Being equipped by pseudopods of Threshold Slime felt like being licked by a thousand dry tongues. Since the slime was my familiar and we shared senses, it also felt like licking with those tongues.
That's why I enjoyed equipping Archer much more than myself, as we were prudently prepared for what approached.
Since we shifted from ghost form to elf form, I could taste the preternaturally smooth texture of Eldar skin on him, as the slime stripped away his ordinary clothes and replaced them with raiment more suited for combat.
"Did you really need to change my underwear too?" Archer asked. I heard his light, teasing voice from the side, my own gaze fixed on the horizon.
"Well, clean underwear is important," I teased back, already beginning to assemble the Spellweaver Mk 20, which the slime had deposited into my hands. And by assembling, I mean slotting the Stone Grail as its power source and attaching Larmo as master control. The Mark Twenty was designed to run on both, creating a fully autonomous, voice-commanded spell-casting device—a Mystic Code that provided power and enacted spells with only a trace of influence from me. One way to deal with word backlash was to avoid any direct spellcasting myself.
"Henshin and hentai are not supposed to be synonymous," he continued in the same amused voice, carrying on our pre-battle banter. Usually we would plan more, but with almost zero information on what was coming, that would be futile.
"Go, go, Overfiend Rangers," I bantered back. But when his reply didn't come immediately, I turned my head and saw he had already nocked and drawn an arrow on his mallorn bow. "What's coming?"
"Trouble," he replied curtly, completely serious, his gaze fixed on the horizon. I saw nothing, but his eyes were better than mine. "And fast."
Spellweaver Mk 20 expelled a mana-infused moonstone that started orbiting around me. That signaled that the Grand Orrery Operating System had passed first-stage booting. Traditionally, Projection magecraft was considered mostly useful only when an ingredient was truly unavailable—and even then it was treated as a stopgap, inferior to obtaining the thing itself.
Thus, while it was certainly possible to use it in Jewel Magecraft, many would consider the idea idiotic—because Jewel Magecraft's greatest strength lay in storing magical energy in jewels for later and reducing cost by sacrificing something universally considered valuable, like jewels.
But with practically infinite mana provided by the Stone Grail, the equation reversed. Spend mana, save jewels; what had been waste became efficiency.
Thus, instead of using already existing gemstones, the Grand Orrery that Spellweaver was building used projected stones, each created from carefully layered blueprints describing not only chemical composition but also how the jewel formed in nature, how it formed in myth, and its mundane and occult properties.
Included were references to celestial bodies, cross-aligned with the properties attributed to those bodies. Thus the moonstone was not only a magically infused Hecatolite stone but also a representation of Luna, circling along the same path the Moon traces as seen from Earth.
By the time agate-Mercury joined the moonstone, I could see the single dot on the horizon. And as more stones fell into orbit — lapis-Venus, ruby-Sun, bloodstone-Mars — the dot had stretched into a shape against the sky. When amethyst-Jupiter joined the dance, it finally grew clear enough to be recognizable.
A silhouette of a dragon.
"It must be Fafnir," I said aloud.
"Unless it's some other dragon," Archer commented, still as casual as ever, steady in the poised moment before release. The phrasing pulled my thoughts, if only for a breath, toward a different kind of release — and I had to admit, he looked gorgeous in both lights.
"How many dragons do you think the Vril-ya can have?" I asked.
"They are all shapeshifters. So as many as they want," he replied.
"But if it's the same template, then from our perspective we could as well call him Fafnir," I countered. "Besides, such a form has only ever been recorded once — and thus must be very expensive in some way. Considering what we know of Vril-ya culture, it must be reserved for the very leadership. So, unless we got very lucky and killed their leader with the ship, it must be him — the one they call the King of the World."
"Or his successor," Archer agreed.
After onyx-Saturn, it was time for the birthstones — jewels representing the constellations of the zodiac — to join the celestial waltz.
As one by one the zodiac stones wheeled into place — diamond-Aries, emerald-Taurus, pearl-Gemini, ruby-Cancer — their circuit began to encircle me, and the dragon's silhouette grew in tandem, swelling like a shadow-play across the sky.
"We should have felt something by now. Some presence," I said. "The Crown of Midnight is definitely in play. But where would a dragon wear a human-sized crown?"
