Refining magic power.
It's no good.
Completely inadequate.
Until now, this had been sufficient.
But once I saw that person's magic, my own Magic Power Operation seemed like child's play.
Construction speed.
Like the crawl of a turtle.
Construction proficiency.
Like a castle built on sand.
Magic power flow.
Like a sewer choked with filth.
Completed spells.
Unbearable to look at any longer.
How could this be.
Is this the culmination of everything I've devoted myself to in sorcery?
Have I been content with such crude magic all this time?
And I'm supposed to be the Empire's greatest mage, with skill like this?
I come to realize the limits of the Human race.
Limits that are far, far too low.
Why was I born as a human?
With such a frail race, I could never hope to reach the heights where that person resides.
I dragged that dark, gloomy feeling with me.
After I failed in the subjugation of that person—now known as the "Nightmare"—I was sentenced to house arrest and confined to a manor in the Imperial capital.
Well, they called it house arrest, but confining someone who can use teleportation magic is rather pointless.
The Empire's upper echelons know this full well, which is probably why they didn't impose a harsher sentence and instead settled for the token punishment of "house arrest"—not that it means anything at all.
I imagine the Empire also has no desire to let me go.
I can't imagine the Empire would simply let go of their greatest mage—one who wields spatial magic, no less, a skill with virtually no other practitioners.
If I made any move to abandon the Empire, they would try every means to keep me.
And if that still didn't work, an Assassin would surely be dispatched.
The Empire's true feelings are that they don't want to lose a valuable asset.
Which means they can't very well afford to upset me.
From what I hear, the summoner Vuimrus, who survived alongside me, has been thrown into the Demon Mountain Range on the border with the Demon race territory—ostensibly to replenish his lost contracted beasts and train new recruits.
The Demon Mountain Range is a dangerous zone where powerful Monsters dwell and the Demon race occasionally schemes.
It's no place to send a man who's half-dead, having lost every last one of his contracted beasts.
Moreover, all the subordinates assigned to him are supposedly problem children with their own quirks.
Vuimrus is a more than capable commander in the Empire's eyes, but I suppose there's no use for a summoner without contracted beasts.
I don't want his hard-won life to be thrown away, but that's entirely up to his own strength.
All I can do is pray for his safety.
As I spent my days in that gloomy state, a certain rumor reached my ears.
A divine beast—a spider—had appeared in the Kingdom of Saliéra.
I knew at once.
It had to be that person.
The Kingdom of Saliéra lies right next to the Kingdom of Outz, where the entrance to the Great Ello Dungeon is located.
The distance and the number of days traveled both add up.
The Kingdom of Outz and the Empire have been desperately trying to cover it up, but the rumor is spreading that an Imperial unit was routed by a single Monster—and that said Monster was lured out of the dungeon.
They didn't exactly lure it out, but after that incident, it's virtually certain that person found some way to leave.
The story about the fortress guarding the Great Ello Dungeon's entrance having collapsed can no longer be kept under wraps—that's the current situation.
A Monster capable of destroying that fortress, appearing at this exact timing—there's no one it could be but that person.
And then there's the matter of the divine beast said to have appeared in the Kingdom of Saliéra.
By all accounts, it has been repelling bandits, healing the land's people, and hunting Monsters.
A true guardian.
Deeds worthy of being called a divine beast.
Unable to sit still any longer, I ignored my house arrest and flew off to the Kingdom of Saliéra.
First, I teleported to the Kingdom of Outz—a place I'd been before—and from there, I traveled by road.
Teleportation may seem omnipotent, but it has one fatal flaw: you can only teleport to places you've been before.
With the previous Hero—who was said to be an even more skilled spatial mage than I—having passed away, I'm likely the only human race practitioner left.
There's a reason teleportation isn't used in military campaigns.
The overwhelming scarcity of practitioners is primarily because almost no one has the aptitude for this magic.
Perhaps one in ten thousand.
And among those, only someone capable of constructing spells far more complex than any other magic.
Without clearing both of these conditions, one cannot wield spatial magic.
And yet, that person performed teleportation with the greatest of ease.
Even I could barely sense the precursors of their teleportation.
The spatial fluctuations were far too natural.
It was teleportation so beautiful I could almost call it art.
I traveled by horse carriage from the Kingdom of Outz to the Kingdom of Saliéra.
But entering the Kingdom of Saliéra from the Kingdom of Outz proved to be quite an ordeal.
It seemed some incident had occurred, and there was tension between the two kingdoms.
How troublesome.
As if I have time to stand around dawdling here.
I was delayed for a while, but in the end, I forced my way through using the power of money.
I may be the last of my line, but I'm still an Imperial noble.
I have money to burn.
More importantly, I have no family.
Gold that only I will ever spend—no matter how much of it there is, it's meaningless.
And so, I at last arrived at Count Kelen's domain in the Kingdom of Saliéra—where the rumored divine beast was said to be.
What awaited me there, however, was something I could never have anticipated.
The divine beast, slain by agents of the Church.
Or so the story went.