17 9

He tried not to think about Shihoru, their comrade who had vanished.
Once he started thinking about her, it was hopeless. He couldn’t possibly keep a level head. Was Shihoru okay? Where was she? What was she doing? Stewing over it wasn’t going to do him any good.
But why else would they be participating in the operation to take Mount Grief? Why else would he have joined the detached force and be trying to break through the Graveyard at the risk of his comrades’ lives?
They weren’t here because they wanted to be, obviously. If Jin Mogis gave them an order, they couldn’t afford to refuse. There was no choice but to reluctantly obey. That was true, of course, but there was also a chance that they would get Shihoru back. Haruhiro could endure for as long as he was able to think that.
He had no real hints to go on. Shihoru’s whereabouts were unknown.
That was why he had to endure and keep searching. Maybe it was more accurate to say he was searching for a way to search, some way to find a lead.
Enduring. And not giving up hope. That was all he could do. So for now, that was what he was going to do.
“Is it just him?” Renji asked in a low voice. “We’ll have to see what he does.”
“Yeah,” Shinohara nodded. He looked around at the members of the platoon. For a moment, he was expressionless. Like he was calmly selecting a human sacrifice. That might have been reading too much into it, but it was how he looked.
“We’ll go in first,” Renji said, completely calm. “We descend to the first floor, sprint across to the other end, then climb the stairs up to the platform and crush him. Should we split up?”
“The stairs seem reasonably wide, so I would rather not do anything reckless like dividing our strength,” Shinohara said.
“If it looks like we’re going to get caught in a pincer attack, then we’ll split up and handle it.”
“All right. Then please do whatever you think is best.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll take command of Orion, as well as Tokimune and Haruhiro’s parties.”
“We’re counting on you, Renji,” Tokimune said with a grin, and Renji shrugged a little.
“Yeah,” Haruhiro agreed.
Renji offered no response to the look Haruhiro gave him. He didn’t ignore it, no. He took it in, and then chose not to respond.
If Haruhiro wasn’t wrong, there was an unspoken you know what to do in there that transcended mere language. In somewhat dramatic terms, it was a confirmation of their secret pact.
Though Renji was brusque and felt like an unstoppable force of nature in battle, he probably had a sensitive side too. It could well be that Renji’s brusque image was something that he played up precisely because of just how caring and emotional he could be. If Haruhiro ever suggested that was the case, Renji would deny it and probably resent him for it.
Renji led the way with Ron, Chibi-chan, and Adachi following him toward the stairs on the left.
Haruhiro, Inui, Shinohara, and Tsuguta the thief peered over the railing, watching the first floor. Obviously, they were monitoring Team Renji too.
Renji began descending the stairs.
Immediately, the Lich King rose. Throughout the throne room, incredible whirlwinds, like sandstorms, brewed up. Dozens, at least. More than Haruhiro could count at a glance. All he could say was that there were a lot of them.
Renji and the others raced down the stairs. They hadn’t reached the landing yet.
Some of the sandstorms, maybe just under ten of them, coalesced, hardening into humanoid forms.
“Wait, isn’t that—?!” At some point, Ranta had moved up beside Haruhiro. He took his mask off and tried to stand up, but Haruhiro grabbed him by the arm and forced him back down.
“Stop that!”
“Look, moron! That’s Renji and his team!” Ranta wasn’t just saying something moronic, as was so typical for him. The humanoid sandstorms were near the bottom of the stairs Team Renji were trying to descend. There were eight of them. Renji, Ron, Chibi-chan, and Adachi. Two of each.
“Are those wraiths?!” Shinohara’s expression was tense.
The real Team Renji was almost at the landing when the two fake Team Renjis began climbing to meet them. No. The two fake Adachis stayed where they were. Were they planning to cast? They were drawing elemental sigils with their staves, trying to form spells.
“We’re going in too!” Shinohara gave the order.
Stay calm. Keep a level head. It’s one thing to aspire to do that, but when there’s a sudden change in the situation like this, the body acts before the head can keep up. Ranta took off at a run before Haruhiro could say anything.
“Let’s go!” Haruhiro dashed off too. Kuzaku, Yume, Merry, and Setora followed. They jostled with Orion and the Tokkis for position as they all rushed toward the stairs.
The double fake Adachis launched some kind of spell at the landing where Team Renji was. Kanon and Falz magic, huh? No matter how great Renji and his team were, they were in trouble if they took a solid hit from that.
