Hmm? Did he cause it to break? he thought.

But that wasn’t correct.

On the end of William Orwell’s hilt was a blade over three feet long.

It was one final superior sword, hidden within his eleven-foot greatsword.

Normally, whether the sword was western or eastern, the forger would prevent the blade slipping out of the hilt the instant you swung it by burying one part of the blade’s steel inside the hilt (or creating a hilt by enclosing it between two sheets) and locking it in place with screws or wedges.

Ascalon was the opposite.

Its creator had stored an even smaller sword within the greatsword by placing it so that it lay alongside the steel buried in the hilt.

It was a gimmick workable only because Ascalon was so enormous.

And.

Because the blade had been hidden, the Knight Leader hadn’t been able to perceive it.

William turned his back to his opponent, hiding the sword behind his giant frame. Then, going along with the momentum, he quickly twisted and loosed a strike swung around from the side.

Vwohhh!! came the sound of atmosphere splitting apart.

“?!”

For the first time, the Knight Leader’s face changed. As he used all his might to retreat, it tore his suit and ripped a straight wound in his chest.

Yes.

Was it not a hidden blade flung from a sleeve that had killed the mythical Scandinavian figure Thororm?

The stinging pain pressed more weight than sharpness against the Knight Leader.

The weight of the trump card. The weight of a renewed fighting spirit. The weight of a strike made without a word.

It almost proved William Orwell was just. In response, the Knight Leader let out a roar.

“R​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h!!”

But he wasn’t the only one who shouted.

With one final blade in hand—or perhaps it was the Soul Arm Ascalon’s true core—William Orwell pursued the Knight Leader as he jumped back again, attempting to dive into close range.

The wound carved into him, the dripping blood, dulled the Knight Leader’s movements.

But it still wasn’t a fatal injury.

The Knight Leader had two methods. One was to use his dark-red longsword’s attack power to cleave William’s body. The other was to use Thororm’s Spell to sap William’s sword’s attack power.

I’ll break his sword, decided the Knight Leader instantly. It won’t be victory unless I slay him after crushing that weapon, the symbol of his resistance!!

He believed in his own justice. Therefore, the Knight Leader denied simply fleeing and tried to thoroughly trample his opponent’s view.

Ignoring the pain of the shallow cut in his chest, the Knight Leader set to breaking William’s final weapon. If he could only do something about that blade, he’d be left to launch a one-sided attack.

“Zer—!!” he was about to say but stopped.

There was no blade in William Orwell’s hands.

They gripped a hilt, but the blade that should have been on top of it was absent.

I…Where is it?!

The spell of Thororm the Knight Leader used selected a target from weapons he himself perceived, then brought their attack power to zero.

In other words, he couldn’t influence a weapon he couldn’t perceive.

That was when the Knight Leader saw a glint of light.

Directly above the sword hilt William held stretched an extremely thin wire. And the mercenary’s thumb was hovering over what looked like a hidden button on the hilt.

Did he shoot it upward first?!

Orwell was probably expecting to throw off the Knight Leader’s timing, then he would reel in the wire to reconnect the blade to the hilt and use it for a second attack.

If he succeeded, he’d certainly deal heavy damage.

But now that I know, that’s it! Ze—!!

Just as the Knight Leader was about to direct his gaze above William’s head, something moved out of the corner of his eye.

It was a branch, about two meters long and thick as a human arm.

It had broken off and fallen to the ground earlier; William had stepped on it, using a seesaw-like motion to kick it upright.

The blade’s body above and the fallen tree below.

He could use either as a weapon, but it was obvious which was the more dangerous.

Did you think I’d hesitate and give you time?!

The Knight Leader, without flinching, looked upward.

He would return the blade’s attack power, which would probably deal a fatal wound to him, to zero.

I have you n—!!

Convinced of certain victory, the Knight Leader funneled even more strength into the hands gripping his dark-red longsword.

But then something changed.

The sword hilt William held—and the thin wire connecting it to the floating blade—was, strictly speaking, a micro-size tube, and from inside it began to spurt a resinous fluid. When it made contact with the air, it solidified like glue, positioning stakes in every direction, now reborn as a primitive club.

Yes:

William Orwell’s most beloved weapon had turned into a giant mace.

“!!”

“!!”

Will I make it?

This was the final attack.

