Siruntel Demonic Realm (1)
Stripped of every tentacle, the chimera was little more than an enormous snake.
An enormous snake the size of a decent building, admittedly — but a monster whose only advantage was bulk posed no real threat to Leon.
Thud!
A sickening rupture of flesh. The chimera's brow was run clean through by his blade, and the creature dissolved into ash-gray dust and vanished.
"…"
Leon flashed a grin at the cadets staring at him with their mouths hanging open.
Nice.
Completing the second form of the Jecheon Sword Style was an encouraging result.
At this level, I should be able to walk out of "that place" without too much trouble.
A dim chamber lit by the blood-red glow spilling through the windows. Countless chairs ringed a black round table. In that vast conference hall, only two men sat.
"…Hold on."
Without warning, one of them twisted his face into a snarl and cut the conversation short.
Skin the color of raw crimson. Eyes slanted sharply upward. A pair of horns forking out in jagged lightning-bolt zigzags. Valcansus, the Great Devil of Wrath, bared his razor teeth and growled.
"Mazias is dead."
"…What did you just say?"
The man seated across from him echoed the words in disbelief.
Pale skin. Eyes hollowed out into black pits. One half of his face was nothing but bare bone, split clean down the middle. His horns coiled like twisted pretzels, warped into grotesque spirals. Cryptos, the Great Devil of Fear, pressed Valcansus again.
"How exactly did he die?"
"Wait! I'm looking at it now!"
Valcansus exploded with rage, silencing Cryptos, then replayed Mazias's final memories.
"This is Middle Earth. What the hell was he doing dying in Middle Earth—!"
Then Valcansus saw the greatsword piercing Mazias's chest and roared.
"Bergopf!"
"Bergopf!? That bastard tracked Mazias down?"
"That shouldn't be possible… How would that idiot ever…"
In that moment, Mazias's vision briefly captured a black-haired boy standing over a demonized human, boot planted on the corpse.
"So that's it…!"
Valcansus grasped the situation at once.
"Bergopf had human help. He waited for Mazias's thrall to summon him into Middle Earth."
"Even so, both of them were only spiritual forms… No — if it was Bergopf, that would be enough."
Recalling Bergopf's authority, Cryptos nodded in acceptance.
Understanding only stoked Valcansus's fury higher.
"Why would that human help Bergopf when he isn't even one of his thralls!?"
A Great Devil could gauge a measure of demonic energy from a mere glance. Not a shred of Bergopf's power clung to that black-haired human.
"To die so pointlessly… It truly infuriates me…"
Hot steam began to leak from Valcansus's nose and mouth. As his rage climbed, his once-slender frame swelled until the chair beneath him grew too small.
"Losing Mazias is a genuine blow. This will disrupt the 'campaign' as well."
Cryptos spoke in a flat, toneless voice, utterly calm.
"Damn it all!"
Crash!
Unable to contain himself, Valcansus smashed the table in front of him clean in half.
"With Mazias gone, there will be a great deal to reorganize. I'll take my leave."
As if long accustomed to such displays, Cryptos watched with a detached gaze, offered a brief farewell, and dissolved into smoke.
"RAAAAAAAARGH!!!"
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Still far from finished, Valcansus kicked and hurled every chair within reach. Mazias had been one of his most critical pieces. For centuries the Devil of Magic had researched sorcery, converting demonic energy into authority — a power of immense utility. In the present climate especially, his magic had been more necessary than ever. And now one human who had appeared out of nowhere had ruined everything. Valcansus could barely restrain his wrath.
"…"
Black hair. Red eyes. That smirking face. Valcansus burned the boy's features into his memory with seething eyes.
A week had passed since Leon cleared Stage Ten of the Illusion Monster Gauntlet.
The Martial Arts Division cadets had moved on to group combat drills. Teams of three, teams of five, or all twenty-five at once — the instructors of each class were meticulously teaching their students how to form coordinated formations scaled to their numbers and face the enemy. In truth, this was also the content of the midterm evaluation, though no cadets outside of Class A were aware of that yet.
In any case.
Thursday. Leon and the Class A cadets were once again heading toward Tower One of the Tower of Illusions for afternoon lessons. In the distance, Martial Arts Classes B, G, and J could be seen filing into the same tower. Each tower was divided into four sectors, allowing up to four teams to use it simultaneously. The classes scheduled for this time slot never changed — the timetables had been deliberately arranged to avoid overlap, after all.
It should be starting soon.
Leon yawned widely as he stepped into the training hall. Predicting events from the original story was no longer reliable. His very existence had twisted the future beyond recognition.