"In its gullet," Archer said dryly. "That would count, wouldn't it?"
"I see no reason why not. Contact's all that's needed," I replied.
When the last birthstone, aquamarine-Pisces, took its appointed place, the dragon's silhouette had already grown to respectable size. That meant the dragon itself was both enormous and fast, approaching at roughly the same speed as the tsunami waves we had faced before, only trailing them by about half an hour.
"It is time," Archer said. "It's near enough."
Near? Unless that dragon was much smaller than estimated, it was more than ten kilometers away — maybe even fifteen. That was too far. Even for him. Or was it?
Suddenly I could feel an enormous quantity of mana beside me. To my skin it was like standing next to a bonfire, but the sensation burned stronger through my familiar — both because its mana senses were sharper than mine, and because Archer's feet were pressed directly against it.
Archer and I were balanced on one vast pseudopod of Threshold Slime, using it as an air platform to stand high above Tokyo Harbor.
Although the slime's tendrils appeared to be flying, that was only a trick of perspective, like a stage magician's levitation. In truth, they were anchored to Irem itself along an axis no human could observe, not without a great deal of expensive and advanced machinery.
I could see the arrow fly like a jet-propelled rocket toward the dragon.
Next was sound alike to thunder. If lightning had struck right next to my ear. Coupled with a rapid dissipation of mana.
As soon as my hearing recovered, and that took only a few seconds — elven bodies were superior like that — I asked, trying to sound calm and dignified, "You learned to perform Mana Burst?!"
"I've had a Magic Core for more than a decade," he humbly bragged, his lips twisted in a handsomely infuriating smirk. "Still using Reinforcement at this point is just a bad habit. A sign of misplaced youth."
"I suppose we should all try to become dragons as soon as possible — preferably immediately after birth," I dryly commented, steadying myself. "But really, how did you master it?"
"Actually it turned out much simpler than Reinforcement. Much more instinctive," he explained. "I just had to trust my instincts, and let it go."
Let it go? What? Was he about to lapse into song? The phrase was absurd. Yet, the more I examined it, the more it revealed a certain logic — irritatingly so.
Reinforcement demanded exacting visualization, efficient to a fault. But because mana clung to the substrate, there was always a ceiling: press too much in, and the object fractured. If the substrate happened to be one's own body, the consequences were correspondingly severe.
Mana Burst, by contrast, was inelegant. One saturated weapon or flesh with magical energy, then expelled it in an instant. Crude, wasteful, but the effect multiplied severalfold. The difficulty lay in timing: accumulation and release had to coincide almost at once.
And yet, if one possessed the reserves — and the instinct to move Od with such precision — then the ceiling of performance was markedly higher.
Then I noticed something else. The dragon was wobbling — and slowly, it began to descend.
"This is absurd. You shot down a dragon with a single arrow?" I said, not even bothering to hide my incredulity. "What's your encore— bringing down the superficial sun?"
"It's a rather special arrow. Something I've been working on for years," he said teasingly. A traditional magus would keep his secrets to the grave and beyond. Archer did the same — but for quite a different motive: he knew it stoked my curiosity to unbearable levels, and he loved to wind me up. Then, as if giving the clockwork key one last turn, he shifted the subject and added, "Aren't you just sore you dressed all pretty for the ball, but your partner lacked the stamina to satisfy you?"
I was about to return with something both profound, cutting, and witty. But then an unwelcome realization wormed its way into my head. Like a cold, slimy worm made of dread.
"Why aren't you bleeding?" I asked, turning to look at his face — at his nose, specifically. "This world has that annoying backlash. Push against it, and it pushes back. Mana Burst should've given you a nosebleed bright enough to paint you red. So what have you done?"
"Shouldn't you be focusing on the dragon?" he asked, in what everyone else would think was a dry, cutting voice. But I was not everyone else. I'd known him long enough to detect the subtle signs of guilt, the tremor in his tone, the twitch in his facial muscles.
So — he'd done something I would not approve of. Something reckless. I should know.
"When I tried to avoid backlash, I injured the blood vessels in my brain by splicing with a slime familiar. You remember how that ended," I explained. "So either you've done something just as reckless, or worse… or you've discovered a safe way to do it. But since you're not sharing, I doubt it's the latter."
