113. Return of the Hero
113. Return of the Hero
Not long after the fifth Liam Walker film premiered, the sixth was released.
Even before marketing for the sixth began, people already knew what kind of battle would unfold.
It was not because someone had leaked it.
But after dropping an island-sized meteor into the sea and cutting it apart, expecting it not to leak would have been shameless.
People already knew who would appear in the sixth film and how they would fight.
And yet, they still turned their steps toward the theaters.
The reason didn't need to be stated aloud.
Their expectations swelling, they took their seats.
Then the title appeared on screen.
<Liam Walker: The Last Hero>
Viewers waiting for the usual opening sequence were confused.
Liam Walker normally opened with a tense sequence before showing its title.
But this time, the title came up immediately with no opening.
Fans worried that it had perhaps lost its original spirit, but they soon realized that anxiety was unfounded.
The following scene made the editorial intent clear.
- Hurry. Agion is still breaking the seal.
Those were the words of the First Vandel’s remnant, which suddenly appeared before Liam after Ras’s death had left him devastated.
They were words spoken to Liam, but at the same time, words spoken to the audience.
It meant there was so much to show in this film that there was no time for something like an opening sequence.
According to the First Vandel's explanation that followed, Agion was attempting to reclaim his soul fragments from successive Vandels across numerous time periods.
But the First Vandel was already one step ahead of Agion.
He had already prepared for the possibility that Agion would even resort to time travel.
The First had arranged time-travel portals by a different method from Agion and barely managed to reach Liam and his friends through his remnant.
After one thing led to another, Liam recovered and he and his friends jumped into the portal.
The first place they headed was where the 11th Vandel was.
The weakest Vandel in history.
But among all Vandels, his political acumen was unrivaled, and he was a somewhat unique Hero who destroyed Agion through political maneuvering.
The problem, however, was that political maneuvering, by its nature, required adequate intelligence gathering and groundwork.
Ambushed without even a chance to attempt any maneuvering, the 11th couldn't even resist and was robbed of his soul fragment.
At least, thanks to the three protagonists arriving in time and fighting desperately, he was able to preserve his life.
After Agion left, the 11th sank down with a bitter smile.
Liam, unable to see that as someone else's problem, comforted him.
The 11th seemed to see something in Liam’s attempt to comfort him. His eyes widened, and he suddenly got to his feet.
And he took a diary from his safe and handed it to Liam.
- Take this. It will help.
The diary recorded all major events from the First through the 11th.
As a bonus, it included notes on how the 11th would have played politics in each situation.
- I wouldn't be any help if I followed you, but at least in this way, I hope to be of some small assistance.
Afterward, the film followed variations of the same pattern as the 11th’s era.
Move to the next era. ->
Fail to secure the soul fragment. ->
Liam comforts the Vandel. ->
The Vandels hand something over to Liam and they head to the next era.
The repetition could have grown boring, but surprisingly the film remained fresh throughout.
And with good reason: Liam was growing with each era.
The political acumen gained from the 11th,
The intelligence-gathering skill gained from the 10th,
The stealth techniques gained from the 9th,
The magical sense gained from the 8th...
Liam lost in every era, but he continued to grow steadily, and audiences could feel it.
As evidence, from the 6th onward, Liam was pressing Agion so hard that even Agion barely managed to obtain the fragment.
The elements that kept the film from becoming tedious weren't limited to that.
The battle scenes between Liam and Agion shown intermittently.
Watching those tension-filled battle scenes left no room for the film to become dull.
Liam and Agion's first full-scale battle began in the middle of a road.
Agion blocked the path of the 8th’s escort convoy, which had begun evacuating in advance.
With a mere flick of his hand, carriages were overturned, crumpled, and hurled to the side of the road.
And just as he was about to seize the fragment from the 8th, the three protagonists, arriving in the nick of time, stopped him.
Agion’s ability to stop the 8th’s spectacular magic and Liam’s combat instincts using only telekinesis vividly showed why he was the Demon King.
