. . .
[ Quest : The Cadre's Catastrophe ]
[ Objective : Eliminate Kokabiel & his affiliates before they destroy this town ]
[ Reward : Rank 14 Gacha Ticket ]
. . .
The ultimate reward was a Rank 15 Gacha Ticket, which told me everything I needed to know about the odds of surviving this mess.
The sheer value of the reward confirmed my worst suspicions. Dealing with Kokabiel was bad enough, but now I had to account for Benemune as well. The objective had just turned my carefully constructed survival plan into a direct confrontation with a Fallen Angel cadre leader who possessed enough power to burn away my chances of Rank 14 ticket.
"Is this the absolute best you can do, huh?!"
The arrogant voice shattered my concentration at the worst possible moment. The swordsman lunged, and I pivoted on instinct, bringing Chastiefol up to intercept the descending strike. Steel screamed as his stolen Excalibur crashed into the shaft of my spirit spear, the impact rattling through my arms.
The blade's overwhelming holy power carved straight through my conjured violet flames, parting them with almost contemptuous ease.
I launched myself off the shattered ground, trading territory for distance as I twisted my spear to redirect the remnants of his momentum.
While retreating through the air, I funneled holy flames into the hovering weapon, shaping it into a tightly compressed mass of volatile destruction at the spear's tip.
I quickly added another entry to the growing list of reasons I hated Excaliburs. His fragment could nullify my flames outright, stripping away a significant portion of my offensive toolkit.
In response, I flooded the battlefield with firepower, launching multiple fireballs directly at him, to see if it can match the volume of multiple flames repeatedly.
The silver-haired maniac responded with a deranged laugh. He spun the Excalibur fragment through a series of effortless cuts, slicing my fireballs apart one after another. Each projectile detonated harmlessly in midair, scattering violet embers across the ruined forest.
"By the time I'm done with you, you'll wish you'd never called me weak."
A predatory smile split the swordsman's face. Before I could react, his form blurred and disappeared, his mocking words lingering in the air long after he was gone.
. . .
From the shadows at the edge of the ruined battlefield, Valper Galilei watched the unfolding fight with a smug expression that practically begged to be punched.
A smug expression settled across Valper's weathered face. My opponent had activated Excalibur Transparency, and the old researcher was convinced that guaranteed my defeat. After all, how was I supposed to fight an enemy I couldn't even see?
SWOOSH!
Valper had already decided the fight was over. In his mind, even heightened supernatural senses were useless against a weapon specifically designed to evade detection. As he smugly adjusted his stained coat, the old fool remained blissfully unaware of the fatal flaw in his assessment.
To his utter surprise, I pivoted sharply and drove my spear into my left flank's blind spot, intercepting the invisible attack before it could reach me.
A wet tearing sound sliced through the silence, the invisible sword slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the ground. As Excalibur Transparency failed, his body flickered back into view. His eyes widened in horror as he looked down at the spear shaft jutting from his chest, blood already pouring from the wound.
"How... how in the absolute hell did you...?"
He coughed up a mouthful of dark blood, his knees buckling as the damage finally caught up with him.
His entire worldview shattered in an instant. He couldn't comprehend how an invisibility technique he considered flawless had failed to save him from a strike he never saw coming. I twisted the spear buried in his torso, sending another wave of agony through him and ensuring he wouldn't have the opportunity to try anything desperate before blood loss finished the job.
"You seriously thought you could beat me with this loser shit?"
CRUNCH!
"Even if you bend light around yourself and turn completely invisible, I can still sense your life force from a mile away"
I couldn't help but scoff. His entire strategy revolved around visual concealment, which would have been impressive if I actually relied on my eyes. Instead, his racing heartbeat and turbulent life force painted a clear picture of his location.
I drove the spear deeper into his chest, ignoring his increasingly feeble attempts to pull the shaft free.
He desperately gripped the spear, trying to pull himself free. It was a pointless effort. I held him firmly in place before feeding purple holy fire through the embedded weapon. The flames raced through his ruined body, burning along veins and arteries until nothing remained but agony.
"Arrgggghhhh!"
