Agnes’s face, at first, seemed to wonder what had happened. Then she looked down…and then to herself, as though to reconfirm what she was seeing. “Ky—” Eventually her throat perked into motion.

“???!!!”

Before she could start screaming, Kamijou and Orsola put her in a full-force nelson hold, covering her mouth.

3

Index was standing in the darkened streets of Chioggia.

The small town on the sea was a scene of chaos. People were in turmoil not only because the historically significant canal and stone bridge had been destroyed, but also because nobody could figure out how. Those looking at the disaster began asking questions, listening to the voices answering in stammered words, growing increasingly dubious, and going through the whole thing again.

Seawater had flooded into the road farther than one hundred meters away from the canal and had even started dripping into another canal parallel to it. The boat was gone now, so the dirty water was trying to go back into the canal. Even so, some houses had seen it coming in from the gaps around doors. Business buildings especially, like restaurants and cafés, were starting to light up, the sounds of frantic cleaning drifting toward her.

Amid it all.

Index stood quietly, her gaze fixed in the direction where the ice sailboat had disappeared.

“The Queen of the Adriatic, allegedly deeply involved in the history of northeastern Italy…” The words she spoke possessed support in the form of her immense stores of knowledge. “No, one of the Queen’s Fleet aiding it?”

A whirlwind of information from the 103,000 grimoires in her head began to coalesce and organize. She drew out the necessary knowledge, blocked out the unnecessary knowledge, and began to investigate whether her speculation was true or not. Finally, she confirmed it.

Which means it had to have been the Roman Orthodox Church. But why did the Queen’s Fleet attack?…Orsola Aquinas and Amakusa. Maybe these two being here together was the cause. Touma and the rest of them don’t absolutely need to be eliminated to move the Queen of the Adriatic!

Then she began to think about possible countermeasures.

I can’t go by myself to the Queen’s Fleet without being able to use sorcery. No, the enemy is greater than a single sorcerer can hope to stand against. But at this rate, Touma and the others will…In that case…

Index brought her face up. She cast her gaze around and, before long, took off running toward the destination she had in mind.

4

Kamijou and Orsola were battled out of the cannon room.

After borrowing the sewing set from Orsola’s sleeve, Agnes had said in a very low voice, “…Anyway, I’ll be found out on the spot unless I at least put my appearance back to normal. Just get out of here now, please.” Then she had begun to move the needle in and out of her custom-made habit. She would most likely head for the flagship when she was finished.

There was no point in thinking about her.

Kamijou poked his head around the passage corner and looked ahead.

The straight hallway, made of ice with an altered melting point shining with pale-white diffused light from the moon, was, in contrast to the ship’s scale, extremely tight and narrow. Maybe it was a trait of warships. It seemed to him like if a few more people were here, they’d probably get stuck and be unable to move.

All the ship’s interior surfaces were like screens in a movie theater; the floor and walls were clearly distinguished, but it was very difficult to see in the air of the passage. Kamijou found himself squinting a little to stare farther down it.

“…Nobody here.”

“Just as Miss Agnes said.”

After their short exchange, they walked around the corner. It had taken quite some time to confirm even that. That first step required reckless courage.

According to Agnes, “Control of the fleet’s navigation and weapons relies mostly on sorcery. The greater part of those on board are from my former unit, and asking any of them for help could cause them to be framed, so that’s out. There are around two hundred fifty in the unit, but there’re close to a hundred ships. You do the math: Each ship is close to empty. That’s what it takes to have a few overseers manage a lot of laborers, basically. It does mean it’s a weak point, though.”

But if the ships are all on autopilot, what work are they doing here?

She’d said they were doing simple physical labor meant to wear them down, but he didn’t think she went into details. Whatever the case, it could wait until they got off the ship with Lucia and Angeline.

Even though he made sure there was nobody actually around, he still couldn’t completely rid himself of anxiety that someone would attack. Behind all the doors in the passage, right around the corner…He could all too easily imagine someone waiting somewhere for their opportunity.

Agnes had also told them that Lucia and Angeline had been taken up three stories above the deck. Normally stragglers were brought down belowdecks to the ship’s hold, close to the bottom, but apparently, the mind-control equipment to “make it so they could never use their escape spell again” was in the upper levels.

