Sazaki’s body creaked and twisted. He moved at his fabled lightspeed, cutting through even sound. The red light that trailed from his body—which moved so quickly that even the darkness that had almost destroyed the world was unable to follow—turned into a flying slash beyond the perception of anyone but Stein and beheaded the twisted ambition.
“You filthy drunkaaard! How dare youuu?!” However, the glowing sphere that should have been torn cleanly away cursed at Sazaki.
“Tch. This is why I hate people who’re near immortal or whatever.”
The ball of light that had come detached reattached itself back to the main body, before the whole mass fired thousands of arrows of light. Each arrow could easily penetrate magically reinforced plate armor, and if they rained down on a city, the streets would be instantly littered with corpses.
“Vanish in the light!”
“In those hollow little things?” Lara asked.
According to an Eastern saying, a bundle of sticks was stronger than an individual branch. In the eyes of Lara, the Witch of Annihilation, the arrows of light Grace fired—despite having her body cut apart by Sazaki—were nothing but empty, inferior products.
“Deploying concept-destruction formula,” Lara said.
“Y-You damn freak!” Grace screamed.
A massive jet-black magic circle appeared before Lara. The patterns and words on it were products of the abyss—ones which not even Grace, someone who’d survived the great war and was called a genius, could comprehend in the slightest. When a thin, black beam of light emerged from the circle, the twisted mass of ambition known as Grace, which should have been impervious to the laws of nature, focused all of its abilities on defense, trying to somehow withstand it.
“Aaargh!”
And her plan had worked to some extent. Although the narrow beam was shaving away at Grace’s luminous body, it hadn’t reached her core yet. However, Lara wasn’t here alone.
“My path is null. My fist is null.”
“Blue power, come forth!”
The muscle head and the braggart?!
To the left and right of Lara’s attack, Stein and Max put all their strength into their legs, running at full pelt.
“Raaaaah!” Max had transformed into a blue spear. There was no human inside his armor anymore; blue scales covered his entire body, and his head was like a dragon’s. He looked almost completely like a dragon-man.
“What the hell is that?!” Grace was unable to witness the miracle of a human transforming into a dragon-man beneath Max’s armor, so she could only be shocked by the power that coursed through Stein’s entire body. The power between life and death had only been used by the Great Demon King and his close associates; Grace could never learn the specifics.
“Haah!” Stein leaped up, his fist scraping off a large chunk of the luminous body.
“The Null Wave?! Impossible!” Grace cried.
The attack blasted right through her purely conceptual defenses. Her luminous body neither regenerated nor reconstructed itself. Graced was terrified as her body remained damaged, nothing happening to fix it. But she should have realized this sooner. Had she thought about it for a moment, she would have understood just what the contradictory power that existed between life and death was: a nothingness that erased everything.
“Go through!” Max shouted.
“Graah?!” Grace cried.
On the opposite side of the luminous body, a blue spear that had been enhanced to the utmost limit pierced through, emerging from the gap that Stein had already excavated.
“Eek?!” Grace’s true body—which was formed of pure light and was controlling her luminous body from a different, higher dimension—cried out in fear as a hand reached out to her soul. “You’re a doll?! Th-That’s taboo!”
It was only natural for Grace to scream like that. Elrica, who had been staring intently at the luminous body, had just used a technique that allowed her to forcefully take possession of a soul. The only people who had historically mastered that technique were those famed for having perfected the art of murder. An ordinary Saint shouldn’t have learned something like that. However, as a Saint made to be a weapon of annihilation against darkness, it was natural for her to have mastered this divine technique.
“Dammit alllll!” As her defenseless soul was almost taken over, Grace took refuge in her luminous body in the plane of reality. However, Stein and Max were chipping away at that body piece by piece, with Lara’s magical attack still not relenting.
“Light, come fooooorth!” In order to resist, Grace—now within the luminous body—constructed a wall of twisted light that would repel all. The light was so powerful that it explained Grace’s arrogance at the start. No human in the modern day could break through it, and everything around it would simply dissolve to light.
“Well, well, you’re much easier to figure out now.” But for Sazaki, it was like Grace had now graciously come down to where her life was within his reach. The Blademaster had already drawn his crimson katana from its sheath—the weapon that spelled certain death for all who laid eyes on it, save for his comrades.
“I-It can’t be...” Grace muttered.
Sazaki’s red flash that now defied all perception mixed with Lara’s black of destruction, and Grace’s ultimate wall of light vanished. Moreover, the luminous body’s power continued to leak out through the gap that Stein and Max had wrenched open, so she couldn’t even redeploy her wall of light. All that was left was Grace’s main body, muttering in shock.
And then arrived the man who could crush even the intangible, whether it was forged of darkness or light.
“Light, come fooooooorth!” Seized by fear, Grace started shining, hoping to transform all into light. But she was up against light too.
“Light, come forth!” Ferd started shining too, but his light was leagues beyond hers.
“Aaargh!”
Grace was unable to look directly at the blinding light he emitted and shut her eyes. But perhaps it was fortunate that she couldn’t see. Unlike Grace, who was a body of light with a vague outline, Ferd could only be described as fully materialized humanoid light. Even though he was no longer the ultimate light that had wiped away the darkness, the yet-unparalleled master simply swung his shining sword down, its power condensed to the extreme. There could be no room for his enemy to resist or even cry in agony. The sword that had once driven darkness away passed cleanly through the twisted light, completely erasing it from the world.
Even if he had grown old and his final days were approaching, the Hero was still the Hero, and the Hero’s party was the Hero’s party. Otherwise, they would never have been able to emerge victorious against the forces of darkness that had almost destroyed the world, or against the Great Demon King—who had almost shattered the very laws of nature. They were the Hero’s party because they were the strongest that there was.
“Now then, let me contact Gale.” After confirming that Grace was gone, Max used one of his cursed pieces of equipment to get in touch with his older brother Gale. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes. How did it go?” came Gale’s voice from afar.
“The Great Demon King wasn’t involved, and the monk slayers were also fake. Grace the Grievous was responsible, and we ended up fighting her.”
“What? Grace? After all this time?”
“Lara will explain the details. And it seems that she also wants to call some of her apprentices to investigate just in case.”
“I see. I’ll start making arrangements immediately. Thank you again.”
“It’s fine. As for visiting our father’s grave, I’ll go there after I’ve visited a few other places. I honestly don’t know when it will be.”
“Very well. Contact me again when the time comes.”
“All right. Later, then.”
Although Gale and Max got along well, they had a complicated political relationship. So, once they had stated their business, they ended their conversation. The rest was a job for the experts.
“Okay, I need to go take care of my store’s inventory in the meantime.” As Max left the Nightless Inferno, he thought about his remaining inventory and considered his travel plans.
“By the way, do you happen to know a place that sells chicken breasts and cow’s milk?” Stein followed.
“Dear me. Cleaning all that up won’t be easy.” Then Lara.
“Good work, guys.” Sazaki also left the cave.
“I haven’t gotten a workout like that in a while,” Ferd remarked.
“Me neither,” Elrica agreed.
“Ooh, nice weather we’re having today.”
“Yes, truly.”
As the final two stepped out of the cave, they were greeted by the morning sun in the wide blue sky.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! You freaking moron!”
Such was the Dragonsbane Knight’s reply when the Great Demon King asked him why he fought for his kingdom even though he would never become king and would be forced to live as an outcast.