I was being a bit hypocritical. But then again, we both had the same policy about reckless actions when it came to each other: do as I say, not as I do.
Thoroughly equitable, perhaps, but imprecise — and it did breed a certain conflict.
Before he could reply, a massive crashing sound pulled my gaze back to the dragon. It struck the water and bounced like a skipping stone. If that skipping stone were the size of a hill hurled by a titan, moving at the speed of a bullet train.
But I didn't allow the spectacle to distract me for long. "Well, please explain what you've done."
"Is this the time for it?" he asked.
And another. They were coming faster now, one after another.
I just looked at him. Of course it was time. Later might be too late.
With a grimace he said, "This world's backlash is limited to this world."
Well, that was obvious. That's why I did most of my work in Irem, which stood apart — though leaks through the Anchor Gates still meant some backlash — or in my workshop, sealed off by expertly designed Bounded Fields.
But the only way he could have managed that in the field was by isolating his own brain from the World. Considering his abilities, his attributes, and even the structure of his sentence, I could only reach one conclusion.
He had parcelled his brain into belonging to Unlimited Blade Works, overturning reality in the spaces inside his skull.
That couldn't be sustained for long. But Mana Burst lasted only an instant. It would take insane timing — yet theoretically, it was one way to dodge backlash.
A brilliant solution only he could manage. And reckless beyond measure.
Words failed me. "You! You! Sword-head! One mistake and you'll turn your brain into a pincushion!"
Another crash. I turned again, irritated by the interruption, and saw it cover the horizon. Seconds away from striking the harbor, and it wasn't stopping.
Well, not on my watch. If Archer was already feeling guilty about collateral damage, how could he properly appreciate me scolding him for recklessness?
I applied the same solution I'd used for the tsunami waves. No need to reinvent the wheel.
I summoned a tower of Irem.
The dragon vanished behind the tower's shroud of mist.
Not for long.
The crash of dragon against tower was louder than the sea's own roar, stone breaking under impossible weight. Mist hid the details until the beast emerged again, bleeding, fragments of broken tower-stone embedded in its scales.
But still going.
Slower, though.
It crashed into the water, raising another wave, then finally settled right beneath us.
Looking down, I could see the top of the dragon protruding from the harbor. It was floating, but so massive that even half-submerged its back broke the surface.
"Don't think I've forgotten the scolding I still owe you," I said, glancing at the dragon. "But we have butcher's work to do. We need to get the Endelómeríe before we lose again. It's done enough mischief unsupervised."
"Mischief is not the right word for mass murder," he chided. "And I don't think getting the Crown of Midnight back will be so easy. Fafnir might object a little to impromptu surgery."
"What do you mean?"
"Look closer. It's not dead," he said. "It's already healing."
"How many Mana Bursts can you use without your suicidally charming trick?" I asked, while activating the holograph menu on Spellweaver Mk 20. Quickly, I found what I was looking for and activated the preset program.
"At full power, twice more," he replied with a frown. "But with the dragon this close, I don't need full power. Most of the arrows I brought only need to hit."
I nodded, satisfied.
He had learned to adapt to Worlds. In his case, by creating Mystic Codes in the form of arrows that, when loosened, invoked Noble Phantasms.
Not an unknown magecraft — but his special circumstances made him uniquely suited to it. Rather than invoking the aspect of Heroic Spirits from the Throne of Heroes, he could draw out the aspect of Noble Phantasms stored within Unlimited Blade Works. Not only was it conceptually closer, but the path could also be bridged by using his own blood and flesh as catalyst.
In a way, like my work with automated casters, it was primarily an adaptation to this World and its backlash. Without it, his use of Tracing was both more powerful and more versatile — and it did not require significant preparation.
But then again, like my automated casters, those arrows could in theory be used by anyone. Not that either of us found such things particularly useful. Magecraft never worked well with mass production. If I wanted to equip others en masse, science was usually the better answer.
"Not the one I used to bring down the dragon," he continued. "That type works best if it goes deep. The deeper, the better. But I only have one more of those."
"So keep it in reserve," I replied. "Use the others. We need to locate the source of its vitality — until then, harrying is the way to go."
Spellweaver Mk 20 pinged, and new words appeared on its display:
Key Conjunction achieved: Jupiter conjunct Saturn in Aquarius
Spell circle set.
