Chapter 247

The fact that she could dodge Ozonezma’s throwing attack, their initial velocity breaking the sound barrier and easily bursting a minian body into pieces, meant that even the firearms from the Beyond couldn’t match Roto’s speed. As their chase continued, they had slipped out of the residential area at some point, into the lowlands along the river, crowded with flooded ruins. The smell of rotting wooden constructions. The unpaved ground was muddy, and the shabby houses were heavily warped and submerged in the water, likely due to repeated river floodings. Ozonezma’s attacks had been meant to drive Roto to this location. There was no need to worry about getting citizens involved if they were in a section that was uninhabitable, even if it was still within Sagasa. It was possible that there were homeless people living here in this section as well; he was forced to consider them necessary sacrifices to eliminate Roto the Cross for good. “…Mwee-hee-hee.” With the tips of her bare feet sunk into the mud, Roto finally turned around. Her posturing was adorable, with her hands held behind her back. “Guess you caught up to me.” She smiled. “I JUST WANT TO TALK.” When Roto stood about twenty meters away from him, Ozonezma, too, stopped in his tracks. “MY NAME IS OZONEZMA THE CAPRICIOUS. I’M A WEAPON CREATED BY A SELF-PROCLAIMED DEMON KING… YOU SEEM TO BE SOMETHING SIMIL—” Air and earth exploded. Ozonezma hammered all his remaining scalpels and placed an attack in the trajectory of her evasion. Together with the explosive roar, Ozonezma could sense the sound of flesh bursting apart. “IF YOU BELIEVED THAT DIRECTLY LAUNCHING MY BLADES AT YOU WAS MY ONLY ATTACK…” Powder smoke filled the air. Two of Ozonezma’s myriad arms were holding muskets. Their bullets were far slower than his laser-like projectile attacks, but by taking a roundabout route to narrow the path of her evasion, he had hit Roto. Slim fingers twirled the long gun around and around. “…THAT’S BECAUSE I TAUGHT YOU TO THINK SO.” “…!” Roto’s figure was swaying. She had been shot in the thigh, and blood was flying everywhere. A wound to that part of the body wasn’t fatal. Even against a high-angle shot that caught her completely off guard, Roto had moved to evade right before it hit. However, the outcome was still exactly as Ozonezma had calculated. THERE WERE TWO BULLETS. IF SHE EVADED THE BULLET AIMED AT HER TORSO, SHE WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO DODGE THE ONE AT HER LOWER BODY. I ROBBED HER OF HER MOBILITY. “I love it… You’re actually trying…to learn about and understand me…” He had purposefully acted to ensure that the few remaining scalpels he had left would be completely used up in this attack. A trump card he had set aside to render the enemy unable to dodge—and create enough time to reload. “Yagoyurgyrorok. Yogmegenyeryu. Yesgefgoyuyarg. Yayoymvyuuya. Yarhatyu.” (From Ozonezma to Aureatia earth. Shadow of queued divergence. Swimming horn. Reflected in a white line. Assemble.) Using Craft Arts on the mud, he generated scalpels. Now he no longer needed to narrow down the density of his throwing attacks. He could crush her in a barrage that showed no consideration for the surroundings and kill her without giving any space to dodge— “Mwee-hee-hee!” The laughter came from right below him. WHEN DID SHE—?! Ozonezma had put close to ten meters between them. While her original agility was one thing, it was inconceivable that she had been able to instantly close the distance while her thigh was shot through. However. Sensing crisis, his thoughts ran at a different speed than reality around him. WHEN I MADE THAT FIRST SURPRISE ATTACK ON HER… The movement she made to kill the young boy, as if on a whim, had been blocked by Ozonezma’s long-range attack. SHE DIDN’T GUARD AGAINST IT? A dull thud reverberated in Ozonezma’s stomach. It resembled the tiger claw attacks in the Beyond, but the technique couldn’t even be described as a martial art. However, those young fingers were sharp enough to pierce through Ozonezma’s armor-like fur. The transparent red blades, like five artificial nails of polished jewels— “Ya yumyouye. Yasreou yuchones. Yonfu gyoune.” (To Roto’s blood. Reed boat suspended in the void. Poison hair enveloping sleep.) “…NOW YOU’VE STOPPED MOVING…!” No matter how