Achievement
"Lady Rubia."
Whoosh—!
The instant Ser's voice reached them, dozens of arrows and a savage wind came howling in.
Rubia saw it and immediately drew up her divine power, weaving a barrier that wrapped around both Ser and herself.
"Well done."
Confirming the barrier's presence, Ser summoned scores of spirits around her body—
KRA-KOOM—!
—and detonated them all at once, birthing a colossal inferno that swallowed the attackers whole.
"Tsk. How troublesome."
A short distance away, Sirin eyed the corpses her greatsword had already carved apart, clicked her tongue, and flicked a flame from her fingertip onto the pile of bodies.
"They regenerate without end. It rather reminds one of us, does it not?"
Ser chuckled and brushed the dust from her skirts as she surveyed the surroundings.
"...I can feel divine power."
"Indeed. Not identical, yet Lady Rubia's divine power is unmistakably present."
"Those bastards who aren't even worth chewing up have finally caused a mess... Tsk. This place is more or less cleaned up. Let us go."
Sirin ground her teeth, snapped her fingers, and their bodies rose lightly into the air before shooting forward like arrows.
"Noah... is Noah all right? She isn't hurt, is she?"
"Her body is intact... yet the situation is razor-thin."
"Ah..."
The moment they heard the sky itself seem to collapse, they knew something had befallen Noah and burst out of the cave at once.
What greeted them, however, were hundreds of people steeped in an eerie power.
Manufactured Masters, they were called.
Inferior in rank to Kalt, whom they had faced before, yet still far from negligible.
When an arm was severed they simply grafted a rolling leg onto the stump; when entrails spilled they scooped them up and clenched the belly shut; even with heads burst open their bodies kept moving—utter madness.
They could not simply ignore them and leave.
Cartia Village would surely suffer otherwise.
So the three resolved to kill every last one, and thus their feet were inevitably delayed.
With every second they lost, the ominous power and the dreadful sonic booms from Noah's location only grew louder.
Rubia was going out of her mind.
Because of her, Noah had stormed out of the cave in anger—and walked straight into this nightmare.
She had tried to follow, but she had been wearing nothing but underclothes and could not chase after her. By the time she threw on clothes and emerged, Noah was nowhere to be found. All she could do was choke down her frustration.
"Rubia. Do not fret so. That Noah does not appear to be losing ground."
Even as Sirin stroked Rubia's back, a shadow crossed her own face.
Noah was not being pushed back—yet the Bracelet of Verdure was clearly nearing its limit.
If she simply removed the bracelet she could crush a couple of Masters with ease. But if, as in training, she began drawing on True Qi or treated death as a trivial matter, the situation would spiral out of control.
"Do the two of you not trust Lady Noah?"
Ser, having summoned several water spirits, crushed one enemy after another and tilted her head.
"I do. I trust her, but..."
"I believe Lady Noah will overcome this without difficulty."
Having just detonated her thirteenth spirit, Ser smiled brightly.
"I said it in jest earlier, yet even I—the genius of the century—could not guarantee victory against her. Lady Noah is that strong."
"...Yes."
Rubia could feel Noah's overwhelming power exploding across the distant sky, yet her expression refused to lighten.
She knew Noah was strong.
She believed Noah would overcome any situation.
What tormented her was simply that she had not been at Noah's side when it happened.
If only she had conducted herself a little better.
If only she had swallowed her embarrassment and chased after Noah in her underclothes.
Then Noah would not have had to stand alone in that place—or even if she had, Rubia would have been right there with her.
"Therefore, Lady Rubia, I suggest you start thinking about how you will apologize to Lady Noah."
Ser snickered with a thoroughly mischievous look.
"...Would it be all right if I hit you just once?"
"If striking me will soothe your anger, I shall offer both cheek and backside freely."
Thwack—! Smack—!
"Kyaah—?!"
A lump of divine power shot from Rubia's fingertip and struck Ser squarely on the head and rear; a piercing shriek tore from the mage's lips.
"Ugh... y-you actually hit me..."
She turned an aggrieved face toward Sirin.
"Did you not do something that deserved it?"
"Well... Lady Noah and Lady Rubia's reactions were simply too amusing..."
"And that is precisely why you have no friends. Just keep that mouth of yours shut."
"No friends... it is true, yet that is still too cruel."
Ser pouted and kept rubbing the spots where divine power had smacked her.
"Rubia. I am sorry as well. This body is too exhausted to use spatial transfer as before."
"You need not apologize, Lady Sirin... If only my own abilities were greater, everything would already be resolved."
"Was Lady Noah truly so strong that even Lady Sirin struggled?"
"It is fortunate I sealed her with the Bracelet of Verdure. Back when she was in my lair—ah, the training grounds—merely restraining her drained an enormous amount of mental strength. And at the end... ahem. In any case."
Sirin slowly stroked her own throat, cleared her throat, and looked up at the sky.
In that instant the ultramarine heavens flushed crimson, and a black sun that shed no light revealed itself.
"...The Black Sun."
Ser's voice, usually soft and mild, came out cold and sunken.
"Ah... no..."
A sigh mixed with despair slipped from Rubia's lips.
And a moment later—
a pitch-black sword scar carved itself across the sun.
"So it has come to this after all. We must hurry."
"...What in the world is that...?"
Rubia knew the Black Sun; she had witnessed it in the battle against Kalt.
But the jet-black scar drawn across the heavens was something she had never seen.
And it was no ordinary scar.
