Lucnoca the Winter in a fight.

Pride.

Explosions slammed the surface of Lucnoca’s white dragon scales one after another.

The soldiers surrounding the basin lined up a total of eleven Cannon Golems and maintained an incessant artillery barrage.

Just like the Craft Golem Sindikar piloted, they were golems produced by Kiyazuna the Axle and requisitioned from Kaete’s camp. Thus, they possessed the absolute best performance of the age, but even a battery of Cannon Golems served as little more than sacrificial pawns—substitutes for Vikeon.

Yukis’s newest biological weapon was loaded into the warheads. Lucnoca should have already been infected mid-battle by Vikeon, but it was a method of guaranteed infection on the off chance that she hadn’t been.

More than anything, the cannon attack—both a feint that didn’t require precision aiming and an attempt to infect her—was a tactic that suited the heartless golems who merely moved according to how they had been previously configured.

“Don’t let them hit the ground!” Tuturi gave orders to the maintenance team on the other end of the radzio. “You’ll hinder Psianop’s movement! It’s fine to miss; just aim near her head and keep disrupting her!”

The maintenance team was charged with tuning the Cannon Golems—in other words, they were going about their work almost right in front of Lucnoca the Winter.

While the golems were easy to operate for a self-proclaimed demon king, regular soldiers needed personnel on-site to operate them—one for every two golems.

Tuturi heard a voice through the radzio before she could finish giving her orders.

<Commencing blood agent dispersal!>

Toxin sprayed from the manned air balloons.

The cyanogen chloride gas prevented an organism’s cellular respiration, disabling the threat of her breath.

This was different from Yukis’s biological weapon and, of course, harmful to the minian soldiers deployed on-site. While they were all wearing gas-blocking helmets, the slightest mistake would mean an agonizing and painful death. On top of that, it likely had even less of an effect than the biological weapons, too.

Even then, they added it to the attack. Tuturi had decided to take every measure she could.

“Please work…!”

Lucnoca’s enormous body shivered, and the raging storm of her dragon’s claws seemed to halt for just a moment.

Though, given how far away she was observing it all from, it might have been nothing but a hopeful trick of the eyes.

Perhaps it had been brought about by the move Psianop unleashed, the Howling Liquid Heavy Power, destroying the dragon’s motor center.

“Please…!”

Tuturi was mostly praying.

Kuuro’s observations said that Lucnoca should have already been fatally wounded.

In which case, even if it was through sheer force, if they continued to disrupt her movements while she dangled on her last leg and kept her focused on Psianop, they would be able to finish it all without a single casualty.

“Word Arts team! Forget about the unmanned balloons! Lucnoca hasn’t given them any attention…! Move to point six-five-eight, twenty-one. Support the mechbow team’s aim! I’ll give the order to light the lamp!”

<Yes ma’am! Moving out!>

The radzio informed her of another squad’s movements.

<General Tuturi. We’ve finished getting the mechbows ready! We have visual confirmation of the target right now…>

“Wait a bit… See for the direction… You gotta get to a position that’ll ensure the shots all hit their mark, or it’ll be a waste! Not yet!”

She was praying.

If now, at that moment, Lucnoca opened her mouth and blew her Ice Arts breath, everything would be over.

Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam didn’t gamble on possibility.

She couldn’t let any coincidences happen.

Lucnoca the Winter inevitably needed to die right here.

“Die, Lucnoca… I’m begging you…”

Lines of light flew like a fine rain, and Lucnoca’s surface flashed.

Flames from the Word Arts team’s Thermal Arts. Obviously, the attack wasn’t trying to be lethal.

The manned balloons offered support by spraying propellant. In the darkness of night, Lucnoca’s body was wreathed in flame.

It made it easier to get sight of a target.

“Please, please, just die…!”

The odds-on favorite for Tuturi was the volley attack from the mechbows.

The perfect opportunity would come. Just a little bit more, if she turned her body toward the Word Arts team…

“Not yet, not yet, not yet…!”

Lucnoca turned around in the direction of the Word Arts team.

Her stance…

Her center of gravity’s dropped!

Tuturi screamed into the radzio.

“Word Arts team, retreat! An attack’s coming your way!”

<We can see! But, at this distance—>

Lucnoca the Winter swiped the earth, as she flopped down.

The explosion echoed all the way to where Tuturi was.

A torrent of earth and rock, enough to transform the terrain, crushed the entire Word Arts team.

“…Hah, hah-hah.”

She had known. It wasn’t a problem of whether she used her breath or not.

Even Sindikar, far above up in the sky, had been shot down in the collateral damage of her fight.

The avalanche of stone and dirt hadn’t been an intentional attack, but simply a reaction to a stimulus.

She had taken in enough poison to ruin a nation, had been hit with a lethal attack that destroyed her brain stem, and had still managed to do this.

