Flight (2)
A parry?!
My mind seized up at the technique that old comrade from the Far East had once shown me.
I hadn't even realized when the attack had landed.
Was she just fast? No—I'm faster.
Some kind of magic? I'd already confirmed all three of her spells.
And besides, I know better. That's not what this was. A strike from outside conscious awareness. I'd grown complacent, assuming that as a mage I held the advantage at close range—and the woman had wasted no time punishing that lapse.
Idiot. I knew plenty of mages excel in close quarters!
Her technique was at a level hard to reconcile with the word 'mage' at all. A single motion refined to perfection. It might not have reached the heights of Lord Takemikazuchi, but it would have been enough to fell any ordinary adventurer.
Even as admiration bloomed in me, my body was already reacting. Yes, I'd been caught off guard—but I wasn't exactly some nameless face in the crowd of 'ordinary adventurers,' either.
Thud—! A numbing jolt of pain shot from the soles of my feet up along my spine.
That was the price of twisting mid-fall and landing on my legs. I'd spared myself the indignity of landing headfirst or on my back, but the pain in my legs was nothing to shrug off. If I'd smashed headfirst into the ground instead, who knows what might have happened.
Cold sweat trickled down as I prepared for her next attack.
"[Firebo—?!"
I tried to ready the spell, but she was faster. Before I could even activate the swift-cast magic known as the swiftest of its kind, she snatched me up and hurled me away like so much garbage.
I hit the ground back-first with a bone-rattling crash, rubble shattering beneath me and kicking up a cloud of choking dust.
Cough... It hurt, quite a lot actually, but at least now I could—
Huh?
Without warning, my heart began pounding with an ominous rhythm, as if foreseeing what was to come.
"...This place—"
"Sharp instincts, I'll give you that."
The place I'd been thrown to was the very spot where I had been blocking her bombardment moments ago.
One might ask what difference that made. But if they felt the density of mind now hanging in the air, the question would answer itself.
Lumps of accumulated mind had been building up around the battlefield, bit by bit, as we fought. Because it had gathered so gradually over the course of the duel, I'd noticed too late.
Naturally, a battle between mages means their minds are in constant, vigorous motion. Between two strong mages, a temporary spike in mind density is, in a sense, to be expected.
But I'd never been in a bombardment exchange this intense before, and the accumulation was unlike anything I'd seen—so I'd simply brushed it off as normal. But what if it wasn't? What if this enormous mass of mind wasn't just accumulating by accident—what if someone had been deliberately piling it up, with another purpose entirely in mind?
The owners of the mind here were me and her.
And it wasn't mine...
My neck creaked as I turned, and there she stood, expressionless as ever.
But was it my imagination? To my eyes, she seemed to be smirking down at me.
"[Lugio]."
A death sentence, delivered without a heartbeat's warning.
The mind enveloping my surroundings surged all at once—
—BWOOOOM!!
—and then it blew the entire area, me included, sky-high.
"Wh-what... what just happened?"
"It seems... Alfia won?"
"Hey, Alfia! No matter how you slice it, this was going too far!"
Ignoring the buzzing swarm of onlookers, I stared at one spot and one spot only.
...The presence is gone.
There had been a presence. Now it had vanished.
Don't tell me he actually evaporated.
'He didn't seem that weak.'
The physical exchange had lasted only an instant, but that single instant had told her a great deal. Astonishingly, the body of the man she'd taken for a mage belonged not to a mage at all, but to someone on par with a professional vanguard.
'A vanguard, carrying magic power that rivals mine?'
Of course, she herself was stronger than your average vanguard despite being a mage—but no one else could claim the same.
She was a monster of talent, hailed as such even by the gods. No one understood better than she did just how aberrant her own existence was. And this man's magic rivaled hers—while his body surpassed it.
In Alfia, who took extreme interest in no one besides her younger sister, a small seed of curiosity took root.
'Is he the same kind of case as me?'
The curse that gnawed away at me and my sister. Yet, ironically, that very curse was what had made us this strong. Which, looked at from the other side, meant nothing less could have made us strong in the first place.
No one became this powerful without paying a price this steep. Of course, she was seventeen and he was thirty-two... but honestly, she still wasn't certain that was even true.
'Come to think of it, he only ever used one hand.'
He'd been wrapped up so tightly in his robe that Alfia had never noticed the man was missing an arm.
'The speed in that one instant, too... he really might be someone like me.'
Lost deep in that sudden thought, Alfia never noticed what anyone watching would have seen: two shadows slipping away from the crowd that surrounded the battlefield.
Not that she would have cared even if she had.
I thought I was going to die. I'm not joking—I genuinely thought I was going to die.
"Hah... I've probably shaken her off by now... right?"
A secluded back alley, nearly on the opposite end of the battlefield. Having sprinted there at full speed, I stood catching my breath and letting out a long sigh of relief.
'That could have killed me.'
The witch's attack had been terrifyingly powerful. It made me wonder, honestly, how someone like her had failed to leave a name in history.
Power, speed, precision, technique, and even the field of vision to read an entire battle—every one of her strengths ranked first or second among everyone I'd ever faced. Not all qualities taken together, mind you, but measured one by one. Compared as an individual, she stood alone at the very top.
At the same level, it would have been her—not the Colossus or the Empress—who represented the era as its foremost adventurer. Or, to put it another way: even she would have fallen before the Black Dragon.
Once again I understood, viscerally, what a miracle my own feat had been. Only because I'd lived through it once did I know—there is no such thing as a second stroke of luck.
'How bitterly ironic.'
With a tangle of feelings, I looked down at my robe.
