Chapter 257 — 결전(決戰)
Chapter 257
Decisive Battle
In that instant, Batu’s eyes went cold.
[So what is it you can actually do for me?]
-Power.
Azazel could tell the brat had finally crossed the line.
In the end.
No matter how tough they act, humans are human.
If they can have their desire and their desperate wish, they’ll toss away even their own life without a second thought.
-I can give you power. Enough to upend the world. Dragon and Demon. Mix the two, and wouldn’t that make for something… interesting?
[…]
A brief silence.
[Fine.]
That was Batu’s answer.
-Good. The right choice. In that case, I’ll step in and hel—!
[But my body is mine.]
-…?
[The power you’re offering—I’ll be the one to use it. If it’s power I can’t control, I don’t need it.]
So this is your last bit of pride, is it?
Azazel snorted, but he knew the boy was already too far gone to turn back.
-Very well.
And with that—
Zzzzt!
The Mystery began.
* * *
What do you even call a thing like that?
Demon Dragon?
Yeah. That sounded about right.
A being that is neither dragon nor demon.
Composed wholly of absurdity, and radiating destruction to match.
That was Batu now.
KRAA-KOOM!
Batu kicked off the ground and launched himself. The impact rattled the earth; from his footprints, pillars of sand shot up several meters high.
A blast that looked ready to sweep away everything in front of him.
The air around them had grown so hot it was suffocating, as if they’d stepped into a field of lava.
But what caught Elric’s eye wasn’t the ferocity.
His eyes.
For all that savage aura, Batu’s gaze was colder than ever.
It meant he’d kept his reason—and could wield the Mystery beneath cold, deliberate judgment.
「A nasty one, this.」
Tepes muttered when he saw Batu’s eyes.
「Men with eyes like that, no matter what they do, end up on top. Trials, hardship, adversity… whatever comes, they endure, they stand, they win. Had his birth been even a little kinder, his fate might’ve been entirely different.」
Borrowing Elric’s body, Tepes shifted his grip on the twin blades.
To meet the oncoming charge head-on.
「Know what we usually call a man like that?」
“What do you call him?”
Elric hauled up every last drop of mana.
Thump!
Thump!
His heart went wild, and the blood gifted by the dragon roared through his veins. The heart set with a mana stone married perfectly with dragonblood, and its efficiency left others in the dust.
At the same time—
Whirr, whirr, whirr!
The blood-mist Elric had scattered earlier spun into a vortex around him.
Something else began to take shape at his back.
Something Elric knew very well.
The Dead Giant.
The summon Tepes had unleashed when he used Azazel inside the mindscape.
The difference was, Elric’s grasp of summoning was too shallow to bring out a complete Dead Giant, so he resorted to a workaround.
The Giant’s flesh knit together like tentacles, winding around Elric’s body.
Clack, clack—
What wrapped his legs became greaves, what swathed his torso became armor.
Grotesque—like undead flesh plastered on thick as if he were some zombie or ghoul—but because of that, the savagery pouring off him rivaled Batu’s.
Rrrrumble…!
It felt like he’d become a true giant—raw might flooded his whole frame.
Corpse Armor.
Giantification.
The second secret art Tepes boasted of, alongside Corpse Explosion, bloomed into being.
If you can’t command the giant, then become one with it and draw on its power—simple.
「Hero.」
As the Corpse Armor climbed over half his face, Tepes spoke.
「That’s what they call those born to a fate like his.」
KRAA-KOOM!
Batu’s descending blow and Elric’s twin swords collided in a blinding crash.
The shockwaves made the Corpse Armor shudder, strips of flesh sloughing off—only for the blood-mist to settle back into the gaps and knit them whole, harder than before.
Thump-thump-thump!
The harder they fought, the faster Elric’s heart raced.
The more blood it supplied, the more mana surged—and the Corpse Armor’s hardness rose exponentially.
Skreee—
Batu’s greatsword slid down, throwing a spray of sparks.
Swish, swish, swish—
Clang-clang-CLANG!
In a blink, dozens of exchanges flashed between them.
「That’s how Heroes are. Fate sets them on a hero’s path, so the road is always lined with thorns, and danger dogs their every step.」
Screech—!
Grrrk—
The greatsword skimmed perilously across Elric’s right cheek. Blood slid down under the shattered helm.
If he’d tilted his head a hair later, he’d be dead.
But Elric showed not a flicker of panic; he whipped the sword in his left hand with vicious speed.
It was razor-keen—steeped in a handful of his blood and flash-frozen with the Seal of Winter.
Crunch!
The tip pierced Batu’s collarbone. The dragon scales kept it from biting deeper, but torn scales gaped to show grisly flesh beneath.
「If you overcome it, you become a hero sung for ages… The problem is, almost no one gets that far. For most like him, there are two endings.」
Slaaash, hisss!
Elric’s blade raked across Batu’s chest. Deeper this time.
The secret of
Now he could see how to use it.
「Either they break, or they fall.」
Elric didn’t get away unscathed.
Even as Batu gave up his chest, his hand shot out and clamped down on Elric’s left shoulder.
Crackkk!
