Ishura - Volume 6 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 - Sparked Fire

The flames engulfing the city were growing ever stronger.

Mixed with the deafening roars of wood splintering and iron bursting, she could hear the sounds of water being pumped to fight the flames from afar.

But she had made it in time.

“Hrn, hnaaaah!”

Both of Tu the Magic’s slender arms gripped chunks of tower rubble and tossed it aside.

The piled-up debris that had trapped the man who had failed to evacuate in time was now being cleared away faster than Gigant construction work. The man coughed from the heat that abruptly gusted in from the depression in the ground surface.

“…You’re a lucky guy. Seems like both of your legs are broken, but that’s a small price to pay for your life, right?” murmured Shalk, gazing at the events off to the side.

Most likely, the debris that Tu had just tossed away had been the wreckage of a water tower.

The heat of the flames was nullified by the huge quantity of water, and by being pinned underneath the rubble, he had just barely managed to get through without inhaling a lethal amount of smoke. Tu felt glad that he was saved.

Shalk the Sound Slicer shouldered the man on his back before anyone said another word.

“…Tu, I can leave this up to you, yeah?”

“Yup!”

A bullet flew from beyond the other side of the flames. She could see it.

Tu stopped the bullet aimed at Shalk with the palm of her hand.

It was something Rique the Misfortune had taught her. Using not just the central point of her line of sight but the vicinity around it to pick up on signs of an attack.

It appeared to be a magic bullet containing some sort of toxin, but it didn’t have any effect on Tu’s body.

“I’m so glad I was able to save him!”

“Here, take this. I’ll be back soon.”

Shalk handed what looked like a metallic pipe over to Tu and rushed outside of the district with tremendous speed.

Since she could still visually track him, he must have been holding back to ensure it didn’t have adverse effects for the man on his back.

For the time being, she would have to keep Alus from attacking from the sky, until Shalk and the man could withdraw to the safe zone.

“All right, come at me, Alus! This thing’ll…,” Tu shouted, waving around the strange metal pipe she had taken from Shalk in the air.

“…What is this thing anyway?”

Two bullets landed one right after another.

On her flank, the flames assailed her, seemingly alive as they moved, and Tu reflexively shook them off with her arm. The shapeless flames flickered slightly from the gust following Tu’s attack but broke through the winds and burned Tu’s body.

“Whoa!”

Ground Runner, making a direct hit on Tu, had already incorporated itself in the mass of fire, now fed by a whole city of kindling. The threat it now posed was incomparable to when it had just recently been kindled. Its flames now brought instant death, but nevertheless…

“…I don’t really get what’s going on here!”

Half of her clothes had been burned away. There wasn’t a single scratch on her pale, soft skin.

Her bare feet smacking the ground, she raced through the flames like a humongous house cat.

“Give back my treasure…”

“Ah, so as long as I have this thing, Alus’ll come after me! That’s gotta be it!”

A rifle shot swooped down toward her. Tu saw it and then dodged.

The next attack was already waiting for her.

“Nhn!”

A mass of mud, reminiscent of a meteorite, hit her directly. The projectiles from Rotting Soil Sun weren’t aiming to cause destruction, but to crush Tu’s torso under its mass. But Tu’s physical strength alone was able to endure the impact.

“Alus!”

Raising her voice, she asserted her presence while guiding Alus toward the center of the conflagration, to prevent the damage from spreading further. Unlike Shalk’s battle, every one of Alus’s attacks hit his target; however, Tu wasn’t bothered by any of them.

She had another reason for heading into the center of the flames. To see if there were any other survivors who hadn’t escaped yet.

She would be happy if there were other lives that Tu could save, like when she had saved Sephite long ago.

“Why…why are you doing such a thing?! All of them, everyone was living their lives…! They didn’t harm you or anything at all! There were a whole lotta them that didn’t even know how to fight, you know! I—”

She found a child’s arm lying on the ground. Tu went to grab their hand, but the child’s face and torso had already been reduced to black ash. It was no longer possible to determine if it had been a girl or a boy.

“……!”

“None of that stuff…really matters…does it?”

A cold voice came down to her from the skies.

“The ones who don’t put up a fight are easier… I want treasure…not enemies.”

“…Why do you want treasure?”

“……?”

“Collecting stupid treasure all by yourself when you don’t even have anyone to brag about it with! Is that what makes you happy?!”

She sank down really low, as if her whole body were a spring. The movement took only a second.

She threw a chunk of rubble with all her might.

Alus rotated in midair, easily evading the piece of debris flying at subsonic speeds. Yet Tu in that moment hadn’t been trying to lure him anyway, but to close the distance to attack.

Leaping solely with her physical strength, she kicked off the wall of a crumbling tower, tracing an arc like a beam of light.

“…! Alus!”

She had closed in on her enemy, getting barely within arm’s reach of the wyvern in midair, with her physical strength alone.

With her unanticipated and explosive power output, her hand attempted to grab the tip of his wing.

“Kio’s Hand.”

In that moment, Alus had already started to unleash his whip.

The magic whip bent and smacked soundly into Tu’s exposed stomach.

“Hng!”

But naturally, the attack didn’t manage to slice through Tu’s invincible body.

But he reaction from the impact knocked Alus ever so slightly away from Tu’s leaping path.

In his very close, yet definitely out of reach, position, Alus readied his gun barrel.

These were the fighting tactics of the world’s strongest rogue.

“Magic tree bullet…”

Together with the gunshot, Tu crashed down from the air.

“Nhn…!”

“…Rotting Soil Sun.”

The mud masses from Rotting Soil Sun rained down in quick succession where she fell. From among the huge muddy mass, abnormally growing tree branches began to sprout forth. Tu the Magic was being imprisoned within the root structure, complexly intertwined inside the muck. Mud continued to pour endlessly into the spot where Tu had landed.

“Consider the source; take countermeasures… Consider the source; take countermeasures… Consider the source; take countermeasures.”

The invulnerable being that remained unharmed after any and every kind of attack would not be so easily killed.

Until Alus accomplished his goal, he would ensure she couldn’t move whatsoever.

There was a percussive sound.

“…An attack…”

The mud mountain burst open from within.

Another percussive sound echoed.

Cracks formed in the dirt mound, and a massive chunk of it was sent flying.

“…like this…is nothing for me!”

Tu the Magic’s physical body itself was her strongest weapon. She was what Izick the Chromatic had considered to be the perfect combat life-form, and she possessed physical abilities that surpassed that of dragons, even as her whole body was entangled in dirt and roots.

She wrapped herself in a street stall’s tent that had escaped the fire, in place of her own clothes, which she had lost in the fierce attacks.

“If there’s some magic item that can stop me…go ahead and try, Alus…!”

She would stop Alus here. She had to.

Tu had had enough of tragedy. The scene of the kingdom she had lost was still fresh in her mind.

…Think. I gotta think. I’m not smart. So if I try to attack him, he’s definitely gonna predict my moves. My attacks won’t harm him, and I think…Alus will probably learn from watching how I act, and then…he might decide he can’t kill me and try to flee.

Tu needed to do something about the situation she knew was coming, but she couldn’t think up a strategy. She was using the pipe Shalk had handed her as bait to keep Alus around, but if he ever managed to get away, that would be the same as defeat to her. No matter how Tu used her mighty physical abilities, Alus, with his flight mastery, was faster.

“One more attack might—”

“You planning on fighting him alone?” came a voice from right beside her.

A place that, up until just a second ago, had been completely devoid of any presence at all.

“Ah!”

Faster than Tu could process, she was joined by a skeleton cloaked in dark green rags.

“Shalk!”

“I told you I’d be back soon, didn’t I?”

Shalk the Sound Slicer was twirling his white spear like a windmill and brandishing it low.

He spoke provocatively to the sky above.

“Sorry, Alus the Star Runner. But it’s two on one from here on out.”

“Okay… Is that because…you can’t win by yourselves?”

“Who knows? The two of us might be more than enough.”

There was once a phenomenon called the Particle Storm that ravaged country after country.

