The frozen wasteland Alon had spread with the endless magic power supplied by Reverse Heavens froze everything in the space.

A world where everything had stopped, as though time itself had come to a halt.

However—

[It seems your ability to learn isn't all that impressive.]

Just as had already happened several times before, Alon's magic failed to stop the law.

Krrrk—!

The frozen meteors immediately gathered together the instant the attraction points were set anew.

At the same time, time began moving again, and the frozen world shattered apart with absurd ease.

Alon's magic was being broken far too simply, far too absurdly easily.

At that, Penia and Evan, watching from afar, let out involuntary cries, and Basiliora, desperately dodging the meteors, groaned.

The situation was that hopeless.

Not one of Alon's spells worked on anything.

He was merely being tormented just enough not to die under the Divine blood's mercy.

And yet, even in a situation this hopeless, delight was overflowing at the corners of Alon's mouth.

Because he had found it.

From the twelve possibilities he had drawn from all the information he had gathered so far, he had finally reached a single answer.

"Hoo—"

His mind tightened even further.

The information on Bringing-In Night engraved itself into his mind once again like a disk being read, and with it, he tried to find the best possible move.

He searched.

Continuously, without end.

Even inside the meteors now laced with cold, he used every bit of strength he had to construct the optimal plan in his ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) head.

[Now—I'm at—my limit—!]

And when the final moment came—

hearing Basiliora's voice, panting out that this really was the end now,

"This is enough."

Alon calmly reverse-summoned Basiliora.

Left floating in midair in an instant, Alon looked at Bringing-In Night, which still seemed to be enjoying itself, and slipped a hand into his pocket.

"Hoo—"

Again, he formed a hand seal.

####

Bringing-In Night found this situation thoroughly enjoyable.

There were two reasons for that.

One was that, just as He had expected, the Star Eater had come here personally, sparing it the trouble of going out to find him.

The other was the sheer pleasure of toying with the Star Eater itself.

Of course, Bringing-In Night had not known the Star Eater's identity until recently.

It had not known whether he was human, or what he did, and it bore him no grudge in particular.

Even so, it took great satisfaction in crushing him like this.

Because of Him, who cared about the Star Eater.

Strangely enough, He cared a great deal about that being.

No, beyond mere concern, He was obsessing over him to a bizarre degree.

It was different from itself.

Unlike itself, which had not even drawn His interest and had merely been handed, like a casual favor, one fragment of the many shards of power He had cast off in order to manifest more quickly.

That was why it was pleased.

The sight of that Star Eater, the one He was so obsessed with, crumbling so futilely in its hands.

A swelling ecstasy rose inside it.

At this moment, when it could play with this to its heart's content.

It was a grotesque and vile emotion.

[Hah—]

Bringing-In Night let out a clear sneer and looked down at the ground.

It was a complete wreck.

There was nothing left in the desolate grassland except dozens, hundreds of craters and the clouds of dust lifted by its ability.

And at the center of it stood the Star Eater.

The coat he had been wearing was already torn to shreds, fluttering pitifully.

Likewise, serious wounds covered his body here and there.

Blood dripped from his fingertips, wetting the ruined earth, and blood running down from the ends of his hair stained the coat that had rolled over the ground again and again.

At that thoroughly satisfying sight, Bringing-In Night stopped its attack and spoke.

[You're a wreck.]

At that, Alon lifted his eyes toward it.

Seeing that dry face of his—his usual expressionless face that held no emotion at all—Bringing-In Night narrowed its eyes.

'The situation should be the worst possible, and he's still calm?'

It was exactly that.

Not one of his spells had broken its law.

Of course, among them, that frozen wasteland that froze everything had been annoying, but even that had failed to break the law all the same.

And yet the other side was still expressionless.

...It did not like that.

[...Do you still believe you can win?]

At the cold question, Alon did not answer.

He merely looked at the Divine blood indifferently.

At some point, Bringing-In Night found itself wanting to see that expressionless face twist out of shape.

More precisely, it wanted him to make the face appropriate for this situation.

A face twisted,

collapsed,

shattered—

[Hah—]

Then it soon let out a laugh.

A pleasant thought had just come to mind.

[So that's it. You think you can still win, don't you? Because if you keep avoiding my attacks, then sooner or later I'll leave an opening?]

"..."

Alon's expressionless face twitched.

Found it.

Bringing-In Night grinned, delighted at having discovered the answer.

It immediately flicked a hand.

At once, half the meteors that had been floating above Alon's head until then lost their direction and fell toward the ground.

And then—

Crunch!

An attraction point formed directly in front of Alon.

Krrrshhh—!

That attraction point instantly sucked in everything around it.

But the odd part was that its range was absurdly small compared to before.

And then—

Crunch! Krrrshhh—!

Everything within that range went beyond merely taking the shape of a meteor and began compressing without end.

Compressing,

compressing further,

until at last—

it became nothing more than a tiny sphere.

With a soft tap, the tiny sphere dropped, then crumbled into powder and vanished.

[What a shame. I'm not limited to making meteors, you see.]

Expectation filled Bringing-In Night's mind.

Now the Star Eater's expression would finally change to one that fit the situation.

That strong certainty drove its pleasure higher.

However—

[...?]

Even after seeing that, Alon's expression did not change.

He still stared at Bringing-In Night with the same blank face.

