Goma
"Tower Master Erika."
"Regent Baldrova."
"Are your internal injuries severe?"
Ferda did not so much as glance her way.
It was a deliberate courtesy, meant to spare her dignity as Tower Master.
Erika forced strength into her eyes and straightened her posture.
"Not enough to hold anyone back."
"Understood."
Ferda accepted the answer in a clipped tone and assessed the enemy's strength.
Beyond the flapping wings of the wyverns stood a hulking man and a comparatively slight figure.
The smaller man fixed his gaze on Ferda and spoke.
"You must be Ferda Rosnova. A pleasure to meet you."
Ferda corrected him at once.
"Baldrova."
"Raised in House Rosnova, yet thrashing about trying to escape your roots? How unsightly."
The man sneered.
But Ferda was no green youth to be rattled by such baiting.
"Hestia Village is overrun with wolf monsters, and here we have wyverns... Seeing how freely you command beasts wherever you please, I take it you were also the mastermind behind the disaster in Halim?"
"Indeed. Grateful, are you not?"
"Why should I thank you?"
"Did you not win dazzling glory in Halim and even obtain a branch of the World Tree struck by Reverse Heaven's Lightning?"
The man recited, with casual ease, a fact that had been told to no one.
Ferda refused to be thrown off balance and returned the provocation.
"The self-soothing of a defeated dog."
"Haha! When you put it that way, I suppose it is true. I did underestimate you and those around you far too much. Even though I fought intending only to kill Chancellor Bernard, I failed."
"Do you mean to lay hands on him again?"
"Regrettably, there is no need. What I wished to destroy already seems to have passed into your hands. So rest easy."
"Why would you imagine I would believe a word of that?"
"Why? Because I already stand above your head; I have no need to lie. For instance—"
He swept a mana-laden finger across the ground in a wide arc.
A sudden gust rose, sweeping the fallen leaves from the earth and lofting them into the sky.
"Even a shallow trick like this—I already know of it, yet you pretend otherwise."
The ground lay bare, and what had been hidden beneath was revealed.
From beneath Ferda's feet, a shadow had been chanting a spell.
"Truly a laughable little skill."
Snap!
The man flicked his fingers.
At the same instant an explosion erupted where the shadow hand had been.
Boom!
The shadow hand shattered into fragments and scattered.
"Ugh!"
Outwardly the force seemed less than lethal, but the reality was different.
Had it been a flesh-and-blood hand, the blast would have torn through mana barriers and armor alike as though they were paper.
"Oho."
Interest flickered across the man's face.
"I had heard that Barbatos's Shadow Magic can be wielded like one's own limbs, and that the pain is likewise identical to that of flesh... yet you react not as if a hand had been severed, but as if you had merely snatched it back from a burn."
He was analyzing Ferda.
Ferda neither answered nor reacted.
Instead, just as the man had done, he set about reading the magic that had been used.
What magic did he just employ?
Ferda replayed the events of moments earlier.
The explosion that had accompanied the snap of fingers.
No—it had not been a simple explosion.
It looked like one at a glance, yet it was not.
That was...
Ferda fixed his mind upon the scene.
He slowed time itself, tearing the moment frame by frame until the motion stood vivid before him.
Not an explosion. A magic that distorts a point in space.
For the briefest instant, space had warped and collapsed around a single point in the air before releasing again.
A magic that warps a point to crush whatever occupies it.
Once the principle was clear, Ferda knew the caster's identity as well.
Only one person in history could command such a spell.
A name that had vanished into a single line of the chronicles.
"You are Goma."
Goma.
At the sound of that name the man gave a murmur of admiration.
"Oho. You saw through me with a single exchange?"
Erika, on their own side, was no less astonished.
She had known him for a Noblesse-class demon at the least, yet she had not pierced his true identity.
And small wonder—Goma was a being who ought not to exist at all.
"If it is Goma, then he was the first Noblesse to fall by the Hero's hand, was he not?"
The man admitted it freely.
