Back in Arcadia’s reactor room, Finn and I were locked in battle. Both of us had resorted to drugs to try to gain the advantage, and we’d both managed to access our respective suits’ full potential because of it. Strictly speaking, though, Brave was still probably more powerful than Arroganz.
“Arroganz hasn’t fought anyone this tough since that Black Knight,” I said.
Merely from mentioning it, I started thinking back to that time. The Black Knight had been the hero of the former Principality of Fanoss. I’d let my guard down, and he pushed us to our limits. If not for that experience, I probably couldn’t have held out against Finn this long. I was tougher now, steeled for the intense battle that was playing out.
“I won’t let you destroy the reactor!” Finn shouted as his longsword sliced through the air toward me.
I parried the attack, but it wasn’t enough. The blow’s force slammed me into the wall behind me, denting it.
Two horns jutted from Brave’s shoulders, generating electricity between them and then unleashing it. Brave had already used a substantial amount of mana, but with the reactor beside them, he could replenish himself by absorbing as much demonic essence as he wanted. This battlefield was entirely to Finn’s advantage.
“Luxion!” I bellowed.
“Deploying a shield over the surface of Arroganz’s armor,” he announced.
A thin magical barrier shimmered over Arroganz. We’d purged the thickest plating earlier, so if we did nothing to mitigate Brave’s attack, it could potentially be deadly. Fortunately, Arroganz was unscathed by that attack, but the same couldn’t be said of our surroundings.
The floor and wall melted as the electricity touching them produced a small explosion. I darted through the air to escape it. Brave swung his longsword down, cleaving straight through the wall with frightening power and narrowly missing me in the process.
“I can’t—no, we can’t let ourselves be defeated! Not here!” said Finn.
My nostrils flared. “Same goes for me, you know!”
As Brave recklessly lunged at us and swung again, my left hand reached toward them and fired a shock wave. He sidestepped it at the last second, avoiding any damage, but it at least allowed me to put more distance between us.
It was my turn to go on the offensive. I swiped my greatsword horizontally, but Finn deflected it and planted his foot right in my chest.
“Not very honorable of you!” I told Finn.
“I don’t want a lecture from you about honor!”
As the force of his kick spun me back through the air, I launched more laser beams at Brave, singeing his skin. He ignored the damage and raced toward me. He and Finn were both drunk on the adrenaline from the fight. It was as if my attacks didn’t even hurt them.
“I can’t keep wasting time on this,” I grumbled. I slammed my foot down on the pedal. Schwert’s propelling nozzle closed to restrict airflow, boosting me and shooting out blue flames in the process.
Brave accelerated toward me, his large, batlike wings beating the air furiously. I aimed my lasers at them. The blasts burned and punctured his wings, but they rejuvenated themselves too quickly for the lasers to have any lasting impact. In return, Brave fired electricity at me in the form of crackling balls that spun toward us.
“Those contain homing magic! There are…eighty-one in total!” announced Luxion.
“Shoot them down!” I said.
Schwert’s lasers managed to take care of most of them, but there were so many that it couldn’t handle every single one. Luxion was trying to conserve Schwert’s power, but this battle was draining its reserves quickly.
“How can you move like that?” Finn demanded. “However powerful you and Arroganz are, I don’t remember you being able to do all this!”
They’d obviously noticed the discrepancy in power between the period before I took my performance enhancer and now. Finn already knew I’d used the drug, of course. He had too, but it apparently struck him as odd that they hadn’t yet overpowered me despite having the clear advantage.
Brave figured out the answer before Finn could. “So that’s what you’ve done,” he said.
“What’ve they done, Kurosuke?”
“Luxion went and did the worst thing possible, Partner! He’s going to kill his master!”
“You can’t be serious!” Finn cried in disbelief.
“Don’t let them get to you,” I told Luxion. “Everything you did was on my orders.”
“You know nothing,” Luxion hissed at Brave with surprising emotion in his robotic voice. His whole tiny body trembled with fury.
“You’re sacrificing your own master to beat us, huh?!” Brave said accusingly. “The performance enhancer you used wasn’t any normal one on the market. You’re using the type that drains the user’s life force to grant them power! Just the kind of dirty trick I’d expect you filthy machines to resort to!”
Luxion instantly lost his cool. “If not for you and your kind, Master would have never resorted to such means to win,” he shot back. “If new humanity never existed to begin with, things would not have come to this!”
With all the emotion on both sides, the battle heated up.
“Leon! How can you throw your own life away so casually?!” Finn demanded as we fought. “I thought you valued your life more. Why would you choose death without hesitation?!”
What? He’s saying it isn’t like me to put my life on the line for others this way? I didn’t need him to point that out; I knew it better than anyone. But these two hands of mine could only protect so many people.
“If you want to protect everything, you have to be willing to make some sacrifices!” I said.
I’d been so greedy in wanting to save so many. Before I knew it, I’d shouldered a bigger burden than I could manage. Although I recognized that I couldn’t carry more, there were still so many other people I wanted to protect. What other choice had I had? I could only take on so much by myself.
“So you’re sacrificing yourself?!” Finn said admonishingly.
“Yeah, and that means I’ll save a lot of people!”
If we eked out a victory, my life would be a small price to pay for all the others we’d protect in the process. Losing would cost us too much. I wouldn’t let myself lose, not to anyone—even Finn.
The battle grew fiercer. Brave lobbed more electricity balls at me. Influenced by his emotions, they grew larger and faster than before. When I stopped to cut one down with my greatsword, Brave finally caught up again.
“Tch!” I slammed my foot into Finn’s chest to knock him away, but he grabbed my left leg. “Shit!” Before I could react, it was already too late. He’d destroyed my leg.