Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
“Phew…… Pheeew……”
Defale breathed heavily in pain while pushing down on the hole in his abdomen.
A lot of blood was gushing out of him.
The wound eventually closed due to his powers of recovery, but he was clearly exhausted.
“Mister, it looks like that body of yours is all used up now.”
Ami spoke after looking over him from the front.
Her body was stained with blood, but it was all Defale’s.
“You hit with your axe. You throw axes. That’s your limit. Even I can understand that much.”
“I don’t want to say this, but as you get older…… you inevitably lose the flexibility of your mind.”
“This is only the second time I’ve fought using this power. You just have to ‘want’ to find something.”
Ami was not particularly emotional as she said this, and spoke plainly with the same intonation as before.
“It’s because you want to die, mister. You can’t find that feeling in yourself.”
“Maybe so. I’m satisfied as long as I get to be violent. As long as I break things. Ahh, but, I started this with the hope of at least having a scar, but I think I might end up looking even more miserable.”
“Can I tell you my opinion as a commoner?”
“Let’s hear it.”
She tilted her head and spoke after smiling.
“I think your degree of misery is just perfect. For some big shot of the army, that is.”
Looking at things from Defale’s point of view, misery was his destiny.
The master he believed in was being controlled by a mysterious presence, and Defale himself had turned into a monster after losing his place.
It was all too sad for a big dream such as to create a country.
On the other hand, however, the army was an overwhelming force from the point of view of Ami and her friends.
To Ami, Defale, as he lamented his own ‘misery’, looked nothing like but a man drunk on his own position and dreams.
“Mister. Dugan, your dream to become a country, these things aren’t as splendid as you think.”
“Hah…… Are you trying to instigate me and give me a reason to fight, little lady?”
“I’m only speaking my mind. From our point of view, the army is nothing but a group of people who commit violence.”
“I see. But, I can’t accept that. I can’t lose! Because, leaving my misery aside, I won’t let my unrealized dreams be denied tooo!”
The axe on his right hand struck the ground.
The cracks created on the ground reached Ami’s feet and she immediately jumped sideways.
Then, the axe on his left hand broke the ground.
Ami twisted her body to dodge the rocks that flew up, slid over them with the rollers on the soles of her feet and jumped.
“Uaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaah!”
Defale went wilder than ever before, shouted and swung his axe around.
It created a wind that eroded the buildings nearby, making the cars and the roadside trees float up.
But, Ami, standing inside the tempest as the wind ruffled her hair, started rotating around Defale.
Without dodging, or running away.
The rubble that got close to her melted away because of the power of the wheels flying around her.
“If I can’t win a strength contest, I’ll just have to repeat. My foe has 30,000, I have 20,000. But 20,000 times two is 40,000.”
One rotation, two rotations, Ami’s speed increased each time she completed a rotation.
Of course, it was not just simply doubling.
But, her body was filled with enough power that she was not afraid of the boisterous dance of Defale’s axe.
“If I accumulate all my power and use my feelings for my sister, I’ll never be afraid of death!”
A ‘charge’ full of power.
No cheap tricks, but a frontal breakthrough.
She broke the rubble, cut through the air, and reached Defale in the blink of an eye.
But he was not just going to let it happen.
He matched the timing of the slashing attack and swung down on Mary with both his axes at the same time.
“Grrrraaaaaaah!”
He put strength into both his arms as his exposed muscles bulged and the reddish tinge of his flesh grew.
The red color was so bright that it seemed as if blood was about to spurt out at any moment as Defale shook and competed with the girl’s wheels.
His flesh axes were the first things unable to endure any longer.
Their fibers were torn up as blood gushed out of the edges, and they crumbled in one go.
“Grrr! Buuut!”
Defale abandoned his axes and stopped the girl with his arms.
The palms of his hands were scraped as his flesh was crushed and his blood mixed into the tempest.
“Hnnnh…… Gaaaaah……!”
“I’ve been thinking. You’re just here to balance the numbers, mister. You’re just a part of a script written by someone else!”
“But…… Even if he is just a re-tempered dull sword, a warrior can’t admit defeat until the moment of death! Grrraaaaagh!”
“Warrior, subordinate, dream…… It all sounds so difficult. I think you should just die already.”
Multiple wheels came out of Ami’s arms and joined the ones flying around her.
As the ‘rotation’ increased its density, the wall of mana she was clad in became even tougher.
Defale’s hands got blown away.
He tried to stop Ami with his ripped up arms, but they were destroyed starting from the tips.
“I can’t stop you…… Ugh, Dugan…… Was it all just to show me how my dream ends!? You did this to meeeeeee!”
“Gooooo!”
Ami pierced Defale’s body after he lost the means to guard himself.
A large hole opened up in the middle of his giant body.
