by Aneko Yusagi
“We’ll see about that! First Mirage!” Raphtalia shouted.
“Rafu!”
Raphtalia and Raph-chan used their illusion magic, and poof! Multiple copies of Atla appeared.
“What?!”
“. . . show yourself! I am the Dragon Emperor, ruler of the world. Strike down these foolish mortals that would defy the Dragon Emper — ”
The Demon Dragon swiped at Atla and her copies violently with his tail and wings, but Atla parried the attacks as easily as if she were waving off flies. In fact, the attacks might not have even been making contact at all. Forgetting that any one of those might be the real Atla would be a dire mistake.
“Annoying little insect! So be it. I’ll stop this incantation and buy some time.”
The Demon Dragon stopped reciting his incantation. I could feel the partially-formed magic hanging in the air.
“Great power in this core stone of mine! Hear my plea and show yourself! I am the Dragon Emperor, ruler of the world . . .”
He began to cast a different spell. Incredible! To think he could pause one spell midway and cast another at the same time!
“Take this!”
Atla thrust at the Demon Dragon. There was a loud cracking sound and his barrier shattered in an instant.
“I’m not finished!” she shouted.
I have no idea how or where she had been storing up energy, but she continued to launch a string of fierce attacks without pause.
“Demon Dragon! Explosive Assault!”
Explosions filled a wide area surrounding the Demon Dragon. He planned on just blowing Atla away!
“Not on my watch!” I shouted.
I leapt in front of Atla —I didn’t know if it was the real Atla or just a copy—to protect her.
“You underestimate me! It will take more than that to stop me!” she shouted.
Atla ignored the explosions and held her hands out in front of her. That was all she had to do to shift the direction of the Demon Dragon’s explosions. It was as if she had altered the direction of the wind or something. Incredible.
“There you are!” shouted the Demon Dragon.
He swung his arm at me. I leapt backward without even looking. If it were the real Atla behind me, I knew that she would respond accordingly. Atla seemed to ignore me. She jumped sideways, right into the Demon Dragon’s claws and then disappeared.
“Too bad. I guess that wasn’t the real one,” I taunted.
“Indeed. Don’t think that you can see through my illusions so easily. And if an attack like that is all it took to defeat Atla, my life would be a lot easier,” Raphtalia added.
I had the urge to make a wisecrack about that last comment, but in a way, I guess it was proof that she was confident in Atla’s abilities.
“Grr . . . Do not interfere!” shouted the Demon Dragon.
“You’re gravely mistaken if you think such haphazard swipes can stop me!” Atla taunted.
The Demon Dragon was holding his claws and tail out and spinning around in an attempt to hit the real Atla. She deftly hopped up onto the tip of his tail and stood there confidently with her hands on her hips. Incredible. It was like in a manga or anime, when a warrior would jump up on top of the enemy’s blade mid-swing.
“This is the last one!”
Atla didn’t attack the Demon Dragon’s tail, but instead charged at the dragon himself and thrust the heel of her palm into the final remaining barrier. When she did, a loud crash echoed through the air. Using the same movement as the old lady had when she destroyed Kyo’s barrier, Atla shattered the Demon Dragon’s barrier completely.
“But I’m still not done!”
Atla landed on the ground for a brief moment, but then shot back up like a bullet. She delivered a sharp jab to the Demon Dragon’s shoulder, and instantly the Demon Dragon’s shoulder burst open!
“Wha . . . Gaaahhhhhh!”
The Demon Dragon seemed confused for a moment, but then immediately began writhing in pain from his split-open shoulder.
“I’m far from finished!”
The Hengen Muso attacks, and Atla’s imitations of them, could be fired off continually. That was something that neither Raphtalia nor Ren could do with their skills.
“Wyndia! Let’s do this!” shouted Melty.
“Okay! Give us back Father and Gaelion!” Wyndia replied.
Their cooperative magic began to take form around Wyndia. She took aim at the Demon Dragon, who was still thrashing around in pain.
“Cooperative magic! Saint Rain!”