They headed up via a steep, cliff-like staircase.

The passage on the third floor had windows along one side. Belowdecks there were cannon rooms packed tightly together, but those weren’t needed in the upper part of the structure, so the hallway was positioned closest to the outside.

“Oh my,” said Orsola casually as she cast her gaze out one of the windows.

Kamijou’s eyes followed hers, and then he gasped. “…Yeah, this isn’t going to be easy.”

They were on the third floor—but only counted up from the deck. There were another ten or so meters from the deck down to the water. It was like looking down from a fifth floor or higher.

It felt like seeing a town from the top of a tower, but instead of a town he was seeing a big fleet of ships. Giant hundred-meter-long sailing warships made of ice like this one were blanketed over the water like a school of fish. Just from their one window they could see over fifty of them. The faintly glimmering ships, radiating with the off-white color of a lightbulb, cast a film of light over the dark ocean’s surface.

“Huh?…I guess Agnes is on the move, too.” Still alert to his surroundings, he focused on the view out the window.

An icy, arched bridge began to crackle into existence between two of the boats. Standing on it was a lone figure. As it crossed the bridge, the ice bridge began to crackle out of existence behind the figure again. Agnes seemed to be beginning her diversion.

Her destination must have been the flagship she mentioned. A few hundred meters or so in front of her, at the center of it all, floated a much more enormous sailboat, surrounded by all the other ships. Both its length and width appeared to him to be twice the size of this escort ship. It was as though he were gazing at a tall castle from the town around it.

Kamijou looked away from the window again. “Don’t even want to count them all…World’s biggest religion, huh? This is all so far out of our leagues.”

“…The entirety of the fleet is the size of a small city.”

Kamijou resumed his walk down the passage, thinking. Their first priority definitely had to be slipping away without anyone noticing, not standing up to all of it. As for Lucia and Angeline, whose spell held the key to escaping, they—

“…Ack?!”

His thoughts froze as he approached the corner. He grabbed Orsola’s hand, then pressed both of them against the wall. Very slowly and carefully, he poked his head out to look.

The room Agnes had told them they were after was about ten meters down the hallway.

And there was somebody right in front of it.

Wait, was that really a person? It looked like a suit of armor over three meters tall, made of ice, blocking the door like a boulder. It, too, radiated a pale-white light, so it wasn’t very transparent. And it looked heavily armed from head to toe. In its hand, it gripped a…mace, he thought. Probably a type of staff or club, anyway. But it looked like it was holding a squarish steel frame, chopped up into round slices.

Kamijou pulled his head back and turned away from the faintly glimmering corner of the wall. Damn it. Trying to silence it in one hit would be too tough…If it calls its friends while I’m wasting time fighting it, it’s all over for real right then and there.

The passage was narrow, with few avenues for escape. If a dozen or so people came into either side of it, there would be no slipping past them. They would just have to wait, with a numbers advantage, for him to lose the battle of attrition.

Shit, he cursed to himself, his eyes flying over the passage again, rechecking how narrow it was, when…

Bam!!

A moment later, with a loud noise, his vision was filled with the pale ice.

Kamijou didn’t understand what he was seeing at first.

The ice armor guarding the door around the corner had zipped down the passage, turned the corner, and now stood in front of him…It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening.

Its legs were quickly sliding to the side. The ice had a different melting point, so it didn’t melt—which meant it shouldn’t be sliding. Upon closer inspection, the armor’s feet were linked with the floor. It was almost like it was swimming through the ice.

But Kamijou couldn’t be calm as he noticed that.

What…?!

His eyes widened with surprise; the ice armor’s arm was already whipping around at him. A brutal strike, bottom to top. The steel frame–like club easily slipped through the thick floor without losing momentum, appearing to be drawn toward his torso.

It had enough weight and speed to crush a cargo container like an empty soda can.

“!…Ah-gahhhhh!!”

When he went to evade the strike, he felt a burst of air on his cheek. His bangs swung as he instinctively realized he couldn’t dodge it. His right hand moved, mostly out of reflex. His palm swung down in a reckless pounding motion at the incoming attack from below.

Bgweee!! A high-pitched noise echoed through the ship.

Suddenly Kamijou’s palm broke out into a severe, cold sweat, which went up to his elbow and then to his shoulder.

