Corpses that had died long ago and fossilized.
In fact, one could say they were ancient stones rather than corpses.
But those desiccated corpses and mummy fragments clung to my body and began forming a new one.
Mummy fragments attached to my missing arm, becoming a black arm, while a desiccated corpse filled the hole in my side.
Black skin covered my newly made body.
At the same time, various visions flashed through my head.
Syamara praying in beautiful robes, believers dying as they fought monsters, and the black Demon King passing by indifferently.
Were these the memories of the dead? Or mere illusions?
Then, I heard Sopeu’s voice.
[Are you alright?]
A voice full of worry.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
I answered him.
[It seems you’ve become able to use the Demon King’s magic… Be careful. There’s no telling what problems might arise.]
Sopeu immediately realized what I had done.
He didn’t say a word about me making a body out of corpses.
What worried him was the Demon King’s magic that I was using.
My newly created black arm and side.
It was a body made of corpses and mummies, but it moved as I willed.
I moved my black arm behind me.
Swoosh!
Tentacles shot toward me once more.
Once again, magic circles that broke shields covered the tentacles.
I didn’t deploy a shield.
‘So that’s how it was?’
Instead, I cast a small spell with my newly acquired arm.
Squelch!
Along with the spell, my black arm transformed into a tentacle and shot forward.
The two tentacles met in midair and destroyed each other.
Crack!
As expected, the two tentacles were equal in strength.
The arm that had become a tentacle was destroyed, but I wasn’t worried.
There was plenty of material here to make a new arm.
Slither.
Again, a lump of black flesh fell from the surroundings and merged with my black arm, which had been left with only half.
The arm was whole once more.
Every time a tentacle flew at me, I moved my new arm to destroy it.
Tentacles equipped with new magic circles kept appearing, but I wasn’t afraid anymore.
I left the incoming tentacles to my newly gained arm.
“Burst!”
I blew apart the Demon King’s body, weakened by radiation, and kept advancing.
The Demon King kept interfering with me.
It wasn’t just tentacles.
The surrounding flesh writhed as it approached.
A sight that seemed like I would be buried in flesh.
In the past, it would have been hard to advance while dealing with all that flesh, but not now.
Black tentacles surged between the approaching flesh, attacking the surrounding meat.
Those tentacles were mummy fragments that I controlled.
I couldn’t seize the entirety of the Demon King’s body.
Whether because they were of the same species, or because they had been under the Demon King’s control for so long, the monster corpses couldn’t break free of the Demon King.
Likewise, human corpses could easily be snatched away from the Demon King.
I couldn’t tell if it was because they were fellow humans, or because the corpses were believers of the Sanctuary.
Either way, I could make the corpses comprising the Demon King’s body fight one another.
A magician who repairs his body with black corpses that transform into tentacles, and controls dead mummy fragments.
[……]
It wasn’t merely unbecoming of a magician; I didn’t even seem human, but Sopeu said nothing to me.
After those worried words, he fell silent.
Was it because my appearance was horrifying? Or to avoid provoking me, who had turned into something monstrous?
Honestly, I didn’t know if I was normal either.
I could use magic normally, and my head felt clear.
But with a body like this, and advancing deeper into the Demon King’s body, I couldn’t seem normal.
Still, I couldn’t stop here.
The destination was right ahead.
The energy flowing through my body seemed a bit strange, and the black stone in my spear had lost energy once again, but I continued forward.
Blocking tentacles and piercing through the monster’s body, I finally arrived at my destination.
I had dug more than ten meters into the monster’s flesh.
At the end of it was the black stone.
The cracks covering the black stone remained as they were.
It seemed even the Demon King couldn’t easily heal his core, his true body.
No wonder the Demon King hadn’t been able to regain his senses until now.
The place I was in was a small hole where I could barely move.
I reached back with my intact hand and grasped my spear.
[You probably know, but my magic won’t work now.]
Sopeu, who had been silent, opened his mouth.
[I know.]
Multiple layers of shields were already spread over the black stone.
They weren’t the same shield.
Ice, fire, wind, lightning.
Sturdiness was a given; they were various types of shields that could block diverse attacks.
Magic didn’t work on the black stone itself to begin with, but the Demon King had wrapped multiple layers of shields around it.
To ensure every magic he knew wouldn’t work.
To think such powerful defensive magic was placed on this small black stone.
The Demon King seemed more shocked than I’d thought.
In the end, I had to use new magic.
Magic powerful enough to destroy the black stone—magic the Demon King didn’t know.
I grasped my staff in one hand, and when I placed my black hand on the shield, it burst into flames.
Was the outermost layer a flame shield?
It was a shield that blocked approach itself, but it didn’t matter.
Though my hand was burning, there was no pain.
My newly acquired hand moved at my will, and I could cast magic as though wearing a glove, but I felt no pain.
Setting aside the unsettling feeling, it was the best equipment.
I pressed my burning hand against the shield and envisioned a certain magic.
At that moment, another voice rang out.
[……I see. You no longer have that weapon.]
It was the Demon King’s voice.
The Demon King, who had been reeling from the shock, seemed to have come to his senses.
Or perhaps he had been holding his breath, watching my situation.
