——Violet lightning exploded in bursts, and Krinkend bounded freely across the battlefield sky in every direction, unimpeded.
"Grrrr——!!"
Chasing after the flashes of thunderous explosions, dragon claws raked through the air like a storm, and with each strike, empty space was torn apart, the resulting vacuum waves cutting off the dragon person's escape routes.
As his options dwindled, Krinkend funneled the Dragon's aim toward himself alone, baiting its attention while maneuvering boldly yet carefully through the upper sky—careful that even the aftershocks wouldn't reach the ground.
"You've exceeded my expectations. How admirable."
Dodging, evading, and clashing head-on against the Dragon's fury—fury that could reshape the terrain with every blow—Krinkend couldn't help but marvel at how the usurper wielded the dragon shell.
As mentioned before, the usurper couldn't fully harness the Divine Dragon's shell. It was like giving a newborn baby the body of the Sword Saint. From the start, it was an impossible affair.
And so Krinkend found himself admiring the usurper's greedy attitude—not in displaying the true power of the Divine Dragon, but in reducing even the dragon shell to a mere tool for victory—and once more respecting a fraction of humanity's strength.
However, as the battle dragged on beyond expectations, he realized—the usurper had far exceeded Krinkend's projections in adapting to the dragon shell, continuing to grow even as they fought.
"I heard you've clashed with the Sword Saint and the Sword Devil before this. That explains it."
Through repeated battles against opponents so powerful that even the Divine Dragon's shell couldn't easily overwhelm them, the usurper had drawn out the Dragon's potential to a remarkable degree. The gleam of the dragon scales and dragon halo protecting the heart core made that tangible.
"The potential of humans... I'm in awe."
How absurd was the notion of the Dragon as a "completed existence"—a boast so hollow.
Why had the Dragon walked the earth as the supreme lifeform, owning everything beneath its feet? The answer, Krinkend believed, was its loud, unapologetic footstep. Its presence was so forceful that no one could look away from it. No one could ignore it. That was what gave the Dragon the biggest face on the surface.
And that was why, when there was no longer a place for it on the surface, the Dragon had vanished beyond the Great Waterfall.
"————"
Even knowing it was misplaced sentiment, the past still visited the dragon person's heart.
As rifts tore through the sky and howling winds flung massive boulders and shards of ice through the air, Krinkend cut through wave after wave of shockwaves—ten, twenty—and in his mind's eye, he saw it: four hundred years ago, his kin chased from the surface, flying away.
That day, the ones who remained on the surface were strays and oddballs—the common wisdom held that any Dragon with proper judgment and sense had crossed beyond the Great Waterfall. But in Krinkend's view, the opposite was true.
The Dragon had been apex life because it was designed to be the strongest. If that was so, then the Dragon must always learn and grow, never yielding its throne.
The very birth of dragon people was proof of that way of being.
"More than anything, don't you realize it? —How laughable."
Krinkend converted the violet lightning wreathing him into a roaring thunderclap, shattering hundreds of boulders and ice chunks that filled the sky and drawing the Dragon's gaze to himself. He looked down toward the ground.
There— "Dragon scales and dragon halo—so that's the mechanism the Divine Dragon used to neutralize your trump card."
"'Neutralize' is an unkind word. I'd prefer 'nullify' or 'render harmless.'"
"This is no time for semantic squabbles! ...The simultaneous activation of different attributes—that's an application of the Dual-Attribute Crossing, right? But if you mix three elements, how do you control the convergence pressure of fire and wind?"
"Simple. You just make the convergence pressure itself the core. The imbalance in the formula caused by mutual interference can be corrected by matching the third element—water to fire, or earth to wind."
"You're using the spiral interference of attributes?! That's insane—clashing opposite-phase attributes would cause the formulas to cancel each other out, and you'd blow right past the gate's critical deviation... Wait, apex compression?!"
"Oh, to reach that conclusion on your own—more impressive than I expected. The formula construction looks innovative, and you seem self-taught... but wait, on closer inspection, isn't that the foundational formula theory left behind by my predecessor?"
"Ngh...!"
