CHAPTER 3

Death Match of Monsters on a Different Level
Saint_vs._Saint.

1

Have you ever heard the sound of the world breaking?

The world’s screams of pain. Beyond explosions and shock waves, destruction far beyond the range of human hearing? Only the fragments of aftermath compounded onto aftermath finally became explosive blasts humans could see. But those screaming fragments now blew away the street-side tree branches, rocked the fourth stratum’s concrete ground, and bent the metal railings like they were sculptured candy.

Kaori Kanzaki and Acqua of the Back.

Their magical clash was all and everything on the observation platform that night, surrounded on all sides by science.

“Oooahhhhhh!!” With a shout, Kanzaki used a god-speed quick-draw technique. A strike certain to kill even angels, made by subverting spells used in one dogma against another.

A Buddhist spell for what a Crossist spell couldn’t do.

A Shinto spell for what a Buddhist spell couldn’t do.

A Crossist spell for what a Shinto spell couldn’t do.

By covering for each one’s weaknesses in the next timely cast, her attack techniques were second to none, delivering perfect, interlocking destruction.

It was, in other words, a single glint of light.

Her slashing attack was one nobody could have stopped—but Acqua repelled it with his giant mace. Several exchanges later, Kanzaki knew: Acqua had just as versatile a set of spells as she did, if not more so—and he did it by fully executing his ability to use regular magic, said to be impossible for God’s Right Seat members.

When Kanzaki tried to detour to a Buddhist spell, he responded, and when she converted it to a Shinto spell, he immediately changed his defensive form. Vast amounts of mana shifted and switched between them, developing into a supersonic hand-to-hand battle in the midst of a parallel mental battle, with each reading the other’s moves on a different dimension.

Physics and sorcery.

Flesh and mind.

Disturbance and meditation.

Gagagazazazazagigi!! Sparks flew in this battle of two saints as their weapons clashed. They appeared at first to be parallel but then showed a certain large undulation within.

In general, to use sorcery, one needed talent. The craft truly showed the skill difference when those without talent tried to create the same miracles as those with talent.

But could anyone say that after watching their movements? After seeing the incredibly exceptional, abnormal talent of the saints?

“…Wonderful. Such popularity. For this many men, this much strength, to come running to his aid alone. That boy may be my enemy, but I am impressed,” noted Acqua, easily swinging around his five-meter-plus iron chunk like a tree branch. “However, you should prepare yourself. If you stand on my battlefield, your only path leads to destruction!!”

Grah!! A new explosion.

Behind Kanzaki flowed a dark river. By the time she noticed the black surface had shaken, a water pillar had already risen, close to twenty meters tall. It was a giant hammer with joints. The terrible weapon grazed the underground city’s ceiling, closing down on Kanzaki’s head.

If she had had her hands full merely with Acqua’s other attacks, she wouldn’t be able to deal with this one, and she’d die.

However…

Dbah!! A splitting sound rang out as their death match unfolded, and something near Kanzaki gave off a glare.

The moment he saw it, seven slashing attacks had brutally sliced up the water hammer approaching from behind, sending it back into the river.

It had been Seven Glints, using her wires.

“…I’m surprised you would think this was my full strength.”

The instant her lips moved, the seven slashing attacks all converged on Acqua from various directions, as though complementing the track of her katana.

Acqua’s chain of attacks sped up.

Some he repelled with his mace, and others he moved his head out of the way to dodge. Having overcome both her katana and wires, he saw—a sudden crimson flame obscure his vision.

“…?!”

The wires streaking through the air had created a three-dimensional magic circle. By the time Acqua realized this, the flames of the explosion had already engulfed his stalwart body.

A second blast followed, and then a third, with the seven wires slicing up through the blasts. They were finally followed by a single flash of a katana bathed in moonlight.

It didn’t sound like a chain of attacks. It had been entirely too fast; the noises all rolled into a numberless clump.

Bang!! The roar was like a giant arm had torn through space itself.

But Acqua was no longer there. Kanzaki’s gaze shifted to a distant spot in front of her. He was on the concrete ground, about ten meters away, having jumped back.

A single cut appeared on his cheek.

A slight graze, probably caused by a wire. But any wound was more than anyone had reached before now. As a drop of red blood trickled down his cheek, Acqua spoke quietly. “You are one of the Amakusa. What you’re doing is fundamentally the same as them.”

He fingered the flowing blood, then pressed that index finger onto the side of his mace, scrawling words onto it.

