Chapter 34
"..."
"..."
The two of them froze at my words.
"Heh."
Looking at the two of them, I smiled faintly, pleased that I had finally delivered a line I'd wanted to try at least once since my previous life.
Back when I first met Mist.
When I revealed my ability to make use of the restriction, I said this.
[My ability is to manipulate the smoke I exhale. Its shape, size, and hardness vary according to my ability, and people who have not awakened their mana cannot see the smoke I exhale.]
There was no lie in those words.
Naturally, I had to speak only the truth to receive the enhancement from the restriction.
But nowhere in those words did I say that I manipulated cigar smoke.
Cigars were simply a matter of personal taste.
It was a kind of trap.
I showed them the power to manipulate smoke, then repeatedly impressed upon them that cigars were its medium.
That was why I took out and lit a cigar just before the fight with the two of them began.
At first, they would be skeptical, but once they saw me actually attack and defend using cigar smoke, the enemy would naturally think:
[Ah, the cigar. That's the core of his ability?]
Then, once the enemy knew that, what would they do next?
Every enemy from the underworld so far, the head of the Nebula ducal family, and the two people before me had all taken the same action.
[Let's stop him from smoking that cigar.]
The duke had also stopped me by inducing a hallucination that my wrist had been severed before I could smoke the cigar.
"The name of my ability is Smoke Manipulation."
But if it had simply been an ability to manipulate cigar smoke, I wouldn't have named it Smoke Manipulation.
"There is only one condition: I can manipulate smoke that I hold in my mouth and exhale."
As I said that, I pointed to my mouth, from which breath was rising now that the temperature had fallen.
The breath moved as though responding to my words. Even this counted as smoke.
Even if it was poisonous gas capable of killing people.
Even if it was smoke from volcanic ash.
And even if it was breath produced by a very simple spell that lowered the temperature.
My ability was to control all of it.
"The destructive power and degree of materialization vary according to how much mana I put into that smoke."
The two of them could not move as I spoke calmly.
The two had been so encouraged by the fact that they had ruined my cigar that they tried to exhaust my smoke.
That was why their field of vision had become so narrow.
Yes.
"Urgh!"
"Kheugh..."
So much so that they failed to notice that the smoke around them had already bound them.
"In other words, my ability is to control all smoke that I recognize as smoke. That's my true ability."
Even if that smoke had been produced by an illusion.
As long as it was produced by mana and I could feel and inhale it, I could use it however I wished.
A cigar as the medium?
"It was merely a matter of personal preference."
As I stated that unequivocally, a message window appeared in the corner of my vision.
[You have revealed your ability.]
[You corrected the other party's misunderstanding of your ability and explained its more fundamental nature in detail.]
[All actions performed while using the ability receive a considerable enhancement.]
[The ability's destructive power, materialization, and total mana are temporarily enhanced.]
'As expected...'
The power began to increase explosively.
A flood of mana poured down like a waterfall.
It was an immense increase in power, enough to instantly erase the fatigue that had accumulated in my body.
'Correcting misinformation adds an even greater enhancement.'
To be honest, I had never properly taken advantage of this method of gaining an edge in battle through the restriction.
Of course.
When dealing with people from the underworld, I was so strong that they usually all fell before I had a chance to use the restriction.
In such circumstances, I had no opportunity to investigate the restriction in depth.
It was also an ability that could not activate on its own.
Even if I explored it with Mist, it was difficult because she was not hostile toward me.
"This..."
Just as I was quietly contemplating the power of the restriction,
I heard Bella, bound by smoke, muttering as she looked around.
"[Frost] spell?"
***
Bella began looking around the moment she was bound by Abel's smoke.
The air was cool. Mana was scattered throughout the surroundings.
'Magic.'
A truly simple, basic weather spell called [Frost], which did nothing more than lower the surrounding temperature.
'That bastard Abel used magic?'
No, he had not merely used it.
'He modified it.'
[Frost] was merely a spell that lowered the temperature around it.
It was by no means powerful enough to make breath appear like this.
Realizing that, Bella stared at Abel with a horrified expression.
Awakening mana and wielding magic were two entirely different things.
To use Abel's previous life as an example, many elementary school students knew what kind of energy electricity was.
But knowing about electricity did not mean they could all obtain an electrician's license or become master electricians.
'This is impossible...'
Magic was the same.
Only after contemplating mana extensively and solving difficult academic problems could one finally activate magic.
Simply put, Abel was in the same situation as someone who had read electrical textbooks roughly at a high-school level and then solved questions from an electrician's licensing exam.
'Even if knowledge about magic is publicly available, how could he possibly do this?'
In the past, mages had made magic their exclusive possession and controlled its knowledge.
But under such control, magic ceased to advance.
No, it was a period when it repeatedly regressed in the name of tradition.
Taking the humiliation of that time as a lesson, mages no longer controlled their knowledge.
Of course, they sealed truly dangerous knowledge, but they instead made basic knowledge of mana and magic available to countless people.
[Many people can freely access knowledge, cooperate, and revise and develop it.]
Guided by this principle, books on magic and knowledge about mana spread widely throughout the world.
Thanks to that, even ordinary commoners could use magitech machines powered by mana.
But no matter how widely knowledge spread, using magic was an entirely different matter.
'...I've lost.'
She had no power to break the smoke binding her.
Even if she escaped those bonds, seeing how bizarrely amplified Abel's power was, the possibility of victory itself had vanished.
