Realization

"Lord Pales, why has this come to pass…"

"Please, get me out of here! I have a wife and children waiting at home!"

"Aaaagh! I don't want to die! Somebody save me!"

After the enormous hemisphere of space swallowed everything around it, people thrashed in every way they knew how, drowning in a despair that turned the world to haze. The devout cried out for their gods. Those with families wailed to be sent home. Those already swallowed by terror simply screamed for the chance to live.

I swept my gaze across them, clenching and unclenching a hand packed with aura.

"This goddamn…"

The curse slipped out before I could stop it. Ten thousand people, taken hostage. Had anything like this happened in the original story? No… I didn't remember every detail, but I was fairly sure it hadn't. The protagonist's party hadn't crossed blades with the Magic Tower Master until well after the Sword and Magic Festival was over. Which meant this, too, had diverged from the original.

Then again — I had already interfered. How could the future possibly run along the same rails? The butterfly of my existence had beaten its wings, and the storm that followed was vast beyond measure. That storm was trying, right now, to tear these people's lives out by the roots.

That was when the Magic Tower Master turned his mouth toward me.

"A truly impressive sight, wouldn't you agree?"

"Magic Tower Master. Don't do this. What have they done to deserve it? If there's something you want, tell me. I'll grant as much of it as I can."

"Heh heh. I already told you, didn't I? What I want is the Grand Duke's life. If arriving at a decision is proving difficult, I would be more than happy to assist."

A dry crackle of mana. He turned his palm toward the sky, and more than a hundred mana bullets bloomed into being above his head. Each one was larger than a human skull — high-density rounds packed to bursting. If he fired those without discrimination, the hell that followed would be unspeakable.

I chose my words with care, doing everything I could not to provoke him.

"I cannot give you my life. Name something else. I swear I'll grant whatever you ask. I could even hand you enough gold to raise several magic towers."

"To think the Grand Duke would show such weakness. You've changed a great deal. Taking hostages was, as expected, the correct answer."

"There are children among them who look up to knights and mages. Show them mercy."

"The one who killed Sir Gawain in front of those dream-filled children was you, Grand Duke."

"…"

He watched my silence and let a thin sneer curl across his face. It wasn't as if he'd shared some rare friendship with Gawain. He simply wanted to watch me squirm.

I kept the conversation going, buying every second I could so the mages outside might crack the spatial barrier, and used the time to take the Magic Tower Master's measure.

Whew… one mountain after another.

There he floated, a hundred mana bullets already formed above his head. However many elixirs the old man had swallowed, his mana ran so deep I couldn't see the bottom of it. Translucent shields sheathed his entire body in what had to be hundreds of layers — even with aura, I doubted I could kill him in a single blow.

I was still turning over how to break the stalemate when he read the intent in my eyes and spoke.

"Trying to buy time, are you? I believe that is quite enough small talk."

A colder light entered his eyes, and he poured out still more mana. The bullets hanging in the air began to scream, a rising shriek like rounds an instant from leaving the barrel. The certainty that I had to stop this hit me like a physical blow, and I kicked off the ground toward him at once.

"Stop!"

"I think not."

A light, almost lazy sweep of his hand cut sideways through empty air. In the same breath, the glittering mana bullets fired in every direction at once, tearing the sky open with a sound like the world being ripped down the middle. They streaked out through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, every last one of them aimed at the ordinary people packed into the stands.

Watching them scatter like fireworks, a flood of thoughts tore through me in a single heartbeat. Leave this alone and people would die in droves. Was there anyone who could help? I couldn't sense another mage or knight of any real caliber inside this space. Which meant I had to do it myself. Ah — that direction. That was where the people cheering for me had been sitting. That girl had looked at the mages the way you look at a dream. That boy wanted to be a knight, didn't he?

"……"

I gathered the thoughts as they flickered past like a dying lantern and forced my mind clear — and by the time I had, I was already wrapped, head to heel, in a blinding white radiance, standing inside time that had slowed to a crawl.

…Bahamut.

I turned my gaze, slow as poured honey, and found the Magic Tower Master standing well back from me. Dealing with him would have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to wait. Radiant Aura punished the body so harshly that it burned out far faster than any other aura I could call. Saving the people came first.

I took in the mana bullets hanging as if frozen across the arena's open air, then launched myself at the nearest one. Dazzling light filled my hand. I shaped it into a blade and smashed the bullet toward the sky.

A muted boom rolled out, stretched thin by the slowed world.

These aren't ordinary mana bullets.

So it wasn't simply a matter of volume. The round I'd sent climbing, trailing that drawn-out crack of sound, was built to detonate the instant it found a target. Miss even one, and the blast alone would kill dozens at the very least.

I bit down on my lip and kept knocking every bullet bound for the stands up into the empty sky.

A boom. I saved the one who had been searching for his god in the dark.

A boom. I saved the man who had cried that he had a wife and child at home.

A boom. I shielded the one who had been screaming simply to live.

I tore from one end of the arena to the other in a frenzy, and somewhere in that storm of motion the mask on my face — unable to keep pace with the speed of light — tore free and fell away. I didn't spare it a thought. I just kept moving, and I knocked down every last bullet.

A final boom. I smashed the last round hanging in front of a young girl, then looked at the face of someone who had just stepped back from death without knowing it. She hadn't even registered that a mana bullet was coming for her; her eyes were fixed somewhere else entirely, and fear had spun itself across her features like a spider's web.

Don't be afraid.

I made the nameless girl a promise. I would get her out of this place alive. Not because I was a good man. I simply had no wish to watch innocent people die. And… if the heroines had been standing here, they would have tried to save everyone too. That was why.