A cloak woven from the Black Dragon's hide. A farewell gift from the one-eyed goddess, who had lost both her dearest friend and her beloved to the hero who finished that final labor.
She must have been in agony—and yet, to the very end, she had done nothing but encourage me. If she had cursed me, resented me, it might have hurt less. Those farewells offered through a face on the verge of tears only carved my wounds deeper and let them fester.
Perhaps that was the punishment she had chosen for me.
'Then again—you really are absurdly sturdy.'
I knew better than anyone how strong it was, and still the defense left me marveling. With no proper battle since that day, I'd never grasped its performance in practice—and here it was, proving itself in the worst possible way.
The strongest shield.
The exact opposite of the divine dagger—those words surfaced unbidden.
'And it seems it has that effect, too...'
The hide of the Black Dragon, the beast even gods had feared, carried a secondary property: it deceived even the senses of the divine. Draped loosely, one might not notice; bound tight as it was now, it was supposedly impossible to see through.
I'd heard that when it was forged, that very trait had caused the smith no end of trouble.
'When I first heard about it, I wondered why anyone would need such a function...'
And now here I was, desperately grateful for it. You really never do know what life will hand you.
"Whew. In any case, the situation's safely resolved... it is resolved, isn't it?"
"Did you think it would be?"
A heavy pressure bore down on the space around me.
I'd had a vague feeling I was being followed, so I'd headed somewhere deserted—but I never dreamed I was actually being tracked. I couldn't be certain until he was close. If I'd managed to slip away unnoticed, I might have dismissed the feeling as nerves.
I'd always prided myself on that one sense, and now my confidence in it had taken a hit. Part of it was his skill, but part of it was that I'd grown dull. I hadn't skipped a single day of training since that day—and apparently even that hadn't been enough.
Setting the regret aside, I focused on the figure before me.
A towering frame well over two meters. A solemn face and bearing. Even his presence resembled his nature—heavy and unyielding.
I endured the weight pressing down on both shoulders and met his gaze. I had never seen him in person, but I knew beyond any doubt.
"The Colossus..."
"You know me?"
"How could I not?"
"Fair enough."
He was a man of weighty presence, yet he didn't deny it. It didn't feel like bravado or pride—simply a statement of fact.
"Who are you?"
"I told you already. Vesta."
The words came out sharper than I intended. Facing one powerful opponent after another had been whittling my nerves down to a fine edge. That woman Alfia before, and this man now—neither was anyone to take lightly.
The strongest human opponent I'd ever fought had been Ottar. And today, in the space of a single day, that record had been shattered twice over. Of course my hackles were up.
"That's not the answer I want. You know what I'm asking."
"..."
"Orario stands at a critical juncture right now."
A critical juncture? As if reading my thoughts, the man's mouth opened, and out came a word I had come to loathe.
"The Three Great Quests."
"!!!"
The Three Great Quests. Humanity's ancient, unfulfilled wish, handed down since time immemorial.
Behemoth, Sovereign of the Earth. Leviathan, King of the Sea. And... the One-Eyed Black Dragon.
Monsters that had menaced mankind since the ancient world—calamities that had sired countless tragedies and strewn endless suffering in their wake. And... the terror that had annihilated the Zeus and Hera Familias, the generation once called the Age of Glory.
In my era, two of the Three Great Quests had already been completed. Behemoth had been lulled to its second sleep, and Leviathan had been reduced to a lid, sealing shut yet another entrance to the Dungeon.
But one alone had followed a different path. The One-Eyed Black Dragon had, by all accounts, wiped out the once-mighty Zeus and Hera Familias.
Not devastated. Annihilated. Swept away so completely that not even roots remained.
And in the vacuum they left behind, the Loki and Freya Familias had claimed the title of the city's strongest.
Which meant—right now, at this very moment, they stood on the eve of their own annihilation.
"..."
The black wind I had once faced flashed through my mind. The moment its single remaining eye had turned toward me, I had frozen solid, unable even to move. Even after I took its head, the fear had never faded—it had only swelled larger within me.
That was how deep a wound the Black Dragon had carved into my spirit.
"Beginning with this Harvest Festival, we will launch our campaign against the Three Great Quests. In other words—a war of total commitment."
The conquest of the Three Great Quests. Just remembering the Black Dragon was almost more than I could bear, and yet they intended to take on the Black Dragon, Behemoth, and Leviathan.
Of course, it was bravado only those who had never fought the calamities could afford—but on the other hand, I could sense a genuine confidence in it, the certainty that ancient calamities could indeed be slain.
If I'd had that kind of confidence, could I have achieved a better outcome? Could I have saved more people? Could I have—
"Let me say it again. We are standing at a critical moment."
That heavy voice hauled my drowning mind back to the surface.
"A wildcard appearing on the eve of a decisive battle is not something we can welcome."
Finally, I understood what he wanted.
The Three Great Quests—humanity's dearest wish. And at the very moment they were about to attempt that great feat, a mysterious power had appeared. No records. No history. No past to speak of.
Because I was a being from the future.
To them, I was the very definition of the unknown. For an adventurer, the unknown was not something to be feared like a friend—it was something to be conquered, cut down without hesitation. And apparently, my timing could not have been worse.
Cold sweat began to run. I had a good idea what was coming next.
"Why should I let you live?"
Killing intent erupted. It was so virulent that night itself seemed to descend upon the alley around us.
So this was... this was a powerhouse who had commanded an entire era.
This was the strongest of mankind.
This was the Colossus.
"If you can't convince me, then you'll have to die."
Drip—
A single bead of cold sweat slid down my cheek.
Ho... hooeeeehh...