"—Sorry for the cheap shot, but here comes the trump card again."
The moment those words left his lips, a super-massive boulder plunged straight down from directly above.
At Aldebaran's plan—a repeat performance, executed with full awareness that he'd be reviled for it—
"———"
At first, her eyes widened at the enormous rock. Then came the sting of having let Aldebaran slip away in the
"But grit alone ain't gonna cut it!"
The colossal boulder scraped and gouged the canyon walls as it plummeted.
The first thing Emilia tried was placing a massive ice lid in the boulder's trajectory to bear its weight. —But Aldebaran used his rock-launching cannon, which fired stone projectiles conjured by magic, to blast clean through the canyon wall itself and destroy the barrier.
The ice lid, its size no longer matching the canyon after the wall was shattered, became nothing more than additional debris falling alongside the boulder.
"Then—!"
The instant she saw the ice lid fail, Emilia switched to her next move.
She re-summoned the ice wings she had purged earlier, spreading them across her back once more like a descending seraph, and folded her long legs. Then, pressing the soles of her boots against the outstretched feet of the ice soldiers she had positioned directly behind her—she launched herself forward with a burst of leg power that the original
"———"
Emilia's sudden burst of acceleration caught him completely off guard. The hundreds of arms reaching from the canyon walls all grasped at empty air, permitting the angel's escape—no, her charge toward Aldebaran.
By splitting his focus between interception and evasion, Aldebaran's speed and momentum as he fled had slackened, and the distance between them closed rapidly as Emilia surged forward.
From Yae, who had stayed behind as a distraction, he heard her grumbling voice lamenting how much of an advantage she'd squandered: "Lord Al, I must say, you're really not worth supporting~"
"You'd be singing a different tune if they caught up here!"
Snapping back at the hallucinated Yae, Aldebaran迎え撃つ Emilia with a barrage of flying stones. But Emilia dodged the follow-up volley mid-air with a graceful twist of her body.
"Are you serious!?"
The fact that she had done this with artificial wings—wings that shouldn't have allowed such free movement—left Aldebaran dumbfounded.
Needless to say, the ice angel's wings did not actually flap. Emilia's three-dimensional trajectory was made possible by smaller ice wings added to the interior surface of her larger ones—by layering multiple ice wings, she created variations in how the wind was deflected, using the tilt of her body to engage the edges like control surfaces.
And she was doing all of this with nothing but pure, innate instinct.
"I'll catch up—!"
Even while spinning sideways to evade, Emilia barely lost any speed.
The distance between them vanished as she shouted. At this rate, she would escape the boulder's impact zone in time. The very trump card he had deployed was being dodged with ease—Aldebaran was truly on the brink.
That, at least, should have been the shared assessment of both parties involved.
"—!"
Emilia's violet eyes flew wide open, her large pupils flooding with shock.
In her field of vision, Aldebaran had done nothing unusual at all. He continued firing stone projectiles that would never hit, but there was no new spell cast, no superhuman evasive maneuver.
The same was true for Emilia's flight, which had gained momentum with the ice soldiers' help. At this rate, she would catch up to him, and he would be unable to dodge her freezing fingertips.
In other words, Emilia was on the verge of fulfilling the conditions for victory. —And yet, there was no joy or satisfaction in her eyes.
Because— "—I told you, didn't I? The cheap shot strikes again."
In exchange for stopping the falling boulder and the catastrophic damage it would cause, Aldebaran had been allowed to escape his battle with Emilia in the Royal Capital.
Therefore, whether people called it lacking in class or not, he would execute the exact same strategy that had worked before. Only this time, there were no innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. —No innocent bystanders, that is.
"—Al!!"
Emilia's hand reached out desperately toward Aldebaran. —Toward the one other person besides herself who stood in the path of the falling rock's devastating force.
△▼△▼△▼△ "—It's settled! Well done, surviving the 'Sparca'! From this day forward, you are one of the gladiators on this island! Welcome, you worthless scum!"
The rough words of welcome and commendation were indistinguishable from insults.