Small droplets of rain began to fall throughout the area. Their spell used the rainclouds that had been formed by the cooperative magic Sadeena and I had cast, so the incantation and evocation had both been quick. Black smoke billowed up out of the Demon Dragon’s wound each time one of the droplets made contact.
“You insolent fools!”
Moments earlier, the Demon Dragon had been confident of his victory, but now his eyes were burning with hatred. Flames erupted from all over his body. That sure looked like quite the feat!
“You won’t hit me with an attack like that!” Atla exclaimed.
Atla was unscathed, and the rain that Melty and Wyndia had called forth showered the flames.
“Now then, Demon Dragon. Want to guess what I was doing while Atla, Melty, and Wyndia were making a fool of you?” I asked.
Sadeena and I had been reciting an incantation continuously this whole time. This kind of magic was a hassle since it required you to solve a little puzzle, but there was no way around it if you wanted to cast the spell. Still, I was able to keep my eye on what was happening while doing it, so I guess I had gotten used to it.
“Wha—?!”
“Time for the second wave! Go, Eclair!” I shouted.
“My turn, is it? Leave it to me! Mr. Iwatani and Ms. Atla, feast your eyes on the true essence of the Hengen Muso style!”
Sadeena and I finished casting Descent of the Thunder God on Eclair and she charged forward. But I noticed that she had been focusing herself before springing to action.
“Oh! That’s the Muso Activation technique that the master was lecturing about the other day! I didn’t know Eclair could do that!”
Ren was playing the narrator character.
But that explanation didn’t tell me anything! Why the hell was he acting like Rishia now?! I was still stuck sparring with Raphtalia and Atla. Nothing he was saying made any sense to me!
“Haaaa!”
Oh! Eclair started moving ridiculously fast! Well, about as fast as Ren anyway. She was still a bit slower than Raphtalia or me when we got serious. But Eclair must have mastered the Hengen Muso defense rating attacks, because the Demon Dragon’s scales went flying with each of her thrusts.
“Grr! Do you not realize who I am?! Weak, pathetic humans!”
The Demon Dragon seemed to be struggling now. He let out an infuriated howl. His regenerative capacity must have been incredible though, because I could see his wounds closing up almost immediately after they had been inflicted. That was a bit worrying.
“It doesn’t matter how impressive your support magic is if I remove it!”
The Demon Dragon began reciting an incantation. I guess he was going to try to nullify the support magic that we had cast on Atla and Eclair. The effectiveness of their attacks began to decrease. Had the support magic expired? I checked Atla’s status screen and the effect was still in place. That meant that he must have used magic to . . . Ah, he must have lowered his own defense rating.
“Alright, Demon Dragon. Now you get to experience the struggle of being the Shield Hero. Raphtalia, Ren, you’re up!”
“Understood!” shouted Raphtalia.
“Will that work?” Ren asked.
I gave him a silent nod.
“Instant Blade! Mist!”
“Shooting Star Sword!”
Raphtalia’s powerful quick-draw attack and Ren’s specialty, Shooting Star Sword, split the Demon Dragon’s stomach right open
.
“Gah! You make light of me . . .”
“If you raise your defenses, we use defense rating attacks. If you lower them, we use brute force by switching to pure attack power. I’m sure you realize that producing more barriers is useless too.”
The same tactics had been used on me before. I’d managed to survive somehow by using cheap tricks. But if L’Arc and the others had been able to fire off those attacks repeatedly, I would have been in the same situation as the Demon Dragon. He was experiencing firsthand the very scenario that I always worried about.
The black sludge around the Demon Dragon had been regenerating immediately before, but now, for some reason, Raphtalia was slicing through it like it was soft tofu and it was disappearing each time she did.
“Grr . . . Stop struggling! You belong to me! Resistance is futile!”
The Demon Dragon suddenly began making awkward movements. What was going on?
“Grr . . . I won’t let you escape! Stop trying to fight! Grrraaaaahh!”
He started thrashing around as if something was fighting back from within his body.
“Grr . . . urgh . . .”
