Chapter 107
Eleanor Crossfell's younger brother, Aiden Crossfell, was a particularly sore spot for her.
Even when it stung as though her flesh had been cut, or burned as though frozen by frostbite.
In the end, he was a finger she had no choice but to clutch tightly….
The people of the family always told her,
that rotten parts had to be cut off decisively.
‘…Is that why this happened?’
She could not know.
She had never imagined that being swallowed whole by a black magician from Hell Service would be the end of her younger brother.
Faced with an ending she had never imagined even in her dreams, Eleanor Crossfell froze like a stone monument.
In the place where her brother had been, there was no scream, no trace.
Nothing remained.
Even if he had made a contract with Hell Service, done countless bad things without her knowledge, and truly been cast out of the family…….
Aiden was Eleanor's one and only beloved full brother.
Grief, frustration, anguish.
All sorts of emotions seethed inside her.
In the end, even anger.
But Eleanor Crossfell eventually had no choice but to tear her gaze away from where her brother had been.
Because someone was standing right in front of her, getting angry on her behalf.
Kwaaang!!
The collision of black flames and red flames.
The third basement floor of the Injustice Building had already grown so hot that it seemed as though purgatory had descended.
If an ordinary person had been here, they would have been reduced to a handful of ash.
But.
Eleanor Crossfell herself had no trouble breathing or looking around.
Was it thanks to the Crossfell family's magic?
No.
That man right there was blocking it.
“……Why?”
Eleanor Crossfell did not even realize she had muttered the word.
He was neither a famous mercenary nor a troubleshooter who risked his life for contracts.
He was merely a homeless man she had happened to encounter.
Perhaps an abandoned collateral branch member of the Crossfell family who had awakened his own magic circuits.
Yet he pretended not to know anything and kindly helped Eleanor.
The magic of absolute cold and inferno.
What kind of past could he possibly have?
She could not even begin to guess.
Explosions of mingled ice and flames collided in midair several times.
Superheated steam becomes a powerful weapon in its own right.
Even as the ice melted, fierce steam burst forth and flames melted skin.
He never retreated.
Eleanor could not understand why that man─perhaps her younger brother─refused to give up the fight.
That was precisely why she had told him to just run away.
But instead of giving up and fleeing.
He boldly began fighting the black magician.
Kwaang!!!
When one exchange ended.
He was pushed far backward by the aftermath, until he reached Eleanor Crossfell's side.
His eyes remained fixed on the black magician, showing no sign of giving up, but the man answered Eleanor's muttering in a decidedly playful tone.
“Why? Why else?”
It seemed her voice, uttered even in that tense situation, had reached his ears.
The red blood trickling from the corner of his mouth clearly showed that he had suffered serious injuries.
However, his eyes still held the same fierce light as ever.
“…What reason do I need to fight some piece of shit?”
Even so, he moved his trembling muscles and forced a smile, as if reassuring her.
“So what, should I just leave you here and run away? You’ve got to say something that makes sense.”
“…You don’t hate me?”
“Huh?”
At the sudden question, Abel Anderson looked at her as though he had no idea what she meant.
He did not know that she had mistaken him for the bastard child of Crossfell and Encard, or their abandoned son.
“What are you talking about all of a sudden? Why would I hate you?”
Following her this far had been entirely his own choice.
Unless she ran off without paying him later.
He still had no reason to dislike her.
“Enough. What was it about fighting?”
“……Momentum.”
“Right.”
Abel Anderson rubbed his stiff neck and took another step forward.
There was not a trace of hesitation in that step.
Enough to make Eleanor herself feel ashamed of how she had done nothing all this time.
Eleanor roughly wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes with her sleeve.
This was no time to stand around like this.
For the sake of the man fighting in her place, and (probably) her younger brother as well.
Eleanor Crossfell steeled her resolve.
* * *
As expected.
I suppose you have to make some effort to understand the position of someone who just lost their younger brother right in front of them……
At that moment, Eleanor Crossfell naturally came up beside me.
…Huh?
“You can rest a little longer if you want.”
She must have been exhausted already.
At my words, Eleanor shook her head, looking somehow different.
“…No. I’m okay now.”
Her gaze was more confident than before.
Flickering flames incongruous with its blue color danced in her eyes.
