"—When you're talking to me, look at me properly!!"
The instant the devastating kick struck, an alarm blared through Al's mind. The alarm was triggered by the kick itself and the myriad factors surrounding it.
For starters, the kick's power was outrageous and dealt massive damage, but he was also shocked that the leg that sent him flying was "entirely leg from here to there!?" To top it off, the tip of her icy boot pierced through his stone chest plate, and ice began forming on his chest where the sternum creaked under pressure — he was in deep trouble.
But the primary reason for the clamorous alarm was, without doubt, the point-blank remark from her lips that struck an undeniable bullseye.
—Look at me properly. And before that — that he seemed lonely when talking to her.
"—"
Honestly, he was surprised she had picked up on the complex emotions Al harbored.
He hadn't been so arrogant as to think he was hiding them well, but he'd assumed she was the type to be oblivious to such subtleties. But thinking about it, she was only bad at confronting malice from others — she was quite sensitive to receiving it. After all, being born into this world as a silver-haired half-elf, that was only natural.
"The tuition fee turned out expensive, huh...?"
Al groaned in pain, clutching his flank just below where the ice was creeping in. An ice figure modeled after the loathsome opponent clung to him there.
The ice man that had interfered with his movements — Al grabbed its head with a left arm of stone conjured by magic and ruthlessly tore it off. "Aaah!" came the creator's scream as the headless ice body crumbled miserably, scattering into shards of ice.
The resemblance wasn't just in appearance — even the ease of dying was identical.
"Here, catch!"
"Gyaa! Geez, how cruel!"
Unlike the shattered body, the severed head still tried to bite, so Al hurled it back toward
The freezing at the kick site was spreading — if this continued, his whole body would be encased in ice— "Well, that'd be game over, wouldn't it, Uncle? You know what you need to do, right?"
Hanging upside down on a pillar of earth, watching the exchange between Al and Emilia like a spectator —
He didn't need advice from a Sin Archbishop. Without being told, Al gritted his teeth and gouged his own freezing abdominals with his sword tip. Intense pain and bleeding — he sealed the near-disemboweling wound with a stone cap to prevent the bad ending of being frozen solid.
His vision went crimson with pain, and his eardrums were filled with Roy's delighted laughter: "Aha ha! That's it, that's it!"
"—Ugh, that's a harsh way to endure it."
"Hey, hey, you can't complain when I gave you a binary choice. If you don't like pain, just let yourself be frozen. At least acknowledge that's how the young lady's attacks work."
"—You're right. I do think so. But Al, don't get the wrong idea."
"Wrong idea?"
"You can't use that same trick on your stomach for every bit of stubbornness in your entire body, can you?"
That declaration was a statement of intent to land the same kind of blow she'd given his flank across his entire body.
As if to prove it, the furrow of distress on Emilia's beautiful face smoothed out, and the surroundings of the Prison Tower grew white with the cold wind that began to blow. Swirling snowflakes enveloped the battlefield, and Al sensed Emilia's true resolve through his numbing extremities.
"I wanna say your angry face is cute too, but honestly, it's scary. And also..."
As Al quipped, a sound of strained air filled the space, and a body began regenerating on the ice man's head cradled against Emilia's chest. Not "a new face" but "a new body" — in mere seconds, the fully restored ice man performed a squat to prove its vigor.
Its pointlessly provocative vitality, faithfully reproducing the original, was genuinely annoying.
"...It's creepy how perfectly detailed it is."
"The same kind of compliment
"Oh. But the person herself looked displeased, didn't she?"
"How do you know that?"
"Because it's the face I'd least want to see."
At this honest answer to her simple question, Emilia's eyes went wide and her eye corners sharpened with indignation. She might have thought he was making light of her, but it was simply Al's candid opinion.
First of all, if you're going to make someone out of ice, you should model it on someone with a more reliable, stronger appearance — like Garfiel, for instance. But no, she just had to go and pick
As a result, Al felt zero hesitation in destroying the ice man.
"If you're making soldiers, you'd think you'd use the most dependable person as a model."
"—? That's exactly why I used Subaru as the model."
"...Oh. I shouldn't have asked."
