"How swiftly the years pass."
In a vast stone chamber that did not feel as though any human being lived there, Serie reigned among grimoires.
"To think that the disciple I raised on a whim would already bring me a disciple of her own."
Resting her chin on one hand atop a stone throne taller than she was, she looked down at her disciple and grand-disciple standing below the steps.
Slowly rising, Serie descended the stairs and approached the two of them.
When she came to stand before them, Flamme introduced her own disciple to her master.
"This is Frieren."
"One of my own kind, then."
Her voice was flat, as though she had little interest, yet there was a faint trace of amusement in it.
Frieren looked up at her master's master.
And Serie, in turn, looked down at her disciple's disciple.
The two elves gazed at one another.
Reflected in the window of Frieren's eyes was the figure of Serie. There, she saw overwhelming mana.
No, more than that.
If one looked deeper, it was different.
It was an amount of mana no human could ever reach even through a lifetime of effort, yet an even greater power slept within it.
It was transcendent mana, so absolute that it did not even give the impression of being suppressed, and yet Frieren was trying to peer still farther beyond it.
*By elven reckoning, she's still a snot-nosed child. And yet she has this much talent. No wonder Flamme took her as a disciple.*
Serie's intuition, which always revealed the right answer, told her so.
Even after seeing her mana, there was no fear in Frieren's eyes, no awe, no admiration.
What had settled there instead was the rational judgment that, if she fought her now, she could not win.
"You're strong. I like you. Name the Magic you desire. I shall grant you exactly one."
"The Magic I desire...?"
At Frieren's question, Serie answered from the countless mages she had known.
"I possess knowledge of nearly every kind of Magic in history. Mages are creatures who devote their lives to pursuing the Magic they desire. Speak it, and I will bestow it upon you."
It was like the whisper of a serpent tempting her with sweet fruit.
What mage would cast aside the chance to receive, for nothing, the Magic they had pursued all their life?
At most, one might only hesitate over whether it was a lie.
And yet—
"I don't need it."
Frieren refused.
Without a moment's hesitation.
At that firm answer, Serie's eyes widened in surprise, but soon the corners of her lips curled upward.
Before someone so far above her, Frieren answered with fearless boldness.
"Searching for Magic is the most enjoyable part."
Beside her, Flamme smiled at Frieren's answer as well.
Returning at once to her usual expression, Serie gave her assessment of Frieren.
"Flamme, this child will not do after all. She lacks ambition. The kind of blazing ambition that burns fiercely."
At those pecking, needling words, Flamme rose to her feet.
"Master. This child will one day defeat the Demon King."
An elf who possessed not ambition that burned her own body to ash, but a cold heart.
"A mage like this is the one who will open an age of peace."
"Are you saying that is impossible for me?"
Dissatisfaction.
It was only natural that Serie would be displeased to hear such words from the disciple she cherished.
"A master who seeks battle enough to part the sea in search of the strong cannot defeat the Demon King. It's impossible for the likes of us."
Well, that was true.
"Master, you can't even imagine yourself living in a peaceful age, can you?"
"..."
Serie's eyes shifted aside.
Magic was a world of image. What one could not imagine, one could not bring into being.
"Frieren is a mage of a peaceful age."
Words that should have ended there went one step further.
"Just like Ainz."
"Why bring that fellow into this?"
At those words, Serie frowned.
"Do you remember what you said before, Master? As a human, he lacks something too. He also lacks desire. If anything, he's such a hopeless person that he still can't properly name even a single kind of Magic he likes."
"And what does that have to do with defeating the Demon King?"
"To my eyes, Frieren resembles Ainz."
Frieren had been listening to their exchange, but at the mention of Ainz, she cut in.
"Where is this person called Ainz? You said we were coming to see the remarkable person who had been made into a statue."
At that, Flamme slumped her shoulders.
"Who knows. I came thinking he'd be here too, but he isn't. Maybe he came to dislike me after what happened back then."
"What, you came to see Ainz?"
"That's right. I have something to ask of him."
Flamme turned to Serie.
"I'll be blunt, Master. May I borrow Ainz?"
"That fellow is neither my disciple nor anything of the sort."
"Then at least pass along the message as a partner."
She shouted toward the empty space at the rear of the stone chamber.
"Ainz, show Frieren a grand spell. The kind of grand spell so astonishing it'll knock her flat."
Then she turned her head back to Serie and said,
"Something like that."
*
After the two master and disciple had left, Serie, now alone, murmured,
"What do you think?"
The space sharpened, and beside her the figure of a man appeared.
"Ainz."
Emerging from the darkness, I said,
"She saw through it from the very beginning."
It was Magic little different from erasing oneself from the world. Even though I had hidden myself with Perfect Unknowable, Flamme had realized I was here.
"How did she know? I hid myself perfectly."
