What ensued was a back and forth battle, one where I couldn’t allow myself to lose focus for even a second. We were evenly matched—no, I was always a little ahead. But even so, there was a huge problem.
“Heh heh.” Grim chuckled. “You live up to your name, golden-eyed black cat. You’re really the strongest soldier I’ve raised.”
After I had struck the core, the sand doll that Grim possessed fell apart, but immediately reformed.
Is this the power of an Ashen-Eyed mage? Ashen-Eyed mages were seen as only second to Amber-Eyed mages, and I was starting to see why.
“Let’s kick it up a notch, shall we?” Grim said.
The annoying thing about my opponent wasn’t just his regenerative abilities. Every time he revived, he’d optimize his vessel and come back even stronger. Destroying the core wasn’t the game changer I thought it would be. If anything, it was just pushing me more into a corner.
“You’ve killed me seven times now? Your growth amazes me.”
Good grief. I’ve already taken him down multiple times, but the fact he regenerates so easily is depressing. I’d started this battle at an advantage yet, slowly but surely, I was being put on the backfoot.
“Now then, let me guess what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you should aim to exhaust my mana, aren’t you?”
I’m not surprised he read my strategy. No matter what manner of being I was facing, it was hard to think that anything could regenerate infinitely; there was only so much mana that any being could have. Making him exhaust all of it on his Regeneration Magecraft should’ve been possible.
“Unfortunately for you, you won’t have the time to try. I’m going to end things here.”
There was no mistaking it: Grim’s next attack would be for real.
“Phew,” Grim exclaimed, “it’s been a while since I’ve fought in this form.”
On his seventh regeneration, his appearance was a little different. Compared to the other forms, it was a little smaller, but the pressure he exerted was magnified to an unbelievable degree.
So this is the final form of his sand doll?
He’d gotten rid of any unnecessary parts and streamlined his form.
“Now, accept your fate! From today onwards, you’re mine!”
He’s fast. His speed was on a completely different level from before. If I wasn’t able to block his attack, I’d live the rest of my years as the organization’s attack dog.
When Garius found me, I’d been left for dead. I’d already been as good as dead once, and I didn’t have anything keeping me tied here. Being Grim’s puppet might not be the worst possible thing to happen.
“No.”
Before I realized it, those words had spilled out of my mouth. If I died here, then what would happen to my allies? How would all the people in my life feel about what happened to me? In that moment, I truly wanted to live.
I will surpass Grim! For everyone’s sake—for all the people I had met and for everything we’d been through—I put everything I had into my next attack.
“Wha—?!” Grim gasped, astonished.
Maybe my wish had been granted; I had executed the strongest attack I’d ever been able to in my life. Before I knew it, my blade had pierced his core.
“I’m surprised. Once again you’ve surpassed my expectations,” he mumbled, shaken, his core finally pierced. In our past encounters, he’d probably never been cornered like this from me. “Maybe I let you grow too much... I need to regroup. Threats like you need to be weeded out.”
After saying these ominous words, his body crumbled.
This is strange. These past six times, he immediately regenerated, but I don’t sense him doing that now. Is he trying to run?!
If I didn’t kill him here, the tides of battle would turn again. I didn’t have enough mana to continue fighting, but on the other hand, at any moment Grim could order all the members of Chaos Raid to come after me. I understood his intent, but now that Grim was just a soul, I had no way of tracking him. The magecraft he used wasn’t anything I was familiar with.
“I’ll lend you a hand, Mr. Abel.”
It was then I heard a familiar voice: Cain. Apparently, he’d come running here, sensing my fight.
“Gotcha.”
As soon as Cain muttered those cryptic words, I sensed that where I thought there was nothing, he’d caught something with a dull outline.
“You can see souls?” I asked.
“Yep. I told you, didn’t I? He’s the same kind of mage as me. I’ve already learned the magecraft he uses.”
I fell silent, surprised. To start with, I’d always thought Cain was more talented than me in Ashen Eye magecraft, but Cain’s potential for growth was exceptional.
“And now it’s all over,” Cain said, crushing his hand into a fist, making the silhouette he’d caught fade.
So he crushed his soul? Looks like Grim can’t regenerate anymore.
“It looks like you can see souls too, Mr. Abel,” Cain remarked.
“Not as clearly as you.”
I’d just barely been able to see the shape of Grim’s soul after Cain had caught it. But Cain had most likely been able to see it in detail.
“The most important thing is to love the dead like you would your neighbor, Mr. Abel.”
Good grief. You really like saying nonsense. Ashen Eye magecraft was far more intricate than other magecraft, and was overall more difficult to use. Even for me, there were many mysteries.
But as soon as I thought that, something strange happened.
Hm? Why’s it so noisy at the base?
The emergency siren was going off, making a loud racket.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Sir!” Ayane ran over, pale.
“What happened?”
Ayane was always all over the place, but she seemed even more panicked today than usual. “The base’s emergency self-destruct switched on! The entire place is gonna blow to smithereens in a few minutes!”
Hm? Why? If I’m not mishearing things, she just said something pretty dangerous.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Right, let me explain,” Ayane said. “So, I was curious about something once and hacked into the security magecraft program. What I figured out is apparently, in the event the person in charge of the base dies, the whole base is rigged to blow! It’s to destroy evidence!”
I see. We’ve secretly accepted requests from the government. To keep things under wraps, they did this in order to prevent an information leak. It was their fail-safe to make sure that all the evidence never saw the light of day.
“This isn’t good. I wonder if something happened to the person in charge...” Ayane said.
Said person in charge is in a nearby mound of sand... But there’s no time for explanations. I’ll do that later.
“Um, Ms. Ayane, I’m pretty sure hacking into the hideout’s system is forbidden,” Cain added.
“Well then keep it a secret! It was a sudden impulse! I was just curious!”
Ayane made it sound so easy, but the security here was no joke. It wasn’t so simple a task to hack it.
Hm. I might have underestimated her abilities a bit. She might possess a higher talent than me for using Obsidian Eye magecraft to process information.
But we no longer had time to chat. We were approaching the time limit. It seemed that the mana energy was rapidly building up, and it was primed to explode.
“Let’s go, you two.”
Staying here would only get us caught up in the blast. For now, it was better if we all fled, and quickly.
“Huh? Go? Where?” Cain asked, confused.
It seemed that since he was still young, Cain had yet to develop a sense of self-awareness. At any rate, killing our direct superior meant that we didn’t have a place in Chaos Raid anymore. Most likely, we’d be branded as traitors.
“Anywhere but here,” I said.
We then started running towards an uncertain future. I wasn’t sure what awaited us, but I doubted it’d be peaceful. Even so, no matter what obstacles were ahead, I was sure that, with Cain and Ayane at my side, I’d be able to get past it. That was the one thing the three of us truly believed in.
✦ ✦ ✦
After that, we successfully escaped from Chaos Raid, and were free. From there on out, Cain, Ayane, and I set forth on our journey which would eventually lead to the defeat of the Demon King, but that wouldn’t happen until much later.