Poxxon (5)
Hoooooong!
The fan's wind kept shrieking deafeningly at his ears. Amid a stench and humidity that even those powerful gusts couldn't dispel, Franc swallowed hard.
"O-Oscar. That guy — doesn't he look a little... off to you?"
"A little is an understatement."
The thing standing before them was an abomination, spewing demonic energy from a human body.
He could say with certainty that he had never encountered such a being, even in his past life.
Come to think of it...
A remark Nebula Grime of the Imperial Ministry had made in passing drifted back to him.
-To put it simply, they are humans transformed into something like demons. They call it a blessing, and they cooperate with the demon race in order to attain that existence. We refer to them as Demonic Humans.
-So far it's only rumor. None has ever been confirmed.
Perhaps that thing was precisely the Demonic Human the demon worshippers so desperately craved.
At the time, I dismissed it as absurd nonsense.
Not that he could keep denying it when the proof was standing right in front of him.
Oscar's eyes deepened. He was genuinely torn.
How, exactly, should he treat the thing before him?
Deal with it as a human being? Or—
Handle and dispose of it as a demon?
The very moment that thought took shape, Franc began to shiver.
"Is it the water? I'm suddenly freezing."
"......"
He hadn't managed to rein in the killing intent in time.
Oscar glanced down at Franc's hand.
His hand was mottled a deep bruised blue, trembling fine and constant — it didn't look like he could so much as grip a whip.
He hadn't been able to withstand the instantaneous burst of power that the Dance of Steel demanded.
He probably can't swing that whip again.
Which meant he could no longer count Franc as combat strength.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the Demonic Human, Oscar murmured.
"Franc, go up to the surface."
"What? Why?"
"You're in the way."
That blunt, cutting request left Franc unable to utter a word.
In one line, it meant: fighting while also protecting you is more than I can handle.
"......Fine."
He bit his lip hard, asked no questions, and nodded.
Because he'd considered Oscar's position too — that even now, Oscar had to worry about saying such things.
If I were stronger, I could have fought beside him to the very end.
Ridiculously enough, Franc — a Level 4 mage — was being protected right now by a Level 3.
He'd finally completed his signature technique, but in real combat, three swings of it was his limit.
...Damn it all.
The giddiness of beating Veronica sank straight to the bottom in an instant.
He'd thought he'd become a somewhat better mage.
And in truth, that was probably real. He had won against Veronica, whom he'd once thought stood leagues above him.
Next time, without fail.
He would not walk away like this — pathetic and dismissed.
Hardening his resolve, Franc slowly backed away and left one last word of advice.
"Win."
"That's the plan."
Turning on his heel, Franc broke into a run toward one of the eight passages.
Only after confirming he was gone did Oscar finally exhale in relief.
From here on, whatever happened, it was his alone to bear.
"Hey."
He called out to Moira Maine.
If any human consciousness remained in the man, words might still reach him.
"Are you alive?"
"......"
Oscar waited.
A human would answer. A demon, on the other hand...
"...Die."
It answered.
Oscar narrowed his eyes and asked again.
"What did you say?"
"Die... all of you."
In that instant, life kindled in Moira's eyes — eyes that had been as hollow and empty as a dead fish's.
"Kill all mages."
"...!"
The next moment, the demonic energy pouring off him flooded out like a river swelling with rain.
Simultaneously, thirteen tentacles erupted from the flooded pool.
Thirteen?
Wasn't this the man for whom four had been his limit just moments ago?
No — more than that, he had never once seen a 5th-level Blue Tower mage control that many tentacles.
"...What on earth did you eat?"
Oscar's face twisted at once as he raised one hand above his head and readied his spell.
I'll use the wind the fans generate to conserve as much mana as possible.
And every ounce saved would go into pushing the spell's power and range to the absolute limit.
Hooooooong!
The wind that had been roaring through the Purification Zone fell suddenly silent.
The fans hadn't stopped.
Quite the opposite — as the wind vanished and the air purification faltered, the fans spun faster still, churning out even more of it.
And that fresh wind was immediately sucked into Oscar's spell.
There we go.
Above Oscar's head, near the ceiling, a tiny orb of wind took shape.
Measured purely in mana, it was the amount he could only barely produce by emptying his entire reserve.
That vast volume of air, compressed and compressed again to the extreme — that was what the little orb was.
It was a spell he had used often in his past life, back when he was a high-tier mage.
Naturally, his current body couldn't create it without an environment's help — and even then, this was only a minor copy.
But for now, this much will do.
Watching him exhale in relief, Moira licked his lips.
"All mages."
He had withered in those few moments, as if a decade or more had passed over him.
Even so, a pair of eyes red enough to curdle the blood stared him down, unblinking.
"Kill them all."
Shaaaaaak!
Thirteen tentacles shot forward at a speed incomparable to before.
But instead of throwing himself aside to dodge, Oscar simply lowered the raised hand with an elegant sweep.
