Chapter 4, Part 3:
The voice had come from a hawk.
No mere hawk could have wandered into a magecraft-made fog so dense. What was more, we had seen it before when Ergo’s skull was suddenly crushed—
The hawk landed on the ship’s mast and surveyed the half-ruined deck.
“I had planned on going in order… but the god devourer’s contents are meant to be secret,” quipped the hawk.
“You again, Mushiki.”
Suddenly, another change took place. The wind picked up, and a tiny storm enveloped the ghost ship with wind speeds beyond imagination.
The ship moaned as if the world had been turned upside down. Even the mast strengthened by the Atlas Institute’s bone familiars creaked, or swayed, or splintered.
“Wh-What the—!” Rin cried out as she held on to the mast for dear life. Ergo’s phantasmal hands caught her just as she was about to be swept away.
My mentor only managed to stand with my help, and my scythe anchoring us in place. The deactivated bone familiars, however, had no way to resist and slid from the deck into the storm’s waiting maw.
“A typhoon in Singapore…!” My mentor raised his head as the wind threatened to tear the hair from his head. “This goes against the Coriolis effect! How could a typhoon near the equator possibly be powerful enough to swallow up such a large ship!”
“So what is this, then?!”
“Pure mystery! Pure mystery at an unimaginable scale!”
Not ten seconds after my mentor’s bellow, all the bone familiars disappeared from the deck, and the storm faded as if it had never been there at all. Though we were still shrouded in fog, a patch of blue appeared above the ghost ship. The hawk swooped down through it with ease.
“There, I’ve cleaned it up for you. You should thank me.”
With that, the raptor took on the form of a silver woman.
She was like a white flame. On her glittering skin was a light blue pattern that was unlike a birthmark nor a tattoo. It made her look like a human-shaped ball of fire. She wore two crude, chain-linked shackles around her wrists, and a beautiful golden bell on her right ear.
“Of the three mages who made Ergo devour gods, you must be the second,” said my mentor.
“You should know that without my telling you, Lord of the Clock Tower.”
In contrast to the woman’s nonchalance, the alchemist looked up with an expression as if she was only restraining herself by wedging her bones into the deck.
“It should still be Latio’s turn!”
The woman nodded twice, unaffected.
“Look, you’ve clearly failed. You would know that if you only have but a tiny bit of self-awareness. Honestly, I feel sorry for you. I can’t bear to see the descendants of the people I once respected and studied with reduced to such a state.”
“Mushiki—”
Mushiki shrugged off Latio’s demand to speak no more.
“The Crudelis family was doomed to perish anyway.”
“You-you…!”
Latio’s body suddenly darted upward. She had launched herself by shooting the bones from her feet. Propelled by its recoil, she jumped almost as if bouncing off the deck as she flew toward Mushiki and hurled a sword made of bone from her hand.
The woman easily deflected the attack with her manacles.
“Haha, so this is how the families of the Six Sources— the Six Sages of Atlas will meet their end.”
Latio’s sword swung five more times with the speed of lightning, so she probably had some power left from the fight that just took place. She was probably directly controlling the bones inside her body to squeeze out more energy beyond her limits. She must also have calculated that her opponent would evade the attack with her Thought Acceleration and Partition.
Instead, the woman, Mushiki, deflected it all with her manacles again.
“Do you know how slow your strategy is? If you’re going to calculate everything one by one before you act, you might as well let your bones do the thinking for you. Besides, the Clock Tower Lord is also here. They started this scuffle. So why don’t we scrap this order of operations and start from scratch?”
She said the last half of that while staring straight at my mentor.
Before anyone else could make a move—
“Repairing internal hacking…Clear!”
Tangere stood up, having recovered from Rin’s interference. With a cry of “Lady Latio!”, the bone giant launched itself into the fray, four bone limbs exchanging blows with the woman’s two arms. Though she was tall, the giant was more than two meters taller. It was hard to see where she was as they grappled with each other, if only for the briefest of moments before the giant was overwhelmed.
I gasped when I heard the bone giant cry out. It should not have been able to feel pain.