A horrific scream ripped from the swordsman's throat as the flames consumed him from within. The sound gradually broke apart into ragged gasps before falling silent altogether. As his body collapsed, two hidden swords tumbled to the ground and landed beside the discarded Excalibur.
I pulled my bloodstained spear free and gave it a sharp shake, scattering charred ash across the pavement. Then my attention shifted to the three Excaliburs resting at my feet.
I frowned slightly. The fight had exposed an uncomfortable truth. My purple flames were powerful, but they weren't invincible. Against sufficiently concentrated holy power and authentic divine artifacts, their dominance was far less absolute than I'd assumed.
CLINK!
With a casual gesture, I activated my storage magic. Intricate magic circle blossomed beneath the Excaliburs, swallowing the holy relics in a burst of warped space before depositing them safely within my dimensional vault.
I turned immediately toward Valper. The old bastard was already trying to run, but I had no intention of letting him get away.
He froze instantly as Chastiefol appeared directly in front of him, its gleaming tip hovering a hair's breadth from his nose.
He stumbled backward, terror wiping away whatever composure he had left. Sensing my presence behind him, Valper spun around on his knees, scrambling across the debris-strewn ground in a desperate attempt to create distance.
"W-Wait! There's no need for this! We can talk about it, can't we? You don't actually have to kill me!"
Valper clasped his hands together in a pitiful imitation of prayer, staring up at me with terror in his eyes.
"Please!" he blurted. "I can be useful! Give me a chance and I'll prove it! I'm a researcher....I have knowledge, contacts, resources. There are countless ways I can be of value to you!"
I responded with a casual flick of my finger. Chastiefol immediately abandoned its position and snapped back to my side before rotating to level its glowing tip directly at Valper's face. The old man's desperate expression somehow managed to grow even paler
The researcher gulped, struggling to keep his composure. A moment later, something seemed to click inside his head, and he immediately thrust a shaking hand beneath his oversized coat.
He yanked a diamond-shaped crystal from his coat, its blue core pulsing with an eerie inner light. Before I could react, he thrust it toward my face and hurriedly offered it up, promising it was mine if I spared his life.
"W-Wait! Think about it! You told me you didn't have the other Excaliburs, but now you possess three fragments! Three! With this, you can make full use of them. Their power can become yours!"
HUMMMM!
He panted through every breath, stubbornly refusing to let his desperate pitch die.
"For years, I searched for a compatible host and found nothing but disappointments. Then along comes a wielder of Holy Flames. Do you understand how absurdly rare that is? The artifact's internal framework should resonate with you far more readily than with any subject I've ever studied!"
My gaze drifted to the softly pulsing blue diamond resting in my palm, and I reluctantly admitted he had a point. Despite possessing Xenovia's and Irina's Excaliburs, I had never managed to draw out the specialized powers sealed within them.
I snatched the pulsing crystal from his trembling hand, struggling to see how cramming a volatile mass of tortured emotions into myself was supposed to provide any meaningful advantage in a fight.
Valper let out a long, relieved sigh, apparently convinced he had just talked his way out of an otherwise inevitable execution. The relief lasted less than a second.
A blinding flash suddenly exploded from the heart of the diamond, swallowing the area in white light.
For the briefest of moments, I caught a glimpse of the souls imprisoned within the crystal. Fractured, scarred, and broken beyond measure, they drifted through the radiance like fading specters.
Yet instead of despair, their faces were filled with relief.
Luminous tears streamed down their cheeks as they gazed into the light, as though they had finally found an escape from a torment that had stretched on for far longer than any soul should have endured.
"Ha! Hahahaha!" Valper burst into laughter "Do you see it now? My calculations were flawless! The artifact merged with you completely, seamlessly, as though it had always belonged to you!"
The glowing blue relic abruptly ceased to exist as a physical object, violently unraveling into a brilliant stream of intangible energy that surged through my body.
He grinned with the manic satisfaction of a con artist closing the deal of a lifetime, blissfully unaware that the artifact was becoming something far greater than he intended.
Tilting the spear slightly, the razor-sharp tip hovered directly before one of his eyes. The old man immediately froze, apparently deciding that blinking was now a dangerous activity.
