✦ ✦ ✦
She kept accelerating. And accelerating. And accelerating.
She split al-miraj in two. She obliterated minotaurs with magic. She used hellhounds’ flames to scorch liger fangs and then baited Goliath’s attack to splatter the pack of hellhounds. She raced, chanted, danced, and flashed, swinging her wand and sword.
Even as fangs tore into her cheeks, even as claws shredded her thighs, she pushed all of her fighting to the next level.
I’m doing it.
I’m becoming a magic swordswoman!
I’m fighting without giving in to the giant or the monsters!
I’m becoming someone strong who can protect myself and save others!!
And yet…
Darkness lurked in the depths of her heart.
A white elf was standing there in the corner.
A vision of her that had become visible at some point.
She refused to smile.
Even though I’m becoming like you, becoming strong, you look so sad to see me.
Why?
Why do you look like that?
I don’t know.
I don’t know, but if I do better, I’m sure she will smile.
If I get closer to her, I’m sure she will smile and praise me!
“Yes!!!”
Her magic erupted, turning a dozen more monsters to ash.
On a battlefield billowing with blood, Lefiya performed a grim, tragic melody as she let her sword sing.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Loki.”
Loki was looking out at Babel—or rather the Dungeon spreading out beneath it—from the manor’s skyway when a voice called out from behind her.
Turning around, she saw Riveria standing there.
“Oh? You good to be here, Riveria? I thought you’d go there for Lefiya.”
“Gareth went. Digging in the ground is not an elf’s job, as he put it.”
Makes sense.
No one could match a dwarf when it came to excavation. Compared to a race inseparable from mines and shafts, elves didn’t even count as competition.
It was not just familias, either. The School District had also mobilized, so too many people were involved as it was, risking a secondary collapse. As big as the Dungeon was, the collapse affected only three floors in total.
“So what, you come here to entertain me since you had time to kill?”
“That is half of it.”
“And the other half is to check whether any of my blessings disappeared?”
“…If you already knew, then spare me the runaround.”
Riveria closed her eyes and sighed as Loki chuckled.
Then the high elf stared at her goddess’s discerning eyes in annoyance and pressed her for answers.
“So how many?”
“Don’t worry, none missing. Lefiya’s safe.”
“…Safe for now would be the correct response, given the situation.”
Loki’s smile disappeared as she looked back at Riveria.
“You think Lefiya’s gonna up and die?”
Riveria was silent for a moment.
“Whenever she went to the Dungeon, I always took precautions. Asking Elfie, Alicia, or others to never allow her to be alone.”
“Because she would go overboard?”
“Yes. Or become possessed by a phantom that is no longer here.”
Understanding what she was getting at, Loki quietly listened.
“Sealed away in the Dungeon in what is almost surely isolation…even with the students at her side, they can no longer stop her, I imagine. The moment she runs into a deadly encounter,. it will be the perfect excuse to unleash everything she’s built up so she can confirm whether she’s made the right choices.”
All the necessary conditions to push Lefiya into action were currently present in the Dungeon.
Once she finished that preface, she finally responded to Loki’s earlier question.
“Those who offer themselves to their delusions will surely be consumed by the Dungeon someday…I have seen it any number of times before.”
Babel reflected in her jade eyes as she stared into the distance.
Loki did not agree or disagree.
She only said, “That’s right. Right now, Lefiya is tryin’ to stop bein’ herself.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Lord Balder, what do you mean by saying Lefiya’s heart will start to lean?”
In Breithablik at the center of the School District.
When they had given what instructions could be provided, and there was nothing left but to leave things to those on the scene, Alisa asked Balder about what he had said earlier.
The god slowly answered.
“In the course of her time as an instructor, I believe she has gained a degree of flexibility in how she sees things, but…even so, the scales of Lefiya’s heart are swaying, though she herself is unaware of this.”
And so, even if he had pointed it out, she wouldn’t notice.
Whether Loki Familia, Balder, or Leon and the teachers admonished her, it would have no effect because she had not noticed it herself.
Alisa’s confusion became apparent as she struggled to follow the god’s words.
Balder smiled softly.
“Alisa, what did you think when you met Lefiya again?”
“…She seemed like a different person. She cut her hair, seemed more mature, fairer. I thought she had become an adventurer…”
“I see. To me, she looked, truly, like a different person.”
“!!!”
Alisa’s eyes widened. But at the same time, she remembered.
“I didn’t recognize you.”
He had said as much when he met Lefiya again. If that was not a figure of speech, if he meant it literally, then…
Lefiya appeared to be someone other than Lefiya in even a deity’s eyes.
“When I heard Loki herself had sent Lefiya as a recruiter, I had some expectations. They solidified when I met her. Anger, regret, or perhaps penance…whatever it may be, Lefiya is attempting to become someone else.”
Alisa’s shoulders trembled.
She had seen it several times in the past week—Lefiya staring off into the distance. In those moments, Lefiya had definitely looked like someone else entirely. There were moments when an elf with long, jet-black hair, who Alisa had never met, seemed to overlap with Lefiya.
“Likely she is chasing after the phantom of someone she lost, attempting to offer up her own body for that person’s sake.”
As Alisa gasped silently, the god spoke without emotion, as if simply stating the truth.
“If she catches up to that phantom in body and soul…then even if she returns alive, it will not be as the Lefiya Viridis that we know.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The screams of countless monsters echoed and merged.
The giant groaned like the ground itself was roiling.
A single elf’s sword dance and opera continued without end, evoking strings of cries and showers of blood.
Lefiya roared.
Her chanting continued without end, and her voice never faltered. She overlapped with that beautiful yet monstrous girl, steadily transforming.
Her chanting accelerated, growing clearer, stripped of anything extraneous.
Her song, nobility, and sublime beauty were overwriting her existence.
Just a little more. Just a little bit more.
I haven’t won yet. But I can now.
Just a little more, and I can kill the weak me. If I can get just one step closer to her, I can cross this terrifying sea of monsters and claim the giant’s crown.
What’s left to cast aside?
What can I still replace?
Filvis had allowed her arm to be eaten for Lefiya’s sake.
So maybe Lefiya should lose an arm herself.
If she could understand an arm’s worth of her pain and sadness, the girl standing in her heart would surely smile.
Let’s go.
I can make it.
I can reach the true Filvis. I can become a true magic swordswoman.
The magic circle was waiting around her left wrist for the perfect moment. She began the countdown to the decisive moment, when she would play her trump card.
Glaring at the monsters, aiming at Goliath, she thrust her hand out for the one magic that allowed her to fight on alone.
“Canon!!!”
Just as she prepared to hammer home her choice in the Dungeon: