INTERLUDE FOUR

The Facility for the Miniature Reproduction and Administration of Phenomena.

That was the name of the building in which Sasha Kreutzev sat.

More specifically, it was a cluster of buildings built by the Russian Catholic Church. The organization mainly analyzed and resolved spiritual phenomena, but when such incidents occurred, they would build an actual-size facility that was exactly like the phenomenon.

Their exhaustive accuracy could best be described as “merciless.”

In the Crossist faith dogma, the souls of the dead went to either heaven, purgatory, or hell. Therefore, there was no such thing as a soul that stayed in this world—at least, that was the story. Hence, the Russian Catholic Church considered all on earth who claimed to be dead to be “fakes taking advantage of death’s sorrow.” They sometimes defined such things like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—they had an effect by going away.

But there were very rare cases, such as jack-o’-lantern, whose souls (actually) wandered around after death. Such cases, though, were judged by Crossism to be the souls of sinners “without the right to go to Heaven, whilst also barred from Hell.”

All those who claimed to be dead, without exception, were mortal.

That was the singular end point of their conclusions.

Whether real or fake, they were the enemy. The Russian Catholic Church handled such troublesome folks by “rounding them up and purging them all at once.” It didn’t matter if ghosts had regrets, or reminisced about their life, or tried to scare people out of spite. If they were wandering on earth, they were evil. The Church’s style was to laugh away the trivial circumstances of any sort and crush them.

Stories of exceptions existed, of course, such as people resurrected by the Son of God and the twelve apostles. Those were acts only capable by such preeminently historic figures like the Son of God and saints, though. Some random sinner or begrudging corpse could never do that.

They had a facility where they received search information so they could “defeat the enemy, no questions asked.”

That place was here.

It gave the impression of a city built in the middle of the desert for Hollywood filming purposes, but their giant papier-mâché film props couldn’t hold a candle to the precision of the ones here.

Also, there had originally only been one or two props, but because of all the “research props” they’d built around the facility, it had grown to the size of a city that could fit two or three whole towns inside. It could be said this was a method only Russia could use, given the vast lands it possessed, cutting straight across the continent of Eurasia.

Sasha put a few drops of brandy in her tea and drank from her cup with a book in one hand inside a building modeled perfectly after a certain palace. Facility for the Miniature Reproduction and Administration of Phenomena was a painfully long name. Even within the facility, within this movie-like town, this building was the old-timer “reference prop” of the bunch.

The palace held a mixture of civilizations inside, and though it was the foundation of Crossist occultism, various objets d’art were mounted up in the top of the roof, ballooning outward like an onion.

“…”

Unbefitting Sasha’s slight frame, she drip-dropped more brandy into her tea like a lover of sweets pouring sugar in. The brandy wasn’t for flavor—this was a tea-flavored alcoholic drink.

The thick book in her hand had the title Actual Images of Angels as Variants printed on the cover. Its “original copy” would have been in the real palace, but this book was a prop belonging to this facility, perfectly re-created down to the letter. Even though it wasn’t a library of grimoires, the facility was renowned for how many “manuscripts” it contained.

“…A precaution regarding angels being called down into human bodies.”

Sasha’s hand stopped on the page she was looking for.

Her slender fingers traced the handwritten letters, which had been inscribed before the printing press was invented. At times, she frowned at the unfamiliar decryption method, but she didn’t rest. There was a reason she persisted in the work she wasn’t used to.

Something strange had happened to her body.

Visibly speaking, she now had a slight, irregular tremble in her fingers. Invisibly speaking, she now had a strange ability to sense mana…though it was actually closer to a biological rejection. It depended on how much mana there was, but when a large amount of it was used close to her, she could feel a sort of pressure in her chest.

She’d been feeling it since the end of August, but Sasha herself had no idea what had happened. After getting looked at in a large-scale facility, it was similar to the state one would be in if dense concentrations of Telesma—angelic power—were residing in her body for a long period of time. She’d never done any sorcery experiments like that.

What on earth had happened to her body?

Figuring it out wasn’t just Sasha’s job anymore. The entire Russian Catholic Church had already transformed it into a pending issue, acknowledged behind the scenes. Telesma was something everyone in Crossism borrowed, and it wasn’t rare for it to directly reside within someone’s body. Even Sasha used it in battle. But this was the first time her unique “symptoms” had appeared.

The entirety of Russian Catholicism, to speak nothing of the group within that framework she belonged to, Annihilatus—the so-called “white paper annihilators”—was now paying close attention to this incident regarding her. That made her worried, too. She had a guess that something was going on, but for now, her own body came first.

“The most major instance in this world of Telesma residing in a human was, of course, the Annunciation. When all the Telesma of the Son of God, immense enough to support and guide this entire world, enters the womb, it normally and without a doubt causes death by explosion. However, the Holy Virgin Mother, by maximizing her own attribute as the heavenly Father’s partner…”

Sasha didn’t realize something—she was nodding along as she followed the letters on the page.

Then the devil’s hands, approaching her from behind.

“Sashenka~. ”

The frightfully silky voice caused her expressionless features to jump in surprise all at once.

But she was already too late.

Two hands burst forth under Sasha’s arms, squeezing hold of her small chest before she could put herself on alert.

A voice behind her spoke. “You know, I think it’s time for little hardworking Sashenka, absorbed in her book and not watching her surroundings, to take a break, okay? Yes—nuwooahh?!”

The latter part turned into a scream as Sasha took a hammer and an L-shaped nail puller from her belt and immediately prepared for battle. Whether by some mechanism or sorcery, the hammer’s hitting surface only needed to touch the table to slam a huge crater in it and make it explode.