There was no safety zone.

“What the hell…?”

“G-General Tuturi! We really should retre—”

“Manned balloon team! Work the terrain lights with Craft Arts! Go ahead and make it pitch-black! Mechbow team, continue to stand by and follow the spotters’ judgment when firing! Don’t let out any light or sounds, whatever you do! There’s a chance that Lucnoca…that Lucnoca the Winter is sensing the direction of the Heat Art temperature changes and reacting to it!”

The lamps affixed to the ground began to go out one by one.

The balloon team’s Craft Arts closed off the lamps and blocked out the air.

She had set the start time to evening in part so that they could plunge Lucnoca into darkness after her eyes got accustomed to the light.

At this point…how much of an effect are these cheap tricks even going to have?! We’re up against Lucnoca the Winter here!

Lucnoca’s movements suggested she was slowly regaining her balance.

From far away, Tuturi heard the dragon’s growl, like the destructive roar of the sea.

As if she was laughing.

“Piss off…”

Tuturi gritted her teeth.

She was going to kill the strongest of all dragons.

Now that she had decided to do it, she would, no matter what.

“Like hell…I’m letting this much get me scared…! Lucnoca the Winter!”

The scene reflected in Lucnoca’s eyes was like a hazy shadow.

In the Mali Wastes, the same as that frozen land in Igania, the past she retraced—her numerous battles against champions—overlapped with each other, flicking through her mind.

Amongst them were ones who boasted speed rivaling her dragon claws.

There were ones with an immortal body who could regenerate over and over again.

There were ones who used weapons that blew poison and fire.

It was as if Lucnoca was fighting all of them at once.

However, it was different from them all. Lucnoca knew that.

Psianop.

Right now, Lucnoca’s sense of sight wasn’t functioning.

However, she could see his presence. She tried to touch it.

In her fogged consciousness, she couldn’t temper herself like usual, but even when it seemed her claws had grasped a silhouette, it would slip through her hands as if it was the vestiges of a dream.

…So your name is Psianop, is it?

Her attack didn’t hit.

Was it an illusion due to her optic nerve abnormalities, or had the finesse in her movements been destroyed?

Lucnoca wanted to believe that wasn’t the case.

He’s surviving my claws.

Even if it was a fickle miracle that would vanish under the slightest misfortune—

That miracle was because of this tiny ooze’s everlasting and devoted study.

“Gahak, koff, glrg, glrboo, bwoo-bwoo-bwoo.”

Writhing, ripping, tearing, she coughed out blood.

Even then, she continued to fight within her hazy perception.

With her terrifying combat experience etched into her across many, many years, she was making it possible.

Creatures with the respiratory center of their brain stem suspended cannot take in fresh oxygen.

If they have an abnormality in their cardiac center, their pulse will become irregular, and their blood flow will stagnate.

Blocking off signals to the brain would result in lost consciousness…a comatose state.

Ahh. How wonderful.

In that case…should something with a dying body that was in a mostly comatose state between dream and reality, yet still continued to keep fighting, truly be called a living creature at all?

With the wound to her brain stem, she was beginning to lose function at the tip of her hands. Nevertheless, she could brandish her claws using only the still functioning muscles of her shoulders and back. Even now, everything about her possessed more than enough violent force to lay waste to an entire army.

Even in the long history of the Beyond, there hadn’t been a single person who could stop its arrival.

It wasn’t a living creature.

It was a phenomenon, a law of nature, and despair.

“…Koff, hoo…hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo…hoo-hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Hrnk, urgg,.uhoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!”

The Beyond, where visitors came from, was said to be a world where the climate changes not according to the region, but according to the passage of time.

With the year split into four, there was one time of the year among them that had been named as such.

A time comes when everything returns to silence, sealed away in beautiful ice, where plants, animals, everything in the world dies once, before waiting for the next time of rebirth.

It is known as “winter.”

He was desperate.

In a literal do-or-die struggle, Psianop continued to dodge Lucnoca’s attacks.

Claws and tail. Sometimes her enormous body itself swept away the battlefield as she writhed in agony.

From which direction would she come, how would she attack—at this stage, it was no longer possible for him to grasp.

Each action Lucnoca took in the supposed jaws of death consisted of attacks that pierced through Psianop’s full-powered defenses, overtaking his wholehearted evasion. Thus, escape was his only option.

Jumping, crawling, shapeshifting. The extremes of his technique. Vast experience. The capabilities of his undefined form. Using all of it to the absolute fullest, Psianop the Inexhaustive Stagnation simply ran around, trying to escape.

Moving his body with desperation, regardless of how he looked, as if to maintain a tight grip on miraculous good fortune.

Each individual second seemed to condense the entire life that the fragile ooze had lived up until that moment.

