CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST OF THE FINAL
In the former Eurazania, on the planned site of the demon lord Milim’s new city, two people were dancing close to the brink of death. Esprit was one of them; the other, her adversary, was Piriod the antlion.
Honestly, it’s not really in my character to fight so much for real like this…, thought Esprit.
The battle had grown desperate enough that Esprit wanted to complain to someone about it. Piriod could nullify all magic, which made her about the worst opponent possible for the demon. Even Nuclear Cannon, fired at point-blank range when all else failed, was deflected like it was nothing. The Prism Barrier that surrounded Piriod let her reflect any kind of magic…and not just that. It also worked against any skill that involved emitting beams or rays, to some extent. That made Piriod a natural enemy to any demon that fought with magic.
Esprit was having trouble buying more time for this battle. Her lack of strength peeved her deeply. Then some unexpected assistance arrived.
“Lemme help you out.”
It was Phobio, who had given Sufia command of his squad so he could join Esprit. Normally he should be supporting Sufia, his commanding officer, but every member of the Flying Beastly Knights was a warrior of their own. They didn’t need orders to make the right moves, and every unit showed extraordinary cohesion in battle. If both their commander and vice commander were fighting on the front lines, that’d be a far greater shot of morale than if they stuck to the rear guard. Phobio was stepping up first this time, lest Sufia steal all the glory yet again.
“Uh, you can tell this one’s bad news, right?” Esprit asked him.
“Yeah, kind of,” Phobio replied. “But I’d have a better shot against her than you, wouldn’t I?”
He was right. Esprit, gifted as she was at fighting with magic, couldn’t do a thing against this foe, but Phobio was more the close-range, blood-and-guts sort. Magic might not work on Piriod, but with Phobio, at least there was still a chance he could figure something out.
“Yeah…maybe,” Esprit said. “I guess I’ll join in, too…and fight with this.”
She had planned to break it out at some point, but Esprit chose that moment to unsheathe her magic sword—her main hope for victory. With her packing a blade and Phobio in his most powerful half-beast form, it was now a pair against the bewitchingly beautiful Piriod. But even with two against one, they were at an overwhelming disadvantage.
Esprit approached and swung her sword. It was a masterful stroke—it was hard to believe she had been an amateur until not long ago. She had begun learning the sword as a pastime more than anything else, but when Esprit dove into something, she tended to go overboard with it. She’d go through her reps over and over again whenever she had a spare moment, repeating the forms and stances Agera had shown her. It had granted a certain sharpness to her skills in a remarkably short time.
But regrettably, Piriod was far beyond her.
“Tsk! A fake, eh?” Esprit remarked. “One detailed enough to be indiscernible from the real thing…”
The moment she thought her slash would hit home, Piriod’s body burst into a cloud of light particles and dissolved. Esprit thought it was an afterimage of the real thing at first, but she quickly realized she was mistaken. The next moment, that fake split up into multiple Piriods. Each was impossible to distinguish from the real one, even with Esprit’s Keen Sense.
This is impossible, she thought. She had hoped to aid Carrera in some small way, but even buying a little time for her would be asking a lot. Phobio was helping out for the time being, but any help he could give was just a drop in the bucket.
He’s better than nothing, I guess.
It wasn’t a matter of things somehow working out just because they outnumbered her. That was how beyond the norm Piriod’s strength was.
Just as they expected, Esprit and Phobio were attacked from all sides. There was no way to tell which Piriod was the real one, so all they could do was defend themselves from the onslaught.
Esprit, by nature, tended to always look out for number one—that is, herself—so she didn’t try anything unnecessary. She had given up on this fight, ready to press the proverbial reset button on this video game. But death was out of the question.
I think I could revive myself if I died, but dying means I’m not following Sir Rimuru’s orders. Lady Carrera would be beyond upset, too, and I don’t think I could ever forgive myself, either.
So there would be no dying that day. But that didn’t mean she had some surefire way of escaping the front lines. Simply put, she was a cornered rat.
Thanks to these self-contradictory thoughts, Esprit was visibly slowing down. Piriod didn’t miss this, of course, her poisoned fangs taking aim at—
“Don’t just stand there!”
Esprit was kicked away by Phobio. Immediately afterward, poison-laced scales fired by Piriod rained down on the spot where Esprit had stood. They glowed with a beautiful, almost otherworldly radiance, but the poison inside was deadly enough to kill even demons. Its toxins corroded physical bodies and destroyed the spirit inside. Even Esprit, a count-class Demon Peer, couldn’t take this level of harm.
