The flames engulfing the city were growing ever stronger.
Mixed with the deafening roars of wood splintering and iron bursting, she could hear the sounds of water being pumped to fight the flames from afar.
But she had made it in time.
"Hrn, hnaaaah!"
Both of Tu the Magic's slender arms gripped chunks of tower rubble and tossed it aside.
The piled-up debris that had trapped the man who had failed to evacuate in time was now being cleared away faster than Gigant construction work. The man coughed from the heat that abruptly gusted in from the depression in the ground surface.
"…You're a lucky guy. Seems like both of your legs are broken, but that's a small price to pay for your life, right?" murmured Shalk, gazing at the events off to the side.
Most likely, the debris that Tu had just tossed away had been the wreckage of a water tower.
The heat of the flames was nullified by the huge quantity of water, and by being pinned underneath the rubble, he had just barely managed to get through without inhaling a lethal amount of smoke. Tu felt glad that he was saved.
Shalk the Sound Slicer shouldered the man on his back before anyone said another word.
"…Tu, I can leave this up to you, yeah?" "Yup!"
A bullet flew from beyond the other side of the flames. She could see it. Tu stopped the bullet aimed at Shalk with the palm of her hand.
It was something Rique the Misfortune had taught her. Using not just the central point of her line of sight but the vicinity around it to pick up on signs of an attack.
It appeared to be a magic bullet containing some sort of toxin, but it didn't have any effect on Tu's body.
"I'm so glad I was able to save him!" "Here, take this. I'll be back soon."
Shalk handed what looked like a metallic pipe over to Tu and rushed outside of the district with tremendous speed.
Since she could still visually track him, he must have been holding back to ensure it didn't have adverse effects for the man on his back.
For the time being, she would have to keep Alus from attacking from the sky, until Shalk and the man could withdraw to the safe zone.
"All right, come at me, Alus! This thing'll…," Tu shouted, waving around the strange metal pipe she had taken from Shalk in the air.
"…What is this thing anyway?"
Two bullets landed one right after another.
On her flank, the flames assailed her, seemingly alive as they moved, and Tu reflexively shook them off with her arm. The shapeless flames flickered slightly from the gust following Tu's attack but broke through the winds and burned Tu's body.
"Whoa!"
Ground Runner, making a direct hit on Tu, had already incorporated itself in the mass of fire, now fed by a whole city of kindling. The threat it now posed was incomparable to when it had just recently been kindled. Its flames now brought instant death, but nevertheless…
"…I don't really get what's going on here!"
Half of her clothes had been burned away. There wasn't a single scratch on her pale, soft skin.
Her bare feet smacking the ground, she raced through the flames like a humongous house cat.
"Give back my treasure…"
"Ah, so as long as I have this thing, Alus'll come after me! That's gotta be
it!"
A rifle shot swooped down toward her. Tu saw it and then dodged. The next attack was already waiting for her.
"Nhn!"
A mass of mud, reminiscent of a meteorite, hit her directly. The projectiles
from Rotting Soil Sun weren't aiming to cause destruction, but to crush Tu's torso under its mass. But Tu's physical strength alone was able to endure the impact.
"Alus!"
Raising her voice, she asserted her presence while guiding Alus toward the center of the conflagration, to prevent the damage from spreading further. Unlike Shalk's battle, every one of Alus's attacks hit his target; however, Tu wasn't bothered by any of them.
She had another reason for heading into the center of the flames. To see if there were any other survivors who hadn't escaped yet.
She would be happy if there were other lives that Tu could save, like when she had saved Sephite long ago.
"Why…why are you doing such a thing?! All of them, everyone was living their lives…! They didn't harm you or anything at all! There were a whole lotta them that didn't even know how to fight, you know! I—"
She found a child's arm lying on the ground. Tu went to grab their hand, but the child's face and torso had already been reduced to black ash. It was no longer possible to determine if it had been a girl or a boy.
"...!"
"None of that stuff…really matters…does it?" A cold voice came down to her from the skies.
"The ones who don't put up a fight are easier… I want treasure…not enemies."
"…Why do you want treasure?" "...?"