I’ve never…been able to overcome anything.

His thoughts strung together incoherent words, as though they were his last dying gasps.

I’ve always just…been lucky to escape from threats to my life.

There was an impact. He needed to withstand the explosion that threatened to scatter his body in every direction.

Lucnoca the Winter’s attack hadn’t directly hit him, nor was he feeling the artillery attacks from the golems under Tuturi’s command—it was just an aftereffect.

Believed to have exhausted her life already, Lucnoca the Winter intensified her power further, gouging the earth with her dragon claws, tormenting Psianop with the aftershock despite his evasion.

The golem’s cannon shells and the lines of fire from Thermal Arts flickered in the night sky.

All of it was raining just as heavily down on Psianop at Lucnoca’s feet, but compared to the terror of Lucnoca the Winter in front of him, it almost made him feel relieved.

I need to withdraw.

Since he had confidently dealt her a lethal blow, it was pure foolishness to stay within her range.

Psianop understood that for himself. He was, in reality, doing just that.

And yet, still, Psianop was compelled to dodge Lucnoca’s attacks.

Why?

Why can she move? Why can she fight? Why…?

Lucnoca the Winter had a large section of her brain stem destroyed, had lost her sense of equilibrium, and despite it all—

“Hoo… uhoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!”

Why can she pursue me?

Lucnoca the Winter was clearly trying to grab hold of Psianop.

Supreme physical abilities and a ruinous Ice Arts breath.

Who had said that was all there was to Lucnoca the Winter?

Soujirou the Willow-Sword. Rique the Misfortune. Kuze the Passing Disaster. As well as Kuuro the Cautious—much like how fighters with rare gifts would sometimes perceive the world with different senses from the average person.

Lucnoca the Winter possessed even that, too.

With what went beyond just a sixth sense, she was able to continue fighting as her sight, her hearing, and her sense of equilibrium were all destroyed.

A progeny of combat. Every single thing about her was on a completely different level.

My…

At this point, he was forced to acknowledge it.

…My judgment came up short. Supreme physical abilities and a breath that annihilated heaven and earth. Unbreakably tough dragon scale. Flight. Reflex speed. Combat experience. I carelessly believed…that she didn’t have anything beyond that.

Several hundred years. Or perhaps a thousand.

Over that long stretch of time, how many champions had exhausted however many different means to try to bring down Lucnoca the Winter, the embodiment of strength without peer.

He was convinced that all the means intelligent beings could possibly conceive had been completely spent to defeat this single dragon.

There wasn’t anyone who could stop the arrival of winter.

I’m going to die.

He had died three times in this fight.

Lucnoca, due to several factors, had her strength diminished. On the other hand, Psianop had fought with his full strength.

Nevertheless, he was surviving by good fortune. Nothing more than pure luck.

In this situation, where Lucnoca was sunk into darkness and unable to clearly see the ground, and Psianop could counter her with precision, it was still by good fortune that he was able to evade her attacks.

“Uhoo, hoo, hoo, hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!”

…Even if that’s so—

He was running around trying to escape.

After connecting with the attack Psianop had gambled everything on, there wasn’t anything else he could do.

Remember. Remember, remember, remember!

He must have had memories far stronger than this terror and panic.

Romzo. Alena. Lumelly. Fralik. Yugo. Izick. And Neft.

Psianop trained and trained to be proud of being a member of the First Party. He had fought.

They had been mistaken to expel him from their ranks.

Because, if those mighty seven had included Psianop.

If that day, Psianop had been Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

He was sure that they would’ve been able to win against the True Demon King.

I must have been resolved to die back then, too! That time, when I couldn’t chase after the First Party. Even despite how deeply terrifying the True Demon King was. Even if I was waiting for the good luck that kept me alive to run out, for my unavoidable fate… Even then, I…

The dragon claws descended. The speed of the fissures racing through the ground were as fast as flashes of lightning.

Psianop was evading.

Running. Running.

The memories of the past ran through Psianop’s heart.

“Ahh… How fantastic. Gahak, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…!”

It was a story from over twenty-one years ago.

The reason his remorse never faded was because that itself was, at the same time, a point of pride.

Back then, I wished that I could go with everyone. That was the only time.

Her tail swiped across the ground. Psianop avoided the inescapable attack using the fissure that Lucnoca had just split open. Immediately after, the dragon claws from her kick blasted away the terrain at that point, gouging deep into the earth. Psianop evaded her.

Lucnoca’s hind limb was taking a step forward.

For just that moment, Psianop was clearly gauging the skeletal structure of his dragon opponent, the shift in body posture that accompanied her attack, and the position where her next step would land.

If she was pursuing him without relying on her five senses…

He could induce this step without changing its aim.

With the weight of his own body, and the terrain destroyed by Sindikar’s Lightning Flute, Lucnoca’s left forelimb sank.

