...
{3rd Pov}
The ground dragon dashed forward at a steady pace, its powerful legs pounding against the dirt road while the carriage it pulled creaked and rattled faintly in rhythm.
The beast's scales glinted slightly under the sunlight, its nostrils flaring as it snorted out warm breaths.
Sitting at the driver's seat was Rem, firmly holding the reins in her hands, her expression composed as always, though her blue eyes occasionally flickered with subtle glances at her passengers.
Inside the carriage, Subaru and Zero sat opposite each other, the atmosphere oddly casual despite the dangerous destination ahead.
At one point, Subaru leaned forward, giving Zero a rather dissatisfied look.
Without bothering to hide his tone, he asked bluntly, "Oi, you can teleport, right? If that's the case, then why the hell are we wasting time riding in this thing? Wouldn't it be easier to just skip all of this and get there instantly?"
His voice carried that mix of irritation and restlessness he often failed to suppress when he felt impatient.
Rem's eyes twitched slightly at Subaru's words.
She didn't openly scold him, but she clearly took note of his tone and the way he addressed Zero.
After all, Zero wasn't just some random traveling companion.
He was counted among the three great Heroes—a title that carried tremendous weight across the entire world.
Even if Rem already knew that Subaru was the Sage Candidate chosen for the future, even if she wanted to place her trust in him, accepting the idea of Subaru standing alongside legends and succeeding as the next Great Sage was something difficult for her heart to accept.
To her, it sounded absurd, almost blasphemous.
After all, Rem could call Subaru her hero with all her heart, but for anyone else, hearing him compared to the Great Sage would only sound like a laughable exaggeration or an insult to history itself.
Meanwhile, Zero didn't look bothered at all.
Resting his elbow on the window frame, his chin supported by his hand, he gazed at the passing scenery with a relaxed air.
His response came in a calm, almost dismissive tone: "I can teleport, yes. But you two cannot."
He paused for a moment, his eyes following the gentle sway of the plains outside.
"Besides," he added, "you're about to attempt something enormous, something that will go down in history. Don't you think it would be a waste if you skipped the experience of traveling? If you just ignored the scenery and rushed ahead, you'd miss a part of the journey itself."
His words made Subaru freeze for a moment, caught completely off guard.
He didn't know how to answer.
The casual way Zero spoke made it sound less like advice and more like the kind of thing an older person would say after living long enough to value the smaller parts of life.
Yet when Subaru thought about it, the irony hit him hard.
Who was supposed to be older here?
Him, Natsuki Subaru, who had spent over fifty years suffering through repeated deaths and carrying the weight of countless loops in his memories?
Or Zero, a youth who had only just turned eighteen?
As Subaru sighed and thought of White Whale, it left Subaru's palms damp with sweat, his nervous hand rubbing against them unconsciously.
He tried not to let Rem notice his unease.
Thanks to the memories he'd regained, the trauma of certain encounters was still painfully fresh in his mind.
The image of the White Whale, that grotesque monstrosity that had ended his life in one of the most brutal and humiliating ways possible, was burned into him so deeply that even recalling it made his stomach tighten.
The phantom pain of how it crushed him lingered as if it had just happened yesterday.
If not for Zero, Subaru wouldn't even be able to force himself onto this road.
The only reason he could sit here and not break into a cold panic was because Zero had already drafted a plan—one that would let Subaru kill the White Whale entirely on his own.
Without that assurance, he would've believed he was marching toward certain death again.
And in a way, he still was. Subaru couldn't deny it.
Even with Zero's guidance, the thought clawed at him: 'I might win, but I'm still walking into death. Even if I somehow kill that thing… how the hell am I supposed to deal with the aftermath of what comes next?'
Zero's plan was simple on paper, yet terrifying in reality.
According to him, the only practical method Subaru had right now to deal with a threat on the White Whale's level was to unleash an attack equivalent to a nuclear strike.
Subaru had no choice but to trust in that plan. The very idea made his skin crawl.
