We split up at the gate, her bringing order to the chaotic stream while I pushed through to the courtyard. There, in the corner, I found her. She had accepted death just like I had expected she would. It was time to get my hands dirty, and what I was about to do unironically made even me feel a little dirty.
"Hilda!" I yelled.
"Bwuh?" she replied, looking up from hugging her knees (as best she could with the obstacles in the way).
"It's you! It's really you! I've dreamed about this meeting for so long!"
Her jaw dropped.
"You came to me so often, visting my dreams like a goddess from the beyond, clad in the most beautiful black robes imaginable. You taught me so much about Cursed magic, and even life. I thought you were just a figment of my imagination, too good to be true, but you're here! Fate finally brought us together!" The trick was to say "dreams" while meaning "previous loops you forgot but I didn't." The key is to not outright lie, but say things easily misinterpreted.
She stood up. "I-I... You..." she stammered, struggling to dedicate her attention to either what I was saying or my appearance. (There had been a lot of STR gains since last time, which seemed to be more about honing the body than simply piling on infinite muscle. In terms of fantasy coverart, I was somewhere closer to Fabio than Conan now, and I suspected there was a hidden Chadness stat impacting my face as well.)
"But I need your help, Hilda. Only you and I working together as soulmates can form strong enough Curse Magic to destroy the Sword of Noon! I can't do it alone! Please, Hilda!"
Hilda's mouth opened and closed as she struggled to speak. She looked away from me, then back, then away, so fast it was honestly kind of funny to see her mass of hair whipping back and forth. "You're making that up. You're messing with me. Why would you do that? Why now? I was going to die and be free but now you're you're you're you're..." she stammered.
"I'm not. We spoke so much in the land of dreams. You told me of your times in the Arcane College, of the trials you faced, of your spells. It is one such spell that must be used now: the Darkness Ball. Ah, I still remember our first meeting when you showed it to me, playfully flicking a small one onto my forehead... Oh, the times we've had together!"
The vortex arose in Hilda's eyes as my words seeped into her. I hadn't said anything too specific, but referencing the Arcane College and "trials" gave an air of legitimacy that was clearly enough for her to start to believe. "A-Are you... Really...?"
"Take my hand, so we can be one."
Her eyes locked on my hand, which was only a little bloody due to my tactical pants-wiping. She reached out slowly, her hand shaking nervously. She retracted it, looked up at me, blushed, then focused on my hand again. Out her arm went. Closer. Closer. Her fingers brushed mine, and I gripped her sweaty palm. Holy shit it was so sweaty. She let out a little half-squeal half-choke, but I was already pulling her (gently) to the center of the fort, directly beneath the light.
Let me make this clear: I didn't do that to get a waifu. This situation is complicated. First and foremost, Hilda was all but the embodiment of despair, and it stood to reason that while she was feeling miserable in this backwater fort ostracized by everyone else she might choose to embrace the burning light of an anti-fortifications spell rather than choose to run with everyone else. She wouldn't jump to help when asked. Second, as indicated by our first meeting, she was fairly distrusting of anyone who didn't accommodate her to some extent, so I had to be a little manipulative somehow to get this done in the like few minutes or so that we had. Third, I learned this from our conversation earlier, but Hilda was actually a god-tier Cursed mage. I didn't know her skill level (or if she even had one), but being isolated and alone in your love for a subject really was a conducive environment for spending long hours grinding away at honing your skill. She was probably one of the top Cursed mages in the continent, though few people knew that, even her bosses, since she kept to herself and struggled to speak. Her help here was absolutely essential. Fourth, and most importantly, please recall my speech from before. What was forming here was not a bond of love or romance, but of temporary friendship, accelerated by the suspension bridge effect. We needed to use the power of friendship and bonds to power up our magic (there was probably a more scientific explanation, like sharing skill levels or something), and what was wrong with exploiting a little psychological phenomenon to make that friendship strong in the spur of a moment?
In conclusion, while manipulation is definitely not something I would say I enjoy doing (especially manipulation as blatant and heavy-handed as this), it was done out of necessity, and we would all laugh about it as friends later. That's why it's important to not lie. You can just laugh and point out how they accidentally misinterpreted you. OK.
Anyway, we got to the center of the fort.
