—
It wasn't the kind of rejection born from disgust or hostility, but rather true indifference in the proper sense of the word.
Under normal circumstances, someone living an ordinary life would rarely encounter a person spouting the sort of prophetic nonsense the Star Reader was known for. In his capacity as one of the "Generals," Groovy had run into
Groovy himself could recall hardly more than shutting the man up when he interjected during meetings.
Given that impression, it was difficult to understand why the Emperor, Vincent, and his confidant Chisha were paying such unusual attention to the Star Reader's activities. Groovy didn't know what Prime Minister Berstetz thought of the Star Reader, but as far as his nose could tell, the man's loyalty to the Empire was genuine, and the complicated anger he harbored toward Vincent did not influence his judgment.
Therefore, with the Empire's leadership having each settled on their respective stances, there was simply no reason for Groovy—who had no opportunity to become involved—to take any interest in the Star Reader whatsoever.
All the more so because, if he learned that the Star Reader had foreknowledge of this collision with the Great Calamity—one that would determine the Empire's survival—a mountain of his habitual profanity would have come pouring out of his mouth.
But at the very least, the reason that familiar string of obscenities burst from Groovy's mouth in this moment was not anger directed at some Star Reader or other.
"You piece of—!"
The gray thorns that had risen over his left chest—when his fingers tried to tear them away and slipped through, the excruciating pain of sharp spines piercing his heart sent every hair on Groovy's body standing on end.
The sensation of something sharp being driven into a vital point inside one's body, one directly connected to one's life force—it was pain so intense that even a seasoned warrior couldn't keep their expression from contorting.
Hatefully, the thorns had no physical substance. They couldn't be swatted away.
Gritting his molars against the one-sided onslaught of pain, Groovy looked to the man right beside him—the one clutching at his waist, the iron-helmeted man.
Naturally, Al bore the same curse as Groovy, and he too was writhing in agony, but— "Damn it, get back! The situation's about to get a hell of a lot worse!"
"Get back—guah!"
Groovy punched the slow-reacting Al hard in the gut and forcibly shoved his body backward.
As the groaning man toppled backward into the street, Groovy grabbed him and swiftly pulled them both into the shadow of a nearby building.
It was an indiscriminate area-of-effect attack. Hiding in the street like this was little more than a small comfort.
"Still, I'd rather avoid having the corpse people come swarming over with grins on their faces when they see us screaming our heads off."
"...Aren't you getting pricked by the damn thorns too?"
"Oh, I am. Though if they'd gone to the trouble of adding flowers along with the vines, it would have at least been a gift with a touch of elegance."
Descending onto the same street as Groovy and the others, Cecilus tapped his left chest as he spoke.
The same thorns were visible through his chest, transparent as ever, and the pain should have been identical. Yet even though the agony was enough to make even Groovy grimace, Cecilus was grinning from ear to ear— "An ace actor must always be the center of the audience's attention. If this were the anguish of having lost a beloved person or dear friend, the contorted expression could evoke genuine emotion. But if you twist your face just because you yourself are in pain, you only diminish the dignity of the actor."
"So even if it hurts like hell or feels like hell itself, you never let your face lose. That's your damn fool philosophy, right?"
"Oh? Have I told you this story before?"
"Yeah, you have, you bastard."
Groovy had been roped into Cecilus's ramblings countless times, because while most people had no patience for his nonsense, Groovy couldn't help but take the bait whenever something nagged at him. That was why he remembered the man's philosophy so well.
Though now, since Cecilus had apparently forgotten having said it before, Groovy realized that the man had been putting his own theory into practice long before his limbs had even fully matured—which moved past being impressive into the realm of plain stupidity.
And just as Groovy and Cecilus were going back and forth— "Ghk... What, the thorn pain stopped?"
Picking himself up in the alley where he'd been dragged, Al looked down at the thorn on his chest and muttered. In its place, he rubbed his punched gut and shot Groovy a resentful look.
"My punched stomach hurts way worse... What's the deal?"
"You being too damn slow to get back is what's bad! ...The thorns, it's probably distance."
