An old knight whose hair and beard had both gone white.
He was the one who, as the knights’ representative in the conference hall, had asked Hio for aid.
Blue aura surged over his sword, and it split the approaching mass of the Abyss cleanly in two.
Seeing that, Hio’s eyes flashed.
‘Aura… works.’
It meant aura worked on masses formed of the power of the Abyss itself.
Of course, being cut in half did not mean a mass of the Abyss would die, but…
- Try using magic.
Hio had magic, did he not?
If aura worked, then mana, a similar kind of qi, should also be more than effective.
Naturally, that meant magic created with mana could be used far more broadly than aura.
And so Hio aimed his staff once more and moved his mana.
The spell he targeted was the 5th Circle’s Explosion.
The point he targeted was the very center of the Abyss surging in black.
The rapidly heated pattern gathered its power into one and burst forth through the staff.
Kwaaaaang—!
Soon, with a tremendous roar, a point in midair exploded.
The result was a success.
“…It works.”
- It takes effect.
The masses within the range of Explosion had burst apart along with the eruption of mana.
Of course, other masses immediately filled the space, but it had definitely worked.
The fact that magic could oppose the Abyss had been confirmed.
Then what should he do?
There was only one method that was by far the most effective.
Hio immediately canceled Heaven and prepared another skill.
Darkness settled even deeper over the battlefield where the dense Abyss was surging in.
The staff was swung.
At the same time, the skill activated.
「Skill - ‘Summon Reaper’ is being activated.」
「An inhuman being that governs death manifests.」
「All skills will be sealed for 12 hours.」
Darkness draped itself over Hio’s head.
Within it, two red eyes flashed.
“Kkingkking.”
The eerie eyes looked down at Hio.
“Bring me their mana.”
The red scythe was lifted in a flash.
A black tidal wave surged from the front, dyeing even the sky dark.
Against it, the giant Reaper raised its scythe high.
“Take their feeble life force, their remaining stamina, every energy you can seize, and deliver it to me as mana.”
Hio had spoken, so the Reaper would carry it out.
It might not be able to take the power of the Abyss itself, but beneath it were countless beings stained by that power.
Soldiers who had been alive just moments ago, the women of ordinary villages or the heads of those villages, perhaps even knights who had once been fairly strong.
From those countless beings rushing toward this place even as their bodies twisted and changed, it would draw out every kind of energy and deliver it to him.
And so Hio, too, raised his staff high.
Countless enemies.
Near-infinite mana to be taken from them.
He had not yet learned 5th Circle necromancy, so among the necromancy spells he could manifest, this was the most powerful.
It was a spell that summoned a lava worm from hell.
“Summon Lava.”
A red mass suddenly dropped into the middle of the surging darkness.
- Kiaaaak!
That vicious worm spewed lava from its entire body and destroyed everything around it indiscriminately.
Among 4th Circle necromancy, it was a summoning spell notorious for failing to recognize even its summoner.
Of course, that was only the beginning.
“Bone Spear.”
Five bone spears brimming with mana shot forward.
Bone Spears that merely flew swiftly without even properly setting a target.
These enormous bone spears would continue piercing through everything, Abyss or monster, until the mana within them ran out.
“Explosion.”
A broad explosion rose once more in the midst of the Abyss’s ranks.
“Fire Pillar.”
A pillar of flame burned the Abyss.
“Earth Break.”
The earth rumbled, slowing their advance.
“Ray of Frost.”
“Wind Blade.”
“Flare.”
Rays of frost and rays of flame alternately burst forth, sweeping across the battlefield.
Blades of wind slaughtered the pitch-black masses in the sky.
There was no chance of running out of mana.
Whenever the Reaper’s scythe swept through empty air once, an enormous amount of energy followed at its edge.
It soon became mana and overflowed through Hio’s body.
And so he boldly discarded delicate mana control altogether.
He poured in excessive mana, widening the range of his spells, increasing their speed, and amplifying their power.
Thus what spread across the battlefield was—
Kwaaaaang—!
A pillar of flame soaring to the end of the sky. A gigantic curtain of fire formed by the merging of over a hundred Fire Pillars.
Kwaaaaang—!
Explosion, exploding endlessly with infinite mana.
Dozens of Wind Blades became a rain of blades pouring down upon the enemies, and the raging wind was like a typhoon.
The Reaper of death swung its red scythe through empty air.
Beneath it, the staff moved without rest.
The scythe swung as if reaping death, gazing toward the far distance.
Beneath it, the staff moved ceaselessly as if dancing.
In the ranks of the Abyss where darkness had been surging in, flames, ice, explosions, wind, and earthquakes appeared and vanished again and again in ways impossible to predict.
“W-we can do this!”
The soldiers and knights who had been in despair raised their swords high and shouted until their throats tore.
“We can do this!”
With newly welling hope, they shed tears and swung their swords.
“Raise your swords! Swing them with all the strength of those ready to die!”
Explosions bursting, flames soaring.
Wind raging, earth shaking, frost spraying forth.
This was light.
“We can defend it!”
A bright light blooming in the depths of despair.