much raw strength Roto commanded, for Ozonezma, a wound to his stomach wasn’t lethal. Right as he tried to cut up Roto from close range— “Yyayuis yorainea. Yact.” (Blue moon swelling and decaying. Burst.) Together with a popping sound, Ozonezma’s countless arms fell into disarray. He reeled. He thought. His recognized that his stomach area had been almost entirely gouged out. The area Roto’s fingers had dug into had exploded from within. “Ozonezma, I think…” “HURCK…AUGH…!” “…I’ve fallen in love with you.” This time, it was Ozonezma’s turn to open up space between them. The crimson fingernails left behind a crescent moon afterimage, cutting off the arm Ozonezma attempted to counterattack with. One of her thighs had been shot through, and yet her agility hadn’t slowed whatsoever. That was why she had closed the distance while he replenished his arsenal. Roto hadn’t even been wounded by the rifle fire. Ozonezma prepared himself to lose another arm into order to regain his balance. He slashed. Roto revolved as if dancing. Ozonezma’s slashing attack veered off course from some mysterious pressure. Fingernails. With an almost vacuum-like sharpness, yet another one of his arms was cut off. Ozonezma still hadn’t escaped the range of her fingernails. The difference in their speed meant that he was never going to be able to escape. WORD ARTS THAT HARDEN BLOOD. Roto’s blood was a blade rupturing Ozonezma’s fur. It was also armor that diverted Ozonezma’s scalpel projectiles and could block a gunshot head-on. Roto’s claw had grabbed Ozonezma’s massive foreleg, as if trying to embrace it. Her gemlike fingernails were also liquid. They penetrated his fur and were digging into his flesh—however, that itself was nothing but a trivial scratch on his body. “…Hey. Let’s become one…” NO. THESE WORD ARTS… “Yact.” (Burst.) A muffled, explosive boom. His foreleg was severed and sent flying. It had ruptured from within. The lethal series of attacks continued. Roto used the momentum of the explosion to spin around vertically, before attempting to land a follow-up attack on Ozonezma’s neck while he was off-balance. “NNGH, GWAAAAOR!” Before she could strike, he kicked Roto’s light body away and sent her flying. Only Ozonezma’s detached lower body had moved. Crawling forward with his back legs and the arms that thronged from the severed section, he had kicked Roto away with a simple command through his ganglions. Ozonezma was a physician as well as a chimera. While he had continued to splice the bodies of organisms into his own, he had also performed self-alterations to allow him to split his body apart and still be able to act. When his stomach section first exploded, he had self-amputated in order to counterattack. “Mwee-hee-hee-hee-hee… That feels so good……” She had been hit with strike powerful enough to instantly render an average child into fleshy pulp, yet Roto got back up once more. The section of her body that got hit was covered in smooth, candylike red crystal. …MANIPULATE INTERMOLECULAR FORCE! A blade just composed of condensed blood would normally never scar Ozonezma’s body. However, the solidity of matter came from the strength of intermolecular bonding. Using Force Arts specialized at making her own blood the focal point, she could produce solidity on par with dragon scale. She permeated into him like a liquid, dug in with a rigid solid, and then once she left the tiniest scratch behind, she was able to change it into a gaseous body with sixteen thousand times the volume—and kill with an explosion from inside. “IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEND AGAINST…AND DELIVERING INSTANT DEATH. I SEE NOW. THIS WILL NOT BE EASY…” The arms growing out from his half-body cross section supported his body in place of his missing forelimb. Ozonezma was alive thanks to near immortal survivability, however, about 70 percent of other normal organisms would have been killed in the clash. “Ya yumyouye. Tamururui chumimyum. Yuchiyas yuyety.” (To Roto’s blood. Clouds and rainbows warbled by the voiceless. Small eyes of gaping cavern.) A massive amount of blood poured out from all over Roto’s body, staining her girlish clothes red. “Yok yok yukmenen. Yaneopept.” (Flower face crumbling in the rain. Multiple hematopoiesis and regeneration.) She had healed the internal bleeding and organ ruptures from his kick. It happened far too fast. A krsnik who infected with an airborne virus of “peace.” She robbed the will to fight from everyone, and even if one did manage to battle her, as an organism, she possessed simple, raw, abnormal strength. I UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE IS CAPABLE OF. