A short laugh could be heard.
“Wah ha... Wah ha ha ha ha ha! It’s finally here. Luck is finally shining upon us! This is our chance to obtain Hyphoria’s Sword of Three Races for ourselves!” Kaltinas shouted gleefully.
“Th-The Evansmana Swordsman has closed in on Eten Nine!”
“Calm down. It may be the Sword of Three Races, the blade that can slice Atzenon’s Lions of Ruin, but its wielder is neither the Holy King nor is he one of the Five Holy Nobles. He’s just a weakling from an ephemeral world. No?”
Lay approached Eten Nine and swung the Sword of Three Races down. He put more magic into this swing than the ones before, and a crack appeared along the hilt Misha had made for Evansmana. Ultimately Lay could not control the sword’s vast power, and his grip slipped slightly, causing part of his slash to Eten Nine’s castle walls to miss and strike the ground instead.
“See? As expected, it’s too much for him to handle. Once we separate him from their ship we can handle him easily. Defeat him and steal Evansmana. Make sure you don’t take their firedew first,” Kaltinas said in a pleased voice.
“Hmm. That’s fine and all, Kaltinas, but have you forgotten we can hear your plans through Leaks?” I asked.
“Hmph. Have you forgotten, misfit, that we are allowing you to listen? Your arrogance finally makes some sense to us now. You might have felt confident with Hyphoria’s Sword of Three Races in your possession, but that holy sword can only shine with the right wielder.”
The gunports of Balandias’s sky fortresses all opened at once. Magic circles then appeared.
“Fire Veylonbosm!” Kaltinas ordered.
A barrage of magic shells rained down from the magic circles. The Demon King Express kept its distance from the attack as it ran through the sky, attempting to evade the spellfire. But there were too many cannons to avoid completely. Roughly a fifth of the blows still struck the Teoboros Ijelia barrier.
“Sorry... I think I might go down before the barrier does...” Eleonore muttered.
The Demon King Express was picking thinner areas of Veylonbosm to run through, but by doing so was getting farther and farther away from Lay’s position. Eldmed continued to instruct the students to guide the train such that damage was minimized as much as possible, but there was only so much the train could evade when outnumbered ten to one. The Balandias Fleet moved like pawns on a board game, splitting Lay from the Demon King Express.
“Lay got separated!”
“We have to cover for him!”
The Fan Union’s voices echoed with alarm. They fired Boros Hetheus from the turrets, but a different sky fortress intercepted and blocked the wheels with their castle walls.
“Hmph. It’s that poor ship of yours that needs saving now. You would have already been destroyed by now without Evansmana’s support,” Kaltinas said.
“Really? I don’t think it’d be that easy to get rid of us,” I replied. I left my throne and the carriage altogether, leaving the train to stand on the front carriage and observe the battlefield. There was no way of breaking this encirclement.
“Eleonore,” I said.
“Got it!” she replied.
I jumped, Eleonore casting Reart and allowing me to slip past the barrier around the Demon King Express.
“Fool. Did you think you could get past us using your ship as bait?” Kaltinas asked.
One ship instantly targeted me, deploying a magic barrier in my direction. Two more Eten ships closed in, deploying their castle walls and trying to sandwich me between them.
They showed no sign of slowing down—they fully intended to crush me. With a loud boom, the two ships collided.
“Wah ha ha ha ha ha! Have you learned your place yet, arrogant ruler? You never stood a chance against my fleet without a proper castle.”
“Really now?”
Kaltinas gasped in shock. “Wh-What are you doing, ship seven and eight?! Engage full throttle! Crush them into silence already!”
“There’s a problem, sir!” a soldier shouted.
“We’re going at full throttle, but we’re not moving...” another added.
“No... If anything, we’re...”
I dug my fingers into the two castle walls on either side of me and pushed back, black particles swirling in a spiral around me.
The voices of confused castle demons echoed through Leaks.
“I-It can’t be! He’s...”
“He’s pushing back against the sky fortress with his body?!”
“Is there a malfunction? No, is it his magic?! Check all engines. It may be some kind of curse!” Kaltinas snapped.
“All checks on the sky fortress completed. Everything is functioning as intended! We simply don’t have enough power!”
“Impossible! How could we lose to a single demon?! He’s a misfit from the shallows!”
“You said I didn’t have a proper castle, Immovable King,” I said, “and you were right—until now.”
Using Fless, I slowly began to rotate my body, keeping my grip on the two castles. While I moved, the two castles in my hand began to turn with me.
“F-Full throttle backwards! Retreat! Shake him off!”
“We’re trying! But we just can’t move.”
“What is this? At this rate... The sky fortress will be swung around...?”
I continued to spin with Fless, the two castles gaining momentum as they spun around me like horses on a carousel. My spin increased in speed until I was like a tornado, and with the two castles in hand, I flew up towards the Eten that was hovering over my head, smashing into it from below. Wall scraped against wall, causing multiple explosions in all three castles and gradually wearing them all down.
“G-Gwaaaaaaaaah!”
After easily destroying one Eten, I charged towards the next, hearing the castle demons’ clamor over Leaks.
“Use spellfire! Fire at them!”
“It’s no good! We can’t take aim!”
“He’s coming this way!”
“Use three ships to hold him back at once!”
“N-No way, he grabbed us instantly. G-Gyaaaaaah!”
“What is this? What is this?! The castle—our own castle—is being hurled at us?!”
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Screams of pandemonium echoed. On the battlefield, whoever was engulfed by the enemy would fall first. If the castle demons had known this would happen, they probably would have been able to counter it. But their imaginations were sorely lacking. Because they had never thought I’d be able to spin around with two castles in my hand, they scrambled to try to counteract me. But the time they lost coming up with a response proved fatal.
“Bwa ha ha! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!”
Eldmed watched me spin towards the surrounding sky fortresses, cackling all the while. He had completely forgotten about the Demon King Express and Lay.
“Tremble in fear, residents of Balandias. Behold the terror before you!” he declared to the Second Balandias, as though victory was already secured.
“H-He’s coming this way...”
“Retreat! Retreat at full speed! We must regroup!”
“It’s no good, he’s too fast—”
A thunderous explosion roared through the sky.
In just one minute, fourteen smoking Sky Fortress Etens had been smashed to pieces, reduced to debris falling out of the sky.
“Compared to the Demon King Anos Voldigoad, the deep-level worlds are trivial,” Eldmed said.