“And yet it changes so much when done by a saint. I am ever more stricken by the cruelty of talent.”

Sorcery was a history of rebellion caused by those without talent. However, the word from the heavens, saint, easily quashed all of it.

The words gave Kanzaki slight pause.

“…”

Looking simply at the result, his complaint might have been correct. Without her, Amakusa couldn’t even scratch Acqua.

However…

“Allow me to correct you,” she said, sheathing her katana. She lowered her center, preparing for a quick-drawing strike. “They can’t use Single Glint. But its foundations—the sword techniques, the wires, the spells, their combinations and tactical patterns—were all taught to us by the precursors of the Amakusa. The result has nothing to do with something as trivial as talent. It is a crystallization of history they’ve built. My school was the Amakusa. My masters were my friends. I will not allow you to speak ill of them.”

Criiick!! The hand gripping the katana hilt filled with power.

“Moreover, a brute aware of all the power he holds mercilessly beating a mere high school student with it has no right to look down on others.”

On reflection, those words dug into Kanzaki as well. It was an admonishment of herself as well, for once having attacked that same boy for a certain purpose.

“…The very fact that my words should anger you is proof of your indulgence,” said Acqua, slowly bringing his mace back up, now with a pattern drawn on it in his own blood.

The ten meters between them was no more than a hairbreadth for the saints. Watching them face off against each other was like watching a classic western film.

A film of long-past halcyon days.

“The foot soldiers who have just begun their reconnaissance when they suddenly encounter an enemy tank—that is a battlefield. Countermeasures are not always prepared in advance. There are no routes of escape, no safe zones, and certainly no gentlemanly manners. If you align all the same conditions, adjust the outcome to be fifty-fifty, what you are doing is not fighting—it is sport. That’s how talent is. How power is. If soldiers encounter a tank without appropriate equipment, one does not need to ask what happened to the soldiers. They will be brutally bombarded and crushed. Is your battlefield different?”

“That way of thinking is your own.”

“You and the others have nevertheless tread into such territory,” said Acqua calmly, without so much as a sneer. “In the boy’s case, actually, was there someone, somewhere, pulling him up?”

“…”

There was no signal, no advance notice before Kanzaki moved.

She charged up close to Acqua with such speed that even a professional sorcerer would have seen only a blur. Sparks flew like an explosion behind her, trailing after her as her sheath’s tip scraped against the concrete ground. But before they could catch up, the unleashed Seven Heavens Sword mercilessly flew toward Acqua.

Ga-keeeeen!! A shrill metallic noise rang out. Kanzaki’s and Acqua’s weapons clashed, and they glared at each other from up close.

“You know all that! You know he’s just a normal person caught up in this! Why, then, did you use your powers as a saint against him?!” she cried, her emotion on full display, something one wouldn’t hear normally.

Perhaps it was because they were both saints. Or maybe it was because as saints, they shouldered a heavy past, one where they’d hurt many people.

“You know what happens when you wield that power, which not even twenty people in the world have—that power that strikes fear even into real sorcerers! Were you ignoring that when you went through with these atrocities?!”

“What would you do if I told you my reason for fighting?” In contrast, Acqua was completely calm and lucid. “For one who acts with conviction, excuses as to the path he’s walked are unnecessary. My actions will speak with their results, for how much truth can there be in a play with only dialogue?”

Between them in their heated contest, the bloody letters on the side of the mace ignited a small explosion of manifested mana. The saints used the chance to put distance between themselves and regroup.

Kanzaki winced slightly, and Acqua readied his giant mace again, posture unchanging.

He was a strong opponent who would not falter; he likely had a single conviction supporting him. But Kaori Kanzaki couldn’t even get a glimpse of it.

“Show me, saint of the Far East.”

Acqua’s body, his inner presence, instantly grew two sizes larger. It wasn’t an issue of solely muscle, either. It was as though the mace he held, from tip to tip, had grown heavier and increased in pressure.

“Show me that those are more than just words. Show me the reason within your blade. Show me without words.”

The saints clashed again.

With speed that none could follow and with power none could attain.

2

Touma Kamijou’s eyelids moved.

It was so slight that it didn’t seem like he’d done it on purpose. It was more along the lines of a spasm, as he slowly, very slowly, cracked his eyelids open. But even then, he didn’t acquire vision for a few seconds. His focus and perspective wavered, until finally, his brain perceived what looked like a hospital ceiling.

…Whe…where…?

