Ciel Midford
Inas den Preussen Robelium.
The man chosen to stand as his proxy was Ciel Midford.
The moment Euphemia grasped that fact, she caught the hem of Perzen's coat and stopped him where he stood, while everyone else poured out of the hall.
"……"
Soon the banquet hall had emptied like a tide gone out. Watching the doors drift slowly shut, Euphemia bowed her head and said nothing. She had no sense at all of what she ought to say.
I said as much. So why is Ciel still trying to set himself against Perzen like this?
Yes. In truth, she knew. It was for her sake. To pretend otherwise would have been a lie. But effort, the will to do one's very best—words like those were far too frail. For a mere knight of a kingdom, the reality he meant to twist aside stood too high, and far too heavy.
The moment of their parting had been the worst it could have been. Even so, did any life exist in this world that carried neither regret nor lingering attachment? The more one forced oneself into another's road, the more pain one earned. They might simply have kept the good memories and walked their separate ways. Ciel, instead, seemed determined to show her the very process by which even those good moments warped. Did he not understand that the more he did so, pain would seep into the memories until, later, she would be unable to recall them at all?
No...
In truth, all of this might have been nothing but the excuse of a woman who had already bent to reality. His spirit, which refused to yield to that reality, seemed remarkable in its way. That must have been why he could become a knight of the true path. She was not like him. She had despaired. She had given up. She had broken. The vow of surrender and obedience she had sworn to Perzen could hardly be called entirely her own will... and yet it could not be called purely against her will, either.
"The terms of the vow I made then... I have never broken them. Not once..."
"……"
Perzen looked down at Euphemia as she held him. Awkwardly up on her toes, she brushed her lips against his neck.
"So..."
As you promised, don't make me sad.
Euphemia had no intention of stopping Perzen from stepping into the duel. What she wanted was for Ciel to feel the immense wall that Perzen was, quietly fold away his feelings for her, and walk a path of his own. She wished for a parting of that kind. But Perzen's gaze was so grim it seemed he might simply kill Ciel, and so she retraced the terms of that old vow and, with a coaxing sweetness rare in her, pleaded as if begging.
"I know that my doing this because of Ciel may displease you all the more... But he was a precious bond of mine. My present and my future, I'll offer to you alone..."
"……"
"Only the past... please don't trample it..."
"……"
"It'll be enough to push him only far enough that he feels the defeat and can give up... Yes. I'm sure of it, so..."
Euphemia took Perzen's hand and laid it over her breast.
"Finish quickly... and when we go back, let's have sex. I want a child who looks just like you. I want your cock to come inside me, fill me up, and knock against my womb. I want you to kiss the nape of my neck. You can press my belly as hard as you like. A gentle touch feels good to me too, so..."
Perhaps for the first time—at what might have been the most naked of Euphemia's temptations—Perzen reached out and stroked her hair.
"Answer me..."
"……"
Did she know? This performance was one he undertook while bearing no small risk. And if, even so, he failed to kill Ciel Midford... he would be committing an enormous blunder. Yet if Ciel Midford died by his hand and her past came down in ruins, how great a blow would that be to her? Perzen found it difficult to guess. In truth, setting a single woman's feelings on the scale against his own fate was a foolish thing from the start.
"Euphemia."
"Yes... I'm listening..."
Even so...
"Recite for me again the terms of the vow you made then."
Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug was, at least to Perzen, a woman to whom the word mere did not attach. He could endure her breaking. But if, once broken, she chose to take her own life...
"I respect you..."
"And."
"I give my all to my duties as your wife."
"And."
"I share sorrow and joy with you..."
"And."
"No matter what happens... I won't leave your side."
"Yes..."
Perzen bent his head and set his lips to Euphemia's brow.
"I, too... shall not make you sad."
Then he lifted his head and opened the door.
Outside the banquet hall, the many spectators who would witness the duel turned as one to look at him. Perzen was not flustered. He took a step forward with quiet dignity. The wall of onlookers parted left and right, and beyond it, beneath the pouring moonlight, Ciel Midford—already upon the stage—received him.
A rather fierce night wind carried the scent of flowers from the Imperial Palace gardens not far off, and sent fallen petals drifting. Perzen stroked his altar, opened the subspace, drew out the coffin that held Isabel's corpse, and set it on the ground.
Ciel Midford walked the path of an Aura Knight. Even without ascending to the Extreme Realm—where mana at saturation leaked outward, took form, and gained the nature of anti-magic—a body reconstituted by mana in that transitional state let a man surpass human limits. As a rule, then, Aura Knights stood above mages in the food chain. Perzen was not afraid.