If the Knight Leader endured this, he would win, and if it pushed him back, William would win.

With the mace already right before his eyes, the Knight Leader focused his mind.

Zero!!

The wannabe mercenary, using all his strength, swung the mace down.

The knight chief, without thinking of defense, swung his amber-red longsword in response.

The two giant weapons crossed.

Boom!!

A terrible quake, strong enough to crush human flesh, resounded around them.

In that moment.

At the last possible instant.

The Knight Leader’s spell had gone off.

The attack power of the spiked mace William Orwell held had gone to zero, and even if it had made a direct hit at supersonic speed, it wouldn’t have been able to wound his opponent whatsoever.

In the darkness, the two men had stopped.

It would have been clear to anyone what the result was.

“…Hmph.”

The first one to make a sound was the Knight Leader.

The one who freely manipulated the very patterns behind the armaments that appeared in legends, using them as ways to attack. For his final strike, he’d chosen “severing power” that could cut through anything. Its destructive force would cleave the earth at a mere touch, and even if his opponent was a saint, a direct hit would unavoidably lead to death.

“What a dull ending.”

“…”

The mercenary didn’t respond to the Knight Leader’s words.

The knight’s body shook and swayed to the side.

William’s mace was buried in the side of his neck.

More specifically, the mace’s—and the sword’s—hilt.

Even more specifically, the small metal attachment, fixed to the hilt as a part of the device that fired the sword blade, was sticking out just slightly, and that was buried in the Knight Leader’s neck.

The man selected a target from all the weapons he could perceive and brought its attack power to zero. Conversely, even if something was right there in front of him the whole time, unless he perceived it as a weapon, he couldn’t influence its attack power.

“Ten years since you left…I thought I’d…really made myself stronger, but just like Dover, you did me in with a surprise attack…”

The dark-red longsword the Knight Leader held had veered off course thanks to William’s strike, and now it slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.

“Still…though…Knights, too…A disagreeable man, put to shame…To think that on that escutcheon…representing harmony among the three factions and four cultures…would be written even my name…”

The score was settled.

“…Come to think of it…You’ve always been…that kind of man…”

His body swayed even more to the side, then crumpled to the ground.

He hadn’t died.

Just like a mineuchi, a strike with the back of the sword from a Japanese katana, he’d passed out from being struck in the neck.

Its attack power hadn’t been affected, but the Knight Leader wasn’t a weakling—a single metal clasp couldn’t kill him. And William Orwell, knowing that, had entrusted his final attack, the difference between dark and light, to that little piece of metal.

His reason was obvious.

“I’m no more than a ruffian, a shallow mercenary wannabe. But it does mean I can fight more freely than a rigid knight,” muttered said mercenary to himself. “…Unfortunately, I don’t have any blades with which to slay an old friend.”

The words were, unusually for him, just idle talk.

10

Touma Kamijou had arrived in Folkestone.

He was trembling madly after getting soaked in the river’s water, but he didn’t even have the time to complain about it right now. Perhaps it was because he was right in the middle of enemy territory, but he was beginning to feel as though something was wrong.

Dammit, where’s the Eurotunnel terminal?! I hope they didn’t bring Index away from there…

Kamijou stared into the darkness of the mountain grove with no real light source.

Kamijou had run into the mysterious sorceress Florice and the third princess, Vilian, on the way, but neither of them was currently nearby. They’d encountered a Born Again Amakusa patrol, and he’d entrusted the two ladies to them. They’d apparently received intel from Agnes that Kamijou’s group was in Folkestone, so Born Again Amakusa, which had come right nearby using an aquatic rescue machine, sent out scouts to look for them…For some reason, as soon as Florice saw the Amakusa, she shouted, “Y-you tricked us, you bastard!!” but Kamijou wasn’t sure what that was all about.

Apparently, a strong enemy called the Knight Leader was protecting Second Princess Carissa in Folkestone, and he’d even taken down Kaori Kanzaki, a saint, putting her out of commission for a time.

The Amakusa didn’t want anyone pursuing the wounded Kanzaki, and when an important person like the third princess came into the picture, they necessarily had to choose to fight a defensive battle. At the moment, they seemed to be hiding and watching for an opening in the knights’ recon to move out with their aquatic rescue machine.

“You know, if we break down our ‘rank’ and arrange our people, we can let a few go with you.”