"It was powerful Magic, enough that even I would have missed it had I not already been aware of you. As you say, it was perfect concealment. But there is one thing you do not understand."
Perfect Unknowable was near-perfect Magic that erased presence, sound, everything—but there was one thing Ainz had overlooked.
"Flamme knows very well what kind of person Ainz Ooal Gown is."
Flamme had not seen through Perfect Unknowable.
Instead, she had been looking at something else entirely.
The life of a friend she had watched all this time and walked beside.
"...So you're saying she guessed where I would be and happened to be right?"
"Yes. She already knew you would be there, so she must have sensed the incongruity of something being in that place."
What kind of absurd logic was that?
That thought crossed my mind, but then I began to think that, if it was Flamme, perhaps she truly could do such a thing.
"She truly is remarkable. If she had devoted that talent solely to Magic, then even with a human lifespan she might have become a mage who surpassed me."
If that was the disciple she had marked out, then perhaps she truly might defeat the Demon King.
And Flamme had not been the only one to find me.
Was it mere coincidence? Or had she heard something from Flamme?
I rolled the girl's name over in my mind—the girl who had looked exactly at the place where I stood, once and only once.
"Frieren, was it."
While Flamme and Serie were speaking, Frieren, seated nearby, had met Ainz's eyes.
It did not seem she had been certain it was me, but she appeared to have vaguely sensed that something was there.
At that moment, I understood. That was the mage of a peaceful age Flamme had wished for.
What a monster.
If she reached the same state of maturity as Serie, she held the potential to become a mage greater than any other.
*At the end of your long, long revenge, the one beside you will not be me, but one who inherits my will.* Was that what she had said?
So after that day, you truly began walking toward that future.
As Serie watched Ainz sitting on the stone throne in thought, she asked,
"That aside, you still haven't said it. Why exactly did you hide yourself?"
Why I, who had been with Serie, hid the moment those two arrived.
The reason was simple.
"After what happened in the capital, things became awkward between us."
Leaving behind one's will to the next generation and departing.
Ainz knew that act from long memory.
Not a warm and tender memory, but a lonely and desolate past.
The sight of a guild hall lined with countless weapons. The place had felt like a corpse, enough to make him sick.
The Flamme of that time had overlapped with the guildmates who had left, asking him to look after the guild.
Once he began to think that way, he could no longer bring himself to approach her.
He had kept his distance for fear of being wounded.
It felt as though he had gone from a flying squirrel to a hedgehog.
To such an Ainz, Serie said only one thing.
"Are you a child?"
"I have nothing to say to that."
With a sigh, Serie crooked a finger at Ainz.
*What is it? Is she telling me to come closer?*
When I obediently approached, she grabbed my robe and tugged it downward.
Meeting my gaze, she removed the mask of jealousy from my face.
In a space with nothing to obstruct us, our eyes met levelly.
"Ainz, do you know why I tried to give Frieren a grimoire?"
"Because she's strong?"
I remembered, because I had heard every word spoken in this stone chamber.
"If that were all, I would have given you Magic on the very first day you came here with me. What I truly desire is for someone to look upon the same scenery as I do."
A living grimoire from the age of myth. The mage closest to the goddess.
Through the ages, she had been called by countless epithets.
There had even been a time in the past when, like Ainz, a statue had been raised in her honor.
Though by now it had weathered away and scattered with time.
And yet, because she was an elf, because she loved Magic, she had ceaselessly honed that discipline until no one could reach her realm.
And so she had wished for another to behold the same scenery she did, and in time Piaveria was born, through which she passed on her Magic.
"I understand your lonely heart."
With that, she pushed against my chest and put distance between us.
"Serie, you..."
"That aside, that Frieren girl. Saying that searching for Magic is more enjoyable, saying she won't accept my Magic—she's rather spirited, isn't she?"
As if to say the matter was settled, she wore her usual arrogant smile.
"So, as Flamme asked, teach her a lesson. Show her Magic so complex that if she saw it used, she'd be knocked flat in astonishment."
It was Magic that could not be found even in a life nearing eternity, Magic possessed by only one person in this world.
*
Far away, in an empty domain where no one dwelled.
The barrier meant to keep it unnoticed shattered in an instant.
What filled the sky was a magic circle that looked exactly like a blue celestial body.
A pillar of light swelled larger, and overwhelming heat joined heaven and earth. Before long, the land below became a blank wasteland without even a handful of flowers.
In ages long, long past,
there had been a legendary spell from the era said to have been when the goddess walked the earth.
The name of that Magic, bearing a majesty enough to call that myth to mind, was.
<Fallen Down>
Looking up at the sight of the sky collapsing, Frieren protested to the absent Flamme,
"You're telling me to learn a spell like this? Even with all the time in the world, that's impossible..."
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