—Incompetent.
Hearing the adjective spill from the girl's mouth, Naoki felt a spark of fresh curiosity.
It had been years since anyone described him with words like that.
"From your tone, it sounds like you're accusing me of failing to save the fairies here in time?"
"Hm, of course."
The girl answered with a laugh.
"After all, you are the savior—the savior who is fourteen thousand years late. Since you've been delayed for so long, surely there's something you must do to atone for it, don't you think?"
"Holy Star Sword Bearer?"
Atone?
Naoki couldn't hold back his laughter: "An interesting way of putting it. I'm late… Hmm, yes, I am late. To be honest, I really wish I could have come sooner."
*BUZZ!* *SWOOSH!*
Without drawing the Holy Sword, with a single hand he swung a brilliant light that cleaved the ground before him. Naoki stared at the girl standing right on the edge of the split: "If I could have come fourteen thousand years ago, I would have crushed the six fairy ancestors—the root of all evil—and resolved this Lostbelt from its very source."
"How shocking. That just now shouldn't have been the Holy Sword's power."
Completely ignoring Naoki's words, the girl admired the flash of light that had just torn the earth beside her feet: "I thought you'd fly into a rage and attack me with the Holy Sword right away."
"Considering I'm the one who burned every fairy here to death."
"!"
Aesc's eyes and expression trembled instantly, and Naoki, closest to her, felt a burst of Mana radiate from her body.
Gripping her staff tightly, Aesc's gaze slowly turned cold: "You did this?"
"Yes, exactly." The girl laughed. "These fairies deserved to die anyway. After painstakingly gathering a physical form, I merely tested my power and burned this place to ashes."
"It felt so exhilarating, watching those fairies choose death over living in the flames. Too bad they couldn't withstand the heat—just a moment and they were gone. Not satisfying at all—"
*SWISH!*
The tip of Aesc's staff instantly flared with powerful Mana light. A complex magical array formed in an instant, and several shimmering spears of light shot forth from it!
Naoki could tell Aesc was furious.
Though through Morgan's memories she knew fairies were fundamentally irredeemable trash, and thousands of years of life had taught her their true nature, her childhood experiences still left her with a sliver of hope for them to this day. She still stood in the position of wanting to save them.
Now, someone who delighted in torturing fairies had appeared before her. Even if Aesc didn't know who she was, her actions alone were enough to ignite intense hostility.
But—
"—!"
Just as the light spears were about to touch the girl's body, they all froze mid-air in unison, then disintegrated into dust and vanished.
(Cancellation? Decomposition?)
*SWISH!*
While Naoki pondered, Aesc's staff lit up with magical light again. Dozens of deep-blue fireballs the size of human heads flew from the staff's tip at once, streaking toward the girl like a meteor shower!
Yet, just like before, the flames halted abruptly near the girl, then unraveled into dust.
The girl smiled faintly: "It's useless, Heaven Fairy. Your Magecraft cannot harm me—my very existence has been configured that way."
"Configured?"
"Yes. After all, I am fundamentally an existence meant to oppose you. So it's only natural that I'm optimized to counter you as much as possible—"
*BANG!*
Before the girl could finish, her entire body was hurled backward like a cannonball, crashing through and shattering all the ruins behind her.
Lowering the leg he'd used to kick, Naoki stared at the girl lying amid the distant rubble.
(No significant damage… it felt like kicking a sponge.)
"Physical attacks are useless too, you know."
Slowly rising from the debris, the girl brushed the dust off her body: "My physical durability is calibrated to withstand the Holy Sword. A kick like that won't hurt me."
A body configured with the Holy Sword as its hypothetical enemy?
"You… were created?"
"Ugh… Well, it's not something that needs hiding. It's fine to be honest." The girl spread her arms. "I was born to destroy this island. Since the fairies are truly beyond saving—since they truly deserve death—I was born."
"—From the deepest part of this island."
The deepest part of the island?
(Isn't that—)
Aesc realized something.
Naoki said it outright: "You—Vortigern? Or Oberon?"
"Neither." The girl shook her head. "I am not Vortigern, nor Oberon—just a mass-produced model."
"Mass-produced model?"
"Don't they exist in Pan-Human History? Mass-produced monsters—the eleven children of the Mother Goddess Creator."
The girl explained with a laugh: "The cause was three thousand six hundred years ago, when someone from Pan-Human History appeared in this Lostbelt. This world also received partial influence from Pan-Human History."
"For example, the Albion Dragon's remains beside you—didn't she witness a flash of the Holy Sword's light three thousand six hundred years ago?"
"I, who dwell in the deepest underground, was the same."
Three thousand six hundred years ago, Morgan arrived in the Lostbelt via Rayshift, entrusted everything to Aesc, then vanished, returning to the Throne of Heroes.
But Aesc was not the only one affected by Morgan.
Rayshift is a technique that converts the body into spiritron particles, transfers it elsewhere, and reconstructs it. Chaldea uses Coffins to perform limited individual Rayshifts without environmental impact.
But Morgan had used no Coffin, and her Rayshift occurred during the special period of the Human Order Incineration.
As a result, Morgan brought fragments of Pan-Human History's records into this Lostbelt.
The flash of Holy Sword light Melusine witnessed was the sight of Naoki from the past swinging the Holy Sword.
"I saw that flash too."
"The starlight that saves the world, the starlight that annihilates all evil, the starlight that will eventually come to this world."
"That was bad. A solution had to be found. If not taken seriously, we would die—though I don't care about my own life or death, I don't want to be finished off before this island is completely destroyed."
"So I—no, we were born."
The girl laughed.
"Spending three thousand six hundred years, using the power and knowledge of the thing that came to this Lostbelt with Morgan, we finally completed the weapons to oppose both saviors."
"That is us."
As the girl spoke, more and more black insect-like substances gushed from the surrounding ground, forming girl after girl, and in an instant surrounding Naoki, Aesc, and Melusine.
"There are twenty thousand of us in total."
"Even the Holy Star Sword Bearer and the First-Generation Elemental Spirit cannot possibly face our numbers."
Countless girls declared in unison.
"You two interfering, obstructing saviors—why don't you just die here?"
"This world does not need you to save it. This world should be destroyed."