Naturally, for a massive body like Lucnoca’s, it amounted to nothing but a slight hindrance to throw her out of balance.

“Y-you…are…”

“I’m one of the First Party.”

To a martial artist, however…

Psianop was already ready and waiting in the spot where Lucnoca’s foot stepped down.

“My name! Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation!”

“Co chwehe—” (To Kouto wind—)

“No, you don’t!”

Her sense of balance had already been destroyed. The instant she stamped down, her center of gravity gave way.

Against an opponent like Lucnoca the Winter, it was finally possible—a full-power blow that had waited for this exact moment.

The extremely sharp strike made the axis of Lucnoca’s body weight tilt ever so slightly.

“Forward foot…sweep!”

“…!”

The ground tremored.

Lucnoca the Winter toppled over.

The load of her colossal body was dispersed to areas unable to support it, and in that single second, she collapsed as if she had chosen to tumble over for herself.

The ooze, smaller than a dragon’s fist, had sunk the truly strongest living creature into the ground.

“…Cyul…cas…” (At the edge of light…)

Despite it all, Lucnoca the Winter still tried to fight.

She was focusing the moment her life ran out, her very final breath, on her Word Arts.

“…”

It seemed as if everything the heavens had bestowed on this beautiful dragon was entirely meant for battle.

However, what about Psianop, on the other hand?

Born with a body not meant for battle, why did he fight?

It wasn’t to save the citizens of Aureatia from the threat of winter. He had never considered whether they lived or died from the start.

It wasn’t to slay the strongest of all dragons, either. He didn’t harbor any hatred for Lucnoca the Winter.

To grasp the honor of the Hero. That also wasn’t it. He knew the people who were truly meant to hold such honor.

To obstinately have his own diminutive way, taking on the strongest and insisting that he would have been able to defeat the True Demon King.

Even if he believed such himself, that hadn’t been it.

…There had once been a day when even he could have fought. Even without the martial prowess he had now, he could have fought as his weak, ignorant self.

Above all, there had been a day when he had clearly seen a proud radiance in his own soul.

“Ahh… Right now… To me, it’s what I’m feeling now! I wanted to have the same heart I had that day!”

For courage.

“Lucnoca…the Winter!”

Psianop sent a single blow toward the collapsed dragon…

Nightmarish death completely filled Tuturi the Blue Violet’s line of sight.

On the other end of her binoculars, the Cannon Golems and their maintenance team were dead, smashed to pieces by the dirt and sand that followed Lucnoca’s attack. When the first section collapsed, she had immediately given the order to withdraw, but they had been annihilated.

The destruction wasn’t anything that a withdrawal and a bit of distance could escape.

The manned air balloon team had been completely wiped out save for two squads. Lucnoca’s destruction wasn’t contained just to the ground. The dirt she kicked up through her writhing final moments certainly hadn’t been aimed at the balloons, but nevertheless, they didn’t possess Sindikar’s level of mobility. Unable to dodge, they were brought down.

She was scared of death.

Not only a fear of her own death. A fear that their enemy didn’t die.

Even then, she managed to hold on.

Worst of all, she still needed to remain stubborn.

“Psianop.”

Although she was observing from a faraway hill, she could clearly recognize it.

She saw the inconceivable.

“…Psianop!”

Lucnoca the Winter had collapsed.

It was something that Vikeon the Smolder, Sindikar the Ark, and even Alus the Star Runner had not been able to accomplish.

She had been the strongest being this world had.

“What the hell, little guy…! You weren’t actually joking?!”

Back then. When Tuturi had talked with him, that ooze had said it with all seriousness.

“…What was it you said—that you’d beat lightning?”

She gave an order through the radzio. The squad on the other side had likely seen it for themselves, but she couldn’t waste this golden opportunity.

“Mechbow team fire…! That little guy… Just what the hell’s his deal…?! He actually stopped Lucnoca from moving! This is it… From this position…! We can aim straight at the gap in her dragon scales!”

The mechbow team, readying the decisive volley, was in a cognitive blind spot.

An isolated spot in the middle of dark and vast Mali Wastes, in a different direction from the attacks up until now.

<Mechbows, take aim.>

She heard the sound of the spotter, guiding the mechbow team.

In the darkness, the force all readied their weapons together, and aimed at a single point.

The spotter, with his Clairvoyance, was able to anticipate through the darkness the single second when the barrage—numerous lines of fire mixing together environmental conditions and individual aiming differences—had the highest probability of hitting the target.

<All hands, count to five, then fire. Five. Four. Three…>

Mechbow was their provisional name, but they weren’t actual bows.

Requisitioned from Kaete’s camp, it was a weapon with a name no one in this world should have ever known in the first place.

Nevertheless, Tuturi accurately recognized this weapon’s advantages.

