CHAPTER 2

Those Who Rise from Defeat
Flere210.

1

Noises bustled through the hospital that night.

This was the emergency care hospital on School District 22’s seventh stratum.

The small wheels of a stretcher carrying a patient clicked and clacked. Several emergency rescue workers advanced in a ring around it as the sounds ventured from outside into the building. The rescue workers’ hands pushing the stretcher passed it off to doctors and nurses, then the stretcher entered a concentrated care room before finally disappearing through the door of an operating room.

“…We’re done, somehow,” said a young male doctor some time later, watching the stretcher come out of the operating room and go back into the concentrated care room. “I can’t honestly say he’s in stable condition, but…”

The hospital hallways were lonely now that visiting hours had ended. However, several figures did populate the dimly lit passage. Many, even. Young and old, male and female, about fifty in all, leaning against walls and sitting on couches as they listened to the doctor’s words. The majority of them were adorned with torn clothes and bandages. Quite a few even had a distinct redness seeping through the white cloth.

They called themselves Amakusa, but the young doctor didn’t know what organization they were referring to, exactly. If he were to put it bluntly, they were an awfully suspicious bunch, but occasionally you’d get these sorts of throngs of delinquent boys inside if a Skill-Out leader was hospitalized. Given that, the doctor made a point not to ask any more questions.

“Speaking broadly, if he was a normal person, I would tell you he needs absolute quiet to rest. Going into more detail—first, bruises all over and a concussion. Next, dislocation of the right shoulder and left ankle. Finally, pressure on his internal organs…”

“…Meaning you can’t make a call, right?” asked a tall man with beetle-like glossy black hair, choosing his words carefully.

The doctor let out a heavy sigh. “There is one piece of good news, I suppose…The scariest thing was the possibility of oxygen deprivation, because he was underwater for such a long time…but it seems the damage was minimal.”

The young doctor continued, looking at what seemed to be medical records in digitized form. “Still…Despite several eyewitness accounts, the root cause isn’t something I can believe out of the blue. A human body being blown hundreds of meters over a bridge, then skipping off the water like a rock before slamming into it…The situation by itself is unbelievable, but the fact that he staggered to his feet amid the worst of a disaster like that is strange, to say the least.”

“He was going easy…,” muttered someone from the dark hallway.

The doctor turned that way, but he couldn’t tell who’d said it. They were an odd group. So many of them all together in the hospital stood out magnificently, but nobody was individually conspicuous. It looked like a scene of a random crowd of people. And that was despite close to fifty of them being bandaged up.

“Anyway,” started the beetle man—the only conspicuous one of their number—asking the doctor, “this doesn’t mean it’s all over, yeah?” just to make sure. “If he can talk, I’d like to give him a quick apology, if I could.”

“Wh-what are you saying?! He needs complete bed rest! A-and I don’t know what you want to apologize for, but that’s not a good idea right now. He’s asleep from the anesthesia. And even without its effects, he probably wouldn’t have the stamina to wake up. We need to let him rest for the moment.” The doctor indicated the concentrated care room with his jaw. “And besides…”

In order to make it easy to see changes in patients at a glance, even from outside, the intensive care room had glass panes for walls, and they could see several patients asleep from the hallway. On one of the beds, ringed with a cluster of machines, lay a spiky-haired boy.

The beetle man glanced that way at the doctor’s suggestion. His face clouded slightly.

As though nestling against the bed, or as though kneeling on the floor, was a girl. A girl in a white habit, gripping the patient’s palm, enfolding it with both hands.

Index.

“…My experience as a doctor tells me to let them be,” cautioned the young doctor, having eliminated the emotion from his face.

The beetle man didn’t seem to have the guts to go inside and interrupt, either. After he nodded quietly, the doctor walked away down the hallway.

The beetle man—Saiji Tatemiya—took just one step away from the glass wall of the patient’s new room.

It frustrated him to no end, but there was nothing he could do for the boy. None of the healing or recovery magic handed down in Amakusa would work. All he could do was pray for his safety—and he didn’t know if he even had the right to do that.

They’d told him they’d protect him from Acqua of the Back, but they’d been literally kicked to pieces. Routed. Tatemiya and the others were in shambles after the man’s attack, which felt almost like a quick side job. They each fell to the ground as Acqua moved toward his target, and they could do nothing but watch him go.

On top of that, at the end, the person they were guarding fought to defend his Amakusa “friends”…and this is how he ended up. Bandages wrapped around his whole body, gauze plastered to his skin. A civilian wouldn’t have been able to tell, but it was plain to see from a sorcerer’s point of view. Even their blending in to the environment, like in peacetime, had thinned.

Amakusa had lost—to everything.

They’d lost to Acqua of the Back, and more importantly, they’d lost to Touma Kamijou.

“…Damn it.”

Tatemiya gritted his teeth. Battered though they were, the enemy wouldn’t wait. According to Itsuwa, Acqua of the Back said if they didn’t let him sever Touma Kamijou’s right arm and take it before a day was up, Acqua would attack Kamijou again. Obviously, they couldn’t let either of those happen—his right arm being taken or him being attacked.

They knew what they had to do.

They had to stand up and face anything in order to protect Kamijou.

“And why are you curled up like that?” asked Tatemiya.

In a corner, which had even less light than the dimly lit hallway, making it practically a lump of blackness, he sensed something like a small animal giving a start.

It was difficult to tell without looking closely.

But it was Itsuwa there, without a doubt, making herself small on the couch.

Bandages on her limbs, a square piece of gauze covering her right cheek. It looked incredibly painful, but it was her mind that had been shattered, broken so badly her physical wounds couldn’t compare.

“…I…I…”

Her voice was shaky and punctuated by a hiccup. A sob. She’d already shed so many tears that she couldn’t control her diaphragm.

“…I said…I said I’d protect him. My spear, my magic…None of it helped…But he said…he said thank you…I couldn’t protect him at all. I couldn’t even get a single hit in as Acqua walked away…But he thanked me…”

He could hear the sound of falling drops. It may have been tears, or it may have been blood from her palm, from her clenched fist.

“When…When I heard about him, I thought, What amazing power he must have. But I was wrong. He can’t rely on any defensive spells. No matter how much healing magic I use, I can’t even fix a glancing wound. He truly was fighting unarmed, and yet I…”

“Itsuwa…”

“I left him to suffer and did nothing.”

At that point, Itsuwa might have been smiling. As she sniffled, he could see a twist in her face that looked like one.

“Why is someone like that living such a carefree life by herself? There’s one odd person among the victims, so why isn’t she stricken by divine judgment?! This doesn’t make any sense. I should have been the one sleeping in that bed!! That would have solved everything!!”

Her sentences wavered between strength and weakness. She was confiding in them, talking to herself, repenting, venting, complaining, and howling like a beast—all at the same time.

She didn’t have a full grasp of her own emotions.

She was so cornered that she couldn’t give them any thought.

Tatemiya narrowed his eyes slightly when he realized that, then stepped toward Itsuwa, splitting the dark shroud.

“You gonna stand up?”

“…”

“What the heck are you doing anyway?” he asked lightly, but then he grabbed Itsuwa’s collar with a hand. Before anyone could say anything, he lifted her with fearsome strength and slammed her against the nearby wall.

A dreadful thud echoed through the hallway.

The impact shot through Itsuwa’s back, making it hard to breathe. But she didn’t put up any sort of resistance. She just gasped for oxygen, glaring back at Tatemiya with tear-soaked eyes.

“…too, you…,” she managed to say between breaths. “Tatemiya, you lost, too…”

“…”

She knew how ugly her words were. And that she shouldn’t have been venting her anger on Tatemiya. But she still pierced him with what she said—because her mind couldn’t endure any more without doing it. This girl, Itsuwa, truly wanted to protect the boy. She earnestly desired to fulfill her promise. And those feelings had been shattered to pieces by overwhelming force. They were precious, something Itsuwa alone needed to understand.

But instead of all that, Tatemiya said, “He risked his life to save someone like this?”

Itsuwa’s eyes widened at the remark. She looked like he’d stabbed her with a knife. Her face hadn’t betrayed any pain even when he’d slammed her against the wall, but now it was filled with a twisted agony.

“Roughed up in front of your friends, in front of the one who saved your life and got wrecked for it…And you still do nothing. That kid seriously sacrificed himself for the likes of you? What a waste of life. It’s a dog’s death, is what it is. Hah. Pretty simple when it comes down to it, eh? This was just some idiot saving an idiot and doing something idiotic.”

Itsuwa’s face flushed with heat. Still being held up, she let out an animal-like roar and tried to throw a punch at Tatemiya. Before she could, though, he took her body from the wall it was up against and swung her down to the floor.

There came a rumble so loud it sounded like an earthquake.

He remained towering over Itsuwa, who was now having difficulty breathing again, and looked into her eyes. “Listen up. You don’t seem to understand this, so I’ll spell it out for you.”

His voice was low. Very low.

Fires of anger smoldered in Saiji Tatemiya’s tone.

“Acqua of the Back will return.”

Itsuwa gave a start.

Tatemiya forced her to think about the facts again—he knew them so well it made him want to pretend he didn’t.

“While we’re here worrying ourselves to death, the time limit keeps ticking down. Our lives already have a low chance of continuing, and with every second we waste, it gets a whole lot lower! Are you going to let that happen? There’s still a chance. However small it may be, there’s still a chance. And you’re going to throw it all away because of your bullshit regrets and guilt?! You’re going to give up and let his right arm be cut off before he knows the difference?! If you want to protect his smile, then get up. Don’t throw away someone else’s life just because it’s convenient for you!”

His shouting was practically a roar.

Itsuwa said nothing, so he continued, “If help came whenever we asked, we’d already be doing that. If someone told us our saint—our Priestess—would come, we could leave the rest to her. But that’s too good to be true. It’s impossible. Listen here—Acqua of the Back is absolutely going to return. Are you willing to make this hospital into a battlefield? All because you wanted to escape reality?!”

“Tate…miya…”

“You can stay quiet all you want, but Acqua won’t stop!! Even if we ask for help, the English Church won’t change their plans and send some nice little reinforcements!! All that’s left is for those who can move to move. We’re the only ones here who can fight!! We may be pitiful, but if we don’t do something now, who is going to protect that kid?! He’s still under the effects of anesthesia!! Don’t you get it?!”

