Flee — I Shall Be Your Opponent
A pale mist had settled over the front of the museum.
Simon was running through that very mist with Prince at his side.
The fog was so thick he couldn't see a hand's length ahead — and yet all he had to do was lift his gaze to catch the sickening sight of the crimson cross jutting up above, bristling against the sky.
Hanging from that cross, unconscious, were Kizen professor Grelion and his two teaching assistants. The mere thought of it made Simon's blood run cold.
[What?! The one we're up against is Rate?]
Prince shot straight up into the air the moment he heard the story.
[Haven't you skipped way too many steps, huh?! How are you suddenly planning to grab a sitting Chief Inquisitor!]
"I wasn't planning to grab anyone. He showed up on his own."
[Ah—wait! Something's ahead!]
Prince, who had been leading the charge, skidded to a halt. Simon stopped beside him and hefted the Greatsword of Ruin.
In the mist, which rippled and swayed like a ghost fortress, a pair of eyes gleamed.
Then the eyes multiplied into dozens, and white-furred dogs began piercing the fog one by one, revealing themselves.
Each was a little larger than an oversized hound, wearing spiked collars around their necks, drool stringing from their jaws.
Grrrrr.
Arf! Arf!
Low growls rolled out, thick with menace. Divinity was bleeding off their fur, and their eyes had rolled half back in their sockets.
They had to be Holy Creatures Rate had seeded around the area to guard it.
[Let's go! Simon!]
Prince clenched his fist and was the first to charge.
"Careful!"
Simon shouted after him and kicked off the ground himself.
Whoosh!
One of the white dogs shot forward like a beam of light, lunging for Simon — and Simon answered with a full-power swing of the Greatsword of Ruin.
CLANG!
Blade met creature with a sound like solid steel striking solid steel. The white dog staggered back, blood spraying from its forehead.
'They're hard! And—'
They bled.
These were nothing like the Holy Creatures he'd seen inside the museum.
'Is each and every one of them a Holy Beast?! That many Holy Beasts, all at once——!'
[HIDDEN CARD PUNCH!]
Prince leapt skyward and drove his fist downward.
With a collision loud enough to rattle the ears, the hunting hounds went flying, and a tornado of dirt and dust whirled up around them.
"Nice one, Prince!"
Simon seized the opening and darted into the dust cloud to hide. Rate's hounds came bounding after him, barking furiously.
'If they're Holy Beasts, then I've got——!'
Simon pulled a necklace from his pocket and gripped it tight.
A holy sub-space for storing Holy Beasts. He'd packed it on the off chance before heading to the Holy Federation — and thank the darkness he had.
'I can do anything!'
He fired his self-trigger, shifting from Necromancer to Priest, then activated the holy sub-space.
"Akalion!"
Vwoooong!
At Simon's call, a tiny, doll-like bear cub popped out of the sub-space necklace with a boing. It took one look at the surrounding Holy Beasts, went rigid with fright, and slapped itself flat against Simon's leg.
Grrrrr!
Arf! Arf!
Rate's hunting hounds bared their teeth in what looked awfully like mockery.
"It's okay, Akalion."
Simon laid his palm gently atop the cub's head, calming it.
Then, gazing down at his first Holy Beast with eyes full of trust, he spoke.
"Transform."
FLASH!
The instant Simon poured divinity into him, Akalion's body began to swell enormously. His fur bristled, his fangs grew, his muscles split and knotted. In the blink of an eye he had become a hulking wall of bear muscle, and he roared.
GRAAAAAAWR!
The sheer, crushing force of that roar made even Rate's hounds flinch in spite of themselves. Simon leapt onto Akalion's back and shouted.
"Well done! Let's go!"
Rate's hounds were trained to sniff out jet-black energy and tear necromancers apart — but a Holy Beast and a Priest wielding the same divinity were not their quarry. The hounds were visibly thrown into confusion.
Simon used the opening to ride the colossal Akalion into a run.
When Akalion bellowed, the hounds could only glare with frustrated, twitching eyes, unable to pounce. The few that did lunge were driven off by swings of Simon's Greatsword of Ruin.
"Prince! You okay?!"
[Obviously!]
He'd worried the hounds might turn and swarm Prince instead — but Prince, true to his nature as an Ancient Undead, was fighting just fine on his own.
Simon cut through the horde of hounds Rate had scattered, and at last reached the foot of the cross.
'Professor Grelion!'
Simon climbed the cross itself and pulled himself up beside the hanging professor.
His arms and legs were pinned fast with enormous nails. Gashes and claw-marks scored his body everywhere. Several of his fingernails had been torn out.
Rage at Rate surged up in him like it might detonate — but now was the time for a clear head. He yanked the nails out one after another, hoisted Grelion onto his back, and descended from the cross. He brought down the two assistants the same way.
"Let's move! Prince!"
With the rescued men loaded onto Akalion's broad back, Simon ran on his own two feet. Prince followed at his flank like an honor guard, pounding hounds into the dirt with his fists as he went.
