“Come off it.”

In response, Carissa’s face remained steady.

“Why, pray tell, do you think I gave them high positions and rewarded them with so much taxpayer money? It’s so that when a national incident happens, they work themselves to the bone doing every little bit they can to steer the UK out of the crisis. That is exactly what every knight desires.”

“Y-you…”

“And they truly were useful. The other cowards were ready to run away, and they prevented them from defecting.”

Carissa slowly lifted the Curtana Original from her shoulder and readied it again.

Then, as though criticizing a difficult child acting too old for his years, she said, “Still, though. They were never more than a bunch of chickens who wouldn’t head to a deadly battlefield on their own anyway. Now, I’ll just have to pave the way myself and make them believe again that this coup d’état will succeed!!” the woman shouted, with many a giant fortress dancing in the sky behind her, the half-destroyed royal palace at her back, and the legendary sword in her hand.

It was the signal that the battle had begun.

4

If they beat the second princess, this coup d’état would end.

Kamijou reaffirmed the thought.

The Knight Leader was absent now, and his subordinates were wavering about whether to proceed with the coup or to stop it. Carissa had thence secured them by way of punishment. Therefore, even though their ranks were temporarily unified, were Carissa to lose her power, the whole thing would come crashing down.

Compared to going all over the UK and taking down every single group of knights, they could settle the score by defeating a single major boss. It could be no easier than that.

Forcing himself to think positively, Kamijou considered trying to loosen the tension in his body, but…

“You’ll die.”

A voice came from directly behind him, already with a sound of cutting wind.

She hadn’t just gotten behind him in the blink of an eye.

The Curtana Original was already sweeping in a horizontal arc toward Kamijou’s neck.

“…?!”

He didn’t have the time to turn around. He simply dropped his body straight down, avoiding the strike by a hairbreadth. Or at least, it looked that way; in the end, a scalding pain ran through his ear. Vilian saw it and let out a short scream.

And then, another strange gwkeee!! resounded.

A smooth, unnaturally white object appeared along the sword’s horizontal path—the debris that was created as an aftereffect of the omnidimensional slice. It weighed more than a lump of steel, and it was about to fall naturally onto Kamijou, who had dodged downward.

Sh…it…?!

Kamijou rolled out of the way of the debris’s landing point. Wh-whump!! The awful rattling shook Kamijou’s gut.

And then…

“Too slow, pig. You’ll be sliced in two.”

Roar!! The Curtana Original swung.

A downstroke, from high to low. The strike, which cleaved through every whole-numbered dimension, created a giant slash that extended in a straight line out twenty meters from the Curtana.

On a route that would sever Kamijou’s upper half from his lower.

He immediately stuck out his right hand in panic.

There was a crack like a whip, and the slashing attack vanished midway there.

It…disappeared…?

Kamijou leaped to his feet, then tried to close the distance to Carissa. If he could land even one hit with his clenched fist, the Curtana Original should break.

But before his fist could get there, the second princess swung her sword again.

She kept its tip facing up, then brought it from right to left as though opening a window. It created a wall-like white debris object that looked like a shutter, which blocked his fist.

A dull pain came back to his bones, like he’d just punched steel.

Kamijou’s face twisted at the sensation. Didn’t work that time! Shit, I don’t know what I need to do to erase them!!

He was overcome by a chill. After all, his opponent’s weapon was a strike that severed every dimension.

If he misread it, it wouldn’t just be his right arm—it could cut his whole body in half.

But he didn’t have time to be worrying about something like that.

He didn’t have any room to relax and think of a strategy.

“Hu,” came Carissa’s breath.

At the same time, there was a massive blasting sound.

The second princess herself had kicked into the air, the white wall separating them.

The debris shield, heavier than steel, easily flew over ten meters into the air with one hit.

Carissa didn’t bring her foot down.

She fired off a second kick after the first that plunged mercilessly into Kamijou’s stomach. It wasn’t so much a human martial art as a human machine gun.

Whump!! went the terrible sound.

Kamijou’s body was easily flung several meters away, and then he began bouncing irregularly off the ground.

“Gah, brgh, aaaahhhhhh???!!!”

The urge to vomit rose within him, and he threw up red-colored chunks.

As Kamijou writhed in agony, Carissa twirled her blade-less, tip-less sword around like a baton, grinning as she threw the thin debris object to the ground. Vilian had finally tried to get her crossbow ready, but the situation had changed to something so dizzying she seemed unable to take careful aim.

Guh…Shit…Gffhh…I…knew I couldn’t keep up with that speed…!!

With a very strong feeling he’d lost a huge chunk of stamina, he still got back up. His fingertips tremored unnaturally.

“Hey, what’s the matter, eh? I was holding back on that one, too.” Carissa’s expression hadn’t changed. It was like she was saying that nothing would change whether or not he got up. “Accidentally sealing massive amounts of telesma inside you does tend to give people side effects like that. Well, at least as long as you don’t build a spell to remove the shackles, I think.”

She was…holding back…? Kamijou’s eyes took on a look of pure disbelief.

Carissa swung her sword around, using the dulled tip to point in a certain direction. “Anyway, are you all right? It’s dangerous to stop thinking, you know.”

Kamijou hadn’t realized what was approaching him at that moment.

A Gryphon Sky flying in the air. Eighty meters long, the crimson hang glider hadn’t changed significantly. However, there was a change in the giant shadow cast on it by the moon. As though spinning around, it changed shape—and in a completely impossible turn, its shape and weight transformed into those of a knight’s lance, its color became pure red, and it floated right down near the ground.

And it seemed like the fortresses overhead were moving in tandem with the red jousting lance on the ground.

In that state, the Gryphon Skies made a pass over Buckingham Palace.

And, of course, the twenty-meter stake moving in tandem with them shot off, skimming across the ground at an intense speed.

What now?!

Ga-bam!!

Touma Kamijou took the hit directly and flew, bent over, into the air.

“Dhgh…bgh…?!”

The pain was so intense that it caused a malfunction and almost numbed him instead, tearing through his upper body. The boy flew over fifteen meters through the air without a single bounce, then, once he hit, continued to roll over the earth.

Then, like beating a dead horse, the pain came in on him afterward.

“W​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​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?!”

Kamijou writhed in intense agony, but then when he saw another stake flying toward him like a cannonball, he frantically rolled. He thought he’d clenched his teeth, but red liquid spilled from his mouth.

However, it was Carissa, the one who had done the damage, who gave an unhappy look.

“Great. The Soul Arm’s automatic decision-making. This thing was originally for straight-up destruction of castle walls, so why can’t it at least cut someone’s top half from their bottom half? It’s made to automatically calculate a target’s strength, then cut out all excess and destroy it with minimum expenditure, but it looks like that worked against me.”

After saying that much, the second princess’s face took a turn as a sadistic grin appeared on it.

“Keh-heh, ha-ha-ha!! But silly mistakes in judgment won’t save you any longer! …Switch to manual decision-making. All weapons, fix your destructive force to anti–Windsor Castle levels. See? Now these attack Soul Arms can rip your flesh apart from just the slightest touch!!”

A chill ran up Kamijou’s spine.

That had been her holding back.

Now that the Soul Arms’ limiters had been released, taking the same hit again would make his body into mincemeat.

Damn it! I couldn’t find a clue for how to beat even just Carissa with her Curtana Original, and now…Coughing up blood but still clenching his fist again, Kamijou glared directly ahead of him. On top of that, twenty mobile castle-breaking fortresses flying around? How the hell am I supposed to come up with a way to turn the tables?!

But then—

From the distant Coven Compass came a fierce pillar of flashing light shooting straight at Carissa. The attack had enough punch behind it that just by passing overhead, it completely shattered glass windows on the London streets.

Meanwhile, Carissa didn’t even look that way.

She just held out her hand horizontally, then twirled the Curtana Original once like a baton.

There was a booming ga-shhh!!

In tandem with her sword’s motion, every direction was cut. In all, it covered a disc with a radius of about twenty meters. The debris object appeared in the form of a cross section; as it scooped deep into the ground, it changed into a giant circular shield.

And then the large-scale flash spell collided with it.

There was a massive bang.

But the shield didn’t break, and the flashing pillar of light, without anywhere to go, dispersed in every direction. The aftermath plucked out the great trees in the garden, bent streetlights over themselves, and churned up the asphalt. Several of the Gryphon Skies overhead raised their altitude for a time, almost reluctantly, trying to get away from it.

That was all.

The second princess, Carissa, was unharmed.

Are you kidding me…? For a few moments, Kamijou was stunned. That crazy laser cannon can’t even put a scratch on her. The head of state with the Curtana Original…Are you telling me this is the kind of monster that makes—?

“Why does that surprise you?” said Carissa, as though breaking off his thoughts. With another snap of her wrist, she twirled the Curtana Original, which had formed the shield. “Can any human kill the leader of angels?”

Zggeee!! The second princess stabbed the Curtana Original’s end into the disc shield.

From above the debris object that had been created by cutting through dimensions came, perhaps, the result of cutting those dimensions again.

As though stabbing a fork into a giant potato, Carissa used just one hand to swing the Curtana Original to the side—

—while it was caught in the giant, twenty-meter-radius disc shield.

“Oh…shit…?!”

Kamijou reflexively used his hands to protect his face, but there was no point.

Ka-thoom!! Then came the crash of thunder.

Carissa had forcefully swung the Curtana Original around while about half the disc shield was buried. The ground immediately collapsed as though a giant construction machine had shoveled it up. The black earth, the concrete, the asphalt, the roadside trees, the water and gas pipes running underground—all of it lumped together. As a river of dirt and debris, it plunged toward Kamijou like a tsunami.

There was no way to avoid it.

The overwhelmingly enormous chunk of mass simply sent Touma Kamijou flying.

The earthy wave’s front end pushed away his body, knocking him easily ten meters back. As it did, the earth bit into Kamijou’s lower half like a living creature’s jaws. As he screamed at the immense pressure, he saw out of the corner of his eye the disc shield slipping out of the Curtana Original. The giant structure flew through the air, collided with Buckingham Palace, and did even more damage to the almost collapsed building.

“Guh, ah, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Kamijou yanked his legs, buried up to his thighs, out of the gravel. He felt something awfully hot on his right thigh. He looked and saw a broken tree branch, about as thick as a ballpoint pen, stuck in it.

Vilian, who had run toward him, shouted something to him, but the pain was so intense it was giving him vertigo, and he couldn’t tell what she was even saying. She seemed to be frantically wondering how to aid him.

Kamijou bit his own sleeve as hard as he could so he wouldn’t bite his tongue.

And then, he put his hand to the branch stuck in his leg. With trembling fingers, he gripped it—and then tore it out all at once.

His scream wasn’t audible.

While no shortage of blood flowed out, Kamijou gritted his teeth so hard he thought he’d break them.

“Don’t you think your ideas were a bit naïve?” said Carissa calmly, watching Kamijou as he endured the incredible pain. “You might have a bit of strange power in that hand of yours, but a mere unarmed human trying to touch an angelic leader? Could you be more presumptuous? The first condition, the ‘thing you need to do to win’—you were mistaken from step one, so.”

