Alon looked up at the enormous meteor Bringing-In Night had created, so vast it blotted out even the sky.

He continued thinking for a moment, then finally spoke as though he had sorted everything out.

"...You really are on a different level."

"Right? So be grateful as you di-"

"But it isn't something I failed to anticipate. I just—"

At Alon's words, the man—no, Bringing-In Night—looked momentarily confused.

Of course, Alon knew.

The being before him possessed power far beyond that of the other Divine blood.

No matter how close to human it looked, the aura it gave off was enough to make every cell in his body tense just from facing it, cold sweat running down his back.

And yet there was only one reason he had deliberately kept the conversation going this long, drawing out information he already knew once more.

"I only needed time."

With Alon's murmur,

Bringing-In Night, still wearing a puzzled expression, suddenly looked at the speck floating high in the sky.

Tiny, but unmistakable.

And the moment it recognized that speck—

"!"

Bringing-In Night realized.

It was not a speck.

It was—

"...a spear?"

A spear.

So enormous it made the skin crawl, growing larger in real time as it mindlessly devoured magic power.

And beneath that spear—

[Qyu-!]

was Blackie, transformed into the poison-eater.

Its eyes gleamed as it glared at Bringing-In Night.

'Good thing I turned on Reverse Heavens ahead of time and prepared for this. If I hadn't been able to summon Basiliora, that could have gone very badly.'

A gigantic spear split through the ashen sky.

After confirming that even Bringing-In Night's face had colored, however slightly, with surprise, Alon said,

"You can have the first strike."

Then he pulled out his right hand, which he had kept hidden in his pocket all this time, fingers still locked in hand seals.

And then—

as Alon's seal completed itself,

Sniping of Oblivion—

the giant spear crashed down into the red earth hanging in the sky, suspended in defiance of gravity.

The blow Alon had prepared from the very moment he arrived at the temple shot toward Bringing-In Night.

The ashen sky turned in an instant into a blinding white light that stole away even vision itself, painting over the red-stained vegetation in pure white,

and that strike—

a blow for which the word sure-kill would not sound out of place—

────────came crashing down upon the Divine blood.

What rang in his ears was a shriek so severe it seemed ready to erase all hearing.

...However.

In spite of that horrifying screech, what Alon's eyes saw was the massive strike that had smashed the red meteor to pieces and reached Bringing-In Night stopping in front of him as though it were a lie.

It was profoundly bizarre and unreal.

The spear, which should have kept advancing, had been braked and now hung motionless before the man.

As though a bullet had stopped in midair.

Boom— Krrrshhh—!

The meteor above his head began slowly collapsing, but the strike still remained frozen.

And then,

little by little,

slowly—

the spear, fired with magic power from Reverse Heavens bordering on infinity, began disappearing in front of him.

Far too easily.

Far too ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) pointlessly.

As though there had been nothing there from the start.

And then—

[What a shame.]

By the time those words fell, the huge meteor that had just been collapsing was already starting to take shape again around Bringing-In Night, whose smile had returned.

As though it had never been attacked in the first place.

Perfectly intact.

[...This is insane.]

At that sight, Basiliora muttered hollowly.

In contrast, Bringing-In Night's delighted smile only deepened.

[Wouldn't it be better to run, even now?]

Basiliora, who had never once spoken weakly in front of Divine blood.

At its words, Alon stared blankly at the sky.

"..."

The situation spread out before him truly was overwhelming enough to crush even Basiliora.

Above them, Bringing-In Night floated in the air, looking down at them with perfect composure.

And above that, a meteor hung in the sky so enormous that even Basiliora was reduced to nothing more than a large snake beneath it.

It was overwhelming enough to make anyone lose the will to fight.

Yes.

It was too overwhelming.

"...I don't think that will be necessary."

Alon saw a chance to win.

####

[What... ?]

Basiliora asked back in shock.

Without replying, Alon kept looking at the sky.

What floated in the air was still the same overwhelming violence and pressure.

If he had encountered that without any information, Alon, too, would certainly have lost the will to fight or tried to flee.

But he was able to stay calm.

Because of the information he possessed about laws.

'Great power comes with a great price.'

The Heavenly Law Spear Emperor was, at its core, a process of creating laws.

The laws born from the rhythm grow closer to providence the more stages they pass through, eventually reaching omnipotence.

But that was only when those stages had been passed through properly.

If the law belonged to a Divine blood that had only just reached the rhythm—

and yet it was still so overwhelming that simply looking at it could crush the will to fight—

then the restriction attached to it would also be just as powerful.

[You were certainly impressive for a human. If you were one of the usual trash, that strike would have killed you.]

Alon looked at Bringing-In Night.

That thing was clearly drunk on its own power as it spoke.

And above its head,

the meteor that had held its shape just moments ago was splitting apart with a sickening noise.

No, it was dividing.

And what soon came into view was

dozens, then hundreds, of meteors broken apart from it, along with a gigantic floating island like some kind of sky garden.

