Ch.214The Final Battle (1)

The Demon King had meticulously anticipated numerous branching points while plotting his resurrection. The fate diverged along two axes: the Divine Order and the Ten Towers.

The Divine Order was designed to gradually crumble with the passage of time. The Ten Towers, though powerful, would stagnate and rot from within. When both forces forgot their original purpose and weakened, the Demon King planned to resurrect himself and grasp the world in his hands.

The ‘Knights’ existed outside these calculations. Even with the most generous assessment, their power was not sufficient to interfere with the world’s fate.

The Demon King’s eyes turned toward Ortes. He was the one who changed everything.

The Knights’ destiny—originally meant to belong to neither faction and disappear into the flow of history with their mediocre power—had been altered in Ortes’ hands.

The prowess that extended the Divine Order’s plans outward and collapsed the Ten Towers’ system. The Apostle of Chaos who descended from Earth.

The Demon King reflected on Earth. As the oldest world, it was the cradle of gods, capable of birthing and nurturing more extradimensional beings than any other.

Myths were like echoes left behind by those who ascended from Earth. Just as traces of the Divine Order’s interference inspired someone to record them as novels, the far more massive and powerful imprints of ascended beings were engraved in humanity’s unconscious as mythology.

The gods who left myths behind and ascended chose different modes of existence. The Olympian gods created new worlds resembling their homeland.

Extradimensional beings were not simple life forms. Each was the sovereign of a specific concept. In the deepest part of the Olympian gods’ ideology, in the primordial myth, chaos—that is, change—was recorded. The Olympian gods wished for their pantheon to flow continuously rather than stagnate.

That’s why this world was created. As a cradle resembling Earth, meant to birth new gods.

The Demon King stood at the opposite extreme from the Olympian gods who welcomed change. He desired to become the most powerful ascended being, to gather all authority in one place.

Therefore, he cast fragments of himself into the young world and twisted its structure. To drive the Olympian deities’ plans toward catastrophe while coveting the seeds of ascension.

But his first attempt was thwarted. By the demigods he himself created—the Ten Tower Lords. Having assumed only the Divine Order, the Olympians’ connectors, would be his enemies, he hadn’t anticipated internal betrayal.

So the Demon King devised an even more meticulous and elaborate plan. A grand fate encompassing both the Divine Order and the Ten Towers.

And then chaos fell into it.

That narrow-eyed man with the bewildered expression, now witnessing the endpoint of the fate he had twisted.

***

Hector disappeared.

He demonstrated that one could see and overcome fate even without the “Eyes,” then scattered and vanished.

I gritted my teeth. This was the opportunity that damned old man had created by burning everything he had. I couldn’t repeat the moment just now when I’d been buried in my obsession with fate.

This was the only moment to deliver a decisive blow to the Demon King, now that his magic of fate usurpation—prepared as a counterattack against fate manipulation—had been dismantled.

Hector’s sword had fallen and stuck at the Demon King’s feet. I ran and grasped it in my left hand.

Clang—!

The Demon King reacted belatedly. He tried to retreat from this place. Understandable, since Elysion’s fall was imminent.

But I had no intention of letting that happen.

I threw the high-frequency blade held in my right hand. The blade, caught in the power of semantic decomposition, shattered into pieces. But simultaneously, the Demon King’s spatial movement was delayed. I gripped Hector’s sword with both hands.

The Demon King’s movements slowed once more. This must be unexpected for him. The combat technique I was using now wasn’t one that utilized the “Eyes,” but rather a recreation of the old man’s swordsmanship.

The old man’s final movements were each a message left for me. The culmination of the swordsmanship he had been teaching me since our first meeting in those ruins long ago.

I could hear his playful criticism: “You’ve got good eyes, but you can’t use a sword.”

What was it he said? That since I had no talent for swordsmanship, memorization was my only answer.

So I watched and memorized every sword technique the old man could show me. How to match against a swordsman, how to exploit the weaknesses of enchantware users, how to fight against mages.

Variable creation and spell overwriting using magic engraving drive were fruits grown from the foundation I inherited from the old man.

And what the old man showed me this time, at the end, was “how to fight the Demon King.”

I watched and memorized it. Without the help of the “Eyes,” I could understand the old man’s movements with just ordinary vision. Because the old man’s sword was the first thing I learned in this world.

The movements Hector showed at the end were engraved in my eyes.

If the Demon King had laid traps to block the “Eyes,” I simply needed to dismantle the magic without opening them.

Even at the very end, I kept my eyes narrowed.

