The Omniscient Eye That Scorns All Creation

“Ghk!!”

Incomprehensible words—no, words that must never be understood—thundered across the entire area. At the same time, black droplets like blood poured down in a thick rain from the crimson eye that blanketed the sky.

Sizzle! Sizzle!

The black liquid melted the snow the instant it touched the ground, soaked into the earth, and grotesque forms immediately rose from those spots. Black wolves studded with dozens of eyeballs. Giants with twisted limbs. Snakes woven entirely of tentacles.

Byproducts of a divine rank—fragments of an Outer God, and its minions.

-Kraaaagh!

-Kieeeee!

The moment they were born from those byproducts, they charged straight at me—the one holding the strongest life force and mana in the entire area. Like a pack of starving hyenas.

I clenched my teeth and swung my staff.

KRAAAAASH—!

A massive pillar of fire erupted from empty air and swept across the snowfield, engulfing them, while rock spikes burst from the ground and punched clean through their torsos.

-Kieeek!! Krek!!

-Kyaaaargh!!

But they didn’t even seem to feel pain. Half-melted, they still came at me with stubborn ferocity.

“These disgusting bastards…!”

I poured out magic without a second to breathe.

I had neither the dazzling talent of this world’s protagonist nor the power meant to face Outer Gods. Even so, I had refused to quit and had clawed my way to the talent I possessed now—elementalist, the rarest lineage even among mages.

Crackle! Crunch!

Lightning burst their skulls. Ice spears punched through their hearts. Gravity fields crushed them flat. I felt the mana inside me draining away like a retreating tide. My heart hammered as if it would explode, and every brain cell screamed. But I couldn’t stop. The second my hands stilled, those monsters would tear the meat from my bones.

Stay calm. Analyze first. You have to analyze.

I forced my blood-caked eyes wide and glared up at the eye in the sky. That thing was the main body. These bottom-feeder fragments were nothing but bait to buy time. The real fight was with that eyeball overhead.

The pupil shifted slightly left and right once more. At the same moment, violet lightning dropped toward my head.

KRAANG—!

I used a spatial leap to dodge the lightning by a hair’s breadth, then put distance between myself and the divine byproducts. Of course I didn’t forget to analyze its combat style while I was at it.

I have to read the pattern.

I kept running, attacking, and defending while I watched its movements. Violet lightning every three seconds. The vortex changed direction every ten. And the fragments multiplied in response to my mana every time I cast. But those were only surface attack patterns—not the decisive weakness. What I needed now was to find a true weak point or habit.

There’s something… there has to be more.

Even transcendent-class beings always had gaps. Kyra Bell Arenas—each of whose personalities had reached the rank of a Transcendent—had a weakness of her own: the moment three or more personalities overlapped, her focus wavered for an instant.

Not that a normal person like me could ever exploit a weakness like that… anyway.

I swung my staff, finished off every clinging divine fragment, then bored relentlessly into the eye’s pupil. Geometric patterns orbited that vast crimson iris.

Divine Language.

The tongue used by gods of other worlds—a language that interfered with the laws of reality. Every time those patterns spun in perfect circles, its attacks poured down.

And then—

…Huh?

A faint sense of wrongness. For the barest fraction of a second, that perfect-looking arrangement of Divine Language had stuttered.

Right before the lightning fell? No. When it summoned fragments? No.

When that thing… registers me.

More precisely, whenever I twisted its attacks or resisted in ways it hadn’t predicted. Like a calculator throwing an error, the characters around the red pupil crackled and scrambled.

It tried to drop lightning again. This time I didn’t dodge. Instead I layered the 5th Circle defense magic Iron Wall three times over. Of course it was closer to a gamble—a ninety-nine percent chance of dying. To even pretend to block a divine-rank attack with defensive magic, you needed at least 8th Circle. Normally the correct move was to get out of its range entirely. But I had something I needed to confirm, so I gambled.

KRAAAAASH!

Just as expected, the barrier shattered—but the lightning scattered without ever touching my body. And in that tiny instant, I saw it clearly. At the eleven o’clock position of its pupil, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Divine Language array briefly broke and black noise flared.

Found it.

That had to be its processing organ—its vital point. Every time I did something unexpected, that spot overloaded. I still didn’t know why the overload happened. But what I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠needed to do in this moment was simple and clear.

In that case… I just have to do something even crazier.

I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and grinned. My mana was almost gone, but that didn’t matter. From here on it would likely be a fight of timing, not raw power.

I adjusted my grip on the staff, raised it toward the sky, and shouted in open provocation.

“Hey, you eyeball freak! Is that all you’ve got? Hit me harder!”

Its pupil trembled ever so slightly. Startled by the taunt of a worthless insect? Or did the error grow worse because a human about to die was still standing up to it with such brazen confidence? What mattered was that the noise at eleven o’clock had opened more clearly than before.

Now.

