The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years

Translator: Alpha0210

There's nothing he doesn't know about the Lightning God. That's been the case, and it's the case now. A fair stretch of time had passed since he'd been torn away from that bastard, but it made no difference: the Lightning God was, beyond all doubt, Unchanging as ever.

That did not mean Residue could seize the upper hand in a fight against the Lightning God. This wasn't simply because his mastery of One Step Through Time and Space was lacking, or because the power he held fell short. Even if Residue grew again and again until he possessed power on par with the Lightning God's, or even surpassed it, the Lightning God could not be counted an easy opponent. How could he possibly be?

He's a Ruler, after all.

KRAKOOOM!

When the Thunder had closed to within arm's reach, Residue thrust the Thunder Staff straight out. At a glance it looked like an attack, but right now the Thunder Staff was no weapon. A lightning rod, more like.

The instant the tip of the staff met the Thunder, the Lightning God's expression shifted, just slightly, into surprise. To anyone else he would still have looked perfectly blank, but Residue could tell. He could even guess at why.

It was because the weapon had taken the Thunder head-on and still held its original shape.

"That cudgel. What is it made of?"

"Beats me. Forgot."

"Hm. So you forged the Soul Weapon yourself, it would seem."

"Maybe I did."

As Residue answered, he gave a faint smile at the feel of the 'Thunder', a sensation he hadn't known in a very long time. He didn't exactly miss it, but the feeling carried a peculiar weight all its own.

If he drew a little of this back into his body......

THUD!

"......"

A vise clamped suddenly around Residue's heart, and he ended up spitting out a fistful of blood. It was as if every hair on his body had stood on end; his whole frame prickled and crackled.

-Trickle.

Blood welled from his eyes and mouth. Looks like that just cost him a few more lives.

"Did you imagine it would be so easy to take in?"

Along with the Lightning God's sneer, the Thunder poured down once more. The bastard's loosing nothing but simple attacks on purpose. He'd judged that if it came to a tiresome battle of feints and reads, Residue, having once been the Lightning God's Remnant, would tell the false strikes from the real ones flawlessly. A sound read.

He realized, too, that just as he could see clean through his opponent's mind, the Lightning God could likewise read his own thoughts to some degree. However much Residue had changed, there was no denying the past in which he had been derived from the Lightning God.

'This really isn't going to be easy.'

And the Lightning God was not Residue's only enemy.

A chill bloomed suddenly on his right, and then a sword stabbed in with the force of a flash of light. The technique was familiar enough that dodging it gave him no trouble, but the owner of the blade was rather unexpected.

"Everlasting Plum Sword. Weren't we on fairly good terms, you and I?"

"We were. But my pride was wounded somewhat by the fact that I, too, was passed over in the selection."

"And so you mean to kill me?"

"I have no such intention. I merely wish to secure my own ticket of admission. If you should come to some harm in the process, I would ask you to regard it as unavoidable."

"......"

Wasn't that just a roundabout way of saying he'd kill him?

Residue clicked his tongue openly, but Yang In-hyun was the sort of man who, once he'd made up his mind, rarely backed off it. It didn't look like any amount of bullshit would get him to lower the blade, so Residue answered by swinging the Thunder Staff.

Beyond him, the ones who had thrown themselves into the fight included the Black Thorn Demon King, the Blue Knight, Sedi Trowman, Retip, and several Absolutes whose names he didn't know; and now Beniyang, Futurix, and the Executor, who had been watching the situation for a while, joined in as well.

Residue looked at them with a dumbfounded expression.

"My dear companions of the road, why is it that you attack me?"

"Because I want to go Outside too."

So Beniyang answered. In her eyes the Seven Colors swirled and churned, blending together like paint. Incomplete though it was, he could feel the Dragon's External Power in it, and he clicked his tongue. So she means it.

Right. This woman's one of Lukas's followers too, so it makes sense she'd want to get out to the 'Outside', where there might still be some clue about him.

And the others?

"Futurix. What about you?"

"It doesn't sit right with me that Her Majesty the Half King has no place there."

"Hm. Fair enough."

When Residue's gaze turned to the Executor, she hesitated a moment, then spoke.

"I have no intention of taking part. It's only that I can't make sense of a selection that excludes the Four Knights and every last one of the Rulers."

"You, too, have a point."

Residue nodded once more.