"Correct. The demons of that age held no vigilance toward humanity. Thus they died hollowly at the Hero's hands."
"Then how are you alive?"
"Simple. That was an age when neither you nor Erdes existed—only a Hero brimming with passion."
Meaning there had been none of the caution and delicacy that mages possessed.
Room enough for resurrection had been left behind.
"To think... that demons would bide their time like this, waiting for a later day."
"Quite so. I myself had no desire to show my face. Yet I found I had no choice."
Goma's eyes turned toward Ferda.
"There is something that rankles."
Rankles.
The word ought to have meant something that soured the mood.
Yet Goma's mouth twisted upward instead.
"Does becoming a demon warp the emotions as well? You seem not to know when to smile."
"Demons feel joy as well. Only it is not the sort of emotion that clings to trifles the way yours does."
"And returning all things to emptiness is what you call greatness?"
At Erika's question he nodded as though it were self-evident.
"It is His magnificent will, and therefore my great joy."
"Then hurry up and vanish so you can go greet the ones who went first."
Crack!
A single bolt of light streaked toward Goma.
It failed to pierce his mana barrier and rebounded.
It had been a Lightning Bolt from Ferda's hand.
"Do you truly mean to kill me with such a thing?"
"No. I already knew it would not work the moment the Tower Master's magic failed to land."
Understanding dawned on Erika; she turned her head toward Ferda.
"...Were you watching me?"
Her expression carried a thread of resentment—why had he not come sooner to help?
Yet Ferda had his reasons as well.
"When someone is about to obliterate an entire stretch of land, how could I not first take stock of the situation?"
"Th-that is true, but..."
"Were you out of your mind, thinking of wiping out part of the Grand Duchy wholesale?"
When Ruri spoke up in a sulky voice, Erika closed her mouth.
Wounded as she was, emotion had been running too far ahead of her.
"I am glad to see you looking so full of spirit after gauging my strength. However..."
A subtle smile touched his lips as he continued.
"I find I have no desire to fight you. How would it be if we simply parted on amicable terms as we are?"
"This is the territory of the Grand Duchy. You run wild as you please and now mean to flee?"
"Hmm. In that case—"
He swept a finger through empty air.
"Do try to stop me."
Space tore open in yet more places, vomiting forth whatever lay within.
The sight was one Ferda knew well.
But the number was nothing like Halim.
Fully five rifts tore open across the area, disgorging their contents.
Some of the creatures veered toward Ferda and his companions; others wheeled about and made straight for Hestia Village.
At the same moment Goma and the giant prepared to hurl themselves into a rift.
As things stood, with even taking a step a struggle, there was no way to stop their escape.
Or rather—if Ruri moved, it might be possible.
She was the child of a Silver Dragon, unmatched in speed.
But if Ruri left, the horde of monsters would pour toward Hestia Village.
Whether the people there could handle them all was far from certain.
"Lord Ferda."
Ruri looked up at him.
Behind the poorly fitted mask, her eyes were those of someone who no longer knew where to go.
"Go. Protect what your master wishes to protect."
"And your own safety, Lord Ferda?"
"Do not worry. I am here."
Though her internal injuries were grave, the rings of water encircling Erika's body did not so much as waver.
"Understood."
Ruri seized her axe and spread her wings.
Whoosh!
A fierce gale tore away without hesitation, crashing into the monsters bound for Hestia Village.
A silver flash wove in and out among the trees; wherever the light passed, only butchered corpses remained.
"How many do I need to hold?"
"I can manage alone, thank you."
"Then I shall watch your back."
Their foes were monsters stripped of reason, driven by pure instinct.
Each blow was dangerous, yet the attacks themselves were monotonous.
The more monotonous they were, the easier they were to read; Erika's water droplets found the vital points with ease and drove through them.
So this is Iorga's magic.
Gentle to the eye, yet once released from the hand it became harder and more lethal than any metal.
It did not merely pierce.
The rotational force it carried twisted and burst the body from within every time it passed a vital organ.
