Chapter 112 - A Wild Card

“Is that all of them?”

“... It looks that way, at least.”

At Alex’s stumbling answer, Elisha clicked her tongue and surveyed the people sprawled around them.

“Every last one of them is vermin.”

“...”

“And they thought they could launch an ambush like this? They should have known their place and stayed put.”

... Was this really the same person?

The same woman who had barely managed to stammer out to Aiden that she had helped him because she wanted to?

Around him, she had acted like a girl in love. Now she was arrogance incarnate.

Surely acting coy to this extent practically qualified as having a split personality...

It had started with her suddenly appearing and requesting his cooperation.

[“You’re that Alex guy, right?”]

[“... What?”]

[“If you’re already tied down playing slave, you won’t mind taking orders from me instead of him, will you?”]

... With that reasoning, she had just ordered him to draw up a complete list of everyone nearby who was hostile to Aiden Kellermain.

Alex had never met her before that earlier encounter, yet she ordered him around as though she already knew him inside out. As though he had no right to refuse.

And it wasn’t merely her way of asking. Her intentions were exceptionally violent, too.

Even if he didn’t command the same attention as the three frontrunners, Aiden was probably starting to draw notice for various reasons. Inevitably, some people would band together to take his head.

She had said all this with the intention of personally rooting them out.

‘... That’s absurd.’

No one chose to take on an entire group alone.

Even Aiden, the man they were discussing, had opted to target the leaders and let the groups fall apart on their own rather than charge into them himself.

What gave this woman the nerve to propose doing it so casually?

Still, whatever he thought, refusing her request was no longer an option. He had already tried that, only to take a massive punch to the stomach and vomit up everything inside it.

‘... Is she actually a gorilla that learned to speak?’

Granted, there was a more refined term: superhuman. But watching Elisha now, Alex had no desire whatsoever to grant her that much respect.

Everyone lying on the ground, practically flattened by her monstrous strength, was probably thinking much the same thing.

Those who had tried to resist in any way had been sunk by a single punch from Elisha. No doubt they were now reflecting on the lesson that they shouldn’t have done that.

‘She actually did it.’

Watching her effortlessly accomplish something he had considered impossible moments ago was making his head swim.

‘... Come to think of it, though.’

He frowned as he examined the people strewn around them one by one.

They had clearly all suffered potentially fatal injuries, yet not a single one was actually dead.

One had a cracked skull, and he suspected others had ruptured organs. Despite injuries that could easily have killed them instantly, all of them were merely groaning in pain, fully conscious.

It was as though someone had forcibly imposed a “law” that prevented them from dying.

‘Is that even possible?’

Before the team competition, the Pontiff had casually declared that no one would die, but he had never dreamed she actually possessed the power to make that happen.

Abigail III had always been considered one of the greatest divinity wielders among all the Pontiffs in history, but...

“It is strange.”

Alex flinched at Elisha’s words beside him. Her face was deeply furrowed.

“Even for the Pontiff, a feat this miraculous is strange. It almost makes me wonder whether they’ve publicly downplayed her power.”

Having voiced exactly what Alex was thinking, Elisha frowned and surveyed the carnage she had created around her.

“... Was that woman really this strong?”

Turning the question over in her mind, she looked up at the sky.

She had hoped that looking at the daytime sky, with the sun high overhead, might help her think more clearly.

That was probably also why she noticed something was wrong sooner than she otherwise would have.

“... What is that?”

Elisha narrowed her eyes at the blackening sky and murmured.

Puzzlement. Bewilderment.

But those feelings were soon replaced in her eyes by terrifying fury.

“We agreed not to interfere openly, you fucking bastards...!”

Probably.

What followed was a string of muttered words Alex couldn’t make any sense of.

▣

The sky turned black.

As though bursting through a tear in it, billowing energy laden with death poured out of the rent.

A phenomenon like that in broad daylight could hardly go unnoticed. Among the people in the midst of their bloody free-for-all, there couldn’t have been anyone who failed to notice it entirely.

Alester, steadily expanding his territory; Julius, eliminated early and watching events unfold; Elisha; even Noel and Katya far away.

All of them would have known that something was going terribly wrong.

The voice that descended upon everyone participating in the team competition was probably further evidence of how serious things were.

“Everyone, come to the high ground.”