Even compared to this Particle Storm, self-proclaimed demon kings, and dragon attacks of legend, the single wyvern Alus the Star Runner was the worst calamity in all of recorded history.

The biggest reason was his speed.

Even Lithia’s air force, supposedly boasting absolute air supremacy, couldn’t fully utilize their air defense network in the face of Alus the Star Runner’s lightning speed invasion and were only able to intercept this singular wyvern on Lithia’s home soil. At the time, Alus the Star Runner hadn’t even utilized his ace in the hole of combining his magic items together to reduce an entire city to ash.

The current situation, with Alus the Star Runner being held up in the first district he attacked in Aureatia, itself a far wider area to defend than Lithia, was a truly miraculous outcome. Forcing him to relentlessly use Rotting Soil Sun and Ground Runner in combat didn’t give him any time to use his combination attack a second time.

I mean, we’ve done a damn good job. Enough to ask for four times the reward from Aureatia; that’s for sure.

But simply containing him was no longer enough.

Giving up a fight just because his enemy remained high in the sky, regenerated even fatal wounds, and possessed invincible defensive abilities brought Shalk’s pride into the mix.

If running around and evading nonstop was all that was needed to win, then no one in the world could rival Shalk the Sound Slicer. However, using skill, strength, or strategy to overwhelm an enemy and silence them was the stuff of true victory.

“Tu, I have an idea. A strategy, even. We’ll need to attack his blind spot, but… You understand where I’m going with this?”

“Stra…tegy…?”

“That’s a no, then.”

Ground Runner once again assailed them, as if to divide the pair.

Shalk evaded fast enough for his figure to disappear completely, and Tu didn’t flinch as she was bathed in hellfire.

Even as the fabric she draped over herself was half incinerated, Tu rolled underneath the rubble, where Shalk had hid himself. It could serve as somewhat of a safe zone and allow them a few brief moments to speak.

“I can help! Just tell me what you need me to do!”

“Do you know what types of magic items that guy’s got?”

“Uh, a whip, mud, some fire…and the Greatshield of the Dead. My attacks don’t do anything to it.”

“…Talking about that magic necklace of his? So you actually know its name, then?”

“Yeah, a long time ago I sorta became familiar with it. He uses a whole bunch of different bullets, too. I mean, just now he shot one that started sprouting all these branches and stuff. If a normal person was hit by one of those, they’d probably shrivel up and die.”

“There’s got to be a limit to the magic bullets. They’re ammunition, after all.”

Shalk was proud of how much he’d managed to do by himself in that regard.

The magic lightning bullets must have been a trump card for Alus the Star Runner, and not something he used multiple times over the course of a fight. Shalk had already made him fire four shots of his limited ammunition.

“He’s got a regenerating ability that repairs his wounds. The magic item that allows him to do that must be embedded in his body somewhere… I don’t know what part of his we have to destroy to kill him once and for all. But Alus still has his sight and his hearing, and he’s thinking about our moves and counteracting them. You know what that means?”

“What does it mean?”

“That he even if he looks like a monster, he’s still got a brain. Or at least there’s an organ in there that serves as the center of his five senses. Destroy his head, and he’ll stop moving, and once we’ve managed to stop him once, we can just keep breaking him down faster than he can recover. We’re both good at that, right?”

Stop his movement, deprive him of the Greatshield of the Dead’s defenses, and smash his skull.

The important part was sharing this plan with Tu.

“Hey, Shalk, that means…”

Beneath the rubble, Tu’s eyes, shining green, looked at Shalk.

“…there’s a chance we might be able to talk things over with Alus, right? Maybe?”

“……Get those stupid ideas out of your head.”

Shalk had no intention of mincing words at this point.

Alus the Star Runner had become an absolute monster. Getting their hopes up was pointless.

Meanwhile—the alert announcing Alus the Star Runner’s attack had reached the halls of Romog Joint Military Hospital.

Since this military hospital was removed from the expected route of the wyvern’s attack, the patients and visitors weren’t evacuated to a different district and instead were instructed to remain where they were until the state of emergency was over.

