The imperial capital
In Lupugana—a place now more aptly called the Corpse Capital than the imperial capital—Al searched for the missing Priscilla, fighting on alone.
That said, it would be difficult to call his search for his master a smooth one.
After all, when it came to the basics of finding someone, you'd start by canvassing for eyewitness accounts—but here, there was no one to even get useless tall tales from, let alone any conclusive testimony.
All that existed were either undead who would close in with dangerous intent the moment they spotted a living person, or survivors who had chosen to keep their heads down and avoid drawing attention in order to stay alive.
Either way, none of them were of any use to Al's objective.
Well, that was— "Even meeting a living person doesn't necessarily mean your goal moves forward in a positive direction, Al. That's just the cruel irony of the world, isn't it?"
—and so spoke the ever-carefree Cecilus, a living embodiment of the world's cruelty.
Al wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment, but he had no room to bicker with Cecilus's words. After all, he was dangling off the edge of a five-story building's rooftop.
"Damn it."
From inside his iron helmet, Al cursed under his breath and looked away from Cecilus's smug grin.
There was no point saying anything to Cecilus in this situation. After all, the very reason Al was hanging off the edge was because Cecilus had kicked him off the rooftop. What's more, he'd deliberately lured Al to the edge, made him think something was in the distance, then kicked him from behind.
If that wasn't malice, what was?
"Consider it a test, or perhaps a check—either way, the purpose was to gauge you. The fact that you didn't plummet straight down suggests your reflexes are better than Boss's."
"Yeah? Means nothing to me."
"Not knowing is perfectly fine! I have a firm grasp of my own thoughts and wishes. And let me be clear—I won't be helping pull you up."
With that unhelpful answer to Al's predicament, Cecilus clapped his hands together cheerfully.
Al hadn't known the reason for the assault until he'd heard the answer, and even then, it didn't make sense. When it came to hostility or murderous intent, Al and Cecilus hadn't spoken enough for any of that to apply.
Al had been saved from a powerful undead foe, they'd exchanged brief introductions, Al had explained his movements thus far and his future objective—and then he'd been kicked off the rooftop.
Cecilus was indeed the kind of presence that could only be called a stroke of terrible luck to run into, yet Al didn't particularly despair at his answer.
Because— "I've heard it too many times to have any expectations."
With that reply, Al released his grip on the edge and surrendered himself to freefall.
"Oh my."
Cecilus's surprised voice faded into the distance, and suspended in the sensation of weightlessness, Al set his thoughts racing.
The distance to the ground was about fifteen meters—heights that superhumans could land from without difficulty—but Al was, remarkably, just an ordinary man, so this would very likely kill him. A squashed tomato in the making.
The approaching ground was wet cobblestone—not enough water to cushion the impact, and no muddy soil to serve as padding either. A brutally unforgiving setup.
Therefore, if he wanted to survive, something other than falling was required here.
"Ooaaaaah!"
Bellowing from deep in his throat, Al extended his bent knees and kicked hard off the wall.
The body that should have fallen straight down gained a diagonal thrust, closing the distance to a building at the same height across from the one he'd been holding onto.
The timing of the kick had to be between one and two seconds after he started falling—too early or too late, and he'd smash into the wall, break his neck, and become a squashed tomato.
But with this timing—in the blink of an eye, Al's body crashed through the building's window.
"Gwoooah!"
Dragging shattered glass along with him, Al tumbled into the ruined room back-first. Glass slashed his shoulders and back, the floor battered him—devastating damage.
"But... I'm alive..."
After sliding across the room and rolling to a stop, Al sprang to his feet and confirmed his survival. Only after checking for fatal wounds and fractures in his limbs—and finding none—could he declare that he'd made it.
If he had any irreversible injuries at this point, he'd have to undo them.
"Whoa, my left hand's gone?! ...Wait, that's been gone for almost twenty years now..."
Inserting his obligatory little quip and pausing for a beat, Al immediately ducked behind the door facing the hallway and swiftly drew the Blue Dragon Blade from the back of his waist.
Death by falling had been averted. But in the process, he'd made a tremendous racket crashing into the building.
Naturally, that noise attracted attention— "Here!"
"Over there!!"
With frantic footsteps, the undead burst through the door and charged into the room.
The undead charged forward with a shout, but as its pale face passed before his eyes, Al swung the Blue Dragon Blade in a wide arc and sent the thing's head flying.
He cut down the vanguard in a single stroke, used the headless body as a shield, and counted the approaching enemies—two beyond the shattered door and one set of footsteps coming up the stairs, making three in total. Beyond the first corpse, the second foe recovered from its surprise and thrust a short spear at him.