He knew enough about nuclear weapons from his old world to understand the implications.
Creating one scientifically required rare and heavily refined elements, intricate tools, and calculations so precise that even minor errors could ruin everything.
That kind of effort was completely beyond what was possible in this world's level of technology. And yet, the existence of magic changed the rules.
With the right application, impossible things suddenly became feasible.
Through the use of Yang Magic—light attribute magic capable of manipulating photons, heat, and even plasma—it was possible to replicate the destructive force of a nuclear weapon.
Something no human scientist in Subaru's world would have been able to build in these conditions could instead be crafted through a terrifying blend of mana and technique.
It could, at least in theory, be used to replicate the destructive power of a nuclear strike—both in the form of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.
However, the difficulty wasn't equal between the two.
Oddly enough, when using magic, splitting atoms apart turned out to be far more difficult than it was in the scientific approach, where splitting uranium was the first and most straightforward method discovered.
By contrast, achieving nuclear fusion, the act of combining lighter atoms into heavier ones, became the more practical path when using magical methods. In science, fusion was the great hurdle; in magic, it was the opposite.
That was why Subaru's role in Zero's plan sounded both absurd and terrifying.
He would have to conjure a bow entirely out of light, then form an arrow also made of pure light.
The catch, however, was at the very tip—the arrowhead.
Unlike the shaft of light, the arrowhead was to be composed of concentrated hydrogen atoms, which Subaru would then forcibly compress and fuse together through Yang Magic until they turned into helium.
In other words, he was being told to manually simulate nuclear fusion through sheer magical control.
It sounded ridiculously simple when phrased in words, but the execution was anything but.
The level of precision required was beyond insane.
Even the slightest mistake could mean a premature detonation, a misfire, or an uncontrolled reaction that would annihilate everything in the area.
Fortunately, the Quasi-Yang Spirit at Subaru's side happened to possess an extraordinary degree of fine control.
Even more conveniently, Zero had taken the liberty of transferring his own expertise in the principles of magical manipulation directly into Subaru's mind through psychic means.
That didn't give Subaru muscle memory, of course.
He wasn't suddenly a trained archer or a mage who had practiced these techniques for years.
But unlike swordsmanship or martial arts, magic didn't require muscle memory in the same way.
It wasn't about swinging arms or tightening grip—it was about subconscious mental control, the natural flow of intention and imagery.
And in that regard, even a novice could perform miracles if their mind was properly guided.
In theory, then, using a nuclear-class attack through Yang Magic wasn't completely impossible. In fact, with Zero's support and the spirit's assistance, Subaru could just barely attempt it.
Not long afterward, the carriage approached the base of Flugel's Tree, the enormous landmark casting a shadow that loomed over the plains.
Zero raised a hand and instructed Rem to halt the ground dragon.
The beast snorted, kicking up dust as the carriage came to a stop.
The three of them stepped out, the air already beginning to shift with tension.
"The White Whale will appear at any moment now," Zero stated calmly, pointing toward the horizon.
"Look—it's already evening, and you can see the Dragon Mist forming in the distance. Subaru, it's time. Start preparing the magic right this instant."
Subaru inhaled deeply, trying to suppress the trembling in his chest.
The Quasi-Yang Spirit hovered near him, glowing faintly, its presence almost wriggling in anticipation as if it could sense the destructive spell about to be cast.
Subaru clenched his fists and muttered, "…Okay. Let's do this. Let's go atomic."
Zero smirked lightly, though his words carried a sharp edge. "And remember—don't fuse too much hydrogen. If you do, the resulting blast will end up far greater than the one dropped on Hiroshima. I don't think any of us want to be standing inside that kind of explosion."
"That's not funny!" Subaru shot back immediately, his voice cracking with a mix of frustration and nerves.
"Damn it, now I feel guilty just thinking about this! I'm Japanese, you know! What kind of insane irony is this? Using nuclear weapons myself—what about the radiation?! What are we supposed to do about the fallout after all this?!"
