The One Who Laughs Last
In thirty years as a professional, the Butcher had never once met an opponent like this.
Shaaaaang—!
Shaaang—!
The world had filled with crimson lines. From the torn seams of space, monsters with red eyes poured down their assault without pause, and there was no time to even gather his wits.
"Urgh!"
The buildings around him were already reduced to stubble. Holes gaped across the walls like a honeycomb, and rooftops tumbled through the air.
"Damn it all!"
The moment the Butcher raised his head, two streaks of light came crashing down at an angle no one could dodge. He thrust his kitchen knives forward in desperation.
Clang!
The pouring rays slammed into the oversized blades and shoved him back. His legs skidded across the ground, carving a long trail behind him.
"Graaagh!"
The instant he roared, the falling beams refracted and lanced away toward the edge of the village.
Keeeeeing!
The flash, annihilating everything in its path, scored a line across the village — and then, with a howling rush of heat, buildings and earth were sliced clean apart and came collapsing down.
"Hahk! Hah!"
The Butcher lowered his knives, cold sweat streaming down his face.
In the darkness, a girl in a school uniform was whipping her ebony-black hair through the air. Between the strands, a pair of crimson eyes glinted like a beast's.
"Kahaha! Kizen bastards! They claimed they were raising students — turns out they were building weapons of pure madness!"
Loraine stared at him in silence.
He seemed to be mixing strange techniques in with his Battle Arts, and he was proving more troublesome than she'd expected.
A blood-soaked professional necromancer who had steeped himself in the dark arts for decades.
He must have trampled countless lives beneath his feet, piling up experience and karma beyond measure.
She could not let that abominable man anywhere near where her friends were.
"One question."
Loraine's lips parted.
"Are you a member of the Cabal?"
"Hahaha!"
The man, who had been whirling the knives in both hands, adjusted his grip.
"I've no idea what you're on about!"
"Why are you targeting Simon?"
"And what do I stand to gain by answering?"
"This."
She gestured behind her, and that nightmare of a spatial rift began slowly to close — like the jaws of a monster sealing its mouth shut.
"Depending on your answer, I will hand you over to Kizen Headquarters of my own volition, alive and intact."
"That's not a gain, that's—!"
Boom!
The Butcher kicked a fallen wooden plank up off the ground.
"Coercion!"
He smacked the rising plank with the flat of a blade. Acceleration snapped into it, and the plank ricocheted wildly from spot to spot like a rubber ball.
Loraine didn't even glance back. With cool indifference, she lifted two fingers. The plank came screaming in from behind her and stopped with a crisp thwack, caught precisely between her fingers.
"You attacked Kizen students in the act. That makes you a criminal caught red-handed."
Crack.
The plank, cleaved in two, fell limply to the ground.
"If you continue to be uncooperative, I will proceed to somewhat less cordial methods of persuasion."
Loraine drew two strange summon creatures of glass and chain from her subspace. They seemed inoperable — the moment they emerged, they flopped face-down onto the ground.
She spread both palms and began channeling her power into them.
Whirrr—!
Whiiine!
Fueled by her ability and Jet-Black, the creatures slowly rose.
They looked like glass men bound in chains. They floated up into the air, and in each of their chests flickered an eye identical to Loraine's own.
"Full volley."
The two creatures snapped open with a clatter and loosed countless crimson lines into the sky. They twisted and careened through the air again and again before converging on the Butcher at the center, assailing him from every direction at once.
"Ha — shit! This is gonna cost extra!"
The humor had drained entirely from the Butcher's face as he re-gripped his oversized knives.
Whoosh!
Swish!
Dragon scales and bone spears came hurling down at the One-Eyed Gentleman.
The Gentleman brushed them all aside with nothing but lazy flicks of the cane in his hand, staying exactly where he stood.
"Graaah!"
Hector charged like a raging bull and swung a fist wreathed in Jet-Black. The Gentleman stepped back to evade it and cracked him across the head with the cane. With a resounding crack, Hector's body lifted off the ground and came crashing down in a heap.
