Echoes
William’s gaze dropped.
He had been standing beneath the sheltering boughs of Yggdrasil, waiting for Justina Schumacher to arrive.
The moment the barrier was breached, a crackling rush of noise tore through the air, followed by a sharp report like the sky itself splitting open.
After that first upheaval, it was chaos all the way down.
Whatever was happening seemed to be running from place to place, its murmur shifting restlessly through the mountain air.
Only the sounds that bounced back from the range from time to time told him the girl was still putting up a meaningless resistance.
A faint smell of burning drifted up the ridgeline, only to be driven back by the opposing wind.
He did not have long to wait.
Justina Schumacher emerged from the brush, gripping what looked like a gun.
Having only just crossed the green boundary that covered the mountain’s waist, she looked exhausted.
“…The Origin Species still hasn’t come.”
“There’s always a way.”
She called to them again.
But the presence of the Origin Species, as if blocked by an invisible wall, only stirred helplessly, unable to advance or retreat.
A kind of barrier. Or perhaps a restraint.
William stopped judging the situation. In any case, he did not think he would lose.
“If you had simply left, I would not have tried to stop you.”
At that, the girl gave a sneer.
“I told you, didn’t I? I’d dig all the way down to the roots.”
Thunder.
Once from the railgun, and once from my own hand.
The mountain slope, beginning where the green vanished, had gone dark and mottled. Volcanic rock was strewn everywhere, and weathered soil, or earth split apart by shock, crumbled and scattered with every tremor.
Far in the distance, the summit wrapped in eternal snow showed its pale, bleached silhouette, and if you looked farther down from there, Yggdrasil’s true body loomed so overwhelmingly vast that it could not be taken in at a glance.
In front of that, I ran.
Ansuz!
Lightning burst from my hand as I dodged William’s mana bullet.
He raised the dagger he had been holding since the day before in front of him.
After he muttered something, a translucent barrier formed in empty air.
The lightning struck it, struggled against it for a moment, and then ricocheted off somewhere else.
He was standing still. That was my chance. I aimed the railgun. At the end of the sightline, William’s figure came into focus.
“…!”
It was a matter of inches.
William sheathed the dagger and kicked off the ground, slipping out of the line of fire at an angle.
Reacting a beat too late to my finger on the trigger, the alloy slug shot from the railgun.
It smashed uselessly into barren volcanic rock and buried itself in the ground.
“That weapon is truly offensive.”
“It’s called science, old man.”
I bared my teeth in a grin. But behind that grin, sweat had soaked the back of my head and my spine.
Only now did I realize how badly I had misunderstood the situation.
There was no reason for a mage to sit there politely and take it.
I should have at least considered the possibility that he could reinforce his body to the same degree as I could—or even beyond it.
I had been so focused on my own circumstances that I had failed to think about my opponent.
And as a result, I had managed to do nothing that actually landed.
I flicked my eyes downward to check the railgun’s condition. The rail was glowing red-hot.
It was spitting steam in a way that looked dangerous, probably because I had fired it repeatedly.
Warning. Rail temperature has reached the limit.
Isaz.
Another rune.
The steam pouring from the rail turned to ice. The overheated rail quickly recovered its temperature.
But that did not mean I could shoot forever.
How many times had I cooled it by now? I tried to estimate in my head.
Four times, maybe.
It was only a stopgap, cooling it like this, but strictly speaking I was shaving off the material’s durability by the bucketful.
And I still didn’t have any spare rails prepared.
How much longer could this makeshift fix hold?
“What’s wrong? Are you out of tricks?”
“Aren’t you the same? Nothing you’ve shown me qualifies as an attack.”
Hmph. So that’s how it was.
He nodded absentmindedly at my taunt.
Then he rolled up his sleeve.
Beneath the sunlight, his pale arm was exposed. Countless scars lay across it.
Just as I was wondering about them, I remembered what I had seen in an old book.
This was dangerous.
William slit his arm with the dagger in his hand.
The wound split open, and blood began to drip down.
—Raise the fire in the furnace. Drive the key into the wound.
──Refine the road of iron. Pave the path from the gate to myth.
The chant ended. The bloodstained blade cut through the air.
Warning—
Naudiz, Isaz, Eihwaz!
I hurriedly called out the runes.
Branches of yew made of ice interwove densely in front of me, forming a wall.
On the other side of it, something thin and sharp ripped through the air and arrived right up to my face.
A spear made of blood.
The spearhead stopped at the very spot where it might have pierced my skull, glistening with a viscous sheen in the sunlight.
Only then did cracks begin to spread late across the wall of ice.
“What’s wrong? Weren’t you the one who was so confident?”
The breath that had been pinned down by pressure finally burst out of me.
My lungs filled with ragged gasps.
The mystery I had spent to raise that barrier had not been cheap.
I could keep making them, yes, but the real problem wasn’t the mystery itself running dry—it was the way my whole body jolted every time I used it.