Along the gash, a dreadful aura dripped like blood, and from the rift rose a wailing chorus of despair and terror.
"Noah did that."
"What...? That eerie power...?"
"Eerie, you say... Yes, I suppose it would appear so to you. Regardless, we are nearly there. Prepare yourselves."
Sirin gave Rubia a bitter smile, raised her greatsword, and flared her mana.
Ser likewise summoned not tiny spirits but several the size of grown humans, ready for battle.
And there—
in the midst of a landscape that looked as though the world itself had ended—
lay Noah, collapsed atop a pool of blood.
"Noah!!"
Before Galrua's severed arm could even hit the ground, it regenerated.
Cut off a leg, cut off a neck—everything simply grew back.
Looks like this bastard's rewinding time to restore his body.
Not just the body—stamina, mana, every condition snapped back to the state before the fight began.
And then—
Crack—! Crunch—!
Sword scars appeared in the place where I had stood in the past, and in the place where I would stand in the future.
Take one step back and I was cut.
Take two steps forward and I was cut.
As though he were slicing through the time axes of past and future themselves...
Fuck me. What kind of bullshit ability is this?
I blocked and dodged as best I could with Carpeng's blood qi and Cartia's voice, but if this dragged on I would definitely collapse first.
The dozens of arrows had become hundreds.
The ground I could safely stand on was vanishing by the second.
Of course, none of that was the real problem.
The real problem was that my head was growing steadily cloudier.
In one exchange I could sever Galrua's limbs.
In the next I could burst his body apart.
But every time I did, my mind turned hazy, and with every new wound the thought whispered that I ought to just die and be reborn.
Dangerous.
Cartia was barely holding me together, and Carpeng's blood qi kept slapping my cheeks to keep me conscious.
Without that... I might already have killed myself.
I had wanted to conserve strength and take out the archer as well.
But there was no choice left...
That's enough. You can't even see him on your Qi Sensing right now, can you?
If I expand it I can, but then I'll get cut for sure.
Stop dancing around the words 'I can't.' And you've got ten seconds left.
Behind Cartia's snide voice came a furious barrage of sonic booms.
Every swing of the greatsword birthed dozens more.
All the mana in the area had detonated and evaporated; not a speck remained.
Even the oxygen seemed to have fled—my lungs burned with every breath.
Anyway, forget the archer. Focus on killing this bastard. Any later and it's over.
I nodded, kicked Galrua's body away to open some distance, and whispered,
...D-doggie. Guard me for five seconds.
Then I wrung out every last drop of strength and poured it into the greatsword.
The mental image sealed within Frey answered my rank and rose to its feet.
Galrua's face twisted.
The arrows that had come in dozens now poured down in hundreds.
Trusting Carpeng's blood qi, I focused my mind.
Pain like lightning speared through my skull.
Cells, blood vessels, muscles, every organ inside me felt as though they were melting, tearing, exploding.
Blood gushed from all seven orifices and soaked my entire body.
Those five seconds stretched into five hours.
And the moment Galrua's greatsword reached my eyes—
I stomped a true step into the earth and swung Frey.
There was no sound.
Nothing flashy—only silence.
A single line drawn from the ground climbed Galrua's body and touched the heavens.
Every landscape painted around us oxidized and was erased.
Galrua's rank and flesh alike were devoured by that line and crumpled inward.
The sword scar that had swallowed everything still was not satisfied; it crossed the Black Sun and carved a deep wound into the world itself.
The rain of arrows simply stopped.
The stretched time returned to normal.
The torn time found its proper shape again.
Galrua's crumpled body shattered into dust.
Every ounce of strength left me; Frey scattered into the air.
Carpeng's blood qi, which had been holding me upright in a daze, gently laid my body on the ground and subsided.
And then—
into my ringing ears came a voice that was irritating, infuriating, hateful enough to kill me...
yet one I had missed, longed for, been glad of, and loved.
"Noah!!"
The blood qi that had been weakly wriggling out of my body crawled over, picked up my greatsword, placed it in my hand, and fastened the Bracelet of Verdure around my wrist.
Thanks to that the pain eased a little, and the surroundings swam into faint focus.
Rubia freefalling from the sky.
Ser's startled face.
Sirin snatching Rubia's body while shouting, Have you gone mad?!
Hey. Hey. Can you hear me?
Yeees...
Then when Rubia lands right in front of you, cough up some blood.
...Why? She's already going to worry.
Just trust me and do it once. Then pass out on the spot.
Passing out... is that something I can just decide to do?
If not, tell the mutt—wait, the doggie—to smack you hard on the head.
Rustle— rustle—
Above my head the fluttering blood qi wriggled as if to say it could do that just fine.
A-are you crazy?
No, just trust me and try it once. When you open your eyes it'll be pure paradise. Seriously. And Rubia needs a little scolding too, doesn't she?
Ugh... that's true, but... f-fine. Okay. I'll try...
"Noah! Noaaah!! I'm sorry. I... I'm so sorry, sob... Noaaah... I, hic..."
At last Rubia landed safely and pulled my body into a fierce embrace.
At the same moment—
Now!
"Uuuugh... keh— cough, ghk..."
"Ah, ah...! N-Noah...? N-no... please... please, please..."
Just as Cartia ordered, I poured out a basinful of blood.
Doggie! Hit her fucking hard!
Hey! W-wait...! Gently! Gently—
Crack—!
Pain as if my skull had been split in half flared—
and I lost consciousness.