"Nowadays, Balanced Circulation—which views mana flowing through the body as a ring cycle—is the standard, and this should have been discarded as obsolete... The records were lost ages ago, but could it be you?"
"Well, pursuing the path of magic requires some measure of resolve! Besides, those documents were just gathering dust in a flea market stall! I was the one who discovered Integrated Circulation from them and dramatically improved mana efficiency in spellcasting!"
"Bold words from someone who built on another's theory."
"I admit it served as the seed of my inspiration, but improvement and refinement are the essence of progress! Or are you going to tell me you've never learned a single thing from anyone?"
"————"
"Don't go silent on me! First of all—even granting you a hundred steps, it wasn't you but your predecessor, the great
"That amounts to the same thing as me, wouldn't you say? —Let's get back to the subject. I'd never even considered Integrated Circulation. If you understand the shortcomings of the Dual-Attribute Crossing, you shouldn't need me to explain why Tripod Center-of-Gravity Control is unsuited for the Multi-Attribute Crossing."
"Are you mocking me? Each additional attribute you activate simultaneously multiplies the disruption from spiral interference. With Tripod Center-of-Gravity Control, you can handle three attributes at once, but beyond that... Actually, you just demonstrated simultaneous control of five attributes. How on earth did you do that?"
"I see. You want to know the answer? Very well, I'll reveal it. I believe the true essence of magic lies in testing one's own curiosity against the profound depths of sorcery, but if your passion only goes that far—"
"Wait wait wait wait, shut up...! Five attributes, spiral interference, apex compression... No, his formula uses Balanced Circulation... That's it! Overlapping parallel instances of Tripod Center-of-Gravity Control!"
"!"
"Meaning you ran two overlapping parallel instances of Tripod Center-of-Gravity Control, each handling three attributes simultaneously! Of the second triplet, you used an active yang attribute to assist your own gate, and by setting the convergence pressure generated from the spiral interference as the core, you achieved apex compression of three attributes plus two, making that possible..."
"Yes, exactly! That's the breakthrough that proves the existence of the Quintuple Resonance Point!"
"Are you insane?! Every step, every instant, every fraction—one slip and the spiral collapses and it's over! You'd create a second Agzerad Canyon centered on yourself?!"
"But it didn't happen. —And that is the lofty, distant summit of the magical path."
"————"
"Are you afraid, Ezzo Kadner?"
"Yes, terrified. Terrified of my own heart that desires it,
And so, two mages on the ground honed themselves against one another, clashing their attainments.
"What such spirited expressions. Beyond my expectations."
There was a role he'd been entrusted with from the start. And so, fighting at the forefront of the battle against the Dragon—wreathed in violet lightning, locked in fierce combat—was something Krinkend had willingly taken on.
But even if he hadn't been given that role, Krinkend would have chosen to clash his violet lightning against his former dragon shell, following his own convictions.
Human against human, sharpening and tempering each other—something new was being forged.
That was the wish of Krinkend—the dragon person of the Divine Dragon
For his spirit—whose most unyielding pillar had never once been consumed by the
△▼△▼△▼△ Roswaal knew almost nothing about Ezzo Kadner, who now stood beside him.
He'd heard the name. A new recruit to
There had been some information that he was a mage, but Roswaal's impression was of an unaffiliated, self-taught mage-of-sorts whose teacher and background were unknown. In fact, since Ezzo was self-taught, it wasn't far off the mark.
However, that impression of mage-of-sorts was overturned the moment he faced the real Ezzo and witnessed his spell construction theory. He was the genuine article.
And between two who recognized each other as the real thing, many words were unnecessary.
"Rest a moment and catch your breath. I'm going to ask you to push yourself once more."
With that, Ezzo stepped down from the platform he'd created to meet Roswaal's eyes, took one step forward into the battlefield, and looked up at the sky.
"————"
The sky, once spread with azure, had become a shimmering, rainbow-hued anomaly of abnormal weather—dragged into chaos by the dramatic effects of accumulated mana from the repeated firing of grand and super magic, compounded by the clashes between the Dragon and the dragon person. Even now, violet lightning continued to explode in countless chains as the dragon person fought alone across the sky.