"Collecting stupid treasure all by yourself when you don't even have anyone to brag about it with! Is that what makes you happy?!"
She sank down really low, as if her whole body were a spring. The movement took only a second.
She threw a chunk of rubble with all her might.
Alus rotated in midair, easily evading the piece of debris flying at subsonic speeds. Yet Tu in that moment hadn't been trying to lure him anyway, but to close the distance to attack.
Leaping solely with her physical strength, she kicked off the wall of a crumbling tower, tracing an arc like a beam of light.
"…! Alus!"
She had closed in on her enemy, getting barely within arm's reach of the wyvern in midair, with her physical strength alone.
With her unanticipated and explosive power output, her hand attempted to grab the tip of his wing.
"Kio's Hand."
In that moment, Alus had already started to unleash his whip.
The magic whip bent and smacked soundly into Tu's exposed stomach.
"Hng!"
But naturally, the attack didn't manage to slice through Tu's invincible body. But he reaction from the impact knocked Alus ever so slightly away from
Tu's leaping path.
In his very close, yet definitely out of reach, position, Alus readied his gun barrel.
These were the fighting tactics of the world's strongest rogue. "Magic tree bullet…"
Together with the gunshot, Tu crashed down from the air.
"Nhn…!"
"…Rotting Soil Sun."
The mud masses from Rotting Soil Sun rained down in quick succession where she fell. From among the huge muddy mass, abnormally growing tree branches began to sprout forth. Tu the Magic was being imprisoned within the root structure, complexly intertwined inside the muck. Mud continued to pour endlessly into the spot where Tu had landed.
"Consider the source; take countermeasures… Consider the source; take countermeasures… Consider the source; take countermeasures."
The invulnerable being that remained unharmed after any and every kind of attack would not be so easily killed.
Until Alus accomplished his goal, he would ensure she couldn't move whatsoever.
There was a percussive sound. "…An attack…"
The mud mountain burst open from within. Another percussive sound echoed.
Cracks formed in the dirt mound, and a massive chunk of it was sent flying. "…like this…is nothing for me!"
Tu the Magic's physical body itself was her strongest weapon. She was what Izick the Chromatic had considered to be the perfect combat life-form, and she possessed physical abilities that surpassed that of dragons, even as her whole body was entangled in dirt and roots.
She wrapped herself in a street stall's tent that had escaped the fire, in place of her own clothes, which she had lost in the fierce attacks.
"If there's some magic item that can stop me…go ahead and try, Alus…!"
She would stop Alus here. She had to.
Tu had had enough of tragedy. The scene of the kingdom she had lost was still fresh in her mind.
…Think. I gotta think. I'm not smart. So if I try to attack him, he's definitely gonna predict my moves. My attacks won't harm him, and I think…Alus will probably learn from watching how I act, and then…he might decide he can't kill me and try to flee.
Tu needed to do something about the situation she knew was coming, but she couldn't think up a strategy. She was using the pipe Shalk had handed her as bait to keep Alus around, but if he ever managed to get away, that would be the same as defeat to her. No matter how Tu used her mighty physical abilities, Alus, with his flight mastery, was faster.
"One more attack might—"
"You planning on fighting him alone?" came a voice from right beside her.
A place that, up until just a second ago, had been completely devoid of any presence at all.
"Ah!"
Faster than Tu could process, she was joined by a skeleton cloaked in dark green rags.
"Shalk!"
"I told you I'd be back soon, didn't I?"
Shalk the Sound Slicer was twirling his white spear like a windmill and brandishing it low.
He spoke provocatively to the sky above.
"Sorry, Alus the Star Runner. But it's two on one from here on out." "Okay… Is that because…you can't win by yourselves?"
"Who knows? The two of us might be more than enough."
There was once a phenomenon called the Particle Storm that ravaged country after country.
Even compared to this Particle Storm, self-proclaimed demon kings, and dragon attacks of legend, the single wyvern Alus the Star Runner was the worst calamity in all of recorded history.
The biggest reason was his speed.