The hand gripping Itsuwa’s collar cracked. He was holding on to it so strongly, he could have destroyed his own hand. And Itsuwa knew—she wasn’t the only one feeling angry, ashamed of herself. All of them had tried to protect Touma Kamijou, all of them had failed, and all of them accepted it.

They would still rise again.

They felt the shame of defeat, but instead of falling to their knees, they would rise.

To protect what was important to them.

Then…

I…I’m…

“You want to apologize to him?” he said, looking into her eyes. “You want to help that kid you’re supposed to protect? The one in there, all messed up? You want to get him back out into the sunlight?”

Itsuwa forgot to cough, even, and nodded slightly. She said something, but a sob made it indiscernible.

“…Then fight. Prove to him you’re the best woman out there. Let him know it was a good thing he risked his life for you. Apologies or smiles—no one can do either without being alive. Unless you want to repent in front of his grave, all we can do is fight.”

Tatemiya took his hand from her collar and slowly rose. He looked around, then asked the others, “Are there any other idiots who think like Itsuwa here?”

His voice carried through the hallway, as if thoroughly demolishing the depressed atmosphere brought on by their regret and powerlessness.

“If there are, then step forward. I’ll wake you up.”

Nobody answered.

But everyone was prepared.

Their regret and their sense of powerlessness hadn’t disappeared—they just had something stronger: the will to fight.

Tatemiya looked among his nearly fifty comrades gathered in the dimly lit hospital hallway and said, “If not, then fine. Now we just have to give this everything we have.”

The members of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church wouldn’t turn back.

They left the boy and the sister in the intensive care unit and headed off to battle against a strong enemy again.

“Seriously. Someone right in front of us who can’t be saved? I expect everyone to reach out and help.”

There was only one thing to do.

Their king was in check, so they needed to turn the tables and protect the boy’s life.

2

Acqua of the Back lingered in the night’s darkness. He was in a forested park on a street corner some distance away from District 22’s third stratum urban district. His reason for being here was simple—he wanted to distance himself as much as he could from the artificial objects of scientific technology flooding the place. Of course, now that he’d realized even these woods were science themselves, an application of hydroponic technology, he was currently in low spirits.

The whole underground must be a space entirely created with machinery.

A starry sky hung above him, but even that was an illusion of planetarium screens. Anyone with a little knowledge of magic would have spotted the difference.

Lighting here was sparse, as if to keep expenses low. One small, square light, however, shone in the darkness: Acqua’s cell phone.

He was talking to the Roman Orthodox pope. Their phones, though, weren’t powered on. The glow on the tip of the antenna was the glow of magic.

Even with this, we can’t be sure nobody is listening in. Amakusa, was it?—those English Puritan vanguards seemed to have been here as well.

Still, it was better than stupidly using a phone inside the grand headquarters of the world’s science faction.

“I have to say,” said the pope, “I hadn’t thought you’d stop short of killing him and only take his arm. I believe Vento of the Front told me that those in God’s Right Seat never changed their philosophies.”

“That’s because Vento has personality issues. In actuality, we must be flexible in each situation, ready to take action as circumstances demand…Of course, in Terra’s case, he took it too far.”

Acqua had been the one to butcher someone in his group and send his corpse to enemy organizations, but he didn’t seem to feel regret or guilt over it.

“The reality is,” he continued, “that the boy’s uniqueness is focused in his right arm. Stealing that means removing the threat. We don’t have the time to be absorbed with a single young man.”

“Personally, I prefer it that way as well,” said the pope on the other end. Acqua thought he heard him smile. “I said this to Vento earlier as well, but…Destruction is the only choice for enemies of God who have clearly become such by their own volition—but I hear the boy in question does not yet know God. To be honest, I have qualms about simply killing him. Of course, Vento snorted when I said that.”

“…I don’t know what you expect from me,” said Acqua, voice level, “but I’m neither as upright or altruistic as you. If the time comes when I must kill him, I will do so. Now is not that time. If that time does come, I will merely kill him. I’m sure there is a future in which that time doesn’t come, should several choices and strokes of luck align. That is all this is about.”

He wasn’t lying. Only four people were part of the world’s highest organization. Terra of the Left, one of those few, had been swiftly murdered—by Acqua of the Back’s hand. If the boy was no longer hostile after his right arm was gone, that was fine. If he was, or if he refused to proffer his arm—the rest was simple.

Acqua would erase him.

It was so simple when put into words, and the single strike he needed to send the boy to his grave would be even more curt than his words. Because Acqua had the power. He had the resolve. And even knowing that, his face remained stone cold.

“Such an odd situation,” said the Roman pope abruptly. “God’s Right Seat was established as advisors to generations of popes, and now it has trodden into the center of enemy territory while I, the pope, observe from the Vatican.”

Crossism was a monotheistic religion.

They had but one God, and all miracles were centralized and managed around that one God. He was absolute, so nobody could resist him. Originally, all the world would have been filled with happiness, and no unhappy people would have ever appeared.

However, what was the reality?

A glance through history showed it clearly: The failure of the Crusades, the spread of the Black Death, the expansion of the Ottoman Turks. It was far from people being happy or not—the entirety of the European continent faced several turning points where it could have been annihilated.

It was too much for a single pope. But as the symbol of a religion holding up their God as absolute, the very act of consulting with another would, in a way, be scandalous.

That was why God’s Right Seat was created. A special group of consultants riding alongside Crossist society’s pyramidal structure, seeking to have such knowledge and power that even a pope could rely on them as needed.

Cardinals, consuls, tacticians—completely different from all these, people who didn’t actually exist inside that pyramid, carrying out the role of providing voiceless advice.

It always had four seats. The members of the Right Seat corresponded to the four archangels, who were especially important angels. Their existence had continued by switching out one after another—the “contents” only—in accordance with its need.

Still, perhaps at times, despite the terrible situations, the popes had relied overmuch on their shadow advisors. At some point, the Roman Orthodox Church had fixed itself around God’s Right Seat at the center.

Acqua thought about it only for a moment. But he made no mention of it in his words. “The next time I contact you will be after it’s finished. Leaving aside whether the target lives or dies—”

Suddenly, a loud noise interrupted him.

It was the air.

Something had blinked, as if blending in with the darkness. It was such a small light that a normal person’s sensory organs would not have been able to pick it up. Acqua detected danger there. Leaving the cell phone between his shoulder and ear, he took an easy leap backward.

The air swirled of its own accord, then the space Acqua had just been standing in was gouged out along with the ground, shaved away and vanished.

Acqua furrowed his brow at the odd phenomenon and eventually came up with a guess. They’re spreading some sort of fine particles into the air, ones that dismantle objects.

If he had been well versed in science, he would have considered Bowing Images, nano-sized reflective alloys. They were ultra-small grains without circuitry or a power source that showed a specific reaction to particular frequencies. It was like using a TV remote control to operate a radio-controlled car—except to tear off singular cells in creatures.

As Acqua was watching for the unseen power, another change occurred, this one in the giant planetarium screen making the artificial night sky. With a shrill buzz, a warning message began to transmit in the entire stratum.

“Anoxic warning issued for all of Stratum Three. All citizens must either quickly evacuate to buildings designated as disaster countermeasures or equip household oxygen tanks. We repeat. Anoxic warning issued for all of Stratum Three…”

“I see.” Acqua gave a fearless grin. “It looks like they plan to disperse these attack particles all over this stratum to eliminate my escape.”

“A bad situation?”

“Does it look like it?”

Acqua muttered something under his breath, and the moisture in the air became his ally. He sensed the movements touching the moisture, getting a rough estimation of the Bowing Images’ dispersal pattern.

Then he heard a soft sound of leaves scraping from nearby brush. He glanced over and saw a powered suit among the trees, its armor reflecting blue light. From a short distance away, he heard a different kind of start-up noise. They must have prepared short-term city armored police cars, making use of both gasoline engines and electric ones.

He wasn’t smiling. “Testing the enemy’s strength, are they? I’ll introduce them to what I call my dirty mercenary style.”

“I would prefer if you refrained from indiscreet bloodshed.”

“I don’t know for sure, but they’re probably all unmanned. I don’t sense human presences in them. That must have been how they got this close, but…”

Vroom!! A new sound split the air. It was the sound of Acqua pulling his especially large mace, over five meters long, from the shadows at his feet.

“Simply wonderful, isn’t it? Academy City?” he said, heaving the metal lump onto his shoulder. “They went out of their way to make a battlefield where no blood had to be shed. How considerate. A perfect way to get used to things.”

As if in response, the enemy group moved. In a corner of that nighttime park, several shadows surrounded him.

A volley of bullets flew. Bowing Images shot toward him, too small to be seen by the naked eye.

But Acqua didn’t fall. He dodged the bullets and blew away the Images, sometimes borrowing their power to accurately deal with the bullets—which were flying in unnaturally twisting paths—and immediately shifting to a counterattack.

I don’t know how the science works, but there must be someone in command here, hiding somewhere.

In a single breath, Acqua broke through their encirclement, his mace, over five meters long, stabbing into the side of an armored car like a spear. He ignored its weight, swinging the car itself around on his mace, crashing it into several powered suits. Then he swung the mace down toward the ground, causing the car caught on it to explode into a million pieces. Finally, after letting the Bowing Images floating in the air restrain him, by some spell, he walked calmly into the roiling flames.

I will tear off these powered suits’ armor, wrench open the armored cars’ chassis, and check every last one of them!!

Acqua of the Back, of God’s Right Seat, worked.

While thunder and destruction dominated all.

3

Japan and England had a time difference of about nine hours. Right now, it was the middle of the night in Japan, but in London, it was still evening. Of course, because of their different latitudes, the English sun set earlier in the autumn and winter. The sky there was already growing purple.

The Royal Academy of Arts.

This museum of art, counted as one of the most prestigious in all England, also sponsored art schools to foster the next generation of artists. And even at this hour, the voices of lecturers had yet to wane.

Standing on the platform as teacher, lit by fluorescent lighting, was Sherry Cromwell.

“We’ll be discussing coats of arms today.”

Her hair was yellow like a lion’s, and her skin was the color of chocolate. Her clothing was a ragged, worn, black gothic lolita dress. Sherry was known as a talented sculptor, too, but her aesthetic didn’t make sense in any works but her own…That, anyway, was her students’ opinion of her.

“You know, coats of arms. The things with family crests on them. Not some strange, occult markings—though I suppose there are some of that variety, but that’s getting off topic.”

