Chapter 15: “Crazy Face” Misery Mosery

Chapter 15:
“Crazy Face” Misery Mosery

 

“WAIT,” I cut in, “I’m getting in on this too.”

These guys were in their own little world, being all dramatic at each other, and that wasn’t fair! What kind of torture was this, not being able to jump into such a fun-looking fight?

“Join in or don’t,” Misery Mosery said. “It matters little to me—you’re all dead regardless. The outcome remains the same. The world must end.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Anyway, I’m in.”

“Boy,” said Elfeit in a low voice, whispering in my ear, “it pains me to say this, but I need your help. Not all the villagers have gotten to safety yet. If we lose control of this situation, it will be trouble.”

Yeah, he was definitely the village chief for a reason. Well, I wasn’t interested in more lives being lost than

necessary. Okay, we’d prioritize the evacuation of the elves before we fought. That seemed pretty straightforward.

Aw man, I was still feeling real fired up after my battle with the monster earlier. Maybe this Misery Mosery guy could give me a little fun.

“Whisper what you will, it matters not. You’re dead men walking.” Misery Mosery pointed his arms at me and Elfeit both, one arm toward each of us.

“Wh—” Something I couldn’t even see flew toward me, and I leapt to the side. It grazed my cheek, and warm blood trickled down.

I sensed death in that moment. I didn’t think there was any way I could’ve blocked whatever that was. His ability?

“Oho, the impertinent heathen has some moves, doesn’t he? If you’d just be obedient, you’d die easier,” said Misery Mosery in the musical, admiring tone of a pet owner pleased to see a trick. Irritating bastard.

“Take a page out of your friend’s book,” he added. “He knows how to take a hit when he deserves one.”

“You—what did you do?” A cleanly bisected wall of earth stood before Elfeit—he’d thrown it up to defend himself. Had he failed somehow? Though he’d moved quickly enough to avoid a direct hit, blood poured from his torso, staining his immaculate white robes.

“Your weak defenses couldn’t hope to stop my ‘Blade of Nothingness.’ It is impossible to defend against. This most powerful of abilities, sweetly granted to me by the Great Dark God, will enable me to bring this world to its end.”

“Wow, dude, you’re pretty goddamn stupid.”

I couldn’t stop myself. I mean, that was just too much, you know? What absolute idiot stood around openly blabbing about his own ability for everyone to hear? Apparently the kind who’d stand right in front of us in his super cool and definitely not tryhard mask.

Misery Mosery stopped moving, and his look of pure rage seethed even through his mask. “You…you mock me? Mock me and you mock my God. Such transgressions cannot be forgiven.”

He hurled another Sharp Thing of Not Stuff or whatever right at me. I ducked with perfect timing. Not a scratch.

“You… What did you do? What is this?”

“Nothing special. Just the result of earnest training.”

First of all, the Blades of Nothingness (ugh, of course I remembered the name—it was just grossly edgelordy!) weren’t all that fast. I mean, no matter how “impossible” to see something was, I’d been constantly training myself to sharpen my senses. If I could feel the wind as it moved, I could dodge. Maybe he could’ve caught me by surprise at first, but now? Come on!

“Sorry, it’s over.” I rushed him, trying to get in close for a punch.

“Don’t you dare look down on me!”

He blasted a fireball at me, but that was nothing. I plowed right through, taking the shortest distance between point me and point jackass.

“Your arrogance will get you killed,” he snarled.

“If you think you can kill me, just try!” I shouted back.

He launched three Blades of Nothingness right through the fireball. So now he wanted to catch me by surprise, huh? Kinda clever, I guess.

“That ain’t gonna stop me.” I leapt through the air and went flat, slipping right between the blades. No backing down. I was going to keep it up, get in, and pound him.

“That is what I meant by arrogance, heathen.”

“Huh?!”

A Blade of Nothingness suddenly changed trajectory and hurtled right at me. I struggled to kick through the air and get away, but my air speed wasn’t fast enough, not to dodge that blade.