Listening to the coarse, vulgar cheers that swallowed the arena whole, Aldebaran collapsed to his knees beside the massive corpse.
The lifeless body he slumped against was that of the magical beast Guiltylaw, dispatched with a sword driven deep into its thick neck. Guiltylaw had lost both its right foreleg and hindleg, and its expression in death spoke of confusion and bewilderment beyond mere pain.
Looking at that wretched death mask, his shoulders heaving with labored breath, Aldebaran felt a pang of grief. —Though he was immediately repulsed by how transparently false that sympathy was.
"You actually survived. I'm surprised."
The one who greeted the battered Aldebaran was a man in shabby clothes—one of the gladiators on the island, and the person who had discovered Aldebaran upon his awakening.
The man's complicated expression likely stemmed from how incomprehensible it was that Aldebaran had survived the 'Sparca,' the proving ground for newcomers. Having been unfortunate enough to be assigned as Aldebaran's caretaker as the first to find him, part of him might have wished Aldebaran had simply died during the trial—it would have saved him a lot of trouble.
Either way, Aldebaran's survival had surprised the man. But the man wasn't the only one surprised.
Aldebaran, too, could not hide his shock at his own survival.
—Having been defeated in a battle he could not afford to lose, Aldebaran had been stranded in an unknown environment.
An unfamiliar place, unfamiliar people, rules explained in only the broadest strokes—for Aldebaran, this was truly uncharted territory, as if he had been thrown into an entirely new world.
What was certain was that he had likely lost all value as a being, and that he had even lost the one person who might have grieved that loss.
So— "You kept saying you wanted to die, but turns out it was all just talk, huh?"
The man's words, equally divided between spite and sarcasm, carved into Aldebaran's heart.
When Aldebaran learned that he had survived both his first-ever defeat and the death that should have followed, he was overwhelmed by an unending sense of loss and self-reproach. From the bottom of his heart, he wished to die. For such an Aldebaran, the 'Sparca'—the trial that newcomers to the Gladiator Island were subjected to—was conveniently suited to his desires.
The blunt explanation had been brutally unkind, but in essence it forced upon him a life-or-death test of skill: those who could not become gladiators had no choice but to die.
For Aldebaran, who desperately wanted to die, it couldn't have been more convenient.
In truth, when Aldebaran was brought into the arena alongside four other newcomers in the same situation and faced the magical beast Guiltylaw, he had intended to die without resistance.
And yet, despite everything, Aldebaran survived.
While the other men fought, fled, and begged for their lives before being killed, Aldebaran—who had become the last one standing—was supposed to have been torn apart by the beast's claws, trampled until his ribs shattered, coughing up bloody foam as death finally claimed him.
And yet— *—No one can defeat the you I created.* The instant those words flashed through his mind, Aldebaran had deployed his Domain.
Compared to the opponent who had challenged him hundreds of millions of times and still never lost, the 'Sparca'—where he only had to kill his opponent three hundred and four times—was hardly painful for Aldebaran.
The real pain came later, in the self-questioning that followed survival.
—Why, how, for what reason had he not died?
"Hmm? You want to know about the outside? Even if you ask me, I've been here a long time too, so..."
Recognized as a gladiator, Aldebaran had earned the right to live on this island.
Within the sealed island, he learned that this was part of the Volakia Empire, that the imprisoned gladiators were forced into killing matches for spectators' entertainment, and that law and order on the island were dead. But there was still so much he wanted to know.
As a result, the person subjected to Aldebaran's relentless questioning was his assigned caretaker—the same gladiator.
"You say you want to know about history, not the latest political situation? I'm not exactly an expert either, you know... Well, I do know about the 'Witches'... the '
First, Aldebaran was surprised that the gladiator knew about the 'Witches' he had cautiously inquired about. Then came an even greater shock: the legend of the 'Witches,' recounted with a terror as if speaking the words themselves was forbidden, turned out to refer only to the 'Witch of Envy.' The 'Witch of Envy,' who had nearly destroyed the world and was sealed away by the 'Three Great Heroes.' No other legends of 'Witches' existed in this world, and records of the Witches of Sin were nowhere to be found. Moreover, when told this had happened nearly four hundred years ago, Aldebaran fell into despair.
