Save the Boss (7)
Miracle Reproduction?! Why is a term that only shows up in the very endgame of the game popping up NOW?!
There's no way I could actually use something like that just because I learned it today!
Do you have any idea how much preparation it takes to pull that off even once?!
Stop tossing out useless junk and trying to look cool, you pathetic Chief God bastard!
[You can do it.]
That was the entirety of the message the pathetic Chief God had left behind.
With those words, the window that had held his message cracked — and then scattered into nothing. At the same instant, light began seeping from the mace in my hand. A warm yet intense radiance, like sunlight given form.
I had seen this light before. It was the very light Grandpa had shown me a few months ago, when I had rushed to save Phoebe from Nakrad's attack.
"Hoh. So the Lord God has been setting something in motion."
The voice reached me through my ears rather than echoing inside my skull as it always did, and when I turned my head, there was Grandpa — floating in midair exactly like Adri.
Grandpa?
"Aye. 'Tis I."
What is going on? Why was Grandpa, whose soul existed only inside the mace, popping out here?! Was this another hidden function of the mace, or what?!
"Now is no time to be fretting over such trifles."
With those words, Grandpa looked downward — toward the evil god who had filled the entire cavern with his own flames and was now smacking his lips as he stared down at me like an ant at the lip of a pit trap.
I could feel the pressure radiating off the thing. I could hear the roar of a blaze that would burn the world down to ash. I could see the hatred steeped in its eyes.
And yet, strange to say, no fear rose within me.
A monster of that caliber was baring its killing intent at me, and still I stood calm. Why?
"Dost thou remember, girl? The way to feel the divinity thou thyself dost carry?"
Of course. How could I ever forget that? Grandpa had hammered the divine-power combat arts into my head over who knows how many sleepless nights. Forget it? Not a chance.
"Then contemplate it."
The moment I turned my awareness inward, following his words — I understood.
I could feel it. The overwhelming warmth that filled my body to overflowing.
Ha.
Hahahahah.
Damn it, Armadi! Didn't I tell you to explain properly if you were going to explain at all?! Listen when your apostle is talking to you! If you're going to give a gift like this, at least have the decency to brag about it!
Grandpa. I have a question.
"Speak."
Teach me how to work a miracle.
"That is a troubling request indeed. A miracle is, in the end, born of one's own—"
Grandpa spoke as if put in a difficult spot, but his expression said otherwise. He made no attempt whatsoever to hide the fond smile spreading across his face.
"But if thou dost ask it of me, then teach thee I shall."
The moment my conversation with Grandpa ended, the hands of the world's clock began to turn once more.
The fall began.
"Georg! Lend us your flame!"
In those reckless days when he tore across the front lines of every battlefield, Benedict had once crossed paths with Georg. And meeting him as an enemy, Georg had proven a troublesome opponent in every possible way.
Had Georg been merely a caster of powerful magic, Benedict would never have remembered him. Power, after all, could simply be smashed apart with more power.
But Georg had been different. He was, without question, a mage of immense mana — and yet his true gift lay not in overwhelming firepower but elsewhere entirely. A versatility that bent the magic of every attribute to his will. In any situation, no matter how desperate, he wove countless spells together into the optimal answer — he was, in effect, an entire legion all by himself.
The people of the kingdom, in equal parts hatred and awe, had come to call him the Wizard of Ten Thousand Spells.
In my eyes, if anything he's grown since those days — certainly no weaker. This much, then, should be manageable.
"I'm already doing it!" The count threw etiquette to the wind in the emergency, and the moment he shouted, dozens of magic circles bloomed into existence around him.
"Bishop Johann! Purification magic!"
"Already deployed!"
"Quick as ever!"
As the Prayer of Purification seeped into the evil god's flames that devoured the ground, the profane energies woven into the fire could not withstand the divinity and recoiled backward. The count, confirming this, first brought a waterfall crashing down upon it. Beneath the assault of a mass heavy enough to crush everything beneath it, the flames went out.
He then raised the water saturating the floor into walls surrounding them and froze it solid. This ice wall, which kept birthing fresh blooms of frost even after freezing had withstood the evil god's flames, melting and refreezing over and over — it could not hold forever, but for now, it became a wall that guaranteed their safety.
Benedict landed upon the secured earth with a thunderous boom, Lucy cradled in his arms, and looked up at the enemy.
"So you've grown big."
White flames blazed with savage intensity, seeping through the cracked wall. The thing had shrieked its own name: Vahda.
"Bishop Johann. Vahda — that's an evil god's name, isn't it?"
"It is. A being that bears the authority of fire."
"So we've drawn a big one, have we."
Heheh. So it's certain our daughter is loved by the great Chief God. After all, one who names himself an evil god is spitting pure hatred at our girl.
Not something I care for. Thanks to it, Lucy was put in danger, wasn't she.
Benedict remembered Lucy's expression at the moment the floor had collapsed. Her eyes had been wavering. His daughter, who ever since some point had developed an extreme aversion to showing weakness, had been caught off guard. That alone told Benedict she had never foreseen this situation.
Hmm. So that means we must not lay any burden on Lucy. Which, come to think of it, works out rather nicely — I get to show her this papa's magnificent side.