As the patients looked on with bated breath while smoke rose high from the Eastern Outer Ward far off in the distance, there were two men arguing back and forth at the rear entrance of the hospital.

“I’m tellin’ you, you ain’t coming with me, old man. You’ll die.”

“Nonsense! I could say the same to you! You can’t possibly beat the Star Runner with one leg! That’s an even more suicidal endeavor than my own!”

“I’m fine. Hell, you just admitted what you’re trying to do is suicide, didn’t ya?”

The middle-aged man was Aureatia’s Sixth General, Harghent the Still. The small-statured man in a red tracksuit was the hero candidate Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

The pair’s personalities were oil and water in every way; however, they were similar in one regard—in this situation where they were supposed to avoid the incoming calamity, they both intended to fly directly into the maelstrom.

“Don’t try to excuse it with ‘I’m fine’! You don’t even have any reason to go fight in the first place! There’s a provision that states those rendered unable to fight are exempt from their duty to fight against self-proclaimed demon kings!”

“Oh yeah…? That just means I gotta go out there even more. If what yer saying’s the truth, then if I don’t head out there after hearing that alert, that’ll mean I ain’t able to fight anymore, won’t it? Could end up disqualified from the Sixways Exhibition fights, too, so I ain’t gonna enjoy myself if I don’t jump in at a fun time like this.”

“Th-that’s your reason…? You’d really go that far to gain the title of hero?”

“Herooo?”

Soujirou the Willow-Sword’s eyes widened as if he was hearing it for the first time.

“Where the hell’d that come from? I was only ever here for the matches. I’ve been up front about that with damn near everybody. ’Sides, you’re being treated like a sick man, too, ain’t you, Harghent? No need for you to head out there, neither.”

“I—I… As one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, I have a duty to defend the nation! First of all, it doesn’t make any sense that Sabfom has mobilized when he’s a patient here, while I wasn’t even summoned! Besides…”

“What now?”

“Besides…”

Harghent’s words caught in his throat.

“…Star Runner’s still alive. I—I…need to defeat him…”

Soujirou looked up at Harghent from below, stooping down like a frog.

“You wanna fight that guy to the death, eh?”

“………………That’s right.”

Harghent couldn’t say anything reasonable at all.

That’s how it always had been with all matters regarding Alus the Star Runner.

Nevertheless, he felt that they needed to kill each other.

As the disaster menacing Aureatia, as the enemy who had haunted him his whole life, Harghent needed to kill him. As someone who had killed his friend once already, and as the one who had accidentally started the rogue on his path, Harghent needed to be killed by him.

“If I don’t fight him right now, I won’t be myself anymore. If there was any enemy in this world…I was meant to give my life to fight, it is Alus the Star Runner. This is what my life has been leading up to. I’m sure of it…”

“I get it, fine. Then I won’t do anything to stop ya. So what’re you gonna do?” Soujirou shrugged his shoulders, resigned. Though clearly, from any onlooker’s perspective, he was the more heavily wounded patient who needed to be stopped.

“…This hospital must have used Flinsuda’s funds to bring in some number of automobiles. Those vehicles can be operated by one person and don’t need horses or carriage drivers. I have…some practice with handling locomotives. I should be able to drive us to the Eastern Outer Ward. Probably.”

“Automobiles? I forgot those things even existed.”

“Y-you ever driven one before?”

“No way. Just seen a lot of them turned into junk heaps is all.”

“I see… Hrm. I’ll have to drive, then… Anyway, there should be some. I’ll search for the garage. I’ll get the car ready before the hospital staff can spot me.”

“Hold up. Now that I think about this, this is stealin’, ain’t it? You sure we can just take a car like that?”

“O-of course it’s not okay! But this is an emergency!”

“So it is stealing, then.”

“Even so! I’m still going!”

Harghent didn’t expect to be able to do anything for Alus, even if he did reach the wyvern.

It wasn’t even clear if he wanted to fight him or if he wanted to try to get something across to him.

He could end up reduced to ashes like other riffraff and have it all be over with that.