Magic was a pain in the ass.
Even if mystery gushed out endlessly, my body and mind simply couldn’t keep up.
Especially since I was using it like water because I had to put up a barrier to stop Origin Species from barging in during the fight.
Since I had to consciously manage the output, control, and release of the mystery all at once, both mind and body were being dragged toward collapse.
It was a weakness I had never noticed when I used only magic armaments, and I couldn’t think of a clear solution.
All I could do was grit my teeth and keep focus.
“…Damn it.”
The ice wall shattered.
Beyond it, William stood at a distance, calm and upright. Four spears spun in a circle around the arm from which blood still dripped.
Blocking that head-on would be horribly inefficient. I muttered another spell.
—The heart’s vast circulation brings boundless vigor; the furnace of flame forges steel as hard as iron.
As if hit by a stimulant, fatigue in my body sank behind a curtain of forgetfulness. My heart pounded violently, and stronger force surged anew through my arms and legs.
If blocking was at a disadvantage, then evasion was the only choice.
“You’ll dodge, then. That may be the wiser decision for you.”
“…!”
“Because…”
My body moved on instinct.
My legs kicked out first, and I leapt through the air for a moment.
The terrible sound of air being torn apart rang out four times in rapid succession.
Thud, thud, thud, thud—heavy impacts landing along the path I’d taken to escape.
“That would not be a very good idea either.”
Warning.
Damn it.
The small curse I spat was swallowed by the wind sweeping down the slope.
I jumped to avoid the spear and then rolled when I couldn’t keep my footing.
My back slammed into a stone jutting from the ground, and pain flared through one side of me.
Clenching my teeth against the ache, I pushed myself upright.
My body lurched forward again before I could even steady it properly. I staggered behind a giant boulder and took a brief breath.
Setting aside the power of it all, how in the world could he use magic with that kind of force so freely?
I had read a little about it in books.
There was a rule by which mana could be drawn through wounds. So if you were short on mana, you could even cut yourself on purpose to pull more in.
But even so, wasn’t he using far too much of it?
“…No way.”
A suspicion surfaced.
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them. I could see mystery racing furiously toward some point underground.
And at the end of that flow was William, standing with his feet planted on the earth.
Ah. So that was it.
“No wonder it didn’t come when I tried to draw on it just now.”
All the mystery held in this area was under William’s control.
That meant no matter how much he spent, it would never run dry. And since he had lived so long, he must have had some other contingency in place for the fatigue caused by using it.
So I wasn’t exactly in any position to be calling someone arrogant. Maybe I should have been looking at myself first—at the idiot who had rolled in here voluntarily to die.
I gave a bitter smile.
“But still.”
I wasn’t about to just take this lying down.
I heard the sound of another spear flying in.
I burst out from behind the rock I had been leaning against. A moment later, I heard it split apart behind me.
Even while running, I still had enough room to think. I forced my feet to keep moving and stopped myself from tripping over my own mistakes.
Each time he made a spear and sent it flying, the movement of the mystery visible to my eyes grew more violent.
Then—
“All or nothing.”
I hesitated for a fraction of a second.
Turning my head, I looked toward William. Mystery was gathering quickly beneath the ground he had sealed off. A blood spear was taking shape in the air.
Now.
I changed direction. Toward William.
I poured all the mystery I could into the railgun. Ignoring the warning that it had been overcharged, I sprinted.
I cut against the wind dropping from the ridgeline, narrowly avoiding the mana bullets that came flying late as the situation was finally understood.
I ignored the stinging cuts.
I could see the man halt in alarm just as he was halfway through making the spear. A translucent shield.
“This too can’t be blocked—”
Huh.
The world flipped over.
It felt like something had grabbed me.
That thing, which had seized me by the collar with brutal force, turned once with all the momentum of my charge and then hurled me in the same direction.
Immediately after, a searing pain shot up from behind my back.
“Kgh—khk.”
What a pathetic cough. My brain, which had been hazy as though covered in fog, began to wake again.
It wasn’t a severe concussion.
A sharp sting spread through my nose.
Sticky. Cold.
With the hand that had been gripping the railgun, wherever it had gone, I wiped under my nose.
When I looked at the back of my hand after wiping it away, it was red.
It was my mistake. I had assumed that if I just rushed him, he would be thrown off.
“I’ll give you this much—your bravery is impressive for a child.”
“Hah—hng, haa…”
“But there is such a thing as going too far when one is young and foolish.”
My legs wouldn’t move.
My breathing was ragged. My vision blurred.
Beside the outline of the man I could barely make out, I saw a dark crimson spear. I hurriedly whispered the rune.
Naudiz, Isaz, Eih…
Ah. No. My voice wouldn’t come out—
“The purpose of my activation is the protection of the Creator.”
──Test Type Fifth-Generation Valkyrie Frame XVF/5G-001 Stride, activation initiated.
---