Ssshhhh.

The rain that had fallen drop by drop became a driving downpour.

Flash!

Each time stark-white lightning and blood-red lightning fell in turn, red-and-white shadows swept across the soldiers’ faces.

“Gyaaaaah!”

“Uwaaaaah!”

“Aaaaaaah!”

Kyrie’s scream, Nereus’s scream, and Gracus’s scream rang out as a triple chorus.

“Isn’t one of them going to die like that?”

“Lord Kyrie!”

Thousands of soldiers were so overwhelmed by the sight that they couldn’t say a word.

In this entire city it was as if only those three were alive.

They set even their own lives aside and burned the unknown for the sake of a single objective.

Flash!

“O Dreaming Thunder Star!”

Kyrie called lightning and thrust his blade.

He stood before a pillar of white lightning.

Even as the detonating glare bleached the world to black and white for a heartbeat, his eyes and cloak stamped themselves in a vivid, impossible blue.

It was a thunderbolt one would remember forever.

The expenditure is worse than I expected.

Gracus ground his teeth as he bled yet another strike off into the ground.

I meant to let them collapse on their own.

The attacks that a Blue Knight born an orphan and made a patriarch’s son, and a Blue Knight born heir to a great cadet line and honed to the utmost, poured out while burning their lifespans—were that lethal.

On top of that, thanks to the mauling from his fight with Necron, the current riding the blades straight into his body was acting with brutal lethality.

No. This won’t do.

Smelling blood at the tip of his nose, Gracus called lightning.

Vmmmmm!

The black clouds whirled in the sky.

Amid the white and red that had been snapping there till now, yellow lightning mixed in.

Crackle-crackle-crackle!

The next bolt Kyrie dropped traced a path unlike before.

The lightning that had fallen in a straight line toward Gracus was drawn off, as if led to a lightning rod, and struck far away.

“Huh?”

“What the—?”

The watching soldiers all blanched as one.

“…Guided Lightning.”

“Isn’t that a technique for dropping lightning?”

“Strictly speaking, it decides where it lands. So…”

Gracus sent the lightnings Kyrie and Nereus were calling to someplace else entirely.

“I won’t be taking any more of that.”

“Damn it!”

“Damn!”

His greasy, singed-beard jaw yawned wide.

“Go chase after your uncle!”

Gracus roared and swung his maul at Nereus.

Kyrie lunged for the now-bared armpit, but Gracus twisted his body and avoided it, then brought the maul down between Nereus’s neck and shoulder.

Crack!

“Ghk!”

Had he not thrown himself backward at the last instant and refused to absorb the shock, that single blow held the power to pulp bone.

Blood streamed from the face and neck where the maul’s metal studs had only grazed him.

Nereus staggered, then dropped to one knee in the middle of the boulevard.

“Nereus!”

With a scream, Kyrie unleashed the knockback Backflow at Gracus’s neck.

Rather than dodge or block, Gracus called lightning.

I’m bleeding too much as it is.

Rumble!

It was a bolt a governor-class Blue Knight called with the resolve to char another Blue Knight completely.

Finish this!

A golden thunderfire kilometers wide growled between the clouds and took aim.

I’m screwed.

Kyrie felt it—being a superb thundercrafter.

Every electrical attack sends faint electromagnetic and magnetic precursors to the target point before the strike itself arrives.

That was why, out in a field on a rainy day, if static suddenly snapped or your hairs stood up, people said to beware.

Too late. I can’t dodge this with Thunder-Step.

Kyrie canceled Backflow and yanked his body away in haste.

For an instant the world tilted; a wave of drowsiness crashed through him.

Is it over like this?

Futility, hollowness, defeat climbed from the shadow like hands and seized him by the shoulders.

It can’t be helped.

You’ve done enough.

Now die.

There are times, in battle, when the pain is so great you’d rather be freed from it by death.

That lightning, which seemed impossible to stop, was pain of that kind.

No matter how outstanding a thundercrafter Kyrie was, the output would burn him to the bone.

[“You think that makes any sense!”]

In the next instant Kyrie bellowed like thunder and threw both hands toward the sky.

About to die so you’ll just die? It hurts so you’ll just die? What kind of unreal nonsense is that!

He likewise called lightning out of the clouds and interfered with Gracus’s bolt.

The snake-tails of vivid yellow and stark white lightnings twined into each other.

Splat, sizzle!

“Kh—!”

Kyrie’s nerves overheated to the limit and shone like heated wire.

I live. I beat Gracus, I beat Traysan somehow, I become Emperor somehow. I live, somehow.

But that familiar razor realism returned to his face.

Even when he’d been caught stealing the bread the headmaster had skimmed off and saved at the red-light orphanage and had been rolling in the gutter, he had thought:

He would seize a stable life.

“Is that how you want it!”

Gracus shouted and thrust one hand to the sky.

Crack!

The vivid yellow that had begun to mix with the white drew its own color back and leveled downward.

Kyrie held and twisted that lightning, feeling as if an invisible hand were propping up the heavens.

So that’s how you call it.

He realized it in a flash.