“Ow,” she said. “Sheesh. Also, thanks.”
“Sure,” Phobio said, acknowledging Esprit’s casual appreciation as he resumed the attack on Piriod. He sent countless clones of himself across the field, lunging at his opponent with seemingly extraneous claw attacks. It seemed pretty pointless if Phobio didn’t know who the real Piriod was, but he wasn’t about to give up on this simple, straightforward approach.
“You know,” Esprit suddenly said, “you’re weaker than me, right? Why don’t you just give up?”
She knew this was a pointless question, so she didn’t expect an answer from him. But Phobio flashed a bold smile back at her.
“Wow, that’s rude,” he replied. “But fine. As long as I’m still alive, I win. Like Geld said once, as long as you survive and win next time, there’s no problem to speak of. And if so, now’s the time to gather clues for that next fight. That’s what I’m workin’ on. And yeah, I’m weak. I hate to admit that…but I just gotta do what I can.”
Esprit was impressed with the surprisingly serious answer. She agreed with it, too.
“I’m a bit of a sore loser myself, but I gotta say, I’m impressed with you,” she said. “Guess you deserve to be called the Black Leopard Fang after all.”
“Thank you, Lady Esprit.”
“You can be more casual with me than that, you know.”
“A mistake along those lines led me to ruin once…but now’s not the time to talk about that.”
Phobio, unlike Esprit, was taking this battle seriously. Even if he stood no chance of winning, he kept viciously attacking Piriod, never retreating for a moment. He had become a wind of the darkest black, tearing through all Piriod’s doppelgängers, but still to no real effect.
But then—perhaps finding this whole act annoying—Piriod struck back for the first time. Her scales swirled in the air, then advanced upon Phobio like a drill. Even those little scale fragments could be a deadly weapon when gathered together. If Phobio took a direct hit, he’d be nothing but ground meat, and he knew that most of all. The difference in strength was obvious—really, trying to face Piriod was nothing short of suicide. But he had made the same decision as Esprit. If he didn’t put in a full effort, it’d all but guarantee Carrera’s defeat.
Reckless or not, I gotta do it. If I can divert her attention even a little bit, my life is a small price to pay for that.
Phobio was proud to be one of the Three Lycanthropeers. Part of him did want to flee, but that would mean losing Carillon’s trust and betraying all the troops who looked up to him. That, in his mind, could never be allowed to happen—and that was what motivated him.
His preferred fighting style involved using his high mobility to toy with his enemies before finishing them off with his sharp claw slashes. He didn’t have particularly great defense, but given his specialization in speed, it wasn’t that much of a problem. That speed was about the only thing keeping him alive, and even then only barely. The slightest lapse in concentration would result in his death. It was a pretty dangerous tightrope to walk.
Esprit, looking at him, found herself reevaluating her battle ally. Hmm…who was it? Gobwa? The girl who serves under Sir Benimaru. Isn’t this Phobio guy constantly babbling at me about how much he loves her? I guess he can perform when it counts, though. Even though he’s just this puny human—not like a demon, who can resurrect itself whenever it dies.
From her point of view, even Phobio, who had become quite powerful among the higher-level magic-born, was just a puny human being. Esprit, after all, was an elite among elites, a great demon who served Carrera, one of the rulers of the demon realm. For her, death wasn’t a finality—she could just come right back, like continuing after losing all your lives, so she never felt particularly endangered by anything. Depending on how bad the damage was, she might have to sleep for a few centuries, but for a demon with eternal life, that would pass in the blink of an eye.
To her, then, the sight of those trying their hardest to survive within their relatively limited time was somewhat dazzling. What about her, though? Whenever she ran into something she couldn’t handle, she could just turn to her master Carrera and she’d work something out. Any minor annoyances in her life could be safely shunted to her colleague Agera. Up until then, Esprit really never had to deal with staking everything she had on something.
Wait a minute. Could I actually be less useful than Phobio here?
No!
Something deep within Esprit screamed out that it was impossible. Maybe it was that genuine part of her, one she had almost forgotten about, that absolutely hated to lose. As if to prove it, Esprit stood back up, a strong figure after almost throwing in the towel a moment ago. Not because dying would violate her orders or for some other backward-looking reason. She just wanted to win—and her will was clear in her eyes.
And what’s more:
“Let’s be frank—we can’t beat this person, right? Instead, Phobio, why don’t we just give her as hard a time as we can?”
Esprit was as much a mercenary as she was a realist. She wasn’t going to entertain reckless dreams of making a comeback. Coldly and calmly, she was formulating the conditions required for a tactical victory.
