A thousand years ago, there was a war against the Abyss.
But could anyone swear that it had been the first war?
What if there had already been one war against the Abyss, and the place named the End of the World had been that fierce battlefield?
It more or less fits, does it not?
This place was the End of the World.
A world that had already perished before the present world called the Verden Continent was ever recorded.
One could imagine that here, the gods themselves had stepped forward.
They had either descended directly upon this land, this continent, manifested here, or created their own great warriors.
In whatever form, they must have extended their mighty power across this continent and stood against the Abyss.
This was the result.
They may have held back the Abyss, but the continent was destroyed.
Their immense power had been far too burdensome for frail living beings, and civilization, along with countless other things, must have collapsed and vanished in an instant.
That was Kreutzwald’s conjecture.
Hio was of much the same mind.
Otherwise, how could this dreadful world possibly exist?
“Hm? Isn’t that right?”
An answer came to his sly question.
—Gegegegegek!
The owner of the answer was a monster that resembled a crab.
A crab with many legs on either side.
The kind of crab one could commonly see by the seaside.
The problem was that this crab looked to be well over two meters tall, and it could move freely forward, backward, left, and right.
Very quickly, at that.
Tadadak!
And despite moving like that, the sound of its feet touching the ground was so faint that one would not hear it without listening closely.
If one were not already prepared for its attack, one’s body would be sliced apart by blade-like legs without even knowing one had died.
But Hio had already sensed it, knew its attack patterns, and had more than enough preparation against it.
Pak!
He leaped through space using Blink, and the creature’s legs merely cut through empty air.
That was not the end of it.
At the spot where Hio had vanished with Blink, flames ignited with a chiiik— and soon after.
Kwaaaang—!
A tremendous explosion burst forth.
The explosion occurred at the same time it swallowed the place where Hio had been, so the monster should not have had any time to dodge, yet even amid that, perhaps sensing something off, it twisted its body to avoid as much of the blast as possible.
Even so, the position of the explosion had been exquisite, and it had no choice but to take an enhanced Explosion right beside it. As a result, its two most threatening pincers went flying far away.
“Ah, no! Those delicious claws!”
Hio merely said, aghast.
“...I made a mistake.”
He was not talking about the mistake of sending the claw meat flying.
His original goal had been to detonate the Explosion inside the creature’s body.
If that happened, the body portion of that delicious crab meat would be completely burned and become inedible, but since the thing was larger than a person and had a high yield, there would still be plenty to eat.
...No, that was not the point.
The best course had been to end it quickly and as quietly as possible, but had he not failed at that?
It was so fast that hitting it was no easy task, and its shell was so hard that it could endure several enhanced Explosions.
Most importantly, if he could not finish it quickly, the other monsters nearby would notice and swarm over.
It was night now, and the surroundings were sure to be crawling with monsters.
In that case, there was only one method.
Finish it as quickly as possible, then immediately flee back inside the barrier.
—Gegegegegegek!
“Yeah, I know you’re a crab, punk.”
He used Blink again, this time to move behind the creature as it charged at him once more.
When using a complicated spell like Blink, two spells at the same time were his limit.
So his plan was to first widen the distance, then prepare two other spells simultaneously.
—Gegege?
The monster let out a dim-witted sound when Hio disappeared from its blind spot again in an instant, but that would not last long.
So without a pause, he immediately prepared his magic.
—Gegege! Gegek!
As expected, the monster instantly noticed Hio’s presence and turned around to rush toward him.
Unfortunately for it, however, Hio’s magic was already complete.
This time, too, the prepared spells numbered two.
Entangle, a 4th Circle spell that restrained a target using grass and trees.
Wind Blade, a 5th Circle wind-attribute spell... except now, under Kreutzwald’s instruction, its cutting power had been further increased.
“Let’s hurry this up. I’m hungry.”
—Gegegegek!
Tree stems and vines shot up abruptly, stopping the creature’s movement, if only for a moment.
Of course, it lasted only an instant before they were shredded to pieces by its sharp legs, but that brief moment was all he had needed.
The blades of wind were already flying toward the legs with which it stood upon the ground.
With a chilling slice— one of its legs was severed.
Its shell was ineffective to attack, so he had aimed for the gaps, the joints.
—Gegegege?
The creature’s body tilted toward the side of the severed leg.
Without even taking the time to watch the result, he prepared the next spell.
He could now manifest up to three relatively simple spells simultaneously.
What poured out roughly was mana.
What spun madly were five rings.
Three spells were created by drawing the power of the patterns to their utmost limit.
All of them were 5th Circle Wind Blades with their cutting power raised to the maximum.
Swaaa—
Leaving behind only a faint sound of tearing air, the three blades fired out at once and began to butcher the monster’s body.
To be precise, they singled out only the joints and split them apart.
—Gegek! Gegegegek!
The creature shouted something, but to Hio, it sounded only like the noise of snow crab being deliciously steamed.
Only after the three Wind Blades struck the monster once more were all of its legs severed.
Having lost every leg, the creature merely blinked its eyes atop its delicious-looking body.
A crab that had lost its mobility and could only sit still.
What prey could be more delicious... no, easier than this?
“Farewell.”
The creature could not evade, so this time, he aimed inside its body and activated Explosion.
Kwaaaang—!
Staring blankly at the scattering crab meat, Hio gulped.
‘...I’m hungry.’
He was hungry.
There was nothing to eat at this damned End of the World.
On days when he hunted one of these things, which tasted just like crab, things were at least a little better, but yesterday had truly been...
“This isn’t the time for this!”