That Prince Inas had thrown Ciel Midford into this play as something to be spent meant, clearly, that his realm was not yet high. More than that, if in breaking through the snow mountains of Ruerug he had taken frostbite over his whole body, healed it through mana, and reconstituted his cells, then in proper sequence he would be weaker than one who walked the Aura Knight's path as it was meant to be walked. Where the ordinary route was to reconstitute the limbs one by one with mana and steadily reach a value of ten, Ciel Midford's value had been spread evenly across limbs and torso. It was the fastest road to the Extreme Realm, and for that very reason he was, along the way, less of a threat than other Aura Knights. Of course, the durability of his whole body could withstand magical force to some degree, so a mindless charge would still be dangerous...
An actor who has not finished his preparations does not step onto the stage.
With a clack the coffin opened, and the Empire's witch, enslaved under his control, rose. This was not a battle against many. The orthodox method would have been to raise the Implementation Rate of a qualitatively valuable corpse as high as it would go and fight that way, but Perzen did not stop there. With a heavy thud he drew out a fairly large box as well, set it on the ground, and lifted the lid.
Inside was the only metal that can exist as a liquid at room temperature. Mercury, in great quantity. In this fight, that mercury would be Perzen's safeguard—an absolute shield that would not be pierced.
"Sir Ciel Midford. Are you prepared?"
Unlike his usual habit, Perzen drew a pair of glasses from his breast. Delicately wiping the lenses, he addressed the Ciel opposite him in a flat voice from which every feeling had been put away.
"My preparations were finished long ago."
"Is that so..."
At Ciel Midford's heavy, swift reply, Perzen put on the glasses and took in a far clearer image of him.
"Then allow me to receive instruction in the honor of which your lord spoke."
Ciel Midford, sword in hand, settled his stance. A petal blown from the flower bed fluttered as if dancing, then fell strengthlessly to the ground—
A crackle. Vivid blue flame burned it away and wound, beautiful, around Ciel Midford's body.
A human body cannot surpass the speed of light. For that reason Ciel Midford had thought that if Perzen radiated current with oppressive force, he would have no choice but to endure it head-on. His body would break in the process, but current at such output would devour mana exponentially, and he ought to gain no small advantage from that.
Crackle...!
Contrary to expectation, the body taking the bundle of current suffered no severe recoil. Set beside the frostbite he had taken breaking through the snow mountains of Ruerug, the pain was of a degree he could well bear. So Ciel Midford gripped his sword and looked at Perzen. A strange liquid rose around the man, embracing him as if drawing a circle, and gave off an uncanny chill—but Ciel did not think it was something he could not cut.
He drove strength into his heels and stepped in. In an instant Ciel Midford closed a distance that had been far from small. Even a body reconstituted for balance rather than specialized to one extreme showed power that fell short only beside Aura Knights of the same rank. Measured against an ordinary man, he was already in the realm of the superhuman.
A low hum rose. Before he could reach Perzen's immediate reach, Ciel Midford crossed some certain distance and felt a strong repulsive force shoving him back. He stopped as if he had struck a wall. The rebound of that collision sent a brisk wind shaking the hem of Perzen's clothes and his hair.
"The ignorant are simple even in how they think."
Meeting the eyes of Ciel Midford, halted just short of his face, Perzen pushed up the glasses that had slipped a little and watched, indifferent, as the man was thrown clear.
"What good is speed and weight, when there is no substance to them."
Mercury. A substance that, upon reaching a certain negative critical temperature, becomes a superconductor—electrical resistance falling to zero even as it expels magnetic fields. In this world, at least, it was knowledge only Perzen possessed. Had Lee Seojin not taken an interest in maglev trains and gone looking into them, it would have been a method he could never have applied. Of course, what he had retained was only a surface understanding, and so Perzen had researched alone until he found that critical temperature. What he had barely uncovered at the end of that work, he had now put to use.
The mana cost is greater than I expected, but...
The effect seemed certain. Current flowing in a line or a circle through a conductor naturally gives rise to a magnetic field around it. Ciel Midford's armored body was hardly fit to serve that role, but current transformed from mana obeyed a mage's control from the first, and deliberately setting its flow and direction was no difficult thing.
I thought there would be some special ability. Is this all?
Each of them had brought his best preparations onto the stage, yet the gap in capacity and skill was so overwhelming that even the tension and the sense of danger he had carried failed to rise, and seemed instead to gutter out.
The hum deepened. Ciel Midford, struggling, hauled himself up once more and aimed the point of his sword at Perzen, and each time Perzen raised the output of the current and widened the magnetic field. If fire had been the spark from which civilization began, then current was the axis upon which that civilization unfolded.
