A Desperate Gamble
"Clack! Clack-clack-clack-clack!"
"I have no idea what you're saying… Silvia. Can you make that out?"
"No. How am I supposed to understand that?"
"Clack! Clack-clack-clack-clack!!!"
The skeleton soldier pounded frantically on its own ribcage, as if the whole situation were driving it mad with frustration. We were about twenty rounds into a game of charades when, far beyond the hill, Yuri came into view—a dark elf slung over one shoulder.
"I've captured the dark elf you mentioned. Just as you said, Count—I searched the ridgeline close enough to the palace for a clear view of the entire grounds, and found her hiding in a cabin."
"You subdued her properly, I hope?"
"Yes. I've fitted her with a magic restraint. She can't handle mana at all in her current state."
"…"
Thud.
Yuri brought Sefirot before me and dumped her unceremoniously on the floor. Something was off about her condition, though. Her body was stiff as a board, as if she'd fainted, and she was muttering something under her breath in a voice too small to hear.
I leaned in close.
She was repeating the same line over and over: Belmont is going to destroy the world…
Delusional nonsense.
"Haa. First things first—let's clean up this mess. And get a head count on the wounded."
"Yes, Count."
The once-magnificent Imperial Palace was a wreck. Collapsed walls everywhere. The noble guests who'd come for the banquet all lay unconscious. Legion soldiers and palace guards sprawled across the ground with injuries ranging from minor scrapes to serious wounds.
"Urgh… What the hell happened…"
"What happened to the palace!?"
Soldiers groaned face-down on the earth, suffering the symptoms of mana exhaustion, every one of them staring around in blank bewilderment. The light of reason filled their eyes—proof enough that the curse had finally released them.
"Snrrrk…"
"…"
And through it all, Reinhardt was snoring away, dead to the world. Probably because he'd taken the black-magic wave head-on at point-blank range—a sudden, violent drop in mana had knocked him out cold.
"Skeleton Grandpa!!! Are you okay!?"
"Clack-clack-clack!"
"Ah! Aaaah! He says a ton of people have broken bones!?"
Most of the skeleton soldiers had come through fine as well. Plenty of them had bones cracked and shattered here and there, of course—but bones could always be stuck back together. In practical terms, we'd taken no real losses at all.
A perfect victory.
Five full years. Sefirot had spent five years scheming inside the Fourth Corps, preparing this one strike—and in a single night, I had crushed every last thread of it and closed the crisis without a single fatality.
I wanted to whoop for joy. I swallowed it down. The second you declare the job done and ask something ominous like Did we get them?, even the corpses have a way of getting back up.
"Whew. We finally got them, then."
"Hey!!!"
"Good heavens. Why would you suddenly—huh?"
And of course Silvia went and planted the flag.
The ground heaved with a deep, rolling KRRRRRMM. Were there still remnants left?
Then, from the passage leading down to the basement, animal carcasses came pouring out of their own accord—swarming, tangling, fusing into one another—until they took on the shape of a massive black jelly.
"What the hell is that, Sefirot?"
"Ahahahaha…! At last, it wakes! Give it up! That child is a crystal condensed from the grudges of every soul who died across the entire elven nation! A monster born of millions of unjust deaths—a chimera!"
"…!"
Sefirot snapped back to her senses all at once, a triumphant smile spreading across her face. The black mass swelled larger and larger until it nearly matched the palace itself. Every step it took made the earth shake; buildings crumbled underfoot like biscuits.
Now that—that is real black magic. Why does everyone only ever give me hell about it?
What? Fuse the vengeful spirits of the wrongfully dead with animal corpses and manufacture a synthetic abomination of a chimera? With things like that walking around, why was I—a necromancer commanding undead legions, and a dark knight who just happened to swing a slightly sinister-looking holy sword—the one getting labeled a black mage?
It was so absurd, so unfair, that my chest went tight for a moment.
"Silvia. Charlotte. Yulia. Fall back for now. I'll take the first move."