Such a difference in power that he couldn’t touch her even once.

Though it was restricted to the UK, the one wielding the power of Michael, the angels’ leader.

Right now, the second princess probably had at least as much power as Acqua of the Back. The actual logic and tech might have been completely different, but the strange objects created when she sliced dimensions somehow reminded him of Misha Kreutzev’s watery wings.

“I don’t mean thinking you could fight and win was a mistake.”

Carissa lowered the Curtana Original’s tip once.

He heard the sound of hissing gas from within the black soil destroyed by her last attack.

“You may be acting in defiance, but if you seriously wanted to run away, you’d survive—that is the level of thinking you’re making a mistake with. That’s what it means to be the angelic leader, the head of state.”

No mercy for those who rebel.

Judgment from heaven would unilaterally rain down annihilation. The only path available to those who faced it was to fervently prostrate themselves and wait for the wrath to pass as soon as possible.

The scale of this battle was already in mythological territory.

This woman would create a legend just by standing where she was.

And that was—

“…The second princess…Carissa…”

“That’s Her Majesty to you, fool.”

Carissa made a displeased face just for a moment, then tapped the tip of the Curtana Original, which she’d lowered to the ground, on the ruined and broken asphalt.

The hissing noise of leaking gas stopped.

Attached to the entire city’s supply—

Ba-boom!!

A moment later, the night behind the princess erupted into a crimson explosion from horizon to horizon.

The flames themselves didn’t reach Kamijou. But the shock wave blasted past Carissa and slammed relentlessly into his body.

“Guh…bfrt?!”

It was like he’d been smacked by a wall. His breath caught, and his feet hovered off the ground. Vilian, who was next to him, had been pushed into the air in the same way.

They remained there for over a second.

Meanwhile, Carissa, despite being closer to the blast wind engulfing her than Kamijou was, didn’t seem in pain at all. She smirked at her floating targets, then kicked lightly off the ground and came near, as though it was actually a comfortable tailwind pushing her.

Yes—even the flames and blasts spreading around them weren’t her “attack.”

Even this was no more than a simple way to bolster how she wanted to move.

With her one light step, an explosive sound rang out, one even more awful than the gas.

Bwa-gaahhhhh! Carissa jumped, smashing the ground. The way she moved was more like stabbing through space than advancing normally. Kamijou, who had finally stumbled in trying to regain his balance, was almost entirely defenseless.

Immediately, he swung around his right hand, but it wasn’t going to do him any good.

Rather than using brute force, Carissa sharply followed Kamijou’s movements, twisted the Curtana Original’s trajectory diagonally, and went for the neck—the blind spot in his defense.

Along the blade-less, tip-less sword’s path, every dimension was sliced through.

A belt-shaped debris object followed after the sword.

The strike could unquestionably cleave through the nuclear shelters of science and the grand cathedrals of sorcery. Kamijou kept his eyes on it and wondered:

The threat was never just the Curtana Original.

This was a person powerful enough to pull off a coup d’état in the United Kingdom, a country that had maintained a very solid system, almost perfectly.

The second princess was incredibly well versed in military affairs. Why wouldn’t she be acquainted with martial arts?

“Die.”

The one single word reached his brain.

A moment later, there was a dull whump as that brain was rocked.

Touma Kamijou’s vision teetered and blurred.

His feet left the ground, and he couldn’t perceive gravity anymore.

His breathing stopped.

And…

I’m…alive?

Kamijou finally snapped out of it when he felt someone grabbing the back of his clothes.

The place he’d just been standing in seemed a little distant. Carissa’s swing of the Curtana Original had connected with empty air, and the second princess was growling at the result.

This was undoubtedly something impossible for Touma Kamijou’s physical skills.

And as proof…

“…I was finally able to return a debt normally.”

…he heard a woman’s cool voice.

Simultaneously, the sensation of someone grabbing him in the back vanished as Kamijou was gently let onto the ground. He looked and saw that Vilian had been picked up along with him. The third princess was looking in blank amazement at the person who had protected her.

Kamijou turned around.

Standing there was…

“Kan…zaki…?”

“Not only me. Everyone else will be here soon,” she said smoothly, glancing away from Kamijou for just a moment. “Index. I request a magical analysis. It is possible that pressure from the Royal Family faction has created a bias in your 103,000 grimoires, so you may not have any record of Curtana-related spells. Would you be able to do a reanalysis based only on your existing magical knowledge?”

“To either take away control, or to seal it. I’ll do it.”

Index, who had been moving with Kanzaki after their transport truck got wrecked, had arrived as well. When Kamijou stared at her dumbly, she gave a snort of pride.

One of only twenty saints in the world, and a magical library with the knowledge of grimoires from across the world stored within…

They were both highly valuable for the sorcery side, but their reinforcement didn’t cause Carissa to lose her composure.

“Foot soldiers who couldn’t even reach the main battlefield properly. And now you think to play a major role?”

“A certain ignorant princess doing quite a number on the city delayed us somewhat. We found it necessary to intercept several structures threatening to crush a theater full of civilians.”

She had stopped structures reaching a hundred meters wide while unarmed.

After saying something so tremendous with utter calm, Kanzaki reached a hand for her katana’s grip.

“…And I don’t plan to solve everything myself. I now have comrades with whom I can trust my back.”

5

The saint Kaori Kanzaki and the second princess, Carissa.

A searing tension spread between the two women.

No concrete physical occurrence would be the trigger.

It simply began when Kanzaki was the first to move.

“!!”

“!!”

She pulled out her two-meter-long katana—or, rather, pretended to—while she manipulated seven wires with that hand.

Seven Glints.