I poured every last scrap of mana into the tip of my staff. Everything on this one shot.

6th Circle… no—ultra-high-speed calculation magic.

Thousands of mana circuits meshed and spun inside my head. The target was that noise. I would force my way into the gap of that error-riddled fragment and burst the thing’s eyeball.

KRAAAAAAA—!!!

The lance of light I wrung every drop of mana into to fire punched dead-center through the black noise lodged in one corner of that crimson pupil. At the same instant the world flashed pure white. With a roar that nearly burst my eardrums, the giant eye covering the sky twisted violently.

I didn’t know whether it even had a mouth, but a hideous scream that shook the entire atmosphere came from somewhere in the sky. Black blood fountained from the pupil, and the vortex that had been scouring the snowfield briefly stopped.

“Hah… hah…”

I staggered and finally dropped to my knees. I didn’t have enough strength left to twitch a single finger. But I had clearly seen it—my lance of light had struck true.

I forced my blurring vision to hold and exhaled.

“Haa… haa… D-Did I… get it?”

The second the words left my mouth, I knew I’d screwed up.

Ah. Fuck. That was a death-flag line.

The cliché I’d seen a thousand times in my previous life. The moment someone asked “Did I get it?”, the enemy walked out of the smoke completely fine. Why the hell had I made that mistake? Please, just this once. Please, just this once, because I wasn’t the protagonist, let the cliché miss me. I prayed with everything I had.

But this world was never that merciful to an extra.

Sssss…

The pure white light that had filled the area faded. The thick smoke cleared, and the pitch-black night sky returned.

And then—

“…Goddamn it. This mouth of mine is useless right to the end.”

There it was—the giant eye floating as perfectly intact as ever. A wound? Hell, it didn’t even have a scratch. The noise I thought I’d pierced must have been nothing more than the thing blinking for a moment. It didn’t even look like it was in pain. Instead it narrowed its gaze as if it had found a particularly amusing toy and looked down at me.

The mechanical noise that had been mixed into its voice vanished. In its place came a voice so clear it made my skin crawl.

“…Thanks for the compliment.”

Wooooom—!

Its gaze pressed down on me.

“Hah… hah…”

Fuck. “It”? What the hell was this “it” it kept talking about? I wanted to ask, but no voice came out. The terror of death was closing around my throat.

Its pupil blazed crimson again. At the same time the black fragments scattered across the snowfield—the corpses of the things I had blown apart with magic earlier—began to writhe and gather into one place.

Rrrrrumble!

The black liquid clumped and hardened, then formed a colossal shape. A pitch-black stake dozens of times larger than my body. Its sharpened tip locked onto me with perfect accuracy—an instrument of execution.

“Ha…”

A hollow laugh escaped me. My final strike, every drop of mana I had, hadn’t even scratched it. And it was about to end me without so much as lifting a finger. So this was the difference in rank. This was… the limit of someone who wasn’t the protagonist.

…So that’s how it is after all.

I let my eyes fall shut, strengthless. Would it have been different if it were Leon? If that guy had taken up the holy sword, received his comrades’ buffs, and fought under the author’s blessing—could he have won? Was someone who wasn’t the protagonist, no matter how much information he had, unable to even put up a proper fight, let alone pull his own weight?

Fuck…

With death right in my face, flashbacks and the rest didn’t matter. Only a crushing sense of injustice remained.

I wanted to live like Leon too.

Save the world. Get treated like a hero. Build a harem kingdom with pretty heroines and spend every night happily deciding whose room to visit. Instead, all because of a little jealousy I wrote one… five love letters, got hunted for it, and ended up dying as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a skewer for an eyeball monster in the middle of a snowfield.

What a goddamn life…

I prepared to accept the death closing in and let everything go.

KRAAAAA—!

I heard the sound of the massive stake splitting the air. This was the end. Once that giant stake impaled me, there wouldn’t even be a proper corpse left.

And then, right at that instant—

“Kyaahaha!! Finally found it!!!”

From somewhere in the sky came a voice so thunderous it punched straight through even the overwhelming pressure of that giant eye. A voice so arrogant, so utterly self-assured, that it almost made me laugh in disbelief.

“The mana of that insolent man who sent This Lady a letter!! And I sense Kyra Bell Arenas’s mana as well—so there can be no mistake!”

“…Huh?”

The voice grew clearer the closer it came—a voice and manner of speech I was certain I had heard somewhere before. My eyes snapped open.

KRAAAAAASH—!!!

The darkness of the night sky was erased in an instant. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pitch-black snowfield began to shine brighter than broad daylight. From far above, a colossal pillar of platinum fire slammed straight down in a perfect line. That pillar of fire evaporated the black stake racing toward me in a heartbeat, then continued its trajectory and charged the crimson eye floating in the sky.

Before I could even register the Outer God’s flustered presence, the unknown pillar of fire smashed dead center into its pupil.

KRAAAAAAA—!