The Regressor paused for a moment.

"... Durability?"

"Yes. Just as the undying one's flesh is poison to vampire blood, vampire blood is a curse to the undying one. Look. The flesh has hardened and turned black."

"Hey! That's not okay!"

"It's fine. When that happens, you just scrape off the hardened flesh with a little skewer. That removes the contaminated outer layer and exposes the flesh underneath. Though there is the problem of it getting shorter and shorter."

"I wasn't asking if YOU were okay! The undying one! HE won't be okay!"

'I'd wondered how the undying one got cursed! So it was you!'

Indeed. So this was how it happened.

I scratched my head and replied.

"So many complaints. What, should I not use it, then?"

"... I mean we should finish this quickly, before that arm wears away!"

"Okay. Message received. I'm going now. Make sure you clear me a path."

"Just get moving! Plantain Fan, Waterspout!"

This time, she slashed vertically. The wind drawn forth by Sky Cherry Blossom overturned the world in an instant. The storm lifted the black knights into the air. Cut off from both the pools of blood and the shadows, they were struck by the Regressor's magic.

"Heavenly Sword Art, Thunderbird!"

With an electric tingle, brilliant yellow lightning etched creases into the air. Fine, weblike threads touched the black knights' bodies. Then, in an instant, they merged into a single stream and became a colossal waterfall.

Lightning burned the blood. A vampire's own body might withstand the impact, but a conjured familiar could not.

Burning in the shadowless air, the black knights turned to ash and scattered.

"Right, I'm off! Make sure you clean up around me!"

"You're still here?!"

The Regressor leaped into the air and swung her sword. A roaring wind swept the way ahead. Her supporting fire from above was quite precise and controlled. Except for the enemies right in front of my nose, every knight was either blown away or forced to crouch low and endure it. I ran across the deserted ground.

The Regressor's support spell, Tailwind, protected me. With the wind pushing at my back, merely touching my toes to the ground sent me surging forward. The wind wrapped around my body let me move freely even inside the storm she had created.

What an amazing buff. It was only a bit of wind, but that alone gave me the liberating feeling of being superhuman.

At this rate, I might even break my personal sprinting record.

"Run faster! Why are you taking it so easy?!"

An impatient shout came from behind.

Apparently, a speed I could barely control looked yawn-inducingly slow to someone else. What did she want me to do? This was my top speed.

"Woof, woof!"

[NEIGH!]

Just then, Azi flew into view and slammed Ralion forcefully into the ground. Blood spattered from its crushed flesh. Having gained the upper hand, Azi ignored the soft flesh that burst apart with every blow. Instead, she clamped her teeth around a hard blood-iron horseshoe and tugged furiously. Ralion twisted in resistance, but that did nothing to loosen her bite.

The horseshoe snapped off. Azi shook her head a few more times before noticing it had come loose, then flung it away with a sharp turn of her head. A heavy clang rang out against the concrete floor.

Then our eyes met.

Azi tilted her head.

"Woof?"

"Good. You're doing a fine job."

Only a moment ago, Azi had been a wild beast beating the blood steed into the ground. Having her stare at me with bright red blood around her mouth was a little unnerving, but the innocent smile she gave me the moment she saw me put me considerably more at ease.

She raised her chin slightly and barked.

"Woof!"

"Good girl! Azi, get that red horse far away from here! Keep it from coming anywhere near me if you can!"

It was far too physically powerful, and being a horse, I couldn't read its thoughts. It was practically my natural enemy.

If Azi could just deal with Ralion, nothing would stand in my way.

"Woof, woof!"

Azi barked as though she understood.

At that very moment, Ralion's remaining hoof came flying from behind her.

The direct hit sent Azi flying like a ball. Barely managing to get to its feet, the blood steed gave a short snort and chased after her without so much as a glance at me. The sound of hooves shattering concrete quickly faded into the distance.

Left alone, I muttered blankly,

"That wasn't how I meant for you to get rid of it."

Still, at least Ralion didn't seem likely to target me for the moment. I set off again.

On one side, a horse the size of a house fought a dog in human form, while the Regressor's wind blew away the endlessly appearing black knights. It was a battle of transcendent beings, a million years removed from anything ordinary.

In the middle of it all, I ran, barely squeezing through the gaps.

Watching a black knight crumble to dust before my eyes, I had only one thought.

Hmm. No matter how I looked at it, I wasn't cut out to be here.

Black knights that rose again without dying, a blood steed, the King of Dogs, a Regressor, and the Progenitor of vampires. I was far too ordinary to be on a battlefield like this.

Just then, Finlay pointed at me and roared.

"Yoooou!!"

The vampire raised her hand, her eyes clouded. Black knights sprang up from all directions and hurled themselves into my path.

Watching them, I muttered,

"Come to think of it, if that bastard can be here, there's no reason I can't."

I was better than Finlay, after all. Yes, indeed.

Nodding to myself, I took out my skewer and scraped the severed end of the undying one's arm. The sharp tip dug between the hardened chunks of flesh, cracking them apart. I scraped at the split flesh and flicked it away.

"Immortal Explosion!"

