“Haaah... Haaah...” As the world around me went quiet, I carefully got to my feet. I needed to make sure not to accidentally touch the teleportation panel as I stood up. Neptotes was nowhere to be seen, which meant I’d safely deposited him on the panel. The sand that had been covering it had been blown away when I slammed him down.
“Is it...over?” Someone muttered, and Parker stepped forward to examine the panel.
“It’s certainly over. He won’t be coming back,” he replied.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, including me.
“But I must say, Veight, that was quite a terrifying plan—linking two teleportation panels to create an infinite teleportation loop,” Parker said as I patted the dust off my clothes.
“I just re-created an incident that happened in the future.”
“An incident? What do you mean? How can something from the future have happened in the past?”
“Don’t worry about it. The important thing is that we now know Valkaan can’t match the power of science.”
I had instructed Ryucco to stick panels five and six together and adjust them so that six teleported to five and vice versa. Panel four still led to panel five, so anyone who stepped on panel four would become stuck in an infinite teleport loop between five and six, which were now glued together. There wasn’t enough space for a human body to properly materialize between them, but even if there had been, the loop would persist, so it hardly mattered. I’d discovered in my past life how dangerous infinite loops could be in programming, and it seemed they were just as perilous when it came to magic. If we weren’t careful about the teleportation magic tools we made, things would spiral out of control quickly. At the very least, it was probably too dangerous to allow regular people to use the teleportation panels.
“How are the teleportation panels holding up?” I asked, turning to Ryucco.
Ryucco sighed and pointed to Kite, who was hauling the two panels on a portable cart. “They’re powered by the person using them, so that old man’s gonna keep getting bounced back and forth until he’s completely out of mana,” Ryucco explained.
“How long will it take for Neptotes’s mana reserves to dry up?”
“Hell, if I know. But once he runs out, he won’t be a Valkaan anymore. And if a regular human gets stuck between those two panels, they’ll be crushed to death by the pressure.”
Just then, I saw red liquid start to seep from the tiny gap between the two panels. It wasn’t exactly blood—more like human flesh that had been run through a blender. Not that I’d ever seen that happen before, but I assumed that was what it looked like.
“Ugh...” Friede murmured as she stared at the panels.
Ryucco seemed unfazed and started munching on a carrot stick. “Wow, he sure lasted a while. Hey, Kite, how many loops did he do?”
“More than a billion. But if you want an accurate count, clean these panels up first. I don’t want to touch them right now.”
“Why not? Don’t you humans touch raw meat all the time when you’re cooking?”
“Not human meat!”
You’re starting to scare me, Ryucco.
Jerrick folded his arms behind his head and let out a long sigh. “You always surprise me, Veight. I never thought you’d beat a Valkaan one-on-one.”
“Well, if I was actually alone, I definitely would’ve lost,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s only thanks to you guys that I was able to get him onto that panel. And I wasn’t even the one who invented these things; that was all Ryucco. Plus, all the magic and techniques I used during the fight were learned from others.”
That was how progress worked. Countless centuries of unsung heroes labored tirelessly to develop new methods and techniques, improve on old ones, and pass them down to future generations. Most of these heroes were regular people. Sure, they were likely intelligent if they managed to create new knowledge, but they probably weren’t super geniuses or anything. Prodigies of that caliber only appeared once every few generations, after all.
“The efforts of millions of regular people have finally built a foundation that can match a Valkaan, that’s all. I didn’t do anything special.”
“As always, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jerrick said with a shake of his head.
Friede gave Jerrick a curious look and said, “Really? I feel like I understand it well enough.”
I knew I could count on you, Friede.
“I do too,” someone called out.
“Ah, Shirin. Welcome back,” Friede said, turning to him.
“Thank you. I’ve safely delivered Prince Shumar to the werecats. I rushed back because I wanted to see if everyone was okay.”
The older generation of demons lived in an era where strength ruled and people followed the strong, so it made sense that they didn’t get it. But the new generation had grown alongside humans and had a better grasp of how they worked. The youth understood that a thriving society was built not on the accomplishments of celebrated heroes but on the efforts of countless ordinary people. Since they understood that, I had faith that demons would be able to mingle just fine with humans.
Suddenly, I sensed a change in the flow of the surrounding mana. With both Valkaan gone, it was no longer being drawn to Neptotes and Burbelga. If I were to compare it to wind, it was as if a typhoon had finally passed and a gentle breeze was blowing in its wake. Valkaan drained the mana of their surroundings just by existing, and now that they were gone, this barren wasteland could finally start to heal.
The other mages noticed the shift in mana as well, and Kite said, “Looks like we managed to survive another crisis.”
“It was all thanks to everyone’s efforts,” I replied with a smile.
I certainly wouldn’t have been able to stop Neptotes and Burbelga alone.
“Now then, we can’t sit around and celebrate just because we took care of some Valkaan. There’s still a mountain of things to address. For starters, we need to secure the region and make sure there are no other threats around. Then we should probably restart our investigation, but...” I trailed off.
“I’m pretty sure we just took care of the problem, didn’t we?” she asked, giving me an exasperated smile.
“Fair enough. I suppose taking new readings of the mana in the regions we already explored should suffice.” With the Valkaan gone, the mana density should be going back up, and if it is, then we wouldn’t need to do anything else. Though, honestly, I wasn’t looking forward to doing even more work. I turned back to my old friend and self-proclaimed vice-commander and said, “Hey, Kite, do you mind taking care of the rest?”
“You want me to do all this fieldwork without you? Absolutely not!”
Thought so.