The students watching were struck speechless.
"Hector is... "
"Getting pushed back?"
The One-Eyed Gentleman calmly steadied the brim of his hat.
All around him lay the scales and bones Hector had thrown, along with scorch marks and the residue of curses.
"Eldest son of the Moore family, they call him — and yet still no more than a student."
Hector pushed himself up, arms trembling.
"Give it a few years, and a single breath from me would reduce you to ash — but for now, this is the limit of what you are."
Hector slammed both palms into the ground and forced his body upright.
"And it seems you were the one behind that 'dragon' earlier. Facing me in a body weakened just after transformation is not wise."
"...You do talk a lot of nonsense."
Hector sucked in ragged breaths and dropped into a fighting stance.
"Come at me, then."
Anyone could see Hector was in danger. Unable to simply watch, the students around him began moving quietly to support him. Nearby Gahal warriors nocked arrows and readied their spears for a throw.
But then—
[You seem to know a great deal about Simon Polentia.]
The One-Eyed Gentleman stirred his Jet-Black.
"!"
Every student and Gahal warrior present clutched at their throats.
I can't... breathe!
The Jet-Black that poured from the Gentleman's body then seized even the atmosphere itself, dyeing everything around them pitch black.
The students and warriors collapsed where they stood, their will to fight stripped away. Some foamed at the mouth; others wet themselves where they knelt.
Overwhelming terror.
Before it, a human being could do nothing at all. Even Hector's face had gone deathly pale.
[Speak.]
The One-Eyed Gentleman rose through the air on a wave of fear-laden Jet-Black and drifted toward Hector. Then he lifted the frozen man's chin with the tip of his cane.
[Tell me where Simon Polentia is. Do so, and the rest of you will be spared.]
"..."
Hector's mouth opened.
"Thanks."
CRACK!!
Out of nowhere, Hector drove his forehead into the Gentleman's. The Gentleman's brow caved inward, warping like dented metal.
"Kghk!"
The Gentleman snatched at him — but Hector seized the Gentleman in a crushing embrace.
"For getting close enough."
Scales rippled into being across Hector's body.
The scales across his body sharpened into spikes.
SHRAAAAK!
Even as he held on, every scale across his body sprang outward, honed to a point like a forest of thorns.
The One-Eyed Gentleman let out a scream of agony. Droplets of blood burst from him and scattered into the sky.
[You—!]
Keeeeeeing!
The Gentleman tried to seize Hector with terror once more.
[Pathetic!]
VROOM! VROOM!
The Gentleman's single pupil dilated wildly.
Dragon Fear?!'
He, the master of fear himself, was seized by a sensation he had never once known.
Am I right now.
Feeling fear before someone other than myself?
CRUNCH!
Hector reared his head all the way back and slammed his skull into the Gentleman's.
Crunch! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Then he simply kept going, without pattern or mercy. The Gentleman's face was savagely crushed inward. Hector spread his wings of the corpse dragon and rocketed into the sky, spun his body at the apex of his climb, and plummeted straight down.
KWAAAAAANG!
The One-Eyed Gentleman's head struck the floor of the fortress wall first, and enormous fractures split the ground around them.
"You sons of bitches!"
Ssss—
"I thought I'd become perfect over this break! I couldn't even remember the defeat that bastard dealt me!"
CRACK!
"I was certain second year would be different!"
KRRRSH!
"But he took the Student Council President's seat! And I had to face him down over a single class rep position!"
CRACK!
"Every damn practical evaluation! The way he moves like he's looking out for me! The way those idiots keep crawling out to pick new fights with him! All of it grates on me! It pisses me off!"
SMASH! THUD! CRACK!
"Why did the commander's seat go to him and not me?! SIMON POLENTIAAA!!"
KWAAANG!
An entire stretch of the fortress wall collapsed like a crater. Hector, still stamping on the back of the Gentleman's skull, was breathing hard — and in both his eyes, a crimson glow was flickering.