“Great Dark God, I deliver this soul unto you. Shower it with your usual mercy! Annihilate it completely.” Misery Mosery prayed.

Damn! How could I get cornered by a guy who calmly closed his eyes and muttered a prayer in the middle of a fight? I might have to lose a limb again if I wanted to win this.

No sooner did I think that than I heard Elfeit’s voice. “Hm!”

My body suddenly launched up into the sky. “Uh?”

The ground bulged up, and my body was lifted higher and higher. The Blade of Nothingness glanced off a pillar of earth—right where I’d stood moments before. I twirled into the air, putting some distance between me and the blades, and the tower of earth collapsed. The blades flew toward me for a moment before breaking form and disappearing.

Looked like they had about a thirty-foot range in a straight line—not very far. If I were more used to fighting guys with that kind of range, I could’ve probably handled the rest easy. Then again, there was no way I’d come out alive if I took a hit from one of those blades head-on.

“I thought you were in danger, so I lent a hand,” said Elfeit. “Perhaps that was unnecessary?”

“Nah, thanks for the save.” He was still alive, huh? I’d thought for sure he was dead.

“You have spared a life marked for annihilation. You… How can you not see the splendor of the Great Dark God and His teachings?!” Misery Mosery shrieked, tearing at his own mask. Blood flowed from his mask as he scratched and tore, and he made a hideous, grating sound.

Kzzzzzzzzzzzzzt…

“I put my faith in the Almighty Wind God, and no other. Our God is nothing like your bloody, narrow-minded demon,” Elfeit snarled.

Suddenly, the ground beneath Misery Mosery’s feet rose up and surrounded him. Was this Elfeit’s earth magic?

“Quick, boy—finish this!”

“On it!”

I closed the distance between myself and Misery Mosery once again. Amidst the clamor from the trees—they’d stopped their “doon” sounds and were humming now, as if listening to our battle—I heard the murmuring voice of Misery Mosery through the wall of dirt he was trapped within.

“O Great Dark God, you’ve come for me. I’m so glad you’ve come!”

Wait, what in the world was this guy going on about now? Was he—

“Back, boy, get back! His magical energy is swelling!”

The wall of earth exploded. From the dust and rubble emerged Misery Mosery, soaked in blood. Crimson flowed steadily from behind his mask, poured out, soaking his clothes a sick, sticky red.

“Great Dark God…you’ve come. Great Dark God…you’ve come.” Misery Mosery’s voice was louder than before, shriller. Even though he wobbled unsteadily on his feet, I saw no clear opening for attack.

“I’m getting a real bad feeling,” I said, “like things just got interesting.”

“It matters not what manner of monster we face. So long as the Almighty Wind God is our ally, victory belongs to us.”

My heart beat harder and harder, pumping hot blood throughout my body in time with my emotions. Oh yeah, I was in a fight to the death right now. The thrill I felt, it was like I could be dead the very next moment. Time compressed. My body shuddered.

“Don’t you think that’s enough stalling?” I asked.

Elfeit nodded. “Yes. I’m sure most everyone has evacuated safely by now. We no longer have to fear getting the villagers involved.”

“Cool. Time to give this everything I got.” I clenched my fist.

This. Was. Awesome. Oh yeah, I was fired up. The sound of my heart made me feel so alive. Yeah, this was living! This was what it meant to be alive!

I kicked off the ground and propelled myself toward Misery Mosery.

“Great Dark God…let’s kill them all. Let’s kill and kill and kill, one by one by one, until we find there are none left. The more I kill, the more virtuous I become. Rotting world, reeking. Make it right. Fix it, one by one,” Misery Mosery babbled that and more while sending another Blade of Nothingness attack flying my way.

The speed of his attack was way faster now, and seven blades careened toward me—he’d really upped his game, huh?

I grinned. What a nice pace. Good effort. Wouldn’t be fun otherwise, heh.

