Merida's Blanket Bombardment
“......”
Having safely completed the task Kizen had entrusted to him, and having glimpsed the past shared between Mayrin and Serne, Simon returned once more to his room at the lodgings.
The 60th floors were packed with people, so this time, too, he'd had to work a deal with Merida to get a room. And even that was only because Mird had grudgingly pulled some strings for them.
Simon spread his blanket on the floor, lay down, and stared blankly at the ceiling.
“Haaah.”
His feelings were a tangled mess.
Mayrin and Serne.
Only now did he understand why, back in their first year, Mayrin would go ice-cold and radiate such hostility at the mere mention of Serne's name.
She never liked talking about Serne. The most he'd ever gotten out of her was this: Serne's talent had been so overwhelmingly absurd that the elders had rewritten the Tower's own laws just to hand her the position of Ivory Tower Master. That was all.
Simon had known the two of them were rivals for succession, and that their relationship had soured over Serne's behavior and provocations. That was the extent of it.
He'd had no idea something this serious lay between them.
Why did Serne betray Mayrin? Did she suddenly covet the Ivory Tower Master's seat? Or was it......
He was lost in serious thought when a thud! sounded beside him.
He turned his head to find Merida sprawled on the floor, having tumbled clean off the bed.
......Unbelievable.
Simon turned away, pointedly ignoring her. He considered putting her back on the bed, but touching Merida mid-deep-sleep was never a good idea.
He was just gearing up to resume his brooding when—
“Mmmnngh—”
Merida rolled and rolled across the floor until she latched onto Simon's leg and hugged it tight. Simon shot upright in a panic.
“M-Merida!”
First she'd slept hugging her travel pillow, and now she was using someone's leg as one.
He shook her shoulder. “What are you doing? Ugh, let go! That hurts!”
“Nnngh, Phantassus oppaaaaa.”
She pressed her cheek against his leg and started nuzzling it. Simon froze, his face draining of color.
“Take me with yooou...... kuuul.”
Thankfully, the movement stopped. Watching her go still as if by magic, Simon let out a long, deep sigh.
Did she really have to nap all over again today too?
Sliide—
Fortunately, before long she released his leg and rolled back into a proper lying position, snoring softly, fully asleep once more.
Before she bothers me again......
Simon made up his mind and scooped her up. In near-perfect reflex, Merida's hand snapped up and touched his forehead.
<Sleep>
Wha—!
Thud!
Simon staggered and collapsed to the floor. Merida, still cradled in his arms, had somehow cracked her eyes open into a half-lidded glare.
“It's not even morning yet. Don't wake me up.”
Simon rubbed his bruised knee. “And you don't remember being the one who woke me up? Also, please stop throwing curses at people out of nowhere.”
“Sorry.”
Merida snapped her fingers once, and the Sleep curse dissolved. Slipping out of his arms on her own, she climbed onto the bed and flopped down on her stomach.
Simon lay back down on the floor too, reaching for his blanket—and then:
Blink. Blink.
She was lying prone, staring straight at him.
“What?”
“Where do you keep going every single night?”
Flinch.
Simon's shoulders gave the faintest shudder. Don't tell me she knew everything?
“The bathroom......”
The excuse tumbled out before he could stop it, and Simon immediately wanted to slap himself.
“We have a bathroom in our room too.”
“N-no! It's just that...... you know! A guy and a girl sharing one room and all, it's a little awkward. There might be, uh, smells.”
“You used it with me there yesterday.”
He could feel it—the more he explained, the grimier he sounded. Honestly, his very first excuse had been beyond salvaging.
But there was nothing he could do about it.
—You must not breathe a word of this to your partner, Merida.
He couldn't tell her about the secret mission.
Just as Simon was racking his brain desperately—
“If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to.”
She turned over and lay flat on her back.
“Everyone has their secrets.”
“......”
A brief, quiet stillness settled over the room. Inwardly, Simon was grateful for her consideration.
“That reminds me.”
