Turning Point (3)
“...What in the world is this?”
Rubia swallowed hard at the sight of the greatsword driven into the ground.
“When did you pull a cute little stunt like that? One hit clearly won’t be enough. You’ll take three.”
Standing beside her, Ser scrunched her face in genuine irritation.
“...How did Miss Noah even know about this?”
“Uh... I could feel it.”
The moment Hermila rose from her seat, the energy pouring from her body had flooded every direction—and at the same time, I felt it wrap around us.
At first I had no idea what it was. But when I focused my Qi Sensing and kept examining it, I finally understood.
The true nature of that energy was True Qi.
According to Sirin’s explanation, it was a power that used life force as its source. The greater the feats a person had accomplished and the higher their stature, the stronger it became—she had rattled off a whole string of details about it.
Uh... what was it again?
Anyway.
The essence of True Qi, she said, was that a person’s most powerful wish manifested even more clearly. You could think of it as similar to a Unique Ability, but it was a force of a slightly higher order.
The downside... since it drew on life force, it shortened your lifespan.
Of course, the lifespan Hermila had paid as the price right now was measured in hours.
Hmm... a fair number of hours?
Around twenty hours...?
I was sure there had been a skill with a similar effect in the game. The one you learned at the final level, 110. The name... I couldn’t remember, but it was a skill that burned HP to activate. It hadn’t been flashy, but the damage had been ridiculously high... yeah, the memory was fuzzy...
“Miss Noah, do you know the true nature of this power... of True Qi?”
While I was desperately trying to recall the cooking instructions for some ramen that refused to surface, Hermila’s voice dragged me back to reality.
“Uwah... y-yes.”
“And you can sense it as well?”
I nodded.
“You also know that it’s a power that eats away at one’s lifespan, don’t you?”
“Th-that’s right...?”
Hermila regarded me for a moment with a complicated expression, then let out a sigh.
“I see. Miss Noah is... no, never mind.”
She brushed the dust from her knees, rose, took a step back, and bowed at the waist.
“I offer my sincere apology. I am truly sorry.”
“Put a little more sincerity into it.”
“...I am sorry.”
After holding the bow for a short while, Hermila lifted her head. Her expression was a touch harder than usual—somehow stiff.
“I intended to use all of you in order to ensure Valoran’s complete subjugation. More precisely... I meant to use your status and renown to unite the people.”
“Status and... renown?”
“Yes. The Priestess’s standing, and the Magic Tower Lord’s fame. On top of that, Lady Rubia is already revered as a hero in Cartia, so bringing the residents together would have been even easier.”
“If it had been necessary, would you have sacrificed us?”
“Of course not. That is not a role any of you need to play. Nor is it one you could.”
There was conviction in her voice.
“Your existence is more important than anything else in this world—something that cannot be exchanged for any other. I believe you already understand that to some degree, do you not?”
Her expression carried a ghostly weight.
“Judging by your faces, it seems you do. For now, may I sit and continue the explanation?”
Ser nodded and took her seat first. Hermila followed. Then me.
And Rubia, who was still standing, said,
“I still can’t trust you, Lady Hermila.”
She glared at her as she spoke.
“I understand.”
“But...”
Rubia approached slowly and gently stroked my hair.
“Noah trusts you... so I’ll try to trust you too.”
“...Thank you.”
“Please explain. We can’t keep standing around like this forever.”
With those final words, Rubia plopped down beside me.
“Haa... Since things have come to this, I’ll drop the pretense and get straight to the point. If further apologies are required, I will offer them all once everything is finished—so for now, please.”
“Then I’ll postpone slapping Lady Hermila’s face until later.”
Hermila chuckled softly, nodded, and picked up a fallen twig from the ground. With it she drew a large circle in the dirt—
“Can you see this as well, Miss Noah?”
“Uh... yes.”
“Heh. Then I’ll explain everything carefully, one step at a time. This is Cartia.”
Inside the large circle she drew a smaller one.
That little circle must be the mainland, right?
“Within this area, the magic circles for opening a dimensional rift are—”
Tap— tap— tap—
Twelve dots in total were marked.
“—arranged like this. They can change at any time, so please treat this as reference only... ah, they’ve already shifted again.”