“HOOOAAAHHH!” I pounded the ground, used the surface like a shield—

“Great Dark God…”

—and, using the ground as a distraction, dodged behind Misery Mosery. The blades seemed to lose track of me too, flying on straight ahead.

“Sleep, monster!” Elfeit roared, unleashing lightning magic on Misery Mosery.

Oh, right, forgot about that guy a bit. Well, with this distraction—if I was gonna hit this jerk, it had to be now! I swung my fist, not making a sound.

“Great Dark God…aaaaahhhHHHHH—H—H—H!”

Misery Mosery didn’t move his body at all, just his neck. It rotated 180 degrees to face me.

No, I was still faster, right? No hesitation, no hesitation—it was clobbering time!

“Hooah!” I swung my fist with all my might—but a wall of earth met my punch. I pierced through and hit—no. I didn’t get Misery Mosery. That bastard, he’d used the same trick I had, huh? Made the wall a distraction. “Tch.”

Blades of Nothingness flew through the walls of earth, chipping away at the dirt. I had no choice but to retreat. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from, couldn’t come up with a plan…that ability of his was just too vicious. I mean, really, wasn’t there any defense?

“Nggaah! Nggaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha! O Great Dark God, I am reborn!”

In fact, I didn’t see any wounds on Misery Mosery’s body. Yeah, he hadn’t been damaged at all.

“By the will of the Great Dark God! By His will! This world will be shrouded in darkness! Born into meaninglessness, born only to die, such is our only commonality, see?! I bring meaning to your death. Show you how to die in a way that pleases Him. You—don’t you understand that?! Heathen trash. Slime on my boot,” Misery Mosery rambled nonsensically.

“Listen, boy: No matter how many times you rush in, you’re not going to get any results like that. And I went through all the trouble of setting him up for you.” Elfeit waved his hand in disgust.

“Shut it. You haven’t damaged him either.”

“That’s because there’s a pesky little human fly flitting about. It’s too much of a distraction for me to launch a real attack with my magic.”

Wait, was he calling me a pesky little fly? “You an idiot or somethin’? Be serious, hit him already. I’m not dumb enough to get hit by friendly fire.”

“Hm. Very well, boy. Feast your eyes upon what I, Elfeit Mistral, can do with my power unleashed!” Elfeit roared, his robes fluttering, as he summoned a cascade of thunderbolts. “Hm!”

Elfeit’s lightning magic shone so brilliantly it dazzled, and with a crackle of thunder, it came right down on Misery Mosery.

“Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God Great Dark God—ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haah!”

Misery Mosery barely seemed to notice. He unleashed another salvo of his Blades of Nothingness and cut through the lightning itself.

“Bothersome. But a beast that has cast aside its intelligence cannot hope to beat an elf.”

As Elfeit said that, his lightning magic swirled and sparkled, and then it transformed into a dragon. The lightning dragon gazed down at Misery Mosery from above.

“The Great Dark God desires the lives of trash! Not precious lives, but your lives!” Staggering, wobbling, Misery Mosery aimed his blades precisely at the dragon—and at us, too. He moved like a master of the Drunken Fist style of martial arts. His wild movements meant we couldn’t pin him down, couldn’t get him with just any magic.

But Elfeit didn’t have just elemental magic. No, he had complete control of his divine magic, and more than half of the spell rained down on Misery Mosery’s writhing body.

“Boy, go ahead and deliver the finishing blow.”

“Of course!” I was about to start running when I felt a surge of energy in the ground around me—Elfeit’s earth magic. The ground swelled and sent me flying toward Misery Mosery.

“Brr brr brr brr!” Misery Mosery whipped his head round and round, making an awful sound as he spun once, twice, thrice.

The lightning dragon whipped its head between me and Misery Mosery before ramming into the latter.

“Ngghhhaaaahhh!” Misery Mosery’s dull, black eyes gazed at me from behind his mask, fixed only on me. He formed ten blades around him, and at once all of them shot after me.

