The Asterisk War, Vol. 14

“This has been a very one-sided course of affairs… Are our two contestants really that different in ability?”

“No, Contestant Weinberg’s tactics have merely given her the upper hand over Contestant Sasamiya. Her Strega abilities are complementing those tactics perfectly, in a way that completely overshadows all our past data on her.”

As it happened, Saya hadn’t anticipated that Violet’s abilities could be so diverse. In terms of offensive techniques, her versatility seemed to be comparable even to that of Julis. On top of that, her abilities had evolved in such a way that the data from her past matches were hardly even relevant.

To put it simply—

“…You’re strong,” Saya grudgingly acknowledged as she glared across the stage toward her opponent.

“…She’s strong,” Hufeng found himself murmuring.

At this, Xinglou, at his side, gave him a deep nod. “She’s the one who showed the greatest potential for growth at the Liangshan. That said, her power and talents are still too much for her. She has a way to go yet before truly mastering them. Oh-ho!” She broke into a shrill laugh, glancing up toward him with a look of unusual contentment. “Don’t you remember? I said that one of them managed to land a blow on me. It was her.”

“What?!”

Hufeng jumped to his feet in shock.

“Sh-she… With you…Master?”

“Oh, you don’t believe me?”

“N-no, it’s just…”

Hufeng was lost for words. It was true that he found it difficult to believe. While Violet Weinberg was clearly a very capable fighter, from what he had seen, she simply hadn’t come across as a force to be reckoned with.

To think she had landed a blow on Xinglou…

“It’s true I let down my guard, but as a Strega, she has real potential. She may not be able to stand up against the best at close range, even taking her support abilities into account, but at a distance, she’s the foremost fighter in this tournament. That’s thanks to her raw power, her range of techniques, her speed at deploying them, and above all… Her skill at adjusting her tactics as necessary in real-time tower above the others’.”

“Her tactics…”

Now that he thought about it, the commentator Maeve had said something similar.

“She hadn’t made much real progress until I began with her, but that was because she only sought out opponents of a lower rank than herself. Which was why, at the Liangshan, I forced her to keep challenging me. Whether she wanted to or not, I made her polish her martial arts, and…this, too.” Xinglou grinned, tapping her temple with her finger.

“I—I see…”

At this, Cecily, until now listening to their exchange in silence, raised her hand. “But, Master, wouldn’t that make her the strongest person at the Liangshan?”

“In any normal situation…at long-range combat, yes, Violet is perhaps the strongest. In close combat, however, and if we’re taking Orga Luxes into account, it might go to Minato. Who would have expected both top contestants to hail from Queenvale? Well, we’re just talking in general, keep in mind.”

“In any normal situation…?”

Did that mean that there were exceptions?

“So would either of them be able to beat Fuyuka?”

“Now, that’s a foolish question, Cecily. The whole point of the Liangshan was to develop a single aspect of each student, a test to see whether I could prompt them to overcome their barriers. They can’t compare in overall strength to fighters like Fuyuka or Xiaohui.”

“But…Elder Disciple—the Glühen Rose beat him…”

“That’s what makes it so interesting! It was unfortunate that Paula and Leon had to face Erenshkigal and that neither Noelle nor Curtis reached their full potential, but Minato put up a good fight against Ayato Amagiri. The Urzaiz sisters and Lester did well, too. I wonder what Violet has for us? Oh-ho! This will be entertaining!”

Hufeng couldn’t help but notice that Xinglou was unusually talkative—a complete change in character from when she had been watching the match between Julis and Xiaohui. Her ecstatic expression remained unchanged, but during the previous match, there had been something dreadful lurking behind that broad grin of hers. Now, however, whatever it had been looked to be gone.

Indeed, it was impossible to deny that her students at the Liangshan had done remarkably well thus far—although he had his doubts that had to happen at the cost of Jie Long’s own contestants.

“Now then, let’s see what she has!”

“…Ah! O-of course!”

At the sound of his master’s voice, Hufeng turned his gaze back to the unfolding match.

“Boom!”

“Useless! Useless, useless, useless, useless, useless!”

Saya let forth bombardment after bombardment with her Helnekraum, but as before, Violet intercepted each and every one of them.

“Ngh…!”

“Now, my turn! Excalibur!”

The next thing Saya knew, her opponent had sent three guided shells soaring toward her.

Saya readied the Helnekraum with her right arm, using the handgun in her left hand to fire off a quick volley, destroying two of the oncoming projectiles. The final shell came dangerously close, and while she managed to dodge it at the last second, she wasn’t fast enough to escape the point-blank explosion.

“Guh…!”

“That’s not all!” Violet refused to let up, leaping after her mercilessly as she was thrown down.

Lifting her upper body from the ground, Saya fired back at the oncoming tempest with her still-recharging Helnekraum and the handgun in her left hand, destroying each of the oncoming shells in a powerful blast.

