Residue

 

People talk about the scars of war,

but what those creatures left behind were the claws themselves.

 

"Over there, Dad!"

"Ugh… that's awful."

Gripping Chryse's small hand as I flew through the sky, I couldn't help letting those words slip at the sight spread out below. Gathered atop a low rise and locked in battle with Scarlet's warriors was a swarm of grotesque creatures numbering in the dozens, the hundreds.

They were the imps I'd named Goblins.

"Where on earth did they all come from?"

Standing roughly as tall as children, goblins matured quickly and bred prolifically. Left unchecked, their numbers would balloon in the blink of an eye, so our policy was to exterminate them on sight, even if it meant going out of our way. Wiping them out entirely was impossible, but where could this many have been hiding?

I spotted a familiar red ponytail among the fray, then widened my eyes at the goblins creeping up behind her.

"Yuuka!"

I called her name as I dove into a steep descent, but I wasn't going to make it. A goblin raised its thick arm, sharp hooked claws bared—

"Oh, big bro. What's up?"

Glancing up at me as I swooped in from above, Yuuka cut down the three goblins closing in behind her without so much as turning around.

"No, it's… never mind."

My concern, it seemed, had been entirely unwarranted.

Yuuka of the Swordsaints. The sole half-elf among the descendants of the Swordsaint clan that had supported Scarlet for generations, she had taken the swordsmanship passed down through the ages and honed it further across her long life, earning her the title of Swordsaint for her peerless skill. As always, she moved as though she had eyes in the back of her head.

"Oh, Dad, look at that!"

Chryse caught up with me after my solo dive and pointed past Yuuka. There, a beast was tearing across the ground.

A tiger-like animal with a coat of pure white. I couldn't quite gauge its size from this distance, but judging by the goblins around it, it had to stand well over two meters tall.

It sent goblins flying as it charged toward us at wind-like speed, then launched itself into a great leap aimed straight at me.

I spread my arms to catch it, and at the last instant the white tiger shifted into a blue-haired girl, slamming into me with all her momentum in a full-body embrace.

"Good work out there, Rin."

"Come on, at least act a little surprised! Mentorrr, you're no fun at all."

Pouting in dissatisfaction was the merfolk girl, Rin. Though whether it was still accurate to call her a mermaid was debatable. Having mastered transformation magic, she shifted forms as naturally as breathing, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually seen her in her mermaid shape.

Mercurial as ever, she didn't even keep a consistent apparent age. Today she'd taken the form of a teenage girl, but she could just as easily appear as a woman in her twenties or a small child. Her true form was a mystery even to herself at this point.

… That said.

"Well, your eyes never change no matter what form you take."

"The way you move is always the same, so it's easy to tell."

"There's no mistaking Big Sis Rin's soul."

Those were my, Yuuka's, and Chryse's respective methods of identification. For those of us who'd known her this long, picking Rin out wasn't particularly difficult.

Rin wore an expression caught somewhere between flattered and frustrated, then shifted into a small bird and alighted on my shoulder.

"Still, there's no end to them. Where are they really coming from?"

Thanks to Yuuka and Rin, the immediate area was clear of enemies, but the battle showed no signs of ending. Scarlet's elite warriors, led by the Swordsaints, had no trouble with individual goblins, but the sheer numbers were overwhelming. No matter how many they cut down, more kept pouring out.

"I'll check."

Chryse knelt and placed her hand on the corpse of a fallen goblin, closing her eyes.

"… There are still a lot of them gathered over that way."

She opened her eyes almost immediately, stood, and pointed into the distance.

"Right. I'll head over, then. Can the two of you lend the others a hand here?"

"Will you and Chrys be okay on your own, Mentorrr?"

From my shoulder, Rin chirped the question in her small bird voice.

"If anything, I'm more worried about you, Rin… You can't even use sorcery."

Having mastered transformation magic, Rin had sacrificed her aptitude for every other form of magic as the price. She could no longer produce flames or fly under her own power. Then again, she could transform into a fire-breathing dragon or a bird that soared through the sky, so it didn't seem to inconvenience her much.

"If we're going there, I can't use sorcery either, big bro."

"You don't need sorcery in the first place, Yuuka."

After all, this was a Swordsaint who could probably slay a dragon with nothing but a stone sword edged with obsidian. I wasn't the least bit worried about Yuuka.

"If Rin went all out, I think she'd be about evenly matched with me."

"… Really?"

On the other hand, even though Rin could transform into fearsome beasts, she wasn't a combat specialist. I'd thought she might still get hurt, but if Yuuka vouched for her that confidently, it had to be true.

"All right then. I'm counting on you two."

With those parting words, I took to the sky with Chryse.

"Huh…?"

It was a few minutes later that my daughter, flying hand in hand with me, tilted her head in confusion.

"That's strange. It should be around here…"

Blinking rapidly, Chryse peered down at the ground below. She had once experienced death and now existed as a soul inhabiting her own corpse… a state not unlike a lich.

Because of that, she could sense the souls of living creatures directly and trace their connections to pinpoint locations and directions. The precision of this ability, however, apparently left something to be desired.

"Did the magic fail, maybe?"

We were currently flying over a low hilltop, and the soft grass stretching out below offered nowhere to hide. No matter how small goblins were, they weren't small enough to miss in terrain with this clear a line of sight.

"How many are there?"

"A whole lot! Way more than a hundred or two hundred, but… huh?"

Chryse cocked her head again and again as she gazed down at the deserted grassland. But her puzzlement actually helped me piece together what was happening.

