“Shotgun Trigger!” I shouted, and Badigadi’s Fighting Armor-encased arm went flying. Only, I was knocked back too. Badigadi had punched me with his one remaining arm. The front surface of my armor was smashed to pieces, and the impact had penetrated through it. I felt like my body was going to be crushed flat. I fell backward.
“Hurgh…rghh…” Blood bubbled up from my throat. My heart was screaming, Not yet! But it was no good. He’d outplayed me. I hadn’t seen it coming. He’d merged his arms together to make his attacks stronger. Lose an arm, win the war, so to speak. He’d driven his fist into the crack in the Magic Armor with unerring precision and shattered it. Why hadn’t that occurred to me when I saw his arms get thicker? Was I a moron?
No, you’re fine. This is okay. You’d have done the same thing even if you’d seen it coming.
I charged in thoughtlessly and I’d ended up cutting one arm off.
I’d taken some heavy damage…but it wasn’t over yet. There was still one arm left.
Then, to my shock, I realized I wasn’t moving. The Magic Armor felt heavy. And my wounds weren’t healing. Right next to where my body sat in the Magic Armor, there was a part that was essentially its core. Breaking that would cause the armor to lose mobility. It wouldn’t stop moving entirely, mind. It wasn’t so simple a machine. Still, it would be massively limited. Fatal in a battle like this.
Panicking, I sent out mana. Right, I had mana left. I could still move, I wasn’t fully drained. I could fight. So why wasn’t I moving?
“A good plan, and such spirit…” While I lay there, unable to move, Badigadi approached. “And you gave me a good fight. Farewell, Rudeus. Not even Laplace dreamed of such an elaborate scheme.”
He raised his cannon-like fist above his head, then brought it swinging—
“Guh!” Badigadi grunted as something red rammed into him from the side. Whatever it was slashed at his arm, severing it at the shoulder and sending it flying off through the air.
“Grr!”
There was only one red something in this forest: Eris. Could it be? Had she followed me? Had she been at my side this whole time—here with me?
I didn’t know. No other support arrived. Eris had come charging in alone. A moment later, I noticed something off. It was her sword. Eris’s sword was broken. The famed Phoenix Dragon Sword had snapped off at the hilt. Of course. Up until now, any damage we’d done to the outside of the armor hadn’t been enough to cut Badigadi’s arms off. She’d forced her sword to cut straight through. Any sword would break.
“Gyaaaah!” Her sword broken, Eris refused to stop. She faced down the Fighting God as though she hadn’t even noticed, howling all the way. Looking around, I saw she wasn’t alone. Following her out of the forest, one after another, came Sylphie, Ruijerd, Ghislaine, and Isolde. But they were too slow.
“Only a fool would dare to stand in my way alone!” Badigadi said, advancing on Eris. There was no one to protect her. Without hesitation, I activated the escape circuits and ejected from the Magic Armor. Strapped on its back was a sword.
The moment I gripped the hilt, a feeling of awesome, unlimited power rushed through my body. The sword contained a staggering volume of mana. It was a sword crafted specifically to make a person into a hero. I poured yet more mana into it, trying to wring out every last drop I had left.
I doubted I could use it myself. But a member of my family was standing in front of me with a broken sword raised before her, growling with her teeth bared, and all to protect me.
I threw the blade to her.
“Eris!” The magic sword flew in a lazy curve through the air to where Eris turned and caught it.
It was the King Dragon Blade Kajukut, renowned for being the most powerful sword in the world, and the greatest of the magic swords forged by the great demon bladesmith Julian Harisco.
Eris raised it high above her head.
“Gyaaaaaah!”
“Hrm? Surely not…!”
She brought the blade down. In the split second before it made contact, the Fighting God’s body floated into the air.
The blade sliced into him with a flash of light that blotted out my vision. The ensuing explosion blew out my eardrums.
We were at the mercy of an overwhelming force.
Destruction blossomed.
There was no blast wave, no shock wave. Only silence. The destruction was all directed inward. All that mana driven into the blade became a sphere that enveloped Badigadi. The sword had released not only Eris’s strength, but all the mana I had put into it.