Simon opened his mouth, partly to change the subject.
“You were talking in your sleep about Phantassus, you know.”
“......”
No answer.
Don't tell me she's embarrassed right now?
Her? Of all people?
When the silence stretched on endlessly, Simon allowed himself a sly grin.
“You must really like him, huh.”
“......”
She was lying down, so he couldn't quite make out Merida's expression. After a moment, she said flatly:
“Secret.”
Cat's out of the bag anyway.
It was such a rare sight—Merida flustered—that even Simon, who was usually the one on the receiving end of her antics, felt a mischievous streak well up inside him.
“Phantassus stayed at our house for a while, you see. Back when he passed on the Student Council President's seat, he talked about you a little.”
Boing!
Merida bolted upright, sleep vanishing from her face in an instant.
“What did Phantassus oppa say about me?”
Even in her usual flat tone, her emotions were bleeding through thick and clear.
Simon put on the smile of a victor.
“It's a sec—”
Zap!
A curse came flying out of nowhere and smashed into the wall right beside Simon's head. Merida's voice dropped to a chill that could freeze the room.
“Answer ‘secret’ and I'll curse you.”
So this was the one thing she took dead seriously—anything involving her brother.
Having witnessed firsthand what had happened to Mird, Simon answered through a cold sweat.
“For your own sake......”
“?”
“He told me to build you a good school.”
Thump.
Her arm dropped.
Then she simply flopped back onto the bed and dragged the blanket up over her head.
Don't tell me......
Is she actually embarrassed?
Flap! Flap!
Her blanket rose and fell several times over. Merida squirmed around under it for a good long while.
So she has a surprisingly cute side too.
Simon stifled a quiet laugh.
“Why do you think Phantassus chose you as Student Council President?”
The blanket-wrapped caterpillar poked just her head out to look at him.
“Even going so far as to hand over his own Sleep.”
Simon crossed his arms. “Good question. I've genuinely wondered that myself.”
“That's why I tested you before the dispatch.”
“And? What were the results?”
Merida's eyes narrowed into a half-lidded glare.
“I can't accept it. I won't accept it. Never.”
......I suppose no amount of time will ever make Merida accept it.
“If he was going to hand the President's seat to a second-year,” Merida said, her expression turning sulky, “I thought it would be me......”
Simon closed his eyes and thought for a moment before speaking.
“I've been debating whether or not to tell you this, but Phantassus said something else about you too.”
“?”
—Of course I was going to recommend my own little sister for Student Council President.
—Haha! My sister won't do. Her vessel is too small! She's so conscious of my shadow that she can't live a life of her own initiative! Her talent surpasses mine, yes. But in the end, it's her mindset that's the problem.
Merida's expression turned grave as she listened.
“......A life of my own initiative.”
“Even I can see it, honestly.”
Simon shrugged.
“Your main spell, Sleep. And the Dark Water Flow system you use as your second. They're all modeled after Phantassus's style, aren't they?”
“......”
“How many Originals do you actually have?”
Merida pouted. “None. Phantassus oppa's techniques are more than enough for me.”
“There's your answer.”
Simon waved his hand with an easy smile.
“Before being Phantassus's little sister—what kind of necromancer is ‘Merida Hugh Ikel’?”
“......”
“I think figuring that out is where you start. If you learn to live a little more on your own initiative, maybe Phantassus will start seeing you differently too.”
Merida fell silent, apparently chewing it over—then blurted out:
“Insolent.”
That one curt word, delivered from inside a blanket cocooned around her like a rolled-up dungaree, struck Simon as so absurd that he burst out laughing.
“Sorry if that stung.”
Whish.
She rolled over to the far side of the bed. Simon, too, laced his fingers behind his head, closed his eyes, and settled back down.
Haaah.
The story of the cheerful Ikel siblings had lifted his mood nicely, but the moment he circled back to Mayrin and Serne's relationship, his heart grew heavy again.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if their relationship, like Phantassus and Merida's, could be laid out just as plainly?