Once more, Harghent was trying to meddle in something reckless and beyond his station.

…That’s right. It was the same when I tried to kill Vikeon the Smoldering. I was the same way when I went to search for Lucnoca the Winter, too, wasn’t I?

Ultimately, Harghent the Still hadn’t even been able to become the madman he was diagnosed to be.

Nevertheless, he still wanted to do this of his own volition.

I was able to do all of that precisely because of the existence of Alus the Star Runner.

His unparalleled recklessness was the talent acknowledged by the strongest of all wrongs and the sole glory in Harghent’s life.

Alus the Star Runner had stopped attacking. It had become a fruitless endeavor.

Although he had tried several methods of attack while Tu the Magic was isolated, it only led him to conclude that it would be impossible to crush her with the magic items he possessed.

On top of that, Shalk the Sound Slicer had linked up with her now. Shalk hadn’t chosen to escape but had purposely come back to fight him.

He had come back even after being made painfully aware that not a single one of his attacks would reach the wyvern.

“…You’re both in the way.”

Two aberrant monsters, each individually possessing more fighting strength than a dragon.

Amid Alus’s waning sense of self, his tremendous combat experience, and the accumulated tactics that accompanied it were the few areas that had been left untouched in order to maintain his combat abilities. But he could determine that Shalk and Tu were, without question, enormous obstacles in front of him, on par with Lucnoca the Winter and Toroa the Awful.

Although this simply stemmed from the difficulty he had defeating them—the high-speed mobility to evade even his lightning magic bullets and the incredible tenacity to endure a direct hit from Ground Runner.

He didn’t need to aim to beat them. This was how Alus had begun to think.

The goal of his adventuring wasn’t to kill legends, but simply to amass his treasure hoard. He would fly low, set up a surprise attack, and steal away Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe. After that, he could just ignore the enemies in front of him.

…Flying lower. Is that…what they want me to do?

The reason the two of them still hadn’t landed a decisive blow on Alus was because he was constantly in an advantageous position on this three-dimensional battlefield and could handle attacks from the surface with ease.

Particularly when he tried to dispose of Shalk the Sound Slicer, Alus had showed the skeleton a majority of the magic items at his disposal. Since his enemy was enticing Alus down closer to the ground, it would be correct for him to consider that to mean Shalk had some sort of strategy to overcome Alus’s methods of attack once he did.

These two…what’s their reason for still getting in my way…?

He looked across the area. The district below him was dyed in an ominous dark red from the flames, but the city of Aureatia stretching out across the edge of the horizon still remained totally untouched.

If I destroy that area instead, I wonder what they’ll do…… Guess I’ll give it a try…

Shalk’s determination to keep his hold on Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe despite how fiercely Alus was attacking meant that he had a reason not to let it go. In which case, if he erased that reason without killing the man himself, Alus could get ahold of the treasure he was after.

There was no need for him to enter into his enemy’s attack range.

Alus instead increased his flight speed in order to gauge his route.

…The air was quivering ever so slightly.

From far off in the direction of the fortress, there appeared to be a light of some kind.

“……”

The upper quadrant of the sky exploded, and Alus descended.

A deathly beam of light, brighter than the midday sun, cut through the clouds and passed right above Alus’s head.

He had been forced to make an evasive maneuver by decelerating in midair.

Burning the atmosphere. Destruction. Heat.

A light beam magic item that accumulated solar light and allowed for fierce intercity bombardment.

Cold Star…!

“You didn’t think I just ran away, did you?”

Shalk’s voice. Had he already requested backup from Aureatia before returning to the battlefield?

After Alus slowed down to evade the light beam—there was someone waiting for him at his point of descent.

“I’m not going to kick you!” yelled Tu.

“……”

Tu had jumped, as if galloping through the air.

Her long braid flowed behind her like a tail. Her eyes, glowing with green light, traced lines through the sky.

“I’ll grab you!” she declared confidently.

In the middle of his descent, Alus couldn’t evade Tu, who was now closing on him faster than a bullet.