A few stifled laughs from the students. They must have thought she was joking. The sorcerer Sherry ignored them and moved on.

“What we call a coat of arms is actually a combination of several elements, but what I brought today is the one that goes in the center—the escutcheon.” Her voice was drawling. “I’m sure those here aim to earn your daily bread by putting paintbrush to canvas, but when you want to impart a message to a work you create, this type of knowledge sometimes comes in handy. Anyway, it’s a way of avoiding artist’s block. Basically, just ignore everything your teacher is saying.”

There came a reserved knock on the lecture room door. With the example escutcheon up on the platform, Sherry glanced dubiously that way.

The door opened slightly and without a sound, revealing a young office worker for this art school. She’d just arrived here this year. With a slight bend of her little head, she said, voice apologetic, “I’m sorry…There’s someone calling you from the British Library…”

“Oh,” said Sherry, her finger running along the heraldry’s edge. She thought for a moment. “Guess you’re on your own for a while, class,” she said to her students with incredible flippancy, scratching her head and leaving the lecture room.

When she went into the hallway, the petite office worker looked at her nervously. “I’m, well, sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sherry. “They like self-study better anyway. You can’t teach people how to make art. The ones who don’t like self-study aren’t cut out to be creators in the first place.”

“I…I see…” The office worker smiled vaguely.

In a slightly annoyed voice, Sherry asked, “Anyway, someone called?”

“Oh, yes. They’re on the phone now. Please come to the office.”

The office worker led Sherry into the room. One of the telephones on a business desk was blinking, indicating a call on hold.

“That one?”

“Yes. It’s the British Library…Are they asking about how to handle pieces of art?”

“Something like that.”

The British Museum and St. George’s Cathedral frequently contacted Sherry. The others in her life seemed to think the places were requesting appraisals or repairs on old pieces of art.

The office worker bowed to her, then went back to her own desk. Sherry tiredly picked up the phone.

An awfully relaxed female voice came over from the other end. “Oh my. Am I correct in thinking that I’m speaking to Miss Sherry?”

“…I just knew it would be you, Orsola. Christ. Don’t they have any other book specialists around there?”

In response to Sherry’s extremely fed-up tone, the woman named Orsola giggled. “Well! You do know that bulk trash goes out on Mondays and Fridays.”

“I get it, I get it. You’re rewinding your words. Just get to the point,” said Sherry flatly, urging her on. She’d learned how to deal with the woman of late.

Orsola’s story went like this.

“I’ve been doing some research into past accounts of magical incidents still in the British Library to find information on God’s Right Seat and Acqua of the Back.”

“Yeah, you told me before I left this morning. Find anything?”

“As a result of verifying things like eyewitness accounts of September thirtieth, the man in question, before taking on the name ‘Acqua of the Back,’ was apparently a central figure in England. There are several first-hand testimonies of this.”

“And you told me that this afternoon.”

“There are also a few testimonies that state he was a knight of England.”

“Huh?” Sherry frowned in thought for the first time. Acqua of the Back, a Roman Orthodox follower, was a knight of England…?

In modern-day England, the peerage of “knight” was a public decoration. It had nothing to do with family. The queen would confer the title directly on any who made important achievements for the country. Knighthood wasn’t passed on to children or grandchildren, either. It was sort of like a national honor award.

But apart from that, a sizable faction called the Knights still existed behind the scenes in England. They took up swords to protect the royalty and the people, treating any who would threaten them as an enemy, and risked their lives to wipe them out. And, just like Far Eastern samurai, they were supposed to have vanished with the development of firearms.

“…To think a leader of another denomination would have once been one of our knights,” said Sherry. “If that’s true, we have a big problem on our hands. In the worst case, Academy City could put us through the ringer and say this Acqua of the Back incident was our responsibility.”

“However, when I looked at the records of knight names preserved in Buckingham Palace, I didn’t find anyone who matched Acqua of the Back’s characteristics.”

“Then your info was a false lead?” asked Sherry. Perhaps it was a case of a magic-using mercenary being mistaken for one.

“Hmm,” replied Orsola, seeming to ponder for a moment. “It is true that I couldn’t find him in the knight name records, but…”

“Eh?”

“Anyone chosen as a knight prepares an escutcheon for their family, yes? I contacted a craftsman on the outskirts of London, and he had an order form for an escutcheon from an unknown person…They used a pseudonym, but apparently, it was canceled part of the way through production.”

“…I see.” Sherry’s lips curled. “A coat of arms’ design encodes lineage, history, and role. You can investigate them to uncover the identity of this knight who isn’t in the database.”

“Yes…I decided there might be information to be gained from the illustrations. I sent the order form to you, with them, um, ‘over fax.’”

Sherry looked at the fax machine just as it was spitting out paper. The young office worker from before ran over to it.

Sherry got the bundle from her, about ten pages in all, then spread the pages out on her desk. She ran her index finger over what was written. This was more like a machine blueprint than a piece of art. The pages were in monochrome and had color specifications written in all over, which really only served to deepen that impression.

“…Two main colors—blue for the base, with green to decorate. The animals being used…A dragon, a unicorn, and…Is this woman a selkie? The shield is divided in four, and if there are three animals to place on it, that means…”

“Does it tell you anything?”

Eventually, after gazing at the illustrations, Sherry sighed. “Something simple, yeah.”

“I see.”

“A dragon, a unicorn, and a selkie. All creatures that don’t actually exist,” explained Sherry. “The colors of the coat of arms are odd, too. You can’t overlap a basic color like blue with another like green. It’s against the rules…It’s so indecent it makes me want to laugh. This guy must have been really unhappy about being placed on the list of Knights.”

Like a phonograph, Sherry translated the information on the figures into words.

“I’m almost certain this person was welcomed by the royal faction and, unable to refuse, grudgingly accepted a summons to the knighting ceremony. Which means…he was a combat pro working as a freelancer before becoming a knight. And probably doing work that benefited England…For a lowly mercenary to be chosen as a knight indicates he followed through with his own upright moral code even on dirty battlefields. There’s no more annoying enemy than one without any dirt on their record.”

Just to be sure, she checked the date on the order form. It was from over ten years ago. The fact that a craftsman had been cherishing this order form, which was both old and supposedly canceled, gave her a glimpse of how much popularity Acqua of the Back had had during his days working for England.

“Also,” added Orsola, “the requirements for being named a knight in the magic world state that only someone from England can receive it. Should I create a list of mercenaries stationed at bases in England?”

“No,” said Sherry, tapping on the animals drawn on the pages with her index finger. “A dragon, a unicorn, and a selkie. All three of these appear in legends across the entire United Kingdom, not just in England—in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, too.”

“…? I was under the impression that unicorns were from Greece.”

“Elizabeth the First supposedly had a unicorn horn in her personal collection. Turned out it was just a regular animal bone, though,” muttered Sherry. “In any case, this is someone born in the United Kingdom, a mercenary-for-hire working for England’s benefit…This whole story of a lone-wolf merc who wasn’t in any rigid sorcerer’s society being welcomed as a knight is pretty suspicious. And given how they couldn’t turn down a request they weren’t happy with…Check anyone the royal faction treated with some importance.”

4

The fifty members of Amakusa, Saiji Tatemiya first and foremost, were in a back alley in District 22’s seventh stratum. Tatemiya had gotten a call; he was holding his phone in one hand while talking to his comrades.

“Looks like an unmanned Academy City mech unit ran into Acqua of the Back in a park on the third stratum.”

That put everyone present on edge. The third stratum was where Kamijou and Itsuwa had just been attacked.

It went without saying who won the fight this time, as well. Acqua of the Back was a monster, and they knew beyond a doubt that a crowd of mass-produced machines wouldn’t be enough to kill him.

Tatemiya looked at Ushibuka, who was nearby.

“…Are we going?” asked Ushibuka.

“No,” said Tatemiya, shaking his head and clapping his phone closed. “We’d be going in blind. I think we all know how that would turn out. Let’s wait for word from England. We need optimal preparation and an optimal strategy, then we’ll challenge him to an optimal fight at an optimal time.” He paused. “This is the final battle. This is what it means to get serious.”

Acqua of the Back had floored Kamijou, their precious comrade and one who saved their lives, but though they knew his current location, they would endure for now. Hellish flames probably raged in Tatemiya’s mind. But for the sake of a single victory, he stifled all those emotions—and told them that they would wait.

“Now isn’t the optimal time. To make the best plan, we have time to wait for Miss Orsola’s data organization skills. What does that leave us to do now? It’s simple—we have to make optimal preparations.”

Tatemiya looked around. The scattered members of Amakusa got to work cleaning and maintaining their swords, spears, and other weapons. To follow their principle of hiding and waiting, they normally had to give up a certain amount of weapon hardness or power, but now they were reinforcing them, removing their limiters.

“…Please, wait about three hours.”

Suddenly, someone spoke. Tatemiya looked over and found Itsuwa, wearing a leather belt to tuck up her sleeve like the Shinsengumi. She was looking down as she reinforced her spear—actually, it was almost a full-fledged retrofit. Since her spear was made of several short sticks that attached to one another, it necessarily fell short on hardiness. Now, however, she was spraying a fixative on the length of the shaft, making the resin weapon a size thicker, while also using sandpaper to polish the surface to a smooth one.

“It will take a bit of time for me to get this into a state where I’m comfortable using it, and to sharpen the blade to use against that monster…Please leave it to me. He hit me directly with his attacks, so I know what kind of weapon I need to fight him skillfully…”

After using the sandpaper to reshape the spear, if there was a part of the resin that had gotten too thin, she sprayed it once again. She repeated that process several dozen times, again and again and again.

Scratch! Scratch!! Even the noise of her whittling the resin down sounded like it had bloodlust in it. Tatemiya felt a minor chill run down his spine. She was like a psycho killer, polishing her knife in the middle of the night. He thought, Uh, crap. Did I get ahead of myself when I criticized her before?

Nearby, Ushibuka must have been thinking the same thing. He whispered into Tatemiya’s ear.

“(…What now? Now it’s like you incited her too much and set a petrochemical complex on fire.)”

“(…W-well!! Listen here. She was acting like an empty shell or something in that hospital, so, well, yeah!! I was just cheering her up.)”

“(…You absolute idiot!! You didn’t have any plan in mind when you incited her, did you?! Now we might have first-row seats to see how terrifying a girl in love can be!!)”

“(…What?! How is it my fault?! What do you think I should have done back there?!)”

