Plucking Stars from the Sky (1)
Plucking Stars from the Sky (1)
A dazzling white flash erupted, searing my vision. The lightning, rising not from the sky but from the earth, surged upward endlessly as if defying the laws of nature. Even from a distance, that thunderous light was unmistakable.
“Hoh.”
Libra, watching from his own territory, let out a quiet murmur of admiration. Beautiful starlight. Clean and brilliant, like a gemstone of the purest clarity. Starlight that seemed to exist somewhere between monster and magical girl.
“Impressive. Wasn’t that the imbecile’s territory? To think someone with that much power would go there. Virgo really is lucky. She might even survive this, eh?”
The ecology of Dark Matter is complex. It faithfully follows the law of the jungle, but the possibility for the weak to become strong is always open. Moreover, those of roughly equal strength are countless. Anyone who has already climbed to the top can only live in unease.
To them, nothing was more bitter than dying in some conflict before achieving their own purpose.
The members of Dilemma forged multiple treaties to prevent this. Blood was spilled in the process, of course. It was one reason the S-rank monsters had stayed quiet for so long.
Territory was part of that treaty. By managing countless low-rank monsters to hinder their growth, and by banning unauthorized incursion between territories, they prevented conflict among monsters who had forged constellations.
Yet the treaty carried no great binding force. It was a rule you could follow or ignore. Constellation-class monsters who actually held territory were not that numerous.
Still, territories were respected.
Because barging in and getting tangled in pointless strife, wasting power, was a deeply purposeless act.
“Is that so...”
Libra answered the man in front of him indifferently.
“Still, fate does not change.”
He stroked the plastic packet laid before him, not even sparing a glance for the lightning.
“What’s over there is Lion.”
Lion.
He did not, of course, mean the animal.
It was the term for the nameless Leo monster. Peculiarly, the monster possessed a star but no intellect. Communication was impossible, as it did not use language. Nor was it inclined to follow orders; it always acted as it pleased.
It would fall into a deep sleep even as lesser monsters attacked right in front of it, and it would suddenly wake and head somewhere, casting every living thing there into death. Despite this stubborn, lone-wolf nature, its power was incomparably greater than other monsters. Unlike others who used only the stars of their own constellation as a power source, it wielded every star within its territory as its own strength.
No one knew where or when it had come from, and its purpose was unknowable. Affiliated with nothing, obeying no one, its actions free but fundamentally belligerent. It would arrive unpredictably, smashing everything in its path as it passed.
It was a walking disaster.
To monsters, Lion was a monstrous being, a beast.
For Libra, who outsourced surveillance and received hourly reports on Lion’s movements, talk of opposing Lion was synonymous with claiming victory against a tsunami or an earthquake.
“Where Lion passes, only ash remains.”
“Wasn’t there someone who once made that Lion flee? My teacher, I mean.”
The man in front of Libra leaned back against the high-grade leather chair and laughed.
“I see the same possibility in that starlight. Just my instinct, though.”
“Spare me your inefficient talk of instinct. Let’s continue the transaction at hand.”
Libra paid no attention to his words.
“If you are Sagittarius, then focus on the target before your eyes, as befits you.”
“You’re the one who looked outside first, so why are you giving me a hard time?”
The figure called Sagittarius frowned and quietly turned his head.
“Why did Lion go over there, I wonder...”
Lion had the habit of remaining deep in sleep for a long time, then setting off for somewhere as if entranced. And upon arriving, it would destroy everything there.
As though it had received a mission in a dream, a command to destroy all that was in that place.
Like a monster that received a prophecy in a myth.
According to Contradiction—one of the madmen who had challenged Lion—Leo’s abilities involved more than mere physical power.
It was said to possess a form of precognition.
Though Contradiction had not learned the activation condition and could not use it himself.
“Why did Lion move precisely now?”
Why, after halting its movements for some time, had Lion headed toward Virgo once more? This was now the second time Lion had gone to Virgo. Was Virgo the problem? Or had it sensed something special within that territory?
Sky Polaris. The person who had made Lion flee.
But to the Sagittarius monster who had witnessed that scene, he could never describe it as “fleeing.”
There had been no battle between them.
Sky Polaris had merely spoken a few words to Lion, and Lion had left.
That sight had been less an act of fleeing and more an act of commanding Lion.
Now, starlight similar to Sky Polaris’s was felt in Virgo’s territory. Could it be coincidence that Lion was there?
The Sagittarius monster sank into reminiscence as he injected Libra’s drug.
**
Lion did not yield to the lightning and unleashed a roar. The ferocious cry shook the earth again.
Following the roar, a burst of flame like a mass of blazing hell erupted. The air grew dry, parching my lips. Lion’s surroundings were engulfed in fire.
Within that fire’s range lay the unconscious Haru, White Dabih, and Yoon Seol-hwa, Blue Sirius.
Kugugugung! When the inferno swept through with a thunderous noise that hardly sounded like mere fire passing—only smoldering ash remained where they had been.
“That was close.”
With a sigh, Watcher lowered the two bodies he had been carrying. White Dabih and Blue Sirius. Before that vicious flame could sweep over them, he had succeeded in protecting them first.
