Chapter 60 - The Antidote (2)

Asked to name the most famous word associated with Rendal Dreyfus Aslan, most people would think of “iron-blooded.”

It was a sobriquet that had naturally attached itself to a man who always handled everything brusquely, professionally, and in the public interest.

Anyone familiar with that reputation would have been astonished to see him now.

“Step on it!”

The driver startled at the icy command and accelerated.

As the iron steed hurtled down the unpaved road with a scream, Grand Duke Aslan rubbed his hands together, trying to still their anxious trembling.

Of course, anyone who knew his reputation would have found this succession of reactions baffling.

But as Aiden had seen through long ago, Grand Duke Aslan cared deeply for his family.

And his current circumstances left him no choice but to be anxious.

“—”

Suppressing the urge to hurry the driver again, Grand Duke Aslan closed his eyes.

'... Liza.'

He had left immediately after looking at several photographs delivered to him moments earlier.

Their origin was unknown, and the sender unidentified, but what they depicted was horribly clear.

Someone injecting Liza Aslan with an unknown drug.

Granted, he had asked Aiden to knock some sense into her. But the Aiden he knew was not the sort of man to do such a thing, and the timing would not have allowed him to take and send these photographs in the first place.

A third party had undoubtedly done this to Liza before Aiden and his companions arrived.

He knew neither their purpose nor what had happened afterward, but one thing was certain.

Something terrible had happened to his family.

So it was only natural that, upon hearing a thunderous crash as they approached the estate, he flung the car door open hard enough to nearly break it and leaped out.

“...!”

Whatever it was, something serious was happening.

With that thought filling his head, the grand duke broke into a run.

Though he had retired from the front lines, he retained his feel for wielding supernatural power. It did not take him long to reach the source of the noise.

And the sight awaiting him was enough to make his entire body go rigid.

Aiden and his companions were facing something amid energy and divinity spread so thickly through the surroundings that the air seemed hazy.

At the center of that battle-scarred ground stood a magical beast that still bore faint traces of Liza's form.

“...”

Fighting back a wave of dizziness, Grand Duke Aslan stared at the beast. As though sensing his gaze, it turned to look at him.

The face was Liza's. But...

That thing was not the daughter he knew. Its eyes held such unmistakable bloodlust that the realization struck him at once.

'Magical-Beast Transformation.'

His long experience hunting magical beasts told him exactly what this was, and a chill raced down his spine.

It was a phenomenon that affected only a tiny fraction of veteran soldiers who had spent decades on the front lines enduring the Night of the Hunt. Their bodies mutated as though their very species were changing from human to magical beast.

Those who reached that state lost all reason and rampaged until they died.

Which meant...

“...”

His daughter had to die.

Her death was already certain.

Just as that fact threatened to overwhelm the grand duke with vertigo, the Lionhearted moved.

“I agree that we mustn't kill her, but who in the world tells someone to charge at a thing like that unarmed?!”

Voicing her complaint with tears practically in her eyes, Noel charged straight at the grand duke's daughter.

'... Mustn't kill her?'

Grand Duke Aslan stared blankly at the Lionhearted.

Then he turned toward the young man who had clearly given that order.

“We don't have a choice.”

Aiden Kellermain gave the complaining Lionhearted a wry smile.

“We can't cure her if she's dead.”

Cure magical-beast transformation?

As the absurd statement left the grand duke dazed, Noel closed in on his daughter with something approaching a scream.

“I'm never going to die of old age—!”

Liza's gaze immediately locked onto Noel. All eight legs lashed out at her without leaving a single opening, sweeping across so much space that evasion was unthinkable.

It was a display of violence that could shred even sturdy armor like cardboard.

But Aiden immediately brought his supernatural power to bear against it.

A bright cluster of light enveloped the surroundings. Pure-white energy streamed out like mist and mingled with it.

As the energy mixed into the condensed core of dharmic power, the luminous sphere began shining an even purer white. Its brilliance was almost too dazzling to look at as it formed a barrier before Noel.

Shaping supernatural power took considerable effort in itself. Since Aiden had yet to learn any skills for manipulating this particular power, the shape was rather crude.

That made what followed all the more absurd.

CLANG!!!!

Grand Duke Aslan's jaw dropped as sparks flew and every one of the magical beast's blades rebounded.

'He blocked it?'

Despite such clumsy handling of his power, he had repelled all eight of the attacking beast's legs.

Everyone in the beast-hunting grand-ducal House of Aslan knew one fundamental rule.

The most basic principle of fighting magical beasts was to use mobility and evasive tactics.

The reason was simple and clear: a magical beast's basic physical capabilities surpassed even those of humans who could wield supernatural power.

For such a human to engage a beast in close combat was like a puppy trying to wrestle a tiger.

Even the weakest magical beast could easily slaughter several trainee knights. Against one of the caliber of the beast wearing Liza's form, even a monster like the Lionhearted should avoid a direct clash.

And yet...

Aiden had repelled an attack backed by that beast's full bodily strength with such a crudely constructed barrier.

And that wasn't even the end of it.

When Grand Duke Aslan saw that portions of the beast's blades had broken against that power, he momentarily forgot the situation entirely and let out an incredulous laugh.

Well. Whatever else he might not know, he was certain those bladed legs could cut through diamonds.

Yet there they were, in that state—as though they had struck something incomparably harder than themselves.