That was a big if. The fake Adachis’ magic seemed to explode. Was that a misfire? Team Renji was covered by an invisible wall, and it seemed to have fended off the fake Adachis’ magic. That was how it looked. Had Adachi done something? He was holding his left arm up high. Blood. He was bleeding from his wrist.
“I can’t use Blood Spell that often!” Adachi shouted. Haruhiro had no idea what Blood Spell was, but it had apparently protected them from the fake Adachis’ spells. That had to be it.
“I’ll crush them!”
What was Renji planning to do? He didn’t go down the stairs. He was jumping off the landing.
“Haruhiro, you come too!”
“Me?!”
He wished Renji wouldn’t drag him into this. Besides, why did it have to be Haruhiro? If he ignored Renji after being called out by name, it’d look bad, and it might even be considered a bit of a stab in the back, so he couldn’t refuse.
I’ve gotta do it.
“Setora, you take it from here!” Haruhiro ordered.
“Got it!”
“Damn it all!” He was acting half out of desperation, pushing past the Tokkis and Orion as he raced down to the landing. Ron and Chibichan had already pushed forward to the next set of stairs, taking on a fake Renji and Ron. Was Adachi supporting them with magic? Renji was down on the first floor, going wild. There were still sandstorms all over the first floor, but there were also a bunch of fakes of all the volunteer soldiers here. It was ridiculous.
Go? Down there?
Me?
Uh, how about no?
“You chicken! I’ll go! Zeeeeeeee!” What’s Z?
The masked dark knight bellowed the enigmatic Z as he raced past Haruhiro and jumped down from the landing.
“Personal skill...!” Before even landing, Ranta slashed one of the fake
Orion warriors, then rolled as he hit the floor and got back up. “P-
Personal skill...?!” he shouted again as he cut down a fake Orion paladin, then immediately sprang at a fake Kimura. “Personal skill, Stellar... Uh?!”
“...!”
The fake Kimura narrowly parried Ranta’s katana with its mace and buckler, but he still had it on the ropes. Haruhiro hated what a loud, obnoxious show-off Ranta could be. But it did stir him to action.
“If you can’t come up with a technique name, then just give up!” Haruhiro shouted, jumping from the landing himself. He wasn’t going to use the momentum of the fall to strike an enemy like Ranta had. He couldn’t. Instead he made sure he landed properly, blunting the impact, and used Stealth. His mind filled with the image of sinking into the floor.
He was a little quiet, a little slow, as if he were slightly separated from everything around him—and yet, he was here. Or maybe it was better to say he was there. His self was not inside him, but outside, perceiving the area as a whole. He heard sounds, felt the flow of things.
It wasn’t bad. He was able to concentrate.
Renji slashed one fake and took the shortest route to the next, instantly laying that one low too, and taking off to terminate the next. Renji could see it. Where the enemies were. In what order he should take them out. He knew it instinctively.
Compared to that, Ranta was far less efficient. He leaped right and left, then moved even further left, making it look like he would bound again, then instead charging in with an upward swing of his katana. It looked like a lot of effort. Horribly inefficient. But his unorthodox style bewildered enemies as he searched for other targets, figured them out, and prepared to act. In that sense, while he seemed to be doing a lot of meaningless things, not everything that appeared to be pointless actually was.
Haruhiro crept up on a fake Kikkawa that was trying to get behind Ranta, grappled with it and slit its throat.
It felt like...yeah, like sand. It was as if he were cutting sand.
The fake Kikkawa didn’t so much crumble as burst, turning to literal dust.
That sand-like powder began moving from where it landed.
Haruhiro looked in the direction it was heading and saw there was already a sandstorm whirling there. It was going to form another fake, wasn’t it?
Yeah, it absolutely was.
The fakes were different from the wraiths they’d fought in the chapel. They looked pretty human from a distance, closely resembling whoever they were a copy of, but up close, they were obvious phonies. The skin didn’t look alive, and the eyeballs hardly reflected any light. They lacked luster in general. The details of their construction were somewhat lacking too, with their faces looking flatter than the originals. There were hardly any wrinkles either.
Basically, these fakes were sand or mud dolls created by the Lich King’s magic. Their abilities were nothing next to the originals’. They seemed to be a match as far as physical strength and agility went, but they weren’t fast to react. It could be that the Lich King was controlling them all, and because of that he couldn’t micromanage them effectively.