His voice grew louder as panic crept in, but the reality was unavoidable. The plan demanded a nuclear strike, and Subaru was the one forced to fire it.
"I'll take care of it this time. But in the future… well, this will remain your trump card, and you'll understand why," Zero remarked casually.
His words carried both reassurance and warning.
Subaru exhaled heavily, forcing a deep breath into his lungs as he turned his gaze forward.
The faint haze of the Dragon Mist was already creeping across the horizon, slowly rolling toward them like an omen of what was about to appear.
His throat tightened at the sight.
Subaru then began to employ the method that Zero had taught him—or rather, the method that had been forcibly implanted into his mind through Zero's psychic transfer of memories and combat experience.
It wasn't learning in the normal sense.
It was as if he had stolen someone else's practice runs, technical data, and muscle instincts and shoved them into his own brain.
He didn't really know the process himself, yet he remembered it as if he did.
Inside his head, Zero's voice echoed through telepathy, directed not at Subaru but at the glowing Quasi-Yang Spirit that accompanied him.
'Watch closely, Gloria. What you're about to see is something fundamentally different from your own techniques.'
Zero understood the limitations of Gloria's original skill.
Her signature attack, the so-called "Cruel Sun," did indeed achieve the effect of nuclear fusion, but its mechanism was entirely mana-based.
Because of that, it was fully under the caster's control—safe to direct, but not absolute.
At the same time, that control came with a weakness: the moment the mana flow was interrupted, the artificial sun would destabilize and eventually collapse, dispersing harmlessly into the air.
It wasn't self-sustaining.
The principle was similar to how Yin-attribute spells could manifest the effects of a black hole.
Such spells never generated a true gravitational singularity; the so-called black hole was based on "imaginary mass."
As a result, the magic-created phenomenon would naturally fade, dispersing as if evaporated by a kind of magical equivalent of Hawking radiation.
They weren't real astronomical forces—only simulated constructs powered by mana.
Up until now, Gloria herself hadn't tried drawing hydrogen atoms directly from the atmosphere to feed her conjured sun.
If she did, and if the mana construct became unstable, the result wouldn't be a controllable magical orb anymore—it would trigger a genuine uncontrolled atomic blast.
The danger of that was obvious, and she avoided it.
What Subaru was about to attempt, however, went a step beyond.
This wasn't simply mana converted into the illusion of nuclear fire. This was "magic science," a hybrid approach that Zero had developed.
Subaru would forcibly compress and fuse hydrogen atoms themselves, using magic not to conjure an illusion but to carry out the real process of nuclear fusion.
That meant the destructive power would outclass Gloria's "Cruel Sun," at least when it came to sheer widespread devastation.
The collateral damage, in particular, would be far beyond her spell's controlled parameters.
Steeling himself, Subaru manifested the construct.
A shimmering bow of radiant light appeared in his grip—or more accurately, the Quasi-Yang Spirit manifested it for him, the two of them cooperating to weave the spell together.
The energy felt heavy in his hands, like holding the tension of a drawn string that could snap at any second.
Then came the arrow. Subaru focused, shaping it into existence.
The shaft formed smoothly, gleaming like a lance of pure sunlight.
But when he looked at the front, the arrowhead remained absent, as though waiting to be filled with something far more dangerous than simple light.
Subaru closed his eyes, shutting out distraction.
He stretched his senses outward, reaching into the world around him.
And then he felt it—the strange new perception Zero had forced into his brain.
The surrounding air wasn't just empty space anymore.
It was filled with countless particles, each distinguishable as though the world had transformed into a detailed, high-resolution grid.
Every atom stood out like pixels on a giant screen.
'Holy crap… this magic is seriously busted!' Subaru thought, stunned.
This wasn't like anything he could normally do.
By nature, Subaru had no talent for sensing mana.
Unlike Zero, who could practically see the flow of mana with his bare eyes and perceive the structure of matter thanks to his absurd super-senses, Subaru was blind in comparison.