"Ah, I see. So that's what's going on."

Chryse's magic, while lacking in precision, was extraordinarily powerful. It could detect targets at considerable distances and wasn't blocked by obstacles.

That performance was, in fact, too good.

"O bearer of crimson flame, O eye that surveys the heat of life, golden dragon's pupil. Reveal to me the fires of the living."

As I chanted the incantation, my vision shifted to blue. Within that blue, countless red points of light bloomed into view.

Just as I'd thought.

Chryse's magic hadn't failed. It had simply seen straight through to the goblins hiding underground.

Dragon's Pupil, which rendered heat sources as red light, functioned much like thermal imaging. Unlike Chryse's magic, it could also make out the contours of real terrain and objects. And I could clearly see the goblins concealed within the caves below.

Fixing my gaze on those points of light, I raised my staff.

"Magic Bullet…"

A small white light, no larger than a fingertip, kindled at the tip of the staff.

"Times…"

It was flame, yet it carried no heat. A lesser spirit distilled down to nothing but pure destructive force.

"One thousand."

I swept the staff in a wide arc, and the light multiplied like bubbles, countless orbs materializing in a band before my eyes.

"Fire."

At that trigger word, the orbs of light streaked downward trailing tails of luminescence, plunging into the small openings dotting the hillside and piercing through every last goblin hiding within.

"Amazing, amazing! That's Dad for you!"

Chryse clapped her hands in delight. But in my enchanted vision, her figure was stained the same blue as the surrounding landscape. That color told me she was far colder than the goblins that had just died.

Her youthful form, which looked no older than her early teens, would never grow any further.

If I'd had this kind of power back then, I would never have let her end up in a body like this. I knew the thought was pointless, but I couldn't stop it from surfacing all the same.

"Come on, let's head home!"

Whether she sensed those feelings or not, Chryse squeezed my hand tight and said it with a bright smile.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

"You went off to fight monsters on your own again, didn't you."

What awaited us when we returned home after annihilating the goblins was Nina, standing with her arms crossed and a stern expression on her face.

"Um, it's not really 'on my own'… It's my job."

"That part is fine. But I've told you to at least let me know before you go, haven't I? Now come here, let me see."

At Nina's sharp tone, Chryse raised both arms and did a little twirl.

"She's fine, Nina. Chryse didn't even get close to the enemy today."

"Be quiet, you."

Nina snapped back without taking her eyes off Chryse for a second. After about three full rotations confirmed there wasn't a scratch on her, Nina let out a sigh.

Chryse's body was, physically speaking, dead. She had almost no sense of pain. Because of that, she often wound up injured without even realizing it.

According to Chryse herself, a properly anchored soul wouldn't slip free from a mere wound. In fact, she claimed she couldn't die even if she lost an arm or her head came off, making her far harder to kill than an ordinary person. But that same resilience had left her a bit cavalier about getting hurt.

Even though sorcery could heal her injuries, it was no pleasant sight. I could understand why Nina fussed over it.

"… I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."

Still holding her arms up as if uncertain whether she was allowed to lower them yet, Chryse apologized without protest.

"Now, now, sis. You don't need to worry that much. Big bro's strong enough these days. They took them all out without a single scratch, right?"

Yuuka stepped in to smooth things over.

"Mentorrr's thing is, like, unfairly strong."

Rin chimed in as well.

The "thing" they were referring to was the sorcery I'd used: magic bullet.

In my battle with Algernon, I'd been forced to confront just how powerless I was. The scales I'd believed could deflect any attack proved useless against magic-imbued arrows, and in human form, I was hopelessly fragile.

That realization drove me to create magic bullet.

A sorcery designed to kill with certainty. Developing something like that had been deeply distasteful, but it was infinitely better than putting the people I cared about in danger.

And ironically, my magical capacity as a fire dragon was perfectly suited to wielding it.

"I mean, anyone who can fire off hundreds or thousands of those high-tier spells at once without breaking a sweat has nothing to worry about."

Bullets that harmed nothing unintended, caused no collateral damage, moved freely, and never missed their mark. It was truly a magic reminiscent of the Freischutz of German folklore. Though since the legendary bullets supposedly always included one that would strike somewhere the shooter didn't want, the name felt too ill-omened to actually use.

As for how I'd achieved such a thing: brute force, plain and simple. The sorcery was constructed by pouring an enormous amount of magical power into a magic circle ten meters in diameter, which by the standard tier classification made it Twentieth Tier.

Almost no one could handle that, and even those who could would collapse after firing a single shot.

"… Even so… I still worry. This one has a careless streak."

When Nina said that with obvious displeasure, an awkward silence hung in the air. It was true that I could be absent-minded, but everyone wanted to say that Nina was overprotective and couldn't quite bring themselves to.

"I get how you feel, but I think you worry too much, Professor Nina."

Just as I was thinking that, Rin came right out and said it. True to form, she never minced words. Nina flinched with a groan. She was probably aware, on some level, that she was overdoing it.

"More than that, I'm curious about the goblins having a nest."

Perhaps reading the room, Yuuka changed the subject.

"It wasn't really a nest. They'd just moved into an existing cave or something. They didn't dig it out themselves."

"Oh, is that all? Huh."

Yuuka's reaction was an even split between relief and disappointment.

I understood exactly what that meant.

If the goblins had developed the ability to build their own nests, they would become an even greater threat than they already were. But at the same time, it would open the possibility of improving our relationship with them.

"Honestly, really…"

I heaved a deep sigh and said:

"What a nuisance Algernon left behind for us."