"This is my first time facing an evil god. Bishop Johann, and yourself?"
"How could I possibly have experience? I am a man who learned of the Age of Heroes from books."
"How troublesome. Georg — and you? Your family has stewarded this place for generations; surely there's some secret technique or other lying about?"
"If I had one, I'd have told you already. I'm not fool enough to hide anything while my own life hangs in the balance."
No one knew how one ought to fight an evil god.
Well — even I, who once went around blasting every manner of creature from every corner of the world as a hobby, don't know. No chance these folk would.
"Then we proceed with the fundamentals from scratch." No, not a problem at all. Evil god or otherwise, that thing had been defeated how many times before? If it wasn't some invincible existence, then keep smashing away and it would fall eventually. Back in the day, this had been his hobby.
Nothing I can't do.
"Stupid Papa♡ Did you forget the person standing right next to you?♡"
"Lucy?"
Benedict, who had been smiling as he readied himself for battle, turned his head toward the voice beside him.
"...There's a way?"
"Just hold out. Even a troll of a papa whose only asset is brute muscle can manage that much, right?♡ Don't tell me you're not confident?♡"
At those words, Benedict looked into Lucy's eyes and saw them brimming with confidence. And he saw something else as well — something stirring within her body.
Benedict could not tell exactly what it was. But this much he understood: it had been granted by the great Chief God.
Is she so precious to you that you would intervene to this degree, my Lord? How gracious — and how grating, all at once. At this rate, how much more will our Lucy be made to suffer in the days to come. Very well, Armadi. Promise me one thing in return. That at the end of it all, our daughter finds peace. If not — then this Benedict will stake everything he has and drag you to ruin.
Carefully, he set Lucy down upon the ground, and for the first time drew the sword from his back — a greatsword so colossal that no one but he could have lifted it. Then he cloaked his entire body in mana. The Arln family's distinctive art of mana manipulation — a secret technique passed down only to the heir of the bloodline. Its effect was simple: a dramatic enhancement of the body's every capability.
Fuh. It has been a long, long time since I showed my full strength.
The flames raised both of their hands. Gripped within them was an axe — an axe wrought of fire, its edge burning for all eternity. The moment it crashed down upon the wall of ice, massive fissures began to spider across its surface.
Anyone could see that the wall would not last long. And yet, even in the midst of that danger, Benedict remained perfectly composed.
"Did you both hear that? It seems if we merely buy time, our daughter will resolve everything for us."
"This has become a simple matter indeed."
"Both of you, that remark— haah. Fine. Let's go with that."
KWAAANG!
As the evil god of fire brought the axe down once more, the ice wall burst apart, and the shield that had protected the party ceased to exist. Watching the evil god raise the axe again, Benedict took the sword's hilt in both hands — and a gray aura settled over the blade. Not some ordinary energy, but an aura so dense that the very space around it seemed painted gray.
The axe came hurtling down — and in the same instant, Benedict moved. Pouring ferocious force into the blade as if to drive it into the earth, he pressed down upon the ground, twisted his hips, and unleashed a sword strike straight at the axe.
However massive the greatsword, the truth was that against the axe blade it amounted to little more than a sliver. And yet the axe could not bear the sword down. A mortal's blade was barring the wrath of a god.
Flame flickered and writhed beyond the greatsword — more than enough to strain any man — but a smile hung on Benedict's lips.
Soon, veins stood out along Benedict's neck, and his already enormous frame swelled vaster still. Muscle expanded along the flow of his blood with the creak of straining armor — and with that, the evil god's axe edge was steadily driven back, until at last the axe itself went flying up into empty air.
Standing beneath the ascending flames, Benedict ostentatiously raised his sword tip toward the sky and lifted his voice.
"And this much is enough for you to call yourself a god?!"
Behold, Armadi! The one who will stand as your enemy, should the very worst come to pass — or else as your eternal ally!
The curse-laden aura spewed forth by the evil god of fire was powerless before the divinity of one who would one day rise to the rank of cardinal. The curse that should have reduced a mortal's mind to ash did nothing but flicker impotently in the empty air.
So too with the evil god's flames. The fire that had once proclaimed that all creation could burn away to nothing was thwarted by the skill of the mage guarding the domain, managing nothing more than to heat the air.
So too with the evil god's fury. Every blow struck downward to crush the mortals beneath him was rendered powerless beneath a father's will to shield his daughter.
Everything. Every single thing present in this place. Nothing was flowing the way the evil god desired.
It would be irritating. Brows would furrow. The beings who would have been nothing at all had it still possessed its true power — the beings who should have been reduced to ash beneath the flames that once burned the world — were standing in its path.
But that thing would never know. That compared to what was about to happen, all of this was nothing.
"Dost thou understand now?"
Of course I do.
Ruel, who had been contemplating the movement of the divinity within me, rose from his place with a smile.
"Now then, girl. Art thou ready?"
And you, Grandpa? Will you be able to manage?
"Who worries for whom, child? I am Ruel — one of the heroes who saved the world."
With that, he took his place beside me and raised his mace high overhead. Watching him, I too lifted high the mace filled with Armadi's divinity.
"The hour has come to work a miracle."
The hour has come to work a miracle.