Chapter 61
Ability-User Hater.
What comes to mind when you hear those words?
Someone who hates magic, aura, and all the rest?
'No.'
The premise was wrong to begin with.
Ability users.
Unusual abilities or supernatural powers not possessed by ordinary people.
From my perspective, "ability" might refer to the aura used by knights, the magic used by mages, or the abilities of ability users like me.
But it was different from the perspective of someone born and raised in this world.
To begin with, aura and magic were powers that had been closely connected to humanity ever since it built civilization, so people did not consider them abilities.
How could they call a power that had existed alongside human history an ability?
In other words, from their perspective, ability users were people who had awakened powers like me.
Wasn't that obvious from the names themselves?
Those who use aura are knights. Those who use magic are mages.
Yet only those who gained their own powers through awakening were saddled with the strange derogatory term ability user.
In other words.
In this world, ability users were people who awakened mana and acquired unusual powers, like me.
"Hmm..."
Well, it wasn't impossible to understand.
Even I could see how absurd it would seem from their perspective to see ability users awaken mana, suddenly gain some great ability, and then act as equals with high-ranking mages or knights.
I became strong through training that made me cough blood, but those guys could use strange abilities—powers beyond common sense—just because they had awakened?
My Smoke Manipulation, of course, as well as Kaizen's and Charon's abilities, which I knew because they had revealed them.
[Magic Bullet], [Absolute Defense]. These two were also abilities beyond human common sense.
Magic Bullet imbued bullets with phenomena he understood and fired them,
while Absolute Defense maintained a barrier so sturdy that it could barely be matched even by a high-ranking mage using their full strength?
Fear arises when one encounters something incomprehensible.
Naturally, from their perspective, ability users were beings wielding powers beyond common sense.
If there had been clear proof of how abilities manifested, that fear might have subsided, but there wasn't.
"What the hell are you nodding about while thinking, you bastard!!"
The voice brimming with rage woke me from my thoughts.
I turned my head and looked at Kairon, who was desperately parrying my attacks with a single sword.
Sshhk!
He sliced through the rapier-shaped smoke flying from a ball of smoke.
Sshhk!
From an unsteady stance, he deliberately twisted his body's axis and cut down a spear flying from behind him.
He moved up, down, left, and right, forcing open a path with mana even from impossible positions.
This was only the second time, including now, that I had seen someone move like that.
"What?"
Honestly, I was surprised.
"Were you a traditional knight?"
A knight.
In my previous life—in other words, on Earth—knights disappeared with the advent of guns.
Naturally. No matter how heavily they armored themselves, guns could simply punch through it.
There was no reason to deliberately maintain a military branch where, chivalry or nobility aside, everyone went equally to the afterlife with a single gunshot.
But this world was different.
The position of knight was still alive and well, and education for training knights was actually flourishing.
The biggest reason was the presence of mana.
Naturally, from a ruler's perspective, knights empowered by mana were still immensely valuable assets.
But guns had appeared in this world too, and the knights had wondered how to deal with them.
How, exactly, were they supposed to respond to these guns?
Surprisingly, the answer was simple.
[Why not just use both swords and guns?]
They weren't so old-fashioned as to use only one weapon just because they were knights, so accepting guns was easy.
But when every knight began trying to use guns, some people refused.
Those were traditional knights.
It might sound as if they were old-fashioned fuddy-duddies, but they had their own reasons for rejecting guns.
But.
They had chosen, out of personal conviction, to follow the path of traditional knights—to use only a sword, or a single weapon—but they weren't fools.
No, if anything, they were people who had honed that one thing more fiercely than anyone else.
Those who had abandoned the advantage of guns and pursued strength solely through weapons had one distinctive trait.
The bodily control to swing a sword in any situation—up, down, left, right, aerial combat, mobile combat—using mana as a springboard.
Swordsmanship so overwhelming it could only be called uncanny.
They had abandoned guns, but they knew better than anyone that guns were dangerous weapons.
That was why traditional knights were masters among masters of close combat, with godlike evasion and close-range skills no one could surpass.
Enough that even knights at the same level would have a clearly divided victor when facing a traditional knight.
In truth, if they hadn't been strong, they would never have survived to this day; they would have vanished into history.
"Hup!"
The original body of that possessing being was surely stronger than Kairon.
If it had been weaker, it would merely have been devoured by Kairon's consciousness.
Yet even without completely taking control of Kairon's body, its movements were nothing short of wondrous.
Watching him cut away attacks pouring in from every direction with only one sword, even while his stance collapsed, I found myself letting out an admiring exclamation.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Wow, you're seriously impressive."
I was genuinely impressed.
If not by someone dodging every attack with nothing but the movement of his body, like a circus performer, then what was there to admire?
"You bastard!!!!"
But the possessing sorcerer took my sincere admiration only as a reason to grow more hostile.
"I'll kill you!!!!"
Crunch!
At the same time, he kicked off with enough force to shatter the ground and charged at me.
Ka-gang!
"How dare you!"
