Mage Milia (11)
Esmeralda had put it off for over three years.
Even if her acting wasn't anything spectacular, that much time was enough to make anyone decent at it.
Yes — she had been putting on a show even in front of a Legion Commander.
Playing the fool.
One in front, one behind. But when the clone died, only the one in front reacted.
Which meant that nonchalant attitude, that disinterested facade — all of it was a lie.
She wasn't foolish enough to grovel before a Legion Commander.
An ability that creates clones. But the number is almost certainly limited. Otherwise, why would she have sent such an awkward number as three to Tower Master Glisha in the first place?
She assessed the situation with cold clarity. Reading the flow of battle, analyzing through observation — in these areas alone, Esmeralda bowed to no one.
Only one of the two reacted when the clone died. So maybe one of them is the real body.
Suppose that was true.
What if the opponent before her right now was the original?
Her instincts told her that was the answer.
The enemy was still relaxed.
She had claimed she'd raise the tempo, but all that really meant was more raw firepower.
And of course, if she took a hit like that, it would only be a clone dying — no loss to the main body at all. There was a certain logic to it.
In fact, she was effortlessly overpowering Esmeralda, who was being supported by the mages of Glacies Magic Tower.
But what if that's exactly what she wants me to think?
From here on, it was a matter of instinct.
No matter how weak Esmeralda might be — no matter how little help the Tower's mages were with their master absent — the excess of composure, the carelessness, the ability that made killing a clone feel pointless, the clones only revealed later in the fight, the way that thought had calcified in her mind…
A deception, meant to hide her true limits.
That was precisely why it had become suspicious.
If Esmeralda's instincts had been any duller, she never would have doubted it at all.
She gritted her teeth at the meticulous scheme hidden beneath that languid ease.
Legion Commander this, Legion Commander that — how had it come to this, where not a single one of them was an easy opponent?
The enemy was feigning relaxation — concealing how few clones she could field while planting the belief that her real body was nowhere near this place.
A masterful psychological game.
She could only conceive of it because she'd crossed blades with the old veteran Eleven first…
Which means the odds are actually in my favor!
She knew; her opponent did not.
An advantage in information always conjures up a dozen different variables.
Five, perhaps eager to wrap this up, began pressing Esmeralda in earnest.
Even so, Esmeralda held on, deflecting each attack by a hair's breadth.
It didn't look like she could last long.
Even the frost-attribute enchantments the Glacies mages layered onto her blades were utterly overwhelmed by Five's flames now that she was committing her full strength.
One by one, her floating swords melted in that fire.
They melted along with their enchantments — no further explanation was needed for how absurd that firepower was.
Her swords dwindled by the second.
The Glacies mages, unable to bear watching, cast and hurled swords forged of ice, but it wasn't enough.
Because they were made of ice rather than steel, most of them couldn't even withstand a single strike from Five.
The situation is still the worst. No — by my usual standards, this is practically normal!
The only reason she could fight Five at close range at all was that protection was one of the Holy Sword's many blessings.
"Whew…"
Esmeralda drew a long breath as she calmly weathered Five's assault from every direction.
The one mercy was that her Sword Telekinesis was specially suited to one-against-many battles.
True, she burned through swords faster than the mages could supply them, but it bought her time.
"Haaap!"
Then it was time to gamble.
Esmeralda switched from defense to offense and lunged.
She was confident in her acting.
Everyone else had seen through it, yes — but fooling Five, whom she'd only just met, was another matter entirely.
Right — the opponent was a clone.
Five was acting like a clone, and Esmeralda believed she fully bought the performance.
That was her only means of defeating an existence far stronger than herself.
"Charging in out of impatience? That was a very stupid move."
Five read the manufactured desperation in Esmeralda's barely-held defense.
Switching to offense that recklessly was bound to open a gap.
It would have been lovely if the gamble paid off and she erased a clone by luck, but risks were exactly that kind of thing.
Kaaaahhhh!
Five detonated the searing heat she had been steadily accumulating against the onrushing Esmeralda.
The Holy Sword's protective blessing kept it from being a mortal wound, but this should force her to turtle up for good.
Yes — that was an assumption only possible because Five believed she was deceiving Esmeralda.
"Who, exactly, was the impatient one?"
Esmeralda endured it.
No — she tore straight through the flames and kept coming.
The will to kill her enemy even at the cost of her own life. And in truth, that was exactly how Esmeralda was thinking.
Of course…
If my opponent had been a clone, I never would have even conceived of this idea!
If she fell but took her enemy down with her, that was a net gain.
It was a tactic only possible because she knew the one before her was the real body.
Five, who had been deceiving herself into thinking she was fighting a clone, would never have kept that option on the table.
"Who was it that was getting impatient, again?"
"You litt—!"
Shraaack!
Esmeralda's Holy Sword cleaved through Five's true body.
Five's strength stemmed from the fact that she could pile up life-or-death experience in perfect safety.
Yes — she traversed the battlefield through her clones, waging war against her enemies again and again.
And even if a clone died, so long as the original lived, she herself could never truly die. Granted, recreating the [Carbuncle Soul] spent on making a clone took considerable time.
But cheap, compared to the price of a life, wasn't it?
And whenever a clone met its end, Five could record and replay the entire process.
In other words — exactly how the enemy had brought it down, what hidden means they had kept in reserve. She could pick apart every last detail, one by one.
"Already seen that one."
That was how Five had held the upper hand throughout her battles against Milia and Irina.