Even after Roswaal had collapsed from exhaustion, Krinkend had continued to fulfill his role— "Why is he fighting alone? You're mistaken about something."
"...What did you say?"
"That mages can't work with others? No—harmony is the very essence!"
As Roswaal's eyes went wide, countless water spheres rose into the air around Ezzo, who had spoken those words.
Each sphere had absorbed multiple shattered rock fragments within it, and carrying those stony payloads, they shot upward in a single burst—diving straight into the intensifying battlefield between Krinkend and the Divine Dragon.
"That's—"
Rather than reckless, it seemed meaningless—Roswaal couldn't grasp Ezzo's intent.
Even granting that it was single-attribute water control, the skill to manipulate nearly a hundred spheres so effortlessly was impressive, but water spheres of that caliber—even with rock fragments inside—wouldn't so much as catch the Dragon's attention.
If anything, they might destabilize Krinkend's tactics for fighting the Divine Dragon solo.
"I'll say it again, Roswaal. —You are mistaken."
At Ezzo's declaration and the scene that immediately followed, Roswaal drew a sharp breath.
The countless water spheres he'd raised were not meant to attack the Divine Dragon. The exploding purple lightning detonated the water spheres and rock fragments, and having gained footholds, Krinkend's speed through the air surged to a new level.
The water spheres scattered widely as if guiding Krinkend's trajectory, and the dragon person—now given a launch platform—drove a blow that was sharper, heavier, and more devastating, punching through the Divine Dragon's dragon scales.
The roar and shockwave reached the ground, and as the blast of wind washed over Roswaal, Ezzo continued.
"Indeed, he has the ability to fight alone in the air. But I suspect that the magic light's true purpose isn't offense, but rather its remarkable defensive capability. He's a seasoned powerhouse, so he can make it work in different ways, but if you eliminate the dispersal of power, its true potential isn't even comparable."
"...I see. But if you provide footholds in the air, wouldn't it become harder for him to scatter his focus? Wouldn't that undermine Krinkend's strength—his ability to kick freely through the sky?"
"You think he's some immature fledgling who can't switch between the two as needed? If so, then what you're lacking isn't just tact—it's the ability to judge people."
"————"
"Roswaal, fighting alongside someone doesn't mean trusting them completely and not worrying about a thing. It means delegating where you should delegate and compensating where you should compensate. Your way, a hundred and a hundred might not get in each other's way—making two hundred. But it'll never be a thousand, where two hundreds elevate each other."
Even as he laid out his philosophy, Ezzo didn't ease his support of the battle above.
This was a rocky plain that never ran short of boulders to lift. The water spheres grew at a pace that filled the sky—even at the speed Krinkend consumed them as footholds, the supply far outstripped the demand.
"Tch, and here I thought you were being clever—it's the teacher, huh!"
The Divine Dragon, having identified Ezzo as the source of the footholds being used against it, roared in rage. Dragon claws shattered a hundred water spheres at once, and then—a breath was launched toward the mages on the ground— "I wouldn't recommend looking away. Like so. Proof."
Krinkend's boots, launched upward, punched through the Dragon's jaw from directly below. The breath that couldn't be released exploded inside the Dragon's maw, and the force sent its fangs flying.
"You...!"
The Divine Dragon reeled from the self-inflicted blast. The air around it warped and twisted as unstable yet undeniably powerful magic light expanded—the Dragon was attempting to cast a grand magic by imitation.
Krinkend could shield himself with violet lightning, and the Divine Dragon could rely on its dragon halo for defense—but if that hit the ground, Roswaal and the others wouldn't stand a chance.
"Then I'll just have to detonate it in the sky."
Fortunately, there were countless water spheres born from randomly released mana and the Integrated Circulation-based magic he'd been able to study up close from the sidelines. He would hack into their magical structure and rewrite their performance.
"Those are my spells?!"
"Magic belongs to no one. The path is always open. —My master taught me that."
