Three Histories Intersect

Serius watched Merea fire signed Heroic-Spirit formula after signed Heroic-Spirit formula, and was forced to throw out everything he had assumed up to that moment.

On top of which — as a Mūzegan royal — he saw, in the same beat, that the country's strategic policy itself might be open to reconsideration.

Mūzeg might not have the luxury of being preoccupied with the north and the west.

The eastern continent could be left alone safely, they had thought.

That had been the reading on which heavy force had been committed to the north and west.

Serius had, himself, signed off on the current Mūzeg King's distribution.

But —

"Is that really the same human as me—!!"

Looking at that, the call seemed to have been wrong.

— Misread.

All of it.

From the start.

Lindholm should have been investigated harder, sooner.

That that was being raised on it had not been a possibility he had factored in.

Even setting all the other Demon Lords aside, the birth of that 〈Demon God〉 should have been the first item to prevent.

That monster was a man who could, single-handedly, change history.

"I sealed him! The processing area! That landed, without question!"

He knew. And the man had overturned the seal — by forcing the limit-break.

The Sealing Formula was, by Serius's read, still operative. That feeling did not lie.

But — as if it didn't matter at all —

— He widened the vessel itself.

That was not a normal method.

Another Demon Lord —

"…Tch."

— inherited art crossing inside a single body.

The usefulness of that particular thing — Serius knew first-hand. He himself was an example.

But what was in front of him was, plainly, of a different order from his.

Similar shape. Different.

A normal human can never reach that.

"All of it —"

All of it, because —

"— that mountain exists —!!"

The root cause was on that mountain.

Loathsome. He wanted to fly back and level it.

"Your Highness! The Demon God is coming —!"

"Hold! — Other units are inbound. Infantry are moving. However threatening he is, on numbers we have the —"

In the next instant, on Caligula's back, Serius watched the Demon God move.

The right hand, sheathed in blue-black flame. He raised it slowly — and pointed the index finger at the sky.

Same beat —

— above the Demon God, innumerable 〈Resplendent Swords of the Water God〉 manifested.

Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen. — Still increasing.

The blades, multiplying by powers, were each as detailed and complete as the original Serius had seen — and each carried the same weight of presence.

"—"

No words came.

A thing like that —

"…What am I supposed to do, against that."

---

"〈Rain of the Resplendent Swords〉."

---

The countless blades suspended above, at the same instant Merea brought his arm down —

— came down on the Mūzeg force like a meteor-shower.

To Serius, it was a picture worse than any nightmare.

---

"Fall back!! Don't get near that—!!"

His voice carried.

He threw the order.

Or — order was almost too dignified a word for it.

— I have to wait the effect out.

"Hold the line!"

Serius, with thinking just gradually starting to come back online, was running the calculation: that spiritual art had to carry a limit and a backlash.

If there were neither a time-limit nor a recoil —

— he'd have used it from the start.

Even allowing that Merea wanted the conversation, he wouldn't have needed to come in that low.

The strange relief Serius had had at meeting Merea in person — possibly that had been engineered into the picture from the start; but if a force on the order of this had been usable on demand, no such elaborate staging would have been needed.

— What we saw before was, in fact, his ordinary working level.

Not full open, but not severely held back either.

Which is exactly why it didn't read as artificial — and the controlled approach had landed well enough to draw Serius near.

In any case — not of this absurd order.

In short —

"I —"

— had been invited in.

Looked at this way, it began to feel as though Serius's interior had been read all along.

Could Merea have read his thoughts that cleanly. From a single eye-contact at distance on Lindholm. — Hardly.

There were no god-grade beings of that kind.

Which means: or,

— someone who knew Serius well had pre-loaded Merea with predicted thoughts and behaviour patterns.

Who.

Who could do that.

— Muran. Crisca. Fasalis.

The three he'd had the most contact with at Aios Academy. The three with potential to oppose Mūzeg, who knew Serius well — the same three now sit on the Three Kingdoms' thrones.

— No.

There was one more.

But that man had been turned out of Aios Academy ahead of all of them, and his subsequent whereabouts had been, for Serius, opaque.

Real name, real station — Serius had never managed to find out.

The one man at the academy who had stood at Serius's level. And — almost certainly — a friend.

Serius let his eye drift toward the Lemusan side.

No particular reason. As if pulled by a god-strung thread of fate, his face turned that way.

And there, finally, he noticed the man.

Right under Lemuse's white banner, on horseback as if he were Lemuse's supreme commander, a man.

Earlier — Serius had read the bright-brown hair as the commander, but hadn't been able to make out detail and had given up.

Distance was closer now.

— I can see him.

The face. Familiar.

---

"— Kudo."

A beat.

"—"

A second beat.

"…You—!"

---

The man who had once said to Serius the same thing Merea was saying.

The man who had pointed at Serius's madness.

The only man who had ever stood toe-to-toe with him.

In that moment, Serius had every piece.

No question.

The one who had primed Merea about him was that man.

A man uncannily good at reading the small shifts of a person's interior.

A man skilled at handling that kind of information.

Not a melee-strong man, but a man whose talent — like Serius's father's — was in political war.

— Looking at him now — Kudo, too, miscalculated the Demon God's strength.

Serius retook composure after a beat.

He could not afford another loss of face.

His pride finally started to brace him.

His eyes caught Hasim's surprised face.

In front of Merea's preposterous formula deployment, Hasim was watching with mouth half-open, surprised.

— Even for him, this scale was unanticipated.

Which means: he hadn't come out here betting on this.

Which gave Serius a certainty.

— Kudo would not walk out here without preparation.

Something else was queued.

Not Merea — Kudo's own trump.

By any read, Kudo was a Lemusan heavyweight.

If anything — by feel — he gave off a royal note.

It snapped together cleanly.

Then —

— if Kudo is royalty, what does he prepare?

Working from resist Mūzeg as the premise, what would that man have set up.

He would have known that contact with the Demon Lords alone, however useful, would not be enough to win against Mūzeg outright.

If the old Kudo was unchanged on this point, his calculation would have been cold.

— What is he waiting for.

Serius's certainty, naturally, rose: Hasim is waiting for something.

He kept thinking.

"— The Three Kingdoms."

Serius's now-hard-running mind reached the answer quickly.

— Nothing else fits.

"He talked them round —"

He had thought the Three Kingdoms were leaning toward submission to Mūzeg.

Father, who handled the political-war side, had said as much.

In particular — Muran, leading Kushana, had — while inside the Three Kingdoms' alliance — reportedly been quietly tilting toward Mūzeg behind the other two.

"…Which one. Which one was Muran's —"

— act.

One of the two had been an act.

The got you note in Muran's grin flickered through Serius's head; he pushed it aside.

Right now, that didn't matter.

If the Three Kingdoms had all gone to Lemuse, the reinforcements coming would be substantial.

— Time. He bought time.

Conclusion. Acceptance.

Possibly the entire conversation — Serius's and Merea's both — had been, in service of that one larger purpose: waiting for the Three Kingdoms to arrive.

— Drop it. The past is past. Think about how to survive this.

The line slipped through his head, and Serius caught it sharply.

"I'm right now —"

— surviving.

Serius noticed, in that moment, that his position had been flipped.