Even Lithia's air force, supposedly boasting absolute air supremacy, couldn't
fully utilize their air defense network in the face of Alus the Star Runner's lightning speed invasion and were only able to intercept this singular wyvern on Lithia's home soil. At the time, Alus the Star Runner hadn't even utilized his ace in the hole of combining his magic items together to reduce an entire city to ash.
The current situation, with Alus the Star Runner being held up in the first district he attacked in Aureatia, itself a far wider area to defend than Lithia, was a truly miraculous outcome. Forcing him to relentlessly use Rotting Soil Sun and Ground Runner in combat didn't give him any time to use his combination attack a second time.
I mean, we've done a damn good job. Enough to ask for four times the reward from Aureatia; that's for sure.
But simply containing him was no longer enough.
Giving up a fight just because his enemy remained high in the sky, regenerated even fatal wounds, and possessed invincible defensive abilities brought Shalk's pride into the mix.
If running around and evading nonstop was all that was needed to win, then no one in the world could rival Shalk the Sound Slicer. However, using skill, strength, or strategy to overwhelm an enemy and silence them was the stuff of true victory.
"Tu, I have an idea. A strategy, even. We'll need to attack his blind spot, but… You understand where I'm going with this?"
"Stra…tegy…?" "That's a no, then."
Ground Runner once again assailed them, as if to divide the pair.
Shalk evaded fast enough for his figure to disappear completely, and Tu didn't flinch as she was bathed in hellfire.
Even as the fabric she draped over herself was half incinerated, Tu rolled underneath the rubble, where Shalk had hid himself. It could serve as somewhat of a safe zone and allow them a few brief moments to speak.
"I can help! Just tell me what you need me to do!"
"Do you know what types of magic items that guy's got?"
"Uh, a whip, mud, some fire…and the Greatshield of the Dead. My attacks don't do anything to it."
"…Talking about that magic necklace of his? So you actually know its name, then?"
"Yeah, a long time ago I sorta became familiar with it. He uses a whole bunch of different bullets, too. I mean, just now he shot one that started
sprouting all these branches and stuff. If a normal person was hit by one of those, they'd probably shrivel up and die."
"There's got to be a limit to the magic bullets. They're ammunition, after all."
Shalk was proud of how much he'd managed to do by himself in that regard. The magic lightning bullets must have been a trump card for Alus the Star
Runner, and not something he used multiple times over the course of a fight. Shalk had already made him fire four shots of his limited ammunition.
"He's got a regenerating ability that repairs his wounds. The magic item that allows him to do that must be embedded in his body somewhere… I don't know what part of his we have to destroy to kill him once and for all. But Alus still has his sight and his hearing, and he's thinking about our moves and counteracting them. You know what that means?"
"What does it mean?"
"That he even if he looks like a monster, he's still got a brain. Or at least there's an organ in there that serves as the center of his five senses. Destroy his head, and he'll stop moving, and once we've managed to stop him once, we can just keep breaking him down faster than he can recover. We're both good at that, right?"
Stop his movement, deprive him of the Greatshield of the Dead's defenses, and smash his skull.
The important part was sharing this plan with Tu. "Hey, Shalk, that means…"
Beneath the rubble, Tu's eyes, shining green, looked at Shalk.
"…there's a chance we might be able to talk things over with Alus, right?
Maybe?"
"...Get those stupid ideas out of your head."
Shalk had no intention of mincing words at this point.
Alus the Star Runner had become an absolute monster. Getting their hopes up was pointless.
Meanwhile—the alert announcing Alus the Star Runner's attack had reached the halls of Romog Joint Military Hospital.
Since this military hospital was removed from the expected route of the wyvern's attack, the patients and visitors weren't evacuated to a different district
and instead were instructed to remain where they were until the state of emergency was over.
As the patients looked on with bated breath while smoke rose high from the Eastern Outer Ward far off in the distance, there were two men arguing back and forth at the rear entrance of the hospital.
"I'm tellin' you, you ain't coming with me, old man. You'll die."
"Nonsense! I could say the same to you! You can't possibly beat the Star Runner with one leg! That's an even more suicidal endeavor than my own!"