In an instant, he bundled the water spheres he'd seized control of, drawing in the surrounding mana for apex compression—hacking his own interpretation into the grand magic the Divine Dragon was trying to construct, deliberately forcing it to fail at completion.
What resulted was the spiral collapse Ezzo had feared—a cataclysmic auroral detonation, tearing apart the sky that had already been shattered multiple times in this battle.
Searing heat and absolute cold alternated in lightning flashes. The rock that had been floating in the sky melted, froze, and shattered. Thunderbolts incinerated even the remnants, and the wind pressure blew ash and dust kilometers away—a catastrophe.
"Have you lost your mind?! You nearly obliterated our ally along with it?!"
"But you protected him. —This is what you call harmony, isn't it?"
Closing one yellow eye in a wink, Roswaal silenced the ashen-faced Ezzo.
In truth, it was Ezzo who had wrapped Krinkend—caught in the detonation above—in layers upon layers of water bands, suppressing the cataclysmic firepower as much as possible and delivering protection where it was needed.
Ezzo was someone who could read Roswaal's intent and act on it. If their roles had been reversed, the gap in skill and consideration would have made this right-person-for-the-right-job arrangement utterly impossible.
He really was a heartless villain. —Though one with room for improvement, refinement, and progress.
"All the same, this stunt had me questioning your sanity, Master. You're a demon."
Though Krinkend—who had narrowly avoided a fall thanks to Ezzo's quick thinking—might have had some choice words, the cold-faced lecture he'd deliver would have to wait until after the battle was over.
And then— "Ezzo Kadner."
"—What is it, Roswaal L. Mathers."
There was something amusing about Ezzo calling back in a deliberately competitive manner after having his name called. Hiding that amusement behind the cracking makeup smeared with blood and sweat, Roswaal let out a breath.
Then, fixing his gaze once more upon Ezzo Kadner the "Gray"— "I want your help. To pioneer a new frontier of magic—one that has never existed in this world."
Even he recognized how underhanded those words were, but Roswaal had made his peace with it. —Someone addicted to the path of magic could never resist that temptation.
△▼△▼△▼△ While constructing the formula, Ezzo Kadner nearly shed tears without realizing it.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid—these ridiculous tear ducts. Don't work right now. Take a break."
He berated his own bodily functions and, tightening his cheeks, held back the tears that threatened to fall.
Ezzo hated being idle. The dwarf race was blessed neither with exceptional physical ability nor superior gates—most of his kin had to strive harder than other races to achieve their goals. The one trait dwarves possessed was a natural affinity for receiving blessings, but unlike Cambarry of Felt's faction, Ezzo had drawn the short straw there too. He was a conspicuously disadvantaged individual.
Ezzo hated being idle. Not because he'd been forced into a harsher life than others—no. It was because being condescended to with "ah, figures" on account of his dwarven heritage was something he simply could not stomach.
Even if Ezzo never reached the goals he'd set, it wouldn't be because he was a dwarf.
He understood this well: once you allowed yourself a single excuse, lethargy and sloth would overrun you in an instant, turning you into a whining, soft, self-indulgent mess.
In fact, that was exactly what had happened to his older brothers and sisters. Ezzo was the youngest of ten siblings, and every single one of them except him had received blessings—which they then used as an excuse to coast through life.
He wouldn't call that wrong. It was their lives. He wanted to say it was wrong, but he wouldn't. He could endure that.
But if it had been his own life, he could not have endured it.
And so when Ezzo Kadner discovered those dusty magical texts buried at the bottom of a box at a street vendor's stall, he devoted his life to that exhilaration and swore he would never make excuses.
"You're the same, Roswaal. ...I can tell just by looking."
Roswaal, who held the position of Royal Court Magister and was in a position to bestow the title of "Color-Bearer" upon those who had mastered an attribute of magic—yet was infamous for never teaching, guiding, or connecting with others. His skills as a Border Margrave were competent, but his status as a mage was bought with lineage and political clout. —That past, where Ezzo had doubted and challenged Roswaal in such ways, was an indelible stain in his history.
