I carved a path forward.
Without Yuna and Ariel, I faced the horde of dark mages alone.
I knew this. Just because I had grown stronger didn’t mean I was at a level where I could face enemies head-on and still preserve my strength.
“Good.”
The Under Chain’s forces were still numerous. They swarmed like cockroaches.
A huge number must have already been dispatched to the front lines, yet there were still this many gathered here.
Maybe it was close to one-tenth of the Empire’s population. If the undead were included, it might really have been that much…
Whatever the case, I wasn’t at a level where I could overpower sheer numbers.
[Thought Split]
I didn’t hold anything back.
There was only one thing I needed to keep hidden. With a single card, I would overturn everything.
“Deploy Helical Gear.”
I pushed forward with everything I had to break through.
I wasn’t the protagonist of this stage today, so I would fulfill my role as a supporting character.
“Haa……”
[Thought Split] continuously crammed all kinds of information into my head in real time.
With no time to organize it, the flood of data being forced straight into my mind made my vision swim for a moment.
“…No wonder you can’t endure this in a normal state.”
I realized once again just how dangerous an ability [Thought Split] was.
If not for the Demon King’s assistance,
If I hadn’t gradually come to understand the information through dreams,
I would have long since become an idiot.
Drip.
Blood trickled from my eyes and nose.
It was a response meant to relieve the overloaded brain, even if only slightly.
“Good.”
Only after paying that price—
That level of penalty—
Was I able to sort through everything before me.
Now it was time to show power equal to the cost I had paid.
Step!
I plunged into the army of dark mages rushing toward me.
As the undead they controlled charged at me, I swung my sword just once.
Crunch!
I shattered the bones of the skeleton charging at me with a rusted iron sword.
The force of my swing sent its arm flying, and the sword it had been holding stabbed into another undead nearby.
The undead pierced by the skeleton’s blade lost its balance and slammed into another one beside it.
A single strike.
Through that chain of events, I linked the enemies together like dominos and brought them down.
Crunch!
A ghost that had been aiming for my back was crushed under the leg of Helical Gear.
A ghost, which normally couldn’t be dealt with through mere physical force, let out a ghastly scream and perished just from being pierced by Helical Gear.
“Consecrated metal?!”
I could sense the agitation of the dark mages hiding among the undead.
They were quite perceptive.
“Well, of course. Did you think I’d come unprepared against dark mages?”
This time, I had thoroughly prepared for this assault. There was no reason not to exploit such an obvious weakness.
Bang!
A single gunshot rang out. I sniped a dark mage who had been preparing a spell from within the gaps between the undead.
Even in the chaos, it wasn’t difficult to pick him out.
That was exactly what [Thought Split] made possible.
Slash!
I swung my sword again.
With every swing, the undead collapsed in droves.
Crunch!
Helical Gear repeatedly crushed and flung aside the endlessly rushing undead, securing space.
“Die!”
A spell flew toward me.
Its level was far from low. It was at least high-level magic.
They intended to blow me away along with the surrounding undead.
It was a carefully prepared strike.
But…
Beginner magic [Mirage].
There was no way I wouldn’t see through such an obvious trick.
It wasn’t even something that required [Thought Split] to calculate.
Of course, I still used the ability.
“When did you even—?!”
While swinging my sword, firing my gun, and controlling Helical Gear to crush the undead, I had also prepared a spell at the same time.
There was a reason I had pushed my ability to the point of bleeding.
“Hup!”
I had already derived the best possible course of action.
Following through with it wasn’t difficult.
“You said you weren’t supposed to be this strong!”
Hearing the dark mage’s shocked, almost screaming disbelief as if he had heard rumors about me….I pushed forward, carving a path ahead.
***
“Yuna wasn’t wrong.”
I had cut down well over a hundred.
The legs of the Helical Gear were soaked with the blood of three hundred.
The cylinder of my six-bullet revolver had emptied five times, and through illusion magic used to turn enemies against each other, I had taken out over fifty dark mages.
“I practically took a shower.”
There was so much blood splattered over my body that my clothes felt heavy.
Even if they were enemies, I had killed far too many people. And yet, I didn’t feel the same level of guilt as before.
“This feels awful.”
I had only belatedly followed the path that those around me had walked long ago.
Squelch. Squelch.
Each step I took made a wet, sticky sound, like walking through a city after the rain.
It was the sound of blood that had run down my body and pooled beneath my feet.
“What kind of state are you in, Johan Damus?”
“Oracle? What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing here? Why did you move without me? If you had called for me in the first place, I would have gladly helped.”
“How was I supposed to do that?”
For a moment, the Oracle widened her eyes in surprise, then quickly frowned.
“…You didn’t need to be considerate.”
“No, I mean how was I supposed to call you when I don’t even know where you are?”
“Ah.”
This girl… seriously?
What kind of misunderstanding was she having on her own?
After what happened last time, she had holed herself up somewhere unknown. How was I supposed to call her?
I didn’t even know where she was staying. If she had at least been in the Cradle dorms, that’d be one thing, but living somewhere outside? There was no way for me to know.
“Ahem. Anyway, I’ll cooperate.”
“What did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t. Johan Damus, I trust you understand what that means.”
Oracle could see the future.
But there were extremely rare cases where she couldn’t.
That would be the future where a final boss candidate achieved victory. If she had appeared now, it likely meant Faust’s chances of winning were quite high.
“Right.”
I nodded and started forward again.
I had expected it wouldn’t be easy. I knew it would be a far more desperate fight than anything before.
“Are you alright?”
“It’s not my blood.”
