Chapter 8 - Prodigy King Lindworm
The showdown at the Tomino Basin raged on.
As the emperor brought his sword down on Lyrule, Tsukasa Mikogami cast aside his ruined rifle and pulled out the flintlock pistol from this world—the one Ringo had modified for him. Yellow Grandmaster Luther ul Fafnir sat atop the stone wall that had risen up to cut Tsukasa off from Lyrule, and Tsukasa took aim at him…
“Ha! You really think that puny little peashooter is going to be able to beat—”
…and pulled the trigger without bothering to listen. A round bullet went flying at the grandmaster.
Luther held his hand aloft to stop it with some manner of spell, but the bullet raced forward unimpeded, piercing through him.
“Gah!”
Luther’s eyes widened in surprise. Surely, he was baffled at how the projectile had slipped through his magic. There was no way this world’s antiquated ordinance could have accomplished that. Only something imbued with greater magic than Luther’s own could best his defense.
And that’s when the grandmaster realized what had happened.
“AHHHHHH?!?!” he screamed. “D-did you make that out of Father?!?!”
The blood drained from Luther’s face. He began furiously trying to dig the bullet back out, but it was far too late for that.
Luther had underestimated his opponent. Tsukasa knew that he wasn’t all-knowing, so he’d prepared countermeasures for anything this world might throw at him, and Luther had misjudged his meticulousness. The bullets loaded in Tsukasa’s flintlock pistol were made from Philosopher’s Stones, the crystallized flesh and blood of the evil dragon who’d created Luther and the other homunculi.
As soon as Yggdra, one of the other homunculi, had told Tsukasa about the destructive way Philosopher’s Stones forced cells to evolve, Tsukasa had immediately thought of using them as a weapon against Neuro. Considering that Neuro had yet to use one of those stones on himself, the odds of a homunculus surviving the forced evolution had to be low. It was a dangerous option, of course, for it could go horribly wrong, but it stood to completely turn things around if the Prodigies ever had their backs to the wall.
Tsukasa’s gamble paid off. It wasn’t long before black crystals tore through Luther’s skin…
“GYAAAAAARGH!!”
…transforming him into a mangled porcupine when his body proved unable to withstand the rapid evolution.
Tsukasa turned his attention from the Yellow Grandmaster…
“Lyrule!!”
…and let out a loud cry as he switched over to his automatic pistol. Emperor Lindworm was about to strike down Lyrule, and Tsukasa unloaded a series of rounds into both him and his warhorse.
All shots fired at Lindworm bounced off his armor, but three found purchase in the horse. Blood went flying, splattering on the emperor and his greatsword.
“Hn?!”
The horse bucked wildly, and the emperor lost his balance, causing his sword to swing wide of Lyrule, if only just. However…
“Agh!”
…the swing still had an unfathomable amount of force behind it. Even after missing its mark and smashing into the ground, the impact sent earth flying with the force of a stick of dynamite.
Unfortunately, Lyrule was too close to emerge unscathed. She used magic to protect herself, but it wasn’t enough to block the impact entirely. The sheer force of the blast sent her flying. After landing, it didn’t seem she would be getting up. She must have been knocked unconscious. From a distance, it didn’t look like she’d suffered any life-threatening external injuries, though.
Meanwhile, Tsukasa’s counterattack was making waves all across the battlefield.
“Tch! You’re like a damn cockroach! Just die already!!”
Prodigy swordmaster Aoi Ichijou had been forced on defense by Black Grandmaster Belial ul Salamandra’s Fire Vulcan magic, yet she managed to evade the barrage of fireballs, much to the homunculus’s frustration. Eventually, he raised a flaming sword in each hand…
“Eat this!!”
…and charged directly at her.
That was precisely what Aoi had been waiting for.
“At long last, I have lured you out, that I have.”
“Wh—?!”
She met the grandmaster with a large swing from Mikazuki, the lapis lazuli sword she’d received from the people of Yamato.
“My ferocious secret technique—Iron-Cleaving Flash!!”
That one stroke was enough to smash one of Belial’s twin swords to bits. However, Mikazuki was already covered in cracks, and this proved too much for the weapon. It shattered into pieces. No typical sword could withstand the prodigy swordmaster’s techniques, and although Mikazuki had done well to hold up, the damage it had suffered during her Dew-Blade Breeze had pushed it close to breaking.
“What an idiot! You panicked and broke your own weapon! Now DIE!!”