I stared directly into his eyes, fully committed to reminding him that surrendering a valuable artifact and earning my mercy were two entirely different concepts.
"I'm curious. At what point did you convince yourself this was a fair trade?"
The old fool hastily raised both shaking hands, the panic in his eyes suggesting he had finally noticed a rather significant flaw in his negotiation strategy.
"Then allow me to improve the proposal! I can permanently fuse them into a single unified artifact! Three Excaliburs combined into one! The resulting weapon will possess vastly greater holy power and retain all three individual attributes!"
My eyes widened slightly as I realized something strategically significant. Merging the three holy swords into a single artifact would solve a surprising number of problems at once.
"For once in your life, you may have accidentally contributed something useful" I said.
A flicker of excitement appeared in Valper's eyes. Apparently, finding merit in one of his ideas had convinced him I was far easier to manipulate than I actually was.
[ Fifth Form : Chastiefol ]
Valper's scheming thoughts came to an abrupt halt as he looked up and discovered that my Spirit Spear was no longer a spear. In its place, hovered a swarm of more than fifty flaming kunai, every blade pointed directly at his face.
"Honestly, this is probably the most positive contribution you've made in your life. It's a shame you waited until the last minute"
The old bastard looked like he was desperately trying to speedrun all five stages of grief before I ran out of patience. Apparently, he had finally encountered a situation he couldn't bullshit his way out of.
With a slight gesture, the swarm surged forward.
The flaming kunai tore straight through his defenses and buried themselves throughout his body.
"Arrgggghhhh!"
He screamed when the first blade punched through his shoulder. Then again when another tore through his leg. Then several more times as the rest found equally unpleasant destinations.
"PLEASE! PLEASE! HAVE MERCY!"
Apparently, being repeatedly stabbed hurts. Who knew?
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"
"I'M BEGGING YOU!"
"PLEASE—AAAAAAARRRGH!"
Unfortunately for him, the kunai weren't the main event.
Purple flames erupted from every blade wound simultaneously, his screams getting higher and desperate as the fire raced through his body, until the expanding inferno consumed him completely.
When the flames finally died down, all that remained of Valper Galilei was a scattering of ash and every atrocity he no longer had the opportunity to commit.
. . . .
Back in the quiet isolation of my dimly lit bedroom, I silently observed the five Excaliburs arranged on the floor. There was something profoundly unsettling about possessing enough holy weaponry to start a crusade on short notice.
At the heart of the arrangement rested Wado Ichimonji.
If everything went according to plan, I'd gain something useful. If not, future archaeologists would have an interesting mystery to solve.
I ran a hand through my hair, as I stared at the array. The success rate was generously estimated at less than forty percent. Apparently, those were acceptable odds now.
I flicked a glance toward Kalawarner. She caught the meaning instantly and moved to raise the defensive barrier before the room remembered it was housing several catastrophically bad ideas.
She gave a curt nod and raised her arms. Violet barriers unfolded around me and the swords in layered sheets of light. A sensible precaution, considering a single mistake could leave me permanently separated from all five Excaliburs.
The plan was simple in the same way juggling live grenades was simple. Extract a portion of the essence from all five Excaliburs, force it into Wado Ichimonji, and somehow convince the universe to treat it as a fused Excalibur.
HUMMM!
I couldn't keep the Excaliburs indefinitely. Sooner or later, they'd have to be returned if I wanted Heaven to remain even remotely cooperative, and carrying five oversized holy swords into every fight wasn't a practical solution either.
Pushing those concerns aside, I focused on the center of the array. The pressure saturating the room was already becoming unpleasant, but that was expected.
Carefully, I reached into each Excalibur and began taking away microscopic fragments of their essence, removing just enough to matter and, hopefully, not enough to trigger a catastrophic reaction.
I gritted my teeth as I forced the five fragments together. The pressure crashed into me from every direction, turning me into an unwilling bridge between forces that clearly wanted nothing to do with one another. For several tense seconds, the essences fought like cornered predators before finally collapsing into a single sphere of white light.