Executing Invocation: Urn of Pure Flow
And then the percentage began to rise, as the reservoir filled with alchemically pure water, condensed from air. A perfect base for later work.
I looked down and saw dragon's flesh writhe as it healed with unnatural, Vril-powered vitality. What Archer had done — plus the long fall and the crash of the sea — had broken its bones, but they were already repairing themselves. I heard bones snapping back into place, gunshot-loud, as torn flesh mended, marked by the golden glow of Vril.
Spellweaver Mk 20 pinged, confirming the reservoir was at capacity. Then it continued with the preset program, the orbiting gems aligning toward the second conjunction.
"Should I shoot while it still looks helpless?" Archer asked.
"Do you think you have a chance of killing it in one shot?" I asked, observing the dragon carefully.
"If that arrow didn't do it?" Archer shook his head. "I lanced its brain with a hundred swords at once. If that still wasn't enough, no critical hit is going to matter. But while it's big, it's still Vril-ya. Isn't the usual solution, if you can't kill them outright, to exhaust their supply of Vril? Hurt it, force it to constantly regenerate."
"I've been observing the movement of Vril — easy enough to track by the golden glow. And it doesn't behave as it should. Normally Vril condenses at the site of damage, but here it flows." I paused, then added, "That means it has both an origin and a destination. The destination is simple to deduce — the Endelómeríe, feeding on Vril like a parasite. But the origin is more elusive. Until we find it, we can't exhaust its supply. Not in any reasonable time frame."
The sudden roar of the dragon nearly drowned out the ping of my autocaster. I glanced only long enough to confirm the status.
Key Conjunction achieved: Mars swallowed by Pluto in Scorpio
Spell circle set.
Executing Invocation: Black Sun of Putrefaction
A timer appeared, showing how long it would take to convert the alchemically pure water into a flawed recreation of Black Vril.
I'd had almost eight years to analyze the poison created by the local version of Gram — the sinister inversion of life-giving Vril. Not the same, but a passable recreation of phenomena. It would decay and rot, but most importantly, it would consume Vril in order to make more of itself.
But I had no time to reminisce. I had only the fraction of a second to glance at the readout before turning my attention back to Fafnir's bellow.
It raised its head and roared, golden light burning as Vril stitched together the massive wound Archer had inflicted with his mystery arrow.
A hole had been punched clean through its skull, just beneath the base of the twin horns. From my angle above the harbor, I could estimate the proportions well enough. If the beast stood three hundred meters tall, then its wingspan must have stretched close to a kilometer — the head alone broader than whole city blocks. By that scale, the cavity drilled into the bone was scarcely a meter, perhaps two across. In other words: the size of a human body, absurdly neat against the enormity of its skull.
From that wound spread a lattice of fractures, radiating outward like a starburst. Some were little more than hairline cracks, others deep gashes that cut visibly into scale and bone, jagged spokes in a wheel of destruction. It looked less like an arrow's wound and more like something had erupted outward in every direction at once.
And yet, all that was not enough. The dragon endured. More than endured. It healed. Regenerated. Restored itself. Golden light burned across the ruin, Vril surging through flesh and marrow. Bone snapped back into place with gunshot cracks, muscles writhed, and skin knitted together as though fire itself had become a surgeon. Worst of all, the repairs left no scars. Vril did not merely heal. It sought always to restore to an ideal condition.
"Why are there no scars?" Archer asked suddenly, twin arrows — one black, one white — drawn on his bow, ready to fire. "I've used cursed blades often enough. Even with Vril, such a wound shouldn't have healed that easily."
Used blades. I could see. The arrow was the origin of the anomalous wounds. Perhaps he had made the arrow itself into a familiar, allowing Projections to originate from the impact point rather than from his own body. That would have been clever, and it would have explained the radial cuts.
But how had it drilled through flesh? Some sort of boring device of rotating swords?
"It's not a familiar," Archer corrected, his eyes fixed on the dragon. Mine too, mostly — I was mapping the flow of Vril, sketching a boiling-metal map in my mind to locate both the Endelómeríe — the parasite draining Vril — and its origin. "It's a contained wormhole leading to Unlimited Blade Works. It stays passive while contained, but when the arrow breaks, the worldline opens."
That was unexpected. But I could see the logic, given what we'd gathered in Imladris, where the angled elven forge had merged with his Reality Marble.
