It's Not Over Yet
KAGAAANG─!
The instant steel clashed against steel with a thunderous ring, sparks burst and scattered, and black light stitched its way across the sky. Out of that storm of dark radiance, a surge of violet glow came boiling upward — and from its very heart, a single sword came darting.
"Aaaah.. help me, Kkamang!!"
"No, I mean, who even are you..?!"
With a harsh grating shriek of metal, I parried the blade that had been streaking for the black-haired girl. Who she was, and how she had possibly come out of my neck — both questions were still drowned in mystery. But at the very least, right now, I had no room in my head to spare for any of it.
"GUAAAAAH!!!"
I was certain I had blocked it without a single mistake — and yet, blades still locked together, I was the one being driven back. A sheer gap in physical ability, that one thing alone, was enough to overwhelm me. And that one thing alone meant I could not beat him.
Not if I kept fighting the way I was.
"Uwoh..?"
"Right this way, ...big brother."
A slight upward flick deflected that violet blade — rough-hewn with savage strength — and his sword swept past, grazing through my hair.
Right. I couldn't win. Not in a contest of pure strength. But neither could I drag this out into the endless battle of attrition I once could have, because my mana still hadn't budged so much as an inch.
'I had stowed the Status Window away in such a frantic hurry, so there was no way to check why...'
"GUUOOOOH!!"
"...!"
Whether he simply never tired, the blade came hurtling at me yet again. I tightened my grip on my dagger and answered it once more.
What mattered here was movement that prized flow over force — deflecting rather than opposing, and choosing to evade rather than deflect.
Put generously, I was avoiding a head-on showdown. Put honestly, I was scared out of my wits. But what else could I do? Being criticized is a privilege reserved for the living. And in the state my body was in, holding out like this was the very best I could manage.
"YOU RAT BASTARDS!!!"
The one sliver of good news was that his sanity no longer looked remotely intact. The proof was plain: the swordsmanship that, only moments before, had been keen-edged and flawlessly structured had begun collapsing into a chaotic, jumbled mess.
"UUAAAAAH!!!"
"Hnngh..!"
Compared to moments ago, it was boundlessly crude — nothing but wild hacking, swinging, and slashing at whatever he touched — yet his monstrously enhanced body more than compensated for every one of those flaws. Even merely deflecting his blows left my wrist throbbing hard enough to drive me half-mad.
"May the Primordial Light protect the children of this land..."
How she had known the state I was in, I couldn't say — warm holy power began flowing into my body, smooth and unending. Anything to wrest my wrist back into working order.
Truth be told, holy power was every bit as unwelcome as ever. But in a situation like this one, choking it down was the only choice, however bitter the medicine.
By the time the pain had wholly faded from my wrist, I was slipping another attack aside with it — and as I kept stirring his attention, again and again, right there in front of him, in each of those slivers of time a hole punched itself clean through the demon's throat.
"Gweeeh.. grk?"
"Ha? What the hell — why won't you just die already?!"
Of course he wouldn't die. This was the thing that had survived that rain of arrows head-on. If a mere pierced throat had been enough to put him down, none of this would be half the hassle it was.
"GEEEHH.. UUUH!!"
"..Wait, look out—"
I had let my guard slip, just for a moment — the one thing I could never afford. Had I, without even realizing it, still been measuring him against something human? The instant I saw his throat punched through, for the briefest while I actually caught myself thinking: he's finished. No living thing, however miraculous its regeneration, moves the instant its neck is pierced.
And so I relaxed. And that was exactly how I lost it — his movement.
A sliver of a moment. The time it took to close my eyes and open them again. In that blink, the sword that had stood before me vanished — and reappeared squarely in front of Charlotte.
Still trailing that hideous roar behind it, of course.
"Young lady!! Look out..!"
"No — that speed, on a frame that size? How is that even..!"
"GAAaAAK!!!"
Her split-second judgment done, she hurriedly pulled the dagger from her breast — but the enemy's blade was already carving its path toward her throat.
"Saintess!! A barrier—"
"I can't..! There's no time to chant..!"
CLANG─!
SHATTER─!
Ah, damn it. Too late.
The moment her dagger met Allen's blade, it rang out across the battlefield — the sound of steel snapping in two.
"Ah."
That one clipped syllable reached my ears with sickening clarity — and even then, Allen's sword did not stop. Even now it drove on, hunting the nape of her neck.