"I'm fine. Hell, you just admitted what you're trying to do is suicide, didn't ya?"
The middle-aged man was Aureatia's Sixth General, Harghent the Still. The small-statured man in a red tracksuit was the hero candidate Soujirou the Willow-Sword.
The pair's personalities were oil and water in every way; however, they were similar in one regard—in this situation where they were supposed to avoid the incoming calamity, they both intended to fly directly into the maelstrom.
"Don't try to excuse it with 'I'm fine'! You don't even have any reason to go fight in the first place! There's a provision that states those rendered unable to fight are exempt from their duty to fight against self-proclaimed demon kings!"
"Oh yeah…? That just means I gotta go out there even more. If what yer saying's the truth, then if I don't head out there after hearing that alert, that'll mean I ain't able to fight anymore, won't it? Could end up disqualified from the Sixways Exhibition fights, too, so I ain't gonna enjoy myself if I don't jump in at a fun time like this."
"Th-that's your reason…? You'd really go that far to gain the title of hero?" "Herooo?"
Soujirou the Willow-Sword's eyes widened as if he was hearing it for the first time.
"Where the hell'd that come from? I was only ever here for the matches. I've been up front about that with damn near everybody. 'Sides, you're being treated like a sick man, too, ain't you, Harghent? No need for you to head out there, neither."
"I—I… As one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, I have a duty to defend the nation! First of all, it doesn't make any sense that Sabfom has mobilized when he's a patient here, while I wasn't even summoned! Besides…"
"What now?" "Besides…"
Harghent's words caught in his throat.
"…Star Runner's still alive. I—I…need to defeat him…"
Soujirou looked up at Harghent from below, stooping down like a frog. "You wanna fight that guy to the death, eh?"
"............. That's right."
Harghent couldn't say anything reasonable at all.
That's how it always had been with all matters regarding Alus the Star Runner.
Nevertheless, he felt that they needed to kill each other.
As the disaster menacing Aureatia, as the enemy who had haunted him his whole life, Harghent needed to kill him. As someone who had killed his friend once already, and as the one who had accidentally started the rogue on his path, Harghent needed to be killed by him.
"If I don't fight him right now, I won't be myself anymore. If there was any enemy in this world…I was meant to give my life to fight, it is Alus the Star Runner. This is what my life has been leading up to. I'm sure of it…"
"I get it, fine. Then I won't do anything to stop ya. So what're you gonna do?" Soujirou shrugged his shoulders, resigned. Though clearly, from any onlooker's perspective, he was the more heavily wounded patient who needed to be stopped.
"…This hospital must have used Flinsuda's funds to bring in some number of automobiles. Those vehicles can be operated by one person and don't need horses or carriage drivers. I have…some practice with handling locomotives. I should be able to drive us to the Eastern Outer Ward. Probably."
"Automobiles? I forgot those things even existed." "Y-you ever driven one before?"
"No way. Just seen a lot of them turned into junk heaps is all."
"I see… Hrm. I'll have to drive, then… Anyway, there should be some. I'll search for the garage. I'll get the car ready before the hospital staff can spot me." "Hold up. Now that I think about this, this is stealin', ain't it? You sure we
can just take a car like that?"
"O-of course it's not okay! But this is an emergency!" "So it is stealing, then."
"Even so! I'm still going!"
Harghent didn't expect to be able to do anything for Alus, even if he did reach the wyvern.
It wasn't even clear if he wanted to fight him or if he wanted to try to get
something across to him.
He could end up reduced to ashes like other riffraff and have it all be over with that.
Once more, Harghent was trying to meddle in something reckless and beyond his station.
…That's right. It was the same when I tried to kill Vikeon the Smoldering. I was the same way when I went to search for Lucnoca the Winter, too, wasn't I?
Ultimately, Harghent the Still hadn't even been able to become the madman he was diagnosed to be.
Nevertheless, he still wanted to do this of his own volition.
I was able to do all of that precisely because of the existence of Alus the Star Runner.
His unparalleled recklessness was the talent acknowledged by the strongest of all wrongs and the sole glory in Harghent's life.