The Sun (2): The World Melts
The world was melting. My head burned, my heart hammered like it might explode. Blood roared through my veins, my sense of self drowned in ecstasy, and my eyes fixed on the sun blazed so fiercely I thought they’d go blind. And in that instant I understood. The moment this sun manifested, the S-class heroes hailed as the strongest in the world were nothing more than insignificant bugs. Yet for some reason the bug in front of me refused to melt even beneath its glare.
Irritation prickled across my skin. I narrowed my eyes and kept raising the sun’s temperature.
Dana stared at the girl through a full-body shroud of sacred fire. A girl cradling a blazing mass that could only be described as the sun itself.
This is insane. What kind of firepower is that?
The instant the girl had summoned the sun, the entire sparring arena began to melt. Perfectly heat-treated alloy walls sagged like ice cream held in front of a furnace, slumping into molten lava. The output was far too dangerous. Had Dana’s battle-honed instinct not wrapped her entire body in sacred fire, even a member of the 5 Greats like her would never have lasted a single second. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure she could survive that long. The heat had already surpassed anything a human could measure.
It was literally a sun. A colossal orb of flame capable of warming a planet 147,597,870.7 kilometers away. Of course there were differences compared to the real thing, but in terms of raw thermal energy capable of overwhelming an entire world, the gap was negligible.
Gazing at the sun that threatened to scorch the planet, Dana wondered, Even if I threw my sacred fire at it… could I actually burn that thing?
She didn’t know. It might be possible, yet as the one producing the sacred fire, she already struggled to erase the overwhelming byproduct heat radiating from the sun’s main body. Ever since becoming a hero, Dana had never felt lacking in personal combat strength, but in this moment she keenly sensed the limits of her own power.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”
Wilhelm, director of the research institute, pulled out the combat suit he hadn’t worn in over a decade. Decades had passed since his retirement as a hero, and he had zero desire to work at his age. Still, the danger that the entire facility might melt down if he did nothing made him grit his teeth and change clothes.
“Director? What’s happening—”
“Issue a Level 5 danger rating! Plea has gone berserk!”
The moment she heard the order, Secretary’s face hardened. She spun on her heel and sprinted away. A Level 5 alert was only declared when the institute itself faced collapse—or when the nation might suffer catastrophic damage.
Good. That will trigger the researchers’ evacuation.
All that remained was for him to join forces with Dana and subdue Plea. Nothing more.
Wilhelm moved quickly, boarding the elevator that descended underground. The doors sealed and the car plummeted at high speed, only to jolt to a sudden stop with a loud clunk.
“Damn it. The heat’s already reached this far?”
A scorching wave surged upward. Wilhelm cloaked himself in mana and kicked open the elevator’s rear emergency door. The maintenance passage—installed precisely for situations like this—hadn’t melted yet. He grabbed the rope and rappelled down to the lowest floor, straight toward Plea’s exclusive laboratory.
“Ugh…!”
Even protected by mana, the heat stabbing through his defenses was agonizing. Still, Wilhelm forced one stubborn step after another, jaw clenched. The underground machinery had already liquefied into puddles of molten metal that clung to his boots like glue. He crushed the slag beneath his soles and kept moving until he finally reached the sparring arena where Dana and Plea had fought.
The sight that greeted him was a sea of scattered crimson lava, Plea holding a blazing scarlet orb, and Dana collapsed and half-buried in molten slag.
“Are you all right?!”
Wilhelm rushed over and checked Dana’s condition. As an outside expert brought in specifically for training, her life had to be preserved at all costs. Fortunately a faint layer of sacred fire still flickered across her body. Seeing the mana circulating within her, Wilhelm exhaled in relief and activated the emergency teleportation artifact he had brought, sending Dana straight to the institute’s top floor.
“Good. Not too late…”
After confirming her safe arrival, Wilhelm brushed molten metal off his knees and arms.
“Miss Plea, can you hear me?”
Plea frowned but gave a small nod.
