by Fuse
“Ahhh… It does feel so nice to be in a younger body again.”
“Heh-heh-heh! You’re sounding much older than you look right now.”
“Enough of that. Now to report to His Highness and show him what I am reborn as.”
He slipped back into the robe he had discarded earlier, staff in hand. There was a new spring in his step as he boldly sauntered off, brimming with confidence and aspiration over the new strength he had. It was enough to amaze even Folgen, reinforcing his confidence in his friend and partner.
Losing three otherworlders, a hefty chunk of their nation’s fighting force, stung badly. But Razen’s strength put him beyond the realm of special A rank at this point, so it was hardly worth lamenting. Right now, Razen was confident he could take Hakuro and Geld, those two enemy monsters he’d run into earlier, and easily trounce them.
Deep inside, he even had a suspicion that he could challenge a demon lord, the so-called S ranks. Then he recalled the words of warning Hakuro left him with.
Have I enraged the one creature in this world I shouldn’t have? That witch dispatched the monsters’ so-called master long ago, no? He’s…actually alive?
The suspicion made him stop in his tracks.
“What?”
“Oh, ah, nothing.”
He immediately started walking again.
…I’m letting my mind paralyze me. Perhaps he is more of a menace than I thought, but I’m overthinking matters. And even if he did survive that witch, I can just dispatch him myself.
He smiled boldly as he approached the pavilion where his king awaited.
On the third day, with the sun hanging in the middle of the sky, the nightmare finally began for the Kingdom of Farmus.
A legion of troops was marching below me—but in my view, they were nothing but sacrifices to feed upon for my evolution.
These were the ones who got Shion and the rest. Normally, I suppose I should give some kind of warning or indication that I would attack. But I already knew these guys had declared war on us, and if they were marching for town, I imagined they were ready to die for the cause. Besides, this wasn’t even a war. I was planning to consume every single one of them. Fair and square kind of lost its meaning if I intended for there to be no survivors.
This human garbage wrecked my territory. The least they could do now was enjoy the honor of helping with my evolution before dying.
I was hovering in midair, in human form with my mask on and my wings out. Control Gravity let me unconsciously maintain this position as I peered downward, gauging the situation.
As I did, Benimaru sent a Thought Communication reporting that the magical devices running the barrier were destroyed. Hakuro also informed me of a dangerous sorcerer he’d encountered, but I didn’t see the fuss. I’d just take care of him alongside the rest. Everyone else was back in town, staying on the lookout to make sure there weren’t any detached forces. It was my turn.
It had taken a little time, but Analyze and Assess had wrapped up its work on the forces below. I now had an accurate picture of their strength and numbers, and I had also finished calculations on a new magical spell. Everything was ready.
…Shall we, then?
I deployed a large-scale magic circle, big enough to cover the entire Farmus force. It was powered by Anti-Magic Area, a great magic I’d picked up from Mjurran. It was about thirty miles in diameter, and it couldn’t have been more perfectly positioned. It covered the entire atmosphere up to ten feet above the ground, cutting the area off from the sky and the earth. Now the enemy could cast no magic.
All of this was just to prevent the force from fleeing. I didn’t want to let a single one of them go, so I blocked any chance of their magically teleporting away. Now it was time to deploy the main course—a vast killing magic, the perfect weapon to seal the deal with. It was called:
“Die! May the anger of the gods sear through your very souls! …Megiddo!!”
Dancing, swirling rays of light rained down from the heavens, repeatedly reflecting and refracting near the ground and plunging through the knights before they could react.
There would be no opening bell to signal the beginning of the quiet massacre.
Usually, a military force in this world would deploy underneath a protective barrier established by the magical platoon attached to it. This was known as legion magic, and it put the force on notice against any type of magical element. The right kind of so-called “nuclear magic” from long range could change the tide of battle even if there was a lopsided difference in force involved, so most military marches in this world were done while keeping a close eye on magic from any number of distances.
Farmus, of course, had made thorough preparations along those lines, keeping up a stiff guard against all magic it could think of. Considering they were marching for a nation of monsters (including some that ranked even beyond A), they’d be deranged not to.
But none of that prep work had any meaning against my new magic.
Barriers in this world primarily worked on the principle of blocking the flow of magicules. It required a different approach from resisting the laws of physics, something I discovered when I analyzed the barrier.
It was simple, if you thought about it. If a barrier could block a heat blast of thousands of degrees, then what exactly was the barrier doing to resist it?
The aspectual magic of this world worked by intervening into the laws of physics, through the careful control of magicules. If you wanted to block such magic, you could just erect a barrier to keep those magicules from streaming in. Any offense against that barrier would have to outclass it in strength, or else it couldn’t apply any of its effects beyond the barrier. The magic would simply fail to set off. Things like Charybdis’s Magic Interference were applications of this principle.
Elemental magic, on the other hand, rewrote the laws of physics with the powers of spiritual intervention. It didn’t work on such large scales of force and distance, and the barrier had been built to block that type of magic as well. It was a pure test of strength between elementals, which made it easy to block your opponent if need be. As long as you were prepared for ambushes, it’d just devolve into an arm-wrestling match.
