CHAPTER 4
THE FINAL BATTLE IV
Dirk Eberwein, the Tyrant, was staring at several air-windows inside his airship cabin.
He was, of course, keeping an eye on the plan. Like Madiath, he was equipped to monitor every section of Asterisk in real time using the cameras installed in the Valiant puppets.
At the moment, everything was going smoothly and yet falling apart at the same time. That was because Dirk had betrayed the Golden Bough Alliance. If the situation continued like this, it would end half-accomplished, half-failed.
And that was precisely what Dirk wanted.
A world without winners.
He didn’t believe that such a thing would ever be truly realized, but he could strive to get as close to that ideal as possible.
That was why he had intentionally passed on valuable intel to Eishirou and encouraged Ayato and the others to go after Varda and Madiath.
“…Well, it’s not like they’ll get the drop on Madiath and Varda.”
So long as Ayato and his comrades were forced to act in small groups, their odds of victory remained slim.
Varda aside, they would never defeat Madiath. He had the highest affinity with the Raksha-Nada Dirk had ever seen.
Ayato and his friends had already fulfilled their role.
At this point, the sooner they were dead and out of the picture, the better.
“If there’s a problem here, it’s Orphelia,” Dirk grumbled as he expanded the air-window showing the ongoing championship match. “She’s having a harder time than I expected…”
He had to admit that not even he had anticipated the princess’s raw tenacity.
Nonetheless, the difference in strength between the two was clear as day. Orphelia’s victory was inevitable. It wouldn’t be long before she snatched it.
And that would mark the end of Asterisk.
Dirk snorted as he gazed at the skyscrapers towering outside his window.
Soon, everyone who called this place home would perish, and the city itself would sink beneath the waves.
Oh, how good it felt.
If he could witness its destruction from beginning to end, perhaps it would ease the disgust and loathing that burned within him, if only a fraction.
But such thoughts were pointless. He clicked his tongue, just as the airship suddenly jolted to one side.
“…I don’t like that shaking. That’s no air current.”
Snapping his fingers, he called for his bodyguards—but as time passed, they failed to appear.
In addition to Dirk, there were two others aboard the airship. Both guards were his protégés, each exceptionally skilled and unaffiliated with Grimalkin. One was responsible for piloting the airship, the other for security.
Out of options, Dirk clicked his tongue again and stepped out of the room.
He was well aware that Ayato and his buddies were tailing him, but it would be practically impossible for them to reach him here. In which case—
He headed for the cockpit, mulling over this possibility. And there he found the first of his bodyguards lying in a pool of blood. Should he assume that the other had been eliminated as well?
Even after Dirk realized that he, a regular human, was the only one left standing, he kept his calm.
If he was going to die no matter what, there was no need to disgrace himself with an act of cowardice.
“Tch! Useless bastards…!” he cursed, pushing his bodyguard aside to sit in the pilot’s seat.
For a man of his skills, controlling an aircraft like this was child’s play.
Whatever he did, he first had to land the vessel safely.
But just then—
“Huh…?”
The chair’s shadow coalesced into a blade, piercing him through the abdomen.
“This ability…Gold Eye Number Seven?”
Grimacing in pain, he glanced around and spotted the figure of a man slowly coming into view by the door, as though seeping out from the shadows themselves. When he was an agent at Grimalkin, Gold Eye Number Seven, Wernher, had worked for him.
Several years ago, Dirk had ordered Wernher to execute a strategy to entrap Ayato during the Phoenix. Ultimately, the operation had failed, and Wernher was supposed to have been killed in action…
“You survived? Why didn’t you come back?” he demanded.
Wernher offered no answers.
Well, he was an agent in an intelligence organization, so that made sense. But Dirk soon realized that there was another reason for his silence.
His eyes were as empty as glass beads. There was no sign of human will or independent thought behind them.
I know that look. Varda must have completely brainwashed him… Which I guess means Madiath sent him here.