“Haah… Haah…!”

“Y-you’re persistent…!” Violet called across the stage.

While Saya had been able to avoid receiving a direct hit, she had accumulated considerable damage from the continued point-blank exchanges.

Violet, on the other hand, perhaps having overused her Strega abilities and prana, looked close to exhaustion.

Both contestants retreated to their respective sides of the stage to catch their breath.

“Contestant Sasamiya looks to be barely withstanding her opponent’s continued assault… But don’t you think Contestant Weinberg is starting to look a bit tired as well?”

“Indeed. But Weinberg’s overwhelming advantage remains unchanged. Sasamiya’s Luxes may pack more power into each shot, but Weinberg isn’t letting up, not to mention the speed with which she can deploy her abilities. She’s effectively forcing Sasamiya to stick to the defensive.”

“It certainly does look like Sasamiya is using all her attacks to counter those of her opponent…”

Saya had to admit that it would be difficult to break out of her current predicament so long as Violet maintained the initiative. That said, she couldn’t imagine her opponent would be willing to let up any time soon.

“…Well, there’s no progress without sacrifice,” she muttered, returning her handgun to its holster and throwing off her uniform jacket.

Underneath, a large metal belt was wrapped around her body—a garment resembling a bulletproof vest but comprised of countless interlinked pieces of manadite.

“Huh…? What’s that supposed to be?” Violet frowned with suspicion.

“…S-Module, activate.”

Saya didn’t bother to respond. She merely removed the belt of manadite from her waist and clipped it into the Helnekraum.

As she did so, a boxlike object manifested to engulf the Lux’s manadite core, with the manadite belt drooping down from inside.

“Whoa… That looks like one hell of a power-up…”

“Hmph! Whatever you’re playing at, I’m still going to win! Take this! Canister Shot!”

Violet’s next attack was comprised of a single oversized shell.

Seemingly no sooner did she release it, however, than it broke apart in midair, sending more bullets raining down on Saya than she could count.

A shrapnel blast…! But—!

The assault fanned out over a large swath of the stage, leaving her with nowhere to flee.

Fortunately, she had no intention of running.

She lowered the Helnekraum to shield herself from the barrage, using the small window of opportunity that had revealed itself to her to recalibrate the S-Module. Unable to shield her whole body, she focused her prana in her arms and legs to try to withstand the bombardment. The bullets lacerated her flesh and put her bones under pressure, but to her relief, they weren’t powerful enough individually to tear through her.

“Full burst.”

Saya, however, paid those injuries no heed as she readied the Helnekraum, aiming it squarely toward her opponent.

“Boom.”

And then, in her usual style, she pulled the trigger.

“Hmph! Let’s see what you’ve got…!—Huh?” Violet’s confidence suddenly flagged, her eyes opening wide in surprise.

At that instant, the bullets of light that shot out from the Helnekraum were more than twice their usual size.

“Wh-whoa…! G-Green Mace!”

Countless bursts of light erupted beneath Violet’s feet to intercept her attack, but they were all effortlessly pushed back. That was only natural. Nothing could stop Saya’s Luxes once they were armed with the S-Module.

“Eep…!”

With a dazzling flash and a deafening roar, the incredible blast tore through the stage.

“Wh-what a violent explosion…!”

Saya pushed the astonished voice of the commentator out of her mind as she cast aside the now-useless piece of manadite she had fed into her weapon from the S-Module.

Though still incomplete, the S-Module was one of two trump cards that she had prepared specifically for the Lindvolus. Each of her Luxes was capable of employing the LOBOS transition method, and while combining multiple manadite cores allowed them to output an incredible amount of power, their chief weakness lay in the fact that they needed to cool down for a considerable length of time after use so as not to induce a mana excitation overload.

However, all it took was changing one’s way of thinking to view that disadvantage as a positive.

Luxes were usually equipped with a limiter to control their output, but a good many users tended to manually remove such devices. In such cases, the risk of pushing the manadite core beyond its limits, resulting in its premature destruction, was considerable. And because Luxes took their respective forms based on the memory imprints belonging to those manadite cores, their destruction naturally rendered the Luxes themselves useless.

However, since Saya’s Luxes utilized the LOBOS transition method and were powered by multiple pieces of manadite, they would remain functional unless all of those cores were destroyed simultaneously. Of course, they would become highly unstable in such a state, not to mention difficult to operate, but she could always swap the spent manadite out for fresh pieces.

Indeed, that was precisely what the S-Module was designed to do—to swap out spent manadite with new, undamaged pieces. In other words, she could maximize the destructive potential of her Luxes by repeatedly pushing their manadite cores beyond their limits and replacing them as necessary.