He let himself entertain the thought for a little while.
The next day, trouble erupted.
“Wake up! Now!”
“Please move, quickly!”
Of the floors in the 60s where Simon was staying, it was the 68th where the problem occurred.
“The dungeon is reenacting its history on the 68th floor!”
“Of all times, it had to happen during the festival!”
Simon and Merida, who hadn't even managed breakfast, were being escorted up by Mird, riding the magic-circle elevator.
“What's a history reenactment?” Simon asked.
Mird's face was grim as she drew out her staff.
“The dungeon is trying to recreate the timeline of an event that happened in this tower.”
“What kind of event?”
“What else could a dungeon have been through?”
Mird's eyes were dead serious.
“Three hundred years ago—the massacre that erupted the moment the Gate opened.”
Clang.
The elevator stopped, and the instant the doors opened, searing heat and a spray of sparks rushed out. All three threw their arms up to shield their faces and staggered back.
“This is......!”
Roaring flames were surging up everywhere, and monsters swarmed through the chaos.
The scene unfolding before them was a massacre in progress. People were dying, blood spraying as they fell.
“Don't be fooled,” Mird said. “Everyone dying right now is fake.”
......So this is a history reenactment.
It was on an entirely different scale from the strange phenomena they'd seen in the tower so far. An entire floor was engulfed in flames, crawling with monsters.
Terrifying.
It was a blessing that this dungeon was sealed inside the tower. If it had ever escaped and absorbed more history, more time, the entire Continent would have gone up in flames, its history of terror doomed to repeat itself.
“Mmmgh, but why do we have to go out there?”
Merida rubbed her sleepy eyes. Mird, whose nerves were stretched to snapping, exploded.
“Are you serious? You're a paid dispatched student, you're supposed to help—!”
Then she realized who she was yelling at and belatedly began bowing and scraping.
“I-it would be an honor if you would help us!”
“Let's go.”
Simon led the way.
Battles with monsters were already raging all around, and the Ivory Tower Kids like Mird were in the thick of the fighting as well. Quite a few festival-goers had come to help too.
“Lucky us! We get to experience the legendary history reenactment firsthand!”
“Let's enjoy ourselves!”
One thing he'd learned since the first day: the festival-goers here weren't exactly sane either.
In any case, dozens—no, hundreds—of outer-realm monsters were pouring out of the flames without pause. Their first priority was slaughtering the fleeing grey figures of the past, but when the Ivory Tower people attacked them, they turned on those attackers as well.
“We must hold this floor at all costs!”
An Ivory Tower man was commanding the battlefield.
“To think they'd make us watch the tower's tragedy unfold all over again! But we will win! Just as we did three hundred years ago!”
“They're coming!”
A fierce battle raged along the front. The Ivory Tower necromancers, fashionably wielding staffs like the mages of old, were unleashing spells from their tips in rapid bursts.
Simon, Merida, and Mird skirted around the most brutal stretch of the battlefield and slipped away to the side.
“As students, we're ‘Seekers.’ Somewhere on this floor there's a ‘Core’ driving this whole catastrophe. We find it and destroy it, and the history reenactment stops!”
“Are we allowed to destroy it ourselves?”
“Well, technically the protocol is to leave it to the adults and fall back. But if we can handle it ourselves, wouldn't that be even better?”
Fwooooooosh!
Piercing through the towering flames, the three of them ran flat out.
“There! Found one of the Cores!”
On the wall Merida pointed to, a Core pulsed and throbbed. It was a bit larger than the ones they'd seen before.
Mird raised her staff.
“I can't be sure this one's the real deal, but......!”
Crackle!
Black lightning rapidly assembled at the tip of her staff and shot forth.
Krarararung!
The lightning bolt streaked out—but the four-legged outer-realm monsters leapt into its path, blocking it with their own bodies.
“No need to rush!”
Simon weaved through the chaos, freezing monsters one after another with Sleep. Mird's eyes went round as saucers.
“Wha—what? How did they just stop?”