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF LOSING IN A BATTLE OF ATTRITION, BUT… Even if he assumed she was able to repeat hematopoiesis and regenerate infinitely, there wasn’t anyone who could rival Ozonezma when challenged by his physical capabilities. Regardless of how terrifying an organism Roto may have been, she still only had the abilities of a single creature. Still, Ozonezma felt that he hadn’t been getting hit with Roto’s attacks up until now simply because seeing her Word Arts for the first time had surprised him. He got the sense that he was unable to perceive any indication she would attack and was delayed in responding to each move she made. “Ozonezma! Are you all right?!” He then heard a voice. Kuze the Passing Disaster. He was heading toward Ozonezma, paying no heed to the mud soiling the bottom of his clothes. Ozonezma had lured Roto to this area from the very start. Ozonezma had formulated a strategy to have Kuze, with his inferior mobility, come from the opposite direction in a pincer attack. However. “DO NOT COME HERE, KUZE THE PASSING DISASTER!” “You don’t have to worry about me! What’re we supposed to do now?!” “THAT IS NOT IT! YOUR INSTANT DEATH CANNOT KILL THIS ENEMY!” A smiling Roto once again closed the distance to Ozonezma with terrifying speed. A straight line tracing her movement was carved into the muddy swamp huddled with ruins. Throw. Throw. Slash, parry, slash, slash. Ozonezma’s waylaying attack, using the full extent of his ability to process things in parallel, was not in response to any indication of an incoming attack. “SHE HAS NO HOSTILITY.” Roto herself had said that right from the start. It wasn’t that her behavior was inconsistent with what she claimed; she was attacking and preying on others who had genuine goodwill. Superb warriors capable of seeing the signs of hostility and responding in kind, would instead be struck without warning by her ultra-fast attacks, dying completely off guard. Claws and scalpels. The slashing attacks entangled with each other at point-blank range, like a gust of wind. Ozonezma continued to meet the nonstop offense at unbelievable speeds, not through prediction but reaction. “KUZE! CALL AUREATIA FOR BACKUP…! CALL FOR SHALK THE SOUND SLICER!” “…” Kuze didn’t answer. Instead, he turned his back to Ozonezma. He stared hard in that direction. He was flustered. “…Why?” Kuze murmured in a quavering voice. Ozonezma was locked in an unworldly hand-to-hand clash. He couldn’t afford to spare any attention in that direction. Nevertheless— “Wait, Roto? What’re you doing in a place like this?” “Ha-ha-ha, playing in the mud, Roto?” “Geez, Roto, look at your clothes! They’re filthy!” “Mom! Look at that huge wolf!” “Rotooo! Ah-ha-ha-ha!” “IMPOSSIBLE!” —the clamorous voices that trickled to him mid-combat echoed with abnormal clarity in his ears. Ozonezma had lured Roto to these downstream ruins at the start to prevent the residents from getting wrapped up in everything. Yet right now, the Sagasa residents were beginning to gather here, not perceiving the danger. Since he had been coping with powers different from a regular vampire, it had had his imagination— There was no reason to assume Roto couldn’t use the powers of vampire. All the Sagasa residents were infected—and Roto the Cross’s pawns. “Stop, everyone! Don’t go over there!” “Nuh-uh! Everyone, come here! Let’s all be one together!” Kuze shouted. Even a brawny paladin couldn’t stop dozens of regular residents by himself. The Sagasa residents didn’t feel fear. They obeyed Roto’s behavioral commands and jumped into the vortex of carnage. With instantaneous judgment, Ozonezma halted the slash meant to keep Roto in check. A smiling child forced their way in between them. Their head burst. Roto’s claws sliced off one of Ozonezma’s arms, catching the child’s head in the process. “DAMN YOU…!” “Mwee-hee-hee-hee! Ya yumyouye. Yasreou yuchones. Yonfu gyoune.” (To Roto’s blood. Reed boat suspended in the void. Poison