I had come close to almost all the truth. That’s what I thought. The things that had long puzzled me were gone. Piece by piece, the puzzle assembled into a single picture. The unprecedented monster called Abraxas handed his flesh to me, before a colossal plan.
“Arranged in advance,” would be the right phrase.
As a person devoted to scholarship, it was much the same as the “shoulders of giants” I always thought about.
No one climbs high and sees far on their own. We all step on the giants of bygone eras and look far from their shoulders.
A will that begins in the past is handed down from person to person through the generations. The baton that began with Abraxas was now in my hand. And it would end with my generation.
However...
If memory and emotion are separate, then the emotion I felt in this <Synchronization> was “melancholy.”
Amazingly, once Abraxas realized the existence of the Demon King, he felt a gloom that ran to the marrow.
“Why is that?”
My thoughts sank. Deeper still. But just then, a vicious headache surged in.
“......”
I sat down for a moment and pressed my hand to my face.
It was like a computer lagging during a download. As the weight of a person settled into my mind, a considerable mental weight pressed me down.
“This is as far as I go for now, huh.”
Memories always surfaced as fragments.
I knew Rebecca and not Balmung, yet it felt like I had met them both.
So I needed time to digest these memories better.
Also, it was time to go see the end of the Hero Party Selection Match.
“Dante Hiakapo. Submit to being bound again, willingly.”
Tirangstein, who had observed the situation until now, moved. But I realized I had to get out of here. Having grasped everything, I had no reason to let myself be caught.
And my guardian nature now was Light. From here on, catching me wouldn’t be easy.
『 Flash Secret of Heaven 』
My body transformed into light and gathered to a point. In that state, I became a straight line and began to recede from the world.
In an instant, Section 17, the Public Security Main Office, the central city of Lumen all came into view, and as I climbed a bit higher, the Empire revealed itself.
“The headache’s getting worse....”
I couldn’t quite make it all the way to Hiaka and fell into a mountain in the imperial borderlands. I even botched the landing and crashed into the ground.
With difficulty I stood and leaned my back against a tree.
It was still daylight.
And I thought about it. About the Hero Party Selection Match that must still be ongoing.
“Balmung and Eve are up against the Matriarch.”
Against a lone assassin and a two-horned demon who cannot use their strength properly due to self-contradiction... the Matriarch’s output is about twice theirs.
An absolute deficit of power. And a monstrous archmage is on the way to increase the output there.
Rebecca.
“Elize and Glory, too—handling Goaten won’t be easy.”
I worried about that side as much as the battle against the Nibelung Matriarch.
Once he hides properly, you can never catch Goaten. The moment he decides to hide, he vanishes. That is what peak human [Stealth] is.
“I know.”
So I prepared for that situation in advance with one more person.
Right now, my secret weapon—Dante Hiakapo’s—was moving toward Goaten.
***
Right after Goaten’s wrist was pierced. He stood quietly and looked at his daughter.
“...You stabbed me?”
“Yeah.”
There was no hesitation in Elize’s eyes. No wonder. He had raised her that way. He had put a tremendous amount of work into making killing people feel like play. Back when he never imagined his daughter would one day become his rival.
“Stop and go back! Goaten!”
Glory shouted from the side.
“...I can’t do that.”
Goaten moved his arm and pulled the blade free. Blood burst out in a gush. With a sigh, he opened his mouth.
“...I can’t do that. You don’t know what kind of life I lived and what hardships I crawled through to get this far.”
“Why should that be my concern?”
“You should know.”
Goaten slowly lifted his head.
“I held back my strength to a reasonable degree—can’t you tell?”
Immediately after, he began to melt back into empty air—[Stealth] of the ultra-advanced class.
“Then I’ll tell you.”
In that instant, a viscous mana spread through the entire space.
『 Seafloor Promenade of the Mind Realm 』
Glory’s eyes flew wide. As a blue space covered everything, his body grew heavy. It was hard to breathe, as if an elephant had been set on his chest, and there was fierce resistance to movement. It felt like being shoved to the bottom of deep water.
At the same time, a subtle current in the water sent ripples as it approached and struck Elize’s arm. Ssek—! With a vicious sound, Elize dropped her blade. In the instant that followed, she hurriedly jerked her body back—and that was a divine move.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!!!
The ground Elize had been standing on—the bedrock underfoot, the nearby trees—were ground to pieces as if thrown into a blender!
“Khk!”
Brrr— Even speech swirled, caught inside the viscous mana as if spoken underwater. Glory cranked the output of 「War Guide♠」 to the maximum.
“Elize, Goaten’s blood!”
“Okay!”
Shielding Elize, Glory scraped the blood spattered on the back of his hand onto the tip of his demonblade, because the basis for exercising the powers of the curse-line♠ begins from blood.
“I see it!”
Indeed. With 「War Guide♠」, which reads the movement of blood, Goaten’s position began to be sensed.
— So you can see me, can you.
A voice from the empty air.
— So what can you do about it?
But with his body sluggish as if soaked, there was no way to fight him.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!!
The squid arm with bladed suckers—awakened earlier with the words of initiation—smashed the air.
