The Demon God Calls Forth a Factor

"Pull back if you don't want to die."

It was a strange picture.

A single man, in front of an overwhelming great army, walking calmly forward.

His direction: deeper into the army.

The man called 〈Demon God〉 walked at a pace that did not change, in a clean straight line.

"〈Lightning Fangs of Wind (Gafū Mikazuchi)〉."

The Demon God whispered the name.

In the next instant, the wind-wings standing at his back like an enormous wall began to make a strange sound.

It was the sound of white lightning cracking.

White lightning, inside the wind-wings.

"I'm done hesitating."

The Demon God — Merea — was running formula computation at speeds beyond ordinary human capacity inside his head, red eyes lit with a hard, jetting glow, fixed on the black mass.

The formula he had just deployed was one of the composite formulae available to him while four-gates-open in Violent-God mode.

As Merea himself had said, he was not yet particularly skilled at flexibly handling each Heroic Spirit's formula on its own.

The 〈Rain of the Resplendent Swords〉 from a moment ago had also been, in the strict sense, a brute-force formula — nothing especially clever, just the same finished render generated in series.

A normal practitioner couldn't pull that off either; even the 〈Water God (Seura Euras)〉 himself probably could not.

The 〈Lightning Fangs of Wind〉 was, in this same sense, original to Merea.

He used the 〈Six Wings of the Wind God〉 as an extension of his own body and laid white lightning inside the wings.

Easy to say. Hard to do — wrapping white lightning into a wing-mass that, by its nature, flowed like wind required an enormous amount of formula-processing.

Merea's faculties, fully expanded under Violent-God mode, made it possible.

Merea, who already exceeded Flander Crow himself in raw formula-processing and formula-generation speed, had — under Violent-God mode — reached a region no one had reached.

He was, half by force, fusing the spirits' signed major formulae together.

And the destructive output —

"—"

— was, in a single word, appalling.

A wind of lightning-cracks tore into the Mūzeg army.

A single sweep flung men into the air; the conducting lightning ran from one body to the next, leapt to a third body, and propagated the destruction.

A fan-shaped chunk of the black mass was simply gouged.

Merea swung his head left and right, marked the Mūzeg cavalry just outside the wing's reach, and —

"〈Rain of the Resplendent Swords〉."

— cast the multiplied blades up into the sky again, and with a single fingertip pointed them down at the further-out riders.

Screams.

"No one passes. I will be the one to pass — to where Serius is."

Not the kind of line one man should be able to put before a great army.

The body backing it was, however, throwing the line into reality.

Merea, alone, was forming a front line.

Then — into Merea's reach, one Mūzeg soldier — bravely — sword in hand, charged.

The space directly in front of Merea had been gouged open by the wing-strike, leaving a clear corridor.

Merea noticed the brave one stepping out of the indistinct black, and turned a flat gaze on him.

"O- uohhhhhhh —!!"

A war-cry.

A self-rallying animal sound, driven into Merea's ear.

The man closed without taking a counter from Merea, came up to his side, raised his sword and cut for the neck.

"…"

But his bravery cost him his body. One instant.

A black mass blew in horizontally at high speed and connected with the Mūzeg soldier's body.

A frighteningly enormous black mass — the 〈Three Tails of the Earth God〉, expanded out of all proportion.

The soldier, struck, bounced across the ground like a rubber ball.

Another tail then headed him off and batted him back, sending him to land at Merea's feet.

Merea took the rebounded soldier's neck in the blue-black-flame hand, and lifted him into the air.

A small, sad expression flickered across Merea's face.

"…Who, exactly, is the cause of all this."

A line let slip.

But by the next instant, the sad expression had vanished from Merea's face.

"I won't say I'll wipe out everyone who opposes us. But — at minimum — while your lord calls us Demon Lord and oppresses us, and you all raise blades in agreement, you will accept the corresponding counter-attack."

Merea continued.

"And —"

A flicker of anger on his face.

"— I am not as kind as 〈Technique God Flander〉."

He said it; the line bound the surrounding Mūzeg force, who had been creeping forward, into pause.

His eyes swept around once, then came back to the soldier still held aloft.

The soldier was already gasping. The light in the eyes had gone dim.

That thin life-light — Merea looked at, dead-on.

He didn't look away.

— Then —

"…Hate me. We will meet, eventually, in the 〈Empyrean〉. — 〈Death Flame of the Flame God (Fram Brand)〉."

The blue-black flame that eats life snapped at the man's neck.