“Holding back against me, are you?” Carissa gripped the Curtana Original as the metal wires shot at her from all directions. “…I’ll end you.”

There was an ear-shattering gkk-keeee!!

The next thing Kamijou knew, Kanzaki and Carissa were at super-close range, their blades pushing on each other. They’d only run straight ahead and swung their swords, and yet that simple motion was impossible for Kamijou to see.

“Competing with my omnidimensional slice? Two blades that can sever all things—it looks like the two laws may have created dissension or contradiction.”

“…You’re moving differently than before. I will return your advice—if you continue to hold back, it will trip you up.”

Her words seemed to be supporting Kamijou’s side, but the boy himself refuted them in his mind.

He could tell by instinct: This princess, skilled as she was in military affairs, would control herself—but she wouldn’t go easy.

“It is an unmanageable shrew, after all,” Carissa explained. “Obviously I’d try to produce the necessary results by paying a cost appropriate to the situation—that way, I’ll create no needless side effects or openings. Decreasing consumption and preventing exhaustion is yet another required skill for tactics.”

Boom!! Their two weapons bounced away, and then they swung again.

Bodies blurred.

What happened next was an offense and defense that made it hard to even grasp where they were located. Tak-tak-tak-tak-zzz-zzz-tak-tak-tiktiktik!! The blasts fired off like a machine gun, with glints of light dancing between them at the same time. Around Kanzaki were torn-up wires, and around Carissa were debris object fangs that were sliced one after another out of her mobius strips from the garrotes.

This wasn’t the sort of situation Kamijou could add himself to in any direct fashion. But the Imagine Breaker still doubtlessly presented an irregular threat to the Curtana Original.

Then there’s something I can do!!

After making up his mind, Kamijou ran in a large circle around their battle—moving outside Carissa’s field of vision—so that, even if it was impossible to directly interfere, Carissa would still have to spare a little mental energy for him.

“Heh. Very admirable for you to go that far, so,” said Carissa without turning around, realizing his intent as she traded blows with Kanzaki with lightning speed. “But—go to hell.”

Ga-boom!! came the sound of an explosion.

The debris objects were naturally created during their skirmish thus far. She used her heel to kick one of them, a thing with an incredibly sharp tip, backward—straight toward the spot where Kamijou stood.

It was like a javelin thrown by a brawny soldier.

“?!”

Kamijou hastily twisted, but still ended up with a wound streaked across his cheek. It wasn’t a cut from a sharp blade—it was a dull wound, as though he’d tripped in a rocky area by the seashore.

When Kanzaki saw it, she ignored her own crisis and shouted, “Touma Kamijou!!”

“Don’t mind me! Push her back!!” yelled Kamijou angrily, stopping Kanzaki as she was about to change her tactics out of concern.

Meanwhile, reinforcements had arrived.

The Born Again Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, centered around Saiji Tatemiya armed with his flamberge and Itsuwa with her Friulian spear, with ancillary members equipped with various swords, spears, axes, hammers, bows, and staves.

The former Agnes unit, composed of Agnes with the Lotus Wand, Lucia with her giant wheel, Angeline with several coin pouches, and other nuns armed to the teeth with a myriad of Soul Arms.

In addition, Sherry Cromwell had come with her golem in tow, while Orsola Aquinas and others had gathered as well. It looked like just about everybody had showed up when they charged in.

The latecomers seemed faintly surprised at first when they saw how Kanzaki and Carissa were fighting, but they stood their ground and joined the fray. Some targeted Carissa from a distance, weaving attacks into the intervals of the ongoing fight, and others challenged her as a group in close combat, intending to lighten the saint’s burden.

Carissa gave a soft slick of her tongue. “Seriously. Now you’re making me pay more than I need. Maybe I should have left some knights to have them ward off the small fries.”

And yet the second princess still didn’t fall.

There was a great boom!!

While ceaselessly skirmishing with Kanzaki, Carissa began to work even the trajectory of debris objects into her tactics. Sharp, pointed structures that looked like giant fangs or ribs flew out in all directions. They blocked the attacks shooting at her from many directions at terrifying speeds, becoming a wall to hold back their assault, then turning into projectile weapons to counter their strikes.

It’s like a game of beanbags, thought Kamijou while he, too, avoided attacks on his life.

Carissa had only two hands and only one weapon. And yet she dealt with dozens, even hundreds of enemy strikes and movements at the same time. The common sense instilled in him from back-alley brawls said that if you used a big enough group of people as a wave, it would wash away a single person. And yet, that didn’t apply here.

And to top it all off, the Gryphon Skies overhead interrupted as well.

A giant, twenty-meter jousting lance skimmed just over the ground, moving in tandem with the crimson fortresses above them, and shot toward Ellis—the golem that Sherry controlled—then rammed into it head-on. After taking the maximized attack, the hunk of boulders broke apart in midair and rained its pieces down on the heads of the former Agnes unit.

Seeing Agnes, Lucia, and the others frantically avoiding them, Kanzaki clicked her tongue. Then she said to her comrades in Born Again Amakusa, “Let’s split into a Carissa team and a Gryphon team! The mobile fortresses are up about twenty to fifty meters…Peter-type aerial attack spells will work at that altitude. Ushibuka, Kouyagi, Nomozaki! Can you construct spells to bring them down by yourselves?!”

“We’ll try, but they’re probably guarded by huge shields of their own. No guarantees we can whittle them away!!”

Despite Ushibuka’s and the others’ replies, they moved swiftly.

The Gryphon Sky that had destroyed Ellis swung around again and began to plunge toward Born Again Amakusa—only to abruptly lose its balance and skew. The giant jousting lance skimming over the ground rammed into the black earth, scattering a tsunami of dirt. Since it was a Soul Arm, it displayed more massive destructive power than even its apparent mass and speed would imply.

