The Second Match - 1

The only plant life was blighted vegetation with shriveled yellow leaves.

It was the only natural life that could be found within the Mari Wastes' surrounding enormous gas field of the Mari Landburrow.

It was a desolate land, with deep crevices running like lightning all over, covered in parched bedrock. The lights of Aureatia, filled with vivacious activity, were supported by this dead land.

With the commencement of the Sixways Exhibition, there was a chance that there would be a battle between two monsters that far surpassed any minia in scale, and thus it was determined there were no better candidates to hold such a battle than here, in the Mari Wastes.

The gas-mining facilities were still a ways ahead in the distance, and there wasn't any minian race zones of activity as far as the eye could see. If there were any eccentrics who wished to spectate what was sure to become a calamitous fight—of course, with the spectator fee becoming tax revenue for the council— amid this terrain, absent any visual obstacle, it would also be possible to watch the flow of the match from a relatively safe and far-off position.

They had provided a special two-day break in between the first and second match. This was to allow the almost full-day ride it took for the caravans full of spectators to reach the Mari Wastes.

It was completely different from the first match. The caravan's rations were enough to cover the spectators' dinner from the night before as well as the day's lunch, and they were all hushed in somber dread, as if watching over a myth.

Then, if the citizens looked through their binoculars or monocular glasses… on one of the two table-shaped plateaus facing each other, they could make out a white silhouette that reflected the sun like cold steel.

Similar to Toroa the Awful, it was a being none among them had ever witnessed before, yet which still exuded a presence that forced all of them to accept she was real.

The strongest being within the Sixways Exhibition. A dragon. A true legend.

Lucnoca the Winter.

Absolutely none of them noticed the puny outline of a man standing beside her.

"…I hesitated the whole time."

Aureatia's Sixth General, Harghent the Still, wrapped his entire body up in a thick blanket and was looking down on the expanse of land, split up by dark crevices.

Lucnoca the Winter was a terrifying dragon but also an individual being living within the logic and reason of this world. She didn't constantly radiate cold air. However, the illusionary biting cold from his memories, and the premonition he had of the frigid landscape that was to come, made his body tremble.

"I thought if I told you everything, you and Alus…may no longer be on equal footing. And if winning like that…had any meaning at all. However, I can't let myself think like that, can I? Alus may know about your legend, Lucnoca, but with you being in Igania for so long, you wouldn't know anything about Alus's legend, so—"

"Harghent."

The dragon gently cut in, her clear voice wholly incongruous with her massive body.

"You take such a dreadfully long time to get to the point, don't you?" "Hngh…! I-I'm not…taking that long! Why is it never Grasse or Enu, but

always me who's told that…?! Do you really find my words so pointless?! I-I'm saying that, at this rate, you'll be at a disadvantage!"

Lucnoca folded one of her long wings and put it up against her mouth. A mannerism almost like a minia trying to hold back their laughter.

There wasn't anywhere within Aureatia's borders that could have accommodated her. Because of it, Lucnoca had only made the trip from Igania to Aureatia one day prior.

The white dragon was giddy, as though she was a young girl who had discovered a new place to play.

"Pfft, hee-hee-hee! Disadvantaged, is it? Why, I don't mind at all." "…He has a magic item, known as the Greatshield of the Dead," Harghent muttered bitterly.

He knew, with his own eyes, one part of Alus the Star Runner's fighting style. When it came to the wyvern's thoughts and personality, he was more knowledgeable than any other in the world.

"I don't know the conditions behind it, but he was able to avoid a breath

attack with it. It was how he guarded against Vikeon the Smoldering's breath. So that fatal breath of yours won't work with him. You need to think as you fight, or you'll get hit with his magic-item counterattack and lose."

"It'll work."

"Wh-what do you—?"

"I'm saying it's impossible to defend against my breath." "...Still."

Looking at her demeanor, full of unwavering self-confidence, it conversely brought a feeling of anxiety flitting through Harghent's mind.

—The dragon's breath of Lucnoca the Winter.

It was likely the Word Arts that boasted the greatest destructive power in the entire land, freezing all creation and annihilating the very landscape itself. Nevertheless, she was just like Harghent, in that she had no understanding whatsoever of the full extent of Alus the Star Runner's weapon arsenal.

Although its effects robbed heat, in complete contrast to their normal processes, Lucnoca's breath was still ultimately a type of Thermal Arts. Was that self-conceit really going to work against the wyvern that butchered a creature of Vikeon the Smoldering's grandeur?