Hope that they could protect their homeland and their precious ones from the oncoming darkness.
And so, even if they were to die here—
“Never retreat!”
They would not look back.
They would never retreat.
“Basterion!”
That was the kingdom of knights, Basterion.
Their conviction, which shone only before death.
“The great mage is with us!”
The red-eyed Reaper overwhelming the battlefield.
And beneath it, the great mage dancing with them.
Thus the war that continued for several more hours was finally able to end in victory.
The survivors were able to embrace one another and shed tears of joy.
A victory whose outcome in the original history was impossible to know.
Whether this was a miracle created by a single mage.
Or merely the extension of a futile struggle.
“Waaaaa!”
That, too, was still impossible to know.
* * *
“Never retreat!”
A knight’s resounding shout.
“The moment you retreat even a single step, it’s over!”
Though his voice was so loud, no attention gathered on him.
Because monsters were pouring in from every direction.
“Group Three! Switch out!”
This was the Infinite Space, where Abyss monsters poured in without end.
“Group Twenty-Seven, switch out as well!”
There, the knights of the Empire and the Possessors were using all their strength to hold back the monsters.
Damon of the Royal Knights was no exception.
“Haa… seriously, these bastards are disgustingly persistent.”
Damon looked at the swarming monsters with an expression of utter revulsion.
They truly were tiresome bastards.
At regular intervals, as if from who knew where, they came rushing in from all sides, and just as Damon had said, they were relentlessly persistent.
They attacked with their entire bodies, as if the people here were their sworn enemies, enough to unnerve even experienced knights.
“If you’ve got time to complain, get ready to switch.”
“…Already?”
Of course, that did not mean they could afford to back down.
If it came down to desperation, they were the more desperate ones.
“I’m falling back. Damon, you’re in.”
“W-wait, I still haven’t recovered—damn it!”
Melissa ignored Damon’s exaggerated complaints and lightly stepped back.
At that, Damon clicked his tongue and immediately filled the spot.
This was how they had endured the monsters’ attacks.
They had to block the endlessly pouring monsters until the two who had entered the Space of Ordeals overcame their trials and returned.
It was a place truly worthy of the name Infinite Space.
“Hey, rookie.”
Melissa, who had fallen back, turned her gaze to the youngest member of the Royal Knights standing right beside her, Claire.
“Y-yes! Senior Melissa!”
As a user of fire-type long-range skills, Claire was in charge of supporting the formation so that the circle created by the knights could be maintained.
However, in the eyes of Melissa, an Awakened One, she was full of clumsiness.
“This isn’t a battlefield where you can show off. They’re not so weak that they’ll collapse just because one person like you isn’t there. Do you understand what I mean?”
She was telling her not to step forward trying to do something for no reason.
“…Yes.”
“You don’t need to prove your usefulness, so for now, just feel it. The feeling of war, the thick killing intent they give off, and the state of mind we need in order to receive it.”
That was something she could not help feeling even if she did not want to.
Because it was happening vividly right before their eyes.
The knights thrusting out their weapons with all their might, shouting battle cries.
The monsters likewise charging at the knights with all their strength.
Even when stabbed by spears or cut by swords, those things did not care at all, and just looking at them naturally made one’s body tense.
And so she could not help asking.
“Senior Melissa.”
“Speak.”
“Why do those monsters charge in so desperately?”
“…Desperately, huh.”
At that, Melissa’s gaze also turned toward the Abyss monsters ahead.
The monsters had continued piling up, and now they were stacked so densely that their numbers could no longer be counted.
Pitch-black, grotesquely twisted Abyss monsters.
“Well, maybe those things want to live too.”
Even such cursed beings must want to live.
That was how Melissa answered.
“Anyway, that’s not what’s important, is it? What are you going to do if you’re intimidated by mere things like that? Your state of mind is carried directly into the skills you unleash, so you need to change your mindset first.”
“My mindset…”
“Yeah. Especially when it comes to flames. Try carrying the fire that fills you into your skills as well. What do you think? Can you do it?”
Claire pondered Melissa’s advice, then nodded as her red eyes sparkled.
“Yes! I’ll try!”
Perhaps because some of her tension had eased thanks to that, Claire’s skill unfolded much more smoothly.
Melissa watched it from beside her, then turned her head.
Her expression was as cold as ever, but with many thoughts in her eyes, she stared at the two gates standing tall.
‘The Space of Ordeals…’
What was happening inside those massive gates?
She did not know, but it was certainly something more difficult than she could imagine.
‘There isn’t much time.’
However, they needed to put in more effort.
Because, as Melissa judged it, there was not much time left.
Holding out was not the problem. The problem was the monsters piling up.
The formation they had now was purely for enduring, and it was not very effective at reducing the monsters’ numbers.
While the monsters accumulating in the Infinite Space were still within a manageable range, Hio and Antiphus had to come out.
Only then would they be able to squeeze out all their remaining strength at once and kill every monster.
Only after clearing the Space of Ordeals and killing all the monsters in the Infinite Space would the strategy finally be complete.
“Melissa! Switch!”
Of course, this was no time to be worrying about that.
