Gardenia’s Heart

Nia kept ascending.

With her wings and her magic, even gravity had ceased to matter.

The ground, the sea, the land, the forests, and the mist all faded into the distance, becoming nothing more than an uneven tapestry spread far beneath her.

She didn’t stop.

The air grew thinner, but she did not miss it.

The world’s curvature became increasingly distinct. The darkness stretching as far as her eyes could see grew so profound it threatened to swallow her whole. The stars, once distant specks of light, unfolded into an ocean of diamonds.

The temperature dropped to a level no living creature should have been able to endure, yet her body remained warm—likely the result of dragon blood racing through her veins, healing the wounds her own spell relentlessly inflicted upon her.

Now she floated. No beating of her lightning wings. No teleportation to propel herself forward. Only the gentle drift of her body through the emptiness of space.

Without air, there could be no sound.

And yet—

”So I really managed to make you angry, didn’t I?”

Standing hundreds of meters away, a tall woman defied all common sense.

Her black dress contrasted with her wheat-colored hair and white wings. One black eye and one silver eye framed her striking beauty, lending an innate nobility to her otherwise rebellious demeanor.

This time, however, something overshadowed that beauty.

From the base of her chest to much of her abdomen, a massive hole of exposed flesh laid her torso open, with ribs, organs, and blood drifting weightlessly through the vacuum. Amid a constant bubbling of crimson fluid, her skeletal frame rebuilt itself, followed by flesh rapidly growing back until the wound vanished within seconds.

Watching Bahamut—already fully recovered from the attack that had launched her into space—Nia showed no surprise. Instead, she focused on the faint tingling now spreading through her ears.

Sound required a medium through which to travel, but by transmitting pure, precisely controlled pulses of mana, it was possible to carry one’s voice regardless of the surrounding environment.

”Creative use. It doesn’t look like you came up with that on the spot. Have you been here before?”

Reproducing the technique flawlessly on her very first attempt, Nia watched as the dragon merely shrugged.

Her last attack had failed.

But it had confirmed something important.

As a metamorph, every part of Nia’s gelatinous body was equally her true self. She had no vital points—but that also meant there was no distinction between where she was struck. An injury to her hair would damage her just as much as one to her neck. Consequently, attacks that destroyed large portions of her body at once posed the greatest threat.

That dragon woman, however, was different.

Though she mimicked a humanoid form, she did not share all the vulnerabilities of an ordinary human. Her regeneration was astonishingly fast—nearly instantaneous—but from the very beginning of the battle, Nia had carefully measured exactly how long each of Bahamut’s wounds took to heal.

Whether Nia destroyed her arms, her legs, her waist, or part of her face, the regeneration time was always the same.

There was, however, one part of Bahamut’s body whose regeneration was ever so slightly slower than the rest.

Not because that area was unimportant enough to receive less attention from her dragon blood.

Quite the opposite.

That part was protected so instinctively that her body tolerated no imperfections in its regeneration.

Throughout the thousands of exchanges they had shared, there was only one place Bahamut had done everything in her power to keep safe.

”Your heart.”

Every time Bahamut shielded her neck, her head, or any other part of her body, she had only been trying to divert Nia’s attention from what was truly her greatest vulnerability.

”Your body naturally protects what matters most. No matter what kind of attack I used, you only ever became truly cautious when it was aimed at your heart.”

Placing both hands on her hips with unmistakable pride, a smile spread across Nia’s face. Like a student triumphantly presenting the results of her research to a teacher, she narrowed her crimson eyes, watching Bahamut’s expression tighten almost imperceptibly.

”Indeed. A dragon’s heart is its most vital organ.”

Waving a hand dismissively, Bahamut let out a quiet sigh before fixing her gaze on the girl.

”But what difference does that make to you now?”

It wasn’t a weakness.

Nia already knew that.

After fighting this woman thousands of times, the shapeshifter understood that, as absurd as it sounded, Bahamut possessed no ordinary weakness.

”The fact that you’re finally defending it means my current self can kill you if I land a hit there, doesn’t it?!”

Without the slightest warning, every part of Nia’s existence convulsed.

It felt as though every artery, every nerve, even her very soul were trying to tear themselves free.

It was as if thousands of blades had pierced her skin while her blood turned into shattered glass.

The dragon’s bloodlust flooded the vacuum of space, focused entirely on her. It burned hotter than any flame.

Her skin seared. Her hands trembled. Simply keeping her eyes fixed on that woman felt enough to erode her sanity.