Even if he strengthened his defenses with the Greatshield of the Dead, if she simply grabbed on to him instead of trying to destroy him, he would eventually be forced to release the Greatshield’s protection.

“Rotting Soil Sun.”

He dropped the magical item.

The mud bullets were mostly fired at random—it didn’t possess any method capable of stopping Tu the Magic. Still, if he was able to obscure her line of sight for just a second, he should be able to escape.

Alus felt her grab on to the tip of his left wing.

…She avoided it.

Tu the Magic wasn’t wearing any clothing.

The cloak she was draped in… She was no longer wearing the leftovers of a street stall’s tent. She had caught Rotting Soil Sun in the fabric after Alus had dropped it below him, and she wrapped it up, suppressing it right before it could fire.

Tu had a grip on his wing. The only choice was to cut it off himself.

“Kio’s Hand…!”

“You’re not getting away!”

Alus’s arm, already moving to unleash his magic whip, chose his musket instead.

In that instant, Alus’s combat judgment was warning him of something,

That skeleton.

Shalk the Sound Slicer was quietly lingering in the rear behind Tu. Carrying Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe, with his rags pulled down over his eyes, he remained motionless.

In the middle of this momentary clash, he might have chosen to act as a decoy.

That’s not it.

The musket’s gunshot echoed.

“……”

“If you’re planning on cutting off part of your own body—”

He had the sensation of something cold and rigid passing vertically through his eyeball.

A blade fired out from a completely blind angle.

Alus’s cranium had been pierced by a spear.

…He could see Shalk’s body. Behind Tu, he still remained completely motionless.

“—you can’t use the Greatshield of the Dead thing, can you, Alus the Star Runner?”

“You’re…”

However, at the same time, Shalk the Sound Slicer was up above Alus, skewering his head.

From his sternum up…his head and right arm were now linked together by a chain.

“The game of cat-and-mouse is over.”

Consider the source; take countermeasures.

Shalk’s body, which he saw down below, consisted only of his left arm and everything below his chest.

He could separate his bones and re-form them. That was this skeleton’s ability.

…Of course. That big piece of cloth that Tu had stripped off.

Shalk had clung to the back of that fabric while his bones were scattered.

Making himself into a weapon at Tu’s control, he put everything on the line for that one moment of opportunity.

Alus figured out the source.

If he knew that, he could counteract it.

No matter what sort of legend he was up against, if he fought them a second time, he could defeat them.

As long as he could fight.

He fell into darkness. His thoughts were dissolving away.

“We did it…” Tu quietly murmured after she landed.

Their final strategy had succeeded.

The world’s strongest rogue was now pinned into the ground by Shalk’s spear.

He may eventually start regenerating, but Tu had a firm hold on Alus. She wasn’t letting him escape.

The destruction and losses were enormous, but they had been able to hold him at bay.

The speed of Alus the Star Runner’s assault had been abnormal. Shalk the Sound Slicer and Tu the Magic were the only hero candidates who had gotten there in time after being summoned to take him down.

“Now we can end this, without letting anyone else die… Right, Shalk?”

“…Tu, I’ll say this just in case, but…”

Shalk’s skull and right arm groaned, still piercing Alus’s head through with his spear.

There was something slightly off in Shalk’s tone.

“You can’t let go…of Alus’s body no matter…what.”

“I know that. Why would you say…?”

Then she realized.

Tree branches growing out from Alus’s body were wrapping around Shalk the Sound Slicer and beginning to absorb his body into their tangle.

Tu knew what this attack was. The magic tree bullet.

In the moment the fight was decided, Alus hadn’t fired his musket at Shalk. He’d fired it at himself.

“N-no…!”

“Impressive. This guy really was…one hell of an…abomination. I can’t believe, in that single moment, he thought of a way to turn the tables like this…!”

Before she could think of something, she went to rip the rapidly growing branches away from Shalk’s bones.

“…It’s not working!”

It wasn’t enough. Tearing off the parts that she could grab with only one hand proved meaningless.

Shalk didn’t possess the same invincible physical body that Tu did. If the magic bullet tangled around him and ate away at him, he was bound to be destroyed.