Even in complete darkness that made it impossible to use bows or Word Arts, these weapons, outfitted with third-generation night vision equipment, could take unilateral aim at a target.

With an initial velocity of over two hundred thirty meters per second, their shots were difficult to avoid even with Lucnoca’s reaction speeds.

Each warhead it launched possessed penetrative capabilities equivalent to eight hundred millimeters of rolled homogenous armor.

<…Two. One.>

“Now… Now! Kill her… Kill that legend!”

It was a portable anti-tank weapon that boasted tremendous destructive power.

In the Beyond, it went by the name “Panzerfaust 3-IT600.”

Flame, and noise, streaked. It was like a meteor shower of destruction.

Explosions, bright as midday, bloomed one after another on Lucnoca’s neck.

The blinding flames lit up the collapsed white dragon’s body.

“…Lucnoca.” Tuturi murmured like a prayer.

The volley wasn’t over.

The squad ready with the next guns continued the barrage of shape-charged warheads.

The nape of her neck, where Alus the Star Runner had seared away her dragon scale defenses in the second match. Alus’s aim in that moment must have been to instantly kill her in the attack as well.

Though she was a dragon, severing her carotid artery would lead to a sudden and fatal drop in blood pressure. The shockwave transmitted from the point of impact would smash her cervical vertebrae and swiftly end her life. This vital point was what the dragon scales had protected before being burned away by the Hillensingen the Luminous Blade.

The edges of Tuturi’s lips trembled as she gazed at the storm of artillery fire.

“Lucnoca… Wait, c’mon.”

…Alus the Star Runner had used up all his magic tools and ripped open a single tear in the absolute legend.

The Aureatian force had gambled on this prestige and schemed to encircle Lucnoca.

Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation’s technique, reached after a long search for truth, delivered a knockout blow.

They had used up the lives of two all-powerful champions, the likes of whom would never be born again, and the power of the world’s grandest military.

All the more reason why, right now, with this opportunity…

“No, no, no, no… Hold on!”

…they needed to kill her, or that would be the end of them.

“Waaait!” Tuturi screamed, paying no heed to the eyes of the soldiers.

It couldn’t be.

Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her.

Amidst the bombardment from dozens upon dozens of weapons from the Beyond, Lucnoca was raising her body up.

From atop the faraway hill, Tuturi could see the colossal body moving far too much.

“Th-this…this has to be a joke… W-we’re hitting her neck! We’re striking her weak point!”

“Co chwelne.” (To Kouto winds.)

The feeble, whispering voice was audible even on the far-removed hilltop.

Word Arts were a language that addressed the world.

To Lucnoca the Winter, distance didn’t prove to be the slightest barrier at all.

“…Stop. It’s pointless. There’s nothing left! What are we supposed to do?! What should we have done differently?! Just die already! Keel over already!”

The smoke of poison and flame should have been burning her respiratory system.

The weapons from the Beyond should have destroyed the organs she needed to produce sound.

Above all, Psianop’s move should have smashed her brain, which governed her speech.

The short break in the incantation…

Felt so terribly…

Long.

“Cyulcascarz.” (Wither and fall at the edge of light.)

The air and ground transformed.

Everything died.

The arena was destroyed.

It wasn’t limited to just the basin. The Mali Wastes itself were destroyed.

“Lucnoca…the Winter…”

The Ice Arts breath hadn’t scored a direct hit.

He had known from estimations beforehand about the vacuum explosion that followed.

Thus, despite getting caught in the vacuum, the strength and technique he had cultivated across twenty-one years ensured Psianop survived the vortex of destruction. Biting into the ground with his pseudopod, he brought his center of gravity low and dispersed the impact…however.

While he may have survived by doing this, what good would it serve?

Psianop’s knockout attack didn’t succeed in fully killing Lucnoca the Winter.

Even after making Lucnoca the Winter tumble over, it didn’t lead to the finishing blow.

As if to interrupt it, the Beyond’s weapons flooded her neck area…

…She was bleeding. Nothing more.

“Uhoo, hoo, hoo, hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…! Oh, it’s so itchy…”

“…! Why?”

He was dying, so then why, why was she still alive?

Faced with the overwhelming irrationality, he let the disgraceful words slip from his mouth.

During his one, sole moment of opportunity, had his Howling Fluid Heavy Power knockout blow failed to reach her?

Had he missed? Had his training and discipline fallen short?

However, the answer was simple.

He simply didn’t want to believe it.

The reason Lucnoca was still alive was nothing more than pure and simple vitality.

“Why don’t you die?! Why… Y-you…you…”

He couldn’t shift to his next movement.

His strength or skill wasn’t the issue.

Lucnoca the Winter had used her Ice Arts breath attack.

Everything began to freeze. A temperature that ended everything and brought it to ruin.