Al stuck his tongue out inside his helmet, feeling like he'd chewed and crushed a bitter bug.
Beyond the damage from being kicked away, the mental toll of exchanging words with Emilia face-to-face like this was far worse for Al.
Maintaining his Authority — his 'Domain' — required unwavering mental stability. And yet Emilia was the ultimate meta-character who could easily shake his heart.
"Son of a bitch."
To be honest, encountering Emilia here was completely unplanned.
After returning from Volachia, Al had manipulated the members heading to the
"...The first link in the chain was Lady
To迎え against Reinhard in the worst possible environment of the
Being able to show such calm judgment even when companions left behind at the Pleiades Watchtower were endangered, and furthermore, in the emergency that the 'Divine Dragon,' who was supposed to protect the Kingdom, had turned against the enemy — that was commendable. He'd thought it was thanks to that Valga Cromwell's counsel, but he shook his head at that.
Felt had been recognized as an enemy by Priscilla. Her royal vessel truly deserved praise.
Regardless, Felt had chosen the best option in a dire situation, and Emilia, who received information from her, hadn't let it go to waste.
The result was this worst-case scenario — being blocked from escaping the Prison Tower and having to face Emilia.
"————"
Directly ahead, Emilia wore ice gauntlets on both hands, standing alongside the infuriating ice man striking a Gear 2 pose, fixing Al with a wary gaze.
In those purple eyes, he could vividly sense her determination not to lose no matter what Al did — but even without such wariness, there wasn't much Al could do.
He'd been countering by imitating her Ice Brand Arts with his own Earth Brand Arts, using stone swords, but the precision of the weapons he could create was like night and day. Durability wasn't even worth comparing, and Al couldn't create any dependable soldiers out of clods of earth.
On top of that, not only was he unable to harm Emilia — even the thought of hurting her made his conscience protest. —This was a fatal flaw inherent to his very existence.
What's more, Emilia's techniques, specialized in capturing targets alive, had the worst compatibility with Al's Authority.
Therefore, with the greatest obstacles to his plan — Natsuki Subaru and Reinhard — eliminated, Emilia was now Al's natural enemy — the worst 'enemy' remaining, bar one.
"Either way—"
No matter how he arranged the situation, he couldn't find a single favorable factor and felt like crying — but there had never been an instance where wallowing in self-pity had broken him out of a dead end.
If he couldn't deliver a decisive blow against someone who kept meta-gaming against him on her own, then the decisive blow would have to come from outside, relying on external power. —Just as he was about to play that trump card— He saw it: through the clouds, the 'Dragon' was descending upon the Noble District.
"You've got to be kidding."
At the sight cutting vertically across his field of vision, Al couldn't help but mutter.
What had just drawn a pale blue line vertically through the whitely hazy sky was the 'Aldebaran' that was supposed to be Al's trump card. If it headed to the Noble District — toward Yae and the others who were stationed there — then nine times out of ten, its purpose was to rescue them.
In other words, an entity that Yae couldn't handle had been sent to the Barriell villa.
Since 'Aldebaran' had intervened immediately, Yae's survival was a coin flip. —At the same time, that meant Al couldn't borrow 'Aldebaran's' help in his current predicament.
"You've got to be kidding..."
With the same words, Al felt even more keenly how dire the situation had become.
He could use his Authority to redo things and call 'Aldebaran' here ahead of Yae and the others. But if he did that, the unsupported Yae would fall to the unidentified enemy.
Neither Yae nor Felt was indispensable to Al's objective.
He couldn't say that, but— "Damn it!"
Abandoning the chance to gulp down the poison in his mouth, Al cursed.
His Plan A had been to use 'Aldebaran's' dragon qi to quickly blow away the cold wave that Emilia had spread across the entire field in snow, and then withdraw from the battlefield. Since that was no longer an option, he had no choice but to hastily execute Plan B.
And to execute that Plan B, he needed to quickly come up with a Plan B.
Even as he thought— "You see that, young lady? At this rate, my partner's going to wreak havoc in the Royal Capital—"
"That's not my problem to worry about, I was told!"