She had been right.

She could kill Bahamut now.

Among all living beings in the world, Gardenia had stepped into the realm of those powerful enough to threaten the dragon’s life.

And because of that... Bahamut would now face her as someone worthy of that title.

Killing a hero.

It truly was easier said than done.

Her dark mana could not sustain her spell much longer. Two minutes—that was all the time she had left to defeat Bahamut.

Even so, Gardenia would never give up.

Their wills collided as the battle rushed toward its conclusion.

Pushing off chunks of rock orbiting the planet, Nia launched herself at her opponent.

Using her usual portals would have allowed her to close the distance instantly, but she couldn’t maintain both forms of magic at the same time. Besides, deactivating [Nebula Maiden] was no different from leaving herself completely exposed to a fatal strike from Bahamut.

Meanwhile, with nothing more than a beat of her ivory wings, the hero weaved effortlessly through the countless fragments of drifting meteoroids. Watching Bahamut maneuver through space using nothing but waves of mana to propel herself, Nia couldn’t help but wonder just how vast the dragon’s mana reserves truly were.

She had no time to dwell on it.

A white tail covered in crystallized scales lashed toward her.

Teleporting again and again in rapid succession, Nia narrowly evaded the strike. Although she could redirect almost all of the force behind Bahamut’s attacks, actually allowing herself to be hit—and suffering even the remaining fraction of the impact—was not an option.

Materializing directly behind the hero, the purple-haired girl drove her leg into the center of Bahamut’s shoulder blade.

Unlike a human, however, the dragon’s ivory wings folded inward the instant Nia appeared, absorbing the entire impact.

There was no time to dwell on her frustration.

She teleported again. And again. And again.

Even in the vacuum of space, Bahamut maintained her maximum speed, forcing Nia to push herself to the absolute limit just to keep up.

As she gave chase, an enormous chunk of rock hurtled toward her.

Throwing a punch, her fist cloaked in the power of the stars smashed into the speeding mass.

The dark boulder—larger than the trunk of a giant tree—exploded apart, filling the surrounding void with a vast cloud of drifting dust.

Thanks to the lack of gravity, the cloud of dust did not disperse quickly. Losing her vision would have been a problem—but with her mana detection, Nia should still have been able to locate Bahamut.

Or so she thought.

”This space rock... has mana?”

No matter how many pulses of dark mana she sent into her surroundings, all she sensed was the dense cloud of dark dust.

Stardust Spring had been built upon the riches of a meteorite that had struck its mountain, so meteors containing magical minerals weren’t impossible.

Even so, being caught off guard now had left her effectively blind.

Should she simply move in a random direction? No. Teleporting blindly was exactly what Bahamut wanted her to do.

Now that she knew Nia was capable of killing her, Bahamut would never let her close the distance so easily again.

Even the dragon’s killing intent had vanished. Nia was completely blind.

Deciding that defense was her best option, she sharpened her senses to their utmost limit and waited for the curtain of cosmic dust to settle.

Her crimson eyes darted across every direction.

No movement. No distortion. No surprise attack would catch her unprepared.

And because every one of her senses was pushed to its absolute limit, she had to cling desperately to her resolve to keep herself from collapsing to her knees at what appeared before her.

The sight was so absurd that Nia refused to accept it as reality.

As the veil of dust thinned—No. Even before it had fully cleared—What stood before her defied logic on every level her mind could comprehend.

Calculations were her specialty. And because of that, she knew she wasn’t mistaken.

It measured two kilometers across.

It wasn’t an ordinary rock. It wasn’t even one of the countless worthless asteroids drifting nearby.

It was a flawless mosaic of crystallized scales, each one the size of a palace, layered upon one another and radiating a majestic light of their own.

A cold bluish glow spread across its surface, pulsing almost like living veins flowing throughout the colossal construct. It looked alive. As though it had been painstakingly crafted to maximize both beauty and destruction.

And beneath that enormous mass of scales, as though she were holding it aloft in the palm of her hand, stood a beautiful woman clad in a black dress, her wheat-colored hair drifting weightlessly as she gazed upon her creation with utter indifference.

”There should be at least three hundred years’ worth of accumulated mana in this.”

Bahamut’s emotionless words sent an icy chill racing down Nia’s spine.

An attack beyond all reason. A construct born solely from the innate ability of her species.

How many living beings in the history of the world could possibly create something like this? No, the very idea that there were beings capable of rivaling such power felt like a cruel joke the world itself had made.

