Alice’s Original Magic was complex enough on its own, but what was truly outrageous was the amount of mana it consumed.
Even if I exhausted every last drop of mana I possessed, it still wouldn’t be nearly enough.
The last time I used this spell, it was only possible because I borrowed the mana Faust had gathered.
The reason I can use it now—
Because there was a gift the World Tree had given me.
The fruit of the World Tree is a mass of immense life force. Its vitality is so powerful that it can even heal a soul.
A pure force of life that exists on a completely different plane from divine power. I used that force to cast this spell.
Considering the amount it contains, I should still be able to use it two or three more times. The problem is…
“What just happened?”
It just shattered once.
Given the nature of the spell, there is only one way it can break unless I deliberately shatter that moment myself.
Death.
Which means that if the spell just broke, I must have died once. But how?
As far as I remember, Abraham drew his sword. The moment that vivid crimson blade was revealed to the world, I died.
Did he swing it?
No. Abraham merely drew the sword.
That alone killed me.
“Gah!”
Only then did the difficulty breathing hit me.
A heat so intense it felt as though it could blast away all the air in the surrounding area. Only then did I properly grasp the situation.
I was buried beneath the ruins of a building, and the Imperial Palace had already been reduced to rubble.
The spell had broken.
“Johan, you’re alive? That’s a relief.”
“Your Highness…?”
Lobelia’s condition wasn’t exactly good either. Her coat was nowhere to be seen, and the shirt beneath it had been half burned away.
Her beautiful red hair, which had once reached her waist, appeared to have been partially burned off, leaving the ends only shoulder-length.
“If even Your Highness looks like this, then…”
I sprang to my feet.
“What about Alice?!”
“You see me standing here in this state, and the first thing you do is ask about another woman?”
“Your Highness is safe.”
“Well, yes. I suppose that’s true. Fine. Alice is unharmed. She has better defensive means than I do.”
Lobelia grumbled as if she were sulking.
I have no idea when she started acting like such a teenage girl. This was someone who looked like she could chew people up alive.
“For the record, Sister Lapis is fine too. I wasn’t particularly worried about her since she is what she is, but even she got hurt.”
Ironically, it seemed I was the only one here who was relatively close to being unharmed.
Well, technically I had died once.
That makes one coin used.
Oddly enough, it was a thought I hadn’t had much since reincarnating, but this almost felt like a game.
Funny. Even when I saw Lobelia and the other protagonists of the game, I never really thought of it as a game. Yet here I was, viewing myself that way.
“What happened?”
“His Majesty drew his sword.”
“And then?”
“That was all.”
“…….”
That wasn’t much different from what I remembered.
I had assumed I simply failed to see him attack, but the problem facing us might be far more complicated than that.
“If things are this bad just from drawing the sword, what happens if he actually swings it?”
“Who knows…”
“There is no need to worry. Swinging the sword itself should be quite ordinary.”
The answer came not from Lobelia’s direction, but from somewhere else.
Abraham stepped out from the flames as he spoke.
With the gigantic sun at his back, Emperor Abraham looked no different from a god.
“The flames released when I draw the sword are merely a side effect. Though it’s not as if I’m incapable of producing something similar intentionally.”
Abraham shrugged and glanced around.
I understood exactly what he meant.
Drawing the sword alone had obliterated the Imperial Palace. If he started unleashing that level of firepower freely, it wouldn’t just be a single castle that disappeared….everything nearby would be wiped away as well.
“And isn’t that more than enough to attract attention?”
Abraham’s gaze turned toward the sky.
Naturally, ours followed.
The moment we looked up, we understood what he meant.
A second sun had appeared in the sky.
A colossal sun, large enough to be seen from anywhere in the Empire, was rising into the heavens.
The flames that had destroyed the Imperial Palace were ascending skyward as though they had become a real sun.
“The stage has returned to its proper course.”
Even at this very moment, he was thinking about the Empire.
More specifically, he was concerned about Lobelia, the future Emperor.
By entrusting command of the resistance to Cynthia, Lobelia had lost both public attention and popular support.
Of course, that didn’t erase everything she had built up until now. But this incident had brought Cynthia into the spotlight while pushing Lobelia into the background.
Yet Abraham solved all of that simply by drawing a sword.
By reducing the palace to rubble in a single strike and demonstrating overwhelming power, it was only natural that everyone would be filled with awe.
The same would be true of their evaluation of Lobelia, the woman destined to defeat such an Emperor.
In an instant, he had seized the attention of the masses and directed the spotlight onto her.
“By the way, what a pity. It would have been better if that strike had killed you.”
“…….”
For a moment, I thought Abraham was mocking me.
But belatedly, I realized his gaze was fixed elsewhere.
“Is it survival instinct? Or have you only now decided that you want to live?”
Alice stood there.
Just as Lobelia had said, her defensive measures were superior even to Lobelia’s. She appeared to have suffered little damage.
At most, she was slightly singed.
She had probably applied her unique spatial movement technique somehow. She had used something similar before when she blocked one of Lobelia’s attacks.
“You may stop now.”
A simple death sentence.
The casualness of his tone made my blood boil.
“Why are you so determined to kill Alice?”
“Then why are you so determined to save the Oracle?”
“Because I want to.”
“You are shameless as ever. Still, that is reason enough.”
Abraham remained completely at ease.
For someone who had casually blown away an entire castle, he was astonishingly indifferent.
“Emotion has always had a habit of sweeping reason aside. That is why one must always be cautious of it and keep it in check.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Johan Damus. You are not ignorant of why I seek to kill the Oracle.”
“…….”
Yes, I knew.
It wasn’t simply about erasing a remnant of the past.