"...Gravity?"

The word slipped from Alon's mouth.

But he soon shook his head.

Calling it gravity did not fit, because the law Bringing-In Night had spread was functioning in too many directions unrelated to that,

and Sniping of Oblivion had not fallen due to gravity either—it had simply stopped where it was and vanished.

"No. Attraction."

As the gigantic sky garden formed in an instant, along with dozens and hundreds of smaller chunks of meteor, and Alon recalled everything that had happened up to now, he murmured as though reaching a conclusion.

At that,

[Oh?]

Bringing-In Night smiled, amused.

[Impressive. To reach a conclusion that quickly.]

Drunk on confidence, Bringing-In Night confirmed the answer for him.

[But—even if you've figured it out, it's not as if there's anything you can do.]

That carelessness was not strange.

This overwhelming difference in force gave it more than enough reason to allow itself that carelessness.

[Hm?]

The dozens of meteors that had begun slowly falling toward Alon only reinforced that certainty.

But precisely because of that—

'I've solved the first puzzle needed to reach the answer.'

Alon had gained an opening.

####

The battle began.

No, in truth, it was so one-sided that calling it a battle felt wrong.

The Divine blood simply dropped meteors downward as though it were enjoying itself,

while Alon did nothing but desperately avoid them.

Of course, it was not as if Alon never tried to fight back in between.

He launched Sniping of Oblivion again.

He tried freezing the entire space the falling meteors were passing through.

At other times, he reduced the meteors to ash over and over with lightning.

But—

regrettably, not a single one of Alon's attacks dealt any meaningful damage to the Divine blood.

And so the battle dragged on longer and longer—

────────-!!!!!

—and the disadvantage kept worsening.

Kwoooosh—!

A meteor shower rained down toward the ground. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Every single one of them was threatening enough that, if it struck, death would come on the spot.

And even in the middle of that, Alon kept his mind cold.

'The opponent's law is attraction.'

Attraction.

A force that pulls toward a single point.

[Dammit—!]

Basiliora, already twisting its body like mad again and again in panic to avoid the falling meteors.

Hearing its voice, Alon continued feeding information into his mind without pause.

And then—

'I've grasped the rough outline.'

Though the time had been short, Alon had understood a fair amount about its ability.

'The number of attraction points it can create at once that I've confirmed so far is eighty-four in total. But I have to assume it can create more.'

'The range in which it can create attraction points is also vast. If it wants to, it can form one right beside me at any moment. In other words, escape is impossible.'

'Its movement speed using attraction points is absurd. So even if attacks could affect it, hitting it is practically impossible.'

'It doesn't seem to feel any burden at all from using attraction.'

And as the information accumulated, Alon realized two more things.

First, its ability was built on an outrageously unfair level of absurdity.

Second, Bringing-In Night was blatantly going easy on him.

If that Divine blood were serious, there was no way Alon could still be responding like this.

Which meant that right now, Alon was only surviving because of Bringing-In Night's carelessness—surviving as its test subject.

In short, the situation was hopeless.

He was alive only because of mercy born from the Divine blood's arrogance.

And yet, in the middle of that miserable situation, Alon's mind was running tighter than ever, searching out clues to victory one by one.

'Its proficiency with the law is still lacking. The distribution of the attraction points varies, and so do their sizes. Once it increases them past several dozen, its control wavers badly.'

'It can increase the number of attraction points without limit, but there is a clear upper ceiling to the amount of force it can use. The more points it creates, the more unstable both the meteors and the floating islands acting as support for the meteors become.'

'Once a particular attraction point exceeds the limit of force it can handle, it supplements that point by erasing other attraction points and feeding their force into the one that has reached its limit.'

'And taking all of that into account, the possible kinds of penalties I can infer are twelve.'

He was already arriving at them.

[Alon—! I'm at my limit now!]

Basiliora's cry, almost a scream, slammed into Alon's ears.

And in truth, Basiliora really did look as though it had already reached its limit.

Naturally. Just having avoided this gradually lengthening one-sided assault until now meant Basiliora had already done everything it could.

But—

"Hold on a little longer."

[What—!?]

"Just a little. Just a little longer."

Alon still needed time.

Just a little more—truly just a little more.

Time to compare the penalty that had been purchased in exchange for that perfect law against what he had inferred from the information so far.

[Dammit—!]

As Basiliora moved its body to avoid another meteor, Alon fired off another spell, but it stopped emptily in midair and vanished.

The first prediction was wrong.

Kwoooosh—!!

He tore apart the pouring meteors with spears of lightning, and the magic that fell to the ground smashed the earth apart.

The second prediction was wrong.

Then the third prediction was wrong.

And the fourth was wrong.

And the fifth was wrong.

And then—when he reached the sixth.

The moment the frozen wasteland Alon spread sealed solid the entire space the meteors had been rushing through,

drip—

he saw fragments of meteor fall downward for an instant.

"...Found it."

On Alon's face, which had remained nothing but expressionless until now, delight rose at last.