As she stared in horror at the colossal mass of crystallized scales, Nia felt Bahamut’s scrutinizing gaze settle upon her.

”Can you stop this?” With a motion so casual it was almost dismissive, Bahamut swung her arm.

The colossal mass of crystal scales surged forward.

Even within the vacuum, where sound did not exist, its sheer presence seemed to tear through the silence as it hurtled onward.

Like a gigantic meteor, Bahamut’s most powerful attack descended toward the metamorph.

Nia could dodge it. It would be difficult, but she had no doubt she could avoid it.

There was only one problem.

”No way...”

A whisper of disbelief escaped her lips.

Turning around to confirm what she already knew, her eyes widened in horror.

Far below—

Much farther below—

There was a single city.

Athamas.

Whirling back around in utter shock, Nia watched the two-kilometer-wide mass of crystallized scales plunge toward the planet, with herself the only thing standing in its path.

A weapon forged from centuries of Bahamut’s accumulated mana for creating dragon scales would never burn away upon reentering the atmosphere.

Was it a bluff? No, she had only known the hero for a few days, but she already understood one thing. Bahamut would never resort to something as pathetic as deception now.

Athamas, the entire Valley of Dawn...

Everything would be utterly annihilated.

Lily and Rose were still in the city of the dragons.

Even if they fled at full speed, there would be no escaping the impact.

She still had one option.

If she gave up and deactivated her spell, she could regain access to her normal portals and evacuate the two of them before the meteor struck.

She was exhausted.

There was barely any sensation left in her limbs.

When was the last time her dark mana had ever fallen this low in the middle of a battle?

She searched her mind for an answer.

Run.

Overwhelmed by the suffocating pressure radiating from the hero, there was no stopping that thought from taking hold.

That was the right choice.

The choice that had always kept her alive.

But...

But...

But she was tired of it.

It was time to make a decision.

She moved forward.

On that day, the metamorph turned her back on the safe path.

Thirty seconds.

Charging through space while pushing her dark mana to its limit, the girl never looked away again.

Thoughts of whether she could or couldn’t do it were no longer allowed to exist in her mind.

Nia charged at the hero whose title had been forged by saving the world.

As a monster, she challenged a heroic legend.

Mana. Density. Everything about that meteor of crystallized scales embodied overwhelming force and unmatched power.

Teleporting something that large wasn’t impossible for her.

But performing calculations of that scale within only a few seconds, especially in her exhausted state, was simply out of the question.

She had to destroy it.

Space.

Theoretically speaking, it was nothing more than the three-dimensional expanse in which every physical object existed and every event occurred.

Ordinarily, as a being living within space, one could influence only the entities and events contained inside it. No matter what spell she cast or how fiercely she opposed it, Nia knew she couldn’t overpower the meteor directly.

But now—

As an anomaly that no longer obeyed the world’s laws—

She wouldn’t be opposing what existed within space.

She would oppose space itself.

Traverse. Sever. Distort.

Those were the three things she could do to space.

Her portals and [Cosmos Rupture] governed the first two.

But now, she could rely only on the third.

[Nebula Maiden]

The second spell she had ever named.

She had to push it to its absolute limit.

Throwing herself straight toward the crystal meteor, Nia began twisting the fabric of space around her.

Twenty seconds.

”Bigger.”

She needed to distort a region of space larger than anything she had ever attempted before.

A tiny fracture wouldn’t be enough.

She needed an impact powerful enough to completely obliterate the meteor.

Like the cosmos itself spilling from her body through ethereal cracks, crimson and violet tendrils spread through the vacuum.

”Bigger!”

Expanding in every direction, as though the very framework of reality around her were becoming warped and uneven, the girl clad in a star-filled sky pressed onward.

As the meteor began entering the atmosphere, the air around it twisted from the heat of reentry—a silent roar heralding annihilation.

Ten seconds.

To reshape space. To move through it. To command it.

And then...To destroy it.

There was no impact.

Like an impossibly thin line, a thread of black light accompanied by the cosmos carved its way through the center of the colossal mass, from its base to its summit.

The cut was so perfect, so impossibly pure, that it seemed as though it did not belong to this world.

For a single instant everything appeared to vanish.

Then it widened.

The razor-thin fissure abruptly expanded. Around it, the crystallized scales that had once glowed with an organic blue radiance shattered one after another like countless panes of glass.

Like the distortion of a convex mirror, everything expanded before collapsing inward together with the light of the cosmos.

It was as though the very space surrounding the meteor had begun collapsing into its own mass.