“…Urgh!” grunted Kamijou unintentionally.

The armor in front of him was motionless.

With a few snaps, the ice armor’s club split right down the middle. Then, the shoulder holding the club broke apart, sending fissures vertically down from its chest to its abdomen, cracking apart its thighs and knees, finally causing it all to topple over sideways.

Clatter, came the noise.

The pale light enveloping the armor’s body disappeared, as though the ice breaking had changed the degree of light refraction.

Orsola, who had been holding her breath nearby, finally spoke. “A-are you quite all right…?”

“Think so.” Maybe it was just him, but his wrist hurt a little bit. “I busted it up…Was this like a robot that moved with sorcery?”

“Well…It doesn’t appear to be a golem, where a caster is delivering clear orders to it. Rather it seems more accurate to say part of the ship altered its own shape. Following the way warships attack, it was possibly…like a cannon, facing inward.” Orsola stopped before the fallen ice sculpture and ran her hands over it, speaking lowly and clearly.

“Part of the ship…?” Kamijou tapped his right hand against the nearby wall. The thick ice didn’t break, though.

…They’re different, I guess. The armor was always moving via magic, but the boat’s walls have already changed completely, he thought idly, but there was no time to investigate the details. Still, though…

He breathed a genuine sigh of relief that magic had been used. If he’d let himself be pulled into a regular hand-to-hand fight…Well, he wasn’t sure even a modern tank could have beaten the thing. Kamijou would have been killed within seconds.

Whatever the case, he’d gotten past the hurdle not with raw strength but with grit.

Kamijou turned the corner, this time with nobody out there. “All right, let’s go save Lucia and Angeline. This is a pain.”

“There is one thing about that,” said Orsola somewhat worriedly. “Would it be possible that Miss Lucia and Miss Angeline are the only ones in that room? There should be at least several casters administering their magical procedure. If we open the door, I believe things will get ugly.”

As she spoke, Orsola picked up a fallen piece of ice. It was the club the ice armor had held, broken in two. She held it with both hands like an instrument case.

“My weapon,” she said with a smile—both things were out of place. To add to that, she went around picking up more, saying this one or that one seemed stronger. Mostly the ice armor’s portions of leg. Would they have about the same attack power as a weighted stone?

“…Right.” It didn’t seem very helpful to Kamijou, but he accepted it for now. “Guess this time we’ll have to fight when they come out. We can only pray they don’t come out scattered.”

“Yes. Well then, let us be off.”

Kamijou and Orsola nodded to each other and ran down the passage. It wasn’t that they wanted to fight while they advanced. Stronger was the more negative feeling of not wanting to be spotted by anyone else in the passage.

They made it to the door in one spurt. Kamijou grabbed the doorknob. It didn’t seem locked. To be honest, he felt scared, but hesitating would get him nowhere. Without a second thought, he threw open the door.

Bang!! echoed the loud noise.

“Urk!” It was a clean room. Maybe it was their version of an infirmary. Even so, the beds were made out of ice, too, so he couldn’t tell how much good they’d do for a patient.

There were around seven men and women in the cramped room. Two were sisters wearing habits with yellow sleeves and skirts. They were Lucia and Angeline. They each wore a golden circlet outside the cloth on their foreheads, but it also looked like they were digging into the fabric. The other five people were all unhealthy-looking men, slender as wire. They could have been researchers, but each wore a deep-black habit with a cloak. On an icy table next to them were lots of metal sticks made of something other than ice, which Kamijou couldn’t surmise the usage of. Their tips were sharpened like pens, making them seem somehow eerie. The strange movie theater screen–like illumination wasn’t helping, either.

No ice armors in here.

But one on five was still a plain old numbers disadvantage.

Shit…!! If he took on every one of them at once, he’d lose. It was all up to how much of a surprise attack he could get in while they were frozen in surprise. He almost took a long step into the room when…

…a shadow stepped between them first.

“Don’t move.”

It was Orsola Aquinas. She awkwardly threw the ice piece she was carrying underhanded. It clattered and rattled as the wrecked club slid across the floor. It was less a throw and more of a bowling ball roll, but…

Gulp.

The Roman Orthodox men with the advantage of numbers all stopped moving at once.