Could four hundred long years have erased even the existence of the Witches of Sin from the world? The Witch who had been willing to sacrifice everything to fulfill her promise—had even she been forgotten?
But the cruelest blow was yet to come— "—'Witch of Greed'? What's that? Isn't that just your own delusion?"
Against the man's suspicion, Aldebaran had no words to offer.
It was no delusion. The days spent alongside the 'Witch' were real within Aldebaran. Her teachings, her fingertips, her words—he remembered all of it.
In this world, there had indeed been another 'Witch' who had tried to resist a being of terrifying power. —And Aldebaran had been her disciple, the 'Witch's' trump card.
"Damn it! What the hell are you talking about!? I'm just answering your questions and you come swinging at me!?"
The man spat those words after being struck by Aldebaran, who had been driven to fury by the denial of the 'Witch's' existence.
This environment—no, this new world he had been thrown into—and his first act of severing ties with a benefactor had taken that form. He had similarly fallen out with other gladiators, and Aldebaran found himself isolated.
He had heard the rumors countless times—that he was an eccentric obsessed with the Witch. The person who had spread the word most eagerly seemed to be his benefactor, and in a way, it was an accurate assessment. He had no intention of correcting it.
What infuriated him, though, was being lumped together with something like the
From what he'd heard, they were a group that proclaimed the 'Witch's' resurrection and committed nothing but acts of terrorism across the land. When Aldebaran exploded at being compared to them, his reputation only worsened.
"...You Witch-obsessed freaks never die well, you know."
That was the dying grudge of his first benefactor—the man who had arranged a death match at the command of the Gladiator Island's warden, and who had been cut down by Aldebaran's brute blade.
Wiping the blood of his benefactor from his face, Aldebaran nodded deeply, certain that the curse—"never die well"—was no idle prediction.
His Domain remained intact, and Aldebaran continued to survive the death matches of the Gladiator Island.
Every one of those who had called Aldebaran a Witch-obsessed lunatic was matched against him in a death match, and one after another, they fell before his blade.
He took no satisfaction in it. Nor did he seek to clear the 'Witch's' name. In truth, the Witches had suffered the ultimate indignity—not merely being slandered, but having their very existence erased.
So Aldebaran did not seek his reason for living in the 'Witch.' —He simply wanted to know why he had been kept alive.
To find that answer, he could not afford to die.
Surviving the first 'Sparca,' and then surviving death match after death match—that was why.
And so, wielding his Domain, with each crossing of blades he swallowed hundreds of deaths, trampling the lives of countless gladiators underfoot, he lived. He lived. He continued to live.
And then— "—Well fought. You even surpassed opponents above your weight class. Your sheer bad luck is admirable, if nothing else."
With words that hovered between exasperation and genuine respect, the warden offered his praise for Aldebaran's victory—having somehow seized a sliver of hope to kill a superior foe.
Aldebaran tossed aside his broken blade and turned his back on the poorly attended arena.
—The ten years since awakening on the Gladiator Island had passed in the blink of an eye.
△▼△▼△▼△ *—No one can defeat the you I created.* Ten long years ground away, mercilessly stripping Aldebaran of his humanity.
When he closed his eyes, he could still see the face, hear the voice, feel the warmth—but over all of it, the death masks of those he had killed, their final screams, and the cold splatter of blood seemed to paint over everything.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* Those words were correct. No one could kill Aldebaran.
For ten years, he had been dragged into the Gladiator Island's 'Sparca' again and again, stacking death upon death at the battlefield, killing masters and inhuman beings who should have been far beyond him.
With each impossible giant-killing feat, there had been more than one occasion where reckless death matches were arranged specifically to get Aldebaran killed—and each time, promising gladiators died in the attempt, making Aldebaran something of an untouchable figure.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* After ten years, the faces on the Gladiator Island bore no resemblance to the original.