“Tch!” With ten attacks on my tail, I had to focus on dodging. Two of the blades hit my arms and legs, cutting into my body. My well-trained muscles, normally like armor for me, couldn’t help this one time.

“Ah, Great Dark—!” Misery Mosery screamed and was abruptly cut off.

I dodged the last blade he’d thrown and whipped around. He’d taken a full hit from the lightning dragon. Still looked fully conscious to me, unfortunately. Even if he was unsteady, the intensity of the aura emanating from his body remained unchanged. How was he moving like that even after a wallop with that level of lightning magic?

“Hooah!” My stance wasn’t ideal, but I threw another blow to Misery Mosery. All my muscles worked in concert with each other, and there was a kind of elegance to my strike. Although Misery Mosery had incredible offensive ability, it didn’t seem like he really had that much in terms of physical durability. No way could he get through a full power punch unharm—

“Hhhhghh ha ha ha! Heee hee ha ha hee hee heeghhh!”

Or not. I furrowed my brow. There sure was a big hole in Misery Mosery’s stomach now, but, uh, from the way he was dancing around, it was almost like it didn’t bother him at all.

Come on, who in the world could possibly move like normal when they had a hole in their stomach?! Even I would have a little trouble after that!

“Hey, boy—what is he?”

“That’s what I wanna know. Hey, Elfeit. Was that lightning dragon you just cast your full power?”

“Yes, though it appears it couldn’t render a fatal blow. How troublesome.”

“Can’t you use your ability again?”

“If I could, I would obviously have cast it a long time ago.”

Seriously? Well, in that case, I was gonna have to go back to whaling on him.

“Skreee?” Misery Mosery leaned forward. I could almost hear the sounds his neck made as he moved his neck like a bird’s. “Kree skreeee?” He seemed more like a beast than a human being.

“Kraaahhh—hrrraaagghhh!” Round and round, till suddenly he launched a Blade of Nothingness in a seemingly random direction.

“No!” Elfeit bolted, horror in his face.

What was he so worried about?

Then I saw it. Two elf children in the path of the blade. I was so absorbed in the battle that I hadn’t even noticed the kids. Big mistake.

“Great Dark God, I send heathens unto you! Tear them apart! Please, do it!” Misery Mosery wailed in a high-pitched voice as the Blade of Nothingness hurtled straight for his victims.

“Not on my watch!” Elfeit roared. “Every child of this village is a child of the Almighty Wind God!”

Elfeit threw himself into the path of the blade. It hit dead on.

“Are you okay?!” I shouted, even knowing he wouldn’t be, couldn’t be.

The blade ripped into Elfeit and kept going.

Why hadn’t he used another one of his earth pillars, dammit?! Probably because he was too drained, or panicked, or—it didn’t matter, the blade was going to keep hurtling toward the kids. It was gonna hit them. If it did, Elfeit’s sacrifice really would have been in vain.

But it wasn’t. The blade was stuck—trapped. Face twisted in pain, Elfeit had grabbed the invisble back of the blade with his own hand while it was caught midway through his torso. He gripped it with a shaking hand. “I won’t let you…lay a finger…on a child of the Almighty Wind God…not on a child of my village!”

The blade remained lodged in Elfeit’s body for a moment. And dissipated. He shouted at the children to run—and they did. Good. My turn.

I lunged toward Misery Mosery again. You need any advantage you can take on the battlefield. And I needed this guy gone or Elfeit was toast.

But Misery Mosery no longer paid any attention to Elfeit. He only had eyes for me. He didn’t give me a chance to get in any closer.

“Ugh, come on, man. Can’t believe you did something so stupid!” I spat without thinking.

“So long as I believe in the Almighty Wind God, I cannot abandon the faithful. Such a thing is only natural, to put faith over my own life,” said Elfeit in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, all with his stomach torn to shreds. Every time he spoke, he coughed up blood.

