Cutting the Wavelength
"Malcolm, tell me how to stop the nagas."
"……"
Simon demanded an answer, but Malcolm, still bound in rope, simply squeezed his eyes shut.
Simon's eyebrows rose.
"If you're not going to talk, then I'll—"
"The nagas are being drawn to a device that emits an artificial frequency."
What?
Simon blinked.
"Head northeast of this museum and you'll find a small mountain. Climb it, look south, and you'll see a flat forest spread out below. The device is there. Just check where the nagas are clustered and it'll be easy to find."
"……"
At Simon's dumbfounded expression, Malcolm choked up and shouted.
"What! What now, you little bastard?! I taught you with my life on the line, and that's the face you make?!"
"Sorry, it's just—you told me way easier than I expected."
"Call it a whim. Now get lost!"
Simon gave a single nod, rose from his seat, and walked away.
Watching Simon's retreating back, Malcolm anxiously bit his lip—and the moment Simon moved to open the window, he blurted out desperately.
"Hey, hey! Wait a second!"
"?"
"I gave you the intel, so you've got to untie me at least!"
"You could've fed me false information."
Simon smiled brightly and planted a foot on the windowsill.
"Oh, and there's also the matter of you knocking out those innocent guards."
"Hey! Hey! Wait a secnd—!"
Without so much as a glance back, Simon hurled himself out the window.
Malcolm, his mouth hanging open in disbelief, lowered his head and let out a hollow laugh.
"……So you've sucked me dry for everything I'm worth, huh. Damn it."
When they first fought, the guy had lectured him like some saint on a mountaintop—but then, in the next breath, he could be ice-cold. That was probably Simon Polentia's real strength.
Malcolm had never once heard of a Kizen student getting backstabbed by Simon. Elisa Celine, Special Admission No. 7, had only ever been the one on the receiving end instead.
Malcolm sighed up at the ceiling.
-I know. You've worked harder than anyone.
-The time for you to rise again will come.
"Daaaaamn it all……"
A strained voice escaped Malcolm's lips.
Ten minutes passed like that.
At last, a resolute light kindled in his tormented eyes. It was time—time to crawl out from under his wretched father's shadow.
"Alright."
Malcolm worked his jaw a few times, and then bit down on his tongue—blood began trickling steadily from the corner of his mouth.
A technique he'd learned by auditing the class of the new Toxicology professor, Byulya.
"I'm not giving up."
The blood flowing from his mouth was Blood Poison.
With his mouth full of it, Malcolm lowered his head and began gnawing through the rope around his shoulders, tearing at it with his teeth.
I'm not giving up.
Once he'd escaped the Deimos Museum, Simon scrambled up the mountain in a frenzy.
Nagas lived in water, and on land their mobility dropped sharply, so they had no interest in climbing mountains. Simon reached the summit without a single interruption.
There it is!
Just as Malcolm had said, a flat forest spread out below—and in one section of it, nagas were clustered together in a dense mass.
So that's where the device generating the frequency that controls them is?
Simon was advancing to get a closer look when he heard foliage rustle sharply nearby.
"Come out."
"……"
A brief silence. Then the undergrowth parted and a boy burst out.
That guy?
Once at the market, once at the museum. The very same unidentified red-haired boy he'd run into twice already.
And this made three.
"H-hahahat! H-hello there?"
The boy scratched his head with an awkward grin.
"We keep meeting! How did you know about this place?"
"……"
Instead of answering, Simon lowered his stance and readied for combat. The moment the boy saw Jet-Black swirling in Simon's hands, he cried out in alarm.
"No, wait! Why are you being so wary of me?"
"Do I look like I have any reason not to be?"
Simon said coldly.
"Fine, let's say the first time was a coincidence. But because of the second encounter, I lost Malcolm."
"Th-that's……! I was chasing Malcolm too, you know!"
So he knew Malcolm as well.
Simon turned that fact over in his mind as he continued.
"And most damning of all—the place I heard about straight from Malcolm's mouth is exactly where you show up. Isn't that precisely the situation where you'd be suspected of being a Randolph Gang spy?"
The red-haired boy put on a face of pure wounded innocence.