They recovered fast. It was unnerving.
Thinking this, Al redirected the headless corpse into the spear's trajectory— "I got you."
The undead that took the fatal blow shattered like a piece of pottery that had lost its will to function.
That's when Al remembered—the tactic of using a familiar corpse as a shield didn't work—right as the enemy's short spear pierced his own chest at a fatal angle.
× × × "Here!"
"Over there!!"
With frantic footsteps, the head of the undead that kicked through the door was sent flying.
Without pausing, Al kicked the bothersome headless body aside and leapt deeper into the room. Chasing after him, the second warrior charged in with a short spear thrust forward.
"Dora!"
The spear's tip was swallowed by an earthen wall that erupted from the floor, forcibly ensnaring it.
Seeing that the move had drawn the enemy's attention, Al planted his feet against the earthen wall— "Dora! Dora! Dora!"
From the wall he'd touched, earthen pillars shot out sideways, blasting through the undead on the other side head-on and sending it flying backward.
The pillar shoved back both the second warrior and the third one trying to follow behind it, and from the tip of each pillar, another pillar fired, then another from that one—a chain like a multi-stage rocket that pinned both undead against the hallway wall and crushed them.
"One more to go...!"
The sound of something large and ceramic shattering echoed between the pillar and the wall. Having dispatched three in one breath, Al kept his feet planted against the earthen wall and watched for the last enemy's movements.
He'd taken out the vanguard with a surprise attack, and the second and third with a trick. If the last one—the lieutenant or general or whatever—decided the situation looked bad and turned back, Al would be in the clear. But— "Yeah, things never go that smoothly!!"
The earthen pillar blocking the entrance was shattered along with the surrounding wall, and the final undead forced its way into the room.
It was a cyclops—a one-eyed race undead—wielding a massive battleaxe, its single golden eye set in the center of its face. At a single glance, Al could tell this one was leagues beyond the previous three in power. Turning his back, he scrambled desperately toward the room's window— "Will I make it?!"
Whether he would or not was irrelevant, because mid-scream, he took the full force of a horizontally swung battleaxe to the back, and Al ended up redecorating the building's interior grotesquely with his own spilled organs.
× × × "Here!"
"Over there!!"
With frantic footsteps, the head of the undead vanguard that kicked through the door was sent flying.
He knew there were two more in the hallway and the worst enemy coming up the stairs. With that in mind, Al leapt far backward— "Dora!"
He had to deal with the second and third warriors in front of him while carving a path to a strategy against the final monster.
△▼△▼△▼△ "Wow, amazing, amazing! I was sure that cyclops who charged in at the end was someone Al could never beat, but you really pulled it off!"
"You absolute piece of shit..."
"My my, I understand it was a formidable foe, but speaking ill of an opponent you had an intense battle with isn't exactly a laudable attitude. Of course, crude language and verbal abuse can be memorable, but I don't approve of the notion that notoriety is better than obscurity!"
"I was talking about you..."
Al emerged from the building covered in grievous wounds, gasping for breath, and was greeted by Cecilus. He slid down against a wall and collapsed to the ground.
Upon being confronted, Cecilus's eyes went wide.
"I seriously don't get how you can look so surprised at that. The guy tried to kill me in two different ways. Even a psychopath should at least have some awareness that people might hold a grudge..."
"Oh my. I certainly haven't learned every word Boss uses in such a short time, so there are bound to be terms I don't know. By the way, what exactly is a 'psychopath'?"
"Pretty much means a psycho. Someone who tries to kill people and acts all calm about it."
"Hmm. But if that's the case, I don't think I qualify as a psychopath. —Because you don't die, do you, Al? For some reason."
Cecilus grinned and delivered a wonderfully twisted self-justification.
At Cecilus's answer, Al—who was crouching on the ground—focused on catching his breath. While Al remained silent, Cecilus held up a finger and continued.
"That cyclops just now was quite skilled. Unfortunately, he was nowhere close to me, but against you, Al? You'd lose a hundred times out of a hundred. This is the truth as I see it!"
"...But I'm still alive, aren't I? Or are you saying I'm dead?"
"No, no, you're quite alive. I did wonder if perhaps you were an undead pretending to be living, but that doesn't seem to be the case either. Which leaves only one explanation. —You drew the winning card on the hundred-and-first try."
Cecilus held up one finger on his raised hand, and one finger on the other, showing Al two fingers.
Two fingers that still only added up to two—or at best, eleven—Al paid less attention to the meaningless gesture and more to the words themselves, which made him catch his breath.