Wanting to buy himself time to think, Al was met with Emilia charging in boldly.
The sheer nerve to ignore the approaching descent of 'Aldebaran' — the 'Divine Dragon' — while trusting her allies was extraordinary. It was proof of how much she trusted whoever had devised the strategy, but being able to do what you're told isn't something just anyone can manage.
And that made her the worst possible opponent to face.
"Hah! Sei! Toh! Haa!"
As if remembering, Emilia abandoned dialogue and launched a relentless barrage.
Countless punches from her ice gauntlets rained down, shattering the hastily conjured stone shield head-on. Amid the flying debris, Al caught the tip of an ice spear with his stone prosthetic, discarded it as it froze over, and leaped backward. —There, an ice man circled around and struck him with an iron mountain lean.
"Gu—aa—!"
Taking that imitation Bajiquan ultimate technique, Al was sent flying forward. Waiting at the landing point was Emilia, who had transformed her ice spear into an ice hammer and was swinging it with full force. Her slender, supple arm drew back, and a full swing of unbelievable power was unleashed.
The cold, spirited blow murdered the air itself, and the instant Al accepted that he couldn't dodge — he formed earth armor covering his body without a gap — and took the full brunt of its tremendous force.
"—!"
Unable to even groan or scream, Al was sent spinning through the air.
The earth coating had prevented the ice from freezing him, but as protection, it was about as comforting as placing a handkerchief between himself and a bludgeon. His vision spun wildly, he was blown away without even knowing his position, caught by a hard impact, and fell to the ground.
"Whoa, that looked painful. Real life-or-death stuff, huh, Uncle?"
Hearing the spectator's gleeful voice drift down from above, Al realized he had crashed into the earth pillar where Roy was impaled. Blown over ten meters, every bone in his body ached. He didn't even have the energy to fire back a retort.
"Damn..."
Taking any more time was undesirable for Al.
Emilia's fighting style of constantly lowering the surrounding temperature was a nightmare the longer it went on — debuffs piling up like snow — and while he dawdled, enemy reinforcements might arrive.
The more the number of opponents grew, the more exponentially the difficulty of defeating them rose — something he'd keenly felt in the battle against Felt and the others. —And there was no guarantee that his 'natural enemy' wasn't among them.
"I can't see properly through the snow, but it looks like the town's in pretty bad shape too, doesn't it? Maybe you should try shouting real loud and begging for help? Uncle."
"Shut... the hell up. You just keep quiet and—"
Roy, hanging upside down, went out of his way to rub Al's frayed nerves the wrong way.
Al felt anger surge, wanting to waste one death just to punch that smug grin off his face — and through that loathsomeness, he saw a glimmer of hope for Plan B.
"If that guy is me..."
From afar, he could feel the sensation of that whitely hazy shape being shaken — proof that 'Aldebaran' was locked in fierce battle.
Few candidates in Al's knowledge could fight a death match against 'Aldebaran,' but he could only trust that the 'Dragon' would win.
And beyond trusting the 'Dragon's' victory, he had to believe that 'Aldebaran,' realizing it couldn't assist Al, was laying the groundwork for an unknown Plan B.
To make that unconfirmed Plan B a reality— "Roy! If you don't want to die, lend me a hand!"
"—! Al!!"
At Al's shout, Emilia's eyes went wide and her voice sharpened.
At the disbelief in that voice, Al was surprised to discover that his stock price — which he'd thought had hit rock bottom the moment he set a trap for Natsuki Subaru, let alone when he'd spirited Roy out of the Prison Tower — still had room to fall.
"But if I need to, I'll borrow even a Sin Archbishop's power. In the Empire, Natsuki Subaru did the same thing, didn't he? What's wrong with that?"
"You know it's not that kind of issue!"
"Sure I do. I know, and I'm saying it anyway. You're free to hate me."
Being hated by Emilia was nothing new. —That was a lie.
The truth was, it wasn't even a matter of being hated — he'd never even been in a position to be noticed.
"You—!"
At Al's response, Emilia, grief-stricken yet furious, conjured ice stakes in midair.