“How do you think I destroyed that?” she declared confidently, her hand moving toward her sleeve.

Kamijou glanced at his own right hand. Then he finally realized what she was trying to do.

They didn’t know about the Imagine Breaker.

“Oh. I misspoke and used Japanese accidentally, but I see you understand me. Though it is perfectly fine if you do not. If you won’t listen to my warning, I will simply have to use this,” she said, hand going into her sleeve.

“Wait…,” one of the men said in Japanese. Now that they were talking, it meant they’d already begun trying to compromise. “…You…What sort of Soul Arm are you hiding?”

Before Orsola could respond, another man opened his mouth. “There’s plenty of ice out there. You could have just broken a piece and brought it here.”

“Oh my. Do things like this happen to grow naturally on this ship?”

Orsola threw the next piece with a bonk. This time it was a piece of the ice armor’s leg. Unlike the fragment of the club, this one had a finer, more lifelike construction—and it was shattered around the knee.

“…” The men took a step back.

With strength, Orsola took one forward. “As for your previous question, if you would like to know how I did so, I would not mind showing you. But please make sure not to turn to cinders before you see it. Oh my, oh my. Will you be able to block this relying only on your arms to guard yourself?”

She lightly shook the hand inside her sleeve, and the men all tensed up so nervously it was funny. Slight fear was visible even on Lucia and Angeline’s faces.

Kamijou was astonished. A bluff was a technique you could use only when you already had an accurate idea of the opponent’s strength.

“Then I apologize, but please, bind these men,” said the nun in question to Kamijou with a smile.

5

The Roman Orthodox men put their hands up without argument.

Because of Orsola bluffing that she had a secret weapon, she couldn’t carelessly approach them. Instead, Kamijou bound their hands and legs. The whole boat was made of ice, so there was nothing to use for rope. Without a choice, he had to use things like their belts. The experience of loosening a man’s belt made him genuinely uncomfortable. He really hoped this was the end of it.

After checking the knots tying the men up, Orsola finally relaxed and removed her hand from her sleeve. She breathed a sigh of relief; she was probably more nervous than she was letting on. Directing her attention to Angeline and Lucia, she said, “We are here to rescue you.”

The two of them instead took a half step back. They seemed to be dumbstruck at how suddenly Kamijou and Orsola had appeared.

A dynamic duo if I ever saw one, thought Kamijou. Angeline was the shorter and Lucia was the taller…or so he thought. Angeline’s face had gone pale, and she was looking at him as though she was about to burst into tears. She was holding the waist of Lucia, who was standing next to her. Lucia, for her part, had a hint of red hostility on her light-colored face, glaring at him with a sharpness that would find any opening. One hand was wrapped around the clinging Angeline’s shoulder.

Both of them wore as a base the same black habit Orsola did, with long yellow sleeve and skirt pieces attached. Maybe it was the uniform of the people working on the ships. Lucia’s smooth, fair arms were slightly visible through her sleeves, which were on the short side. Angeline’s baggy sleeves exposed only her fingertips, though.

“…You came to rescue us? Did you think we would believe you? The only reason the two of you were thrown into a place like this is because you failed.”

The low, cautious voice had to be Lucia. Angeline couldn’t even get her mouth to close. Kamijou was more apprehensive about her attitude than the hostility being directed at him. “Umm, we’re not on this ship because we wanted to be. We just have Roman Orthodox people after us for no apparent reason. Our first objective is just to get out of here.” There was no point hiding it, so he revealed what they were after. “From what Agnes told us, you can use a spell that lets us do that. If we want to run, we need your help, so she said she wanted us to come help you before they did some weird stuff to you.”

“S-Sister Agnes…She said that?”

The familiar name caused the twinge of fear on Angeline’s face to disappear. She seemed to brighten right up with only that. Maybe she was actually an animated girl at heart.

But Lucia’s sleeve swung out and she pressed on Angeline’s head from above. “Sister Angeline, these are the words of a heretic. Please at least consider the fact that this may be a trap.”

“I-I’m sorry, ma’am! But, well, if these people met Sister Agnes, then maybe, maybe she’s…”

“Once again, you are being too hopeful! They know our connection to Sister Agnes. They could be feeding us good-sounding lies because they know that!”