"Strike."
The slowly descending orb of wind — the Nucleus of the Storm — hit the filthy sewer floor and, the instant it did,
shattered like a broken glass marble, unleashing a colossal storm.
KWAAAAAAA!
The tentacles caught in that raging gale were shredded, quite literally, to ribbons.
"All... mages,..."
The storm, sweeping on, slammed into Moira Maine and hurled him against the far wall.
CRASH!
"Gahah!"
Moira Maine hit the hard floor with a strangled cry.
In the same breath, the demonic energy that had been prickling against his skin vanished as though it had never been.
"Khh... damn it... what the..."
With his limbs shattered, Moira's face kept contorting — even breathing seemed to hurt him.
Oscar approached and crouched down beside him.
"A broken rib is puncturing your lung. Breathe as slowly as you can, and don't try anything clever."
"Sp-pare me, please..."
Oscar pulled a vial of potion from his coat and said,
"Answer my questions and I'll spare you. That drug you took — who gave it to you? What organization do they belong to?"
"A drug? What... are you talking about?"
"...You don't remember?"
Could it be they'd even planned for a situation like this, installing a safeguard that erased short-term memory?
If so, keeping him alive came first.
Once he survived, there would be ways to dredge the memories back up later, whatever it took.
"Drink, first. You have to live — no matter what."
The moment Oscar tipped the potion to his lips—
"Gh—kagh!"
Moira suddenly vomited black blood and convulsed violently.
His breathing, gone ragged in an instant, quieted like dying embers — and then stopped forever.
"......"
Oscar pried open the dead man's mouth and examined the inside for a moment, then clicked his tongue.
Pinero powder.
The same powder Moira had used to poison the White Tower's potions.
So the strange drug this man had swallowed had contained it.
Thorough. Sickeningly thorough.
The pill had been designed so that the moment it was ingested, no measure of any kind could save the victim — death on the spot, guaranteed.
A method this venomous told him plenty.
It really does connect back to the demons...
That said, the finished product called a Demonic Human wasn't particularly threatening.
Moira Maine's magic had grown far stronger after venting demonic energy — but that was all.
No heightened regeneration like real demons, no special abilities either.
Then what, in the end, was the ultimate goal the demon race hoped to gain through these Demonic Humans?
Oscar's eyes narrowed. He glanced once at Moira Maine's face — then gently closed the eyes the man himself never had.
Ever since it came to light that a Blue Tower mage was implicated in the mercenaries' deaths, public opinion had flipped completely.
The Blue Tower, caught flat-footed, hastily announced that it had all been Moira Maine's personal action and that they had known nothing — but the flames of public fury were not so easily quelled.
"If they knew, they were accomplices. If they didn't, they're incompetent."
In the end, even the Blue Tower's Vice Tower Master stepped forward to offer a public apology.
Under any other circumstance, Oscar would have sneered and enjoyed the show. Right now, he had no spare attention for it.
"...A strange energy, you say?"
"Yes. Something a little different from mana — my skin kept prickling."
The moment he returned to the White Tower, Oscar went straight to the Vice Tower Master and reported the whole affair.
His reasoning was simple enough.
Either way, this goes into the Special Affairs Department's activity report — but saying it out loud now means it reaches the Imperial Court's ears that much faster.
He knew his current limitations all too well.
Flying off on his own to investigate Newtech or track down demons and the Black Finger would be inefficient.
He lacked the overwhelming strength it would take to manage that in the first place.
So I'll choose the easier, faster route.
That route was using the Empire.
Even now — the mere mention of a hint about the Demonic Human had made Vice Tower Master Hamel's face darken noticeably.
"Did you, by any chance, see the man's eyes at the time?"
"Ah, right. They were turning red, weren't they? They'd been brown originally."
"Hmm..."
Hamel let out a heavy sigh and nodded.
"Write up everything related to this incident in detail and submit it with your activity report."
"Understood."
"Are you injured anywhere?"
"Thankfully, no."
Well, if you wanted to be strict about it, Franc had gotten a bit hurt.
At those words, the Vice Tower Master tilted his head.
"Is that so? As it happens, Franc came by before you arrived."
"He did? What for?"
"He submitted a request for closed-door cultivation."
He asked for seclusion training of his own accord? Him?
Hearing the unexpected news, Oscar chuckled wryly.
...So it ate at him that badly — not being able to fight beside me to the end.
But it was a good sign.
Because a strong person is, above all, someone who can look their own shortcomings square in the face.
You have to face a thing first. Only then can you overcome it.
Franca had felt his inadequacy with his own skin and gone into seclusion to close the gap.
No doubt he'd come out having drilled his fundamentals and pushed the Dance of Steel somewhere new.
I'm looking forward to it.
How different would the Dance of Steel look, reworked and reinterpreted through that boy's own hands, from the version Oscar had once known?