Beyond close-quarters combat with ice, Emilia could also fight like a proper mage — she directed the floating ice stakes at Al and Roy, raining them down like carpet bombing. It was a clear expression of her will to stop Al and Roy's wickedness, but Al peeled up the ground with magic like a carpet and caught the bombardment with a tatami-flipping motion.
"Even if you ask me to cooperate—"
The impacts punching through shook the earth, and this hastily built earthen shelter wouldn't last long.
While Al had to split his attention to maintain it, Roy — who was in the same predicament but had zero concern for it — twisted his lips in displeasure: "As you can see, our limbs are broken and we've been forbidden from eating. What exactly do you want us to do? Or... are you going to give us permission to eat that lady over there?"
"Nope. Not feeding you, and not letting you rampage either."
"Then there's nothing we can do—"
"There is. —Spit it out."
In a low voice, Al declared, turning to look at Roy hanging upside down behind the earth tower, offering the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony a third option beyond devouring or rampaging.
Roy's eyes went wide, then he broke into a grin: "Just how much do you know about us, Uncle? You're not actually our real father or something, are you?"
"If I raised brats like you, I'd be too ashamed to face society."
They were bound by curse marks and forced to obey. Al had absolutely no intention of building a friendly relationship, but Roy welcomed the proposal with a lick of his lips.
Roy Alphard, who bore the name of 'Gluttony' — no, 'Voracious' — what evaluation had this great eater, who would swallow anything regardless of how grotesque, given Al? —It was undoubtedly nothing flattering, but there was no time to press him on it.
"—Stop it!"
In that instant, the earthen shelter was shattered by a massive ice boomerang — similar to the wing blade used by the Empire's Madeline Eschart — which crashed through, and Emilia burst in through the gap in the ice.
Al blocked her path with a stone prosthetic hand enlarged to about one and a half times its size. With a palm like a baseball glove, he covered it from above, soft and certain, blocking the way.
But— "—! A decoy?!"
Using the stone glove as a springboard, the ice man executed a handspring over the obstacle.
Emilia had used herself, the vanguard, as a decoy and sent the ice man ahead. Normally, the roles of decoy should be reversed between a person and a construct, but he'd fallen for it completely.
The ice man sailed over Al's head toward the impaled Roy. Al fired stone projectiles from both sides to sandwich it and shatter it, but— "Harder than before!"
Having increased its ice density — not bone density — the ice man's new body repelled the projectiles.
Undeterred, the ice man reached for Roy, intent on interfering no matter what — and in that instant, its head and torso were separated.
"What?!"
Emilia cried out as she saw the ice man's head fly off through the gap she'd torn open in the stone glove with an ice sword.
She couldn't know what had destroyed the rebuilt ice man. —She had no way of knowing it was a steel wire extending from the ring on Al's right ring finger.
A silver thread glinting through the ice fog had pierced through the ice man's defenses and decapitated it. It was a technique involving a single finger's worth of steel wire, mastered during the battle against Felt and the others.
Skills come in handy. And right after embodying that— "—Might as well. This seems like the most fun option."
A voice brimming with dark amusement spoke, and Al — no, the world screamed.
△▼△▼△▼△ In that instant, what assaulted Al was a sensation of vomiting his soul.
"Ugh."
He thought he understood the principle. He could imagine what would happen.
But when it actually happened, understanding and imagination were both useless.
It wasn't an attack on the body or the mind — it was an assault on 'memories,' something that couldn't be touched.
"Ugh."
There was a phenomenon called déjà vu, where something you were seeing for the first time didn't feel like the first time. What Al — no, everyone affected by this — experienced now was that déjà vu amplified tens of thousands of times over, so vivid it couldn't be ignored: 'rumination.' As proof— "—Ah..."
A ragged breath escaped, and the ice javelin fell from Emilia's hand. The weapon, poised to be thrown, dropped limply and, before reaching the ground, lost its form and returned to mana.
Her wide purple eyes shook violently with agitation, and she unconsciously sank to her knees. Watching her, Al gritted his molars and leaped backward.
"Ugh."
The nausea was intense. But not enough to buckle his knees.