I looked into the sphere of mana as it destroyed everything within it while it rose slowly into the air. I watched cracks appear in the Fighting God Armor. It fell to pieces. Badigadi was compressed within the mass of energy and then faded into dust without even a murmur.
I think he struggled, but there was nothing he could do. The Fighting God Armor didn’t function, and Badigadi was crushed even as he tried to regenerate.
The sphere vanished. The broken remains of the armor fell into the Earthwyrm Ravine. There were some clangs and clatters as they fell away, bouncing off the cliff walls, and the King Dragon Blade, still impaled in the metal, went with them.
All that remained was the armor. All traces of Badigadi’s black flesh had vanished.
For a good while, I stared. I stared both at the now silent ravine, and after the Fighting God Armor that had since vanished from sight. Badigadi’s arm lay nearby. It didn’t move or even twitch. It definitely didn’t look like it was about to start regenerating. Was he dead? Had we won, or was something else coming? Any moment now, was I going to hear a “Fwahaha!” as Badigadi returned?
I stared down into the ravine, wondering. Nothing happened. I saw no sign of anything coming back up. All that was left was silence.
I heard a thud from behind me and turned. Eris had fallen to her knees, her face pale. I rushed over to her. Was she injured? Had Badigadi got in a counterstrike? I reached out my hand, thinking I had to heal her right away, but then I sank to my knees as well.
“Ohh…” It wasn’t an injury. I recognized this sensation, as well as the look of Eris’s face. This was mana drain. Sucking out all my mana hadn’t been enough to satiate the King Dragon Blade Kajakut. It had used up Eris’s mana as well. Eris probably hadn’t experienced mana drain since childhood. She sank back, blinking.
“Eris.”
“Rudeus…” she said. “Your hair’s gotten whiter.”
I put a hand to my head, although I couldn’t tell myself. But returning her regard, I saw that one lock of her hair had turned white as well, like she’d put a streak in it.
“Yours too, Eris.”
“Huh… Then I guess we match,” she said, then toppled forward. She hadn’t fainted. She was only weak after using up all her strength. I wanted to fall on top of her, but I held myself firmly back.
“Rudy!” Sylphie was peering at us, worry in her eyes. She wasn’t alone, either. Ruijerd, Ghislaine, Isolde…they were all here.
“Sylphie, where’s Cliff?!”
“Um, well, someone else healed his wounds, then Zanoba and Dohga carried him back to the village. All of us here came straight after you, but then I didn’t want to get in the way, so I hesitated… But Eris ran in alone—huh?” Sylphie had laid a hand on Eris’s prone body, and now she looked puzzled. She’d probably cast a healing spell on sheer reflex. But Eris wasn’t wounded, so she didn’t get up.
“I think it’s mana drain. That sword consumes the mana of whoever wields it.”
“Oh. All right, then.”
“Anyway, Sylphie, those arms over there—get them to an undamaged magic circle. Then get Eris back to the village. I need you to tell Sir Orsted what happened, then bring Cliff here.”
I stood up. The Version Zero was in ruins, and my mana was practically exhausted…but I could still move. I didn’t know how much time it would take Badigadi to restore himself. After being crushed by that much mana, the way he’d disappeared looked like he’d been annihilated. And that was practically an understatement. The arms showed no signs of starting to regenerate, so I wanted to believe we had a while. Maybe that was naive. Wishful thinking. Most importantly, the Version Zero was destroyed, and the Version One was gone, too. I was on the verge of mana drain and Cliff, who could cast barrier magic, wasn’t here. Badigadi had fallen into the ravine, and we had no way of sealing him. If we went down there in this state and found him waiting for us, our chances of victory were close to nonexistent. There’d be nothing for it but to ask Orsted to take to the field. I wanted to get through this without him using any mana, but I might not have a choice.
I wasn’t strong enough.
Still, I’d driven Badigadi into a tight spot. I’d done everything I could. Whether Badigadi was up and about down there in the ravine, I didn’t know, but surely I’d brought him as low as it was possible for him to go.
I felt disgust at my own weakness.
“Ruijerd, Ghislaine, and you too, Isolde. Come with me, please.”
“Rudy? Where are you going?”
I thought I’d done everything I could, but there was still something else I had to finish. Even with my mana close to exhausted, I had to do it.
“I’m going after Geese.”