Facing the giant chimera as it lumbered steadily toward us, I prepared to activate a skill once more. Maybe it was because I'd already fired off a wide-area black magic earlier—the control felt far more familiar now. I thought I could set a much finer range.
I aimed the field forward only, careful not to catch anyone behind me, and unleashed the skill. Black smoke rippled outward and swallowed the chimera whole.
[GRRAAAAAAAAH…!]
"My lord. It doesn't seem to have done a thing."
"No, Knight Unni! Look closer! It's moving way slower!"
I'd thought the black magic had no effect at all, given that the thing hadn't so much as flinched. But the rampaging momentum that had looked ready to flatten everything in its path drained away in an instant. The chimera came on as if trapped in slow motion.
So it, too, ran on mana as its fuel—and wasn't free of mana exhaustion. That black magic couldn't fully neutralize it, though, meant this thing wasn't simply being moved by a curse. It was better understood as a separate life-form the curse had brought into being.
"Everybody back! Something super-duper strong and crazy-dangerous is coming out…!"
Charlotte's face lit up with excitement as she hoisted the Jjang-sseh-jjang-sseh Sword. Yuri hurried to clear the wounded sprawled across the chimera's path. At last nothing stood between Charlotte and the giant chimera. She chanted and brought the blade down.
"Rumble-Crash-BOOM!!!"
KWAANG!
Violet aura erupted from the Jjang-sseh-jjang-sseh Sword, soaring as if it meant to punch through the sky—the same aura that had once split a mountain—and slammed straight down into the chimera. The blow parted the giant mass as cleanly as a knife through tofu, slicing it neatly in two.
Charlotte dismissed the aura and crumpled. When the dust settled, the scene before us was a long, gouged crater—and a chimera split cleanly in half along that crater's edge.
"Did we finally get it…!"
[GRRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!]
The instant Silvia spoke the cursed words, the giant chimera—which had looked dead after being cut in two—began to twitch. The two halves sealed back together as cleanly as if nothing had happened. Then, as though it had never been split at all, the chimera started advancing again, good as new.
"Ah…"
Charlotte, already down from mana exhaustion, went white as a sheet. Despair settled over that sweet face—and in that very moment—
[HYAAAAAAH!!!]
"Huk-huk-i!? Why did you come back?"
[I will not stand for the humans who make me chocolate cake dying!!!]
The Evil God 'Kali' cheers on the Great Spirit, shouting for it to hang in there!
KWAANG!
A dung-brown bulk came flying in and slammed into the giant chimera. Two colossal bodies locked together, shoving in a contest of pure strength—a spectacle to behold. At first Huk-huk-i seemed to be pushing the chimera back. Then, whether from the size difference or not, Huk-huk-i began to give ground, inch by inch.
Even Huk-huk-i couldn't overpower that thing by force alone. Which left only one realistic way to put the monster down.
"My stamina is largely spent, and Huk-huk-i has it pinned. What I need to do is perfectly clear. If cutting it doesn't kill it, then we simply cut it until it dies—wouldn't you say?"
"That's about the most brutish plan I've ever heard… but this time, it might actually be the right answer."
"I'll finish this quickly. Yulia—cover me."
"Yes, Instructor."
If cutting it doesn't kill it, cut it until it dies? Absurd as it sounded, there truly was no other option left. Just as infinite power doesn't exist in this world, neither does a creature that regenerates without end. Keep carving long enough, and even that chimera would eventually hit a point where it could no longer recover.
No one knew when that point would come—or how many cuts it would take. Even so, Silvia and Yulia seized their swords without a moment's hesitation and charged, advancing in perfect step as if they'd fought side by side across a hundred battlefields.
"Yulia opens wounds on the chimera's body—Silvia, land follow-ups before they close!"
"Yes!"
Slash! Slash!
Yuri darted in and out—no, Yulia—streaking past the giant chimera and leaving gashes in her wake. Before the flesh could seal shut again, Silvia lunged and drove her blade deep into the openings.
"Boom!"