However, the S-Module was, after all, still incomplete, and it remained difficult to operate. In its present state, the output of each manadite core had to be manually calibrated by the user and the energy focused on the core she wanted to push past its limit. Saya’s Luxes had never been particularly user-friendly, but this only added to their complexity.

“Th-that’s…! Uh-oh…!”

Violet’s wavering figure emerged slowly from the ensuing cloud of dust. Her uniform had been torn to tatters, and her left arm looked to be broken, but her eyes were still filled with fire.

“She’s still standing! Contestant Weinberg took that blast head-on, but she’s still standing!”

“…No, it looks like Contestant Sasamiya’s aim was a little off for once, leaving Weinberg enough of a margin to dodge the worst of it. That said…the damage does look severe.”

…I suppose I still need to work on my aim, Saya thought, biting her lip in frustration.

But of course, there was nothing she could do but keep going, and she quickly focused her attention back on her opponent.

“Now it’s…my turn!” Violet called out, pointing the musket gripped in her right hand up to the sky as its tip swelled with mana.

“You’re still going all out…?”

“I’ll grind you into dust! Red Beard!”

A huge shell close to five meters in diameter came into being over her head, launching directly toward Saya at tremendous speed.

“…Full burst.”

Saya, however, maintained her composure as she readied the Helnekraum.

“Whaaaaat?! R-rapid fire?!”

Thanks to the unique construction of the S-Module, Saya had been able to minimize the charge time between consecutive shots—although, of course, there was a danger that the gun barrel wouldn’t be able to hold out as long as her stock of manadite.

“Boom!”

The brilliant burst of light launching out of the Helnekraum flew straight into Violet’s own enormous projectile—and as it did so, an explosion beyond any the match had yet seen engulfed the stage. The shock wave was enough to tear a gaping crater in the ground and send both contestants flying backward.

“Ugh…!”

“Gah…!”

As the blast and raging heat subsided, a terrible silence descended on the stage. No one—not the audience, the commentator, or the announcer—said anything to disturb the eerie sense of calm that fell over them all.

Amid that silence, both contestants rose to their feet.

“I…won’t…lose!” Violet howled as ten, fifty, a hundred—more projectiles than the eye could count—emerged around her.

“Type thirty-five Lux Gatling cannon, Granvaleria.” Saya, meanwhile, swapped out the Helnekraum for the Granvaleria, equipping it with the S-Module. “Fire! Boom, boom, boom, boom, boooooooooom!”

A seemingly endless torrent of racing bullets emerged from its heavy-duty muzzle at a rate of more than four thousand per minute. Projectile collided with projectile, bullet with shell, all canceling each other out and consuming one another in balls of flame.

“Goooooooooo!”

“Nghhhhh…!”

The two contestants seemed to be evenly matched. Every now and then, a shell would pass through the bombardment, detonating behind Saya’s head, just as one of her own bullets would fly past Violet, but neither was able to score a direct hit.

Violet seemed to be pouring every last ounce of her prana into her assault, still not letting up with her torrent of fire.

Saya, likewise, continued to feed one manadite core after another into her weapon, maintaining its output at the highest level.

Like stars twinkling in the night, bullets and shells were born and died in the air.

Of course, neither contestant would be able to maintain their rate of fire for long.

The exchange couldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds before coming to a sudden end.

“Ah…”

“Ngh…!”

Violet staggered to her knees, while at the same instant, the barrel of Saya’s Granvaleria ruptured open.

But even so…

Violet raised her musket once more, just as Saya pulled out her handgun.

The sound of weapons fire broke out.

Compared to the prolonged bombardment that had engulfed the stage just a short moment ago, the sound of a single shot seemed almost inconsequential, and yet—

“Violet Weinberg—crest broken.”

“End of battle! Winner: Saya Sasamiya!”

—that small burst of light marked the end of their ferocious shoot-out.

Watching the match from her chair overlooking the stage in Agllekant Académie’s special viewing lounge at the Canopus Dome, Camilla Pareto gave voice to a hint of apprehension.

“I always knew it would turn out this way, but…now that it’s certain, I’m a little uneasy.”

Ernesta, sitting cross-legged beside her, was as relaxed as ever. “Oh? I’m practically bursting with excitement… But this is no time to relax, huh?”

With their respective proxy fighters, Rimcy and Lenaty, about to face off, their mutual composure was all the more noteworthy. Perhaps they were both brimming with confidence, or else…

As she had already announced, Camilla had no intention of yielding this match to her close friend. Saya Sasamiya had just made it through to the fifth round, so if Rimcy could win here, Camilla would finally have a chance to repay her debt from the Phoenix in the quarterfinals. And Rimcy was just as eager to face Saya again as she was.

“Hmm…! I wonder who Ardy will be supporting this time? His invaluable partner, Rimcy, or his cute little sister, Lenaty…? What a quandary!”