It was as if the universe had handed him a new sense overnight—one he neither earned nor understood, yet couldn't deny.
Zero had only just recently devised this particular form of Yang Magic.
It was a new spell, something experimental, something designed to temporarily grant Subaru a heightened perception—an artificial sixth sense that resembled Zero's own superhuman sensory abilities.
With it, Subaru could perceive both the flow of mana and the presence of atoms around him in an almost tangible way.
However, there was a drawback: the technique placed an extreme strain on the human brain.
The sheer overload of information flooding in all at once was enough to fry normal nerves.
Fortunately, since the foundation of this ability was Yang Magic, the strain wouldn't crush Subaru immediately.
It would take time before his brain reached the point where it could no longer handle the overwhelming input.
That small window of time was all he had to make use of it.
As his perception sharpened, Subaru's attention was quickly drawn to the lightest and most common particles scattered throughout the atmosphere.
He instantly recognized them—not through study or training, but because Zero's knowledge had been drilled into his skull.
These particles were hydrogen atoms, the very building blocks he needed for the attack.
Carefully, he willed the arrow to form fully in his hand.
The shaft gleamed with brilliant light, but the most important part was at the front.
He shaped the arrowhead so that it was hollow, a delicate frame made entirely out of condensed light.
It wasn't solid; instead, it acted like a filter, a container with a thin film designed to separate and capture specific gases.
Slowly but steadily, hydrogen began gathering inside, drawn and sealed within the luminous tip.
As the arrowhead filled with the volatile atoms, a sudden, monstrous sound tore through the night. A thunderous roar echoed across the plains, raw and wild.
Subaru's head snapped up, his concentration breaking for a split second.
His eyes widened.
The Dragon Mist was no longer in the distance—it was right there, curling around them like a suffocating wall.
Realizing the danger, Subaru immediately canceled the sensory magic before the feedback could overwhelm him.
Without wasting another second, he switched to a different spell.
His eyes flared, glowing with an intense golden light.
Vision-enhancement magic surged through him, allowing him to pierce through both the darkness and the thick layers of fog that blanketed the battlefield.
Through that haze, his sharpened sight locked onto the source of the roar.
His gaze settled on the colossal silhouette looming in the sky above.
It was there—the White Whale. Enormous, grotesque, and awe-inspiring.
Its titanic body floated hundreds of meters above them, the sheer size enough to dwarf the surrounding landscape.
A ghostly halo shimmered faintly above its head, radiating an unearthly presence.
Its massive eyes fixed directly onto Subaru, burning with a predatory light.
Then, with a rumble that shook the air, the beast released another roar that reverberated deep into Subaru's chest.
And yet, Subaru felt nothing—no fear, no panic.
After all the whining, after all the complaining he had spewed on the way here, he had expected himself to be paralyzed in terror when the moment finally arrived.
But instead, as he stared up at the monster, he found his heartbeat calm, steady.
His mind was eerily still.
'I get it now…' Subaru thought quietly to himself.
'The fear of death doesn't hold me anymore. Not after everything I've been through. I've died so many times already that the thought of it doesn't scare me in the slightest. Even if I have to die a few more times, what difference would it make? I've already lost everything I once clung to—my family, my children, the fifty years of life I built in that other loop. All of it was taken from me.'
As those grim thoughts flowed through his head, the weapon in his hand responded.
The arrowhead began to spin, rotating rapidly as the hydrogen compressed tighter and tighter.
The light film shrank inward, concentrating the gathered particles, the unstable tip glowing with ominous energy as it shrank further toward critical mass.
Subaru kept his eyes locked on the monstrous whale above, refusing to look away even as its guttural roar shook the heavens.
The enormous creature let out a bellow that split the air and, in response, two identical clones materialized beside it in the sky, perfect phantoms of the original.
The Dragon Mist around them thickened as the echoes of the roar spread outward.
Subaru's hands moved steadily despite the terrifying sight.
