Ascension Ritual
After we’d roughly soothed Daeun, who was still whining about it, we left that unexpected reunion behind and set out on the journey toward the center.
As always, we dealt with the monsters that came lunging at us, wandered the roads while gawking at the houses the demonfolk had lived in, and when the sun went down, we built a campfire and prepared to bed down for the night.
And so, two days passed.
At last, we arrived at what seemed to be our destination.
“Hmm.”
I scratched my cheek as I looked at the black barrier blocking our way.
It looked similar to the holy magic protecting the Sedes Holy Kingdom, and to the holy magic Celine had cast, but the black, wavering surface gave it an unsettling feel that made my skin crawl.
This might be a little troublesome.
“Can we break through it?”
“We can break through it.”
“We” just didn’t want to, that was all.
The whole point of a barrier was to separate what was inside from what was outside. If they’d gone to the trouble of erecting one, it meant they’d needed to keep those two spaces apart, and if we carelessly punched a hole through it and ruined that meaning, it could cause problems.
For example, something like a monster too strong to handle could come spilling out…
Well, I figured the odds of that were very low, but still. This was the demons’ home ground, after all, and I wanted to avoid causing any unnecessary misunderstandings.
When I said that, Daeun gave me a strange look.
“…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No, I just… it’s weird seeing Kana have such thoughtful ideas… ow!”
Anyway.
With Magi this dense, it probably wasn’t possible to smash the whole thing down outright, and even if we made a hole big enough for three people to pass through, I doubted it would repair quickly.
Still, it was better to avoid doing anything troublesome if possible.
Even so…
I glanced at Daeun, who was holding her shin and making pained little noises.
She didn’t look well at all.
If Daeun had heard me, she’d probably have said, “That’s because Kana kicked my shin!”
But if she was going to say that, then she had already looked bad before I’d ever kicked her shin.
When we first set foot in Laxia, she’d been fine, but as the Magi around us thickened and swallowed the world, her face had only grown darker, and now it was the color of mud.
Still, she’d lasted longer than I expected.
Daeun was Expert rank.
Even I, whose realm was far higher than hers, found Laxia’s Magi oppressive, so what must it have been like for her?
Just enduring this long was already more than enough for an Expert—frankly, it was too long.
It was probably thanks to the magical artifact she carried, but that seemed to be reaching its limit now too.
“Celine. Please put some holy magic on Daeun.”
“Yes. Understood.”
“Eh? N-no, I don’t really need that….”
“You’re sweating buckets, and you say you don’t need it?”
“…Ahaha. You noticed? But, you know, we never know what’ll happen, so we should save our strength as much as possible. It doesn’t even hurt that much… I can still hang on, so I should be fine, right? If I really can’t take it anymore, I’ll say so then….”
“Don’t be stupid.”
I cut off her muttering with a firm voice.
“The reason I told Celine to conserve her strength in the first place was for this.”
What exactly did she think I meant by “save your strength”?
And sure, with Edel’s blessing it probably didn’t hurt that much, but that didn’t mean she was fine, did it?
She was practically radiating the fact that she wasn’t okay, and she expected us to just go, “Oh, I see”? Please.
“Ahaha….”
“It’s a nuisance, but please.”
“Of course. That is my role.”
As Celine’s holy power wrapped around her, Daeun’s complexion softened considerably.
“Phew… the damage-over-time is gone. I was wondering if I’d need a potion, but thank goodness. What? You think I was trying to save money on potion costs like some cheap grinder? What kind of cheap grinder am I supposed to be? That’s insulting, and I can’t let it slide.”
If she was going to sigh in relief, then why had she been so stubborn about refusing holy magic in the first place?
I shook my head at Daeun’s inexplicable behavior and examined the barrier.
Unlike the fence built around the village where demonfolk who had fled to the Ardeena Continent lived, this barrier showed no sign of any entrance.
“No choice, then.”
I muttered it and drew my sword.
Daeun, who had been watching me, said in a sour tone, “…Didn’t you just say you wouldn’t break it? I’m pretty sure you said you wanted to avoid causing misunderstandings.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Then why are you drawing your sword? Wait—don’t tell me you’re going to cut me with it…!”
“You’re chattering so much, I guess you’re feeling better now.”
Come to think of it, maybe the reason yesterday and today had felt a little empty was because Daeun had been spouting fewer nonsense remarks.
And she’d been clinging to me less than usual, too.
If I said that out loud, she’d definitely respond with something obnoxious like, “Aww, our Kana was lonely because unnie didn’t get to hold you? There, come here and cling as much as you want,” so I kept the thought to myself.
“Even if I don’t smash the barrier, if I do something that can’t be ignored, it’ll draw a reaction.”
Could anyone really ignore the sound of bombs going off in the yard?
I poured mana into the sword in my hand.
Wooooooong-!
The blade, stuffed full of mana, vibrated madly as it let out a howl.
It only held together because a skilled blacksmith had made it. If it had been a sword crafted by some half-baked amateur, it would have shattered long ago and turned to iron dust.
This was an act that ignored the sword’s durability entirely…
An act so crude and unsophisticated that even if I scrubbed my eyes raw, I wouldn’t find a trace of finesse in it.
Just hammering mana into it like an idiot.
Crack.
But it seemed this sword had reached its limit.
