The Mucker
A massive monster—3
“Ah.”
I spotted my father in the distance. His hair was disheveled in a way I’d never seen before. Sweat streamed down his forehead. His face was set in a rigid mask. And his torso was drenched in crimson, one arm completely gone.
Heat surged through me in an instant. I didn’t bother hiding the rage that boiled up to the crown of my head—I let it show.
Behind me, the now-familiar Artificial Sun materialized, forged from pure magic power. Its size rivaled the colossal one I had created on the day of my coming-of-age ceremony.
“You damn lizard bastard!”
A faint, lizard-like shape lurked in the distance, just beyond the hill where my father stood. The moment its jaws began to open, a colossal maw formed over the hill itself, ready to tear away the entire space in one bite.
My magic power roared. The energy stored inside me swelled like boiling water, surging in an instant.
-Kiiiiiiing!
The completed Artificial Sun synchronized with my inflated magic power. The moment my internal energy resonated, the sun began to pulse as if drawing breath.
A flickering sun. Its target: the creature trying to devour space itself right this second.
“Die!”
My fury was answered by magic power. At the center of the Artificial Sun, which resonated with my golden-burning energy, a vast amount of power compressed into a single point. In the next breath, that compressed might erupted as a colossal beam.
“Kraaaaaaaaah!”
It happened in the blink of an eye. The massive ray of light pierced straight through, and the blurry lizard began to scream in agony. At the same time, the faint giant maw hovering over the hill vanished.
“Fire!”
My father, his face deathly pale, didn’t miss the opening. He immediately commanded his two lions. The magic-made golden lions opened their jaws at his gesture and began unleashing golden beams of their own.
-Ziiiiiiiiiiing!
A gigantic pillar of light descended from the sky while two rays blasted up from the ground, slamming into the lizard.
“Kraaaaaaaaah!”
The lizard shrieked and tried to dodge, but evading both the sun floating in midair and the beams aimed by a moving body was no easy feat. The moment blood sprayed from its scales as it twisted, its body folded in on itself and vanished into thin air.
“To your side!”
At my father’s shout, I twisted away instantly.
-Crunch!
The space itself warped and tore apart. So this was it—the reason my father had lost his arm!
“Burn!”
A sun meant light. But before that, it also meant temperatures beyond anything this world could measure.
-Fwoooooosh!
Flames engulfed the empty air across the entire area. The instant everything except the space where my father stood was set ablaze, the lizard that had been hiding in folded space revealed itself.
“Kroaaaaaaaah!”
When its long body lunged to swallow me whole, I immediately threw a punch. Golden magic power traced the path of my fist, aiming straight for the lizard’s head. From below, my father’s golden lions charged at his command.
In that brief window, the lizard that had vanished from sight multiple times before appeared above my father in the blink of an eye. Its true target had been him from the start!
“You think I wouldn’t notice?!”
If I hadn’t caught the starving glint in its eyes as it stared at my father, I’d be a disgrace to the fire attribute! You bastard! I’m a Franz too!
A massive clump of magic power fell from the sun like a giant droplet. It instantly transformed into the shape of a lion and sank its fangs into the lizard’s nape.
“Kroaaaaaaaah!”
The lizard screamed in pain. Seizing the moment, my father’s lions latched on as well. Ignoring the bizarre spectacle of three lions and one lizard locked in a brutal brawl, I dropped down beside my father.
“Father! Are you all right?!”
“Leoric.”
My father looked at me. The sight of his ashen face made my heart drop. I had never seen him this weakened before. I examined the wound on his arm. It had been torn off cleanly. He had stopped the bleeding, but the injury itself was massive. The blood loss was bad enough, but the fact that he had allowed a direct hit in the first place was even more dangerous. He needed treatment immediately.
“I’ll heal you right away—!”
“It’s fine. I’m all right. Don’t worry about me—deal with that thing. If it leaves the mountain, we’re in trouble.”
“But…!”
I glanced behind me. The lizard was still shrieking in agony. Its stealth ability far exceeded my expectations. If even my father had been caught off guard, letting it escape now would be disastrous. I understood that much.
A hand settled on my hesitant shoulder.
“Go. Fulfill your duty as a noble.”
I met my father’s golden eyes. The once-brilliant hue had darkened. I could feel his only remaining hand trembling on my shoulder. I clenched my teeth. Even while enduring such pain, his grip on my shoulder was firm. I forced myself to nod.