In her mind, and in all of ours, only a single thought surfaced in that instant. Her death. Nothing more, nothing else.
Even the shortest spell demanded its casting time, and here, now, stripped of even her dagger, she had no visible way to survive the blow. For me, and for the Saintess, the distance to her and the time remaining were both — too far, and too short — to attempt a thing. And least of all could I, without even mana to call upon, do anything at all.
KWAAAAAANG─!!
"GU.. GUROOOAAAK!!"
It was then that the colossal detonation split the air.
Startled by a sound that seemed to shake the earth itself, I snapped my head up — and the arm that had gripped the sword mere moments before was gone from Allen's body. All that remained was a ragged wound, as though something had torn it clean off.
"..Uh, huh? I'm... I'm alive, right?"
"Get up — quickly, get away from him..!"
"Pinky!! Stop hurting her!!"
A whole feast of massive fire orbs slammed into him, and torrents of black light chased hot on their heels.
Come to think of it, everything had happened so fast I had briefly forgotten: Aria's mana had become usable again. And at no small level, either.
Right now, she was likely beyond most any cadet the Academy could field — because she, who had always, always held herself back, was fighting at full power for the very first time in her life.
"..I've gotten so much weaker, even allowing for this restriction.."
"...."
"At this level, I won't be any help to big brother at all..!"
Her muttering carried all the way to where I stood. ..Honestly, if a situation ever came where mana on her level couldn't help, then the true mistake would have been getting tangled up in that situation in the first place. By any sensible measure, a mage of her caliber being useless was a vanishingly rare thing — but she didn't seem to see it that way.
"Bad guy!!"
"GRUUOOOH..!!"
"Mamang said bad guys get punished!!"
And small wonder she thought so — right before her eyes, torrents of black light were still gushing out without the slightest restraint.
Black rays that melted flesh at a single touch. All of that eerie, ravening power was bearing down on one point alone.
"IT HUUUURTS!!!"
And Aria was watching every moment of it with her own two eyes. She had always taken pride in her magic — which made it all the more impossible to forgive.
That a girl who looked even younger than her — generously, her equal in age — was throwing stronger spells than she could, and throwing them longer. For someone born with exceptional talent who had never once skipped a day of effort, the situation itself landed like a hammer blow.
'Where on earth did a child like that even come from..?'
"IT HURTSAAA!!!"
"U..uurgh, crying won't make me go easy on you!!"
'At this rate, I'll be nothing but a burden to big brother again..'
"Aria!!"
But on a battlefield, thoughts like that were pure poison. Losing your focus to self-reproach, of all things, in a place where a single instant of crossing blades decided life and death — it was something that should never happen, something that had no business existing. But she was a girl starved of real combat experience, and this was unfamiliar ground.
So she had no choice but to pay the price with her whole body.
"A..RIAAAK!!!"
"..Huh?"
Allen, charging straight through his own melting flesh, had struck her body with his sword. Struck is an ill-fitting word for a blade's touch — but this once, no other word fit half so well.
"KYAAAAK!!"
"...?"
Because even though the edge had unmistakably touched her body, she had not been cut at all — she simply went flying and crashed into the wall.
"May the Primordial Light protect the children of this land..!"
Before Aria's body could be carved clean in two, the Saintess's holy power had wrapped itself around her. Of course, the force of the blow itself could not be negated — she was flung into the wall all the same. But this, at least, was a moment to give thanks that she was still breathing.
"A..RIAAK!!"
And in the same breath, the madness that had been rampaging every which way through Allen's mind began whispering to him without end. Disobey your father's order. Slip free of his shadow. How much longer will you live as the family's puppet?
Things he would never have dared so much as imagine back when he was still whole, still human — the you of now can do it, it crooned — and a man already ruled by madness could not refuse the temptation.
His father's order — Duke Reinhardt's order — had been this: if anyone comes to take Aria away, protect her. Without fail.
[Disobey, the order. Kill, that bitch — break, completely, free, of the family!!]
'A..haha.. right. Yes. That's it.'
[Yes! Mayhem, slaughter, chaos!!]
'Only then, will the Duke, acknowledge, me?'
[Right! That's, it — accept, me, accept me, more!!]
'Yes. That's the.. only, way. Abso..lutely.'
The madness that had whispered on and on inside him curved into a grin. For the heart that, until moments ago, had clung — however faintly — to its own humanity had, at last, fallen.
At least for now, it was not yet time for the tide of battle to turn.