The neck did not burn. Did not blister. There was no wound at all —

— but in the next breath, the life had gone from the eyes.

The blue-black flame on Merea's hands, as if drinking the life and rejoicing, surged taller, body reaching toward the sky.

To the Mūzeg soldiers, that picture was something worse than death.

To be caught, soul, in that blue-black flame and not ascend to the 〈Empyrean〉 — to be burnt eternally instead — that fantasy briefly lived in their chests.

---

Even so, the Mūzeg soldiers did not pull back.

They were good soldiers — good Mūzeg soldiers.

Sword and spear in hand, they kept running for Merea.

By that point, behind Merea, the other Demon Lords and Lemusan riders had joined in, and the engagement was again a full-front clash.

But the man watching the field from the higher position —

"— A drop of water on a hot stone."

— alone on the back of the red dragon, said it under his breath.

Serius Brad Mūzeg was reading the field cleanly.

"The losses are going to swing too high…"

Not worth it. That was the line that fit it.

Beside him, Mihai had the same read.

"The more force we commit, the more that Demon God shaves off. The infantry coming up, when they enter, will likely shave to the same pattern."

Mihai said it calmly, but his eyes carried plain shock — wide, the kind that watch something they cannot believe.

In Mihai's mental image, the present picture overlapped with feeding a starving predator for free. A predator never satisfied.

"Tch — we can still fire the white light cannon. If we put down that Demon God, even —"

The voice came from the captain of the spell-corps, beside the two of them.

After firing once from inside Caligula's mouth, he and his men had remained on Caligula's back to fire support-formulae from range.

Watching the picture below in frustration, the captain finally — enough of this — was weaving the formula.

His subordinates, evidently of the same mind, joined him without a beat. Their formula-deployment was fast.

But — a tragedy was on its way.

Serius alone had read it.

Far below, the red eyes of Merea, raging like an act of nature, had turned this way.

Even at distance, even without the detail visible, the killing intent and the air alone carried that much pressure.

A bad premonition.

"Stop —"

Serius started to call them off.

— Too late.

The captain and his men had finished about ninety percent of the white-light-cannon array, set the aim, and were on the verge of firing —

When —

"Tch —"

— the black light got there first.

A jhu sound — a sound a human body should not make — and a 〈Black Light Cannon〉 had passed within a hand's breadth of Serius's face.

It wrapped the captain and the spell-corps around him, and reaped their lives clean.

"—"

Serius could not react.

Mihai stood there blank.

Far below, Merea — visibly slightly displeased at having missed his actual target — pulled his eyes away.

He had fired before the captain's white-light cannon had completed.

Up to that point, simultaneous had been the best Merea could do.

Per the rule that the reverse formula required eighty to ninety percent of the incoming formula, Merea — for all his processing speed — had a hard limit on his pre-emption rate. If he could compose the reverse-formula earlier, the picture would change; in practice, simultaneous-fire was the limit, and he had rarely pre-empted the way Flander did.

In standard mode.

Which was already enough to be a serious threat. In Violent-God mode, his speed went higher.

The picture just past confirmed it.

Serius could not, accurately, see Merea weave the formula.

By the time he caught it, the formula was complete in Merea's hand. Then the black light was already out. As if the picture had been swapped between blinks.

"— Stop."

Serius reflexively raised his voice.

"Don't fire formulae!"

The order was for the other spell-corps men still operating on the engagement, separate from the captain's group.

Serius had, in the same instant, understood how foolish firing formulae from this side now was.

But that, too, was late.

"Tch."

In the corner of Serius's vision, a black bolt ran.

It went in a clean line for the spell-soldier who had set up an elevated position to fire safely, and punched through his body.

Beyond the cooperative formula, individual casts were in flight — and to every one, the matching reverse-formula got there ahead, eating each man's body.

"How much processing —"

What is happening inside that monster's head.

The reverse-formulae were arriving at a reaction speed at which the time-gap had effectively zero presence.

"Worse than the 〈Technique God〉…!"

Serius revised his assessment. Threw out his earlier conclusion that Merea's reverse-formula was imitation-grade.

It was a different thing from the 〈Technique God Flander Crow〉's. Flander's reverse-formula was deft.

But the 〈Demon God〉's reverse-formula was, in its own way, not weaker. Multi-target response capacity probably exceeded the Technique God's.

With the Technique God, you could create gaps by piling on attacks past what one mind could process. With this one — that trick wouldn't work.

How many casts simultaneously could he handle. Where, exactly, did his processing budget cap. — No way to read it.

The bottom was unfindable.