"Oh my, so the curse is tied to the distance between us and the caster? If the pain vanished the moment we retreated, then that tracks! Since we were stuck together, it's even easier to see—first it was Groovy-san on the belly side, then Al-san in the middle, and finally me on the back. Even in less than a second, there was a difference."
"...But the thorns haven't disappeared."
Running his fingers through the empty air where the intangible thorns lingered, Al muttered bitterly.
Just as he said, the pain may have faded, but the thorns themselves hadn't vanished. Even if the obvious obstacle of pain was removed, the fact that the connection to the thorns persisted was troubling. In most cases, this kind of persistent curse also served to detect the target's location.
As long as these thorns remained, their position could very well be wide open to the enemy.
"If that's the case, they could send forces our way the moment they figure out where we are, even though we've gone to the trouble of hiding. —I'm of the opinion that killing too many enemies isn't ideal either."
"You were saying that before. What's your reason?"
"Like I said before, it's just a hunch."
"...Your damn hunch."
Groovy couldn't dismiss Cecilus's flash of intuition as mere nonsense.
It wasn't a situation where laughter was appropriate, and more importantly, the man had a track record that made it impossible to write off as just talk. Both Cecilus and
Groovy, too, hadn't expected that the opponent who had caused a disaster of this scale would resort to something as crude as brute force.
If anything, if the enemy truly relied solely on brute force, they wouldn't have been a match for Vincent or Chisha— "——"
For a brief instant, Groovy glanced at Cecilus's profile and fell silent.
A host of thoughts ran through his head, but the fundamental issue was this: if the enemy had chosen to rely exclusively on brute force, then the idea that they could simply collide head-on with the Empire—which had Cecilus and Arakiya—was a flawed premise.
An opponent who could make that kind of fundamental mistake wouldn't be a threat to the Volachian Empire.
Of course, if what was happening now—reducing Cecilus to this state—was all part of the enemy's design, that would be impressive. But Groovy's own instincts denied that possibility.
It was Chisha who had shrunk Cecilus. The residual traces of mana made that unmistakable.
And Chisha taking sides against the Empire was inconceivable. Still, the fact that Groovy couldn't fully divine Chisha's intentions was a thorn in his side he couldn't quite remove.
"If our position's been blown, we don't have time to stand around thinking. What's the plan? Do we all rush in together and take out the bastard casting the curse?"
"Yes. That would be the fastest solution! —is what I'd like to say, but based on what you said earlier, Groovy-san, the curse's power is tied to distance. Which means that since the pain receded when we moved away, if we get real close to them again..."
"This time, it won't be just that level of pain, will it?"
"Most likely not."
At Cecilus's deduction, Al glared bitterly at the thorn on his chest.
Groovy agreed with Cecilus's reasoning. The terror of this enemy—who indiscriminately scattered thorn curses throughout an area—lay precisely there.
The closer you got to the caster, the more powerful the thorns' curse became. Most people would probably be rendered immobile by pain before they even came within striking distance.
"At that point, it wouldn't matter how tough you were—you'd be completely immobilized."
"And you're looking at me because you think I'm the kind of fool who might charge in without thinking? But even I wouldn't blindly rush in here without a plan. If we could solve the problem by enduring the pain and cutting the enemy down, that would be one thing—but—"
Cecilus paused, then clapped his palms together with a sharp crack. He interlocked his fingers and looked between Groovy and Al through the gap.
"That's not the case, is it? If it were a matter of simply lopping off the enemy's head, you would have sent me in to do that long ago, Groovy-san."
"...That's what makes curses so damn troublesome."
Before Cecilus's unnerving smile, Groovy couldn't suppress a sigh.
If this were magic, killing the caster would usually nullify it. Magic was activated through the caster using mana to interfere with the world, so once the caster was gone, that was the end of it.
But curse arts were different—they were specialized in inflicting lethal harm on their targets.
Many of them were activated by binding to the target's Od, and even if the caster died, most would continue to function as long as the target remained alive. These thorns were clearly tied to the target's Od rather than the caster's—the very embodiment of this principle.
The only ways to dispel this kind of curse were to have the caster解除 it, or to use a special workaround.
Wait, I slipped in a Japanese character there. Let me fix that. "解除 it" should be "unravel it" or "dispel it."