Man, this—this idiot. Then again, he was a man of heart. He had a strength I didn’t. Yeah, he was the reason Filia had been cast out, but I couldn’t tamp down a faint respect growing for Elfeit. Conflicting emotions boiled inside me, but I pushed them away. No, I had one enemy right now. He stood in front of me.

“Let’s do this,” I said calmly. I was gonna get payback for Elfeit. I looked straight ahead at Misery Mosery, this zealot guffawing and dripping blood, and I clenched my fists.

Just then, I sensed a powerful presence coming from behind. A familiar one? Yet different, somehow.

“Yuri!”

“Filia!”

Filia came rushing in to support me, but this wasn’t the same Filia as before. Just a glance into her eyes told me enough: She’d regained her abilities. Those silver eyes of hers, those eyes that had looked so oddly fragile before, blazed with power.

Filia saw Elfeit lying on the ground, covered in blood, and rushed over to him in a panic. “Chief Elfeit?! I’ll heal you right away!”

“Filia…don’t. Focus on him…on defeating him. He’s a threat to us all.”

“But!”

“We don’t have time to discuss this.”

“Skree caw! Caaww! Open your hymn books to the last page! Bash your head till the pews run red, it’s time for the Kill Everyone Festival!”

Misery Mosery launched a fireball. Must’ve been fifteen feet in diameter, easy, and probably loaded with Blades of Nothingness inside. I couldn’t protect Elfeit alone.

“Filia! Shoot wind up from below, with your full power!”

“Got it! Let’s go. ‘Wind God’!” Filia shouted.

An eerie, lightning-quick wind swept around her, Elfeit, and I. The wind gradually took shape, surging and reforming into the form of a massive woman. The speed of its formation, the pressure emanating from its massive body, they were far beyond what I’d seen during the magic battle tournament.

“Hyaaaaaah!” Filia screamed. The wind raged up from the ground with impossible fury, sending the fireball flying harmlessly up into the sky.

But five Blades of Nothingness still shrieked through the air toward us.

“Here!” I took aim at the back end of a blade and struck. My fist and the blade collided, and the blade was knocked upward into the sky. “I knew it.”

How stupid of me to take the words of my enemy at face value. Impossible to defend against? As if. The only impossible part was the front end of the blade. If you hit the back, you could intercept the thing. I wouldn’t have known if Elfeit hadn’t made his desperate grab earlier.

If Elfeit hadn’t risked everything for us… Well, like hell was I gonna let that go to waste. We were definitely going to settle this, here and now.

“Hooah!” I launched all of the blades up into the sky, one by one, in the same manner as before. “Now, Filia!”

There was nothing in our way, not anymore. I let the plan take shape in my mind, knowing Filia could read my thoughts—she nodded.

Good. I jumped toward Misery Mosery. “Hooah!”

“Haah!” As Filia shouted, the giant wind woman pushed my body from behind. My body, propelled by the swirling tempest, hurtled toward Misery Mosery.

“Great Dark God! Help me! Bestow your blessing upon me! Eeek!” Misery Mosery tried to fire off another Blade of Nothingness, but Filia mimicked my method from earlier and launched the blades off course with swift wind attacks. The blades flew harmlessly away.

“Damn heathens!” Realizing he couldn’t defend himself using his blades, Misery Mosery walled himself up with earth magic. It was the same thing he’d done before, but back then, I hadn’t had Filia’s Wind God to back me up.

“Eat this! HOOAH!”

With all my strength, my fist collided with the wall of earth, smashing through until it made impact with Misery Mosery’s masked face.

“Khgrh…” Blood gushed through the cracks in the wall of earth.

Huh. I’d thought there was something strange when I punched a hole in his stomach. He’d just stood up like it was nothing, pranced around like he didn’t feel pain.

No human could move like that with an injury of that nature, but he had. Which meant he wasn’t human. Not as such.

“Your real body is that mask, huh?”

The mask shattered, and all signs of life in Misery Mosery vanished.

 

***

 

“We won, huh?”

