I was thrown back, then a searing pain ripped through my body. I tried to brace myself, but I obviously didn’t do a good job. My vision blurred as I scanned the scene around me. Red bricks were flying everywhere. The one responsible was Fomor, the demon lord resembling a steel plant. I had to stay ahead of it—if it caught me, that would be the end.
I didn’t break any bones…probably. I can do this. I will do this. It’s not over yet…!
I coughed violently as dust continued to rise.
“Ha-ha-ha!” Kormadino’s laughter echoed through the space.
Where the hell are you?
“You seem to be in a pinch, Xylo Forbartz. Maybe it’s about time you accepted your fate.”
“Shut up!” I demanded, despite that being the complete opposite of what I actually wanted. I needed him to talk more, to reveal his position. So I provoked him. “It’s gonna take more than a lowlife scumbag like you to defeat me! Because…”
While it physically hurt to even consider saying it, I knew there was no better way to piss off Kormadino.
“…I am the Thunder Falcon, Xylo Forbartz! I am the undefeated hero who freed the Second Capital! I have been in countless situations like this and have overcome them all! So there’s no way I’m gonna lose to a petty villain like you!”
“…I see you’re a poor loser.”
Kormadino was clearly trying to suppress his emotions, but I could hear the disgust in his voice. He was on the third floor of the Scarlet Manor, glaring down at me through the shattered wall. Found ya. It made all the embarrassment feel worth it.
“Keep grumbling. Your sour grapes will only make the moment you lose both your memories and your sense of self all the more enjoyable.”
Two tentacles began to writhe deep within the cloud of dust.
“Gih.”
Fomor let out a deafening screech as it lunged toward me, barely giving me a second to jump out of the way.
“Gigi.”
Another two tentacles followed, and I dodged to the side. The attack managed to graze me, but my last knife found its target and blew up one of the tentacles. I was wondering how many more this thing could possibly have when, as if to mock my question, countless tendrils slithered across the ground, spreading like a plague. There were enough to blanket the entire plaza. The situation had just gone from bad to worse.
“Gigigigigigi!”
The tendrils were all closing in on me at once, but I was out of knives. Was there any way to defeat this thing? Was I going to die again? I thought of my memories as my thoughts began to drift. Right… I should have bought something with Teoritta to help me remember. That way, even if I forgot, I’d still…
The fact that such thoughts even crossed my mind was a sign of weakness. I shouldn’t be thinking about what might come after my death. Not yet. Not until I’d done everything I could to survive… This wasn’t over yet. In fact, the torrent of tentacles never even reached me.
Fierce sparks flew into the air, followed by a deafening crash.
“…Wh…what?”
A massive shadow clouded my vision. It was a wall—a thick, unforgiving wall of iron.
“Are you all ri—? Ahem! What is wrong with you, Xylo Forbartz?!”
Someone had leaped down from above… Or maybe they’d fallen. When I looked up at them, I found a familiar face—no, a familiar right eye and arm. It was Yurisa Kidafreny, the saint with Senerva’s body parts.
“So…it was a demon lord! And the one behind it all is…” Yurisa looked up and clearly faltered. “Governor-General Simurid Kormadino? Wh-why?”
“Yurisa, wait. Listen to me.” I almost wanted to sigh. “What are you doing? You’re the Saint. Go protect the bigshots up on the stage.”
“H-High Priest Ibuton and your friends are already handling things over there! S-so I came to save you!” Yurisa glared at me, her eye sparking. “Because you were fighting alone! Is that a problem? I wanted to save you!”
“You…” Again, I wanted to sigh. A sense of déjà vu washed over me. I could swear I’d had this exact conversation before. “You’re out of your mind. Who risks their life to protect a penal hero? We’re not even soldiers. We’re military property.”
“Sh-shut up! Just be quiet!” Yurisa’s face contorted in anger, but that was where our ridiculous argument came to an end.
“Kiiiiii!”
A cacophony of metal rang out as steel tentacles burst from the ground, tearing through the pavement. Four, five—there seemed to be no end to them, and each one moved with an almost sentient purpose.
“It’s coming!” I shouted. “We don’t need a wall! Just some iron bars!”