"…This must not be."

Watching what had just happened, Serius felt his core values cracked at the root.

"Quality surpassing quantity…!"

Look at the numerical disparity.

In an ordinary war, that disparity is, almost without exception, decisive.

It does not happen.

It should not happen.

Modern war's bedrock confidence in number-as-absolute-advantage — overturned by a single irregular, a single monster —

"— must — not —!"

The instant Serius felt his world-view of war begin to crack, he felt some piece of his own body crack in step with it.

Not all of him; but more than the average man, he had built his standing-ground on the field. The providence of the field, as he had known it, was shifting under him, and the unsettlement was not minor.

And — about to push that unsettlement past peak — was an event a few minutes off.

Demon Lord and Demon Lord.

That it occurred was thanks to the fact that multiple Demon Lords were here, working together; and on top of that — past Demon Lords were meeting through the present Demon Lords' bodies.

The singular existence Merea Mea, holding a hundred Heroic Spirits' factors, would call forth the factor of another Heroic Spirit — one that did not exist in his own body — to wake.

Without anyone realising, the engagement's resolution was approaching.

---

Without his noticing, Elma had drifted up beside Merea.

She handled the demon-blade Krishra deftly, cutting through Mūzeg soldiers in series.

Even so, she chose her position so finely that she never got in Merea's way. Even from his side, hers was an exceptional tactical eye.

— Three minutes.

While watching Elma's movement out of the corner of his eye, Merea ran the timer in his head.

How many more minutes he could hold Violent-God mode.

The recoil from opening the God Gate was clear-shape.

Self-destruction.

The body breaks down from inside and outside.

— No. Run past it.

If Hasim's projection held, a few more minutes would bring the Three Kingdoms reinforcements.

Merea was ready, if it came to it, to let the Violent-God mode time over.

He carried the 〈Resurrecting Body of the Life King (Myuzel Blue)〉 and other self-regenerative inheritances.

Leaning on those, he could endure a degree of overrun-self-destruction.

That said, the shock and pain of the self-destruction did not vanish; he would taste suffering past imagination.

Even so —

— Doesn't matter.

He intended to do it.

Just as he had decided that — Elma drifted in alongside him —

"You're going to push past the limit, aren't you."

Merea was, plainly, startled.

He had to suppress the impulse to put a hand to his face — had it shown?

But Elma —

"Just — somehow — got that feeling. Just somehow."

— said it, slightly grumpy.

"— I'm impressed."

A wry smile from Merea.

Most of the immediate Mūzeg soldiers had been cleared out; the remaining ones were visibly hesitating to charge into clear inferiority.

They weren't afraid of dying in battle. They were afraid of dying for nothing.

"Right now, lying to Elma seems hard. You're normally full of openings, though."

"Oh — be quiet, don't snipe at me in the middle of this —"

Elma blushed faintly and looked down a hair, but did not, in any beat, take her eyes off the enemy.

"— There are still a lot of them. We've cut down a good amount of fighting spirit, but Mūzeg's faith runs deep. As long as Serius is here in the back, they won't break. They all wear that look."

"Fair. Across literal centuries this country's been pouring itself into accumulating combat strength. The end result is here. Slot in the piece called Serius Brad Mūzeg, and the apex finally arrives. They won't fold easily."

Elma planted the demon-blade in the ground for a moment.

She drew the short-knife at her hip and trimmed her clothing where it had torn.

"I'd been over-trusting the travel-grade fabric. On a battlefield, it tears straight off. I'll order something better off the money-grubber next."

"Sounds good. To get to that — first, we have to —"

As Merea was about to step forward again, his hand brushed the grip of the demon-blade Elma had stuck into the ground.

The blade let out its usual eerie metallic cry where it touched the back of his hand. Merea, hearing that — froze.

Strictly: the feel of the contact had been wrong. He had frozen on it.

"A moment —"

Saying it to Elma, he gripped the demon-blade's hilt — almost on impulse — and pulled it free.

"Wait — even you, be careful. Even I don't fully know all the properties of an Imperial Weapon —"

Elma laid a hand on his arm — and a few beats later, she also froze.

"What — is — this —"

Confusion in her face.

"Inside my head — a voice —"

"— It's the demon-blade speaking."

To Merea's ears, it was clear.

---

Second Imperial Weapon, 〈Demon-Blade〉 Krishra — engaged.

---

In the next breath, Merea felt mana being pulled, hard, out of his body.

A load past anything he had felt while running multiple Heroic-Spirit signed formulae in parallel. A monstrous pull.