“Hurry! These bastards really are disgustingly persistent!”
Melissa moved to switch with Damon, who had started whining again.
The temperature around her dropped coldly.
With one step, a single snowflake settled lightly.
Beneath the second step she took, snow had already piled up thickly.
In each of her hands was a sword.
“Melissa!”
In her left hand was a sword of ice that shone like a jewel.
In her right hand was a sword of pure white, soft snow.
* * *
After all the Abyss had been driven back, the scene shifted once more.
The Reaper had returned to its small and cute form, the so-called form of Kkingkking, and their surroundings were no longer a battlefield where tears and joy coexisted, but the royal castle of Basterion after night had fallen.
‘…I’m tired.’
- Of course you are. You kept casting magic without rest for hours. If it had been any other mage, their brain would have melted.
‘Neither the mana channels nor the staff would have held out. It was possible because it was me.’
- ……That is true, but somehow it feels unpleasant.
His stamina and mana were still perfectly fine, but mentally, he was utterly exhausted.
Thanks to Kkingkkingi, who brought him more power the more enemies he faced, he had experienced mana replenishing without end, but it was not an entirely pleasant experience.
He wanted to rest now, but this tactless Kkingkkingi kept pouring mana into him, so he had reflexively continued casting magic.
Thus his mental fatigue was considerable, but he could not rest.
“Lord Pavlenko.”
Because the king of Basterion was seated directly across from Hio.
There was no one else around. Only Hio and the king sat facing each other in the room.
“Please speak comfortably, Your Majesty. Are you not the ruler of Basterion?”
At Hio’s words, the king gave a bitter smile.
“How could I do that? Are you not a far more important person than I, who possess neither ability nor power?”
Then he erased the smile from his face and changed his expression again.
It was similar to the face Hio had seen before in the conference hall.
An earnest, desperate expression.
“So, Lord Pavlenko.”
And the words he spoke with that face were—
“Let us stop now and flee.”
They were pathetic words.
After finally winning, after finally being able to speak of hope, he was asking to run away again without even tiring of it.
How could he be so cowardly?
No, before that, in a time when the entire continent was fighting the Abyss, where on earth did he believe they could flee?
The answer to that question came from the king’s own mouth.
“We can go to Tetradia together!”
Tetradia, the ancient city of magic where the Tower of Magicians stood.
He was telling him they should flee there.
It was truly laughable.
The knights were risking their lives in battle, and after all his scheming for a place to escape, what he had come up with was Tetradia?
Did he truly believe that place would be safe?
Of course, apart from the sight of this pathetic king, Hio could not grant that request.
He was merely inside a memory of the past right now.
He was only undergoing a trial within the Space of Ordeal.
So naturally, he shook his head.
Then the king cried out in anguish.
“Lord Pavlenko! If it is you, surely it is possible! Please…… please!”
That sight and that sorrowful cry made the question arise once more.
Why was the king begging so desperately to flee?
Was it simply because he was afraid? Because he valued his life?
No, it did not feel that way.
There seemed to be some other reason.
“Great Pavlenko. Please…… please, I beg you like this.”
How was the king so certain that Hio possessed such ability?
Simply because his magic skills were exceptional? Because he had stopped the Abyss’s invasion with infinite mana?
No, that was not it either.
His certainty was far too strong for it to be merely that.
His eyes held the conviction that if it were him, then something like this should be only natural. And because of that, they became all the more desperate.
Facing that gaze, the faint sense of wrongness swelled in an instant.
The small sense of incongruity he had felt from the very beginning, from the moment he arrived inside the trial.
The incongruity that had never ceased in the banquet hall, in the conference hall, even in the very middle of the battlefield.
It had been everyone’s gaze.
The gazes looking at Hio.
Had they not called him Lord Pavlenko from the start, as if they knew Hio well?
Because it was within a trial, because it was a memory of the past rather than the present, he had thought that could be so.
But that was not it.
Everyone’s gaze had clearly been directed at Hio, yet it felt as though they were not looking at Hio.
They called him Pavlenko, but not a single one of them had ever called him “Hio Pavlenko.”
Not the most renowned old knight in the kingdom, not the highest-ranking noble, not even the king had dared to address him casually.
“If it is you…… If it is you, surely helping us escape would be easy……!”
Once his thoughts reached this point, what came next surfaced naturally.
It was no longer conjecture, but fact.
In the banquet hall, in the conference hall, on the battlefield.
Even at this very moment, in the king’s office, not one of the people here had been truly looking at Hio.
They had been seeing someone other than Hio, praising him, speaking to him.
There could be only one reason.
“You are the head of the great House Pavlenko.”
Abyss, 53rd Floor. The Space of Ordeal.
[Trial - The Pathetic King’s Conviction]
This was not simply a trial that showed him scenes of the past and made him experience them.
“The mage who lives in the highest place in Tetradia!”
This was the memory of the one who had been greatest during the war a thousand years ago.
The memory of a mage who must have been the most extraordinary figure in that agonizing history.
“Are you not Abelard Pavlenko!”
The Master of Tetradia’s Magic Tower.
He was inside the memories of Abelard Pavlenko.