“I—I know what I’m doing!”
Yurisa’s eye sparked as a wall of iron spikes erupted from the ground, blocking some tentacles while impaling and ensnaring others. Simultaneously, I used my flight seal to scale the barrier. There was something I had to check.
“Tsk.” Kormadino clicked his tongue, then rang the small bell. “Kill them, Fomor!”
This was the moment I had been waiting for. The fact that he had to ring that bell indicated that the creature required direct commands. And in that case, it had to have some means to hear them. I glanced around, looking for some kind of sensory organ.
Immediately, a massive hole opened in the ground, revealing not dirt but a massive, tooth-lined maw. This creature was different from the plantlike entity we’d fought in the Zewan Gan Tunnels.
That’s a sea anemone! I remember Frenci’s old man used to keep one in a huge fish tank!
This was an aquatic creature with countless tentacles and a central, gaping maw. As Kormadino rang his bell, it let out a grating, discordant shriek.
“Yurisa! Summon an iron spire! Even a small one will work!”
Did she know the full extent of her powers yet? She could do more than just summon structures from the ground. I had a feeling she knew what I wanted to say, though.
“And drop it from the sky!” I shouted.
Whether Yurisa understood my command or was simply tracing a memory that still lingered in Senerva’s arm, I didn’t know. But it worked.
“Hff! Come on… Drop!” she yelled, her right arm trembling.
A towering steel spire materialized in the sky and instantly plummeted downward, directly into the very center of Fomor’s monstrous mouth.
“Gigigiiiiiih!”
A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the air as the steel spire drove deeper into the creature’s maw, shattering its jagged teeth as it spewed thick, oily blood. Not even the monster’s thrashing tentacles could dislodge it. I reached out and touched the spire, infusing it with Zatte Finde for a whole five seconds.
“Hope you like this!” I shouted, launching myself away from the spire as it detonated.
The explosion ripped through the creature’s maw in a searing flash. Its tentacles convulsed chaotically from the shock, and though it likely no longer knew where I was, its savage assault forced me to continue evading.
“A-aaahhh!”
Iron bars materialized in a shower of sparks as Yurisa used her power, sheltering me amid the metallic symphony of collisions. Yet there was one person left unprotected: Simurid Kormadino. His hubris was rewarded as the thrashing tentacles decimated the Scarlet Manor, hurling him from the third story to crash onto the ground below like the fool he was.
“Th-this is absurd,” he said, groaning as he got up. “I haven’t lost yet… It’s going to take more than this to stop me…!” He fell to his knees; he’d probably broken a few bones. Yet, despite the pain, his grip on the small bell-shaped artifact used to control Fomor never loosened. “It’s not over yet.”
“Governor-General Kormadino! Are you okay?!”
Soldiers emerged from a back alley. They were cavalrymen with uniforms bearing the insignia of a bow and arrow—Kormadino’s private soldiers. There were around twenty of them. Was luck still on this guy’s side? Maybe he was just a better man than I was in general, and this was karma.
“Heh… Ha-ha!” He gritted his teeth and forced out a laugh, his pain evident. “Yes… The battle isn’t over yet. I shall win. I have worked too hard to fail.”
“G-good soldiers, stay away from that man!” shouted Saint Yurisa, raising her right hand into the air. She mustered up as much courage as she could, but her trembling fingers betrayed her. “Governor-General Kormadino was keeping a demon lord under the capital! H-h-he is a traitor!”
“We know,” a man replied softly. He seemed to be the captain. The other soldiers calmly formed a protective circle around Kormadino. “But we owe him. He promoted us and provided homes for our families so they could safely evacuate to the south. We owe our lives to the governor-general.”
“But he…! He…!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Kormadino cackled, somewhat dryly. “Yes, I knew I could count on my elite!”
“Come, Governor-General. We must retreat. We shall protect you with our lives!”
“Hmph.” But Kormadino dismissed the captain’s plea. Instead, he raised the small bell once again. “‘Retreat’? You must be confused. I can’t just run away without accomplishing anything… I have to prove to the Demon Blight that I am useful.”
“But look around you, Sir.”
“There’s still a way I can win… Fomor! Heal your wounds!”