But when he actually witnessed the waste-free construction of Roswaal's magic, the beauty of the unfolding formulas, Ezzo had been thoroughly ashamed from the bottom of his heart.
Ezzo and Roswaal were the same age.
And Ezzo had been arrogant enough to believe that no one his age had worked harder. He'd poured every waking moment of his life into touching just the fringes of what magic truly was. But it wasn't even close—the gap between Roswaal and Ezzo in their pursuit and refinement of magic felt like more than a century's difference.
That was an absolute truth that couldn't be attributed to differences in talent, race, or birth—which was why Ezzo Kadner was on the verge of tears from joy.
"!"
The one standing in the field he yearned for was someone who had worked harder than himself—and for that, he was glad.
That understanding, admiration, and gratitude made Ezzo's heart swell—and for the first time in his life, the man who hated idleness above all things commanded his tear ducts to be idle.
With those feelings in his heart, Ezzo too focused his consciousness to demonstrate the depth of his own accumulated research.
Magic demanded a vivid imagination of the outcome. It was an act equivalent to baring everything about oneself—what one thought, what one desired, what one shaped one's wishes into.
And so, magic held no lies. —By looking at someone's magic, you could understand everything about them.
"—Hey, you understand, don't you, Roswaal?"
Were those words actually spoken aloud? Or were they an illusion conjured by a gate being pushed harder than ever before and a concentration that cut into his very life force?
"...Yes, of course I understand, Ezzo Kadner."
Yet despite his suspicion that it was a hallucination or auditory phantom, there was a reply.
The landscape had gone white from the extreme buildup of mana, and even the roaring thunder of violet lightning fighting to protect them below went unheard—yet the sense of each other's presence felt so close it was as if even their heartbeats could reach.
Through the magic being woven between them, two mages bearing their innermost selves—their consciousnesses intertwined.
Roswaal's accumulated days, the results of his single-minded pursuit, the time spent striving toward the summit alone without anyone catching up—it all came through.
Excessive results made people lonely without their choosing, and Roswaal had remained lonely.
But, swearing by the tears he had never shed, Ezzo had to tell Roswaal.
"I don't yet know how far you intend to go, all alone. But no matter how many people try to make you a distant, unreachable figure—I am not one of them."
If effort and refinement had brought him there, then he could do the same—or more.
"No matter how much you embraced solitude, no matter if you chose to die alone, no matter if you tried to go where no one else could reach—I alone will cling to you."
He didn't understand the feeling of wanting to give up, but he did understand the feeling of wanting to grieve.
You do everything you possibly can, and before you know it, no one is around. —And no one wants to believe that's their own fault.
"You were granted the titles for mastering the three colors: Red, Green, and Yellow. Yet you ceded the seat of Blue to Felix Argyle, and the seats of White and Black remain unfilled. —Do you understand what that means?"
"————"
"Do you know what I'm called? Ezzo Kadner, the 'Gray.' What do you think gray is made of? —Roswaal, I will reach you."
And so, the same gratitude Ezzo Kadner had tasted, he now offered to the great mage.
"You will never walk this road alone."
△▼△▼△▼△ The color of the sky had already been lost.
Blue had vanished from the clear expanse of the firmament, leaving only a faded gray-white veil stretching in every direction, as though the atmosphere itself were fading, ephemeral and vanishing.
A flash of light split that pallid sky. Krinkend streaked through the heavens trailing violet lightning like a ribbon, his speed no longer metaphorically "leaping" but rather with the force to tear through the very sky.
Opposing him was the colossal silhouette dancing through the air, its palely luminous dragon shell guarded by dragon scales and dragon halo—each flash of its dragon claws tore open the void, and vacuum faults came crashing toward the dragon person with a thunderous roar.
"————"
There was no breath to spare for words. Only the crackle of violet lightning.
Then came the sweeping dragon wings, and mixed with the gust, countless light bullets streaked through the sky. They scattered across the gray sky like stardust, tracing savage trajectories as they closed in on Krinkend—closer, closer, closer. Thunder flashed, piercing through the rain of hundreds of light streaks, and countless glimmers colored the desolate sky. The aftershocks of the explosions dispersed upward, and not a single fragment of light reached the two mages on the ground.