“And knowing Aiden’s personality…. He’d want his sister to avenge him.”
“That does sound like him.”
I hadn’t known the guy long, but he really had a rotten personality.
Maybe that wasn’t something to say about the dead.
Still, Eleanor seemed to have steeled her heart anew, so I didn’t think she would get in the way.
When she drew up her mana, a chilly air gathered around us─.
Then quickly vanished again.
The surrounding heat must have been too intense.
“……”
“…Um, for now, I’ll just ask you to let me support you.”
Still, this was a situation where I wanted even a tiny helping hand, so I had nothing to complain about.
I spoke to Milo, who had been quietly watching our banter.
“Should I thank you for waiting?”
“……”
But from the moment I chose a new trait and produced bright-red flames, Milo seemed to be deep in thought about something.
For the record, since I was in pretty bad shape, he wasn’t exactly doing well either.
Quite apart from the parts of him that were burned or the suit that had been ripped here and there.
My decisive right hook had landed cleanly moments ago, so Milo’s jaw was now practically hanging loose.
Still, by the time we were saying this, he seemed to have already healed his injuries completely.
Milo asked me in an awkward tone,
“…To use Crossfell’s absolute cold and Encard’s inferno in the same body…. What exactly are you?”
There was only one answer I could give.
“A grocery store part-timer.”
It was the truth, not a lie, but Milo had not looked as though he intended to listen to me in the first place.
“…A bastard child of the family, or perhaps a test subject? It could even be a secret project of the city government or a corporation.”
“Why the hell did he ask if he wasn’t going to believe me?”
“Well, never mind.”
He was ignoring me outright now.
His yellow gaze fixed on us—or more precisely, me.
“Persuading people is my specialty. If you spend a few years living in a spacious room about one meter in diameter, you’ll soon feel like talking. This gives me one more reason to capture you alive.”
“Persuasion? A spacious room?”
What kind of demon did this bastard learn Korean from?
“That’s not persuasion, you bastard. That’s torture.”
Even so, if it was a favorable development for me, then it was favorable.
It had always been harder to capture someone alive than to kill them.
After a brief silence.
Without either of us needing to say who would go first, Milo and I clashed again in the middle of the room.
Poom!
The sound of compressed air bursting.
Heat like every blood vessel in my body was burning lingered around us.
It wasn’t so intense that breathing became difficult, though.
‘Using expensive trait points to unlock a new trait wasn’t entirely pointless.’
Now I could throw punches barehanded from this close without immediately dying.
I guess having the same attribute gave me some resistance after all.
Fire against fire.
Ice against ice.
It was truly a battle of power against power.
Unfortunately, once again, I was the one who lost the exchange.
When the same result came out as before, Milo seemed to notice that something was strange as well.
“Hmm…. I seem to recall hearing that the flames were powerful enough to burn the world…. They appear to be a little lacking compared to the rumors I heard.”
I could tell just from the way he was calmly running his mouth.
“I was being cautious for nothing. You really should have trained harder.”
A smile settled around his mouth once more.
He seemed to think he had seized the upper hand completely.
There was nothing I could do about it.
After all, I had only just unlocked the 【Inferno】 trait.
And, of course, 【Absolute Cold】 was still fairly new too.
The black flames gradually began to devour the red flames I had created.
What stopped them was the white ice that burst out from behind me in an instant.
“Hmm? You stood there doing nothing when your brother died, so I thought you would just watch.”
“…Shut up!!”
Shrrr!!
Icicles erupted from the floor and raced toward him, but they did not seem likely to deal Milo any meaningful damage.
“If you wait just a little, I’ll let you meet your brother inside my stomach─.”
Even just drawing his attention counted as doing my part.
When I activated my magic circuits again, Milo shook his head.
“Now, now, that won’t do. You’ve already clashed with me once. Do you still not know the result?”
“I’m not joking. Let’s clash exactly three more times.”
“Once or three times….”
The black flames that rose up began burning me from the tips of my toes.
Damn it.
They say the most painful pain in the world is a burning pain.
I definitely didn’t want to find that out with my own body.
But the traits I had unlocked so far.
【Ironman】, 【Steel Skin】, 【Iron Will】, and so on and so forth.
I was basically a walking man of steel, so I did not collapse from the pain and was able to unleash the inferno again.
“What on earth is supposed to be different…….”