"There's the Cursed Sword, Murasame. Go get it."
At Groovy's chin-jutting command, both Cecilus and Al blinked in unison.
Al's ignorance was one thing, but Cecilus—who knew and had simply forgotten—was infuriating. Groovy grabbed the infuriating Cecilus by the collar and bared his teeth with a savage snarl.
"The 'Evil Sword' Murasame! For cutting through shit that has no physical form—curses, contracts, all that formless garbage—this damn blade is the fastest tool for the job! Go find it!"
"Me!? But you're talking about a sword I don't even know! If I don't know where it is, how am I supposed to— Or can you track it by smell, Groovy-san?"
"It's no use. That damn sword cut its own scent so I couldn't follow it with my nose. You can't track it by smell even if you keep it submerged in a pool of blood year-round, damn it."
On top of that, Murasame held a grudge against Groovy—who had melted it down from a sword and reforged it as a blade—and wouldn't even allow itself to be held.
In terms of difficulty of handling, it was on par with Cecilus's own brand of unmanageability. The "Evil Sword" was a true match for its owner, and its location was beyond the reach of Groovy's nose.
"—But if we get it, we can deal with these thorns, right?"
As Groovy pressed closer and Cecilus played dumb, Al stood up and confirmed in a low voice.
At the gravity in his tone, Groovy released Cecilus and nodded.
"That's right. If I had to guess where it is, it's either at that fool's home or in some secret vault—but I can't imagine that fool can keep a secret a secret, so there probably isn't one."
"I agree. Where's his home?"
"In the Crystal Palace gardens. The damn fool lives there with Arakiya."
"Wait, wait, wait! Groovy-san, I think that 'damn fool' you keep talking about is me, but a name I've never heard just came up! Who is that!?"
"Arakiya... He's actually with that girl? And in the castle garden? The world's too damn small..."
"No, they're not 'together' exactly. Probably."
At Al's reasonable murmur, Groovy wrinkled his snout and answered.
Even Groovy, who had been watching from the sidelines, didn't fully understand the relationship between Cecilus and Arakiya. They'd known each other for close to ten years, but what Cecilus thought of others was a mystery, and while Arakiya clearly despised Cecilus, they lived together and shared meals.
If they were in heat, Groovy would know by smell—but there were no signs of that. Occasionally they tried to genuinely kill each other and ended up reshaping the Empire's geography, making them quite the handful for bystanders.
"But I don't think the 'Dream Sword' or the 'Evil Sword' would just be left sitting around after the fool was shrunk. So what's possible is..."
"——. If we could get into the castle, we'd have done so from the start."
The concern that the swords might have been collected and stored inside the castle was, as Al pointed out, valid.
If they could breach the Crystal Palace, they wouldn't need to resort to the strategy of storming the summit with reinforcements. But even to welcome reinforcements, sealing this caster was a prerequisite— "Hmm, well now. Would they really leave such powerful weapons sitting in the castle indefinitely? Weapons that appeared with such meaning behind them should surely be put to use."
There, Cecilus interjected from behind, hands clasped behind his head. He'd turned his back on Groovy and Al as they discussed, but was peering over at them periodically with a thoughtful "Hmm, hmm."
"What? If you've got something to say, stop being coy and just say it."
"No, no, no. You two can go on talking between yourselves. Besides, whatever I say probably won't register in your ears anyway, so it's fine."
"Are you sulking about Arakiya, you bastard! She's the woman you keep almost killing each other with! She's probably around here somewhere! Now cut the crap and talk!"
"Oh my, if you're going to be that insistent, I suppose I have no choice. —In short, from the enemy's perspective, wouldn't it be better to give the weapons to someone to carry rather than leave them in the castle?"
His sullen expression instantly replaced by a radiant grin, Cecilus's remark made Groovy furrow his brow—and then feel frustrated that the opinion was, against all expectations, perfectly reasonable.
In other words, if Cecilus's theory was correct, the powerful weapons known as the "Dream Sword" and the "Evil Sword" were highly likely being held by one of the corpse people.
And more specifically— "If they're that powerful, wouldn't they entrust them to someone stationed at an important location?"
"Damn."