Angeline continued to shrink away under Lucia pushing down on her head, but she occasionally threw a glance toward Kamijou.

Shit! This would go so much faster if Agnes had just written a note or something. He sighed. How was he going to explain this? The real problem was that their alarm was justified—Kamijou and Agnes weren’t very friendly with each other. There was nothing harder than bringing someone over to your side using only words.

As Kamijou fretted, Orsola opened her mouth to speak. “Then I will ask you this. Why do you think we came here?”

“What?”

“As you say, this is the enemy’s base. We came in here only after felling the guards. Is there any other merit to taking such a risk to come here other than to rescue you?” said Orsola, sparing just one glance toward the men tied up in the corner of the room.

“…Well, that’s…,” she managed reluctantly. But she couldn’t put together her thoughts, so her words stopped before she said anything else.

“Do you think we came all the way here to make enemies of you? The damage would have been done even if we had left you here. What reason would we have to rescue you, even using Agnes’s name? I find myself having trouble thinking of one.” Orsola glanced at the corner of the room again, where the men were tied up, after she and Kamijou had taken that risk.

“…” This time, Lucia was silent.

Instead of pointlessly explaining the unanswerable question, she created a situation in which the person she asked wouldn’t be able to answer. That was smart, thought Kamijou, inwardly surprised. She hadn’t said a word of compromise or made a single excuse in their defense, and yet she’d just silenced Lucia. This didn’t feel like the way Orsola usually did things.

Then she brought her mouth close to his ear and whispered, “…It is my job to persuade those in heretic lands who do not know the Lord.”

Oh, that makes sense, thought Kamijou in frank admiration. Maybe negotiating with her life on the line was something she was really good at.

After looking at Kamijou and Orsola in turn with a searching gaze, Lucia said, “So if we didn’t have any value in rescuing, you would have left us here…What luxury.”

“Sister Lucia!”

Angeline’s baggy sleeves pulled on the cloth around Lucia’s waist. The taller one sighed tiredly. “All right. Your words do have some truth to them. Also, Sister Angeline, how many times have I told you not to do that? You’re rubbing against my thigh.”

Kamijou almost looked away when those smooth words came out lightly. Did they not really care, since they were both girls?

His cheeks reddened in spite of his intent, and Lucia’s eyebrow twitched. “Are you having any ideas?”

“N-no! Not at all, no, ma’am!!” he said, using every ounce of spirit to try to be cool. Then he forced the topic back on track. “Well, I mean, we’d like to get out of this crazy ship as soon as possible. How do we go about doing that? Oh, you know, I hope they didn’t confiscate any tools you needed to do it.”

“I-it’s all right. If the spell could be guarded against by taking a few instruments, I don’t think our fellow Roman Orthodox followers would have been this rough…”

“Sister Angeline, if you are serious about that, then you need a pat on the head,” said Lucia, very casually dealing with Angeline’s pouting. “The conclusion is that it is impossible to evade the Queen’s Fleet’s security by water, such as swimming in the sea or stealing a lifeboat. And if we are discovered even once, we will be fodder for countless cannons.”

“…Wait a minute. You two got out of here once before, right? Did you fly through the sky or something?”

“Even if we did that, we’d simply end up waiting for anti-aircraft fire…Anyway, it is too bothersome to explain. We will show it to you right away. Sister Angeline?”

“Yes, Sister Lucia. Ah, err…Whatever your intentions, th-thank you very much. Our spell and minds both were about to be destroyed if things had continued much longer.”

Angeline bowed her head in thanks, but Lucia said her name again and she quickly got to work.

Lucia and Angeline put their palms together. Not evenly, though. A closer look showed that they appeared to be giving detailed consideration to which fingers were touching and which weren’t.

“Normally, tools used for magic are ones a caster prepares based on his or her specialties…,” said Orsola, a bit impressed. “But instead, they’re using the clothes binding them as a temporary substitute. By channeling mana into the two binding spells via different routes than normal, they gain the effects of an entirely different sorcery. I am very impressed you thought of such a thing given how restrictive your environment is…”

So maybe it was like using something really trivial, like a spoon or a shoelace, to its fullest potential to break out of an impenetrable prison. As Kamijou thought about it, before his eyes, it happened.

