Chapter 277
Chapter 277. Latent Heat (14)
In that very moment — not on one of Sirocco's ankles, but on both, rings of brilliant red light manifested.
And her bare feet, wreathed in that dazzling crimson radiance, stamped down hard against the ground.
THOOOOM—!
That alone made the earth around Sirocco quake violently — stones and trees in every direction shuddered to their roots as if an earthquake had struck, branches snapping wholesale and flinging skyward.
"So like I said——!!"
Her ruby-like eyes blazing vivid as a wolf on the hunt, Sirocco shouted from the heart of the battlefield.
On her lips, small fangs bared, hung the faint smile unique to the strong — the smile of one who overwhelms her enemy.
"I told you — I'm strong!!"
A ferocious wind whipped through, and the atmosphere transformed.
The wolf-eared girl standing with her back to the world of light woven by the Sky Lanterns brightening the night sky—
and Anarchilon, its back to the endlessly dark shadow of the forest, glared straight at one another.
In this moment, the two powers upon the battlefield — each recognizing the other as a foe capable of dealing the killing blow — clashed their killing intent together hard enough to strike sparks.
The difference in their scale defied comparison — and yet Anarchilon, as if steeled for a duel to the death, showed tension for the first time, lowering its colossal head into a battle stance.
— ———! ——! ———, ——————!!
I will not lose — as if screaming exactly that, Anarchilon stamped the ground once in fury and roared toward the sky.
It whipped dozens of its tentacles freely skyward like flails, sending them surging tens of meters into the air — then brought every last one hammering down on a single point: Sirocco.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—!
Unavoidable, forbidding even frontal defense — the tentacles, bearing overwhelming force, scattered green light and came storming down, carving the air into slivers.
The lashing tentacles swept everything around them, fragments of great trees and cliff-rock whirling chaotically.
But Sirocco paid no mind whatsoever to the tentacles slamming down around her like a bombing run.
She simply glared at the enemy, walking slowly, steadily forward.
Then one tentacle embedded in the ground whipped low from the side, aiming for an opening — and Sirocco glanced down at it and stamped it flat beneath one foot.
The ring of red light wound around her fair ankle blazed brighter as its output surged.
In the air, threads of light like an aurora shimmered dazzlingly, beginning to wreathe Sirocco once again — and in that instant—
The entire tentacle beneath her small, slender ankle shattered to pieces and crumbled away.
CRRRACK—!
But the enemy's offensive was not over.
Anarchilon reared its head high and aimed the colossal horn crowning its helm at Sirocco.
The strongest and most terrible weapon of its fifty-meter frame — the trump card the enemy had held back until the very end.
The killing blow fell, casting pitch-black shadow across the entire ground below, plunging down with force enough to raise a storm across the region.
But in that instant, Sirocco slid one leg far back, sank her stance low, glared head-on at the descending horn, and spat out, ice-cold.
"Hmph. Fine. So that's how you want it?"
It was in that very moment that Sirocco's bare white feet tapped off the earth and leapt toward the sky.
The next instant, she whipped her leg around in a great arc — twisting her hips and whole body through the air with supple grace, like delivering an overhead kick.
For a heartbeat, in the darkness, the red light wound around her ankles ignited scarlet, scattering its brilliance blindingly.
Trailing that tail like a meteor, a ferocious kick that split the very air of the night sky carved through the void and crashed head-on against the enemy's horn.
KRAAAANG—!
Heat like wildfire bloomed outward in every direction — and the next moment, with a colossal roar unlike anything ever heard, the gigantic carapace horn shattered to pieces, whole.
[Unique Magic: 9th Rank Manifestation]
[Crimson Wind's Twilight]
The next moment, a heat-laden gale swept across the land, and a shockwave that seemed to warp the very horizon distorted the air and spread wide.
"Ah — that's......!"
Unable to believe that such destructive power had come from one person — from that small-framed girl — Alicia's mouth fell open. And in that instant—
The shattered fragments of Anarchilon's carapace broke apart piece by piece in midair, scattering wildly across the sky.
The black shards, pulverized and dispersing, caught the Sky Lanterns' glow and scattered beautiful light high above.
And amid those black crystals filling the sky—
Unable to withstand the force of its horn's destruction, the enemy's frame — a small mountain of fifty meters — staggered once, twisted sideways to expose the ridge of its back, and then began toppling, tilting hugely backward.
Sirocco did not miss that opening. She leapt once, high, and landed in a single bound atop the enemy's carapace shell.
— ———, ———! —————!!
The enemy's death-shriek, like a scream rising from an abyss, rang painfully in the ears.
But Sirocco, unmoved, looked down at the enemy with a frosty expression and swept one leg high into the air atop Anarchilon's shell.
Like a gymnast's split, her two legs formed a perfect line as her fair bare foot stretched skyward.
"From here on, I'll keep getting stronger!"
Beside her snow-white bare leg, Sirocco's prim gaze, fixed down upon the enemy, narrowed slightly for an instant.
"So that someday — I can surpass him!"
The killing axe-kick plunged toward the enemy like a guillotine, screaming with a shriek of torn air that defied the world's physics as it detonated.
The instant the strike — carving a perfect line down the enemy's flank shell — struck home, an ear-splitting crash of impact burst forth.
The next moment, a pure-white shockwave erupted in every direction from the blow, followed by an aftershock gale that swept away — quite literally — everything around them.
KRRRRRRRACK—!
The jungle's trees snapped and flew wholesale; the rocks in every direction shattered and hurtled skyward.
The aftershock of Sirocco's single strike razed everything within a radius of dozens of meters to utter ruin.