Aldebaran had long since become one of the longest-serving residents, and not a single person who had known the rumors about the Witch-obsessed eccentric remained. Once Aldebaran understood that the 'Witch' was taboo and that most people knew nothing beyond the surface of legend, he had entirely stopped bringing up the subject.
But that wasn't born from disappointment or resignation at never getting the answers he wanted. It was something far more profound.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* For ten years, trapped on the Gladiator Island and forced to kill over and over—a space where only the exchange of life and death existed—what came to dominate Aldebaran was a vast, overwhelming despair.
The despair of truly questioning whether the 'Witch' had ever existed at all.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* When he closed his eyes, he could still hear the voice. He knew he had been told those words.
But—had it truly happened?
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* The Witch's face—he couldn't remember it.
The Witch's voice—he couldn't remember it.
The Witch's warmth—he couldn't remember it.
Ten years had worn the memories smooth, like a videotape rewound and replayed until it frayed. Even when the torn strips were spliced together, playback was impossible. In the end, the tape itself crumbled to dust.
And so the memories scattered, and when the last grains of dust slipped through his fingers, Aldebaran could no longer understand.
—Had the 'Witch' really existed?
—Were his memories truly of things that had happened?
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* Sometimes, he wanted to destroy himself for no particular reason.
In those moments, Aldebaran deliberately released his Domain and entered the death matches, letting his opponents batter him within an inch of his life, peering into the abyss of death. —No, it was more than just peering. There were times he considered simply falling off the edge.
But in precisely those moments, the Domain would save him in unexpected ways.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* As if to prove the words of a 'Witch' whose very existence was in doubt, there had been many occasions when opponents who should have killed him with one more step suffered a mental breakdown before his eyes.
Each time he watched them roll their eyes back, losing both reason and will to fight, Aldebaran felt something invisible trying to keep him alive. With a feeling of hollow frustration, he would take their heads.
Even after ten years passed, the meaning behind why he had been kept alive remained elusive.
Worse still, he could no longer be sure whether the thing trying to keep him alive had ever truly existed.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* What frightened him was this: That everything that had shaped him was a fabrication. That the 'Witch's' effort and words had never truly existed at all—and that Aldebaran really was nothing more than a madman obsessed with the Witch. This agonizing self-interrogation had eaten away at him, leaving him with countless sleepless years.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* That phrase, which had once been his anchor and the very foundation of his identity, had become something terrifying beyond measure.
To continue doubting that all of this was the product of delusion—that his mission, his fated encounters and partings, none of it had ever existed— *—No one can defeat the you I created.* An endless spiral of self-questioning.
Like being sunk not to the waist but to the chest in a stagnant swamp filled with the black water of negative despair, unable to move.
Such a time, where only the manner of death remained undecided, would continue endlessly from here on. —And yet, this stagnant period of Aldebaran's life was to encounter a turning point one day, without warning.
That turning point was— *—Hear me, you rabble scattered across the Gladiator Island.* A voice fierce and blazing with heat like flame, echoing across the island through the speaking tubes.
△▼△▼△▼△ —A simultaneous uprising of the gladiators, and a new emperor's assassination plot disguised as the response to it.
That, it seemed, was the true nature of the turning point that had fallen upon Aldebaran.
That said, there was no way detailed information would trickle down to a mere gladiator on the island, and Aldebaran didn't particularly care to learn more. For the time being, he assumed from the fact that the island's administration hadn't changed that no regime change had occurred.
At the very least, at this point, Aldebaran knew nothing of any emperor's replacement.
But if there was one thing in this situation where Aldebaran felt a profound change within himself, it was this: he had saved the silver-haired girl who was in danger.
Naturally, this had nothing to do with Aldebaran's original purpose.
The silver-haired girl was a passing dog-girl who had no connection whatsoever to the silver-haired person Aldebaran had a relationship with. But the fact that he had been able to save her—along with the blazing voice of a girl who cut her own path through the chaos with absolute self-assurance—had given Aldebaran the resolve to act.
