CHAPTER 5

The Queen of the Adriatic
La_Regina_del_Mar_Adriatico.

1

“It won’t be long now.”

Biagio Busoni looked up from the ship’s bottom.

“Soon this job, too, will be over. Good heavens—to think crushing a single city would be this much trouble. The Queen of the Adriatic…I would have liked to take a nice, long look around it for its antique value before this was over, rather than just putting it to use.”

Each side almost twenty meters long, the room appeared perfectly square. But upon closer inspection, the walls were tilted ever so slightly inward. It wasn’t a cube but a quadrangular pyramid. If you looked up along the walls and at the faint, bulb-like, almost-white light with which they glimmered, you could see its pinnacle far overhead. The ship was only twenty meters from its bottom to its deck, but here on the inside, the ceiling appeared to be over one hundred meters high.

“…Hmm. It hasn’t quieted down yet.”

As if in response, the whole body of the flagship, the Queen of the Adriatic, lightly shook. Not only once. The rumbles came several times in sequence. The escort ships hemming in the flagship were firing on other allied ships, one after another, like cannibals. And yet the roar of artillery continued. That meant the enemy was crossing over boat after boat, approaching this place. The roaring sounds mercilessly beat against even this, the deepest part of the flagship, enclosed by thick walls of ice.

There was a problem with this as well.

The men overseeing the Queen’s Fleet, unlike the sisters who formerly hailed from Agnes’s unit, were unsuited for battle. It wasn’t a matter of quality but simply of variety. No tactician would fight on the front lines with a weapon in hand. That was also the reasoning for having so few of them: merely a few dozen or so.

That by itself he could tolerate. The issue, however, was that the sisters at his beck and call weren’t used to shipboard combat. They were placed on these ships purely to do physical labor. This result could only be called inevitable—they hadn’t received any naval training—but…

That is why I declared that they station a marine unit here in addition to the management. And they…

The people above him had seen only the Queen’s Fleet’s capabilities before deciding on their own that it was safe and they didn’t have to call in extra soldiers. They hadn’t considered that the fleet’s purported invincibility could change based on the type of battle…So above and below, it matters not. Useless trash, all of them.

Biagio’s eyes swiveled to the side, his head not moving. “Fairly stimulating, isn’t it? Is it always so calm around you?”

“…”

The question was directed at the only other person in the room, a girl.

A perfect sphere of ice seven meters across sat in the room’s center. The middle was empty like a bubble, but when the Rosary of the Appointed Time, the ignition key for the Queen of the Adriatic, activated, it would fill up with ice. It would freeze the compatible nun, and then he would use it to magically break her along with the sphere itself. Right now, she was resting against one of the sphere’s outer curves, as if clinging to it.

Her name was Agnes Sanctis.

A girl made to wear a revealing habit that appeared torn.

She didn’t answer Biagio’s words.

Or perhaps she couldn’t answer them. Why was there a battle happening? Who on earth had come all the way here and for what? Her expression said she was too busy thinking about these things to pay attention to anything outside her.

“That’s the face,” continued Biagio. The dozens of crosses on the four necklaces hanging at his upper chest jingled. “Simply brilliant. Your expression, shamelessly hoping for someone even at this late hour. Your heart, which dares to say your position is a good one. Yes, that is how it must be. When a lowly sinner looks at me with a face of morbid realization—that is what I dislike the most. All animals should be doing is creeping along the ground. Vanity, however, is a right reserved for humans.”

Along with a grin and the superficial words came a bared malice.

Agnes shot Biagio a glance. “…And what do you think I’m clinging to?”

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me—I know. I will not ask you again. Hmph. I was disappointed when she pushed this task upon me, but as it allowed me to see this, I will put up with that as well.”

Agnes looked away from him out of hatred.

He watched her, satisfied. “This is where your hopes will be crushed. A cog in the machine has no need of emotions.”

2

There were only around fifty members of Amakusa.