The result was Agion's victory.
The next battle scene took place in the era of the 6th.
This time, instead of Agion appearing first, the protagonist's party was waiting for him at a fortress.
In response, Agion brought a train and rammed it into the fortress gate like a battering ram.
Amid the soldiers scattering in utter panic, the three protagonists stopped Agion.
Though they had been overwhelmingly crushed in the immediately previous era, the three, having received special training from previous Vandels, had now reached a level where they could trade blows with Agion to some degree.
With the party persistently targeting his breathing apparatus, Agion acknowledged the disadvantage and changed his strategy.
Instead of breaking through them head-on, he used transformation magic to swap his appearance with a soldier's, then retrieved the fragment.
This time too was a defeat for the three, but still, there was hope.
And in the era of the 4th, that hope bore fruit.
They used his soul fragment as bait to lure Agion into a trap.
Exploiting the fact that his power weakened for the brief moment he absorbed a fragment, they bound him and then collapsed the cave.
Agion held up the collapsing cave with telekinesis.
But even that was what Liam had aimed for.
He destroyed Agion's breathing apparatus while both his hands were occupied.
With a look of utter shock being the last thing shown, Agion vanished into the collapsing cave.
Watching this, Sean, the man among the three, muttered.
"Did we take him down?"
In that moment, the ground split.
Beneath the fissured ground, Agion, whom they thought buried with the cave, stood glaring at the protagonist's party, his breathing apparatus removed.
With the weakness of his breathing apparatus gone, Agion's power was overwhelming.
With the telekinesis of just one hand, he seized Liam by the scruff of the neck.
At that moment, through Hannah's quick thinking, the protagonist's party escaped Agion's grasp and succeeded in evacuating to the next era.
The place they arrived at was the era of the Third.
It was just after the Era of War, when Agion had led the demon army and opposed all of humanity across the world.
Agion had been successfully sealed, but before the aftermath of war had faded, humanity turned against itself and started new wars.
The party had to hurry and find the Third Vandel amidst those battlefields.
But the Third Vandel was the one about whom the least was known among all Vandels.
Origins unknown, residence unknown.
All that was known was that he had originally roamed the battlefield as a talented mercenary, caught the eye of the Second, and suddenly became a Hero.
And that he was a Hero who, after sealing the Demon King, vanished forever without showing even a shred of interest in the wars between humans.
With nothing else known, the party had no clear path to find the Third.
In the end, instead of searching for the Third, they decided to first meet the Allied Forces commander and borrow the power of the Hero Allied Forces.
Whether fortunate or tragic, the leaders of each nation still remembered the terror of Agion and willingly formed an allied force.
Thus, the three protagonists temporarily halted the war among humans.
Further, they succeeded in stationing the Allied Forces in advance at the sea where Agion would appear.
On a rocking ship, the party gazed endlessly toward the sea where Agion would emerge.
At last, through a tearing dimensional rift, Agion revealed himself.
Without any need to explain who he was, his overwhelming presence alone prompted the army to attack immediately.
KABOOM!
Hundreds of cannons fired upon Agion in unison.
Agion reached his hand out toward the cannonballs flying at him, then withdrew it.
He wanted to test his power now that the weakness of the breathing apparatus was gone.
He deflected the incoming cannonballs, seized a weapon from a nearby soldier, leaped from ship to ship, and swept across the battlefield.
At the intense movements that had been impossible while wearing the breathing apparatus, a smile unconsciously crept onto Agion's face.
Then, as if gradually growing tired of moving his body, he began to chant in earnest.
"<Being deeper than the abyss, brighter than the sun—>"
Magic was fundamentally a discipline that demanded extreme concentration.
Magic was a miracle produced by a wish powerful enough to warp reality, with mana as fuel.
Accordingly, the chant itself had little meaning; it was closer to the rambling of a wizard in a state of extreme concentration.
But delving deeper, the chant was not an entirely meaningless act.