…If I lose, it's over for me. My ambition and my honor will be fully exhausted. That was why I brought along someone who absolutely wouldn't lose

—Lucnoca the Winter. I'm sure... I'm sure I did everything right. But…but still.

His tightly clenched fists were trembling in his lap. It was partly from his premonition of the cold to come, but it carried another reason.

With this battle, something was finally going to be settled once and for all— Harghent's very life.

Alus is strong. The strongest.

He believed so more than anyone else in the world. That was precisely why he decided to fight against him.

He looked at the tall earthen pillar that rose up exactly in the middle between the two large plateaus. As the sun grew higher in the sky, the shadow stretching out along the ground would shrink. That was the signal for the start of the match. For a battle of this scale, they couldn't possibly place any official observers nearby.

At the moment when the shadow totally disappeared, the fight between the world's ultimate two dragonkin would begin.

Aureatia's Twentieth Minister, Hidow the Clamp, was taking part in this fight purely for the sake of Aureatia.

It wasn't because of his own good nature, nor was it out of loyalty for Queen Sephite or the Aureatia Assembly. In fact, Hidow had never once in his entire life been seriously concerned for another person, and he even acknowledged that he himself was a bit of a villain.

He just didn't have any ambition. Simply resolving Aureatia's problems as they came up—and nothing more.

Given that, the fact that he ended up working together with the person who held the strongest ambitions of all, the wyvern Alus the Star Runner, truly was an ironic twist of fate.

"Hey, Alus."

There was a bottomless abyss right below his feet. He was sitting down on the edge of the table-shaped plateau directly across from Lucnoca's.

Alus's responses were always slow, so whenever they'd converse, at the beginning, it would always start with Hidow talking at him in this way.

"This is nothing but a big show." " "

"You've known that a while, right? This is just some big festival for those minian race idiots to watch and enjoy all of you fighting. The whole crap about the Hero or whatever is just window dressing. Doesn't it make it all seem so absurd?"

"...... Why?"

A small silhouette looked down from an even steeper clifftop from where Hidow sat.

This was simply a question. Alus wasn't offended. He had spent enough time observing this wyvern that he could tell as much just from the tone of his voice.

He looked over in a different direction. The crowding citizens. In the wasteland landscape, they were huddled together like a windblown drift of garbage.

They had come to watch a calamity capable of annihilating them all a hundred times over as if they were on a pleasure trip. Their actions and everything about their lives seemed loathsome and senseless to Hidow.

"Those idiots aren't putting their lives on the line. They can't even solve their own problems by themselves… Heck, they don't even know what their own problems even are, really. You want a country full of idiots like that? Me? I wouldn't."

"…It's all the same,"

The wyvern blandly replied. There wasn't any emotion in his voice. "Minian races…wyverns… Everyone's the same, right?"

"So you and I are the same as them, then?"

"...I just have people I like and people I don't like... Dumb, clever… It's all too nitpicky for me, and I don't really get it…"

"At the very least, minia are like that, let me tell you." "...Why?"

"It's fine if you don't get it... More importantly, if you're going to get out, now's your last chance. There's technically an agreement that outlines a penalty of some kind, but the Aureatian army's never going to catch you flying up in the air. If it all sounds like nonsense...forget me and head back home."

Hidow knew his suggestion was a wasted effort.

Alus did whatever it was he wanted to do. Even if it was something that couldn't be measured in gains and losses.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to become a legend who had uncovered everything the world had to offer.

"It's not nonsense at all." "…You think so?"

"...... It's a match against Harghent…"

It was the same, melancholic mumble as always. However, there was a feeling of delight in his words.

The one he recognized as the greatest opponent of all. The joy to battle against the powerless Sixth General unacknowledged by anyone else.

His gazed was fixed on Lucnoca the Winter—and also not on Lucnoca the Winter at all.

"I seriously don't get it."

Hidow looked at the sky. The sun was close to its zenith. The time was fast approaching.

For a reason as simple as that, a mythical battle was at hand. All the world, save Hidow, was bound by such a simple rule. "All of you… I don't get a single one of you."

The pillar's shadow was hidden, and wings buffeted the wind above his head.

The dragon had flown into the air.

The start of the Sixways Exhibition's second match was declared. It was exceedingly quiet.

The match, the largest-scale fight throughout the games, didn't defy any of the expectations of those who witnessed it, save for those of the similarly all- powerful combatants who would claim victory.

In other words, before the sun could even set, the battle was one that brought eternal destruction to the land around it.

The conclusion taught everyone exactly how terrifying the words all- powerful could truly be.

Alus the Star Runner versus Lucnoca the Winter.