The sound was so faint it could have been swallowed by the wind and lost, but my sharpened hearing caught it without fail.
It was the scream of a blade driven to its breaking point.
If I forced any more mana into it here, it would die with one final, ragged cry.
I already had more than enough mana to make a racket, and there was no reason to waste it and lose a perfectly usable weapon, so I stopped.
What I held in my hand was a giant pink sword that could easily be called a greatsword.
I gripped the blade, now stripped of its original color and shape, and swung it toward the sky.
A pink sword aura soared upward.
There was neither an obstacle to block it nor an enemy that needed to be cleaved in two.
Rattle-rattle-rattle!
“Ghk…!”
Not only I, but Daeun and Celine, who had been watching me, clapped their hands over their ears at once.
The straight, spear-like slash of sword aura produced a harsh, grinding noise.
It wasn’t the sound of something being cut so much as something being ground down, or crushed to powder.
And soon, I could see with my own eyes what my sword aura had actually cut.
“I didn’t expect this result.”
The place where the sword aura had passed.
Along the path it had carved, the blue sky shone through in full.
I stared with interest at the bizarre sight of the blue sky visible through the dark haze of Magi.
Right. The Magi was there.
What my sword aura had cleaved wasn’t the barrier—it was the Magi blocking the sky.
If I hadn’t poured in enough mana, it would have been swallowed by the Magi and vanished, but because I’d forced so much into it so carelessly, my sword aura had split the thick Magi and reached all the way up to the high heavens.
I’d only meant to create a simple shock, though.
The shrill noise that scraped at the ears, and the refreshing open view that burst wide before us, had not been what I intended.
My original purpose had been only to circulate a massive amount of mana.
If I gathered enough mana to shake the surroundings, then anyone with even a moderate sense of power would have to notice.
And sending the sword aura up toward the sky was meant to make our location clearer, not to show off my power, nor to…
“You split the… sky….”
…to say something embarrassing like Daeun had just done.
Still, seeing the blue sky after so many days didn’t feel bad.
Even if it wouldn’t last long.
“It’s a gift from me.”
I thought this should be enough for a housewarming present.
Casually turning halfway around, I asked, “So? Do you like it?”
Click.
And then I was stopped by iron bars.
…Huh?
Why?
More importantly, hadn’t this happened before not so long ago?
* * *
Fortunately, I regained my freedom before long.
It was thanks to my testimony that I’d done it to summon the demons inside without damaging the barrier at all, along with Celine’s holy power, whose persuasion probability was gloriously at one hundred percent.
Honestly, the latter seemed to carry more weight than the former, but still. My contribution wasn’t zero, was it?
“As the leader, I had my duty to fulfill, so I will not apologize.”
The woman who had let me out of prison said that.
The man I had seen a few days ago had looked young, but the woman standing before me looked even younger than that.
For a human, she seemed to be in her early twenties or so.
She was a beauty, with softly slanted eyes that gave her a gentle look.
“Why does everyone have such huge chests….”
Thok.
I jabbed Daeun in the side to warn her, because she was staring at the woman with jealous eyes and muttering nonsense.
Why was she envying nothing more than a lump of fat?
It wasn’t jealousy, absolutely not.
Besides, I didn’t even want myself to be like that.
That sort of thing would only get in the way when swinging a sword, wouldn’t it?
“Leader? Are you the chief of the demonfolk?”
“…Is your speech always this, how shall I put it, curt?”
“It’s a habit.”
“You should correct bad habits. Breaking one that’s rooted in the body is not easy, but if you set your mind to it, it is not impossible, so you should start trying from now on.”
“I never said it was a bad habit. And I’ve spoken casually to Edel too. Are you saying you rank higher than Edel? If that’s the case, I’ll speak politely to you.”
“…There is no way that the exceedingly busy Lady Edel would deign to exchange words with a little girl like you. If you intend to deceive me with such absurd lies—”
“What Kana-nim says is true.”
“…”
If it had been a lie, the nun of the Edel Church would have been the first to rise in outrage.
But instead of getting angry, the woman fell silent at Celine’s defense of me.
She looked from me to Celine and back again with eyes full of disbelief, then slowly lowered the hips she’d half-raised back into her chair.
“…The end times truly are upon us.”
Seeing her react like that, a sudden impulse rose in my heart.
What would she do if I told her Edel’s true nature?
Would she deny it and insist that Lady Edel could never behave like that, or would she accept even that?
I was very curious, but my plan was instantly guessed and thwarted by Celine, who rushed to stop me.
“Please don’t make this too difficult.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
I was only being a little petulant because they’d locked me up in prison.
Anyway, her face looked strangely familiar.
I tapped the scabbard a few times in thought, then snapped my fingers.
“What are you to Atisha?”
“…You know Atisha?”
“She’s the one who brought me here, so of course I do.”
“I see…. Yes, is that child doing well?”
“Hard to say. I didn’t get a proper look, but she seemed to be living all right.”
“That is a relief.”
The woman’s eyes shone faintly, as though she were remembering something she missed.
“So, your answer to my question?”
“She is my daughter.”
“Ah, I thought so.”
It was within the range of what I’d expected, so it wasn’t all that shocking.
Though judging by how wide Daeun’s eyes had gone, she seemed to feel differently.