And every time she chanted that thoroughly unimpressive spell, an explosion rang out. Light flared from inside the chimera's body, and the whole mass heaved. Once wasn't enough. Silvia circled around, stabbing her sword into every wound Yulia left open, chanting Boom!, stabbing again, chanting Boom!—over and over.
The successive internal blasts must have finally told. Huk-huk-i, who had been steadily losing ground, dug in its heels and began shoving the giant chimera back—
[GRRAAAAH!]
[KYAAAAAK! That wasn't me getting pushed! I just got a little tired and lay down for a second!]
The giant chimera bellowed and swelled its body. The recoil sent Huk-huk-i, who'd only just managed to hold the line, tumbling flat on its back. As if to flaunt that it was still very much alive, the chimera resumed its slow advance, smashing buildings as it came.
"Haa… haah… Even that wasn't enough…?"
Mana exhaustion finally claimed Silvia as well. She sank to the ground and couldn't rise. Charlotte and Silvia both spent, Huk-huk-i out of the fight… This was truly the end. I could see no way left to stop it.
"Yulia."
"Yes, Count."
"Pick up Charlotte and Silvia—now—and get into the panic room. Even if the whole palace comes down, you'll be safe there."
"Understood. But what about you, Count…?"
"There are still people left."
"…!?"
The banquet hall was still packed with unconscious bodies. Leave them and run, and every last one of them would be crushed under the giant chimera. The Empire's entire upper echelon would be wiped out in one stroke—exactly as Sefirot had planned. That, I would not allow.
"Th-then I'll stay and evacuate them! You should escape first, Count!"
"How am I supposed to carry both Silvia and Charlotte by myself? Charlotte, maybe—but Silvia's too heavy. It has to be you."
"Count, but…"
"There's no time! Go!"
"…"
At my shout, Yulia's lips trembled; her eyes welled up. Then she turned. She slung Silvia and Charlotte over her shoulders and headed for the panic room. Only once she was out of sight did I finally let out a breath of relief.
"Hooo…"
So how was I going to move all these people by myself?
I wasn't. That had only been an excuse to get Yulia clear. I still had one last card—a trump I could only play when no one was watching.
[GRRAAAAH!]
As the giant chimera roared and advanced on the fallen crowd, I took a slow step toward it.
The Evil God 'Kali' warns you that if you don't stop now, you will die!
The Evil God 'Kali' strongly urges you to flee at once!
The Evil God 'Kali' is appalled by your judgment, demanding to know whether you have no fear of death!
Quiet when it suited her—and now she wouldn't stop nagging. She should have figured it out by now. I had no intention of stopping. Even if the chimera crushed me to death right here, I was not going to stop.
Do something, Kali!
Kali had almost never intervened in the real world. But could she truly just stand by and watch if I were about to die?
You are loved by Evil Gods and demons for no particular reason. You become far more likely to catch their eye.
What I was counting on was Aslan's cursed constitution—the constitution that made Evil Gods love him. If she truly loved me. If she didn't want me to die. Then Kali would have no choice but to step in and force the issue herself.
With nothing but faith in Kali, I threw a gamble with my life on the line.
The Evil God 'Kali' wears a tearful face as she begins to enter the mortal rea—
KRA-KOOM!
A thunderclap tore at my eardrums, and a blue flash detonated before my eyes. For a moment the world went pure white, as if I'd been hit by a stun grenade. When my vision finally returned, the giant chimera lay in complete, scattered ruins.
[Grraaa…]
The black chunks twitched for a while, as if trying to regenerate—then the life went out of them, and they sagged into limp, dead heaps. This was so thoroughly finished that even if Silvia shouted Did we get it? ten times over, it would never come back.
Had Kali finally stopped spectating and manifested in the mortal world? I turned, eager to take in the sight—
"While I was powerless, you violated my imperial body to your heart's content. So—how did it feel? I'll grant you the chance to leave that review as your last words."
"Ah."
—and found Empress Vanessa standing there, the holy sword Tempest raised high and crackling with blue lightning, a bone-chilling smile fixed on me.