This was a trivial conversation Frieren and Serie shared before they informed Ainz of Flamme's death.
The will, torn into dozens of pieces, lay scattered across the floor.
"Go back, Frieren."
Beyond the falling scraps of the will, Serie's expressionless face came into view.
Having shredded the will with a single gesture, Serie rested her chin on her hand and spoke.
"You want me to continue raising mages? I cannot possibly agree to that. It's offensive."
Glancing at the scattered pieces of the will, Frieren looked up at Serie.
"Master said you would get angry and tear up the will, Serie."
In a quiet voice, she relayed Flamme's final words that had not been written in the will.
"Even so, she still wanted me to tell you. She said she'd fulfilled her dream. I don't really know what she meant, though."
At those words, Serie showed a faintly bewildered expression.
Perhaps it was because the words of the dead had gone beyond what the living had imagined.
"Then I'll be going now. We probably won't meet again."
"Frieren."
That single word from Serie stopped Frieren's departing steps.
Her cherished disciple had died; or perhaps another thought had suddenly come to mind; or perhaps she simply felt like it. The reason did not matter.
"Before you leave, would you walk with me for a while? We have as much time as we could ever want."
Whatever the reason, she felt like taking a walk outside now.
In a forest far from the city.
Serie walked ahead, and Frieren followed behind her.
"An age where anyone can use magic—that was Flamme's dream."
She spoke of Flamme, who had always been with her since childhood.
"From the start, all that talk about being for humanity, or giving them the power to resist the Demon King's army... none of that really mattered to her."
A red-haired girl came running toward a flower field, braids swaying behind her, and a masked man followed slowly after her.
Ironically, the two great figures who had bestowed the most grace upon humanity had little interest in humans themselves.
"Maybe that's why the two of them got along so well."
Flamme, who loved rare magic, and Ainz, who loved rare magic items.
Like children meeting some nameless playmate and playing together, the two of them had never needed any profound understanding.
Whether the time was long or short, it was simply that being together had been enjoyable.
"Do you know Flamme's favorite magic? The magic that makes a flower field. I used to call it a trivial, useless spell."
The red-haired girl smiled in the middle of the flower field.
"I thought it was magic with no use at all, and yet those two used it to create a potion that saves lives. That was something beyond even my expectations."
In the end, the girl who loved flower fields had turned it into the greatest magic of all.
The girl who had woven a flower crown placed it on the man's head, then ran toward Serie, who had been watching from afar.
"She truly loved magic. She sincerely wished that people all over the world would one day be able to use that kind of magic."
The girl glanced at Serie, then took her by the hand and led her toward the man.
"To be honest, I thought such an age would only come in the distant future. I thought her dream was impossible."
And yet the Empire had acknowledged magic. Before long, the magic that made flower fields would become the most efficient way to produce healing potions.
"To me, in a span of time no different from nothing at all, that girl became the founder of humanity's magic."
Humanity would continue to advance. Countless spells would spread like wildfire, pass from one person to another, and magic no one had ever seen or heard of would be developed.
"Master was always fast. As if she were being chased by something."
"Humans have lifespans. Unlike us, who can postpone important things without consequence, they cannot afford to delay."
What is endless may be beautiful, but it burns nothing.
Humans struggle because they are beings destined to burn away someday.
"Frieren, it has been a long time since human history began. And from here on, it will only accelerate."
The ones who had hastened that course were none other than Flamme and Ainz.
"A thousand years. In a mere thousand years, the age of humanity will arrive."
Once a fire catches, if there is wood to feed it, it will spread without end.
At the edge of a cliff, Serie turned back to look at Frieren.
"Someday, elves will be overtaken by humans."
The one with the greatest talent had passed that spark not only to herself, but to all humanity.
"If there is one who will kill you, it will be either the Demon King... or a human mage."
Hearing that, Frieren gave a faint smile.
"You don't say you, or Ainz."
The two greatest mages of all were not among those she named as the ones who could kill Frieren.
"You have a rough idea of what Ainz really is too, don't you?"
"Any mage who saw that magic would know he isn't human."
"When I first saw him, I thought he might be the Demon King."
The being who, under different circumstances, might have driven the world to ruin was no longer a monster.
"He suffers in life, wrestles with it, and agonizes over it. He is a person."
The humanity filling that skeleton now shone in a way it had not before.
At that answer, Frieren said,
"Serie, your words have convinced me."
In her hand was the will Serie had torn apart.
"I want you to show Flamme's will to Ainz."
"Even I do not know what will happen if he hears that news."
"He'll learn it someday anyway. For us, time is eternal."
And then—
"I promised him I'd show him a great spell that would truly surprise him."
Fifty years had passed.
Frieren's ability to suppress her mana, and the amount of mana she possessed, had grown to an astonishing degree, and her skill with magic had improved as well.
Even so, there was only one change that truly stood out.
It was a subtle change that only someone who had embodied a different system of magic could notice.
"I see. So you didn't spend all that time merely suppressing your mana after all."
The corner of Serie's mouth curled.
"That Flamme... she placed a ridiculous wager on her disciple."
Someday, elves will be overtaken by humans.
But not yet.
There was someone who would live through the long years beside him.
If so, then he could keep moving forward without stopping.
So—
Someone had to tell him that he was no longer alone.
*
Frieren's [Falling Sky] was powerful.
It was a strike specialized against Undead, with such high bonus damage that even a warrior would lose most of their health if hit by it. If it had not been incomplete, but a perfect [Falling Sky], then for a mage like Ainz, enduring it would have been difficult.