Countless presences were being caught in the detection magic he had spread wide.
Every monster in the area that had sensed Hio’s existence was converging on this place.
“Run!”
He had to run without looking back.
“After I grab the claws!”
But he had to take the claws that had flown off earlier.
As Hio cast Blink in succession toward the claws, a grin kept slipping across his lips.
“Hehehe... If I hurry back, throw them straight into the fire, then scoop the meat out with my hands...”
The thought of the pure white, plump claw meat made his mouth water on its own.
Just one claw was as big as his torso, so at the very least, he would not go hungry today.
As he moved while thinking that, a wave of sober realization came over him before he knew it.
“What the hell am I doing...?”
Was he not training madly to eat rather than diligently training to improve his skills?
On days he failed to hunt, he had to starve, and if he did not want to starve, he had to work hard to improve his ability.
After all, his damned third master would never do anything as bothersome as going out to hunt for his one and only disciple.
Of course, even that thought flew far away the moment he held a claw in each hand.
“Ehehehe... Slurp. Just wait a little longer, crab meat.”
It had already been a month since he came to the End of the World.
Hio’s tenacity for the sake of eating was far beyond imagination, and before he knew it, he had grown to the point where he could manifest three spells simultaneously.
* * *
Tadak— Tadadadak—
In the yard of Kreutzwald’s old house, flames blazed high.
Even so, that light could not stretch far and only barely illuminated the surroundings.
The sky and everything in every direction were stained pitch-black.
The old house standing in the midst of it, and the area around it, could at least be called a place fit for human habitation.
All the ash powder on the ground had been blown away, and the ash drifting through the air had also been blocked from approaching by a Barrier.
It was the result of Hio using magic himself.
The campfire that almost reached the roof, and the Barrier that kept ash powder from intruding.
Clearing away the ash piled on the ground, bringing back those delicious claws, purifying and preparing them for eating—all of it was Hio’s doing.
Inside the house-sized bonfire Hio was staring at, the spoils he had just acquired were cooking.
The most delicious, plump claw meat in the world.
“Slurp... I can’t take it anymore!”
A rich, savory, salty aroma spread through the air.
In the end, just as Hio could no longer endure and was about to run forward, his body was forced to a halt.
“Let it roast a little longer.”
It was because of Kreutzwald, who was leisurely reading a book right beside him.
In his hand, though no one knew when he had picked it up, was a wooden staff aimed precisely at Hio.
Unlike Hio, who was sitting on the ground, staring into the fire and drooling as he waited for it to cook, the man who had been relaxed in a rocking chair and looking through a book had stepped in to restrain him.
From the perspective of Hio, who had starved for an entire day, it was only natural for his eyes to go wild, master or not.
“Hey, old man.”
“...”
“No, Master. Your disciple would like to fill his stomach a bit, so would you please release this?”
“As your master sees it, it seems it needs to cook more.”
“Your disciple says it’s perfect right now.”
“If it is undercooked, it may upset your stomach.”
“...You’re not planning to eat it, are you?”
Could he seriously be intending to eat it?
That damned third master, an old, thirteen-hundred-year-old monster, a necromancer and dark mage with no conscience?
At Hio’s question, asked with an extremely crooked gaze, Kreutzwald quietly turned a page in his book instead of answering.
That damned old book he had gotten from who knew where.
“No, excuse me. I starved all day yesterday, and today I barely managed to get two claws, and now what? I did the hunting, I lit the fire, I did the cleaning, I did the purification. Huh? And now you’re saying you’ll eat with me? When you don’t even need nutritional intake in the first place!”
Kreutzwald spoke lightly to the fuming Hio, as if tossing the words out.
“Were they not deeds done with magic you learned from me?”
“...”
Hio was left speechless.
Now that he thought about it, that was true.
The flames roaring before his eyes were, in truth, the 1st Circle spell Fire.
The reason a flame that should originally have been the size of a fist could burn so tall and large was, again, thanks to Kreutzwald’s instruction.
A magical alteration that enlarged only the range without touching the power of the basic formula.
When he had first learned this, it had struck him as a fresh shock that magic could be altered so easily in this world.
Was that all?
Even now, was he not maintaining Fire while also spreading a Barrier widely around them?
The reason he could be so calm while simultaneously manifesting and maintaining two spells was also because of what he had learned from him.
The same went for developing the skill to hunt monsters using only magic.
It meant that, though Hio disliked it, Kreutzwald was fulfilling his role as a master better than anyone.
“...Well, then, one leg at least... I can’t eat two anyway.”
“It makes me feel rewarded for raising a disciple.”
Only then did the energy binding Hio’s body release with a snap.
It had not been magic that bound him.
He knew that because he had suffered it several times already.
This was pure mana.
It was not something transformed by drawing out the power of the patterns.
It was mana alone, woven and moved like rope.
One could call it terribly inefficient and wasteful, but because it was pure mana, it was nearly impossible to unravel with magic, and because it did not go through a troublesome process, it was an uncanny power that shot out almost at the same time as thought.
And well, to that monster who had lived more than a thousand years, this degree of mana waste must be like child’s play.
“Your expression is extremely insolent. What are you thinking?”
“Pardon? Nothing at all. Please eat, Master.”
“Kkeul kkeul... Let us do that.”
At last, the claw was pulled from the fire.
Steam rose from it in wisps, and beneath it gleamed pale white flesh.
As Hio plunged his hand toward that delicious crab meat, he made a vow once more.
“Ah, hot—fuck!”
Someday, he would definitely surpass this monster of a master as well.