Black summoner volume 21, p.1
Black Summoner: Volume 21, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Color Illustrations
The Story So Far...
Chapter 1: Fusion
Chapter 2: Unification
Chapter 3: God of Another World
Chapter 4: New Life
Chapter 5: Paramita
Chapter 6: I Object!
Afterword
Bonus High Resolution Illustrations
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
Chapter 1: Fusion
A little while before Goldiana and Hao were taken by surprise, the perpetrator behind the surprise attack—Hazama Shemhazar, known as the Foreign God and one of the Three Great Authorities—had encountered Dorothy first, so he was the first to start fighting.
“Khah hah hah hah! What an amusing girlie you are! I never would have thought you’d follow me this far into the ground!” he exclaimed.
“You’re one to talk. I’m amazed you can keep burrowing while laughing like that. I would never imitate it, but I am impressed,” Dorothy admitted.
Actually, it would be a little misleading to say that combat had started. Looking at the current situation, it was hard to say that they were actually in a ferocious fight.
To make the order of events clear:
As soon as Dorothy encountered Hazama, she shot at him with Maul, opening a large hole in his chest. However, he simply regenerated the rotten meat like nothing had happened before launching into a taunting dialogue with her. Furthermore, eerie tentacles emerged from under his robe, creating a tense atmosphere like the battle could kick off at any moment.
But there was no telling what went through Hazama’s mind as he turned his back to Dorothy and burrowed into the ground. At first, Dorothy thought he was planning to ambush her from below. But Hazama didn’t show himself no matter how long she waited, and there was no sign that he was mounting an attack.
Dorothy scrunched her brows together and thought, Did he run away?
One of the Ten Authorities—what was more, a member of the elite Three Great Authorities—had fled? Dorothy couldn’t believe that was true. But in the end, Hazama had disappeared. Worse, his presence was getting farther and farther away. And thus, Dorothy’s doubts became certainty. Of all things, Hazama had turned tail and run from a fight with her. In fact, he’d done so boldly and without hesitation.
“Are you trying to lead me into a trap? Or are you just a coward?” Dorothy asked.
She was as expressionless as usual, but it seemed she was a little ticked off. Her choice of words exuded a bit of pressure.
“Khah hah! I just felt it would be too much trouble to fight you. I was going to let you fight Eld while I went to defeat someone who seemed a little weaker!” said Hazama.
“Well, either way, I wasn’t going to let you go. Prepare yourself,” said Dorothy.
Invisible bows instantly manifested around her, arrows nocked. Each was pointed at Hazama despite him being underground.
“Multiple Maul,” said Dorothy.
Many arrows of decay were unleashed at that signal. The swarm burrowed into Isla Heaven, losing none of its deadliness as it traveled through the ground, chasing after Hazama. The arrows rapidly closed the distance. This time, they wouldn’t take just a part of his body; there were enough of them to erase everything. However...
“His presence...split?” Dorothy wondered aloud.
Just as the arrows were about to hit, Hazama’s presence seemed to split. And not only into two. Dorothy now felt over a hundred of him, and the number was still increasing. Every new presence felt like Hazama himself; there was no difference. She couldn’t tell which one was real.
This was Dorothy’s first time meeting Hazama face-to-face—not that she’d ever seen his face—but for some reason, she could imagine him laughing at her as she stood there in silence. That was just how twisted the god named Hazama was. Dorothy had realized as much. Though it might have seemed that she was quick to jump to conclusions, she was actually right on the mark.
“Reacquiring target at greatest efficiency. Reloading the next volley as they give chase,” Dorothy said dispassionately. Since the ritual, her ability to manipulate magic had become incomparable to when she’d fought Kelvin in the exhibition match. The arrows that had been chasing only one target suddenly split up to target different presences at her command.
They wouldn’t be able to erase all the Hazamas that were continuing to split off, but they’d be able to stymie the inflation of his numbers for a time. Actually, since she was continuing to fire more arrows, as time went on, the number of extra Hazamas was steadily diminishing.
“Oho! So you’re brute-forcing your way through my decoys,” Hazama remarked. “But your ability to use such powerful magic at such a large scale surprises me. How strange... Wasn’t Grim Reaper supposed to be the one with bottomless MP? My word, I shouldn’t have relied on the reports from those fallen angels. Khah hah hah hah!”
“Really? Then how about you experience it for yourself?” Dorothy proposed.
“Hmm?”
Hazama could hear the lovely voice of a girl who shouldn’t be under the ground, which was still being pierced by arrows of decay. Naturally, the owner of that voice was Dorothy, who should have still been attacking from aboveground. There was no way he should have been able to hear her down there. Still, whether it was a dream or an illusion, Hazama turned around and saw her. She looked like a mermaid, with her bottom half shaped like a fish, and was swimming through the ground, but it was definitely Dorothy.
“Hey now, what’s the meaning of this?!” Hazama shouted. “You’re looking quite a bit different from before! Khah hah hah hah! And you’re so fast!”