“Why are you so powerful…?!”

“…Whe—koff. Where did you go…?”

The colossal being, head stretching up to the heavens, turned her head around.

She was searching for her enemy.

It was different from the instinctual counterattacks from earlier.

Her eyes weren’t searching for anything in particular.

It was almost as if she was lost in a daydream.

She held faint anticipation as the ghosts of the past flickered and melted away in her mind.

Maybe if they had undefeated strength. Maybe if long years of devoted study were with them.

Or perhaps the passage of time would overcome her? Maybe if there was a miracle, unlike none of these, brought on by a spiritual radiance, then surely…

Surely. Lucnoca believed that then surely it would turn into a battle.

“There are…even stronger champions wait…ing…right…? Harghent…?”

“Aughhhhh! Ahhhhhh!”

Psianop’s voice didn’t reach Lucnoca the Winter.

There was nothing reflected in her eyes.

“I—”

Thus, she crushed Psianop offhandedly, as if killing any other ooze.

Not even realizing that he was the powerful fighter she continued to seek.

“…Not yet, hah-hah… Not over yet… right…?!”

Tuturi laughed. It came from her lungs convulsing terribly and spitting out air.

Most of the officers at the second command post were dead.

They hadn’t been hit directly by the breath at all—the mechbow team had. Her position was level with them, in the complete opposite direction.

Tuturi the Blue Violet was on the verge of death, purely from the sudden hypothermia, and the shockwave from the breath’s vacuum aftereffect.

That alone would kill a mere minia.

“Ps-Psianop… You… Hah-hah. You were a ridiculous little guy… Just like you said…you actually f-fought…Lucnoca the Winter…”

She had thought it was an incomprehensible level of pride.

However, Psianop really had put his life on the line for something like that.

What accumulation of notions and personal ideas had he amassed to accomplish something like that?

It was a willpower bordering on madness that a minian like Tuturi found impossible to believe.

“I won’t lose…”

Tuturi tottered through the annihilated camp.

She felt something off in her right hand, and when she looked, she had lost almost half of her palm, from her middle finger to her pinky.

What, is that all? she thought.

“…General Tuturi.”

One of the fallen soldiers moaned.

“Let’s end this…the operation’s failed…”

“Huh?”

Tuturi looked around, but she couldn’t tell which direction the voice came from.

From what she saw, the only ones fallen on the ground were dead, or mere moments from death.

Tuturi survived with only losing her palm merely because of a razor-thin difference. When Lucnoca had spit out her Ice Arts breath, Tuturi, observing the battle herself, had managed to instantly fall flat on the ground.

“……”

She couldn’t hear any more of the soldier’s voice after that.

They must have died.

“…Screw you,” Tuturi answered the voice of the unidentified corpse, off in some unknown direction.

Both of her eyes were wide open.

She still needed to fight. She bore that responsibility.

Tuturi had let so many minia die. She had trampled over their honor…

It wasn’t worth the cost if Lucnoca the Winter was comfortably left alive.

“See me… If I say I’m gonna do something, I really mean it, all right?! Psianop? He never fled, did he?!

Tuturi shouted in the middle of all the corpses.

“That piddling little ooze over there fought…and you think any of you could’ve gotten as far as he did against a monster like her?! Huh?!”

At this point, the results were now clear.

Everything was all too late.

Absolutely nothing in the world could match the strongest of all creatures.

“I’ll do it,” Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam murmured like an all-consuming grudge.

There was one final reason why she was meant to fight even knowing it meant death—

Pride.

“Even if Psianop’s dead… Lucnoca the Winter! I’m going take you down!”

Lucnoca wandered the pure white landscape.

Even a dragon like herself would, very rarely, have these sorts of dreams.

One where she’d wander through a white fog, as if everything had frozen over.

She couldn’t even see the ground she was walking on, but there was a faint silhouette within it.

Several familiar figures…of the champions who were etched into her memory.

“Eswilda,” she murmured toward the faceless shadow. “…You’ll catch up to me, won’t you? Even if no others were able to reach me…you, knowing me and still trying to surpass me, might be able to do it. I’m still waiting…for your growth, you know? Won’t you take me on?”

She gave no reply.

The elf had died long, long ago. So far in the past that Lucnoca gave up even trying to count the years.

She walked on through the fog.

“Yushid. Olgis… Alus… I wish I could see you all one more time.”

It was both a dream, and not a dream.

The all-too-many long years she had lived without anyone ever able to match her—the reality of several hundreds of years.

“I really did like you all.”

All the lives Lucnoca the Winter knew, without exception, were dead.

Merely dying once meant that she could no longer speak with any of them again.

Countless powerful individuals had appeared in front of her, but no matter how many years and months came and went, never once did the dead appear again.