Klang!
"Insult me! I picked up a sword to hear your admiration, and this is how you repay me?!"
Sword thrusts and slashes so fast my eyes could barely follow.
Moreover, he mixed feints and real attacks into every movement and began hammering at my smoke barrier.
"I didn't take up a sword for that!!!"
But.
The difference between our full strength was obvious.
"Aaaah!!!!"
Kairon swung his sword once more, letting out a roar of raw fury.
He looked utterly consumed by emotion.
Yes, he was passionate to an almost unnatural degree.
"Hmm..."
Ka-kang!
"I see..."
"You bastard! Focus on me!!!"
His voice was practically tearful by now.
But I ignored Kairon's voice and sorted through his reactions so far in my head.
"Ah, I'll just play with this guy for a while."
As I spoke, I sent two smoke spheres toward Kairon once more.
At the same time, hundreds of weapons began attacking Kairon from the two spheres, and Kairon let out a shriek as he desperately resisted my technique.
"Gaaaaah!!!!"
Using his scream-like voice as background music, I activated the communicator.
[This is Abel. It seems the people who entered this train through this possession technique aren't limited to this one guy.]
I was certain.
I knew from watching the man occupying Kairon's body desperately try to draw my attention to himself.
He wasn't alone.
There were more possessed people aboard this train.
It seemed he had reacted so violently to keep me from noticing that fact.
To focus my gaze, my thoughts—everything—solely on himself.
To prevent me from even considering in advance that he had other comrades.
Otherwise, with such an overwhelming difference in strength, there would have been no reason for him to cling to me and draw aggro.
[So investigate the other suspects further.]
With that reasonable conclusion, I relayed the information to Bellias and looked at Kairon, who was precariously fending off my attacks.
"Damn it!!!"
Or was I wrong?
Seeing Kairon shouting with foam almost bubbling at his mouth, I felt a slight twinge of doubt.
He looked like the male lead of a romance-fantasy novel, but watching him ruin that face so thoroughly somehow made it even more jarring.
'Well, it doesn't matter.'
It was funny to watch such a handsome face—handsome enough that another man might even feel a sense of rejection—get wrecked, but I decided not to care.
Kakakakang!!!
I sat in a chair made of smoke, using the sounds of my smoke clashing with Kairon's sword as music, and waited for Kairon to run out of strength.
I also needed to undo the possession,
and give Bellias time to find that bastard's comrades.
His strength was so pitiful that, if I hadn't come to obtain information on the mysterious organization, I wouldn't have bothered coming at all.
If the original body of that possessing sorcerer had come, it might have been dangerous.
But this was not even the possessor's original flesh,
and facing me in this degraded state, without even properly taking control of the body he possessed, was obviously too much for him.
"Yaaawn..."
I'm yawning because this is so boring.
Sshhk!
"Aaaah!!!"
Using Kairon's battle cries, now mixed with even more screams, as background music, I kept the still-burning cigar between my lips and slowly began to smoke.
***
[Confirmed.]
Bellias replied to Abel's communication.
Then she began checking the condition of the suspects scattered throughout the train once more.
The largest train in the world, divided into a total of twenty-four sections.
Her detection range was overwhelming enough to cover the entire train.
And it did not merely detect them; it was a near-miraculous ability that could precisely capture people's movements—no, even the movements of their muscles.
'Good. Found them.'
Bellias immediately began stirring up mana to move the suspects she had found moving strangely.
Two suspects to where Mist and Ariel were waiting.
The other to herself.
[Teleport.]
Whoosh!
"What?!"
An heir to a count's title was suddenly transported here by Bellias's teleportation.
'What was his name again?'
Well, did it really matter?
All she had to do was knock him unconscious and take him to Ariel.
Whirr.
Thinking that, Bellias began activating the subspace magic inscribed on her clothes.
Then a being with a bizarre body made of iron and gears emerged.
The pinnacle of magitech.
An automaton.
It was the greatest among the masterpieces Bellias could create at present.
Click.
As her fingers moved, the automaton began turning the gears inside its body with a harsh grind to carry out its master's command.
"What is this?!"
The possessing sorcerer, who had suddenly arrived here, was flustered.
A space where he had been teleported without warning.
Before him stood an unidentified figure in robes and an automaton that appeared to be protecting her.
That alone was confusing enough, but the torrent of power pouring from the automaton was more than enough to make the possessing sorcerer lose his will to fight.
Mana discharged with enough force to distort the air.
Even by the most conservative estimate, it was at the very top of the Expert level, or comparable to a high-ranking mage using their full strength.
But what if that mana wasn't the automaton's full strength?
If the automaton's power was not its full strength, there was only one possible conclusion.
Master-class.
“Hahaha…”
The being possessing the heir to the count's house, who had been suddenly teleported here, let out an incredulous hollow laugh at the thought that arose in his mind.
Rumble!!!
As if to prove that the possessing sorcerer's thought was correct, power incomparable to before began pouring from the automaton's entire body.
Crunch.