Extinction

 

Everything comes undone without warning.

 

"No matter how far you run, it's futile."

In my dragon form, I cornered the white rat at a dead end and declared as much.

There were no holes to hide in. No escape routes.

"As long as you're the one who created those goblins… I can trace the connection with magic and follow it."

"Aren't you the one wasting your time?"

The white rat replied in a calm, measured tone.

"As you well know, killing me means nothing to us. A new white individual will simply be born."

"Yes, I'm well aware."

The rats are a colony organism, a single life shared across the whole. Killing one talking white rat was about as meaningful as plucking a single hair from a human's head.

"This attempt was a failure, regrettably, but there will always be more opportunities. Unless you manage to exterminate us entirely. Though I'd say that's rather impossible."

"I wouldn't be so sure. Chryse."

"Right!"

Chryse smoothly drew a sword with both hands. It was a blade borrowed from the Swordsaints, forged entirely from hihiirokane. With a somewhat clumsy motion, she swung it down and sliced through empty air.

"What… did you just… do…?"

The white rat asked.

"I cut it," Chryse answered.

Honestly, I'd been half-skeptical she could actually pull it off.

But judging by the rat's reaction, it seemed to have worked.

"Your soul connections… the ones that spread out like a web."

"Impossible…!"

Chryse is an expert on souls. She can see them with the naked eye, without needing moonlight.

If that was the case, then perhaps she could sever those connections, too.

That was my hypothesis when I brought her along, and it appeared to have been proven right.

"… So what? I am… merely an individual assigned the function of speech. I told you before. I don't make decisions for us, nor do I hold any position of authority."

The white rat quickly regained its composure and replied.

"Are you so sure about that?"

But it seemed more like the rat was struggling to keep its composure, trying to convince itself as much as me.

"In this world, words are something very special. Magic, for instance, is built on names. Incantations stabilize magic. Sorcery can be handed to others."

These were the mysteries I had uncovered in this world over the ages.

"All of it… is built on words."

Even if you don't speak aloud, naming still requires language. That's why beasts that can only growl are incapable of using magic.

The rats had once claimed that while only one individual could speak, the others could still understand language. But was that really true?

"If you're all connected, then any individual that hears a word transmits the sound to the whole. But the ability to interpret its meaning belongs to the white rat alone, doesn't it?"

The rats themselves almost certainly had no way to verify this. They are all-as-one and one-as-all.

"And even if that weren't the case, you gave your orders to the goblins by speaking aloud. You aren't connected to the spirits you created."

"… And what of it?" the white rat growled.

"If I die, a new white individual will be born. Severing me from the colony is utterly pointless."

"Will one really be born, now that the soul connection has been cut?"

When I needled it with that, Algernon fell silent.

It had never tried before, so there was no way it could know.

But what I had in mind was something far more ruthless.

"You know what this is."

I pulled a sheet of paper from inside my coat and held it out. On it was an intricate pattern.

"This is…"

"Innis's anti-aging enchantment sorcery."

Before chasing the white rat, I'd asked Innis to let me copy it.

The design was staggeringly complex, but she'd said it was still simpler than a golem.

"You're good at stealing techniques, aren't you? Use this, and you can live far beyond your natural lifespan."

"What are you getting at?"

The white rat hadn't grasped my meaning yet. Its voice was tinged with bewilderment.

"I'm saying that if you don't use it, you'll die."

"I'll… die…?"

Where the souls of the dead go, I don't know. Whether they ascend to the heavens, return to the earth, are reborn as I was, or simply cease to exist.

All I know is this: if your memories don't carry over, it's no different from ceasing to exist.

— And conversely, if your memories do carry over, it's no different from never dying.

Just as I am living proof of that.

"That's right. You'll die. If you stay as you are, you will die. Not 'you' the collective — you, the individual standing right here, will die within a single year."

The same was true for the rest of them. Despite their fleeting lifespans of barely a year, as a colony they had essentially never experienced death. That was why they didn't fear it.

"I… will… die…?"

Any being with sufficient intelligence must feel the same terror when faced with annihilation.

The white rat seemed to have finally swallowed that fear whole.

"That can't be… Something so… absurd…"

"Then use the enchantment sorcery. As long as you use it, you can go on living."

As the sole white rat, severed from the colony.

"Algernon. I'll name you that once more. Live. Death is frightening, isn't it?"

As long as Algernon lived, the colony of rats would lose their words.

No matter how enormous the colony, they would be nothing more than ordinary rats.

This was, perhaps… the first curse I had ever cast.

A deeply vile, wicked curse, one that inflicts misery on another.

But it was the only way to contain them. Exterminating every last rat scattered and hidden across the world was impossible.

"Absurd… absurd, absurd, absurd! Something this… this ridiculous…!"

The small rat, Algernon, screamed with emotions laid bare.

Its gaze darted in every direction… and then, suddenly, locked on me.

"You… you bastard, how dare you!"

Its red eyes blazed with fury. Algernon glared at me with an intensity that could have set me ablaze, and screamed:

"Sekiguchi, Ryouji!"

How does it know that name?

Before I could even finish the thought, my body was engulfed in searing heat.

My scale-covered arms shrank. My vantage point plummeted. My sharp senses blurred and dimmed.

Perhaps because the change was being forced on me from the outside, the transformation from dragon to human, which normally took only an instant when I willed it, progressed slowly, accompanied by burning pain.

Come to think of it, the first time I took human form… when Ai had called my true name, it had been just like this.

Ah. So that's when the rat had heard it.

Powerless to do anything but wait for the transformation to finish, I cast my mind back.

When I had spoken my true name before Ai's grave, Nina had said there was no one else around.

But what she could survey was limited to within the forest. A tiny rat burrowed underground, for instance… that, she would never have noticed.

"Spear of Ice!"

Timed perfectly with my transformation, a spirit sorcery spell was unleashed. Water and ice sorcery are devastatingly effective against me.

Even a water bullet, the kind of spell that would leave an ordinary person with nothing worse than a light bruise, was enough to knock me unconscious. In dragon form I could weather it, but taking a Third Tier Spear of Ice head-on in human form meant certain death.

I had to dodge. I threw every ounce of will into moving, but my body, still caught mid-transformation from dragon to human, refused to budge.

No—!

Just as I braced for the end, an impact slammed into me, and I tumbled across the ground.

… I was alive. Everything ached, but the pain wasn't severe.

I managed to push my now-responsive body upright… and then I saw it.

"Chry… se…?"

My daughter, a Spear of Ice driven through her chest.