I looked at my right arm. The bones, snapped to pieces, my muscles, torn. Not in great shape. I’d just gotten this baby healed, and now I’d wrecked it all over again. I could worry about that later.

“Filia, heal Elfeit!”

“I’m working on it!” But even though Filia used her recovery magic, the blood poured endlessly from Elfeit’s body. “Wh-why isn’t it stopping?!”

“Enough, Filia… Surely you understand. I’m already dead.”

“No…”

Elfeit slumped. He turned his face to me and said, so quietly, “Boy…fight me. Fight me to the death.”

 

***

 

(Elfeit’s POV)

I, Elfeit Mistral, was born into this world 650 years ago. When I was born, I was a considerable disappointment to my people. Despite my ancestry, descending from an ancient line of village chiefs, I had no significant abilities. Worse yet, I am a man. The Wind God is a woman, and so the truly devout followers of the Wind God religion view women as superior to men. And yet I, a man, may be the only truly devout believer in this village left. As pitiful as it is ironic.

My ability was, of all things, Underwater Breathing. One can imagine how useful such a power is in the depths of a forest. Because of this ignoble fate, ever since I was very young, I had been plagued by a small, recurring doubt that wriggled in the back in my mind at all times.

“Does the Almighty Wind God hate me?” Prideful, I suppose, to think the Almighty Wind God would bear any feelings at all toward a single elf. But my abilities were so irrelevant, so contextually weak, and I thought myself so terribly unfortunate to be a man. I couldn’t stop nursing these doubts.

And then Filia was born.

I knew the moment I saw Filia that she had received the blessing of the Almighty Wind God’s love. As time passed, Filia’s abilities at last manifested, and indeed, she was found to possess dual abilities: Wind God and Clairvoyance.

For the first time in my centuries of life, I felt angry with the Almighty Wind God.

Why would She bestow the Wind God ability—said to be the incarnation of the Almighty Wind God Herself— upon Filia? I had worked ceaselessly for the sake of the village, and yet!

I issued an order to the people of the village to ignore Filia, half out of pathetic desperation. A repulsive order it was, born of vile jealously and boundless self-regard. Filia’s parents begged me to rescind it, but I did nothing.

That day marred me. I had veered from the path of the Almighty Wind God’s teaching and inflicted an indelible wound on a single girl.

“Chief Elfeit?! I’ll heal you right away!” A high-pitched voice reached my ears and brought me back to the too-bright world. They say your life flashes before your eyes when… Well, that’s what they say.

I felt a throbbing, searing sensation in my stomach, causing me great pain. Hm, right. I suppose I had acted in accordance with the teachings of my god and saved those children, hadn’t I? “Help whoever believes in the Almighty Wind God,” such is Her command.

Respect for that law was absolute, far more critical than respect for my own life. I suppose I was far from qualified to talk about such things now. Seconds after Filia’s arrival, the masked man attacked me.

It was then that I beheld a miracle.

Filia, clad in the form of a giant made of wind, was unmistakably the figure of the Almighty Wind God Herself. Her silver-white hair fluttered in the wind, divine beauty made flesh. The Almighty Wind God rendered divine punishment unto that masked man. Upon witnessing that spectacle, I was borne down by the weight of my sins.

Ah, my Almighty Wind God, I sealed you away. What could be crueler? What could be lower?

“Wh-why isn’t it stopping?!”

Filia, her abilities released but her form as normal as it could be, healed me to no avail. The wound I had received was most certainly fatal, but more importantly, I no longer had the will to go on. All that remained was a desire for atonement in the eyes of Filia and of the Almighty Wind God Herself. Atonement that I knew well I could never truly reach.

Perhaps. But in the Wind God faith, deeds carried out in your final moments, right before death, are regarded highly. I had risked my life to save those children. Surely the Almighty Wind God would look down favorably upon me.

And yet.

No, I couldn’t be forgiven. Even if She forgave me, I would not forgive myself. I refused redemption.