The blackened flesh shattered into fragments and swept over the black knights. Flesh hardened to just the right degree made excellent ammunition. The knights struck directly by the fragments floundered under the effects of the curse.

The arm had grown considerably shorter on my run here. Thinking I ought to use it a little more sparingly, I sprinted onward.

"Tsk. It's my fault for introducing an old lady to the latest amusements. All my fault. Yes, indeed. Plenty of old folks have ruined themselves and their families by discovering new passions late in life."

I was ordinary.

Unique magic? Please. Like any ordinary person, I could only use universal magic. I had nothing as grand as energy arts, either. Just enough manual dexterity to shuffle cards perfectly.

In other words, anything I could do was something anyone could do.

Was this the price of fiddling with her heart to make a connection, to win a little favor? Tsk, tsk. This was why people ought to know their place. My crime was forgetting mine just because I was in the bottomless pit.

"It means someone like me is easily replaced in the end. My actions, my words. Even the kindness I offer is utterly commonplace."

A fresh awareness of my own insignificance drew a sigh from me.

After all that running, Finlay and the vampire were finally close at hand. Gripping the undying one's right arm firmly, I walked toward them.

"Still, first things first. I have to survive. Even an ordinary person would do everything they could to stay alive."

The closer I came, the more clearly I could read their thoughts. Finlay's hostility toward me. The vampire's hazy sense of self. Even the blood connection between them.

Aiming for the space between them, I murmured calmly,

"So I'll do my very best to kill you."

"Do you think I'll die that easily?!"

Finlay clenched his hand again. Veins writhed all over his body: his neck, forehead, arms, and chest. Blood he could no longer control surged and bulged hideously beneath his skin. Controlling the Progenitor had left him unable to control his own blood.

By contrast, the vampire was perfectly tranquil apart from a few protruding veins. She merely looked down on everyone, expressionless and unfocused.

Finlay shouted at me as I came right up to him.

"You bastard! How dare you come here! I'll crush you!"

"Wait right there, pickled garlic. I'll pickle you in a drum full of concrete."

Burying him in garlic concrete and rolling him into the sea would be quite a sight. He'd be happy for the rest of his life.

The undying one's right arm was nearing its limit, too. Now it was a race against time. I charged forward, swinging the arm, which had darkened all over, in wide arcs.

The black knights kept reforming from the floor, the air, and the pools of blood. Yet they were helpless. Weapons hastily fashioned through supernatural power could not stop the undying one's right arm. Things might have been different with blood energy, but that red aura lost its radiance before the sun.

Blood energy was life force drawn out of the body. Without it, the shadows were no better than puppets. With no power circulating through them, they could not withstand the undying one's curse.

CRUNCH.

An echo of what must once have been a promising knight disintegrated in an instant. Equipped with real weapons or armor, it might have given me a good fight. Unfortunately, its gear had been hastily conjured through supernatural power. That echo met its end with its shield shattered and its chest pierced by someone's right arm.

"Is that all you've got, Finlay?"

Only about ten paces remained between the vampire and me. With Tailwind behind me, I could cover that distance in just three bounds.

Panic rose in Finlay's mind.

'As long as that sun is up, I can't use blood energy to strengthen the black knights! They can't stop him without it. But!'

"O Progenitor! Lend me your power!"

Finlay summoned his blood manipulation. Unlike before, when he had merely borrowed her thralls, he was now taking her blood energy and wielding it himself.

In an instant, a hundred times the blood energy he normally controlled gathered within his body. Ignoring the blood vessels bursting all over him, he shouted,

"This is the Progenitor's power! Take this, lowborn scum!"

Dozens of red spears appeared in the air. They targeted my shoulders, abdomen, and legs. Most of the others were meant to limit my movements.

A hit would be lethal, but their trajectories were utterly simple. Of course.

'Those are a feint! The real attack is the whip I've secretly sent behind him!'

So obvious. I could predict it before I even read his thoughts.

If he'd poured all his concentration into each spear instead, I wouldn't have been able to dodge. But no, he had to try something clever.

A scarlet whip approached from my blind spot. At the same time, the red spears shot toward my body.

Dealing with them was easy. I swept the red spears aside with the undying one's right arm and twisted my body to dodge the whip. The whip behind me was all I needed to concentrate on.

It sliced uselessly through empty air.

'He dodged without even looking? Then!'

His hand brimming with red energy, Finlay thrust his arm downward. His shadow spread wide.

'I'll punch holes through the soles of your feet!'

Oh, now that was original.

I crossed my next step out of rhythm. A blade of shadow shot up where my foot would have landed had I kept walking normally.

After dodging that hidden blade, I staggered my stride and timing like a drunk. Each time, Finlay's blades cut through innocent patches of air.

'How is he doing this? Then I'll cover the entire ground!'

Thousands upon tens of thousands of blades rose beneath Finlay's hand. He intended to turn the entire ground into blades.

Not a chance. Leaning forward slightly, I dragged the undying one's right arm across the ground. Hardened flesh broke away from the severed end as it scraped along, stretching into long trails that consumed the shadows. Before the blades could reach me, the shadowy domain itself crumbled.