“You are nowhere close to Xiang Yu’s
[1] power, or Yu’s inventiveness. How come you haven’t reached either one in more than two thousand years?”
I recognized the first name. Xiang Yu was a famous general of ancient China. In that case, “Yu” must refer to his wife, Consort Yu. Though I never heard that the lady in the Song of Gaixia
[2] was a formidable fighter, perhaps the history Mushiki had witnessed was different from the one I knew.
With a crack, Mushiki tore off the giant's arms as if they were made of paper mâche.
“Hahaha, this is almost too easy!”
Chains extended from her manacles and wrapped around Latio and the giant. She spun them around as if they were attached to fan blades before pounding them down onto the shard of the mast that remained.
Before they made contact, the bone giant made one last desperate heave.
The chains loosened, and Latio fell onto the deck. Only the giant was impaled.
“Tangere!”
“Haha, as long as you’re safe… I can’t move anymore…”
Though the giant could mended itself even after having its head blown off, it didn’t even try to retake its detached arms.
“You must be kidding me,” said the silver woman, frowning. “I haven’t had the chance to have fun in ages. I knew you were weak, but surely you’re stronger than this. I haven’t let out all my anger yet, and you’re already broken.”
As she began walking toward Latio, Rin ran over to stop her.
“Aren’t you guys on the same side?”
“Hah? Have you been paying attention or not? Sure, I knew her ancestor, but now we’re only bound by a contract that’s lost its meaning.”
“Really? She seems to respect you, though. In return, you provoked and insulted them. That’s awfully rude, don’t you think?”
“So what?”
“So, I don’t like you!”
A red light shot out from Rin’s hand.
“
Anfang!”
As it flew toward the woman, the gemstone seemed to blossom like a rose. She had instilled many times more Magical Energy into it. This was probably one of the true cards she had prepared to use against Latio.
“
Sixth, fifth, fourth, fire all! Do not spare even one of the enemies’ shadows
Sechs, fünf, vier, Verzehren Sie den Schatz! Vernichten Sie den Schatten des Feindes!”
Rubies exploded before my eyes. Rin was giving it her all. Her attack was likely as powerful as the RPG the pirates had used not long ago. It could demolish a small house, maybe even damage the alchemy-enhanced ship. But the woman dispelled it yet again with a wave of her hand.
“Oh, so you like snowball fights? Alright then, I’ll play with you.”
She raised her thumb. It was simply compressing the air, not even magecraft, but it was enough to send Rin flying into the mast. She slid to the ground with a whimper.
“Rin!”
Her head was bowed. She did not stand up. Her magic crest should have responded to her condition and healed her automatically, but it would take her a while to recover.
This was pure, overwhelming violence.
All of my mentor’s and Latio’s careful planning was for nothing. This is what people in the Clock Tower meant when they said that fights between mages ended before they begun. Thought Acceleration, Thought Partition, and the holy lance that destroyed resources necessary for them. Our plans to overrun the deck, and for the pirates to assist in interference. Somehow, this woman could trample over the rules of magecraft and alchemy to act upon her brutal will.
“How…?”
Mushiki tilted her head to look at me.
“What is there to be surprised about? You should know that mystery is canceled out by stronger mystery. That fact hasn’t changed since the Age of the Gods. Neither the Atlas Institute’s Exoforms nor that girl’s Gandr have a stronger mystery than my skin. They didn’t stand a chance.”
“…That means…” My mentor muttered through trembling lips. “…You must be a Xian
[3]…”
“What do you mean?”
“The Philosophy Magecraft rooted in Continental Asia is mostly managed by the Spiral Manor. However, a few lingering individuals survive with the authority to connect to the Magecraft Base and form the organization known as the Summit Court. The organization’s leaders are the Ten Officials, all of whom are true Xian.”
Right. My mentor had brought this up before we used Luxcarta— there was another organization beyond the reaches of the mortal realm, the realm of the Xian.
“If all the rumors are true, Xian are the pure embodiment of mystery. Even their breaths and tears would be brimming with it, their bodies more so.”