Even facing many at once there was not a scrap of waste; every strike finished its target in a single blow.
And Goma is the one who reduced even an opponent like this to desperation...
Coldly considered, they had not let the pair escape—rather, the pair had simply released them.
At last even the final monster that had charged them was put down.
Erika swept the area once more for living auras and confirmed they were safe.
"Haa..."
Then she sank to the ground where she stood.
There was no leisure left in her.
"Are you all right?"
"My life is not in danger, but I will need several days of focused recovery to restore my mana."
"Can you stand?"
Ferda extended a hand.
"Thank you."
Erika took it.
It was a hand callused in a way unfitting for a mage.
She had touched this man's hand once before.
In that same instant, something rode along her palm and flowed into her.
Erika knew exactly what it was.
That same mana that had once left her so mortified.
"Hyahk!"
Erika recoiled as though burned.
She dropped Ferda's hand and collapsed back onto the ground.
"...What is the matter?"
Her face had flushed scarlet.
What do you mean, what? The second you took my hand you started leaking mana again! You lecher! Trying to pull another filthy trick on me!!
She wanted to scream it aloud, but she did not dare.
Ferda wore the face of a man who genuinely had no idea what had happened.
She would only make a fool of herself if she spoke.
"A-ahem! It is nothing. I think it would be better if I simply practiced my mana circulation here. Please keep watch around us."
"Understood."
Erika folded her legs into a lotus seat and closed her eyes.
The circuits within her body turned; with each beat of her heart she gathered mana.
In the darkness left behind by a single eyelid, the battle of only a few dozen minutes earlier rose again before her.
To think that man was Goma—one of the Demon King's Seven Evil Stars.
The Seven Evil Stars.
Even among Noblesse-class demons, who ranked just beneath the Emperor-class Demon King himself, they stood at the pinnacle and served as legion commanders.
She had traded several exchanges and felt his mana, yet she had never so much as guessed.
She had known only that he was Noblesse-class.
And how could she have known more?
She had been hard-pressed, forced to pour every scrap of focus into the fight itself.
There had been no room left to pierce his identity.
Yet even that excuse brought her no comfort.
She had once been called the Sage among the Twelve Heroes.
She had already clashed with the other six Evil Stars and found openings against them.
And Regent Ferda saw through him in a single exchange.
He had received one attack and known the truth at once.
That was a fact that would not vanish no matter how she denied it.
I was outmatched in mana as well.
She had not been fully prepared, yet the outcome of a true contest would have been hard to dispute.
If Ferda and Ruri had not appeared—if she had faced that man alone—would she have won?
Damn it.
She chewed on the bitterness inside.
Though she had not seen the end, the helplessness she had felt was not something she could simply overlook.
And then—
I want to die of embarrassment.
The fact that she had made such a spectacle of herself and cried out was more painful than the twisting agony of her internal wounds.
She bit her lip and pounded her own thigh with her fist.
Ugh, you idiot. You idiot! Why don't you just drop dead already!
Ferda watched her swallow her anguish and thought to himself,
Her internal injuries must be quite severe indeed.
A short while later, someone flew toward them.
Ruri returned, the vicious axe still in her grip.
"Everything that was headed for Hestia Village has been dealt with. Word from the village is that they are wrapping things up on their own without needing further aid."
"Well done."
"It is not finished yet. The monster corpses still need clearing."
"Burnel will be pleased."
The forest was littered with monster carcasses.
Green blood and purple flesh lay alien and ominous against the natural surroundings.
"I will handle the cleanup of this area."
The one who spoke was Erika, still seated in lotus position.
"There is no need for you to trouble yourself."
"There are many of them, and if they are not cleared thoroughly some places will be contaminated, will they not? That sort of work needs magic. Once I circulate a little longer I will have enough mana to manage it."
"Understood. Then I leave it in your hands, Lady Erika."
It seemed the matter was settled—yet it was not.
BOOM—!
A tremendous sound rolled through the air.
Its source was none other than Hestia Village.