"Hahahaha! You can't even put up a fight!"
And so the onslaught resumed — Clyde, transformed into a black monster, launched his furious assault.
Magic blasts flew without cease, each one far surpassing any run-of-the-mill Bloodline Magic. Combined with the occasional composite spell woven from multiple elements, the result was a ferocity so overwhelming that even deploying barrier magic to its limits required sheer ingenuity just to hold the line.
And when they stopped their feet to focus purely on defense, tentacles would come sweeping in as if to mock their very efforts — a scything slash. This was something that could tear straight through even the—
Spirit Veil
—without so much as slowing down, forcibly stripping away their defenses, and into that opening came a relentless barrage of magic.
Against this overwhelming offensive that far exceeded their capabilities, Ermes and Sarah were — just as Clyde had said — almost entirely on the back foot, reduced to nothing but desperate defense.
"Look at you! Look at youuu! You must've been feeling pretty cocky all this time, right? Acting all high and mighty because you thought you could definitely win since I couldn't use Bloodline Magic!"
For the record —
The one actually carrying out this attack was not, strictly speaking, Clyde. The initiative for driving his body had been entirely ceded to the bat monster, which excelled in manipulation. He merely projected his consciousness onto the surface and deluded himself into believing this power was his own.
...The fact that he harbored not a single doubt about any of it — there lay the truth of who he really was.
In any case, the onslaught continued.
Ermes and Sarah managed to coordinate their efforts just enough to stave off any killing blow, but conversely, that was all they could manage. There was no opening to even attempt a counterattack.
The man who had defied his every expectation time and again, and the woman who had brushed aside his patronage despite everything he'd done for her — Clyde wallowed in the exquisite pleasure of tormenting them both, one-sided and unchallenged.
"..."
But. He did not know.
Because he had always possessed power far inferior to Ermes's, he had been unable to see through to the essence of who Ermes truly was — as a fighter, as a wielder of magic.
That is to say — how to fight when facing an opponent of equal or greater strength. The true horror of who he was.
"...What...?"
By the time Clyde noticed, the battle was turning fatally against him.
First, the frequency with which his magic destroyed the barrier had dropped drastically. His attacks were being blocked more efficiently, more thoroughly.
The instant he recognized this, a fire spell came from the other side. A counterattack after quite some time.
"Tch!"
He managed to block with his magic, somewhat at ease — but then, he noticed something further.
This spell. Compared to the scattered ones he had been receiving until now... the power had clearly increased.
"...I see."
Ermes's voice reached Clyde, who was drowning in questions.
"Even if the outside is an aberration, what's being used is a human body. I was wondering how someone could produce that level of magic power output, but..."
Even in this situation, he remained terrifyingly calm.
"Deliberately self-inflicting damage on the magic flow, the circuit — and using the body's overcorrection response as a boost to the output. ...It's a line of thinking that someone who instinctively avoids getting hurt would never arrive at. I see —"
His expression didn't change, but those emerald eyes blazed with intensity as he declared:
"—"
"Nice,"
", "
"that."
""
"Guh—!?"
The power of the counterattack magic climbed even higher.
It was only now that Clyde finally arrived at the answer to the mystery.
He was learning. Even as he blocked magic, he studied how the bat monster used Clyde's body and magic power to wield spells.
He treated this extremely unique situation — "controlling a human body through a monster's mind" — as an invaluable sample case. He analyzed and reproduced it, adapting the findings to his own use of magic, as if returning the favor the bat monster had dealt him moments ago.
On top of his innate traits came a spirit honed by crisis, along with the high adaptability and flexibility forged through years of magical refinement.
And above all — the extraordinary observational ability that embodied his purpose, his very way of being.
This was learning and evolution. The defining trait of his magic: ceaseless progress.
"Steal by observing those who excel." That was his very essence.
Therefore — the moment someone possessed abilities greater than his own...
...that was precisely...
...when he was most dangerous to underestimate.
But naturally, Clyde could do no such thing.
"Don't get ahead of yourself!"
He grumbled with mounting irritation, and as if answering that hostile intent, a tentacle sweep was unleashed upon Ermes.
But against that too, the other man showed a response beyond all expectations.
"—!?"
This time, Ermes deployed the
Spirit Veil
at an angle.
And just like that, he deflected the tentacle attack by "sliding" it along the surface, diverting its trajectory to block it.
This was a technique he had also employed during his battle with Rose and the Traukia household — a way of using barrier magic to defend with minimal expenditure against attacks that would normally shatter a standard barrier.
But the difficulty of executing the same maneuver against an attack "too fast to even perceive" naturally skyrocketed.
And yet, the reason he was able to accomplish this—
"...It's fast, but the trajectory is simple. I guess a newly constructed body can't handle complex movements, huh."
This, too, was the fruit of observation. It was nothing short of proof that he had read the tentacles' movements perfectly.
And with that single remark from Ermes, the balance of offense and defense finally flipped.
"Tch!"
He threw himself into unleashing magic in desperation, but every shot was deflected. Ermes's counterattacks between each volley grew ever more powerful and precise, and eventually Clyde could no longer keep up with the defense.
Ermes inevitably left openings in his Chant when switching between different types of magic, but Sara's support covered those gaps.
Inevitably, the tide of battle tilted further. At one point, the backlash from the magic caused Clyde's body to stagger.
Ermes had no intention of letting that opening slip by. He seized the moment to begin chanting his ultimate technique.
While Clyde tried to regain his footing and Sara blocked the next attack, Ermes finished his chant.