Haruhiro took down a fake Adachi with Spider, hit a fake Tokimune with Backstab, then delayed a fake Ranta with Shatter before using Hitter, and finishing with a Backstab as he ran past. Fake or not, it felt good to be teaching Ranta a lesson, but he’d prefer to keep that a secret. For his part, Ranta was toying with a fake Haruhiro, a look of maniacal glee on his face, so they were even.
In addition to Renji, Haruhiro, and Ranta, more and more of their allies were piling down the stairs to the first floor. At one point, one of the fake mages managed to get off some Arve magic, but Adachi used his Blood Spell, or whatever it was called, to block it. Renji, Haruhiro, and even Ranta, to a degree, were making it a priority to take down the fake mages. That was the intent, at least, but Haruhiro noticed something.
He’d taken down fakes of Adachi and the two Orion mages. But Haruhiro had not touched a fake Mimorin.
They existed. Haruhiro had seen one, but Renji had been closer, so he’d let Renji take care of it.
Also, while he was fine with Rantas, Haruhiro hadn’t touched any of the fake Kuzakus, Merrys, Setoras, or Yumes.
Even though it was clear at a glance that these things were fakes, he still hesitated just a little.
In the chapel, Kimura had faced nearly identical wraiths of his fallen comrades. That must have been difficult in its own way, but these impostors were copies of people Haruhiro was working with in the present moment. Because he had incredible allies like Renji, he’d been able to think, Well, they’re just fakes, and shift gears into battle mode. But if not for that, fighting these opponents might have shaken everyone, and they could have ended up on the defensive instead. The margins here were razor thin. If the enemy had been able to make an early push, it would have been hard for the platoon to recover from it.
There was no way to be optimistic about the current situation either.
The whole team was heading for the stairs on the left side of the platform where the Lich King awaited them. Renji, Ranta, and Haruhiro led the way, and the others followed.
Renji, at the very front, was maybe fifteen meters from the stairs. Ranta and Haruhiro were hanging around behind him. The rear group was headed by Ron, Tokimune, Tada, and Kuzaku, as well as Shinohara and Matsuyagi of Orion.
If he had felt like it, Renji could probably have gone even farther ahead. But it would have left too large a gap between him and the rear group. Renji was taking out fakes as he waited for the rest to catch up.
With Renji leading the way, the detached force eliminated any fakes approaching them at an incredible speed, but the number of enemies wasn’t going down at all. Though they struck their copies down again and again, the fakes turned into sandstorms, and the sandstorms turned into fakes, which rushed toward the group all over again.
It went without saying, this was the work of the Lich King standing in front of the throne.
Was the Lich King expending some sort of magical power to create the fakes? If he was, then just like human mages, his reserves of power were likely not inexhaustible. He’d only be able to create fakes for so long.
But wasn’t it also possible that this was the effect of a relic, and endless? Even if it wasn’t endless, the Lich King’s reserves of magical power could very easily have been absolutely massive. If he could make fakes all day and all night, it was essentially inexhaustible.
The detached force had the upper hand for now, but, again, the margin was razor thin.
Renji was going absolutely wild and showed no sign of tiring, but he’d already worn himself down fighting the spinies. The fatigue might all hit him at once at some point. That also went for the others, including Haruhiro, who’d given their all fighting the spinies.
Honestly, while Haruhiro was doing a good job of maintaining his focus, his body wasn’t moving so well.
A fake Yume was taking aim at Renji.
“Ah...!”
There was a moment’s hesitation, but Haruhiro closed in on the fake Yume from behind and tried to hit her with a Backstab, only for her to turn and loose her shot at him instead. Haruhiro managed to avoid it by jumping sideways, but the fake Yume shot again, and again. Oh, crap. It was all he could do to dodge them.
“Hee hee!” If Mimorin hadn’t cut the fake Yume in half with her longsword, one or two of those arrows might have hit him.
“Haruhiro! I love you!”
“Th-Thanks...”
I’m focusing well? Who am I kidding? I’m doing a terrible job, aren’t I, Mimorin?
But what was Mimorin doing here? Actually, it wasn’t just Mimorin. Ron, Tada, Tokimune, and Kikkawa too. Kuzaku was also nearby, as were Shinohara, Matsuyagi, and more. It was the rear group. They’d caught up.
