Chapter 473

Belkerp's remains were carefully arranged and placed inside a container fashioned from Earth Magic.

An attempt was also made with Restoration Magic to do something about what had once been Lucy - the flesh sludge - but Leah explained that it had already transformed into an entirely different substance, making recovery impossible. So they gathered it as carefully as they could and placed it in a container as well.

When they returned, they intended to at least build a grave for the two of them.

With that, they stored everything they had received from Belkerp into Tatsuro's Infinite Item Field, then quietly gathered around the infant sleeping inside the capsule, its small chest rising and falling with each soft breath.

Ai, who had been studying the baby with wide, curious eyes, poked its chubby cheek and voiced the question on her mind.

"Still, why do you think this child survived unharmed?"

"This is purely speculation, but most likely, the Cores wanted Lucy's revival to fail - yet none of them turned their attention toward the child. Or perhaps some among them thought the child had nothing to do with it and actually wished for the child's revival to succeed. Either of those seems most plausible. There were many among them who had children of their own during their lifetimes, after all."

Ai took in those words with a quiet "I see," while Ishtar's expression turned thoughtful, and she spoke up.

"In that case, a living brain is less stable than Leah's Magic Brain after all. A living brain has flexibility born from lingering emotion, but the fact that it can choose to refuse anything contrary to its will is not ideal from the user's perspective - even if there are ways to force compliance."

"And looking at how things turned out, there's no telling where that refusal might show up or what kind of effect it'll have."

"But flexibility is important. It carries the potential to produce results that even its creator never anticipated. With that in mind, perhaps the Magic Brain housing Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi - the one Nii-san uses - is, in a certain sense, the ideal form I've been reaching for."

At Leah's words, the cores of Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi embedded in Tatsuro's staff and coat flickered and gleamed with what seemed like a touch of pride.

"With those research materials, you may even be able to learn how to create something like that yourself. Through methods that harm no one, of course. I'd like to take a look at them myself."

"I don't mind showing them to you, but I don't believe anyone other than me will be able to read them."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?"

Leela had been reminiscing about the towering stacks of documents she had seen, and the comment from Leah brought her up short, tilting her head in puzzlement.

She may not have reached Belkerp's level, but she was still someone who had lived dozens of times longer than Tatsuro and the others. She had skills that let her read any script, yet she could not understand how that would still leave her unable to read those documents.

"At the time, Belkerp asked me for my full name, do you recall?"

"Now that you mention it, yes. I assumed he simply wanted to know your name before the end."

"That may have been part of it, but it wasn't the only reason."

"Wait, really?"

It turned out that the documents had been constructed so that unintended readers could not decipher them. When Belkerp asked for Leah's full name at that moment, he had been re-registering the lock so that Leah alone could bypass it.

As a result, if Leela were to look at those pages, she would perceive nothing but meaningless strings of characters and indecipherable diagrams - while Leah would see everything exactly as it was meant to be read.

Upon hearing this, Leela said what a shame and gave up without any fuss. She was certainly curious, but if he had decided he wanted no one but Leah to see it, she felt it right to honor that.

"Well, setting all that aside - what are we going to do with this child? We're about to have to start fighting, aren't we?"

"What to do right now matters, but we'd better also decide what comes next."

"That's a fair point. What do you all think? Let's at least run through a few different possibilities."

As Tatsuro invited a range of ideas, the most straightforward and least demanding option was placing the child in something like an orphanage. Find a properly run establishment and make a generous donation, and the child would most likely be well looked after.

Another option was entrusting the child to this country's emperor. If they kept quiet about the child's parentage and asked Emperor Fion - who regarded Tatsuro and Ai as Servants of the Gods and had already recognized Leela as a Clear Elf, the same race as the founding mother and father of the nation - to raise the child well, he would likely agree without a moment's hesitation and provide the finest education imaginable.

A few more ideas along similar lines were put forward, but in the end, they settled on holding the decision in reserve for now. Whatever they chose to do, keeping the child under their own watch was the safest course while it remained in such a premature state. They would care for the infant at the base for the time being and revisit the matter once the child had grown a little more.