He didn’t know where he was. Even if he’d seen the place before, his brain might not have been processing his visual information. His nose picked up the scent of disinfectant alcohol more quickly than his mind figured out what he was seeing.

…What…happened…?

He felt adhesive tape on his chest and abdomen. Electrodes were probably attached to them for taking readings.

The lights in the room were dimmed, but he felt someone else here. A subtle pressure near the middle of his bedding…

His eyes moved in that direction, where he found Index sleeping on a pipe chair next to the bed. He couldn’t see her face through her long hair, but she’d probably been here for a while now.

It gave him a very slight prick of pain.

“…”

A little bit of energy returned to his limply hanging hand.

He could tell the blood was circulating to his head in response to regaining consciousness.

Acqua of the Back.

Itsuwa.

The Amakusa.

Kamijou had passed out after being launched from the suspension bridge, but their battle must have still been going on. He hoped it was. Of course, there was a chance, albeit very slim, that the Amakusa had already won, and it was over. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see that happening—Acqua was genuinely a monster. He knew there was nothing a high school student like him could do if he stood up to the man, but it would obviously be better for them to have as much combat strength as they could.

Acqua had viewed the power in his right hand as dangerous.

That meant he still had the chance to influence the battle if he used it.

His right hand, which could even erase miracles from God.

He gave it a look, then nodded.

He looked at Index again, slumped on top of his bed and sleeping.

The girl, keenly and earnestly worried about him.

…I’m sorry, Index. I’ll apologize later; I’ll apologize to death…

And yet:

So please, just let me do what I need to right now.

3

Pow!! An explosion ripped through the Academy City night.

It wasn’t from flames. It was a shock wave from a massive eruption of water.

Acqua had used sorcery to control the vast stores of river water, creating a giant hammer that almost scraped against the underground city’s ceiling. Kanzaki’s wires cut through it brutally. Tons of water in the shape of a construction arm were instantly vaporized, sending steam everywhere. But Acqua controlled that steam in turn, converting it into a glittering cloud of diamond dust.

He had more than just a hammer at his beck and call. The entire fourth stratum, almost two kilometers across, was already in his grasp. Artificially laid rivers made completely dry, every drop of them floating in the air. It formed a slender line, drawing itself across the entire stratum and forming a complex, wondrous magic circle.

With each formation, switch, and re-creation of the magic circle, another barrage of varied spells came to Acqua’s aid.

Attacks of all shapes and sizes assaulted Kanzaki.

Several spears of ice, each close to thirty meters long, flew at her.

A watery tail, undulating like a whip, lashed out at her from various angles.

A giant, ball-shaped mass swung down at her, then swept out to the side.

And Acqua himself, slipping through the cracks, made his way up to Kanzaki.

His strategy: combine several attacks, each of which was a one-hit kill move, and then send her chances of death skyrocketing even further. By Acqua’s prediction, after seventy seconds, Kanzaki should have lost enough speed for him to land a fatal wound.

“!!”

But even after that time had elapsed, Kanzaki counterattacked.

In response to the watery magic circle changing its form over and over, Kanzaki spread her seven wires out in all directions, immediately creating a bounded field to deal with it. She was prepared to be his lesser in true ability, so she sometimes cut through the water jets, sometimes dove inside one to bend its path and cause his spell to fail, and sometimes hijacked one mid-cast, using it for herself.

It was like electronic warfare—magical hacking.

Water and wires. The two networks tore each other apart, created openings, outwitted each other, all in an effort to sap their limited world’s ability.

Countless rays of light painted the world. The water Acqua’s magic circles constructed, and the wires Kanzaki used to break it. Acqua, who filled the entire underground city, and Kanzaki who stood alone in a space inside it.

As they carried out this staggering battle of sorcery in their minds, they also pushed forward with direct hand-to-hand martial combat in parallel. They performed feats in one battle or the other that normal sorcerers wouldn’t be able to follow if they were fully focused, and they did both at the same time.

Explosions burst through the air. The space between Kanzaki and Acqua began to haze. Steel across steel, swung from different directions, intersecting and colliding.

He uses the Adoration of Mary…While wielding her katana and her wires simultaneously, Kanzaki clenched her teeth. It wasn’t merely pain causing the expression.

A special law that twisted the rigid rules of Crossist techniques: That was how Acqua had explained it, but the Adoration of Mary was for something else to begin with. It was a chance for the defeated to rise again. Whether a person had broken the rules and strayed from the path by committing a sin or causing tragedies terrible enough to abandon God, the image of the Virgin Mother would shed tears for their sake, smile to them in their dreams, and grant them the ability to carry out miracles. People everywhere used that as a starting point, devoting their minds to prayer, and in doing so, unconsciously used the spell.