Judging by how he spoke up after seeing that I hadn’t taken out the hydrogen bomb, it was likely the latter.
[To charge in without that weapon. Good. I’ll kill you and find out all about that weapon.]
The Demon King seemed to have feared the hydrogen bomb.
Well, it was only natural.
It must have been the first time the black stone, which he thought could never be wounded, had been damaged.
Thanks to that, the Demon King had become interested in the hydrogen bomb.
A hydrogen bomb was not magic, so no counter-magic could be devised against it.
If the Demon King escaped from here, he would likely try to find Earth through the ruins.
I didn’t know whether the Demon King could find Earth.
Nor did I know how the Demon King would deal with Earth, which had no dark energy.
I had no intention of worrying about that either.
Gurgle.
The Demon King’s body began to change.
The tentacles that had been attacking me from behind withdrew, and the holes were filled.
The writhing flesh began changing shape.
The flesh that emitted blue light was buried beneath other flesh, and different flesh took its place.
The Demon King began rearranging his body.
He sent the radiation-contaminated flesh elsewhere and began filling my surroundings with different flesh.
Changing an already created body couldn’t be easy.
It must have been closer to abandoning the existing body and remaking it.
The Demon King went through such hardship voluntarily.
To stop me.
The Demon King seemed to plan on keeping me in his body and crushing me.
It was a dire situation, but I became calm instead.
There was no turning back anyway.
‘I really don’t think I’m normal.’
I doubted my mental state once again, but ignoring such thoughts, I moved my burning hand.
Gurgle.
My burning black hand moved and covered the black stone, shield and all.
Fwoosh.
The black stone wrapped in my black hand looked like a burning orb.
Walls of corpses closed in from all directions.
Inside, I recalled everything I had learned.
Until now, I had learned much magic.
Aside from copying magic, I had taken many magic lessons from Sopeu.
From the principles of elemental magic like fire, water, earth, and wind, to gravity magic and electric magic.
There were countless lessons and teachings, yet I had hardly learned any magic theory.
The principles Sopeu spoke of were difficult to understand.
Part of it was my own stupidity, but there was another problem as well.
As an Earthling, I couldn’t accept the principles of magic Sopeu explained.
How fire, water, earth, and wind became elements that composed nature.
Whether mimicking how birds or angels flew made flight magic possible.
That this universe was filled with dark energy, and all the world’s power was born from the interaction of that dark energy.
Most of the magical common sense Sopeu taught clashed with my meager scientific knowledge.
Magic was the act of moving dark energy to realize a magician’s plausible imagination in reality.
Just as one imagined the fire element to create flame magic, magicians combined common knowledge to create spells.
If one couldn’t accept the common knowledge itself, one couldn’t create magic.
I too tried my best to understand and accept it.
But all I could do was copy magic, make slight modifications, and apply Earth-style science to it.
Thinking back now, I wasn’t an inferior version of the Demon King.
The Demon King and I were the same.
The reason I couldn’t do as the Demon King did was because I had learned science in a world without magic.
It was funny that the Demon King possessed magic common sense, but thinking that way, I could understand everything that had happened until now.
Why the Demon King could analyze magic and create counter-magic.
And why I couldn’t do the same, and why the Demon King couldn’t immediately imitate my Earth-style modified magic.
While fighting the Demon King with Earth-style modified magic, another question arose.
If magic turned a magician’s plausible imagination into reality, couldn’t I create magic from the ground up using Earth’s common knowledge?
If thinking of fire and earth as elements created fire and earth magic, then rather than merely modifying magic, couldn’t I use the four fundamental forces of science themselves as magic?
Instead of elemental magic, I could create magic using the electromagnetic force, and instead of gravity magic through universal gravitation, I could apply the theory of relativity.
Of course, most magic was useful enough as it was.
Even if I used the electromagnetic force, it wouldn’t be much different from fire or lightning magic.
Even replacing it with the theory of relativity wouldn’t strengthen gravity.
However, there was a magic that the magicians of this star had failed to create.
Magic like my spatial movement magic, born from the idea that space and time were one—something they had never considered.
That was one of the remaining four fundamental forces.
Magic that used the nuclear force.
A magic circle floated above the burning black sphere.
A magic circle with many empty spaces, crooked and distorted.
I began to change the magic circle.
The common knowledge I possessed.
I overlaid the magic circle with the common knowledge that the world was made of atoms, and that when those atoms split and fused, they generated immense power.
The magic circle filled in.
The distorted magic circle traced beautiful lines.
The magic circle gradually began to emit light.
The black stones attached to the spear darkened.
An enormous energy flowed into the burning sphere.
The flames clung to my arm.
The dormant pain shook my bones.
This level of pain was something I was used to. I didn’t stop.
The magic circle brightened to the point where it was hard to open my eyes.
[What is this! What kind of magic are you making!]
The Demon King, unable to comprehend the magic, screamed.
Against the backdrop of the Demon King’s screams, I chanted.
“Gather, smallest ones, and collide. Fuse and divide.”
With the chant, the magic circle moved.
It was as if I could see atoms moving before my eyes.
Atoms rushing toward one another.
I cast the magic.
“Light of Destruction, Nuclear!”
The world was engulfed in light.
Purification.