The White-Haired Demon God

"Down!! Formula-cannon!!"

The next-instant warning had specifics on it.

〈Sword Emperor〉 Elma's voice.

By the time everyone caught the line, that had run through overhead.

The Demon Lords, on Elma's warning, were down on the ground.

Merea, also down, registered the white flash — boasting enormous heat-output — clip the corner off a few of the Heroic Spirits' graves.

— !

That sparked Merea's flare.

Finally the flash all rose into the sky and cleared, and a beat of silence came.

When the brightness was gone, Merea threw a glance at the graves.

The Heroic Spirits' graves had, just, held their original shape.

A relief breath left Merea's mouth.

But there was no time to drift.

To check where and what had been fired, he moved to the gouged corner of the sacred mountain and turned his red eyes downward.

And —

"— Many."

What reflected in the eyes was several dozen figures uniformly clad in black.

Climbing fairly high already.

From a point just below the summit, a multi-caster formula-cannonade had been delivered, Merea read.

Mana-residue, and the faint constituent-formula echo left in the space, were captured by 〈the Magic Eyes of the Technique God (Flander Crow)〉.

"Black national banner and uniform colour-coded with it. — Mūzeg Kingdom, the country chasing me."

〈Sword Emperor〉 Elma, coming up beside Merea, said it on a bitten-lip note.

"Lately they've force-unified the nearby states by armed strength, growing strong. And — Demon Lord Hunting — that country is the one running point on it."

At the phrase Demon Lord Hunting, Merea's brow twitched.

"That, there, is Mūzeg's spell-corps. And what they're after, now, is — this 〈Demonic Sword Krishra〉 I hold."

In Elma's hand, the demonic sword was held bare.

While Merea and Elma worked to grasp the situation, the other Demon Lords, in turn, came up close and, on edge-tightened expressions, looked down.

"Oi — second shot's coming."

One of them, watching the Mūzeg spell-corps' motion, gave another warning.

In the next beat, every line of sight narrowed onto one person.

Where they were looking — Merea.

---

Why they had looked at Merea.

There were various reasons, but the chief one was that Merea was, slightly, different from the rest.

Merea, alone, had not run here.

That difference, in the moment of choosing one person, was the plain reason.

Yes — they, after a moment's thinking —

— were trying to delegate the next action-authority to a single person.

In this situation, if everyone wished to live, cooperation gave the highest survival rate.

But they had only just met. Time to align by careful talk was not on offer.

Then — entanglements set aside, forcibly deferring the action-authority to someone was needed for unity.

Thinking it that way, Merea's figure surfaced in their minds.

The man who, briefly, had given them a space of ease.

Once one had seen the difference in Merea, the rest of the reason engine moved, forcibly, to make Merea special.

It resembled the action of manufacturing an excuse.

A small factor, on which, by force, acceptance is laid.

Within the thinnest window, every one of them did this.

Survival-instinct was whispering do this.

So they handed the next-action decision — to Merea.

For Merea, it was an inconvenient turn.

The pressure of being pushed into decision in that moment must have been awful.

Now, on the shoulders of this man called Merea, the lives of twenty-one Demon Lords had been laid.

The Demon Lords, in their hearts, apologised to Merea.

Apologising, also, they wished.

Give us words.

Give us guidance.

But — their wish was, in an unexpected form, betrayed.

From Merea, no words to the Demon Lords were threaded.

Merea, gaze fixed downward in observing register, had barely registered the Demon Lords' looks.

So, also, the give-us-words line of those looks did not reach him.

Even so, by another method, Merea was answering the Demon Lords' wish.

The guidance was given by action.

At the head of the action, in a low, weighted voice, Merea threaded a line, and it went toward the Mūzeg spell-corps below.

The voice was not large; they below would not have heard it.

The line, also, was not addressed to the Demon Lords.

But the Demon Lords nearby, certainly, heard.

---

"— Won't let you. The second shot — absolutely."

A line carrying solid resolve.

"Don't break this place."

Those erasing their names were, for Merea, plainly enemy.

Merea, alone, stood up at the cliff's edge.

On a stance so upright that it appeared as if the cold wind blowing the sacred mountain's summit had transformed into a force-of-presence wreathing him.

Merea's snow-white hair, on a slight upward stand, and the red eyes lighting with a combat-eager glow — the Demon Lords watched, half-stunned.

---

The Mūzeg spell-corps below was holding hands toward a single point.

In the space they were holding hands toward, an enormous spell-circle was unfurled.

A multi-caster cooperative formula.

A formula that no single user's processing-capacity can build is, by multiple users co-ordinating cleanly, built and fired.

Co-ordination requires its own training, but cleared, it lets a powerful formula fire fast — large spell-corps tend to have such signature-cooperative formulae as their hallmark.

"Bad — that one, possibly flashier than the last. Mūzeg's been pushing forward, fine — but their spell-corps' training-grade is higher than I'd thought."

"That formula on five casters."

"What do we do."

Several Demon Lords cursed at the sight of the Mūzeg side's formula.

Other Demon Lords carried similarly bitter faces.

— but, only one, Merea, on a flat expression, eyes on the scene, —

"Aggressive Reverse Formula."

— toward the Mūzeg corps, with one hand opened, was, alone, building a formula very like the one they were assembling.

The build-speed was nothing like that of the Mūzeg corps below.

The Mūzeg corps, focused on building their own, had not yet registered the demon-god who, alone, was building the same kind of formula.

After a beat, the Mūzeg corps' build was complete; aiming, they looked up at the summit, and first they saw —

"—"

Snow-white hair lifting on the cold wind.

Red eyes, not blinking, looking down at them.

In the one open hand — the same spell-circle.

Their faces froze.

"F-fire — fast—!!"

A Mūzeg corpsman half-shouted, but already too late.

"— 〈Black Light Cannon〉."

A black flash, very like the prior white flash, surged out alongside the demon-god's voice — slanted down, this time.