The conversation could not last long. Once again attacks came flying from every direction. There were weapons like swords and spears, there was searing flame, and there seemed to be something like a sharp, cutting wind sweeping in as well.

But to Residue, every one of those attacks felt terribly sluggish. Without even needing to bat them away with the Thunder Staff, he slipped past them with a loose sway of his body.

It felt as though some strange new sense had been awakened in him. He hadn't entered a Minimal Time Zone, nor had he used One Step Through Time and Space. So why was his body this light?

It didn't take long to reach a conclusion.

Before coming here, Residue had fought a battle against the Half King. He hadn't managed to land a single decisive blow, had only been beaten one-sidedly, but that experience had clearly done Residue some good.

"......"

A strange exhilaration welled up in him.

He wasn't even tired, yet his heartbeat seemed to have quickened a little, and heat seemed to be rushing to his face. An unfamiliar sensation raced through his whole body, and only belatedly did Residue realize that this was the excitement that came from a sense of accomplishment.

So that's it.

Is this the feeling of climbing one rung higher?

BAM-BAM-BAM!

As three Absolutes were sent flying, the Lightning God's eyes narrowed.

It was not the Thunder, but an energy uncannily similar to it could be felt radiating off the man. The Black Thorn Demon King had said as much, hadn't he. That the Residue of now was charting his own course, growing stronger in a manner set apart from the Lightning God's.

It had been hard to believe. For the Lightning God trusted in himself more than anyone. How strong his own ego was, how unshakable. He knows it well. And if Residue, a being born torn away from that very Lightning God, was growing stronger in a way different from the Lightning God's......

...didn't that mean this one had slipped entirely free of his influence?

"Hahaha......"

Residue burst into laughter and hurled himself into the battle. And he carried on in an outrageous, unorthodox fashion. At one point he bored straight in between the Lightning God and the Black Thorn Demon King; after a few skirmishing exchanges he turned his back and bolted off.

Martial arts can be without form. Of course, the realm of the Formless is something even most masters can scarcely glimpse, but it is possible. Yet to strip form from one's overall manner of fighting is impossible...... Some color is bound to bleed into the movements one way or another. Because a creature with a will of its own moves its body according to judgments it makes for itself.

And yet, among all those present, not one could read Residue's attacks.

Which meant one of two things.

Either there truly was no principle, no law at all, to the way he fought.

...or the landscape of the battlefield Residue beheld lay a full step above theirs.

"It isn't as though this one is overwhelmingly superior to the lot of you."

Residue's voice suddenly drove into those who were thinking along just such lines.

Residue had only just leapt high to evade the Lightning God's Thunder and the Black Thorn Demon King's Thorn, and had finished landing atop the table where the Four Knights had been seated.

That spot happened to be the exact center of the battlefield, so at a glance it looked as if Residue had vaulted straight into the enemy's encircling formation of his own accord.

But those who surrounded Residue only faltered for a moment; not one of them could readily mount an attack.

"Pathetic amateurs, the lot of you......"

As if he'd expected exactly this, Residue plopped himself right down where he stood. Then, propping his chin in one hand in a rather insolent posture, he went on.

"Right. Quit this cooperating that suits none of you. It's downright uncomfortable to watch. Don't you get it? Every one of you is far too self-righteous, far too willful. I'll say it plainly: there isn't a single one among you here who could accept another's help without complaint."

Twisted up inside, the whole lot of them. Residue tacked the words on and pressed on.

"Far from gratitude, you'd give suspicion, hostility, a sense of being put out by the whole thing. That's what you all are."

In truth, he'd sat down as boldly as if he'd spread out a mat to settle in, but how long he could keep rattling on like this, even Residue couldn't say. It wouldn't be the least bit strange if one of the bastards ringed around him struck at him this very instant.

Even so, Residue couldn't stop running his mouth.

"And that is exactly why none of you can be counted among the five."

"And you are claiming you are otherwise?"

The Lightning God asked, and Residue nodded.

"Cooperation is still an unfamiliar word to this one, true. But this one has already been through the abyss, and to claw out of it I took the help of others. That's what sets me apart from you. I know the world as it stands now isn't soft enough to be changed by one man throwing a fit on his own."

"......"

The Lightning God's face twisted with displeasure.

Residue saw that face and grinned.

"Just the face I expected. To you, I am yourself, and yet a thing that is not yourself. It's only natural to feel revulsion every time you watch such a thing go off the rails and change."

"......"