"From of old, man has been powerless before nature."
Blue flame crackled and spat. Ciel Midford, flung away without a shred of dignity, went down on the ground and bit his lip hard. The gaze he lifted...
It did not seem even a sliver of a threat. Perzen stood straight in a lofty posture and looked down on him from a height without end.
He did not fall. He did not break. He did not bend. He did not snap. Truly, seven times down and eight times up. Flung back helplessly again and again, Ciel Midford still did not give up, and still he charged at Perzen. He was wretched, desperate, and earnest, and yet...
A dull impact. The result never changed.
"Tsk."
At that, the knights of the Empire clicked their tongues as if they had seen something unfit to watch, and turned their faces from the sight. An Aura Knight, toyed with to that degree by a black mage enslaving an Elemental Magician's corpse—was that even a thing one could say aloud? They thought he was bringing the whole shame of the Aura Knights down upon himself alone, and hoped Prince Inas would simply declare the loss and have done. The situation was so pathetic that it was difficult to esteem his will and spirit at any height. Yes, Ciel Midford was facing it with the resolve to die... but there was no one moved by that. A life is a tragedy seen up close and a comedy seen from afar. Those words must have been made for a moment exactly like this.
A boom. Beneath Ciel Midford's feet the ground shot upward and lifted him into the air. However extraordinary his body, movement in the air would be limited. Watching him right himself for the landing, Perzen formed a massive cube of ice. Its peculiarity was that the space within was hollow, and that above and below, small holes had been cut through which only Ciel Midford's torso and head could pass. The moment Perzen set the air pressure inside and outside at odds...
A rush of wind. Naturally, drawn along the current of pressure seeking to equalize, Ciel Midford was sucked into the great ice.
"Kh—!"
His head passed through the upper hole, jutted abruptly from the lower side, and jammed there. Perzen filled the emptied interior with water of high viscosity. The resistance was severe in proportion to that thickness, so each of Ciel Midford's movements failed to carry its force, and the ice wall would not break. It was a picture of an Aura Knight perfectly suppressed by the enslavement of an Elemental Magician's corpse, and among the spectators several Elemental Magicians let out cries of admiration and applauded.
......
Most of them, no doubt, would take this for a moment at which it would not be strange for the duel to end. Prince Inas, too, thinking this was enough, was weighing when a declaration of defeat would fall most naturally. But Perzen did not want to end it so. A body reconstituted by mana might be durable, yet the head would not resist magic so well. A desperate wish to burst that skull open as it was leaked thick killing intent—and still, seeing Euphemia beyond, her two hands clasped in desperate prayer, Perzen swept a hand down his face and pressed the killing intent under.
Euphemia... do you know what it is, having come this far, to leave the decision of my fate not in my own hands, but to the probability that is Ciel Midford?
She could not know. Even if he had shown none of it, the anxiety that somewhere beyond the reach of his hands and eyes a dagger aimed at his heart was growing had been no small stress upon him. But if, with the two selves mixed, the goal engraved by Lee Seojin's self was survival... then the goal engraved by Perzen von Schweik Brutein was perhaps the only woman in this world for whom he need not mind his severe obsession: Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug. And so the compromise he had prepared naturally left him only one.
Ciel Midford. You...
With what thought was he standing in this place? To take the measure of Perzen's full strength once?
If not that...
Staking his life. Prepared to die. Had he come to kill the villain who had stolen the heroine? He could not know. He could not know, and yet from where Perzen stood he thought he had no choice but to hope Ciel Midford had chosen the latter. He moved Isabel Ron Pierre Genova forward.
A snap. The cold that had been holding the mercury at extreme low temperature vanished, and all his mana save some ten percent was made available. At once, at the fingertips of Isabel as she raised her hand, an intense spark began to rise—
Crackle—! A brilliant bundle of current scattered in every direction like leaves and branches spreading wide, and shot up into the sky. Had high-voltage current radiating to that degree gathered in a single place, one could easily have guessed what would have become of Ciel Midford's head. But Perzen, as if to show them, as if he were merely wasting mana, wrought art through current—splendid, beautiful, elegant, and refined.
Night had settled, a darkness that swallowed light. The scattering current became a single tree and drove the dark of night away. Then the great ice binding Ciel Midford shattered. Its grains, and the thick water pouring from within, broke apart in an instant and sent up glittering vapor. Truly... it was a dreamlike sight.
And Ciel Midford, dropping out of that vapor to tumble gracelessly to the ground, broke the immersion of the spectators who had been caught in the dream.
At the same moment, a single phrase from Inas den Preussen Robelium spread in a quiet ripple.
"We have lost..."