Kagurazaka Chizuru, one of the founding members of the A-rank explorer clan Anthem, had been born as the third daughter of a branch family of the Kagurazaka household—a distinguished martial lineage.

The Kagurazaka family was an old house that had carried the blood of warriors and their sword arts from the Kamakura period down to the modern age, making its living through the protection of important figures and the hiring out of personal bodyguards. The “martial might” of the Kagurazaka was never lent out for money alone; it was granted only when the family acknowledged the righteousness of the employer.

Chizuru herself had not been taught the deeper details, but even before the world fused with another, the Kagurazaka had been a family of arms, and even in the present age after the fusion, their standing and pride had not wavered.

That was because, after “Dungeons” appeared across the world, some of the eccentrics who almost immediately set out to explore them had included the Kagurazaka family.

They had adapted quickly to the post-fusion world and gained an advantage over other houses—and that much had been fine. But the dungeons that had appeared in this world were not so forgiving.

No matter how skilled a swordsman one might be, without sufficient mana affinity they could not adapt to dungeons. It was said that up to C-rank dungeons could be cleared through technique alone, but even then the limit had eventually been reached, and culling had occurred.

At present, the head of the Kagurazaka family was—someone from a branch line once scorned for having “thin blood,” the child of a concubine.

Possessing extraordinary mana affinity, and driven by a level of training that bordered on the abnormal, he had married into the main line as the husband of the then-head’s daughter, and later ascended to become the family head himself.

That a man once derided as a lowly concubine’s child had adapted better than anyone else in the Kagurazaka to the world after its fusion with another, becoming the head of a new era, still left a stagnant undercurrent within the family. Disgust at someone of such birth, and yet fear of a strength they could not help but acknowledge. Now, even in simple sword technique, no one could rival the head of the house.

Mind, skill, and body.

Those were what the various “Paths” were generally said to cultivate. Even the Kagurazaka sword arts, which were not a “Path” in themselves, could not become strong without them.

An unbreakable mind. Refined skill. A body capable of executing them.

And now, in the present age—mana affinity.

Mind, skill, body, and magic.

Within the Kagurazaka family, Kagurazaka Chizuru had been a cursed child in whom only “magic” stood out.

◇◇◇

She leapt toward the left head of the three-headed hydra and severed it with an iaijutsu strike.

The right head had already been cut down by a single blow from the leader, Saitou Megumi, swinging her greatsword with both hands. That a girl who had once been nothing more than an ordinary middle schooler could now unleash an attack rivaling—or even surpassing—Chizuru’s made her let out a wry smile at the sheer unfairness of the world.

Yes—no doubt the techniques most members of the Kagurazaka family had devoted their entire lives to honing would still not measure up to Saitou Megumi, barely twenty years old. They would probably be scattered in moments. And the same would be true if Megumi were replaced with Chizuru.

Most of the family members she had feared so deeply as a child were, to Chizuru now, nothing more than a faceless rabble.

Even so, the Kagurazaka had not lost their standing as a martial house. One reason was that, while not on Chizuru’s level, they still produced capable explorers. The other was that the world did not run on explorers alone.

—Ah, I’m thinking about pointless things.

Even as that thought crossed her mind, she was almost unconsciously diverting all the mana in her body into defense to block the aftershock of the magic arrow Irselia was about to fire.

Without even half a second of delay, just as predicted, a single shot of Miming Vrede slammed home—piercing straight through the middle head of the hydra and blasting her away with the shockwave.

Ten meters up in the air.

Straight sideways.

Who in the Kagurazaka family could possibly weather something like this unharmed? No amount of properly honed technique alone could ever deal with it.

But Chizuru could.

Thanks to the mana defense she had prepared in advance, she had been blown away, but the impact itself barely registered. She also understood exactly where her body was flying.

“—Hah!”

She exhaled sharply, forcibly twisting her body midair to control her posture, and landed hard on the steel framework of a transmission tower she should have crashed into, using every spring of her body and her mana to make the landing work.

