Instant Death Magic

What the hell just happened?

I sat in the chair and stared blankly out the window. A terminal sentence, and a life already sinking under a mountain of debt. In a spasm of giving up, I had dumped every curse I had on Trenba — the bastard who was always looking for a fight.

And then I had seen a white flame on him. I had closed my hand around it. And Trenba had gone down.

I knew. If I had squeezed any harder—

"He would've died."

The certainty sat heavy in my palm. That white flame had been Trenba's life force — his soul. A moment ago, I had been trying to snuff it out. Instant death. He would not even have understood why he was dying.

Why had a power like this appeared? The question did not linger long. The monster's mana stone. The human-shaped thing sealed inside it, the one with the crimson eyes. Those eyes had been identical to—

Some kind of parasitic monster?

At least it did not seem visible to anyone else. As if a death sentence were not enough, now I had a parasite riding along with it. I lifted a hand and dragged it slowly down my face. My head was a mess.

Trenba had been carried off as he was. By tomorrow the rumor would be all over the district — Trenba the troublemaker, taken down by Haren the weakling. Rumors rode other rumors. It would spread fast. But what did any of that matter? I was going to die in a few months. Whatever people said about me was none of my concern.

That was what I was thinking, leaning back against the inn bed, when something cut across my mind.

Wait.

Assume the flame I had seen was a soul — a life force. Then couldn't I see my own? The thought had barely formed before I was shoving my sleeve up. The eye was still there, coiled around my wrist. I called up the sensation from before and pushed power into the skin.

The world tilted. A new field of vision was flooding into my brain, and the dizziness came with it. I clenched my jaw, endured it, and looked forward through the eye on my wrist. After a moment the view began to widen.

I can see it.

Inside my body, a deep crimson flame was burning. And it was terribly small. Set beside Trenba's, it looked like a wick that might go out at any second.

"Damn it."

So the eccentric mage had been telling the truth. A terminal life, just as he'd said. Mana Stone Sclerosis. Destined to harden into a mana stone where I stood. The only way I lived was to become a mage — and for a commoner, that was next to impossible. A bitter sigh had just risen in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my throat when I could not swallow it down.

"AAAAAAAH!"

A scream tore the air apart. I pressed my face to the window at once. Far off, a stretch of space had crumpled in on itself.

Dimensional Transfer. The phenomenon that brought monsters into the world. And the monsters were already here. Lesser beasts tore down the street, snatching people as they ran. But the small ones were only the beginning. The real threat was always the greater monster that led the pack. Dimensional Transfers almost never opened twice in a single day. Today, luck had simply run out.

I reached for my gear — and stopped.

I was going to die of Mana Stone Sclerosis anyway. What reason did a man like that have to keep working as a monster hunter? I did not even need the money. Anything I earned would only go to paying down the debt.

The thought turned over and over in my head. But somewhere in the middle of it, my hand had already closed around the sword.

In the instant before I lost consciousness with my palm on that mana stone, only one thing had risen to the surface. A boy who had been in a situation like mine, dying — and me, bowing my head to a mage and begging for my life anyway. That was a regret deep enough to be the last thing I saw at the edge of death. I had wanted to live righteously, and I had been the one to throw that righteousness away. The shame of it had sat in me like a clot ever since.

What the hell did being weak even matter? Even if the body was not strong, the heart at least should have been. What surfaces at the edge of death is bound, in the end, to the essence of a life. What I had been missing — justice. The small justice of raising a voice against what was wrong. The same justice my father had once shouted at a mage. I had wanted that for a very long time.

I took the sword. I ran down the stairs. People were pouring in through the inn door, fleeing the monsters. I went the other way.

Outside was chaos. People scattered in every direction, and the small monsters hunted them with a stubborn, single-minded hunger. Lesser beasts, hunched and gaunt in the shape of wolves, standing only half as tall as a man. Small — but there were so many of them. Monster hunters were appearing here and there, and still they could not keep up with the numbers.

Then I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠saw one of them about to come down on two children. Both kids were sobbing, their little legs pumping as hard as they would go. It was not going to be enough.

Power drove down through my legs. I threw my body forward and put everything I had into the swing, aiming for the heart, where the mana stone would be. Kill it in one blow.

A shrieking clang rang out. The sword slammed into the monster's hide and stopped. Even a beast this small was still a monster. Damn it. Any other hunter would have punched straight through. I felt, all over again, exactly how frail this body was — a lifetime of training and eating myself sick, and the muscle had never once agreed to stay. A scrawny frame. A sick constitution. I had always resented being born like this.

The ambush had still landed. The wolf-beast eased back a step, lips peeling off a snarl of teeth.