“Tatemiya, Ushibuka?” murmured Itsuwa. Both the men shot upright at attention, unmoving. Itsuwa, still looking down, continued, her expression unreadable. “I’ll be fine, all right? Could you please let me focus?”

Her face was blank, and her voice was incredibly level.

That was all she said, though, before going back to sanding down the side of her spear again. It was slowly evolving to be easier to carry, easier to use, and easier to kill.

Tatemiya and Ushibuka turned into shivering, stammering messes. Their comrades nearby sighed deeply at them.

Itsuwa seemed somehow awfully violent today, so Tatemiya secretly kept himself busy by using leather belts to tuck up his own sleeves, reinforcing his clothing with magic, and comparing notes with everyone else to make sure they had a firm grasp on the surrounding geography.

In the meantime, Tatemiya and Ushibuka, almost seriously, put their hands together in prayer for Acqua of the Back, who wasn’t here right now.

You might have your own stuff going on, Acqua, but now that our Itsuwa is in a murderous rampage mode, you’re on your own, buddy.

“(…I…I really, really, really don’t want to be responsible for holding Itsuwa back when she snaps,)” said Tatemiya quietly.

“(…I—I—I concur,)” whispered Ushibuka.

Just then, Tatemiya’s ringtone went off.

“Oh my. Would I happen to be speaking to Mr. Tatemiya?”

“Ack, Miss Orsola!! Your voice is a salve for the soul!!”

With something important in his mind about to give way, Tatemiya stood there, about to collapse into tears.

Orsola, though, didn’t understand the situation. “Um, if this is the wrong person, then I do apologize. I will hang up—”

“Don’t hang up!! If you do, I’ll fall back into that sea of nervous tension!!”

Grasping at straws, Tatemiya fully engrossed himself into his conversation with Orsola. He switched his phone to speaker mode, so that everyone could hear, and waited for her to speak.

“I…I have new information regarding Acqua of the Back,” she reported, unusually hesitant for someone who always went at her own pace. “I’ve discovered his real name—William Orwell. He’s a magic mercenary born in England, belonging to nobody. Of course, he wasn’t a Roman Orthodox follower since birth; the record states that as a young boy, he was baptized in an English Puritan church. As a mercenary, he was always a lone wolf and appears to have specialized in bringing down enemy positions.”

Specialized in.

That implied bringing down positions wasn’t all. In his many battles, the thing he’d been best at was point control. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do any other kinds of battle. If that was true, William Orwell would have lost long ago, and he wouldn’t be here now.

“Also, William apparently has a sorcerer’s name as well. He has engraved the name Flere210 into his mind.”

“…Flere, huh…?”

Magic names used Latin words. Flere’s literal meaning was “tear,” the droplet. They didn’t know what meaning was behind that, though. Still, William Orwell had enough of a reason to name himself that—and the overwhelming ability to be able to.

A saint—that word, expressing an entirely different sort of existence than the rest of them, passed through the back of Tatemiya’s mind. “What kind of record did William Orwell have during his mercenary days?”

“In western Russia, supporting the Astrologers’ Brigade. In central France, the battle to annihilate the Knights of Orleans. Near the Dover Strait, the battle to rescue the third princess of England…There are too many to count.”

Participating in many battles, gaining victory, and returning alive—that, by itself, spoke to Acqua of the Back’s massive abilities. As Orsola listed off the names of the battles Acqua took part in, Tatemiya recognized several of them. All were known as heated conflicts. Battlefields they could praise only as nightmares, the sort even Amakusa all together couldn’t overcome.

“He’s a tough opponent…Actually, he sounds almost invincible.”

“However, William Orwell does not seem to have been the sort to resolve all problems before him with violence. For example, he went to one war-torn region with few medical facilities and passed on medicinal knowledge to decrease death rates, went to a starving village and taught them how to prepare burdock root as food since it wasn’t being used for it in that region…He evidently did much outside of fighting. Some people apparently called him a sage.”

That was only something he could have done if he understood the reality of war. Some problems couldn’t be solved just by sending in a large force or donating money. It took the feel of the battlefield’s air on your skin, an understanding of what the people there needed, and an assurance that they could do what you did, too. Only that would create a permanent, not a temporary, increase in their quality of life. It would appear that Acqua of the Back wasn’t a mere battle idiot after all.

He was an intelligent beast, with a tenacious body and a flexible mind.

“I cannot find anything one could call a weakness,” said Orsola. “It appears he has been using his meteoric powers as a saint ever since he was a freelance mercenary.

“…And on top of that, he wields power as a member of God’s Right Seat after converting to the Roman Orthodox Church.”

That meant all those legends from his mercenary days were built back before William Orwell even became Acqua of the Back. His abilities were beyond that now. And it wasn’t just additional strength he had—he’d gained an entirely new game board to battle on. Once again, Tatemiya was astounded at how great this enemy they’d made was. He was probably more terrifying than their own Priestess baring her fangs.

How on earth does he control all that power?

If you looked at Kanzaki, it would seem like she was naturally controlling her powers as a saint. But it wasn’t actually that easy. If a normal sorcerer like Tatemiya tried to handle it, it would be so much he’d destroy himself instantly.

And Acqua commanded even more than she did.

…Means he’s probably stronger in magical ability, too.

“The plan was for England to knight William, but a week before the ceremony, he vanished. An in-progress escutcheon was thus left sitting in a craftsman’s house.”

And when he next appeared, he was an enemy of England. It was a mystery what happened in that time, but that wasn’t important right now.

“I don’t expect you to find any weaknesses. Don’t you at least know how Acqua fights? Like what weapons he uses or what combat style?”

“His combat style is completely self-taught. He appears to call it ‘dirty mercenary style.’ In terms of his weapons, he uses a steel mace over five meters in length. This says it outwardly looks like a knight’s lance.”

Tatemiya and the others already knew that; they’d fought him directly.

“Also…The way he moves during battle is unique. Instead of running, he appears to slide over the surface of the ground.”

“…?” They hadn’t given that a thought. Was that why they hadn’t heard him approaching? Now that he considered it, she was probably right. Still, Acqua moved so fast that aside from changing direction, it pretty much looked like he just disappeared.

“It seems to be a movement spell that uses water somehow. Cars slip on ice because of the thin layer of water between the ice and the wheels, right?”

“Which means…He’s been good at using water even before they called him Acqua of the Back…”

Vento of the Front, Terra of the Left, Acqua of the Back. If they were each associated with one of the four archangels, that meant Acqua’s territory was Gabriel, God’s “power”—whose attribute was water. He hadn’t used any special attacks, any water spells, during their fight, probably because he thought them beneath it.

…All right. How do we plan for that, exactly?

There were too many unknowns, values whose upper limit was too high for them to even imagine. It made Tatemiya want to laugh.

Then it happened.

“Whatever our enemy, there’s only one thing we have to do…”

Quietly.

Itsuwa, who had been reinforcing her spear, murmured, her lips barely moving at all:

“Isn’t that right, Tatemiya?”

The words you better not run away were hidden in there, and Tatemiya’s hand with the cell phone in it started to tremble.

5

Three AM.

Acqua of the Back lingered on a bridge in School District 22’s third stratum.

During his route from the park to here, he’d felled eight self-propelled Bowing Image control antennae, seventeen armored cars, and thirty-eight powered suits. All were unmanned. He would defeat one enemy, move, encounter more there, wipe them out, repeat…But he still couldn’t find who was taking command, controlling the operation. His opponent must have been using their head more than Acqua gave them credit for.

Without a glance to the artificial night sky projected by the planetarium canopy overhead, he found himself thinking, Vento’s divine judgment would have made this easy…

Still, it hadn’t even been an hour yet, and the enemy had withdrawn. It was such a one-sided defeat that the Academy City leaders must have decided the battle a waste of military resources. Acqua agreed. He shuddered to think how much capital had gone into manufacturing those metal trash heaps. People poured insane amounts of money into modern weapons—so much the numbers stopped making sense. He thought they would be better off finding a more economical use for it all.

“…But surprisingly, they don’t seem to be idiots.”

That was his evaluation of their skillful withdrawal. You could say it about any field: Professionals had a lot of pride in their own work. For someone in the service, that was straight power. The thrashing he’d given them would make everyone talk. Their withdrawal meant Academy City had a leader who had pushed that aside, used enough logical arguments to force the others to understand the actual situation, and urged a swift retreat.

Of course, it didn’t matter how excellent that leader’s political skills were, nor how much strength and brawn they commanded. It didn’t change what Acqua had to do.

Destroy the Imagine Breaker.

…And intercept all elements who would block him.

Now, then. Acqua took out a pocket watch and checked the time. Still nineteen hours left until the negotiated time is up…

He closed the watch, put it back in his pants pocket, then looked to the side using only his eyes.

“Come to a conclusion?” said Acqua into the darkness. “You have half a day until the time limit. Have you made the preparations already?”

From out of the dark came a scrape…of footsteps.

More than one set. Around fifty of them in all. All of them members of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, known as a branch of English Puritanism. Their footsteps, surrounding him, were three-dimensional, meaning that they had all appeared, as though seeping out, from every nook and cranny in the metal bars making up the bridge.

There were men, women, children, and adults, and all of them wore normal clothing you could find anywhere. But their hands gripped swords, spears, axes, bows, whips, and other weapons, all ominously reflecting the streetlights. Among them were weapons that even Acqua, as a mercenary, hadn’t seen before—a kusarigama and a jitte, characteristic of the East—and even one that looked like a flute made of metal.

At the front stood the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church’s vicar pope, Saiji Tatemiya.

There was a simple reason he knew his name: He’d heard it muttered during the previous battle, called among allies and when changing tactics. Intelligence gathering on the battlefield was another necessary skill for a mercenary.

“Well, I mean, you gave us an impossible problem,” said Tatemiya. “Means we don’t have to worry about it, so we came to a quick decision. Guess I have you to thank for that, at least.”

Tatemiya held a large sword, a flamberge. Like claymores and other two-handed swords, it had been made extra-large for crushing both thick armor and the enemy inside.

His weapon was enormous, 180 centimeters in length. But from Acqua’s viewpoint, it still looked no longer than a child’s stick.

“An impossible problem?” he repeated, smiling as he tapped his foot on the ground. Without a sound, his shadow wriggled, and out came a lump of metal over five meters long. “You stand against the Roman Orthodox Church’s two billion, and yet I said you’d get out of it with a mere arm. I would think this a bargain.”

