As he stepped toward Celestia, who stood powerlessly shedding violet tears, Lowell sank, for the briefest moment, into memories of the past.
Back when he had played Magica Academy Legacy countless times, the Act 1 final boss Celestia, whom he had faced beyond the monitor, had truly been every player’s wailing wall.
The moment the boss fight began, she transformed into a merciless destroyer, making her setting as a kindhearted genius mage seem meaningless.
The bombardment of high-level magic that filled the screen left no room to dodge, and the sheer variety of spells was so vast that if you failed to memorize dozens upon dozens of patterns, it was difficult to survive even a single minute.
But there was another decisive reason Celestia’s difficulty was truly atrocious.
At the very instant you miraculously broke through the rain of magic, approached her main body, and tried to swing your sword, the one who always blocked your path was the high spirit Sylver.
Sylver’s counterattack, protecting his master while piercing the player’s heart, was nothing short of futile despair.
Because of that perfect harmony of offense and defense, it was treated as established fact among players that Celestia was the true final boss of Magica Academy Legacy.
But on the battlefield Lowell now faced, there were mountains of fatal variables that shook the original strategy formula from its very roots.
An absurdity that could not be described simply as “difficult”—a level of unfairness that was practically system collapse itself—blocked Lowell’s path.
The one fortunate thing was that the high spirit Sylver had taken the side of an ally.
The fact that the greatest wall that had plunged players into the pit of despair in the original, the high spirit who protected Celestia, had turned to Lowell’s side was undoubtedly a blessing amid misfortune.
However, aside from that single positive factor, every other circumstance was so bleak he would rather close his eyes and look away.
First, the timing was far too early.
In the original, the decisive battle against Celestia occurred after summer vacation, when the player had grown to a certain degree—in other words, during the second semester.
Because the player was given the physical time to accumulate enough experience and improve their skills, they could prepare the minimum stats and equipment needed to attempt the fight despite its hellish difficulty.
But now, all of that growth process had been skipped entirely, and it was only the beginning of the first semester.
On top of that, Lowell’s own condition was practically the embodiment of a debuff.
The agile and powerful body of the protagonist from the original was nowhere to be found.
The body he had possessed was not only so overweight that even slight movement left him gasping for breath, but its mana circuits were closed, leaving him unable to use even a handful of magic.
With his current physique, whose basic stamina was at rock bottom, merely surviving a single wide-area magical bombardment from Celestia would be close to a miracle.
It was like a level 1 novice standing before a max-level boss—and standing there while afflicted by every curse imaginable.
The second problem was Sylver’s condition now that he had become an ally.
For a being known as a spirit, merely manifesting in the present world consumed an enormous amount of mana continuously.
If his contractor served as a battery supplying immense magical power, there would be no problem, but the current Sylver had been rejected by his master and was forcibly maintaining his form by shaving away at his own soul.
Lowell, who had no mana at all, could not provide Sylver with even the slightest support, and as a result, the overwhelming majesty Sylver had shown in the original was nowhere to be seen. He was in an extremely weakened state.
The claws he swung were dull, and the aura he emitted was pitifully faint.
Lastly, the enemy’s very identity had far surpassed the scope of the original.
If it were Celestia corrupted by Sylver’s machinations as in the original, there would at least be patterns he had experienced hundreds of times, but what ruled her now was a fragment of the Evil God—the terror of the final chapter and the calamity of the world.
Contaminated by a blasphemous power that shattered common sense, Lowell could not even begin to gauge what degree of destructive force she would unleash, nor what grotesque and cruel attacks she would carry out.
In conclusion, there were far too many variables right now.
This had completely escaped the bounds of the game he knew.
This was no longer within the realm of something that could be攻略ed.
Lowell suppressed his trembling breath and drew the cold air of the hall deep into his lungs.
His chest felt tight, and his hands and feet grew cold.
His odds of victory converged below the decimal point, and the difference in weight class he felt was so vast it went beyond despair and became almost hollow.
But there was nowhere to retreat.
Behind him was Chloe, who had risked her life to open a path, and before him was a girl who had never once been saved, not even after hundreds of attempts.
Lowell gripped the crowbar tightly and tossed a curt remark to Sylver beside him.
“……For now, we’ve got no choice but to clash with her once. Sylver, you move first.”
Sylver looked at Lowell, his fur contaminated by demonic energy standing on end.
“If a high spirit like you makes a scene, she’ll have to be on guard too. Pretend you’re exchanging blows with her or something and create an opening.”
Sylver growled low, as if dumbfounded.
“……And what do you intend to do in the meantime? Are you saying you’ll break through that hellish storm of magical power with a body that doesn’t have a handful of mana?”
“Yeah. While you draw her attention, I’ll somehow get to her main body. If I can land just one hit from up close, that’ll be enough.”