What he hadn’t seen before because he’d focused only on bringing it down with brute force now came into view.

If you forced the sky’s thunder-energy to move, you burned too much mana.

Use the bare minimum of my mana. Feel the rotation of the thunder-energy inside the storm cloud.

Storm clouds, riding the updraft, rise from below to above, then descend again, drawing a great oval.

The thunder-energy within the cloud moves with it.

Blend my mana into that rotation, draw the sky’s thunder-energy together, then strike in time with the downward phase.

Trying to stop it, he grasped it in reverse.

A Celestial Lightning Body synced over 1,000% let him feel it.

As it rises, the amount of thunder-energy increases but control weakens; as it descends, the amount dips but control strengthens.

Kyrie asserted control.

It’s like drilling thundercraft—only the difference is, instead of bringing it into my body, I’m bringing it down outside.

He picked the instant when Gracus’s golden lightning, soaring toward the top of the cumulonimbus, was swelling its momentum.

Clench!

He poured his strength in an instant, and nearly half of what Gracus had gathered was overpainted white.

“Ghk!”

Coming on with the maul, Gracus bled at the lip.

“Ha!”

It bit.

Kyrie knew he had struck a precise weakness.

He drew half-circles with both hands.

He stirred, as if sweeping all the clouds of the sky.

He sent the bolt he had just stolen one more circle inside the cumulonimbus and brought it straight down.

A strike that jumped his mana limit twice—True-Energy Guidance added.

Flash!

A pillar of lightning thick enough to bury Gracus’s spirit form utterly slammed down.

“Graaah!”

Gracus dropped the maul and convulsed.

“Now I understand.”

Kyrie grinned, sparks crackling between his teeth.

“You understand?”

“You asked if I wanted to try it? Yes. Let’s try it. I think I can do it now.”

“At your age?”

Gracus’s mouth gaped as he voiced his doubt.

The two Blue Knights raced each other, dragging fire down from the sky.

Flash!

Flash!

Flash!

They flung Guided Lightning, sending the other’s bolt far away, while trying to fix their own over the other’s head.

“Holy hell. Holy hell.”

“O Dreaming Thunder Star, look down on us.”

“Do we attack?”

“You joking? You get caught up in that and your flesh will part from your bones.”

Soldiers, Retainers, Navigators, Knights— even Blue Knights—watched the two with eyes full of awe.

An Insula rooftop overlooking their duel.

“Don’t withdraw the cannons. Have the spearmen set their pikes down too. Recon and command, don’t leave the roofs.”

Joi rattled orders to the runners and pulled off the roof herself.

If even one of those lightning pillars fell this way, anything could happen.

Flash!

“Aaagh!”

“Gyaah!”

Just now, Gracus had twisted Kyrie’s Heavenstrike with his own Guided Lightning and blasted dozens of friendly soldiers away.

Unlike before, Joi felt no intimidation from the sight.

She had watched, closer than anyone, how Kyrie had struggled to stand there.

She did what she could do now, thinking that someday she wanted to stand at his side.

The boulevard.

“Kiri-Kiri, you’re the best. Hehe.”

Frey pushed herself upright on her greatsword.

Her whole body burned, but she could still move.

She kept herself ready, so that if the one single moment came when he needed her, she could throw herself in at once.

The Governor’s Citadel office.

Gaveng watched the duel with Erica.

“Magnificent.”

“Hmph. He beat me, so this much is the least he should do.”

Erica lounged arrogantly in the governor’s chair and muttered to herself.

“If he keeps growing like that, in a year he might even be a threat to me.”

“It will certainly be someone like that who changes the world.”

So thought Gaveng as well.

He watched a moment longer, then returned his eyes to the documents in hand.

He was in the middle of grasping and organizing the Citadel’s budget papers.

If proof turned up of wasteful expenditures, it would also help when they pressed the case of collusion with the Royal line.

Back to the boulevard.

“Trying to catch up to my effort with some cowardly Body-Loss Vow!”

Gracus called lightning with one hand and grabbed up his dropped maul with the other.

He could not stand it—how a red-light bastard could be crossing blades with him as an equal, unless the boy were a direct child of a main line.

A red-light bastard should have had less mana than he, should have been weaker than he, should have had to work longer than he to even stand on the same line.

“I’ll teach you your place with this maul! Since you gouged one eye out, I’ll gouge the other too!”

Even as he called lightning and knocked it aside, step by step Gracus came on toward Kyrie.

“…!”

Frustration flickered in Kyrie’s single eye.

Right now I can’t move a single step.

He was spending all his focus on calling or diverting lightning.

If he so much as tried to move, lightning would smash him at once.

“Idiot.”

A coarse curse came from behind Gracus’s legs.

“I’ve never thought like that either.”

“Hm?”

Nereus had crawled along the ground at some point and clamped both of Gracus’s ankles.

Thud!

He caught behind the knees and drove with the shoulder—wrestling takedown.

“Ghk!”

Gracus tumbled across the boulevard.

His head slammed once hard on the ground, bounced, and the focus he held shattered completely.

Up in the storm cloud, the force of the golden lightning weakened sharply.