Lucia and Angeline raised their joined hands horizontally. It looked like a social dance. And their fingers were pointing to where a cabinet, made of off-white glimmering ice, rested.

Whhrmm.

Like a pupil opening up, a big hole, about one and a half meters across, appeared in the semitransparent cabinet.

“With a spell that belongs to a subset of the one that created the boats using ice, we can open up a cavity like that one. By applying it, we can harden seawater and create a roller coaster on the seafloor. We can get out through there.”

“W-we shaved off little bits of the ice walls and tried really hard to figure out how they worked. The Queen’s Fleet is amazing at guarding the sea, but it’s not so good at things underwater…Ow!”

Angeline winced as the big hole in the cabinet suddenly shrank and closed up. Their joined hands drifted apart. A bead of sweat trickled down her temple.

She slowly shook her head. “I—I guess they must have added an interception spell to these clothes. Oww…,” she said, rubbing her temples—right about where the golden circlet was wrapped around the part of the hood on her forehead, digging into it.

“We will just need to destroy part of what’s restraining us. It’s magically using the way this fabric was sewn together and where its seams are, so if we break the seams in order, it will be nothing.” Lucia picked up off the table an impractical-looking pen made of ice.

Break them? Kamijou cast a glance at his right hand. “Hey, if that’s what you need to do, then wouldn’t it be quicker to—? Gwah?!”

Before he could finish, he felt a soft impact on the back of his head. He turned around. Orsola had one hand to her cheek and the other balled into a fist. “Now, now. You don’t honestly intend to render even them stark-naked, do you?”

“Ow!! Sorry, Orsola, you’re right, I was wrong! But why are you so mad…? Ow, ow! That hurts!!”

Lucia and Angeline looked at them askance as Orsola delivered a series of surprisingly accurate knocks on the head to Kamijou. Then they began stabbing the ice pen into the yellow sleeves restraining them, poking holes. The work looked detailed and delicate in the difficult low-light conditions where only the walls and the ceiling glowed, but their hands moved with fluidity.

“A roller coaster on the seafloor? Like a chute? If we go too slowly, won’t the Queen’s Fleet catch up to us?”

“No, i-it actually goes pretty fast. Its maximum speed…i-is about three hundred kilometers per hour.”

“On average it is only ninety kilometers per hour. The friction does slow it down.”

Kamijou blanched at their words. He was pretty sure bullet trains traveled at three hundred kilometers per hour. For one thing, would they be able to breathe? He also wondered how they would slow down. Lucia and Angeline had already tested this once before, and they looked good as new, so there probably weren’t any issues. Really hope it’s not some occult brake using some insane magic theory, he thought, glancing at his right hand. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to break the coaster before then, but…

Kamijou’s eyes caught back up to the nuns’ work. “Either way, we can get out of here right now with that, right?”

“…Actually, it’s a little more complicated,” said Angeline simply. “We have to use seawater to create the seafloor coaster. That means we have to get to the bottom of the boat first.”

“We will make a hole in the floor of the ship, then create the coaster out of water. After we go in, we’ll seal the entrance behind us, cutting ourselves off. That way, it will be difficult for the Queen’s Fleet to track us.”

So we can’t rest easy yet. Kamijou sighed, but Lucia and Angeline both seemed to think optimistically about it.

“Sister Lucia, we’ll be able to get out with Sister Agnes this time!”

“If possible I would prefer it not end there, but our first priority is to secure Sister Agnes. If she doesn’t move, nobody else will, either. W-wait, Sister Angeline, don’t make a hole there!” Lucia quickly grabbed Angeline’s hand.

They’d been feeling less and less cautious as time went on. Their behavior wasn’t quite haphazard, but Kamijou could sense their emotions. It was a subtle change, but he thought he could see anticipation hidden under the surface.

“I—I wonder when we’ll be able to meet Sister Agnes.”

“It likely won’t be easy. She’s probably doing things for us as we speak, as secretly as she can.”

And that was why Kamijou wavered on whether to say it. He thought back to Agnes’s words.

“I have a symbolic role.”

She had told them to rescue Lucia and Angeline. But the words were somehow cold, like she was watching others from afar, where they couldn’t affect her.

“Pretty good deal, right? Everyone else needs to work for me to have it, though.”