Because she already knew how one of her clones had fallen to them.
It had always been a fight with a steep gap in power.
For the weak to defeat the strong, they had no choice but to weave wisdom and strategy.
"Aha? Trying the same trick twice?"
"Kyaa?!"
But Five had already experienced every one of those strategies. The same move would not work twice.
"Sorry, but I know that one now."
Irina, who had been drawing a ritual circle beneath her eyelid, hit the ground rolling with a short scream. Her holy power shone pure white, and her eyes were pure white as well — it must have been quite convenient for deceiving an opponent.
But having already been burned once, Five answered with a flame-wreathed kick that melted every false eye in the vicinity.
"That goes for you too."
She cleaved through Milia's tentacles.
The Legion Commander, Five, possessed swordsmanship to match her flame.
That was because, in life, she had been a Hero who wielded the Holy Sword. In a sense, the blade was even more familiar to her than fire.
Shraaack!
Milia's tentacle magic.
It was an attack that bound specific elemental magic into a formless, viscous fluid.
Which meant that merely touching a tentacle exposed the victim to every elemental form of assault at once — burning agony, shock, frostbite, and more.
And because those tentacles could absorb and release the same elemental energy in turn, Five had suffered no small misery at their hands.
So she simply cut them down with raw physical force.
"Anything else you'd like to show me?"
"Kgh!"
Faced with Five's attacks — overwhelming her with a single sword alone — Milia could do nothing but give ground, again and again.
Kwajik!
But in the very moment Five was driving both Milia and Irina back—
"Hm?"
Five tilted her head at an unseen force biting into her ankle. Looking closer, she caught sight of black mana.
The lingering resonance unique to black magic.
"Aha?"
Only then did Five's gaze turn to Jim, dangling limp from one of Milia's tentacles. His specialty had been black magic, hadn't it? He'd been brought into the corps as an officer on that basis, so it had to be.
But it fell short of her expectations.
It was black magic of a somewhat unusual form, sure — but asked whether it was special, Five could only shake her head.
"Mediocre…"
A sleight of hand to conceal the special quality Five had been curious about. For him to keep it up even in a situation like this meant that if it were revealed, it would almost certainly be deeply embarrassing.
And at the same time — perhaps he simply didn't want his comrades to learn the truth of his power?
Five thought so as she watched the covert form of magic.
Yes — she absolutely despised people like Jim.
Too bound by sentiment to betray them completely, yet cunning enough to hide what he concealed even now, in the middle of all this.
"You're the type I hate most of all."
She loathed attachment.
She loathed lies.
And she despised those who wielded attachment as a tool for deception.
Fwoooar!
Five drew out the full power of the Fire Spirit. The tentacles' absorption was a nuisance, but even that could simply be crushed under overwhelming firepower.
Right now, all she wanted was to burn everything before her eyes to ash.
"Just die."
Wrapped head to toe in a raging inferno, Five looked like the very avatar of flame.
In truth, there was little difference.
The god once worshipped by the Fire Spirit Order. Revived through that power, she was, indeed, a being worthy of the name avatar.
Yes — Garnet was already dead.
The righteous Hero once called Garnet had died and passed away; what stood here now was nothing but her husk, possessed by a wraith of hatred.
And perhaps that was exactly why—
"You traitors."
Consumed by hatred, blind even to who stood before her, it was only natural.
BOOOOOM!
With a sound like a volcano erupting, the snow mountain collapsed.
Crackle. Crackle.
The snow of the mountain had melted away entirely, and the trees — already bare of branches — had all become charred firewood.
Amid it all, Five felt her own body wavering.
The real body took a hit.
Not quite death, but a fairly serious wound, it seemed.
She was already injured from her battle against the ancient dragon, Agni.
Her main body would no doubt leave soon, to shake itself back into shape.
There was no time. If she wanted to finish her enemies for certain, it had to be now.
The moment the distance grew, this copy of her would be reabsorbed into the original.
"So you were alive after all."
Five smiled, as if delighted that her prediction had come true.
The demon spy, Jim.
He stood waiting for her, magic already unfurling in one hand.
"Ah, this is just self-defense. That means I'm in the clear, right?"
"Self-defense, is it… You're still planning on coming back to the army, I see."
"Honestly, I really can't figure out what exactly I did wrong."
"Really? You think that'll be enough? I'm starting to get curious about that special quality you've been hiding."
"That would be a bit of a problem."
The demon spy, Jim.
By Esmeralda's appraisal, his ability was a Comprehensive Estimated Level of barely around 200.
If he unsealed the power and memories he kept quarantined behind his own boundaries, he could handle the likes of Five without any trouble at all. Of course, doing so might let information about his true identity leak back to the Demon King.
But right now, things were a little different.
Such careful calculations were beyond the Jim of this moment.
There was exactly one reason he was holding out here with nothing but a single thread of black magic.
"Because I want to speak from the same eye level."
Not a sage who looked down from above — knowing, understanding, teaching — but a fool who stood at the same level, hurting and suffering alongside them.
"That's what I'm trying to do."
The three years he had spent with the Hero Party. The fact that it had been, in its own way, joyful — and that having to part from it left a bitter taste.
The only one who could understand that feeling was the person he was right now.
Black Magic
Six Realms Manifestation — The Realm of the Hungry Ghost
⟨ Hungering Maw ⟩
That was why Jim had locked himself away within the Five Desires and Seven Emotions.
Because to be steeped in worldly desire was, itself, proof of one's humanity.