Ataolf, one of the strongest on the continent.
If the Sword Saint had risen to the ranks of the strongest as a superhuman beyond superhumans, with a monstrous body and the 8th Rank, then Ataolf was the exact opposite.
He had accumulated strength by pushing his traits and skills to their limits. By exploiting his trait, which made him stronger the more he sowed chaos and spread terror and fear.
Of course, that could not have been all.
Simply possessing good skills and traits was not enough to stand at the summit.
Some kind of enlightenment must have been necessary as well, and Ataolf had achieved it.
—…A monster indeed.
Just as Purnel said, it was a monstrous aura.
A bitter smile hung on Hio’s lips.
“…This wasn’t in the plan.”
A streak of cold sweat ran down his back.
He had sensed the abnormality when the black mist and the Blue Flame clashed.
At a glance, it had looked as though the Blue Flame was overwhelming it, and Hio had thought that only natural… but the truth was a little different.
Before the Blue Flame could burn it, the black mist vanished first.
It had not been overpowered. It had withdrawn on its own. The moment Hio realized that, tension rose in him of its own accord.
Was the meaning not far too clear?
The master of the black mist had called all of it back.
Ataolf had appeared.
Immediately after that, Hio had warned those on the ground to run, but whether that would be of any use…
Well. He was not sure.
「Skill—‘Shout’ has been deactivated.」
「Skill—‘Illusion—God’s Arbiter’ has been deactivated.」
He deactivated the skills and called the Blue Flame back to his side.
And at almost the exact same moment, darkness—the black mist—surged in.
Darkness flooded in within an instant.
A mist so dense it could not be compared to before.
The moment this took control of the space, the entire area would already be Ataolf’s domain.
It would be in the palm of his hand.
Because Hio knew that danger all too well, he activated a skill at once.
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor(雷帝)’ has been activated.」
The power of lightning filled his entire body to the brim.
At the same time, Ataolf’s grotesque voice rang out.
A metallic sound that any living creature could not help but instinctively reject.
—Yes. Yes.
The black mist had seized control of the whole area, and that voice was being carried through the black mist.
So the entire space was resonating.
—So you are Hio Pavlenko.
Even amid the repulsive sound coming from every direction under heaven, Hio looked precisely toward where he was.
His burning white eyes stared straight at that immense presence.
Beyond the flames of the Blue Flame, within the black mist, at the place where an overwhelming aura could be felt.
There stood the leader of Black Fang, Ataolf.
The man who had stained the continent with blood for the sake of his own strength.
The strongest on the continent, and its worst criminal.
And yet…
For someone who had watched his downfall from right beside him, he was simply—
“Pitiful Ataolf.”
A pitiful human being.
* * *
—Pitiful, you say.
Ataolf began to chuckle.
At that, the mist rippled, and space vibrated.
—How amusing.
He was not an opponent against whom bluffing would work.
Even so, Hio truly thought so.
—Yes. You’ve got quite the nerve, too.
Even then, he did not let his guard down.
He did not know when or where the black mist might come crashing in.
—Have you any thought of joining me, Hio Pavlenko?
As he stared toward where Ataolf was with blazing eyes, his hand rummaged through his pocket.
The magic stones that came to hand were… not very many.
“Your sins are too deep for us to join hands, Ataolf.”
—Yes…
For an instant, the flow of the mist changed.
—What a shame.
Puhuuung—!
The sound of the black mist that had seized the space colliding with the Blue Flame.
For the first time, the highest-grade flame that burned all things had been blocked.
No—perhaps it was more accurate to say that the Blue Flame was barely holding back the mist.
—An irritating fire.
Grit—
The Blue Flame was pushed back little by little by the black mist pressing in from all directions.
After all, it was not a flame meant for protection in the first place.
A blue flame that overwhelmed and burned.
Yet the black mist directly moved by Ataolf was instead pressuring even that Blue Flame.
The blue flames were gradually pushed back.
The space around him was closing in.
Hio made a quick decision.
「Skill—‘Summon Phantom Steed’ has been deactivated.」
What he had to do was concentrate a mighty power into a single point.
「Skill—‘Blue Flame(靑炎)’ has been deactivated.」
The moment the blue flames vanished, he struck through the center of the black mist surging in.