"Formula Replay—
Messenger of the Faceless
"
Technique Composite—
Magic Bullet Archer
"
A composite Bloodline Magic—loading a godspeed strike in which he himself became the magic bullet.
He planted his feet firmly, and in his chest he harbored a silent pride.
It was something he could not surrender as the one who had inherited Creation Magic from his master. An unshakable pride as a reproducer.
In other words—
...the same thing as me."
"Don't think you can beat me so easily," he said.
In a sense, this was payback for the first time Ermes had been subjected to his own analysis.
Ermes activated his magic, unleashed the stored power, and charged.
He shot clean through the right half of the black Monster, tearing it away root and all.
◆
He felt it connect.
Even as his charge carried him to the far side, Ermes's mind was already processing.
He didn't know the Monster's ecology, but—
Human—
as long as it was based on a human, it had to have some kind of limit.
Given that, the blow he'd just landed could certainly be called a decisive strike. The Clyde inside wouldn't walk away unscathed—or rather, judging by the impact, his right arm at the very least should have been blown clean off at the shoulder.
He wouldn't let his guard down, of course. He'd close in and finish this—turning toward Clyde, Ermes—
saw something impossible.
"............Huh?"
Gone.
The wound was gone. The hole was gone. The right half of the body that Ermes had just shot through had completely reverted to its pre-battle state. Before him stood the black Monster, as flawless as ever.
What the hell.
Could it be that in the instant after Ermes's follow-through—in less than a blink when his eyes were elsewhere—the wound had fully healed?
That was simply impossible. Such performance far surpassed the scope of any ordinary recovery magic — no, it exceeded the bounds of any recovery magic Ermes had ever known.
He had already accounted for the possibility that the enemy could use recovery-type magic as well. That was precisely why he had chosen his current Technique — to inflict a wound that would make instantaneous recovery absolutely impossible.
He couldn't read the mechanism.
Ermes maintained his stance while frantically running through possibilities. And then, a voice drifted down to where he stood.
"…Aaah, that hurts. That really hurts."
It was Clyde. Still in his black Monster form, he swiveled around to face Ermes, his crescent-shaped mouth twisted into an ugly grin as he spoke in that grating, dissonant voice.
"That's just terrible, Ermes. Tearing off a classmate's arm without so much as a second thought — are you even human?"
Based on those words, there was no doubt the attack had landed.
Then why — that question was answered by Clyde's next, smugly triumphant voice.
"But you know, it's all pointless! No matter how desperately you struggle, no matter how cleverly you try to land your attacks — it's all for nothing! Because my loyal Monsters will take the damage for me! They'll die in my place! Ah, now that's what I call an efficient use of lives!"
"…No way."
The instant he heard those words, a deduction crystallized with perfect clarity in Ermes's mind.
Could it be — the Bat's magic, the sharing of information. He had developed it further, and was now sharing the magic wielded by his Monsters as well.
"…The Monsters'…
lives are shared too…
…!"
If that was the case, then the abnormally rapid regeneration made perfect sense.
But if so, then…
This terrifying Monster. This entity that wielded powerful physical attacks, multiple magics, and even composite spells. An enemy that, despite growing somewhat accustomed to it, remained an unmistakable threat.
And then…
How many times
would I have to
kill
this thing——?
"Hh—!"
Calm down. Fear comes later. He chastised himself so.
If his reasoning was correct, then in the worst case, he would have to keep killing this thing until every Monster on the field was wiped out.
That was impossible. Before anything else, his magic power was nowhere near sufficient.
Then another method. Find a spot it couldn't regenerate from—or, their "
Life Reserve
" until the humans on the school building's side wore it down completely.
In any case, keep up the pressure and find an opening. Ermes made that split-second decision and was about to resume his charge, but—
"............Ah, right."
In that instant, Clyde spoke in a tone that—if he had been in human form—would have been accompanied by a snap of the fingers.
——and turned his back on Ermes once more.
"Wha—"
An utterly incomprehensible act under normal circumstances. To do such a thing to an opponent who was clearly targeting your life and had the means to kill you—that was nothing short of suicide.
But... in that instant, Ermes felt a violent chill run through him.
"That's right, isn't it? If I can't die even when you kill me, there's no need for me to go out of my way to involve myself with you."
"!"
"Then how about—"
And so, Clyde imbued countless palms with powerful magic.
Every last one of them—
He directed toward Sara.
.
"Wha..."
"We should just kill the easier one first, yeah!!"
It was, without question, a supremely effective method.
A technique born from his willingness to take a bullet in the back from Ermes. An atrocity made possible only because he held multiple lives.
Sacrificing one Monster's life,
the weaker one
Kill them first.
A terrifyingly efficient, supremely grotesque, and precisely for that reason useful exchange of lives.
And that was why Ermes couldn't read it coming.
On top of being overwhelmed by an ability he'd never seen before, there was the sheer absurdity of Clyde's will—at this critical juncture, refusing to face him head-on.
Because of the one area where Ermes was inferior to Clyde—*malice*—his realization came too late.
And so, they learned.
That the noble sentiment Ermes cherished, in which he believed, and for which he continued to strive—
—could be torn apart by the fangs of malice that were wretched, filthy, and small beyond remedy.
"Well then, you false saint—!"
There was no way even the earliest magic could activate in time, and Sarah had no means to counter it alone.
Thus, the deadly volley of spells—from which defense was a desperate impossibility—
—was unleashed mercilessly upon Sarah.
Sorry for the somewhat abrupt cut-off.
I'll update the next chapter as soon as possible. At the very least, I'll stay within an every-other-day pace and update by the day after tomorrow no matter what, so I'd be grateful if you could wait...!