Belial surely saw Aoi’s weapon breaking as a golden opportunity. He lifted his remaining sword and brought it down toward Aoi’s head. The burning sword traced an arc through the air as it made to split the girl’s head in two.
However, it stopped just short of its mark.
Belial gaped in shock, quickly spotting why Aoi was still alive. “Dammit, you stole a weapon from a corpse?!”
She had indeed. They were in the middle of a battlefield, and the numerous Fire Vulcan volleys from Belial had felled many soldiers from both sides. Aoi had grabbed the sword off one of the fallen to replace Mikazuki and block Belial’s attack.
This sword was little more than a lump of inferior steel, and the grandmaster’s fiery weapon would melt through in less than a second, but the prodigy swordmaster was quicker than that. Before Belial finished melting the sword in Aoi’s left hand, she’d already snatched up another with her right and swung it.
Belial wrenched back his blade to defend against Aoi’s attack, which was as much a bludgeoning blow as a slashing one. The shoddy sword was unable to withstand Aoi’s technique, of course, exploding into fragments. However, Aoi had expected that.
There were plenty of replacements to be found.
While Aoi attacked with one hand, she made sure to grab a new weapon with the other to maintain the pressure. It was a wasteful technique that used up and discarded a blade with each attack. Such a thing was only possible on a battlefield.
“Behold my chaotic secret technique—War Debris Dance!!”
And dance Aoi did, kicking up dirt in her wake as she moved across the blood-soaked basin.
In his anger with Aoi—with the entire human race—Belial had moved in too close, leaving him unable to safely retreat. The divine and brutal dance pulled him in.
Neuro hadn’t underestimated the Prodigies, not after seeing their nuclear missiles and how they’d expanded their influence from a remote village to all four northern domains so quickly. As a result, he’d been able to combat them on relatively equal footing. However, the same couldn’t be said of anyone who was so overconfident in their own abilities as to fight one of the Prodigies head-on without a plan or countermeasures in place. And that was doubly true when facing Aoi Ichijou!
“Gahhh!”
Belial didn’t have time to even attempt a spell. It took everything he had to defend himself from the rampaging tornado of steel, and even his guard began to falter in short order. Eventually, his remaining fire sword shattered…
“It can’t be… I lost to this primitive creature?!”
A sweep from a spear smashed his skull to fragments.
“Luther?! Belial?! Dammit!”
After watching the other two homunculi get struck down in rapid succession, one could hardly blame the final one, Green Grandmaster Deneb ul Typhon, for looking worried. Judging Aoi to be the biggest threat, he prepared to launch a blade of wind at her. However, the moment he tried, a cloud of colorful smoke erupted around him, shrouding his vision.
The smoke had come from the bombs prodigy magician Prince Akatsuki used in his performances.
“Poison?! No, it’s just a smoke screen! Feh, how clever!”
The mere sight of ominously colored vapor was enough for people of this world to recoil in fear, but Deneb hailed from a more advanced civilization. It barely took him any time at all to realize that the smoke was harmless and clear it away with wind magic.
For Aoi, though, those scant few seconds were more than sufficient.
“Excellent work, Akatsuki, m’lord!!”
“Rgh!”
In a flash, Aoi closed in on Deneb and pulled him into her War Debris Dance.
“HRAAAAAAAH!!!!”
However, things didn’t go as easily as they had with Belial. Deneb used his wind-clad staff to block Aoi’s fearsome blows and retreated to an area with fewer casualties. By limiting the amount of weapons Aoi had access to, he slowed her attack and maintained his guard.
It was a smart tactic, but it didn’t change the fact that Aoi alone had him against the ropes. Unfortunately for him, his other opponents seized upon that advantage quickly.
“Thanks to Aoi, our guys had time to regroup! Cut the emperor off from his troops! All forces, pump ’em full of lead and don’t let up!!”
Prodigy businessman Masato Sanada had gotten his Lakan Qinglong Gang mercenary forces back into formation, and when Emperor Lindworm charged for Lyrule, Masato’s men opened fire at the imperial knights hoping to join their liege. The Lakan Qinglong Gang’s bolt-action rifles boasted a rate of fire that was unheard of in this world, and the weapons ripped through the imperials like wet paper.
The imperial army’s sudden arrival and subsequent surprise attack had shifted the tides of battle, but the Prodigies were slowly pushing back thanks to their unique talents and exhaustive preparation.
