The Superd village was too quiet. It was so quiet I wondered when I arrived if everything was already over.
“Why?! Why is there no one here?!” Alec bawled. I passed through the palisade gate and into the village and found it empty. The Superd were gone, as were Julie and Aisha, and Cliff and the others who’d been carried back here for their wounds. Even Sylphie, who was supposed to have been relaying my message to Orsted, was gone. Eris, too. There wasn’t a trace of any of them. All the people had vanished into thin air.
“How can this be?! Isn’t this what Rudeus was defending?!”
It was. I was defending this place.
This was bizarre. Everyone had been here, right before I left! It had been…how much time had passed? It was about three hours from here to the ravine. I’d used the Version Zero to get there, and I’d been in a big hurry, so it had only taken an hour. Then we’d fought Badigadi, searched for Geese, and come back…so five, maybe six hours? Five or six hours ago, everyone had been here. Being in a hurry I hadn’t looked around much, but I was sure they’d all been here.
Except—hold up. Hadn’t there been…too many people? Hadn’t there been some people who had no place being here?
“Curses… You had me completely fooled…” Alec turned around. “Rudeus Greyrat!” Fury radiated from him in waves.
You’ve got it wrong. I don’t know any more than you.
Why would I have come chasing after such a dangerous opponent if Orsted wasn’t even here? That’d be moronic. I’d have run away into the forest, counting my blessings that he’d let me live.
“Orsted and the Superd were never here, were they?”
“Um, no, the Superd were… You saw Ruijerd before, didn’t you?” Getting the feeling he might attack at any moment, I backed away. I had no idea what was going on now. Maybe this was all a bad dream. Maybe the Abyssal King had survived or something, and everything since we’d defeated Badigadi had been a dream.
“I was going to let you live. No longer. If you are so desperate to fight me to the last, I shall grant your wish…”
Crap. What’s going on? I had to run. I had no reason to fight, I had to run. I was about to turn around—then, ice ran down my spine.
My feet stopped moving. Had Alec done something? No, that wasn’t it. He was rooted to the spot too.
“Wh-what’s this, this cold?” He sounded scared. He was looking around wildly. He had the Fighting God Armor. Why was he so scared?
Why?
Well, because it was a curse. A curse to inspire fear. A curse that specifically didn’t work on me. Only, I could tell that the source of the curse was currently seething with murderous rage, and that rage was tied up in some major trauma for me. That scared me.
That murderous rage took shape as it emerged from the back of the village. Silver hair, and those awful eyes, the whites shining beneath the gold of his irises. He came walking toward us slowly with a terrifying look on his face.
“Rudeus.”
“Sir Orsted…why…?”
It was Orsted. He had his helmet in one hand and tossed it to me now. I hurried to catch it.
“When Sylphiette informed me what had happened, Cliff Grimor was already close to full mana drain. I saw that he would be unable to seal Badigadi and the Fighting God, so I went and begged another man’s aid. Hence, my arrival was delayed. Forgive me.”
No, not that, I wasn’t asking why you’re late. I want to know why there’s no one here.
“This, however… This, I did not anticipate,” Orsted said, then looked at Alec, North God Kalman III, who stood there in the Fighting God Armor. “I shall handle the rest.” He stepped forward, and Alec took a frightened step back. I had no idea what was happening. I only called after Orsted.
“But Sir Orsted, your mana…”
“Enough. There has been enough of that,” Orsted said, shaking his head. “I too have made up my mind.”
“Made up your mind…? About what…?”
He looked at me. His mouth quirked in the thinnest shadow of a smile, then set with almost imperceptible determination. With the most terrifying face in the world, he said, “I wish to see for myself what it is like to fight alongside trusted friends.”
I hadn’t quite followed the beginning and end of the conversation, but for some reason, his words struck me. I understood he’d resolved himself to this battle.
“Okay,” I said at last. “Then I’ll leave you to deal with the rest.” I stepped back. There was nothing more for me to say. I was supposed to be thinking that I couldn’t allow Orsted to fight, and yet I could feel a little smile tugging at my mouth. I’d misjudged a little. Not one thing in particular, exactly. It was just that Orsted had let me in more than I’d thought. He thought of me as his ally on an emotional level, not just in his calculations. He wanted to fight alongside his friends. Not allies. Friends. From now on, he would not be alone, but with me. He wouldn’t use me, but rather stand at my side. Now I knew we couldn’t lose. I’d thought I’d failed to achieve a goal, but I’d won something else.
“Now then, North God Kalman III, Alexander Rybak.”
“So it’s you… You’re Dragon God Orsted.” When Orsted called his name, Alec raised the King Dragon Blade Kajakut. He was wielding both the Fighting God Armor and the King Dragon Blade. They made for a devastatingly powerful combo. He wouldn’t consider tossing just one of them to the side, would he? Was there anything I could do here?
“Perfect.” Orsted, it seemed, thought differently. As Alec raised his blade, a smile of confidence flashed across his face. That smile was terrifying enough to turn everything around it to ice.
“With both the Fighting God Armor and the King Dragon Blade, there’ll be no excuses when you lose, will there?”
“You—!” Alec was out for blood now. “Do you mock me?!”
“I do not.” Orsted put his hands together and then slowly drew them apart. Something emerged from the palm of his left hand: it was a sword, and when I saw it, my knees began to knock together. I’d only seen that sword once before. Orsted had only called it the Dragon Blade. All I knew was that it consumed a massive volume of mana.
“My sole desire is to beat you down utterly and to break you.” He held the sword out, pointing it at Alec’s eyes.
Alec’s fury rose to the surface, the air crackling with his wish to see Orsted dead. He raised the King Dragon Blade.
“Try it, then!” he shouted.
Dragon God Orsted faced off against North God Alexander in the Fighting God Armor. The true and actual final battle had begun.
✦ ✦ ✦
About ten minutes later, around a quarter of the forest around the Ravine of the Earthwyrm was gone. Amid the now scorched and barren wasteland, scattered with mounds of splintered trees, there knelt a boy missing both his arms. A sword pressed into his throat. The boy looked up at its wielder in blank shock. A man with silver hair and distinctive eyes stared back. He didn’t have a scratch on him. Looking at him standing there unscathed, you’d think there hadn’t been a battle at all. The only clue was a spattering of dirt on his clothing.
“Choose. Become my follower or die.”
The Dragon God against the North God in the Fighting God Armor.
That match-up could have been a truly legendary battle. A pair of opponents of that caliber could have gone down in history for good. Sadly, the actual battle was nothing so grand. It was too devastatingly one-sided for that. Honestly? It was tough for me to put it into words. I watched it, getting caught in the melee and narrowly escaping death as I did so, but they moved so fast I could hardly see anything. Even with the Eye of Foresight, I couldn’t tell what either of them were doing. The only thing I saw for sure was that Orsted always had the upper hand. I could tell that every time Alec tried to turn things around, Orsted smashed him into utter submission. He was completely outmatched. Even with the Fighting God Armor and the King Dragon Blade, he couldn’t touch a hair on Orsted’s head. The armor was smashed to pieces, which were now beginning to regenerate, but they had detached from Alec’s body. The King Dragon Blade lay on the ground nearby along with his arm.
Alec had long since lost all will to fight. He looked up at Orsted, his face petrified with fear. Tears streamed from his defeated eyes, and his mouth hung half open. The boy who’d boasted of becoming a hero was gone. In his place was a whimpering puppy, its spirit entirely broken.
After a long silence, at last he spoke. “I will become your follower,” he said.
And now, this time, the battle really was over.