To venture beyond this closed world and verify the 'Witch's' existence.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* Killed time and again by aquatic magical beasts released into the lake, Aldebaran finally escaped the island where he had been imprisoned for over ten years and set foot on land not surrounded by water. —Strictly speaking, the entire world was enclosed by a great waterfall, so land not surrounded by water didn't truly exist. But the fact that he could muster enough spirit for a quip spoke to his renewed determination.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* Those words had been a curse, a comfort, a shackle, and a forgiveness.
To discern the color, the heat, the uncertain certainty of that vast, amorphous, directionless wellspring of emotion, Aldebaran decided to trace the 'Witch's' trail.
There was not much time to spare. During his years on the sealed island, the world Aldebaran walked through had, without intention, drawn closer to the world he remembered.
All that remained was to verify whether what lived inside him was real. And for that, he needed confirmation of the 'Witch'— "—Why are you not recorded in the 'Gospels,' I wonder?"
The Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult tilted his head with exaggerated puzzlement as he spoke.
Though Aldebaran understood the broad reasons, he fidgeted with the metal fittings of his helmet and gave a vague response.
The pitch-black iron helm he had begun wearing even back then was a parting gift from the Gladiator Island, and he prized it for its sturdiness and full-face design that concealed his features.
Having someone so conspicuously dressed not appear anywhere in the all-important 'Gospels' clearly displeased this unusually loud and animated Sin Archbishop.
"—You are the 'Sloth,' yes?"
Honestly, this fight against the Sin Archbishop had been one of the most grueling of Aldebaran's life.
Not that he had ever won without dying first more often than not, but even so, this was an enemy whose defeat was agonizingly difficult to achieve. In the end, he had met the conditions for victory but had not truly won.
Compared even to the Witches of Sin—the dubious, questionable beings who were the 'Witches' peers—the Sin Archbishop had been every bit as formidable.
In any case— *—No one can defeat the you I created.* Aldebaran felt he had finally justified those words. Having obtained the information he sought, he reflected: the group most likely to hold what he needed had been the Witch Cult, that heretical organization he had heard so much about on the Gladiator Island.
A group that was supposedly impossible to find when sought, but easy to lure out if you knew how. —Indeed, all he had to do was spread rumors about the 'Witch of Envy' whom the Witch Cult worshipped, and some of them would come running.
Though of course, if you couldn't handle the ones who came running, you'd simply have your life snuffed out in the most foolish death the world had to offer.
"Stop it! How dare you!
How much of the Sin Archbishop's deranged, sanity-shattering statements could be believed was anyone's guess.
But the ravings of that madman, even if they meant nothing to anyone else, held meaning for Aldebaran.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* Patiently, persistently, he retraced his encounters with the Sin Archbishop, drawing out words, exchanging the necessary dialogue, provoking him, offering up his life, and starting over from the beginning—he simply repeated this process until he obtained the information he needed.
Then, he walked right past the Sin Archbishop he had summoned and erased all trace of their meeting.
"Ahh! Aahhh! Oh! Sloth sloth sloth sloth sloth—!!"
He could picture the Sin Archbishop, left behind by the Witch Cult's encirclement, screaming until he coughed up blood—but Aldebaran no longer cared.
The single desire that burned within Aldebaran at that moment was one: to confirm the 'Witch's' existence.
He knew how the Witches of Sin had met their ends.
The 'Witch of Wrath' had been driven mad by a trap and died in a frenzy. The 'Witch of Lust' had been burned to nothing in a great fire. The 'Witch of Gluttony' had withered and died in a sea of sand. The 'Witch of Pride' had been submerged in a great flood. The 'Witch of Sloth' had slain a dragon and fallen into the great waterfall.
And the 'Witch of Envy' had been sealed at the world's edge. The last 'Witch'— "—I see. Being able to enter this place from outside the tomb is a structural flaw. Combined with how the '
A grassland existing beneath an impossibly vast, unreal blue sky. On a gentle, breezy hill sat a white table and parasol.
This was, without question, the fading scene from a memory that lingered within Aldebaran.
At its center stood a being of extraordinary beauty, expressible in only two colors—white and black— "—Why, I wonder, does love diminish?"