“The Roman Church isn’t our enemy. It’s people like you—the ones making the normal God-fearing people dance for you, preying on them.”

“Hmm. Does this mean our negotiations have failed?”

“What else could it possibly mean?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It’s not for me to worry about. You’re the ones who should be worrying—because you’ve abandoned the only possibility you had of living through this.”

Acqua reaffirmed his grip on the gigantic mace stretching from the shadow under him, then gave it a light swing with his wrist, as though flicking a tennis racket.

“I’ll say this once more to be certain,” he said. “I am a saint.”

“…”

“And I also have power as part of God’s Right Seat.”

“…”

“If you’ve properly understood that, and still say you will risk your lives to fight and protect someone, then I look forward to it—the possibilities of man, or what have you. I look forward to your vaunting being more than nonsense. I’m sure you’ve poured every bit of your strength into tricks and aces. I will accept every last one of them.”

Acqua changed.

Not in a visible way. He didn’t sprout angel wings or a halo overhead, or anything concrete like that. However, something unseen had spouted from his whole body.

“And I will still win.”

With a rumble, Acqua took just half a step forward.

He didn’t do it to move but to prepare his metal mace. It was a quiet, grave, decisive motion to display his resolve and determination to crush every last one of those he saw as enemies.

“I will prove that battles are not decided by good or evil, but by strength and weakness. I pray that you will draw out at least one of my own trump cards. If you cannot even reach that point, then I will grant you not the title of weak, but that of fools—”

Acqua didn’t continue after that.

Ga-bam!!

Itsuwa, having lost her patience, ignored their conversation and struck suddenly, her full intent behind it.

The Friulian spear she’d stabbed wordlessly shot toward Acqua in a line, as fast as a flash of lightning. Immediately, she activated a spell on its tip, one she’d built using the cold night air—and detonated it. Boom!! Flashes of light scattered while bursts of wind whipped about, mercilessly smashing everything to pieces—not just Acqua, who had taken the hit directly, but the asphalt nearby.

It even flipped over her own ally, Saiji Tatemiya.

“I-Itsuwa…Hello…?” he said softly, shocked, but Itsuwa didn’t turn around. He just got an electric feeling coming off her shoulders.

She glared into the billowing dust, keeping her spear ready, and clicked her tongue. A mace tore through the curtain of gray, revealing an unharmed Acqua.

“Do you not think it polite to listen until the end?”

“…If you want to talk, I’ll listen later.” Itsuwa, far from growing nervous, actually took another step in. “After I’ve beaten the living, standing, walking, talking, breathing shit out of you! If your jaw is still in good enough condition to talk anyway!!”

Itsuwa’s shouts could pierce eardrums, and though her face was expressionless, a strange power was gathering in the middle of her brow. The Amakusa members, with pained looks, variously put hands to their heads and looked away.

“(…Bad, bad, bad!! Itsuwa’s gone off the deep end!!)”

“(…It’s your fault! You were careless and told her at the hospital to prove she was the best woman out there, and now her feminine heart is at full power!!)”

“(…Idiot. A woman in love would make even God an enemy.)”

As the men chattered to each other quietly, Tsushima gave them an oddly cool reprimand.

Itsuwa and Acqua ignored their exchanges, facing each other down. At some point, Amakusa’s central point had changed completely.

“Hmm. That’s very heroic of you, but I’d rather you show me actual power to match your words.”

“Please, don’t worry. Even if we end up pieces of flesh, we will rip and tear and cut and hack and shred you to bits so that you regret what you’ve done!!”

A voice came from behind her, crying out, “What?! I didn’t think we were going that far!!” She ignored it and took another step forward.

The two of them had come into definite striking range. Leaving behind Saiji Tatemiya as he watched in bafflement, they clashed.

6

Explosions ripped through the late-night air on the bridge.

The difference in speed between Acqua, who wielded the immense powers of a saint, and Itsuwa, just a regular person, was vast. Acqua lurched straight for her so quickly that he disappeared from the human eye. All his muscle mass expanded at once, and he whipped his giant mace like a guillotine.

Itsuwa barely managed to move her spear a half step later. She took a stance with it along the path of Acqua’s attack, meaning to stop it. But Acqua had no attacks that could be stopped.

However…

“!!”

With a grrrrrieeek like two boulders colliding, Itsuwa’s spear stopped Acqua’s mace.

Normally, a mere Friulian spear would have been blown to smithereens, along with Itsuwa’s slight body.

“That spear…”

“Yes—it’s coated in fifteen hundred layers of resin.” Itsuwa grinned, barely holding her weapon in place. “It represents the rings indicating wood’s age, and the hidden form’s identity is the reproductive power of plant life. Until this spell reaches its limit, this hardness will only continue to grow firmer with the passage of time. Every second that goes by makes it sturdier. Have a taste, and know the power of my Weeds!!”

“However, you have several other spells layered on it…”

“…Why was clothing adopted in every civilization in the world? Do you need an explanation on what hidden forms are for?”

The sweater Itsuwa wore was unnaturally torn near the armpit, revealing pale skin beneath. Almost as though she had substituted it to take the mace’s damage for her.

“To defend the wearer, yes…This must be its most important meaning. However, it is an ancillary damage-reduction spell, not convenient enough to defend against any sort of attack unarmed.”

Acqua hadn’t seen anything like this in the last battle. And they didn’t have to be stingy about it now. In other words, Amakusa’s members had been very quick to get such highly effective Soul Arms and spells ready.

But that wasn’t what surprised him the most.

She kept up with my speed…?

He was a saint. His speed was overwhelming. No normal human could keep up with it. Itsuwa should have been dead right now, unable to move a finger.

And yet she’d reacted.

She’d only had half a step to catch up later; she didn’t have any time to switch to a counterattack. And yet her defense had still worked.

How? Acqua wondered, but then he realized the answer a moment later:

There was a certain regularity to the fifty Amakusa members’ movements. A more unique regularity than a simple, efficient battle line. As soon as he thought Itsuwa was their center, the center moved. When he looked for it again, he would find it scattered among all of them; it wasn’t an actual center. But the moment he took his mind off that center, it would return to Itsuwa. It was an odd sensation, this center, almost like a creature sliding through the single group.

Sometimes it would coalesce, other times it would scatter, and like the sand in an hourglass, it combined their individual movements into one larger meaning.

Are they reinforcing one another’s kinetic vision and physical abilities?

“Parlor tricks…,” he said with a frown at their movements—which seemed accustomed to fighting against saints. Sainthood was a rare talent that less than twenty people in the world had. Only so many people would personally see one in their lifetime.

Hmph. I see. The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church. A saint like myself was once a member of their ranks.

With that taken into consideration, their eyes must have been used to the speed, strength, and intelligence of a saint. And they had the brains to bring out that experience, resulting in her having made a spell to keep up with Acqua.

He pulled his mace back once, then readied it again, giving Itsuwa another look. “But it’s still too slow.”

“?!”

Sshwohhh!! The saint charged in again.

Before Itsuwa could feel the blast of wind, the mace came at her in a horizontal sweep. She barely caught it, but by the time her clothing had ripped and allowed her to magically elude the impact, the next attack was already coming from overhead. She tried to swing her spear at it, but that was when the first strike’s impact washed over her, sending her body falling backward.

As Acqua’s second attack fell more swiftly at her than the shock from the first, the middle-aged Isahaya sacrificed his katana to delay the mace’s path for a half second, and in that time, the woman Tsushima grabbed Itsuwa by the neck and hurled her aside.

The third attack Acqua performed passed through the spot Itsuwa had just occupied, mercilessly crushing the asphalt on the bridge.

Go-gong!! The bridge itself swayed, unstable.

Though Isahaya had avoided a direct hit, the barrage of asphalt fragments pelted his body, sending him flying.

Acqua tried to pursue Itsuwa further, but then he saw a glare of light mixed into the gray dust.

A wire.

No—more than one.

The next thing he knew, all those people, close to fifty, with the spear-wielder at the center, had launched ultra-thin wires from their fingertips. Each of them controlled seven strands. Three hundred fifty wires in all formed a spider’s web, attacking Acqua from all directions.

“Hmph.”

Acqua didn’t dodge.

Ga-pah!! He exposed himself to the ultra-thin blades slicing through the air and then, on top of that, used a strength technique to force them all to rip.

It was far from a certain-kill move—it had stopped him for less than a second.

Acqua of the Back, of God’s Right Seat, had just displayed his overwhelming power.

“You killed me.”

Quietly.

A voice, whispering into his ear:

“YOU KILLED ME.”

I see, so that’s it…?! The same moment Acqua clenched his teeth, a red mist-like gas spurted from the severed wires. It expanded so far it was like it had bleached out the black night sky, immediately beginning to engulf his body.

“…The hidden form—Punishment for Murderers.”

Itsuwa’s mutter came to him from where she stood, in the center of the broken bridge. The red mist suddenly inflated from within, bursting.

Amakusa’s sorcery had whipped up a massive explosion from within the mist. Not only had it trapped him in an inescapable prison—now an overwhelming explosion danced through the inside. No matter how fast he was, he wouldn’t escape it.

“This spell redefines the wires as individual lifelines, then delivers punishment on any who destroy them. It uses religious views shared throughout the world, east and west, in every culture—it holds the meaning of negative resentment, which no civilization’s defensive techniques can block.”

The mass of red consuming Acqua burst a second time, then a third. Boom!! Bam!! Dull sounds, one after another, like explosions occurring underwater. They chained further, multiplying, until the red mist hung like a twisted bunch of grapes.

The most advanced technique they had, unachievable with one’s power alone, created by the singular entity known as Amakusa.

But the looks on their faces were not bright.

Da-boom!!

Their killing spell tore open from within, then scattered in every direction.

What caused it was a far more powerful explosion than the ones Amakusa had prepared. The blast was a rank stronger than the one they’d brought to kill a man, and it easily destroyed the prison.

As dust swirled into water vapor, a gray curtain fell across their surroundings.

From beyond it came a deep male voice.

“I will tell you of my sacrifice.”

An enormous silhouette wavered behind that curtain. Something circulated there, something like a core within the shadow.

“My characteristics are of Gabriel. And because of his connection to the Annunciation, I can, to some extent, use a technique related to the Virgin Mother—a secret ritual known as the Adoration of Mary.”

His words alone continued on.

“The Adoration of Mary attenuates severe punishment.”