"I'm not particular about the number one hundred and one. One hundred and two, one hundred and three, two hundred—it doesn't matter! You lose to that cyclops a hundred times out of a hundred. But what if you did it a thousand times? A million? A hundred thousand? You might just trigger a literal one-in-ten-thousand chance. And you pulled it on the first try. Isn't that right?"
"..."
Pretending he was just silently catching his breath had reached its limit.
Inside his iron helmet—his expression hidden from view—Al's face twisted as he felt a genuine fear of Cecilus from the depths of his heart. His perception, his words—Al couldn't even begin to understand what Cecilus was.
What Cecilus had just said almost perfectly described Al's Authority. And not through logic—it was something closer to a wild guess.
The young man who called himself
"The height might be from the same reason as me and my brother, but..."
Just as Al and Subaru had been de-aged by Orbalt, it was entirely possible Cecilus had been shrunk by him as well.
The person in question didn't identify himself as the "First" of the "Nine Divine Generals," but when de-aging became severe, Al had experienced the sensation of his consciousness being dragged along by his external appearance. The same was likely true for Cecilus.
In Al's case, they'd forcibly optimized his mind, but that rough treatment could only be performed by Al and Subaru. Therefore, it was thought that Cecilus's spirit had shrunk with nothing to be done about it.
If that was what had turned Cecilus into a childlike monster, then the consequences of Orbalt's handiwork were severe.
"Is it that you have no answer because you can't give one, or because you don't want to? ...Which is it?"
At Cecilus's quiet question, Al pushed himself up from the wall he'd been leaning against.
Cecilus's silence held an edge to it—a sign that the pendulum inside him was swinging wildly from side to side. It was the pendulum that would decide whether he would stand as Al's enemy or ally.
A fixation on something trivial—even here, in this corpse capital beset by unprecedented calamity.
"I wonder. I truly wonder. If you possess something that could draw that one-in-ten-thousand outcome on the first try, Al... could you do the same against me?"
In that case, it wouldn't just be one-in-ten-thousand—the chances might be one in a hundred million or one in a trillion.
But if the odds weren't zero— "Let me give you some advice... stop digging into what makes me so charming. Otherwise, you'll end up glaring at someone you shouldn't and regretting it big time."
"My! Those words, directed at me? I don't dislike it—I actually like it."
Al sighed at Cecilus's reaction, which only seemed to find him more and more entertaining.
Al wanted to find some way to deflate Cecilus's interest, but from the looks of it, there wasn't time. He'd only just survived the fall and the undead rush.
The burden was heavy, but he needed to push forward.
"—Domain release, followed by re-expansion, thought experiment reactivation."
Before Cecilus could do anything else, Al redefined the Matrix he'd already set up.
The backlash was enormous due to the frequency and scale, but Al had resolved to ignore the cost for as long as it took to leave the Volachia Empire. Recapturing Priscilla was the top priority.
"If that's what it takes, I'll do it as many times as—whuah?!"
He was in the middle of speaking those resolute words— Before he could finish, Cecilus's figure in front of him blurred, and the next instant, Al was struck in the side by the sole of a Zorri boot and flipped sideways.
At this outrageous act, Al screamed as he skidded across the ground.
"That's—that's crazy! You go on and on about dramatic flair, then attack someone mid-sentence?!"
"No, no, no, that's not it all! For me to do something so unrefined? Outrageous! That would be grounds for seppuku. Rather, look—"
"Look at wh—"
As Al finished skidding and pulled himself up, the explaining Cecilus pointed to the wall. Looking, Al saw a fist-sized hole in the wall at the exact spot where he'd been standing, at about chest height.
It hadn't been there a moment ago. A hole that had appeared suddenly.
Which meant— "A sniper... gukh!"
"A bit rude, don't you think?"
The moment Al's eyes went wide, Cecilus's figure blurred once more, and the next instant, Al felt the G-forces of acceleration through his entire body as he was thrust straight backward.
Cecilus was sprinting at full speed—he'd grabbed Al by the waist and started running with him. And then, chasing after the two who had become the wind— "Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, what the hell, what the hell, what the hell?!"
In the illusion of being hurled backward, Al watched as street after street and building after building had walls punched through them by something tremendous that pursued them in a frenzy.
If his first impression was correct, this was sniper fire. Sniper fire that was chasing Al and Cecilus.
"If it's sniping, snipers are supposed to stay still—that's the iron rule!"
You lie in wait, and when your scope acquires the target, you deliver a killing blow.
That was the fundamentals and the iron rule of sniping. Yet this sniper fire was pursuing Al and Cecilus with pinpoint accuracy, even getting ahead of them to target spots where they might try to hide behind cover.