Those words were less her consideration as their ally and more her sympathy and pity. That would cause only pain for Lucia and Angeline, who sought a position by her side, wouldn’t it?

“They’re treating me like a guest. From my point of view, what Sisters Lucia and Angeline are doing is a waste of time.”

How did it come to this? thought Kamijou. Lucia and Angeline were slowly starting to break into smiles, and that sight pained him to no end. Weren’t people supposed to smile? They weren’t smiling out of malice. They smiled out of heartfelt care and goodwill.

“…Sorry,” said Kamijou. “But I don’t think Agnes is coming.”

Lucia and Angeline stopped dead.

Their expressions died away.

The small seed that had finally begun to sprout in the earth had just been stomped on and crushed.

The first one to open her mouth was Angeline. “Why…is that?” she said. “You met Sister Agnes, didn’t you? She asked you to save us, right? A-and also, where is Sister Agnes now, anyway?”

Lucia said nothing, but she turned an inquisitive gaze at Kamijou.

“Agnes is…” Kamijou saved himself the trouble and skipped right to the facts. “She told us she was going to create a diversion so we could rescue you. She said you’re the ones in the most danger right now, so we should prioritize rescuing you instead of her. She went to the, err…the Queen’s Fleet, right? She went to its flagship.”

“She…The flagship?!”

Surprisingly, the startled voice was Lucia’s. Whether out of anger or panic, her already pale face drained of color.

“This is not a joke! Why does she think we thought up ways of breaking out to the point where we risked our own lives?! It was to prevent this from happening! The one in the most danger is quite obviously Sister Agnes, isn’t it?!”

Wait a minute, thought Kamijou. He felt a kind of temperature difference between himself and the two nuns. He could sense that each of them was working off a different premise to begin with.

Angeline’s face returned to its almost-crying expression. “Besides, d-did you even understand wh-what the Queen’s Fleet is for?”

“Umm…To keep watch on the Adriatic Sea, right?”

“Miss Agnes did say that was a front, didn’t she?” said Orsola, knotting her brows. “…We heard from her that it was a manual-labor facility to work those who have brought detriment to the Roman Orthodox Church…”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Lucia, almost short of breath. “The Queen’s Fleet is an escort group headed by the Queen of the Adriatic, meant to protect large-scale sorcery of the same name and its ritual site. The ‘labor’ we’re being made to do is all in preparation for that. They would never need something so grandiose for the simple task of observation and labor!”

“The Queen of the…?” repeated Kamijou. When they’d reunited with Agnes, he remembered hearing that term at some point. “What…the heck? So this gigantic fleet is all just a warm-up act for the Queen or whatever? And what kind of magic is that ship even trying to cast?”

“I don’t know…Only the overseers managing the laborers—high officials of the Roman Orthodox Church—know the details.”

“A-all we know is that the large-scale sorcery, the Queen of the Adriatic, will be performed on the flagship. And that there’s another spell, called the Rosary of the Appointed Time.” Angeline counted off each fact on her fingers.

“A-and finally, that Sister Agnes is needed to use the Rosary of the Appointed Time.”

Kamijou was dumbfounded. He thought at first that Angeline wasn’t overly familiar with Japanese so she had misspoken somehow, but…

“We don’t know the details, either. However, we are certain they will use her and that it will at the very least destroy her brain. The procedure’s effects will be much more wide-ranging and difficult compared to what they were going to do to us. Sister Agnes…might be reduced to nothing but a beating heart.”

Lucia’s additional explanation was all too precise and cold. Kamijou felt a shudder move over him, up his spine, and to the very core of his head, all at once. She didn’t have only a symbolic role. She had a certain degree of freedom secured for her, and it was a good environment to live in…What had all that been about, then?

“Never thought it would be you two, though. Maybe I can use this.”

Agnes’s words came to mind. She’d said them to herself. Now he finally understood what she meant.

“I was having a rough time; that problem was more than I could solve myself. But with you two, it’ll be solved quickly.”

The rough problem wasn’t the security situation. If Agnes had rescued Lucia and Angeline and then told them to run away themselves, they would never have agreed.

He should have seen it before. What Agnes Sanctis had done to Kamijou and Orsola during the Book of the Law dispute was difficult to call benevolent, but she had just as much right to act out of consideration for others.