"————"
The next instant, everyone truly saw the stars of heaven twinkle.
From beyond the faded sky, from somewhere far, far away, a star descended—pulled by an immense gravitational force, plunging straight toward the earth. Its hesitation lasted less than a blink.
"!"
An especially fierce burst of violet lightning erupted, and chain-reacting thunderclaps propelled the dragon person upward, into the sky where the star fell.
"————!!"
The Divine Dragon's breath—the torrent it released turned white-hot, searing through the sky—but it aimed its spear neither at the dragon person in the heavens nor the mages on the ground, instead flying off toward the distant earth.
Bursting violet lightning and the Dragon's roar merged together, and the shattered star at the edge of the sky blazed with fierce brilliance, illuminating the faded heavens and earth— "—Al Sextet."
The incantation made the horizon tremble, and the heavens held their breath.
All mana that shaped the world was given six distinct colored roles, and the unleashed forces intersected and fused. Interference that would normally collapse in an instant instead produced a single rhythm, using the world itself—stripped of its color—as a medium, forming a beautiful ring.
Soon, the six-colored torrents converged into one, becoming a pillar that severed the boundary between heaven and earth.
The pillar did not lean toward any of the six colors—instead, it chose as its own the aurora of magic itself, the very source made manifest, and the column of light was reduced to a force that consumed all.
At the center of that pillar of light, the colossal shadow of the Divine Dragon was ensnared.
Its resisting claws, wings, and breath—all were swallowed by the void. The Dragon's power became fuel for magic, and the pillar of light grew thicker, blazing with ever greater intensity.
The light stretching skyward pierced through the cloudless void, brilliantly illuminating the far upper atmosphere and the horizon beyond. In that instant, the laws of heaven and earth were rewritten for a single moment.
It was an absolute miracle—something neither the First Mage nor the Witch of Greed had ever accomplished since the system of magic first came into being.
"Ah..."
It rang so feebly in the silenced world, a meager tribute compared to the enormity of what had occurred.
But it was enough to bring conviction. —Here and now, the Divine Dragon's dragon halo had been shattered.
And then— "—Seal Shackles. Third release."
In the center of a world where the sky had been torn, the earth scorched, and six attributes maintained their balance in the form of a pillar—through the vortex of that aurora, the only thing that bore color descended from the heavens: violet lightning.
Like a meteorite crashing through a star, its body plunged from the far reaches of the sky wrapped in lightning, detonating the kick in midair and transforming itself into a single, supreme arrow aimed at one singular point.
The target: the reverse scale—the single vital point carved into the Divine Dragon's neck, the lone vulnerability in armor that boasted absolute defense. The dragon halo stripped away by the pillar of light, this was the last wall between the Dragon and its heart core.
"Gratitude. —Thank you."
The violet lightning, trailing like a comet, pierced through the wall of sound, through the defense of dragon scales, and a fist drove home.
The pillar's radiance and the torrent of violet lightning overlapped, shockwaves shaking the void, and with the sound of something shattering, bands of light raced across the Dragon's entire body.
A blow given with everything he had, linked to the apex of magic—a miracle without precedent in history—and it pierced, right now, the heart core sleeping in the innermost depths of the Divine Dragon's shell.
"————"
Pierced by that definitive blow, the Divine Dragon spread its wings in midheaven and slowly looked down at the ground. Spotting the tiny, barely-alive figure there, the Dragon's claws swept through the air near its own head—casually, as though reaching for the ornament on a helmet it hadn't realized it was wearing.
"Tch, pathetic. ...After having every advantage in the book, I can't even blame the stars for this one."
With that contemptuous, utterly mundane grumble—so far removed from any dignity befitting the Divine Dragon—the absolute being that had dominated the heavens was drawn by gravity, falling toward the earth.
Dragging the shimmering remnants of light in its wake, tearing through the void, accompanied by a deafening roar—it fell.
That was the conclusion—the final reckoning—with the usurper who had stolen the shell of the Divine Dragon Volcanica.