Thus, Bella accepted her defeat.
"Grrrrrrrr!!!"
But Kaizen did not care whether Bella gave up or not.
He did nothing but pour all his strength into breaking the smoke binding him.
He knew that Abel was strong.
But if he had been the type to kneel before the strong, he would have given up when he first met Karon.
"Don't mock me!"
Kaizen's ability, [Magic Bullet].
The ability to contain phenomena he understood.
Crackle!
A single bullet appeared before Kaizen for an instant. Kaizen detonated the magic bullet he had created with his ability on the spot.
Boom!
When the mana-made bullet exploded like a grenade, the force contained within it slammed into the smoke binding Kaizen.
Abel's tightly constricting smoke began to weaken for an instant.
"Aaaaargh!!!"
The bonds loosened for an instant.
Kaizen poured in all his mana and barely broke free of Abel's restraints.
"Huff... huff..."
Of course, Kaizen looked terrible after taking a direct hit from a mana-made grenade at close range.
His entire body was covered in wounds from the explosion; he looked no better than a rag.
"Not yet..."
But Kaizen did not fall.
"Not yet."
Click.
Exhaling ragged breaths, he pulled out the massive rifle strapped to his back.
The decisive reason Karon had accepted Kaizen.
Karon liked his refusal to lose at any cost, but that was not the essence of it.
[Magic Bullet Generation.]
Kaizen generated magic bullets containing phenomena he understood.
It was thanks to that ability that he could create interference bullets that disrupted mana.
[Magic Bullet — Abel]
By personally experiencing and understanding everything about his opponent as he fought, Kaizen could create a magic bullet designed solely to subdue that opponent.
Everything, from the enemy's mana movements and breathing rhythm to the characteristics of their ability.
Thanks to Abel openly revealing his ability just now, Kaizen's understanding had increased another level.
That was why he had barely managed to create it.
A magic bullet solely for Abel, designed to fight Abel alone.
Its power was enough to pierce Karon's defenses in an instant, despite Karon being unquestionably stronger than Kaizen.
"Kugh!"
Of course, the idea that he could understand everything in an instant was arrogant.
Understand everything about one person, at that?
Even a god would have been unable to understand someone so completely in such a short time.
So Kaizen forcibly constructed the magic bullet once more.
The first time had been to break Abel's restraints. This time, it was to attack Abel directly.
"Puhk!"
He did not care even if he suffered the rebound from overusing his ability.
If he had been the type to submit to mere strength, he would never have thrown himself at the duke again after experiencing death through the duke's hallucination that day, only to suffer death fifteen times in total.
Click.
"Huff... huff..."
Having barely heard the sound of the magic bullet loading into the rifle, Kaizen clutched his trembling legs and looked at Abel while coughing up blood.
His entire body was a wreck.
His reckless use of his ability had transformed his body into one that could not use mana for the time being.
"Khe..."
Even standing was a miracle, but Kaizen forcibly moved his trembling hands and aimed the rifle at Abel.
"Good grief... You still won't give up?"
"..."
"Bella over there looks like she gave up a long time ago."
"...What do I care..."
Kaizen answered Abel in a voice as cracked as it could possibly be.
His eyes as he said it shone too brightly for him to look like someone about to die.
"Is that so..."
Seeing Kaizen like that, Abel realized that words would not dissuade him.
The rifle was aimed at him.
If Abel dodged the attack, Kaizen would surely collapse and the fight would end right there.
"Ha."
But Abel ruled out dodging.
Partly because he could not show the duke's people watching the fight the disgraceful sight of dodging a strike into which a man had burned his life.
And partly because he believed he ought to accept a man's final strike, forged by grinding his life away.
"I'll humor you."
The power enhanced by revealing his ability.
And the mana enhanced by revealing the state of his body, the cause of this incident.
He began pouring all of it into a single point.
Fwoooooosh.
The smoke that gathered in an instant condensed into the shape of a small sphere.
"Ha... hahaha—!!!"
Seeing that, Kaizen looked at Abel with a savage grin.
He could feel it—the immense power condensed within that tiny sphere.
It was so overwhelming that he wondered if this was what the power of legally prohibited war magic felt like.
Grin.
Smiling, Kaizen pulled the trigger of the rifle loaded with a magic bullet meant to fight Abel alone.
Bang!
A magic bullet with the same hazy color as Abel's hair and cigarette smoke began flying through the air toward Abel.
"..."
Fwoooooo.
Abel did not react to Kaizen's attack.
He merely breathed the final smoke into this technique.
Several days earlier.
In the capital, he had once used a technique that pushed away only mana to capture Heros.
This was the opposite.
Not a technique that pushed away mana, but one that pushed away everything.
The only technique Abel had named himself.
In the knowledge of Abel's previous life, its name was based on the largest gas planet.
[Jupiter]
———
—!!!!
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.
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[Report on the result of the illegitimate children's battle to determine the heir to the Nebula ducal family]
[Nebula ducal family's training grounds partially destroyed]
[Kaizen — Blood vessels ruptured throughout his body, and the flesh that held his mana is collapsing. Approximately six months of recuperation required]
[Bella — Unconscious after exhausting all her mana. Fortunately, no significant external injuries, but approximately one month of recuperation required]
[Abel — No significant external or internal injuries. He appears to be suffering only from fatigue, judging by the fact that he walked into his room after the fight ended]
[All servants acknowledge Abel's victory and support him as the official heir.]