Lucia and Angeline had told them the entire Queen’s Fleet was a warm-up act for the Queen of the Adriatic. Agnes was the key to the huge, large-scale spell activating. If she escaped with Lucia and Angeline, they would pursue them to the ends of the earth.

“The Queen’s Fleet has something big coming up.”

But Agnes had said this, too.

“Only the people higher up know the details, though. As long as they have enough people to spare for that, they don’t give a crap about one or two people breaking out.”

If that was true, then when she said she’d go to the flagship, she really did mean it was to create a diversion. To abandon everything for the allies who had tried to save her.

Kamijou wondered what she was feeling.

“While you’re there…But you’ll be captured, too, won’t you? We should break out together.”

In that very last moment, what had she felt when she said those words?

And…

What had she felt when she lied about everything to guide Kamijou and Orsola to Lucia and Angeline?

“You picked a fight alone against two hundred and fifty sisters before, and that’s what you have to say now?”

The emotion buried in that lighthearted comment…

Realizing Agnes’s unspoken wish, Kamijou stood there, dazed.

And then, into the useless boy’s ears…

Grasshh!! Suddenly, the explosive sound of an ice wall crumbling split through the air.

The sound and the shock wave were enough to throw them all to the floor. The ice wall must have taken a hit from outside and broken. The side of the room farthest away from them had shattered into a rain of ice shards like glass. Just above them, a stray piece of wreckage hurtled past at a dreadful speed.

“…Ow!!” cried Kamijou, not at having fallen but from the throbbing pain inside his ear. “What was that…?!” It was like he was hearing the others’ voices through headphones. It seemed like the sounds were coming to him from far away.

“A-an attack?!” said Angeline, voice trembling. “From where…?!” She had immediately been safeguarded under Lucia as she dropped to the ground. Lucia’s face was baffled as well—that was only natural. This escort ship was surrounded by many of the same. Was an outside attack even possible?

Then Orsola, also on the floor, abruptly lifted her head. “Could it be…?” She looked past the destroyed ice wall—to the nightscape seen from five stories aboveground. “…One of our own ships fired on us!!”

You have to be kidding me! Kamijou wanted to shout. “This is their own ship, isn’t it?!”

“No,” said Lucia through gritted teeth as though in pain. “The escort ships are made of seawater. As long as the Adriatic Sea still has water, they can destroy as many as they want! Repairing and rebuilding isn’t an issue!!”

Lights blinked in the distance, past the broken wall. It was fire, spurting from the lips of many cannons. Unlike normal artillery fire, the gunfire was like a wave broken up into fine pieces, carried along by the wind.

“…Urgh!!”

The delayed storm of noise came a moment later, like thunderclaps.

Before Kamijou could take any action, the swarm of cannonballs destroyed the entire face of the ship, not only the room they were in. The pale light disappeared from only the parts that had been smashed. The bound men near the wall began to fall into the night sky. Before he could think about reaching out to save them, a fragment of ice crushed by a cannonball collided with his temple. Strength immediately drained from his limbs. The fleet was in a close formation during these bombardments, so follow-up shots mercilessly pelted the ships nearby as well. Masts broke, cabins were smashed, and he could see beyond the broken wall those boats desperately freezing seawater to repair themselves.

But this ship was different.

Its automatic regeneration didn’t activate, and the ship began to list heavily.

Orsola, who was clinging to the ice floor, said, “Ouch…The workings of the cannons appear to be conforming with the legends of Saint Barbara…”

“Urgh!! It’s sorcery, right? Then I’ll use my right hand!!”

“It isn’t possible to block all the cannonballs! The ship is too big!!”

A whole host of additional explosions drowned out her shouting. The overlapping sounds of firing came together to hit them with a shock wave like lightning. Kamijou was pressed to the floor, but the quake from below still sent his body a few centimeters into the air. The continued onslaught of cannonball strikes caused the entire floor to tilt. Maybe a supporting pillar underneath them had been smashed. A moment after, the walls and floor started to rotate, along with his vision. There was a pshhhh sound like sand pouring nearby. It was the water’s surface parting.

They were sinking.

By the time Kamijou got a grip on what was happening, the vessel of ice had already been mercilessly shattered like a small model boat hit with a hammer.