Not that he had been dispatched per se. This was probably a contingency plan in case Dirk ever betrayed the alliance or started acting against its interests. Varda would never have come up with a ploy like this, which meant that it was obviously Madiath’s doing.
“Hmph! So you’re the one who scooped him up, Madiath… No wonder he never made it back to base.”
A fresh blade appeared in Wernher’s hand, aimed for Dirk’s throat.
Slumped back in his chair as he was, Dirk had no interest in trying to dodge it—though, of course, it would have been impossible anyway. But the weapon stopped just before it could slice through his throat. Wernher suddenly clutched his head in apparent pain.
“Ah… So Varda lost, then?”
If Varda was destroyed, her brainwashing would lose all effect.
The timing was ironic, but this didn’t yet mean that he was in the clear.
The blood loss from his gut wound was already blurring his vision.
In this state, there was no way that he would be able to fly an airship. Heck, he would probably soon lose consciousness.
“Damn it…! To think I’d die before I could see this wretched city fall…!”
Without a pilot, the airship slowly lost altitude, approaching the surface of the lake.
In simple terms, Julis’s Queen of the Night move was a special technique for converting mana into prana.
Prana and mana were elements with a high degree of affinity. Dantes and Stregas used prana as an intermediary to manipulate mana, so it went without saying that the two operated hand in hand. This was what Julis believed, but it wasn’t simply her opinion—mainstream theories held that prana was an adapted form of mana, made to operate more effectively within the human body.
If that was the case, Julis thought it stood to reason that one might be able to lean on their commonalities to wield mana as though it were prana. However, that would require a device to convert the former into the latter. When it came to exerting fine control over prana and also functioning as an excellent medium, there was only one entity that came to mind—the human body.
That’s right: Julis’s Queen of the Night technique used her own body as a conversion device—which was precisely why Xinglou had described her as the biggest fool in the last several hundred years. Should the conversion process fail and worse come to worst, her physical body could very well disintegrate. Even if it succeeded, there was a good chance that she would burn herself during the process, since her power took the form of flames. In fact, she had come within a hair’s breadth of losing her life several times just perfecting this move. If not for her time at the Liangshan and the presence of Xinglou Fan as her teacher, she would probably have wound up dead long before ever working out how to perform it.
And despite the huge risk, the technique’s effects lasted for only twelve seconds. She had tried to extend that limit through trial and error, but found it impossible. A flower that bloomed for one night only would inevitably wilt come morning.
Its effect, however, was enormous.
Like this, for example:
“Burst into bloom—Longiflorum, Multiflos!”
After activating her Queen of the Night, Julis immediately deployed her Strelitzia wings and soared into the air, then summoned countless spears of bluish-white flames, each one of them longer than her own body. There must have been more than fifty of them in total.
Those spears, in the shape of Easter lilies, launched like missiles, burning through everything in their path.
Orphelia moved to block them with her arms of ominous miasma, but the flaming white flower spears tore straight through them, blowing them away.
“Ngh!”
Orphelia didn’t attempt to block them with her bare hands, as she usually would, instead falling backward. She must have realized the extent of Julis’s power the moment she saw it. In fact, with her current firepower, she ought to be strong enough to break through all of Orphelia’s defenses.
Practically pursuing her, spears of white flame rained down one after another, pillars of fire bursting across the stage. But Orphelia’s physical abilities were astonishing, and Julis was unable to corner her.
And then—
“Burst into bloom—Anemone Coronaria!”
More than a dozen huge flaming flowers, each of which could easily be mistaken for a miniature sun, appeared suddenly in midair.
In this state, Julis could easily perform countless large-scale moves in rapid succession, and even execute them simultaneously.
This was because she could use all the mana around her as her own prana. In essence, Queen of the Night gave Julis the same unlimited store of prana available to Orphelia.
That also meant Julis could pour as much prana as she liked into each technique—so long as she didn’t overload them to the point of collapse, that is. The potency of her moves was now on a totally different level.