At the voice that suddenly sounded in everyone’s ears, someone blurted out in alarm.

“Y-Your Holiness?!”

It sounded rather like the death cry of a chicken being strangled, but this was clearly no time to worry about that.

“That isn’t something we prepared in advance.”

At the Pontiff’s thoroughly irritated words, faces began to turn pale around them.

Something unmistakably ominous was billowing across the sky, and the Pontiff herself, who was overseeing the event, had admitted it wasn’t her doing.

Everyone here would realize just how dire their situation was.

Sure enough, as soon as the participants gathered on the high ground, they found the Pontiff looking up at the sky with a displeased expression.

Her entire body was blue, suggesting that she had sent something like an illusory projection rather than come in person.

“... What is that, Your Holiness?”

Naturally, Alester was the first to speak upon seeing her.

There was a sense that he was stepping forward on behalf of all the royals present.

“I don’t know either.”

“...”

“But as I’m sure you’ve all sensed, nothing good is likely to come of touching it.”

Alester frowned in silence.

Had she answered in her usual fierce manner, he could at least have assumed she had something else planned.

Now, however, the Pontiff’s tone was stiff throughout. As though even she had never imagined this happening.

“I’ll give you every bit of support I can from this distance. But I can’t stop that for you myself.”

Her next words drove the point home.

“I’m on my way, but that thing is spreading faster than I can reach you. I’ll handle the aftermath somehow, but you’ll have to find your own way to survive.”

“...”

More and more faces were turning ashen.

Surely no one on the island could witness that phenomenon without feeling threatened.

The sticky black energy flowing through the sky had now formed a curtain so vast that it made midday look like the dead of night.

“Well, fortunately, you do have someone there who can help with that.”

“... Pardon?”

“Here he comes.”

Everyone’s heads whipped around at the Pontiff’s remark.

“... You fought so well, but your basic fitness is pretty poor. Not enough exercise?”

“My... endurance... isn’t... exactly... hah... very good...!”

... The sight of the man climbing up alongside Mylène left them all speechless.

He was panting so hard that his lips had nearly turned blue. It wasn’t an act. He was simply utterly exhausted.

‘... It’s not like I have huge reserves of supernatural power...!’

A string of fierce battles had drained every last bit of the supernatural power he possessed. Asked to climb a mountain this steep on physical strength alone, even this was the best Aiden could manage...

“Aiden! You made it in time!”

Right on cue, two people appeared from somewhere, landing from the air with a thud.

The Lionhearted. Deathwish.

While everyone stared blankly at the prominent figures who had appeared out of nowhere, Julius’s face twisted horribly amid the crowd.

It was an immediate reaction to seeing Katya.

“What is this woman doing here?”

His words prompted another immediate reaction.

All trace of Aiden’s breathless panting vanished. Before anyone knew it, he was in front of Julius, driving in a hook as though he meant to split his jaw.

“Watch how you talk to my friend. Do you want to die?”

“...”

The threat was even more vicious than anything Aiden had said during their earlier fight, leaving Julius speechless.

Back then, he had said he had no intention of killing Julius and asked him to withdraw quietly. Now he had gone straight for his jaw with alarming ferocity...

Even after doing that, Aiden turned away as though he had decided Julius didn’t deserve another moment of his attention.

“Your Holiness. This isn’t your doing, is it?”

“Would I do that? That thing already caused an uproar in the capital.”

Aiden nodded in agreement.

True. However unconventional the Pontiff’s mind might be, simply unleashing something like that would amount to declaring war on the entire continent. There was no way she would do it.

“So, as someone who’s stopped it once before, what do you think?”

Everyone stared at Aiden, mouths agape.

... He had stopped something like that?

This man, who still couldn’t catch his breath and looked ready to keel over?

Of course, it was true, so Aiden had no reason to deny it. He continued.

“I know you all get along wonderfully.”

Even as he spoke, the black death energy pouring down from the sky continued to spread.

The phenomenon was exactly the same as what the demon-god fragment in the capital had caused. The problem was that, unlike then, he no longer had the Lord Protector’s Remnant.

‘... Still.’

It was unlikely that this was a genuine demon-god fragment either, so the odds were roughly balanced.

“But just this once, let’s do things my way.”

So he could stop it.

Without a doubt.