Behind them both, Ardy’s towering figure was fidgeting with anxiety, his head grasped firmly in both hands.

On the stage below them, Rimcy had already deployed her ACM unit and exterior armor and was ready for battle. Lenaty, on the other hand, had activated the huge adjustable glaive-type Lux that Camilla had built for her, the Youdemra, its blade longer than Lenaty was tall.

“Well, if I could have it my way, I’d have preferred that we save this match for a little later. But I suppose it isn’t unusual for entrants from the same school to be put against one another in the main tournament.”

“That goes for Queenvale in round seven, too. But, Ernesta…there’s something I need to ask you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about that work you’ve been doing for those associates of yours. I don’t mean to pry or anything…or at least, I didn’t mean to, but there’s been a lot of talk lately.” Camilla paused there, opening a small air-window, which she then showed Ernesta. “It seems that Seidoukan’s student council president has had Galaxy’s lab take charge of this for analysis, all in absolute secrecy. One of my contacts informed me last night.”

The air-window showed what looked like the strewn wreckage of some kind of machine. It was severely burned and damaged, and proper investigation of it would no doubt take a considerable length of time.

Camilla, however, recognized it at first sight. It was a puppet, of the same design as Ardy standing behind them.

“Oh dear… They must have activated its self-destruct system. Well, I suppose they are free to do whatever they want with them.”

“So it is your work…”

“Yes. Well, it’s a mass-produced version of the AR-D. A Valiant. Although strictly speaking, all they wanted were mere battle puppets. Pretty dull, really.”

Ernesta’s tone was one of disinterest. Having finished speaking, she rustled through the pocket of her lab coat, pulling out a handful of small candies.

“…The Golden Bough Alliance?” Camilla asked under her breath.

She had only recently learned its name, but she knew that its existence spanned many years.

Unlike Asterisk’s other schools, Allekant Académie had no centralized intelligence agency under the school’s own control. Rather, each of the various factions maintained their own network. As a result of that, the depth and quantity of the information they could acquire often lagged behind that available to the other schools.

On the other hand, students from Allekant’s research class often made broad connections outside the Académie itself. After all, it wasn’t unusual for successful researchers, no matter how young, to have some level of involvement with external projects. The most top-ranking of them, such as Camilla and Ernesta, or Hilda, had even been active before their enrollment and had often taken work from several different foundations. In other words, information gathering at Allekant was more of an individual responsibility than a group one.

Camilla and Ernesta had learned about that organization by mere chance while investigating potential avenues of countering the head of Tenorio, Hilda Jane Rowlands; Orphelia; Dirk Eberwein, Le Wolfe Black Institute’s student council president, and the mysterious organization that Dirk belonged to… Although that was really all they had managed to unearth.

“Just what are these associates of yours planning?”

“Well, now… I’m not trying to obfuscate things here, really. I honestly don’t know. I just delivered the work they wanted from me. I never met any of them in person.”

“…Then just how effective are these Valiants?”

“They’re no big deal. They’re no match for Ardy, that’s for sure… Well, they might pose a problem if they fight in numbers, I suppose…”

“In numbers? Just how many did you give them?”

At this question, Ernesta, a bar of chocolate hanging out of her mouth, flashed Camilla a sweet grin. “Around a thousand.”

“Wha—?!”

Aghast, Camilla almost swallowed her tongue, completely lost for words.

Ernesta, however, merely gave her a sidelong glance, before clapping her on the shoulder. “Hey, come on, now! The match is about to start! Yes, Rimcy and Lenaty are both so adorable!”

She had already shifted her attention to the contest about to get under way.

For Camilla, too, that was obviously the most important matter at hand. She was certainly concerned about these Valiants and Ernesta’s associates, but she would have to deal with them later.

And having decided that, she turned her gaze back through the pane of reinforced glass to the stage below.

“It’s time for what may well turn out to be the most unusual match of this tournament! Two proxy fighters from Allekant Académie, the first battle between autonomous puppets since their debut in the Phoenix! You won’t want to miss a second, because this will be one for the history books!”

In stark contrast to the massive audience, working themselves up into a frenzy to the sound of the live commentary, Rimcy was as composed as ever.

“Our Master Camilla has just informed me that the opponent I must defeat has just won her fifth-round match. If I am to face her in the quarterfinal…I cannot afford to lose to you here. Even if you are my dear little sister and our Master Ernesta’s proxy.”

Rimcy wouldn’t normally so much as dream of defying Ernesta, but this time she had been given permission to do her absolute best.

“Yahoo!” her younger sister replied, skipping around innocently. “Lena can’t wait to battle you! But you know? Lena’s going to win!”

Rimcy knew that Lenaty’s specs exceeded her own. While she understood that victory and defeat couldn’t be predicted based on numbers alone, the odds of her winning in a head-on fight were less than 30 percent.