All Glory managed was to flee about thirty meters to avoid it. When he turned with eyes wide open, the mountain path was scorched into a wasteland.
“Raaaagh!!”
Glory switched tactics.
『 Cursed Split Blade 』
He fired house-sized slashes in multiple branches and swept the entire area.
No matter how good the stealth, it was self-evident he was bound to the space. Then he would attack the entire space.
Tuduk—
“It’s biting!”
One of the squid’s arms shattered. When a trace burst in the air, Elize, too, instinctively caught the scent and charged along that trajectory.
Now—!
“No!!”
But Glory realized it. What Goaten had thrust forward were one of two tendrils. In other words, he had deliberately offered up an important tool of his as bait.
And Elize bit.
Puk! Elize stabbed into the tendril, but she couldn’t disengage back.
“Ah—”
Eight legs fell on her at once.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!!!
—BANG!!
That blow detonated from the tip of Glory’s blade.
“...Friend!!”
Startled, Elize hurriedly wrapped her arms around Glory’s waist and pulled back, and Glory’s two legs had burst.
He had recklessly moved by sacrificing half the killing intent and curses he had gathered in 「War Guide♠」. Thus he gained, in an instant, a speed surpassing an assassin’s—but in recoil his legs blew out, and he lost a massive portion of his strength.
“Hah, hah... I’m fine.”
Roughly a hundred meters away, Goaten also let [Stealth] drop for a moment, steadying his breath. Half of his eight legs had taken heavy damage, yet his composure overflowed.
“What do we do? At this rate, we’re both going to die.”
“......”
Glory moved legs that bled in streams. Then, by sheer force of will, he stamped the ground.
Thud!
“We can do this.”
He raised 「War Guide♠」 again.
“We have to do this!”
And then, both of them froze.
“You can just do it with me.”
Goaten had reached their noses in the blink of an eye. They couldn’t react at all before the monster with half-transparent tendrils tangled around him.
“Wh—when!!”
Glory still did not know at what speed a world-apex assassin lives. Elize was the same. Nor did they know that Goaten had been standing and waiting to unfold the family-transmitted footwork.
A blade flew in and pierced Elize’s abdomen.
Fwoooop—
The tip sank deep and burst out through her back.
“Elize!!!”
Glory was horrified—
“...Got you....”
Elize, belly pierced, said that vacantly.
Looking closer, the tip of Elize’s blade had dug in above Goaten’s ankle and pinned into the earth.
She fixed it with moving mana, and the composure on Goaten’s face began to crumple. Glory understood.
This was the last chance!
Grimacing, Glory swung 「War Guide♠」 with everything he had at Goaten.
“Kh—!!”
A 『sword aura』 of pitch-black mana stretched six meters long and flew at Goaten, shredding three hastily incoming tendrils—and aiming for Goaten’s neck.
“Uaaaaaaaah!!”
KAKAKAGAGAK!!
Faced with that all-out strike, Goaten thrust out his hand.
“Ghk!”
The sword with its aura tore his hand, ripping down his wrist. It looked ready to split him to the toes in one unstoppable rush.
But that was as far as it went. Near his wrist, it finally struck the bulwark of his dense mana. When Goaten clenched his fingertips, the blade froze with the 『sword aura』 still condensed on it.
The tip had only dug about two centimeters into his neck and clavicle.
With the sense that every means he had was blocked, Glory lifted his eyes and met Goaten’s.
And in those eyes he read overwhelming superiority.
“...First, let’s talk privately. Somewhere my daughter isn’t.”
A remaining tendril flew.
Unfurling thousands of blades.
Over Elize’s body, belly pierced—
To grind her into paste—
In that moment, far away, a woman’s fingertips moved.
THUD ― !!
Goaten’s lower body exploded.
“Huh?”
Only his upper body remained, rammed into the ground.
Glory recoiled in shock, and Elize, swaying, turned her head.
Roughly 800 meters out, on a high cliff rock of the mountains. A very familiar person stood there. Brown hair, neatly tied down. An assassin with a calm expression, hands together forming a 『Seal』.
It was Adele.
She had cast Curse No. 96: 『Curse of Instant Death』!
“You!!”
It was the TA he had seen a few times at Dante’s estate. At Glory’s shout, Adele waved a hand.
But even if it was an ability obtained from a bug, under the balance of System⧉ it [N O V E L I G H T] had to be accompanied by an enormous aftershock. Right after unleashing that massive [Great Curse], twin nosebleeds burst and streamed from Adele’s nostrils.
“...What now.”
Then an anomaly occurred. With his lower body blown off, Goaten propped himself on a single tendril and rose. Glory was aghast. What kind of mind could do that—did that even make sense?
“I guess I’ll have to kill you....”
Buried in empty air, Goaten blitzed through 800 meters in an instant. Like a launched missile, he threw off shockwaves and thunderclaps nearby. Even as his wounds split wider and the skin of his chest and back tore, he did not stop.
“No!”
“Watch out!!”
Right after Elize and Glory cried out in panic—
The 『Seal』 settled again.
――――― .
Goaten, mid-flight, detonated.
By the time he reached Adele, there was nothing left that could be called a human form.