When the Amakusa had suggested that, he honestly wanted nothing more than to take them up on it. But Kamijou thought it over a second time more calmly.

“No, you all concentrate on the rescue machine. We can’t let Vilian get captured again, and aren’t you doing healing magic on Kanzaki or something? In that case, if you got her back onto the front lines as soon as you can, that would be safer than sending people with me.”

“But…”

“Once I rescue Index, how am I going to get out of Folkestone? What I want is for you guys to protect the goal line. It would make things easier for me, too.”

With that, he got Born Again Amakusa to reluctantly agree after he indirectly integrated into their “large ring.” They really didn’t seem to want to leave others to their fate.

The knights’ highest-priority target to destroy was the third princess.

It made more sense for a force like Born Again Amakusa to put their people toward protecting Kanzaki and her.

…But Itsuwa was getting all red for some reason, and everyone else put her in a stranglehold. Did she want to rescue Index that badly? They must have made friends during the fight with Acqua of the Back before, thought Kamijou calmly, which would have gotten him speared if Itsuwa had heard him.

In any case, right now, he was alone.

“…?”

Suddenly, Kamijou’s head lifted. He could hear something.

When he realized it, a moment later, his ears were slammed with the sound of an explosion like a shock wave.

What is…?! Kamijou crouched down instinctively and turned in the direction from which it had come.

He couldn’t see past the darkness.

It was clear that getting closer wouldn’t do him any favors, but if he didn’t dive into the danger, he wouldn’t be able to rescue Index.

Slowly, Kamijou crept toward the source of the sound.

The way held a narrow, paved road, covered in fallen leaves. After a certain point, cracks appeared in it, then breaks, until it got to the point where he was actually having trouble walking on it. Finally, he saw exhumed black soil and thick, mowed-down trees.

As always, there were no streetlights.

But there was a light source.

“Is that…?”

A horse and wagon?

Something was there, about ten meters ahead of him. On the front of the awfully old-fashioned vehicle hung glass lamps enclosed in open box-shaped reflectors. Maybe they were lanterns, like the things on the end of flashlights. They were likely not imitations, instead actually using fire. At times, the light illuminating the dark swayed unsteadily.

But that wasn’t the only light.

Blade hitting against blade, and steel armor, too, breaking into sparks.

It was a true battlefield where man fought against man.

If he looked very closely, the carriage wasn’t in good shape.

With one of its four wheels broken, it was unnaturally tilted.

And the battle was unfolding around that broken carriage. No—he wasn’t sure he could call it a battle. At least, it certainly didn’t look like an equal fight.

Several knights, clad in silver-colored armor, jumped in from various angles.

At their center stood a man holding a sword over ten feet long.

A flash.

Kamijou’s eyes couldn’t make out the details—it was just a skirmish unfolding with overwhelming speed—and as a result, spectacular sparks flew one after another from the silver armor, each of them blown far, far away.

One of them crashed right next to Kamijou.

It was no coincidence.

The man standing at the middle had moved only his eyes, not his head, to level a glare on Kamijou.

A brawny body.

Clothes mostly blue.

A giant weapon.

They all combined to give Touma Kamijou a terrible chill. This sensation wasn’t so vague as a mere premonition—it was the experience of having been literally driven to the precipice of death that triggered the warning signals in him.

Their root cause looked Kamijou in the face and said, “Hmph. I would have preferred not to see that hateful face again.”

“Acqua…of the Back?!” shouted Kamijou in spite of himself.

A big man who wielded particular might even in God’s Right Seat. Once, they had been able to defeat him in Academy City, but the opponent was one against whom they needed the full Amakusa roster plus the saint Kaori Kanzaki’s powers to just barely eventually win.

He’s…alive?! I thought there was that huge explosion in the underground city lake…Are you telling me he survived even that and then escaped Academy City?!

Kamijou’s thoughts, while disturbed, presented several possibilities to him.

His tensed body shivered. But why would Acqua show up here? Don’t tell me God’s Right Seat is trying to stir up this awful coup d’état even more?!

He didn’t know what reason the man was in town for, but he wasn’t a person Kamijou by himself could do anything about.

Unconsciously clenching his teeth, he inadvertently mumbled to himself, “…Damn, all this stupid coup business is already a mess. This is a pretty unlucky coincidence!!”

“I doubt it is coincidence.”