She would have to go all out from the very beginning.

“Activating AR mode. Initiating connection.”

As she acknowledged the prescribed conditions, a set of additional armaments materialized around her, merging with her exterior armor and covering her lower body with a skirt-shaped shield that unfolded into a steel wing almost twice the size of her ACM unit. At the same time, a hammer-type Lux like the one Ardy wielded materialized in her right hand.

“Now we’re talking! We haven’t even gotten under way yet, but Rimcy’s already killing it!”

“That’s…a similar process to when she merged with Ardy during the Phoenix. The components are similar…and this may just be a guess, but it looks like a reverse version of what we saw last time.”

As was to be expected, the commentator had a sharp eye. Rimcy’s additional armaments did indeed utilize spare parts from Ardy.

Originally, their fusion technique had been designed to transfer control over Rimcy’s command system to Ardy, in order to boost the output of his urm-manadite core. The main point of equipping the parts separated from Rimcy was so that Ardy could boost his own specs—the weaponry itself was secondary. Given that Ardy’s core was composed of urm-manadite, Ernesta had jokingly referred to their combined form as Perfect Ardy.

For Rimcy, on the other hand, being powered by a regular manadite core, her new combined form served to drastically increase her specs and firepower. Similar to Ardy’s combined form, Ernesta had taken to calling it Full Armor Rimcy.

“Ooh, so that’s your reinforced armor, sis. But you know… Yep, it’s too over-the-top! Not cute at all!”

“Indeed, it may not be the most elegant of armaments—but without it, I would stand little chance facing you.”

Lenaty was armed solely with her Youdemra. She wore no armor—nor, for that matter, anything that resembled clothing.

Rimcy knew, however, that Lenaty required no such protection. Camilla had naturally downloaded the data relating to Lenaty into Rimcy. As such, she knew almost all of Lenaty’s strengths and skills—with the exception of the purpose of the mechanisms surrounding her urm-manadite core, which not even Camilla fully understood.

Nonetheless, that advantage was mutual. Rimcy’s creator, Ernesta, naturally knew everything there was to know about her own specs and performance as well, and had undoubtedly passed that knowledge on to Lenaty. Even the connection system for her present additional armaments had been developed by Ernesta.

“It’s time. Let us both do our best and make this a good match,” Rimcy declared.

“A good match…?” Lenaty tilted her head in apparent confusion.

“…Lenaty?”

“Hmm, I don’t really understand… But I’ll do my best!” she squeaked, before heading toward her starting position.

Rimcy found herself overtaken by a feeling she couldn’t describe but quickly returned her attention to the battle at hand.

“Round 5, Match 6—begin!”

At the very moment the school crest at her chest rang out, the two of them leaped into action.

Rimcy increased the output of her flight unit, launching into the sky, while Lenaty jumped high into the air, bringing the Youdemra down to keep her from gaining height. While Rimcy met that blow head-on with her hammer, Lenaty’s strength was easily enough to overcome her flight unit, pushing her back to the ground.

Rimcy let out a quick barrage with the assault rifle–type Lux she activated with her left hand, pushing Lenaty back as she tried to launch a follow-through attack. Her younger foe, however, continued to close the distance between them, using the Youdemra as a shield.

A hammer swing was Rimcy’s counter, but Lenaty brushed the attack aside with her left hand, before quickly circling around to her elder’s blind spot as the Youdemra began to transform into a huge gun larger even than Rimcy herself.

Lenaty immediately fired off a powerful barrage; Rimcy rotated her body, sending a short burst of her own to cancel out the oncoming projectiles.

The difference in the output of their respective Luxes meant that she didn’t have enough time to shoot down all her targets, forcing the armor wrapped around her lower body to defend her against the bullets as they made contact. In the meantime, Lenaty’s Youdemra had returned to its previous form as a glaive-type Lux—but as she drove it forward in a quick flurry of strikes, Rimcy reduced the thrust of her flight unit, retreating and firing after her with her assault rifle.

Nonetheless, with a single bright flash, Lenaty cut through them all with the Youdemra, pressing forward once more.

“A-amazing! Just look at that rapid exchange of bullets, that fiery clashing of blades! Neither one of them is surrendering so much as a step or pausing for even a second! I’ve never seen a match move this fast!”

“Well, any normal person, no matter how great, would need to stop and catch their breath at some point…but that doesn’t really apply to these two. It also looks like they know each other’s moves perfectly, along with how to counter them.”

It was exactly that.

Rimcy and Lenaty did know each other perfectly—or to be more precise, they were predicting one another’s movements with perfect accuracy and selecting the best option available for countering them. At Allekant, this was commonly known as a processing battle, as both puppets had a perfect grasp of one another’s specs and design. Indeed, this kind of fast-paced contest would be impossible against flesh-and-blood masses of irrationality and uncertainty, as her previous opponents had been.

