Irie Argensia (1)
"Haah... haah..."
Ragged breaths tore out of me, one after another. A ceaseless barrage of massive mana bombardment poured down without pause, and layered on top of it came precognition so overwhelming that its reach had no discernible limit. Even the mightiest champions of the continent had been torn apart like paper before that calamity of a power.
Of course, if you asked whether my own situation was any better, the answer would be no. My right arm had been torn off long ago, and I'd already lost all feeling in both legs. I knew, instinctively, that my body had reached its limit.
Looking up at me, Demon King Vassago — his body cleaved in half by my sword strike — quietly murmured,
"It is your victory, young swordsman."
'Monster of a bastard.'
He'd butchered a subjugation army numbering in the thousands without a shred of mercy, and now he wanted to talk about victory? Demons really were all cut from the same cloth — hollow where emotion should be. I couldn't have found it more repulsive.
Strength seeped into my remaining left hand without my meaning it to, but he paid my reaction no mind and opened his mouth again.
"However, it is too early to rejoice. This life of yours, too, ends here."
"Is that so? Then I'll take those as your last words."
I felt no further worth in answering his nonsense. Swinging my remaining left arm, I drove the broken blade deep into his throat.
Shunk!!
"..."
The Demon King died without so much as a final word. His mighty mana proved utterly meaningless as the life drained from his body.
But in stark contrast, the mana core in his chest began to shine all the brighter. A lustrous crimson glow. That dense, concentrated light drew my gaze in despite myself.
And by the time I came back to my senses, the core was already resting in my left hand.
'...This is insane.'
I could feel powerful mana coursing up my veins, dammed back only by my grip. So this was what it felt like to be drunk on power? Even I, a complete stranger to magic, could tell what it was — a mass of mana so staggeringly potent it made my head swim.
And then, unbidden, a pitch-black desire lifted its head inside me.
'What if I shoved this thing into my own body?'
Wouldn't I at least grow stronger than the ones who'd been swept away by the Demon King's bombardment? No — I might even come to wield power greater than the Demon King himself, the one I'd just killed.
A Sword Saint who became the greatest mage on the continent. The title alone made my mouth water.
'Yeah. What's the harm in keeping a trophy or two?'
Just as a grotesque smile began to spread between my blood-crusted lips—
'Whoa. That could have ended very badly.'
A flash of clarity snapped through me, and my clouding mind sharpened back into focus.
It truly deserved to be called a Demon King's core. Even a magic-illiterate like me had been seized by such blind, ravenous possessiveness. I'd come within a hair of driving that ominous thing straight into my own chest.
'Whew. Thank God it was me who picked it up — imagine if it had been anyone else.'
I was in the middle of admiring my own iron will when—
Fwish!
"...Kgh!"
It missed by a hair's breadth. A razor-sharp beam of light had shot out from behind me and punched through my shoulder. Had I not twisted my body on pure instinct, it would have taken me through the heart. In the very next instant, light came streaming out of the wound and spread across my whole body, binding me where I stood.
Clang!
Chains of mana, forged from light. Even as blood poured from my wound, my arms and legs were bound fast.
"Put the mana core down on the ground."
"It is not a thing for a lowly sword-swinger like you to hold."
Familiar voices, coming from behind me. Melin, Yug, Caris — archmages ranked among the very finest of the entire subjugation force.
"Hahaha..."
Even as the blood kept flowing, I burst out laughing at the sheer absurdity of it. I'd assumed they'd all been blown away by the Demon King's bombardment. Turns out they'd been hiding somewhere safe, patiently waiting for me to cut the Demon King's throat for them.
"Oh, so that's who you were — the rat bastards shivering in a corner because the Demon King scared you?"
"Crude of tongue, as befits a barbarian."
Unshaken by my vulgar mockery, Melin leisurely lifted his chin and spoke.
"We were not hiding. We were merely biding our time, waiting for you to fulfill your duty as our meat shield."
"That's rich."
"...Do not hasten what little life remains to you."
Kriiiiek!
At a single gesture from Melin, the chains around my body cinched tight enough to crush bone.
"Gaaagh...!"
"A final warning. Set the core down this instant, and I shall at least see you buried as a martyr who fell in battle."
There was a reason they didn't simply take my head then and there. They were afraid the mana core in my hand might be damaged in the process — so instead of blades, they'd brought chains to grind my strength down. The scheme was written all over their faces.
The unending blood loss dimmed my vision, and the chains' crushing pressure made even breathing a struggle.
In this state, I had no chance of winning. Drag it out any longer, and I'd lose the core and die a dog's death. Simple as that.
'Still. I'll be damned if I hand it over nicely.'
Moaning through the pain and feigning defeat, I let the mana core slip lifelessly from my fingers to the ground.
"There. Take it."
"...You should have done so from the start."
"So the lowborn wretch does know the worth of his life after all."
As the core rolled across the ground, a slimy smile crept over Melin's lips.
"Naturally, we have no intention of sparing your life."
'You dumb bastards.'
Drunk on the fortune of having their prize roll right into their laps, perhaps? For just an instant, I could feel their taut, coiled mana slacken.
It was a mistake that mages who had never fought with their own bodies made all the time: they had no idea how dangerous a cornered warrior could be.
And I did not miss that fleeting gap.
KRAK!
"What are you doing, Caris! Stop him, now!!"
As I wrung out the last of my strength, shattered the chains, and tore forward, their panicked cries rang out behind me.
But...
It was already too late.
Fwoosh!
KLANG!
Crack-crack-crack!
My strike, thrown with everything I had left, skewered the mana core rolling across the ground clean through.