With the emperor caught deep behind enemy lines…
“Wow, what kind of monster tries to hit a helpless maiden with a grisly old thing like that?! Your parents shoulda taught you better than that!”
…prodigy journalist Shinobu Sarutobi cut toward him like an arrow.
“Ninja Art: Bolt Release!!”
The emperor had descended from his raging steed, and Shinobu pressed the modified stun gun she’d brought with her from Earth against his armor, blasting the man full of electricity. A terrible noise split the air as bolts arced up and down Emperor Lindworm’s body…
“Such futility.”
…yet Shinobu was the one caught by surprise. After taking the shock head-on, Lindworm reached to grab her.
“!!”
Shinobu hurriedly put some distance between herself and Lindworm, landing beside Akatsuki. Had the emperor seized her, the electricity might have flowed into her.
“Shinobu! Are you all right?!”
“Yeah, but it looks like he is, too. And my stun gun has some pretty nasty modifications.”
Shinobu stared at Lindworm, disbelief coloring her expression. Despite all the electricity she’d pumped into him, he hadn’t so much as flinched, and he still stood on his own two feet. No human could have endured something like that.
As Shinobu thought back to the story she’d heard about a single swing of Lindworm’s sword being enough to break a Rage Soleil, something Ringo’s antiair missiles couldn’t stop, she swiftly moved to shield Akatsuki. However, Lindworm showed no interest in pursuing either of them. Instead, his gaze swept across the battlefield.
“How many have perished in these few seconds you’ve delayed me? How many soldiers would’ve lived had my blade reached the girl?” There was no rage in his voice, only remorse. His eyes went to Shinobu. Pity entered his tone. “But I forgive you.”
“I can see that in fighting for the girl, you people are fighting for what you believe to be just. But what of it? No matter your reasons, your actions have produced naught but mountains of corpses and rivers of blood. As long as multiple forms of justice exist, this world will never be able to change.
“Progress can only come about by entrusting everything to me.
“Once I obtain true power, then as prodigy king, my might will transcend the boundaries of nations, and my life will continue eternally. When I stand alone at the apex of strength, I will build a world with no races, nationalities, or anything of the sort. The weak will all live under me in peace as equals. I will suppress the greed that drives human conflict, and everything from war to the tiniest quarrels will cease to exist. My absolute justice will ensure the world’s perfection.”
“……”
Lindworm’s voice echoed loud and clear across the entire Tomino Basin. He hadn’t raised his voice, not to any meaningful degree. However, the moment he’d opened his mouth, the fighting across the Tomino Basin hill came to a stop. Everyone—the imperials, the Yamato army, the Lakan Qinglong Gang, and even the Prodigies—had no choice but to stay their hands, hold their breaths, and lend their ears to the emperor’s speech. It was like every nerve in their bodies screamed not to miss a word.
Emperor Lindworm’s dream was impossible. It was idealistic to the point of delusional absurdity. Yet coming from him, it sounded nearly possible. No, almost inevitable.
It was the strangest feeling, yet it reminded the Prodigies of the undeniable reality of their situation. They wondered if they were making a terrible mistake. All this time, they’d believed Lindworm was the Four Grandmasters’ sacrificial lamb, a vessel to host their resurrected Father. As such, they’d assumed that, at worst, they could simply destroy him and be done with it.
Seeing Lindworm in the flesh forced them to reconsider that viewpoint. Was he really a mere lamb?
No. No, he was not.
When Lyrule had explained that Lindworm would die too if he killed her, he’d confidently declared, “Whether the Four Grandmasters lied to me or not is a trifling matter. I understand the power that slumbers within me better than anyone. If it tries to consume me, I will simply devour it first and subsume it into my own flesh and blood.”
This man was a dragon in his own right, one well capable of devouring the evil dragon.
In that moment, everyone present became certain of that. And if that was the case…
“In my world, all will live out their days in tranquility without taking or being taken from. It will be a perfect world managed in its entirety by my supreme will. None will know hunger or thirst. That girl is the final sacrifice necessary to achieve all that.”
…then was turning their weapons against him, the prodigy king trying to bring about a world controlled by a single absolute ruler who left no room for conflict, truly the right thing?
What option would lead to the best outcome for the world?
The High School Prodigies had sworn to protect their dear friend Lyrule, but the question troubled them nonetheless.