At that moment, a hint of doubt entered Milo’s expression.
Judging from the intricate flow of mana, he seemed to be a fairly advanced mana user himself.
If so, he would naturally be able to tell.
“…Wait a moment. Isn’t the firepower greater than before?”
My trait proficiency continued to rise steeply even at this very moment.
“One more with this.”
My voice came out raspy.
My vocal cords seemed to have burned a little.
But I had no time to act at ease here.
His regenerative power was higher than mine, after all.
Kwaaang─!!
Black flames and inferno collided once again.
My body naturally bounced backward, but this time Eleanor’s help kept me from rolling across the floor.
A wall of ice that had burst from the ceiling caught me, and the chilly cold transmitted through my back brought my mind sharply back to clarity.
I had no time even to thank her; we merely exchanged glances and charged at each other.
Seeing moisture welling up repeatedly around Eleanor’s eyes, I could only tell that I was in worse shape than before.
But what could I do?
‘He says he’ll keep me in a room one meter in diameter. I really have to fight as though I’m prepared to die.’
Charging straight in again without resting, I felt the heat boiling around us make my blood flow faster and more forcefully.
─Thump.
We clashed again.
“……!!”
“That’s two.”
This time, Milo took several steps backward.
The bewilderment on his face made me feel thoroughly refreshed.
I hadn’t even been knocked away.
“W-what is this….”
“This is the last one. Three.”
“……Don’t bullshit me!!!”
At last, he revealed his true face.
How rude, keeping up the honorifics all this time….
Well.
Anyone would react that way if an opponent who had seemed an easy victory at first began growing stronger with every clash.
He must have felt as though he had been cheated, but fights did not really have such a thing as foul play.
Fwoosh!!
At that moment.
Milo’s mana concentrated in one place.
He must have instinctively realized that he could not win by pushing the battle of firepower.
At the same time, flames began to blaze around my right fist.
“…Fuck!!”
It was hot enough to bring tears to my eyes.
My mind went white for an instant.
But my body mechanically continued doing what it had to do.
Milo must have predicted that I would draw up the power of absolute cold to extinguish the flames around my fist.
But instead, with my hand still burning, I drove his nose bridge inward─.
Smack!!
If his regeneration was fast, then all I had to do was keep attacking without giving him a chance to recover.
Because of his pointlessly long arms, he could not easily tear me away after I got in close.
Bang!! Kwaang! Bang!!!
Before I knew it, I was pounding the head of the man who had hit the floor without pause.
Every time Milo’s struggling hands touched my body, chunks of flesh were torn away, but I did not stop.
He apparently did not have much experience in close combat.
“H-huff…!!”
If he had really been a demon, he would not have been gasping for breath like this.
I was saved by the fact that he wasn’t a demon. Phew.
Still, even in a world of insane fusion punk, demons were crossing the line a little.
And then.
Clinging to my fading consciousness through the pain, I said one last thing.
“Three, no…. Now it’s four.”
Milo’s trembling eyes conveyed something like, ‘You said only three…!!’ but.
I casually ignored it.
“Aaaaargh─!!”
Fortunately, the power of the inferno did not set me on fire as well.
Heat hot enough to melt even bone consumed him.
A short while later.
By the time the screams stopped, all that remained was a charred mark in the shape of a person.
【The player’s level has increased!】
Wow, what a generous source of experience….
I staggered as I slowly rose to my feet.
Eleanor caught me as I nearly fell backward.
Since I was larger than her, we had no choice but to end up in the awkward position of a little child supporting an adult.
I had won the fight, but the fact that she had lost her younger brother remained unchanged, so….
I tried to apologize to Eleanor, but my voice barely came out.
“A-are you okay?!”
But perhaps I really was in the worst possible condition, because Eleanor looked at Hot Dog Man (Well-Done) and asked in a worried tone.
I looked down at her, then quietly gave her a thumbs-up.
Have all my nerves died now?
I couldn’t feel any pain or sensation at all.
Still, I could move.
However, perhaps that gesture was not enough, because the worry on her face did not disappear.
To assure her that I was all right, I calmly voiced the joke that had just occurred to me during the fight.
“I was totally a Fire Punch just now…….”
Right when I had continued speaking that far.
My consciousness simply cut out.
I had fainted.