The people who showed her the beauty of courage then died due to that very courage.

Why are you strong?

Lucnoca had been strong from birth. Across the history of the world, she might have been the sole example of such a phenomenon.

She had also spent all her time fighting in order to learn the reason for the power she was given.

However, the ones she battled all equally died like weaklings. Unable to learn the reason she sought, she merely realized for herself the overwhelming isolating gap in power between her and others. The history of combat she amassed only served to make Lucnoca the Winter even stronger, and even more solitary.

Among all the dragons, each one worthy of being called calamitous, she was the strongest individual.

“Why won’t…anyone stay here with me?”

Dragons didn’t shed tears.

However, Lucnoca had always been sad.

With her head cast downward, she walked through the infinitely expanding fog.

“No matter how many words you cast at mere shadows…”

For the first time, someone amidst the fog answered her.

The small, emaciated shade looked to be sitting cross-legged.

“…the only sound that’ll come back is vacant echoes. The silence is all your work.”

“…”

His dried-out black skin was covered in wrinkles, and with his withered physique, it was easy to mistake flesh and bone.

He was a completely bald lycan.

A deceased of a different kind, unknown even to Lucnoca the Winter, having etched the memories of all the champions into her heart.

“…You. When exactly did you get here, then?”

“Groo, groo, groo.” The lycan laughed in a low voice.

“When? You’re asking me the question of when I came to Nirvana? That’s not the right question, Lucnoca the Winter. The fact you’re able to see my figure here means you have come here. You understand now, don’t you?”

“Not at all.”

Lucnoca the Winter wasn’t able to think about the meaning behind his words, yet even still, her heart danced innocently.

Perhaps. If there was some other person who would appear. Someone whom she would arrive at in the end.

“Nirvana. Will you fight with me, then?”

“We’ve been fighting a long time.”

“Is that really so?”

That may have been the case. Right now, everything was faint and vague.

“You are definitely fighting right now. Rejoice. That is what has led you here.”

“Really…? Is that what happened? Right now, I…”

A white fog, obscuring the view ahead. A summit where no one would stand as her equal.

It was a deserted and blank scenery where even fighting wasn’t permitted.

“…Ahh.”

If eventually, the end should come…

Lucnoca awoke. The dream had lasted a second, flashing through her hazy cerebral nerve like lightning.

Her dozing lasted for less than a single instant, and yet…

“Popoperopa.” (To Psianop’s pulsation.)

Word Arts. The voice resounded from the base of her neck.

A single being, now exposed due to her dragon scales being seared off, could be seen clinging to her nape.

It was a diminutive creature she had crushed with her dragon’s claws without even realizing it.

How exactly had he come from the frozen soil back up to her neck again?

It had been an extremely short second of sleep.

Even the apex martial artist wasn’t able to estimate the power of Lucnoca the Winter.

However, if it was an attack he had been hit with once before, he then learned a certain truth.

If he used his technique to turn the force aside, he could leave his nucleus behind and die after the dragon’s claw attack.

“Parpepy. Peep por ppe. Por pupeon.” (To Psianop’s pulsation. Suspended ripple. Tie the sequence. Full large moon.)

He knew one certain truth.

Lucnoca the Winter said she was itchy. Now that she had said something like that, he knew that she definitely wasn’t bluffing or challenging him, and she truly meant it.

The dermal itchiness brought on by the stimulation of her skin made her reflexively and unconsciously scratch.

In her hazy consciousness from the hit to her brain, Lucnoca touched her own weakness, the left side of the cranium—the claws that had just smashed Psianop. He had grabbed on to her dragon claws the instant he was hit with Lucnoca’s attack. Of course, he would pay for this method with his life. However—

He knew one certain truth.

Five years with each use. Within his cellular life span of fifty years, he had spent twenty-one of them, and during the remaining twenty-nine years, he had used up twenty-five years of total regeneration. Even then.

Half regeneration, using up two and a half years, was still possible.

Then, the remaining half of the dragon claw’s force, enough to erase all his cells with a single touch—

“Perpipeor.” (Circulate.) “Lucnoca the Winter.”

—was blocked by a black dragon scale.

It was a fragment of Vikeon the Smolder that had shattered and scattered in the middle of their intense battle.

“I-if…you are going to…trample over…your fated death…then I’ll do the same.”

Then, the single point Psianop targeted—

That position, where Lucnoca herself had carried him up—where her scales had been lost in the first round from Alus the Star Runner’s attack with Hillensingen the Luminous Blade, that had turned painful and itchy from the combined assault of Tuturi’s troops, and where Psianop had hit her with a fatal blow once already—the left side of the all-powerful dragon’s head.

“I’ll give you a second knockout blow!”

He spread his pseudopod out wide on the base of Lucnoca’s neck.