On one hand, they had the life of someone who’d rescued them and fought by their side as a close ally, and on the other, they had the words of a man they’d only just met and who they knew nothing about beyond his name. The scale ought to have been tipped heavily in Lyrule’s favor, yet for a moment, it seemed evenly balanced. Lindworm’s overpowering dignity convinced any who beheld it of his righteousness, and the sheer magnitude of his presence drove others to submit to him in a way that defied reason.
When faced with his unnatural force of personality, a thought crossed Shinobu’s mind. Perhaps that man really was a genius, chosen by the heavens to rule.
However…
“So you’d have a single person rule by force from on high. Is that your brand of justice, Emperor Lindworm?”
…as everyone else stood speechless, one person trudged forward.
Using his mangled rifle as a walking stick, the young man dragged his broken leg behind him as he approached Lindworm.
He was prodigy politician Tsukasa Mikogami.
“Then I refuse to bend a knee to you.”
“Duke Gustav told me about you, Emperor Lindworm.”
“In time, you too will learn that this world exists for one man alone. Not an impostor—a genius, chosen by the heavens to rule! The day you learn that, you too will kneel before the emperor.”
Gustav had left behind a fiery prophecy in his final moments, and it had been rattling around in the back of Tsukasa’s mind ever since. Who was Emperor Lindworm? Tsukasa had wondered. What kind of man had inspired such fanatical devotion in Gustav?
Now, having finally met him, Tsukasa felt sure of something.
“I get it now. That larger-than-life energy you have, the way you pity the weak, the drive you have to fulfill your ideals… Gustav was right. You really are a genius chosen to rule. A prodigy even. I’m sure that you carry out everything you promise to the letter. You would rule over everything all on your own, suppress any rebellion, and bring forth a world that was fair and peaceful with you standing at its zenith. Your ideals sound ridiculous, but you might just be able to make them into a reality.”
However…
“But the thing is, that world you’re describing is a far cry from perfect. It’s as imperfect as can be.”
“…What?”
Tsukasa took the world Lindworm offered and rejected it outright.
A part of him had found hope in Gustav’s words. As an ordinary man, things slipped through Tsukasa’s fingers constantly. He could only reach for the most happiness for the fewest sacrifices possible. If a genius of the sort Gustav had described really existed, then perhaps they’d bring about the greatest happiness without sacrificing anything at all.
Were someone like that to appear…Tsukasa might finally be able to regret all the things he’d done. Such had been his sliver of hope. However, Lindworm wasn’t that person.
“There’s no room in your world for human happiness.”
“…!”
“Happiness isn’t something you give people. It’s something their greed guides them to. No matter how exemplary your rule, how magnificent a king you are, or how flawless your governing structure, it will never make people happy.
“All your ideals amount to is suppressing people’s greed to maintain your order, and history has seen many like you come and go. You’d keep it going for longer than others, but that’s all. I refuse to let you sacrifice Lyrule for an imperfect world! That’s why you must fail today, Emperor Lindworm!!”
As he spoke, Tsukasa strode for Lindworm, swapped out his magazine, and pointed his pistol straight at the man. He also signaled Shinobu, still close by, with his eyes. She saw it and prepared to strike the emperor from the other side. Tsukasa shot a similar glance at Masato, telling him to leave the people pinning down the imperials to their devices so he could take aim at Lindworm, too. Their next attack would use every ounce of firepower they had at their disposal.
However…
…that attack never came.
“ Ah…”
Suddenly, Tsukasa and the others doubled over. Before they could get out so much as a word, their consciousnesses began slipping away.
What had happened?
Tsukasa couldn’t understand.
“It would appear that, unlike you, someone understands what I’m saying.”
Upon hearing Lindworm’s words and realizing what was happening to him, Tsukasa shot a shocked glance over his shoulder as he tried desperately to keep himself awake.
There behind him, he saw her.
“Rgh…”
How could she have done this?
Tsukasa forced himself to discard the thought. Now wasn’t the time for questions. The why didn’t matter.
He needed to pull the trigger.
Lyrule was in danger, and he needed to shoot Lindworm before passing out. Despite knowing that, though, his finger refused to listen. The gun tumbled from his hand…
…and as Tsukasa and the others finally collapsed, the massive blade plunged into Lyrule’s defenseless heart.
The moment the golden greatsword pierced Lyrule’s chest, everyone present heard the thunderous heartbeat of a dragon. The thrumming gradually intensified, like its bearer had just woken up from an eternal slumber. The ground trembled.
