Chapter 2 — 봄의 안배
Part 2, Episode 4
Spring’s Arrangement
A place that had been all but a peaceful Mureungdowon.
Now everything was frozen stiff, hideously shattered in every direction.
“Hrrf!”
Elric, who had been sprinting hard across the field, dove into a drift of snow.
KABOOM—
A hail of massive ice chunks speared the ground where he’d just been.
The already-ruined terrain turned even more grotesque.
The idyllic Mureungdowon had vanished without a trace.
Even so, in the thick of that pitched battle, two more Elrics were hot on Elric’s heels.
“Goddamn it! 【Freeze】!”
Elric fired off Hanseol to push the two back.
“【Rise】.”
On top of that, he used Bukpung to draw Dragonfang Soldiers from the shadows and set them charging in to buy time.
But—
“【Bind】.”
“【Shatter】.”
KABOOM—
They were Elrics too, after all.
One bound Elric’s ankles as the other smashed the summoned Dragonfang Soldier’s head to pieces with an ice hammer.
The shattered fragments were seized by the cold blast and scattered to the four winds.
Looks like this arrangement really is out to kill me myself, huh?
Elric felt certain his earlier deduction was right: this wouldn’t end until every last doppelganger was dead.
The problem was how strong they were.
Not just the face—they had all his stats.
Even his mana reserves.
Down to the smallest habits, techniques, and patterns, they were all the same.
“This is actually ridiculous.”
He couldn’t help venting.
But the biggest problem lay elsewhere.
“【Rise】.”
Elric2—Elric had started numbering them because telling them apart was impossible—summoned Dragonfang Soldiers and went for Elric’s legs again.
“Shit. This is crap, seriously. I can’t tell who’s who…. Why set the arrangement up like this?”
“【Rise】!”
Then Elric3 raised an ice bulwark to cut off every escape route, forcing a three-way free-for-all.
“For an arrangement, having fakes mimic my voice is infuriating.”
Elric was speechless.
Those fakes genuinely believed they were the real thing.
Even knowing it was part of the arrangement, the visceral human revulsion boiled his blood.
And what really pissed him off—
“Who are you calling fake, fake?”
—was that they imitated his ego and talk as if they were real.
No, it was worse than that.
Each one acted with complete conviction that he was the original.
Seeing Elric seethe, Elric3 snorted and shot back.
“A fake gets called a fake. You want me to call you the real thing?”
“You’re the fake.”
This time Elric2 barked at 3, as if the notion offended him.
“…”
“…”
“…”
A beat of silence.
Then Elric3 said, as if certain, “No. You two are the fakes.”
Just like that, a shouting match broke out from nowhere.
“I’m gonna lose it. How did I end up stuck with knockoffs like—”
“Think it through. Do you really believe your memories are real? If you inherited my reasoning, you can’t avoid the conclusion.”
“Words won’t solve this.”
Unable to keep talking, the three Elrics began to stoke their mana against each other.
That was when it happened.
In the midst of yelling, a savage blizzard roared in.
A gigantic mass of ice slammed down on the three Elrics’ heads with crushing weight.
THOOOOM—
With a deafening boom, the ground flipped as if an earthquake had struck.
The land tore open beneath the gale.
Winter, Chapter Six—Mia’s magic.
“Fweee!”
And there, atop the ice boulder, stood another Elric4.
“You son of a—!”
The Elrics had thrown up ice barriers the instant the mass fell, soaking the impact.
They drew ice lances to check the new intruder, Elric4.
But that wasn’t the end.
Sensing an opening, Elric5 and Elric6 appeared from the left and right.
They brandished razor-honed ice blades and axes, sweeping the area where the three Elrics had been.
This, too, was Winter, Chapter Six—Nahatram’s technique.
Even their copies wielded Winter, Chapter Six’s incarnations to perfection.
PAPAPAPAPOOM!
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRASH—
rrrrrumble…!
The ground, ravaged by a storm of techniques, bloomed with ice flowers; white frost dust billowed up and veiled their sight.
“That’s three taken care of.”
Believing they’d finished off the trio, the new Elrics leveled their weapons at each other.
“Your turn now, you fakes.”
“Shut it. Every time my voice comes out of your mouth, I get chills.”
“Damn. Ancestors or not, what a rotten sense of humor.”
With eyes full of hostility, the three Elrics crashed together.
Bang!
Just then, powdery frost whirled up over the place they’d thought finished—light burst through its seams.
BWOOOOOM—
A ferocious gale blasted Elrics 4, 5, and 6 away.
“All that jabbering is driving me nuts. Come on then, you bastards. Beat you all senseless and you’ll behave.”
The fog peeled back.
At the center stood Elric, yelling with a face full of irritation.
He was well and truly pissed off.
For a moment, faced with so many identical selves, he’d wondered if maybe he was the fake.
No.
Thought, reason, memory.
He went back over everything, and nothing rang false.
I’m the real one. No question.
If he was the original, the rest were phenomena; he was the substance.
No matter how much they resembled the substance, phenomena were phenomena.
They could never surpass the substance—that was Elric’s judgment.
He’d tried to play it safe—one-shot only, get the lay of the land.
He couldn’t hold back anymore.
“I’m done watching fakes run wild.”
[Damir.]