It was said that was how certain people could spread chaotic miracles about. They would be misunderstood as worshipping someone other than the Son of God, but that was wrong. The true nature of the Adoration of Mary was that it stopped the tragedies that happened in the gaps of the network built by the Church and the clergy. Mary didn’t put Crossist society out of order. There was simply enough of a reason for people to kneel and pray for the safety of their family, their friends, their comrades.

Mary.

The highest saint in history—the one who had performed the greatest feat in all of Crossist history—giving birth to Christ. She’d accepted the angel’s words so she could grant the people relief and salvation, conceived Jesus, and prepared herself for a path laden with trials alongside her husband. And the Adoration was the crystallization of that faith, created by the feelings of those who adored her.

And that.

Those feelings…!!

Logical interpretation of the Adoration of Mary spell, which was displayed in the form of straightforward, simple prayer, was difficult, and there were many reports of stone statues that depicted her being miraculous items, while completely missing the mark. The streets were rampant with swindlers, too, using that fact to their own ends. But Acqua was even crueler than they. He was creating actual miracles and using them to commit atrocities.

“You are quite something,” came Acqua’s voice amid the thunderous claps of clashing longsword and blunt weapon. “To think you would bring two kilometers and five thousand tons of magic circle to submission using feats of strength.

“But,” he continued, “it looks to me as though your body has already passed its limit.”

“?!”

When his indication caused Kanzaki’s movements to dull slightly, Acqua’s attacks increased in intensity and rained down on her. The difference between them seemed ready to open wide in the blink of an eye, but she swung her sword again, meaning to turn the tables.

When activating Single Glint, Kanzaki forcibly drew out power exceeding the momentum her physical body could control. There was no way for her to fight for long in such a state, meaning her Single Glint had been polished by necessity into a sword-drawing technique that would end the contest in a single moment.

But such instant-kill techniques didn’t work on Acqua.

He stood before her as a saint, with power equal to or greater than her own, and on top of it, he also held the mark of God’s Right Seat, radically powering up his body. Kanzaki could only step into this world for a few moments; Acqua of the Back advanced through it steadily.

She bit down. It was almost like he was an angel.

Acqua of the Back presided over the power of Gabriel.

Even Misha Kreutzev only seemed to achieve imperfect manifestation…By odd coincidence, she’d fought the real archangel of that name once before. But this is still strange. I sense something more than that from Acqua…Urgh?!

This string of attacks seemed too much for a saint with similar capacity. Acqua felt as though he rivaled that archangel, imperfect though it may have been.

But how was that possible?

Could he really store so much power without destroying himself?

“Hnn!!”

She heard him exhale. For a moment, an odd, floating sensation enveloped her. Eventually, she realized that he’d stopped his relentless chain, then stored up energy to attack again. But by that time, his full-power strike was upon her.

The giant mace came down hard at her from directly overhead; Kanzaki positioned her katana horizontally to stop it. When they clashed, a shhh-thud went off, sending an enormous shock rattling through her katana to her arms, her torso, and down to her feet all at once, causing her boot soles to dig inches into the ground. It was hard tile underfoot, but she sunk into it like it was mud. The attack hadn’t struck her head, but she felt herself waver, as though it had shaken her brain.

But she endured it.

And the moment after Acqua’s mighty attack, with all his weight behind it, there would come an opening.

“Ooooohhhhhh!!”

With a roar, Kanzaki followed through with her Seven Heavens Sword.

Perfect timing; a pristine opportunity: a move to pull herself back from the brink of disaster.

Acqua’s mace stopped even that. Ga-keeeen!! A dull shock wave proclaimed far and wide that it had dispersed the power behind her katana.

“It has been three years since the last battle of saints. Such a long time. This has been good exercise.” At close range, Acqua gave an emotionless smile. “But let’s end this. I came here to do a job. I have no time to amuse myself with sport.”

“?!”

Unable to properly respond, Kanzaki pulled back her katana and swung even harder, delivering a relentless attack.

But Acqua wasn’t in front of her.

She sensed him with her mind, rather than her vision: Her target was above.

He had jumped about twenty meters up. A leap like a rocket launch, impossible for normal people. Becoming a single point in the air, he placed the satellite representing the power of Gabriel, the moon, at his back.

Strictly speaking, he didn’t. It was only the planetarium screen, torn to shreds, displaying the night sky.

