『Primal Mirror』 stimulated the root of a person and revived those agonizing memories.
Almost all the professors there, the Hero Party, had to face memories they didn’t want to see.
< Focus on the fight !!! >
Right after 『Primal Mirror』 shattered, the first thing they heard was Glory’s shout. Glory, who had just now attacked his own family, roused everyone even while he felt like his brain was melting.
That bellow was truly timely. If not for that, the warriors who had spaced out would have been annihilated in an instant.
However, he couldn’t prevent morale from breaking.
On all sides the demonfolk’s offensive burst out.
Professors died one after another.
Frozen stiff, Rebecca was caught in an explosion, blown away, and slammed into the ground.
Jinksythe’s finger pointed at Glory standing before her. It was the 『Curse of Petrification』. The Hero’s uniquely high-intensity mana resisted, but from fingertips to forearm it turned to stone and then released again. As if an invisible force were struggling for dominance, his arm kept stiffening and then going soft in turns.
< Kraaagh! >
< I-It’s piercing through! >
< Pull back for now! >
They yielded the field for the moment,
and that was a small mistake.
< Summoneken is aiming at the base of the Zone 2 Mage Tower! >
Previously, Bomiteka had knocked down the Mage Tower, and because of that, the barrier of Peaceful Nature☮ also broke, but fundamentally the tower had a double layer of protection.
Summoneken was trying to break even the “Blessing” on the inside of the “Barrier.”
The moment that collapses, even the minimal self-correcting ability that protects the Academy will vanish.
Jinksythe’s curses, reduced by nearly 50%, and the poisonous fumes rising from Trappycche’s corpse intoxicate everyone.
< No good! W-We must protect the tower! >
< Unleash protective magic! Professors of Magic!! >
The magic professors, having come to their senses, hurried to block it, but it was useless.
With strength wrung out only barely, Summoneken summoned an “Incomplete Bomiteka.”
It had no eyeballs, no horns had grown, not even a jaw joint—yet even as-is it differed little from a gigantic thirty-meter-diameter boulder.
That flew like a siege hammer and smashed the base of the Mage Tower.
Kwakwakwakwa-boom!!!!!!
< T-The tower is collapsinggg!! >
The 「Blessing of Peaceful Nature☮」 was broken. Immediately after that, when Jinksythe cast curse number 85, the 『Curse of Diffusion of Magic Power』, the mages died in droves.
Glory gnashed his teeth down hard.
With this, the Zone 2 Mage Tower had been perfectly destroyed, and the strategic pivot was gone.
They had to hold.
Holding became difficult.
‘At this rate, we’ll be wiped out.......’
Because mana is the power that embodies will.
From the moment will was broken, Glory’s petrification began to advance a little more.
‘Is this the end.......’
He somehow beat hornless demonfolk to death with the opposite arm, but he felt his body stiffening. Slowly, his body was falling apart.
At the end of it, Glory’s knees touched the ground.
―― .
In that instant,
the hair rose on the back of Glory’s neck.
Something full of light was approaching from far off in that dark sky.
If it was this presence, there was only one person. The one he’d wondered why he wasn’t coming, was coming now.
Glory switched on comms and screamed as if his throat would rip.
< Professor Dante is coming!! >
Right there, everyone who was clutching their respective wounds, squatting down or writhing in pain, widened their eyes.
< Professor Dante is coming!! >
Glory shouted again and dashed out like a madman. He slaughtered hornless demonfolk and soared into the sky. He smashed Jinksythe’s 『Petrifying Hand』.
And then he roared once more.
< Professor Dante is coming!!! >
Thirty-odd hornless demonfolk flew in like shells to kill Glory. But Glory moved his body like a madman and batted them away.
Flames rose in the hearts of those watching.
< Smartly! Stall just a little longer! >
Assassin professors including Baekwa, brimming with spirit once more, began to throw Kambatuk into confusion.
< We’ll disrupt them from this side as much as possible! >
Balmung shouted, hefting his overheated sniper rifle,
< Get up! >
Adele Mouin, too, bled from both eyes, clasped the Virgin Cross, and prayed, beginning to restore an absurdly wide area.
< Rebecca, not yet?! >
< I’m doing it!! >
With her wrist broken, Rebecca began something even more audacious: with 『Domain Proclamation: Mage’s Tower』, she started to bring into midair the vanished Mage Tower.
When the broken Blessing of Peaceful Nature☮ surged up there temporarily, the warriors who had been gasping from poison and curses came to their senses.
Was that all? Eve also took to the air. The moment eyes sprouted on one of Jinksythe’s hands, her 「Peacebringer†」 cleanly sliced that wrist off. The ultra-giant hand carrying a 90s-series curse was destroyed.
< Good!! Now! Mages, rise and hold!! >
Ezekiel sprang up with a shout. Then he thrust out the staff-bearing hand and poured mana bullets into the ribs of “Soserche,” who had been massacring the mages until just now.
< Dante Hiakapo, that golden rat bastard is coming!! >
They had to hold.
