Thunder Stake
Kwaaaah! The Sword of Despair lifted its head to cleave my body. I unleashed a barrage of Mana Bullets. Tang! Tang-tang! If I were still that hero brat, I could've shattered that sword with the Holy Sword ages ago. Every single one of the Demon King's lackeys is a monster.
"The Demon King is one thing, but these guys are seriously monsters."
And yet he keeps coming after me to fight. What a pervert.
"Says the one who defeated the Demon King?"
"There's something called underhanded tactics." I really wish he'd stop bringing up the Demon King. Still, we've been yapping long enough, haven't we? I've been chattering away like some girl for a full ten minutes now. I can't keep channeling demonic energy for much longer. Against one of the Four Heavenly Kings, dragging this into a war of attrition is suicide. My body is starting to feel heavy.
He looks worn out too after fighting this long. Makes sense—he's already spent maintaining the army in Karhem, and now he's burning even more clashing with me. Time to use it.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
I looked up at the sky. Rumble... My luck was incredible. The conditions were even better than before. Dark clouds had gathered, and wind and rain were whipping through the air. This environment was perfect. I could pass off Karhem's destruction as a natural disaster. Plus, with the clouds already there, I could reduce the mana needed for the no-chant casting. If I concentrated it all in one spot, I'd have fewer clouds to manipulate and save even more mana. This was going to be a gamble. Just once was all I needed. If I could gather the thunderclouds into a single point and drive it down like a stake...
Maybe it was possible. Even Pector couldn't tank that kind of hit. Swordmagic attrition was exhausting, and a grand spell was realistically one-shot only. Either way, the disadvantage remained. So I'd aim for a one-shot fight.
Clang-clang! I blocked him with Teleport as much as possible while feeding mana into the clouds and stirring them. At the same time, I kept layering formulas onto my palm. One for lightning magic. One for mana amplification. I imprinted them onto my left hand, repeating it dozens, hundreds of times.
Rumble... Rumble...
"What are you planning? You can't even use Meteor in that body, can you?"
As expected, Pector wanted to settle this with swordsmanship. He'd picked the most advantageous battlefield possible. Not that he'd go easy on me—he knew that much would wound my pride. So we both stayed silent about it.
Pector had one major problem. He'd only ever seen me use Meteor, so he didn't know about this.
"Will your magic immunity hold, or will nature win?"
"What—"
"It's a mistake to think the only grand spell is Meteor."
I used Teleport once, as fast as possible. Mana cost doubled. If I was going for a one-shot anyway, this much was worth spending to create an opening. And then—
Bang! I sprayed Mana Bullets to block Pector's attack and create that opening. At the same time, hundreds, thousands of formulas amplified the lightning magic. Just one shot. It required delicate control. One mistake and Karhem would be wiped off the map. There hadn't been any victims in the buildings destroyed so far, but if I lost control of this spell, every human in Karhem would die.
"[Thunder Stake]"
Crackle-crackle—Fzzzzzzzzzt!
KWAAAAAANG!
Divine lightning fell from the heavens toward Pector. The world shook, and light swallowed Karhem whole.
* * *
Amidst countless demon corpses, a woman flicked the blood from her sword.
"That gutless Pector. Was he so scared of facing me that he only sent these small fry?"
Her entire body was drenched in blood. All of it from the demons Pector had sent. She'd cut down at least a thousand by now. She was exhausted. Could she really take on Pector in this state?
"Would it have been easier if he were here?"
That guy who'd watched her training the imperial army against the Demon King's forces and muttered, "What the hell are you training them so stupidly for?" Noah.
—If you let me take the hero party's spot, I'll train your subordinates way harder.
—And if you fail?
—If it's what the Light Sword wishes, I'll do anything.
Right. Because he'd said that, she'd taken his place for just one day when the hero party went to subjugate the Demon King's army within the Empire. And Noah had trained the imperial forces. Back then, she'd thought the hero party was truly hopeless and wondered how Noah had managed to stay with them. The problem was, when they returned, his subordinates had completely changed in personality and character. They'd become thoroughly combat-oriented and strong enough to rival high-ranking adventurers, sure—but they'd also gone half-mad. Some even started eating raw monster meat, of all things. When she'd confronted him about it, he'd said he'd just repeated twenty-four-hour training for three days straight. Could three days really do that? She was curious what kind of training it was, but it had benefited the Empire's national interest.
'That was a memory too, I suppose.'
Even now, those subordinates were probably dripping monster blood from their mouths. If they'd lived, they would've grown even closer to the imperial family and herself.
"Dying like that... How furious must he have been?"