Defale stopped moving on the spot, his arms hanging down by his sides.
Ami finally stopped moving a few dozen meters away from him when her brakes finally worked: ‘Whoops’.
And Defale went to the ground at the same time as she turned around.
Large amounts of blood gushed out of the huge hole in his body and mixed into the wind, filling the air around with the smell of iron.
“Phew…… My first victory!”
Ami made a peace sign with her right hand and raised it high up.
“Will sis praise me, I wonder? Will she hug me tight again? I’m looking forward to it!”
Then, with an easy gait, she returned to the spot where she left Cutie and the others.
Defale’s presence was already erased from Ami’s mind.
She never knew him in the first place, so it was only natural.
◇◇◇
“Oops…… Yay, they came off.”
Mary’s bones disappeared and Magrat was freed from the crucifixion.
But he was pierced in all four limbs and could not even stand up as he laid on the ground.
He managed to get on his back by twisting his body, but he could not move any further.
He was nauseous from the pain.
His blood kept gushing out.
His body temperature went down.
His cheeks twitched as he, moment by moment, approached death.
“Aaah, my groin hurts too…… That bitch could have just killed me, but she’s doing much worse. You can’t hit someone’s crotch in a match, doesn’t she know how to put on a good show?”
He was muttering to himself to hide his emotions before a faintly white glowing ball flew into his sight.
It was the power of Hermit he controlled.
The ball was invisible to other humans, but, naturally, Magrat could see it.
“But even if I run away, I’m just going to die anyway. Hey, Hermit. To tell you the truth, I’m scared of suicide too. I did it earlier since I was all fired up, but I don’t wanna die alone by myself. Man……. Aaah…… Ahh…… But, I don’t want my arms and legs to hurt either. I wish I could at least die painlessly. Poor me.”
Snap.
After vaguely talking to himself without any conflict, the ball crushed Magrat’s head.
Fresh blood spurted on the ground.
Then, his consciousness, or his soul, followed the arcana and transferred into the closest new body.
The blood that was administered to the others first transformed a specific part of the brain to select the ‘body’s owner’.
Magrat then transferred over, and transformed the body while erasing the character of the body’s original owner.
Krrk, snap, the body transformed while its bones broke, its flesh collapsed and ripped up and kneaded to become a flawless Magrat.
Naturally, he felt pain during this process as well.
It was a revival system that was not gentle to Magrat, and one that Magrat could not even control.
After this intense pain that could kill someone with shock, the next time he woke up was in the arena.
“Aaah…… This is……”
He looked around.
There should have been refugees crowded together in this wide space.
But, there was only one person standing there, with her right arm transformed into a shape resembling a dragon’s head.
“……Mary, you.”
Magrat’s mouth joyfully contorted when he saw her.
“You, you, you you yooooouuuuu! Haha! Ahahahahahahaha! This is the best! Yes! I love that kind of decisiveness! I’m forgetting all about the pain, bravoooo!”
Mary grinded her teeth and angrily shouted after hearing that voice.
“Shut up!”
“I won’t shut uuuup! How can I shut up after being shown such wonderful entertainment!? How can I not feel ecstasy!? I’m going to shout my joy out looooouuuuuud!”
Just as he said, he shouted in a strange voice while bending backwards.
Then, while staying in that position, he took a big breath.
“Hnnnnh, hah, hehehahaha! This irony, bloody, mature smell of death! It’s like the Valley of the Death God where we first met, but it’s overwhelmingly higher in freshness, more exciting, more astonishing, the fresh lingering fragrance of genocide! Mary…… You, you……”
He straightened his body after disheveling his hair, and pointed at the blood-covered Mary with both hands.
Then, he twisted his mouth to its limit as his gums showed, heavily breathed through his nose while his wide open eyes were bloodshot and shouted louder than ever before.
“You killed everyone here, didn’t yooouuu!? Hundreds of people who don’t know anything, all those ordinary citizens from A to Z! You left no one behind and ate them all with the mouth of the Death God, didn’t you!?
Mary firmly clenched her left fist and blood oozed from the palm of her hand.
She was hanging her head down so her eyes were hidden under her bangs, but her shaking arms made it clear that she was filled to the brim with anger.
“I said shut up!”
“No! Nooo, no! It would go against everything I believe in to shut up in such a fun place like this! You’re a cannibal! You know! This entertainment is the beeeeeeeest!”
“Then die!”
Magrat dodged a bone fragment shot from Mary’s left hand, ‘Whoops’.
Then he started cackling again.
“But, haha, this is bad. I can’t run any more.”
“Yes, I can tell from your face that this is the end for you! Let’s just finish it already.”
That was her real intention.
She was tired of seeing his eccentric form over and over again.
Mary grew a blade from her left hand, and turned its pointy end towards Magrat.