Illusion—God’s Arbiter.
A skill in which magic created to deceive an opponent’s eyes meshed with Hio’s trait, maximizing its effect.
The heavens open.
「Illusion—‘God’s Arbiter’ has been activated.」
It was no wonder one would feel that way.
For a cluster of pure white light poured down from the sky, cleaving the darkened air.
Within the space seized by black mist.
Something enormous, formed of light, revealed itself as it split that darkness apart.
Sharp light cut through the mist and opened the heavens.
—Worthless wraiths of Ataolf.
What slowly descended was an enormous sword radiating light.
That alone would already have overwhelmed everyone upon the ground, yet the swords of judgment were not one alone.
—I am here.
Sacred swords of light appeared one by one, piercing through the sky, the clouds, and the darkness.
Their number reached several dozen.
Truly, God’s Arbiter. Sacred swords worthy of that grandiose name.
They were the punishment of a wrathful god.
Dozens of enormous swords revealing their majesty, and beneath them, a golden giant standing in place.
And between them, a pure white divine beast floating serenely.
The one riding atop it was.
“The mage, Hio Pavlenko.”
Everyone on the ground looked up at the sky.
Alcmion, who had been swinging his fists as he coughed blood.
Silbert, who had been despairing while trying to plan for the future.
The people who had been so terrified they had their heads pressed to the ground.
The three girls who had just climbed up from the basement.
All were overwhelmed by the dozens of swords of light that slowly revealed themselves, piercing through the darkness everywhere.
And so they could only look up.
“Top-priority elimination target.”
However, the executives of Black Fang.
The wraiths of black mist, stripped of emotion, were different.
In toneless voices, they looked only at the target to be eliminated.
Even if they were overwhelmed by the swords of light, they did not retreat.
No such order had been embedded in their minds.
“Eliminate.”
They moved, even knowing their bodies would be burned away by the blazing swords of light.
Though their instincts made their bodies tremble before the majesty filling their vision, they activated their abilities.
Those who could fly lifted themselves into the air.
Those who could not became black mist and surged upward all at once.
“Wh-where do you think you’re going!”
Alcmion, belatedly coming to his senses, threw himself forward, but his aged body failed to reach where he wished and toppled over.
His stamina was spent, and his wounds were too severe.
“……Stop them!”
Silbert hurriedly gathered what mana he had left, but it was likewise useless.
At most, he sent one or two people crashing to the ground.
The things surging toward the sky already numbered in the hundreds.
No, it looked as though every black mist on the battlefield was rushing in.
Their final target was only one.
The mage, Hio Pavlenko.
—Poor wraiths, unable to die, unable to live.
As Hio watched the black tide rushing toward him, he raised his staff high.
Mana gathered, and will moved.
「Skill—‘Azure Flame (靑炎)’ has been activated.」
Dozens of great swords descended, piercing the darkness.
The blue flames of Azure Flame settled upon the tips of those swords.
—Burn.
He pointed toward the ground with the tip of the staff he had raised high.
He pointed at the black mist surging upward.
And at the same time, blue flame shot from the tips of the swords.
A supreme flame that burned away every last bit of the surging mist, the darkness.
Blue light fired from above to below.
Black mist rushing from below to above.
In an instant, the blue flame and the black mist collided.
Yet despite the collision of two immense forces, the great impact or noise one might have expected did not resound.
Because it was one-sided.
What overwhelmed all else was the blue flame. Azure Flame (靑炎).
The black mist that faced it could not offer any meaningful resistance and melted away. Crumbled apart.
The blue flame devoured the black mist rising against it in the blink of an eye and descended without hesitation, then, as though unsatisfied, spread even farther.
Driving away the black mist, it became a blue sea and advanced into the distance.
Toward the monsters remaining on the ground.
To burn away even their bodies completely.
Very quietly.
So swiftly that they could not even feel pain.
That was the will of the one who wielded Azure Flame.
The blue flame carried that emotion wholly within it, burning all darkness and driving away the black mist.