“Urrrrragh…”
Something resembling a jet-black flame burst up from Lindworm’s body and enveloped him, his body the epicenter of the quaking.
Engulfed by the obsidian fire, he let out a groan as his body shuddered. It was a low cry, the kind one might make as they were being burned alive. Eventually, that noise escalated into a shout…
“ !!!!”
…and then into a scream. There was something utterly inhuman about that bellow, and it shook the air.
The black flames surrounding Lindworm expanded into a burning pillar that climbed into the sky, becoming an inky aurora borealis that pierced heaven and earth alike. The pillar was made of magic so intense no light could escape its pull.
“Ohhhhh!!” Aoi had passed out mid-fight much the way Tsukasa, Masato, and the others had, but Deneb was so enthralled that he forgot all about finishing her off. He knew who that tremendous power repainting the world belonged to. “I’ve been waiting so, so long for this moment! The time for Father to walk this earth once more has come! Finally, I’ll be able to achieve perfection again!”
Eventually, the black light faded, and the silhouette of Lindworm’s still-standing body came into view within it.
Unable to wait a second longer, Deneb rushed for the figure, sank to his knees, and clasped his hands together as though in prayer. “Father! Do you recognize me, Father?! It’s me! Your son, Deneb!”
To that, he received a reply…
“You tried to deceive me, and for that, I forgive you.”
…from Lindworm von Freyjagard, his tone no different than it had been moments ago.
“…What?”
Deneb’s eyes shot wide open in disbelief. How? The seal was broken, so the evil dragon who created him and the other homunculi, Father, should have been reborn using Lindworm’s body as the vessel. Why did Lindworm’s persona remain? Where was Father? Deneb had no idea what was going on.
Sensing the grandmaster’s confusion, Lindworm answered his unspoken question. “I subsumed your creator and made him into my own flesh and blood.”
“You…what?”
“He was foolish enough to try devouring me, and now he is no more. His strength, knowledge, and magic belong to me. And now that I have this power, I have no need for external might. I have become capable of controlling this entire world on my own. You will know my thanks for your work as one of my Four Grandmasters. I welcome you gladly to live in peace as one of the citizens of my new, perfect world.”
Just like his voice, the look in Lindworm’s eyes as he spoke was unchanged. Deneb knew his father’s eyes, and he knew how they carried fury for the world that had driven him out. These eyes were so calm as to appear practically tranquil, however.
Upon seeing that…
“AhhhhhhHHHHHHHH!”
…Deneb had no choice but to accept the truth before him.
Two souls couldn’t coexist within the same body. Deneb’s master had fought this man and lost.
In other words, Deneb would never be able to leave his inferior ape body and return to the nigh-perfect form he’d possessed before his reincarnation…
“HOW DARE YOUUUUUU!!!!”
…and that made him furious. He and the other homunculi had tolerated their hideous forms and ruled people they saw as primitive creatures because they knew it would eventually lead to them reclaiming their former glory.
Incensed that his dream had been dashed, Deneb summoned his magic and charged at Lindworm.
The emperor responded with a disappointed sigh…
“I see you’ve made your choice. What a shame.”
…and waved his arm through the empty air.
With a satisfying pop not unlike the burst of a water balloon, Deneb exploded into a fine, bloody mist. All that remained of him were a few errant scraps of flesh and the tatters of the clothes he’d been wearing.
Deneb was dead.
The grandmasters had long been at work in this world, and after kicking the last of them aside as one might a pebble on the road, Lindworm took his greatsword, still wet with Lyrule’s blood, and slammed it into the ground.
The moment he did, the Tomino Basin and its many assembled soldiers went still.
The evil dragon had once destroyed the continent, and Lindworm now commanded all the evil dragon’s power. A single thrust of his sword was enough to split the earth’s crust and send a spiderweb of fissures out across the ground.
With the footing stolen from them, the soldiers were forced to freeze in place whether they wanted to or not. Lindworm turned to them. “All units, cease this fighting,” he declared. “Here, in this moment, the world has become complete. Henceforth, it will exist under my sole governance. The weak shall all exist as equals under me, and all conflict shall be forbidden.”
“The ground…”
“He stabbed it with his sword, and it just…shattered.”
“No human could do that. There’s… There’s no way we can win…”
That the imperial forces showed deference was a given, but the Qinglong Gang and Yamato army had no choice but to obey, either. The High School Prodigies who’d been leading them had all just fallen unconscious. Everyone fell to their knees and bowed their heads before the advent of the all-powerful ruler.