hair enveloping sleep.) Roto grabbed the arm from the child’s scattered body in midair. Like a club with joints, the child’s upper arm thrashed Ozonezma. “Yyayuis yorainea. Yact.” (Blue moon swelling and decaying. Burst.) She made the blood flowing backward through the minian blood vessels explode, blocking Ozonezma’s line of sight in a bloody mist. With Ozonezma’s superb sensory organs, he still maintained a grasp on the situation. Of the slash attack from both of Roto’s arms and the residents huddling together as if deprived of all free will. They were happy. They were all going to die in bliss. “Stop! Please, Roto, don’t do this…!” Ozonezma could hear Kuze’s heartrending screams from beyond the throng. There were too many of them. Even with Ozonezma’s capabilities, he would eventually be unable to cope with the attacks. Ozonezma was a physician. However, he wasn’t a minian physician—just as he had done in the past, if it was necessary, he wasn’t going to hesitate. “Grrrr, nrrrauuuugh!” His myriad arms grabbed the residents and used them as shields against Roto’s slashes. Using a rib he had pulled out in place of a scalpel, he thrust it toward Roto. Brandishing someone’s ankle, he slammed their skull at her. Her blood armoring made the skull burst. Either that or her claws had effortlessly cleaved it apart. Roto’s small form endlessly skipped in every direction, using the people’s bodies for footing. Each time her feet touched down, a person would burst apart like a water balloon and cloud Ozonezma’s line of sight. Red claws. Word Arts. Innumerable arms. Blood. He avoided the fatal moment. And again. He needed to continue to evade. “Ozonezma…! Don’t kill them! They’re all innocent people!” I UNDERSTAND. There was something Ozonezma realized after Soujirou confronted him with the truth. Ozonezma’s true nature really was that of a monster. Absolutely nothing had changed about him from the time when Izick first created him, killing champions in an attempt to challenge the Demon King for years on end. However, the time he spent traveling with Olukt was the only time he had been able to delude himself into believing he had a virtuous heart. Even now he chased after the illusion he saw back then and tried to save others. WE MAY HAVE BOTH BEEN CREATED BY IZICK, BUT I AM DIFFERENT FROM TU THE MAGIC. Ozonezma the Capricious was destined to continue his betrayals, betraying his own wish. Since in the end, in order to save others, he had chosen a method that killed them. I WAS BORN WITHOUT BEING ENTRUSTED WITH ANY WISHES OR DESIRES, AS A WEAPON. The nightmarish slaughter was over. The thick fog of bloody mist had cleared, and both Ozonezma and Roto had survived. The only ones left standing among the crowded group of residents were four children whom Kuze had seized in his arms. The children were smiling. Roto was seated on top of a crumbling house pillar, outside of Ozonezma’s attack range. “…YOU’RE NOT GETTING AWAY.” Ozonezma snarled as blood poured out from all parts of his body. The distance between them was twenty-three meters. Ozonezma determined that, even when accounting for Roto’s speed, he had enough of a reprieve to adjust his stance before she approached. He reattached the lower half of his body he had amputated. A great number of his arms had been cut off, and his forelimb had exploded, but the injuries weren’t serious enough to prevent him from continuing the fight. He also now understood the enemy’s behavioral pattern. If he didn’t make any considerations for the lives of outsiders to their fight, Ozonezma could continue fighting Roto until she ran out of stamina. “Hey, I wanna talk. I like talking about the Wordmaker…” Roto sat down atop the pillar despite being in the middle of combat. Hugging one of her knees close, the other kicked her pale bare foot back and forth. Ozonezma considered replenishing the stock of scalpels he had used up in the melee from before and sniping at her from afar—however, she might have been tempting him into creating that opening. He couldn’t get a read on any forewarnings to what her intentions were. He observed for any indication of movement. “I HAVE NOTHING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT. Yagoyurgyrorok. Yogmegenyeryu. Yesgefgoyuyarg.” (From Ozonezma to Aureatia earth. Shadow of queued