“Enough about that. I was banished from the court ages ago, alright? I’m not one of the Ten anymore.”
The woman scratched her head sheepishly. I, on the other hand, was completely frozen in place with shock.
Latio had been strong enough. This Mushiki was of an entirely different caliber, like a mountain to a rock. It was difficult to break apart a rock with your fists, but no one would be stupid enough to try and do the same to a mountain. That was how overwhelmingly different they were.
Mushiki paid no notice to me and walked toward the red haired youth. She gently brushed his face with the tip of her finger.
“Why, hello.”
An alarmingly charming smile appeared on her face, in stark contrast to her casual greeting. Allured by it, I instantly forgot that my life was still in danger. Though I didn’t quite understand the feeling, I suppose this was what they meant by someone beautiful enough to collapse a city by looking its way.
“You’ve been hungry all this time, haven’t you? Since you’ve woken up, you’ve never been truly satisfied, isn’t that right?” She muttered with her lips close to Ergo’s ear.
“Agh…” Ergo let out a whimper as she caressed him.
She had clearly shaken him. I was witnessing a carnivorous plant lure in its prey. Even though being captured could only lead to death, there was something enrapturing about the woman’s face that made her impossible to resist.
The woman cast me a look with her uncanny eyes. Their irises were golden, and their pupils a deep red, like a golden ring floating in an orb of fire.
“Devour that girl,” she urged him. “Honestly, I must have still been half-asleep to not have realized before I saw that Noble Phantasm. It must feel so awful with that girl beside you, always holding yourself back… You mustn’t let your desire pile up. I’m practically your mother, so it’s only natural that I would want to see my dear son released from his suffering, isn’t it?”
(
…Mother?)
That was certainly a shock, but something else had a greater impact on me.
(
…He’s been suffering all this time?)
I didn’t understand what that meant. —No, I did.
I didn’t understand what she was trying to do. —No, I understood that too.
The word Yomotsuhegui echoed back and forth in my head. My mentor had hypothesized that Ergo had eaten the flesh of gods. In that case, what would satisfy them?
Shouldn’t I have realized long ago, as a grave keeper, an expert on the realm of the dead?
“Eat her, Ergo!”
Ergo stiffly turned toward me. His expression was not one of joy or anticipation at the thought of release, but of pure despair, the emptiness that comes with being given the solution.
…Ah, yes.
All this time, the god-devouring young man had wanted to devour the hero inside me.
We were not some sufferers of the same plight. It was quite the opposite. He was the
, and I was the
.
“Gray! Snap out of it! Run for your life!”
Add’s voice seemed strangely distant. It was Mushiki’s doing. I couldn’t move with her eyes on me. They were probably some sort of Mystic Eyes.
(
…Huoyan-jinjing[sup][4][\sup]…)
A word appeared in my mind.
That was the name of a pair of eyes my mentor talked about, from a legend from the Far East. That story had involved Xian, too. For some reason, the desire to listen to one of his lectures again with Rin and Ergo throbbed with each pulse of my heart.
Ergo walked slowly towards me.
“Ergo!” My mentor shouted.
Not even that could reach me now. I could not protect him. I hoped he would forgive me.
“Gray…”
The young man opened his mouth as if he had no other choice. Saliva dripped down from his teeth and onto his chin. What a beautiful beast, I thought, for some inexplicable reason.
Tears were flowing, the only beautiful thing in this dangerous place.
My vision was flooded with red.
*
Something warm pounced toward me in the sea of red. However, I felt no pain.
Fearfully, I ran my hand down my face and was met with an unbelievable sight.
Ergo was biting down on his own arm, his own flesh. Bright red blood flowed from his open mouth. His teeth trembled with force that seemed strong enough to break his bones.
“Ergo!”
His mouth was stained crimson like a clown’s nose, but his eyes were moist, like a child’s.
“Ergo! You fool!”
Mushiki had hardly finished speaking before there was a sickening sound. It was the sound of flesh being severed from Ergo’s bones, which shone white between the shocking amount of blood. The storm-washed deck was spattered with red.