"Well, raising the child as a resident of our territory might not be a bad idea either. Being Belkerp's child, they'd probably grow up exceptionally capable - and I think they'd fit right in with our territory, don't you?"

"True. Not a high-ranking elf, but a mid-tier elf - in this child's case... Magic Elf... no, perhaps a Wise Elf."

"What's a Wise Elf? Leela-san. I can sort of guess that a Magic Elf would be good at magic, but..."

"A Wise Elf is a subspecies closely resembling the Magic Elf, with many overlapping traits. The distinction is that while a Wise Elf has lower raw magical power and spell strength than a Magic Elf, they possess greater cognitive ability and superior magic control - that's the defining characteristic. And the highest-tier elf of that lineage would be the Nia Elf."

"Nia Elf..."

The name made Tatsuro grimace as Aarenfrit came to mind. That man had been a Nia Elf as well.

When he explained who Aarenfrit was to Leela and Ishtar - who had noticed his expression - both of them grimaced in turn.

"High-ranking elves, outside of Clear Elves, are remarkably gifted and long-lived among the other elf variants - but the troublesome part is that the early ones begin showing symptoms after around three thousand years."

"...Come to think of it, King Howl of Casapisti, where our base is, will eventually lose his mind too. Maybe we should keep that in mind going forward."

"I don't think you need to worry about that, Tatsuro. High-ranking elves in royal positions are actually fairly common, and those with that kind of responsibility tend to have rules in place requiring them to take their own lives once the first signs appear. Without that, the kingdom would collapse sooner or later."

"So King Howl will end up... taking his own life someday. I get that going mad would be a problem, but still..."

"But that king is a Nymph Elf, isn't he. Because of their unusually extended childhood, I believe they can maintain their sanity for around eight thousand years. And as of our time - I believe he was still around five thousand years old - so you have a while yet."

They still had roughly three thousand years, which was something of a relief - and when Tatsuro really thought about it, eight thousand years of life was an extraordinary, extraordinary blessing by any human standard. Perhaps it wasn't something they needed to worry about at all. With that thought, he brought the conversation back around.

"Let's set that aside for now. I'll take Jeanne with me, head back to the base, get the baby somewhere safe, and then come back."

"Neigh"

Since they would need to leave the baby in someone's care, there was no one else to ask but Gramps - and in that case, it was only right to bring Jeanne, the child's true master. With that reasoning, he took Jeanne along, returned to their own era, and after asking both Jeanne and Gramps to watch over the infant, came back to where Ai and the others were waiting. Not much time had passed since they transferred, so the margin of error was nearly nothing.

"Alright, then let's get ready for combat."

"Where shall we do this? The room where those powerful Golems were is the sturdiest and the most spacious, so I'd recommend that."

"Then let's pull the World Force over there."

And so they retraced their steps to the room where they had fought the powerful Golems that had served as the Final Defense Line. The debris left abandoned there was gathered into Tatsuro's Infinite Item Field, and then Ishtar covered the ceiling, walls, and floor with her silver sand to reinforce the room. Even if things got rough, it would hold.

Tatsuro then gathered up the World Force from the magic circle room like wisps of cotton candy, maintaining his skills as he carried it two rooms over to their destination. All that remained was to use Level Eater to adjust the scale of the World Force, spawn a magical beast, and defeat it.

The Grade God measured out the designated amount, and once that portion had been drawn and released, the time for conversion into a magical beast had finally come. Tatsuro finished activating the skill, and together with the others, stepped back to brace themselves for whatever might emerge.

And what appeared was-

"A... big shield? I think?"

"That's what it looks like - but this feeling..."

"Yes. Without a doubt, it's a Magic King Species."

It stood roughly three meters tall and thirty centimeters thick. A great circular shield, with a carved demonic face clutching a red jewel at its center. Arranged around it, as if encircling that central face, were carvings of five demonic upper bodies rendered in relief.

Something that, no matter how you looked at it, you would believe it if someone called it a giant's shield - was now floating through the air, radiating its Magic King's Aura toward them in clear warning.