But they didn’t completely bring the thing down.

The Gryphon Sky that they’d shaken around got back up and tried to launch another attack on the Amakusa group.

“Shit—!!”

“No, that was all I needed!!”

Kanzaki interrupted Ushibuka’s shout, charging ahead with a saint’s leg strength. The giant jousting lance had slowed after aiming into the ground. She grabbed the side of it with both hands, then turned from the waist and swung it around as hard as she could.

The Gryphon Skies were currently set up to move in tandem with the giant stake’s “shadow.” Since Kanzaki had grabbed and swung around the jousting lance, the Gryphon Sky overhead also started revolving like a tornado. Perhaps the jousting lances really held a way to sever and split the magical tandem movement, for fear of one hitting a durable fortress and getting stuck in it. But it wouldn’t have mattered. Kanzaki was using more than just arm strength to swing the Gryphon Sky around. She was both using advanced sorcery to interfere with its emergency release and putting her arm strength as a saint to use at the same time.

Swinging the Gryphon Sky around in a wide circle, she strung along about four of the ones in the air, and after making them into a clump, she changed the axis of her swing, dropping them all down in a straight line.

It was a supergiant morning star.

And, of course, she’d aimed them at the Curtana Original–wielding second princess, Carissa.

There was an enormous ga-baaam!

But it didn’t happen because of several massive aerial objects falling to the ground.

It was the blast noise of the second princess, having thrust the Curtana Original from low to high, severing the morning star with a single attack.

“Shit!! That hammer was made of five mobile fortresses!!” shouted Isahaya in place of Kanzaki as she ground her teeth.

However, Itsuwa, readying her Friulian spear, raised her voice to energize everyone. “B-but she’s proven we can bring them down! Split into more teams and launch attacks on the Gryphon Skies as well. If we reduce the number of mobile fortresses and get more people able to concentrate on Carissa, that alone should raise our chances of victory!!”

They nodded, and without anyone speaking, they split into two groups and headed for their own enemies.

Then Kanzaki temporarily withdrew from the front line, leaving the fight to her comrades. Even as she caught her breath to restore her stamina, she jumped smoothly toward Kamijou.

“It pains me to say this, but it looks like we will indeed need to rely on your right hand. Carissa’s slashes—can you cancel out the omnidimensional slice attacks themselves?” she asked him in a low voice, repelling white structures flying at them sporadically. “They are both powerful slashes and a way to create projectile weapons. If you can erase even one, it will throw off the second princess’s tactics, and it may provide us with an opening.”

“I mean, I can try, but I can’t make any promises!” Kamijou clenched his right hand again. “I can’t seem to figure out the rules. A bunch of them hit me before you got here, too, but there were times I could erase them and times I couldn’t.”

Just then, a curtain of jet-black fire from the Silkie Aquarium mobile fortresses, fired from afar, shot one of the crimson Gryphon Skies out of the air. With the hulk approaching them like a crashing passenger plane, Kanzaki grabbed Kamijou by the back of the neck and jumped over two hundred meters.

“There is a legend about three swords in China. The strongest of them would cut without feeling like it cut, and the person cut wouldn’t realize it, either, and go on living as though nothing had happened…Well, it is a fable that appears in educational ideas, but it seems like the Curtana has taken that fable and made it reality.”

“?”

“To the point—if a slash is truly too sharp, there will be a time lag between when it slices the object and when the result appears. In concrete terms, debris objects appear in three-dimensional space as cross sections one-point-two seconds after the omnidimensional slice.”

“…You had the time to analyze that?” Kamijou was baffled.

“It was necessary,” answered Kanzaki perfunctorily. “The dimension-slicing ability is the only magical phenomenon. The debris objects are no more than physical phenomena born from it. It is, for example, like the relationship between a magical fire and its ashes after it’s burned out. Your right hand can erase the slashes themselves, but it probably can’t deal with the debris objects created as a result.”

“Which means…”

“If you attack the point through which it passes within one-point-two seconds of the Curtana’s attack, you’ll be able to erase the slashing attack and prevent any debris objects from appearing.”

One-point-two seconds.

Precise decimal times like that were beyond what a simple high school student could perceive.

“…And if I mess up, it immediately puts me in danger of a fatal cross counter.”

“I’m not saying you need to beat her. Think of it like this—if the Curtana Original tries to slice through dimensions on a wide scale and at a long distance and create a giant structure, if your hand will reach it, then reach out.”

“Got it. Stay calm and wait for my chance, right?”

Kanzaki patted Kamijou on the shoulder once, as though signaling that she was trusting her back to him. Then she put strength into her legs once more and jumped back to the main battlefield where Carissa and her Curtana were dancing.

But the situation didn’t wait for her.

Ka-bam!! With a rumble, a giant flower blossomed with the second princess in the middle of it. Its petals were those of death, woven with sharp, white structures. Projectile weapons, fired in every direction, blasted the close-combat unit at the heart of Born Again Amakusa far away.

“Itsuwa!! Tatemiya?!” shouted Kamijou.

But before they could answer, Carissa spoke. “Come on, now. Leaving your precious lambs behind for a strategy session? It’s like you want me to shoot them or something, so.”

As her words ended, the second princess jumped.

Perhaps borrowing telesma from the Curtana, her straight jump was over ten meters high. In the air, she readied her blade-less, tip-less sword, and as she fell, she aimed for her “target.” Kanzaki moved immediately.

Touma Kamijou’s right hand had an important role in the quest to destroy the Curtana Original.