I set the thought aside and went for the Magic Tower Master with the Radiant blade still in my grip. Inside the crawl of slowed time, he was pouring out every drop of mana he had, reinforcing his shields as fast as he could weave them.

Magic Tower Master. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You think I can't kill you?

If you try to kill these people, I will kill you. If you try to kill me, I will kill you first.

I raised the Radiant blade into a high guard, one archmage standing before me, and brought it down with everything I had.

The impacts cracked through the sealed air, one after another. Maybe it was because I was swinging at the speed of light — even with my ears muffled by the spatial barrier, the sound of those shields bursting was enormous. Each cut detonated a single layer and laid the next one bare. When I put more force into the same spot, two layers went at once, peeling away like the shell of something being stripped to the meat. I kept hammering the same place with stubborn, workmanlike violence, digging through Bahamut's mana shields the way a man digs a hole in the earth.

Hah. Hah. Fuck…

By the time only twenty or so of those hundreds of layers remained, I knew I could no longer hold Radiant Aura. An unfinished task sat right in front of me, and I had almost no time to think — because the world that had been crawling was already clawing its way back toward ordinary speed.

He'll go after the people again. I can't give him even a breath.

I set an unshaking will into my two red eyes. As time found its old rhythm, I reached for a power that could cut through anything at all.

The Radiant edge dissolved from my hand, and a dark, ink-black sword qi took its place. High above, every mana bullet I had smashed skyward at the speed of light detonated at once, and an explosion loud enough to split eardrums shook the entire arena to its foundations.

"Kyaaaaah!"

"Wh-what was that!?"

The ground-shaking roar sent the crowd into a blind panic. Not one of them wore the face of someone who understood they had already died and been given back their lives. I looked to the Magic Tower Master and caught a flicker of dismay, small but unmistakable, crossing his expression.

"Grand Duke!"

"Magic Tower Master."

"So that is how you intend to play this…!"

"Things will not go as you wish."

I made the declaration without a shred of doubt and closed my hand around a blade of razor-edged obsidian qi. Then, determined not to give him even a heartbeat to restore those shields, I brought it down on him.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Every stroke of the obsidian blade sheared through ten layers of mana shield ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and unmade them into light hanging in the air. The Magic Tower Master thrust both arms out and fought desperately to rebuild what I was tearing down, but I was destroying them faster than he could weave them back. His face twisted. He kicked away on a burst of Levitation, putting distance between us.

"Let's see you stop this one!"

The composure he always wore was gone. Mana screamed against itself as dozens of fresh bullets took shape — each one so large that a single detonation looked capable of erasing hundreds of lives without effort. He swept his hand, and the rounds screamed out in every direction.

Not a chance in hell.

I detonated my aura in a single explosive surge and painted dozens of sword-qi blades across my field of vision. A trump card I had prepared specifically for this plan: the Flying Sword Art, worked through blades of pure qi. As if the technique itself had answered the desperation in me, enough of them formed in an instant to smash every incoming round, a swarm of dark edges hanging in the air before my eyes.

"What!?"

The Magic Tower Master's eyes flew wide at the sight of the blades I had called. I had no time to enjoy the look on his face. The instant they existed, I sent them flying.

Dozens of edges tore the air and streaked away, each one hunting a mana bullet bound for the stands. They flew like a sudden wind and dropped every last round from the sky, a spectacle of dark steel and bursting light. The detonations rolled together into a single crushing roar.

"Dammit!"

Once he saw that every bullet had been destroyed, there was no composure left on the Magic Tower Master's face at all. Controlling that many blades at once, though, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had apparently been more than my brain could take. A warm, metallic slide of blood ran from my nose.

Ah. I'm going to die.

What fortune was I chasing that I'd put myself through this? No. Focus. Right now I had to stop that insane old man.

I lifted a hand to wipe the blood from my nose, and a moment later the world went red.

The capillaries in my eyes just burst.

Absolutely goddamn maddening. And in the middle of that, the Magic Tower Master apparently decided that killing me took priority, because he began to unfold an entirely different kind of magic. The current of mana changed. Death itself seemed to breathe out from his palms, a tide of power that rejected the very idea of living things, and I knew by instinct that he was preparing a killing art.

This was the moment. The instant he committed to a single decisive blow was the one chance I would get to end him. If I didn't meet this attack head-on, he would simply run again and turn his sights back on the crowd.

I gathered every last scrap of strength I had left and forged it into obsidian sword qi. Even after the blade had taken shape, the dark aura refused to stop — it kept swelling, growing heavier and vaster in my hands. Ten thousand lives hung on what I did next. The time it takes to blink once came and went.

"Desperanto Cala Orte!"

The terminal incantation rang through the hemispherical prison. People curled in on themselves as if they could already feel the end arriving. The Magic Tower Master hurled the death-aspected mana gathered in his hands straight at me.

A declaration, and a will driven deeper into the mana than any technique. I drew the enormous obsidian blade down in a single vertical stroke.

A roar tore through the entire sealed space. In the same instant, a colossal crescent of dark aura surged toward the Magic Tower Master, a half-moon of annihilation screaming across the air between us.

"Dammit! Grand Duke!!!"

The old man bellowed, throwing both arms out and stacking mana shields in a frantic, overlapping wall. It did not matter. The obsidian aura that had already carved the death mana in two carved the shields apart as well. It split the Magic Tower Master where he hung in the sky, left from right — and then it kept going, ripping the hemisphere behind him wide open as it climbed, unstoppable, into the open heavens.