It was as if they were surrounded by a hundred snipers—or being targeted by a sniper who could move at high speed with complete freedom.
"Whoops! Whoops whoops! Whoops whoops whoops!"
"Pwah! Ugh! Bit my tongue!"
Dodging the sniper fire of terrifying accuracy and mobility, Cecilus—carrying Al with him—darted left and right, up and down, continuing to evade the attacks.
But he wasn't looking around at all. Al realized it. —He was going on instinct alone. Cecilus was dodging superhuman sniper fire on nothing but gut feeling.
"Not quite that much. But when the enemy has that decisive moment, don't you get a sharp feeling yourself? That's what it is."
"Forget about my questions! Focus on staying alive!"
"I will. But this opponent is a real talent. —I've crossed paths with them several times before, and they've never managed to land a hit on me."
The ground erupted with explosive sounds as Cecilus used it for propulsion, accelerating with each stride despite the force of his Zorri boots. Feeling the invisible shooter and its sniper fire closing in on them, Al was hit with a double shock from Cecilus's words.
The first was that Cecilus had already crossed paths with this enemy multiple times and had survived each encounter.
The second was that this enemy was an abnormal threat that even Cecilus couldn't defeat.
"I think they're flying, but other than being fast, I can't see them."
"Can't see... the enemy..."
From Cecilus's carefree remark, Al picked up the keyword: invisible enemy.
If he could uncover the mechanism—or at least find some countermeasure— "Oh, this is—"
Cecilus's characteristically carefree voice came again, accompanied by an absurd shattering sound from behind Al—from the direction they were headed.
Three buildings came crashing into Al's field of vision, collapsing directly into their path.
Buildings from the front and both sides—three directions closing in—their foundations gouged out by sniper fire, tilting and collapsing toward them.
If they were crushed, it would be instant death. The moment he saw it, Al clenched his teeth— "Domain, redefine—!"
"We're going straight through the front!"
Just after Al managed to redefine the domain, Cecilus kicked off the ground and, carrying Al in his arms, smashed through the window of the collapsing front building and charged inside.
As the building tilted, glass shattered in a light cascade in response to the warping walls. Cecilus kicked through the floor, smashed through the ceiling, and forcibly carved a straight path from the lower floors to the upper ones, charging upward.
"Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!"
Since the building was collapsing, the crushing contact with the street would start from the bottom floor—that was a fact.
But even so, escaping being crushed in this manner was such a reckless feat that it could hardly be called sane. It shouldn't have been possible.
And yet, through this extraordinary judgment, Al and Cecilus managed to break through the top floor's ceiling and escape outside before the building finished collapsing— "No, this isn't enough."
Al and Cecilus burst through the ceiling and into the open air.
Below, three collapsing buildings collided with each other, their massive weight causing tremendous earthquakes as they fell into ruin. One of the buildings must have stored flammable liquor or magic ore, because fireballs were seen spreading across the streets.
However— "Now, now, what a formidable foe!"
Cecilus's joyful exclamation and the tremor that shook Al's body came at the exact same moment.
But the one who felt the impact wasn't Al. It was Cecilus, who had flown into the air alongside him—this was the shock of him being hit by sniper fire and having one of his legs blown off.
His small left leg was blown off below the knee, scattering blood through the air as the young man clenched his teeth. Al knew from experience—pain arrives quickly, and the throat screams— "Over there!"
Instead of screaming, Cecilus shouted that, and in the distance—he'd likely spotted the enemy.
Then, pressing his remaining foot against Al's body—which he'd been holding—he used Al as a launchpad and flew toward whatever he'd found.
With the propulsion of a single leg alone, the momentum was tremendous, and if anyone could catch up to the enemy, it would be him.
In that state—with one leg missing— "That's no good."
Even without a leg, Cecilus was probably a hundred times stronger than Al.
But that wouldn't do. He needed Cecilus to be in peak condition. Therefore, Al drew the Blue Dragon Blade and held it to his own neck.
And without hesitation, he forced the blade across— × × × "Straight ahead—"
"No, the building on the right!!"
As Cecilus was about to charge straight into the collapsing building from the front, Al bellowed with a voice that overpowered even the sound of falling structures, redirecting their course.
The moment those words reached Cecilus's ears, Al could tell he was smiling and licking his lips.
In the next instant, Cecilus forcibly changed direction and, still carrying Al, charged into the collapsing building on the right.
As the chain of shattering glass rang out around them, Al pointed to the back of the room they'd entered— "That room! Secure the box inside!"
"Aye aye, sir!"