A solar flower of roiling flame, its diameter well over ten meters wide, attacked Orphelia, surrounding her. The heat alone would probably have rendered any ordinary Genestella unconscious.
With a time limit of only twelve seconds, Julis could probably pull off only three moves. Half of the Queen of the Night flowers shining behind her had already withered.
If possible, she wanted to finish Orphelia off with her next move.
“Nim a Jimuna.”
“…?!”
Right then, like a geyser erupting, a huge mass of black liquid spewed out around Orphelia—completely vaporizing the fireball that threatened to burn everything away.
A liquefied gas…!
The miasma must have been compressed to liquefy it, and once in that state, its density was completely different. Even with Julis’s current firepower, she didn’t think she could break through it.
If this had been the Orphelia of a few moments ago, the match would already have been decided. It seemed that, at full power, Orphelia was a monster beyond Julis’s wildest imagination.
Julis, however, was the same.
Three seconds left! One more move!
Julis’s fireball and Orphelia’s liquefied gas annihilated each other, and as the resulting steam enveloped them, Julis dashed as quickly as she could straight for her opponent.
Right now, she possessed unparalleled physical strength, since her body was imbued with inexhaustible prana. She could even move her broken right arm without any difficulty.
Orphelia was clearly taken by surprise. She probably hadn’t expected this speed.
“Burst into bloom—Magnolia Grandiflora!”
She put her hands together, aiming straight for Orphelia’s chest, and no sooner had she called out the words than a bright flash of white engulfed her vision, followed by a blinding explosion.
A superpowered attack delivered at close range.
The explosion, which would usually have swallowed the whole stage, had been compressed down to the size of a few petals—producing a technique of absolute destructive potential, only possible while her Queen of the Night was deployed.
Immediately after releasing it, the flowers behind Julis’s back withered away, and the strength quickly drained from her body. Her hair, which the technique had paled, returned to a rosy pink, while her body stung with a lattice of burns.
After using Queen of the Night, her prana was almost totally depleted. The aftereffects were a little less severe each time she used it, though she couldn’t pin down precisely why. This time, too, she seemed to have slightly more prana left over than on the last occasion, though it was still less than one tenth of the usual amount.
“…Wh-whoa! S-sorry, everyone! Watching all that unfold so quickly, I guess I was at a loss for words! But enough about me dropping the ball on the live commentary…er, what do you think, Zaharoula?”
“Assuming it actually made contact, even Orphelia Landlufen should have taken damage from that last attack. The fact that the match still hasn’t been decided must mean that her school crest hasn’t been damaged and she hasn’t lost consciousness… But I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been downed.”
As the voices of the commentator and analyst washed over her, Julis suppressed the urge to collapse and trained her eyes on the roiling dust cloud, trying to see past it.
And sure enough, she could see the faint silhouette of Orphelia, her knees on the ground.
“Whoa! Orphelia is still alive and well, though she’s taken considerable damage! She’s down on her knees!”
Her Le Wolfe uniform was torn apart here and there, her exposed skin red and swollen.
Even so, her expression betrayed neither anger nor pain nor frustration. Rather, it was dominated by quiet resignation and sorrow. But for the briefest of moments, a glimmer of faint, unvanquished desire seemed to flash across her face, contradicting her usual emotions.
“…That was good, Julis,” she began in a calm, slightly hoarse voice. “I’m impressed. The strength of your destiny…and its opposition to mine here and now…there must be some meaning behind it. So please…don’t let this be the end.”
“…?!”
Julis was speechless.
“You, your destiny—they’ve pushed me to this. So you’ll have to take responsibility until the very end. Now, shall we continue?”
Orphelia stood up unsteadily, fixing Julis with her crimson gaze.
“H-hmph…! You’re in no state to talk like that,” Julis said. “I’m well aware this applies to both of us, but I think you’ve already reached your limit. There’s no need to keep pushing yourself, right…?”
“Limit…? You say the strangest things, Julis. There is no limit to my—to Orphelia Landlufen’s destiny.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than a thin miasmic tendril rose from Orphelia’s feet, gently grazing her neck.