After every conceivable detour, he had finally arrived at this palace of dreams.
Questioning his own sanity, Aldebaran had been on the verge of believing this was merely a phantom.
And for this reunion with his disciple—after more than a decade for him, more than four hundred years for her—the real 'Witch'—no, the 'Witch of Greed'—offered a smile devoid of warmth and spoke words of celebration.
△▼△▼△▼△ "———"
For Aldebaran, the time since losing his arm was already the longer portion of his life.
So while he rarely felt his single arm as a handicap in day-to-day life, there were still exceedingly rare moments when its limitations became painfully apparent.
For instance, when he needed to carry someone unconscious in his arms.
"No bumping, please."
In Aldebaran's embrace—including the stone prosthetic arm he had fashioned through magic—the limp, unconscious Emilia was cradled.
The aerial chase through the vast canyon between Aldebaran and Emilia had ended with Emilia collapsing, thanks to a foul play on Aldebaran's part.
It was nothing complicated. His trump card was the same one he had used to escape Emilia's grasp in the Royal Capital.
The kind-hearted Emilia could not ignore someone being lost in battle. —She, too, had been deeply scarred by losing Priscilla during the Empire's 'Great Calamity.' So she had not hesitated to throw herself in the way to shield Aldebaran—who was sitting directly in the boulder's path—even at the cost of her own safety.
"Even if there was no guaranteed way to hit me otherwise, I gotta admit it was a scumbag move."
Of course, Aldebaran had arrived at this conclusion only after experimenting with other strategies.
He had tried adjusting the boulder's landing point, shattering it into a rockslide, selecting different trajectories for his stone barrage, and combining other spells—but beyond the tactic of making himself a hostage, Emilia had broken through every single one with her trademark split-second intuition and decisiveness.
Those who tried the other strategies ended up frozen by Emilia's hand—Aldebaran among them—so there was no denying he had been forced into this desperate measure.
"Not that this erases the guilt or gets me forgiven or anything."
This excuse, meant for no one's ears, was too crude even for Emilia to forgive.
Emilia, who had shielded Aldebaran and taken the brunt of the boulder's mass without defense, had been struck hard across her entire body and lost consciousness, as expected. From a cursory glance, there didn't appear to be any lingering injuries—probably just a strong concussion at worst. —He had been careful to calibrate for exactly that outcome.
"I made quite the detour. ...Waiting for Yae might not be the wisest call."
After the fall from such a height and the conclusion of his escape from Emilia, he finally had the leisure to take in his surroundings. What he realized was that he was likely in the Aguzhad Canyon—one of the largest in the world—and that the Mogorodo Great Geyser, his destination, was at a significant altitude difference from where he was now.
He had already crossed the border of the
Besides— "Whether Orta can link up is one thing, but can Roy and Father even meet up...?"
Among the separated accomplices, there was no concern about 'Aldebaran's' combat prowess, but
"Either way, the safest bet is to have everyone gather at the designated point."
Aldebaran's top priority was reaching the Mogorodo Great Geyser and fulfilling his objective.
That objective required 'Aldebaran's' power, but in the worst case, there were ways to manage without him. Additionally, Roy's 'Gluttony' Authority would be indispensable for the cleanup after the disaster this plan was meant to exploit.
So after completing his objective, he would find a way to regroup and make them follow his orders.
"If trying to prevent secondary damage just causes tertiary and quaternary damage, that's a whole different mess."
Muttering to himself, Aldebaran tilted the stone wings on his back and maintained his speed as he descended into the canyon's depths, managing to land—barely—by the bank of the great river flowing below. —That was a lie. Cradling Emilia the entire time, he self-destructed six times and only succeeded on the seventh attempt.
"If I can't even stand after this, it'd be a real joke."
The first time, it wasn't just his legs—his entire lower body was wrecked, and he nearly suffered total paralysis, almost unable to even take his poison. He managed to tumble into the river and drown himself instead, but he didn't want to repeat that mistake.
In any case— "Sorry, Emilia... Miss."