"How do you connect to other mages for power?" I asked.
"Y-Y-Y-You," Hilda began, stammering so hard I thought she would bite her tongue off. I probably didn't even need to mention she was staring at a wall with her head turned ninety degrees. "Y-You hold hands, l-l-let your mana mix, and th-then say the chant together."
"Both hands?" I asked. The orc mages hadn't, but I figured it woudl be best to ask anyway.
"N... Y-Y-Yes. Both hands. That's important. Both hands."
"Okay." I slipped her other hand into my free hand, turning her to face me, and squeezed them both for good measure. We were now facing each other, both of our hands clasped between us, but Hilda was still staring sideways.
I was going to ask about mana-mixing, but I felt it start happening on its own (or maybe Hilda started it). A kind of sickly, energy-sapping darkness slipped into my body through my hands. OK. It was pretty unsettling, not going to lie. If I entrusted myself to the darkness I would probably be sapped of the will to live in a matter of seconds. I pushed against it instead, and got the feeling I was putting my mana into Hilda. I wondered if all mana was sickly and dark, or if mine would feel different for her. I shuddered to think of what my soul would feel like. Probably something edgier than hers. Bleak nothingness, maybe.
After a pause, Hilda said. "O-Okay. Now we chant." She looked up, and so did I. The Sword of the Noon was blindingly bright by this point, and could best be described as feeling like a miniature sun. "Keep saying the chant over and over, so the spells mix."
And so we did.
"Yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure, yamiyo tekionagure..." we chanted together. An orb of darkness formed above us and began growing in size. If I remembered correctly, it only had to be 1/10th the size of the sun above to consume it. Hopefully my slightly buff mana and her immense Cursed experience would be stronger than the, like, 15 orc mages hiding out somewhere.
As the Darkness Ball grew in size, the drama of the moment was impacted by a few things. (Note that epic battle music was playing in my head as BGM. Think, final boss music.) First, Hilda's hands were so sweaty they were actually dripping, somehow, and it was difficult to not just accidentally end the mana mixing by slipping out of her grasp. Second, if you're wondering why my hands would slip out of her hands, it was because I was trying to keep them in front of our faces while she was trying to force them to the side. Third, if you're wondering why she was trying to push them aside, it was because Hilda was pushing her... okay, enough euphemisms, Hilda was pushing her large, soft breasts against my chest while she tried standing on tip toes to reach my face with hers. Fourth, if you're wondering why she was doing that, it was because she (seemingly) wanted to conclude this Friendship Power moment with a kiss on the mouth after we finished chanting, despite the fact that kisses were decidedly not symbolic of platonic friendship. There were many reasons I was resisting rather than embracing this, but chief among them might have just been stubborn attachment to my chessboard theory. Where did it all go wrong? Was I going to lose the moral high ground I had been pretending to have and care about for so long?
Wrestling match aside, the Darkness Ball had grown quite large. It wasn't a miniature black sun, but it was big, and easily at least a tenth of the growing ball of light above.
We kept chanting, and by the time it felt like my MP was running out, the Sword of the Noon descended. To my surprise it was a beam rather than the ball itself descending, but then again the name clearly wasn't Sun of the Noon. Either way, Hilda and I made eye contract, and did what we had to do.
"Yamiyo tekionagure!"
We said chanted for the last time and unleashed the Darkness Ball into the sky. I don't think we needed to hold our palms up to the sky for dramatic effect, but by God we did. A glance to the side showed Rose and some others at the gate of the door, having abandoned retreat to watch the light shows, which seemed like a bad idea to me, but Rose had her helmet off, and her pristine face had a slight smile that screamed confidence. Assurance. A theory proven correct. I didn't know what she was sure of, but I didn't have the time to think about it.
The Darkness Ball collided with the beam of light, and rather than being eradicated, grew stronger. I had understood the fact that Darkness Balls worked by destroying light and fed off it, rather than being weak to it, but it didn't really hit me as true until I saw the ball grow steadily in size on its way up. A beam had been a poor choice; any chance to overwhelm the ball had been lost. By the time the Darkness Ball reached the sun of light, it had well and truly become a Black Sun in its own right. The two suns collided, exploding in a dizzying display of light and darkness, and that was that.
(I sidestepped and dodged the kiss.)