That was why Kanzaki figured Carissa would go after the boy first and foremost.

“No! It’s not me!!”

And when Kamijou tried to bump Kanzaki out of the way, Carissa swung the Curtana in midair. It created a smooth, white plank in the air, to which the second princess delivered a mighty kick.

The trajectory changed to an acute angle—

One veering away from Touma Kamijou and toward the third princess, Vilian, who had been watching in a daze.

“?!”

Vilian immediately tried to bring up her crossbow, but it was too late.

With a boom, Carissa landed right next to the third princess, then used one hand to drag her younger sister down to the ground. By the time Vilian looked up, the Curtana Original’s end was already at her throat—the sword that had no blade or point but could still cut through dimensions.

“And why is someone like you, who can barely use magic, even here in the first place? Have you been spurred on by an odd sense of justice? Or were you just too scared to wait on your own, left behind by the main force?”

The arrows for Vilian’s crossbow, possibly on advice from the Puritans, had been modified somewhat. But from Carissa’s point of view, holding the Curtana Original, one of the United Kingdom’s greatest Soul Arms, it was the same as trash. Red, blue, yellow, green…It seemed to be glowing with four-colored magic lines, trying to form various sorcery based on their distribution, but it wasn’t even as effective as a little kid’s love fortune.

“Rather than operating spells others started, you triggered a spell to harm someone with your own strength for the first time in your life, using the subway to make my Curtana Original go out of control. Bet you’re on cloud nine now, aren’t you? …You’re so innocent, so happy over a single coincidence. But that’s really as far as you could go, isn’t it, my incompetent little princess?”

Essentially straddling her, Carissa laughed derisively.

But then her face froze abruptly.

“…Perhaps it is. So this was what those sinless servants and cooks, and William, faced in order to let me escape. To think it was this terrible.”

The third princess returned her sister’s stare dead in the eye.

To directly convey her will to win.

“Then I will stop hiding and stand up as well. As princess of a nation, I will be a roof to protect everyone from this kind of torment and fear!!” she shouted, readying her crossbow.

Ignoring the sword at her throat, she took aim at Carissa overhead. Then, as though saying she was prepared for them both to kill each other, she unwaveringly pulled the trigger.

She’d fired a special arrow, one with an arrowhead whose tip functioned as a Soul Arm.

“?!”

For the first time, Carissa’s face changed.

All she’d done was swing her neck aside.

But the second princess, Carissa, had used all her strength to avoid her sister’s arrow.

Even though the crossbow was modified to be easy to use, even for feminine, slender arms, it was still over a meter long, and loading the next arrow would require about five seconds at the least.

Meanwhile, if Carissa gave the Curtana Original the order, she’d slice every dimension apart, along with her sister’s neck.

“Rest in peace, dreamer,” declared Carissa, her face different from before, now terrifyingly impassive.

Then…

Pa-ga!!

The night-streaking arrow Carissa had dodged landed a direct hit on the Coven Compass’s large-scale flash spell.

Originally, Vilian’s arrowhead had been modified to grant a magical effect. Carissa was sure it was the sort that caused wounds to expand, but…

When the arrow hit the large-scale flash spell, it morphed.

The pure-white light turned into a mass of water that weighed dozens of tons. It rolled and undulated eerily in the night sky. Far too enormous to be a whip, its supermassive tip curved like a radio tower and shot toward Carissa, engulfing some of the crimson Gryphon Skies in the air as well.

A combination attack?!

Vilian, on her own, didn’t have the strength or the knowledge to substantially control sorcery. However, that changed if she used the mana the Coven Compass was launching over a long distance. She didn’t have to prepare some incredible spell to cause a huge explosion—all she had to do was use her own strength to trigger the detonation.

Plus, the Puritans had the Index of Forbidden Books on their side. With advice from several sorcerers, just imitating them and weaving a magical signal into the arrowhead had made it possible to cause such phenomena.

“Damn your cheap tricks!!”

Carissa rolled with all her might to escape the giant mass of water. In the meantime, Vilian forced her slightly shaking hands to calm, pulled the shotgun-like slide, and nocked her next arrow.

“Were you not aware? Just as you excel in military affairs, they say I excel in virtue.”

“Justifying your reliance on others? It sickens me to think we’re sisters, so!!”

Zwoh!! Something invisible spurted out into Carissa’s surroundings.

Without backing down, Vilian pointed the crossbow up to the night sky above her sister’s head. The arrow she fired once again struck a large-scale flash spell from the Coven Compass, but Carissa didn’t even watch it. Instead, she ran straight for Vilian.

The giant pillar of light burst, then became a collection of golf ball–size spheres, raining down upon Carissa like a deluge. But having borrowed the Curtana’s power, Carissa executed movements that were beyond human territory. With short zigzagging motions, she dodged through the rain, always closing the distance to Vilian.

“This is the limit of relying on others!!”

Now that Vilian didn’t have any other way, Carissa swung the Curtana Original.

With this timing, it would be impossible to dodge or defend.

All that was left was for the third princess’s head to fly, but…

“Yes, this is the pinnacle of reliance upon others, my sister.”

There was a thundering drr-bam!!

It was the sound of many footsteps. Vilian’s body disappeared from before her eyes, and in exchange, the close-combat team at Born Again Amakusa’s core, including Tatemiya and Itsuwa, jumped at her.

This was clearly different from their earlier speed.

The foot soldiers were flitting about three or four times faster now. As Carissa swung the Curtana Original with reckless abandon, creating debris objects to intercept their attacks, she gritted her teeth.

To think that deluge was really—not an attack but a physical ability–enhancing spell!!

Even as the high-speed battle continued, she unconsciously set her glare on Vilian, who was now farther away.