The terrifying power dwelling in that kick seemed to set the entire night sky trembling.
Behind it, Anarchilon's agonized shriek rang out.
— ———, ————! ——————!!
From the flank of the colossal beast that had reigned atop the wasteland cliffs, jet-black ash sprayed into the night sky like vomited blood.
Anyone could see it: a strike of an entirely different dimension from the Sirocco of before — destructive power raised a full stage beyond.
Enoch froze in place at the sight.
Unique Magic 'Crimson Wind's Twilight.' The technique that served as Sirocco's 'enhancement skill' in the original work.
And in this moment, in a present where future and past had been wholly rewritten, it was revealing itself.
Beside him, watching the same scene, he heard Alicia murmur quietly.
"That is...... 9th Rank......"
The red wind of the rock desert, descending upon its enemy as a one-girl cataclysm.
The Empire's last lone wolf-girl, sprinting with annihilation as her only goal, to sink her fangs into her prey's throat.
Seeing that afterimage of the future superimposed over Sirocco, Enoch felt a chill run through him before he could stop it.
He already knew it better than anyone.
——This is the phantom of Sirocco Lycaon.
A fragment of 'that' Sirocco Lycaon from the original work — merciless and powerful beyond the reach of any mage in the Empire, who walked a tragic fate.
Even with the causality of the Official History rewritten by Enoch's hand, this was the supreme realm she was always destined to reach as a mage, borne by her innate mana affinity and prodigious combat sense.
And more — in this moment, Sirocco had transcended with no one's help at all, using her own will as the foothold to seize the next realization.
She had grown, enormously, by her own power.
The word Promotion flickered through his mind. A piece on the chessboard that presses ever forward until, at the very end, it ascends.
With the battle's conclusion at hand, wasn't this form Sirocco now displayed the truest Promotion of all?
A fresh chill traced down his spine.
This was the mighty piece upon the chessboard that Enoch — bearing the King's role — could command on the battlefield.
And the pivotal key, the genius, for overturning the fate of the future that would one day arrive.
At this glimpse of the true caliber of the girl sworn to be his sword, a swelling feeling rose in him, and he clenched his fist.
"T-truly somethin' else, that is......"
Just then, a small exclamation in a dialect lilt sounded beside him, and Enoch glanced over.
Alicia stood entranced, hands clasped tight together, marveling at Sirocco's exploits.
Then, as if coming back to herself a beat late, Alicia turned to Enoch with a startled expression.
"B-but Direct Lineage. The Rank Transcendence — how did it...? What on earth did you two talk about back there?!"
"Is that what matters?"
"Wha—! 'Course it matters!"
Apparently not even noticing she had slipped into dialect, Alicia thrust her face in close, looking ready to all but devour him.
"She broke through the wall of 10th Rank — on her own! No matter the reason, they say that only happens when somethin' tremendously important dawns on you, deep in your heart!"
Enoch nodded slowly. He certainly understood what her words meant.
Rank Transcendence.
'Rank' — the limit where mages arrive and stagnate; the wall of realization that all must someday cross.
He knew well that overcoming it through a realization — whatever the catalyst — and reaching the next Rank was what people called Rank Transcendence.
And naturally, he had always known that Sirocco — 'merely' 10th Rank now — would one day leap over that wall, just as in the Official History of the original work.
But despite knowing all that, there was one thing even Enoch had entirely failed to predict.
[Here, in this place — I wanted to become strong for you. Not for anyone else!]
The image of Sirocco speaking those words straight at him moments ago flickered through his mind, leaving a strange feeling behind.
As Alicia said — and as Enoch knew from the original work — the words Sirocco had spoken while looking at him must themselves have been the realization she seized as the key to her Rank Transcendence.
But in that moment of awakening, what did it mean that she had said she wanted to become strong "for you" — for him, and no one else?
Enoch stared blankly ahead.
There stood Sirocco — planted firmly atop the slowly collapsing, mountain-huge Anarchilon, utterly unbothered by her own small frame.
The shadowed back of the girl from the original work's past, consumed by hollow vengeance after her tribespeople's deaths—
and the Sirocco of now, who had brought down Anarchilon in a world of light and was glancing back at him over her shoulder — the two images overlapped.
Could it be— at the thought, Enoch's breath caught for a moment.
If his guess was right, then the catalyst of Sirocco's awakening was not her tribespeople's deaths, but solely him—
—Just as his thoughts reached that point, a solid weight pressed into his arm from the object in his hand.
Glancing down, the AP Bomb Sirocco had entrusted to him sat there. Either way, this was no time to lose himself in thought. Gripping it hard once, Enoch spoke.
"Let's go. Alicia."
"Understood. Right — this is no time to stand around......"
Alicia, too, seemed to have settled her excitement; she took a small, steadying breath and nodded.
In the darkness beyond, the fallen colossal enemy commander bellowed, scattering jet-black ash.
The gale whipped up in its wake set both their clothes snapping wildly. Raising a hand to shield his face, Enoch looked toward it.
The enemy was still there — carapace shattered, yet boasting durability that kept it very much alive.
Alicia calmly raised her lance beside him.
"Then let's hurry. Lady Sirocco carved its carapace open, but if we leave it like this, it will regenerate!"
No more words were needed.
Ignoring the creature's near-deathbed shrieking, Enoch and Alicia stood side by side, each gripping their weapon, and began walking forward.
The next moment, the black-haired boy in his black uniform and the girl with long ash-brown hair streaming over her dark-crimson uniform kicked off the ground as one and broke into a sprint.
Through Sirocco's heroics, the final stage for changing the future of the 19th Outsourcing District stood ready.
Then now — it was time to settle this.
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