After all, for puppets, knowing their opponent’s specs and design in detail, it was easy to predict with a good degree of accuracy how they would move and respond in combat. While there were always infinite choices available, when calculating their expected outcomes, that number could be narrowed down to something much more manageable. On top of that, for puppets as powerful as Rimcy, there was little difficulty in compensating for any discrepancies between calculation and reality within a fraction of a second.

In other words, this match was nothing more than a race between processors to see which could outpace the other. Indeed, Rimcy knew that if the battle were to continue as it was now, she would lose at some point between fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds and seventeen minutes and forty seconds from the present moment. While they may have looked evenly matched, the difference between their respective specs meant she would be unable to calculate sufficient courses of action beyond that point.

That being the case, there were only two options available to her to break out of this cycle. The first was to select an irrational course of action. This would have been impossible for any ordinary puppet, but it was a different matter altogether for those like her who had been gifted with self-awareness. However, that would mean resetting the cycle of calculations, which carried a high risk of worsening her present situation.

Which left only the other option—

“Initializing anti-autonomous puppet floating mines. Activating dispersal.”

“Huh?”

As Rimcy moved across the stage, her ACM unit deployed a continuous stream of floating mines. They were spherical in shape, each around fifty centimeters in diameter. They drifted across the stage as if billowed by unseen waves, always keeping a fixed distance from one another to prevent unwanted collisions.

Camilla had developed the floating mines independently for this battle against Lenaty and hadn’t passed her data on them along to Ernesta. Using them now would inevitably make it impossible for Lenaty to maintain her sequence of calculations.

Watching them, Lenaty quickly brightened.

“Yeah! That’s more like it! Mom said to stick to a processing battle at first…but now Lena can do whatever she wants!” she exclaimed gleefully, before slamming the Youdemra down on the closest floating mine.

“Wha—?!”

The second her weapon made contact, the mine exploded with a thunderous roar.

Individually, the mines weren’t particularly powerful. Moreover, Lenaty incorporated a more advanced version of Ardy’s defensive barrier, making her chassis extremely difficult to penetrate.

That, however, wasn’t the purpose of the floating mines.

“What a downer. I thought you’d have more… Huh?” Lenaty began, before her knees suddenly gave way beneath her and she collapsed to the ground.

It was only an instant—just a momentary loss of balance—but for Rimcy, that was enough.

Powering her assault rifle up to maximum, she unleashed a merciless bombardment of bullets toward her opponent.

“Aieeeee!”

Lenaty screamed like an injured kitten as each bullet struck her, but the barrage didn’t seem to do much damage. That, however, was fine, so long as it bought Rimcy more time.

Rimcy had taken advantage of that window of opportunity to stow her hammer in her ACM unit and retrieve her secondary Lux.

“Activating Ruingörz.”

The Ruingörz was a towering sword-type Lux, longer even than Rimcy was tall. Camilla had designed the energy cannon with the express intention of surpassing the destructive power exhibited by Saya Sasamiya’s Luxes. Its manadite core let off a green glow as it rapidly charged its energy.

“Wow! That looks bad!”

Ernesta possessed data on the Ruingörz, so it was likely that Lenaty knew of its destructive potential. Panic seemed to wash over her as she tried to ready a countermeasure, but before she could properly prepare herself, the floating mines gathered around her.

“Aieeeee! Not fair!”

Camilla had expended a great deal of effort on perfecting the targeting program of those floating mines. Even with Lenaty’s considerable computational power, it was unlikely that she would be able to fully predict their movements.

On top of that, the floating mines were equipped with a special form of powdered manadite designed to temporarily inhibit the movements of autonomous puppets. Though that ability had been unknown in the early days of meteoric engineering, today, most Luxes and autonomous puppets were equipped with a special coating designed to block such interference. Naturally, that applied to both Rimcy and Ardy.

Lenaty’s coating, however, was incomplete. It wasn’t clear whether that was by design, but as very few weapons were designed to interfere with manadite cores anymore, it was possible that Ernesta had merely overlooked the weakness. Lenaty’s twin urm-manadite cores were undeniably powerful, but they came with a clear drawback.

“Discharging maximum output.”

“Waaaaah!”

Having finished charging the Ruingörz equipped to her right arm, Rimcy sent a piercing torrent of brilliant light straight for Lenaty. As the beam shot across the stage, the ground warped and caved beneath it, and the floating mines that found themselves caught in its path detonated one after the other. In Camilla’s testing, the destructive potential achieved when maximizing the urm-manadite’s power output had been more than enough to break through Ardy’s defensive barrier. There was little chance that Lenaty would escape unharmed after receiving a direct hit.

However—

“Phew! Th-that was a close one…!”