The third princess, after getting out of the saint’s arms, said, with confidence she hadn’t possessed until now:

“I told you so. I’m the one on the side of virtue.”

“Silence! You think you’ve won with this pathetic cleverness?!”

Carissa made a long jump backward, then swung the Curtana Original around in a wide arc again. The spell borrowing the Coven Compass’s power reinforcing the foot soldiers’ physical abilities had buried itself in the ground in the shape of bullets. In that case, if she created a giant hundred-meter-long debris object and turned the entire earth over with it, she’d break the hundreds of cores supporting their spells.

It’s over, Vilian. Once I stop them from moving, I’ll have you drawn and quartered in front of the people!! thought Carissa, swinging the Curtana Original around with all her strength, her entire body in it.

But all the other dimensions didn’t get cut.

She felt the attack slip away, like it went through air, and frowned.

The cause was a single boy, Touma Kamijou.

Yes.

Just as he’d planned with Kanzaki, there was the crack of a whip, and the halfway-sliced dimensions reverted.

Then, in time with that misfire—

—the third princess, Vilian, pointed her crossbow at the night sky again and fired an arrow.

This way…?! Carissa automatically readied the Curtana Original overhead to prepare for the Coven Compass’s powerful combo attack.

But the third princess’s “virtue” didn’t stop there.

After that, these words rang out.

“BTD, CD!! (Bend the trajectory, change downward!!)”

Those were the words of the girl who had precisely memorized 103,000 grimoires. It was a method called “spell interception,” used to interfere with others’ magic.

However, it hadn’t been for the Curtana Original Carissa held.

Index hadn’t yet completely analyzed the Curtana’s magic. What she did have, though, was a communication Soul Arm linked to the Coven Compass.

In other words—

The large-scale flash spell, which should have been traveling in a straight line, was what had bent.

“Wha—?”

For the first time, the second princess looked surprised instead of angry.

As if to dodge Vilian’s arrow, the giant pillar of light the Coven Compass fired swerved at a right angle. When it changed trajectory in the air directly downward, it pierced mercilessly through the Gryphon Sky along the way, then plunged straight toward Carissa, weaving through the Curtana Original’s blind spots.

An explosion went off.

An intense explosion that knocked over even the sorcerers spread out around her.

It nearly blew out Touma Kamijou’s hearing.

A massive amount of dust danced up into the night sky. With the spot the large-scale flash spell struck at the center, it had left a crater of over forty meters in diameter. The close-combat team members, centered around Born Again Amakusa, coughed and wheezed, but Kamijou could still tell they got up.

It was so extreme that Kamijou wondered if they’d gone too far.

It was enough to make him accidentally worry about the enemy, but something made him revise that idea right away.

“…All right, that one worked, so.”

An awful chill ran up Kamijou’s spine.

In an instant, the air of relief spreading through everyone vanished. Because:

With the whooshing of a whirlwind, the clouds of dust blew out from within. Standing there, with the Curtana Original in hand, was the second princess, Carissa. Her leather-decorated red dress was pocked with mud, and some parts were torn. Something red and oozing was visible on her skin. But Carissa was healthy. The Curtana hadn’t broken, either.

Are you serious…? Kamijou felt a shiver run through his legs.

He imagined being made to fight a monster with extremely high health in an RPG forever.

She took something of that level to the face? I don’t know the details, but that was a cannon blast from a fortress. Might not be that practical or that good in regular combat, but the pure power could’ve been more than Kanzaki’s attacks. And even when it hit her directly, it only gave her a few scratches?!

“…As I thought,” said Kanzaki to herself, her face bitter. “As long as we don’t destroy the Curtana Original, we can’t do anything.”

Of course, a bigger problem then arose—how was Kamijou’s right hand supposed to get close against someone whom they couldn’t defeat even with that?

In response, Carissa put her beloved sword on her shoulder once and looked around easily at the night sky.

There had been almost twenty Gryphon Skies at the start, but thanks to long-range artillery fire from the Coven Compass and the Silkie Aquariums, plus attacks from the Puritans on the ground, they were nearly wiped out. Even the final one, which was barely flying despite its damage, lost its balance while Carissa watched it, and it began to plummet.

“I suppose that’s as far as unmanned ones can go, so. Actually, they were designed for attack, and I used them for the opposite, for interception. Their specs might not have been the only issue here.”

“Either way, you’re the last one,” said Kamijou. “If we can keep pushing you back…”

“Oh, well. Beat up the grunts and leveled up, have you? That’s quite a low estimation of the head of state armed with the Curtana.”

Carissa returned her gaze from the night sky to set her eyes on Kamijou, the sword still on her shoulder. She reached a hand into her dress’s breast pocket and pulled out a small radio.

“And I don’t recall saying those were the only grunts I had.”

“?!”

For a moment, he thought she was going to call in more mobile fortresses, and he focused his mind on Carissa’s radio.

But his prediction was wrong.

If he’d thought calmly, he would have known why she took out a radio and not a magical Soul Arm. Either way, this was what she said:

“Orders for the destroyer Wimbledon currently patrolling in the Strait of Dover. Prepare the cruise missiles loaded with bunker cluster warheads. Set the warheads’ detonation depth to negative five meters, aim them at Buckingham Palace…and fire at once.”

The first one who grimaced and stiffened up was Touma Kamijou—from the science side. “B-bunker clusters?!”

“You know them? Special warheads, designed to destroy entire military shelters. They do scatter about two hundred smaller bombs in the air, after all. If I fired them while the Gryphon Skies were up, they’d hit them; they would have toned down their destructive force.”

