Don't Come Here, You Monster!
“No, no! Stay back, you monster!”
There are species in this world that move according to a single 'concept,' fastidious beyond all reason — and the unicorn was the worst of them.
It wasn't fussy in matters of raw strength.
No, it was one of those beings that judged its counterparts on its own arbitrary terms.
The moment it laid eyes on you, it measured you against standards that seemed, to itself at least, perfectly clear, and then decided how it would behave toward you — and even what kind of personality to wear while doing it.
You couldn't simply kill them for thinking and judging as they pleased, and yet leaving them be was insufferable in the extreme. Such were these creatures.
Because they only ever acted within their own rigid frame, one could almost call them the most transparent race in existence.
And once in a very great while, a concept would trample right over the very laws of the world.
“What a load of bullshit.”
A foul word slipped out for the first time in a while.
I usually watched my mouth — on stream, and whenever I wasn't alone — but this was an exception.
How was anyone supposed to look kindly on a species that pried into the affairs of angels and demons as it pleased?
Not that prying ever let them *win*, of course.
If anything, their arrogance had earned them damage so thorough it bordered on extinction.
Even I, who had wandered across countless continents and worlds, had seen them only rarely — and I'd laid eyes on a unicorn exactly once.
A pure-white spiritual body wreathed in brilliant, prismatic light. A long, tapering horn. Eyes of unblemished snow. A horse — a foal, really — bearing the light of purity.
‘Oh! How pure you are! You fill me with the feeling of beholding a pristine field of snow, never once trespassed upon!’
‘And yet... that snowfield was not formed of your current body alone, was it? Something I cannot fathom has been laid over it.’
‘But do not worry! Whether your 'past' or your 'present,' you are utterly, perfectly pure!’
‘I simply pray that you will preserve this purity forever and ever—’
...Honestly, the person most deserving of praise is me, for not killing it on the spot.
How did I even hold back?
My one regret is that I never got around to smashing its skull in.
What infuriated me even more was that I had actually placed a shred of hope in that godforsaken beast — for no reason other than that it seemed to dimly sense my 'past.'
I'd thought maybe it knew something about this system, about this world.
‘Knew something, my ass. It had nothing. That deranged purity fanatic simply possessed a god-tier talent for judging one single thing: purity. That was it.’
A 'mere' species that couldn't even beat a low-ranking angel at anything besides looking.
That's exactly why it makes me so angry.
If only that power had extended to actual force.
If an ability that could see through all creation had posed even a real threat to the angels and demons.
If that 'concept' could have been turned toward something — anything more worthwhile.
‘Then the world wouldn't have fallen so far.’
Eee-hee-heee~!
“...Huh. Lily, don't tell me.”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Vlack opened his mouth to say something, then swallowed it.
Perhaps to change the subject, he swung his greatsword in a wide arc and drew the unicorn's gaze.
The hostility radiating off the creature now was nothing like the look it had given me.
‘Just bash its head right in—’
“I'll take the unicorn. In the meantime, Lily, you take the core—”
“No.”
I drew out my hammer.
No longer cloaked in the red shell from before, but gleaming with a vivid crimson sheen all the same.
“I'll smash it myself.”
I'd been itching to blow its brains out anyway.
FWOOSH! In an instant, my body rocketed skyward.
As I soared, that damned horse's head came into view below.
And even mid-battle, it looked up at me — and its hostility simply melted away.
Perfect. Now, the head. Shatter.
‘Shatter...?’
Cr-r-rack!
Brilliant blue ice swallowed the hammer whole.
The ice compressed, and compressed, and compressed — until, packed with ferocious mana, it exploded.
“Lily!”
“Whew... safe!”
Leo materialized alongside the shattering ice.
Behind her, a dinosaur — the summoned beast — tore through the blanket of white steam and landed squarely on top of the unicorn.
The beast clutched its head, dizzy from the impact.
“Uuurgh... don't just throw me—”
“Dodge on your own!”
“Huh? Wha—”
Before he could finish, a black slash came screaming in.
It swelled as it flew, growing into something so vast it evoked a crescent moon filling the sky.
The dinosaur scrambled to gather his focus.
“Block it!”
SHIIIIIING!
Though the unicorn of Purity and Nobility resented being bound to a master it found less than 'perfect,' it obeyed the command all the same.
A translucent five-colored shield bloomed into being and drank in the black slash.
Even after absorbing a barrage of reinforced strikes, the unicorn's whole body shuddered for just a breath.
It wasn't a true World Boss — but it should have had power worthy of one. And even so, it was being pushed this far.
“...You monsters really are in a league of your own.”
“Good! Keep it pinned down!”
“Excuse me?! Aren't we supposed to be fighting this together?!”
The dinosaur roared after Leo, already flying off into the distance — but she never circled back.
Instead, she offered a perfectly reasonable justification:
“The Professor's still perfectly fine over there!”
Through the heart of the explosion, a colossal hammer came swinging down.
An overwhelming blow, detonating in a blaze of pure white light.