On the Roman Orthodox Church’s side, however, were at least two hundred and fifty just counting sisters. Thinking normally, they should lose based on numbers only. But they were fighting aboard ships. Everyone could never gather in one place, which seemed different from the fundamentals of land combat. In any case, Amakusa was closing the distance and focusing on super-short-range attacks, allowing them to rotate smoothly through the chaotic battle. However, the numerically superior Roman Orthodox Church found their movements hampered by their allies and their own weapons. Amakusa was fighting fully aware of how to turn overwhelming numbers into a disadvantage. Their few members had probably learned it during their battles with many enemies.

The situation was, coincidentally, similar to the Book of the Law incident.

There was only one distinction: whether Agnes Sanctis was to be defeated or protected.

“Go! Do whatever it takes to get that kid out of there! We’ll distract their main force for ya!!”

Kamijou ran, spurred on by Tatemiya’s words.

The flagship was already within three escort ship crossings.

While Amakusa was holding back the sisters, Kamijou, Index, and Orsola jumped from ship to ship. Out of them, Orsola was the only one who could use the wooden-bridge spell they needed. Each time, after chanting an incantation more clearly and carefully than normal magicians, she threw another bundle of Japanese paper.

The flagship, the Queen of the Adriatic, was right in front of them.

The source, protected by many an escort vessel. The sorcery device binding Agnes Sanctis and its spell to destroy Venice in one shot. If this ship was the central command location, would Biagio Busoni, whom they hadn’t yet seen, be here?

“Let’s go! Index, Orsola!!” shouted Kamijou, running over a wooden bridge and stepping onto the flagship.

The deck was enormous.

The Queen’s Fleet already featured ships a hundred meters long, but this one was gigantic—twice that size. The ice walls were shining brighter than the others, too. It was like the entire ship was made of silver awash with moonlight. And if the decorations spoke to the other ships’ functions as vessels of war, this was like a resplendent palace. Even the railings and doorknobs seemed created by a craftsman, and various statues of angels and the Virgin Mary lined the ship’s edge at regular intervals. He didn’t feel like going to the ship’s bow, but the statue attached to the end was probably a famous piece of artwork.

“There doesn’t appear to be anyone here…,” said Orsola, gripping her angelic staff and looking around. “This feels similar in construction to the pleasure boat that the doge, the one in charge of Venetia, used. A ship used for the national event, the Marriage of the Sea.”

“In other words, the boat has magical properties,” said Index. “This ship also serves as the central control for the whole Queen’s Fleet. By endlessly changing this ice ship’s decorations and their locations, it can control any of the specific boats directly.”

Kamijou took a careful look around as well. “Which is why the sisters don’t come here and why they’re not firing the cannons recklessly. I bet this flagship is the only one they can’t easily fix with seawater. If not, they wouldn’t need to have all these escorts around it.”

Index reached for the nearest door to get inside the ship, but it wouldn’t open for her. She looked to see the crevices between the door and the walls closed up tight with ice. It was essentially a wall. “Wait just a second. I’ll try undoing the door’s magical lock—”

Her words were interrupted in the middle, however—when Kamijou took a step forward. “You don’t need to be so squeamish about it. All this thinking stuff is really starting to get to me!!” he shouted, seeming truly fed up with it, pounding on the middle of the ice door with his right hand as hard as he could.

Bang!!

Not just the door but the walls around it were immediately blown away. His fist had left an open hole, a square three meters to a side, around where it hit. “Well, that was impressive,” he said.

“I believe it’s because unlike the escort ships, the walls and floors here all have magical meaning.”

Which meant he didn’t only unlock the door—he had totally busted up a bunch of other mechanisms, too.

Beyond the destroyed entrance would probably be a beautifully adorned passage, like the outside of the flagship. But the space inside also came to a clean end, the passage stopping three meters away. He hadn’t just punched through the square; he’d dug into a solid cube. There were statues of angels and wall lamps there, some still kind of hanging on the walls.

“It’s made of blocks,” answered Index simply. “It’s set up so that only the minimum required parts are cut away to prevent as much damage as possible. Even with your right hand, Touma, you can’t destroy it all at once.”

This wasn’t how it had gone when he’d touched parts of the escort ships. So then her theory is right—the whole ship is always changing shape, and that’s how it controls the rest of the fleet, he thought.

There was no time for questions, though.

Shwaa!!