Just like that, Ergo fell to the ground, and the spell on me was lifted. My mentor ran toward Ergo, possibly after being freed from the same spell.
“You resisted it, Ergo.”
“…I’m your student… after all…” His quavering voice only made the pain in my heart grow. “You must know…why I’m so hungry…”
“Those who eat the food of the underworld must not leave or eat anything else. It makes sense for the same to apply to a god devourer.”
Ergo smiled a strenuous smile.
“Haha… How embarrassing… You always catch me…embarrassing myself… Gray…”
I thought back to our encounter on the roof, his song, and his flustered expression.
—Don’t be afraid of ghosts
At the time, I had thought that the ghosts were actually gods, those unknown people inside him. …But what if they referred to his hunger? Hadn’t he struggled desperately to keep the urge to devour gods inside him? Rin said that he always seemed to be asleep. Was that so he could keep at bay the relentless hunger that had pursued him ever since he awoke?
So that was why my mentor commended him, and Ergo responded that it was because he was his student.
They had known since the very beginning, while I had tried to avoid it.
“Professor…if this goes on…I’ll lose control of my arms…”
“Not on my watch,” my mentor declared. “Think of the moon, Ergo.”
Gachirinkan.
In an instant, Ergo’s movements slowed. The bloodied young man did as my mentor had taught him and closed his eyes as if he had fallen asleep.
“Hey, hey! What are you doing?” Said the silver woman with an exaggerated sigh. “I expected better. I didn’t come here to watch you push water uphill with a rake, or however the saying goes.”
My mentor stood up and looked Mushiki squarely in the eye.
“…What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Asked the woman, tilting her head.
“Both you and the Alchemist have asked me to hand Ergo to you. But since you have gone through the trouble of deciding the order to attack him, you must have different goals.”
“Ah, well,” Mushiki said, clapping her hands together. “My wish is simple compared to the other two…It’s honestly a little embarrassing. I didn’t know I could still get embarrassed at this age. Perhaps there is some value in growing old, then.”
Though the word they used was the same, it seemed as if Ergo and the woman were talking about completely different things.
“I want to devour him.”
Her lips twisted, revealing show-white fangs brighter than a tiger’s, sharper than a wolf’s, and more threatening than both.
“…Devour him?”
“I suppose you could call it a food chain,” Mushiki explained casually, twirling her finger. “Ergo devours gods, and I devour Ergo. Isn’t that wonderful? He’s not just vintage wine but a crystallization of millennia of mystery. Not even the peaches of immortality can compare. You should feel proud that you’re going to be devoured.”
“Enough!”
Though even I was surprised to discover it was me who shouted it, I stepped forward, gripping my scythe with no intention of taking it back.
“Exactly, Gray,” said my mentor, also stepping forward and putting his hand on my shoulder. “He is my student, and your underclassman. Of course we cannot stand by and watch this nonsense.”
“Dear me, are the two of you serious?” Asked Mushiki with a face full of contempt. A gust of wind blew past and sent her white hair fluttering. “I might not know much about the modern age, but I can tell a mage’s skill level just by looking. You couldn’t do anything to help Latio, could you? Without your students, what can you do?”
“This is what I can do.” My mentor smiled a wry smile, took a breath, and made his intentions clear at last. “Like I said to Latio, I am a teacher. I keep thinking about ridding myself of the job, but it keeps coming back to me. And so, as a teacher, I will unravel the whodunnit of this mystery. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.”
“Huh,” said Mushiki, though I wasn’t sure whether she understood what my mentor said. “I see. So that’s what you’re trying to do. Don’t expect me to stand by and let you have your way, though.”
“Help us, Latin Crudelis Hiram,” my mentor shouted as the impaled bone giant looked on. “Regardless of your goal, we cannot let her take Ergo!”
“I don’t understand, Lord,” said the alchemist, shaking her head. “Why are you offering Latio your help? Were we not fighting you just now?”
“I’m just making the best use of what I have! It’s embarrassing to have to beg for help, isn’t it? But I don’t have another choice!”