The sole chance that Shalk’s strategy had created for them…ended up creating an opportunity for Alus as well, to put an end to the Sound Slicer.

“……!”

She needed to release the other hand holding on to Alus.

There was a strong possibility that Shalk’s final attack had killed Alus anyway. His brain was run through.

“Shalk!”

“Don’t let go!”

“How…how could I not?!”

Tu was fully aware that she was a fool.

She let go of the hand gripping Alus.

She used both arms to tear away the branches entangling Shalk. A single second.

In that moment.

Kio’s Hand, which the dead Alus still held fast, flitted up into the air and cut Alus’s own skull. Sacrificing half his head, he had escaped from the white spear pinning him to the ground.

“Not yet…!”

Even as the branches she tore off Shalk were enveloping her arms, she immediately turned around.

Mud exploded right before her eyes.

“…!”

Rotting Soil Sun had fallen on to the ground during the previous clash.

The magic item that endlessly generated mud bullets was lost…

Overcome by a terrifying amount of mud and with her vision blocked off, she barely managed to touch Alus’s arm.

She couldn’t grab hold of it. The tree roots she’d grabbed earlier were now blocking off Tu’s fingers.

He’ll be able to escape!

“Tu! Throw me!”

In the blink of an eye, the roots entangled around her fingertips were sliced off.

Shalk the Sound Slicer, now just his head and one arm, had lost his mobility, but he could still swing his spear.

With her sight still obstructed, Tu clenched down on the white spear tip.

I have to judge this for myself. If Alus is still alive, which direction is he going to fly?

Rique the Misfortune would have definitely thought about it.

Everyone else besides Tu was desperately thinking things through.

They used their experience to get a grasp on how their foe would act next.

That’s right. In Alus’s case, he’d steal treasure!

Tu flung Shalk, now transformed into a single spear.

In the direction of Shalk’s torso decoy—toward Heshed Elis the Fire Pipe.

This motion scattered the mud covering one of Tu’s eyes.

She could see the scene in front of her. Shalk connected with his body and extended out his spear.

It didn’t reach.

…It can’t be.

Alus, recovering his ability to fly, had flown off in a completely different direction than she had predicted.

Tu’s decision had come too late.

There was a single point that was outside Tu the Magic’s expectations. The world’s strongest rogue, who was more obsessed with treasure than any other, in that moment, hadn’t been a rogue at all.

Alus the Star Runner, his skull destroyed by Shalk, moved solely on the instincts directly following his regeneration.

Tu the Magic had failed.

Shalk shouted from outside the sea of mud.

“Tu! Unless you want to turn into a fossil, you have to get out of there! The mud’s not stopping!”

“No!” Tu shouted. She held on to Rotting Soil Sun, trying to curb the constant torrent of mud.

“I have to put a stop to this thing! If…if there are any survivors still left, I can’t let them get swallowed up by this mud! I won’t let any more harm come to this district…or anyone beyond it!”

“There aren’t any damn survivors! You think you can get that magic item under control right now?! That’s like trying to use Word Arts on a guy you just met for the first time!”

Her lower body was sinking completely into the mud. Her feet found no purchase.

The amount of mud pouring from the discarded Rotting Soil Sun was a veritable ocean. Tu’s body was covered in muck, her eyesight was being sealed in darkness, and the insides of her respiratory organs began to drown in mud.

Even then, Tu was able to endure it. She believed so.

I won’t give up.

She was an abomination who had been created without the ability to feel fear. She could continue fighting however long it took.

In this hellish city, engulfed in raging fire and sinking into mud…right now, Tu the Magic was the only one capable of continuing to hold on to Rotting Soil Sun.

She could hear a voice from far away.

This time, she wanted to be sure to save someone. She wasn’t going to abandon anyone to die.

I won’t give up, I won’t give up, I won’t give up…!

Her fight was over.

Together with her strong will, the Demon King’s Bastard sank into the depths of the mud.

The sun of calamity, rising up into the skies of Aureatia, refused to set.