Lenaty had dodged the oncoming blast by little more than a hairsbreadth, although she had appeared to be standing still the whole time.

If Rimcy had to guess, the beam had crashed straight into her own floating mines before reaching its target. Lenaty looked to have guarded nothing more than her school crest, but the fact that she looked otherwise undamaged was beyond unsettling. Fortunately, given the concentration of manadite powder released by the detonated mines floating through the air, it would be impossible for her to dodge a second shot.

However, it would take some time to recharge the Ruingörz.

She could try to get close and destroy her opponent’s school crest in melee combat, but the risk of coming out second in a processing battle was too high. In that regard, Lenaty’s computational power was simply overwhelming. Rimcy couldn’t estimate just how long her opponent would be disabled, and recalculating once she recovered would be difficult.

In that case…I’ll have to be sure.

No sooner did she make her decision than she discarded her assault rifle and began to reconfigure her left hand. What emerged was a new and improved version of her strongest lance, the Ruinsharif. The Ruingörz equipped to her right arm may have possessed more power, but the Ruinsharif was still the best in terms of accuracy and rate of fire.

This, however, was not the end.

“I wanted to save this for my battle against Saya Sasamiya, but now I have no choice… Initiating connection.”

Rimcy brought both her left and her right arm—in other words, the Ruingörz and the Ruinsharif—in front of her, where they promptly merged into a single Lux so complete that it looked as if it had been designed to operate this way from the very beginning.

“Charging Ruindravalf.”

The strategic, high-energy compound cannon let out a deep hum and bathed the stage in a green glow.

At the same time, Rimcy directed her remaining floating mines to completely surround her opponent.

“This is the end, my sweet sister.”

“Wha—huh?! Camilla! First those floating mines, now that compound Lux?! What else are you hiding?!”

While Ernesta was clapping her hands together in excitement, Camilla merely continued to stare down at the stage in cool silence.

Lenaty, who many saw as merely a combat puppet, was simple in design. This was especially true when compared with the design of Rimcy, with her unparalleled offensive capabilities, or Ardy, with his absolute defensive power. The entirety of the tremendous energy output produced by Lenaty’s parallel urm-manadite cores was allocated to basic operations. In other words, instead of capitalizing on the unique properties of those pieces of urm-manadite, the energy simply boosted her overall strength and agility. That was it. And because of that, it was practically impossible for her to counter against Rimcy unless she specifically tried to take advantage of some flaw or weakness. In a way, the current situation could be put down to the fact that Camilla and Rimcy’s strategy had overcome Lenaty’s raw specs.

No, she corrected herself, she shouldn’t let herself get big-headed. Rather…

“Your design oversight may yet bring me victory,” she murmured softly.

“Oh? You mean the gap in the coating protecting the cores? Well, I don’t really have anything to say to that, aside from that I’m impressed you noticed it,” Ernesta replied, cupping her jaw in one hand. “…And that you went so far as to design those new weapons to take advantage of it. I will admit, I slipped up there.”

“It isn’t like you to make a mistake like that. No, I doubt you slipped up. The fact that you didn’t address it suggests you weren’t worried about anything interfering with the core, but that’s just carelessness…” Camilla stopped there, a distressing thought suddenly striking her.

Would Ernesta Kühne really do such a thing? Would a genius of her caliber really be so negligent and overconfident as to make a mistake that she, Camilla, could ascertain? Lenaty was her greatest masterpiece, a project into which she had poured her heart and soul. Would she really overlook a design flaw in something so important to her?

No. Of course not. Not the Ernesta Kühne she knew.

Only now understanding, Camilla glanced to her side to see Ernesta peering toward her through the gap between her fingers, her lips curled in a faint grin.

“Right, right, you see it now, don’t you? That isn’t a design flaw. Well, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get the coating to hold one hundred percent, so I’ll take responsibility for that…but there’s a reason why that gap leading to her core is necessary.” Ernesta’s grin grew wider with each word, until it was clear that she could hardly contain her laughter. “You should have asked yourself, Camilla, why that gap is necessary in the first place. Ah, but I suppose I did hide it pretty well, so I can’t blame you for missing it. What I wanted you to notice, though… Ah, look, here it is.”

“Huh?!” Camilla found herself jumping to her feet as she realized what was about to happen. “No… No, no, no, no, no! That’s not possible…!”

For her, what she saw down on the stage was something that couldn’t possibly exist.

“…Ruindravalf, maximum output.”

With her compound Lux now fully charged, Rimcy focused her targeting reticle directly on her opponent.

Lenaty, for her part, was completely surrounded by the remaining floating mines, with no avenue of escape. Even if she were to try to dodge the bombardment as she had last time, there wasn’t enough room for her to escape the Ruindravalf’s fire. More to the point, she didn’t possess any weapons that could change the situation. After all, Camilla had designed all her armaments—and of all Camilla’s creations, the Ruindravalf was by far the most powerful.