"Run!"

I shouted it at the terrified children. They snapped back to themselves a beat late and started running again. The wolf's eyes tracked them — and the instant I saw that, I charged. I meant to use the opening.

I understood, a second later, how badly I had misread it.

An eyelid opened on the wolf's cheek. The thing had only been pretending to watch the children from the start. Monsters were born hunters. I remembered, all over again, what that actually meant.

Its paws hammered the ground. In the same breath its teeth came for me — a hideous, rusted set of fangs. One bite and I would not live long enough to scream. I wrenched my feet back and clubbed the sword across its path. Steel and teeth met with a jarring crash, and both of us staggered. I was the one losing the contest of strength. The opponent was a monster. This was not a fight I could win with force.

It kept driving me backward. The wolf's killing intent sharpened, raw and ugly. It meant to pin me with sheer power and finish it. Humans or monsters, it was all the same — the moment they sensed weakness, they came on like a falling blade. They would never acknowledge anything weaker than themselves.

Be killed, or kill. The two choices were still hanging in front of me when it opened.

The eye that had sprouted on my arm after I touched the mana stone. It caught the monster's life force — a flame burning a dark, bruised violet. The same kind of flame I had seen on Trenba, and on myself.

Trenba came back to me. The way he had gone down the instant I closed my hand around the fire he carried.

Was this a gamble?

No. It was certainty. The cleanest way to put a monster down. With a move like that sitting in my hand, there was nothing to hesitate over.

I let the sword fall. The sudden loss of resistance pitched the wolf forward — and it took the opening without a flicker of doubt, a reaction stripped straight out of animal instinct. The fangs came on.

My hand got there first.

Extinguish it. I will extinguish it.

The flame in my grip roared, violent and wild. For the first time the wolf's body locked. It twisted, tearing out a scream of pain. I put more strength into my fist and let the will to kill it — nothing else, only that — break loose.

The wolf crashed to the earth and did not move again. Its life had ended inside my fist. An instantly dead wolf-beast filled my vision.

"Hah— hah."

I stared at it, dragging air into my lungs. Dead. Instant death. I had killed a monster with nothing but my own power. It was only a single lesser beast. Even so, a tremor ran over my hands and would not stop.

And that was not all.

Power.

Vitality moved through my body in a way it never had before. Strength poured into my hands. My hunched back straightened. For the first time in my life, it felt as though real force had taken up residence in my grip. An unfamiliar thrill drove straight through me. Was this just the drunkenness of winning?

No. That's not it.

It felt as though my physical class had simply gone up — as though the small monster's life force had flowed into me. I turned the Third Eye on myself at once.

Stronger. Using the monster's life as kindling, my own flame had climbed a full degree. It had looked ready to go out at any second. Now it burned as if it had been given a different kind of life altogether.

What if.

If I kept hunting monsters — could I outrun the death sentence? The thought slid through my head and stayed. Death had come right up to my face. And now I could see a path away from it.

"AAAAH!"

"Run— run!"

Screams broke across my hearing again. At the same instant a dimensional rift tore open with a heavy boom, and a monster the size of a house dragged itself into the world.

An abyss of a creature. Something a human being had no business standing in front of. Then dozens of burning stones fell out of the sky, and the whole shape of the fight changed.

"It's a mage!"

"We're saved! We're saved!"

A mage who had sensed the Dimensional Transfer had arrived. The greater monster and the mage began their battle, and in the space that opened between them the monster hunters threw everything they had into the lesser beasts. I did the same.

The flame on the greater monster was enormous. I could see it with perfect clarity. Could I extinguish a fire like that? It was not impossible. It would take a long time. But someday, I thought, I would be able to put even that flame out — the same way the mage above us was throwing magic around as if the sky belonged to him.

A chill went through me.

The moment I looked at the mage, my body locked. A golden flame was bursting off him, so overwhelmingly vast it seemed to reach past his flesh and interfere with the world itself. What kind of life force was that? Beside it, even the greater monster looked small. I closed my fist until the knuckles ached. Seeing power like that only made the hunger rise harder.

Mages had life force too. Which meant they were no different from the monsters. Someday I would be able to extinguish theirs as well. I would be able to stand against the ones who styled themselves as evil.

Instant Death Magic.

The mages I had spent my whole life looking up at. People who held power and still were not just. I had hated them. And I had always, always yearned for their strength. I had wanted a power like that so badly it hurt. So I named this one myself, without asking anyone's leave.

A small resolution that belonged only to me, the one who had come back from death. So for now I would do what a monster hunter was supposed to do, and take down even one more beast. That was the small justice I could achieve today.