“Renji!” Shinohara shouted. “Let’s rush in and focus on taking out the Lich King!”
“Vo-foh! Go-feh!” Kimura laughed. “Let’s wrap this one up quiiick!”
The warriors of the detached force used War Cry one after another. This wasn’t just a loud shout. It was a sound like no other, making enemies falter and rousing the user’s spirits.
“Grahhhhhhh...!” Renji roared and charged. It was like he was unleashing a well of power that he had been holding back all this time, storing it up for this moment. In the blink of an eye, Renji was on the stairs.
“Oh, for crying out...!” Ranta tried to keep up with him.
“Ha ha...!” Tokimune’s longsword flashed, and he raced forward with Tada, each overtaking the other repeatedly.
“Hoorahhhhh...!” Ron, Chibi-chan, and Adachi had gotten close to the stairs too at some point.
“Yahhhhahhhh...!” Orion’s giant warrior Matsuyagi was putting on a real display too. He easily mowed down fakes with his twin warhammers, steadily advancing. Shinohara, Kimura, and the members of Orion were pretty much all following Matsuyagi.
“Damn, he’s cool!” Kuzaku was a bit farther behind but was doing a good job of swinging his large katana around and drawing the enemies to him. There was a group with Kuzaku at its center, including Yume and Merry, Setora, Kikkawa and Inui, and Anna-san the cheerleader bringing up the rear, and supporting the platoon’s advance that way.
I’ll join up with Kuzaku and the others, Haruhiro thought for a moment, but he ended up following Mimorin to the stairs. The Lich King. They had to defeat the Lich King as soon as possible. If they didn’t, they’d run out of steam before long.
When Renji began climbing the stairs, Ranta, Ron, Tokimune, Tada, and finally Matsuyagi followed.
“Grahhhhhh...!”
Renji reduced the fakes crowding the stairs to sand and dust in short order. Even without the power of a relic, he could do that? Could humans get that strong? Yeah, no. They couldn’t. It was only because it was Renji that it was at all possible.
If Renji weren’t here... Just the thought alone was chilling. They wouldn’t even have made it to this throne room without Renji, would they? Shinohara had led Orion in multiple attempts to clear the Graveyard before now, and all of them had failed. Maybe he’d decided it might be possible because Renji was coming?
So long as Renji was around, it felt like they could do anything.
That wasn’t true, of course. Obviously. Renji had his limits too. He wasn’t immortal or indestructible. He was human, the same as Haruhiro or any of the others. But even knowing that, Haruhiro wanted to doubt it. Renji was just so completely different from everyone else. He couldn’t be evaluated with common sense. It was like he belonged to a different dimension.
Thinking back on it now, it seemed apparent that Renji had seriously pulled his punches during the fight with the spinies. He probably hadn’t had an easy time. They’d all been pretty exhausted, but for Renji, that was all it was. The repetitive manual labor might have left him with some pent up frustration. Now he was blowing off steam.
Renji reached the top of the stairs. The upper level was much less well-guarded. Actually, Renji was mowing down fakes like some kind of reaper.
The second to make it up there was Ron. Matsuyagi pushed Ranta, Tokimune, and Tada aside, leaping up onto the platform. Those three, along with Shinohara and Orion’s best fighters, all arrived in one clump, climbing up onto the platform one after another. Haruhiro and Mimorin followed.
“Delm, hel, en, giz, balk, zel, arve...!”
“Zeel, mare, gram, eld, nilug, io, sel...!”
Two of Orion’s mages drew elemental sigils and chanted. Adachi was doing the same.
“Jess, yeen, sark, viki, teo, meo, fram, dart, ul, dio, zeon...!”
That was a long incantation. It was a big spell. The Orion mages were using Arve and Kanon magic. Adachi was probably using Falz. All of them were targeting the Lich King, no doubt. The mages fired off their most powerful spells, which they had been able to save until now, in an attempt to finish him off fast.
“Goooo...!” Ranta screamed. Haruhiro didn’t say it out loud, but he felt the same way. His personality being what it was, he thought, It can’t work, right? They’d struggled a lot to get here. The battle to take Mount Grief was still just getting started, but this confrontation with the Lich King had to be the greatest challenge of the Graveyard. It would never end so easily. He didn’t want to feel disappointed, so he kept his defenses up. Was this a habit or his nature?
In all honesty, though, he hoped it would end quickly. Of course he did. That was obviously preferable.
