Chapter 97 - Anilis

Everyone looked skyward as the pure white radiance descended to the earth.

A miracle.

There was no better word for that dazzling light.

Rohan's eyes widened as the light shone down upon him. They could hardly do otherwise. No one in the world knew better than he what this light was.

'The divine force of the divine realm.'

This was the light of the greatest creators. A higher-dimensional power of which even he could draw upon only a fraction. And now that power was descending to the earth.

Rohan recalled what he had just witnessed.

'The Saintess...'

Renée had done this. With her sword, she had torn open the passage he had created to draw divine force from the divine realm, bringing that realm down upon the earth.

He did not wonder how.

Her divine powers made anything inevitable so long as its possibility was not zero. With those powers, it was entirely possible for the tip of Renée's sword to catch the passage to the divine realm and tear it open.

But the strain of accomplishing such a feat must be immense... Just as that thought occurred to him, Renée coughed.

"Cough!"

Rohan hurried to her and caught her as she fell.

"Saintess!"

"I'm all... I'm all right."

Renée barely managed the answer, feeling as though her airway had abruptly closed. Her mind was hazy. Her whole body seemed to float. Amid those sensations, she felt as though someone were squeezing her heart.

Somehow enduring it all, she reached a trembling hand toward the sky and summoned her pure white divine energy.

She could not collapse yet. There was still something she had to do, giving everything she could to truly stand as his light.

Spellcraft arrays wove themselves at her fingertips. Pure white lines formed a circle. A regular pentagon traced its outer edge. That pentagon multiplied into five, overlapping to become a cube.

Renée sent the cube she had created up into the sky and burst it into radiance.

WHOOSH!

The area-wide regeneration art, [Cradle].

The art seeped into the pure white radiance falling from the sky.

'Complete.'

Though she had not seen it with her eyes, she was certain. The art had been properly inscribed. A faint smile touched her lips, and she lost consciousness.

"Saintess!"

Rohan's cry echoed in her ears like a lullaby.

* * *

Bera's eyes flew wide at the suddenly white sky, at the radiance wrapping around his body.

'Saintess!'

Only Renée could do such a thing, and he knew that even she would have to push herself beyond her limits to accomplish it.

He had to capture the master of the Magic Tower quickly and return to Renée. Turning with that thought, he saw the tower master's back as she fled at full speed.

GRIND.

Bera clenched his teeth. He could not let her escape. Tensing every muscle in his body, he shot forward.

The direction in which the tower master fled, and Bera pursued, was toward the gutter.

* * *

In the deepest reaches of Oriac.

Anilis, master of the Magic Tower, had rushed there the moment the sky turned white. She opened a drawer in her office and took out a small glass vial. Clear blood sloshed within it: the fully refined serum.

"Fuck!"

BANG!

A loud crash rang out as Anilis slammed her hand against the desk.

'I was almost there!'

The plan had been to take down the crown prince, plunge the capital into chaos, and then stroll away.

An apostle? She had not cared. One had indeed pursued her, but hadn't she held a considerable advantage? In a city, wasn't the advantage of the attacker over the defender obvious?

She should never have had to flee so disgracefully and resort to the serum.

Her hand tightened around the serum. Her normally fierce expression had grown even more savage, making her look like a murderous fiend.

'That goddamned bitch.'

She meant Renée.

Anilis was the master of the Magic Tower. She stood at the pinnacle of the discipline that dealt with the mystery called magic. That was why she had instantly understood what the light was.

It was a storm of divine energy. Had she remained within it, she would never have been able to win.

No, that was still true now. The sky that half-witted girl had ripped open stretched over Oriac as well.

Was there truly no way out? That was not the case, either.

Anilis looked at the serum, her eyes trembling.

All she had to do was drink it. Then she could defeat that cockroach of an apostle and escape.

Yet a question troubled her nonetheless.

'And then what?'

The serum was complete. Given how many people she had ground into its creation, it would have been strange if it were not.

She had reduced its side effects as far as possible. She had eliminated every instance of organ rejection.

But one uncertainty remained: she could not guarantee that she would retain her sanity after drinking it.

It was dangerous enough to make her hesitate even in a crisis like this.

BOOOM!

A sudden explosion thundered through Oriac. Violent tremors sent everything in the office tumbling to the floor.

At the sight, Anilis ground her teeth hard enough to make them creak and sent up an observer.

'The apostle...!'

The apostle of oaths. He had made it up to Oriac.

'Madman.'

Anilis trembled with fury.

Oriac floated in midair. He was not wearing one of the magitech propulsion devices the crown prince had been developing, either. That meant he had climbed all this way with nothing but his own body. He had leaped to this height just to capture her.

Fierce gray eyes peered through his black hair toward the observer. The apostle grinned.

Anilis knew at once that the smile was meant to taunt her.

'Fucking bastard.'

A brat who had not even lived thirty years, an insignificant creature who had lived less than a quarter of her lifetime, dared mock her.

He was mocking her without even understanding how great an undertaking he was destroying.