Ice surged up like a mountain from under the deck to above it. To either side, in front and behind them, to surround them. It started to crack apart, revealing finer details. As the ice was shaved away, what lay in its place was a three-meter-tall suit of western-style armor made of ice.

And not only one or two.

Twenty or thirty of the ice armors had instantly surrounded Kamijou, Index, and Orsola.

“Inside!” shouted Orsola. “Those exist to protect the ship. They should hesitate to attack and accidentally destroy its interior!!”

The words had barely left her mouth before Index had grabbed Kamijou’s hand and ran. He had been about to take the armor pieces on with his right hand, but in his surprise, he found himself dragged along, almost losing his balance. Dozens of them took in hand their swords and axes, all made of the same material, and moved.

A whirlwind groaned, and the air split.

With a deafening roar, multiple sword slashes intersected. They grazed Index’s fluttering hair, stabbed right by Kamijou’s face, and passed over the head of Orsola as she ran, crouched. Kamijou almost stopped breathing. But that didn’t mean he could stop his feet.

Before the next attack came, the three of them rolled inside the ship using the entrance of the bored-out cube.

The interior was just as disgustingly intricate as the exterior. Angel statues lined either side of the passage, and each of the lamps hanging on the walls was changing its shape, little by little, separately from all the others. Everything from the doorknobs down to the screws looked like it had been created with the pride of a craftsman or an artist. Ships made only of ice didn’t even need screws in the first place.

“This should be—”

Before Orsola, still sitting on the floor, could say any more, a cluster of ice armors flooded into the entrance.

“Shit!!” Kamijou stood up off the floor, grabbed the hands of Index and Orsola, who had sunk to the ground, and less dragged and more swung them farther into the ship.

Ga-gee!! came a sharp noise.

Several of the giant armors had jumped into the entrance at once, so they got jammed in there. Many blades stabbed through the chests and guts of the armors that had stopped, and they shattered. Then, plodding over the completely broken ice sculptures, new armors made their way into the passage. They pressed toward them like the shock wave from an explosion where Kamijou and the others had just been moments ago.

“They’re still coming…?!” shouted Index.

But now Kamijou managed to predict the ice armors’ priority…They want to get rid of my right hand at all costs. One of the walls of the entrance had already been destroyed. He didn’t know exactly how it worked, but they seemed to have decided the Imagine Breaker was a threat. Which means…!

Just as Kamijou came to an intersection in the passage, he clenched his right hand into a fist. “Index, Orsola! You two go on ahead!!” he shouted, flinging both the girls into a side passage and then running straight down this passage.

“Touma!” Before Index could make her next move, all the armors ran after Kamijou. A few of them tried to go for Index and Orsola.

“Whoooaaa!!” Kamijou dragged his right hand across them, destroying them and causing the rest of their gazes to focus on the young man. They hefted their weapons, and all the automatic ice guardians flooded toward him.

3

“Sister Angeline! Are you all right?!” Lucia cried behind her as she gathered the fragments of the burst wooden wheel to her hand.

“…Yes, ma’am.”

Angeline had managed to prop herself up against one of the ice masts in a sitting position. Her coin pouches had been destroyed, so right now she was fighting with her hood, stuffed with coins like heavy rocks.

She wasn’t actually in any condition to fight. Even on a real battlefield, the correct decision would be to have her pull back from the front line for now. That was why Amakusa’s current leader had given them the submersible talisman, but the sisters wouldn’t allow that. And to shake them off, Lucia was no longer even able to cradle the injured Angeline.

Lucia stood her giant wheel in front of her, threatening them.

The ring of sisters pulled back just a bit. There were about thirty of them here, but considering their formation’s density compared to one enemy, this might have been the most heated battle site right now. Their strategy was to ensure their defeat of the weaker forces first. Lucia and Angeline were well aware of that, too.

How can we get through them…?

These sisters knew the intensity of Lucia’s attacks, so they didn’t approach carelessly. But because they understood how her attack worked, they wouldn’t back down fearing a bluff.

“Passengers of Ships Twelve, Seventeen, and Nineteen, evacuate immediately! Head for the water if you can’t! The fleet will now sink those ships and reconstruct them!!”

She was used to hearing that broadcast.

At the same time, she heard this. “This is nonsense! Quit playing around with the wounded!!”