Acqua of the Back, of God’s Right Seat.

His voice alone dominated the world.

“Those who believe will be saved. But one of Jesus’s characteristics is to levy severe, suitable punishment on those who do not follow his rules. The Adoration of Mary mitigates this. Like a substitute for a woman who runs away from a convent, one who will take her space in the rolls until the woman’s return.”

The silhouette slowly moved.

Forward, to break the curtain made of dust and vapor.

“Unlike the Son of God, born at once as man, as God, and as the Holy Spirit, Mary is pure child of man alone, a rare being who has stepped deeply into God’s realm. It is said she received from this the role of intervening with God on the behalf of those suffering severe punishments despite having incredibly pure hearts.”

His voice rumbled.

High and mighty, and unconcealed.

“The conclusion is this. My special quality is the Mercy of Mary, which nullifies punishment. It can warp even the impartial and definite Last Judgment. It can change even the signposts sending the souls of the dead to heaven or hell. All acts of restriction based on severe punishment versus sin and evil have no meaning for me. To wipe away the sin of murder, I don’t even need to move a finger. Did you honestly think this would work against one who can erase even the sins of God hi—?”

Da-bam!! Another explosion. The gray curtain covering Acqua was swept away, all in an instant.

“Hmm. Do they not think it polite to listen until the end?”

Acqua put his giant mace on his shoulder and sighed in annoyance. Nobody was here but him. They’d kindly left him a spell that would leave only the sense of their presence behind. All fifty of the Amakusa combat personnel had disappeared into thin air.

He was the only one left on the bridge, but he grinned like a hunter trailing the footmarks of his prey.

“I suppose this makes the pursuit more enjoyable.”

7

The current members of Amakusa, centered around Saiji Tatemiya, had moved to a small plaza about three hundred meters from the bridge. They had acted alongside the spell they’d placed on Acqua, Taboo Against Murder; they’d put the spell together beforehand so that they could quickly flee if it was broken.

Someone with his skill would surely sense their presence and mana flow. There were only so many places in this underground city to hide, and Amakusa had a good reason they couldn’t flee anyway.

“He broke it, as we thought. What now, Vicar Pope?” asked Ushibuka, collecting the wires, cut apart like strands of cotton.

“…Would have been nice if it got him, but things won’t be so easy.”

Tatemiya, flamberge still in hand, looked around. Amakusa had displayed enough physical ability to keep up with Acqua of the Back, but it wasn’t actually that convenient a thing. Besides, if all fifty of them could move with the same speed as a saint at all times, they’d be more treasured than the saints were.

“Deception will only get us so far,” Itsuwa huffed, trying to catch her breath.

The physical enhancement spell had actually been keyed by touching someone’s back. The hidden ritual was “physical recovery by touching the back.” While fighting, they constantly changed their formation, touching one another’s backs when moving or crossing. It restored their physical abilities and enhanced them temporarily. The spell couldn’t be used alone; as it benefited allies, it was unique to groups. In addition, when in an area with suitable “lines” for geomantic sleeping places and rest places, the effects were amplified.

They’d successfully kept up even with the saint by heightening their allies’ physical abilities over and over, but they couldn’t completely repel the enemy’s attacks. And if the formation itself was thrown into disarray, they wouldn’t be able to strengthen one another.

This wasn’t enough to defeat Acqua of the Back.

That was the kind of monster a saint was.

“Which means we’re going to have to use our trump card. We’ll counterattack starting with Itsuwa, with her spear, following the form of the Son of God’s execution. No holding back. Be ready for this.”

Tatemiya looked around, particularly at Itsuwa, for confirmation.

Her Friulian spear still in both hands, the young woman nodded slightly.

That was when it happened:

Zzwahhh!! A chill crawled over the skin of everyone there. Some sort of giant presence was tearing through the dark, swiftly approaching them. They could feel it. No need to ask who it was—who could it have been but Acqua?

Amakusa still had its “trump card” plan. But because it was their big move, they couldn’t use it right off the bat.

“Damn. Form up!!” shouted Tatemiya.

Amakusa’s members moved like a wave. Not forward, backward, left, or right—but below. They got their hands into the artificial, tiled ground and wrenched open a one-meter-square section of tile as though it were a hatch. Underneath the surface waited a space of steel and concrete.

A damp metal staircase and railing, and thick, crisscrossing pipes. As the machinery made low, regular rumbles, Itsuwa pressed her back to the pipes in order to slip through the cracks available. This must have been a hydraulic generator and its transformer.

The partition between the underground city’s strata was about ten meters thick. It seemed they were using the space for energy production facilities.

As Tatemiya, Itsuwa, and the others passed through the intricate passages, they set up the wires all over as traps. They didn’t think they’d defeat Acqua with them. They just needed to buy time.

Amakusa continued, aiming ever lower.

For now, they would retreat from the third stratum, where Acqua was, to the unharmed fourth stratum to buy time. Then they’d make the necessary preparations for their trump card.

“You’ve shown me something good. Allow me to show you something better.”

But suddenly, the deep male voice rang through the dimly lit space. It bounced many times, making it impossible to locate the source.

“I have the property of Gabriel. Surely you know what I can control.”

“?!”

There was no time to react. The thick pipes crisscrossing through the concrete space promptly exploded from within. The water-carrying pipes were over one meter across and five centimeters thick—yet they tore apart like paper, sending a rain of guitar pick–sized metal fragments scattering. Snap! Crack!! Orange sparks burst this way and that. The speeding fragments were hitting the concrete and ricocheting.

“I can easily control the volume of water. Used the right way, I can make it into a bomb.”

Ga-bam-bam-bam-bam!! The pipes exploded in all directions, one after another.

The cloud of metal fragments, pushed by the mixture of water and vapor, turned into a shotgun deluge that pelted the Amakusa. Itsuwa, finally reacting, knocked one fragment heading toward her face out of the air with her spear, but it instead threatened to mow her down completely.

The sheer force behind it was incredible, but something else bothered Itsuwa. A moment before the pipes ruptured, she’d seen what looked like shining letters. They spelled laguz.

A symbolic word.

“Wait…A water rune?!”

It was an incredibly commonplace sorcery, one that could even be called “a typical example of magic” due to how basic it was.

“That reaction…You must have learned something about God’s Right Seat from Terra’s corpse.”

According to the English Puritan Church’s report, because the bodies of those in God’s Right Seat more closely resembled angels than humans and although they could use special spells, they weren’t supposed to be able to use spells regular sorcerers could. So why?

“Is it truly that surprising? No, a member of God’s Right Seat cannot use the normal magics of man. However, my Adoration of Mary spell effectively removes those promises, those bindings, those conditions.”

He could use both the power of a saint and God’s Right Seat…

And on top of that, he had a perfect grasp of both human and angelic spells.

“Did you not think it strange? When I first attacked, who do you think used one of the most popular sorceries of all, Opila, to ward everyone off?”

There was a vast difference in both attack varieties and power.

The monster was equipped with quality as well as quantity. He spoke only the truth, with no needless emotion expressed.

“Do not put me, Acqua of the Back, on the same level as those others from God’s Right Seat.”

Ugh…! Several more pipes ruptured, and finally, the turbine itself used to generate water power exploded, attacking her. Seeing the turbine’s propeller whirling toward her like a rotary knife, Itsuwa went over the metal railing without using the stairs, falling straight down into the dark. She used her spear to pierce through a hatch in the floor, then leaned outside to see the ceiling section of the fourth stratum, the one right below the third.

From the floor where she was, it was about a twenty-meter drop. Along the ceiling were thin, metal walkways and crisscrossing stairs. The sight looked like a theater stage, and directly below her were not the buildings and roads of the fourth stratum but the giant planetarium screen, still displaying the surface sky. The giant sheet of fabric covering the city was hung from the ceiling with countless thin support beams and wires placed at regular intervals.

But Itsuwa didn’t have the time to be rapt over the bizarre sight.

“…!! Where’s Ac—?”

“I’m right here.”

By the time she heard the voice suddenly next to her, she’d already felt wind pressure. Before she could turn that way, her spear moved out of reflex. It caught the weighty attack coming at her—but it immediately sent her careening fifteen meters away. He’d struck her down along with her spear.

Gshahh!! A dull sound followed, ringing in her ears.

Itsuwa, somehow enduring the damage to her whole body, tried to set herself up to land. But there was no footing. With no options left, she fell toward the giant screen.

Surprisingly, the screen supported her body without ripping. It must have also been engineered to prevent things from falling from the ceiling.

Not thinking about the unstable, sinking footing, Itsuwa readied her spear again and looked forward.

Acqua of the Back.

The man, carrying the mace on his shoulder, which was incomparably larger than her spear, jumped down from the railing himself, landing atop the screen.

“Let us leave the warm-up at that,” he said quietly, angling his mace at her again. “We both hold weapons now. There is no reason they should not cross.”

“…You’re right,” said Itsuwa slowly, pointing her spear’s cross-shaped tip at Acqua. “But I can’t guarantee I’m alone.”

As soon as she said that, ceiling hatches over Acqua began popping open.

The members of Amakusa appeared from them. Every one was wounded, red staining different spots on their clothing, but their numbers hadn’t yet decreased.

All fifty of them—one hundred eyes—focused on Acqua.

The monster, however, wasn’t even scared.

“It matters not.”

He swayed.

He didn’t take a single step; his center of gravity alone had fallen.

“Come,” he said as all the members of Amakusa dove for him.

8

Itsuwa charged Acqua directly. Before the man—who stood on the giant screen projecting a starry sky—responded, blades challenged him from the Amakusa men: from the left, right, back, and overhead.

Close to twenty sharp edges aimed for Acqua’s body. Even if he dealt with those, thirty more would attack him after that.

An absolute number. No normal person could have dealt with even the first wave.

But Acqua responded.

Vwohh!! The giant mace split through the air. It batted away Ushibuka and Kouyagi, floating in midair, and the shock wave he’d purposely scattered to their surroundings assailed other ones. Ignoring the people in front of him who had been blown away or broken, Acqua slammed his mace straight behind him without looking.

His chain of movements was practically an explosion.

With Acqua at the center of the maelstrom, the skilled warriors fired away in every direction.

“!!”

Itsuwa, a moment away from adding her own attack to the mix, abruptly stopped herself on the screen.

Acqua used the chance to slide toward her as though skating across the floor.

Itsuwa immediately put up her guard, but he slipped through her defensive net, bringing his raised mace down toward her skull.