If there was any way of surviving it, it would have to be—

“Arghhhhh! Lena’s sick of this! Get going, already!” Lenaty cried, before casting the Youdemra aside, leaning forward, and launching herself over the floating mines in a single giant leap.

No sooner did she reach the ground than Rimcy came rushing straight toward her.

“Rawr!”

“I thought you might attempt that. Firing Ruindravalf!”

Rimcy, having anticipated this possibility, climbed higher into the air and fired the Ruindravalf to intercept.

The burst of light bathed the whole stage in brilliant white as a vortex of pale silver engulfed her opponent.

This would settle it.

Not only Rimcy herself, but the announcer and commentator, the massed audience—everyone except Ernesta and Camilla—must have thought so, too.

And yet—

“Nee-hee-hee-hee-hee! Not yet!”

Tearing through that torrent with one hand, Lenaty’s small figure emerged from the blinding light.

As Lenaty passed right by her opponent, the only thing that filled Rimcy’s mind was Lenaty’s innocent smile.

“Wha—?!”

Rimcy spun around as quickly as she could, but as she did so, both hands—in other words, the Ruindravalf—along with her right leg, the armor protecting the lower half of her body, and her ACM unit were shorn clean in two.

Lenaty had cut through them all with the side of her arm.

“Th-that’s…”

Losing her balance, Rimcy crashed to the ground.

Lenaty went slowly over to her. “Yippee! Right in half!”

Only then did Rimcy realize that Lenaty’s eyes had changed in color. But that wasn’t all. The energy radiating from her right arm was beyond belief, far exceeding anything Rimcy had measured before. With two urm-manadite cores, that kind of power should have been impossible to control.

“I see… So that’s it,” she murmured.

It was extremely unlikely, but faced with the evidence in front of her, it was the only plausible explanation.

“Lenaty, are your cores variable types? Normally, your urm-manadite cores are controlled through parallel processing, but now…they’re linked using the LOBOS transition method, aren’t they?”

“Nee-hee-hee! Yep! Lena loves this Lena the most! All this energy just gushing up from deep inside!”

The LOBOS transition method was an imperfect technology, one that in its present incarnation placed a heavy burden on those who attempted to apply it, as it caused the energy output to become unstable even with regular manadite. To think that it had been applied to urm-manadite… This level of control would no doubt be impossible even for Saya Sasamiya, who was perhaps the most used to applying the process. If something were to go wrong, it wouldn’t be at all surprising should the urm-manadite explode or, in the worst of cases, trigger a runaway cascade. The results could be catastrophic.

“Look, look! Sis! Isn’t it amazing?”

Her voice filled with excitement, Lenaty shook her arm from side to side, casually tearing through Rimcy’s left leg and what remained of her ACM unit. Her armor was all but useless. Faced with power such as this, there was simply no means of defense.

“…I understand, Lenaty. I am defeated.”

Still lying flat on the ground, she let out a resigned sigh—and with that, her school crest made its announcement:

“End of battle! Winner: Ernesta Kühne!”

For the first time since the Phoenix, Rimcy found herself struck by feelings of regret—regret that she had no alternative but to renege on her promised rematch with Saya Sasamiya.

“Oh, is it over…? Boring! Lena wants to keep playing!” Lenaty put her hand behind her head, pouting in displeasure, before suddenly peering into Rimcy’s face as if remembering something. “Ah, right! Hey, Rimcy, sis! Did Lena make this a good match?”

“Huh…?”

“You said before that you wanted to have a good match, right? But Lena didn’t know how to do that. Because that doesn’t just mean winning, right? And Mom said something like that, too. That it’s no good just to destroy my opponents.”

“Ah… I see. You really don’t understand just yet.”

But Rimcy understood. Despite possessing such absolute power, Lenaty really was still a child. Just what would she learn in the days and years to come? Rimcy couldn’t help but wonder whether her future experiences would shape this innocent young girl into a saint or a demon. It was a frightening thought.

She wanted to embrace her younger sister, but with her body the way it was, that was impossible. Instead, she answered her in a voice so gentle it surprised even herself: “I see… Perhaps I can teach you what I know.”

“Yep!”

“In a good match…it doesn’t matter who wins and who loses. So long as both contestants are fully satisfied, it was a good one.”

“Fully satisfied…?” Lenaty stared back at her blankly.

“Were you satisfied with this match, Lenaty?”

“Hmm…” Lenaty shook her head.

“I thought so… I feel the same way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t strong enough to give you anything more.” Rimcy’s smile was a complex mix of bitterness and pride. “However… I believe your next opponent, in the quarterfinals, will be different. She will give you a great match. I’m sure of it.”