Farris took my hand and slowly got to his feet. He had the face of a man freed from the ghosts haunting him, but he immediately gathered his composure.
“Your Majesty, the Immovable King is—”
Just then, the sky fortress shook with an intense rumble. There was no stopping Ein Aer Naverva’s rays anymore. Not even Zeridheavens could proceed any further with a ship hull this damaged.
No—there was something else. Something was pushing Zeridheavens up beyond its limits. A powerful divine authority was reflected in my Magic Eyes.
“...mine...” an eerie voice echoed. I turned to see a head floating in the open hole I had made of the castle. “He’s mine...”
It was the head of the Royal Tiger Maytilen.
“You can’t have him,” she said. “He’s mine. I won’t allow it. Farris is the wings that will lead Balandias. He is the Silvercastle Creator who will construct my ideal castle!”
A Leaks immediately arrived from Arcana. “I cannot seal it with the Six Flowers of Absurdity. The Royal Tiger is burning her own life to free herself.”
The light of a dying flame could overcome the darkness itself. The Royal Tiger’s source was approaching its destruction, allowing it to surpass the power of the Six Flowers of Absurdity. It was also about time for Arcana’s magic power to be exhausted. There was no way to immobilize a god of the depths completely.
“Zeridheavens! Can you hear me?!” Zaimon suddenly yelled through Leaks. His panicked voice echoed throughout the entire ship. “Abandon ship immediately! Chief God Maytilen intends to use her divine roar!”
The crew immediately responded by drawing the magic circle for Gatom. But before they could teleport away, silver claw marks appeared, slicing through the formulas.
The crew shouted in dismay.
“What?! Why?!”
“The cause and effect of Gatom is being controlled... Isn’t this the Royal Tiger’s power?”
“Impossible! Why would she...?!”
“What is the meaning of this, Maytilen?!”
The Royal Tiger’s floating head grinned. “None of you can leave. If I let a single grain of sand out of my grasp, the misfit will sneak out with it.”
Far below Zeridheavens, the headless, crushed body of Maytilen glowed silver under the rubble of the Great Castle of Causality. In response, the piled-up Silvercastle regained its radiance.
“Chief God Maytilen!” Zaimon cried out. “If you use that here, Balandias will not survive! You’ll be destroying your own world!”
Words of total delusion spilled from the Royal Tiger’s head. “A single silver bubble is a small price to pay to obtain Farris. I won’t allow anyone else to have him. No one. You’re mine, Farris, forever.”
“You’re crazy! Farris is too close. You’ll kill him!” Zaimon yelled.
But Maytilen only gave an eerie smile.
“If he dies, his bond with the misfit will be broken, and his firedew will someday become the wings of Balandias once more. I can wait until then, even if it takes tens of thousands of years.”
An intense light, similar to Gavuel, glowed. The Six Flowers of Absurdity were fully shaken off, and the Great Castle of Causality twisted and creaked as it changed shape, turning into the head of a giant stone tiger. Its jaw opened, a low sound reverberating from its throat as the self-sacrificial magic power of the Royal Tiger gathered in its open mouth.
“Now, become one with me,” the Royal Tiger said. “Heiz Belmut Ieriyard.”
The roar of the Royal Tiger shook the atmosphere itself. From her mouth came the scorch marks of countless silver bolts, striking across Zeridheavens. The Royal Tiger’s authority that ignored cause and demanded the resulting effect could bypass any barrier and force the damage of any blow. It could destroy anything, no matter how strong.
The crew of Zeridheavens had no time to even react. As residents of Balandias, their instincts told them that this was the authority of their Chief God, the Royal Tiger Maytilen. There was no way of evading or defending against the power of causality—to them, it spelled their death. However...
“Have beauty,” Farris said.
From a magic circle emerged a single magic brush. It waved through the air, creating a three-dimensional magic circle that covered Zeridheavens. I linked to him with Gyze and supplemented his magic power so we could cast the group magic together.
“Show them your true wings,” I said.
Farris closed his eyes and focused. “Astrastella.”
With the sky as his canvas, the broken wings of Zeridheavens were redrawn in no time at all. They were longer, sharper, and more beautiful than ever before. The outer walls, ramparts, castle gate, and turrets of the sky fortress were also regenerated. In the blink of an eye, the half-broken fortress was made anew.
The next moment, Maytilen’s roar of causality, Heiz Belmut Ieriyard, swallowed Zeridheavens. The ship shook, shot through by the silver bolts, and began to fall apart. The bolts ignored all defenses, all magic barriers and ramparts, leaving only the resulting destruction of Zeridheavens.