"I told you, I'm not! It's a genuine misunderstanding!"
-But then again, aren't you just as suspicious?
Both Simon and the boy froze. A woman's voice was drifting from the bracelet on the boy's wrist.
-We were the ones chasing Malcolm first, and you got in our way. Besides, you just said it yourself—that you heard the location 'from Malcolm.' Gang members don't spill vital intel the second they're caught. If anything, the odds that you're in league with the Randolph Gang are just as high, aren't they?
"Uwaaah! W-wait, both of you, don't fight!"
Left like this, the conversation would just run on parallel tracks forever.
"Then let's both prove who we are."
Simon pulled off the hooded robe draped over his shoulders, revealing his uniform underneath.
"My name is Simon Polentia. Second-year at Kizen."
The red-haired boy's eyes went wide.
"Whoaaa! Kizen! You're from Kizen!"
-Tch. Is that uniform fake?
Without a word, Simon tapped the chest of his jacket with a fist wrapped in Jet-Black. The barrier unfurled in a perfectly normal shimmer.
"Then it's my turn……!"
The red-haired boy drew something like a commander's token from his coat and held it up.
"My name is Arthur Bleman! The Mercenary King! I took a commission from the lord of Parona to protect his territory from the Randolph Gang!"
Simon's head tilted.
"The Mercenary King?"
"Yes! Yes! You've heard of him, right?"
"I thought that title belonged to a much older man."
"That's my grandfather. He retired due to injury, and the mercenaries raised me up to take his place."
He closed his eyes and clenched his fist.
"On my grandfather's name! I swear I will save the Parona Peninsula, no matter what!"
"……"
There were still pieces that didn't quite fit, but with the nagas massing below, even a moment spent wrangling felt like a waste.
"Fine, I get it, so stay back and—"
"Simon! Join forces with me!"
Arthur proposed.
"Honestly, I didn't have the guts to push through that naga horde alone! You're strong, aren't you, Simon? I could tell from the two times we ran into each other!"
Simon turned his head toward the seething swarm of nagas below.
Whether Arthur belonged to the Randolph Gang or was a mercenary didn't really matter.
He was confident he wouldn't be the one taken advantage of. If the man was worth using, then use him.
"Don't fall behind."
"Haha! That won't be a problem!"
-Kyarruk!
-Kyaaaaak!
Around the Randolph Gang's frequency emitter, countless nagas had gathered in a teeming horde.
Every time a pulse rippled out from the emitter, the nagas threw their heads high and loosed their shrieking cries.
Then—
Shaaaaaaak!
At the sudden sound, every monster's head whipped around. Two boys were sprinting toward them from several hundred meters away.
Thum!
Simon compressed the ground beneath his foot and launched into the air. In his hand, held in a textbook-perfect throwing posture, crackled a jagged purple spear.
⟨ Simon Original — Chaos Spear ⟩
Shaaaaaaak!
The purple spear tore through the nagas on an utterly unpredictable trajectory, pulverizing everything it passed.
"Haaaaap!"
Behind him, Arthur's sword flashed. Silver light flickered through the air again and again—and in the same instant, five nagas collapsed, spilling blood.
"Keep moving, Arthur!"
"Yes, sir!"
Simon pulled more Chaos Spears from the magic circles on his body and hurled them one after another. The sky dyed purple with their trajectories as the packed mass of nagas was shredded to ribbons.
Arthur, lopping the head off a naga closing in from the flank, let out a whistle of admiration.
"Incredible! That's phenomenal dark magic!"
Strength flowed into Arthur's grip.
"I can't afford to be outdone, either!"
Whenever Simon mowed down a swath of monsters with volleys of Chaos Spears, Arthur followed up with precise swordwork to cut down the stragglers.
For a pair who'd only just met, the two of them meshed surprisingly well.
"Hup!"
"Haaaaaah!"
Blood sprayed and monstrous shrieks rang out on all sides.
Two boys boring a path straight through a forest of more than a thousand nagas by sheer force—it was, frankly, a dazzling spectacle.
"Simon!"
When a spear Simon had thrown dead ahead skewed violently to the right, Arthur shouted.
"Forgive me, but wouldn't it be better to just focus on what's in front of you?!"
"Sorry—not exactly something I can control."
A spear that exploded. A spear that pierced. A spear that split apart. A spear that scattered outward.
One swept away dozens of nagas in a single stroke, while another barely managed to run a single naga through—the spread in destructive power was extreme.
Get used to the variables!
Simon gritted his teeth and threw the next spear.
Don't flinch when you kill one. Don't flinch when you kill twenty. Focus on nothing but the throw itself!
Still, those special training sessions with Richard back in Leshill had borne fruit. There were no complete duds—any spear he threw was good for at least one kill.
And Arthur, watching, felt his jaw drop. The world had turned purple—and at its center he could see Simon's back, commanding all of that violet destruction.
So this is the power of that famous Kizen student!
When Simon slowed, briefly winded, it was Arthur's turn to surge ahead.
Shrrrrrrik!
What is that?
Arthur sheathed the sword he'd been wielding, then drew from subspace a long, segmented Snake-Belly Sword forged from the bones of some colossal monster, and began to swing it.
"Kraaap!"
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWANG!
The weapon was a chain of massive bone segments linked by wire, lashing out like a whip and recoiling in rhythmic waves, sweeping away the nagas around him. Every pass of the blade sent clouds of dust blooming into the air.
It was absurdly crude—but its destructive power alone was catastrophic.
So Arthur's a necromancer too, huh.
It felt like swinging several of Simon's Overlord tentacles fused together. Some kind of Restoration-based construct, apparently—an attractive force was operating between bone and bone.
"Hrgk! Gah!"
The power was monstrous, but before long Arthur stowed the Snake-Belly Sword back into subspace.
"Th-the third sword is still rough going……! Hah!"
He's got two more of those things?
Simon let out a short laugh, then pressed his hand to the magic circle at his side.
"Come forth."
⟨ Simon Original — Summon Chaos Reaper ⟩
The one-of-a-kind summoning spell of Chaos.
From Simon's shadow burst a ghostly figure wielding a scythe, its silhouette conjuring the image of a joker card.
Shrreak!
When the Reaper raised its hand, every Chaos Spear embedded in the ground surged into the air. Long blades formed beside the shafts—Chaos Spears transforming into Chaos Scythes.
Shrring! Shrring! Shrring!
The moment the Reaper swept its scythe, the Chaos Scythes joined in, dancing through the air and carving the nagas apart.
"Simon! One o'clock, dead ahead!"
Arthur shouted.
"That's the frequency emitter!"
"Okay, I see it."
"At this range, I can break it!"
Arthur raised his sword upright and melted Jet-Black into the blade. The moment the jet-black darkness met the steel, it shifted into a silver that pulsed with an uncanny sheen.
⟨ Arthur Original — Juque (巨闕) ⟩
A crescent-shaped wave of sword energy split the earth as it flew, then slammed into the frequency emitter.
However—
Clang!
A barrier had been woven around the emitter. Arthur's sword energy struck it and dissolved.
"Tch, a barrier too?"
"I'll cut the barrier—cover me!"
Simon had bared his openings to Arthur again and again by now, and Arthur had never once attacked.
Certain at last that the boy was truly on his side, Simon entrusted him with his back for the first time.
"Hup!"
He focused on nothing but the front. Cutting through the endless tide of nagas, he plunged in alongside the Chaos Reaper—and then drew a single Chaos Scythe into his own hand.
Kiiiiiiiing!
As Simon poured Chaos into it, light rippled across the scythe and its size began to swell—until it matched, exactly, the blade the Reaper carried.
Together, now!
Simon from the left. The Chaos Reaper from the right.
Like a pair of crossing strokes, they carved an X through the air and sheared into the emitter.
CRRAAAANG!
The barrier shattered into fragments, and the emitter stood fully exposed.
"Arthur!"
"Yes, sir!"
Arthur came barreling in behind, tracing a streak of silver as he charged clean past the emitter.
The sword held upright above his head fell in a single stroke the instant his charge was complete.
And with perfect precision—
CRRAAAAAAK!
The emitter split in two.