“Go to hell!” Leaping out from behind Layla was Hessel. His magic blazed like the sun as he pushed his body to the limit, unleashing his Linebreaker. A deafening roar split the air as it smashed into Emergias’s Hunting Ground, cracking it open as if to expose its yolk.
“Heh heh heh. Ha. Aha ha ha ha ha ha!”
As fragments of darkness scattered, Emergias’s head emerged, laughing like a madman. No, it wasn’t just his head. It was also an unnaturally long neck. Those marks on his face that looked like scales had been replaced with the real thing. A new pair of horns punched out of his forehead to match the twisting pair on the side of his head. His laughter revealed a forked tongue as it flicked out from his mouth. There was not a hint of sanity left in his expression.
“Ah...I’m so jealous of it all. You’re all so blessed. I should get the same treatment! No one should be more blessed than me!”
As he spewed nonsense, dark magic billowed out behind him, taking the shape of a pair of wings. As more of his body came into view, a tail of magic could be seen growing out from his rear. He was a snake... No, at this rate, he was more along the lines of a dragon. He had fully transformed into a monster.
But what was with this magic? It was enormous, obviously, but its form was vague and ambiguous. Emergias’s appearance wasn’t all that changed, his whole presence was completely different too. It was like...
“A devil,” Ante finished, pity in her voice. “He has been distorted by his authority, or perhaps his soul has been shaved away. It no longer functions as an adequate vessel for his devil’s power. See? Even as he steals more power, it just flows back out of him. He’s now incapable of sustaining himself.”
As she said, intense magic emanated from him in waves, but not like the pressure that the powerful gave off. It was more like his power was dissipating into the air around him.
Like a massive beast inhaling, Emergias absorbed every drop of magic from the surrounding stone walls. The Concreta within them was sapped of its power, causing the walls to crumble. As Emergias grew in strength once more, his form became even less stable. And then that monster turned a hateful glare on me.
“You! You have everything I ever wanted! I’ll never forgive you... Never! I’ll take it all! All of it belongs to me! Now give it!!!” Emergias’s wings flared, and then with a roar, he charged.
Wait, those wings aren’t just for show? He can actually fly?
He was fast, but as long as he charged in a straight line, it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Using Adamas to deflect his spear, I let myself fall backward to avoid the force of his charge, then delivered a swift kick to his chest from below.
With a grunt, Emergias was sent flying upward and slammed into the ceiling.
He’s glaring at me... Guess that means the tail is coming, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Rolling on the ground to dodge the tail swipe, I lashed out with my sword and lopped off a good chunk of it.
Emergias howled in pain. With him growing so much larger, there was more of him for me to cut. I started to laugh. This was going to be good.
“What’s so funny?!” Emergias screamed, lashing out with his spear.
“Don’t mind me. I’m just glad this is finally a proper fight,” I replied, deflecting his spear with Adamas. Even though he had been the one to come to my fortress and attack me, all Emergias had done was run since arriving here.
But now he was finally fighting for real. Now we could really kill each other.
“Finally ready to fight, huh? Took you long enough. Just had to steal the magic of your subordinates, your friend, and the scales and wings of a dragon.” I snorted at the twisted freak in front of me.
Everyone else is blessed? Don’t be stupid. Not only were you born with magic and status, but you even made a pact with a devil. You have no idea how hard I had it in my last life when I had basically no magic at all.
As he was now, his magic was pretty strong. But compared to the Demon King—including the despair I’d felt back when we fought—he was just a load of crap. He was finally ready to fight for real? I couldn’t be happier. Now that he had wings, my biggest concern was him turning tail and telling others about everything he’d seen here.
“No matter how fancy you look, no matter how much magic you gain”—I sneered as I deflected his spear again—“you’ll never change.” So I provoked him further, trying to draw out as much fury from him as possible.
“Shut up!!!” Emergias screamed, lashing out with blinding speed.
I narrowly dodged the spear, countering with a slash from Adamas that tore into the scales of his arm and sent blue blood spraying.
“Damn you!!!” As if he no longer felt the sensation of pain, Emergias continued his assault. At the same time, a sinister magic emanated from him, coiling around me.
“Plunder is Taboo!” Ante and I shouted in unison. It might have been pointless, but we tried to resist him with everything we had. His jealousy was so vicious that defending against it entirely wasn’t possible as a tiny bit of my power—the thinnest outer layer—was stripped away. That being said, that speck of power dissipated harmlessly into the air before Emergias could even absorb it, so the difference in our strength didn’t change all that much.
So which would come first? Would one of us exhaust all our powers, or would one of us land a killing blow? That was the nature of our current contest.
But on top of the constant curse emanating from him, the tail, wings, and unbelievable strength he now had were still threats. Barbara and Hessel couldn’t approach as they were unable to resist his curse of Envy, and Layla had become a mere human. So, I put all my focus on following Emergias’s movements.
What was he really after? It wasn’t power, I was sure of that. As we exchanged blows, I could feel just what a pitiful creature he had become.
I had provoked him earlier by saying he hadn’t changed at all, but that was probably closer to the truth than I had initially realized. What he needed wasn’t strength, but rather something more on a mental level. Something like backbone, or grit. No matter how much he trained, no matter how much magic he stole, no matter what he accomplished in battle, his character never changed. It never had, and it never would. What he really wanted was forever out of reach, no matter how hard he strove for it.
We were alike in that way. I also wanted more power, but that was just so I could one day defeat the Demon King. What I really wanted was a world where humanity could live without fear. Or more specifically...my old peaceful village life. My dad... My mom... Claire... All of them smiling and waving at me.
“So I’m blessed, huh?”
Like hell I am.
“You already took everything from me!”
This guy. If no one else, I would kill him.