That’s why when all of the fakes turned to sand and dust just before the mages cast their spells, he thought, No, please, just stop it, from the bottom of his heart. Enough of that. Not that the Lich King would grant Haruhiro’s wish.
Most likely, the Lich King had stopped manipulating the fakes and changed over to another power instead.
“It’s an Anti-Spell!” Adachi shouted. Haruhiro wasn’t a mage, and he didn’t have his old memories, so he didn’t really know what that meant, but it was presumably some kind of magic that blocked magic. Maybe it was the same sort of thing as Adachi’s Blood Spell, which had come from the Red Continent.
The mages’ spells might have started to trigger, but then they were erased.
The Lich King was wrapped in a transparent bluish dome. Was that what had deflected, or perhaps dispelled, the mages’ magic?
The king who did not sleep, even in death, wore clothes that looked like they were worth a fortune on their own, and an imposing, majestic crown. But he was dead. It was clear to see that he was no longer among the living. He was obviously deceased. He wore an impressive golden gauntlet on his right hand, so the only exposed skin on his body was his face and his left hand, which held his scepter. Could it even be called skin? At one time, it must have been full of life, coursing with blood. Now it was dried up, clinging to his bones. His face was not so different from a skull. The eye sockets were black pits. No more than holes.
Many long years must have passed since the time of his death.
Sure enough, he was standing, and moving. He manipulated great powers. Even though his body was lifeless, he was the master of the Graveyard.
The king who did not sleep, even in death.
The Lich King.
“Yahhhhh...!” Renji charged in with fury. His ominous greatsword shone with purple light.
“Aragarfald!” Ranta shouted the name of the relic. It wasn’t the greatsword. The relic was the armor Renji wore. It imbued his sword with a special power.
Magic didn’t work on the Lich King. He could deploy an Anti-Spell to block it. But if that was the case, all they had to do was close in and chop him up. It seemed like an idea anyone could have thought of, but Renji made the decision well before anyone else could. It was as if he’d already decided to do it the moment Adachi and the others’ magic proved ineffective. He might have even been getting ready to.
It was fifteen to twenty meters to the Lich King’s throne. In mere seconds, Renji would break through the Anti-Spell and bisect the Lich King. Haruhiro didn’t think, There’s nothing the Lich King can do now. Surely he’d do something, Haruhiro just couldn’t imagine what.
And the Lich King did, in fact, move, though only to raise his right hand, the one with the golden gauntlet. When he did, the bluish Anti-Spell vanished. But it was more than that. At the same time, the Lich King rapidly rose.
Well, not the Lich King, but the floor beneath his feet. No, that wasn’t the floor, it was sand, huh? It gathered at an incredible speed, lifting the Lich King up. He rose higher and higher, five meters or more. The Lich King stood atop a pedestal of sand.
“Ngh...!” Renji slashed the pedestal, but it was just a mass of granules. There was a flash of purple lightning, and the greatsword sent sand flying all over, but the hole quickly filled with more.
“Delm, hel, en, balk, zel, arve...!” Mimorin wasted no time before drawing elemental sigils and casting Blast.
For a brief moment, Haruhiro thought, That might work.
The Lich King had stopped making fakes when he put up the AntiSpell. Then he had dropped the Anti-Spell to manifest a pedestal of sand. That meant he couldn’t do two things at once. He was limited to one major thing at a time. If that was true, then if he got up on the pedestal, he could avoid physical attacks but not prevent magical ones.
Haruhiro’s guess had to be right. The Lich King didn’t use Anti-Spell now that he had raised himself up. Mimorin’s Blast flew toward him, but missed. He’d dodged. The pedestal of sand was more than just a pedestal. It moved like the head of a dragon, carrying the Lich King with it. Did he plan to leave the platform? The sand dragon was lowering its head, bringing the Lich King down to the first floor.
“Zeel, mare, gram, fey, ruvy, quo, pai, silka, krai, es...!” Adachi was chanting. What spell was that?
“Whiteout!” Mimorin blurted out. Was that the name of the spell? It was probably Kanon magic. It affected the area near the Lich King as he was about to touch down on the first floor, and a fairly wide area around that. Everything in a radius dozens of meters wide, centered around the Lich King, was covered in white. Snow. It was a violent blizzard. Despite its distance from Haruhiro and the others up on the platform, they were still shivering from the cold.