As Cecilus suggested, that was the most probable scenario, and Groovy agreed with a curse.
If that was the case, the best strategy was to eliminate possibilities one by one and head to the most likely location.
"If Barloy is at the third tower, that's not our guy. His weapon's a spear. He wouldn't go through the trouble of switching—that damn decision-making of his doesn't work that way."
"Then it must be somewhere else. It would be a shame if Al-san's plan to use his father and the others as decoys goes to waste, though."
"No, I agree that we need to take this one out first above all else. ...When my brothers show up, holding just this one guy back would be no laughing matter."
Al clenched his trembling fist, and Cecilus squinted one eye at him while looking to Groovy.
The plan was set. For the sake of obtaining the "Evil Sword," they would go searching among the other summits for the person most likely to have it—an approach with an undeniable sense of improvisation—but— "Fool, at least get the first guess right. Which one has the highest probability?"
"Umm... I'd say the second tower, going by instinct?"
"If it's the southeast, that's still relatively close from here. Then we'll use the werewolf skins again, all three of—"
"No."
Even after the destination was decided, Groovy cut Al off.
Shaking his head, Groovy tossed the werewolf skin garment he'd been holding to Al, then turned his back on the two and headed toward the mouth of the alley.
And then— "From here on, we split up. Someone needs to hold this enemy in place so they can't move. —It's a damn rotten assignment, but no one can do it but me."
"—I get what you're saying, but you've got the thorns! The conditions are the same for both of us!"
Ignoring Al's attempt to stop him, Groovy didn't slow his pace.
Al tried to chase after him, but Cecilus's small hand pressed against his chest. Holding Al back, Cecilus called out to the departing Groovy.
"You do have a fighting chance, don't you?"
"At the very least, I'll buy that fool enough time to do his job. Who do you think I am? I'm Groovy Gumlet, the 'Land' of the 'Nine Divine Generals'!"
Thrusting his arm high, Groovy declared his confidence over his shoulder to Cecilus.
It seemed to resonate especially well with Cecilus. Even without looking, Groovy could sense his elation from the snorting breath, and Cecilus called out in the polished tone of a star performer: "Then by all means, give it your all! Let us meet again, together with the 'Evil Sword'!"
And with that—delivered in the familiar, theatrical manner of a consummate star—he sent Groovy flying into the battlefield with a kick to the cobblestones.
△▼△▼△▼△ —Parting ways with Cecilus and Al, the lone Groovy leapt across the imperial capital.
He vaulted over streets without any concern for being seen, kicked off building walls and rooftops, and launched himself through the air with wild abandon.
This was nothing like the covert operations required by wearing the werewolf skin garment—he had to deliberately move conspicuously to draw the enemy's attention.
At long last, at long last, Groovy finally had the chance to display his true capabilities.
"Making me endure all that suffocating bullshit..."
Loading all his pent-up frustration onto his tongue, Groovy spat a venomous curse.
Deep down, Groovy had always despised this kind of furtive behavior—fleeing hither and yon, hiding from others' eyes while moving in secret. It wasn't a matter of aptitude; he simply hated it.
And yet, ever since the appearance of the corpse people had forced him to withdraw from the Western Front and trek all the way to the imperial capital, he'd been subjected to this endlessly. He'd had enough—his patience had reached its absolute limit.
Naturally, his frustration wasn't the reason he'd proposed acting alone. But now that he'd obtained the freedom to run wild, he intended to savor it.
"——Now we're talking, you bastards."
Groovy tucked into a roll, spinning vertically through the air. The thorn vine crawling across his furred chest writhed as the binding reactivated—the distance to the caster had closed.
The piercing agony driven directly into his heart was not something even a warrior accustomed to pain could endure easily. As stated before, that was the unvarnished truth.
However— "If this damn curse hurts you, then there's a damn loophole!"
With that roar, Groovy drew a short blade from the bandolier wrapped around his torso.
From among the multiple daggers loaded onto the belt, he selected one with a purple line running along its edge. Groovy pointed its tip at his own throat and drove the blade into his own flesh.