Rising from the shattered ground, he looked up at the sky.
"What is the meaning of this, Frieren?"
"I'm keeping my promise to my master."
Descending from the sky like a fairy, Frieren leveled the staff in her hand.
The air was taut with the sense that she could fire off magic at any moment.
His thoughts accelerated.
A mindset honed for PVP swiftly analyzed the items Frieren possessed.
'A staff I've never seen before. Something mages commonly use, perhaps. Most likely for boosting power or support. [High-Tier Item Detection]... blocked, as expected. Best to be cautious with magic items whose nature I can't discern. So her flight comes from a necklace with [Fly] built into it. Flamme must have given it to her.'
Someone other than himself was using Yggdrasil Magic.
Aside from Serie, that was a possibility he had never even considered—a blind spot in his awareness, and she had struck straight through it.
'To think she'd actually learn Super-Tier Magic.'
He had shown it to her assuming she would never be able to learn it, and yet he had never imagined she would truly master it.
This was talent beyond the range of anything Ainz could have predicted.
'Is this the first time I've taken proper damage since meeting Serie?'
Looking at his hand, perhaps from the lingering effect of the spell, there was still a slight tremor.
No matter how clear the difference in power was, accumulated damage could not be ignored.
'For now, should I try talking this through?'
If this situation was nothing more than a misunderstanding, it could be resolved easily. Honestly, that was the most rational approach. And if he could buy some time along the way, it would help both his recovery and his analysis of the situation.
"Frieren, I have no intention of fighting you."
"And I have no intention of letting you pass, Ainz."
The answer came at once, firm with the resolve that she would not let him enter the barrier.
But if he said this, even that resolve would surely break. Frieren was Flamme's disciple, after all.
"I am going to save Flamme."
It was her master's death. There was no way she could accept such a thing so easily.
"Magic that revives the dead. I know many kinds of magic like that."
From the little time they had lived together, he knew Frieren was not someone without feelings—only someone who expressed them sparingly.
Her heart should be the same as his.
They had not spoken much, but they had often spoken of Flamme.
It had been the small thread that bound the two of them together.
"Yes, I know."
"What?"
He had been certain that if she heard those words, she would step aside, but the answer that came back was not what he expected.
"Master said you would."
"Are you saying Flamme's death means nothing to you?"
"If you're a disciple, keeping your promise to your master comes first."
Frieren opened her mouth.
"Even if that means facing your master's death."
Magic was cast from the staff crowned with a red orb.
"Teleport."
He dodged the spell in an instant.
"Stop this, Frieren. There is no need for us to fight."
"It's irritating, the way you keep looking down on me like that."
In truth, Ainz did not see Frieren as an opponent he needed to fight seriously.
The magical attainments he had gained through living with Serie, and his physical specs.
Taking it all together, the gap between them was like that between an adult and a child.
It was not that he was underestimating her, but he had no reason to bring out the full extent of his power against her.
That, instead, only provoked Frieren's anger.
Though it did not show on her face, the fierce barrage of magic spoke for her feelings.
Light flashed, fire roared forth, and lightning surged skyward.
"Useless."
Frieren's magic was, in the end, magic she had learned to deceive demons.
It was a trick that would not work on Ainz, who knew of mana suppression through Flamme.
He struck back with magic of the same kind of power—no, with even greater force, driving her back.
Frieren wore the winged necklace like a child standing on a chair to meet an adult's height, but even when she widened the distance, she had no way to stop Ainz from closing it in an instant.
Ainz's hand, now close at hand, brutally tore through her defensive magic.
Even as a magic caster, the strength of a level 100 Undead came with overwhelming physical force.
Before he could reach her, she fired a mass of mana and detonated it in midair, but even that was blocked.
Her defensive magic shattered.
Frieren crashed into a tree.
He tore the winged necklace from her neck, then kicked away her staff and sent it flying.
"Stay down and rest."
He had widened the distance from the barrier as well. This should keep her from following.
Just as he turned away from Frieren and headed for the barrier once more, a vast magic circle spread across the sky.
A familiar sequence of letters.
"This is... [Falling Sky] again? Frieren, you truly don't know how to give up. Did you think I'd let myself be hit by something I've already seen once?"
[Falling Sky] possessed extraordinary power, but in actual combat it was one of the more difficult spells to use.
Unless one was an NPC standing still, no fool would simply let it hit them.
"I never thought that."
This world was deeply influenced by image.
And so even Yggdrasil Magic was used differently depending on who learned it.
"This spell isn't actually perfect. There aren't many places where I could even use it, so I haven't had many chances to try it."
Because [Falling Sky] was a spell Frieren had interpreted on her own, it was no different from building it up from the very beginning.
But though its power might have been weaker, it was by no means feeble.
Its casting time, range, and cost were all simply different from the original.
This was Ainz's mistake, born from having perfectly memorized the effects of Yggdrasil Magic.
"The part I understood least was that the caster isn't harmed by their own spell."
Because this world was not a game, it did not permit such game-friendly conveniences as in Yggdrasil, where one was not injured by one's own magic.
Which meant this was closer to a threat.
"Even so, Ainz, you won't just let me die, will you? You'd have no face to show Flamme if she came back to life."
If it were Flamme, she would never forgive Ainz for killing her disciple. Even if he revived Frieren afterward, that would not change.
Fifty years had not been enough for her to catch up.
Yes, fifty years could never bridge that realm.
And yet the difference between them was simple.
Frieren was serious enough to stake her own life on it.
"Magic that brings down the sky."
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