'... Just how hard is that barrier...?!'

He already knew that Aiden Kellermain had an exceptional talent for supernatural powers.

Word that he had mixed energy and divinity was quietly circulating among those with discerning eyes. Above all, hadn't his use of a technique left by the Knight of Dawn been recorded?

But he hadn't imagined that Aiden was hiding something beyond even that.

Just how many hidden talents did this man have up his sleeve?!

ROOOAR!!!

As the beast roared at the loss of its means of attack, energy burst from Noel's body now that she was within range. With her physical strength explosively enhanced, she seized Liza's body and held her fast.

“Keep holding her!”

Divinity radiated from Katya's body, following Noel in and pouring over Liza. With its heat reduced to a minimum, it bound the beast's legs tight like a snare.

Finally, Aiden darted toward Liza. Yet another supernatural power gathered in his hand.

“Wait, you—!”

Snapping back to his senses, the grand duke opened his mouth to stop Aiden.

The skill with which they had subdued the beast so quickly and cleanly deserved praise. But Aiden looked for all the world as though he was rushing in to kill her, and the words escaped him before he could stop himself.

“Your Grace.”

That was the only reply, accompanied by a chuckle.

“I'm not so deranged that I'd make a father watch his daughter die.”

What followed was a sight that truly lived up to its name.

A supernatural power made by blending divinity and dharmic power.

Its name was Purifier.

▣

Plenty of impossible things happened in the world. Naturally, though, witnessing one firsthand was rather rare.

In that sense, Rad was currently wondering whether he ought to buy a lottery ticket.

He was watching something he had never expected to see in his life.

Liza had been thrashing and resisting as she lay pinned to the ground. Exposed to the supernatural power streaming from Aiden's fingertips, her struggles were gradually subsiding.

And it wasn't merely her resistance that was fading.

The unmistakable signs of Magical-Beast Transformation sprouting from her body were actually being cured.

The bladed legs jutting from her back shrank.

They grew small and limp, then vanished as though retracting into the body they had been using as a host to siphon nutrients from.

Here was someone in the terminal stage of Magical-Beast Transformation, for whom death should have been the only solution. Yet he was restoring her to normal simply by drawing out his power and touching her.

Noel, holding Liza's body down; Katya, keeping her legs tightly bound; and Grand Duke Aslan, quietly watching it all—their faces expressed much the same thing.

Utter astonishment.

“... I don't think even a high priest specializing in healing back in the Holy Kingdom could pull this shit off.”

Rad could not have agreed more with Katya's groaned remark.

Though he found it almost pathetic that she could come up with no better point of comparison.

'Healing?'

No. Such a paltry word could not explain this phenomenon.

Supernatural power was divine authority bestowed upon humans. Demonic energy followed the same principle, even if it was the power of Wornil, a sealed god.

In that sense, a human undergoing Magical-Beast Transformation after exposure to demonic energy was a phenomenon governed by Wornil's authority. So was the fact that Magical-Beast Transformation would not stop until death.

Like objects falling from above to below, it was one of the laws that constituted the world. Something so self-evident that questioning it would be strange.

In other words, that man...

Quite apart from the madness of freely mixing supernatural powers...

A human had just reversed a god's authority.

“...”

That was an aberration fully deserving of the word “miracle.”

It was impossible.

Yet what he was seeing was undeniably real.

'... No.'

Rad let out a hollow laugh and dragged a hand down his face.

'What the hell kind of monster is he?'

When the prince had previously ordered him to investigate Aiden's background again from scratch, he hadn't taken it particularly seriously.

In his estimation, Aiden was a fairly dangerous variable, but not one worth that much attention.

The scene he had just witnessed changed his mind immediately.

'He was an ordinary civilian until recently, wasn't he?'

Rad trusted his own judgment enough to be certain of that.

The man had unquestionably been an ordinary civilian with nothing to his name. The documents, his actions, even meeting him face-to-face had all convinced Rad of it.

Just an ordinary human who had lucked into a windfall.

Someone who would reveal the limits of his meager abilities before long.

Then what was this?

Not even a few months had passed since he was an empty shell of an ordinary man with nothing. Just how many absurd abilities had he acquired?

His rate of growth made no sense.

'... I'll have to turn over every last stone.'

What on earth was this man hiding? What was he involved with that let him grow at such a monstrous pace?

Rad would have to investigate every detail.

With that thought, he concealed himself within the curtain of darkness he had spread with demonic energy.

'His upbringing, how he handles his powers, and... '

Once Rad decided to begin something, he always saw it through to the bitter end.

He quietly closed his eyes, planning to dig up even information the man himself might not know about himself.

Fortunately, the black magic he wielded through demonic energy allowed him to activate a few long-distance travel spells with ease, even amid this chaos.

'... I may not have achieved my original objective.'

He would have to scrap all his prepared schemes, but at least he was leaving with a clear idea of what to do next.

At the very least, he had resolved to nip such a terrifying seed of future trouble in the bud.

That was what he thought.

“Excuse me, Minister of Administration. Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“...?”

Until a voice suddenly spoke right beside him.

Along with those words, a hand reached through the curtain of darkness, seized Rad by the collar, and dragged him outside.

“...!”

His face contorted as he turned to look.

“Or should I call you the Puppeteer?”

Aiden Kellermain stood there gripping his collar, an icy smile on his face.