With her right hand holding the Curtana Original and her left hand holding the radio linked to the destroyer, Carissa smiled a more wicked smile than ever before.

“I was originally planning to put you in more of a crisis to lure my mother, Elizard, here and then fire them at her, but you destroyed the Gryphon Skies ahead of schedule. I had to move it up.”

“Shit!! Those warheads’ll blow away everything in a three-kilometer radius!! It won’t just be Buckingham Palace. If even one of those things hits, it’ll wreak havoc on London, too!!”

“You may wail if you wish, but cruise missiles are quite fast. Concords, Eurofighters—France and the other EU nations pester us quite a lot for development costs, but thanks to that, our nation’s supersonic-related technology got stronger. We kept up with the foldable wing concept, and I think they were saying the cruise missiles with them can reach up to Mach 5 even at low altitudes. A hundred-kilometer distance wouldn’t even take a minute.”

“Damn it…!!”

Three kilometers in sixty seconds. Normal human legs wouldn’t carry a person outside its range in that time. Maybe it was a different story for a saint like Kanzaki, but most of the Puritans here wouldn’t make it.

“I will not let you.”

The one who interrupted was Kaori Kanzaki.

“I’ll create a defensive barrier in the air to intercept it,” she went on, checking the wires in her hands. “A three-kilometer effective radius and two hundred smaller bombs…If that’s all, the scale certainly shouldn’t be impossible!!”

“Yes—if you use magic power, you might be able to do something about the bunker cluster,” noted Carissa with a smirk.

She herself stood before them only because she’d borrowed the Curtana Original’s power, and she was probably confident she’d emerge unscathed even from those blast winds.

Then, with her left hand holding the radio, she gestured to the night sky.

There was a point of light up there, man-made, clearly different from the twinkling stars.

“…But you don’t have much time to spend preparing.”

“!!”

Springing into action at those words, Kanzaki strung out her seven wires in the night sky. They depicted a three-dimensional magic circle, through which a pale-blue light ran as it tried to cover the entire city block with a giant, thick wall.

It was the kind of insane sorcery only saints could use.

But…

“You’re defenseless. Just as planned, so.”

“…?! Kanzaki!!” shouted Kamijou instantly, but Carissa, licking her lips, brought her Curtana Original to bear faster.

Ga-bam!! With the sound of every dimension being sliced, everything began to collapse. Kanzaki barely managed to avoid the hundred-meter cross section, but her spell preparations were stopped as a result, and the thick wall that was supposed to cover the night sky was pierced through by a ray of light.

It was the approaching cruise missile.

Kanzaki tried to reconstruct her defensive spell, but she didn’t make it.

At around four thousand meters up in the air, the cylindrical missile split into four. Then the compartments shed their shells, and out of them appeared two hundred bombs that had been packed within. They scattered into the air, then plunged down like lances.

Carissa had set their detonation depth to negative-five meters. Even though they were meant to displace massive amounts of earth deep underground, she’d purposely made it so they’d explode over the surface, in order to blow away Kamijou and everyone else who was at ground level.

He thought he heard someone scream for everyone to run.

Kamijou, unable to move his body, simply stared dumbly at Carissa.

His enemy.

The United Kingdom’s second princess had her arms stretched wide, as if to accept divine light. As she watched the two hundred specks of light in the night sky with satisfaction, she seemed to notice Kamijou staring. She brought her gaze in front of her again, then gave him a smile, a real one—completely different from any he’d seen her give—and said something.

Kamijou couldn’t tell what it was.

A moment later, the bunker cluster assaulted Buckingham Palace.

There was no noise.

Only pure white, blanketing his vision.

But he felt, somehow, that his body had been thrown. Most of the bombs didn’t explode in midair or on the surface; they buried into the ground like they were originally designed, plunging beneath the surface before detonating.

His consciousness blacked out, then flickered back on.

For a while he moaned; his fingers twitched…and then, somehow, Kamijou came to the realization that he was still alive.

“Guh…urgh…”

He heaved like he was coughing, but his own voice didn’t get to his ears. He tried to turn his neck, but his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted. And yet, with awkward, jerky motions, he moved his dirt-caked hands and feet, wobbling unsteadily up. This was the first time he’d ever really considered it miraculous that his limbs were all still attached.

He looked around.

Surprisingly, the catastrophic devastation hadn’t spread to the London streets. Maybe it was thanks to the defensive barrier Kanzaki built halfway, but in reality, most of the two hundred smaller bombs had misfired in midair, and what had come down on top of Kamijou and the others were the leftovers that slipped through the cracks in the barrier sliced open by the Curtana Original. And even for those that got through, the other sorcerers would have immediately tried to use their own defensive spells to lessen the force of the blast wind.

But…

“In…dex…?” he muttered, not caring about the mud all over his face.

There was no response.

“Kanzaki? Itsuwa?”

Only the boy’s voice rang out in the cold.

He was buried in the dirt, buildings were collapsed, and his own limbs faltered. In the middle of the burned, thoroughly destroyed area, Kamijou somehow managed to move his shaking lips.

“Sherry, Agnes! Oriana!! Shit…Orsola, Lucia, Angeline! Tatemiya, Vilian!! Damn it. Someone…someone answer me!!”

He heard several groans in response, but there were no clear words.

Almost everyone was down. Some might have been buried in the dirt. That scene did much more damage to Kamijou’s heart than the shock wave had done to his body. It was too hard now to imagine how many tricks their enemy had at her disposal. Kamijou’s mind was starting to lose track of the situation.

In the midst of all that, just one transcendent figure stood there.

The second princess, Carissa.

The woman in the red dress, Curtana Original on her shoulder, spoke.

“All right. Do you still hold out hope?”