It did not take long for silence to fall over the battlefield.
“……I knew he was a madman, but.”
After confirming that much, Silbert sank down onto the ground.
Was it emptiness at something utterly beyond his reach?
Or relief that, in the end, he had not run away?
“Is he really trying to become a god?”
The sky he looked up at while sitting there.
Blue flames purifying the darkness, and the golden giant looking down over them.
The sacred swords that had fired the flames.
And the one who had done all of it sat upon a white divine beast, looking down proudly upon the earth.
“Wahahaha!”
Alcmion, lying sprawled on the ground, stared at the sky and burst into mad laughter.
“Hahahaha!”
Each time, the blood pooled at his mouth splattered in every direction, but he paid it no mind at all.
“Are you watching?”
He merely spoke.
“Hawkin.”
Toward the corpse whose neck had been severed, its eyes wide open.
“Benoit.”
Toward the one whose heart had been pierced by dozens of needle-like stingers.
“Oliver.”
Toward his old comrades, already dead, one with his head crushed so badly his form could no longer be recognized.
He kept speaking, even knowing no answer would return. He burst into laughter.
“Hahahaha! Isn’t it good to be alive? To see a miracle like this!”
Unlike his mouth that kept laughing, his two eyes looked terribly sorrowful.
“So why did you have to hurry off like that?”
He raised one arm and covered both eyes.
“……I’m sorry.”
The laughter soon turned into sobs.
“……You. Tell me.”
Roland Bernstein muttered as though his soul had left him.
“What… in the world is that?”
His gaze fixed on the sky, the words he murmured in a daze were clearly a question directed at Claire.
But no answer came back.
Claire, and Ravena beside her, wore expressions similar to Roland’s.
They were looking up at the sky seized by the swords of light while feeling similar emotions.
What could they possibly say?
With what words could this, this feeling, be expressed?
Would awe be suitable?
Or would fear, surpassing even that, be more appropriate?
“What the hell is he…?”
At his first appearance, she had simply thought of him as an acquaintance of Silbert’s.
Though it was strange that he was observing a combat practicum that not just anyone could enter, it had certainly not been enough to bother her greatly.
But what in the world was that……?
She had never heard or seen that such a thing was possible.
Was it not something that only a god up in the heavens could do?
Was it not the image of an arbiter carrying out divine judgment?
“I……”
Claire muttered as she looked at Hio, high up in the sky.
“I, up there……”
Hio was in a place so high her hand could not reach.
She had known he was strong.
But now she understood it even more clearly.
That shuddering strength. A power she could not even compare herself to.
Would there truly be a place for her at Hio’s side?
Could she grow enough that even this wondrous scene would not surprise her?
“Without fail…!”
No, she would.
Without fail, she would stand beside him and look upon the world from the same height.
That was something that made her heart tremble just thinking about it, and a goal that made it pound.
Claire clenched both fists so tightly they seemed ready to shatter.
Vowing that one day she would surely do so, she stared intently at Hio, who floated alone.
……That was why Claire was able to see it.
When everyone had had their eyes stolen by the swords of light that dominated the sky.
When they were entranced by the blue flames ruling the earth, Claire alone had been looking up only at Hio, and so she noticed.
Hio’s gaze, fixed unwaveringly on a single place.
The somehow ominous atmosphere.
Unlike everyone else, who was relieved that this hell had ended, he was still tense.
She realized that although all the mist around them had cleared, the enormous black curtain surrounding the entire academy was still perfectly intact.
And the moment she noticed that.
—Everyone.
The giant’s mouth opened once more.
—Run.
* * *
Before he had been transmigrated into this world, Nam Tae-min had been a fairly ordinary person.
Not a perfectionist, not excessively fussy about cleanliness, just an ordinary person who got angry by himself while playing games.
Tap, tap—
“Did they seriously make this bastard to be beatable?”
Nam Tae-min grimaced hard and tapped the desk with his mouse.
A single line of text was displayed on the monitor he was staring at.
「You have died.」
“Damn it.”