Flesh from the giant—what even Azazel had struggled to break—shattered. Batu’s brute strength was such that Elric’s left shoulder was pulp beneath.
“Ghh!”
Elric had to swallow a scream that clawed its way up his throat.
It hurt like hell.
Worse was—
Zzzzt-zzzt-zzzt—
Azazel’s demonic energy was probing into the wound again.
「In hardship, you usually lose precious comrades. Then of course the Hero’s mind wears thin. And so they despair.」
Elric clenched his teeth hard enough to crack a molar and triggered the Seal of Winter.
Fwoom—
Crackle!
The invading demonic energy froze on contact.
No—more than that.
The heat Batu’s mana had pumped into the air dropped to a killing chill, a gust so fierce it rolled back into Batu.
Counter-intrusion.
Frost crept over Batu’s body.
Seal of Winter.
Secret art.
Absolute Zero.
Click.
Amid the extremity of battle, Elric realized he’d stepped into a new realm without even knowing it.
As if something hard wrapped tight around his core had cracked. As if he’d shed a shell.
The north wind and killing frost.
Beyond the two authorities that “make winter,” there was something else. Now Elric finally understood.
And that this—this was the secret Otto Han had told him to claim.
Fwaaaash!
A blizzard tore through every direction.
When the gale settled,
Everything was ice and dancing veils of snow.
As if Elric and Batu alone had fallen into a world of snow.
Winter.
Only they were in that season.
「And sometimes, temptations come from all sides. To others, that power is irresistible. Plenty will hand you the reins of power or goad you toward a throne. And so the Hero collapses.」
Tepes, pleased to see Elric all but grasp “Winter,” kept explaining.
Elric couldn’t help but ask.
[Then.]
As if on cue, Elric and Batu shoved off each other with force.
[What about me?]
Crimson snow whirled where Elric reset his stance; where Batu moved, a black-crimson miasma heaved.
Batu tipped his head back, then spat something at Elric.
Fwooosh!
A dragon’s authority—a Breath.
「You’re not a Hero. They’re noble and pure. But you… if you’ve got any conscience, can you really say that with a straight face?」
Elric’s face twisted before he could stop it.
After all that tidy preaching, that’s your conclusion?
He stamped hard and slammed the ground. Thoom. The shattered ice bucked up into a wall. The beamlike Breath split and scraped past in two shearing streams.
He grumbled—Batu didn’t even feel human anymore—and barked at Tepes.
[What about me! What’s so wrong with me!]
「Is your conscience intact?」
Said so seriously it didn’t even sound like a joke—he had no comeback.
Worse, Elric wasn’t sure he had one at all.
[Damn it! Then what? Am I a Demon King now?]
「Not that either.」
[Then what?]
「A descendant of what was a Hero.」
[‘Was’? What’s that supposed to mean? You mocking me now?]
It sounded absurd, but Tepes’s explanation rolled on.
「And a descendant of what was a Demon King.」
Thud.
Elric’s thoughts snagged.
He had a hunch.
A figure he’d seen only in visions of the past.
The Progenitor.
「A being that holds both faces in equal measure—people of old usually called it this.」
Elric swallowed dry.
「A god.」
“…!”
Elric’s thoughts stopped there. As if bewitched, the Seal of Winter—shed once already—flared on its own, without asking its master’s leave.
「‘Winter’ is the harsh season when all life huddles and sinks into deep sleep.」
Afterimages flickered past Elric’s eyes—the kind of visions he’d seen when he first absorbed the seal.
The vision the Seal of Winter painted.
A mindscape Otto Han might once have witnessed.
「In it, those not properly chosen always cradle hunger, shiver in the cold, and close their eyes.」
He saw animals wandering under wind-blown snow, faces gaunt with fatigue.
One fox, unable to find food for its kits, scoured the slopes until it collapsed, nose buried in the ground, breathing in ragged gasps.
Branches were bare, grass was brittle and dry. All he saw were frost on fallen leaves and icicles hanging from twigs.
Thus the meaning of “winter” is Death.
The killing frost that brings death, the north wind that calls it—these dog winter for that very reason.
And.
The comrades who’d teased Otto Han, who symbolized winter, would say:
You always seem to carry death around.
And every time, Otto Han would grumble:
Even in winter, flowers bloom.
「Yet within it, flowers that stand tall bloom in splendor.」
There was a flower on what he’d thought nothing but bare branch.
It glittered, beautiful as any true blossom.
A snowflower.
「In that moment, snowflowers are more dazzling and beautiful than ever.」
The countless blossoms he’d seen in the Temple of Flowers had bloomed around Elric. They shattered and scattered, and then sent him back to the world.
The vision had ended—
But somehow, Elric could still smell the snowflowers at the tip of his nose.
So he reached toward Batu charging him again. The snowflowers had shown him something new.
Seal of Winter.
Secret art.
Plum Blossoms in Snow.
And right then—
Crackle-crackle—
Brilliant snowflowers bloomed over Batu’s frostbitten wounds and burst.
Thud!
Amid drifting petals came the sound of Batu falling.
The Mage Who Devoured Talent