'Somehow, I got the professor and the assistants out. But——'
Simon turned his head.
Far off in the distance, he could see sparks scattering and feathers whirling through the air.
'Will they be all right?'
Krrrrsh.
Lorraine clenched her fist tight and brought it down through empty air.
The air shattered like a windowpane, and through the fissures blazed scarlet beams of light.
Keeeeeeeeee-ing!
Keeeeee-ing!
The whole world drowned in red. Every time a flash of light carved its path across the ground, boulders and gravel alike vaporized into wisps of steam under the heat.
"Hahahahaha!"
Rate twisted his body through the air, evading it all. Throwing himself into a storm of scarlet beams from every direction and slipping past them with movements that verged on prophecy — that was a war veteran for you.
The moment Rate finally evaded every last one of Lorraine's attacks and touched down, the Serne feathers that had been chasing him like homing arrows broke apart and reassembled into magic circles.
Inferno
Serne flicked her fingertips like a conductor wielding a baton.
FWOORRRRRRRRR!
From the ten magic circles surrounding Rate, lava gushed forth like a busted faucet.
When one circle burned itself out pouring lava, the next feather waiting its turn behind it claimed the spot, spread a new circle, and began pouring again — over and over.
A full ten minutes of relentless lava bombardment.
Through it all, Lorraine and Serne caught their breath and stared ahead. Serne gave a casual shrug of her shoulders.
"I suppose the reputation of the priest who's killed more necromancers than anyone in the world wasn't just talk, after all."
At first, the two girls had simply overwhelmed him. They tore at him, froze him, split him, burned him again and again beyond counting.
But Rate was still alive. Same as every time before. Beyond the noxious smoke, in a crater of lava so blurred it barely held a shape, a man was lifting his head.
Then they saw the cross on his arm swing up in a light, casual arc.
"!"
Lorraine hastily brought her two daggers up in front of her, and Serne sent her feathers forward, snapping defensive magic circles into place layer upon layer.
With a sound like the earth's axis wrenching sideways, a ghostly pale slash struck home against the two girls, and the ground itself flipped over like a bedsheet.
"Agh—!"
Black and white hair whipped violently in competing tangles as the two girls were shoved backward across the ground by the impact.
Lorraine stared dead ahead, gasping. She spread open her trembling left hand — one of her daggers had been blasted to pieces, leaving nothing but shards.
"Heheh—"
Serne, who had managed to halt a little further forward, glanced back at Lorraine and flashed a foxy grin, drawing a V with her fingers.
Lorraine cried out in alarm.
"Don't let your guard——!"
FWOOSH!
Out of nowhere, Rate's cross came hurtling down from above and split apart Serne's head even as she stood there grinning with her V-sign.
Her body scattered like splashed paint, and Rate, landing, spun full around and swung the Cross Blade. Lorraine hastily raised her one remaining dagger.
CLAAAANG!
Lorraine's body went hurtling into the distance, and just as Rate dropped low and readied his charge, she pointed at him with an extended index finger.
[FIRE!]
Cracks split open in every direction, and twenty shafts of scarlet light struck Rate dead-on all at once.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWOM!
While Rate held the beams at bay with his Cross Blade raised before him, Lorraine let the shattered remains of her dagger fall to the ground.
"Haah... haah."
As she stood gulping down air, light shimmered beside her and Serne reappeared.
"You...!"
"Did you honestly think I'd die from something like that?"
She passed a palm across her forehead. A thin line of blood was trailing down it.
"Still, that actually stings."
Simon had never seen Serne bleed before.
So she's human after all, Lorraine thought, just for a moment, before steadying her stance.
The scarlet beams that had been plunging down in straight lines exhausted themselves and vanished, and Rate stood revealed squarely ahead, cross brandished before him.
"Now this is fun. A rare, exceptional kind of fun, for a romp with children. So the next generation of rulers really are built differently, hmm?"
Rate said this, then stroked his chin with apparent dissatisfaction.
"But the pair of you — fine in every other way — you're much too thin and wiry. Grelion was a joy to carve and skewer to my heart's content, but with you two, one slip in my force and I'm liable to cleave you clean in half."
"!"
"Lose just one arm or leg and you'd come apart wailing and sobbing about the pain, wouldn't you? And that would sour the mood terribly. I simply can't abide that."
Shhhff—
His Cross Blade slid across the ground as he advanced.
"I shall handle you with the delicate care of a glasswork — and once I've wrung every last pleasure from you, then I'll collect your lives."
"People trapped inside their own little worlds disgust me."
Serne held a feather at her fingertips and tossed it into the air.
"As it happens, I'm one of them. I despise my own kind."
The feathers she threw scattered into hundreds of strands, fluttering down like rain. Then they warped and shifted, transforming into the shapes of soldiers. Serne's summoned troops — the Feather Soldiers.
Shk!
Chk!
Two hundred soldiers in full armor, spears in hand, raised their weapons as one.