Leo, fused as one with her ice spirit, had unleashed the secret of the half-spirit.
“Ice Statue.”
KRA-KRA-KRACK!!! Leo's frozen form shattered in a single instant — and the fragments smashed against the hammer a second time and dissolved into nothing.
In that instant, Leo thought:
If that destroyed statue had been the real body, and not a clone—
Having bolted behind Lily in a heartbeat, Leo swallowed hard.
“Hoo!”
Leo's fingertips began to move.
Why had she used the ice spirit instead of borrowing the power of the light spirit she'd gone through such trouble to contract with?
Her frozen heart declared its final note.
“Absolute Zero.”
CRACKLE-CRACKLE!
An absolute cold streamed from Leo's hand and froze over Lily's body.
But it meant nothing.
Lily's flesh was a vessel flowing with divinity and angelic blood — a body so mighty even the demons had coveted it.
No mundane 'chill' was ever going to freeze it solid.
Lily knew this as well as anyone, which is why, rather than countering, she'd simply been watching to see what marvel Leo would pull off.
And Leo, seeing exactly the reaction she'd predicted, broke into a grin.
“This is my revenge for the homework, Professor.”
Leo's left hand — not the right that had spewed the cold — traced a flowing curve through the air.
Mana moved. And it moved along a path the system had never sanctioned.
Cr-r-rack.
The cold drew a circle.
A circle outside the frame — and the frame began to fracture.
Cr-rick...!
“...?!”
The tip of Lily's finger had turned a vivid, bruised blue.
“Hehe.”
Leo had, for the first time, declared 'intrusion' upon Lily's very flesh.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
With all my attention fixed on the unicorn, I had briefly forgotten that a creature named Leo even existed. When I finally came back to myself, I was being swept along by the aftermath of her explosion.
I'd taken about as much damage as any of the other rankers caught in it, but nothing critical. Considering Leo's standing and the current situation, it was actually pretty mild.
It made no sense for it to be this much, coming from a Leo. So I held back and observed for a moment — then swung the hammer anyway.
The ice burst apart, and Leo emerged behind it.
In that instant, a chill of dazzling blue tried to seize my whole body.
‘Not yet, huh.’
Still not enough.
Was this really all there was?
Just as I was sinking into a disappointment I refused to call disappointment—
“This is my revenge for the homework, Professor.”
The flow of mana began to churn.
Blue mana — a current so cold it chilled me just to look at it — stirred of its own accord, and that current, with breathtaking arrogance, warped a part of my body.
The tip of my finger went a deep, frozen blue.
Uncharacteristically, I could only stare at Leo, my expression utterly hollow.
And still grinning that hehe grin of hers, she did not stop pouring out the cold.
Impossible.
How long had it even been since she learned to properly handle mana? And already she could manage transfer — no, she could reach into another person's body itself.
To be precise, it wasn't my body she'd touched but a fragment of my mana, and the extent of it was a single joint of one finger — but the fact that she'd managed it at all was what mattered.
At this level, she'd stepped past transfer and brushed against the edge of true Manifestation.
‘She pulled off something I haven't even taught her yet.’
Was it because she wasn't human?
I checked Leo's state. Half nymph, half spirit — and on both sides, closer to a spiritual species than anything ordinary.
She had never been human to begin with, and in every respect her foundation had always been fundamentally different from the other users'.
In a way, it was inevitable — but it was the kind of inevitable that should not have been possible.
“Amazing. Truly, genuinely amazing.”
“Hehe. The revenge is just getting started! From now on, you'll never be able to assign homework so carelessly again — I've got overwhelming—”
“I've decided I want to teach you something even more interesting.”
Fssshh...
My finger came back.
Every wisp of cold that had wrapped around me sank away, and all the mana that had been aiding Leo turned and regarded her like an enemy.
By contrast, I seemed to be beloved by every mote of mana in the room.
“Oh my?”
“Mana is like a blade. Stretched out toward your enemy, it's an endless comfort — but flip its direction, and it becomes the threat.”
So you'd best be careful.
“A blade's edge can turn at any time, after all.”
“P-Professor?”
“To go beyond what I'd prepared... at this point, I'd say you're ready for 'that.'”
If it was Leo, she might manage a little more. Just a bit more growth along this path — yes.
She might even be able to serve as my 'auxiliary.' Perhaps there would finally be some progress for my magic, too — the one that had stalled at ninety-seven stacked magic formulas...
Somehow she read my expression in that instant — and apparently imagined something absolutely horrifying — because Leo scrambled backward in a rush, smothering her icy aura at once.
“D-don't come any closer, you monster! Y-you can't just turn me into your grad student!”
“...Hm? What on earth are you talking about?”
“Ghh... fine then! I'll simply execute you right here, Lily!”
“A grad student... a grad student, hmm...”
I'd seen plenty of those back at the Imperial Academy. The ones who trailed loyally behind the professors, permanently dead on their feet from exhaustion—
“Well. That's not too far off, actually.”
“......."
The power of light settled into Leo's body.
Their second battle — with fate? riding on it — had begun.