Repeated training allowed a chant to replace mental calculations like a macro, much like Pavlov’s dog.
Thus, if a wizard chanted in complete sentences, it proved they were attempting magic beyond their normal ability, even if they needed the chant’s help.
"Block it!!!"
An officer shouted.
Even without him shouting, the soldiers had already begun to move.
The soldiers charged recklessly at the chanting Agion.
One might wonder if charging so foolishly at the Demon King was the right move, but there was a reason for this judgment as well.
Ordinary wizards were defenseless while chanting.
Thus, if they intended to chant, they often deployed a vanguard.
And now, Agion stood alone, without a vanguard.
Believing they might have a chance while all his concentration was devoted to chanting, they charged bravely.
But the world always had exceptions.
Rare wizards could maintain their normal ability even without a vanguard and while devoting attention to a chant.
And Agion was one of those exceptions.
""
Even while calmly reciting the chant, Agion swung his sword and swept soldiers away with telekinesis.
A chanting wizard was supposed to be powerless.
Agion, having shattered that basic premise, did not stop his chant even as he carried out a one-sided massacre.
While the army reeled in confusion, he finished his chant.
"<Primordial being who toppled a civilization. Show your glory here once more.>"
The chant ended.
And above Agion's head, a magic circle unfolded.
The wizards immediately analyzed the magic circle and recognized it as Meteor-type magic.
As countless wizards and knights prepared to intercept it, the sky gradually darkened.
And following the darkening sky, their expressions darkened as well.
Meteor was famous as a spell that dropped a massive boulder from the sky and swept enemies away with the resulting blast.
However, the point to note here was that what fell in Meteor was, strictly speaking, a boulder.
A boulder meant something larger than a pebble but smaller than a rocky mountain.
Then came a question.
If what was falling from the sky was a rock that filled the entire field of vision.
If the rock became so colossal that it became indistinguishable from the sky itself.
Would calling that rock a mere boulder have been the correct expression?
If, as far as the eye could see, above one's head, it was covered purely by rock and nothing else, wouldn't it have been fair to say that rock had become that person's sky?
If one thought of it that way, perhaps what the army was seeing wasn't something as trivial as a falling rock, but rather a collapsing sky.
"<Sky Fall>"
No one could object to the arrogant skill name that Agion murmured.
People merely shed dry laughter and cold sweat, staring at the collapsing sky.
The wizards preparing interception stopped their chants, and officers closed their eyes.
Even the three protagonists were helpless this time.
People gave up, and watching that sight, Agion, drunk on superiority, wore an arrogant smile.
Just as everyone lowered their swords in despair, one man picked up one of the fallen weapons.
Short in stature for an adult man.
Slightly yellowish skin and cauliflower ears so battered that his race was impossible to identify.
The being who suddenly appeared wore a turban on his head.
Just as one soldier was about to stop the unexpected intruder, the turban flew off in the wind.
The man who revealed his face—Krauser Vandel—looked up at the collapsing sky and wore a belligerent smile.
"I simply wanted to cut the sky."
Along with that line, the scene seen in the trailer appeared.
The Third let out a hearty laugh.
It was a remarkably composed attitude for someone facing a collapsing sky.
"I've cut mountains, shorn the earth, and even bisected the sea, but the way to slice the sky never came to me. I never imagined that wish would be granted in this way. Such things happen in life, I suppose."
Seeing the Third, who had suddenly appeared, Agion's eyes widened.
The Third gave Agion one glance, then snatched a sword held by a soldier.
The Hero, spreading his legs and raising his arms above his head to take a downward-slashing stance, shifted his gaze toward Liam.
Instead of explaining who he was, what kind of man he was, or why he had come, he simply tossed a remark at Liam.
"Watch closely, whelp. This is what swordsmanship is."
His arm, bent all the way behind his back, traced a semicircle as he swung the sword.
Following the Third's blade, the sky split.
Beyond the parting sky, the clear blue sky that people knew revealed itself.
It was the return of the Hero.