Chapter 256 — 결전(決戰)
Chapter 256
Decisive Battle
“【Bloom】.”
A doppelgänger.
A temporary clone formed from the genetic factors recorded in blood.
It was also a technique Tsepesh, the so-called Blood Lord, wielded as a signature alongside the Giant of the Dead.
“There’s one here too. What to do?”
“Nope, over here.”
“Hehe. And here as well?”
They popped up where Batu’s eyes couldn’t reach, but his honed senses didn’t miss the two spearheads driving in from the blind spot behind him.
Two more new doppelgängers had been made to strike from the rear.
Those impish, teasing laughs.
They got under Batu’s skin.
“Pointless tricks—how dare you!”
Thinking Elric was toying with him, Batu twisted his body sharply, batting away every one of their attacks.
Vwooooong—KRA-KA-BOOM!
Cha-cha-chang—
A gale of blade-wind, heavy with aura, roared up and detonated the ground.
Sand pillars meters tall shot skyward.
Exposed to the aura mixed into that storm, the doppelgängers would shatter in an instant, so the four Elrics hastily fell back.
“Even if one of you becomes four.”
Batu kicked off the earth and charged, determined not to let Elric slip away.
“If I beat every last one of you to a pulp, one of them’s bound to be the real thing!”
BOOM—
Like a bull in full charge. The closest doppelgänger scrambled to block him, but it couldn’t last; it was blasted away as a bloody pulp.
Thud. Thud. Thud!
Batu veered, picking his next target and sprinting.
Each savage stomp made the ground quake. Spattered head to toe in the doppelgänger’s blood and meat, Batu looked every inch a fiend.
That one. His Dragon’s Eye has fully opened.
Watching the fight, Mephisto narrowed his eyes.
He was currently digesting the demonic energy Lapis and Lazuli had left behind.
Because of that, direct intervention was difficult, but he still watched the battle closely, not missing a beat.
A fight between two humans who had swallowed dragon blood—irresistible even for a Great Demon King.
And his conclusion was that Batu, who had taken dragon blood long ago, was in a dangerous state.
Those eyes, especially—wild with madness.
Hadn’t someone said it?
The eyes are the mirror that reflect the person.
Batu was proof.
A vertical slit, reptilian and red, cleaving his pupils from top to bottom.
Dragon Eyes.
At this point, calling him human was a stretch.
If his Dragon Eyes had awakened, it meant the gene mutations from the dragon blood were nearing their end.
But even so, he hasn’t entirely stepped outside the bounds of humanity… which means he’s becoming a monster.
Mutation was a kind of aberration.
If it transcended the limits of a species, it would be evolution.
If not, collapse was inevitable.
And that, too.
It wasn’t the only problem.
He drank a Demon King’s blood as well, didn’t he?
No sooner had Mephisto finished than—
KRAAASH!
Hot on the heels of the second, the third doppelgänger burst apart, leaving only Elric, the original, standing.
Drenched now even in the doppelgängers’ blood, Batu radiated a menace so terrible it was hard to call him human.
Steam visibly wafted off his body; his magic power was boiling over.
But—
With only the original left, Elric almost seemed to have been waiting for this. Unruffled, he snapped his fingers.
“【Detonate】.”
Another of Tsepesh’s specialties activated.
Corpse Explosion.
The flesh and blood Batu was smeared with erupted all at once.
KRAAASH!
KRA-KA-BOOM, KRA-KA-BOOM!
Rrrrrumble, rrrrrr—
Explosions rolled one after another, the kind that could level a decent-sized building with ease.
Batu’s grand command tent, which had barely retained its shape, vanished in a single blast.
The ground heaved again and again, and the surrounding mountain tribesmen jolted in terror.
“Lord Batu!”
“Great Chieftain…! Cowards! How dare you do this to our Great Chieftain!”
To those who regarded magic as a base trick, it looked like Elric was disgracing their leader, and they roared themselves hoarse.
But the Guardians made it clear they wouldn’t let anyone interfere with Elric’s fight, holding the line like an iron wall and forcing the tribesmen back.
To make matters worse, Imperial troops were crashing in from outside, throwing everything into chaos.
With Batu pinned down in a moment like this, command and control fell apart, and any proper response was impossible.
Rrrrrrumble!
Even so, the blasts kept hammering the spot where Batu had been.
No matter how exceptional a superhuman he might be, could anyone really survive that?
[Wow. That’s some serious punch.]
「No point wasting doppelgängers made by squeezing out enough blood to cause anemia.」
Even at Elric’s admiration, Tsepesh was indifferent.
Long years dealing in blood and death had left him unlike his close friend Damir; he wasn’t one to show much emotion.
「Besides, your blood is mixed with a dragon’s.」
Elric nodded in understanding.