“Krrrk!”
Pain it had never felt before. The creature known as the Mucker stared at the wounds covering its body. Its once-tough black scales now bore scorch marks, and it could feel power that had pierced straight through them and into its flesh.
The Mucker’s large, slit pupils rolled wildly. It had a choice to make. The prey whose leg it had already torn off was still visible. It hadn’t bled out yet, so abandoning an injured meal would be a shame. Saliva dripped from its mouth as it recalled the taste of the leg it had already digested. It really was a pity to let it go.
Was there any way to get another chance?
“Krrrr…”
The Mucker licked its lips and prowled around the hill where its prey waited. Its body gradually grew fainter. Sound, shape, even the presence of its magic power—all of it vanished.
It fixed its gaze on the newly arrived prey that seemed to be of the same kind as the injured one. Family, perhaps? If it was the kind of animal that couldn’t abandon a wounded kin, then this was fresh prey. The quality of magic power emanating from the new arrival tickled the Mucker’s senses.
Hunger and greed. Those were the reasons the Mucker had descended the mountain. Its eyes gleamed as it melted into the darkness, waiting for the perfect moment.
Using its predation ability was practically a gamble even for it. The stamina and magic power it consumed were enormous. The Mucker knew all too well that a predator who failed its hunt could easily become the hunted instead. Slowly. It dissolved its body into space and vanished once more, waiting for the right timing.
I floated in the sky, looking down over the land. My father remained alone on the hill, clutching the severed part of his arm. Well, two golden lions were prowling around him like guards, but they were nothing more than extensions of his will. In essence, he was acting as bait.
My eyes trembled as I watched, but I forced them shut.
-Ziiiiing!
I observed the perfectly hidden creature’s movements. Even now that it had concealed itself so thoroughly, my radar couldn’t detect it. Not that I had expected much precision from it in the first place. But the creature was definitely there. Its faint magic power lingered nearby before vanishing again. It was clearly somewhere in this area, yet I couldn’t pinpoint its exact location.
“Huuu…”
I took a deep breath. My father’s words came back to me.
-You are a strange child.
My father had said that while pointing at the Artificial Sun.
-You possess knowledge I never taught you.
The flickering sunlight grew steadily brighter.
-You know many things you were never taught.
The Artificial Sun I had created expanded in size and began to move.
-Is that why? You treat the obvious as if it truly is obvious.
The Artificial Sun drifted beneath the true sun hanging at the apex of the sky.
-You don’t accept as natural the things we consider natural.
It wasn’t just knowledge about the sun. The concept of “sun” carried countless meanings. Just as the Sun card in tarot held many interpretations, the meaning of the sun differed from culture to culture despite universal worship. Apollo in Greek mythology was the sun god, yet he was also renowned as a versatile deity of art and countless other domains. The same applied to Shennong in Chinese mythology and Quetzalcoatl in Aztec lore. Far more concepts encompassed the sun than merely symbolized it.
I had known that, hadn’t I? Before the Franz family became nobles, there had been a local faith centered on the Golden Lion. Princess Amelia hadn’t mentioned any of this because it fell under common sense in this world. Instead, she had spoken of “visions” known to only a handful of people here—things that were obvious to me because I had reached out to every form of culture and art from my previous life.
Yes. I had been trapped inside the prison of common sense I brought with me. That was why I had failed to grasp the common sense of this world.
“Hey, lizard.”
I pointed at the sun with my finger. The sun, now even larger than when it had illuminated the city, pulsed. Yet unlike before, I felt no strain. I could sense it. The quality of my magic power had changed. The flow of my energy had shifted, and controlling that flow had become far more natural.
Thanks to the Artificial Sun created beneath the real one, the hill that should have been darkening grew just a little brighter than it had been moments ago when the true sun still hung overhead.
Feeling the power radiating from the Artificial Sun, I looked down at the hill with golden eyes. Even though I could tell the quality of my magic power had improved, I still couldn’t detect the lizard’s stealth ability. I marveled at it even as I recalled a very simple truth.
The truth that wherever light shines, there must be brightness.
“I’ll share with you the words of the greatest and most famous religion from the world I came from.”
The sun floating in the sky disappeared.
Did it disappear? No. I had become the sun itself.
“Let there be light.”
And there was light.