"It possesses a defensive skill called Jewel's Protection. As long as there is energy within the jewel held in that central demonic face, all attacks will be reflected without exception. When attacking, please be care"

Before Leah could finish saying "please be careful" from inside her tiger-form machine, the shield pivoted from vertical to horizontal, its carvings now facing the ceiling. The five demonic upper-body carvings surrounding the central one rose up from the surface of the shield like a three-dimensional projection, coming to life.

Each held in their hands a pair of weapons - a jagged, lightning-shaped sinister short sword and a long sword.

The shield, with those demonic upper bodies jutting from its surface, came gliding toward Tatsuro on a smooth, fluid arc, as if skimming the air.

Since attacking would only get it reflected back, Tatsuro created a multi-attribute barrier on the front alongside Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, Ai conjured a Ki Shield, Leah raised an ice shield, and Ishtar formed a silver sand shield. All of them braced together to receive the charge.

"….!!"

The demons pressed forward, hacking at each barrier and shield with the twin short swords and long swords clutched in their hands. But there was no sign of breaking through.

"If it reflects attacks, we just have to attack from a direction the reflection can't reach us!"

"Neigh!"

With that, Athena's Golden Lightning was blended with Jeanne's tornado into a mixed magic, then fired downward from above using Tatsuro's Transfer Magic. Just as Leah had said, that strike was reflected - but upward, into the empty ceiling. All they had to do now was keep the shield pinned while deflecting its attacks in a harmless direction, draining the energy from the red jewel embedded at its center until the absolute-defense reflection failed.

With that plan in mind, they were about to launch the second strike of the lightning storm - when a sense of wrongness passed through everyone holding a barrier or shield. In that same instant, each of them felt the energy poured into their defenses yanked away in one sharp pull, as if being siphoned off.

What that meant was obvious - their barriers, which had been keeping the shield at bay, were now weakened.

"-!"

The side of the shield split open vertically with a great clap, and from within, blades of Ki burst outward in every direction, spanning a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

The first to react was Ai, whose dynamic vision was unmatched. On pure reflex, driven by the need to protect everyone, she thrust her right fist directly into the blast.

Under normal circumstances, that strike would have scattered the enemy's Ki blades to nothing - but the enemy possessed the absolute-defense reflection skill.

"Gh!?"

"Ai!"

The reflection had applied to the Ki blades as well. The moment Ai's fist connected, her own force was hurled straight back at her. The martial arts glove on her right hand exploded off, and then the Ki blades surged in and, breaking through Ai's Durability, sheared off the upper half of her fist.

Four of Ai's fingers danced through the air.

But thanks to the slight lag in the reflection, Tatsuro's Transfer Magic allowed the rest of the group to create distance without taking a single hit. The demon shield looked around in bewilderment at the group that had suddenly vanished. But it seemed to have no detection-type skills - and since they had hidden themselves in an instant behind a partition of silver sand, blending into the surrounding terrain, it had yet to figure out where they were.

"I'll heal you right now!"

"I'll heal you right now!"

"Yeah, thanks."

Tatsuro, Nana, and Tsukuyomi used Life Magic to tend to Ai as blood flowed from her hand. Ai's right hand regrew without leaving so much as a scar.

"Everyone - those two swords the demons are carrying appear to drain the energy from whatever they touch and channel it into the jewel. Bringing anything infused with magical power or Dragon Force near those swords is dangerous."

"I would have liked to hear that a little sooner, but you were cut off before you could finish."

"I'm sorry, Sister. Your injury"

"No, it's fine. Tatsuro and the others already healed it. And it was my fault for forgetting about the reflection and swinging anyway - don't worry about it."

"But thanks to that, the rest of us escaped those blades without a scratch. Thank you, Ai."

"Don't mention it, Ishtar-chan. So, Tatsuro is..."

"That damn shield bastard... daring to leave a mark on Ai's beautiful hand... I will never forgive this..."

"Oh dear, that's not good."

While everyone else was relieved that they had all gotten out of it safely, Ai caught sight of Tatsuro alone, his face alight with pure, burning fury and quietly prayed for the demon shield's soul in the life beyond.