Really, with any type of magic, it all came down to figuring out the principle and going beyond it to neutralize the threat. That was why barriers like these were prepared to deal with just about anything, usually stacking at least two types of protective layers above each other.
To deal with this, I thought outside the box a little and used magic to create a pure form of physical energy. Between my experience with Charybdis and my analysis of Control Magic, I had a general understanding of how the triggering of magic worked. Getting to see Hinata’s Disintegration in action was also an inspiration for the final concept. It all allowed me to have the Great Sage develop a magic effective enough to poke a hole through every type of defensive magic. I had just finished the final adjustments on it, and now it was deployed.
Over a thousand or so droplets of water were floating around me. I had deployed a dozen-ish large ones up above, shaped like convex lenses. These droplets gathered the sunlight overhead, honing it into thin rays of light and refracting it against the mirrorlike droplets below. This focused all the light upon a single point, where it was then further condensed by the convex-lens droplets down below me before being channeled toward its target. The temperature of these thin rays, no more than a pencil’s width in diameter, was several thousand degrees—more than enough heat to take a person’s life.
The droplets were water elementals I summoned and transformed for my needs. With my magic, each one of them took in the sun’s energy, refracted it, and collected it. And that was how Megiddo, my new physically driven magic spell, worked.
The first wild blast of light led to a helpless death for over one thousand knights. Their ranks began to fall apart below me—Megiddo was terrorizing them, or so I hoped. But that wasn’t the end. Optimizing my calculations, I automatically
adjusted the positions of the relevant droplets and set off the second blast. Another thousand or so fell, unable to resist the searing heat.
That was the really scary thing about this magic, actually—how little energy it cost me to orchestrate. The convex lens that served as the final launching point was vaporized every time by the heat, but I could instantly provide another one. That was what the water elementals were for. And gathering water vapor from the air didn’t take much work.
Rebuilding a lens took less than half a minute, so it was even possible to launch a volley of air strikes. All I had to do was gather more water and adjust my aim. It cost me nothing more than whatever it took to summon elementals and keep the machine purring—this spell, for the most part, ran on sunlight, the purest symbol of natural energy. It meant I could use it only during the daytime, but these forces were kind enough to march upon Tempest close to high noon. All potential issues had been addressed. Now I just had to clean up the garbage below me.
The soundless bolts of light-speed force offered the knights no chance to react as they toasted them. The massacre went on. Magic Sense gave me a perfect picture of their locations, letting me strike them right where they were most vulnerable. The only thing their barrier obstructed was magicules, so I luckily had a clear view of them all.
Whether a mercenary clad in crude leather armor or a knight in government-issue metal plate, death came to all equally. Occasionally, I would deliberately aim a beam at someone’s arm or leg or torso, making them scream in despair to add to the chaos. It only made the scene more gruesome. Terror was everywhere now.
What I did not aim for were the fancier wagons and tents. I didn’t know where the king was. If I killed him, I’d never be able to make him confess his sins. I wasn’t that compassionate. Anyone stupid enough to incur my wrath needed to be amply rewarded for it.
A mere five minutes or so after this one-sided strike began, two-thirds of the advancing force were out of commission. That meant over ten thousand lives had been snuffed out by me, their souls harvested.
Now ought to be a good time…
With a flutter of my wings, I descended to Earth, ready to deliver yet more despair to the fools before me.
When Razen spotted the Anti-Magic Area deployed by the enemy, he was amazed at the sheer size of it. But he paid it no further mind, instantly recognizing that it didn’t matter much to them.
Unlike in the Dwarven Kingdom, whose magical forces were the star player in their offense, Farmus’s magicians were tasked strictly with handling defense first, followed by strengthening and support spells. Magic that enhanced the bodies of targets was largely impervious to jamming, which meant having offensive magic robbed of them was not a major problem. Plus, they already had assorted legion magic in effect, and dispulsion magic would be the only way to get rid of that. An Anti-Magic Area made it impossible to cast any new magic within its range; it had no effect on things already cast.
Razen checked one more time to make sure all their defensive magic was still operational. It was.
“Hmm. Looks all right. Our enemy is rather confident in their close-range combat skills, then?”
“Sounds like a job for me. Let me drum up my knights’ morale for a—”
Just when Folgen was replying to the sorcerer’s question, a beam of light slammed down. Razen could barely comprehend what had happened—not just him but everyone in the area. There was a dull ting of impact, and the guard sentry behind them fell, a tiny round hole right between his eyebrows.
“Ah…?! What was that?”
Razen found himself shouting out in surprise.
“Stand strong! Protect His Highness!!”
Immediately heeding Folgen’s orders, the knights sprang into action, trying to bottle up their trepidation inside. But it was pointless. That first beam was just a test firing; what followed was a brilliant, dazzling array of light.
In the blink of an eye, soldiers began to fall anew. There was no time to heal them. The beams ran right through their vitals, killing them instantly.