He raised the bow of light he had created, pulled the string taut, and carefully nocked the arrow.
His aim was unwavering.
He didn't bother aiming at the illusions; his sights were fixed directly on the real White Whale.
The arrowhead in his grasp spun furiously, the compressed hydrogen atoms inside churning at a dangerous velocity.
The structure grew smaller and smaller, shrinking under the incredible pressure, threatening to collapse into itself at any moment.
The power waiting to be unleashed was something far beyond anything Subaru had ever handled before.
'A man who has already lost everything has nothing left to fear,' Subaru thought grimly, steadying his breath.
His heart was calm in a way that almost frightened him more than the whale itself.
A short distance away, Zero's eyes gleamed as he turned toward Rem, his voice rising with raw excitement.
"Watch closely, Rem! Watch it with your own eyes! Look at your so-called hero as he struggles against fate! Look at him as he stands tall again, as he dares to challenge something no ordinary man could even imagine! This—this is the sight of him overcoming the impossible!"
His words were sharp, each one carrying the weight of conviction.
He jabbed a finger toward the scene unfolding in front of them. "Humans are weak! They are fragile! Subaru is weak—pathetically weak! And yet look at him! He never stops! He refuses to give in! His courage outshines and outclasses those who are a million times stronger in body and talent!"
Rem's eyes widened, her lips parting slightly as she turned her gaze from Zero to Subaru.
The Great Sage's grin stretched across his face, manic with exhilaration.
He spread his arms wide toward the battlefield, his voice booming with unrestrained passion as if he were declaring it to the entire world itself. "Behold this moment! Remember this sight! Subaru, the weak, the ordinary, is etching his name into history right here and now! O world, witness it! Witness the courage of one who has nothing but still dares everything! Witness the courage… of the weak!"
The truth was undeniable.
Humans were weak.
That was the reality of their existence.
But in this moment, in this battlefield, weakness itself was being turned into the greatest form of strength.
At the very dawn of human history, back in the era when the world had yet to see the birth of science, humanity lived at the mercy of nature.
Men and women huddled together in small groups, not out of choice but out of necessity, seeking companionship and protection from the countless dangers that surrounded them.
Human life was fragile then—so fragile that even a simple encounter with a wild beast could mean certain death.
They could be slain by animals half their size, torn apart by predators far stronger and faster than them.
But the threat wasn't only from great beasts.
They could be killed by things so small they were invisible to the naked eye, beings smaller than specks of dust, spreading sickness and death without even being seen.
They could fall to plants or substances that acted as poison to their fragile bodies.
Even the world itself seemed to conspire against them.
And yet, despite all these weaknesses, humanity survived.
More than that, they endured.
Human perseverance became their defining trait, the unyielding spark that allowed them to claw their way out of helplessness.
It was because of this stubborn perseverance that humanity managed to rise above being prey.
Through generations of struggle, they adapted, they learned, and eventually they climbed to the very top of the food chain.
They compensated for their weakness with the strength of wisdom, their lack of natural weapons with tools and strategies, and their fragility with the power of unity and knowledge.
Time and again they faced challenges, and time and again they overcame them.
Subaru's eyes gleamed as he watched the massive figures of the White Whale and its two clones diving downward from the sky, bearing down on them like avalanches of flesh and mist.
His lips parted, and his voice rang out sharply, a single command that cut through the tension:
"Nuclear strike!"
At that exact moment, Subaru released the string.
Swoosh.
The luminous arrow shot forward, tearing through the air at a blistering speed.
The pressure around it screamed as it cut the atmosphere apart.
As soon as it launched, Zero moved without hesitation.
He immediately distorted the surrounding time and space with his own magic, erecting a protective barrier.
The effect was instantaneous—reality itself seemed to shift and bend, isolating their position from what was about to happen.
The arrow flew true.
In less than the blink of an eye, in barely a fraction of a fraction of a second—specifically, in the span of one hundredth of a second—it reached the White Whale.