Most people probably would have found my mentor’s answer laughable. But isn’t that how the weak fight? If you don’t want to curl up into a ball and cry, you must struggle with all the might you can muster.
Latio was silent for a moment before she stood up.
“…I shall. But only on Zheng He’s ship.”
“That is enough.”
“Oh? A temporary alliance?” Mushiki tilted her chin, revealing the blue patterns inked on her neck. The chains on her wrists jangled. “Good, more fun for me. Go on, keep trying. You won’t get anywhere.”
My heart pounded furiously in my chest. This was the first time I had ever been so scared. Though I had fought many times against opponents stronger than myself, the depths of her ability were completely impenetrable. My nerves stopped responding to my attempts at enhancement, and the handle of my scythe became slippery with sweat.
“Ergo, can you hear me?”
Even so, I heard a voice behind me.
“…Let us begin our one-on-one lesson.” Said my mentor calmly to the prone young man.
*
He was submerged in water.
He drifted in it.
He did not feel pain, only exhaustion that he had no desire to fight. He knew that something far scarier would come to replace the fatigue once it passed.
He hoped that he could stay like this forever.
Rin said they had found him floating in the ocean.
Now, he had simply returned.
He was sure that everyone else was fine.
No one was hurt. He didn’t have to worry about hurting them anymore. So all he needed to do was curl up and surrender his body to the tide.
Why, then, could he not sleep?
Why?
He didn’t know.
No amount of thinking gave him an answer.
He could only float along like a jellyfish subject to the will of the sea as he pondered the question in his hazy mind.
But just as he was finally about to give up on thinking, he heard a voice.
“….Let us begin our one-on-one lesson.”
(
…Ah…)
The memory of his promise surfaced.
Even if their relationship was only temporary, a student should naturally listen to a teacher’s class, and a student should naturally never be absent if the teacher is also there.
A faint light appeared in the water.
(…It must be the moon,) he thought.
Gachirinkan. Another word rose to the top of his mind. Perhaps this light was his mental image of the moon.
“Ergo.” Came the calm voice again.
“—And so, I indict the divine.”
*
It was as if we were under fire from a battleship.
With every blow, a shockwave rattled the deck. I could feel the ghost ship shudder beneath my feet, all hundred meters of it being tormented by a single person.
“Two steps toward eleven o’ clock!”
I heard Latio’s warning just in time for Mushiki’s fist to graze the back of my head. There was no time to worry about my hood; my entire body was sent rolling across the deck. Another command was shouted at me the moment I stood up again.
“One step toward six o’clock! Use your scythe! One step toward two o’clock!”
Her voice was not transmitted using telepathy. Something the alchemist gave me was sending sound directly into my inner ear, like bone-conduction earphones.
As we fought, Latio thrust her bone sword to allow me to escape whenever I had trouble keeping up. Thanks to her, I was barely able to resist. Regardless, we were firmly stuck on the defensive. Our opponent was like a storm, after all, and what could you do against one even if you were warned a few seconds before it was going to strike? Even a light blow from Mushiki’s perspective would spell certain death for me.
—Xian.
I understood the horror of that word for the first time.
At the same time, I also realized how impressive Latio’s ability to defend against her was. If not for her orders, how many times would I have died?
Even so, we were walking a tightrope— no, dancing on a spiderweb. The problem wasn’t that it could break at any moment, but that doing so was a challenge to the laws of physics.
“Ahaha, so two can manage what one cannot. Your agility is not bad, scythe girl. How about we see which one of us lasts the longest?”
I certainly didn’t think a battle of endurance was a good idea. One second spent fighting against her was like an hour. To survive her violence, every deadly blow, even a moment’s thought required all of my strength. I had to think desperately, move desperately, and fight desperately in order to survive the next second.
While this repeated again and again, I heard my mentor speak from behind me.
“First of all, the gods that you devoured, Ergo, could not have been random. The reason for this is simple. Gods are amalgamations of various attributes. Random combinations will surely repel each other.”
He had spoken of a similar concept in a lecture before. Since the concept of placing many gods into a container was improbable, there must be some sort of explanation.