When he got near the ceiling, Acqua turned himself one hundred and eighty degrees, then placed his feet on the artificial canopy.

“!!” Kanzaki immediately tried to pursue, but the damage from earlier—and, most of all, the strain on her body that she’d been accumulating—created a few instants’ lag.

Stopped in place, a chill surrounded her from all sides. It was the rhythm of life and death, which only true warriors could sense. One could glimpse it when the entire flow of the battle had shifted, shaken. Like the slanting of a seesaw that didn’t physically exist.

And overhead was Acqua.

“The Holy Mother mitigates severe punishment.”

In response to his whispers, the moon hanging behind him gave off a burst of light. No—the mechanism displaying video on the planetarium screen had come under some kind of load and shorted out. Crack-snap!! Several sparks escaped, as though ticking down a countdown to the unknown.

No normal sorcerer could use that sort of logic—but Acqua’s Adoration of Mary forced it to work.

This is…!! The bluish-white flash enveloped the steel mace, and she could tell it was storing an immense amount of power.

“This power, which at times appeals directly to God’s law. Let it wrap you in mercy and ascend to heaven!!”

With a cry, he kicked the ceiling away from him and lunged downward. The already damaged false sky collapsed in its entirety from the strike, and the blue tranquility returned to a jet-black darkness.

A straight-line descent.

And a giant mace swinging down at her.

What unleashed from there was not a slash, nor a stab, nor a firing, nor an explosion, nor a burst, nor a severing, nor a crushing.

It was simple pressure.

The overwhelming destructive force pushing down surpassed even a small planetary collision.

All sound vanished from the world then.

Even the sound of the world breaking was gone.

In a circle one hundred meters around Acqua, the ground of Academy City District 22’s fourth stratum found itself brutally razed by his massacring attack. The descent’s impact didn’t even let a crater form—it simply smashed the steel and concrete ground to bits, transforming it into a giant hole.

It didn’t matter if the ground had shelter-level toughness or anything else.

The destroyed land across that hundred-meter circle merely rained down into the fifth stratum below.

Explosions, quakes, and so much dust.

The sequence of smashing and crashing echoed on and on.

Water poured down like a waterfall; the rivers and water power generator pipes had been severed.

“Guh…urgh…”

Amid it all lay Kaori Kanzaki.

She’d stopped the attack itself with her Seven Heavens Sword, but the ground beneath her feet hadn’t been able to withstand it.

The immense pressure had cast her down, along with a mountain of rubble, from a height of over twenty meters. Now, she lay faceup on a chunk of concrete.

Her body was in tatters. Even though Acqua’s attack hadn’t landed a direct hit, its pressure went through her weapon to damage her. She’d been caught between his extra-large mace and the man-made ground, and now a dark red liquid dripped from every part of her—from her arms, from her legs, from her torso.

One of the saints had been brought to this.

Immediately, she realized that if she was hit with that again, she would die.

However…

“…” As she grated her teeth in frustration, there was no fear or shock on her face.

Only anger.

She was directly below the crater, in the fifth stratum. She’d fallen into a large plaza, so thankfully, it didn’t seem like the collapse had killed anyone. That, however, was merely being wise after the event. What if this had been a residential area? What if someone had happened to be walking through the plaza? Just thinking about it gave Kanzaki a chill down her spine. Academy City must have implemented some sort of measure, but unlike the fourth stratum, the bare minimum magical Opila ward wasn’t even here.

He was a saint like her.

He had a talent not even twenty people in the world had.

Why was this absurdity the only place he wielded that power?

“Acqua…,” she growled, dragging her upper body into a sitting position and snatching up her sword from where it had fallen atop the rubble.

Acqua of the Back had made a rough landing on the fifth stratum ground with her. “Where is the Imagine Breaker?” he asked, the mace that had caused this incredible destruction laid lightly on his shoulder. “Or will I meet him eventually if I crash through more strata?”

“Acquaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

Kanzaki blasted to her feet so forcefully, her own blood lashed out around her.

Her Seven Heavens Sword, held in a two-handed grip, wavered unsteadily. She’d clenched her fists so tightly that she’d broken several nails, and red blood dripped between her fingers. The immense impact she couldn’t completely withstand had damaged her from the inside, and when she tried to take a breath, she ended up coughing up a chunk of blood.

But the light in her eyes was no weaker than before.

And as long as that light didn’t fade, her blade would never stop.