The Demon King's core lost its perfect form at once, and from that moment on, it did nothing but spew out ominous mana without end.
"AAAAAAGH! Do you have any idea what you have just done!"
"I'll tear you apart right this instant!!"
So much for their poise and refinement from moments ago. Watching them fly into a rabid frenzy was, frankly, a beautiful sight.
"Your precious prize is smashed to bits. Now what will you do?"
"Y-you filthy wretch!!"
KABOOOM!!
And then I took the storm of spells raining down from above with my entire body.
"Ggh... aaaaagh...!!"
Hundreds of holes opened across my flesh in real time. And came the horrific agony of my skin burning away.
In that moment, with death right before my eyes, the Demon King's last words surfaced unbidden.
"This life of yours, too, ends here."
If this life ended... then did that mean there was a next one?
I couldn't claim to know the Demon King well, but he was not the sort to tack on meaningless words.
'If there really is a next time...'
Those three, right in front of me. Through the haze of fading consciousness, I drove their faces deep into my memory.
'Next time, the ones dying will be you.'
With that vow, my consciousness drifted further and further away.
"Hahk!"
I jolted awake with a rough gasp, the pain still vivid. The horrific agony of burning flesh and holes punched through my body — pain I never wanted to feel again as long as I lived.
And yet what met my eyes was not the soaring ceiling of the Demon King's castle, but a chandelier dangling from an unfamiliar, ornate one.
"...Huh?"
Dazed, I pushed myself upright and drifted over to the mirror.
And there stood a beautiful young man with black hair.
Sharp eyes. Pale, flawless skin. And crimson eyes.
Unlike the face I'd seen in my dream, not a single scar marred it.
And at that very moment—
"Ugh...!"
A vicious headache hit me, and with it came the sensation of two severed lives fusing back into one inside my skull.
'Irie Argensia.'
The third son of House Argensia, one of the continent's most celebrated magical lineages — a family said to gather prodigies rivaling even the houses of the Three Founding Mages. That was the new name I bore as I greeted my twenty-third birthday.
"So there really was a next life."
A name worthy of the Demon King of Prophecy — for a brief moment, I marveled at his power, which had foreseen events three hundred years into the future.
But the instant I fully grasped my past life, the first thing to surface was the faces of those three mages who had struck me down from behind.
The moment my thoughts reached that point, my eyes turned to the calendar at the side of the room.
— Greitz Empire, Year 416 —
'Three hundred years...?'
Far more time had passed than I'd imagined. A span in which any ordinary person would, without question, have long since died.
Even so, clutching a thread of hope, I kicked my way out of bed and began tearing through the count family's enormous library like a man possessed.
But the investigation, fueled by sleepless nights, left behind nothing but hollow disappointment.
"The Great Three Founding Mages Bring the Flourishing of Magic to the Continent"
All three of them — Melin included — had gone down in history as the heroes who saved the continent. They hadn't merely lived out their natural spans to the very end; they had died peacefully of old age two hundred years ago.
'Well, fuck me.'
Thud.
Hollow, I shut the book and hurled it roughly to the floor.
A world three hundred years on, where even the targets of my vengeance had died natural deaths. All the murderous heat that had been churning in my chest hissed right out of me like a punctured kettle.
'Maybe I should dig up their graves and pound their bones into powder?'
The thought flashed through me in a moment of temper, but I quickly gave up on it. What was the point of digging up graves where not a shred of flesh would remain? It would only drag the Founders' descendants down on my head as enemies and make my life a headache for nothing.
'So what am I supposed to do now...?'
Revenge had long since sailed beyond my reach. I was slumped in a corner of the library, staring into the void with a life's purpose lost, when—
my gaze suddenly fell on my two slender, snow-white hands.
The bloodline of a famed magical house, and yet a pathetic body without a single drop of mana.
"Well. Doesn't matter, I suppose."
After all, I'd never tasted the blessing of mana in my past life, either.
There was something more important than that.
This noble young master's body looked like it would snap if you tapped it — and yet, when I recalled a few movements from my past life and gave them a try, they came out impossibly light and smooth.
In place of my old body's cumbersome muscle sat a supple frame. And where my joints had once been worn ragged from a lifetime rolling around in the dirt, these ones — tucked away in a room their whole existence — were pristine and fresh.
To a mage, a body without mana was garbage, plain and simple. But by my standards — with eyes only for the sword — it was nothing less than a lump of talent, a blank page waiting to be written on.
"Hmm... Might as well loosen the body up. It's been a while."
My enemies were all dead of old age, and having gone to the trouble of being reborn, I could hardly waste away cooped up in a library. I figured I'd get some air and move my body a little.
Except the garden was unusually raucous.
"Wow! As expected of Young Master Ellen!"
'Hm?'
A crowd had packed itself into one corner of the garden. Servants kept fussing and gawking around the boy standing at the center of it all.
"A 3-Circle at twelve years old!!"
"I have never seen such talent in my life. Truly the pride of the family!"
"Well, with talent like this, it's only natural."
My half-brother, Ellen Argensia.
A 3-Circle at twelve was, without question, respectable talent. But the magic that actually met my eyes...
'What the hell. It's pure garbage.'
He'd obsessed over raw power and let his casting slow to a crawl — and as a result, the caster's own body was left completely defenseless against a counterattack.
Truth be told, the Ellen in my memories had been a thoroughly insufferable brat, so I had no particular intention of bestowing my teachings upon him...
But I did happen to be bored out of my skull.
Perhaps I'd give that frog in his well a glimpse of what real combat looked like.