Then—

"What a shame."

The moment its eyes widened—

"I already knew that too."

Alon said,

"That you're going easy on me."

"That you're playing with me like a toy."

"That you're not using all your power. I knew all of it."

He recited the truth.

At that moment, Bringing-In Night realized.

That he had finished his "preparations" by using the time Bringing-In Night had wasted filling its own vile delight.

Of course, it had no way of knowing what those preparations were.

But that calm attitude signaled danger, and Bringing-In Night spread its hand to kill him even now, but—

"!"

regrettably, its hand would not move.

It could not move.

Alon, who had at some point pulled the hand out of his coat pocket, moved his lips.

"Illusion of Totality."

And after that, what it saw was—

dozens, hundreds of Alons floating in the sky and standing on the ground.

####

Bringing-In Night was startled for only a moment by Alon suddenly splitting into hundreds of copies, but it quickly grasped the principle without much difficulty.

'...They're all illusions. The magic used is—ice and light.'

His mind, which had once belonged to an excellent mage even before he became Divine blood, began breaking down the principle behind Alon's spell.

'But he didn't create them simply through the refraction of ice and light. There's something more.'

And the moment it realized there was something more in that magic, the hundreds of Alons all formed hand seals at once.

And with them came hundreds of crackling spheres of magic power.

Every single shot held overwhelming force.

Those things that completely filled his field of vision—

[!?]

the instant they all fired at once, Bringing-In Night instinctively gave up control over some of the meteors and deployed attraction points.

It had no choice.

'The illusions—aren't fake!?'

Because the spells fired from the hundreds of Star Eaters were not illusions.

It could not afford to just stand there in shock.

It had deployed attraction points to block the hundreds of spells, which meant it had no room left to attack.

More precisely, the Star Eater was not allowing it any opening to attack.

He was timing the spells with split-second intervals so perfectly that the attraction points could not be cut off.

But its shock lasted only a moment.

After blocking the attacks for quite some time, Bringing-In Night finally found the real body.

'That one—!'

Among the hundreds of spells, it saw one infused with ever so slightly more magic power.

Seeing Alon in the center, the one firing that spell, it judged calmly.

'I have to kill the real body.'

The incoming spells themselves were not all that strong.

It was simply that taking them head-on with its body would be fatal, so defending against them was necessary.

However, the hundreds of spells, stabbing in sequentially, gave it no chance to attack.

No—in truth, Bringing-In Night had already been launching counterattacks with its remaining power as well.

The Star Eater's attacks were not so overwhelming that all of its attention had to be devoted purely to defense.

The real problem, though, was this.

Every time it found the real body and attacked, he avoided the falling meteors far too well, and the clones of Alon swept up in the attack regenerated without end.

In other words, to end this situation, it had to kill the Star Eater in one blow.

And if it compressed its attraction point, it could easily accomplish that goal.

The problem was that it no longer had that much room left at the moment.

If it used compression even once, then among the attraction points it had spread in all directions to block the attacks, it would have to remove one.

Just as its hesitation dragged on—

"!"

it suddenly realized something.

There were no Alon clones on the ground.

Bringing-In Night immediately looked at Alon and made its decision.

It released the attraction point that had existed below, and without hesitation "compressed" Alon's real body.

Tuk—!

At the same time, the attacks stopped.

Bringing-In Night grinned, but simultaneously felt a strange sense of unease.

The hundreds of Star Eaters did not disappear.

And Alon, who should have been compressed and erased without leaving a trace, had not vanished either.

And then, at that moment—

"So standing on the ground really was the answer."

the Star Eater's voice rang out.

"...What?"

Bringing-In Night's eyes widened.

"At first, I thought it was a coincidence."

"But when I froze space itself for the third time and saw the meteors lose control for an instant, I started to feel that something was off."

"Then the fourth time, when I alternated spells and saw that the only time you moved was when I froze the entire space, I found the path."

"At first, I froze the space itself, including you. But that wasn't it."

"Next, I froze the ground where you were."

But—that hadn't been it either.

"That was when it occurred to me. Both in the temple and now, even though you had no reason to, you were floating in the air."

"Right after realizing that, I froze the space once more and made a floor beneath your feet, and you moved as though you'd been waiting for it."

Alon's murmur continued quietly, as though standing above all things.

Bringing-In Night was shaken to the core, but—

[Ha—]

soon it bared a chilling smile and opened its mouth—

[So what of it? Even if you've figured out my penalty—even if you've realized that I can't use my power while standing on the ground—can you force me to touch the ground? No! Absolutely impossib—]

—but as it spoke, it suddenly felt a bizarre sense of wrongness.

The hundreds of Alons were still looking at it.

Alon, who should have been compressed, was still speaking to it calmly.

"Bringing-In Night."

That was unmistakably strange.

If its ability had not disappeared, then that meant—

"You—"

—the penalty was already being applied.

"—since when did you think you weren't standing on the ground?"

Bringing-In Night dropped its gaze.

Beneath its feet, where there had definitely been nothing just moments ago, a small piece of ground had appeared.

Hidden behind illusion magic.

A small patch of earth lifted up through gravity magic.

And then—

the spells that had already been formed by the hundreds of Alons shot toward Bringing-In Night as though they had been waiting for this exact moment—

─────and the world was dyed in light.