Kanzaki let loose a roar to inspire herself, even to the point of squeezing her damaged organs. Acqua batted away her simultaneous attack—metal clanging against metal—then a chain of those metallic sounds, layered over one another, instantly caused the air to burst.

Ga-bam!! Sounds of clashing and collisions rang out.

The two saints crossed blades once more.

They were both so fast that the arrival of that observation would be late for the next strike.

Kaori Kanzaki swiftly swung her blade, dragging the seven wires through the gaps as though sewing, re-sheathing her katana at the slightest opportunity, then striking out with incredibly fast sword draws. At the same time, she created attack spells of flame and ice, continuously ambushing Acqua in an unpredictable pattern by combining three-dimensional magic circles made out of her wires, her footwork, and the rhythm of steel banging on steel.

In response, as soon as Acqua batted down her katana with his giant mace, he would suck in the night air and the fragments of moonlight within it—perhaps an attribute of Gabriel—and thereby increase his mace’s power. He also used the properties of the Adoration of Mary, which mitigated severe punishment, to overcome the condition that God’s Right Seat couldn’t use ordinary sorcery. As he loosed a string of attacks that exceeded the speed of sound, he simultaneously used vacuum blades and chunks of rock to strike at Kanzaki from multiple angles.

Bagagagagazazazazazagigigigigi!! Sparks flew. A miniature starry sky danced around them.

“Guh, uff?!”

But the result was clear as day.

Blood spurted from Kanzaki’s mouth at uneven intervals. She was already past her limit. She’d unmistakably taken severe damage in places on and in her body. The speed at which she wielded her blade diminished conspicuously, and now that she couldn’t keep up, an image of a hopeless future flashed through her mind. She was devoting everything just to stay with him; there were no strikes she could make that would turn the tables—for turning the tables was something you could only do by keeping a card up your sleeve.

She had used all her cards, and they couldn’t deal with him. She wouldn’t have that chance. If she couldn’t afford to keep even one trick up her sleeve, it wouldn’t be possible to even the score.

But…

“I’m telling you…to shut…the hell up!!”

What came to mind next were the words he’d said when she’d first met him in Academy City.

Remembering them returned her strength.

It was all coming back:

“That’s got nothing to do with it! Are you protecting people just because you feel like your strength obligates you?!”

The boy, who had stood up to a saint with a single clenched fist—all for their treatment of one girl named Index.

“That’s not it, is it?! Don’t fool yourself! You got that power because there was something you wanted to protect!”

She didn’t exactly think his words were the most beautiful in the world. There were as many ideas as there were people, and none of them stood at the top of all the rest. That said, Acqua of the Back must have had his own reasons and beliefs that required him to fight.

However.

His reason—to mercilessly beat an ordinary person, even aware of his immense strength as a saint and of God’s Right Seat—wouldn’t let him beat that boy. She knew it.

The boy’s actions, being just a boy but taking a hit from Acqua to protect Itsuwa, would never lose out to someone who dominated as though doing so was as natural as one of the “chosen ones.”

As she wielded her blade, Kaori Kanzaki gritted her teeth.

The reason the boy had shown her.

The conviction he’d risked his life to show her.

She couldn’t let this coward, with talent as his only possession, trample that.

4

The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church members, numbering almost fifty, paid no attention to their miserable state—the bandages they’d used to fix themselves up had been torn apart, redness seeping up through them—instead, they stood at the edge of the giant hole Acqua had punched in the fourth stratum, watching, dumbstruck, the battle unfolding between the two saints in the fifth.

The aftermath of the explosions, the blasts, and the shock waves were incredible on their own, and given the amount of debris scattered around them, it was a wonder no civilians had gotten caught up in it.

Despite being human, the overwhelming momentum and shock waves drove away even the raging vortex of mana as the monsters’ duel unfolded. Roars sounded, clangs of metal on metal rang out, and the blasting winds blew out the vapor in the air, creating afterimages like condensation trails. Several flashes sparked between every single attack—a spell that would have turned any of those currently in Amakusa to ash with just one hit—and then that spell would be intercepted by another, in an endless cycle.

From their distant perspective, it looked like the collision of two galaxies. With the clash of the saints, stars exploded, space warped, planets were swallowed in darkness, and new lights were born, strong enough even to drive away that oppressive void. What, then, did the two standing at the center of those transient galaxies represent?

One of them was Kaori Kanzaki.

A woman who had once led the Amakusa, and who still gazed warmly upon them from the shadows.