In an instant, the poison embedded in the blade's edge flowed into Groovy's body, coursing through his bloodstream and rapidly devouring the frame of the diminutive werewolf. The lethal toxin reveled in the prospect of fulfilling its purpose of killing a living creature, racing through his veins to deliver a fatal blow to his vital functions—and at the very last moment, he withdrew the blade.
"—Gh..."
Fighting back the sensation of his stomach contents threatening to rise, Groovy's wide eyes bloodshot.
The capillaries in his eyeballs burst, painting his vision red—but Groovy's body held firm at the precipice of death by the venom, instead producing a different transformation.
Parts of his body's senses fell silent under the assault of the poison. He had killed—his sense of pain.
In an instant, the thorn's pain that had nearly stopped Groovy's legs vanished entirely, and the constriction around his heart was overcome by the rush of a crisis barely averted.
Normally, this poison was meant to be administered to a captured enemy—tormenting them by keeping their consciousness clear while they watched their own body deteriorate, stripped of the ability to feel pain.
But Groovy had theorized that by carefully adjusting the dosage, he could destroy only his sense of pain while preserving his body's mobility—as he now demonstrated. He'd wanted to try it but never had the chance, and to his surprise, it worked even on his first attempt.
"If I tested this on Cecilus, that damn fool, a mistake would be unrecoverable."
When it came to his own body, Groovy had an intimate, hair-by-hair, fang-by-fang understanding of his condition—that was what allowed him to make such fine adjustments. But trying it on Cecilus or Al would be a deadly gamble based on nothing but instinct.
Or maybe even Cecilus could die from poison—and the thought of testing that wasn't entirely unappealing—but suppressing the curiosity welling up inside him, Groovy set his sights on the fourth summit.
The situation was what it was. His top priority was saving the Volachian Empire from the brink of annihilation.
In a perfect world, he'd have seized this opportunity—the resurrection of the corpse people—to harvest materials from extinct species and rare races of limited numbers, but that was something he'd have to swallow his tears and let go.
The reason he wanted to do that burned fiercely within Groovy.
"Damn."
The short curse was born from an irritation that would never fade.
—From the moment he first laid eyes on the imperial capital overrun by corpse people, Groovy had considered the possibility that either Vincent or Chisha was dead. And of the two, it was Chisha who had most likely died.
There had been signs that Vincent's stride carried with it the faint scent of death—at some point, that scent had abruptly cut off, and now this.
"That damn pale-faced bastard."
A man who had kept his emotions utterly inscrutable—he had ultimately gone so far as to conceal even his scent.
It was Vincent who had ordered Groovy away from the battlefield to the Western Front just before the decisive battle for the capital—and that Vincent had been Chisha.
What had happened to the real Vincent in the interim, Groovy had no way of knowing. And if he tried to imagine how Cecilus had been shrunk, it all pointed to Chisha playing a solo hand.
But that victory would mean nothing if the Empire fell.
"Damn."
How could he accept such an absurd outcome?
Groovy was a werewolf born in the Empire, raised in the Empire, and living in the Empire. His work carried the weight of his race's social advancement, and he had been told ever since he was young that it was his duty to fight bravely and die.
Groovy had always known himself to be someone who would carve his name into the Empire's history—and indeed, he had been recognized by the Emperor and catapulted to the rank of Divine General with effortless speed.
And the one whom Groovy had acknowledged as his equal—or his superior—were the Nine Divine Generals.
Groovy was a warrior of the Empire, and one who held to the creed that "the people of the Empire must be mighty."
That was precisely why victory and defeat were sacred matters. —The victor must be praised.
"Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn—"
In Volachia, where battle never ceased, if even that unspoken law was corrupted, then this world would truly be hell.
But hell was something that befell the Empire's enemies. He could not allow this world to become hell.
He had to show the enemy where hell truly lay.
"—Found."
Spinning, spinning, his rotating vision caught several moving figures, and Groovy muttered.
The corpse people below had spotted him flying overhead and were shouting something. But their reaction was far too slow. They'd be harmless left alone, but there was no reason to leave them be.
Above all, in the midst of this stench of blood, Groovy could not afford to let prey slip through his teeth.
Clicking his fangs together with an audible snap, Groovy drew the chain-sickle from his back.