He stepped firmly down onto it. The nape of her neck where she had lost her dragon scale was right before his eyes.

Weight. Movement. Force. Technique.

Psianop needed to drive his very life force, everything he had, into her.

The dignity of battle he shared with Qwell.

The twenty-one years of training he spent in the Sand Labyrinth.

The remorse for being unable to slay the True Demon King.

The wonderful days he spent with the First Party.

To defeat.

To defeat.

Psianop had reached this far in order to defeat something.

The technique that defeated Neft the Nirvana.

The move that Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation had created himself.

The skill that only the martial artist in the First Party, the one who was meant to defeat the demon king, could utilize.

Its name—

“Howling Liquid Heavy Power!”

“Kwaugh, hrngh, hooo!”

The impact he sent into her, using up everything he had within him, raged even harder inside her skull, as if transmitted through the traces of the wounds he had already carved into her brain once before.

The attack to the back of her neck destroyed her cerebral peduncle, reaching all the way to the interbrain.

“Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo…”

Lucnoca the Winter laughed.

Perhaps it only appeared like that was the case.

Just as it had been up until now, she could do battle, even with her reflexive actions taken moments before death.

The strongest of all dragons, with her brain thoroughly destroyed, still didn’t stop.

Psianop too tried to fight on further.

Dragon claws closed in on Psianop right after he delivered his blow.

“…Neutralizing…Power…!”

The attack was impossible either to defend or evade.

Even with Psianop’s technique, he was going to be smashed to pieces, defenses and all—

However, right at that moment, an explosive light flashed.

“Psianop!”

There was the light of a steam automobile.

Tuturi the Blue Violet Foam had just fired a mechbow from inside the car.

Nothing more than a coincidence.

Hit with a shot from the Beyond’s strongest portable weapon, the trajectory of the claws shifted ever so slightly.

This attack, sent in Lucnoca’s dying moments, grazed Psianop.

“…”

Psianop had fallen onto the ground.

At the same moment, the strongest dragon this world knew collapsed as well.

Two moons looked down from above the frigid night sky.

“Hoo, hoo-hoo…hoo-hoo-hoo…”

Lucnoca the Winter was laughing. Laughing like a young girl.

Everything, absolutely all of it, seemed like a beautiful dream.

“…Psia…nop. Ahh… The Inexhaus…tible…Stagnation…”

It was a champion’s name. She would never forget it.

Up until her final moments, the memories of her beloved champions were hers and hers alone.

“…Lucnoca…the Winter…”

There was a voice. Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.

Had the final attack Lucnoca sent at him finally taken his life?

Her eyes could no longer see anything, but she wanted to believe she hadn’t.

“Right now, what’re you thinking…at your undeniable end…the moment of defeat…?”

As long as one continued to fight without end, they were fated to one day face defeat.

Even truly the most powerful being of all couldn’t escape from such an end.

What a ruthless truth indeed.

Lucnoca the Winter had kept on witnessing herself, always and forever.

“Uhoo, hoo-hoo…hoo, hoo…”

“…”

“It was the same…for all of them…fight and fight…up until the end…and then they died.”

She had yearned for that brilliance, the thing that she was never able to have for herself, thinking it was precious and sacred.

The courage, and recklessness, to challenge a foe of absolute might. She believed that such a heart was the most beautiful thing of all.

She had loved them.

“I’m going…to the same place…they all are…”

“…”

No matter who they may be, as long as they continued to fight, they would arrive at that place.

The champions that she would never be able to meet again were all there.

She had wanted so desperately to be pushed to the end of her strength… To see the end of battle…

“I…”

Psianop groaned.

“Lucnoca…the Winter. You couldn’t…have used up all your strength in this battle. This fight wasn’t one-on-one. I even knew this myself, and overlooked it. I wasn’t… Lucnoca the Winter. I wasn’t able to overcome you.

“…Ahh. Is that how it was? Uhoo, hoo, hoo…”

Lucnoca the Winter was laughing.

What a trivial thing to care about, indeed.

She had used all her might.

She managed to use all of her might, to the point that she struggled for her life.

Just how exactly was she supposed to have any more power than that?

No matter how many opponents she had faced. No matter what methods they had used against her.

In all her years, there had never been a battle where she was able to give her all.

“So fun…ahh, it was so very fun…too fun, even…hoo-hoo-hoo…”

Winter, the incarnation of despair, thought so.

“…I never…even noticed…any of that…”

Everything was so terribly silent.

It seemed as if the world itself was gently falling asleep.

A single season came to an end.

“…I won.”

As if dragging out the slight bit of life he had left, a single ooze departed.

Compared to the legend, the harbinger of the end, he was nothing but a terribly small weakling.

However, that weakling had won, and survived.

“I…won. Qwell…”

Ninth match. Winner, Psianop the Inexhaustible Stagnation.