I've meddled with far too much already. Who knows where some bizarre butterfly effect might crop up next.
Even so, what was meant to happen would happen eventually. That much was certain.
"Today's training will proceed the same way as yesterday. Focus on correcting the shortcomings I pointed out."
Cheren addressed the twenty-five cadets who had entered the hall. The exercise ahead was a form of combat simulation — not the three-dimensional holograms of the Illusion Monster Gauntlet, but a full transfer into another space where real combat would unfold. Obulius: a virtual field forged by archmages who had twisted dimension and space itself. There, cadets faced successive monster waves at fixed intervals. The quality was so high that, short of actual battle, it was regarded as one of the most effective forms of training available.
During the prep time before transfer, Leon cracked his neck with a series of pops and called out to the cadets.
"Let's set a new record today."
"Yeah!"
"Understood!"
"Sounds good!"
Firm replies shot back from every direction. Not a single cadet in Class A refused to follow Leon anymore. Even Pierre, who had taken such a thorough beating weeks earlier, was burning with enthusiasm at Leon's words.
"Commencing!"
The assistant instructor's shout rang out.
Wooooom!
The chamber blazed with blue light, heralding the onset of warp magic. Magic circles erupted from every surface. Floor and walls trembled faintly. Already accustomed to the process, the cadets stretched at their leisure and chatted while they waited.
And it was precisely then — when every last one of them had let their guard down — that it happened.
Crack!
A tiny spark leapt from a corner of the ceiling. A flame so small and fine that not a soul in the hall could have noticed it. Yet it was a spark dropped into a powder magazine. A single hairline fracture was all it took for the intricate, finely woven circuits to collapse.
Crack, crack! Crackle-crackle-crackle!
Sparks cascaded outward in a chain reaction, spreading like falling dominoes. What had been flowing was severed. What had been gathering scattered. What had been rising fell. The mana swirling through the entire space twisted, and the hundreds of spells the tower had been running collapsed one after another. Prismatic mana sprayed out as if from a burst faucet. Blinding flashes strobed across every field of vision.
Krrrrrrrrrk!
The gentle vibration of a boat rocking on water became an earthquake that shook the foundations of the earth. The entire sequence took three seconds.
"W-what's going on!?"
"Something's wrong, isn't it?"
But three seconds was more than enough to realize that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
"What—! Shut it down immediately!"
Cheren shouted at the assistant instructor in alarm.
"I can't! The controls aren't responding!"
The console the assistant was hammering like a madman was already dead.
"Damn it…!"
Cheren set his hand on his sword hilt, ready to smash through the door and glass wall entirely — and in that instant,
Flash!
Every cadet was swept up in mana of an uncanny color and vanished.
If space itself were carved into pieces and scattered through the void, it might feel something like this. The place was blanketed in total darkness, and severed fragments of space — inverted, warped, jammed in like shards of broken glass — studded the emptiness at irregular intervals. A strange and wondrous realm. Leon knew this was merely a transitional corridor, a brief passage created by an error in dimensional magic. Their final destination was not here.
"W-what is this!"
"Where the hell are we…?!"
The Class A cadets plunged into total panic. Leon, knowing they would slip free of this place soon enough if they simply waited, made no effort to calm them. Leaving the uproar behind, he surveyed his surroundings at a measured pace.
The four classes that had been in Tower One would all have been caught in the same accident. That was how it had gone in the original story.
Upper left: a cluster of cadets in similar chaos. Among them, Billy looking mildly flustered, and Esabel working hard to settle her classmates. Class B.
Lower right: cadets with no weapons at all, bare-handed. Class J — the Martial Arts Division's only class composed entirely of unarmed fighters.
That left Class G, the spear specialists. Leon turned his head diligently, searching for them.
Ah, there they—?
Leon's mind stopped cold for a beat.
Far off, a girl with violet hair stood staring blankly into space.
—Alone.
"YOU LUNATIC!!!!!"
A bellow erupted from Leon's throat as if he had swallowed a train whistle whole.
"WHY ARE YOU BY YOURSELF!!!!!"
Whether she heard the scream or it was pure coincidence —
"…?"
Celia, who had been glancing around in bewilderment, found Leon with her eyes. She gave a single shrug in his direction, as if to ask what the fuss was about. Cool and unreadable as ever.
"…"
Leon felt a profound, dizzying sense of dread.
The space rippled once more, and the cadets began to transfer again. The four groups would now be scattered, each dropped into the heart of the Siruntel Demonic Realm.
And Celia would be left there with no companions at all.
"…"
Leon decided that the moment the transfer finished, he was lighting a cigarette first thing.