Without a moment of hesitation or doubt, Cecilus followed Al's confident directive.
He smashed through the wall to the adjacent room and passed through, finding an iron chest—a piece of the property that the building's owner had stored away for emergencies.
Unfortunately, the owner hadn't managed to take it with them despite their preparations, but that meant Al and Cecilus could secure it.
"Up top!"
Right after securing the chest, their escape from the tilted building returned to the path of Cecilus's superhuman legs and thinking.
With Al clutching the chest, Cecilus sprinted upward—crashing through the ceilings of the lower floors and the floors above, one after another, all the way to the top in one burst.
And the moment they kicked through the ceiling and burst outside, Al—facing a sight he'd lost count of how many times he'd seen—dropped the chest right there.
Then, just before the sniper fire from afar could blow away one of Cecilus's limbs— "Ignite."
Inside the dropped chest, Al's clumsy spell served as the spark—high-purity magic stones that had once belonged to some citizen of the empire caught fire, and the resulting explosion of flame engulfed both of them from below.
"—"
Feeling the scorching heat sear their skin, the wall of flame they'd created concealed Al and Cecilus from the surroundings. However, even if only for this moment, even if the fire hid them—for a sniper of this caliber, they would still track and shoot through—no, they wouldn't lose sight of Cecilus and would pierce right through.
Therefore, the purpose wasn't to confuse the sniper's eyes.
"Over there."
Murmuring this, Cecilus bared his teeth in a grin.
Blood sprayed from Cecilus's cheek—his hair accessory had been shattered by a grazing shot, and his blue long hair spread outward. But all of Cecilus's limbs were intact.
The wall of flame wasn't meant to hide Cecilus from the enemy—it was meant to let Cecilus see the bullets heading toward him before they reached him.
Before reaching Cecilus, the bullets would break through the wall of flame and arrive.
It was a ridiculous gamble, but Al had bet on the fact that Cecilus would not miss the changes in the flame in the instant before the bullet reached him. And the gamble paid off.
And so, across the wall of flame, Cecilus and the sniper locked eyes.
"—"
In the next instant, Cecilus's pupils narrowed, and the sole of his Zorri boot pressed against Al's waist.
Just as before, Cecilus intended to fly to the shooter's position he'd just pinpointed. The difference this time was that all of Cecilus's limbs were still attached to his small torso.
From here, all that remained— "I won't let my guard down."
Murmuring this, Al braced himself for the next domain re-expansion.
Each time, he felt a tearing sensation of loss inside his head, but Cecilus was right. A one-in-ten-thousand chance was just that—an opportunity that came only once in ten thousand tries.
If he wanted to claim it twice, it couldn't be through compromise.
So Al prepared the next Matrix redefinition— "Cloud Cutter."
Just then, a strange change struck Al's field of vision.
Beyond the wall of flame—in the sky at the angle Cecilus had determined the sniper was positioned, where the enemy remained invisible to Al—there was a disturbance.
Simply put, the clouds had been cut.
The thick black clouds blanketing the sky above the Corpse Capital Lupugana had been suddenly sliced open. And not in one place—the cuts in the cloud cover appeared in two, then three places in succession.
As if chasing the invisible enemy in the sky—no, not "as if."
Slashes were chasing the enemy, and the shockwaves were tearing through the black clouds.
"Aaaah!! They're getting away, they're getting away! They'll escape!!"
The scream-like voice belonged to Cecilus, who still had his foot planted on Al's back.
The reason for his wide-eyed scream was likely the sniper retreating from the slashes cutting through the clouds—abandoning the fight and pulling out.
For Al, this could only be seen as good fortune, but for Cecilus, it was different. He glared down at the scenery below with eyes full of frustration.
And there— "Ha ha ha ha! Run, run—tremble before my swordsmanship!"
In a location away from the three collapsing buildings that Al and Cecilus had escaped from, a single figure was visible on a rooftop.
It was a person holding a katana, watching the retreating enemy in the distance, and laughing in high spirits as they held the blade that had sliced through the clouds up toward the sky.
An unfamiliar figure—Al furrowed his brow, wondering who it was.
Behind Al, Cecilus caught sight of the sudden intruder and went "Huh?"
"You've gotten old since I last saw you, Dad."
"Your old man?"
At Cecilus's casual remark, Al was left dumbfounded.
The figure Cecilus had called his father, visible in the distance—it was fine that he'd likely rendezvous with him. The problem was— "...You're not going to die after this, are you?"
With the dangerous sniper gone, Al—still floating in the air and looking down at the three buildings still violently collapsing below—left the rest in Cecilus's hands and murmured.