“Heh… Got any bright ideas?” Phobio asked with a laugh.
He sensed a change in Esprit’s mood. Now he could feel that their chances of winning had gone from zero to…something better.
“Well, we can’t win with a traditional approach,” she said. “But I have a little secret trick I could use. Would you like to forge a demon pact with me?”
As Esprit spoke, bits of scale were whizzing past Phobio, his entire body sporting an ever-growing number of light cuts. It was only a matter of time before the poison took hold, meaning that Phobio’s tenuous grasp on life would soon fade away.
But despite that, Phobio smiled. “Another pact, huh…? Well, no time to ponder it. Let’s do it. What kind of demon pact are we talking about?”
Phobio had gone through the bitter experience of forging a pact with Footman and his cohorts, only to be tricked in the end. But he was going through with this anyway, a sign of just how resigned he was to his fate.
“Oh,” Esprit casually replied, “just your typical one. ‘I will grant you any wish, and in return I ask for your soul,’ that kind of thing. The classic sort demons use to bring humans to their doom.”
As demons more or less lived off human souls, they were pretty good at forging contracts like that. With the magic they controlled, they really could fulfill most wishes. This wasn’t as true for newborn demons, however; only the oldest of the old—those around since ancient times—had that kind of power. For someone like Esprit, it was a quick little trick she could pull off without breaking a sweat.
“Gotcha. I trust you, Esprit, so count me in.”
Phobio readily agreed, not so much as wincing even as his right arm was being crushed to pieces.
Esprit smiled. “Good. If you hesitated at all, it might have been too late.”
Even before she heard Phobio’s answer, she had already begun making preparations.
“I know what you’ll wish for, but—”
“The power to get through this!”
With a broad nod, Esprit activated the demon pact to make Phobio’s wish come true. In exchange, a pathway to Phobio’s soul opened up, allowing Esprit to enter. After just a moment of hesitation, she shed her physical body, as if shrugging off all her indecision—and then, back to her usual shape as a spiritual life-form, she entered his soul. This was Possess, a skill intrinsic to the demon races. It was used for things like taking over the body of someone they forged pacts with, and that was close to what was happening with Esprit and Phobio.
“I really didn’t want to take this measure, you know. It’s such a wonderful body Sir Rimuru granted me, and now I have to leave it in the middle of a battlefield like this.”
“Whoa, what’s going on here—?”
“Calm down. We’re smack-dab in the middle of a lethal situation, but I’m using Ultraspeed Thought to extend time a million times over.”
Esprit’s calm voice gave Phobio the mental fortitude to understand what was going on. Indeed, the world seemed completely stopped to him, frozen in time.
“…Huh. So this is what life looks like from the top of the heap.”
“Oh, I still have quite a while to go, trust me. Lady Carrera can slow it down a hundred million or so times over. She can instantly launch ritual magic that normally takes years to prepare.”
“Ha-ha! I’m impressed…”
Impressed wasn’t the half of it. This was on a whole other dimension—a realm Phobio couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Ignoring her dumbfounded companion, Esprit began to explain matters.
“We have time now, sort of, so listen closely. I have exited my own body and returned to my spiritual life-form base in order to inhabit you. Normally, I’d completely take over my host and use their power as my own, but that’s kind of a whole multistep process, and honestly, doing that won’t make me much stronger at all.”
Phobio’s wheelhouse was physical combat, especially close-range melee combat. The training Middray pounded into him had greatly improved those skills as well. Esprit, on the other hand, had just recently taken up swordsmanship as a hobby. Piriod was a magic specialist, too, so Esprit could land a few hits on her, but Piriod had adapted to her so well that defeat was imminent. That was one reason why Esprit preferred to have Phobio retain control over his body.
But that didn’t mean she’d be an idle observer.
“The reason I’m inhabiting you is so we can combine our forces.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Just keep focusing on evasive measures for me. The way it was before, you would’ve been killed within ten—no, five minutes, but now that my power’s integrated with yours…”
Esprit had used a demon pact to occupy Phobio’s body. Now she was giving all her power to him.
“…So if I use that power, I can beat her?”
Phobio’s instincts told him it couldn’t be that simple. And he was right.
“It’ll take more than just that. I think she’s got even more of a ‘vision’ in this fight than I do.”
Piriod’s compound eyes gave her visual access to all kinds of information. She could clearly see the flow of magicules around her, which allowed her to instantly react to any sort of magic cast. That much was obvious when she threw Carrera’s Abyss Annihilation back at her on the very first try. It proved to Esprit that Piriod was even more adept at handling magic than her. Esprit was probably outclassed in Hasten Thought, too.