What a waste of a man. Wouldn't it have been better if the hero had died instead? How angry must he have been with that incompetent hero party to charge at the Demon King alone? According to news from the Kingdom, the higher-ups claimed Hero Eugene said the mage Noah had abandoned them. How pathetic for a supposed hero to whine like that.
Rumble...
While she was badmouthing the hero party, gray clouds drifted across the sky.
"Clouds, of all things." The weather for meeting one of the Four Heavenly Kings was truly pathetic. Looked like lightning might strike any moment. If only it would just swallow Pector whole. And then Natalya saw it.
Fzzzzzzzzzt!
KWAAAAAANG!
"...Huh?"
An overwhelming force of nature, so immense it could only be described as "massive." A lightning bolt so enormous it defied description struck down upon Karhem from the sky.
"......It actually granted my wish properly."
Maybe she should try believing in the Goddess Church. Come to think of it, a new saintess had appeared. She might as well visit a church sometime. Having sorted her thoughts, Natalya headed toward the center of Karhem.
* * *
Rumble-rumble... I rose from the pile of dirt and rubble. Dust filled the air in every direction as I brushed myself off.
"Ah, shit. That really hurt like hell."
My whole body throbbed. If I hadn't compressed the lightning and deployed a shield at the last second, I would've died for real. If I hadn't layered hundreds of formulas, the lightning would've scattered everywhere. Blood was trickling from my ears—looked like I'd lost hearing in one. Even if that could be healed, the real problem was Pector. I pressed my temples and tried to steady myself. Taking that lightning in a human body and surviving this well... I was practically lucky.
"This bastard can't die on me."
If he died, I'd be the one in trouble. At least according to my theory, something happens to whoever kills one of the Four Heavenly Kings. I was right on the verge of that happening. The Demon King died and nothing weird occurred, but until I uncovered the secret behind the Four Heavenly Kings' birth and death, I couldn't just kill them freely. I forced myself upright. My shoulders were stiff too. Was that damn chest fat really the issue here?
Rumble-rumble... From beneath the collapsed Karhem government building emerged a man clad in shattered black armor. What the hell? That wasn't possible, right? I hoped my prediction was wrong.
"Kuhahahaha! Noah. Magnificent. As expected of my rival!"
What? That bastard was Pector?
"Wow. You're still alive."
The guy was a real monster. And his appearance was unexpected. Before the helmet came off, he'd looked like nothing but a mass of beard, but he seemed only a few years older than Olivia—around Noah's age.
"I didn't expect that lightning to pierce my armor. Let alone destroy the helmet."
If magic doesn't work, you just have to pound it in harder. But more than that—
"How old are you?"
Why the hell was this guy so young?
"What does the number of years lived matter? I stopped counting once I passed a hundred."
"A hundred?" The Demon King's army had only appeared about ten years ago. When had the previous Four Heavenly Kings appeared and died? I needed to look into this more. But right now—
"......Shit, my hand won't move."
My right arm was completely numb. We were both too exhausted to keep fighting. He hadn't intended to kill me either, just like I'd said—I couldn't afford to see this through until I uncovered the secret. "The Light Sword will be here soon. How about we withdraw for now? It's basically a draw anyway."
I couldn't move, and if he was in that state, it meant he'd burned through all his demonic energy and mana. Neither of us could fight. So it was a draw. I could force myself to move, but my body might scatter into mana.
"No. You won this time as well."
"What?"
Looking closely, the sword in Pector's hand—the one called Despair—was broken. The weapon that could turn a person to dust had been shattered like that.
"My sword is broken. For a swordsman, the sword is his life. Since it broke, I have lost."
Pector shook his head. If he said he'd lost, there was no point arguing. I was too tired anyway. But he only took the broken half—the hilt portion.
"You're not taking the sword?"
Ordinary people couldn't even touch that thing. Karhem would be destroyed because of that broken sword alone.
"I'll leave half with you. It was enjoyable after so long, so I won't approach the Empire for a while."
With those words, he opened a dimensional rift and vanished inside. The fact that someone like him had targeted the Ashtar territory meant he'd set this up from the beginning to go after me.
"No, seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do with this weird thing?"
Any normal human who grabbed it would be in danger. If I hadn't achieved Mana Fusion, I wouldn't have even been able to hold the sword. But that wasn't the important part right now. I stored the sword in my pocket dimension. The real problem was something else. Aslan was useless even at times like this. I flipped over one of the collapsed buildings. Beneath it were a few rat-like kids.
"Whoa, looks like I'm not dead yet. Guess I controlled it pretty damn well. You guys came to watch again?"
"Hiiiik!"
Lightning had swallowed Karhem, yet these brats were still alive. That meant I'd really targeted only Pector. Yeah. Aslan, Lyler, Shariel. At least their guts were worth acknowledging.