“Hah, thank goodness… All that painstaking suppression work was worth it after all.”
“What are you talking about…?”
Wilhelm widened his eyes theatrically. “You still possess enough intellect to speak? At this level… things will certainly be easier than before.”
But that wasn’t an answer to her question. He muttered to himself, then settled into a stance—right foot sliding forward four steps, left foot pivoting ninety degrees, waist slightly lowered, left arm guarding his chest, right fist cocked at his hip. A classic martial-arts posture.
“This is only the second time I’ve spoken to you directly instead of through a speaker, isn’t it? In any case, this is round two. Brace yourself.”
I felt sick. Why? Right now I had no desire to hold anything back. Every suppressed emotion was exploding out at once.
For fourteen years I had been locked inside this institute, never once breathing fresh air. I couldn’t talk to anyone. The researchers ignored me even when I spoke first. The only people who ever interacted with me were Dana, who visited twice a week, and the director when he occasionally spoke through the speaker.
Every single day I lay there for over ten hours while they extracted my mana. Lying trapped inside the machine that sucked my power dry was torture enough. The tasteless slop they called meals made me wonder whether I was being fed human food or pig slop.
That was why I had felt some goodwill toward the director. Even if it was only occasional, he talked to me through the speaker. The special meals he sometimes slipped me tasted unbelievably good. In a laboratory with zero entertainment, he had allowed me to watch YouTube and movies. I couldn’t leave comments, but even that much had been enough to ease my stress.
Yet the moment that goodwill and those rose-colored glasses vanished, only rage remained.
Inside this isolated facility he had positioned himself as my sole conversation partner and tamed me like a pet. He controlled me with special meals as bait, let me relieve stress with the toys he provided, and made me feel grateful. Maybe he had truly offered those small comforts out of pure kindness, but right now I couldn’t care less. I just wanted to burn everything. The entire research institute.
Staring at the director before me, I relentlessly raised the sun’s temperature. The walls melted faster and faster. Yet he paid it no mind and simply walked toward me.
“An impressive technique… You summon part of a nuclear fusion reactor, compress it into spherical form, and produce a flame orb with solar-level heat?”
He was exactly right. Manifesting one’s inner world into reality was an advanced process known as Stage 2. My version was a pseudo-Stage 2—I used my overwhelming mana to blanket my inner world and rip out a fragment.
I scowled and intensified the heat even further, but Wilhelm had already closed the distance until he stood right in front of me.
“However, this orb… although it contains mana, it produces only heat, not light.”
“So what—”
“If you wish to defeat me, you must at least manifest a true Stage 2.”
Wilhelm raised his fist high.
“Still, defeating Dana—a member of the 5 Greats—was impressive. Honestly I expected you to lose… The contract is your victory. So go ahead and rest.”
His fist slammed down onto the crown of my head.
Indescribable pain exploded through my skull. My consciousness began to fade. And through the blurring haze, a small voice reached me.
Hearing the director’s voice, I felt the corners of my mouth curl upward. Fortunately I hadn’t needed to resort to Plan B. No matter what anyone said, the winner of this contract was me.
“Goddamn it, this is actually going to kill me…”
Wilhelm, having just struck Plea’s crown, exhaled with a face drained of all color. He had struck a pose in front of the rampaging girl, but the truth was that merely enduring this situation had already pushed him to his absolute limit.
“How the hell did Dana last ten minutes in here…?”
Only four minutes had passed since Wilhelm entered the arena. Yet his mana was already completely exhausted. He was even burning through the mana battery charged with power extracted from Plea—energy reserves that placed him among the top in the entire world, far beyond anything in Helline. And still this was the result.
With his ability he had managed to suppress Plea’s power, but the sheer overwhelming volume of her mana forced him to expend dozens—sometimes hundreds—of times more power than usual.
“I have to get out of here now…!”
Carrying Plea on his back, Wilhelm activated the same escape artifact he had used on Dana earlier. This facility, he thought grimly, would have to be written off as a total loss.