The microscopic vibrations unleashed as the structure of space itself gave way created the illusion that the gigantic meteor had simply destroyed itself.

It wasn’t merely a few fragments.

Like an endless sea of grains of sand blooming across the heavens, tens of thousands of crystalline shards spread through space like newly born stars.

The wheat-haired woman in the black dress silently watched what had just happened, tilting her head.

”So it’s over, huh?”

In a way, it was anticlimactic.

Her heterochromatic eyes, usually so indifferent, now held only the faintest trace of surprise.

Nothing more.

Because nothing of her opponent remained.

Had Nia been destroyed by the backlash of her own power? Or by the collision with the meteor? It no longer mattered.

”Yeah... it’s over.”

She had no time to locate the source of that voice.

”Huh?” A confused murmur escaped her lips, accompanied by the bitter taste of blood flooding her throat.

It hurt.

Where did it hurt?

Bahamut couldn’t tell.

She tried to raise a hand toward the source of the pain, but her brain could no longer command her body.

Able to move only her eyes, she looked down.

Something crimson and still pulsating—

Wrapped in nerves—

Rested within a hand cloaked in stars.

She was in the vacuum of space.

There should have been no sound.

Yet somehow...

Her mind still registered the sickening noise of something being crushed.

Everything went black.

Zero seconds.

”Ah... Aaah... Aah...”

With almost no dark mana left in her reserves, the purple-haired girl released her spell.

The backlash came instantly.

Floating in the void, Nia’s entire body convulsed as a pain unlike anything she had ever experienced tore through her.

Her consciousness wavered.

She knew that if she lost her composure for even a single moment, she would black out.

Without the strength to replenish her gelatinous body, or the dark mana needed to produce dragon blood, wounds covered her from head to toe.

And yet, drifting aimlessly through the emptiness of the cosmos, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sight before her.

The planet was beautiful.

With nothing left to distract her, her gaze remained fixed on the blue-green sphere. Much of it was veiled beneath the Demon King’s gray mist, yet even so, the view before her was beyond words.

Born inside a cave hidden within a labyrinth, the metamorph had never imagined she would one day witness something like this.

”The world really is beautiful, isn’t it?”

”!?”

The voice, emerging from absolute nowhere, startled the exhausted girl.

Summoning every ounce of strength she had left, Nia turned her head.

A woman in a black dress was holding her.

She clenched her teeth, ready to resist with whatever little strength remained—

Until a comforting warmth spread throughout her body.

”Relax. I’m not going to attack you anymore. I’m not a sore loser.”

Holding Nia with surprising gentleness, Bahamut wrapped her freezing body in her own mana, shielding her from the deadly cold of space. An awkward smile crossed her lips.

”It’s been a very long time since someone actually managed to kill me.”

Though she wanted to respond, Nia had no strength left.

She simply accepted the warmth.

”Tell me...” After a long silence, Bahamut spoke again. ”At some point, you must have met one, didn’t you? An enemy so overwhelmingly powerful that nothing you tried had any effect... one against whom all of your efforts were completely meaningless.”

It was a question Nia had never expected.

Yet the answer came instantly.

The Torment.

Back when Akasha had not yet become her wife’s fairy, the black wolf had been the first opponent to truly make Nia realize how weak she was.

Watching the expression on the girl’s face, Bahamut knew she had remembered someone.

She didn’t need the details.

Only the answer mattered.

”You never entered a battle unless you had complete control over the situation, right? But that one time. The one time you lost control over everything around you and had no choice but to fight...” Bahamut’s gaze quietly met Nia’s. ”...why didn’t you run?”

”Because if I ran away, my wife would have been killed.”

Nia didn’t hesitate for even a moment.

”Hahahaha!”

And Bahamut couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

Seeing the irritated look on Nia’s face, Bahamut shook her head in silent apology before channeling more mana to keep her warm.

”As your teacher, let me teach you something.”

Facing the planet before them, Bahamut extended her hand.

”When you’ve lived for a very long time and experienced enough of the world, you can tell what’s going through someone’s mind from a single glance.”

She smiled, baring her fangs as her eyes sharpened, staring straight into the core of the metamorph’s being.

”The first time I met the two of you face to face... do you remember what you were thinking?”

That had been the night before the banquet.

Appearing so suddenly, with a presence so immense that it overwhelmed every other dragon combined, Bahamut had filled Nia with overwhelming dread.

If she had to put it into words...