This form was something Dorothy had gained from the ritual—from Zeval, specifically—which had given her the Unique Skill Worldswim. It allowed her to swim literally anywhere, meaning she could traverse any environment like she was moving through water. Of course, breathing was not a problem either.
In some ways, the skill resembled Burrowing, which allowed its user to burrow into the ground, but since swimming offered much greater speed, it could be considered an upgrade. Hazama traveled through the ground freakishly fast by using disgusting-colored tentacles to dexterously part the earth, but Dorothy in mermaid form was even faster.
“Actually, how did you know where the real me was? The seeds I scattered as decoys should give off the exact same presence,” Hazama said.
“I don’t have the time to tell you every little trick of mine,” Dorothy replied. “Stop using those gross tentacles already and let me kill you.”
She would never reveal her tricks. There was no merit in explaining everything, from her invisible arrows to how she took in the situation underground. From confirming that the enemies she hit disappeared to checking to see if any of the presences she felt were moving strangely to detecting everything else through her arrows—a lot had gone into how she had found him.
Dorothy had gone through the steps methodically to destroy Hazama with certainty, but things would only get more difficult from here. No matter how much she shaved away at his flesh, Hazama would quickly regenerate. She needed to completely eradicate all of him, or at least find some sort of weak point like a human’s head or heart, though it was still a mystery as to whether or not such a thing was a viable option.
“Multiple Maul,” Dorothy ordered.
The invisible arrows she had deployed, which could travel through the ground just like her, were numerous. They accurately hit the areas on Hazama where his head and heart seemed like they would be, with several more piercing him all over to erase the rest of his body as well.
“Khah hah! You’re really a merciless little girlie, aren’t you! It stings, and you move amazingly well! If I were anyone else, I would have been dead! Hmmm?” Unfortunately, Hazama was able to quickly regenerate even the areas that seemed critical, his body swelling with new meat. The robe he was wearing was now a shadow of its former self, but he himself was able to regenerate if even a speck of him was left.
“It seems you’ve got a much more...interesting...body than I expected,” Dorothy observed.
“Khah hah! You’re one to talk!”
And that was how their chase had reached its current state.
There was no sign of Dorothy running out of magic, and neither did Hazama seem to be running out of stamina. Neither side was about to give up. If things continued like this, they would chase each other forever.
Dorothy did have the option of using the Rank S Time Magic spell Eternal to stop time and finish him without any chance of resistance, but that would be difficult for her since they were currently underground. That is to say, since the spell stopped the entire world, Worldswim would no longer work either. In short, Dorothy would find herself buried alive. Neither Time Magic nor Worldswim were all-powerful abilities; there were situations where they wouldn’t mesh well, like right now.
“Now then, I can see that it will be very difficult to run away. So I suppose it’s about time I turned around to fight,” said Hazama.
Though he had been hit by many arrows, each of which had rotted his body away, he didn’t seem bothered as he accelerated his burrowing speed. Finally, he burst out of the ground into a large underground space.
“Khah hah! Finally here, huh? Now then, girlie, show yourself already. This place will be your grave—” Hazama started.
“Eternal,” Dorothy interjected. The instant she descended into the underground space, she h
Since Dorothy had only been shooting her arrows of decay until then, Hazama had probably thought of her as a rather annoying Black Mage and not a user of the rare Time Magic. It was only coincidence that he had escaped into one of the only environments that could counter her time-stopping abilities. Though Time Magic hadn’t had the opportunity to show its strength up until now, that was no longer the case.
“You have the devil’s luck, I suppose you’d say,” muttered Dorothy. “I never would have dreamed you would so blatantly run away. Thank you for the rare experience.”
The chase scene was over, and in this frozen world, they finally came face-to-face. Of course, everything other than Dorothy was frozen, so her opponent wasn’t actually aware of that.
“I know I said this already, but...you really have the strangest body. What kind of god are you?” Dorothy asked.
She was looking at the mysterious and complicated form of her enemy, frozen before her. His bizarre head had a very large, pronounced mouth, and it was hard to think of him as a real, living thing. He didn’t seem to have any eyes to speak of until Dorothy noticed a single one within his large mouth. It looked like it was staring into her, even though time was frozen.
I really hate the feeling his gaze gives. It’s just nasty.
So Dorothy decided to start by destroying that eye. But even leaving aside his nasty gaze, it wasn’t just Hazama’s head that was strange. Everything below it was equally bizarre. It seemed the shapeless mass of meat that served as his foundation could form itself into anything, as growing out of it was everything from centipede sections to meat tentacles to limbs that looked like human arms. He was a hideous mass of defilement of all living things all mixed together. Any normal person would have gone insane just from laying eyes on him.
“I get why he covers himself with this robe now,” said Dorothy.
Luckily, she seemed to have some sort of resistance to grotesque sights, as even after seeing Hazama’s terrible form, she remained calm. In fact, the feelings she had experienced when they’d met eyes while he was trying to escape had been more intense.
“Still, this place is pretty strange too,” said Dorothy. “Why does a facility like this exist in a holy land where angels live?”