It was a flash of steel lightning.

But the strike didn’t hit her.

Acqua felt the sensation of his attack whiffing. Itsuwa, who had just been in range, had disappeared. He looked and saw only the brightly colored sweater she’d been wearing clinging to the tip of the mace. His gaze moved from his hands to what was in front of him. Itsuwa stood a short distance away, wearing her tank top, which she’d somehow kept on despite shedding her sweater.

Acqua flicked the mace to remove the cloth scrap from it. “A substitute?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have very many of them,” said Itsuwa quietly, readying her cross spear again. “Don’t make me do something too embarrassing, please.”

Before she finished speaking, they clashed again.

Acqua’s mace, which looked like it could easily break the earth itself, came again.

But Itsuwa’s spear responded. She must have reinforced her body with several spells, putting in tremendous effort to keep up with his sainted movements. He struck once, twice, then a third time. Itsuwa’s motions were half a tempo slower, barely managing to deflect his attacks.

“You move well,” said Acqua in honest praise of his enemy as he quickly swung the mace. “But can you keep this up? Your rhythm is steadily lowering.”

“Urgh…!!”

Little by little, she was being pushed back as their gap widened. Once it passed a certain point, Itsuwa wouldn’t be able to stop his strikes, and she’d be smashed to little bits.

In order to support her, other members of Amakusa, like Tsushima and Isahaya, attacked Acqua from several different directions, but his mace struck out with terrifying speed, acting like a wall to prevent their strikes. As he crossed blades with Itsuwa, Acqua controlled the combatants around him as though they were a mere distraction. And when he had the chance, he shone runic letters, counterattacking with highly pressurized water jets.

Tatemiya, dealing with the ferocity, glanced toward Itsuwa. “(…How’s it coming?!)” he whispered through his teeth.

“(…I don’t…have time…!!)”

“Itsu—!!” began Tatemiya in a shout, meaning to reposition the Amakusa members, but Acqua’s attack came.

It knocked away his flamberge, which he’d abruptly gotten ready, and the shock wave sent him spinning into the giant screen.

“Let’s see,” said Acqua, getting his mace ready again as he watched Itsuwa’s ragged breathing. “I shall enjoy seeing how many seconds you last.” As he spoke, his muscles expanded all at once.

It was impossible to escape his range. His giant mace and Itsuwa’s spear collided. She’d barely avoided a direct hit, but that was Itsuwa’s limit. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!! Each time their weapons clashed—almost as though the cogs forming her attacks were sliding out of place—Itsuwa’s speed clearly dropped more.

She didn’t have room to counterattack. She couldn’t even fully receive his attacks, which pounded the screen underfoot with shock waves. The special fabric, which must have had bulletproof fiber woven in or something, began to tear apart like stockings.

This was a hellish battle of attrition. A marathon. A race where a blender to grind human flesh was slowly approaching from behind the runners.

If she stopped, she was dead.

But if she kept running, she would go past her limits and destroy her own body.

The collision of weapons, bladed and blunt, was all that continued.

“Hnn…!!” Acqua sucked in a breath, and when he lifted his leg for another powerful step toward her, Itsuwa moved.

She didn’t go forward, but backward. As hard as she could—to evade Acqua’s attack.

It was a little retreat, only a few meters. From Acqua’s perspective as someone with the physical abilities of a saint, it was a distance he could cross in a heartbeat. But for Itsuwa, this was a desperate decision. Because she’d jumped back with all her strength, she lost her balance and was about to topple over.

The young warrior couldn’t engage him with another attack. Nor could she dodge one of his or defend it.

“Hmph,” sniffed Acqua, moving to finish her off.

He dove into certain-kill range with the speed of a jet fighter carving through the air.

Zzzt!

But then he stopped—as though something had sewn him down.

“What…?”

Surprised, Acqua looked at his feet. His speedy movements were something he’d supported with a spell. By laying a thin film of water between his shoes and the ground, he could slide across it using the same logic as when tires slipped on ice.

The spell had failed without him realizing it.

Itsuwa shouldn’t have had the leeway to invert his spell and destroy it. In fact, she’d made no motions to actually cast such a spell.

However…

Before he realized it, a faint light appeared. It came from his feet. An incomprehensible pattern extended from them, blocking the movement spell he’d been using.

The strike Itsuwa had failed to receive. The aftermath from it was a shock wave that had torn the screen underfoot. And the pattern of that torn fabric itself had constructed a circular shape, which, by curious coincidence, had blocked his movement spell.

Except—this was no coincidence.

The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church didn’t use any special incantations or Soul Arms when they used sorcery. They constructed their spells by recovering and reassembling the magical symbols hidden in omnipresent, everyday items and events.

And above all…

Seeing how she’d gotten just a moment’s opening from Acqua…

…Itsuwa, in front of him, had a very faint grin on her face.

As Acqua tipped forward, Itsuwa thrust her spear at him without mercy. Finally able to counterattack after everything, she struck with lightning speed.

Roar!! The straight strike tore through the air, and for the first time, Acqua took evasive action.

“Urgh?!” Acqua jumped not forward, back, left, or right, but up. The unstable screen at his feet didn’t matter. With just one hop, he dove upward almost five meters, then hung by his foot, which he hooked onto one of the thin support beams holding up the screen.

“Tatemiya, everyone!!” And yet Itsuwa remained in her stance. She lowered herself, then once again thrust her Friulian spearhead at Acqua. “Time for the trump card!!”

After she called their names and mustered all her strength, the members of Amakusa, scattered about nearby, acted in concert. Some approached Itsuwa, while others took a certain set distance from her, reinforcing the formation that placed her as the central point.

Having caught one foot on the thin beam as he looked for a place to land, Acqua looked at the scene below and felt it—a focusing of all their wills and mana onto Itsuwa.

It was a warning. The first wave before something enormous happened.

Here it comes…!!

Before Acqua could speak, Itsuwa moved.

Ga-bam!! A burst of air.

By the time he perceived it as the sound of a human foot kicking away from the screen, Itsuwa had already shot through the night air with the force of a rocket or a space shuttle. The mind-boggling force caused several of the beams supporting the massive screen to break and collapse. In her hand, as she accelerated at a tremendous speed, was a small cloth that looked like a hand towel. She’d used it, tying it around the spear’s shaft, to change her stance.

“A pipe spear?!”

By reducing the friction between her palm and the spear, she added speed and power to the shaft as it thrust. But Itsuwa was currently going for something different with the addition.

“Take this!”

And that was because, with the strike she was about to unleash, without any protection, she’d lose her hand at the wrist in the middle of the spell.

“Saintbreaker!!”

Ga-bam!! The spear exploded in Itsuwa’s hands.

It wasn’t a metaphor, or anything of the sort—it actually turned into a flash of light. This time, the straight, sharp thrust dug brutally into the middle of Acqua’s gut. Pale blue lightning erupted from his back, cleaving the darkness of the night. Because of the terrible friction, the cloth wrapped around the shaft she gripped gave a puff of black smoke and blew away.

With a thunderous roar, a cross of light, different from the sparks erupting from Acqua’s back, exploded out in four directions.

“…!!”

Before Acqua could manage to say anything, the hidden spell activated.

Itsuwa—no, the entirety of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church—had just unleashed a literal Saintbreaker.

Because saints possessed similar physical characteristics to the Son of God, they, by idol worship theory, possessed the same type of talents and powers as Jesus.

On the other hand, by using artificial means to destroy the balance of those physical characteristics similar to Jesus, it was possible to temporarily seal away his powers as a saint.

Having abruptly lost that balance, the saint wouldn’t merely lose their power—they’d be unable to control the power remaining inside them, be caught up in a runaway reaction, and be unable to move.

Once…

The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church had lost a saint.

A kind saint, who had left her home for fear of involving others with her strength. The members of Amakusa hadn’t even had the strength to stop her.

After that, they had made a vow.

They would one day attain enough strength to no longer be a burden to her.

This time, they would gain the power to chase after her, grab her by the hands, and tell her it was all right.

The blood, sweat, and tears they’d shed culminated in the Saintbreaker.

In order to support her as a saint, they had to properly understand her as a saint. They had to overcome that wall, had to stand up to problems that even she, as a saint, was threatened by.

It was something that was genuine, real.

It was something only the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church had successfully devised.

A unique attack spell that existed for the sole purpose of defeating saints.

He’ll be frozen in place because of his berserk mana for maybe thirty seconds.

Theoretically, this spell only worked on saints and wouldn’t have any effect on normal sorcerers. Because of that, there were never any saints around who would purposely risk themselves as test subjects, meaning this was its first-ever usage.

But Itsuwa had definitely felt it hit. She calculated the effective time from that. We’ll use all our time to fully neutralize Acqua, now that he’s a normal human!!

However—

“That was a good spell.”

This time, Itsuwa’s face really froze.

Her Friulian spear, which had become a bolt of lightning, had, at some point, returned to its normal form. Itsuwa hadn’t told it to. The spell had been calculated and disengaged by an outside power.

Acqua’s left hand was at his stomach.

He wasn’t pressing on a wound. His palm now held Itsuwa’s spear, which was a mere hair from touching his skin. Right before her spear had changed into lightning, Acqua must have grabbed its tip with his hand. With the alteration before it went off, the special lightning bolt had veered off, ever so slightly.

“If I had been a normal saint, that might have gotten me.”

Acqua’s lips curled up. Not in scorn—but in a deep smile, displaying his joy at having met such strong opponents.

“It was very close.”

Still controlling Itsuwa’s spear with only his left hand, he moved his right. And the hunk of metal that was itself a mace, over five meters long.

“But I am both a saint and of God’s Right Seat!!”

Da-pahh!! A roar reverberated throughout District 22.

She didn’t even have the chance to use her clothing substitution spell. By the time she realized the noise had come from her own body, she’d already stopped breathing. Struck from above, her body launched into the thick, bulletproof fiber screen in less than a second, ripping it open and hurtling her the rest of the twenty meters to the ground.

“Gah— Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

As Itsuwa fell, she saw the glow of defensive spells spreading around her. It must have been her comrades. Itsuwa used what she had, too, desperate to build a spell that would decrease her speed. Unfortunately, her body crashed through all of it and slammed into the asphalt.

A gray dust cloud billowed up like smoke.