”There was no way I could win. I had to figure out how to escape.”

”Exactly. And now... do you know what your wife was thinking at that exact same moment?”

Answering immediately, as though she had always known, Bahamut slowly closed her outstretched hand.

”Lily thought, ’How can I kill the person standing in front of me if she tries to attack us?’”

Nia’s eyes widened.

”Even standing before someone like me, the first thing that girl thought about was how she could defeat me if I became a threat.”

Bahamut laughed again, nearly doubling over before covering her face with one hand to calm herself.

Even so, the exhilaration in her voice remained.

”Isn’t that insane? It’s been centuries since someone looked me in the eye and the very first thing reflected in their gaze was a vision of their own victory. But don’t get me wrong. There wasn’t a chance she could have killed me even once the way you just did. But that’s exactly the point. It didn’t stop her. Those weren’t the eyes of someone preparing to die. They were the eyes of someone who fully understood the difference in strength... and still intended to fight. It was so unexpected that even I had to acknowledge her.”

Now Nia understood why Bahamut called Lily by her name while addressing everyone else differently. It wasn’t because they had known each other before. It was because Bahamut had come to respect Lily the moment they met.

”Listen carefully, and engrave this into the very core of your existence. Wanting to run away isn’t wrong. It’s a perfectly valid strategy, and there are times when you absolutely should. What is wrong is giving up on victory before the battle even begins. If you don’t believe you can defeat your enemy, then the fight is already lost before it even starts.” Her fanged smile grew sharper. ”A person only becomes truly strong when they have something they desperately want to protect. If what I treasure most stood behind me and the entire world stood before me, trying to harm it… I would fight the world itself.”

Reaching inside her dress, Bahamut withdrew a single object.

The book looked detached from reality itself.

Its cover was filled with incomprehensible script, while a faint azure glow seeped from its pages.

”You’ve earned it, Gardenia. It’s yours.”

Placing the Book of Truth into the shapeshifter’s hands, Bahamut expected to hear a certain response.

Instead—

”I’m not calling you ’Teacher.’”

Pouting with an unmistakable frown, Nia hugged the book tightly against her chest. Running her fingers across the surface of the Book of Truth, the exhausted girl wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to react.

She had won.

Even now, that fact still didn’t feel real.

Unable to restrain herself any longer, Nia slowly dissolved the entire structure of the book into her body.

A tremendous surge of dark mana flooded her exhausted form.

Crimson-violet tendrils spread outward into the surrounding space, sending ripples in every direction. Even Bahamut could feel her entire body tingle in response. And then it disappeared completely into the girl.

The fourth volume of the Book of Truth had been consumed.

Two remained.

”It looks like things are getting pretty lively down there.” Lowering her gaze toward the planet, Bahamut’s lips curled into a smile.

Although she couldn’t see nearly as far as Bahamut could, Nia still had a part of her body down there.

”Lily...” Murmuring her wife’s name, the metamorph felt her body tremble as fear welled up inside her.

”I thought we’d have more time, but things are escalating much faster than I expected.” Scratching the back of her neck, Bahamut shifted her gaze from the planet to the girl she was still holding, keeping warm with her mana. ”What are you going to do? Lily isn’t weak, but the situation she’s in isn’t exactly favorable. If you don’t go, they’ll be in trouble, but...”

Nia’s body had been torn apart to the point that she could no longer distinguish one injury from another.

Even though her dark mana had recovered, the exhaustion weighing on her was so overwhelming that neither her mind nor her body could focus enough to produce dragon blood and regenerate.

The fact that she could still speak and keep her eyes open—no, that she remained conscious at all—was already a miracle worthy of praise.

Even so...

”I’m going... to protect what matters to me.”

Forcing her battered body to move, Nia slipped free from Bahamut’s arms and began making her way back toward the planet.

She didn’t know how much she could still do.

But she had to be there.

”What a troublesome disciple...”

Grabbing the purple-haired girl by the neck, Bahamut pulled her back.

”I promised to stop the war if you won, but... I think things will turn out better if I don’t interfere.”

Nia looked at her with genuine confusion.

Ignoring it, Bahamut hooked two fingers into the corners of Nia’s mouth and forced it open, exposing her throat.

”I’ll help you... but only this once.”

Nia’s confusion lasted only another second.

Biting into her own forearm, Bahamut tore a deep gash in her flesh with her fangs.

Holding her arm directly above the girl’s open mouth, a heavy stream of crimson blood poured down Nia’s throat.

”Go protect what matters to you.”