The One-Eyed Gentleman realized it instinctively.
I picked the wrong one to cross—!
"The one who wins in the end—!"
His head wrenched back like a madman's, and black haze rose between his teeth.
"IS ME!"
A jet-black Dragon Breath struck the One-Eyed Gentleman dead-on and detonated in a massive explosion. Hector flung both arms wide and let out a scream with all the force in his body.
"$@!&^%@!!"
An ultra-wide Dragon Fear cracked across the battlefield, and the Mimics climbing the fortress wall began dropping like flies. Some of the monsters turned and retreated from the wall entirely.
The students, hardened against curses, shielded themselves with Jet-Black and held on — but the Gahal warriors began dropping unconscious one after another.
Slluuurp!
Seizing the chaos, the One-Eyed Gentleman — now a pool of black liquid — came seeping down through the smoke of the explosion.
The pool slid along the slanted surface of the castle wall.
"Well, well. Quite unintentional."
The Gentleman's face emerged from the shadows as he ran down the sloped wall.
His warped features smoothed back into place.
"It seems I provoked a dragon's reverse scale."
From his standpoint, the situation was nothing but a headache.
He had never intended to make an enemy of the Moore family in the first place.
All he had done was ask — politely, with a dash of fear — where Simon Polentia was. Who could have guessed the man would react so extravagantly?
He had burned strength and stamina at the worst possible moment, for nothing.
"!"
Suddenly, the Gentleman's lone pupil went wide. An enormous shadow had fallen across his body as it crept along the wall.
Whump!
A black corpse dragon, trailing the stench of rotting flesh, was flying alongside him with a lazy beat of its wings.
'He — he followed me all the way here?!'
GRAB!
Hector, in his dragon form, clamped two powerful legs around the Gentleman's face.
SCRRRRAAAAAAAAAPE!
Then he dragged the man against the fortress wall at full speed.
[You goddamn bastard!!]
Hector's fury was nowhere near spent.
Inside the fortress, a full quarter of the city had been blown away by the battle between Loraine and the Butcher. Her catastrophic firepower was far too much for a small village to endure.
"Hahahaha!"
In the middle of the razed wasteland, the Butcher stood drenched in sweat. His legs creaked. His arms shook.
But Loraine's breathing was steady.
Backpedaling, the Butcher had to admit his initial judgment had been wrong from the start.
A necromancer flinging around that kind of overwhelming firepower? I assumed a war of attrition would favor me.
Eighteen years old, and already this strong?
It was talent fit to rule the Continent itself.
If I let this drag on, the one being ground down will be me.
But being caught by an eighteen-year-old girl here would be an insult to every heavyweight who had lost their heads to him over the years.
And it wasn't as if he had merely been running all this time.
Another torrent of crimson flashes poured from the spatial rift spread behind her. Having finished reading their trajectories, the Butcher raised his blades and bellowed:
"Oh no! Looks like your friend's about to be in trouble!"
CLANG!
The crimson flash he deflected ricocheted away behind him.
It was streaking toward the top of the fortress wall, where a female student was directing zombies against the Mimics. She hadn't noticed a thing.
BOOOM!
Loraine gritted her teeth and detonated her power, launching herself into the air. Then, a heartbeat before the flash reached the girl, she arrived behind her back and raised a dagger to block it.
"The friend beside her is in danger too!"
VWAAAAAH!
One of the Butcher's oversized knives was already spinning toward the other side of the wall. This time his target was the boy standing next to her.
Loraine seized the girl by the collar and shoved her body down, then flung herself forward with Jet-Black roaring around her.
"Haaah!"
She swung her dagger, and the extending blade-arc barely caught the flying knife, knocking it away sideways.
SHAAAAAK—!
Sliding down onto the fortress wall, she twisted her head toward where the Butcher had been standing.
He was gone without a trace.
She hurriedly raised her communication crystal.
"This is Loraine! Right now— "
—Loraine.
Just then, a calm middle-aged man's voice drifted from the crystal.
—Good work. Leave the rest to us.