Something near his chest seemed to be . . . trying to escape? The Demon Dragon pressed down on his chest, but a beam of magic began to leak out from under his claw.
“Ugh . . .”
“Everyone, attack! It looks like this is our chance!” I shouted.
“Weak, pathetic humans! Don’t get . . . cocky!”
“Hmm? Are you sure it’s okay to be paying attention to us? I don’t know what’s going on with your chest, but attacking you there can’t be a bad idea!”
“Here I go!” shouted Atla.
“Indeed. That seems to be his weak point. Let’s go, Ren!” said Eclair.
“Okay!” Ren replied.
“I’m not in the mood to lose!” Raphtalia exclaimed.
On my signal, Atla, Eclair, Ren, and Raphtalia all attacked and sliced right through the arm that the Demon Dragon was using to press against his chest.
“Urghhhh . . . gahhh!”
The Demon Dragon nearly fell over backward from the pain of having his arm severed. The arm began to regenerate immediately, but the pressure on his chest was gone. With the restriction removed, the thing that had been struggling inside burst through the dragon’s chest wall and showed itself. A tiny baby dragon—Gaelion—came flying out, holding Filo by the nape of her neck.
“Gaelion!”
“Gy . . . gya!”
The Gaelion that appeared looked like he had just hatched. The experience points that had fueled his growth had been sucked right out of him. Even so, he had fought back to protect Wyndia. To protect all of us. The fact that he brought Filo out with him was proof of that.
“Filo!” shouted Melty.
“Ugh . . .”
Nice! Filo was still alive. I held her up in my arms and cast my healing magic on her. The Demon Dragon was busy fighting Raphtalia and the others and couldn’t afford to pay attention to what we were doing.
The thing about magic was that casting spells required a certain amount of concentration. The pain the Demon Dragon was experiencing most likely made that impossible for him. And now, two sources of his power—Gaelion and Filo—had escaped, which would undoubtedly weaken him even further.
And then the Demon Dragon’s already black appearance grew several shades darker and he glared over in our direction. He was staring at Wyndia. Wyndia returned to where Melty and Sadeena were standing and took in a deep breath.
“Sadeena. I . . . I’m going to defeat that Demon Dragon!” she shouted.
“Okay!” Melty replied.
“It looks like that’s our only choice,” said Sadeena.
The three of them began casting cooperative magic. They were reciting the incantation incredibly fast this time, as if driven by Wyndia’s determination. And then, before I knew it, a tiny Gaelion was flapping his tiny wings and hovering over them, assisting with the incantation.
“Grr . . . I’m not going to play nice anymore! Gaaaaaaa!”
The Demon Dragon started to lose form. He began to look more like a mass of black sludge than a huge dragon. On my status screen, I noticed that his name changed from Demon Dragon to Wrath Dragon. The abilities of my powered-up Shield of Wrath had combined with a fiendish dragon to create the Wrath Dragon. Was Wyndia’s father in there too? What a miserable dragon.
I stepped forward to protect Wyndia and the others. Gaelion flew over to me and hovered right behind me.
“It’s dangerous here. Stay back.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Wha?!”
Gaelion spoke! But it must have been telepathic communication, because the voice seemed to come from within my head.
“Don’t act so surprised. You’ll give me away to Wyndia and the Sword Hero.”
“You must be . . .”
It must have been the father Gaelion. He was still occupying the body of baby Gaelion.
“It makes me happy to see how much my daughter has grown, Shield Hero.”
Umm, daddy getting emotional is not what I was interested in. I’d have to ask why he was still inside of Gaelion later. That issue obviously hadn’t been resolved at all.
“You’ve noticed, haven’t you? Your rage has coalesced with the Dragon Emperor from another world.”
“Yeah, I got that . . .”
“That thing is the embodiment of your anger. Now that it has lost this host body, it is sure to come chasing for you. You must defeat it before the true rampage begins. If you do not, it will pursue you to the ends of the earth and beyond.”
“Got it. Ren, Raphtalia, let’s finish this!”
“Understood!”