The Amakusa’s former Priestess was now fighting for them:

To save the civilian boy Acqua had designated as his target, as well as to save the current Amakusa members he had attacked.

But—

“…”

They heard a crash.

It was the sound of Itsuwa’s Friulian spear slipping from her bloody hand as she gazed at the battle. The spear she’d poured every last drop of their skills into reinforcing in order to save one boy. It was the crystallization of her efforts—and now it lay on the ground, like a rock by the roadside.

It wasn’t just Itsuwa.

Several others had dropped their weapons in the same way. Some of their knees gave out, and some of them put a hand on a wall. And they all had the same expression she did.

Absolutely spiritless.

What have I been doing this whole time? thought Itsuwa.

The more Kaori Kanzaki fought for their sake, the more it felt like a rejection of their hard work. No matter how hard they tried, they’d never step off the palm of their saint. She would look at them as if gazing at something dear to her, and if danger approached, she would fight to such heights that nobody could ever reach.

They’d never gotten him to look at them.

No matter how far it went, it was nothing but play to him.

They felt as though the harsh truth would crush them. At the same time, they felt so petty for not being able to think anything else of the life-risking kindness she’d shown them. And that loss would inevitably shatter them even further. But they couldn’t do anything about it. They were like ants to a giant. They couldn’t step into this incredible battle, and just watching it completely drained what little stamina and willpower still remained in their worn-out bodies.

If that boy was here, he wouldn’t have cared.

If he’d seen a friend, Kaori Kanzaki, fighting before his eyes and being hurt—that would have been all it took for him to clench his fist and break right into the middle of the fight.

That was another kind of strength.

But right now, the Amakusa didn’t have the conviction needed to display such a thing.

The battle between two saints continued.

Without realizing that even if their completely overwhelming strength wasn’t hitting them directly, it was still gouging holes into the hearts of their audience.

INTERLUDE THREE

The distress signal had come long ago, but none of them could make a move.

It wasn’t as though they were heavily wounded. It wasn’t as though their destination was very far away, either. They couldn’t move simply because of position and politics.

The distress signal had arrived from a British royal long-distance escort coach.

The horse-drawn coach’s magical defensive net should have been perfect. It was so tough that ever since they’d made it, they joked that not even the planet tearing in half would cause it to emit a distress signal. It was far beyond the Walking Church, the special habit. England, the great land of magic, had used all its technology and history to design it, giving it the moniker Mobile Fortress. This coach, meant for the royal family, should never have been stopped, no matter who attacked it.

And it had sent them a distress signal.

Under normal circumstances, this was absolutely impossible.

It meant something very simple.

There had been a political deal of some sort.

And England’s third princess on board was a piece that had been sacrificed.

The members of the Knights faction, on the national border along the Dover Strait, listened silently to the distress signal as it repeated, again and again, their hearts gripped with pain.

Nobody said a word, and everyone grated their teeth in frustration, clench their fists hard enough for blood to seep from their palms.

The Knights’ goal was the prevention of internal schism within the United Kingdom—which possessed a complex relationship between three factions and four cultures—and to defend with their lives all who inherited enough royal blood to lead the kingdom.

The men of the Knights worked within that Machiavellian vortex, and because their environment was so harsh, so cruel, they could speculate as to their situation without needing any real explanation.

The Third Princess of England was under attack by the Spanish Order of the Star. They were an extremely large group within the Roman Orthodox Church, and ever since the Spanish Armada had been destroyed during the age of Elizabeth I, the magical factions of England and Spain had been at odds with one another.

The royal family had purposely allowed this attack to occur, likely because they desired a war with the Order of the Star. They’d been the ones to spread Crossism during the great age of exploration, and even now, the Order exercised almost complete influence over all the Catholic cultural factions in South America. England was trying to wrest influence in South America away from the Roman Orthodox Church’s Spanish Order of the Star and thus extend their own sphere of influence. Further, the third princess didn’t have much authority in the royal family. They’d probably weighed her against an entire continent and decided to sacrifice her.

It was the Knights’ job to protect the princess. As a matter of course, they would run to her aid even when she didn’t request rescue. Ignoring a distress signal from her was, normally, completely out of the question.

However.

Right now, at this exact moment, the Knights could be no more than rocks.

They’d been ordered to move with swiftness if the magical battle in France extended to England across the Dover Strait, but they were ordered—without reason—not to move unless those embers reached the homeland.

“…”

William Orwell left a tent the Knights had set up.

Even now, an intermittent light shone beyond the Dover Strait that night. It wasn’t a lighthouse. It was the aftermath of the Spanish Order’s magical attacks, escaping to them from over the French border.

