her backside. As a result, Kaito had been wailing the entire time since. An exasperated shout came from Elisabeth, near the front. "Enough of your whining, Kaito! You're immortal! Even if you do fall, you're sure to survive!" "Hell no, I'm not falling for that! I know full well that enough blood loss will make my soul fade away! I'm freaking out over here, and the bumpiness isn't helping!" "Your grumbling really is getting irritating, mister. Why don't you make like a corpse and shut the hell up." "You're sitting in the saddle; you're in no position to talk!" Kaito put forth no shortage of effort in making his objections known. Jeanne's honey-blond locks fluttered in the air as she feigned ignorance. Deus Ex Machina was no longer by her side. It was ill-equipped for long flights, so she'd temporarily dismissed it. Vlad, who was floating beside Kaito, gave a light chuckle. "Well, well, well, my dear successor, it seems that you're growing accustomed to the skies. And isn't that what's really important here?" "Shut up! ...But I, uh, I guess it's not as bad anymore..." Still trembling, Kaito caught a glimpse of the ground below. The forest looked like a vast, vibrant green swath. Beastfolk, demi-human, humanâ€”it was impossible to tell whose territory they were above. Looking down on it from the sky, he felt land-ownership rights seemed almost petty and irrelevant. The red dragon's body weaved back and forth as she continued her flight. It was unclear where their destination was, but she clearly seemed to have one in mind. Her speed was steady, and she showed no signs of being lost. Then the landscape below them started to change. The forest came to an end and was replaced by a series of houses and buildings that looked as small as toys. Then they, too, were replaced with a sandy yellow desert. As he gazed off into the distance, Kaito felt his breath catch in his throat. Far away, he could make out a vast body of water, sparkling as radiantly as though it had fragments of glass sprinkled atop it. "You've gotta be kidding. We're gonna cross the ocean?" "At this rate, it seems she intends to leave the very continent." Elisabeth sat up. Her voice carried an understandable hint of tension to it. At some point, the air had taken on a different quality. It had previously been dry and parched but was now rife with moisture and the smell of the sea. The ocean was approaching faster than they could blink. Then the red dragon soared over the glittering sea. A gust of conspicuously fishy wind lapped at their cheeks. A flock of seabirds let out alarmed cries, then flew off. A line of white sailboats ran atop the waves. At that point, the sun started sinking beneath the horizon line. The waters burned a vivid red. The light was the shade of ripe fruit, and it scorched its way into Kaito's retinas. The majesty and splendor of it all took hold of his eyes and soul. It was a landscape he'd never gotten the chance to see in the closed-off life he'd lived before. Anxious as he was as to the nature of the red dragon's destination, an uncharacteristic surge of excitement ran through him. Riding a dragon through the skies, huh... Man, just look at how far I've come! "Hmm. I'll admit to not knowing why I know, my dear successor, but I think I have an inkling of where this dragon is heading." "W-wait, for real, Vlad? Then whereâ€”? Ahhhh!" Upon hearing Vlad's assertion, Kaito had turned his head to one side in earnest. The moment he had, though, the red dragon had charged headfirst into a cloud. His sight stolen away from him, Kaito let out another yelp, at which an emotional voice called out, "Master Kaito, you're so cuuuuuute!" Beyond the pale white of the cloud, Vlad quietly murmured his response. "The World's End, in all likelihood." At that moment, Kaito recalled something he'd once heard. It's a nonsensical little fairy tale, and one that's gone on for a very, very long time. Having first gotten atop a red dragon's back, it would appear that they were now heading to a land straight out of a story. 4 The World's End Someone once said that the world has no end. The world is round, they proclaimed, and as such it has no terminus. Someone once said that the world has an end. It's like a waterfall, they proclaimed, one that swallows up anything and everything. Someone once said that the world has an end. For God created that place, they proclaimed, and designated it "the World's End." Was the world, in fact, round? Were the seas all connected? Or was there nothing but a waterfall at the edge and an abyss that swallowed up anything and everything? To this very day, the truth is yet unknown. After all, nobody ever actually undertook the voyage to find out for themselves. Even so, though, one of the three proclamations can currently be held up as definitely true. For in this world, there is a location that God designated as its End. It's said to be a pure place, one crafted from snow and water, wind and mana. And it's a place that only those granted knowledge of its location were able to reach. "'Even if one were to walk the whole earth over,' it's said. Being a mage, I'd of course heard of it, but to think that while I live and breathe... Well, no, I suppose I'm dead now. Either way, I never dreamed I'd actually be able to reach it! Yet, now I stand with my own two feet...or to be more precise, I should say I float! But in any case, it's quite moving." "That's a lot of corrections you're making there. Are you quite all right?" "Ha-ha-ha, as satisfied as satisfied can be!" Leisurely shrugging off his beloved daughter's cold stare, Vlad gave a hearty laugh. With grace befitting