“Sleep curse!”
“......Curses work on those things?”
Just then, Merida stepped forward.
“Simon.”
“Yeah! Go ahead.”
Simon drove his elbow into the center of a monster using battle arts, then twisted around to put another one to Sleep.
“I'm going to prepare a wide-area curse bombardment. Cover me.”
Flap!
With that, she pulled her blanket out of her subspace. Simon let out a bewildered little smile.
“......You're sure you're preparing a wide-area curse bombardment, right?”
She climbed onto the blanket and lay down. A moment later, an anti-gravity curse lifted her softly into the air.
Mmnya. Mmnya.
She closed her eyes and sank into a deep sleep. And the moment she did, the full power of the magic circles that had been drawn across her blanket came alive, radiating outward from her body.
'!'
A chill ran down Simon's spine. Countless magic circles, like shooting stars, bloomed across the tower's ceiling—all centered on Merida.
⟨ Phantasos Original – Dream State of Selflessness ⟩
The girl on the blanket plunged into deep sleep and began thrashing and squirming.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
And from the magic circles, curses came pouring down. Every last one of them was Sleep.
“That's impossible!”
Mird spat out a cry of sheer disbelief.
A indiscriminate carpet bombing—trading hit rate for sheer, overwhelming volume of curses.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of monsters were caught in Sleep's grip and frozen in place.
“Nice one, Merida!”
Simon kicked off the ground and charged. Curses rained from the ceiling too, cutting off the monsters trying to close in on him.
Remarkable. So this is the trump card she's been hiding all this time?
No wonder she was ranked fourth overall. Had they met in a duel evaluation, he would have had a genuinely hard time.
The moment she fell asleep, she transformed into a devastating curse artillery battery, raining curses down across a vast range without end.
Her habit of firing off curses in her sleep must have been a side effect of this very technique.
Haah!
Simon drew the artifact axe from his subspace. The monsters guarding the Core were pelted by the curtain of curses streaming down from the ceiling and ground to a halt.
Simon could charge straight in.
“Bone Armor.”
SHAAAAAAK!
Countless bone fragments blanketed Simon's body, transforming him into something like a giant. He stood several heads taller, his frame swollen with mass.
Truly the figure of a man clad in a fortress of bone.
A fortress-like skeletal shell—size, weight, and crushing strength drastically augmented.
Gripping the axe in the thickened right arm of his Bone Armor, Simon swung it at the Core with everything he had.
Kuuuuuuuuuum!
The entire 68th floor shook. A single blow had buried the axe halfway into the Core.
“One more!”
Simon hoisted the axe back high. All the while, the monsters desperately throwing themselves at the Core to defend it were caught up in Merida's rain of curses and frozen mid-charge.
......Incredible.
Mird's arms hung limp, her soul visibly draining from her face.
—Why is it that we pour in five times the money, and still can't match the heels of the Kizen children?!
The Ivory Tower Master's speech, delivered before the assembled Ivory Tower Kids.
Frankly, she'd thought it a bit of an exaggeration. A lecture meant to scold them and whip the discipline back into shape—nothing more.
But no.
“Hnnngh—YAAAH!”
Kuuuuuuuuuuuum!
It was the plain, unvarnished truth.
Simon's second axe blow, swung at full power, shattered the Core, and the monsters crumbled away with dry rustling sounds.
“The history reenactment is dissolving!”
“Someone destroyed the Core!”
“WAAAAAAAH!”
Cheers erupted from every direction.
Simon stripped off his citadel-like Bone Armor, and Merida descended from the air.
......So this is Kizen.
She had sworn she'd never admit it, not even on pain of death.
And yet the two of them standing there after the battle's end simply could not have looked more brilliant.
Thump. Thump.
The two of them walked toward each other, palms spread wide. And then—
CRACK!
A high-five with everything they had. In the same instant, they both staggered and face-planted onto the floor.
“Let go first!”
“No, you let go first!”
......Though, admittedly, there was something a little foolish about it too.