Dragon blood was a cheat code in more ways than one.
It awakened the body and created talent where there was none. It honed the senses and opened the sixth. That alone was a staggering change.
So if the magic used Elric’s dragon-tainted blood?
Naturally its power dwarfed that of a typical “Corpse Explosion.”
「That said, Mephistopheles has a point.」
Neither Tsepesh nor Elric seemed to think this would end the fight.
「With Demon King blood in him, he doesn’t go down easy.」
No sooner had he said it than—
Fwoooosh!
A whirlwind speared up into the air, then tore through the dust cloud as Batu emerged.
Step.
Step.
He looked different from before.
His silhouette, broadly, was still human.
But dark blue-black scales had climbed up from his chest to cover half his face, and from one temple a dragon-like horn had jutted out, standing proud.
Wings and a tail burst through the shredded hem of his upper garment and hung limp, dragging on the ground.
Could you still call that human?
Half-man, half-dragon.
Batu had become something neither fully human nor fully dragon.
「The mutation’s gone so far it’s forced a change in race. Spontaneous mutation. And an anomaly on top of it?」
Batu had one more distinctive feature.
Tssss—
The black aura wreathing him.
Demonic energy.
* * *
—Don’t you want to kill him?
A voice whispered in Batu’s ear.
A sweet voice, like a devil’s murmur.
—Then why make it complicated? You already have the power. Crave more. Hunger for it.
Batu instinctively knew what that voice was.
Azazel.
The Great Demon King the Grigori served.
He was supposed to have vanished after the Grigori fell, yet here he was, trying to meddle.
No doubt the big swig of Lazuli’s blood a moment ago had roused him.
Batu wanted to tell him to get out of his head. Now.
But—
For some reason, the words wouldn’t quite come.
—You don’t seem to like me. Fair. Let’s be honest. Having to join hands with humans isn’t exactly my ideal either. But we can give each other what we need, can’t we?
Azazel’s voice tickled Batu’s heart with practiced ease.
—The dragon your tribe revered for ages didn’t protect you; it betrayed you. Knowing full well it would imperil your people, it shared the same dragon blood with Elric Mervinger.
Batu knew the Guardian Dragon had given him dragon blood not for his sake, but as a sign to find Elric, the subject of the prophecy.
But even after finding Elric Mervinger, Batu kept silent. He never told the Guardian Dragon.
He feared the power given to him might be taken away.
He had just, finally, come within reach of his clan’s long-cherished wish. He couldn’t let it be ruined.
Above all—
It was his clan that had served the Guardian Dragon for generations, not some Mervinger whelp!
So the right to receive dragon blood belonged to the tribe, not to Mervinger.
No—he drilled that into himself.
Azazel slipped deftly into that psychology.
—And the priestess? You thought she was on your side. But wasn’t she part of what set you on this grueling path? And what did she do afterward? Did she keep standing with you?
Enough.
For a moment, Batu wanted to shout it.
He didn’t want a foul-mouthed demon speaking of Sarnai.
—But then the priestess stopped taking your side… and even sent Elric Mervinger, the man you’d left to die—
[Shut up.]
Batu snarled.
[What do you know about Sarnai, to foul your mouth with her name?]
I’m the only one who gets to speak of her.
That’s what he wanted to say.
Azazel was taken aback.
He’d thought the man was just a strong, stupid, easy puppet. He hadn’t expected his words to be defied.
Most mortals had their souls ensnared just by listening; their minds went blank and they became puppets.
Batu, it seemed, was cut from another cloth.
No wonder he’d driven Elric—who had once humiliated Azazel—this far.
But in the end, a human is a human.
Azazel only smiled darker.
—Either way, it comes down to this: you’re the only one left who can protect your tribe… your people.
Batu’s boiling emotions cooled to ice.
—So what’s wrong with craving a little more power? If you lose here, you go back to a wretched life. Worse—you might live and die as slaves. Can you accept that?
At Azazel’s whisper, Batu dragged out the memories he’d locked away, the ones he didn’t want to remember.
Slave hunters who pushed deep into the mountains in the name of liberation.
Routed soldiers who set villages ablaze and plundered the people.
Imperial troops who, simply because they were different, refused to see them as human and treated them like beasts…
Years of unjust suffering under the Empire’s oppression and violence flickered past his eyes.
—But you don’t have much time. You know it. That’s why you’ve endured your ‘thirst,’ over and over.
Azazel didn’t miss the way Batu’s eyes sank deep.
—In that case—
A new vessel falls into my lap. Better than most Demon Kings, perhaps.
Thinking that, Azazel tossed out his final line.
—Why not burn gloriously, right to the end?
The Mage Who Devoured Talent