“Gahhh!! My arm—my arm’s…!!”
“Help! Help meeeee!”
“Aaaaaahhh! Where—where’s it coming from?!”
Those unlucky enough to be caught up in firing range cried and begged for mercy—or fell into panic at the sight of their unresponsive squad mates. In a single moment, it was pandemonium across the battlefield. Their spirits were once high, their minds confident in victory—but that was all long gone.
The leader of the Farmus Mercenary Brigades bitterly clucked his tongue.
His old soldiers, all veterans of more than a few intense battles in their time, were being run through by these beams of light out of nowhere, killed instantly. The new, younger recruits were running for their lives, driven by terror and barely in control of their senses. It happened in an instant—the blinding light dancing around them, everything within range of it dying all too easily.
Resistance was futile, and after a few moments, the second wave arrived. He saw his right-hand man, the vice captain of the force, fall before him—and that finally made the leader realize this was an enemy attack. Immediately, from the bottom of his heart, he regretted ever joining this expedition.
Goddamn them all! What the hell is behind this?!
There was nothing he could do to counter this thing that went well beyond his understanding. But the mercenary leader had luck on his side. The third merciless wave that visited the squad killed him painlessly. He was a famed fighter, lauded as an A-ranked champion to the world, and he lost his life before he even knew what had happened.
In response to this emergency, the anti-monster Temple Knights affiliated with the Western Holy Church stuck to their guns.
“All troops, fall into rows! Every group, stand in close defensive formation and launch your Multilayer Barriers! Show the enemy that no attack can faze our holy might!!”
They were trained to move like this, instantly reacting despite all the friends they’d lost. It was a kind of dedication that amazed anyone who saw it. But just as they built their barriers, firm and confident, they all had their heads shot through and died.
It was as if someone was ridiculing them from up high, showing them how useless their defenses were. And staying in close formation wound up being suicidal. Having so many troops in a tight space allowed one beam to kill several knights at once.
No faith in the gods above would be strong enough to have any meaning in the face of Megiddo. By the time the fifth wave subsided, the Temple Knights were annihilated.
The strong and the weak trembled in unison. There was nothing they could do. Even the Farmus Noble Knight Federation, that group of hardy young Farmus noble-born, had collapsed, seeking any kind of escape they could. They were even attacking one another in a crazed, ugly display—but it was that ugliness that allowed them to survive the longest. Whether that was lucky for them or not is a topic for debate.
The magicians among the Noble Knight Federation—Razen’s personal apprentices—were forced to wallow in their helplessness as they died. They were unable to cast magic, and instead it was magic being endlessly thrown upon them. Or was it even magic at all, really? They just didn’t know, and it pained them.
Even at the very end of their lives, on the brink of death, they were students. All they wanted to do was know. And they couldn’t.
At the end of light wave number seven, half of them were dead. Razen and Folgen stared blankly at the scene for a single moment, then resolved to regroup with their king and leader.
There was no longer any way to maintain order among the ranks. Everyone was too busy trying to save their own hides. Their best bet right now was to hasten over to their king and keep him safe. They still had no idea what these beams of light were. Even with their intellectual senses turned up to maximum, it was beyond their grasp. The moment something bright passed by, someone else was fallen. Even the afterglow took precious time to be perceived in their minds. The speed of it all w
as simply unimaginable.
But Razen had another theory about this. By his observation, a single beam could kill at most a few knights at once. He could tell there was some set of laws behind this light. If there was a wall, something he could use to cut off the light, that’s all he would need. Even if it was—worst-case scenario—a wall of humanity, the king would still be protected. And as for himself? He was willing to bet he could withstand this light.
So he and Folgen pushed toward the king’s tent, shouting the whole way:
“Where is King Edmaris? Is His Highness safe?!”
King Edmaris was doing everything he could to quell the wellspring of terror robbing him of his very breath. He had to save his dignity as a monarch at all costs. His mind raced, his thoughts chaotic.
There was now no denying it: This campaign was a failure. Even if he wanted to escape alive, developments no longer allowed for that. He just wanted to scream, How did this happen?! but there was no time for that.
“Reyhiem, what will…? What should we do?”
“We—we must remain calm. We must remain calm!”
The king and the archbishop hugged each other inside their ornate tent, shivering. An attendant who had stepped outside to gauge the situation—literally just a moment ago—had already been incinerated.
It wasn’t so long ago that he had seen off the advance forces, waiting for the knights who would march forth from behind them. They all seemed so confident, so reliable. He was sure this campaign would end in victory, part of the path to glorious honor for him. But a few minutes were all it took to turn the tables. All it took to fill the fields with the dead.
The sight was so detached from reality that King Edmaris couldn’t even comprehend how it had happened. All he could do was sit in his tent and quiver. And Archbishop Reyhiem was exactly the same. He had no interest in protecting the king—he stayed here simply because he imagined it was safest for him. He had no proof of that, but he wound up being correct. None of that merciless light had shone upon them yet.