Winter, Chapter Six—Damir.
The “Iron Warlord,” once an apostle of the God of Benevolence, who erased everything demonic.
If he borrowed the power of the one who’d even eyed the papacy, he might be able to wipe out every fake here.
The ice lance in Elric’s hand turned into a pure white holy sword.
From his back, six pillars of radiance surged up and unfurled into three pairs of wings.
He looked for all the world like the hero from a fairy tale, come to fell a demon king.
Along with it, Damir’s voice buzzed in his head.
Calm and suffused with warmth.
“This is the first time the new head of house borrows my strength. I advise moderation. Divinity and mana are, strictly speaking, different in nature.”
Even while lending his power, Damir sounded worried about Elric handling divine power.
“Not sure moderation’s an option.”
Elric lifted the blazing holy sword high.
Hummmm—
A crushing pressure erupted from the tip.
Startled, the Elrics hurriedly cast defensive spells.
“【Block】.”
“【Surge】.”
“【Erect】.”
Krrrk-krkrk!
A forest of ice walls rose, freezing Mureungdowon over.
That was how overwhelming Damir’s power was when Elric went all in.
“Ha. You think that’ll do? Too late. Repeat after me—you’re dead.”
Elric laughed at the fakes, thinking they could stop Damir’s power with that.
And—
Slash—
A band of light shot from the holy sword, cleaving through the ice and smashing into the earth.
KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM—
rrrrrrr…!
A wave of light laced with ice and cold swept Mureungdowon clean.
Before that bulldozer force, half the fake Elrics were cut in two and fell.
The rest were hurled far past the boundary of the field, scrambling to regain their feet and gasping for breath.
Some were barely clinging to life, reeking of scorched flesh.
An overwhelming difference in order of magnitude.
Such was Damir’s power.
Of course, Elric, who’d wrung that power for all it was worth, was exhausted too.
“Haa… haa….”
But unlike the remaining fakes, his eyes were bright and alive.
So this is an apostle of the God of Benevolence. Wild.
Elric stared at the swath the light wave had torn through and marveled.
Nothing but wreckage.
The terrain itself had been rewritten—no one would guess this was the same place.
It was hard to see that as a miracle left behind by the God of Benevolence.
“Could it be… I’m the fake?”
The less-injured fakes mumbled, faces blank.
Terrified by the thought they might be the copies, they stared at Elric.
Buoyed by that look, Elric swept them with his gaze and shouted.
“Not coming? Then I’ll come to you.”
He beat his wings and hurled himself at the remaining fakes.
“Damn it, Damir!”
But the others had Winter, Chapter Six as well.
They all awakened Damir and met Elric head-on.
KRA-BOOM—!
Pillars of light fell everywhere; three pairs of wings blossomed on the fakes’ backs and holy swords filled their hands.
“Ha! That’s rich.”
If Mephisto had been around for this test, he’d have called it a circus.
The problem was that each and every fake was using the real Damir’s power.
Elric changed tack in an instant.
What if I set them on each other and let mutual destruction do the work?
For now he was the target, but if he pulled back a little, they’d be at each other’s throats in no time.
He was about to shoot up into the air.
Right then—
As he beat his wings to slip away, another fake Elric, hidden till now, slipped in behind him.
A flash of light.
Slash—
“W-what….”
Elric tried to turn and move, but he couldn’t.
No—his body moved, but his gaze wouldn’t.
Drip.
His torso turned, but his neck wouldn’t follow.
A thin red line formed and then burst into a spray of blood.
The one who had taken Elric’s head was, of course, Elric.
A fake who had drawn on Winter, Chapter Six’s power opposite to Damir—Tepes.
“I told you. You’re the fake.”
The fake Elric sneered at Elric’s triumphant face.
I… wasn’t the real one?
Just before his consciousness snapped, Elric couldn’t believe he was truly about to die.
His severed head tumbled through the air.
Still wearing a look that said he’d never expected this.
The Elric who had slain him, face splattered with blood, burst into laughter.
“Khahaha! I’m the real one. I am!”
Thunk—!
But the Tepes-Elric, laughing madly, was abruptly cut off as a shower of ice awls pierced his skull.
“What are you even saying.”
Another Elric, using Mia’s power, appeared with a wry smirk.
Chomp—
His brief amusement ended as a colossal ice serpent burst from the ground and devoured him whole.
The slaughter began anew.
“Die, just die!”
The remaining Elrics hurled themselves at the ones beside them—arms lopped off, heads sent flying.
Madness.
With no one able to tell real from fake, they bared red eyes and tried to kill each other.
The ground ran slick with their blood.
“Gaaaaah!”
The scream of an Elric whose legs were cut off.
“Mm—mm!”
Another with his mouth punched through, unable even to scream.
They were so exhausted they’d devolved into grappling, squeezing out the last of their mana; Mureungdowon was stained blood-red.
And in the midst of it all, something strange.
Fwaa—
The land that had drunk Elric’s blood melted the ice, and greenery spread.
One by one, trees began to sprout.
The more Elrics died, the more Mureungdowon returned to its original state.
Meanwhile, the Elrics kept insisting they were the real ones, busy killing and being killed in turn.
It looked, somehow—
Like a sacrificial rite offered to a god in the hope of prosperity.
The Mage Who Devoured Talent