"You know it leaves a somatic link directly to your soul," I said, gently chiding.
"It lasts less than a second. I don't think it matters," he replied.
The last ping. I glanced — quickly, very quickly. I couldn't afford to take my eyes from the dragon for more than an instant, but I had to check.
Key Conjunction achieved: Sun aligned with Galactic Center at 27° Sagittarius
Spell circle set.
Invocation locked: Zero-Point Sagitta
Ready to fire.
The dragon roared — but not as before. Pain, anger, hate still clung to the sound, but Vril had done its work. The beast was hale again. This was no cry of suffering. This was a battle cry. And more.
The sound was earth-shattering, freighted with psychic impressions. Too much even for me to parse. I caught only flashes: a starving man in a camp, a medieval villager fleeing dragonfire, a hidden court where serpent courtiers devoured each other in endless intrigue, a ship adrift in the void as light and life dwindled and the captain chose who must be sacrificed so the rest could endure.
Different visions, but a single thread. A declaration of self. Of history. Of philosophy.
A morality brutally simple: resources were finite, survival was the only Good, and anything that threatened it was Evil. Community existed only to feed the climb to the top — and climbing was the sole rational act.
And this was no plea, no theory. It was a proclamation — truth hammered into being across ages. A creed proven by life itself, by blood and bone: void-ships adrift at the edge of nothing, starving villages clawing at survival, the age of reptiles locked in tooth and claw. Proof older than nations. Older than memory. Older than humankind. Older than the mammalian line.
Not human. Alien. Yet disturbingly comprehensible — and all the worse for that. Many would embrace such a creed without hesitation, thinking it wisdom.
Hard to counter, given the weight of data. But one always had to consider origin. Bias — not only deliberate, but also unconscious. No single perception, however long or bloody, could stand as proof.
And yet it was an assault. Embraced as simple truth, it turned man against man. Broke unity.
Not that it mattered. I wasn't expecting any help beyond Archer's to make a difference in a reasonable time frame. And if survival was the only measure, then my survival — in the short run and the long — demanded the dragon's extinction.
In a way, his own creed justified his death at my hands.
Archer snorted. "Disgusting."
"Not the first time someone's shouted Rand at me," I replied lightly. "But I must admit — it was the loudest."
He chuckled, loosening the arrows. Together they flew, one black, one white, twining a spiral toward the dragon's wing. Comparing the size of the arrows and the dragon's wings, the wings were the more vulnerable target—especially for those two arrows.
Those two had no elixir potent against dragons, nor did they carry curses or poisons. It was just that this type was most numerous among his arrows.
The paired arrows invoked the twin blades of Kanshou and Bakuya—Noble Phantasms that Archer had the greatest affinity with, since their legend lay in the making, not in their use, and also invoked a sacrifice. They resonated with Archer's own nature and thus took the least time and resources to make, leaving him with the most of that arrow type.
Already, he was drawing a second pair and firing them.
I wasn't going to let him have all the fun. But I had to choose my targets more carefully. He was on distraction duty—to harry and draw the dragon's attention, lest the beast wander into the city.
My goal was more delicate and precise. I had to determine from where the Vril flowed.
From my previous observation—the slight, elongated and curved nature of the glow in the wound—I judged the flow was almost circular, and also counterclockwise. Which did not give much to go on, but it was a place to start.
If the dragon's anatomy was similar to a lizard's, and its body type suggested it would be, the main arteries should run relatively close to the equivalent path.
I aimed my Mystic Code carefully—at the place where the neck of the dragon met the left wing, slightly to the side. Then pressed the trigger.
Spellweaver Mk 20 immediately cast the spell Zero-Point Sagitta: a sympathetic link between its barrel and the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And thus turned the whole construct into a gravity-powered railgun. Of course, the spell was an imitation—I did not get the full gravitational attraction of a supermassive black hole, just enough to launch several liters of alchemically treated liquid at the speed of sound.
By that time, Archer had fired three more pairs of black and white arrows.
But at the distance we were from the dragon, my attack had struck before even his first did.
Almost at the very spot I had aimed, the flesh blackened and rotted, while the tears in the wing lit with golden glow. But that was the beauty of the alchemical imitation of Black Vril: it immediately devoured Vril to self-replicate.