The impact of the 'rumination' varied from person to person. Naturally — emotional attachment was different for everyone. Al and Emilia had different levels of investment in the 'memories' in question.
Hateful as it was, Roy's choice had been precise. Precisely choosing a memory that would hit Emilia hard but affect Al less.
Therefore— "Ugh."
Suppressing the urge to vomit, Al raised his hand toward the sky.
The sky was still white with ice fog, unable to properly see even the sky above the Royal Capital. But there, Al believed, 'Aldebaran' had laid the groundwork for Plan B.
—A product of the combat experience gained in the battle against Reinhard at the Augria Sand Dunes.
In that battle, Al and 'Aldebaran' — beings sharing the same self — had used shared magic crests to cast spells, with 'Aldebaran' lending its mana for Al to activate magic. This time, it was reversed.
Al would trace the magic crests to the ritual formula that 'Aldebaran' had prepared above the clouds for Plan B, pour in mana, and flip the switch.
Because they shared the same self, they'd arrived at the same idea — the nonexistent Plan B activated— "—Ugh."
Right after activation, seeing the full scope of 'Aldebaran's' Plan B, Al let out a groan of a different quality than before, yet still adjacent to Roy's 'rumination.' Plan B, in its entirety— "No...!"
Sensing the tremendous torrent of mana, Emilia's lips trembled as she remained on her knees.
Unable to stand, she nonetheless raised her head — and her purple eyes caught it. —Floating in the sky above the Royal Capital was a massive rock formation on the scale of a hundred meters.
It was as if an entire small hill had been uprooted from somewhere and levitated. Al had never encountered one, but those who had been overwhelmed seeing a
Regardless, the purpose of 'Aldebaran' floating the rock formation in the sky was obvious— "Ugh."
The next moment, a sound like the sky cracking reverberated, and the countless fissures racing across the rock made it clear to anyone who noticed the anomaly in the sky.
A small hill's worth of rock, splitting into ten or twenty boulders, hurtling toward the ground— "No—!!"
Anticipating the result, Emilia willed her trembling knees to stand.
She had to know. Even shattered, boulders over ten meters in size and weight would cause massive devastation and numerous casualties if they hit the town.
And the only one who could prevent it was someone with the power to do so.
"I'm still trying not to kill anyone here. That's why."
"—Al!"
"I believe you won't let a single one fall on the town."
Forcing this unilateral and selfish wish upon her, Al ignored Emilia's emotionally charged shout and rushed to the earth pillar to secure Roy.
As a last-ditch effort, the ice man — once again reduced to just a head — rolled in to block him, but Al mercilessly crushed it underfoot and peeled the impaled Sin Archbishop off the pillar.
"What a bad man you are, Uncle."
Ignoring Roy's unnecessary remark, Al hoisted the small body onto his shoulder and ran.
Without looking back at Emilia, whom he'd been exchanging blows with moments ago, he ran.
"Al! Don't run away... Al!!"
He could hear Emilia's anguished plea, but no attack came to stop his feet. Naturally. Her power was being used at full strength right now to save people.
If he were someone who could target Al here without considering the consequences, it would have been easier to live. Surely, being that kind of person would have been salvation for both Emilia and Al.
But Emilia couldn't be selfish — she used her magic to save people, and in doing so, let Al escape.
"Don't go! Give me back Subaru and
In response to the surge of emotion, the sound of the sky freezing over rang out spectacularly.
Al raised the ground beneath his feet, used it as a foothold to scale the wall surrounding the Prison Tower, left Emilia's white battlefield behind, and without stopping, ran, ran, ran.
"She's crying, you know. That lady over there."
The despicable Sin Archbishop went out of his way to point out what Al could have ignored if not told.
With his heart torn by the sound of tears, Al continued running without stopping. For now, all he wished for was that his fellow conspirators would all gather at the rendezvous point, and he kept running.
The boulders falling toward the Royal Capital were being intercepted by ice towers conjured one after another, preventing damage to the town.
Neither the one who had caused it nor the one who had stopped it took any joy in it.
Only— "—Ah, thank you ever so much!"
'Voracious,' licking its lips, savored the bittersweet spectacle and sneered alone.