***

The Demon King faced blind chaos. No. More precisely, chaos with narrowed eyes.

If completely blind, an impartial collapse without bias toward any direction should occur. But Ortes’s collapse had a tendency. The destruction of the magical society, system, and order.

Actions that seemed to antagonize “magic” itself, the greatest order. The falling Elysion in the sky was like a symbol of magic’s destruction.

The Demon King could sense the vanished Yellow Thunder above, and the four elemental Ten Commandments waiting to be triggered.

Yet he couldn’t escape. Because that narrow-eyed chaos was returning the chaos the Demon King had just given him, doubled.

Chaos is the primordial seed. The place where all concepts sleep. That’s why Ortes’s eyes could see the essence of the world. Chaos already contains everything in the world.

The expression of that power as the “Eyes” was the product of fate twisted together by the Divine Order and the Demon King himself. The novel recorded on Earth. Because Ortes first saw this world in the form of text, his power manifested in the most familiar form.

It was the moment when all the Demon King’s escape magic was dismantled by Ortes’s sword. The lower part of Elysion was already glowing brightly. It would explode upon impact.

Did you not say you wanted to become a god? Do you wish to die with me?

Ortes did not answer. The Demon King had the capacity to exploit any words spoken to him.

And then, the world was covered in light.

***

It was the moment when Elysion shattered as the explosion spread. Ortes felt a bottomless abyss opening beneath his feet.

In fact, it was a golden gate opened flat on the ground. As soon as Ortes was swallowed by the darkness within the gate, the golden portal closed.

The next moment, Ortes fell into Hydra Company headquarters in Etna City.

He returned using Prodito’s holy relic just before the explosion’s effects reached him. No separate work was needed to time the return. The structure was to record Prodito’s holy relic with the Pope’s holy relic, then activate it at the most critical moment to return.

But Hector couldn’t return.

“Ortes.”

Carisia’s voice was heard. Ortes raised his head.

The core personnel of the Hydra Company alliance were gathered there. Ortes dusted off his clothes and stood up.

“…Knight Sword Master Hector failed to return. It is presumed he perished after dismantling the Demon King’s magic.”

The word “presumed” contained Ortes’s hope. He didn’t want to confirm the death.

The silence was heavy. A significant force capable of contending with the Demon King had disappeared in a situation where the anti-magic field was activated.

“President, what is the status of the remaining combatants?”

“The Pope will reach his limit if he uses the holy relic one more time. The others from the Divine Order have collapsed after expending their divine power to secure channels for receiving revelations. The Priestess might be able to move, though.”

“I can move,” said Kine. Bacchus’s holy relic was Illusion. Whether it would work on the Demon King was questionable, but in the current situation, the more forces available, the better.

“Let me explain the situation.”

Elysion had moved directly above Etna City. This was to be expected. Carisia had no intention of removing the artificial Ten Commandments embedded in the center of Etna City.

The Ten Commandments deployed in Elysion were five: Yellow Thunder plus four from the Ten Towers expedition force. The Ten Commandments deployed in Etna City were five: the artificial one plus four secured by the Hydra Company alliance. A balance of 5 to 5.

The plan was to operate the core formula of the anti-magic field from Etna City, positioned at a higher level, and amplify the anti-magic field with the five Ten Commandments deployed in Elysion.

Of course, this was the “public” plan shown to the Ten Towers expedition force. From this point, Carisia had been preparing to break the Demon King’s integrity by sacrificing Yellow Thunder.

If Yellow Thunder, responsible for one axis of the anti-magic field amplification magic circle, was offered as a sacrifice to Aigio’s Scales, the other four Ten Commandments constituting the magic circle would naturally overload.

Using that as a pretext, Lampades would invoke the agreement with the expedition force and prepare to drop the Ten Commandments. The justification was to address the anomaly created by Yellow Thunder’s loss while simultaneously delivering a fatal blow to the Demon King.

By separating the Ten Commandments from Elysion and dropping them, four sequential explosions would strike the Demon King, whose magic was sealed by the anti-magic field.

A maximum explosion with everything invested except the five Ten Commandments needed to maintain the anti-magic field. Had the space below Elysion not been filled with extradimensional magical power, who knows what magical disaster might have occurred from such a massive explosion.

Ortes, feeling instinctive unease but also faint hope, asked:

“Did we get him?”

Kaikel displayed a hologram. It was the recording from Lampades’s extradimensional radar.

Directly below the floating Etna-Elysion.

The Demon King’s magical power was shining.