I dropped to one knee, breathing hard as nausea twisted my stomach and the room briefly threatened to rotate around me. Once the dizziness subsided enough to distinguish the floor from the ceiling, I slowly guided the condensed essence toward Wado Ichimonji.
The katana's reaction was immediate.
Wado Ichimonji shuddered violently against the floorboards, rattling hard enough to leave shallow grooves in the wood. The sword bucked and thrashed as the foreign essence poured into it, like five hostile souls had just been informed they were expected to share the same body. Unsurprisingly, they objected.
CRACK!
Fine cracks burst across the blade in every direction, rapidly weaving a destructive pattern that threatened to tear the weapon apart.
I refused to let the process fail. Mana poured from me in relentless waves, flooding the struggling steel as I forced it to hold together through sheer stubbornness. Then, at the very edge of disaster, everything went silent.
Light burst from the forged steel in a dazzling surge, engulfing the weapon completely. By the time the radiance subsided, a new sword had emerged from the chaos.
I smiled despite myself. The tension drained from my shoulders as I wiped away the cold sweat clinging to my skin and reached for the blade that had nearly given me a mental breakdown.
The moment my hand closed around the hilt, I felt it. Five distinct currents stirred beneath the surface, each carrying the destructive nature of a different Excalibur while somehow existing in perfect harmony with the weapon's holy aura. That alone was enough to disqualify it from the category of "ordinary sword."
I began testing its various attributes, watching in fascination as the weapon shifted from overwhelming destructive force to complete transparency with a smoothness that bordered on unnatural.
"Congratulations on the new sword. It's nice to know some people get legendary weapons while the rest of us are expected to fend for ourselves with cutlery."
Kalawarner leaned against the doorframe with practiced laziness, looking entirely unimpressed. The dramatic forging display had apparently failed to earn her admiration, though it had succeeded in providing a fresh target for her.
CLACK!
I slipped the sword back into my dimensional storage before something unfortunate happened to it, then leaned against the edge of my cluttered desk and smirked at the Fallen Angel.
"Do you even know how to use one of those? Up until now, your entire combat strategy has consisted of aggressively throwing spears at your opponents"
"That's not true" Kalawarner scoffed, pushing herself away from the doorframe with wounded indignation.
Considering her documented history of solving problems through aggressive spear deployment, I felt that was a remarkably bold position to take.
"For your information, I've gotten pretty good at close-quarters combat since you handed me that experimental Sacred Gear" Kalawarner crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes "And how would you even know otherwise? You're always off training by yourself. You barely pay attention to what I'm doing half the time."
I sighed, a tired smile tugging at my lips as I walked over and sat down beside her.
SIGH!
Kalawarner immediately turned her head away the moment I sat down, her arms remaining stubbornly crossed as she committed herself to the time-honored tradition of pretending I no longer existed. Recognizing the situation for the diplomatic crisis it was rapidly becoming, I placed a hand on her shoulder and began negotiations.
"What do you say we all grab dinner outside tonight?" It seemed like a reasonable attempt at restoring relations before they deteriorated any further.
Kalawarner spun toward me and jabbed a finger into my chest "Why are you so unbelievably dense?" she snapped. "I'm not asking for a group dinner, you idiot. I want you to take me on a date!"
I blinked.
Then I reviewed the preceding conversation for evidence that it had, at some point, become romantic.
Unfortunately, all I found was a lengthy discussion about weapons and combat training.
Recognizing that pointing out the numerous flaws in her reasoning would almost certainly worsen the situation, I wisely elected not to do that.
Instead, I nodded with the enthusiastic agreement of a man who valued his continued mind peace.
"Alright, alright," I said, throwing up a thumbs-up "A date it is. It's been a while since we've gone anywhere that didn't involve property damage, attempted murder on..."
VZZZT!
The silence only for a few seconds before my phone buzzed in my pocket. One incoming message was all it took to send the chaos rushing back to me.
I reluctantly fished the phone from my pocket, staring at the glowing screen for a second longer than necessary. The moment I read the message, whatever peace remained vanished. Staring up at the cracked ceiling, I sighed knowing that my brief window to prepare got shut down.
Kokabiel, the miserable bastard, apparently had no concept of patience.
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