The skies of Second Balandias.
The Royal Tiger Maytilen soared through the air in all directions.
“That should be enough of a warm-up. Come, show me what you’ve got,” she said, suddenly blurring and appearing right before me. “Or I’ll eat you.”
She widened her jaw, showing off a set of sharp teeth. I shoved my right fist into her open mouth right as it tried to close over my head.
“Eat all you want.” I drew a magic circle inside the Royal Tiger’s body, firing Dogda Azbedra. With a thunderous noise blue stars ignited inside Maytilen’s body, sending countless sparks flying like fireworks.
“I knew it,” Maytilen said as she was thrown through the air, grinning. “Kaltinas’s words cannot be trusted. Dogda Azbedra, of all spells? Using that isn’t just a mere matter of upstream formulas.”
She turned herself midair, remaining afloat without a hint of surprise on her face.
“Whom did you learn it from, brat?”
“Oh, just someone I passed by in the forest.”
I drew ten magic circles and fired more blue stars. They curved towards Maytilen in four directions, sealing her escape route, but a flash of silver claws swiftly dispersed them.
Her paws hadn’t swung just now. The claw marks had just appeared out of nowhere, erasing the Dogda Azbedra I had drawn in her body too.
“You’re hiding something,” she said, Divine Eyes glaring at me. “You’re new to the silver seas, yet you’ve learned magic deeper than Balandias and have Evansmana in your possession. Have you secretly allied with the Holy Sword World Hyphoria? Or perhaps their bitter enemy, the Ruinous Abyss World Evezeino?”
She ran through the air while lobbing questions at me.
“One of the deep-level worlds must have armed you with deep magic and the Sword of Three Races before sending you to Pablohetra. There are many in the alliance who’d underestimate an ephemeral world.”
“I won’t fault you for suspecting a backer, Maytilen, but have you considered that I’m simply just strong?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. If you value your life, speak up now.” Maytilen’s front claws gleamed silver. “Or you’ll be torn apart with these Silverclaws of Ruin. These claws can bring down even castles.”
Maytilen’s body then shot forwards like a bolt of light. I caught her from the front with both hands, but the next moment, silver claw marks ran across my back. She hadn’t touched me there, yet her claws had ignored my wards and slashed all the way to my source, sending fresh blood pouring out along with the blood of the Demon King.
The wounds from my battle with Loncruz hadn’t healed fully. Inside me, my source of destruction was rampaging.
“Such a sturdy ruler for an ephemeral world. Such a nuisance.”
The magic power of a god flickered in the corner of my eye. It didn’t belong to the Royal Tiger—it was the dome that covered Second Balandias outside of Ottolulu’s water barrier. And attached to the dome, standing upside down, was a long castle, glowing silver. The castle extended downwards from the dome to the ground, enclosing the entire world within its walls before rising back to the top. It was like a castle ring that covered the entirety of the miniature world. A second ring intersected with the first.
“Hmm. So that long castle is your power.”
“You finally noticed?” she asked.
The castle covering the world began releasing a vast amount of magic, as though a veil had been lifted.
“Castles are built by stacking stones. Fortress walls are built by stacking causality. Castles, then, are cause and effect. They can be stacked until they form a world, a towering den fit for a Royal Tiger.” The world’s order distorted with Maytilen’s words. As if resonating with the long silver castle that covered the world, her fur began to glow silver too. “Great Castle of Causality Heizbenierya.”
The next moment, I felt a huge impact against the back of my head, sending my body hurtling towards the ground.
“This world is my castle. The stone walls accumulated are the causality of the world. Do you finally get it now? I control the causality of all of Balandias. Castles rise and fall according to my will, and thus cause and effect are mine to control. I can remove cause and still obtain the effect.”
The cause—the swinging of her claws, the physical tackle of her body—had been removed, leaving only the effect of claw marks and impacts. A fitting authority for a chief god.
“In this silver castle, I freely command the effect of all things. Your defeat was decided the moment you arrived,” she said.
I flipped in the air and landed on the ground. Water from the barrier splashed up in response, and a large hole was created in the ground.
“Such big talk,” I said, glaring up at the brazen Royal Tiger in the air with mauve Magic Eyes. “If you can control causality, why didn’t your earlier blow destroy my source completely?”
Maytilen didn’t respond. The eyes of a fierce beast were fixed on me.
“If you can freely command effect as you say, simply making Farris your ruler should have been easy. But you didn’t do that—you couldn’t.” I calmly pointed at her. “Due to the nature of a castle, all you can do is build or break the causality of things, like you said. You can break the cause of something and force its effect on someone, but there’s a limit to how much you can cut off. Even if you can ignore the action of swinging your claws, the most you can do is claw me. You can do nothing to erase the opposition from my source.”
If too much causality were removed, the castle itself wouldn’t be able to remain standing. She seemed capable of stacking causes to create a stronger effect, but was still limited in what she could actually do.