“Ga ra Tuul.”
Orphelia’s body trembled, tensing up.
“Ah… Ah… Aaah…!”
Her eyes widened, and she glanced overhead, sobs spilling from her mouth as blood foamed up from her throat.
“What…? What are you doing, Orphelia?!”
Without responding, Orphelia seemed to grow weak, before turning bloodshot eyes on Julis. Blood vessels and veins were visible all across her body, pulsing violently.
“Orphelia! What was that?!” Julis cried again. Orphelia merely shook her head weakly.
“…You know what they say,” she began at last. “How something can be both poison and medicine? Just like how toxic plants have been used to make healing tonics. That was a technique to force my body to keep moving, even if it kills me.”
By the time she finished speaking, Orphelia was no longer staggering. By all appearances, the damage that she had sustained earlier was gone—in fact, she seemed to be gaining yet more strength.
“…Th-that’s insane! Cut it out, Orphelia! Why are you…?!”
Julis cried out as rage welled up inside her, but she shut her mouth as soon as she saw Orphelia’s face. Swallowing her words, she bit her lip so hard that she drew blood.
To anyone else watching, Orphelia’s expression must have looked the same as ever. Resignation, grief, lamentation were all there, covering it.
But to Julis, and only her, there was something more.
“If you want to stop my destiny—”
“…Yeah, I know. I know.”
How many times had she heard those words?
But now she understood.
All this time, Orphelia had been telling her to stop this.
The tears in Julis’s eyes were the result of her own ineptitude. She looked down, wiped them away with the back of her hand, and reaffirmed her resolve.
“I’ll stop you, Orphelia. I’ll crush that stupid destiny of yours.”
“Do it, Julis. If you can,” Orphelia responded quietly.
Julis was already covered in wounds.
Her injuries wouldn’t keep her from moving, but crucially, her prana was running out.
What should she do?
She didn’t need to think very hard to know she had only one option.
I’ll have to use my Queen of the Night again…!
But that was something Xinglou had expressly forbidden.
“Do you hear me? Once you’ve used that technique, you need to give yourself at least a full day’s rest before trying it again. Otherwise, your body won’t be able to endure it. If you don’t obey this warning, that one-night flower of yours will wither without ever opening its bud.”
In other words, if she tried to use it again right away, it would inevitably fail.
And if it failed, that would mean certain death for Julis.
But I can’t give up now…!
Julis took a deep breath, made up her mind, and drew on her prana.
Even if it meant crumbling to dust, if she couldn’t save her friend, what else would she ever accomplish?
Her most treasured partner—that day, he had told her that he would do anything in his power to protect her, to be her strength.
Julis wanted to do the same for Orphelia.
“Bloom—”
But just as she was about to convert the prana coursing within her, her body was enveloped in raging hellfire.
“Gaaarrrggghhh!”
She hadn’t activated Queen of the Night—a breakdown had occurred in the conversion process.
“Wh-what’s going on here?! Riessfeld’s burning up, literally!”
“…Her prana is out of control. This is bad…”
While the scorching flames burned her body, Julis fought desperately to bring her prana under control, but nothing was working. Her fire resistance seemed to be doing nothing, and she had to stop breathing to keep from inhaling the flames.
A-at this rate…!
“I’m sorry, Julis… But I won’t show you any mercy…”
Staring at her opponent, Orphelia solemnly wove her miasma into a potent arm and swung it down. If she let herself get crushed, Julis knew it would be the end of the line.
“Gah… Argh…!”
Even so, she focused her attention exclusively on her prana. She would fight it until the very end.
And then—
Wh-what…?
All of a sudden, her consciousness was flung into a void.
Below her was a huge blue planet.
And around it, innumerable stars.
She was floating, she realized, in distant space.
No… It can’t be… This place…
She understood at once.
This was the world known as the other side.
A galaxy overflowing with mana.
A universe in which gods existed.
…!
And she could tell that a being of incomparable immensity had sensed her, despite how tiny she felt.
But before the entity could touch her consciousness, Julis was dragged back to her own reality.
She gazed at the miasmic arm about to drop down and crush her, as though time had stopped.
Her thoughts were still in chaos.
She vaguely comprehended that a hole had opened up in her mind for the briefest of moments, connecting her to the other side. The hole had been quickly closed, but thanks to that, her consciousness was safe.
And through that momentary encounter, she had reached an intuitive understanding of the true nature of mana and prana. She knew the breath of God, the essence of all things.
I can do this now.
She would pay the price for it, but that was okay.
If it meant winning this match, the sacrifice would be worth it.
“Bloom—Queen of the Night, Multiflos.”
The second she murmured those words, time started moving again.
Behind her, twelve queen of the night flowers unfurled their petals like in a mandala.
Twelve seconds and twelve flowers—in other words, she had been afforded a hundred and forty-four seconds. She didn’t know what would come afterward, nor did she care.
As Julis became one with the pale flames, the miasmic arm approached to crush her, only to be instantly sliced in half by a huge blazing sword.
“Burst into bloom—Gladiolus.”
Swinging the blood from her sword, Julis murmured the name of her next technique.
“…I see. So you’ve seen the other side…!”
Orphelia was visibly surprised, but she seemed to understand everything.
A slight smile appeared on her face.
Without responding, Julis rose up into the sky and called out at the top of her voice:
“Burst into bloom—Antirrhinum Majus, Multiflos!”
The flaming dragon, infused with enormous prana thanks to her Queen of the Night, swooped down on Orphelia, rearing its seven heads.
“Ku gar ilulu yankashiw.”
The next moment, a jet-black dragon forged from Orphelia’s miasma rose to meet it head on.
Pure white flames and pitch-black miasma collided, beginning a fierce struggle.
“Wh-what a contest! This is incredible! I have no words except to say this is totally incredible!”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Yes! I’ve always, always wanted to see a fight like this!”
But neither Mico’s nor Zaharoula’s voice reached Julis’s ears.
At that moment, everything but Orphelia had faded from her consciousness.
The dragons’ duel ended in a draw, and both exploded like a barrage of fireworks, leaving behind scattered sparks and wisps of miasma.
“Burst into bloom—Saururus Gregarious!”
With a wave of her arm, countless white lizard’s tail flowers rose up across the stage then exploded all at once.
This attack had an enormous range, and it obliterated the battlefield.
Orphelia leaped up into the air to evade, and Julis took aim at her, unleashing another attack: “Burst into bloom—Erythrina!”
With that, hundreds of flaming swords appeared overhead, surrounding Orphelia in midair.
Julis had surmised that Orphelia lacked the ability to fly. If she could, she wouldn’t have waited this long to reveal it.
In which case, it should be impossible for her to dodge this next strike.
“…Ningishzida.”
But Orphelia ensnared the fiery blades with a barrage of tentacles emerging from empty air—no doubt made up of the same liquefied gas that she had employed earlier.
Not only that, but the space around Julis began to distort, too, and more tentacles lashed out at her.
“Tch!”
In her current state, Julis had the speed to deal with them—but the fact that they had appeared suddenly and out of nowhere was a bad sign. She managed to pull away with a flap of her wings, but then—
“Uh-oh…!”
By the time Julis realized what was happening, Orphelia was already using the tentacles as a foothold, her right arm stretched out toward the sky.
This will be a big one…!
“…Gugalanna!”
A huge amount of miasma formed a dark cloud near the top of the stage, falling directly toward Julis in a terrifying torrent, as though several huge waterfalls had been bundled together.
“Burst into bloom—Redcrown Breeding!”
Julis’s next technique’s pentagonal petals, strengthened in the nick of time, shielded her like an umbrella, holding the miasma at bay.
The world lost all color as a terrifying roar filled the air.
Even now, Julis continued to manipulate her prana, pushing it ever wider, ever deeper.
