Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~ - Chapter 11: The Twins’ Curse

Chapter 11: The Twins’ Curse

The first thing I felt was a freezing wind.

A chilling cold that traced across my skin—yet this wind wasn’t blowing wildly. It was being sucked inward. It spiraled toward the ice dragon seated at the center, drawn in like a vortex.

A bad feeling crept over me.

But before I could figure out what it was—the swollen energy exploded.

“—っ! Haro! Noiche!”

“Swirl back…!”

Zaria instantly stepped in front of us to shield us. I quickly spread my ink thin to form a barrier.

But it was hard to say we “made it in time.” What hit us right after was a single blow that gathered all the cold air into one point and burst it outward—an enormous explosion.

For a moment, all sound vanished.

My vision turned pure white.

Pain like being shredded by countless shards of ice tore through my entire body as we were blasted away.

“—Zaria! Haro! Wake up!”

…My consciousness must have blacked out for a second.

A flicker of light—but the moment it slipped away, Noiche’s shout snapped me back awake.

Zaria and I both shot upright at the same time and took in the situation.

Everything around us was frozen solid.

The ground and the trees were covered thick with pure white frost. The leaves that had been swaying in the wind moments ago no longer twitched at all.

…An explosion of cold air. Definitely high-level magic.

It had gathered all the cold it had scattered until now and turned it into explosive force. Terrifying power.

Sharp pain throbbed from the countless cuts all over my body.

Still, I got off easy. Zaria, who had stood in front to protect me, had a huge icicle-like shard stabbed deep into her left shoulder.

“Guuh…!”

“Zaria, it hurts like hell, but don’t pull it out. We can’t stop the bleeding right now.”

“I—I know… I’ll fight like this.”

Zaria bit her lip at Noiche’s warning and gathered her magic again.

Pressing her left shoulder with one hand, she glanced at me.

“Sorry, Haro. This was my idea, so I should be the one up front. You can stay back if you want… just stick with me a little longer, okay?”

“…You really are serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded. I’d planned to stay until the end anyway. Of course I wasn’t going to fall back.

Zaria grinned at my answer—and then charged forward.

“Ricochet Pinball!”

“Thanks!”

I placed Ricochet Pinball marks along her path. The starting boost sent Zaria rocketing forward like a bullet straight into the ice dragon’s chest.

She dodged the sweeping claw strike and answered with a flashing counter-slash.

I followed right behind her, catching the ice bullets beginning to form around us with my ink.

“Swirl back.”

I shattered the ice projectiles—

Then used the fragments as abrasive and fed them into the flow of the Chainsaw of the King’s Crown.

My target was the glowing marked point—the wound Zaria had opened. I fired the Chainsaw of the King’s Crown to pile on top of her slash.

Yet the attack didn’t pierce the scales.

“For real!?”

“This is bad…”

Dragon scales hardened beyond hardness by magic.

We managed to gouge deep wounds into the thick scales, but they stopped just short of reaching flesh. Its toughness had definitely increased compared to before.

A stage-up from rage.

It seemed there was still one more level left.

All the while, the dragon rampaged.

It scattered ice everywhere, breathed frost, and smashed frozen trees with its swinging tail and wings.

Faced with the berserk dragon’s onslaught, we tried to fall back once—

“Ugh…!”

—Zaria’s legs buckled from the pain in her shoulder.

“…! Swirl back!”

I hurriedly spread ink into a shield.

The instant I grabbed Zaria’s hand and yanked her back, the gale from the sweeping wing sent us flying.

We rolled and tumbled all the way back to where Noiche was.

“Daaaah! Sorry, uuu, aah! I screwed up! I flinched!”

“It’s fine, that much is nothing.”

“More importantly, Haro! What do we do about that thing!?”

“Yeah… what should we do…”

The problem was lack of firepower. In pure magical destructive power, Noiche far outclassed Zaria.

But when you factored in magic that could see weaknesses, Zaria’s tactical value was higher. And while she maintained that, Noiche couldn’t use her own magic.

…Well, regardless, Zaria was injured now.

Should we switch to Noiche after all? The moment that reasonable thought crossed my mind—

“…I wish I could fight together with her.”

—Behind us, Luce ground her teeth.

We’d only known each other two days, but I still thought it was rare. For her to show such openly negative feelings.

That’s right.

If only these two could use magic together, every problem we faced right now would be solved.

“Shall we try it?”

“…?”

“Try what?”

I answered the two girls who tilted their heads in confusion.

“I’ll solve the problem you two have been carrying.”

*

Let me write down the basics about magic.

Magic is a phenomenon produced using magical power as energy.

Whether it is a physical phenomenon or a non-physical one depends on the case. Magic that creates fire or water is a physical phenomenon, while magic that divines the future from the positions of the stars is a non-physical phenomenon.

Why can such unrealistic things be done?

There is no clear answer. But I believe the source is magical power.

Magical power probably has the property of reacting to the thoughts and perceptions of living beings.

When someone thinks “I want to control fire,” magical power reacts and produces fire.

But thoughts are unstable things, so magicians use various methods to stabilize their magic.

They standardize their thoughts with magic circles, formulas, or incantations, or strengthen the intensity of their thoughts through faith.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

But back to the topic.

In this case, what matters is the nature and shape of magical power.

I said earlier that magical power reacts to the user’s thoughts, but it’s not as convenient as every thought manifesting exactly as desired.

Each person’s magical power has its own nature—some easily produce fire, others easily produce water. This ties into things like attribute affinity and bloodlines.

The nature of magical power differs by individual and bloodline.

And part of that nature may stem from the physical shape of the magical power itself—that was the hypothesis of an experiment my older brother arbitrarily turned into a paper, if I recall correctly.

“There was a side experiment where we used several pairs of twin mice.”

“…Twins?”

“Yeah. After the experiment, when we dissected them, we discovered they were mirror twins. Their internal organs were reversed left and right.”

At the words “twins” and “mirror twins,” the sisters reacted as if their ears had pricked up.

“W-what kind of experiment? What happened!?”

“The method was almost the same. We trapped them in glass bottles. The interesting part was the result—the inside of each bottle ended up covered in spiral scratches.”

“Both twins?”

“Both. But the direction of the spirals was reversed. One bottle had right-handed spirals, the other had left-handed spirals.”

The fact that the magical power itself scratched the glass means it was a phenomenon derived from the physical properties of magical power.

And in the case of mirror twins, it produced perfectly symmetrical results. In other words—

“—Your magical powers are in a mirror-image relationship.”