Three heads—severed.

A hydra-type monster believed to have appeared due to the Noumi Dungeon’s Stampede. With the direction and covering fire of Irselia, the S-rank elven explorer, it was true that she had cut off its head with her own hands.

But still—

“…What? What is this…?”

The intuition she had cultivated as a member of the Kagurazaka family refused to grant Chizuru any peace of mind. A sense of discomfort, an unease like she had missed something important.

Megumi, who had been blown in the opposite direction from Chizuru, did not land neatly where she was. Instead, she was shouting about something toward the remains of the Noumi Dungeon branch office… the ruins left behind after being destroyed by the hydra.

Searching for and rescuing those in need.

Choosing to help people before anything else—like it was the most natural thing in the world.

That was the quality she possessed as Anthem’s leader, despite being a year younger.

If it was in the direction Megumi indicated, Chizuru would not mind giving her life.

Just a few days earlier, when she had been unable to abandon Midou Airi at the Kamioka Dungeon, Chizuru had felt no dissatisfaction with that decision either.

Once Megumi said she would do it, then even if Chizuru survived by prioritizing her own life, she was certain it would lead to a miserable existence. She had held that strange conviction. She no longer remembered when it had begun, but that was how deeply she trusted Megumi.

But that trust was faith in her as a guide who showed the way. When it came to situational judgment, Megumi still had a softness to her. Her perception of discomfort and danger lagged a beat—or two—behind Chizuru’s.

“Leader! Get away!”

She shouted without thinking, but she had no way of knowing whether her voice reached Megumi or not.

Megumi was not facing Chizuru, but the hydra’s corpse—and from that corpse, a five-headed hydra was born. It burst forth by tearing open its own belly, and the blood that spilled out surged like a flash flood, sweeping Megumi away.

“…What?”

She was certain they had cut off three of the hydra’s heads.

No—she had been mistaken. They had struggled even against the dragon that appeared on the fourteenth floor of the mutated Kamioka Dungeon. The theory had been that the mana of the Kamioka Dungeon, which had produced that dragon and the black knight, had flowed into the Sugai Dungeon and the Noumi Dungeon. Both had exceeded their mana capacity, and that was why the Dungeon Stampede had occurred.

Then it made no sense that the heads had been severed so easily by Chizuru’s and Megumi’s attacks.

Which meant that hydra—

From three heads to five. And if those five heads were cut simultaneously… would it become eight next?

A chill ran through her as she looked at the hydra.

The newly born five-headed creature, having burst out of the three-headed body that birthed it, was slightly smaller in overall length—but in exchange, its mana was far more condensed. Even the total amount of mana she could feel against her skin had increased. It was clearly not an opponent she could hope to face head-on.

Using the steel framework of the transmission tower as a foothold, Chizuru kept her knees bent and reached for the sword at her waist, pouring mana into it so she could draw at any moment.

The iaijutsu stance.

As sword techniques went, it was one she was relatively skilled at—viewers of the stream loved to hype it up as a “godspeed draw” and the like. In reality, though, it was obviously faster to just take a proper stance and cut.

To begin with, iaijutsu and quick-draw techniques were meant for drawing a blade and landing a strike in an instant. The idea that you could swing a sword faster than from a ready stance was pure fiction—utter nonsense.

And yet—

As an A-rank explorer, Kagurazaka Chizuru now possessed power straight out of fiction, and could wield techniques just as nonsensical.

She compressed mana inside the scabbard, then released it at the instant of the draw to accelerate the blade. At the same time as the sword accelerated, the unleashed mana itself became an edge, further amplifying the cutting power. That kind of absurdity did not exist in Kagurazaka swordsmanship.

But still—

Would that absurdity even work on that?

The five-headed hydra that had emerged from the three-headed body shook itself like a dog climbing out of water, spraying blood in every direction. But it would surely begin moving in less than five seconds.