As I struggled to hold on to the faint light of life, I just barely managed to squeeze those words from my throat: “Boy…fight me. Fight me to the death.”

 

***

 

“A fight to the death?”

For a moment, I thought I’d misheard Elfeit, but the look on his face told me I hadn’t mistaken him.

A fight to the death… But why? I mean, I didn’t particularly mind getting the chance to punch the guy, but Elfeit couldn’t really mean it, not in his current condition. Yet he staggered up, unsteady on his feet, even while Filia tried to stop him from moving.

“Chief Elfeit?! You can’t, not now. Besides, isn’t a fight to the death blasphemous in the eyes of the Almighty Wind—”

“Precisely. I care more for the Almighty Wind God than anyone, and I am proud of that fact. For that reason, I cannot allow myself to be by Her side.”

Where Elfeit got this power, I didn’t know, but he slowly approached me, one step at a time. Even as blood gushed out of him in amounts way past lethal, Elfeit just didn’t stop.

“Boy…no, Yuri, was it? Yes, Yuri. Please. Accept…my last request.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I had to. Sure, I had no clue what was going on with the guy, and I could never forgive him for the awful way he’d acted toward Filia, but… I couldn’t just ignore his request as he stood there facing me, fueled by sheer willpower alone.

“Yuri?!”

“Filia, he’s staking his life on this request. I can’t stop it, and I won’t.”

Even though Elfeit’s stomach was split open, he closed in on me with palpable determination. My hair stood on end. There was no way I was gonna miss a chance to go up against this kind of opponent. When Elfeit was about thirty feet away, I held my fists out.

“Let’s do this, Elfeit.”

“I am in your debt, Yuri.”

Elfeit, too, slid into a fighting stance. The tension, which had ebbed after the fall of Misery Mosery, rose again. I couldn’t say I was feeling peachy keen, but Elfeit was on death’s door. And I couldn’t afford to lose.

“Phew.” Elfeit let out a light sigh, softening the ground I stood on, making it difficult for me to keep my footing. I jumped as quickly as I could, high into the sky. My ribs throbbed with pain. I ignored them. This wasn’t the time to wallow in agony. It would be disrespectful to Elfeit if I let my meager wounds get to me.

“Let’s go!”

I kicked through the air and dove toward Elfeit. Lightning magic rained from above, but I dodged, hopping left and right. The lightning stopped—an opening—and I moved in. A few more rounds like that, and I got right up in front of Elfeit.

“It’s over,” I said.

“Not yet.”

Elfeit changed his stance, switching from a magician’s posture—leaning slightly forward and not really focusing power anywhere—to thrusting his right arm out toward me and adopting a form fit for close combat. I’d never seen that pose before, but it was pretty impressive. A fist fight with me, huh? Interesting.

Instead of using my right arm, which was useless by then, I swung my left, and with all my strength. All of it.

“Let’s do this! Hooah!”

“…”

Our fists met—and Elfeit was blown away. His body sailed tens of feet back, snapping through some trees, before falling to the ground.

Filia ran over to Elfeit. Then, a while after, she came back to me.

“He’s gone.”

“I see.”

I stared intently in the direction Elfeit had sailed. In the moment before our fists clashed, I had heard Elfeit’s final words:

“Take care of Filia.”

What in the world did he mean by that? Elfeit hated Filia, didn’t he? He’d never once dropped his stern attitude toward her, not even at the end. It was hard to imagine he’d turned over a new leaf and changed his mind about her in such a short time. But…

“What’s the matter, Yuri?”

“Nothin’.”

I walked over to Elfeit’s body. He had a sour look on his face, but somehow—somewhere in that—I thought I saw satisfaction. Well, whatever Elfeit intended by those last words, I snorted.

“You don’t gotta tell me that,” I muttered into the wind.

I would protect Filia. It didn’t matter if I had to face off against Sinmarch or whoever. But to do that, I had to become stronger. I would become stronger. Stronger and stronger. This I vowed to Elfeit. More importantly, I vowed to myself.