“Okay!”
My companions were the whole reason I’d been able to push the enemy into such a tight spot. The gold star went to Atla this time.
“You need not worry. I’m going to help you attack now. Once we force that thing to spit up the demon dragon core, your sidekick can finish it off!”
“So the usual game plan.”
“You’ve got this!”
Sheesh. I couldn’t help but feel like we still had other unresolved issues, but maybe it was just my imagination. Gaelion joined the party, which increased the speed of our incantations. The Wrath Dragon unleashed a breath attack. It was weaker than before, but still too powerful to take head-on.
“Haaa!”
Atla simply held her hands up and the Wrath Dragon’s flames were parried away. How did she do that? That girl had some formidable defense capabilities. The Wrath Dragon persisted in attacking me. It needed a new host.
“There’s no rule that says I can’t dodge just because I have a shield, right?”
The Wrath Dragon came at me with an onslaught of entirely straightforward attacks. I maneuvered back and forth, dodging them. The attacks were focused solely on me, so there was no need to guard against them in an attempt to protect the others. Since his attack pattern was so straightforward, dodging the attacks wasn’t too difficult, as long as I kept an eye on his speed.
“Here I go! Stardust Blade!”
“Shooting Star Sword!”
Ren sure loved using Shooting Star Sword. He was always firing it off as soon as there was an opening.
“Find the core stone and make him spit it out! That will weaken him even further!” I shouted.
“Like pure flowing waters, let our intentions wash away hatred, resentment, and the curse upon this land. Let our desire to save the world manifest as strength! Dragon Vein! Grant us a miracle!”
“I, Gaelion, command the heavens and earth! Transect the way of the universe and rejoin it again to expel the pus from within! Power of mine! Awaken the strength to sever this flow of emotions before me! ”
Thanks to my shield, I could tell that Gaelion was reciting a high-level incantation. The shield sounded like it was working in overdrive as the translation appeared on the screen in front of my eyes. Sadeena must have not
iced something, because she was looking over at Gaelion.
“Erasing Aqua Slash!”
“Annihilating Wave of the Water Dragon!”
Gaelion and the three of them completed the incantation. Immense magical power began to form in front of Gaelion.
“Huh?!”
Wyndia yelped out in surprise, and Melty slumped down onto the ground, exhausted. Sadeena gripped her harpoon and dashed toward the Wrath Dragon. Gaelion held on to the freshly formed ball of magic and took in a big breath.
“Little Naofumi! Little Rat! Back me up!” Sadeena shouted.
“Okay!” replied Rat.
“Zweite Aura!”
“Fast Power! Fast Magic!”
Rat and I both cast support magic, increasing Sadeena’s attack speed.
“Let’s do this, little Gaelion!”
“Gyaowww!”
Umm, the real Gaelion would have made a “kwa” sound.
Gaelion took in a big breath of air and blew it into the ball of magic. A massive torrent of water erupted from the ball and shot at the Wrath Dragon. Sadeena leapt into the torrent and began swimming in circles, creating a vortex. I thought Raphtalia and Filo came up with flashy attacks, but these two had outdone them.
“It’s like watching a fight between the gods,” Fohl mumbled.
“There’s no place for you in this fight, Brother,” Atla replied.
“Ugh . . . I’m going in!” Fohl shouted.
“You stay right where you are,” I ordered.
Fohl was being left further and further behind. I had a feeling he’d be dead in no time if I let him join the fray. I couldn’t have that. Paying no heed to Fohl, Sadeena went spinning forward in a special attack that looked like something a five-part transforming super electromagnetic robot might do. She drilled right through the Wrath Dragon and the torrent that Gaelion had produced vanished.
“D . . . did that do it?” Sadeena asked.
She landed on the ground and looked back at the Wrath Dragon. She was breathing hard. Of course, I checked the Wrath Dragon for signs of life too.
“Not yet! Also . . .”
Atla immediately dashed toward the Wrath Dragon and leapt at him like a lion pouncing on its prey. She dug her fingers into his windpipe.