“In this case, there are two clear similarities.”
Meanwhile, I launched myself from the tilted mast in order to block a palm strike from Mushiki. From the corner of my eye, I saw the mast snap from the shockwave her attacks generated. Following Latio’s instructions required not only absolute trust but also split-second decision making. Maybe it was also partly her calculations, but it made me feel like my brain was going to overheat.
“One is that the gods are associated with the sea. It cannot be a coincidence that you were found drifting at sea, not to mention your dreams. In fact, drifting on the sea is an attribute of the gods in many myths.”
Even in a situation like this, my mentor still managed to speak as if he was standing behind a pulpit, his voice ringing out across a quiet room.
“Some examples are Hiruko of the Far East and Njord from Norse mythology. Beliefs that consider castaways or washed-up objects as the embodiments of gods exist worldwide. Considering your dreams, I can surmise that the gods within you possess the attribute of the sea or water.”
(—Chains!)
They extended from Mushiki’s manacles.
I used my scythe to deflect them, and turned it back into box form just as it was about to be caught up in her chains. I had to avoid that at all costs. I had seen what happened to the bone giant Tangere when he was captured.
“Ihihihihi! Well this stinks, doesn’t it!”
Even Add’s voice had a trace of nervousness in it.
Amid all of this, my mentor continued.
“The other commonality is the hands,” my mentor said, raising a hand that he tried to steady. “There is no better clue than the hands you control. Like I said before, hands are a sign of evolution. It was the pressure of information from hands that turned apes into man.”
It was really so much like a one-on-one lesson.
(…Ah.)
Why did I suddenly feel like crying?
As I had always known, he was suited to this role, which was part detective and part surgeon. Yes, my mentor could only be a lecturer.
“To a god, hands represent infinite reach. In Asia, the compassion of Avalokiteshvara is represented in her thousand arms. On the other hand (TN: pun not intended), the hands of war deities like the Asura represent destruction. Therefore, if one has the hands of a god, one can reach information normally inaccessible to humans. In other words, they can reach new heights of evolution, which caused you to reach memory saturation… your creators should have predicted that this would happen. Didn’t Mushiki ask you about what you remember?”
—“Hahaha, so you remember me? Or perhaps I should say, have you not forgotten me?”
Indeed, the hawk had said such a thing. It must have been based upon the assumption that Ergo had lost his memory.
“In that case, the commonalities I mentioned should be the same. What if the three gods you ate have something to do with evolution?”
“Haha, what an interesting lecture!”
Mushiki closed one beautiful eye and laughed. Of course, she was engaging in high-speed battle as she did this. To her, I suppose it was like a mother chatting while trying to calm her child down.
“At the very least, I have to give you credit for giving such a pretentious speech in the midst of battle. But where will you go from there? There are as many gods on earth than there are stars in the sky. Do you think
this is going to narrow the list down? Actually, if you exclude the ones you can’t see from earth, I’m sure there are more gods than stars.”
I understood what she was saying.
After all, how many mythologies were there on earth, and how many gods did each one have? Just the North Star alone has different names in different cultures, and was tied to different deities. Using my mentor’s logic was like trying to identify a culprit based solely on their hair color and blood type.
My mentor nodded.
“I agree, it’s impossible. My current guess is only a summary of Ergo’s current situation. However, one of the gods has practically been given away already. It’s like a bonus question slipped into a test. Let us use it as the starting point for a more difficult problem.”
I had witnessed my mentor grumbling to himself as he tried to think of test questions more than a hundred times. Of course, I would be taking the test myself, so I always had to keep my distance. He was always rather miserable looking after a night spent working on them as a result, but his persistence was admirable. He often reminded us to consider the feelings of the person who came up with the questions.
“The question here is your name, Mushiki.”
“Oh?”
The woman’s eyebrow twitched slightly.
“In ancient China, under the rule of Yu the Great, one of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, there was a monster that was said to be invincible. It had the appearance of a monkey, the strength of nine elephants, a green body with a white head, snow-white fangs, and blazing eyes. While King Yu tried to control the floods of the Huaihe River, the monster caused great storms and summoned armies of monsters to disrupt him. King Yu was greatly troubled but eventually managed to capture it with the help of gods and dragons. He then bound it using special chains with golden bells attached.”