Despite standing at a distance from Kamijou, Acqua actually responded to his mutterings.

As the sharpness of Acqua’s five senses caused Kamijou to renew his caution, the man offhandedly gestured to the broken carriage. “If your long-term goal is to resolve the coup d’état, and your short-term goal is to recover Index again, then the basis for our actions aligns in several points.”

“What?” Kamijou followed Acqua’s fingertip with his eyes.

When he did, he saw the broken carriage’s door was half-open, and a cloth, which looked like a nun’s hood, was sticking out. It wasn’t a normal one. It was white fabric embroidered in gold, like a teacup.

“Index!!” he cried without thinking, but there was no answer.

He wanted to run right to her, but it was too dangerous to shift his attention away from Acqua of all people.

But while Kamijou kept his guard up, the soldier himself didn’t seem that interested in him. With casual movements, he went away from the carriage, turning his back to Kamijou.

“If recovering her is your goal, then be swift about it. In a certain way, this place is more dangerous than the conquered city of London.”

“…?” Kamijou gave him a dubious stare—the God’s Right Seat member was displaying a strange lack of hostility.

But the situation didn’t end there.

“Hmph. By the looks of things, the Knight Leader’s been taken down.”

A sudden voice.

Kamijou and Acqua turned around just as a single woman came out of an interval between trees.

A member of the British royal family, she wore a predominantly red dress garnished here and there with equally red leather. In her right hand, she gripped a sword with no blade or point.

“I thought I’d ordered him to bring me two heads so I can get used to this sort of thing…And all he could do was wound you? It seems I need to do everything around here.”

The second princess, Carissa.

The mastermind behind the coup d’état.

“!!” Without thinking, Kamijou steeled himself, but the second princess wasn’t looking in his direction.

Her eyes set on Acqua, she lightly swung the Curtana Original upward. “He sure did cause me trouble, so. If we don’t have the opening performer, that means I need to deal with the cannon fodder myself.”

“Your troubles will vanish soon. Your military ambitions will end now, after all.”

“You’d better not underestimate me too much. Did you forget the Curtana Original is in my hands?”

As she watched Acqua reposition his giant sword, the second princess smiled thinly.

Acqua’s face changed, and his sword moved.

He wasn’t aiming at Carissa. Instead, he slammed his sword’s side into a nearby giant tree, using the shock wave to blow away Kamijou and send him tumbling.

Meanwhile.

Carissa held her strange sword aloft and said, “This is originally a ritual sword, meant to sever British territory from the planet Earth and to manage and control the interior—but by applying that idea, I can do things like this, too.”

She swung it down.

Boom!!

A moment later, Kamijou witnessed the sight of dimensions being cut.

The range was about sixty feet.

With a strange noise, something passed over in a ray, connecting Acqua and the spot Kamijou had just been in. He could tell that something like a zone, or a wall, was expanding, its width equal to the Curtana Original’s. It was colored white, like a plastic model before painting. The object, which hadn’t fully become an object yet, had appeared before Kamijou’s eyes.

“I felt this before, too, when I was practicing…The Soul Arm itself is an antique, but when the user—that’s me—wields it based on military knowledge, its nature changes a bit, so…Well, my mother has the same trait, so she could probably do something similar.”

Joy mixed into Carissa’s voice.

“Did you know this? When you slice a three-dimensional object, the cross section becomes two-dimensional. When you slice a two-dimensional object, the cross section appears as something one-dimensional.”

They heard a ka-thud.

The strange belt-shaped object illogically floating in midair fell down right next to Kamijou.

It had a texture not unlike ceramic, but despite its apparent mass, it seemed to be incredibly heavy. Even after it fell, it continued to sink slowly into the black earth.

“In the same way, when an object with more than three dimensions, or space, is sliced, the cross section is output into the world as a three-dimensional object. The result is that thing—the exposure of the cross section—remains of the object.”

Whoosh. The second princess hefted the Curtana Original onto her shoulder.

It wasn’t an attack.

Nevertheless, dimensions sliced along with the movement of her sword, and like pencil shavings, colorless belt-shaped objects began to fall at her feet.

“Of course, this thing doesn’t care whether it’s a higher or lower dimension. It slices all dimensions currently in this position at once. It seems like out of all the exposed cross-sectional objects, the only ones we can perceive are those that appear in the three-dimensional world.”