What kind of garbage game was this?
How could a single NPC possess such absurd traits and skills?
“Tch…… This game’s going to go under soon, isn’t it?”
So those words were not a guess, but a certainty.
Ventair Online.
He had been playing it with decent enjoyment for nearly three years…… but the farther it went, the stranger it became.
Far too much absurd power had been given to an NPC who was essentially the leader of an enemy faction.
“Was his name Ataolf?”
Black Fang, which he ruled, was itself the problem.
The organization known as Black Fang was actually composed entirely through the ability of one man, Ataolf. Wasn’t that already ridiculous?
The so-called executives, and every individual belonging to Black Fang beneath them, were all, in truth, Ataolf’s black mist—that was the setting.
Originally, they had been normal people, but after joining Black Fang, they had become like that through Ataolf’s ability……
“There has to be a limit. Does that even make sense?”
Those sorts of guys popped out everywhere, causing chaos and spreading infamy.
If it ended there, it would at least be better, but using the infamy spread in that way as nourishment, Ataolf’s ability grew endlessly stronger.
That worst of criminals was accumulating power that could truly be called the strongest on the continent.
If such an Ataolf appeared in person with the black mist in tow, users and NPCs alike were simply slaughtered without exception.
The character Nam Tae-min played, “Gochu Is Coming,” had also had the misfortune of running into Ataolf and dying.
“Getting killed by an NPC…… It’s so miserable I’d better hurry up and get stronger.”
Even while muttering that, he moved the mouse again and clicked the revive button.
The background visible behind that message was a deep, dense black.
It was not an effect from having died, but the effect of Ataolf’s black mist filling the area.
It was the trace left behind by that ability, one he did not even dare think of resisting.
* * *
It was likely no coincidence that memories of the past suddenly surfaced.
—Everyone, run.
With those words as its last, the golden giant vanished.
The dozens of swords of light that had filled the sky also disappeared in an instant.
The surroundings sank into darkness once more.
“……Run……”
Silbert muttered unconsciously as he slowly rose from where he sat.
Because this was a familiar darkness that called up memories of the past.
The attack he had thought was over had, in truth, not ended.
No, in truth, it was only beginning now.
“Run!”
Thoughts such as where to were meaningless.
As far away as possible. No matter what, far away.
The black mist had already arrived right before them.
It was coming.
A living hell was coming.
The strongest and worst mist on the continent was surging in.
“I said don’t dawdle, run!”
Silbert strained the veins in his neck as he shouted in every direction.
“Run……!”
But was it already too late?
The space had become one where they could barely see an inch ahead.
Before they knew it, the black mist had seized the area right beside them.
The air began to tremble, and the black mist vibrated.
Then what resounded was space itself.
—Yes. Yes.
A chilling voice, as though scraping against the eardrums.
A metallic sound coming from the black mist, its source unknown.
—So you are Hio Pavlenko.
At the sound that seemed to whisper from the mist right beside them, every hair on their bodies stood on end. No will to resist arose.
No matter how much he had honed his psychokinesis, could he truly stop this black mist?
What surged over him was helplessness.
And despair.
He had thought he had nearly reached the ranks of the strongest on the continent.
He had believed that if he only succeeded in evolving to a highest-tier skill, he would be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
……What a foolish delusion that had been.
The thing he felt directly against his skin was a presence on an entirely different dimension. An overwhelming power that could take his life at any moment with a mere twitch of its hand.
The reason his body trembled was surely not only mana exhaustion.
And so Silbert looked up at the sky.
Though there was already nothing visible but darkness, he knew the light that had pierced it.
Because he had witnessed a miraculous wonder only moments ago, he instinctively looked up at the sky, chasing some hope.
Kwaaang—!
And he shuddered.
What he saw were countless lightning strikes lurking within the darkness. Ponderous thunder filling the background. Flashing bolts of lightning.
And.
—Pitiful.
Two eyes burning pure white.
—Ataolf.
Eyes like lightning, looking down even upon the black mist.