Hermila corrected the positions of the dots several times, then without pausing began carving numbers beside each one.
“The order is as follows. The mages dispatched from Erden will activate the magic circles in sequence. We cannot stop them. No matter how far away they are, they activate them at the cost of their own lives.”
Numbers were carved all the way up to thirteen.
Huh... there are twelve magic circles, so why are there thirteen numbers...?
I counted again carefully from the starting point. Still thirteen.
But why were Rubia and Ser just watching without saying a word?
“Hmm...”
While I tilted my head for a while, Hermila smiled and added an explanation.
“These twelve here are the magic circles, and the one on the mainland is the summoning circle.”
“Ahh...!”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes...!”
“Good. Well done. Then let’s move on. The magic circles, once activated in this order, will devour the offerings prepared by Erden and activate the summoning circle.”
Hermila drew lines from the magic circles to the summoning circle—stroke after stroke—then looked at Ser.
“Originally, Lady Ser’s role was to cut off the mana flowing into the summoning circle. That is no longer possible.”
Ser’s face crumpled at those words.
“Is it not mana?”
“Correct. The moment Lady Ser’s participation was decided, Erden altered the structure of the summoning circle. From mana to human life—”
Hermila trailed off and drew a new circle far away on the ground.
“To be precise, the lives of fetuses born in the underground of the Order.”
Rubia drew in a horrified breath and clamped both hands over my ears. Even Ser, whose expressions rarely changed, twisted her face and ground her teeth.
“A life that has only just come into being is the most vigorous and pure. It also holds the greatest vitality, making it the most suitable fuel.”
“...Fuel.”
Even while speaking of such things, Hermila’s expression remained calm.
“Of course, we spent a great deal of time and effort trying to stop it. But we were already too late. The moment they entered the world, their souls had already been extracted. It seems they had planned for this contingency from quite early on.”
In the heavy silence, Hermila tapped the ground with the twig a few times and opened her mouth again.
“That is all in the past. No amount of fretting or regret will change anything now. So I will continue the explanation.”
Even while recounting something so horrific, there was no shift in her emotions.
“Once the magic circles activate, the summoning circle will trigger within roughly five minutes. Then a dimensional rift will open in the sky.”
The twig moved smoothly, scattering and swirling through the interior of the large circle.
“The moment Valoran emerges from that rift and touches the ground, he will unleash an area attack. That held true no matter which future I observed.”
The area skill that triggered the instant a raid began.
Valoran, descending from the sky on horseback, slamming his greatsword down to create a shockwave.
If you started without knowing, you began the fight at half health... an extremely infuriating pattern...
“We will enter immediately after that attack subsides. When we do, Valoran will show one of two reactions. One is closing the distance on horseback to attack; the other is scattering red projectiles. There are countless other branches, but these two actions were by far the most common. Therefore, we will plan around them.”
The pattern where he charged on horseback while attacking...
Walk two steps forward, then right, up, down, left, down, up, right, diagonal-left, spin the sword in a big whoosh—shockwave boom! Crash! That was it.
Parry everything and jump only the final shockwave, and an attack window opened—the easiest pattern of all.
The greatsword’s swing speed had been insanely fast, but... well, once I recorded the screen and watched it at 0.25x speed, I could see everything.
So I had memorized it easily. I had even written it on sticky notes and stuck them in the corner of my monitor.
“First, the countermeasure for close-range attacks. The moment he begins charging on horseback... we must dodge no matter what.”
Huh.
Well... yeah, that made sense.
In reality he wouldn’t swing according to a fixed pattern—he would flail wildly. And the speed would be enormous.
So just dodging was—
“Right, up, down, left... attacks that swing roughly like that, at a speed my eyes could never follow.”
Eh?
“Even if I manage to block the first four, stopping every single one is impossible. So while I buy time at the front, the rest of you will open distance and attack Valoran. This is the Elixir prepared for that purpose.”
Rubia gripped my hand tightly, her expression trembling. Ser bit her lip as if she hated the method. I held my breath and tilted my head.
Listening to Hermila... wasn’t this the exact same pattern I had seen countless times in the game?
If so... I could deflect it easily.