“Oh..!”
I gasped. My mentor’s description matched the woman exactly, aside from the part about the monkey. She had the same fiery eyes, golden bells, and chains.
In the midst of the raging waves, my mentor uttered the monster’s name.
“This monster’s name was Wuzhiqi.”
“……”
I saw a wry smile appear on the woman’s face.
“Which is to say, Mushiki. This monster is said to be the prototype of a divine figure that is still famous today. That is why the identity of one of the gods within Ergo can be guessed. Excuse my roundabout way of talking, but I had to explain it as such so Ergo could understand the process,” my mentor continued. “The monkey king of the Water Curtain Cave of Flowers and Fruit Mountain— you see? That name already contains water. That stone monkey, brought to life by the essence of nature, leaped into a waterfall and became the king of all manner of mythical beasts. Though this fact is often overshadowed by his role in journeying to the west to retrieve scripture, he is also a sort of water deity. This is evidenced by his prestige in the port city of Singapore.”
“Enough of this nonsense, Lord El-Melloi II!”
Mushiki raised her voice for the first time. She slid between the crossfire and approached my mentor quite literally in the blink of an eye— right on time to meet me launching myself at her.
“Now, Gray!” Latio instructed me according to her predictions.
“Add! Remove first stage restrictions!”
“Damn it! I don’t think I can take this monster head-on!”
My scythe transformed into a giant shield. Forcing my way in, I blocked the woman’s attack.
In spite of the shield, my body strained under the impact even though I had reinforced it to its limit. The strike was both magical and physical, piercing into the minute gaps between my bones and my flesh.
“Reverse!”
As I shouted the incantation, the magical energy turned into flames and turned against my opponent.
“So you can even take my Shentoujin
[5]?”
The woman clicked her tongue and batted at the flames, striding forward all the while. I was more surprised than her. Even though I sent eighty percent of what Add defended back at her, she had only flinched.
My mentor was still a distance away, but he would die as soon as Mushiki laid even a finger on him.
“Sir!”
Before my warning could leave my mouth, a green gemstone was thrown beside her.
“
Release, storm, strike!
Ich werde Sie gehen lassen. Sturm, der umstürzt—!
”
It was emerald magecraft, and the storm it summoned managed to knock Mushiki off her feet.
“Rin!”
“…Xian or not, I refuse to be underestimated…”
She looked up, pale after being smacked into the mast.
Though Mushiki remained unharmed, this move at least bought us some time. And even in the middle of such a battle, my mentor stood in place.
“…It seems that I’m still utterly useless even after all this time. The title of Lord doesn’t change a thing. But apparently, there are still some things I can do.”
My mentor chucked at his own weakness. He was still trembling as he had been since the beginning, and I remembered why I was able to continue fighting.
It was because he was more scared than I was. He was not the heroic sort of person. He was weak, cunning, selfish, and sometimes so kind it was ridiculous. And yet, all I wanted was to stand alongside him.
If he wanted to fight, I would do the same.
“I, Lord El-Melloi II, am the inquisitor and shall reveal the god’s name,” my mentor announced.
This was the whodunnit. Who was the culprit— or perhaps the very opposite, who had been devoured?
“Your name, O God that Ergo devoured, is—”
——
[1] Now, if I was going to be consistent about romanizing names, I should put the surname last, but that feels needlessly confusing.
[2] Also called the Hegemon’s Lament, specifically the line “Ah Yu, my Yu, what will be your fate?” (虞兮虞兮奈若何)
[3] Xian = Xianren = hermit. I chose the former because these are more than people who’ve decided to hole up in some mountains.
[4] This is hardly an ideal translation. 火眼金睛 (lit. Fiery eyes, golden gaze) refers to the magic eyes of Sun Wukong, which allow him to tell monsters from human beings.
[5] Some kind of martial arts technique meant to cause internal bleeding or something.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Comun