"Ha!"
The instant prey presented itself, Rate lit up with delight and swung his Cross Blade.
Every soldier mid-charge was bisected by a single stroke, their upper halves drifting into the air, and Rate dove through the gap on bent knees.
Then Serne lifted a fingertip and, with a sly smile, drew her thumb downward.
FWOOOOOM!
With a sound like firecrackers going off, the Feather Soldiers abruptly changed shape into magic circles.
Chains of Ten Thousand Shackles
The moment a hundred magic circles unfurled toward Rate and blazed with light, his movement froze.
He turned his head. Faint binding sigils had clamped themselves around his arms and legs.
"A binding curse. Something like this won't——"
KUUUUNG!
While Serne held Rate in check, it was Lorraine's turn — she pulled something out from within a fissure in the air.
A scarlet body, the ground beneath its planted feet glowing and burning white-hot. It took the form of a great-horned demon.
Lorraine Original — Twentieth Liberator
"Release."
As she murmured the word, the seals binding the demon's wrists and ankles came undone.
Lorraine rested her hand on the demon's back and closed her eyes. The two horns on her own forehead grew steadily shorter — and in exchange, the demon's body seethed like an active volcano, veins bulging across its skin.
Thrum.
Th-th-th-thrum!
Like an arrow nocked on a taut bowstring, the demon coiled its body and readied its charge.
"Go."
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The demon detonated the ground around it and surged forward, erupting Lorraine's crimson power like a volcano made manifest.
Keeng! Keeng!
At Serne's gesture, her feathers flew ahead into the demon's path and lined up like dominoes, transforming into one magic circle after another. As the demon barreled through them in sequence, its firepower and momentum swelled with each pass.
Rate, still bound by Serne's curse, curved his lips into a pale smile.
"A serviceable combination."
The demon, now within arm's reach of Rate, brought the enormous hellfire sword clutched in its hand crashing down toward him.
FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Lorraine's scarlet jet-black energy surged up like a mountain range. It was a blow of such magnitude that the very terrain around it turned over.
"Haah... haah."
Lorraine lowered her hand, gasping. Beside her, Serne watched the scene through half-lidded eyes.
KUGUGUGUGU—!
Amid the billowing smoke, Rate was still standing tall.
As Serne looked closer, she saw that Rate's hand was holding the demon's sword at bay.
'He couldn't have dispelled the binding curse — so how is he blocking?!'
The smoke cleared, and Rate's figure emerged in full.
His left hand — detached clean from his shoulder — was seen rolling across the ground.
And a second left hand, sprouting not from his shoulder but from his chest, was the thing holding that sword.
"Not bad. But—"
Only then did Serne's binding curse finally shatter, and Rate seized the demon's head with his free right hand and crushed it like a watermelon.
"—it's a long, long way from enough to kill me."
Far away, Lorraine let out a short cry and dropped to one knee. Serne's brow furrowed.
"That's a look of incomprehension, I see. I concentrated divinity into my shoulder and tore my own left arm off."
Rate answered calmly, rolling his fallen arm along the ground with his foot.
"My self-restoration magic regenerates the moment damage occurs to my body. But I relocated the site of regeneration from the shoulder to the chest. And so — an arm grows from my chest."
He thwack-ed the chest-armed arm off with his other hand. Over his freshly bloodied shoulder, self-restoration took shape once more, and a pristine left arm sprang out.
"When you've spent enough time rolling through war zones, you'll often find yourself fighting with a few dozen spare arms attached. Why are you looking at me like some kind of monster, you necromancers?"
The true terror of Rate, the infamous Chief Inquisitor, was not his transcendent physical abilities. Not his superb swordsmanship. Not even his regeneration.
Among the necromancers Rate had killed over the years, there had been those stronger than he was. But in the end, the one who killed them and walked away alive was Rate.
His true strength was the Infinite Divinity. So long as his obsession and fanaticism refused to gutter out, Rate received an endless supply of holy power. Even with his skull crushed and his heart pierced, he would rise again, hunt his prey to the very end of hell, and kill them.
"Still holding back, are you? Then entertain me further!"
He re-gripped the Cross Blade and swung it in a wild, rough arc. In an instant, a gale and a storm of dust filled everything around them, and Rate swept past Serne and crashed down upon Lorraine, whose body had yet to recover from the backlash of her own power.
"Let's see, then — can a necromancer regenerate an arm too?!"
The very instant his Cross Blade began its descent toward Lorraine's shoulder—
"!"
A white blade wedged itself between them.
KA-AAAAAANG!
With a clean, resonant ring, Rate's cross was wrenched forcibly upward. Then an unseen cloak whirled violently, and a second strike came flying in.
CLAAANG!
Rate's face twisted as he caught the blow, and he fell back a single step.
Lorraine's eyes went wide.
"No way...!"
WHOOOOOOOSH!
Simon stood there wearing Pier, facing the two of them, as the Ancient Undead's voice rang out.
[Flee. I shall be your opponent.]