She was looking at her surroundings with interest. The large underground space they had ended up in seemed incongruent with the world it was in, like a modern research laboratory. What really drew her eye was a large glass tube filled with mysterious clear orange liquid. Quite a lot of those tubes were arranged in a line here, and each one contained what looked like an angel. Were they being grown inside them? Some looked fully developed, while others looked like children, and some had yet to even take human shape. It was like a model of the growth phases of an angel.
This looks like something from a civilization more advanced than anything I can imagine, Dorothy thought. I imagine this looks like Jildora’s lab, though I’ve only heard stories about it. If I remember right, he shouldn’t have been able to reach this continent. So was this the work of one of the Ten Authorities? No, that’s not it. Judging from the state this facility’s in, it’s not new. At the very least, a fair number of years have passed since it was built. Which means someone built this and has been maintaining it for a while...right? Hmm, unfortunately, there is one extremely suspicious fallen angel who seems like she might be involved.
Dorothy was thinking of the culprit behind the Ten Authorities’ revival: Luquille. She was one of the few angels allowed to move freely within Isla Heaven, and the intense feelings she’d built up for Mel had turned her into a fanatic, resulting in her wanting to reinstate Mel as the Goddess of Reincarnation. Dorothy had never considered her an ally. In fact, she viewed the fallen angel as a treacherous snake in their midst.
The angels here seem to have been artificially made as puppets. If she’s been using this facility over the years to experiment with creating artificial bodies, I can understand how this all came to be. The problem is whether or not the fanatic could truly make such an advanced facility by herself, but...I bet Jildora is involved somehow. I don’t know exactly how, but I can’t think of any other way this could have happened.
Luquille could have acted in secret to have the fallen angels do research for her, feeding her information up in Isla Heaven. Or she could have had a direct connection with Jildora. It was even possible that DarkMel, back when she was the Black Goddess, had handed over the technology as an investment for Kelvin’s future enjoyment. Now that Jildora and that version of DarkMel were no longer in this world, there was no way to confirm any of these theories other than asking Luquille directly. But Dorothy couldn’t imagine Luquille answering truthfully. So, basically, there was nothing she could do on that front.
Dorothy sighed. “This is way too much trouble. Oh, whoops. I should finish you off first. But don’t worry, I’m ready.”
She had reverted back to her human form and now pointed her large staff at Hazama. She’d been continuing to cast her magic around Hazama even as she’d been pondering.
“Mass Contagion,” Dorothy stated.
Eight spells manifested around Hazama, perfectly surrounding him. These were castings of Contagion, which would decay everything within their area of effect. Compared to spells like Maul, shaped like an arrow, and Decadence, which concentrated the effect on the area around the soles of her feet, Contagion traded the power to age its targets by decades for a wider range. The magic spread out from its origin in a wave of decay. It would be incredibly difficult to dodge these brutal spells—in fact, it was nearly impossible. Even more so for Hazama, who was both unable to move and completely surrounded by them. Dorothy planned to erase his repulsive existence without a trace.
Thanks to Eternal’s properties, the waves of decay stopped mere millimeters from Hazama. But that would leave him a minuscule amount of time. No one else could stop the passage of time, and everything within this facility had already been affected by the spells.
“This is the end,” said Dorothy. “So I defeated one of the Three Great Authorities and destroyed this suspicious research lab. Looks like I got two birds with one stone. I’m sure Rion-san will be happy. Hee hee! Well then... Time: Resume.”
The moment time started again, Hazama’s body collapsed, and all the machines around them rapidly deteriorated before ceasing to function.
◇ ◇ ◇
The world started to move, and destruction came. Hazama didn’t even have time to finish his sentence, which had been interrupted when time had stopped. His corrupted body rotted instantly, decaying to exposed bone from the inside out. The research facility around him experienced the same effect.
Dorothy sighed. “Your tenacity is unbelievable...”
But it was too soon to assume the battle was over. Hazama’s body, which should have been annihilated by decay, suddenly expanded and returned to its original state. The event looked strange, like something coming from nothing.
“Khah...Khah hah! Khah hah hah hah hah hah! You’re no regular Black Mage, are you, girlie?” Hazama asked. “My stock just plummeted by more than a hundred in an instant.”
“Good for you,” Dorothy replied. “So, when did I say I was a Black Mage? It seems you reached that misunderstanding all on your own.”
At this point, Hazama’s body had recovered enough that he could talk.
“Damn that smart little mouth of yours... And you destroyed my feeding ground too,” he said. “Do you even understand how precious this place was?”
“Feeding ground?” Dorothy repeated after a moment’s hesitation.
“Yes, indeed. Though they’re cultured, this facility is capable of generating angel meat. I love that meat, you see, so I come here quite regularly. Well, whatever...it’s not like this is the only one available,” he replied.
Dorothy was silent, allowing him to continue.
“Oh, are you interested in angel meat too? Khah hah! If you are, then I don’t mind letting you try some,” he offered.
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” Dorothy replied flatly. She instantly fired off a casting of Maul. The attack struck Hazama’s eye, blasting it out the back of his throat before making it rot. Of course, as expected, the eye quickly regenerated.