Kwaaaang—!
He broke through with the power of the Thunder Emperor.
At the same time, dozens—hundreds—of lightning bolts crashed down on the place where Ataolf stood, but—
Kwaaaang—!
As expected, they were blocked.
—Yes. This time, lightning.
Just because he had pierced through the mist where its power was concentrated did not mean he had escaped.
Mist was spread everywhere under heaven, so the moment Ataolf perceived it, that much would immediately close in around him again.
He had to completely escape the mist’s range.
So once again, he concentrated the power of lightning.
His destination was high in the sky.
Completely outside the black curtain.
The mist clung to him tenaciously, but its power had not gathered enough to stop the Thunder Emperor once he had resolved to advance.
Kwaang—!
Spewing pure white light, he pierced through the black curtain and finally escaped Ataolf’s domain.
That did not mean he could relax.
The situation had merely changed from one where it would not have been strange for him to die at any moment to one where he could endure a little longer.
The Blue Flame could not burn it, and the lightning could not reach him.
“This is really…”
When he took out two magic stones and replenished his mana, they soon lost their light and crumbled.
Now, only a few magic stones remained.
He had to fight while conserving as much mana as possible, but was this an opponent who would allow that?
“…This is dangerous.”
Kwaaaang—!
With a thunderclap that tore through the air, he moved from where he stood.
Filling the space he had left was Ataolf’s mist.
The black mist, which had somehow already followed him close by and was wrapping around him again, contained immense power.
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor(雷帝)’ has been deactivated.」
「Skill—‘Feather Fall’ has been activated.」
Two enormous pairs of wings rose from his back.
Feather Fall, a skill that drastically reduced the speed of one’s descent.
—Catch him.
Ataolf’s command rang through the darkened sky.
He had escaped Ataolf’s domain, but the black mist was constantly pressing in from all directions to reconstruct that domain.
「Skill—‘Feather Fall’ has been deactivated.」
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor(雷帝)’ has been activated.」
Kwaang—!
At the same time as he avoided those viscous hands—
「Skill—‘Thunder Emperor(雷帝)’ has been deactivated.」
「Skill—‘Blue Flame(靑炎)’ has been activated.」
He fired blue flames through a gap in the tangled mist.
「Skill—‘Summon Phantom Steed’ has been activated.」
The Phantom Steed caught his falling body, and he rapidly moved away to avoid the black mist.
At the same time, the Blue Flame—
The Blue Flame, shot out with Hio’s will fully embedded within it, did not clash with the oncoming mist but dodged this way and that as it advanced.
The flame shot forward like that, and at the place where Hio expected Ataolf to be—
Kwaaaang—!
It unleashed the greatest firepower it possessed.
Blue flames soared high into the dark night sky.
「Skill—‘Blue Flame(靑炎)’ has been deactivated.」
But in the place where the Blue Flame vanished—
—Yes. So this is what it means to be a mage.
There was a black membrane surrounding Ataolf.
The pitch-black mist curtain, like an abyss, was so solid that it did not shake in the slightest.
That was the problem.
Ataolf’s barrier could not be pierced even with the power of the Thunder Emperor or the Blue Flame.
Not by hundreds of lightning bolts.
Not by the Blue Flame burned to its utmost. Ataolf’s body had not received even the slightest wound.
Hio could tell because no penalty message had appeared.
…There was something.
No matter how much he had accumulated strength through his trait, something was different.
The feeling was different. The power contained within it was different.
The Thunder Emperor and Blue Flame he used were surely the same highest-grade skills. Yet the power he felt from that was beyond them.
It was not something that could be measured simply by grade.
‘So this is… different from the game after all.’
One who had truly realized his own skill.
The power of one who had obtained something beyond grade.
Hio took out magic stones and quickly replenished his mana, but even those were nearly gone.
Even though he had used Thunder Emperor and Blue Flame only when necessary to conserve as much mana as possible, the rate of consumption was tremendous.
—What is next, Hio Pavlenko?
Even so, he had to keep moving.
The moment he was caught even once by the black mist surging in again, it would be over.
With his poor stats and insufficient defensive techniques, he would die so easily it would be absurd.
Mounted on the Phantom Steed—
At times, lightning.