Her opponent, it seemed, was doing the same.
As soon as the cascading miasma subsided, both fighters’ voices overlapped, echoing across the stage.
“Burst into bloom—Rose Odysseia Garden!”
“…Erragal!”
Julis’s technique summoned small flaming roses, the same type that had won her match against Xiaohui Wu. They were around the size of small fists, but with the added effects of her Queen of the Night, they were powerful enough to break through all of Orphelia’s defenses.
These flowers contained the memories that the two of them had nurtured in the orphanage’s greenhouse together.
The same precious flower was embroidered on her handkerchief, the one that had set everything in motion.
And those roses—thousands of them, sparkling like stars—began to fill the stage.
Meanwhile, a huge quantity of miasma engulfed Orphelia, taking on the appearance of a malevolent god. It had to be over thirty meters tall, with a skeletal head and a horrifying, wraithlike body.
“Burn!”
Julis issued her order, and the roses flew straight for the underworld titan as more explosions than could possibly be counted lit up across the stage. But the giant paid them no heed, reaching out to crush her.
Julis quickly sped up to dodge it, but the titan pursued her with a speed unthinkable for something so huge. Meanwhile, roses of flame continued to burst in every direction, chipping away at the giant’s body, though they seemed no more effective than a volley of cannonballs fired at a mountain.
“In that case…!”
Julis concentrated her fire on the titan’s abdomen.
At last, the figure’s miasmic body was wearing away.
The titan writhed in agony and turned its gaping eyes—or rather, its empty sockets—toward her.
A chill ran down Julis’s spine and she raced to fall back, when a ray of super-compressed miasma shot out from the creature’s eye, carving the stage in two.
She had dodged the beam in the nick of time, but it had severed her wings, and she lost control. She crashed into the stage, which was now reduced to rubble.
At the same time, the hellish titan disintegrated, melting away from the stomach as Orphelia crawled out.
Julis had less than thirty seconds left before her Queen of the Night reached its limit.
She would have to settle this.
Both she and Orphelia staggered to their feet, panting, and locked eyes.
They had both realized it.
No technique would be enough to decide this contest.
In stoic silence, the two approached each other—and then, in the blink of an eye, they kicked the ground and struck out with their fists, using all their strength.
Julis’s punch landed in the pit of Orphelia’s stomach.
Orphelia’s struck her in the face.
Both of them now had inexhaustible prana, and they lashed out at each other with fully charged strikes.
Before either could so much as groan, they were both blown away, rolling and tumbling over the ground.
But they quickly rose back to their feet, Julis wiping the blood from her battered nose, Orphelia spitting up blood as she fixed her opponent with a glare.
Both hits had hurt. Of course they had.
Both of them would have concentrated their prana to maximize their defenses, but those boosts wouldn’t be able to match their increased attack power.
In all likelihood, neither would be able to withstand the next blow.
Julis understood. This was a fight—a fight between two children.
“Juuuuuliiiiisssss!”
“Orpheliaaaaa!”
Screaming out each other’s names, they let their fists fly once more.
This time, they both dealt heavy blows to each other’s flank.
Their voices were replaced with airy pants as they each buckled at the knees, leaning against the other.
“…Hey, Orphelia?” Julis asked.
“…What, Julis?” Orphelia’s voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible.
“Don’t you think…this is getting ridiculous?”
“…I agree.”
“Then we’d better wrap things up,” Julis said, summoning the last of her strength.
“…”
As Orphelia knelt, staring up at her, Julis raised her hand high into the air.
“This is payback…Orphelia.”
The next moment, she slapped her hard across the cheek.
A soft, audible smack reverberated across the stage.
Orphelia curled up in surprise, then opened her eyes as though on the verge of tears. Just like that, she fell flat on her back as the tears began to spill out, joined by the sound of laughter.
“You win, Julis.”
“Orphelia Landlufen—forfeit.”
“End of battle! Winner: Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld!”
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