Volume 4—Chapter 127: It Bleeds!
These last few days had been frustrating for Irana.
Not only because everything kept going wrong, but also because she had started noticing that something was affecting her memories.
Take Minami Kotori, for example.
The daughter of one of the three prominent families in Tsukuru, and supposedly one of Irana’s friends.
Yet somehow, for several days, Irana completely failed to recognise her existence. It was not ordinary forgetfulness either. Whenever she tried to think about Kotori, her awareness simply skipped over her as if something was interfering.
It was only after meeting Yukari Fiolera again that the memories slowly started returning bit by bit.
Because of that strange feeling, Irana had also been avoiding her Onee-chan, Aria.
Not because she wanted to.
Her instincts simply told her that whatever was affecting her memory could become dangerous for Aria, too.
Now that she had finally met Kotori again, the memories connected to her existence became clearer once more.
But that only made the current situation more suspicious.
“Who are you?!” Irana said angrily.
Sharp ice crystals surrounded Kotori from every direction.
Because Minami Kotori had just used magic instead of Esper powers.
Strictly speaking, powers outside the Esper System had always existed. The problem was that those powers did not belong to this world.
For example, the witch Irana encountered earlier, the one who fought Nidhogg until moments ago. Irana already knew that the woman was not an Esper. She was someone from another world.
Irana learned about such things because of an incident that happened at the beginning of the school year, when two suspicious individuals attacked the academy.
Neither of them used Esper abilities.
Since then, Irana had secretly been researching powers beyond the Esper System. She even consulted her father about it.
What followed was a long explanation about dimensional cracks and the worlds connected to them.
Dimensional cracks were essentially gates leading to other worlds. Most of the time, monsters emerged from them. Occasionally, intelligent beings crossed over instead. Some came peacefully, while others were hostile.
But because humanity feared the unknown, those encounters rarely ended peacefully.
Now, after personally experiencing memories that felt tampered with, and seeing Minami Kotori casually use magic from another world, Irana had every reason to question her.
“Irana? What do you mean?… It’s me. Kotori, you know,” Kotori said nervously.
“Yeah, right…” Irana replied coldly. “Maybe you are the real Kotori. But has the existence called ‘Kotori’ always existed from the beginning?”
Kotori stiffened slightly.
“Can we talk about this after we deal with that big dragon?” she asked.
Irana stared at her for a moment before finally lowering her hand slightly.
“Fine… but you better not go anywhere after we’re done with that thing.”
And so, for the moment, Irana decided to leave her questions for later. Beside…
Irana let out a quiet sigh. “Sorry… my mind has been all over the place because of all this chaos.”
Kotori had clearly saved her just now.
But even so, Irana still could not explain why her first instinct was to treat Kotori as hostile.
It also bothered her that she reacted differently toward Kotori and the witch from earlier, despite both of them clearly having connections to powers outside this world.
Irana shook her head lightly.
“Better focus on the battle for now…”
Above them, Nidhogg unleashed another deafening roar.
The giant dragon twisted through the dark sky while attacks from countless Espers continued raining toward it from every direction. Fire scorched the clouds, lightning tore through the storm, and massive branches from Elizabeth’s tree stretched higher and higher toward the battlefield above.
Irana raised her hand once more.
The frozen air around the island trembled violently as enormous spears of ice formed behind her.
At the same time, a golden light suddenly appeared in the sky, shining brightly through the storm-filled clouds.
Its radiance immediately caught Irana’s attention.
“That’s the witch…” Irana muttered.
The figure dashed through the air at incredible speed, leaving trails of golden light behind her broom.
“Why did she disappear earlier?”
But before anyone could answer, another portal suddenly opened beside Irana.
This time, it was not a claw emerging from it.
It was Nidhogg’s head.
Its gigantic jaws burst out from the portal, trying to swallow Irana whole.
“What the…?!”
Irana instinctively jumped backwards, but the dragon’s sheer size made escape nearly impossible.
As she glanced upward, her eyes widened.
The dragon’s enormous body in the sky was disappearing piece by piece into another portal.
It was moving.
No.
It was transferring its entire body to the ground.
Cracks spread across the massive ice castle surrounding the island as Nidhogg slowly emerged from the portal beside them.
The frozen structure trembled violently under its weight.
“Aegis!!”
A magic barrier instantly wrapped around Irana moments before the dragon’s jaws crashed into her position.
BOOM.
Even with the shield protecting her, the impact still sent Irana flying across the battlefield.
“Anemoi!!”
A powerful gale suddenly caught her body midair, slowing her momentum before she smashed into the ice.
Irana landed roughly, sliding several meters before regaining her footing.
“Kotori…”
She immediately looked back toward the battlefield.
The dragon’s full body had now completely emerged onto the island.
The sky above cleared as Nidhogg descended fully to the ground, its colossal body towering over everything around it.
Then it roared.
The sound shook the island so violently that several branches from Elizabeth’s tree cracked apart.
“Kotori!!” Irana shouted. “Syena is down there, protected by my ice! We need to save her before that dragon crushes her!!”
“On it!”
Kotori immediately raised both hands.
“Aegis!! Aegis!!”
Layer after layer of magical barriers appeared underground around the area where Syena had been sealed within the ice.
Then suddenly, a streak of golden light descended from the sky.
The witch riding the broom slammed directly into Nidhogg’s head with explosive force.
The impact alone made the dragon’s massive neck jerk sideways.
“What a rude fella,” the witch said casually while hovering above the dragon. “I was about to confront you in the sky, and you ran away to the ground?”
Irana narrowed her eyes at the witch.
It was definitely the same witch from earlier.
But somehow… something felt different.
“Didn’t that witch say she had a twin…?” Irana muttered quietly. “Well… can’t trust my memory anymore…”
The comment was clearly directed toward Kotori.
Unfortunately, Kotori failed to notice the jab entirely and remained focused on protecting Syena underground.
Meanwhile, Emilia stretched one hand forward.
Dozens of glowing constructs instantly formed behind her, each one radiating intense magical energy.
“A mere lizard trying to gobble the world tree?” Emilia said coldly. “Aren’t you a greedy one!!”
The constructs suddenly fired.
Beams of light shot toward Nidhogg at terrifying speed.
In response, portals rapidly opened around the dragon, redirecting many of the attacks away from its body.
But there were simply too many.
Several constructs slipped past the portals and struck Nidhogg directly.
Explosions of golden light erupted across the dragon’s scales.
And then…
“It bleeds…” Irana whispered.
For the first time since the battle began, blood poured from Nidhogg’s body.
Author's Note
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