I was right in front of him now. Cornered, Finlay hastily formed a wall of blood. He had no strategy left. All he could think about was stopping me.

"Why? Why can't I hit you?!"

A red wave crashed toward me, but all that did was block his own view.

I slashed through it with the undying one's right arm. Had that been water and the thing in my hand a sword, I would have been swept backward.

But vampires controlled blood, and what I happened to be holding was an earthfolk arm.

The blood that touched it instantly hardened and turned pitch-black. I shouldered through the discolored wave and emerged. Tailwind swept away the droplets trying to cling to my body.

Finlay gaped in horror. Meeting his eyes, I lunged forward.

"Want to know why you can't hit me?"

He'd be disappointed if he knew.

Which was precisely why I ought to tell him.

Drawing the undying one's right arm far back, I gave him the answer.

"Because you're attacking me yourself! You're so damn predictable, I couldn't get hit if I tried!"

"You... little... bastard...!"

"Haha! Neither your ability nor your character is fit for a noble! Even a mosquito would be a bigger person than you!"

"I'll kill y—!"

Idiot. Reacting to my words was already a waste of time.

"Immortal Finish!"

I took a great stride forward with Tailwind and swung the undying one's right arm hard into Finlay. The biceps the undying one was so proud of slammed into Finlay's face. Both turned black at the point of contact, and the impact sent Finlay tumbling pathetically away. A couple of teeth flew from his mouth.

But knocking Finlay down wasn't the end of it. The vampire was the reason for this whole mess. I had to wake her.

Leaving Finlay where he had fallen, I ran toward her.

Behind me, Finlay howled in despair.

"Stop him!!!"

Finlay flailed both arms. Blood energy streamed from his hands in every direction.

The power he wrung out at the expense of his own defense blocked my path yet again, tireless as ever.

Newly rising black knights, whips of blood, crimson brands, thorns sprouting from the darkness. Even mist that filled the world.

All of it headed toward me and the undying one's right arm, to stop the earthfolk flesh that defiled the blood of blood fiends.

'If I can just knock that away! He'll never stop the undying army! Without that earthfolk right arm, a mere blade-wielder is nothing!'

No one could blame them.

They had seen me swinging the undying one's right arm in every direction, "contaminating" the black knights. Watching an undying army that should have risen again lose its power and collapse must have made them feel threatened.

The undying one's arm was indeed a deadly poison to vampires. Finlay must therefore have thought that the weapon was the greatest threat, and that stopping it was all he needed to do.

"Knock it away!"

To stop the undying one's arm from contaminating blood with its curse, what mattered most was sheer quantity. There was no choice but to crush it beneath an enormous weight.

So Finlay forcibly gathered blood energy from here and there to push me back—or, more precisely, the undying one's right arm.

With every ounce of power he had.

"Ta-da."

As expected, making such a show of it had paid off.

Thanks to that, no one was paying the slightest attention to the single card in my left hand.

A wave of fresh blood swept over me—or, more precisely, my weapon, the earthfolk right arm. The undying one's right arm flew high into the air.

The greatest misdirection of my life. Those whose eyes followed the rising arm remembered my existence a beat too late.

'Damn! Where's the Instructor?!'

By the time Finlay turned his head, I had already let the arm go and was charging at the vampire with a single card gripped in my hand. At the sight, triumph gleamed in his eyes.

'Fool! Did you think I'd leave the Progenitor unguarded?'

My card brushed past my wrist and turned into a skewer. The sword stick gleamed ominously as it headed toward the vampire's chest, toward the fissure streaming with dark red energy.

'That's a storm of blood manipulation! Not my power, but the Progenitor's own power running wild! An ordinary weapon can't even approa—!'

Then Finlay saw it. The tip of my skewer bore a strangely familiar blood-red hue.

'... True blood?'

Iron was the most important constituent of blood. Iron was also what wounded the body and drew blood from it. Since the advent of the Iron Age, the two had been inseparable.

So much so that they were even paired in the expression "blood and iron."

Their connection only deepened through history. Iron weapons were fed blood for ritual purposes, and some physicians made those who lacked blood lick rusty iron. The scents of blood and iron were winds that came and went together.

That was why mixing blood and iron was considered a foundation of alchemy.

And I had tried that basic alchemy with a rather precious ingredient.

"I hid it in a card so I could sneak it out someday. I never imagined I'd use it like this."

I thrust the skewer imbued with true blood into her open chest, into the gap still left there to keep the tether of control intact.

I felt resistance. Fiercely flowing blood energy tried to push my hand away.

But I had already done this dozens of times.

I deftly probed inside the vampire's chest as though I had a map. My skewer reached her heart with ease, as if it belonged there.

THUMP.

An artificial vibration traveled through the skewer in my hand.

This was the heartbeat Finlay had forced out of her. It was unpleasantly regular, like a cheap metronome. A forced imitation of a heartbeat, and a curse created in the insolent attempt to dominate his own blood lord.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. You've been talking rather excessively in your sleep. You've dreamed enough. It's time to wake up."

I drove the skewer into the heart of the curse and summoned mana from my entire body. Squeezing out more mana than I had ever used in the bottomless pit, I shouted,

"Volt."