By then, the arrowhead was no longer recognizable as a solid shape.
It had shrunk so small under the strain of compression that it was practically invisible, a pinprick of lethal instability.
And then, under that impossible pressure, the contained hydrogen atoms slammed into each other. Collisions at the subatomic level tore them apart and forced them together, fusing into helium atoms.
What science had always described as the same reaction that powered the stars was recreated here through the union of magic and willpower.
The result was inevitable. Nuclear fusion unleashed its fury.
The compressed arrowhead could no longer contain the reaction, and the energy released in that moment detonated in an overwhelming, world-shattering explosion.
BOOM!
In the span of mere seconds, an enormous orb of fire erupted into existence, swelling outward until it consumed everything in its radius.
The blazing sphere expanded to several hundred meters wide, and within its infernal grasp, the White Whale and its two clones were completely engulfed.
There was no room for resistance, no chance for escape.
The temperature inside the fireball skyrocketed to unimaginable levels—millions of degrees in an instant—far surpassing the heat of any fire spell that had ever been cast.
Compared to this, even the most destructive flame magic of the past seemed like a child's candle.
The air itself screamed as the world reacted to the birth of such an impossible force.
Then came the shockwave.
The earth and sky roared in agony as a tremendous wave of force erupted outward from the core of the explosion.
The shockwave ripped through the battlefield at incomprehensible speed, pulverizing everything in its path.
Trees caught in the immediate vicinity didn't simply fall—they were obliterated, shredded into nothing but ash and cinders in an instant.
Trees farther away were violently torn from the ground and hurled through the air like broken twigs, their trunks shattered into splinters before they even hit the ground.
And then there was the Flugel's Tree.
A colossal symbol that had stood for ages, towering proudly in defiance of time and history—reduced to nothing.
The explosion did not spare it.
In the blink of an eye, the legendary tree was obliterated completely, erased from existence as though it had never stood there at all.
Where once had been a forest, now there was only desolation.
A massive crater spread across the land, several meters deep at its shallowest points and stretching hundreds of meters wide.
The ground had been torn apart, gouged out by the unimaginable force of the blast.
But the destruction did not end there. The shockwave continued its rampage, surging across several kilometers, destroying everything it touched.
Rocks, trees, and the very terrain itself were ripped up and scattered like leaves in a storm. Villages and landscapes in the distant horizon felt its wrath.
Above, the brightness of the detonation rivaled the sun itself.
For a few moments, the world was bathed in blinding light so intense it transformed night into day across a span of tens of kilometers.
The radiance reached so far that distant lands, far beyond the battlefield, could see the flare on the horizon.
To anyone watching, it looked like a second sun had been born and then instantly tried to devour the sky.
When the initial blast finally subsided, what followed was the grim aftermath.
Dust and debris surged upward, billowing high into the atmosphere.
The cloud of destruction rose thousands of meters into the sky, taking on the unmistakable shape of a towering mushroom.
It loomed over the land like a grim monument to the devastation wrought here.
Minutes crawled by.
The world seemed frozen in stunned silence. Slowly, the raging winds and turbulence began to settle.
But even then, the battlefield was far from safe.
The rising dust, debris, radiation, and lingering heat posed a danger as lethal as the explosion itself.
Zero, however, was already moving, he came out of the protective barrier.
He spread out his hands, his voice calling silently to the spirits of earth and wind.
With Gaea and Sylphy at inside him, he unleashed his mastery of Earth Magic and Wind Magic, weaving them together with overwhelming precision.
The rising storm of dust and toxic debris was forcefully compressed, pushed back, and calmed.
The air began to clear as his spells worked in unison with the elemental spirits.
Then came the most critical step.
Zero drew in the aftermath of the explosion itself.
Every trace of radiation, every fragment of residual heat, he absorbed into himself.
Energy that would have poisoned the land for decades, he redirected into his own body.
His aura and ki swelled as the absorbed energy coursed through him, far beyond what they had been before.