Sylver snorted in disbelief.
“You truly are stupid. With an ordinary tool like that, you won’t even scratch Master’s barrier. That crude weapon of yours won’t work at all.”
“I know.”
Lowell answered calmly, confirming the cold sensation of metal against his palm.
Sylver still looked at him as if he were spouting madness, but Lowell knew very well that this tool was by no means an ordinary object.
In truth, he had found it by chance in a corner of a storage room deep inside the Bartholomew Training Ground.
Even after playing the game hundreds of times, this was the first time Lowell himself had discovered this item in such a place.
But the moment he saw its rugged appearance, the red paint roughly peeled away, he was certain.
No matter who looked at it, this was an Easter egg item that blatantly paid homage to the legendary hero “GoX Freeman.”
This item, inserted by the developers as a joke, possessed physical destructive power values that overwhelmingly surpassed even splendid treasured swords.
It was the only card capable of literally tearing off magical barriers.
If it was this tool, mixed with the legendary joke said to have been used by a hero from another world, it should be able to forcibly twist even the Evil God’s magical power with the laws of physics.
Lowell completed his final preparations in his mind.
Taking advantage of the opening while Sylver desperately drew her attention, he would ignore the absurd difference in weight class and drive in a single effective blow.
That was the only method Lowell had drawn up in his head.
“Sylver, now!”
At Lowell’s shout, Sylver kicked off the floor and shot forward, leaving a silver afterimage behind.
A massive aura erupted and fired toward Celestia head-on, and with that wind at his back, Lowell lowered his stance as much as possible and threw himself into the middle of the violet madness swirling through the death zone.
The instant Lowell and Sylver tried to close the distance, Celestia’s unfocused eyes flashed violet.
When she lightly stamped her foot, the air in the hall screamed and began contracting into a single point.
[ High Magic: Ground Zero ]
Space itself compressed, then expanded in an instant.
Centered on her, a tremendous explosion of magical power raged outward, mercilessly crushing the surrounding area.
The marble floor was pulverized beyond recognition and scattered into dust, and the surging shockwave pressed down on Lowell and Sylver’s entire bodies as if refusing to permit any entry.
But within that wave of destruction, Sylver roared, leaving a silver afterimage.
[ High Magic: Gust (突風) ]
Sylver rotated his entire body like a drill of magical power and emitted a razor-sharp current of air.
He had forcibly collided Celestia’s explosive magical power head-on with his own aura and mixed them together.
As the two enormous forces meshed, the trajectory of the explosion twisted grotesquely, and in that momentary gap, Lowell burst through the center of the hellish storm.
“……!”
Even amid the agony of his lungs burning up, Lowell did not stop.
At last, Lowell approached right in front of Celestia, close enough to touch her if he reached out, and drove the crowbar forward with the weight of his entire body.
Crunch——!
What echoed through the hall was not the sound of metal, but the grotesque tearing sound of something being ripped away.
An absolute wall that, in the original, would not have allowed any attack whatsoever.
The hooked end of the crowbar had sunk deeply into Celestia’s violet barrier, which had been densely woven from the Evil God’s magical power.
The power of the Easter egg, which ignored magical compatibility and imposed only physical destruction, had activated.
As if a transparent glass wall had been forcibly crushed, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the barrier’s surface, and unreal fragments scattered through the air.
For the first time, unfamiliar bewilderment crossed Celestia’s expressionless face.
However, Celestia’s bewilderment lasted only an instant.
If this had been the Celestia攻略 battle from the original, once a certain amount of impact was applied, the barrier would have shattered into fragments and left her defenseless, but what currently enveloped her was an unholy power created by the fragment of the Evil God.
Kwaaaang——!
Instead of breaking, the barrier exploded, sending out grotesque waves of magical power centered on the point where Lowell’s crowbar had lodged.
It was not a simple shockwave meant to push an opponent away.
A heavy pressure that seemed about to crush Lowell’s entire body descended upon him, and Lowell was helplessly flung backward, rolling miserably across the marble floor of the hall.
“Haaah……!”
The acrid scent of blood surged up to his throat.
As Lowell barely tried to raise his upper body, a violet shadow fell over his vision.
Before the aftershock of the explosion had even faded, Celestia had somehow glided across the ground and approached, then stamped down on Lowell’s neck.
Crunch.
At the heavy weight pressing against his lungs, a death-rattle-like groan burst from Lowell’s mouth.
Lowell met Celestia’s gaze as she looked down at him.
The violet tears flowing down her cheeks were still there, but the eyes beyond them gleamed coldly, completely stripped of emotion.
Celestia slowly raised her hand.
Above her palm, condensed magical power gathered with a chilling noise, soon taking on a sharp form as a violet sword of magical power appeared.
And Celestia pointed the blade toward Lowell’s face.