“So what’ll I do, then?”
“Just keep struggling. Do everything you can to stay alive. And you won’t be alone, of course. I’ll help you.”
Phobio would be the one calling the shots during melee combat, but Esprit was going to engage in a little magical warfare, too. She knew it wasn’t going to work, but the idea was it’d help mitigate attacks on Phobio.
“Huh. Okay. So you’ll try to boost my chances of survival as much as possible?”
“Exactly. For us, a tactical victory means we survive until someone comes along who can beat her. If we can also keep her attention and prevent her from interfering with Lady Carrera, I’ll have nothing to complain about.”
Phobio agreed. It seemed sound to him.
“So we’re buying time, in other words.”
“It’s about the only choice we have, isn’t it? Given the clear difference in ability, I don’t see us doing much of anything else. But don’t worry. According to my calculations, we should be able to hold out for twenty minutes this way.”
“Ha-ha! Yeah, great to hear.”
Phobio chuckled at this. How was he not supposed to worry? He quickly banished the thought, however. It pained Phobio to admit it, but he was a pushover. But the weak have their own way of fighting, and Phobio was ready to do his best.
The battle plunged into its second round.
With Phobio and Esprit occupying the same body, their existence points added up to a sum that was more powerful than its parts. It was still under one million, which was nothing compared with Piriod’s, but Phobio was moving much better than before, letting him somehow find a way to keep up with his foe.
One reason for that was because Phobio no longer had to worry about physical injury—not with Esprit taking the damage for him. Fatigue wasn’t a concern anymore, either. It helped him clear his mind of worry and go into full-throttle battle mode, giving up on making this a prolonged fight entirely. This approach usually came with a pretty short time limit, but it was working only because Esprit was providing the magic force to keep it going.
Phobio’s Animalize skill worked in three stages. The first was his usual magic-born form—the most well-balanced, least draining type. The second was his leopard-headed magic-born form, geared for battle and quite versatile. Finally, there was a fully animalized form capable of tricky, unpredictable moves. This form was the best in terms of pure speed, but Phobio couldn’t use most of his sharply honed skills with it, so it wasn’t well suited for humanoid enemies.
Right now, Phobio was in his most powerful leopard-headed form. It drained him quickly, even damaging his body when he went all-out like that. He had been carefully controlling his power, releasing it in quick little spurts. Even when he took damage, his lycanthrope body’s natural regenerative ability let him manage that well enough. Maintaining that form consumed physical and magical force, which was a disadvantage in extended fighting. Now, however, he could put all those concerns aside and just keep on fighting. The hand he had lost a moment before was wholly rebuilt and ready to be used to its fullest.
That was all thanks to Esprit. Phobio’s soul was fully protected with Esprit incorporating her own spiritual body into it. That was made possible by her unique skill Observer. Using it, she could keep a connection with people she knew that transcended time and space—and combined with the demon pact, she could take control of their souls in an even more complete fashion than before. It meant Esprit would take a lot of damage, but she wasn’t about to complain. She tapped into everything that made her a demon, enduring the barrage in any way possible.
But if you’re hurting, well, you’re hurting.
“I really hate insects,” Esprit grumbled. “These attacks that hit directly on your psyche… It makes having Cancel Pain meaningless.”
It was the combination of many little factors like these that gave insectors an advantage over demons. It was always a terrible mismatch—if a demon and an insector of equal strength fought each other, the insector would always win. These unfavorable conditions were conspiring to make Esprit’s damage build up in no time.
Phobio, however, was still fine. Thanks to Esprit’s sacrifices, the fight remained competitive. And some good news was arriving.
“I knew it,” Esprit said. “I’ve just figured out why we’re holding out better than I thought.”
“Oh?” Phobio replied.
“You don’t have to react to this,” Esprit muttered, “but despite her gifts, it looks like Piriod was hurt pretty bad by Lady Carrera’s magic. I had a hunch deflecting that huge spell had to come with risk, and I was right.”
Carrera’s Abyss Annihilation had the power to destroy an entire planet, depending on how you used it. Piriod had taken that blow with her entire body, so Esprit assumed it must’ve had some effect on her. She couldn’t prove that hunch by herself, but possessing Phobio and revving up her Observer skill to maximum finally convinced her it was true.
“So if I attack whatever part of her is damaged…can I win this?”
“No way. The damage is slowing her attacks, but her defense is still an iron wall. But think of it the opposite way. This is good for us, isn’t it?”