As her broken body lay half-buried in the shattered asphalt, she managed to move her neck and look up. Past the screen, torn this way and that, she heard something burst. Za-bshhh!! It sounded like a wave crashing against a boulder, but by the time she heard it, a huge geyser of water had already spurted from the screen’s fissures. The several dozen tons of water looked like a giant arm, like a dragon’s jaws. The members of Amakusa scattered into the air below, crushed by the sheer quantity. She heard several screams.

But she saw one person float to the ground like a feather.

“How dull. You came in full force, formulated a plan, and now you’re done?”

It was Acqua. He put a foot on a piece of asphalt near Itsuwa, who was almost completely broken, speaking quietly.

“You still have several hours before the time limit I set.”

The water fell like a waterfall from above the screen they used as a planetarium, causing mechanical warning alarms to go off everywhere. But Acqua was unperturbed. He looked down at Itsuwa with perfect composure, as though it were natural he would crush any enemy who came to him.

“I give you this choice. Hand over the boy’s right arm, or stain the road with your blood.”

“…”

He didn’t get an answer.

But there was movement. She grabbed a cracked fragment of asphalt, forcing her bloodied and broken body to move, and tried to stand up.

“Then I have no choice,” said Acqua quietly, bringing his huge mace around again. “If it is death you desire, then you will vanish in the waves.”

His mace’s tip pointed at her head.

Boom!!

In answer to Acqua’s call, a vast amount of water that truly threatened to crush the fourth stratum cascaded from the screen above like a waterfall. It was a little under twenty meters long, shaped like a giant hammer with joints. Like the arms on construction vehicles it curved, as though it were aiming for both its prey, who had crawled up out of the ground, and the very lands themselves.

Itsuwa didn’t close her eyes.

And that was why, at the very last moment, she noticed it.

Acqua’s hand had suddenly stopped.

But she still felt an unknown murderous intent fill her surroundings.

It came not from Acqua of the Back; nor the other Amakusa members like Tatemiya and Ushibuka who had fallen nearby; nor Itsuwa, whose entire body was covered in wounds. It was a simple sensation of hostility, with an unknown range and direction. Acqua stopped himself and moved his attention away from his target. Something that even he, such a man as he was, would need to take caution of, was very close.

“…I see,” murmured Acqua, before cracking a smile.

She’d seen that up close before—the look he gave to a strong opponent. But this time, the smile was many, many times deeper.

The tons of water roiling through the air of the fourth stratum broke. Without any magical control on it, the water sunk toward the artificial rivers, scattering huge, tidal wave–like ripples, putting the embankments underwater.

Acqua relaxed, then put his giant mace back on his shoulder.

Then, just once, he looked at Itsuwa. “You’ve kept your life. Thank your master for that.”

Bam!! A burst. By the time she heard it, Acqua of the Back was gone. He went far too fast for her to follow with her naked eye.

She stared at the emptiness in front of her in complete bafflement.

She’d survived.

Given the disaster here with the ruined asphalt and concrete, the wreckage from all the water making it look like a bomb went off, she wasn’t happy. Still, that was a vague conclusion; she didn’t know if they’d won or lost. Without knowing how to judge the situation, Itsuwa simply repeated what Acqua had said.

“Thank…my master…?”

She craned her neck to look around. She wanted to follow where the man had looked to before, but nothing was there. It was gone, vanished just like Acqua, with only darkness there now.

9

A place about two hundred meters from the road where Itsuwa had fallen:

The hardened riverbanks of concrete had been turned into a small observation platform. Because of the Opila, the warding spell, there wasn’t a soul to be seen in the cold facility—save for a pair of saints.

One was Acqua of the Back.

The other…

“I see you’ve been taking good care of my friends.”

A tall body and fair skin. Black hair, tied at the back, reaching down to her waist. A T-shirt, tied up at the waist, with a denim jacket over top and jeans. The jacket’s right sleeve, however, was cut off at the shoulder, and in contrast, the left pant leg of her jeans was cut off at the thigh.

Her outfit was plenty unique—but it all paled in comparison to a single item she carried.

A single sword, fastened to a western-style belt.

A Japanese katana, over two meters long, dubbed the Seven Heavens Sword.

“Yes, I believe I have heard of a saint in the Far East living by the creed of one-hit kills.” Acqua nodded in satisfaction.

Saints who were affiliated with nations or organizations couldn’t exactly go wherever or do whatever they liked. And yet, this one had accepted the risks to stand before him.

Acqua reaffirmed his grip on the mace.

At last, it wouldn’t be bullying anymore. He could finally revel in a true fight.

“I believe I’ve also heard that the Amakusa saint is one who dislikes battle. Do you have what it takes to fight me?”

“Yes.”

She—

“I still feel the same way. But it would seem I’m far more immature than I would have led myself to believe.”

—Kaori Kanzaki.

“Perhaps it’s because you made such a vivid show of routing them. Why, I’m almost ashamed of myself, despite my magic name. Despite having been taught that wrath is one of the seven deadly sins.”

The saint, once called Priestess…

…simply ruled over this place as if she would blow away the very darkness that sat among its wreckage.

“My tedious worrying ends now. I will not let their determination be in vain. That’s all I need.”

For the sake of the boy who had been unfairly hurt.

For the sake of her friends, trampled by overwhelming force when they tried to stop him.

She gripped her katana’s hilt almost tightly enough to crush it.

The two saints’ gazes clashed.

That was the signal.

A battle between two monsters, whose ranks numbered under twenty in the whole world, was now under way.

INTERLUDE TWO

The Knights of Orleans.

France’s largest sorcerer’s society. That was the name that had taken all hope from the boy.

Originally, this group, attracted to Joan of Arc’s personality, wasn’t an official fighting force. It consisted of volunteers gathered to support her journey from the shadows. Nor were they a unique group specializing in magic. As long as a person abided the goal of saving France, their position, social standing, and family didn’t matter. The group was supposed to have been—in an extremely rare instance at the time—a place for nobles and farmers alike to stand shoulder to shoulder and laugh among one another.

But on May 30, 1431, something happened that distorted the group’s direction forever.

Joan of Arc was captured by England and burned at the stake as a heretic.

After that, the Knights of Orleans twisted into a strange group bent on vengeance. One of their goals was, of course, the destruction of all England, who had been the ones to personally execute her. But the targets of their revenge reached very far and wide, including French soldiers and nobles for not taking any real action to steal her back—despite having been saved by her—and even French civilians, who, strictly speaking, couldn’t have done anything if they’d wanted to. But their group wasn’t about to accept extenuating circumstances.

Though they were indeed the largest sorcerer’s society in France, turning everyone against them at once meant their prospects of victory were grim. And they should have realized that fact, but they hadn’t.

The Knights of Orleans had a single hope.

Joan of Arc hadn’t been born with any special talents. When she was thirteen, she began hearing a strange voice, which is what led to an immediate blossoming of her ability.

After her death, the Knights still desired that ability, which they called the Revelations of Arc.

Not to defend anyone as she had done—but simply to sate their own vengeance.

Why had nobody realized that God would not help any who wished for miracles for their own personal gain? As a necessity, the Knights transformed into a group dealing in mysticism, and its distinctive features began to smell ever more of sorcery.

After hundreds of years and many generations of Knights, and their esoteric knowledge continuously passed down from one to the next, they were still continuing their experiment that would never work—the artificial mass production of those with Arc’s power.

One boy and one girl were born in the midst of that.

The girl was chosen, if mostly by force, as a “subject” for the Revelations of Arc. The boy opposed it. He thought of plan after plan to let the girl escape, using all the strength he had to fight—and he’d failed.

She was no longer at his side.

The last thing the dying boy had heard was the girl’s voice, saying, “I believe in you.”

But the boy didn’t have the strength to stand.

If he had, he would have used it a long time ago.

His body lay collapsed on filthy ground in a decaying alley.

“Do you plan on crawling there until death, giving up on everything?”

He heard a voice.

It was the tough-looking man claiming to be a freelance mercenary.

He’d come to France to stop the Knights of Orleans’ tyranny. There, he had met the boy and the girl, and had made a diversion of himself in order to let the girl escape…but the boy was far too weak and had let them take the girl away.

“What am I…supposed to do?” muttered the boy.

If he stretched out his hand, he could reach his sheathed sword. His colichemarde. A lightweight French short sword, modified from the sabers used in sporting events so that the boy could wield it in one hand. But that hand was a mess. He hesitated to even touch the sheath, as though it were boiling-hot water.

“I’m…not anyone special. I can’t overcome every crisis just by using what happens to be around me!! There’s no way I can win. I’m up against the strongest sorcerer’s society in France! How the hell am I supposed to fight them?!”

“Will you give up on her, then?”

“…”

“Are you not still crawling on the ground here, moving toward her, because you can’t accept that?”

“…”

The boy didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Somehow, he worked his wound-covered, dirt-caked body and sat himself up, but that was all he could do. It wasn’t just stamina he was missing—it was willpower.

The mercenary didn’t act concerned for him. “This isn’t the time to wallow in hopelessness.”

No matter how long went by, he didn’t pick the boy up. He took his sheathed sword in hand.

“The enemy is strong, and considering their ability to accomplish their goal, the girl’s fate is clear. I should think there is only one thing you need to have on your mind right now.”

“In other words,” the mercenary said, “how she said she believed in you, despite this hopeless situation.”

Time stopped within the boy. The only thing that continued was the mercenary’s words:

“What will you do? Get up again to protect the dreams of a foolish girl? Or teach the foolish girl the truth and grant her even deeper despair?”

The mercenary gripped the sheath, his face almost up against the boy’s, thrusting the sword’s hilt against him—that colichemarde he was to wield courageously.

“Choose. What is your decision?”

It didn’t need worry.

It didn’t need thought.

There was a mountain of problems piled up before him. The risks were all over, scattered this way and that, numerous as the stars. But it didn’t matter. Only those who had done something were allowed to think about those things.

The boy stood.

He ignored his wound-covered flesh, grabbed the hilt of the sword, undid the slender clasp holding it in place, and pulled his weapon from its sheath.

“A good choice.”

The mercenary smiled.

The boy’s expression had changed. He walked next to the man, standing as his exact equal, as comrades-in-arms. They walked to the dark alley’s exit, their sights set on the enemy they needed to defeat and the hideout holding the girl they needed to save.

“Let’s go,” said the boy quietly.

“The time for fear is over.”

Their enemy was France’s largest sorcerer’s society, the Knights of Orleans. A group of combat professionals driven by historical vengeance. But this would be the start of their real counterattack.