■ Fat Man □
The next day.
The sunlight filtering through my eyelids forced me to wake up as I lay in bed.
“Ugh…”
I had a hangover, likely from drinking with the Demon King for quite a while the previous night.
“Did you cough?”
“Huh… Camilla?”
I was startled to find an unexpected person by my side.
“Here’s some honey water. Drink it.”
I absentmindedly took the honey water Camilla handed me and drank it all. After finishing the contents of the cup, I handed the empty cup back, and Camilla placed it back on the tray.
“Why are you here? What about Ozma?”
Camilla tilted her head slightly and replied.
“My duty to serve Ozma ended when Caldlasth returned. Since Barnett, who originally served as Ozma’s adjutant, has returned, my role naturally shifted back.”
Now that I thought about it, that made sense.
After all, Barnett had been with me to assassinate King Oscar.
Having been together for so long, it felt natural for Barnett to be by my side instead of Camilla.
“Are you tired of me serving you? If so, I can arrange for someone else…”
“No, that’s not what I meant!”
“I’m joking.”
Camilla said this with a straight face, then slightly lifted her skirt with both hands and bowed.
“Then, I’ll be in your care once again, Caldlasth.”
“…I’ll be in your care too, Camilla.”
“Then I’ll relay the Demon King’s message promptly. The Demon King said that if you cough, you should use every available method after noon to destroy the Constantinople Wall.”
“That’s… quite a burden.”
“Should I tell the Demon King you might not be able to do it?”
“No, it’s not that bad.”
I got up from the field bed and draped the robe hanging on the box over my upper body.
“By the way, what time is it now?”
“11:30.”
“…I’ll just wash up and go. The Demon King will forgive me for that, right?”
“Of course. The Demon King isn’t that inflexible.”
After hearing Camilla’s reply, I grabbed a towel and headed to the nearby river.
—
At exactly noon.
I walked alone toward the Constantinople Wall, with the entire Demon King’s army lined up behind me, watching.
The only items I had on me were Stormbringer, Unlimited Power, and a pair of knuckles.
Honestly, that was enough.
Defense could be handled with infinite mana.
Using an amplification spell, I addressed the kingdom soldiers who seemed to have no intention of coming out from behind the wall.
“Ah, ah, mic test.”
A buzzing voice with a suitable echo.
As soon as the strange figure from the Demon King’s army started doing something, the soldiers on the wall began to stir.
An arrow flew toward my head, likely a test shot, but it bounced off the wind barrier I had already activated without even touching me.
With the dog-shaped mask I’ve always used well flipped over my face, I slightly lowered my voice and spoke.
“I won’t drag this out. If you surrender now, I won’t touch the Constantinople Wall. In case you didn’t hear, I’ll repeat it. If you surrender now, I won’t touch the Constantinople Wall.”
After a moment, someone on the wall, using a similar amplification spell, replied.
“We intend to defend this wall until our last breath, so you should surrender instead. Before you get hurt.”
It was probably one of the military mages.
If they were a mage from Oz, they must be from the Emerald Tower. Our junior seems a bit spicy.
They’d rather take punishment than accept a toast.
“Don’t regret it later.”
“I won’t.”
Okay, so that’s how it’s going to be?
Feeling a bit heated, I immediately began chanting the 5th-tier spell, Little Boy.
Ether x Ether x Ether x Ether x Ether.
A quintuple stack of the artificial element Ether.
Since Ether is created by compressing regular mana to its limits, even spells of the same tier as elemental magic consume nearly three times the mana.
To prevent backlash, high-level mana control is required, making it nearly impossible to use in the heat of battle where every second counts.
But in a situation like this, with no interference, it’s a different story.
The kingdom soldiers on the wall were currently off guard.
They trusted in the defense of the Constantinople Wall, which hadn’t been breached in nearly 700 years.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to test the firepower of Ether magic.
I had developed it but never had the chance to use it at full power.
Boom!
The sphere of light launched from my hand began flying toward the Constantinople Wall.
Watching it, I put on the sunglasses I had taken from my pocket.
Then,
Kwaaaaaaaa──!
The Ether crystal, reacting to the wall’s automatic defense magic, swelled up with a tremendous roar.
It was truly earth-shaking.
The pseudo-sun that suddenly appeared in the sky emitted a blinding light, aiming to destroy the Constantinople Wall, which had protected humanity for centuries.
But as time passed, the sun’s size gradually decreased, and when it finally disappeared, the intact Constantinople Wall was revealed.
The kingdom soldiers on the wall, who had been watching in stunned silence, hugged each other and cheered.
“See! This is a miracle of the gods! The heavenly goddess protects us, so Oz will never be conquered by you demons!”
The mage who had taunted me earlier shouted excitedly through the amplification spell.
‘Ugh, noisy.’
I thought as I picked my ear.
Anyway, now that I knew Little Boy wouldn’t work, it was time to drop something bigger.
Ignoring the kingdom soldiers who were busy singing hymns of praise to the goddess, I began crafting the spell from scratch.
Starting with a hexagram.
While a pentagon isn’t bad in terms of balance, a magic circle with a hexagon is itself a symbol of the goddess of wisdom, known as the Star of David.
I continuously filled the six points where the mana-trapping circle met with mana.
The mana gradually crystallized, transforming into the artificial element Ether, and the six Ethers complemented each other, achieving stable output.
In the process, an unprecedented amount of mana was sucked into the magic circle, but it was still within the expected range.
Having recently reached the 7th tier, my overall mana capacity had significantly increased.
Like a water-drinking hippo, the new spell endlessly absorbed mana, and by the time it was complete, nearly half of my mana was gone.
If Little Boy consumed nearly three times the mana of its original tier, this spell consumed nearly five times.
Truly groundbreaking.
Since it was a spell I had only theorized and never had the chance to use in battle, I was curious about how it would manifest.
Soon, the spell was complete.
On my palm was a sphere much larger than Little Boy.
Little Boy wasn’t small, but this one was nearly three times its diameter.
I aimed the completed spell at the still-standing Constantinople Wall and fired.
The sphere of light flew slowly.
‘Maybe I should step back and watch.’
Feeling an instinctive sense of foreboding, I wrapped myself in wind magic and hurriedly flew back toward the Demon King’s army.
The soldiers on the wall laughed, thinking I was running away in fear.
I etched their final moments in my mind and unconsciously made the sign of the cross.
In the name of the Father, the Son.
“Fat Man─”
—
That day, the massive mushroom cloud rising over the Constantinople Wall was deeply imprinted in the minds of all Oz citizens peacefully strolling the streets.
A part of the Constantinople Wall, which had protected them from external invasions like a guardian deity, had evaporated before their eyes.
Fortunately, Fat Man was a pure mana-based spell, so there were no secondary effects like those of a real nuclear weapon, such as heat radiation or radioactive fallout. However, the sheer visual impact of a single spell’s power was so overwhelming that Prince Tipetarius, the current leader of the Oz Kingdom, who watched it all from the royal balcony, deemed further resistance hopeless and unconditionally surrendered to the Demon King’s army.
The long-standing war between humans and demons had come to an end.