Considering the goals the Emperor had revealed so far and the insight he possessed, his true objective became obvious.
“To eliminate the interference of gods or more precisely, beings that transcend even gods.”
“The beginning, the end, the process… what a ridiculous notion. A human life should be lived within human boundaries.”
The age of humanity he spoke of.
Rejecting everything predetermined and forging a path through one’s own strength.
The death of the gods was merely a step toward that goal.
He truly was an extreme humanist.
“Oh my, then were you planning to kill me someday as well?”
The moment Abraham’s objective was laid bare, Lapis emerged from the rubble.
She was smiling, but her eyes were not.
Abraham merely snorted at the sight of her and replied,
“I have always carried this sword as preparation for you. Isn’t the same true for you? You claimed all you wanted was to enjoy this world, but in reality, you were searching for this as well, weren’t you?”
“…….”
Now that was news to me as well.
Abraham’s sword was clearly no ordinary weapon.
After all, it had destroyed an entire castle simply by being drawn.
I couldn’t even begin to guess where something like that had come from. Was it even an object that could be created by human hands?
“The most reliable means of killing you. The things one fears and guards against most should always be kept close.”
“…That wasn’t why.”
“Perhaps. As I said before, that is the nature of emotion. Fragment of a transcendent being, do your kind possess emotions as well?”
“Not a question I particularly want to hear from a human.”
“I suppose not. What could tools like you possibly understand?”
With those words, Abraham casually tilted the sword in his hand.
“And so, will you be able to reclaim the Demon King’s body?”
***
Chris was strong.
But even that strength was not enough to hold back the Imperial Knights.
Raw, innate power.
Yet he lacked both technique and experience.
At first, sheer momentum allowed him to overwhelm the Imperial Knights, but gradually even that advantage began to fade.
“Urgh!”
More than anything, the greatest issue was his mindset.
Despite his appearance, Chris was still just a young boy.
He had never killed anyone.
He had never even seriously injured another person.
The greatest chain restraining him was none other than himself.
“I-It hurts.”
The heart of a gentle boy was still far too immature to fully awaken.
Instinctively shrinking back, the boy appeared painfully fragile.
The fact that he had found the courage to stand and fight at all was worthy of admiration.
The count’s retainers and the mercenaries gradually found themselves pushed back.
Pressed tightly against the carriage, they looked like prey being herded during a hunt.
Chris fought hard.
He had done well.
His opponents were simply too formidable.
But that was enough.
“Ah, found you, Father!”
Because those few precious moments had been enough for reinforcements to arrive.
A chain of miracles and unforeseen variables.
The butterfly effect that began with Monia’s sudden appearance had granted an opportunity to everyone who should have died.
“Mind if I ask something? You’re all the kind of scum who deserve to die, right?”
Yuna landed among them and spoke.
Her face wore a playful smile, but the words coming from her mouth were anything but playful.
“Am I wrong? You drew your swords against innocent people. You didn’t just block their path….you attacked them with deadly weapons. That makes you criminals caught in the act, doesn’t it?”
“You dare speak of crimes before a knight? Safe Clown.”
“You know exactly who I am, and you still have the nerve to run your mouth?”
Yuna was angry.
The constant pressure from the knights who kept her thoroughly in check had built up a great deal of stress. Then, to make matters worse, members of House Damus who were her prospective in-laws had come under attack.
“An assassin, of all things… An assassin who has already revealed themselves is nothing to fear.”
“Watch your mouth. The person standing in front of you is a candidate for the next Master of the Magic Tower.”
Yuna grinned as she began casting a spell.
Her master and parent was a master of illusion magic.
“Even if I hid right in front of you, you wouldn’t be able to find a single strand of my hair.”
It was as if the ultimate weapon had been placed in the hands of an assassin.
***
Meanwhile, unlike the situation involving the Damus family and Yuna, the battle at the World Tree was far from optimistic.
“You coward…!”
“When one person is fighting many, this much is only natural.”
The Black Knight Lanius was relentless.
Relentlessly, he targeted Helena.
She was both the enemy’s source of recovery and their weakest link. He did not care in the slightest that she was a child.
“Then stop me. Or were you planning to protect someone despite lacking even the ability to do so?”
Lanius’s spear was fast.
Even when thrust openly, it moved at a speed that was difficult to keep up with.
Dietrich could do little more than desperately block Lanius’s spear; he had no chance to counterattack.
This can’t go on.
At this point, there was no way he could fail to understand.
This Misfits group could not defeat Lanius. The man who had come alone possessed the strength and skill to justify such confidence.
More importantly, he had yet to reveal his full power.
An overwhelmingly powerful opponent, far beyond what even Dietrich’s Trace ability could overcome.
I can’t afford to drown in despair forever!
He had talent. He had strength. He had accumulated a wealth of experience.
Yet all of it crumbled before the weight of centuries.
Within the battle-hardened knight, tempered through countless years, lay an air of absolute confidence.
“This is starting to bore me.”
Every time Lanius swung his spear, another casualty followed.
Jeff’s barriers were inevitably shattered, and Melana’s monstrous strength was brushed aside as easily as twisting a child’s wrist.
Only Dietrich could somehow put up a fight, but even he could not endure more than three exchanges.
And if Helena were to fall in that situation?
Then everything would truly collapse like a sandcastle.
No matter what happened to the others, Helena had to be protected.
The battle dragged on.
It was like trying to hold back a crashing tide with the palm of one’s hand.
To turn this battle around, there was only one miracle left to rely on.
That’s right…
I have to combine Divine Power and the Trace!
Unless he could unite those two forces that refused to work together, they had no chance of victory.
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