At times, flames.
He would have to keep fighting like that.
What he needed was a single opportunity.
To cut down the darkness that could not be pierced.
One single, sharp chance.
* * *
“Anyone who can move, move quickly!”
On the ground, a sudden line of evacuees stretched long.
Under the command of the professors who remained, they were trying to leave this battlefield while carrying the injured on their backs.
“We don’t know when the mist will descend again, so hurry!”
The fortunate thing was that the dreadful black mist had gone up into the sky.
It was wrapped high above, so they were trying to get as far away as possible in that window of time.
The thunder that shook the heavens and the black mist enveloping it filled those below with a terrible unease.
Before beings no different from natural disasters, they were powerless.
“Claire…”
At the end of that line of refugees were three girls.
Claire, Ravena, and even Roland.
“…Yeah.”
Claire, who had remained until the very end to check whether there were any other survivors and had been looking up at the sky, reluctantly turned her steps.
Kwaaaang—!
With a noise that tore through the air, the sky flashed just then.
A baptism of lightning lit up, if only for an instant, the dense mist enveloping the sky.
She did not know how many times something like that had already happened.
How many hours had the battle been going on now? She could not even guess what was taking place.
Amid the descending lightning and the surging flames, only the enormous wings and the familiar form of the divine beast flickered into view from time to time.
She could not tell at all who had gained the upper hand or what state they were in.
And so Claire forced her unmoving feet forward.
Because there was nothing she could do by being here.
Because she could not even properly peer into that black mist, she forced herself to turn around at the very rear of the evacuation line.
And then, at that moment, someone suddenly appeared beside her.
A presence abruptly sensed in a space where there had clearly been no one.
At that, Claire’s head turned.
“…!”
Her eyes widened in shock.
“Let me ask you something.”
Blond hair that evoked a mane.
The eyes of a fierce beast resembling a lion.
“Is there, by any chance, a mage in that place?”
The great Sword Saint, Vitalianus Mahel.
* * *
—Yes. Hio Pavlenko.
Listening to Ataolf’s voice vibrating with a hum, Hio rummaged through his pocket.
—You are exhausted.
But what he wanted did not come to hand. He had run out of magic stones.
Even though he had tried to conserve as much as possible by using Feather Fall, Levitation, Summon Phantom Steed, and the like, the end had finally come.
Because his opponent was who he was.
One of the strongest on the continent.
The worst criminal, and at the same time, one who had truly awakened.
To try to conserve mana any more than this while facing such a person would itself be arrogance and carelessness.
—Yes.
Ataolf was far too unharmed. Not a single wound on him.
Of course, the same was true for Hio, but compared to the little mana he had left, the black mist was still the same as it had been at the beginning.
—Hio Pavlenko. Choose.
Only then did Ataolf reveal himself before Hio. At a glance, he had the impression of an ordinary middle-aged man.
Were it not for the long sword scar carved across his face, he would have looked like an ordinary person.
—Will you die here? Or will you join me?
At the still-unpleasant voice, Hio grimaced.
“Your voice really is awful to listen to.”
Even at that provocation, Ataolf did not so much as blink.
He merely asked once more.
—Will you die?
The mist still surrounded him.
In the end, Hio had not pierced through the black membrane protecting Ataolf at close range.
To pierce that, he needed a power even more concentrated than the Thunder Emperor.
Fundamentally, he needed power meant to break something.
That was why Hio had waited all this time.
He had poured in every last magic stone and wandered endlessly through the black mist, waiting.
For only the moment his opponent let his guard down.
He had made him confirm it until his mana was worn down, and down, and down.
He had shown it to him dozens of times over.
My lightning, my flames, will never reach you.
In the end, they cannot pierce through the dense mist at your side.
You are… safe.
And had he not finally succeeded?
Ataolf trusted the curtain of mist around him, withdrew the mist nearby, and was approaching him.
Hio could not stop the corners of his mouth from rising into a grin.
“Who knows… I’m not too familiar with what dying is like, so let me ask someone.”
The result of carelessness would be brutal.
“What do you think?”
With a willing heart, he asked his friend.
“Teordo.”
Behind Ataolf’s back, a black gleam flashed in a pair of eyes.