It would rear up, balancing on its hind legs and tail in some incomprehensible upright posture, swing around serpentine heads that had to be over twenty meters long, and pour mana on the level of an upper-tier S-rank purely into destruction.

“…!”

She couldn’t cut it. She couldn’t even imagine cutting it.

Charge in like before, leap up, and sever the heads with an iaijutsu strike? Impossible. The instant she rushed in, the heads would move like whips and smash her aside—like swatting a slow-moving gnat out of the air with a flyswatter.

“G… ngh… ugh…!”

She ground her teeth together, maintaining the iaijutsu stance, yet Chizuru could not move. She could not bring herself to decide to leap into certain death.

If Megumi—the leader—told her to go, she could leap without hesitation.

If Irselia gave her instructions, she could withdraw without fear.

If Airi delivered words of power to her, she felt like she could do anything.

But now she could only watch the gigantic monster, on the verge of going berserk.

This is why I am—

In a state where her perception was accelerated, as though a single second had been stretched dozens of times over, a further voice slipped out from even deeper inside.

This is why you are—

Drop by drop, it fell somewhere within her heart, seeping in.

And then, in that instant, something came—light.

“――Huh?”

She thought she saw something shining come flying in from far away—and in the very next instant, it came to a stop slightly above and to the side of the five-headed hydra, scattering an overwhelming amount of light.

There was no way an object could simply stop in midair, and yet to Chizuru, within her accelerated perception, that was exactly how it looked.

A fraction of a moment later—still less than an instant—an explosive sound reached her.

It was because it had arrived at supersonic speed. The intense light that seemed to reject the night itself was likely carving through the air resistance with mana. At the same time, it had expelled mana like reverse thrust to decelerate, completely killing its inertia and velocity.

Hence, the midair halt.

The source of that torrent of light was that holy sword once wielded by the dragon-slaying female swordsman—true to its name, Lightbringer.

And standing atop that holy sword, raising a crimson-black cursed blade—

“Ah… ah… aah!”

A shuddering, electrifying rapture surged through Chizuru’s body, as though joy itself had been injected directly into her spine. Her entire body trembled, and a voice escaped her without restraint.

Because it was so beautiful.

What a flawless—single-stroke cut.

“Ah… ahh… aaahhh…!”

The mana she had packed into her scabbard dissipated into mist. A slash from a position that should never have reached somehow swept away all five heads at once. It looked as though it was only natural that they would be severed if the katana were swung like that.

It was a strike that blatantly ignored all logic, and yet Chizuru felt not the slightest doubt. She even thought that there was no way those heads could have survived that slash.

Hayasaka Tooru.

The single stroke that had saved her at the Kamioka Dungeon.

And now, another stroke delivered while riding atop the holy sword that had come hurtling in at faster than the speed of sound.

“—Tooru-sama! Ahh! Just as I thought—you truly are—”

A flash that surpassed anything produced by any member of the Kagurazaka family.

A god.

He was the god of the sword himself.

◇◇◇

After that, Chizuru honestly did not remember much.

Before she knew it, she was riding in a wagon driven by Hamamatsu Nanami. Megumi was alive. For some reason, Irselia got out partway through. They returned to the hotel… and then Chizuru checked the Anthem stream archive. She had thought that, from Irselia’s position with the camera at the time, Tooru’s arrival might have been captured.

Her prediction was correct—but the harvest was meager.

From the pulled-back angle, it was clear that Tooru had come flying in faster than sound, but he had simply been too far away. No matter how much she zoomed in, she could not make out that single stroke.

She did learn one thing, though: the span of time that had felt like roughly a hundred seconds to her—“from the birth of the five-headed hydra out of the three-headed one to Tooru cutting it down”—had, in reality, been less than nineteen seconds. Counting only from when the five-headed hydra appeared and Megumi was swept away by blood, it had been a mere four seconds.

Chizuru replayed those four seconds again and again.

Until the afterglow of that rapture injected into her spine finally faded.

…Which was why it took her a while to notice the fact that Irselia was staying over at Tooru’s place.