"And yet why is it that this one feels no displeasure looking at you? Hm? Lightning God. What do you suppose the reason is?"

"That is......"

The Lightning God faltered.

In this one moment, even Residue was uncertain.

He couldn't tell whether the man had fallen silent because he didn't know the answer, or because he knew it and simply didn't want to put it into words.

It made no difference either way, so Residue spoke.

"It's simple. It's because this one has accepted that we are utterly different beings. The moment I did, I was able to become completely free of you. Haha. What an irony. The displeasure you feel right now means the very opposite, doesn't it: that you have never once managed to break free of me."

"...Drivel."

"Well, more than nine-tenths of what this one says is drivel, true enough."

Residue nodded.

"At any rate, that brief little skirmish just now. Even granting that the Red Knight held a few of them off, and that this one has grown somewhat stronger... even so, it was far too easy. I didn't feel so much as an ant's speck of danger. Why do you suppose that is?"

By now no answers were coming back, but the hostility and bloodlust that had blanketed the Summit Hall only moments before were beginning to thin.

It was proof that the bastards surrounding him were, in their own way, fixed on his voice, so Residue carried on in a flat, even tone.

"There's no Synergy in any of you. Not a shred. None to be hoped for, either."

"Synergy?"

"That's right. There was a time the Blue Knight and the Red Knight joined forces to try and kill this one. Back then this one was in a wretched state, and it wasn't a time when I'd awakened any new power either, so I was beaten helpless. But in the end I didn't die. Why is that?"

"Because you scurried off like a good little rat?"

If she didn't get under his skin at a moment like this, she wouldn't be the Blue Knight.

Residue chuckled, looking over at Pale where she stood off to the side.

"That's one of the reasons, sure. But the decisive cause was that your joint attack was pathetic. Far from helping each other, you only got in each other's way. Add ten and ten and somehow get five, an unheard-of result, you might call it."

"......"

"Every last one of you here is the same. Black Thorn Demon King. If you brought your full, undiminished power to bear and joined with the Lightning God, you might even beat the Half King. You have that much firepower between you. But could you actually do it?"

"......"

No answer came back.

Because a Ruler does not lie.

"Take the lot of you out there and ruin won't be the problem. All my strength would go just to keeping things from collapsing from the inside. But the ones selected just now are different. From back when they were human, they fought by joining their strength, and they brought down enemies far stronger than themselves. Which is to say they're specialists at fighting as the weaker side. That very aptitude is the single most necessary quality for those who go out to the 'Outside'."

"Insufferable sophistry."

The Black Thorn Demon King shook his head.

"Do you truly think we lack even that much flexibility? Enough to kill one another with annihilation staring us in the face?"

"Slaughtering each other is too extreme an example. Suppose, instead, a moment comes when Sacrifice is needed."

"Sacrifice?"

"A moment when one of the five absolutely must die. There could be any number of reasons, no? Simply to buy time, to advance to the next stage, to take a mighty enemy down with you......"

"......"

"When a moment like that comes, can any of you point to yourself as the one to be sacrificed?"

Now even the Black Thorn Demon King knit his brow.

"Then one simply makes sure such a situation never arises."

"Not a wrong thing to say. But there's no end to this sort of empty debate. And this one isn't saying you're in the wrong, exactly. There's no need for you to change. Live as you always have. The way you have until now. That's what's right for you. It's only that there's a stage better suited to each side's aptitude. The 'Outside' is no place for the likes of you to throw your weight around."

He'd more or less said his piece.

Residue spent a moment wondering what conclusion these people would reach, but the conclusion he arrived at was that he had no idea.

Just then the Lightning God opened his mouth.

"And if we are not convinced, what then, Residue?"

"Then I'll have to proceed as I first planned. I'll force you down by strength. Short of killing you."

"By your own hand, you mean?"

"No. We shall."

Every one of those who filled the hall turned, startled, to look toward one side.

Someone had been standing near the entrance, but until that voice spoke, no one had registered the presence at all. From the moment she spoke, however, a presence more intense than anyone else's in the summit made itself known.

Residue smiled faintly.

Her attire was markedly lighter than the last time he'd seen her, and her face was as serene as if she'd merely stepped out for a stroll. And yet, in this figure's altered bearing, Residue sensed instead an inscrutable maturity.

"......"

"......"

To clear the air that had suddenly gone quiet, Residue spoke.

"Her Majesty the Half King, now arriving–"

*****

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