divergence.) “Is that because you think I’m dumb?” Her tone rang cold, unlike her previously childish and fawning voice. An alluring smile, as if created to charm anything and everything. “Hey… You believe I’m just a monster without any thinking heart of my own, don’t you…?” “Yayoymvyuuya. Yarhatyu.” (Swimming horn. Reflected in a white line. Assemble.) “Ozonezma! Run!” Kuze’s shout made Ozonezma realize. No matter how dangerous, threatening, and enchantingly beautiful, he should not have let himself be captivated by Roto. Their melee from moments prior ended with Roto putting far more distance between them than she had before—a distance that normally would only result in facing one-sided long-range fire. She retreated. Roto the Cross wasn’t only limited to attacking. She could control others. Ozonezma should have been watching the sky. Through the bloody mist, Ozonezma had seen it. A blazing, brilliant star, radiant even in the scarlet daytime sky. He knew this attack. It was hard to believe. Roto the Cross could control others. She had gained control over all the residents in Sagasa Old Town. However, how far did this control spread through airborne infection actually reach? The red eyes stared hard at Ozonezma. She was taking aim. “Horizon’s Roar…” The arrow fell like a star. The arrow that landed right on Ozonezma’s coordinates gouged, dissolved, and destroyed everything in its straight path. “You’re saying Mele the Horizon’s Roar…attacked an urban area…?” Jelky the Swift Ink couldn’t summon any further words after receiving the report in his office. A tragedy that should have never come to pass. “There is no mistaking it, sir. The ruins in the lower basin of the Sagasa River were annihilated from the arrow he shot. Ozonezma the Capricious, engaged in combat with Roto the Cross, took a direct hit… Everything on-site has dissolved to nothing, so we have no way to get confirmation, but he is mostly dead…!” “…She wasn’t just a serial killer. I’m designating Roto the Cross…a self-proclaimed demon king. For Mele the Horizon’s Roar…there is still a chance it was a simple accident. Deferring judgment…” Jelky gave his orders with a sour look. However, inwardly, Jelky himself had mostly given up as well. Mele was, without a doubt, one of Roto’s corpses. They couldn’t prepare an antiserum that could circulate through his colossal body. Contrary to Jelky’s intention to use the Sixways Exhibition to annihilate all threats, Aureatia continued to screen and filter said threats. The power to destroy any threat that could be controlled by a sponsor or the Kingdom. Ozonezma the Capricious. Kuze the Passing Disaster. Uhak the Silent. Shalk the Sound Slicer. Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge. Mele the Horizon’s Roar. Jelky had previously been of the mind that if such individuals were to remain alive along with the True Hero, and they could serve as a deterrent toward any other threat the world may face, it might have been best to overlook their existence. However, it was the champions who seek to exorcise such threats who will eventually go mad and use that power to destroy miniankind. They had seen any number of such examples during the age of the Demon King. “…Is there nothing we can do?” Mele the Horizon’s Roar was infected—there was an even more frightening reality. Jelky looked at the map of Aureatia on the wall. The gigant village on the northern edge of Aureatia was as far from Sagasa Old Town as anything in the city. What it signaled was a hopeless fact. That everything they did was already too late. Rosclay had died, and the royal palace was attacked. Given that true terror had already been let out into the world, it was practically a miracle that Aureatia hadn’t been brought to ruin from civilian unrest. “Everyone is infected…” A miracle had happened. A world where not a single person felt fear was coming. She possessed hyper-versatile blood that could become both a deadly weapon and an indestructible shield. She acquired an infection route under minian hands that had undergone an impossible mutation. As the final variant species, her transcendent speed and intellect afforded her few equals across all of recorded history. Arriving at the extremes of wishes and prayers—and spreading rampant: the love of an ideal world. Idol. Krsnik. Roto the Cross.