his noble bearing, Vlad cast a sweeping gaze over the snowscape before them. The ground was frozen and hard, and no amount of digging would turn up soil. The entire region was made of mana-rich ice. Because of that, everything as far as the eye could see was blue and faintly glowing. The snowflakes were big enough to make out their individual shapes, and they piled up everywhere like little handicrafts. Above them, the sky was milky and white. Strangely, it was also covered in an oil-like rainbow sheen, although that didn't appear to belong to clouds, the sun, or the stars. The sky was simply empty. It was like a giant lid was sitting over their heads. Consequently, it was difficult to tell whether it was night or day. In a sense, it resembled the demons' world. However, the sky wasn't sullied like it had been back there. The wind was frighteningly clean and pure, and the atmosphere was sparkling. It was beautiful, almost miraculously so. But at the same time, there was nothing there. There was just absolute emptiness. It was like a hollow vessel, with all the desolate solitude of everything having ended and the faint hope that something new would begin. It was a place truly deserving of the name "the World's End." And in that legendary land, Kaito Sena was currently freezing to death. "I'm s-so c-cold! Cold, cold, cold, cold, c-c-c-c-cold!" "Please, Master Kaito, pull yourself together! Oh, if only my surface area were a hundred times larger!" "Hmm, I feel as though I just saw a vision of Kaito being fatally crushed." Despite being wrapped in Hina's tight embrace, Kaito was shivering. For the last little while, Hina had been laudably trying to warm him up with her own body. Just as she'd said, though, she lacked the surface area to cover him completely. Other than his face, which was buried in her opulent chest, Kaito was suffering an utter defeat at the hands of the cold. As she gazed at his frozen visage, Elisabeth nodded. "'Tis true, though. The temperature is such that no human would withstand it unprepared." "The World's End is a place of purity. In other words, this ain't no place for respectable creatures to try survivin'." "H-h-how the hell are you two not cold in those r-r-ridiculous getups?!" Kaito couldn't stop himself from crying out. Elisabeth and Jeanne, in stark defiance of what they'd just said, seemed to be perfectly fine. Vlad was a phantasm, and Hina was an automaton. It made sense for the two of them not to feel the cold. But the fact that Elisabeth and Jeanne seemed unaffected as well made no sense. After all, the amount of fabric comprising the Torture Princess's bondage dresses barely even rose to the level of "sparse." Jeanne appeared dumbfounded by Kaito's exclamation. She shrugged her exposed shoulders. "Allow me to pose you a question, mister. Why should any mage complain about the cold in a land as rich in mana as this? What, you think you classify as 'respectable'?! You're like some sorta masochist perv who owns clothes but walks around naked anyway!" "'Tis just as Jeanne says. Using your mana better would serve you well. Are you ready? Hold the sensation of a lit fire within the pit of your stomach. Then form a layer of warmth in the air around... Wait, no. Stop. You were just on the verge of immolation, no?" "Y-y-yeah, that's right, I a-a-almost caught on fire! I'm bad at that f-f-fiddly magic stuff, okay, and I'm cold!" As smoke sputtered from the top of his head, Kaito continued shivering. Then Vlad returned, seemingly having grown bored of observing the scenery. He shook his head in exasperation. "I take it you intend to secede, then, my dear successor? It's a pitiful way to die, to be certain, but it is what it is. Partings are always sudden and always sorrowful. As comical of a farewell as it is, perhaps that, too, lends it deeper significance." "Listen here, you. When I die, I'm smashing your stupid jewel on my way out if it's the last thing I do." Kaito leveled a glare at Vlad through his shivers. It was unclear what he found so funny, but Vlad responded with a chipper laugh. Exasperated as she was, Elisabeth gave Kaito a firm clap on the shoulder. "Calm down, now. I daresay you're at no risk of actually freezing to death." "Iâ€”Iâ€”I mean, you're r-r-right, but I feel like it'd still be a problem if I s-s-stopped being able to move." Elisabeth did have a point. Kaito's soul was currently housed inside a homunculus. As long as he didn't unintentionally undergo severe blood loss, his body was immortal. In fact, if he were a normal human, he would have already succumbed to hypothermia and died. But if Elisabeth's blood running through his veins was to freeze, so would his motor functions. And given their current situation, he wasn't particularly keen on asking someone to lug him around as a paperweight. Hina clenched her fists in determination. Her face full of resolve, she grabbed at her maid uniform. "Now I understand! Now that it's come to this, we only have one option left! As his bride, I will take extreme, extreme pleasure in removing my clothes and pressing myself against my precious husband to better warm him up!" "Settle yourself down, Hina. 'Tis true that you replicate a human's body heat despite being an automaton. But stripping and clinging to him will change little. Also, do try to hide your ulterior motives a bit more thoroughly. Promise me that, if nothing else... In any case, the red dragon seems to have stopped moving. We have nothing to use as a guide, and Kaito is on the verge of freezing." "I d-d-don't like where this is g-g-going." "The matter now becomes, 'what to do?'" Elisabeth crossed