There, amid the reverent silence…
“Wonderful. Absolutely splendid stuff.”
…a single young woman clapped her hands together in delight.
While all others knelt, she stood tall—prodigy physician Keine Kanzaki, the person who’d thrown the anesthetic needles that knocked the rest of the Prodigies out.
“Why did you betray your fellows?”
“Betray them? It wasn’t anything so sinister. I simply did what I felt was necessary.”
“When I heard about the world you would bring about, I realized that you must share my ideals.
People were weak, terribly so. And few understood that as well as Keine. God, in all his foolishness, had created them that way. He’d built the flaw of greed into them, and it made them into creatures of jealousy and envy that stole and were stolen from in turn.
Whenever Keine watched people kill one another on battlefields, the same thought always crossed her mind. I want to mend the creator’s oversight. She considered that her life’s goal. She even had the skill to make it possible. However, she lacked the power to impart her cure upon everyone who lived. Petty concepts like “morals” and “ethics” stood in her way.
She hated them, and that anger ate at her. But now, she’d found her solution.
Making all those little problems go away required power, and now she’d finally found someone with both the strength and the will to realize the perfect world of her ideals, one comprised solely of kind people who’d been relieved of that defect called greed.
With his help, she might be able to fulfill her dream. Lindworm’s larger-than-life presence had given Keine that impression even before he broke the seal. Now, after seeing the way he’d absorbed the evil dragon’s power and split the ground with a single swing of his blade…
“…There is no doubt left in my mind.” Keine’s cheeks went flush from excitement. “Mr. Lindworm, I have no doubt that you could bring peace to this world by controlling it with an iron fist.
“That said, ruling people by force alone will breed discontent. It won’t bring them happiness. God was foolish enough to build humans as creatures of avarice, and it’s in humanity’s nature to constantly seek more than what it already has.
“However, I have the power to heal that defect.
“I can mend how their greed drives them to take from each other and replace their hearts with kinder ones—ones filled with love for others, ones that share openly, and ones that respect the small joys they already know.
“Together,” Keine concluded as she extended her hand and offered Lindworm a handshake, “we can forge something better. With my kinder hearts and your eternal reign, we can create a perfect world where everyone is happy and all can live in peace. We can build one here…and we can build one in the world I come from!”
“The world you come from?”
Keine’s impassioned proposal sparked Lindworm’s interest, and while he was distracted…
“Is there anyone who can still move?!”
…a desperate shout echoed across the Tomino Basin. And of all people, it came from Lyrule, who by all rights should’ve been dead.
Indeed, she had perished. The voice coming through her mouth belonged to Yggdra, the homunculus possessing her body.
“If there is, then please…grab on!!”
As she spoke, Yggdra desperately held out her hand and prayed that someone would answer.
“HrrrrAAHHHH!!”
Fortunately, one of the High School Prodigies, prodigy journalist Shinobu Sarutobi, did exactly that.
While the others had been caught entirely off guard, Shinobu was an investigative journalist. She’d already known about Keine’s dark side, and she’d inferred about her goals. A small part of her had considered the possibility Lindworm’s philosophy might align with Keine’s.
That little consideration had enabled her to take an on-the-spot reaction. Shinobu had managed to evade Keine’s needle, although not entirely. Her vision was blurred, but she was still conscious.
On hearing Yggdra’s cry, Shinobu snatched up Prince Akatsuki from the ground beside her and spent the last of her strength breaking into a dash. Lyrule sat up, and Shinobu grabbed her hand.
As soon as she did, a flash of magical green light exploded from Lyrule’s body.
The three of them—Lyrule, Shinobu, and Akatsuki—vanished. Yggdra had teleported them away. Thanks to her magic, the three had made an escape.
Lindworm watched it all happen, but he seemed utterly disinterested. He returned his attention to Keine. “…Might I ask you to elaborate on that?”
Lindworm had been born the sole member of the strong, and as prodigy king, he felt a sense of responsibility to each and every member of the weak. To him, Keine’s intimation that she came from another world was incredibly fascinating.
With that, the strings of fate that had been tied to that world since time immemorial had brought about a conclusion that none could have foreseen. This marked the beginning of the High School Prodigies’ battle against Prodigy King Lindworm—a foe even mightier and more resolute of will than the evil dragon he’d consumed.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login