To prevent the river from suddenly flooding and drowning her while he was gone, Aldebaran laid Emilia not on the canyon floor but in a shallow alcove in the rock wall, slightly elevated.
Before leaving her behind, he hesitated over what to call her. After a moment of deliberation, he settled on the same way he always had—as Aldebaran. —The correct way to address her, given their real relationship, required a courage he didn't possess while their current, incorrect relationship persisted.
"—!"
Curse his own cowardice—and then a blinding headache pierced through him, and Aldebaran clenched his teeth.
Now that the crisis had passed and his nerves were beginning to slacken, the accumulated debt was coming due. Fighting to hold it together, he took ten deep breaths and swallowed his poison—repeating the cycle until his mind stabilized.
But while this technique could provide breathing room for his mind, it could not do the same for his body—specifically, his brain.
In real time, his brain had been running nonstop for nearly a hundred hours.
Along the way, 'Aldebaran's' healing magic had papered over the worst of it, but until he shut down completely—mind and body both—this overheat would not subside.
Still, he told himself: just one more push.
*—No one can defeat the you I created.* "Yeah, that's right, Sensei. —No one can beat me. That's right. Absolutely."
When he closed his eyes, the words resurfaced in his mind.
With that as his foundation, Aldebaran— *—Look upon it, once more.* "———"
*Once more, my—* "———"
*My—* The fragmentary, indistinct voice reached him.
He knew whose voice it was, knew when those words had been spoken, knew how deeply they would burn his soul—and so Aldebaran clamped shut his mind's ear.
He would not stop. He had decided. He had decided, after all.
He had decided that he must not stop.
And so— △▼△▼△▼△ —It happened just after Aldebaran, having shut out that voice, had dragged himself back up the canyon wall and resumed his rush toward the Mogorodo Great Geyser.
"Huh."
What escaped Aldebaran's lips was a rasping exhalation.
It was no surprise it slipped out. This was an accident from beyond his awareness—an eventuality his deepest mind had dismissed as impossible. —A massive ice pillar had plunged into the earth a mere two meters ahead of Aldebaran's path.
"———"
Swallowing hard and turning around, Aldebaran understood: the ice pillar had been dropped by Emilia, whom he had left far below in the depths of the canyon.
But given the damage she had sustained, Emilia shouldn't have regained consciousness for several hours—meaning she had launched this final blow while still unconscious.
"Ain't no quit in that girl..."
That said, if Aldebaran had climbed out of the canyon five seconds earlier, he would have been directly beneath the falling pillar. In that sense, he had narrowly averted disaster on two fronts.
Naturally, even if the strike had connected, Aldebaran would have used his Authority to undo it and arrive at the outcome of not being hit. But for Emilia's sake as much as his own mental well-being, it was better that she never landed a hand on him.
Even so— "During a battle, you see it every now and then—unsettling stuff."
In the Gladiator Island's 'Sparca,' during life-or-death fights, there had been occasions where an opponent with a fatal wound would squeeze out one final strike that could take Aldebaran down with them. In his experience, some had even come at him after having their heads severed.
People sometimes decided on an action, and even if they lost consciousness or life, the residual intention in their limbs would drive them to carry it out.
Emilia's final blow was born from that same desperate will to stop Aldebaran at all costs— "—Wait."
Aldebaran cut off the breath he was about to use to praise that willpower.
Before his eyes, the ice pillar that had pierced the earth grazing Aldebaran's path was enormous—truly a spear of ice that some mythological giant might wield. But as an attack meant to kill him, it was absurdly excessive.
Such a massive thing was almost like— "—An anchor."
The moment he murmured that, almost by accident—the next assassin was dispatched toward Aldebaran, who had been about to use the ice pillar Emilia had launched as a landmark to navigate toward the Mogorodo Great Geyser.
It was— "Yo, Helm-boy, you look pretty banged up for someone I haven't seen in a while."
"...You can say that about yourself too. You've gotten a lot more foul-mouthed, Filioire."
Having each survived the first stage of the battlefield and advanced to the next, the two faced each other.
Filioire Lugunica—no,