But it didn’t fall. New wings were being born as they were being destroyed. And that wasn’t all—with each subsequent regeneration, the damage caused by Heiz Belmut Ieriyard was clearly getting smaller. Based on how panicked Zaimon had sounded, this move was most likely the Royal Tiger’s final ace, and it should have been powerful enough to destroy Astrastella’s spell formula. But the roar of causality had failed to shoot through Zeridheavens’s core. In fact, each time Zeridheavens was redrawn, its wings gained more resistance to Heiz Belmut Ieriyard.
The Silvercastle World Balandias was an accumulation of causality. Just like how the stones of a castle could be toppled, the Royal Tiger could topple causality itself just as easily, as long as she could properly recognize the cause—
A castle was formed by accumulating stones. Using this logic, Maytilen then believed that art was formed through an accumulation of paint. But the magic brush couldn’t be stopped. In truth, the art creation spell Astrastella required neither brush nor paint. Astrastella made a painting born of Farris’s imagination, and thus, to be destroyed, required that one have the ability to see inside Farris’s head.
The Royal Tiger was incapable of that. No matter how far she followed the cause, even if her authority could see into Farris’s head, she wouldn’t understand what it was she found there. Art didn’t exist in Balandias, and so while the Royal Tiger was knowledgeable in how to construct a castle, she knew nothing about how to create a painting. The artistic wings Farris drew were far from being simply functional. To her, his wings appeared to be flying with no care for cause or effect. They were wings that could soar, self-willed and freely, higher than any pile of rocks. Perhaps that was why the Royal Tiger had obsessively sought Farris in the first place—to fill the hole she saw in her incomplete world.
“That power! You, Farris...with your power, if you became ruler...I would...”
“Isn’t it about time for you to surrender? All you have left is that perishing source of yours,” I said, having leaped out of Zeridheavens to fly over to where the stone tiger was.
“Silence! I will not allow it! Farris is mine... I’ll never give him to you!”
A silver bolt shot through my body. The next moment, the Solar Eclipse of the End high up in the sky of Balandias released a light.
“Remember this, Maytilen.”
Far above us, Sasha’s Divine Eyes of the End found the Royal Tiger’s castle. Dark light began to gather around the solar eclipse.
“Obession can destroy you.”
“Ein Aer Naverva!”
Apocalyptic light targeting only the Royal Tiger and her castle fell upon the Great Castle of Causality. Even under this apocalyptic onslaught, Maytilen continued firing silver bolts at Zeridheavens with a strange, single-minded obsession. But none of her roars of causality affected Zeridheavens anymore, and the ship soared freely past the countless silver bolts. Dyed black by the punishing light of the end, the Great Castle of Causality crumbled apart.
“You...” the head floating in the air muttered. The castle was completely annihilated. The Royal Tiger’s head fell down to where the rest of her was, and her dying body was made whole once more.
“It’s vexing, but this is all I can do...” Maytilen muttered, before she raised her voice to say, “I won’t forget this, Militia’s World! Misfits of the Demon King Academy! This anger, this resentment will never be forgotten. My Silvercastle World will turn into starved tigers who exist only to destroy you. Even if the world and its people suffer for it, we will chase you down to the ends of hell and tear the flesh off your bones!”
“If you had used your last breath to surrender instead, you might have lived,” I said, grabbing the Royal Tiger’s fur from behind. Condensed light of darkness gathered around my hand.
Sasha hadn’t finished firing Ein Aer Naverva—I had grabbed it with Leion, and amplified Abernyu’s apocalyptic light, already powerful enough to destroy the average miniature world, even more. I then took that amplified power of destruction and thrust it into Maytilen’s source.
“W-Wait, I surr— Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
My hand pierced through the Royal Tiger’s body, with Ein Aer Naverva exploding inside her source. Light of darkness filled Second Balandias, turning my surroundings completely black. All destruction focused on Maytilen’s source and tore it into pieces.
The darkness gradually brightened. Little by little light returned to the world, color returning as the sinister Solar Eclipse of the End in the sky faded away. All that was left at my feet were the ashes of her corpse and a barely intact tiger skull. She was still alive, but barely.
“But there’s no saving you anymore. Balandias will be better off without your surrender,” I said to Maytilen’s skull. I then looked up at the castle demons watching from a distance. “It’s over, castle demons of Balandias. Get over here and let’s settle this, once and for all.”