“She’s quite vigorous.”
If something like that rampages, wouldn’t human civilization simply be destroyed? Now that he possessed starlight, he could tell. Given the power that monster held, the calamities it had inflicted on human society so far were at a modest level. They were, literally, no more than something that happened while it was just breathing.
Watcher turned his gaze toward Virgo. She was the most heavily injured of them now. Her wounds were severe enough that it would not be strange if her breathing stopped at any moment. Fortunately, he had gathered her up just now along with the magical girls, so she had not been caught in those flames.
Slung onto his back, she fiercely pulled at Watcher’s neck with her only functional limb—her right arm.
“How did you fight something like that?”
“Fight? You think I fought it? A fight is only possible when the levels match.”
Virgo spat the words out as if mocking herself.
“What I did wasn’t a fight. I endured.”
Watcher shifted his gaze back to Lion. A vicious appearance. It looked like something out of an old giant monster film. The sheer difference in size was so overwhelming that an involuntary laugh nearly escaped him.
“...Is that so.”
So that was the enemy who had killed his parents. He observed it through coldly composed red lenses. His fury simmered but did not show. Like heating water to spin a turbine, it simply powered his actions. He was not ruled by that anger.
At the same time, his purpose did not rule him either. He did not try to strike it down without the least hesitation.
He held a clear motive, mastered it with reason, and acted.
Heart blazing, mind cold. A vague proverb that had once seemed trite was beginning to make sense.
While calculating the many ways to bring down an opponent so overwhelmingly strong that the situation seemed impossible, he did not forget why he had to bring it down.
This was not revenge. It was not to honor his loss. It was not to burn himself up, consumed by what had already passed.
This was protection.
It was to prevent loss. To stop it from repeating. To break the chain that had continued from the past into the present.
Without looking at Virgo, Watcher continued speaking.
“First, let me say this.”
Lion was his sworn enemy, and Virgo’s sworn enemy.
This common symbol carried a deeper meaning.
If the day he lost his parents was also the day Red Spica fell to the earth—
Then the person who protected him in that hell was also Red Spica.
“Thank you for protecting me until now. Virgo.”
Neither Han Jae-jung nor Virgo knew this. They had not shared many words with each other. They had always remained silent, always run away.
But that fact does not change.
Whether as a magical girl or as a monster, Red Spica had always protected Han Jae-jung.
“So this time, it’s my turn.”
For some, an opportunity to become a hero. For others, an opportunity to escape being a hero. Now, having reached entirely different outcomes from the same experience—
He spoke to the enemy the hero must strike down and the benefactor who had once saved him.
“Run. I’ll handle this.”
Virgo laughed as if she found it absurd.
“What are you talking about?”
“Let me tell you what I’m thinking.”
He raised a finger and pointed at Lion’s eye.
“I’m going to pour every last bit of my strength into that point—the eye that looks the most vulnerable right now.”
“What?”
“Virgo, I’m going to fight.”
His words were resolute.
“This is different from when defeat was certain and I did my best to minimize the damage. This is a ‘fight’ I intend to win. I’m fighting to lose nothing.”
Watcher genuinely believed he could win.
“Virgo, you said it yourself. Beating a monster is like plucking stars from the sky.”
He gently lowered Virgo down and gripped his axe.
The blade of the axe resembled the shape of Ursa Major. A gathering of stars—as wild as that great beast drawn across the night sky, and as warm as a guiding light.
“So, I will pick those stars from the sky for you.”
Lightning gathered on the axe. It was lightning that would burn everything, and lightning that held the chill of a bitter cold able to freeze all things.
“I will show you a star.”
Cold Lightning. This contradicted light was exactly what he was now.
“I’ll show you a starlight you can never again say you’ve forgotten.”
Wielding a monster’s power with a human mind, protecting with a force meant for destruction, and challenging an unbeatable foe to achieve victory.
Contrary to his words about showing her starlight, Virgo was already looking at starlight.
Because he was, in this very moment, her star.
As he leaped into the sky, lightning like a sun coalesced upon his axe. The lightning, reaching his entire body along the blade, dyed his whole form white. It was not vicious like before. It was more reverent.
Lion watched him in silence. Where had the roaring gone, roaring as if to destroy everything in this world? It even seemed docile. Its massive body, rigidly still, looked more like a statue than a living thing.
Like a star falling from the sky, the lightning descended. It was his axe. The axe, hurled with all his strength, lodged into Lion’s eye. Lion’s body, whose crystalline lenses were even tougher. Regrettably, his axe did not sink deeply.
He had already known. His eye, which read the future, had long since foreseen that this attack would fail. Instead of despairing, Watcher extended his leg.
The lightning that had encircled his body gathered at his leg. The lightning gathered at the tip shaped itself into something resembling a bear’s head.
Heaven-Felling Beast Kick.
The roar of a beast that could even bring down the heavens converged at the tip of his leg and lunged toward Lion.
Kwaaaaang!!!
His kick drove the axe deeper, pressing it into the eye. The axe plunged deep into Lion’s eye. Soon, lightning flowed from his axe as if taking root.
Lion’s head, which had seemed immovable, pitched forward and slammed into the earth.