It was a wide-bladed sickle wielded with one hand, connected by a chain to a weight—a weapon with a distinctive handling style. Normally, a chain-sickle's chain was only a few meters long, designed for close-to-mid-range combat. But Groovy's was crafted from a special material.
Because of this, the chain and weight easily reached a cluster of corpse people nearly thirty meters away.
Groovy swung the sickle-bearing hand in a wide arc, and the trailing chain-weight sang its metallic song as it soared earthward. The weight was roughly the size of a fist, but with the momentum behind it, its destructive power was beyond what a single bare-fisted blow could compare to.
Naturally, the corpse people leapt clear to avoid it, escaping the weight's path—but they were mistaken.
"You damn fools!!"
Groovy's roar—and the chain-weight he'd hurled—met the ground.
In that instant, the weight blazed crimson from within, and a colossal explosion engulfed the surrounding buildings. The devastating shockwave swallowed the fleeing corpse people, and an entire street of the imperial capital was annihilated.
—Girarl Red Hills, near the Great Waterfall to the northwest of the
That place, which appeared as a red desert zone, was the most dangerous terrain in the world—a land made of fire magic stone particles fine as grains of sand. The mere blowing of wind would trigger extraordinary chain reactions of explosions; it was said that this land was formed from the blood tears of a Great Spirit that had failed to become one of the Four.
Inside the weight of Groovy's chain-sickle were fire magic crystals harvested from Girarl Red Hills. Having absorbed the ambient mana, they now unleashed devastating destructive force.
Bathed in the afterglow of an explosion hot enough to blow an entire street away, Groovy landed on the scorched, smoking wasteland. He straightened his spine with a powerful snap and— "ROOOOAAARRR—!!"
—he unleashed a battle cry driven purely by the destructive impulse swelling within him.
His pounding heart called out the thorns' constriction, but there was no pain. Savoring the sensation of scorching heat ravaging his body from within, Groovy exhaled a breath that reeked of blood.
Biting down hard on his fangs and raising his chain-sickle once more— "With that damn curse, you won't be pulling off any ambushes!"
He launched the chain-weight upward at the figure descending from the sky above, its red cloak billowing behind it.
The weight's power had already been proven—and the figure met it head-on with the sword in their hand. The next instant, a fireball erupted, engulfing them.
However— "Tch!"
In a flash, the flames that had consumed the sky were split cleanly in two, and Groovy leapt backward.
The unnatural change in the fire was proof that the incoming figure had cleaved it apart. And the thorns—dancing with renewed vigor as if celebrating their master's arrival—made it clear that this was the very person who had been scattering the thorn curse across Groovy and his surroundings.
If he hadn't suppressed his sense of pain with poison, he would have been coughing up blood and writhing on the ground by now.
If the enemy were someone who relied solely on the thorns, Groovy could confidently claim complete superiority. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be such an easy opponent.
"Ambush, you say? What a peculiar notion. Why should one such as I need to resort to such underhanded tactics?"
Speaking with calm authority, the figure that had landed on the scorched earth slowly turned to face him.
Pallid, cracked skin. Dark eyes with golden irises floating within. The figure met every criterion of a corpse person—but what stood there overturned every prediction by several orders of magnitude.
First, the ornate vestments whose design was reserved exclusively for members of the Volachian imperial family. Then, the facial features that bore a striking resemblance to Vincent Volachia. And above all, what the figure held in its hand.
It was the blazing crimson light of the Sun Sword—possessed only by the Emperor of Volachia— "Damn."
If corpse people were being resurrected, it stood to reason that Volachian royalty could be among them.
So while the fact that the figure wielded the Sun Sword was surprising, it was understandable. What was not understandable was that it wasn't the only thing they held.
In their right hand, the corpse Emperor carried the Sun Sword—but in their left, they held a different weapon entirely.
And it was a blade that Groovy had never expected to encounter here— "—How far are you going to defy me, you damn sword?!!"
Roaring in pure fury, what Groovy saw in his vision was the Cursed Sword Murasame in the corpse Emperor's grasp—the Sun Sword and the Evil Sword, two impossible demonic blades standing as enemies before Curse Tool Master Groovy Gumlet.