“How do you like that?!” Ron shouted.
“He blocked it!” Adachi replied, spitting the words out angrily. “He used Anti-Spell at the last second!”
That meant that the Lich King was safe behind a magical Anti-Spell barrier in the middle of the raging blizzard.
“Okay, change of plans!” Tokimune flashed his pearly whites and headed for the first floor. Was the word disappointment not in his dictionary? He had incredible mental fortitude.
“Get down there!” Shinohara ordered. The platform was maybe five meters high, at most. While it wasn’t impossible to jump down, Haruhiro would have preferred not to.
“We’re going!” Renji had no intention of using the stairs. Haruhiro got that. It was way quicker not to. They wanted to get to the Lich King before Whiteout wore off. In Renji’s case, because he was using the purple lightning effect of Aragarfald, he had a time limit he needed to take into consideration too. It wasn’t so convenient that he could switch it on and off at a whim. He needed to end this while the purple lightning was still active. If he didn’t, he’d be rendered immobile for a while. At worst, it could cost him his life. He needed to hurry as much as he could.
That said, if Renji hadn’t shot a glance toward him, Haruhiro would have taken the stairs with Tokimune. Why’d he have to look?
Haruhiro wondered.
Was that a “You’re not coming?”
Or more of a “You’re obviously coming, right?” I wish you wouldn’t lump me in with you.
Unlike Renji, Haruhiro was normal. Just a regular, mediocre guy. That was a reality he’d have trouble changing. Haruhiro didn’t know what it was that Renji expected of him, but it seemed like there was something. Honestly, it was a nuisance.
I can’t do what I can’t do, man.
A lowly guy like Haruhiro couldn’t chase after Renji. So Haruhiro wanted to watch his exploits from a distance. Cheering for him like Anna-san. He didn’t remember the past, but he was proud to have enlisted at the same time as Renji. That was no lie. It was the truth.
So why? Why did Renji having high hopes for him make him want to hang his head? Haruhiro had trouble understanding it himself.
I mean, it’s impossible, you know? There’s no way I can do it. I can’t live up to your expectations.
But was it right for him to take the attitude, You’re in a completely different dimension, so please just forget us lower beings. Don’t make unreasonable requests like asking us to keep up with you, at this point?
If Haruhiro were in Renji’s position, he’d have been appalled. He couldn’t treat someone who gave off that vibe as an equal.
They weren’t equals, mind you. There wasn’t just a gap in their abilities, there was a gaping chasm.
It was blatantly apparent in their combat potential. But humans did more than just fight. Did he need to act subservient to someone because he couldn’t beat them in a fight? Could someone stronger than him not be an equal and a friend? That couldn’t be right.
Still, Haruhiro knew his place. For the sake of his comrades, he couldn’t afford to act recklessly and get himself badly hurt or even killed.
I can’t be that foolish. I won’t do what I can’t do, okay?
But, well, if it was just a matter of getting down from a five-meterhigh platform without using the stairs, a thief like Haruhiro could manage it. Renji didn’t exactly dive off the platform himself. He hung from the edge, then dropped. Haruhiro did something similar. If he used the side of the platform for footholds, it wasn’t terribly hard. If he were wearing armor or carrying bulky weapons, maybe it would have been, but Haruhiro was fortunately unencumbered. Renji was loaded down with heavy equipment, but he wasn’t a normal person. Aragarfald’s purple electricity might have had something to do with that.
Renji dashed toward the area affected by Whiteout.
Haruhiro chased after him, glancing at the stairs to the platform as he went. Tokimune had already made it down. He saw Ranta, Shinohara, and Kimura too. And there were more following them.
There was a loud thud behind him, and he turned back in time to see Matsuyagi bracing his legs against the impact from landing on the ground. Had he jumped from the platform? Maybe Renji and Haruhiro had convinced him to do it. But was he okay? Well, he was running now, so at least his legs weren’t broken.
The effect of Whiteout was fading. It was no longer a raging blizzard that turned the whole area white. The snow was still violent, but Haruhiro could see the Lich King behind his Anti-Spell barrier.
Renji charged into the blizzard. He rested the greatsword that was arcing with purple electricity on his shoulder, ready to swing it down any time.
The Lich King was bound to lower the Anti-Spell. Would he rise on a pedestal to escape again? Ride on the head of a sand dragon to get farther away?
Haruhiro needed to see it for himself.

Chapter end