“Are you going?”

A voice addressed him from behind.

William turned and saw the top of the Knights, the Knight Leader, standing there. Unlike the sturdily built Acqua, the man had an elegance about his behavior. It was likely thanks to his upbringing, in particular the fact that he’d needed to learn etiquette at castles and palaces. Which was only natural, given his expected, permanent role of defending those with royal blood.

William Orwell was a mercenary who would fight for anyone who hired him.

The Knight Leader would spend his life in service of his nation. They wouldn’t normally be able to get along.

But in actuality, they would have drinks together whenever they had the chance. The Knight Leader had invited William into the Knights numerous times, and William had refused every time. But after fighting elsewhere in the world, he would naturally drift back to England to wet his throat with a cup. Everything about them was different, from their positions to their perspectives, from their fighting styles to their ways of life. And yet, strangely, they accepted each other.

Which was how the Knight Leader knew.

Knew what William was thinking when he left the tent without a word.

“You are fettered as ones who protect the nation. The actions of those with the nation at their back will represent the nation’s will. You can’t cross the border to France without orders and engage the Spanish.”

William Orwell spoke quietly, adjusting the giant mace on his shoulder.

“But I am different. I am just a mercenary. I can run rampant all I like—I don’t have the nation backing me. What I do will not reflect at all on England’s intentions.”

“You think I’ll let you go on your own?” The Knight Leader’s lips turned up. “You may be a storied veteran, but I can’t leave this in your hands alone. Come—with your luck, you’ll survive. But it’s our duty to protect the princess; we can’t entrust her to a mercenary of unknown origin. She might just be one kid, but she’s an unmarried woman. If a lawless brigand kidnaps her, it puts the entire nation in danger.”

“Did you not hear what I said?” William said, mildly shocked that the man’s argument was nothing more than a farce. Still, he knew the Knight Leader was speaking out of consideration despite his joking tone.

When their eyes met, each knew what the other was thinking.

It was a bond they couldn’t escape from.

“Yes, you said the Knights have all of Britain on their shoulders, so they can’t intervene,” said their leader simply, removing a pure gold decoration from his chest. His identification emblem—decorated with his family emblem, escutcheon in the center. The man gazed at it wistfully for just a moment, but eventually let it go.

Without returning his eyes to his emblem, now on the ground, he looked directly into William’s eyes. “Now I’ve been disqualified from knighthood. Which means you’re taking me with you. If the distress signal is still being sent, the third princess must still be alive.”

“I see. How very like you.”

William Orwell, now aware of his friend’s determination, smiled slightly.

He’d probably known the Knight Leader would do that, too. He knew what kind of person this man was, this man with whom he’d shared drinks time and time again.

That was exactly why he entrusted his back to the man during fights.

The Knight Leader glared bitterly at the popping lights across the strait and urged William onward. “Let’s hurry. It may not be able to move anymore, but its defenses should still be functional…The royal faction set it up personally, though, so we don’t know how long it will stay that way. In any case, we need to rush there posthaste.”

“You are right.”

William candidly agreed, but a moment later, he’d rammed his fist deep into the Knight Leader’s gut. With a dull whump, he looked at William with an expression of disbelief.

“What…are you…doing…?”

“No. I cannot take you with me. You know that.”

William removed his fist, and the Knight Leader crumpled, as though he’d lost something holding him up. Still, it wasn’t enough to knock the man out, trained as he was. William didn’t watch as he struggled—he just spoke.

“I use my trivial position as mercenary to travel the world’s battlefields at will. But even I cannot enter England’s castles and palaces. That is something only you can do.”

“Will…iam…”

“If you truly want to protect the third princess, you must look to the future, not just the present. The disaster that invited this strategic move will strike the third princess many more times in the future. When that happens, she had better have someone with her. Protect her, leader of knights. Not only the third princess, either, but the royal family as a whole, though rotten with such political horse-trading. That is the job you were given, as a knight—not I, a mercenary.”

“William Orweeeelllllllllllllllllllllll!!”

Shrugging off the Knight Leader’s shout from where he lay upon the ground, William headed to the battlefield.

The Knight Leader heard a magic name.

A certain mercenary’s magic name.

“The time has come to name myself. My name is Flere210—the one who changes the reason for your tears!!”

The Dover Strait lay between England and France.

But William Orwell, equipped with spells that allowed him to move through the water, shot across the national border with the speed of a cannonball.