Sasha Kreutzev turned around, weapons in hand.

The person behind her blanched. “S-Sashenka? We’re in a facility for perfectly reproducing spiritual phenomena, and if you go around breaking things so easily, it makes it hard for the facility to do its job…!!”

“Answer one. Please send any written letters of apology to Bishop Nikolai Tolstoj.”

“Wait, you’d be the one writing that, Sashenka! Hell, why does Sashenka look so lovely when she’s playing innocent?!”

Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap!! She waved her arms desperately around. Sasha sighed.

The woman was Sasha’s direct superior.

Her name was Vasilisa. The signs of aging had begun to show in her fair skin, and she was extremely conscious of things like ultraviolet rays and skin blemishes. Standard battles with the Unhallowed, or “those who should not exist,” were conducted at night, but lately she’d picked up a bad habit where she’d say, “Staying up late is bad for my skin” and go home by herself. Sasha quite frequently caught her body in a lasso and flung her right into the middle of the “herd of targets.”

But she was still Vasilisa.

Why she insisted on the name of a heroine from Russian folklore Sasha didn’t know, but it was obviously fake. Vasilisa was just barely leaving her twenties, but nobody knew her exact age. She’d said, “Women are better with lots of mysteries!” a few times—but when Sasha said it more importantly meant nobody would celebrate her birthday, she was depressed for half the day.

Sasha’s incredibly immature superior was driving her up a wall. Not in the past tense, but in the present continuous tense. That was important.

Vasilisa trailed the page Sasha had been reading. “Reading something old and dusty again? Does that mean you haven’t figured out what went wrong with your body, Sashenka? In that case, I’d be happy to give you a thorough checkup, heh-heh-heh-ah-ha…”

Sasha took the hammer she was twirling in her hand and brought it down on the crown of Vasilisa’s head. She heard a dull bang!! “Question one. Do you prefer hammers or screwdrivers?”

“You already hit me with it, so that’s not a very good question. You’ve got so much nonsensical destructive force in you as usual.”

Sasha didn’t want to hear that from the person who never batted an eyelash at the magical torture hammer slamming into her. She liked to joke around, but she was probably stronger than Sasha.

“By the way, that Telesma in you—it’s Gabriel’s, right?”

“Question two. What about it?”

“That’s normally impossible, isn’t it? That would mean it’s more than the twelve apostles, right?”

“Question three. What—?”

“Bzzt! The POWER OF GOD was the angel chosen for the Annunciation. And if more power than the twelve apostles got shut away in a woman’s body, then…My, oh my! Sashenka, could you be…? Does your belly look any bigger—? Bgghoh?!”

Sasha swung her saw right into Vasilisa’s smiling face.

Not a scratch on her.

“Oops, sorry, I didn’t mean it. After all, Sashenka, you wear that hard-core bondage outfit all the time. You couldn’t stand making a baby with no pleasure, could you?”

“Question four. Do not foul even a single page of the sacred New Testament, you complete jerk. As an additional explanation, this straitjacket is something you forced me to wear by abusing your authority, remember?”

The so-called “bondage outfit” Sasha was wearing consisted of a red mantle, under which she wore a suit that was basically just very revealing underwear, along with a black belt. It was the kind old perverts might show up wearing on the street at night. Vasilisa claimed, “If it looks like an Unhallowed will possess your body, as a last-ditch option, you can bind yourself!” but no matter how she looked at it, she was just into this stuff.

Sasha, for her part, would rather not have even touched such a sluttish straitjacket. Unfortunately, Vasilisa was her direct superior, and she had to uphold her written oath. It would be absurd if rebelling over something she couldn’t do anything about landed her in a convent (read: guardhouse).

Not all Russian Catholic sisters dressed like this, of course. It wasn’t a circus of perverts.

Hiding herself behind her red mantle again, Sasha glared at her superior.

Vasilisa, clad in a perfectly honest red habit, cackled. “What? You hate it that much?”

“Answer two. That question itself is an insult to my personality.”

“Then let’s change your outfit,” she said simply.

“…?”

Sasha looked at her superior through her pestiferous bangs, only a little taken aback.

Vasilisa began to fish through her old-fashioned bag she’d set on the floor at her feet. “Well, you see, lately I’ve been looking into a bunch of stuff about Academy City and the occultism of island nations for business…”

“…”

She didn’t like where this was headed.

She felt like she shouldn’t look inside the bag.

They weren’t borrowing the aid of an astrological facility—but for some reason, a rather cold premonition was insistently poking at her mind.

“And get this—there’s a unique culture within Academy City. Of course, when I say culture, you know what I mean. Japan really is a good reference for countries. Well, I got my hands on some serious stuff, so I motivated myself to sew one of these, right down to the stitching!”

Sasha looked at the door, but before she could get very far estimating how thick and durable it was…

“Sashenkaaa, have you ever heard of Magical Powered Kanamin?”

She used her L-shaped nail puller to bust down the heavy door and flee.

One look at the “clothing” Vasilisa was unfurling for her with a full smile and she nearly let herself start crying. She knew Vasilisa had been collecting pieces of Japan’s suspicious otaku culture through France, but she hadn’t considered the woman’s tastes to be that ridiculous.

Anything but that glittering, shiny outfit.

Sasha Kreutzev was a combat nun belonging to the Russian Catholic Church’s special unit Annihilatus. Their battles were cruel ones, their goals the utter destruction of “all who should not exist” in this world. There was no good reason for running around a battlefield in such fluttery, thin clothing.

Maybe she should transfer to another department.

Nobody would want to die in battle wearing something so hard-core.