The golden glow at the wound I had inflicted was quickly swallowed by the black shadow I had inflicted. It would not last. My imitation was less capable of proliferating from the real thing, and the amount of Vril coursing through the dragon was unprecedented.
The dragon turned its head and opened its jaws wide.
Well, it was not as if it intended to lie passive and enjoy our attention. I moved my left hand and Threshold Slime deposited the portal gun into it. Even as the dragon inhaled, with a deafening sound, I was already preparing.
Parts of the slime we were standing on had already turned white from Conversion Gel. I fired the portal gun at it, then immediately aimed toward a building I had previously noted—a concrete wall on the roof, suitable material for forming a portal. I fired, and the portal opened.
I jumped through, twisting as gravity changed, since one portal was on the ground and the other on the wall. I shouted to Archer, "Jump!"
He followed, starting the move even before I finished speaking. Still, we were only a hair's breadth away from being engulfed in the dragon's breath.
It was not fire, but a blackish mist. I could feel it burning the Threshold Slime even as it retreated back into Irem. And the small pieces that passed through the portal before it closed quickly dissolved patches of the roof, exposing the empty room beneath.
"Talk about bad breath," I commented, looking at the damage. Some sort of acid. No, probably nothing that simple. More likely a complex soup of enzymes and other organic compounds working in concert.
"No amount of mint would help," Archer quipped back, even as he readied another shot and the dragon continued spewing.
"Well, he did vomit at us," I replied, returning to observe effects and patterns. After firing the whole reservoir, the automated caster would once again need to cycle through its spells to be ready to fire again. "I think this was some sort of aerosolized digestive juice."
Extracorporeal digestion was not unheard of in nature, but it was more expected from arachnids and starfish than from reptiles.
But that was something for later—I had a more practical problem now.
The spreading rot showed it was not following the blood vessels. Which was unusual, since Vril tended to bond with organic compounds, and in more advanced organisms it often used circulatory systems to reach damaged parts.
But the speed was also highly unexpected. It was moving more like an electrical current than the usual flow.
I glanced at the wings. The wounds were almost gone, but the glow was much more visible than the blackness of rot. It was subtly moving, not keeping to the wound, and shifting toward the centre of the body—but not in a straightforward manner; rather, it looped to the left. That suggested some form of circulation.
I took in a deep breath. Well, there was some research suggesting that increased oxygen intake could help with thinking, but it was rather dubious, and could just be placebo. Still, it was no bad habit.
The smell of lavender and gardenia hit my nose, sweet and almost cloying, cutting strangely against the salt of the harbour. It was actually quite a nice roof, well-maintained and without the trash all too common in smaller communal spaces.
So where could the source be? I could almost dismiss the torso as the origin. Detection of a destination was easier than pinpointing an origin, so I was almost certain that the Crown of Midnight was there. And there was a high probability that its absorptive properties were the cause of the unusual velocity of Vril flow.
Thus, if origin and destination were too close together, the extremities would be starved of Vril — and I knew that was not the case.
The wings, too, could be dismissed. Both the shape of the Vril and my observation of the rotting wound I had inflicted suggested a dual flow: out to the wing, then back again. It was very unlikely for the origin to be there.
The head? The same problem as the wings — the flow was again dual.
Well, knowing where the origin wasn't was the first step to figuring out where it was. But the second step might be a little steeper. Five possibilities: four legs and a tail. And not all were accessible at the same time.
"Having fun?" Archer suddenly asked.
I just looked at him in question.
"You're smiling," he continued.
So, I was. How strange. My self-control was usually better, but I could not deny that I enjoyed a good puzzle.
"I hope you've found the target, because I'm running out of special arrows," he added. My smile faded. "Soon I'll be forced to use—what did you call it?—my suicidally charming trick."
The Mystic Code in my right hand pinged.
That gave an idea.
"Here." I offered Spellweaver Mk 20 to him. "You're the better shot, and it's better if I concentrate on the portal gun. I've determined the source of Vril is in one of the legs or the tail. Aim for the base—where hind legs and tail meet. If you can't get a shot there, target a front leg instead."
He slung his bow on his back and took the Mystic Code from me, and the gemstones orbiting it followed.
With a sly smirk he added, "Just to be sure — are you asking me to shoot a dragon in the ass?"