Her whole body shook. Then Anilis slumped and began to laugh in harsh, choking bursts.

"You goddamned fucking bastard."

A verminous bastard. A filthy piece of trash. A bastard she would tear apart and feed to the dogs.

Every manner of curse spilled from her mouth. And still she laughed.

POP.

The serum's stopper came free. Her bloodshot eyes gleaming, Anilis stared at the observer, at the apostle beyond it, and drank.

She had swallowed it rather than injected it, but that posed no problem whatsoever. All that mattered was inscribing it into her body.

CRACK, CRACK.

Anilis's bones slowly began to twist.

* * *

Clinging to Oriac's outer wall, Bera struck it with the Holy Sword, filling the blade with divine energy.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Cracks appeared in the wall. They widened into fissures.

He thrust the Holy Sword into one of those fissures a final time, imbuing it with more powerful divine energy than ever before.

BOOOM!

The outer wall collapsed.

"Whew..."

Bera squeezed through the opening in the collapsed wall and surveyed the interior.

'A garden?'

That was what the space appeared to be. Perhaps a spatial expansion spell had been placed on it; the indoor garden was far larger than he had expected from outside.

'No sign of anyone.'

He had stormed in prepared to face every mage in the Magic Tower, yet he sensed not a single presence.

That heightened his tension. Had the tower's mages become 'corpses' as well? As he sharpened all his senses at the thought—

CLICK.

"There's no one here, dear."

The words reached him alongside the click of a heel.

Bera's head snapped toward the voice. Standing there was Anilis, master of the Magic Tower.

Recognizing her, he drew a sharp breath at her appearance.

'Her hair color...'

Pink was spreading through Anilis's hair, starting at the tips. Her features were gentler now, rather than the fierce ones he had seen only moments earlier.

CRACK, CRACK.

Her facial bones twisted with the sound.

"I sent them all outside the moment the festival began."

"So they were all in on it?"

"Of course not. My children know nothing. I simply didn't want such precious intellects to be lost."

With a series of creaks, the corners of Anilis's mouth rose.

Rather than attack rashly, Bera watched her condition as they exchanged words.

Divine energy was continually descending from the pure white sky, replenishing his reserves. There was no need to rush.

"Little boy, do you have any idea how foolish you're being?"

"Well, could it be any more foolish than trying to assassinate the crown prince?"

"The crown prince?"

Anilis gave a shrill snicker.

"A fucking moron like him, a ruler? Do you think that makes any sense?"

Bera did not answer. It was not a silent agreement. He simply felt the thick anger in Anilis as she spoke.

"Ridiculous, isn't it? Because a bastard like that struts around calling himself a ruler, I couldn't even conduct my research freely. I had to hide."

"Research..."

"Research into the next stage of our species. Research that could lead us to a new species, free of hunger, cold, and every other form of suffering."

Bera adjusted his grip on his sword.

'She's insane.'

He did not want to listen any longer, but there was still something he needed to confirm.

"So you experiment on human beings. And strut around boasting about serum someone else gave you? Does the master of the Magic Tower have no pride?"

"You don't understand, dear."

Pink tinged Anilis's eyes.

"How mysterious and great they are—the primordial species. What it means to have lived from the creation of the world until now. You know nothing. And not just you. None of the imbeciles on this continent understand."

"What a load of bullshit..."

"You don't understaaand!!!"

WHOOSH!

A blast of scorching wind surged up.

Bera wrapped his body in divine energy and dispelled it.

"You know nothing! You're dogs and pigs who live simply because you're alive! Livestock! You have no desire to learn! No longing to reach the laws of creation! Why this world came into being! How it sustains itself! You turn your backs on all of it!"

It was a scream bordering on a desperate tantrum. Wearing a face that could no longer be called Anilis's, the tower master stretched out her hand.

Spears of red flame began to fill the space.

At the sight, Bera invoked his divine powers.

"I proclaim."

Gray divine energy began to envelop the space.

"From this moment forth, all acts of magic and sorcery within this space are forbid—"

"No, they aren't."

CRAAACK!

The gray space split. Fissures spread through it before it exploded into fragments.

Shock swept over Bera's face. Seeing it, Anilis smiled so broadly that her mouth seemed about to split.

"What? Surprised? You thought your divine powers would solve everything, and now that they can't, you're about to piss yourself?"

'How...'

Divine powers were the gods' grace. Power from a higher dimension. How could she interfere with them?

Watching Bera reel in confusion at that thought, Anilis continued with a cackling laugh.

"Stupid little boy. Divine energy is mutated mana. Divine powers, too, are ultimately just phenomena made manifest. Did you know? Every phenomenon in the world has a principle behind it. And once you uncover that principle, there is no need to fear it at all."

Anilis raised her hand. The spears of flame all turned toward Bera.

Then the impossibly broad smile vanished from her face. She heaved a deep sigh and spoke.

"... Yes, why should I bother? It's meaningless to ignorant fools like you who've given up thinking."

There was a trace of weary emptiness in her words.

Then, with a gesture of her hand, the spears of flame shot forward as one.