The influx of power was staggering—his reserves of aura and ki multiplied several times over, reaching a level he had never touched until now.
Zero stood amidst the ruin, the world scarred by the catastrophic strike, his body now burning with newfound strength stolen from the very disaster he had orchestrated.
Zero could feel the overflowing surge of energy still rushing through his body, his aura and ki intertwining and reinforcing one another.
Normally, he would have preferred to enhance only one of them to maintain better control, but he knew from experience that doing so recklessly came with dangerous consequences.
If either his aura or ki grew too far beyond what his body or soul could naturally withstand, it could cause severe internal damage, tearing apart his balance from within.
However, since aura and ki were natural counterparts—two sides of the same coin—their growth together created harmony instead of conflict.
Increasing them simultaneously did not destabilize him; it only made his body stronger, sturdier, and reinforced his soul's foundation.
With that matter stabilized, Zero finally released the barrier he had set up to shield Rem and Subaru.
As the protective veil fell away, the two immediately saw the unfiltered reality of what had just taken place.
Both of them froze.
The landscape that stretched before their eyes was nothing short of apocalyptic.
The crater alone looked like a wound carved directly into the world, and the radius of devastation reached out for several kilometers in every direction.
Whole sections of the forest were simply gone—obliterated as if they had never existed.
Subaru's jaw dropped.
He felt his throat tighten as his mind struggled to process what his eyes were showing him.
His voice cracked as he shouted, unable to contain himself:
"DAMN! I… I DID THIS?!"
The shock hit him harder than the recoil from the explosion itself.
He stared at his own hands as if they didn't belong to him, as though the very idea that he was responsible for this nightmare was some kind of mistake.
Rem, on the other hand, could barely keep herself steady.
Her face turned pale, and her hands trembled slightly as she gripped her skirt.
She had known—she had been told—that Subaru was going to unleash a powerful magic, something far beyond his usual capabilities.
But this… this was not just "powerful."
This was devastation on a level she had never even imagined.
Her stomach churned, and a dizzy spell nearly made her stumble.
"This… this affected everything for kilometers," she whispered, almost breathless.
Zero, however, stood calm and composed, though the faintest trace of amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth.
His voice was casual, almost instructional, as if nothing extraordinary had just occurred.
"I've already cleared the dust, debris, smog, radiation, and excess heat from the air," he reported matter-of-factly, as though he were giving a progress update on a simple task.
Subaru gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing nervously as his mouth dried up.
He tried to force a laugh, but it came out shaky and uneven.
"Man… I'm not using this magic again. At least… not until I can actually learn that Yin barrier spell or something to resist radiation. Otherwise, I'll just end up killing myself along with everything else!"
Zero chuckled lightly at Subaru's panic, a low laugh that made it hard to tell if he found the situation amusing or if he was simply entertained by Subaru's dramatic reaction.
Rem, however, didn't laugh.
She was still staring at the crater, the desolation, the sheer void of what had once been alive. Her expression was locked between awe, horror, and disbelief.
To her, it was almost impossible to connect the Subaru she knew—the boy who stumbled through mistakes, who constantly complained, who showed vulnerability at every step—with the person who had just unleashed destruction on a scale that could rival even the most terrifying calamities of history.
Meanwhile, far away in the Royal Castle, a heated discussion was taking place among the highest authorities of the Kingdom.
Tensions were already high when, without warning, the Dragon Tablet stirred.
New words burned themselves into its surface with undeniable authority.
[The Sage Candidate, Natsuki Subaru, has slain the White Whale.]
The announcement landed like a thunderclap in the chamber.
For a moment, the entire hall fell into stunned silence as the meaning sank in.
Then, as if a dam had broken, the uproar erupted louder than ever before.
Nobles shouted over one another, knights and officials gasped, and the political atmosphere twisted into chaos.
The once-impossible feat had been accomplished.
The White Whale was dead.
And the name etched into history alongside that victory was none other than the unthinkable—Natsuki Subaru.
To be continued...
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