“Strike!”

Nereus shouted without even looking back at Kyrie.

“You—!”

Kyrie spilled a beat of dismay.

If he struck lightning now, he would shock Nereus too.

“Strike! I said strike!”

But Nereus roared again and again.

Kyrie clenched his teeth.

Flash!

White lightning smashed down over Gracus’s heart.

Boom!

Nereus sprang away as if he had been hit himself.

“Ghk!”

A scream unlike any before tore out of Gracus.

Nearly a bowlful of blood poured from his mouth.

Now!

Kyrie didn’t miss the opening.

The moment the enemy’s strength ebbed—one only the man himself could know.

Finish it now.

He called lightning with the resolve to scorch even his own nerves.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Golden plate spilled from Gracus’s body in a crashing cascade.

The body wrapped in muscle and fat lay bare.

“Huh?”

Kyrie spilled a breath of dismay.

His skin was already carbonized and charred; not a patch remained whole.

But beneath that brittle shell, golden current was swelling, replacing veins and muscle.

Elementalization?

Elementalization: the Authority that converts the body itself into electricity.

If successful, it was the stamp of the strong—one could become a Planetary Seat in the capital’s main forces and enjoy a life of luxury.

[“Ah—aaaaaaah!”]

Gracus’s eyes rolled all the way back as he roared.

It was a beast’s roar, not a human’s.

“Everyone back!”

Sensing that something—whatever it was—had gone wrong, Joi urgently pulled the soldiers farther away.

“Fire the cannons! Accept friendly casualties and just shoot! Don’t use Rykenta ballistas!”

She did everything she could to land damage somehow.

Thunk! Thud-thud! Thud-thud-thud!

Rykenta ballistas and cannons slammed into Gracus’s body.

Charred hide sloughed off.

But Gracus’s massive body only swelled larger.

“Insane.”

Kyrie had to crane his head higher and higher to meet Gracus’s eyes.

Gracus, once Nereus’s size, was now bigger than an orc warrior.

He would soon be ogre-big.

There was almost nothing human left.

Elementalization wrought wholly of current stood in the boulevard.

Between the strata of current that made up the body, white bone and ruddy muscle fibers jutted here and there, a gruesome and terrifying shape.

Ordinary arrows or blades won’t do anything to that. Either force him to exhaust himself and revert to human, or cleave with even higher-output current…

Kyrie ground his teeth.

No. He’s nearly at the limit too. If it were a normal elementalization, he should be larger. There shouldn’t be bones and meat scraps left like that.

Repeating to himself that Gracus too was at the limit, he called lightning.

Not because he had grounds—because if he didn’t believe it, he couldn’t do anything.

Flash!

White lightning fell upon Gracus.

Blood streamed down from Kyrie’s right eye.

“Ah…”

Neural overheating.

Crunch!

Kyrie bit his tongue to hold on to consciousness.

Gracus’s body—wrought of vivid yellow current.

It bites.

When his white current struck that body, it writhed and shook like pigments of different colors mixing.

It was getting through.

Almost there. I’m really almost there. If you can’t call lightning, then use electrical emission!

Snick.

A sound like an overheated optic nerve snapping.

Kyrie’s vision washed black for a beat.

The world seen by bio-radar alone was black ground and white outlines.

Flash!

A rough, white line slashed down.

He had no strength left to put into it.

It was a bolt called purely by craft.

【Your “Heavenstrike” has reached the realm of “Deepening Perk: Heavenstrike.”】

【“Deepening Perk: Heavenstrike” is converted into “Celestial Lightning Body.”】

A string of characters rose in the Stigma of his right eye.

Huh?

Kyrie trembled with rapture.

A surge rolled through him—nerves growing stout, maximum mana swelling, every muscle of the body hardening.

[“Look at me in your final moment.”]

Crackle-crackle-crackle!

[“Because I want to see both those eyes close!”]

The current Gracus fired smashed into Kyrie.

An “emission” with output like a Heavenstrike.

Boom!

Kyrie lifted from the ground and slammed into an Insula wall.

Gracus moved to fire again.

It was an attack that could have hurled Kyrie into the abyss.

“Get clear!”

[“Ghk!”]

Frey, sprinting in, stabbed Gracus’s Achilles with her thunder greatsword.

Rip!

“Move! Kyrie—move!”

It was the part with the most human flesh left.

Gracus’s elementalization—five meters tall—lurched hard.

[“Vermin!”]

Gracus kicked Frey away with the other foot.

Was I out for a moment?

Kyrie came back to himself just then.

Thanks to the Celestial Lightning Body further hardening his nerves, consciousness returned fast.

He seized the thunder greatsword.

He could still fight.

He sprang with everything he had at Gracus, who had just turned toward Frey.

Whoooosh!

He raised the thunder greatsword overhead and called lightning.

Hold.

He poured True-Energy Guidance into Physical Reinforcement.

He brought the blade down on Gracus’s crown so the lightning would strike the sword at that instant.

Flash!

The lightning became a hammer, and the sword the chisel it struck.

Gracus’s giant body split straight down the middle.

Chapter 98

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