Phobio fell silent for a moment. Then he heaved a heavy sigh.
“So I still have to dodge her attacks until help arrives…?”
It was a sad conclusion, one he hated to make, but it was the only one he could reach. So, resigning himself to his fate, Phobio focused on Piriod’s moves, trying to execute his role as best he could.
………
……
…
Around forty minutes later:
“…We’re sure putting up a fight, aren’t we?” Phobio asked Esprit.
“I’m too tired to talk. I can’t go on. I’m sooo dead.”
Phobio was cut and wounded from head to toe, but he was alive. Esprit, protecting his soul and taking the damage, was also just barely conscious. They had assumed that twenty minutes would be the best they could do, so for her, this was a tremendously satisfying result.
But that result came only after they gave it everything they had. Piriod, meanwhile, was doing just fine. If anything, she was moving better than at the start of the fight—which meant she had healed whatever damage Carrera had given her. Strategically, this was a great victory…but tactically, it was clearly a defeat. But that was okay. Both Phobio and Esprit, after all, had done their parts.
“Tsk! Just after I get a girlfriend, too. I couldn’t regret this more if I tried.”
“Oh? Was that why you were fighting harder than I expected? Well, congrats on exceeding my expectations, then. I’ll take a message to her for you as a reward.”
If they couldn’t get back up on their feet, all that remained was to wait for death. Knowing this, they began to exchange banter with each other. Phobio would have preferred to indulge in memories of Gobwa, the first real romantic partner he ever had, but Esprit wouldn’t let him.
“What kind of monster are you?!” he asked.
“Not a monster,” she retorted. “A demon, remember?”
“Oh, right. I guess sarcasm doesn’t work on you, huh? Sad.”
“Well, I appreciate the compliment, at least.”
“I wasn’t complimenting you.”
“No? No, probably not.”
Through the intense battle, the two of them had grown close enough to talk this casually with each other. So they waited for the moment to come, distracting themselves as much as possible from the fear of death and the humiliation of defeat.
However…
Piriod held out her hand, her expression unchanging. Carrera had crushed the organ within her body that generated her magic, but now it was repaired, making her casting even more efficient than before. It would only take a moment to dispose of Phobio, who was lying motionless on the ground.
She joyfully awaited the screams of death Phobio would soon belt out, not knowing he and Esprit were slowing down time to prolong their bantering. There wasn’t a shred of respect for this opponent who caused her so much trouble. She was there simply to pursue the pleasure her instincts demanded.
From Piriod’s fingertips, a ray of dense, compressed magic shot out. It dug deep into the ground, not piercing Phobio. A hobgoblin had jumped out from Phobio’s shadow, grabbing his leg and throwing him out of danger with the momentum.
Then:
“Oof! Boy, I showed up with the best timing ever, didn’t I?”
The dim-witted-sounding voice echoed across the field. It belonged, of course, to Gobta. He had rushed in to help Phobio out of this critical situation, and he was ready to make his moves.
And Gobta wasn’t alone, either. As Phobio flew through the air, he was caught by Gobwa, a beautiful red-haired woman in a scarlet military uniform. She held Phobio firmly to her chest as she brought him out of Piriod’s line of fire. Awesome! Phobio thought, though he didn’t say it out loud.
Ranga, who was the last to appear, stood up front to protect Gobta, providing a blockade against any follow-up move Piriod might try. Without hesitation, he launched Apocalypse Howling, which slowed the insector’s movements.
With those quick, keen movements, Phobio, along with Esprit inside him, was saved from almost wholly assured doom.
Esprit, back in the body she had abandoned, sat up.
“You’ve amazed me again, Sir Gobta!” she said. “I always believed you’d come rescue me!”
Those gleaming eyes of hers weren’t ridiculing Gobta—she really was a fan of him.
“Oh? You were, huh?” he asked. “Wow. I dunno what to say.”
“Now come on and show her exactly why you’re part of the Big Four!”
Esprit couldn’t stop piling on the praise. And none of it was trolling, either. She meant every word.
“Well, uh, maybe once this fight’s over, we could go on a date—”
But just when Gobta began to get carried away:
“Oh, um, I’m not looking, thanks!” Esprit said.
She didn’t have any romantic sort of love for him, a fact she felt prudent to make clear. This made Gobta visibly disappointed, with shoulders sagging and everything, even as Esprit made good her retreat.
So thanks to Phobio and Esprit’s hard work, the front line had yet to collapse. And after that timely substitution, the battle was in its third round.
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