What…the hell? Kamijou was dumbstruck.

If what she said was true, that sword was like a monster weapon that could cut through all dimensions—and he knew what dimensions were, but mostly only in concept. No matter how much steel an enemy used to protect himself, the Curtana Original would probably ignore it and slice through dimensions and his body.

But despite all that…

At this point, Kamijou didn’t even feel fear. The scale was just too enormous. The universe was apparently expanding forever because of the Big Bang, but nobody could physically feel space expanding with their own five senses. But that was the kind of power the second princess, Carissa, was manipulating.

“Omnidimensional slicing magic.”

Carissa snapped her wrist to whirl the Curtana Original around, and as she littered the ground with cross-sectional objects, the world’s wreckage, her smile slowly broadened.

“This is the first time I’ve used it, too…Seems easier to use than I expected, so. If there’s any issue with it, it’s that it’ll end things so incredibly easily that I’ll lose face for it.”

At this point, Kamijou was finally recovering from his state of shock and rediscovering his ability to think, little by little.

The second princess, Carissa—mastermind behind the coup.

They’d been able to have a normal conversation in Buckingham Palace, and they had even laughed together. He didn’t want this to come down to a brawl if it didn’t need to, but it didn’t seem very likely to settle things by talking it out. And if he made a wrong move, Index, still unconscious in the carriage, would be in danger too.

…Shit. We’ll have to talk it out after fighting!!

Carissa faced them with her sword that could probably slice through far more than a man-made nuclear shelter—like the planet, or space, all at once.

Kamijou threw a sidelong glance at Acqua.

Could he trust him?

No matter what anyone said, Acqua was still one of the God’s Right Seat members of the Roman Orthodox Church.

But on the other hand, he’d just been fighting the knights, led by the Knight Leader, on his own.

He could assume they seemed to share a common enemy for the moment.

Kamijou hesitated for a moment, but he was sure there wasn’t time to waver. “Hey, can you buy some time?”

“…” When Kamijou spoke to him, the man’s eyes set upon Carissa, and Acqua scowled—as expected.

Kamijou ignored this and continued, “Looks like that crazy sharpness is only on the sword’s edge. The side of it should be regular steel. Hit it with your blade and make her falter, just for a second. Then I’ll use my right hand to bust up that Soul Arm—”

“Oh, how scary,” interrupted Carissa in an obviously sportive tone. “Yes, your own patented skill is called Imagine Breaker, isn’t it?”

She stopped whirling the Curtana Original around.

The flat, pointless tip came down.

With her sword stopped dead, she said, “Then allow me to introduce you to an application of this technique suited for it.”

Carissa shoved the Curtana Original’s tip into the ground.

Boom!! A shock wave rattled Kamijou’s ears.

A dome-shaped, five-hundred-meter tempest of destruction whipped up around the second princess.

She’d probably changed the flow of mana—which she’d focused in order to use her omnidimensional slice—diverting it to a different route. The destructive force born as a result didn’t reach a high enough output to slice through other dimensions, but instead, it sent a shock wave flying equally in all directions in this three-dimensional world.

It was unquestionably an explosion.

The giant wall turned up the ground, mowed down the trees, and reached where Kamijou was standing in an instant.

“A​h​-​o​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h​h?!”

With a shout, Kamijou got his right hand ready.

But perhaps it had failed.

This power was so incredibly vast and continuous that Kamijou’s right hand alone couldn’t nullify it completely. The knowledge left over in his mind after his memory loss forced him to think of Innocentius and Dragon’s Breath.

A fiendishly brutal pressure slammed into his right hand, and with an awful bone-creaking noise, pain splintered through him.

Pushed back by the power, he was launched up from the ground in mere seconds.

And once his body had been thrown into the air, the rest was simple—

Grwshhh!!

—He instantly flew away.

A dome-shaped explosion with a five-hundred-meter radius.

Kamijou, his body fired diagonally up by the pressure, reached an altitude of two hundred meters in the night sky.

When the force pushing him up from below and the force of gravity reached equilibrium, for a moment, Kamijou floated in the air, staring at the scattered Folkestone nightscape.

What do I do…?

It would be a matter of seconds before he began to fall.

And his right hand didn’t have any kind of convenient ability to let him land safely from a height of two hundred meters.

What do I do?!

The ever-present force of gravity bared its fangs at Touma Kamijou.