“I’m aware. If it were your wounds, you’d be screaming in pain by now. Johan Damus, you look like you’re in a bad mood.”
“Of course I am.”
My hands were stained with blood.
A lot of it.
The reason I felt awful right now wasn’t because I had committed murder.
It was the sense of disappointment with myself. Only now did I come to terms with something everyone else had already gone through.
Everyone had been like this. That was the kind of world it was.
I made plans and led my friends to kill people without even knowing this filthy sensation.
“They must have felt just as dirty.”
Becoming numb.
That was what truly terrified me.
Especially when I thought about how, not long ago, I had grieved and struggled over the deaths of Imyun and Raven.
“Johan Damus.”
At that moment, the Oracle cast a spell toward me. Come to think of it, she was a mage too, wasn’t she?
I had gotten so used to her strange abilities of jumping through space and flinging cards that I had forgotten. Thinking about it now, this was probably her main specialty.
“What you’re feeling right now is only natural.”
“……”
“Walking around like that, of course you’d feel awful, wouldn’t you?”
With her magic, the Oracle blew away the blood and bits of flesh clinging to my body.
It was the spell Ariel had said she would use.
“It won’t completely free you from what you’re feeling, but it should at least help you clear your head a little.”
I glanced once at my now-clean hands and rolled my stiff neck.
For some reason, a wave of fatigue washed over me.
And just as she said, it did feel like a small change of mood.
“Oracle.”
“Yes, Johan Damus. Where shall we go? What’s the plan?”
Oracle spoke with a calm expression.
I stared at her face for a moment, then let out a small chuckle as I stated the destination.
“You know, don’t you? We need to finish what we couldn’t take care of last time.”
“How would I know? Since when were we so in sync that I’d understand without being told?”
Grumbling, the Oracle still guided me to the Under Chain’s headquarters.
She’s really something else. Seriously, she never lets a single remark slide, does she?
***
“You’ve come?”
“You got here quickly.”
At the heart of the Under Chain.
When we arrived at the camp where the ritual was taking place, we ran into Faust, who had gotten there ahead of us.
It seemed he hadn’t been chasing me, but had instead chosen to arrive at my destination first and wait.
Honestly, this is the problem with smart people. I went through the trouble of tying him down, and he still managed to get ahead of me.
“Great Sage, what happened to Yuna and Ariel?”
“They’re dead.”
“That’s a lie.”
If the intention was to shake me, it wasn’t a very good approach.
Maybe it would have worked before, but not now.
“I’m still receiving their biological vital signals even now.”
I had already made arrangements using the Helical Gear so I could check my companions’ conditions in advance.
Didn’t I say it? This time, I came fully prepared.
Since the core of the plan was for everyone to scatter, having a way to monitor my allies was essential.
“You managed to shake the two of them quite well.”
“If I truly intend to escape, it’s hardly a problem.”
Faust pulled back the rag covering his body, revealing his condition.
“Ouch, you don’t look so great.”
His body was covered in cuts and gashes, along with marks that looked like he’d been struck by something. It seemed he had taken those hits in order to shake them off and make his way here.
“Well, I’d say it’s still better than your situation, wouldn’t you? Johan Damus. After all, you left behind the ones who would protect you.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
Maybe it would have been better not to regroup with Oracle.
If I had just trudged along on my own, slow and unsteady, Yuna and Ariel might have caught up with me.
Of course, I’m not trying to blame anyone.
If we’d been any later, it’s certain a different problem would have come up.
“By the way, what is that? What exactly are you plotting?”
I asked as I looked at the gloomy energy beginning to gather in the sky.
I hadn’t been able to see it from afar. With the surroundings already so dreary, there was no way I could have noticed that black aura.
More than anything, I couldn’t feel any particular force from it.
“Are you trying to stall for time?”
“Just pure curiosity.”
“I see. That curiosity can wait until after you’ve become a corpse. First, let me prepare for our conversation.”
“That’s not going to work.”
He was someone who could forcibly bind the souls of the dead and converse with them, so it was frightening that he wasn’t joking.
When he spoke of preparing for a conversation, he must have meant asking my soul after killing me.
“……”
It was just as I was about to say something.
Chains appeared before my eyes again.
Truly devious. Somehow, he carries out even more underhanded tricks than I do without a hint of hesitation.
Crack!
This time, I couldn’t avoid it. That’s how devious the attack was.
But fortunately, there was one thing Faust had gotten wrong.
“Nice one, Oracle.”
“If you die here, that would be a problem. So I’ll keep you alive.”
He’s relocating the chains using spatial movement? Unfortunately, that too is nothing more than borrowed power.
On our side, we have the Oracle who can actually manipulate space. Even if her ability isn’t on the level of the Wonder Mage, it’s naturally superior to Faust’s.
The chains that had appeared before us soon returned to their original position with the sound of shattering glass.
“I see… so it’s you.”
Only then did Faust turn his gaze toward the Oracle.
“Oracle.”
For all intents and purposes, it was their first meeting.
Faust looked at the Oracle with an indifferent expression, and the Oracle calmly met his gaze.
“Well, it should be fine.”
Clatter—
The chains began to flow.
Within the torrent of chains cascading like a waterfall, we each tightened our grip on our weapons.
“There’s much I’d like to ask, but that can wait until I’ve made the proper preparations.”
“Congratulations, Oracle. Looks like you’ve been chosen as a conversation partner too.”
“That man seems to have some kind of social aversion. It shouldn’t be that hard just to have a conversation.”
I agree.
For some reason, I seem to be getting along with her unusually well today.
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