As adults, grabbing everyone by the hair.
They had to haul them to their feet.
< Everyone!! Magic, fir— >
Puuuk—
A flying blade punched through the back of Ezekiel’s hand and smashed his staff.
Ezekiel could not believe his eyes: it was Shaman Kreutz who had attacked.
‘......!’
Shuriken that followed on a time delay peppered in—wrist, then elbow, upper arm, and shoulder, p-p-p-puk.
Even amid a battlefield turning complex and urgent, Ezekiel’s and Shaman’s eyes tangled unusually long. In truth it was but an instant; the whole world felt slow.
‘......Great King Rat. Why.’
And he realized it. There was no light in Shaman’s eyes. Just before Jinksythe’s hand exploded, he had cast the 90 『Curse of Domination』 on Shaman Kreutz.
‘Damn.’
Ezekiel toppled, shedding blood, and at the same time his head grew complicated.
In force of arms, of course—and in the faculty’s standing—this was a person who must never be stolen away, and he was dominated.
‘Even if someone were to be dominated, it mustn’t have been that man.......’
Shaman Kreutz was
the fastest in Hiaka.
The freest.
And the one who could kill the most people in the shortest time—the very top-tier assassin of the [Throwing] branch.
‘.......’
Meanwhile, at Shaman Kreutz’s ear, Jinksythe’s command began to be heard.
[ Run ]
He spoke to the old man whose mind was well-fed.
[ Run ]
There had once been a similar composition.
It was the time when the assassin called Shaman Kreutz made a mistake in his youth, which bound him all his life and made him regret—those days.
To run here meant: go outside and create more victims. That was the order.
Shaman also was not ignorant of what kind of murder weapon he was as a human being.
And so Shaman turned his body.
[ Run ]
......However. At some point recently. Dante Hiakapo had said he had met Batalion. He had even filed that report. When asked what the bastard’s end had been, Dante said he remained vile and applied for asylum in the Empire.
‘A foul beast that only knows how to betray. Tsk tsk...’ Shaman had clicked his tongue. ‘That’s right.’ Dante had also nodded.
Dante nodded.
Dante’s words became a certain inspiration to Shaman.
If it’s a decision made for something precious, even if one abandons the nation, it cannot be condemned.
That is to say.......
Not what act one committed,
but what one achieved was what mattered.
‘Right, what’s wrong with betraying your country because you don’t want to die?’
Smoking a cigarette alone.
The well-fleshed old man began to feel a strange rapture.
‘Why should I die?’
‘Why did I have to die at the flower of thirty, huh?’
‘Kreutz was in the wrong. I thrashed to live, didn’t I?’
It felt like he’d done well.
Betrayal.
‘That was the teacher being stupid. Does honor put food on the table?’
‘That was my wife being stupid. If I’m there, I’ll raise the child even better.’
‘Whether I’m forgotten by you lot or not, afterward I stuffed my face with donuts for seventy years and was happy. You vermin.’
Shaman Kreutz grinned wide.
Back then, life was precious to him.
He protected his life.
Because he was young.
Then now, well over a hundred.
What is important to him?
[ Run ]
Hiaka Academy.
< Great King Rat―!! >
When the scream rang out, Shaman was already taking to the sky toward Jinksythe.
『Domination』 tried to jerk his body in spasms. Along with the phrase [Run]. Shaman laughed. Even he, who had reached Challenger, would not be able to resist this domination for long.
Now.
Only now could he do it.
[ Run ]
He stepped on the air and soared high; the Academy’s panorama spread below. The Academy he had entered as a teaching assistant at thirty and tended and worked in all his life. For him, this place was his youth. His life.
Dante Hiakapo’s words were right. One must move for what is precious. An adult had to know how to protect the children. Such thought had now become more important than his life.
Therefore, this voice ringing in his ear—this time he could refuse it.
[ Run ]
I refuse.
< Great King Rat―!! You crazy pig bastard―― >
Tuk, he took the comm from his ear.
By then he was before Jinksythe’s # Nоvеlight # head with arms attached. Shaman slipped right into that mouth and moved his mana.
『 Thousand Needles, Ten Thousand Flowers 』
He drew in all the thousands of shuriken he had scattered back to himself. It was the quietest self-detonation in the world. Thus Jinksythe’s head blew apart and it died, and in that spot only a lump of iron remained.
A great throwing assassin died like that. Ezekiel’s boiling roar shook the battlefield.
The battlefield was covered in flame and blood, and the professors’ spells shattered to pieces in the air.
Some had already lost their lives and some, drenched in blood, fell to their knees.
On that battlefield upon which such despair had fallen.
The sky opened.
A single shaft of light fell from the sky and touched the ground.
Riding blinding radiance, the shape of a person revealed itself.
All the professors, the demonfolk, turned their gaze there. Even Summoneken curled the corner of his mouth.
From within the light, the man holding a weapon murmured low.
“ Raise the sword, O levy. ”